United Devices Provides its Grid Computing Solution to NTT West for Enhancement of its Service OfferingsSolution Gives Competitive Edge to Japanese Telecomm Firm, Integrates Business Client and Consumer Broadband CommunitiesAUSTIN, Texas, August 8, 2007 — United Devices (UD) announced today that Nippon Telephone and Telegraph West Corporation (NTT West) and its reseller partner Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation (SCS) have completed installation of a managed service offering for business clients and broadband clients in western Japan. NTT West is the leading provider of telephone land lines and broadband Internet access in its service area. With UD's solution, NTT West utilizes the CPU power of its broadband users' PCs to deliver grid services with application software to business clients. With this solution, NTT West customers can opt to contribute idle CPU resource to NTT West's computing grid and as a result can receive CPU usage fees in proportion to the resources they contribute. The company then provides this computing capacity as a service to commercial business clients with compute intensive needs. The solution, "Hikari Grid," benefits NTT West's business clients by enabling them to avoid the problem of inefficient infrastructure investment in the face of fluctuating computational resource demands. At the same time, NTT West's broadband users are able to receive CPU usage fees in proportion to the CPU resources they offer. The advantage for NTT West comes from the competitive edge it gains in the services marketplace as it expects to be able to offer the CPU resources of its more than 5,000,000 contracted broadband line users (as of the end of March, 2007). "After careful research and testing of a number of options, we selected Sumisho's solution from United Devices," said Hideaki Inaba, manager, services creation department, at NTT West. "United Devices provides a very flexible, powerful scheduler and its analytics will give us a better insight into grid operations. In addition, UD already supports the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6." The NTT West solution is built on United Devices' managed services offering which provides the grid engine and management software needed to link NTT West's two customer groups. Sumisho Computer Systems, a United Devices reseller, helped NTT West to build the solution business case and implementation plan ultimately put in place. Experienced innovators in the area of IT delivery, SCS will provide ongoing professional services and support fro the project. Terms of the agreement were not released. "We greatly value our relationship with NTT West and look forward to helping them write a new chapter in their grid initiative," said Kyozo Ueno, manager, strategic marketing, advanced technology system development division, at Sumisho. "NTT West has one of the most innovative commercial grid applications in Japan, and it is exciting for us to take part in it." The solution service was just launched in April 2007 and is now being offered to NTT West business clients while NTT West continues to accept subscription applications from its broadband users. Further, NTT West is currently considering various "killer" business applications for corporate clients to deploy on the "Hikari Grid" and is in the process of discussing this with several prospective independent software vendors (ISVs) expected to be widely used on the "Hikari Grid." NTT West would welcome proposals by ISVs regarding "killer applications" for "Hikari Grid." "Japan is United Devices' second largest customer base outside the United States, and we are thrilled to add a customer of NTT West's prestige," said Ben Rouse, chief executive officer at UD. "As this type of virtualized application delivery continues to gain adoption, we are seeing more companies like NTT West taking proactive steps to build cost-effective managed service offerings for customers as a way to differentiate themselves. UD is a leader in providing these offerings due to our ability to automate application delivery based on established policies and SLAs – the application-centric approach to virtualization." About Nippon Telephone and Telegraph West CorporationNTT West is part of NTT Group, the incumbent telecommunications operator in Japan. NTT West provides Regional Telecommunication Services in the west area of Japan. Such telecommunications services include: Telephone services, Integrated Digital services, Leased Line service, and so on. For more information, visit the NTT West Website.For specific inquiries regarding this announcement, please contact: About Sumisho Computer Systems CorporationSumisho Computer Systems Corporation and Sumisho Electronics Co., Ltd., have merged to provide customers with a world of enhanced IT solutions. The new company is applying maximum synergy to find and attract a wider range of customers and serve their needs more completely and in greater depth. For more information, visit Sumisho Computer Systems Corporation.About United DevicesUnited Devices (UD) develops and delivers policy-driven automation solutions for next generation data center environments. The company's solutions enable customers and IT service providers to assure application service levels by dynamically scaling capacity to meet the real-time demands of applications and users. By automatically matching application requirements with the most eligible set of IT resources (both physical and virtual), UD solutions improve business agility and responsiveness, better utilize existing resources, and reduce operating costs – all while providing assured service levels. UD solutions are proven in production at hundreds of customers in a range of industries, including Manufacturing, Energy, Life Sciences, Government, and Telecommunications. Find out more at www.ud.com. |