12 NTT Technical Review

1. Background

Since the reorganization of the NTT Group in 1999,the R&D Division of the holding company has steadi-ly supplied companies in the NTT Group withresearch and development results. In November2002, NTT announced its “Vision for a new opticalgeneration — Broadband leading to the world of res-onant communication” [1]. Anticipating break-through changes that will lead to the emergence of asafe and rich social life and business operations, it

represents the common theme that unites NTT Groupcompanies in the full-scale broadband ubiquitous erathat will be ushered in by optical technology in thenear future.

In line with this vision, the R&D Division intro-duced “comprehensive commercialization functions”in July 2003 to reinforce efforts to commercializeR&D results (Fig. 1). R&D activities are roughlydivided into the “establishment of core technology”as a source of competitive advantages and “develop-ment for commercialization” to turn promising

Masato Mizoguchi†, Takayuki Okimura, and Atsushi MatsudaAbstract

To meet the diverse and complicated needs of customers in the rapidly growing information and com-munications market, NTT is backing its R&D efforts by comprehensive commercialization functions.This article introduces NTT’s commercialization activities and gives several examples of them.

Comprehensive CommercializationFunctions

Special Feature: Comprehensive Commercialization

† NTT Department IIIChiyoda-ku, Tokyo, 100-8116 JapanE-mail: m.mizoguchi@hco.ntt.co.jp

Market trends Development aimed at introducing thecreated core technology in business

Introduction inbusiness

Research

Existing technologies andproducts on the market

• Practical application via allianceswith relevant companies in relatedindustries

• Applied R&D efforts made bybusiness corporations

• Discerning judgment• Analysis of market and

technological trends• Marketing• Development plans & proposals• Creating a new market and

exploiting new business

Comprehensivecommercialization functions

Needs found at business corporations

Development forcommercialization

Establishment offundamental technologies

Development ofcore technology

Development ofcore technology

Research

Research

• •

•

• •

•

Fig. 1. Comprehensive commercialization functions.

Vol. 3 No. 5 May 2005 13

research themes into revenue-generating business. Acomprehensive producer is a person who has fullauthority and responsibility for managing a develop-ment for commercialization.

2. Outline

There is said to be a “valley of death” [2] betweenthe R&D stage and the introduction of marketableproducts and services. Many R&D results fail tomake it to commercial usefulness because of the dif-ficulty of judging their feasibility. To overcome thisbarrier, the comprehensive producer tries to deter-mine how core technology developed by NTT Labo-ratories can be turned into business applications.More specifically, he or she makes a discerning judg-ment for a technological theme, analyses markettrends and customer needs, and conducts market sur-veys to prepare planning proposals in the develop-ment for commercialization appropriate for eachtechnological theme. In running a development pro-ject, every comprehensive producer promises his/herown commitment targets in terms of quantitativebusiness scale and also takes responsibility for thecommercialization process. To carry out this respon-sibility, the comprehensive producer has overallauthority for allocating and reviewing businessresources and withdrawing from the project if he/shedecides it will be unprofitable.

Conversion into business applications is activelyaddressed in view of the alliances not only amongcompanies within the NTT Group but also with com-panies outside the NTT Group while paying attentionto the combination of widely ranging fundamentaltechnologies owned by NTT’s R&D with the existingtechnologies on the market at the most timelymoment. In addition, we try to pursue the possibilityof applying the accumulated communications-relatedtechnologies to other fields through the comprehen-sive commercialization functions. The establishmentof the comprehensive commercialization functionsclarified the burden of risk and the range of responsi-bilities among the Group companies, therebyenabling steadier and more efficient execution of var-ious developments. In December 2003, NTT estab-lished NTT Resonant Inc., which focuses on com-mercializing new services on the basis of variousbusiness seeds created by the NTT Laboratories. Thecomprehensive commercialization functions willpursue NTT Group’s Medium-term ManagementStrategy released in November 2004 [3].

3. Examples

Figure 2 shows several ongoing technologicalthemes. Some of them are discussed in detail in theother articles in this special feature. Below, we brieflymention some that are not, but have achieved consid-erable success thanks to the effective comprehensivecommercialization activities.

