Suntory Group

Overview

Suntory Group

Industry:	Alcoholic/Non-alcoholic beverages and foods
Hardware:	Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 blade servers
Software:	VMware vSphere 4 virtualization software
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Suntory Group transforms its business systems infrastructure into a private cloud.
Server virtualization and consolidation greatly reduced the number of servers, improved operational efficiency and accelerated Suntory’s environmental sustainability efforts.

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.

Published on April 22, 2011

Challenges and benefits

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.

Customer’s Background

Private cloud infrastructure supports Suntory’s successful transition to a holding company

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.

Private Cloud Deployment at Suntory Group

Achieve seven important set business objectives through the private cloud project

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.

Seven objectives to meet through the private cloud deployment project

1.Increased agility	Enable resource provisioning for Suntory’s group of companies in a timely and responsive manner. This will best support new business implementation, operation and existing business expansion.
2.Capacity utilization	Gain the ability to increase/decrease capacity based on needs, and eliminate waste by allocating resources when and where they are needed. Be able to quickly add capacity to accommodate peak workloads.
3.Cost reductions	Through virtual consolidation, reduce the number of physical machines and associated costs.
4.Increased availability	Increase system availability and uptime by shortening planned downtimes.
5.Business Continuity Planning	Realize a disaster recovery plan between Suntory’s datacenters.
6.Improved flexibility	Virtualization offers hardware independence, and will allow Suntory to be more responsive and flexible in accommodating organizational change and system integration needs.
7.Contribution to environmental Sustainability	Facilitate the company’s environmental management efforts through reductions in physical machines and associated power consumption.

Fujitsu PRIMERGY Servers at the Core of Suntory’s Private Cloud

Reliability is key in selecting server hardware for a secure private cloud environment

One of Suntory’s initial goals was to put its core business systems into the cloud environment. These included order and shipping transactions, sales support systems, applications used at Suntory factories and B2C-related services. These were all essential to the support of Suntory Group’s every day operations. As a result, product reliability would be a key consideration when it selected the server hardware to host the private cloud infrastructure.

Mr. Mitsuyasu KasetaniChief IT Infrastructure Operation Service Div.SUNMORETEC

When it came to virtualization implementation, Suntory was already familiar with and had broad experience and knowledge with such concepts. The company had repeatedly installed and tested virtualization technology since 2007. By leveraging its capabilities in virtualization, Suntory carefully evaluated several virtualization software options for the private cloud deployment this time. After thorough assessment, Suntory turned to VMware, recognizing VMware’s high market share in the global marketplace and its complete set of advanced features such as business continuity capabilities. As for the host server hardware, Suntory chose to adopt Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 blade servers for the cloud infrastructure. Mr. Mitsuyasu Kasetani, Chief, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Division at SUNMORETEC talked about the reasons the company selected Fujitsu PRIMERGY. “We were very attracted by the fact that the PRIMERGY BX900 chassis could house as many as 18 blades, which other vendors didn’t offer. More blades per chassis would make a big difference - higher density server consolidation meant more savings in costs, floor space and energy consumption, which were all very important to us.” “Besides, we liked the easy-to-use, feature-rich server management tools provided by Fujitsu. We also knew that Fujitsu has extensive expertise and experience in VMware deployments. Ultimately, our long-standing business relationship with Fujitsu was what counted the most. Considered the fact that Fujitsu, for the past 30 years, had been devoted to supporting us in deploying and maintaining our mission-critical systems, it was a natural choice for us. We also appreciated Fujitsu’s efforts in providing us with a single-point of contact for hardware, operating systems and virtualization support,” Kasetani concluded.

Dating back to the initial phase of the project in 2010, as Kasetani recalls, it was very challenging to complete the vast number of tasks within such a short lead time. Suntory had only ten months before going live on the private cloud environment, and such tasks as - thoroughly reviewing the company’s existing ICT policy and rules, and creating standards to operate the new private cloud - all needed to be done within the given time period.

Private Cloud Enviroment at Suntory Group

Business Benefits and Future Scenarios

Reducing the number of physical servers by 80% through virtual consolidation

Mr. Akihiro TonomuraManagerIT Infrastructure Operation Service Div.SUNMORETEC

The newly-deployed private cloud at Suntory Group went live in December 2010. “In three years, we’ll complete a step-by-step expansion plan to migrate 60% of the Suntory Group’s business systems to run on the private cloud infrastructure. Through the process, we expect to achieve an 80-percent reduction in the number of servers, compared to the previously-running environment at Suntory. Having fewer physical machines to maintain will of course help us cut hardware-associated costs, but I’m equally excited to see another significant benefit - an expected reduction in power consumption (CO2 emissions) by 85%,” said Mr. Akihiro Tonomura, Manager, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Division at SUNMORETEC.

