Suntory Group

Suntory Group 

Suntory Group is Japan’s leading beverage and food company, and carries out its business in a wide variety of fields. In April 2009, in response to the rapid changes in the market environment, Suntory shifted to a pure holding company. To effectively and efficiently support the new corporate structure, Suntory Group decided to refurbish its existing ICT infrastructure and move to private cloud deployment. The new private cloud environment was built on high density server consolidation using Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 blade servers. Suntory recognized Fujitsu’s expertise and experience in VMware deployments and came to Fujitsu for help in moving ahead with the private cloud project. Suntory also stated that, more importantly, the long-standing and sound business relationship between the two companies gave it the confidence to work with Fujitsu. The resulting private cloud environment at Suntory Group went live in December 2010. Suntory is continuing to work on step-by-step expansion with the intension of gradually integrating all their target systems into the private cloud over a three year project. Through this project, Suntory aims to leverage the advantages of server virtualization and consolidation, to reduce the number of servers, associated power consumption (and corresponding CO2 emissions) by 80% and 85% respectively.

1	Revamp Suntory’s business systems infrastructure to facilitate total optimization across the Suntory Group and improve the competitiveness of each group company.		Created a private cloud environment using Fujitsu blade servers and virtualization technology. This allowed Suntory to move forward in integration of all target systems at the company based on set standards. Now thanks to IaaS capability, any necessary compute resources can be delivered to users within a single day.
2	Need for end-to-end vendor support as the new private cloud infrastructure would play a critical role in supporting Suntory’s day-to-day business operations.		Fujitsu has been one of Suntory’s trusted ICT business partners, providing support for deploying and maintaining Suntory’s mission-critical systems for many years. Suntory chose to adopt Fujitsu PRIMERGY blade servers for its private cloud. Fujitsu also make life easier for Suntory by providing a single-point of contact for queries associated with hardware, operating systems and virtualization.
3	Promotion of Suntory’s corporate-wide commitment to maintaining the health of the global environment.		Compared to previous IT infrastructure, the new private cloud environment reduced the number of physical machines and power consumption. Reduction ratios for numbers of machines and power consumption were 80% and 85% respectively.

Suntory’s product:“The Premium Malt’s”This premium lager beer, made from carefully-selected pure ingredients using Suntory’s special brewing methods, features a floral aroma, and a rich and quality taste.Formed in 1899, Suntory was the first company to pioneer a whiskey business in Japan, introducing that western liquor culture to the country. Since its establishment, Suntory has expressed its spirit as “Yatte Minahare!” which translates as “Go for it!”, and has always been committed to cultivating new values and taking on new challenges. Inspired by its frontier spirit, the company has continued to grow as a market leader in producing and distributing alcoholic beverages and foods worldwide. In addition to Suntory’s well-recognized strengths in beers, soft drinks, whiskeys and wines, and in response to the recent boom in healthy eating, the company has been rapidly growing its business in the health food field. Also, in accordance with its objectives to enhance the quality of life and well-being of its customers, Suntory has further expanded its business operations into many other related fields. These include: restaurants, fitness gyms, flowers and many other services. The company is now in the process of aggressive globalization. In 2005, Suntory created a new corporate message “Suntory, Bringing Water to Life” that illustrated the company’s long-standing commitment to a sustainable society. In demonstrating this strong corporate message, Suntory is also active in fostering environmental management activities.

Mr. Michinori MatsumotoDirector,SUNMORETEC CorporationAs part of efforts to maintain and increase the competitiveness of each business unit in today’s ever-changing market, Suntory, in April 2009, made a major step in positioning for further growth by transitioning to a pure holding company structure. Suntory’s aim was that each business unit would become more agile and dynamic to respond to the changing market environment; while Suntory would be able to accelerate cost reductions and resource optimization efforts across the entire group.
That’s where Suntory Business Expert Limited (SBE) and its SUNMORETEC affiliate came in. SBE was in charge of consolidating and standardizing Suntory Group’s shared processes and functions. SUNMORETEC was responsible for providing ICT engineering services to the Group. They worked together to create mid-term ICT strategies with the core objective of deploying next-generation infrastructure to enable the business goals of the reconfigured Suntory Group.

“ICT infrastructure requirements do vary, depending on the characteristics of each business unit - such as product lifecycle, sales methods and market maturity,” said Mr. Michinori Matsumoto, Director, SUNMORETEC Corporation. “At Suntory Group, we needed to run a mixture of heterogeneous systems to support the diversified businesses with totally different characteristics. In order to understand the requirement differences, and accommodate the unique challenges and demands from each business unit in a responsive manner, we decided to go ahead with a private cloud implementation,” Matsumoto continued.

Mr. Hideki WatanabeDeputy ManagerIT Infrastructure Operation Service Div.SUNMORETECLooking back on the continuing ICT improvement efforts and strategic investments that the Suntory Group had made, deploying a private cloud infrastructure wasn’t an “out-of-the-blue” approach to take. “Around 2006, we started integrating the Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) methodology, which had been developed and practiced at our manufacturing sites, into Suntory’s internal ICT systems. With servers, for example, we’ve continued to undertake a detailed loss analysis - Evaluation, standby, non-operational assets, advance investment and workload changes - item by item, which let us minimize loss and improve the optimal use ratio of existing assets. In view of all the ongoing improvement activities we undertake, it was a natural choice for us to move ahead with a private cloud implementation,” explained Mr. Hideki Watanabe, Deputy Manager, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Division, SUNMORETEC.

In early 2010, Suntory embarked on its private cloud deployment project. Seven important objectives were set to be achieved through this project. They were: (1) Increased agility; (2) Capacity utilization; (3) Cost reductions; (4) Increased availability; (5) Business Continuity planning; (6) Improved flexibility; and (7) Contribution to environmental sustainability (The table below provides a detailed description of each objective). After considering all seven objectives and evaluating the hardware/software limitations, Suntory determined the initial scope of its project. It would begin by moving its core business systems and branch-office systems into the cloud.

Mr. Mitsuyasu KasetaniChief IT Infrastructure Operation Service Div.SUNMORETEC 

Private Cloud Enviroment at Suntory Group

 

Mr. Akihiro TonomuraManagerIT Infrastructure Operation Service Div.SUNMORETEC 

The contribution of cloud computing to environmental sustainability

Cloud Computing Contributions to Enviromental Sustainability 

Mr. Hideto Arima (Right) Mr. Katsuyuki Hori (Left),Cloud Infrastructure System Division, Service Business Unit at Fujitsu FSAS Inc. 

Note:
Information in this case study, including figures, identifying names and job titles are based on information supplied at the published date and may have changed when this page is viewed.

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