Vol.1 No.1 (Winter, 2004)

WATANABE Hisatsune
Associate Senior Vice President

NEC has published the "NEC Research & Development," an English technical journal introducing the company's R&D efforts to the world for 44 years. Recently, however, companies - of course including NEC - have been improving their 21st-century style of new businesses, and we have accordingly decided to launch this new "NEC Journal of Advanced Technology" for the purpose of supporting such business style. This journal also adopts the new style and meets our global customers' demands.
It will offer more information than its predecessor about the NEC Group's state-of-the-art advanced technologies, will introduce core technologies used for newly developed products, and will propose new systems and services.

The first two special issues of "NEC Journal of Advanced Technology" - Vol.1 No.1 and Vol.1 No.2 -, that offer our marketing message "Dynamic Collaboration," introduce overviews and future trends of core technologies and products which are supporting "Dynamic Collaboration"; Vol.1 No.1 features 'system technologies,' and Vol.1 No.2 presents 'hardware products.'

NEC will continue to advance our business improvement to satisfy global needs. We hope that the "NEC Journal of Advanced Technology" will serve as a means of acquainting readers with our enthusiasm and competence, and in addition, that it will contribute to readers' business activities.

KANASUGI Akinobu
President

A preliminary report by the Cabinet Office announced on November 14, 2003, revealed that the real GDP of the Japanese economy has grown for seven consecutive quarters. The main factors are believed to be the increase in external demands (exports minus imports) and equipment investment. In particular, increased export to China and other Asian countries boosted net exports, while equipment investments are making a rapid recovery in strong export industries (electric machinery, machinery and others). Despite these positive economic indicators, there are still some concerns for the Japanese economy that leave a sense of uncertainty for the future.
The first concern is the “strong yen” in a business recovery phase led by external demands. The second concern is the gradually spreading view that “it will still take some time to achieve a full-fledged consumption recovery” as the contributory share of consumption, which was one of the plus factors of GDP until June 2003, has fallen to almost zero in the 4th quarter of FY2003. Thirdly and lastly, is the concern that the prolonged deflation will adversely affect the confidence of consumers as well as that “deflation of assets,” which is not currently reflected in the price index, will effect business performance and individual consumer spending.
Under this economic situation, Japanese companies have been steadily improving their earnings by reducing fixed costs including labor-related charges. However, the pace of earnings improvement has recently slowed down. Japanese companies are now at a turning point where they should change over to management that aims to resume revenue growth.
According to the results of research on medium-term management issues for the future compiled by the Japan Management Association, many corporate executives were found to believe that prospects for financial strength and earnings improvement are looking brighter to some extent, and that these executives will take renewed action toward revenue growth. With so much anxiety lingering in their minds, establishing the driving force for subsequent growth has become their common challenge.

Special Issue: Advanced Technologies Driving “Dynamic Collaboration” -Featuring System Technologies

YAMAZAKI Yukio

Companies are searching for a new business model in the midst of unclear, chaotic and fast-changing economic circumstances, as exemplified by increasing globalization and rapid changes in the market environment. The focus of these companies is on “creating new corporate value through quicker and more dynamic response to accelerating changes in the market.” NEC believes that the shape of the next-generation business will be one in which each company enhances its own competencies and strengths, and uses these core competencies to collaborate with other companies. On June 10, 2003, NEC introduced this concept of “Dynamic Collaboration - making your business grow -.” This message is a promise that NEC will support its customers’ business innovation and creation of new value. In order to fulfill this promise, we at NEC are determined to resolve our customers’ management issues by offering business solutions that converge our advanced computing and networking technologies, and thereby serve as a business partner that evolves along side our customers.

EGAWA Takashi, KOBAYASHI Masayoshi, YAMANISHI Kenji, ARUTAKI Akira, NAMIKI Junji

Considering SCM (Supply Chain Managing) as an example, we formulate ‘Dynamic Collaboration,’ NEC’s business vision, as a concept of control theory. This enables us to build business relationships in more flexible manner. Control theory tells us that such deeds make a system unstable if the number of business partners is more than a few, but our experience tells us they do not. We believe that in the real world there are self-organizing processes under which lie dynamics to make structure, and that thanks to this, dynamics systems become simple enough to be stable. It is therefore more important for us to understand and to control the dynamics than merely to discuss surface architecture. Ubiquity is another important component for system stability. It enables us quick sense and reaction, thus suppressing internal system delays and contributing to stability. We believe this clearly shows that our future lies in ubiquitous computing and in Dynamic Collaboration.