The private cloud deployment at Suntory Group has already delivered many advantages to the company. Component redundancy on the PRIMERGY blade servers has increased overall system availability. VMware also minimizes planned downtime when a hardware configuration change is required. Suntory now also has much improved business continuity strategies by creating a disaster recovery plan between its two datacenters in Osaka and Tokyo. System expansion tasks that used to require two months to complete can now, using IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), be accomplished within a single working day. With PaaS (Platform as a Service), a new platform can be up and running within 7 days.
Matsumoto has a vision for expansion of the private cloud implementation. “To continue with this success, we will accelerate our system integration efforts and expand the scope of the private cloud project to include system not targeted this time. We will soon need to introduce a more flexible billing scheme to meet diverse and changing business needs, and enhance our automated server provisioning and deployment capabilities for further growth. We have challenging areas to work on. One is advanced server management, including predictive management that enables proactive failure prevention, and provides the ability to quickly and accurately identify areas affected by any server failure. Another challenge is enhanced configuration management capability which will address improved resource utilization and efficiency. Moreover, interoperability and integration with global private clouds is one of our business themes. In the process of addressing all these challenges, Suntory greatly looks forward to continued work with Fujitsu. We believe that Fujitsu can not only provide maintenance support but also come up with many dynamic proposals that will help grow our business.”

Suntory is striving to move forward with the aim of bringing happiness and enrichment to its customers’ daily lives. As a trusted ICT partner of Suntory, Fujitsu is one-hundred percent committed to providing end-to-end support to facilitate the innovations and business growth of Suntory Group.

(From the right)
Mr. Michinori Matsumoto, Director, SUNMORETEC
Mr. Hideki Watanabe, Deputy Manager, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Div., SUNMORETEC
Mr. Mitsuyasu Kasetani, Chief, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Div., SUNMORETEC
Mr. Akihiro Tonomura, Manager, IT Infrastructure Operation Service Div., SUNMORETEC

The contribution of cloud computing to environmental sustainability

Reducing CO2 emissions by 85% with the private cloud infrastructure.

As part of its commitment to environmental management, Suntory Group is currently promoting company-wide green initiatives with the goal of reducing power consumption at its datacenters by 5 percent. This private cloud deployment project is considered one of the effective methods of achieving Suntory’s goals. During the 3-year project, Suntory is aiming to reduce the number of servers by 80 percent, compared to the previously-used systems. With fewer physical machines to run, and performance improvements in the servers, it is now expected that the company will achieve an 85-percent reduction in server power consumption.

The Suntory Group’s environmental vision states that the Earth’s natural environment is an irreplaceable resource in Suntory’s business. In accordance with the company’s corporate philosophy “In Harmony with People and Nature”, in 2005, Suntory created a new corporate message “Suntory, Bringing Water to Life” that expresses the company’s long-standing commitment to a sustainable society. Upholding that strong message, Suntory continues to drive green initiatives that protect the natural environment.

Initiated in 1997 and revised in 2010, the “Basic Principles of Suntory’s Environmental Policy” is the foundation for all business activities of the Suntory Group. Through the use and provision of the most advanced ICT technology, Fujitsu strives to support the Suntory Group in its pursuit of environmental sustainability efforts.

Cloud Computing Contributions to Enviromental Sustainability

A message from Fujitsu engineers in charge of this project

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

We’re honored to have participated in this project and in supporting the Suntory Group developing cloud implementation. We believe this project is a great example of the power of combining Fujitsu’s technological capabilities with the customer’s expertise in operations. The new private cloud deployed at Suntory will enable the customer to preserve its technology investments for many years to come.

To meet the diverse and changing demands from our customers, Fujitsu is devoted to further development of our virtualization capabilities with 250+ VMware Certified Professionals (VCP) internally.

As members of the Fujitsu Group, we remain committed to providing valuable solutions to our customers, and helping our customers achieve successful system deployments in the ways they want.

Group Companies:	195 (Data as of December 31, 2010)
Employees:	25,103 (Data as of December 31, 2010)
Consolidated Revenue	JPY1,742.4 billion (January 01, 2010 - December 31, 2010)Mobile voice, data and multimedia
Consolidated Ordinary Profit:	JPY100.8 billion (January 01, 2010 - December 31, 2010)
Major Business Areas:	Suntory’s business ranges from alcoholic beverages, non-alcoholic beverages, health foods, health beverages, restaurants, fitness gyms, flowers, and many other services. Recently, the Group has been accelerating its growth plan for global expansion.
Company website:	http://www.suntory.co.jp/

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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.