
SOFTBANK Contributes to Japan's Recovery Process by Utilizing NetApp Technology Following 2011 Earthquake and Tsunami IT Transformation Enables Softbank to Increase Customer Base by 27% and Reduce Operating Expenses by 30% in the Last Five Years
SUNNYVALE, Calif.-April 10, 2012- Companies large and small all over the world depend on their information technology (IT) infrastructures to help drive business success. By making the right decisions, a company can transform its IT environment to accelerate business, create competitive advantages, and increase profits. But what if an IT infrastructure could do more than simply help a company accomplish its business goals? What if the decisions made years earlier about how to transform IT could also lay the foundation to enable a company to respond in a time of crisis?
On March 11, 2011, Japans largest earthquake on record hit and triggered a massive and devastating tsunami, causing extensive damage in a wide range of regions throughout the country.
In 2006, SOFTBANK Group, a Japanese telecommunications and media corporation, set out on a path to consolidate and transform its entire IT organization, which had become highly complex, redundant, and disparate due to previous acquisitions and expansion. The companys goal was to change IT from a cost center to a profit center, and it turned to NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) as a key technology partner to help make that happen. What resulted was a completely revamped IT organization that enabled SOFTBANK Group to deliver a range of internal and external cloud services called White Cloud that served as a catalyst for SOFTBANK Groups continued growth and success.
But with a corporate philosophy aimed at making people happy through an information revolution, SOFTBANK Group took its work one step further. The companys newly transformed IT infrastructure allowed SOFTBANK Group, just days following March 11, 2011, to deliver several of its cloud service offerings either at highly discounted rates or free of charge to businesses, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations that had been affected by the disaster. SOFTBANK Group also made a decision to expand its internal virtual desktop service, which was built on a NetApp foundation and used by some of its groups, to a company-wide system to enable the continued efficient operation of the company as a whole.
Although the original plan was to gradually release this service over a one-year period, SOFTBANK Group completed the deployment to 14,000 employees in just a few weeks. Behind SOFTBANK Groups ability to quickly respond to external emergency and internal needs was NetApp technology.
SOFTBANK Group Leans on NetApp to Drive Business and Respond to Disaster
Since kicking off its IT transformation project in 2006, SOFTBANK Group has realized tremendous results. These include not only enabling its business to go further, faster, but also enabling the company to be there for its fellow citizens when they needed it most. Highlights of the project include:
Turning IT from a Cost Center to a Profit Center
SOFTBANK Groups IT infrastructure transformation helped the company decrease IT operating expenses by 30%, increase its customer base by 27%, and reduce overall storage capacity by 40%.
NetApps unique storage efficiency technologies such as deduplication and thin provisioning have provided the company with disk space savings of more than 50% for increased savings and flexibility.
SOFTBANK Mobile, the highest-growth business of SOFTBANK Group, increased its number of customer accounts by 75% and reduced operating costs by 50%.
Massive Transformation of IT Infrastructure to Focus on Cloud Services
SOFTBANK Group has a vision that cloud computing will become one of the worlds greatest assets, and believes that it will serve as a repository for every piece of human knowledge and wisdom.
SOFTBANK Group today offers a total of 16 different White Cloud services, several of which are built on NetApp. One of the first White Cloud services was called White Cloud Desktop Service and was based on its internal virtual desktop offering built on NetApp. This offering helped the company reduce calls to the internal help desk by 90% and increased individual productivity by an average of 10%.
SOFTBANK Groups internal virtual desktop service has also instilled a cultural shift among its own employees. Working remotely in Japan is not a common practice but SOFTBANK Groups White Cloud Desktop Service provides employees with increased work flexibility, which resulted in largely increased productivity for the company. In fact, more than 22,000 company employees today use virtual desktops built on a NetApp foundation, making SOFTBANK Group one of the largest VDI use cases in the world.
NetApp FlexClone technology has allowed SOFTBANK Group to reduce the time it takes to implement 1,000 virtual desktops from one week to one day, improving overall productivity and speeding time to deployment.
The Ability to Respond at a Time of Crisis
Just three days after the earthquake and tsunami, SOFTBANK Group began offering at a major discount its White Cloud Desktop Service to businesses, public agencies, and nonprofit organizations incapacitated by the disaster and provided other services free of charge.
SOFTBANK Group also delivered its White Cloud Desktop Service to thousands of its own employees who were not yet part of the deployment. This ability to make a decision in just a few days and to deploy its services on a massive scale in just a few weeks was testament not only to the flexibility and scalability of SOFTBANK Groups own IT infrastructure but also to the innovation and will of its people.
