OREANDA-NEWS. July 03, 2012. NAMCO BANDAI Holdings Inc. and Fujitsu Limited today announced their collaboration on the construction of a cloud-based shared platform that aims to integrate accounting and other mission-critical systems, primarily SAP, as well as operating systems at BANDAI NAMCO Group's major group companies. Operations of the shared platform began at BANDAI NAMCO Group's major Japanese companies in April this year. Going forward, plans are in place to expand the system's deployment to additional group companies in Japan and implementation to disaster recovery measures. Ultimately, system operations are to be launched at major group companies, including those located outside Japan.

By deploying the new platform, BANDAI NAMCO Group expects to achieve a full-scale optimization of the mission-critical systems at its group companies, thereby substantially improving operational efficiency and reducing its total cost of ownership by an anticipated 30%. Moreover, as a result of operating the consolidated shared system platform, the company will be able to strengthen its group-wide governance. This, in turn, can potentially lead to enhanced managerial oversight.

Until now, BANDAI NAMCO Group has built and operated different mission-critical systems at each of its companies. This has brought about a number of challenges, including redundancy in terms of the operational processes and system-related facilities at each company, as well as the added workload involved in ensuring compatibility between the different systems.

Given these difficulties, BANDAI NAMCO Group developed a plan to integrate the ICT infrastructure at its major group companies. Based on the company's medium-term IT strategy, which was formulated in 2009, the new plan aims to reduce the company's total cost of ownership and strengthen its governance.

In accordance with its plan, BANDAI NAMCO Group has upgraded the accounting and other mission-critical systems at its major group companies to SAP-based systems. Moreover, in collaboration with Fujitsu, the company has also employed the private cloud environment at Fujitsu's datacenters to standardize its software(1) and design protocols for these mission-critical systems and other business systems, in addition to integrating operations and developing a shared platform upon which the systems will run.

In April, cloud operations began at eleven of BANDAI NAMCO's Group companies in Japan, including BANDAI Co., Ltd., NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc., and BANDAI VISUAL Co., Ltd. Going forward, plans are in place to expand the system's deployment to four additional group companies in Japan, including NAMCO Limited, in addition to implementing to disaster recovery measures and ultimately launching operations of the system at other major group companies, including those located outside Japan.

By constructing the new shared platform, BANDAI NAMCO Group will be able to achieve a group-wide system optimization, thereby significantly improving operational efficiency and reducing the company's total cost of ownership by an anticipated 30%. Furthermore, the new cloud environment will also provide flexible support for the BANDAI NAMCO Group's future goal of expanding its business outside Japan.

Going forward, Fujitsu plans to continue providing ICT support to the BANDAI NAMCO Group in an effort to help the company achieve its vision of The Leading Innovator in Global Entertainment.