1 NTT’s Business Domains, Mission, and Services

NTT has 300,000 employees and offices in 88 countries and provides regional, mobile, long-distance, international voice and data communication services, as well as smart energy and urban development solutions in 190 countries. In order to provide secure ICT solutions to customers, it has become a new social mission for NTT to develop an international data management platform that guarantees interoperability, trust, reliability, transparency, and sovereignty. The following NTT services could help the mission.

  • IP network: quick and safe tier-1 global network

  • Virtual private network: enterprise broadband networking

  • Data center: scalable and reliable data centers in 20 countries

  • Enterprise cloud: private, multi-tenant, and third-party clouds

  • SD exchange: connect enterprise cloud and various clouds

  • Cloud management: optimize multi/hybrid-cloud environment

  • Managed security: global, integrated security services

2 Key Requirements for Data Spaces

2.1 Why We Need Common, Secure, and Fair Data Spaces

Today, new business models such as the sharing economy and the circular economy have emerged, and the need for data sharing to improve productivity is growing. As the value chain between companies expands internationally, it is also necessary to share the data globally, seamlessly, and promptly in cyberspace for quality control and risk hedging, etc. If we share all the data on the global value chain (design, manufacture, lease, billing, maintenance, recycling, etc.), we can respond quickly to the diverse needs of users while respecting SDGs adopted by the United Nations. However, if data is leaked or misused, companies would suffer a large loss. Data monopoly, censorship, and regulation can impede international data flows. Inconsistent data flow regulations, rules, and standards could also make data sharing difficult. Based on this recognition, I have established “Global Data Management Platform Study WG” within RRI (Robot Revolution and Industrial IoT Initiative) and discussed the requirements for an ideal international data platform with the WG members.

2.2 Use Cases for International Industrial IoT Data Utilization

In considering the requirements of the WG, we assumed a use case where a company not only sells products but also controls the quality of products in use by many users and performs predictive maintenance, and manufacturers should share product data with overseas customers and component manufacturers.

2.2.1 Use Case 1: Mobility as a Service (MaaS)

Use Case (Assumed Situation)

A car-sharing company globally provides MaaS using vehicles from various manufacturers. When a user depresses a brake pedal of a vehicle to slow down while driving, a vibration sensor, which is attached to brake mechanism for detecting failure of brake system, exceeds a threshold value, and an alert is issued requesting confirmation of safety to a car-sharing company.

Scenario

The car-sharing company asks the vehicle manufacturer through the maintenance company to analyze sensor data. The manufacturer verifies the manufacturing history with the parts manufacturer to determine the cause. The maintenance company inspects and replaces vehicle parts. An insurance company contracted with a car-sharing company pays benefits to the maintenance company (Fig. 28.1).

Fig. 28.1
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Collaboration between companies for MaaS (©2021, NTT)

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2.2.2 Use Case 2: Factory as a Service (FaaS)

Use Case (Assumed Situation)

A manufacturer that exports agricultural machinery to foreign countries entrusts the predictive maintenance for its products to a FaaS operator*. The vibration sensor of the machinery exceeded the threshold value, and an alert requiring replacement of worn parts was issued.

*FaaS operator: A company that manufactures, delivers, and replaces genuine parts on demand in cooperation with overseas parts factories and maintenance companies.

Scenario

The machine manufacturer asks a FaaS operator to replace parts. The FaaS operator selects the nearest and best partner factory in terms of quality and delivery time. The machine manufacturer discloses drawings and recipes for the parts to the selected partner factory, which is confidential detailed data that contains the company’s proprietary manufacturing know-how and is not normally given outside the company because it should not be disclosed to competitors. The partner factory uses the confidential data and makes the parts, and the maintenance company receives and replaces the parts (Fig. 28.2).

Fig. 28.2
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Business model and process for FaaS (©2021, NTT)

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The study of these use cases reveals that MaaS/FaaS operators need data spaces that can securely share sensitive data with manufacturers, partner factories, and maintenance company and control the scope of disclosure and terms of use of the data (Fig. 28.3).

Fig. 28.3
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Data spaces architecture required for FaaS (©2021, NTT)

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2.2.3 Key Requirements for Future Global Data Platforms

Based on the above use cases, the WG considered the concerns and challenges of data sharing for each company, setting up the business scene, business flow, players, a value network between each player, each player’s business role, value provided, and activity (Fig. 28.4).

Fig. 28.4
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Major concerns and challenges of data sharing (©2021, NTT)

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We listed 134 concerns and identified the challenges to address them. Then we detailed the expected functions and roles of data platform and identified major system requirements that will be important in the future for international data sharing as follows (Fig. 28.5).

