Sumitomo Precision Products True Flexibility Between On-Premises and Cloud Environment

Nutanix Cloud Platform Improves Operational Management Efficiency and Performance of IT Infrastructure

Overview

Sumitomo Precision Products, Co., Ltd.. is one of the world’s leading machinery manufacturers involved in aerospace equipment. Since its establishment in 1961, the company has contributed to the society by utilizing its unique design, manufacturing, and development technologies in diverse fields. In addition to supplying landing gear and thermal control systems for aircraft, the company has also developed more efficient and compact heat exchangers for bullet trains and general electric power, as well as pumps and control systems that utilize hydraulic technology to reduce noise level of vehicles and jetfoils.

The company is also moving into areas such as global environmental protection by supplying ozone generators for wastewater treatment and manufacturing processes, and the development of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) for use in automobiles and smart phones and their application in sensors.

Challenge

With the expansion of business areas, it has become necessary to respond to the different needs of each business unit. For example, the centralized management of design and development information for aircraft, heat exchangers, etc., and the reliable protection of confidential information such as design drawings. Other businesses require agile responses to diverse requests and industry trends because of the rapid evolution of the market and the rapid turnover of products.

Sumitomo Precision Industries is working to open up its system to counter the aging of its mission-critical system, which is centered on a host computer, and to respond flexibly to the needs of different businesses. As part of this project, the Information System Department has taken the lead in renewing the virtualization infrastructure related to production management and drawing management.

Solution

The system to be renewed had been in operation with more than 130 VMs based on a three-tier configuration, but it could no longer support functional expansion due to lack of performance and resources. The IT department’s human resources were also heavily impacted by responding individually to the various requests that frequently arose from each department. From a security standpoint, an on-premise infrastructure is essential due to the need to renew older versions of the OS, and to ensure strict control of the company’s confidential data.

For each business unit, it is important to optimize designs and manufacture quality products while saving time and money. For the Information Systems Department to support them, the system needed to be simple and easy to operate, and it needed to be able to quickly enhance performance according to the needs of the business units.

The company turned to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) as a solution to meet these requirements. “In the review phase, we considered rebuilding our three-tier system, but HCI simplifies the configuration and can be operated by a small number of technicians. After considering multiple HCI solutions, we decided to adopt the Nutanix Cloud Platform based on its high scalability as well as operational efficiency,” said Toshiki Sandou, General Manager, System Infrastructure Dept., Information System Div., Sumitomo Precision Products. In addition, SCSK Group, a partner that has been supporting the company’s IT environment for some time, provided a precise analysis of the company’s IT environment and requirements, and offered accurate solutions for reducing management man-hours and flexibly responding to future expansion, which helped the company to adopt Nutanix.

Customer Outcome

Atsuki Nishimura, System Development Dept., Information Systems Div., said, “Our previous virtualization environment based on a three-tier configuration was reaching its limits in terms of management, hardware, and scalability. By migrating to Nutanix, we have been able to build an environment that can flexibly respond to the strict demands of the user department while reducing the workload on our IT department, such as easy and graphical management with Nutanix console”.

In addition, Nutanix Move, a free service provided by Nutanix, was used to migrate the environment in which the production management system, drawing management system, and other systems were running from the existing three-tier system to the Nutanix Cloud Platform. “The Nutanix support department was very helpful as they were able to provide accurate answers to any questions that arose during the process, and the V2V migration was completed smoothly within the limited migration period,” said Nishimura.

Next Steps

“From a management perspective, stable on-premise environment is essential for handling highly confidential data, while BCP and disaster recovery (DR) are also important to the company to ensure business continuity in event of a disaster. Currently, we operate our IT infrastructure in-house and use the SCSK Group's cloud service, USiZE Service, but we will consider a more flexible BCP/DR environment. With Nutanix, we are able to achieve a good balance between on-premises and cloud operations," said Sandou about the future outlook.