CTC Builds Operational Automation Environment for Shimizu Corporation’s Private Cloud

Twenty Operational Tasks Automated in Two Months after Introduction

Jan 16, 2014 ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (President and CEO: Satoshi Kikuchi; Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter "CTC") has built an operational automation environment for the private cloud of Shimizu Corporation (President and Representative Director: Yoichi Miyamoto; Head office: Chuo-ku, Tokyo). Twenty operational tasks were automated two months after introduction of the environment, which uses HP Operations Orchestration from Hewlett-Packard Japan, Ltd. (President and Representative Director: Shinichi Koide; Head office: Koto-ku, Tokyo; "HP Japan," hereafter). As a result, the lead time from when a user department submits an application over the company intranet to when a system environment is prepared was shortened from the original two days to just two hours.

Shimizu Corporation has migrated approximately 200 servers, including mission-critical systems, to a private cloud, and is expected to consolidate more than 300 servers during fiscal 2014. While the solution offered greater convenience to user departments, such as the ability to utilize IT resources flexibly, work such as system environment setup tasks placed an increased load on its information systems department.

To solve issues of this nature, CTC built an operational automation environment for the private cloud based on the OpeNext operational automation solution, which makes use of the HP Operations Orchestration operational procedure automation tool from HP Japan. OpeNext is provided by CTC System Service Corporation, which supplies operation services for business and applications across CTC and its group companies. From regular tasks to as-needed tasks and failure response, the automation of approximately 60% of a wide range of operational tasks was achieved in a multi-vendor environment.
CTC also provided support that will enable Shimizu Corporation to perform ongoing post-introduction maintenance, such as training on operational methods including new automation flow creation.

While Shimizu Corporation has traditionally performed manual double-checking to ensure high service quality, thanks to the automation, operational errors have been eliminated and the associated work load has been drastically lightened. In addition, a project is currently underway to use HP Operations Orchestration as a business continuity planning (BCP) initiative, to develop mechanisms to ensure the reliable operation of a disaster countermeasures site.

Moving forward, CTC will continue to provide a range of services to support the building and operation of Shimizu Corporation's private cloud environment.

OpeNext

This is a solution based on HP Operations Orchestration that introduces operational automation to achieve lower system operating costs and improved service quality. Comprising three services, namely Operational Task Organization, Automation Flow Creation and Operation & Maintenance Management, engineers skilled in HP Operations Orchestration use templates containing their accumulated expertise in system operation to perform various services, from task examination to automation flow creation as well as the maintenance and management of tools. For an introduction to the operation and management services offered by the CTC Group:

HP Operations Orchestration software

HP Operations Orchestration software is a runbook automation product that boasts the best track record in the industry as an operational procedure automation tool for running IT processes simply and efficiently. Using the extensive selection of templates included as standard, customers can easily create new automation flows themselves, winning the product widespread support among corporate users including data centers and service providers. By automating a wide array of tasks and processes inside a data center and reducing the time taken to deal with incidents and problems, provisioning, change request and complicated workflows, HP Operations Orchestration helps customers to lower costs.

Contact Information

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation, Corporate Communications Dept.


E-mail:press@ctc-g.co.jp

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