Vol.1 No.2 (Spring, 2004)

KOBAYASHI Kazuhiko
Executive Vice President, NEC Corporation

Recently, the overall world economic situation has been improving with the United States leading the way. The Japanese economy as well has finally emerged from the harsh conditions it had experienced for some time and has begun to recover (Fig. 1).
In the computer (IT) industry also, some enterprises are conducting business reconstruction in the midst of IT deflation and showing signs of recovery. For example, at NEC in 2001 and at Fujitsu from 2001 to 2002, drastic cuts were made in the workforce, causing severe suffering. Despite this, in 2003 both companies successfully returned to profitability in terms of sales and net profit.
With the pickup in the economy, the IT industry is also regaining its health and strength.
Nevertheless, we feel that the present trend toward recovery is following an unconventional pattern. This is a matter on which I would like to share my thoughts.

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

KOBAYASHI Kazuhiko

As hardware platforms to support "Dynamic Collaboration" age, NEC provides computer products into which we have greatly invested the world's highest standards of technologies acquired from experience with mainframes and supercomputers, as well as storage products that meet increased data capacity and data protection requirements, and network products that are indispensable in broadband and mobile environments. In addition, we offer the UNIVERGE family of products that combine our proprietary computing and networking technologies. NEC will continue to deliver "high-performance," "high-reliability" platforms suitable for the forthcoming broadband age, in addition to other products that will contribute to the innovation of the customer's work style and the creation of enterprise value.

SHIBUYA Toshiteru, MIKAYAMA Shigemi, SENTA Tetsuhide, KIMURA Masayuki, TAKAGI Hitoshi

NEC NX7700 Series Model i9510 is a high-performance and highly reliable server for mission-critical enterprise application. NX7700/i9510 provides suitable infrastructure for NEC's solution under the name of "Dynamic Collaboration."

OKADA Masahiko

In recent years, intercorporate collaboration has been getting attention as a means to create new value to strengthen competitive power in market. In order to achieve efficient collaboration, both high availability and high connectivity are required at the same time for information systems. Express 5800/ft series based on standard IA server is one of the best products in this point. This paper describes the target and features of the Express 5800/ft series.It also describes various kinds of important technology to realize a redundant IA server. It also introduces several cases to explain how the fault tolerant computer is utilized.

OKANO Tadashi

BladeServer is a server mounting form as well as pedestal type and rack mounting type.BladeServer is classified high-density type and high-performance type as usage. The requirements for each type are different, and strong points are also different compared with the conventional type server. Each type of BladeServer produces the new added value as well as physical consolidation. As for the high density type, cost reduction of operation management is a strong point, and the high performance type gets on the high usability. As enforcing these strong points, BladeServer has improved in its potential to evolve the system architecture to virtualization and decentralization.BladeServer and VALUMOware will contribute the evolution of IT platform and support the Dynamic Collaboration.

NAKAJIMA Toshiro, KOIKE Hirohiko, ISHIHARA Hirokazu
OHTANI Hiroyuki, NAGANO Hiroaki, OHTSU Toshiyuki

The NEC Storage product family provides a storage platform to strategically utilize the explosively increasing data in enterprises. This paper describes the functions, which are based on NEC's platform technology, VALUMO, provided by the NEC Storage SAN (Storage Area Network) and NAS (Network Attached Storage) products, to reduce the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) and improve availability and reliability.

SHIRASAWA Susumu, KURAHASHI Makoto, NODA Osamu, OGAMI Kenichi

In recent years, IP telephony services using VoIP (Voice over IP) technology has been attracting a great deal of attention all over the world as a means of telecommunication cost reduction. This paper describes the IP telephony market trend and various important technologies for not only IP telephony for public service and enterprise use but also IP Centrex services, a new solution for voice communications aimed at the needs of business customers, just launched last autumn in Japan. It covers packetization, voice codecs, echo cancellation and call processing protocols. Also, it is suggested that the possibility of convergence of information and network technologies will bring a new work style of business.

TAKAGI Kazuo, IWATA Atsushi, UMAYABASHI Masaki
HIDAKA Youichi, ENOMOTO Nobuyuki, ARUTAKI Akira

We propose a GOE (Global Open Ethernet) concept for supporting next-generation provider- and customer-managed Ethernet VPNs, and also present technical detail of GOE tag-switching technology especially for provider-managed VPNs. Next-generation provider-managed VPN services are expected to cost-effectively provide transport functions that are almost equivalent to STM ones, such as reliability and scalability, since they are becoming a lifeline as an alternative to STM-based leased-line ones. On the other hand, with the spread of customer-managed VPNs and broadband access, next-generation customer-managed VPNs are expected to support not only ‘ site-to-site ’ and ‘ person-to-site・#8217; connectivity but also ‘ group-to-group ’ and ‘ person-to-person・#8217; connectivity. Such VPNs should be required to be based on ‘ plug & play・#8217; technology so that customers can use these networks easily without any security problems. In order to meet these requirements, we propose a GOE concept which is to provide a world-wide Ethernet access to any person, from anywhere, anytime, with ‘ plug & play.’ We approach toward the concept with two categories of GOE technologies. One is based on GOE tag-switching technology, which gives transport functions that are almost equivalent to SONET/SDH ones, to provide scalable and reliable Ethernet networks for provider-managed VPN. The other is based on Ethernet-over-ANY technology called GOE-VPN, which transports Ethernet frames transparently between any sites and/or persons with ease, to provide ubiquitous Ethernet access scheme. GOE would be a driving force for evolving Ethernet to a world-wide network and much wider spreading of Ethernet-based VPNs.

NISHIHARA Motoo, KAMIYA Satoshi, HAYASHI Takeo
UENO Hiroshi, DOMEKI Tomoyasu, KANOH Toshiyuki

The progress of broadband Internet has caused various changes in services such as shopping, banking, and entertainment. Today, many customers can use various high-quality services over broadband Internet anytime and anywhere. As the services utilizing broadband Internet come into wider use, the availability and the reliability of the services become important subjects. This paper introduces a broadband service gateway platform technology that makes various businesses and services over the Internet readily available and reliable. A concept of a network front-end processor at the boundary between an information system and the network is proposed.

News

2004 NEC Technology Forum
NEC Develops 3D Face Recognition Algorithm that Realizes World's Most Accurate Personal Identification System
NEC's Mobile Terminal Business Strategy in China
— Introducing Flagship Models, World's Smallest, Slimmest, Card-Shaped, Camera-Equipped Mobile Phone and Pendant-Shape Mobile Phone —