Japanese Telecom Provider KDDI Offers Managed Services To U.S. Businesses

KDDI America Inc., the U.S. division of Japanese telecommunications solutions provider and cellular carrier KDDI Corp., is making another foray into the North American market with new managed services designed to help organizations monitor, secure and maintain their enterprise network infrastructures. The new managed network, routing and switching services feature Juniper Networks' networking equipment. The Juniper SRX Series Services Gateway is the foundation for KDDI America's Total Managed Security Router, which features centralized monitoring and log management to security controlled networks.

The service provides wide-area network (WAN) connectivity, infrastructure security, and on-site Ethernet local-area networks (LANs) that the company says can help organizations simplify network operations and reduce maintenance costs. The Total Managed Security Router enables customers to procure and maintain their network infrastructure environment, including routers, switches and firewalls from a single point of contact. The service includes data network services, including worldwide and nationwide Ethernet, IP-VPN, private lines, data centers, Dedicated Internet Access and systems integration. "Juniper Networks SRX Series fulfills our customers' connectivity and networking requirements, while providing enhanced integrated security such as multi-function integration and centralized network monitoring," Hokuto Sanematsu, director of Network Engineering, KDDI America, said in a prepared statement. "Offering compatibility, standardization and cost effectiveness for hardware support and maintenance are the primary reasons KDDI America chose Juniper Networks, whose name is synonymous with simplicity, reliability and state-of-the-art performance."

KDDI Corp., which is the number two wireless carrier in Japan, already offers a variety of enterprise-scale managed services in its native country, including co-location services and managed hosting, and it continues to expand on them. In February 2009, for example, it began offering the Global Managed Security service in the Japanese market that includes construction, installation and maintenance of firewall and Unified Threat Management (UTM) devices to protect network environments, operations management services and security monitoring services. The service provides 24-hour, 365-days-a-year, real-time monitoring, so that in the event an incident occurs, notification and advice can be sent to the customer immediately, minimizing any damage. Earlier in the year, in June 2009, the company began offering "KDDI Cloud Server Service," which constructs virtual private data centers and virtual systems that utilizes a platform as a service (PaaS) within a KDDI data center in Japan. PaaS is the delivery of a computing platform and solution stack as a service, via a network, and it can include the provision of a software development platform. Clients can individually select the functions they wish to use, making it possible to quickly and flexibly expand or minimize complex systems, according to KDDI.

In 2007, KDDI launched a U.S.-based mobile phone service, operating as a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) that resells wireless access using Sprint's network. At the time, some believed that the MVNO service was largely a play to add value to its premium cellular subscribers by giving them wireless service in the U.S., but KDDI America already offers several business services, such as systems integration and co-location services. Its newly announced managed network services for the U.S. market suggests KDDI has its sights set on becoming a more dominant player in North America. While it may be launching new managed services in a market that's getting crowded, and during still-challenging economic times, market researchers like IDC predict there's opportunity. With its new managed router and switch services, KDDI may be setting the stage to offer cloud computing in the U.S. market. KDDI America is slated to debut the Total Managed Security Router suite of security and access services, such as Anti Spam, Anti Virus, Log Audit, Additional LAN Port and Redundancy at the end of the first quarter in 2010.