KDDI America
Established in 1989 and headquartered in New York City, KDDI America is a wholly owned subsidiary of KDDI Corporation of Japan, a leading global mobile service provider.
786
Employees
1,561,326
Files in AODocs
33
DMS Libraries
KDDI America offers a wide range of products and services including global network services (global private line, frame relay/ATM, Internet), domestic and international long distance cellular services (switched and dedicated accesses, toll free, and prepaid), system integration, and fibre video transmission. In addition, it owns and operates Telehouse data centers.
Challenge
- For Yuri Ikeya, the system engineer at KDDI’s information system department, migrating the company’s New York City office from an old Windows 2003 file server to a cloud-based solution was a high priority.
- Although they had a file replication system for their on-premise file servers, KDDI couldn’t guarantee that users’ files would be restored if they were accidentally deleted. Not to mention, the old file servers were running into trouble and constantly required maintenance.
- “We already had a G Suite account and had just upgraded to unlimited G Suite storage,” explained Yuri. “We started to think about how we could fully utilize the unlimited storage on Google Drive and begin to move our company content and data to the cloud.”
- After testing Google Drive, Yuri and her team understood that it would help KDDI move forward. However, there were a few missing features that prevented them from fully adopting Drive as their document management system. They were looking for more centralized ownership and better control over document sharing permissions. They also needed a way to migrate the millions of documents living in their Windows file server over to Drive.
Goals
- Move off of their Windows 2003 file server
- Centralize control over Drive files and folders
- Drive user adoption of G Suite
Yuri Ikeya
System Engineer, KDDI Information System Department
“Migrating to the cloud allowed us to handoff file server maintenance operations and reduce the risk of data loss,” explained Yuri. “Security is now unified with Google and AODocs security settings and we’re able to manage it all from one place.”
Story
Yuri and her team began to search for a document management solution to add on top of Google Drive so they could add an extra layer of control and organization to G Suite.
AODocs proved to have everything that they needed to do a full migration from their existing file server and gave them centralized file ownership and control within Drive. They worked with a project manager from AODocs to complete the migration and get the team up and running in just a few days.
Impact
This has allowed the KDDI security team to encourage users to work in the cloud and not keep company documents on their local PCs.
“Moving away from the file server centralized everyone’s work within Google,” said Yuri. “We’re really seeing people use G Suite more than they ever were before.”
KDDI employees find it much easier to collaborate and share files with AODocs Team Folders. Users can also access their files from outside of the office without using a VPN. It has naturally led to them using Google Sheets and Docs over the legacy file types that were hosted on the file server. They’re now able to work directly in Drive and not have to download and re-upload each new file. The KDDI IT department has noticed that as users get more familiar with the way that AODocs and Drive function, they become more open minded about adopting other cloud solutions.
“Our users are starting to wonder what else they can do within G Suite and if there are other solutions out there that work the same way for their other job functions,” said Yuri.
