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. SOFTBANK Groups actions, such as deployment of the White Cloud Desktop Service, allowed the company to decrease power usage
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
01/12/2025
L3Harris and PentenAmio formalise their teaming agreement at MilCIS 2025, streng...
01/12/2025
Artemis II is NASA's first crewed flight test of the Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft. The crew, from left: Commander Reid Wiseman, Pilot Vic...
01/12/2025
IRVINE, Calif. Wooden Camera has introduced its new Accessory Collection for the Canon EOS C50. The new lineup includes a low-profile, gimbal-ready cage, expand...
01/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for its Dec. 18 Open Commission Meeting that will include a vote on a report an...
01/12/2025
In most years, a graph of annual local TV ad spending is about as predictable as an electrocardiogram of a reasonably healthy patient in a doctor's office. ...
01/12/2025
Many industries have seen big-ticket hardware turn into software. Switchers, though, demand a combination of real-time performance and sheer bandwidth that has ...
01/12/2025
GENEVA Shanghai will host the next quadrennial Radiocommunication Assembly (RA-27) and World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-27), Oct. 11-Nov. 12, 2027. This...
01/12/2025
NEW YORK Just in time for Giving Tuesday tomorrow (Dec. 2), the Broadcasters Foundation of America is seeking out donations to help television and radio industr...
01/12/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Net Insight CEO Crister Fritzson has informed the company's board that he will retire from the video transport and media cloud technology ...
01/12/2025
01 Dec 2025
Kyivstar and Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation Select Go...
01/12/2025
The prequel to the global hit Sky Original mob crime saga, Gomorrah' is a s...
01/12/2025
Featuring Florence Welch, Red Hot Chilli Peppers' Flea, designer Bella Freud...
01/12/2025
Back to All News
A Down to Earth, All Too Relatable Hero: Cashero' Teaser ...
01/12/2025
In the rush to deliver content to every screen, many broadcasters overlook one of the most crucial steps in the workflow: format and frame rate conversion. Get ...
01/12/2025
Fox Corporation Chief Financial Officer Steve Tomsic to Participate in Upcoming ...
01/12/2025
Arvato Systems' Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Receives BSI C5 Certification (T...
01/12/2025
Summary This short video gives you an summary of the changes in under two minutes.
--...
01/12/2025
As the festive season approaches, RT Supporting the Arts is proud to showcase a...
01/12/2025
Researchers worldwide rely on open-source technologies as the foundation of their work. To equip the community with the latest advancements in digital and physi...
01/12/2025
Festive specials of Christmas in Kilmainham presented by Marty Whelan, High Road Low Road, Callan Kicks the Year and Keys to My Life
Ring in the New Year with ...
01/12/2025
Architect and television presenter Hugh Wallace, best known to RT audiences as a long-serving judge on Home of the Year, has died at the age of 68.
In a state...
28/11/2025
Nadia Fall attends the 2025 Sundance Film Festival premiere of Brides at the Egyptian Theatre on January 24, 2025, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Donyale West/...
28/11/2025
It's easy to ignore those little red update available badges. But when it ...
28/11/2025
WASHINGTON Federal Communications Commission has released a tentative agenda for the December Open Commission Meeting scheduled for Thursday, December 18, 2025 ...
28/11/2025
The Professional Fighters League is looking to super-serve fans of mixed martial...
28/11/2025
Fubo has released in beta on select Roku devices a new feature that lets users display up to four simultaneous streams at once....
28/11/2025
The WNBA playoffs and Week 4 of the NFL regular season highlight the list of live sports events airing on television this weekend....
28/11/2025
The 32nd class of honorees to the B+C Hall of Fame took to the stage at New York's Ziegfeld Ballroom on September 26 for a gala induction event. Click below...
28/11/2025
We hold in our hands the very last Next Text for Next TV, the weekly back-and-fo...
28/11/2025
DirecTV said it made a deal with EchoStar to buy EchoStar's video businesses, including satellite-TV provider Dish TV and virtual MVPD Sling TV, for $1 plus...
28/11/2025
The Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame, the premier industry event paying tribute to the influencers, innovators and shining lights of broadcast, cable and streami...
28/11/2025
Friday 28 November 2025
Sky Sports x Slawn drop limited-edition football jersey...
28/11/2025
Rohde & Schwarz shows resilience in a challenging environment, revenue exceeds t...
28/11/2025
Unwrapped: The Toy Show Appeal - airing this Sunday on RT One and RT Player- s...
27/11/2025
LONDON Vizrt has added several AI-driven advanced features offering improved speed, intelligence and accuracy in the newest version of its media asset managemen...
27/11/2025
Prime Video has launched AI-powered video season recaps in a beta version for select English-language Prime Original series in the U.S., a move Amazon is callin...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Netflix's Raat Akeli Hai: The Bansal Murders Marks a Grand...
27/11/2025
27 Nov 2025
GSMA brings M360 Eurasia 2026 to Samarkand in partnership with VEON...
27/11/2025
Tahar Rahim and Izuka Hoyle star in the gripping six-part Sky Original from Acad...
27/11/2025
Thursday 27 November 2025
Sky Arts Reveals the Nation's Greatest Basslines - and Queen Reign Supreme
The UK's most iconic basslines have been revealed...
27/11/2025
Back to All News
Stranger Things 5': Prepare for One Last Adventure With O...
27/11/2025
The media industry has a paradox at its core. It's an industry built on light, color and imagination, yet behind the scenes, it's powered by one of the ...
27/11/2025
Rating reflects rating progress across areas including policies, diversity & inclusion, health & safety and Net Zero leadership
Winchester, UK, 27 November 202...
27/11/2025
What are the industry standards for Retail Media? Kathryn explains that certification is based on the IAB Europe Retail Media Measurement Standards and the IAB ...
27/11/2025
World champion boxer and Irish sporting icon Katie Taylor will be in studio this...
27/11/2025
Roblox, one of the world's most popular online gaming platforms for primary ...
27/11/2025
Black Friday is leveling up. Get ready to score one of the biggest deals of the season - 50% off the first three months of a new GeForce NOW Ultimate membership...
26/11/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Prime Video EP Mike Muriano Previews Massive Black Friday Slate Fe...
IT Transformation Enables Softbank to Increase Customer Base by 27% and Reduce Operating Expenses by 30% in the Last Five Years 
