MWC: NEC aims to dominate western telco infrastructure and energy storage markets

Japanese tech firm NEC is to make an agressive play for dominance of western telecommunications and energy storage markets, one of its executives has revealed to Computing.

Some 80 per cent of the company's revenue currently comes from Japan, but this is set to change as the firm aims at two key markets in Europe and beyond; telecommunications software defined network (SDN) solutions, and energy storage.

The company was hit by financial fallout from 2011's earthquake, and saw a loss of ¥1,900,000 yen in 2012, though it has since returned to profitability.

"NEC is still a Japan-centric company in terms of business and revenues," CEO and president of NEC Italy, Ugo Govigli, told Computing. "More than 80 per cent of our revenue is in Japan, but the direction given by our president is to move to 50 per cent of revenue shares overseas by 2017."

For its attack on telecoms infrastructures, NEC is positing an ambitious SDN-based approach to replacing incumbent hardware-based solutions, in the hope that existing providers may not want to make the investment on the latest hardware.

"Ericsson is probably the biggest provider, and if I was them I wouldn't do anything to destroy the market they already have," said Keiichi Miyahara (pictured), corporate chief engineer, network platform operations unit at NEC.

"Some 30 or 40 per cent of the market is using Ericsson's equipment. And if they want more capacity, they just add a layer to an existing platform. And I would say that would be true for all of the major incumbants; Ericsson, Siemens, Alcatel Lucent," added Miyahara.

In comparison, NEC's proposition to the market is to use standard, off-the-shelf server hardware and an open source hypervisor - the software controller that creates and runs the virtual machines that comprise the SDN telecoms system.