DENSO Transforms to a Sustainable IT Platform

DENSO Corporation is a global Fortune 500 company that has been a world-leading, comprehensive supplier of automotive parts since its founding in 1949. DENSO is focused on advanced mobility that positively changes how the world moves and contributes to greater well-being. The company’s top priority is company-wide digital transformation (DX) promotion, aiming to foster a digital mindset among all 170,000 employees in the group.

Since its founding in 1949, DENSO Corporation has been a world leader as a comprehensive supplier of automotive parts. Through advanced technological development, the company is pioneering the future of mobility, including electrification, autonomous driving, and connected technologies. In recent years, DENSO has accelerated its efforts toward realizing a society free of traffic accidents and achieving carbon neutrality, aiming to contribute to a sustainable society. Digital technology supports these socially important initiatives. 

At DENSO, the promotion of company-wide digital transformation (DX) has been positioned as its top priority, and the company is striving to enhance its organizational strength and competitiveness by realizing the digital transformation of processes that support its business. By reinforcing the digital foundation that supports product design, analysis, and production management systems, DENSO is accelerating innovation in next-generation mobility while improving the safety, quality, and efficiency of its manufacturing operations.

“At DENSO, our DX initiatives involve a tripartite approach to systematization, technology, and people—that is, the standardization of operations, the development of a digital infrastructure, and fostering a digital mindset among all employees. The team is working towards the goal of digitalization that leaves no one behind among the 170,000 employees across the entire group,” says Yasuhiro Ishida, Manager of Server Service Section 1 in the IT Service Office of the IT Infrastructure Promotion Department at DENSO.

A robust IT infrastructure supports DENSO’s DX. The company has been building and operating its private cloud platform ALADIN (Attractive Landmark for All DENSO Infrastructure) since 2012, providing it as a service to its business divisions and group companies. As an IT platform that provides services securely and at a low cost, ALADIN contributes to improving the business speed of DENSO and its group companies, reducing IT-related costs and environmental impact.

Technically, it is built as a virtualization platform using VMware ESX. The two main components are virtual servers (infrastructure as a service) and storage areas, which allow business divisions and group companies to freely build and operate systems. ALADIN has undergone numerous updates and expansions since its initial implementation, leading to its current state. ALADIN is home to a wide variety of systems used by various departments, and a massive amount of data, including critical information such as analysis and design data for product development, is accumulated daily. For this reason, a major focus of expansion is the addition of storage capacity, with several hundred terabytes of capacity added each year.

At the time, DENSO prioritized cost optimization for ALADIN, selecting a different manufacturer or vendor each time it was expanded. As a result, even though the upper-layer operating system and virtualization software were the same, multiple cloud infrastructures with different lower-layer hardware were running. Operating this infrastructure was cumbersome, and the workload was significant. 

Because the infrastructure to be introduced changed every year, operation manuals had to be created and operators trained each time. In the event of a failure, it was necessary to identify which infrastructure was experiencing the problem and address it according to the specific procedures established for each system, raising concerns about potential misunderstandings and operational errors.

Even more problematic was the regular update process. Because a new infrastructure had been introduced every year, equipment reaching the end of its warranty period required annual updates. The recent increase in data volume meant that individual migrations took an enormous amount of time, sometimes resulting in weekly migrations for nearly a year. While the updates were necessary, they were not creative work, and maintaining staff motivation was a challenge.

“Therefore, we aimed to realize a sustainable ALADIN. In recent years, our company has been promoting the use of the public cloud, but we also believe that the demand for on-premises systems will continue for reasons such as response time. So, we decided to refresh to an integrated platform that minimizes the burden of conventional operation methods and periodic updates and can operate stably over the long term,” says Mr. Ishida.

DENSO prioritized four key requirements: long-term stable operation, the ability to perform data migration without downtime during server upgrades, cloud-like operation enabling conversion from CAPEX to OPEX, and the ability to reduce power consumption in preparation for the increasing demand for AI and GPU-related services. The company’s particular focus was on storage. DENSO believed that reforming its storage infrastructure would significantly advance its ability to meet these requirements. 

The most promising storage solution was Everpure FlashArray. FlashArray was already being used in some ALADIN systems and had a well-established reputation for performance and stability. Compared to other storage products, it had fewer failures and virtually no complaints regarding responsiveness.

