6 Business Heroes and Industry Innovators

VMware customers accelerate innovation and transform business in a multi-cloud world. At VMware Explore 2023, we celebrate the transformational journeys of six heroes and innovators from the APJ region.

Heroes

VMware heroes — like NEC Corporation, Japan Post and Union Bank of India — strive to improve our evolving, complex world. Heroes seek to continually improve the customer experience by championing new technologies.

NEC Corporation, Weathering the Change Hero

In a time of uncertainty and turbulence, people need partners they trust. NEC helps organizations transform through integrated IT and network technologies with safety, security, fairness and efficiency.

To provide continuous support to customers, utilizing insights and knowledge gained directly through NEC’s “Client Zero” approach — in which the company itself is the initial client — is important. Therefore, as part of its own ongoing digital transformation, NEC decided to modernize its own IT infrastructure to better support customers’ long-term needs. This would also give them first-hand experience to guide their own customers through similar journeys in the future.

Instead of immediately shifting to a cloud-native architecture, NEC first lifted many systems — as is — to the cloud. This more rapid, seamless and cost-effective method:

• Reduced migration costs by 91% and reduced operational costs by 19%.
• Minimized disruption and security risks to users.
• Provided NEC with knowledge and insights for future cloud migrations and to aid customers' digital transformation.

Japan Post, Customer Experiences Hero

As emails and text messages replace traditional mail, Japan Post delivers valued customer experiences. The national postal service provider digitally transformed its operational environment so it’s ready to spring into action — to partner with more e-commerce companies, to increase deliveries and to adapt to new services (like contactless delivery).

Part of this digital transformation includes upgrading hand terminals to Android smartphones. Japan Post uses an “anywhere workspace” solution to remotely manage the 145,000 devices. In this responsive environment, they:

• Securely deliver new applications and software updates to delivery staff.
• Digitize processes and improve the efficiency of post office operations.
• Streamline IT management and reduce IT costs.

Japan Post makes it easier and easier for customers to send and receive parcels. Delivery staff are better equipped to deliver hundreds of thousands of parcels in the country per day on time. And the organization adapts to new business opportunities that arise.

Union Bank of India (UBI), Hero for Good

UBI is a leading public sector bank that continually strives to serve its customers better. In service of this, UBI made significant investments in cutting-edge technology, including:

• virtualization,
• cloud computing,
• modern application platforms,
• software-defined networking (SDN) and wide area network (SD-WAN),
• a data lake for artificial intelligence (AI),
• and other digital platforms, etc.

These investments enable UBI to provide inclusive financial services throughout India that are not only fast and scalable but also available around the clock.

UBI is committed to modernizing existing applications and swiftly launching new services. The Bank is embarking on a digital journey to provide a complete digital suite of services to consumers and businesses at their fingertips. Notably, UBI made history by introducing India's first Banking Metaverse Lounge, and the bank received prestigious awards for its innovative digital offerings, including the Union Bank Voice Assistant and Digital Banking Units.

As UBI continues to advance in analytics, its IT capabilities will empower the bank to deliver hyper-personalized customer experiences, enhance credit monitoring, bolster cybersecurity measures, and improve overall governance.

UBI boasts a robust and state-of-the-art IT infrastructure, coupled with its analytical prowess and digitally enhanced customer experiences. These factors earned the bank a top-ranking position for providing superior banking services. Remarkably, the Indian Banks' Association has recognized UBI as the leader on the Enhanced Access & Service Excellence Reforms Index. This index is a vital component of India's initiative to reform public sector banks, making banking operations more transparent, efficient, and customer-centric for the nation's citizens.

Innovators

VMware innovators — including KBTG and NIO — are visionary. They revolutionize their businesses and industries and bring extraordinary value to their customers and employees.

KBTG, Cloud Infrastructure Innovator

Transformation is a core value of KASIKORN Business-Technology Group (KBTG), Kasikornbank’s IT operations arm. KBTG aims to keep up with ever-changing business needs by getting innovation from the lab to customers, fast.

At the foundation of rapid app delivery, is rapid infrastructure delivery. Developers expect platform and infrastructure teams, who aren’t often involved in planning, to deliver resources immediately. So KBTG shifted to an automated, software-defined approach for the development of cloud and application services.

Platform and infrastructure teams automate every step of the process, so all repeated tasks can be completed within a predictable timeframe. Through a self-service portal, developers follow a built-in approval workflow to provision resources and then check their overall consumption and costs. The turnaround time shortened from weeks to hours, and the transformation inspired developers and operational teams to collaborate more often.

PSA Singapore, Modern Apps Innovator

PSA Singapore operates the world’s largest transshipment hub with unrivaled connectivity, handling 37 million twenty-foot equivalent units of containers in 2022. The daily volume of cargo movement is high, as is competition from regional hubs. To meet the demand and stay competitive, PSA modernized its digital infrastructure.

PSA’s digital transformation journey includes running its port applications with a modern app platform in a hybrid cloud environment. Paired with modern app development practices and optimized operations, PSA increased modernization velocity, improved platform stability, upskilled and motivated developers and accelerated innovation and business outcomes.

Nio Co Ltd, Hybrid Workforce Innovator

NIO designs and develops smart, electric vehicles in mainland China, which has a highly competitive EV industry. Every customer touchpoint matters, and employees use a variety of mobile devices to connect with customers — Windows and macOS office computers, in-store iPads, Androids at charging stations, and inspection handheld devices at vehicle maintenance stations.

To provide the best customer experiences, employees must have easy access to the apps they need. As the company rapidly grew and expanded its presence overseas, NIO needed every device to be secure, updated and efficient to manage.

NIO leverages a modern, anywhere workspace platform to confidently manage it all, simply and securely. It took less than three months to initially deploy the solution on over 1,000 devices, across multiple locations. That total now includes over 10,000 devices and continues to grow with the company.    

As a result, IT radically reduced the complexity and cost of managing its diverse devices across different brands, models, operating systems and network environments. NIO’s totally mobile workforce continues to seamlessly access business apps and data with multi-factor authentication, conditional access and single sign-on capabilities. And the company is ready for the newest services and intelligence to enhance productivity and insights for its digital workspace.

Congratulations to all these heroes and innovators! Explore more customer stories on VMware News & Stories.

The 2023 VMware Customer Achievement Awards program has been conducted in partnership with TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). Entries were reviewed and evaluated by a judging committee consisting of VMware executives, ESG analysts and Tech Target Editors.