Fig. 28.5
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Major system requirements for international data sharing (©2021, NTT)

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In order to create and operate the data spaces that meet these requirements, I hope to combine Fraunhofer’s achievements with NTT’s technologies and services below.

3 NTT R&D Related to Data Spaces

In 2020, NTT has published documents, “Global infrastructure for data sharing between businesses” and “A Global Data Infrastructure for Data Sharing Between Businesses” [1]. To promote value creation using data, NTT is working on building an international and open ICT infrastructure that enables data to be provided, shared, and utilized securely, at low-cost, and quickly among companies in all types of industries around the world while maintaining the data owner’s data sovereignty. We aim to collaborate and grow with companies, communities, and governments around the world who are working to overcome similar challenges.

3.1 IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network)

The IOWN [2] is an initiative by NTT for networks and information processing infrastructure including terminals that can provide high-speed, high-capacity communication utilizing innovative technology focused on optics, as well as tremendous computational resources, which create useful data spaces combining networks, edges, and clouds. This is done in order to overcome the limitations of existing infrastructure with innovative technologies, optimize the individual with the whole based on all available information, and create a rich society that is tolerant of diversity by effectively utilizing data.

NTT has established the IOWN Global Forum to engage in discussions with people from various industries. It aims to realize a smarter world where data in different industries will be brought together in order to create a fully connected and intelligent society (Fig. 28.6).

Fig. 28.6
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Concept of IOWN by NTT (©2021, NTT)

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NTT plans to develop the Cognitive Foundation Data Hub, which is an infrastructure that consists of multiple servers distributed over a wide area. With its data brokerage functions and shared data storage, it enables nodes, e.g., sensor nodes and AI analysis nodes, to instantly exchange or share large data objects.

3.2 4D Digital Platform

4D digital platform [3] integrates sensing data in real time into the Advanced Geospatial Information Database with its highly precise and abundant semantic information and performs a variety of high-speed analysis and future prediction. By combining with various IoT data, it can offer various values such as increasing smoothness of road traffic flow, improving ease of use of urban assets, and enabling cooperative maintenance of social infrastructures. As a cross-industry platform supporting people’s lives, and as the one of the key elements of Digital Twin Computing, a part of NTT’s IOWN initiative, we intend to leverage NTT R&D and NTT Group technologies and assets toward sequential commercialization beginning in FY2021 (Fig. 28.7).

Fig. 28.7
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Conceptual diagram of 4D digital platform (©2021, NTT)

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3.3 Digital Twin Computing (DTC)

NTT proposes digital twin computing [4] as an extension of the conventional concept of digital twins. By freely combining and performing calculations on digital twins of objects and humans in diverse industries, we are able to accurately reproduce combinations that could not be comprehensively handled up to now, such as humans and automobiles in cities, and thereby make predictions about the future. With DTC, NTT will create a diverse virtual society in which objects and people can interact with each other beyond the constraints of the real world and will enable the real world to expand and ascend through integration with virtual society. We aim to create innovative services that have never been possible before, which includes expanding human potential by expanding the scope of human activities to virtual societies or social design and decision support for solving complex social issues through large-scale simulations and predictions (Fig. 28.8).

Fig. 28.8
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Digital twin computing four-layered architecture (©2021, NTT)

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In the development and operation of DTC, it is necessary to consider issues such as human understanding, privacy, digital ethics, and values of the digital society. However, such problem-solving and social implementation cannot be achieved by players involved with ICT technologies alone. Collaboration among experts across a wide range of academic and specialist fields and players in various industries will be required, such as social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, applied sciences, and interdisciplinary fields. And above all, secure data spaces are essential to achieving our goals.

3.4 “DATA Trust” and “Smart Data Platform with Trust”

DATA Trust is a concept proposed by NTT for safe and secure data sharing between enterprises and embodied on Smart Data Platform (SDPF) with Trust by NTT Communications. The platform provides features such as linking data owner with each data, access control, data usage tracking, and data isolation for each user, consensual data sharing, partial sharing of data, and anonymizing data. It can separate and control various types of data, such as open data and contract-protected and confidential data.

NTT is applying this technology to provide Digital Utility Cloud [5]. It manages machine tool operation status data, personnel data like work logs collected by mobile devices, and static data such as manuals and specifications safely and securely. Companies that use this platform can take advantage of this data to save costs and resources required for development and improve customer service.