The deciding factor in the company’s adoption was the Everpure subscription-based Evergreen//One service. It offers a pay-as-you-go, cloud-like usage model and enables a shift from CAPEX to OPEX. Everpure keeps the storage infrastructure up to date, eliminating the need for large-scale data migration during system upgrades. Even when upper-level host servers are updated, the storage remains uninterrupted, allowing for migration while maintaining cloud services. 

Furthermore, DENSO is focusing on the use of AI and GPUs, and there are concerns about increased power consumption due to future system expansions. The low power consumption of FlashArray//C™ was a key factor.

“We need on-premises solutions, but we also want to create an IT infrastructure that can operate stably over the long term, like a cloud service. This ideal of a sustainable ALADIN was made possible by Everpure technology and service architecture,” says Mr. Ishida. By standardizing ALADIN on Everpure FlashArray and Evergreen//One, DENSO has established a modern storage and data platform that can flexibly support critical workloads such as product design, analysis, and production management systems, as well as future DX, factory digitalization, and mobility initiatives.

The latest ALADIN systems are installed at two locations, Aichi and Kanto, functioning as the main infrastructure for each area while providing mutual backup to ensure redundancy. By consolidating multiple ALADIN systems, which were previously operated individually, into a single platform and standardizing operations, the workload is expected to decrease. 

Predicting future increases in data volume is extremely difficult. While promoting cloud computing, there is still demand for on-premises solutions, and changes in the business environment and policies must also be considered. The team has seen situations where doubling capacity was considered sufficient, only to find it exceeded that capacity within a few years. With FlashArray, even if capacity becomes insufficient in the future, it can be easily increased and expanded, allowing for flexible responses.

DENSO utilizes its IT partner’s services for basic operations to minimize the burden on its systems. Any problems are quickly identified through Pure1®, a powerful cloud-based storage management platform. Yoshinori Makihara of Server Service Section 1 in the IT Service Office of the IT Infrastructure Promotion Department at DENSO highly praises the liberation from data migration. What he found most burdensome was the risk of data loss when updating storage.

“We handle a large amount of data that is valuable to end users, so mistakes are unacceptable. As a manufacturing company, there are few opportunities to stop services, and we are constrained by the fact that we can only work on holidays, so the prolonged update process was also a burden. With FlashArray and Evergreen//One, even when we upgrade our system in the future, the storage will not need to be updated, and there will be no need to migrate the data. The peace of mind that comes from knowing that there is no risk of losing data is immeasurable,” says Mr. Makihara.

As for the expected benefits after the full migration, Mr. Makihara cites the data reduction effect of Everpure data reduction technology. By consolidating data from multiple ALADINs into one, the data reduction effect of FlashArray will be even more pronounced than before. Mr. Makihara also stated that this will improve the initial response to failures. 

“Previously, we would gather information and respond after a failure occurred, but with the integrated system, we can manage everything centrally. This time, we have also strengthened support from our IT partners, so we want to take a comprehensive view of the new integrated environment and implement proactive operations so that we do not have to worry about resource shortages or similar issues,” says Mr. Makihara.

According to Mr. Ishida, in the future, this will also be applied to other on-premises infrastructure such as core systems. The team is considering adopting FlashArray as its standard storage. DENSO’s idea is to build it as an independent platform while still being able to apply the advantages of FlashArray. Furthermore, DENSO is also considering global expansion. 

“IT organizations operate IT infrastructure in various regions around the world, and a diverse range of on-premises systems are running. Just like us, the demand and challenges of on-premises systems will continue. We believe that leveraging the know-how gained from this ALADIN integration and expanding the use of FlashArray would be beneficial,” says Mr. Ishida.

This new infrastructure will also require server replacement in five years. In this implementation project, standardization of procedures and design is being advanced in preparation for that time. However, since storage updates and data migration are not required, the hurdles for server replacement work have been significantly lowered, and this has been well received. 

Finally, Mr. Ishida spoke about his expectations for the future: “Whether it is on premises or in the cloud, we want to provide a service that can be used seamlessly globally. We aim for an ideal foundation where end users can use it stably with the necessary response without having to be aware of where it is running. As professionals, we expect Everpure to focus on developing new technologies and products, and to proactively propose ways to utilize storage for the future.”