A Global Team Established to Coordinate the Data Space Across Countries and Regions and to Create New Businesses

1. Background

To realize a sustainable society, there is a widespread need to solve social issues such as carbon neutrality and circular economy. To solve these problems, a foundation is needed where multiple companies and organizations can freely and safely share data while trusting each other. In Japan, multiple initiatives to promote trusted data sharing and interoperability have been gaining momentum. Among them are "DATA-EX," led primarily by the Data Society Alliance, and the "Ouranos Ecosystem," spearheaded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry-each advancing the development of data spaces while contributing to a cross-broader movement. In Europe, "Catena-X (*1)", a data space mainly for the automobile manufacturing industry, and other initiatives have been launched. As commercial services are provided in each region, interoperability and international cooperation between these services and specifications are becoming increasingly important.

• (*1) https://catena-x.net/en/1

2. NTT DATA Strategy

The NTT DATA Group Corporation has formed a global team to implement data spaces in society, which supports the creation of new value and businesses for companies through data use. This unified global team orchestrates inter-company data exchange activities, accelerating the real-world deployment of data spaces and unlocking new business value. It will accelerate the social implementation of data spaces and the creation of business value for companies by leveraging expertise, development technologies and taking interoperability into consideration.
As a concrete effort, this team will promote innovation by enabling various companies and industries to co-create new businesses. This will involve expanding software components for commercial services necessary to ensure interoperability, etc. when data are exchanged in different companies and industries, and through contributions to international cooperation through domestic initiatives and partnership with the International Data Spaces Association (IDSA (*2)), Gaia-X (*3), etc. in Europe.

The NTT DATA Group Corporation has been promoting the creation of use cases and the development of technology for inter-company data collaboration through co-creation activities with companies and industries for the social implementation of data spaces. We are also continuing to enhance interoperability collaboration with different infrastructures such as systems and technologies.

NTT DATA Group Corporation's Activities for Social Implementation of Data Spaces

• (*2) https://internationaldataspaces.org/

• (*3) https://gaia-x.eu/

3. Examples of NTT DATA 's Activities

• Development and launch of a battery traceability platform for batteries for electric vehicles (*4)
• Demonstration including international connection using the international testbed in cooperation with the University of Tokyo (*5)
• Realization of data spaces related to mobility and sustainability
• Promotion of the Public Procurement Data Space (*6) in Europe

• (*4) https://www.nttdata.com/global/ja/news/release/2024/051600/

• (*5) https://www.nttdata.com/global/ja/news/topics/2024/111900/

• (*6) https://benelux.nttdata.com/insights/whitepapers/the-power-of-data-spaces

4. Key Objective & Effective

Companies have traditionally been hesitant to link complex and sensitive business data. However, our technology provides secure protection from data provisioning to the receipt of computation results, and supports key data space activities such as onboarding, participant identity and access management, policy enforcement, and secure data exchange.
NTT DATA offers a wide range of solutions. For example, we provide the Data Space Builder, which provides services and technology, including every data space building block to deliver a complete data space ecosystem. These include interoperability, trust framework and sovereignty enablers, data exchange and semantics among other features, encompassing trust and scalability. The Data Space Builder is already enabling lighthouse European and Spanish projects. Another offering is the Data Security, Privacy, and Integrity Governing Platform (SPIP) - a solution designed for secure, data-centric and fine-grained data access and sharing, based on the Zero-Trust security model. SPIP collaborates with data spaces such as DATA4CIRC, a European data space by manufacturing and providing the data-centric security for protection at-rest and in-transit during the whole data lifecycle. To enable the exchange of highly sensitive data and algorithms used in data analysis and collaborative computations, NTT DATA also provides secure technologies that preserve the confidentiality of data and algorithms at all times and locations. We can launch a proof of concept (PoC) using the aforementioned technologies to facilitate data exchange and collaboration across various industries and organizations.

Our strategic offerings empower seamless collaboration on complex, sensitive data-fueling innovation and unlocking new opportunities across ecosystems. In addition, NTT DATA has the capability to support initiatives such as testbeds, collaborate with diverse stakeholders both in Japan and internationally, and actively engage them in the development and operation of data spaces.

5. Our Future

By 2026, the NTT DATA Group Corporation will have 200 experts trained in data spaces and will promote the social implementation of data spaces for use cases requiring data exchange across companies and industries, such as the electric power, healthcare, finance and insurance sectors. In addition, by leveraging the knowledge and partnerships on interoperability gained through this team, we will co-create business markets with various companies and industries, and aim for sales of 50 billion yen by 2030.