Strategies
Shaping the Future with IT
Takaaki Matsumoto
Senior Executive Manager of NTT DATA Research and Development Headquarters
NTT DATA was founded in 1988 as a subsidiary ofNTT dedicated to systems integration and network
system services. Since its establishment the company
has led the software service industry in Japan as apioneer of information system development, having
engineered much of Japan’s social information technology (IT) infrastructure through a series of large
projects for both the public and private sectors. IT
permeates every aspect of life in society today. It isindispensable both in our daily lives and for business.
Our corporate message is “Insight for the New Paradigm—Shaping the Future with IT” and in utilizing
our technical capabilities, proven reliability, andvision, we are committed, together with our customers, to creating new services and new markets
with IT at their core.
The NTT DATA Research and Development Headquarters is working on leading-edge technologies
with a focus on their applicability to our business aswell as the creation of new added value through technology. Currently, our R&D is aimed at realizing twovisions for adding new value using IT in the ubiquitous network society. The first, ‘e-collaboration’, creates new added value by enabling seamless networking between individuals, businesses, and even government organizations. The second, the ‘tangiblefuture’, concerns confident decision-making basedon the swift collection and analysis of the vast
amount of information that surrounds us. For thispurpose, we are conducting R&D in six areas:• Collaborative computing: RFID (radio frequency
identification) solution development, sensor networks, and context awareness• Tangible intelligence: data mining, large-scale
high-speed full-text searching, metadata handling, and bioinformatics• User interfaces: voice recognition, multi-channel
multi-modal user interfaces, and universal design• System architecture: open systems for mission

critical services, and grid computing• Information security: digital document lifecycle
management, prevention of information leakage,
biometrics, and integrated countermeasureagainst network intrusion• Software engineering: model-orientated systemdevelopment, model-driven architecture (MDA),
and web services
Our world today is changing in a big way: personalvalues, lifestyles, and commercial and business structures are all undergoing huge changes. Our systems
integrators build and deliver information systems, but
to ensure that IT is introduced smoothly into society,
we are finding it necessary to consider various social
issues such as new legislation and business practices
to exploit the potential of our technologies and alleviate potentially negative impacts such as the digital
divide. We are extending our efforts to propose solutions to these issues so that consensus over them will
be reached through dialogue. We are currently looking at the fields of e-democracy, security and privacy,
and personal healthcare. By working actively on both
the development of technologies based on our two
visions for the creation of new added value and building a consensus for resolving social issues, we hopeto create services that contribute to society.