NEC 2013 Annual Report Download - page 14

Under฀“Mid-term฀Management฀Plan฀2015,”฀
NEC is focused on development of Software-
Defined Networking (SDN), a new concept
that is set to revolutionize conventional
network technology.
SDN uses software to enable flexible
control of network structure and function.
This allows carriers and corporate customers
to make more efficient use of systems and
networks that have increased in scale,
complexity and diversity, which consequently
leads to lower capital spending as well as
reduced running and maintenance costs.
Another benefit of SDN is the greater ease of
allocating network resources in an
emergency, enabling a carrier to assign
priorities to the use of services such as
telephony, email, music and video. Moreover,
it can also help automate the process of
expanding or modifying the network,
something that has traditionally required
human labor. This promises to reduce the
time needed to provide new services
substantially. Together these benefits provide
new value that cannot be realized through
conventional network set-ups, while also
boosting customers’ competitiveness.
NEC began R&D in 2008 on network
control technologies for realizing SDN based
on the “OpenFlow” standard. Having
launched฀the฀world-first฀UNIVERGE฀PF฀Series฀
for datacenters and corporate applications in
2011, NEC is a global leader in this particular
field. Going forward, we plan to build on our
technical expertise by expanding our
presence to include products and services for
carriers. We plan to grow this business
aggressively by using our IT and network
assets to start providing full solutions as well
as discrete products.
SDN Will Revolutionize Networks
technical advantages to work with partners such as
Spanish carrier Telefónica S.A. on the development
of SDN solutions. Going forward, through the early
commercialization of business, we aim to establish
a leading position in solutions to help improve the
operating efficiency of carriers.
As part of strengthening and promoting locally led
businesses, we are shifting to a system based on
each regional headquarters taking the lead in
assessing local requirements for advanced social
infrastructure to enable a faster market response
from development to marketing. Over the long term,
our aim is for each regional headquarters to act
independently and provide mutual support for
business development using local strengths. In April
2013, to support this business model, we created
the Global Safety Division (GSD) based in
Singapore. The NEC Group’s first divisional
headquarters established outside Japan, the GSD
will function as a control base for our global
business development in the safety field. We
already have a strong track record in Singapore and
have established customer channels in areas such
as fingerprint and facial recognition and video
surveillance. Besides driving the development of our
strengths in these areas, the GSD will also oversee
development of common solutions in regions
outside Asia and provide assistance for safety-
related development projects worldwide.
NEC’s overseas sales in the fiscal year ended
March 2013 were ¥483.1 billion. Based on these
initiatives, we aim to increase overseas sales to
¥750 billion in the fiscal year ending March 2016, in
the process raising the overseas sales ratio to 25%.
13 NEC Corporation
Annual Report 2013