4 Initiatives to Interconnect GAIA-X and NTT Platform

4.1 Collaboration Between IDS Connector and SDPF with Trust

Since October 2020, NTT has been collaborating with IDSA in a demonstration test as the first phase of contributing to the development of a secure, global data-management platform that assures interoperability between data platforms which will be built and managed in countries worldwide [6]. The test environment for sharing highly confidential data securely will include IDS Connectors, the core technology of GAIA-X, a federated data infrastructure for Europe, and NTT Com’s IoT platform and Smart Data Platform with Trust. The demonstration, in addition to assessing the practicality and operability of a new structure for appropriately controlling the access rights of each data based on related laws and contracts, will shed new light on the requirements, etc. of platforms designed for international data management. The results are expected to lead to the establishment of global data management platforms that smoothly link local data platforms in countries across the globe (Fig. 28.9).

Fig. 28.9
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IDS demonstration system on NTT’s IoT platform (©2021, NTT)

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In the demonstration, a test environment has been built to test various cases of international data sharing, such as remote monitoring of machines overseas, etc., to verify the practicality and operability of data sharing. IDS Connectors and Smart Data Platform (SDPF) with Trust will be deployed in a test environment in Japan to test system interoperability and the management of specific data-usage rights. NTT has already created a simple demo system using IDS Connectors that simulates the use case 2 discussed in the RRI WG mentioned above.

NTT will proceed with further verification and testing by applying the current test’s findings in a test operation environment (test bed), aiming to verify the interoperability of various hardware and software using the IDS Connectors. The new global data management platform will be jointly developed by Japanese and overseas companies and organizations. At the same time, we will determine concrete requirements for the platform together with various organizations and companies active in Japan and overseas, including the RRI. Going forward, NTT hopes to support the formulation of basic specifications through public-private-academic collaboration.

4.2 Interconnect Factories in Europe and Japan with IDS

In order to achieve the global target “carbon-neutral society,” we must optimize the industrial structure by globally sharing and monitoring data on economic activities that emit CO2. In December 2020, NTT started the data-management Proof of Concept (POC) to visualize CO2 emissions across manufacturing processes with the aim of transforming into a sustainable and law-carbon economy collaborating with SIEMENS at the Switzerland Innovation Park Biel/Bienne [7]. NTT is testing the innovative approach toward global data sharing between businesses using Smart Data Platform with Trust. The POC is performed in the test and experimentation platform of a drone manufacturing line. It highlights the role of data sharing for a sustainable development and circular economy. SIEMENS is supporting the POC by integrating its IoT platform Mindsphere as a central data hub on NTT’s virtual private cloud and on-premises servers.

NTT plans to interconnect the test system with GAIA-X prototype using IDS Connectors in 2021. We would like to install IDS Connectors to link with GAIA-X in NTT’s data centers and interconnect the Swiss factory and Japanese cloud with GAIA-X prototype system in EU via NTT’s SDPF with Trust. We would like to expand this experimental system to build and operate an international joint testbed for interoperability experiments with IDS/GAIA-X in cooperation with companies and organizations around the world and to contribute to the establishment of data spaces that can share various data globally in a fair and secure manner.

5 Future Prospects and Expectations for Data Spaces

Today, we face many problems that threaten the environment, human rights, health, and peace. In order to solve these problems and achieve the SDGs, we need to have a mechanism to constantly monitor the activities of the ecosystem of companies, individuals, and organisms and to detect and correct abnormalities and injustices. I hope to create a global cyber-physical system with a mechanism that uses ICT to check the state of the economy and the natural environment and implement defense measures and repair them when they deviate from their ideal state, which is just like the immune system and autonomic nervous system of the human body. To complete such a “Global Autonomic Nerve,” I would like to work with Fraunhofer and other companies, organizations, and governments around the world to create peaceful data spaces for the SDGs. To this end, it is necessary to build a common, global, open, and fair data management platform that can connect and share data not only within the EU but with all countries and regions around the world. However, rules for using data spaces, such as the definition of critical data, the concept of data sovereignty, and laws governing the export of data, will vary from country to country. Therefore, it might be a good idea to construct global data spaces by establishing a national data space within each country or region that operates in accordance with each law, setting up a data flow management gateway at the each border, and interconnecting them by global common rules and interfaces.

I think GAIA-X should also have secure gateways to interconnect with data spaces in countries outside the EU to enable global data sharing. In addition, to make data spaces more operational and convenient, we need to prepare orchestrator systems that can easily and securely integrate and manage data, devices, edges, servers, clouds, software, gateways, and networks (Fig. 28.10).

Fig. 28.10
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Data spaces hierarchical interconnect architecture (©2021, NTT)

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As a global carrier, NTT will be able to contribute to designing, building, and operating such an international intercontinental data space architecture with IDSA and Fraunhofer and all other stakeholders, by combining existing NTT services and new technologies including IOWN, 4D digital platform, Digital Twin Computing, and SDPF with Trust. I look forward to promoting these activities together in various fields such as industry, mobility, energy, logistics, health, and cities toward a hopeful future for the ecosystem of mankind and the earth.