NTT DOCOMO cuts costs, ups performance with Oracle Exadata

The modern communication age is built on partnerships. All over the world, enterprises are leveraging on the strengths of their diverse, multi-partner ecosystems in order to improve performance, reduce costs and deliver better services to their customers. In particular, these relationships are helping carriers throughout the telecommunications industry to fully harness the potential of new technologies like AI, IoT and especially 5G. 

“5G is about delivering ultra-low latency and higher capacity than ever before. It's also about creating meaningful change in the industry,” said Zaif Siddiqi, Executive Director and Global Head of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department, in a recent interview with Mobile Magazine.

For Siddiqi - and his colleague Hisakazu Tsuboya, Senior Vice President and General Manager of NTT DOCOMO’s 5G & IoT Business Department - their ongoing efforts to globalise NTT DOCOMO’s 5G business beyond Japan itself is requiring the company to trade on the considerable expertise of the NTT group as a whole and of its partners - both in Japan and abroad.  

“By leveraging our network and the technologies that are available throughout the NTT Group and our partners, we bring 5G together with backend infrastructure, AI engine, XR capabilities and cloud services,” Siddiqi explains. 

In the Japanese market, NTT DOCOMO benefits from an established mass market customer base, a cutting edge 5G and 4G LTE network, and long-standing relationships with a diverse network of partners. “We have 3,600 partners in Japan, who we are working with to develop new 5G solutions,” says Tsuboya. 

One of those key partners involved in improving the capabilities of NTT DOCOMO’s backend infrastructure is global cloud and data centre leader Oracle. 

“NTT DOCOMO is working with Oracle on backend database servers that are highly interoperable with 5G architecture. The backend infrastructure is vital to enable fast and flexible deployments of the 5G mobile network,” says Siddiqi.

As part of this relationship, NTT DOCOMO has purchased 100 Oracle Exadata machines - cutting edge database management technology that helps the carrier meet the needs of 80mn users. 

Using the Exadata machines in NTT DOCOMO’s data centres resulted in a 10 fold performance increase, while simultaneously reducing operating costs by as much as 50% by consolidating its databases with Oracle Exadata instead of developing and maintaining stand-alone database instances. 

NTT DOCOMO also managed to improve end-user work efficiency by rapidly processing massive volumes of business data using Oracle Exadata. The process also reportedly increased data availability by maintaining real-time copies at two disaster recovery sites, an innovative solution that ensures rapid data recovery and minimal data loss in the event of a disaster.

“Oracle Exadata is implemented as our core engine to process the call, communication, and billing information of 80mn users in real time. Thanks to Exadata, we cut operation and maintenance costs in half, while realizing 10X performance,” enthused Taku Hasegawa, Senior Vice President, General Manager of Information Systems Department, NTT DOCOMO.