Forward-thinking Infrastructure improvements to
mark 100 years of innovation
Sumitomo Corporation will mark the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2019. It is planning
to relocate its headquarters in the fall of 2018, with a planned IT overhaul at the same time.
The “Work Reform and Headquarters Relocation Team” of the IT planning and promotion
division will play a central role in this process. They work on infrastructure improvements to
administer everything related to IT and demonstrate the collective power of the group.
Akiyoshi Yamada, Director of IT Planning and Promotion, manages the deployment of
the new IT infrastructure, along with the simultaneous successful completion of the
headquarters relocation. “The promotion of communication and collaboration is necessary
in order to demonstrate the collective power of our group, and strengthening of the IT
infrastructure is essential for its promotion. We want the employees to leverage the newly
improved infrastructure as ‘earning power’. Furthermore, we expect that incorporating the
latest technology, such as AI and the IoT, will contribute to the creation of new business.”
Another reason behind the encouragement of IT utilization by Sumitomo Corporation
was the recommendation of “work reform” included as one of the strategic policies by the
government. “We also intend to make it possible for each and every employee to be able to
work according to his or her lifestyle with the help of IT equipment, regardless of the time
or place,” said Koichi Taniguchi, Team Leader of Work Reform and Headquarters Relocation.
At Sumitomo Corporation, a large number of devices, especially for salespeople, are carried
outside of the company. Preventing the leak of sensitive information sits at the top of their
agenda. In addition, due to the need of large-scale collaboration between divisions within
the group, a solution was needed to ensure secure information sharing among everybody
involved in a project. Building an infrastructure that was secure and encrypted was
therefore crucial to prevent eavesdropping.
Usability for employees and administrators
“We chose Pulse Secure’s PSA Series as our SSL-VPN solution for accessing company
data remotely,” said Hisashi Mitsunaga, a member of the same team. “Besides previous
performance, the number one reason was the confidence that Pulse Secure is a market
leader. In addition, because we are a global company, stable support
with a global basis for overseas expansion was important to us.”
With operations in 65 countries around the world, a total of 5
installations were completed in Tokyo, New York, and London, which
could be called the focus of the global basis.
He said that the switch to the next-generation models went smoothly
because of the performance history of Pulse Secure. When asked about
the advantages of deploying their products, he said that “because the
Pulse Secure client is easy to connect, and it’s tied to a password, once
you finish the authentication, you don’t have to input the password
every time. The feedback from employees showed that it’s extremely
easy to use. In addition, the administrators who are actually using
the current system said that there are few hardware failures and that
the administrator screen is easy to use,” he emphasized that it is easy
to use for both employees and administrators. He is very confident
that everything is ready for the switch to the PSA Series at the end of
February 2018, with a deployment period of 10 months.
Lifeline for employees working
around the world
He said that they actually have 3,000-4,000 registered users on a
global basis who use it for their work, and they have about 300-500
people with a constant connection. “Basically, we grant permissions
to all the employees who want to use it. While there are few people
working in the back offices who want to use it because many of them
currently do not need remote access, we anticipate that the number
of users will increase due to the future work reforms.”
When asked about the future development schedule of the IT
system, he said that “it will be planned after the completion of
the relocation of the headquarters. With the progress of the work
reforms, in case there is a need for all the employees to work at
home or at a satellite office, we wouldn’t be able to do our jobs
without the client of Pulse Secure, so in other words, it has become
a lifeline for us.” In addition, with the elimination of the wired LAN at
the new headquarters, they are planning to transition to a wireless
LAN environment. “We’re at the point where, if there were no
systems for working remotely, people outside their offices wouldn’t
be able to do their jobs. As the work reform is in progress, all of the
employees must be able to make use of remote access.”
He said that right now it is being used as a VPN for authentication
during remote access, but once cloud services are deployed, they will
consider using it as an authentication infrastructure. “It’s still under
discussion, but we felt we need to verify the compatibility of the
in-house system with Pulse Secure’s products for authentication.” In
the current system, only the employees of Sumitomo Corporation
can register to it. As for its use across the group, “we also consider
preparing a platform with the base in the headquarters for the group
companies. We felt we need to create an authentication infrastructure
for all the employees, including the 70,000 people in the group
companies, when they are collaborating with each other. We definitely
want to cooperate with Pulse Secure on that as well.” In the future,
they will keep an eye on not only on-premises data sharing but also the
use of cloud services. Steady progress is being made in the “earning
power” of the Sumitomo Corporation Group, which is driving a global
network for expansion worldwide, aiming for diversified business
development leveraging the collective power of the group, and the
establishment of a foundation to support it is also on its way.