3.1 “Ate!?melo” music search serviceThis new service allows mobile phone users to dis-

cover the title and artist name of music that they arecurrently listening to by holding the phone near thesound source (e.g., TV or radio) for about 20 seconds.The service, called “Ate!?melo” (meaning “what’sthat melody?”), on NTT’s portal site “goo” is sup-plied by NTT Resonant. It began on December 15,2004 [4]. Prior the start of this service, we performeda demonstration at “in the city Tokyo 2004”, an eventheld in October 2004 by the music entertainmentindustry, to hear and collect opinions from music fansand contents holders, confirm appropriate serviceneeds, and promote the service launch [5].

This music search service was achieved by com-bining fast media search technology and service inte-gration technology, both developed by NTT Labora-tories. The search technology produces characteristicinformation called an audio “fingerprint” from a frag-ment of music captured by a mobile phone. Then,from this fingerprint, a specific music title is pin-

Activities

• Service platform– Sound-input type music search service

• Resonant service– Navigation project

• Security✔ Secure enterprize network access control system

• Smart card✔ Type-B smart card mobile phone

• Open source software (OSS)✔ Promotion of OSS use

• Environment and energy✔ Public environmental IT system✔ iDC Shield Vault

• Business creation✔ Proximity communication technology using

human body as signal path– “Wonderhorn” singing voice synthesis

technology• Devices

✔ “FingerQuick” fingerprint identification devices– Super luminescent diode

✔ Discussed in one of the other special feature articles.– Briefly mentioned in this article.

Fig. 2. Examples of themes covered by thecomprehensive commercialization functions.

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14 NTT Technical Review

pointed in a huge database that includes attributeinformation (metadata) about the contents. In addi-tion, the service integration technology lets severalservers, including computer-telephony integration(CTI) servers for receiving and handling phone callsand fingerprint-matching servers, collaborate witheach other, enabling us to flexibly extend or changethe service in the future.

We attempted to diversify search methods througha mobile phone such as supporting a hummingsearch, searching by humming a part of a tune, orvoice recognition search. Based on the audio finger-print database, NTT plans to build up an evolving“contents aggregation platform” including broadcast-ing/Internet monitoring service and music ID conver-sion service useful for various affiliation services forcontents holders, copyright management organiza-tions and broadcasting service operators throughrepeated experimental tests jointly performed withpartners in each industry (Fig. 3).

3.2 Navigation project using goo labs.Navigating technology is becoming more and more

important to enable effective utilization of Internetinformation, which continues to grow at an exponen-tial rate along with the rapid propagation of broad-band communications. NTT and NTT Resonant setup a joint navigation experiment to test third-genera-tion search services that will enable users to getappropriate information related to business and enter-tainment. Marketing in preparation for the launch of

commercial services is in progress with some openjoint tests on goo labs. [6], a Web site designed forfield evaluation of NTT’s research results. The openexperiments started by this project include “Topic-Master” to classify and display search results of newsarticles, “BlogScope” to efficiently search all sen-tences of web-log articles and topical articles(launched in goo’s commercial service on February1st), “Personal Summary” that allows users to viewtheir favorite contents arranged in a free layout viasimple drag&drop manipulation, and “HotWindow+”to automatically select and display the latest topicsfrom news sites and blog sites (Fig. 4). The projectencourages many customers to directly experiencenew navigation techniques and provide frank feed-back so that both applied technologies and servicescan be enhanced as soon as possible.

3.3 “Wonderhorn” singing voice synthesistechnology

“Wonderhorn” is a computerized synthesis technol-ogy for creating voice messages in a particular per-son’s singing voice. It blends music and lyrics that theuser inputs with a singing voice taken from a person-alized database of previously registered voices byapplying a model for reproducing the harmonic over-tone structure appropriate to each individual and mix-ture technology for special residual noises extractedfrom actual singing voices (Fig. 5). “Wonderhorn”has already been furnished by NTT Advanced Tech-nology (NTT-AT) to companies in the entertainment

“Ate!?melo” sound-input type mobilemusic search service:

Metadata databaseFingerprint databaseContents aggregation platform(Supply, maintenance, and management ofdatabases to find the desired contents) Collaboration

