Mizuho Information & Research Institute, Inc.

Find a highly experienced partner to handle dynamic changes from the business side around the globe

Mizuho Information & Research Institute, Inc. (MHIR) offers ICT service in areas such as system consulting, system integration, and outsourcing as a member of the Mizuho Financial Group.

To support the Mizuho group's commitment to offering comprehensive financial consulting services under a "One Mizuho" slogan, the company became increasingly involved in the development of a global ICT environment that could provide high-quality services to customers worldwide.

"While building such an environment, we also needed to respond to local regulatory requirements in countries where we were operating. Since regulatory requirements were rapidly increasing, especially those related to cyber security, we decided to strengthen our organizational structure to respond in a more flexible and accurate manner," explained Mr Yasumasa Mukai of MHIR.

We were required to follow rules relating to the handling of personal information protection and prevention of its falsification that were frequently modified and expanded. There were also various requirements from the business side to increase service transaction speed and ensure ample system availability. The new systems and networks had to meet such stringent requirements.

"Establishing an operational structure that can promptly analyze impact to the ICT environment and creating a solution to satisfy changing requests was critical. We had to deal with such an environment around the world with our limited resources, so we needed a partner capable of building and operating a global ICT infrastructure,"added Mr. Mukai.

Enhance managed services to meet global coverage and responsiveness to requirements

Mizuho Financial Group (Mizuho) chose NTT Communications (NTT Com) as its partner to build and operate the global ICT infrastructure.

Mizuho has been using NTT Com's managed services to build and operate its global network since 2012 and determined that further strengthening of the services would meet its increasing cyber security demands.

"Only NTT Com could ensure stable and secure communication services in all countries and regions while comprehensively managing the system and providing scalability," said Mr. Mukai. Their ability to collaborate closely between the Japan HQ team and overseas affiliates, especially in terms of coverage, was another deciding factor.

In developing countries, for example, it is not uncommon for construction vehicles to accidentally break telecommunication lines. Resolving such an issue requires quick identification of the cause, swift on-site negotiation with the local carrier, and physical work to responsively restore such telecommunication lines. NTT Com's vast experience in such situations gave us big peace of mind.

"Although we need to respond to regulatory change requests in each country, we also need to centrally manage the global network from the Japan HQ team, maintaining an appropriate environment for network monitoring with enough visibility. Toward that end, we concluded that NTT Com's managed services were the best choice," emphasized Mr. Mukai.

Smoother operations overseas through traffic status visualization

Enhancement of NTT Com's managed services further strengthened Mizuho Financial Group' s global network. While continuing to provide network lines, equipment and 24/7 support, the services also newly implemented encryption for all transactions. This cyber security measure was fully employed not only in countries where encryption was requested, but also in regions where it may become a requirement in the future.

A new performance management function was also incorporated that visualizes communication status at the IP address level and analyzes traffic for each application. This function allows quick, accurate response to inquiries raised from the business side around the world, such as for communication delays. Those functions newly implemented significantly improve user support service by MHIR.

In keeping with the group's global strategy, multiple projects have simultaneously proceeded in various fields. One of the big projects for Mizuho was to replace the core banking system used by its overseas locations. NTT Com was also chosen as the group's partner to provide network infrastructure, which is still an ongoing project.

"In this project we're reconstructing our core banking system for the Asia Oceania region, which is probably the most important system in our financial business, and expanding it globally. Our first step was to choose NTT Com's data centers in Singapore and Malaysia as the bases for our environment in the Asia Oceania region. The advantages of NTT Com I mentioned earlier allowed us to launch the network infrastructure as scheduled and meet performance goals," Mr. Mukai shared with satisfaction. He also added that the intra-DC and inter-DC networks provided through NTT Com managed services offer the same operational stability and quality as in Japan.

While optimizing its global networks and rebuilding its core banking system with NTT Com as ICT infrastructure partner, Mizuho's policy has steadily steered towards more active use of external IT resources.

"The financial industry has traditionally kept its systems in-house for security and performance reasons. However, the creation of new services incorporating the latest technologies has become an important mission, and handling everything in-house now limits business potential. We've nurtured our partnership with NTT Com for many years and look forward to further improving our group's customer service through the company's swift and flexible offerings," concluded Mr. Mukai.

In the future, Mizuho plans to diversify its initiatives by using public cloud and inter-connections between such cloud services and existing on-premise systems. Since security and governance will continue to be priorities, NTT Com will surely contribute in many ways.