IBM Services to Support Digital Transformation of Meiji Yasuda Life
January 17, 2019 at 09:00 am EST
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IBM Services announced that Meiji Yasuda Life (lead by Director and President Akio Negishi, and headquartered in Chiyoda, Tokyo) renewed a strategic outsourcing agreement with IBM regarding operation of the IT infrastructure for its mission-critical systems, and has newly signed an agreement with an eight-year term from July 2019 to June 2027. As a part of the Meiji Yasuda Philosophy, Meiji Yasuda Life aims to continue to offer "peace of mind, forever" as its management philosophy, and aims to become "a long-respected life insurance company that cares about people first" as its corporate vision. The IT infrastructure for achieving these aims needs flexibility to support the growth of business in a rapidly changing environment, robustness and reliability to sustain core operations, a refined level of operation utilizing the latest technology, and the ability to provide an even higher degree of enhanced quality and work efficiency. Since its first adoption as the former Meiji Life, Meiji Yasuda Life has utilized strategic outsourcing with IBM Japan for an extended period of time to realize a highly reliable IT infrastructure and high-quality operations that can sustain management strategies. Based on these past results and its strong relationship, the company decided to sign an agreement with an even longer term. IBM Z will be used for the IT infrastructure as before, featuring high robustness and exceptional reliability. In order to enhance flexibility and scalability so as to accommodate digital transformation in the insurance industry, a private cloud environment will be newly built on IBM Z to provide necessary resources as required. With regard to operation, automation solutions that utilize cognitive technologies will be gradually implemented in order to enhance the quality of work and boost efficiency. For the operational structure, an environment will be built to enable remote operation from Sharing Centers situated offshore and nearshore, and an environment will be prepared so that staff can be optimally assigned for individual work requirements with a lean approach, in order to support further boosts in work efficiency as well as reductions in costs.
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) is one of the world's leading computer services companies. Net sales break down by activity as follows:
- cognitive solutions and transaction processing software development (41.4%);
- IT services (31.6%): consulting (management of logistic chains, financial performance, CRM, human resources, etc.), application management, systems integration, cloud computing, hosting, technical support services, etc.;
- sale of IT infrastructure (25.3%): hybrid IT infrastructure solutions, microcomputers, servers, peripheral devices, networks, data storage equipment, etc.;
- financing of computer equipment (1%);
- other (0.7%).
Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (41.5%), Americas (9.8%), Europe/Middle East/Africa (29.7%), Japan (9%) and Asia/Pacific (10%).