TERAO Minoru, IWAOKA Yasuo, HADANO Kouichi
YAMAMOTO Masato, ISHIKURA Naoto, ITOH Junko

Due to the rapid development of IT (Information Technology) such as the Internet, information systems are now positioned as important social infrastructures. This means that information systems are required to meet two basic requirements for social infrastructures, “robustness” and “flexibility.” “Robustness” is the ability to run business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and “flexibility” is the ability to promptly respond to changes in market environments. In order to achieve such “robustness” and “flexibility,” NEC has accumulated a large volume of experience in the construction of OMCS (Open Mission Critical Systems) while incorporating rich know-how obtained through experience with mainframes. Such experience-based know-how has been integrated into the platform technology for OMCS construction, “VALUMO.” “VALUMO” stands for “Value More” indicating NEC’s commitment to improving customers’ corporate value. The corporate value discussed here has three aspects: “business continuity for non-stop business,” “collaborative networking for business expansion,” and “TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) reduction for lowering cost,” and NEC will provide this value to customer companies through the use of our technology. VALUMO will contribute to the expansion of customers’ businesses using systems ranging from super-large scale to middle/small scale, on platforms that support various industries and services, and systems that work with package software. This paper gives an overview of the VALUMO technology.

FUJITA Satoru

This paper describes the trends of Web service technologies that support ’Dynamic Collaboration.’ For the realization of collaboration in business, five important features are shown: (1) connectivity and interoperability, (2) security and safety, (3) robustness and reliability, (4) dynamism, and (5) contract. There are various specifications proposed on Web services and ebXML, which is a complementary technology of Web services. This paper categorized these specifications into the above features, and gives a brief explanation of each technology.

KATO Akira, ARAI Masanobu, FUJIWARA Ryuhei

This paper discusses two research and development items that present good examples of how new forms of convenience can be created when different types of networks interwork while taking advantage of one another's strong points. One is the prototype of a mobile phone equipped with a terrestrial digital TV receiver, which can serve as an interactive portable TV terminal targeted at individual users. Sharing resources with the existing third-generation cellular telephony service, the prototype is almost the same in size as the mobile phones currently on the market and is suitable for practical use. The other is an ad-hoc system aimed at collecting sensor data. We have developed a wireless sensor terminal that can operate on a tiny solar cell the size of a business card, as well as an ad-hoc multi-hop sensor network system whereby sensor terminals are located in a mesh topology, with each several hundred meters apart, thus autonomously establishing a network of multi-hop transmission routes. We believe that having these networks of different types interwork closely with the Internet will create new business in the coming years.

MIYAUCHI Hiroshi, KOMATSU Ayako, KAWATSU Masato, SUGIURA Masashi

Security is an essential issue for Dynamic Collaboration. NEC has developed the iBestSolutions/ Security framework as the security basis of Dynamic Collaboration. The main components of iBestSolutions/Security are security management, cyber attack protection, integrated identity management and information disclosure management. NEC is also developing new security technologies including privacy protection that will be necessary in the future ubiquitous society.

KOJO Takashi, MAENO Yoshiharu, SEO Yoshiki

Dynamic resource allocation is one of the critical characteristics required for the back-end systems implementing Dynamic Collaboration. In this paper, we first discuss the requirements on such systems and point out that the policy automation is the key technology. Then, scalable models for dynamic resource brokering of complex large distributed systems are discussed. We implemented basic functions of the models and successfully demonstrated feasibility of the model.

Keynote Speech for CEATEC JAPAN 2003

SASAKI Hajime
Chairman of the Board

The word “Ubiquitous” has become a part of everyday conversation. My definition of a ubiquitous society is “a society in which IT is incorporated into everything around us.” In Japan today, use of broadband communication, which is a backbone infrastructure, is rapidly growing. This means that an essential piece to building a ubiquitous society is swiftly being put into place. The next step is to promote utilization of IT as described in “e-Japan Strategy II.” On that account, I consider it necessary to further advance discussions on new ubiquitous-related markets, ubiquitous solutions, and the core technologies to uphold such solutions. On the basis of Japan’s social environment, well-developed infrastructure, and technological edge, it is important to seek ways to globally develop and expand a Japan-initiated ubiquitous society.

Keynote Speech and Paper for TELECOM 2003

KANASUGI Akinobu
President

Thank you for the introduction. I am most honored to have the opportunity to speak to you today. If we look at the current state of information communications technology, or ICT, we see that technological innovation is propelling us toward a fully networked society. I call such a society a ubiquitous society, where information can be exchanged anytime and anywhere, be it between one person and another, a person and a machine, or one machine and another machine. As the basis for discussion, I would like to share with you today the initiatives Japan has taken toward developing a ubiquitous society, outline the importance of security and privacy issues, and point out challenges for the future.

NAMIKI Junji, OYAMADA Jun, HAYAKAWA Kozo, IWAMA Kazuo

Under the turning point of Telecom Industry with the rapid penetration of broadband Internet and advanced mobile services, ITU TELECOM WORLD 2003 was held in Geneva, Switzerland without participating of some major players in Europe and North America. NEC introduced its most recent advanced and vital network business solutions created by the convergence of computing and networking technologies under the theme of “Dynamic Collaboration - making your business grow” for network service providers. Through the presentation in theme stage and each exhibition, NEC’s proactive business message would be reached and understood by participants.

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