Kyocera Document Solutions: Accelerating software development and lowering maintenance costs with Google Cloud
About Kyocera Document Solutions
Founded in 1934, the predecessor business to Kyocera Document Solutions became a member of the Kyocera Group in 2000 and changed its name to the current version in April 2012. Kyocera Document Solutions is developing a printer and multifunction device business, an enterprise content management business, and an inkjet business. The organization provides products and services to more than 160 countries and territories through a network of 42 distributors.
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About Kyocera Communication Systems
Spun off from Kyocera Corporation in 1995, Kyocera Communication Systems is an information systems company that tackles challenges through expertise in information and communications technology, engineering, and management consulting. The business aims to fuse advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, and 5G with expertise in renewable energy businesses driven by the Kyocare Group to create new services.
With Google Cloud, Kyocera Document Solutions is improving the speed and scale of its software development capabilities while reducing maintenance costs and strengthening business continuity planning.
Google Cloud results
- Improved the organization’s agility and responsiveness by reducing software build times by 20%,
- Allocates resources as and when needed to respond quickly to change
- Higher-performing storage enables the business to increase the number of users per machine, increasing efficiency
Achieved pre-migration target of reducing maintenance costs by 30%
Kyocera Document Solutions’ main business is the manufacture, sale, and support of multifunction products (MFPs), printers, and printer supplies. The organization builds development environments for embedded controllers and ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits) for MFPs and printers on a software platform created in a private cloud run by a domestic data center operator and used from 2014 onwards.
However, while in 2014 private cloud was mainstream and running-costs optimal, over time Kyocera Document Solutions faced challenges keeping overall running costs down as data maintenance costs rose and the organization needed to expand resources for business continuity planning.
Furthermore, performance of the network between Kyocera Document Solutions’ development operation and the hosted private cloud began to cause issues, due to the requirement to download tens of thousands of megabytes of data.
In addition, as Kyocera Document Solutions shifted development from a domestic to an international operation, the business found limited support from domestic data center operators for overseas bases. The transition also required the team to rebuild a disaster recovery environment that supported two domestic bases into an environment that spanned international and domestic bases, and also to strengthen its business continuity planning.
Finally, Kyocera Document Solutions could only access resources reserved in advance through the private cloud, making it very difficult to respond to changes such as rapid increases in data volumes and shortages of compute resources.
“We also chose Google Cloud due to the availability of the region in Osaka, Japan, and overseas regions and the fact Google Cloud had its own communication network.”
—Masayoshi Hayama, 1st Section, Software Technology Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology HeadquartersThe Kyocera Document Solutions team targeted a 30% reduction in running costs as one of the cornerstones of its selection and began the process in 2018. The business undertook a proof of concept with Google Cloud from February-March 2019—an exercise that built confidence in the cloud platform. “At the proof of concept stage, we performance-checked the configuration management system used mainly for software development and the build server for development,” says Keisuke Kitano, 1st Section, Software Technology Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology Headquarters. “We found Google Cloud performed best when compared against our existing private cloud and public clouds.”
“We also chose Google Cloud due to the availability of the region in Osaka, Japan, and overseas regions and the fact Google Cloud had its own communication network,” adds Mr Masayoshi Hayama, 1st Section, Software Technology Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology Headquarters.
Kyocera Document Solutions launched its migration to the cloud in October 2019 and constructed an architecture in March and April of 2020, with data migration and switching completed in May and June on a system-by-system basis. The business launched sequentially and completed the transition by the end of June that year.
The business initially opted for an architecture based on Cloud Storage and Compute Engine and migrated its mechanism for source code configuration management and change management to Google Cloud using SQL and other means.
A diagram of the organization’s architecture is available here:
Kyocera Document Solutions asked Kyocera Communications Systems Co. Ltd (KCCS) to help migrate the business seamlessly from the private cloud to Google Cloud, due to KCCS’ status as a Google Cloud Partner and the synergies available from engaging another Kyocera group company.
In addition, KCCS provided a suite of services ranging from requirements definition to basic design and detailed design, system construction, testing, and migration.
KCCS played a key role in building the infrastructure, enabling the Kyocera Document Solutions team to focus on applications. Due to Kyocera Document Solutions’ contract with the private cloud provider, KCCS had to migrate 130 or more instances and 10 or more systems in a short period of time—and did so seamlessly.
“We have now achieved our original goal of reducing maintenance costs by 30%, which came largely from our decision to review every aspect of our software development platform. We now plan to use various Google Cloud services to further optimize cost and performance by making further improvements.”
—Masayoshi Hayama, 1st Section, Software Technology Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology HeadquartersIn addition to reducing running costs by optimizing resources and utilizing managed services with Google Cloud, KCCS built from scratch a disaster recovery environment that spanned domestic to overseas bases.
Google Cloud helped considerably with senior people responding to KCCS’ inquiries about architecture, while the cloud business’s high-caliber support engineer helped resolve problems quickly.
“We have now achieved our original goal of reducing maintenance costs by 30%, which came largely from our decision to review every aspect of our software development platform,” says Masayoshi. “We now plan to use various Google Cloud services to further optimize cost and performance by making further improvements. Furthermore, we can allocate the resources we need when we need them, ensuring we are quick and flexible in responding to change.”
“Overall, we look forward to KCCS and Google Cloud proposing solutions that leverage new services and technologies.”
—Masayoshi Hayama, 1st Section, Software Technology Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology HeadquartersYosuke Minami, Section 1, Software Promotion Section 2, Software Technology Promotion Department, Software Development Section, Technology Headquarters, Kyocera Document Solutions, says Kyocera Document Solutions’ field engineers “are particularly pleased that we have reduced build time by about 20%.
“Also, we have moved to SSD-based storage with significantly higher performance than hard disk storage, enabling us to increase considerably the number of users per machine,” adds Yosuke.
Kyocera Document Solutions plans to build on the convenience offered to its engineers and developers by creating a cloud-native software development platform that enables free use of cloud services.
The business also plans to set KPIs to measure the impact of migrating to Google Cloud in consultation with KCCS and intends to use the BeyondCorp Enterprise zero trust security service to strengthen its capabilities in the area.
“Overall, we look forward to KCCS and Google Cloud proposing solutions that leverage new services and technologies,” concludes Masayoshi.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
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About Kyocera Document Solutions
Founded in 1934, the predecessor business to Kyocera Document Solutions became a member of the Kyocera Group in 2000 and changed its name to the current version in April 2012. Kyocera Document Solutions is developing a printer and multifunction device business, an enterprise content management business, and an inkjet business. The organization provides products and services to more than 160 countries and territories through a network of 42 distributors.
About Kyocera Communication Systems
Spun off from Kyocera Corporation in 1995, Kyocera Communication Systems is an information systems company that tackles challenges through expertise in information and communications technology, engineering, and management consulting. The business aims to fuse advanced technologies such as AI, IoT, and 5G with expertise in renewable energy businesses driven by the Kyocare Group to create new services.