Following the earthquake and tsunami, a crisis at one of the countrys main nuclear power plants resulted in a power shortage and a government-mandated decrease of 25% in energy use.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
01/04/2026
January 4 2026, 18:00 (PST) DOLBY AND DOUYIN EMPOWER THE NEXT GENERATON OF CREATORS WITH DOLBY VISION
Douyin Users Can Now Create And Share Videos With Stun...
14/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
14/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
14/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
14/02/2026
Boston Conservatory Orchestra Helps Peter and Leonardo Dugan Complete Their Dre...
13/02/2026
Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has provided an update on its adoption of the cloud as it continues on its journey to fully migrate to IT-based systems by 2...
13/02/2026
France T l visions has successfully launched France 2 UHD featuring Dolby Vision...
13/02/2026
Partnering with Worldwide Olympic Partner TCL, OBS deploys connected Athlete Mom...
13/02/2026
The men's figure skating long-form program is tonight, and it promises to be an exciting night for fans in the stands, fans at home, and even the production...
13/02/2026
With new partnership between the league and NBC, workflows distinguish more between live, broadcast sound
There'll be a lot new for the 75th NBA All-Star W...
13/02/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level have one major thing in common: the intensity and attention to detail ramps up dur...
13/02/2026
Teradek announces the launch of RF-X Auto Switcher, a revolutionary appliance designed to deliver flawless, uncompromised signal integrity for the world's m...
13/02/2026
Globecast and Synamedia announces that Pitch International (Pitch), the leading London-based sports marketing agency, has gone live with cloud-based distributi...
13/02/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
13/02/2026
Far from the action in the snow and on the ice, the team controls the production...
13/02/2026
The Daytona 500 is called The Super Bowl of Racing for a reason. Whether it's the culmination to five days of action on the track, the sheer size and scop...
13/02/2026
For the Milano Cortina Games, Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) is delivering more than 6,500 hours of content, with more than 900 hours of live action, sprea...
13/02/2026
After 24-year absence, NBC Sports returns to NBA All-Star Weekend with unique ca...
13/02/2026
By Jessica Herndon
We may have just wrapped an unforgettable 2026 Sundance Film...
13/02/2026
By Jessica Herndon
One of the most exciting things about the Sundance Film Fest...
13/02/2026
This Wednesday in Los Angeles, Spotify brought together a group of podcast creat...
13/02/2026
Yesterday, Spotify and LoveShackFancy hosted a Galentine's and Gents Lunch a...
13/02/2026
The upgrade to a Project 25 network provides state agencies communicating on the Statewide Law Enforcement Radio System flexibility to tailor the network to the...
13/02/2026
Riedel Communications has officially opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, marking a strategic expansion of its global Customer Success and IT software...
13/02/2026
Two of ES Broadcast Hire's longest-serving employees recently celebrated a decade working for the company.
Annie Breislin, Operations Manager, and Charles ...
13/02/2026
Disguise, the award-winning technology company powering global experiences, today unveils a new 8,000-square-foot office and Experience Center in Atlanta, creat...
13/02/2026
At BSC Expo 2026, Mavis announced full support for the Accsoon SeeMo series of iOS camera adapters across Mavis Camera and Mavis Monitor apps. This new integrat...
13/02/2026
Executing technically ambitious live streams, virtual productions, and immersive media today requires talent, creativity, and the right supporting technology. L...
13/02/2026
Michal Miskin-Amir, Jonathan Stanton and Bobby Bond to lead technical advances amid surge in demand for LTN's IP video transport services as satellite capac...
13/02/2026
Grass Valley, the pioneering media and entertainment technology innovator, has won a competitive NATO-wide tender to provide the new camera system for NATO'...
13/02/2026
Wireless IP intercom underpins agile, multi-location live production workflows
Digital Azul, the independent production powerhouse specialising in complex liv...
13/02/2026
Actus Digital, a LiveU company, will unveil major new enhancements to its Actus X Intelligent Monitoring Platform at NAB Show (LiveU booth N1740), reinforcing i...
13/02/2026
Globecast, a worldwide leader in broadcast services, and leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that Pitch International (Pitch), the leadi...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/02/2026
What can I watch on UKTV this week?What can I stream on U this week?
This guide highlights romantic dramas for Valentine's Day, alternative relationship t...
13/02/2026
New RT series tells stranger-than-fiction stories of Irish con artists
Swindlers airs Wednesday 18 February, 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
Swindlers, a...
12/02/2026
Chyron unveils PRIME 5.3, the latest software release of the company's powerful engine for live production graphics. PRIME 5.3 delivers the first official i...
12/02/2026
The vendor's VP of Product Management explains how quality assurance, monito...
12/02/2026
LTN announces the appointment of three experienced executives to lead its new Technology organization: Michal Miskin-Amir as EVP and Head of Technology, Jonatha...
12/02/2026
Riedel Communications has officially opened a new office in Kuala Lumpur, Malays...