NTT Communications Corporation, the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group, succeeded in April 2021 in developing the prototype of the platform that enables interconnection with IDS and the IDS Connector, the core technology of IDS, which constitutes one of the core components of the Gaia X data ecosystem, the data distribution infrastructure that Europe is developing to protect the data sovereignty of its countries and regions.

As such, NTT Com will develop the prototype of the secure international data distribution platform that connects IDS and withTrust^™, NTT Com’s Smart Data Platform that realizes secure data distribution among companies and organizations, and conduct interconnection trials with partners in Japan and Europe from October this year to March 2022.

Based on the trial results, the commercial version of this platform will be launched in the first half of fiscal year 2022. It will enable secure international distribution of data, including device data in factories, ordering information, CO2 and waste emissions data for product life cycles between the components of the global supply chain, through Gaia X and withTrust^™ . NTT Com will thus contribute to the realization of a sustainable society by improving industrial efficiency, decarbonization, and resource recycling through data distribution.

NTT Com has constructed a trial environment on the cloud where data can be securely shared among companies and organizations by connecting IDS, OPC UA, and withTrust^™ in Europe and Japan, enabling secure connection to the Gaia-X prototype via the Smart Data Platform. The test environment was made based on the use cases of manufacturing data distribution for decarbonization and resource recycling in the manufacturing industry (now being studied by WG1 “Study on Global Data Distribution Management Platform” sub-WG by Robot Revolution and Industrial IoT Initiative ), and the requirements of the international data interconnection platform derived from such use cases. The trials will verify the convenience, functionality, and practicality of the international data distribution platform by connecting devices and systems of domestic and overseas partners to this trial environment and distributing data between Japan and Europe.

An experiment will also be conducted in this trial environment to interconnect multiple data spaces of those European industries that comply with Gaia X, including Smart Connected Supplier Network in the Netherlands and Catena-X in Germany. NTT Com will also study data models to enable the smooth transmission of manufacturing CO2 emission data and other information that transcends the differences in business practices and laws between countries and industries. The practicality of this model will be verified through experiments to securely distribute data between Japan and Europe. Then, in collaboration with Canada-based Empress Software Japan and other companies, NTT Com will propose this model to the OPC Foundation as the OPC UA companion information model.

Flow chart of interconnection trials

Partner companies and organizations that have already agreed to participate in this experiment are as follows: Okuma Corporation, OMRON Corporation, DENSO WAVE Inc., Empress Software Japan Inc., Yokogawa Electric Corporation, Industrial Open-Network Laboratory in School of Fundamental Science and Engineering at Waseda University, RRI, Smart Connected Supplier Network (SCSN), and Value Chain Connectivity Test WG at Virtual Engineering Community (VEC). (As of October 14, 2021, in Japanese alphabetical order.)

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