Activation of the contents market

CD Ring tones/music Tickets Goods

RIAJ CPRAJASRACProductioncompanies

Musicpublishers

Recordcompanies

Database

Copyright management organizations

Broadcasting monitoring service:

Supply of the list of broadcast music titles

Supply of the platform for service collaboration

Supply of on-air information about artistsand ranking information

Monitoring of illegal files

Measurement of promotionaleffects on the Internet

Correlative analysis data between mediaexposure and sales information

Marketing-related services such as the utilization of results fordiverse campaigns and the supply of consumer behavior data

Music search via mobile phones + affiliations arisingfrom search results (CD sales, ring tones, music, etc.)

Consumers

Database

Contents holders

Internet monitoring service:

Dat

abas

e co

llabo

ratio

n

Broadcast reception facilities Internet surfing robotCTI facilities

Fig. 3. Contents aggregation platform and services bound for the contents market.

Special Feature

Vol. 3 No. 5 May 2005 15

field including game and music education. Anyonecan try the singing voice synthesis function using thesample voice database Utabara.com [7] operated byNTT-AT.

3.4 Super luminescent diode used for medicalimaging

We are trying to apply some of the leading-edgeoptical device technology developed by NTT for opti-cal communications systems to other fields. One suchtechnology is a super luminescent diode (SLD) lightsource, which we are trying to apply to optical coher-

ence tomography (OCT) for medical purposes. OCTis a noninvasive in-vivo imaging technique. Figure 6shows OCT images of masu salmon eggs provided byYamagata Promotional Organization for IndustrialTechnology. The combination of OCT with an endo-scope is expected to provide early detection and med-ical treatment of various cancers. The SLD lightsource provides a wide bandwidth (1310-nm band)and high intensity (at least 30 mW for fiber-coupledemission). It should lead to much clearer and finertomographic images. The SLD light source is alreadybeing sold by NTT Electronics (NEL) [8].

Blog search experiment Hot topics display experiment

News-article classification/search experiment Web-page personalization sophistication experiment

“Personal Summary”

“Blog Scope”

• Searched results are displayedusing category labels.

• Overview of search results canbe seen

• Easy narrowing-down• New information can be found easily.

• Selection and display of topical words by genre• Genre selection according to user’s interest level• Three types of the interface to encourage

awareness depending on the usage scene

RSS: resource description framework site summaryHTML: hypertext markup language

Creation of new,third-generationsearch services

• Intuitive drag&drop manipulation• Contents described in RSS or HTML

format can be displayed

• Technology for searching similar articles• Realtime link analysis technology with a

highly-efficient, original database

Search the future

Fig. 4. Navigation project.

Personalized databaseof singing voices

Lyrics writtenby the user

Song written by BachPersonalized singing

voice message

Voice of user’schosen singer

Fig. 5. Example of using “Wonderhorn”.

References

[1] N. Wada, “Vision for a New Optical Generation,” NTT TechnicalReview, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 6-17, 2003.

[2] http://www.atp.nist.gov/atp/secy_rept/evans_rpt.htm [3] “NTT Group’s Medium-term Management Strategy,” NTT Technical

Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 38-44, 2005.[4] http://mobile.goo.ne.jp/melody/ (in Japanese).[5] http://www.inthecity.jp/ (in Japanese).[6] http://labs.goo.ne.jp/ (in Japanese).[7] http://www.utabara.com/ (in Japanese).[8] http://www.nel-world.com/news/news_sep04_1.html

Special Feature

16 NTT Technical Review

Takayuki OkimuraSenior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTT

Department III (R&D Strategy Department).He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in elec-

tronics from Kyushu University, Fukuoka in1985 and 1987, respectively. In 1987, he joinedNTT, where he was engaged in R&D of elec-tronic display systems. He is now engaged inR&D planning for comprehensive commercial-ization functions. He is a member of IEICE andthe Institute of Image Information and TelevisionEngineers.

Atsushi MatsudaSenior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTT

Department III (R&D Strategy Department).He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in civil

engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology,Tokyo in 1982 and 1984, respectively. In 1984,he joined NTT, where he was engaged in thedevelopment of outside plant and telecommuni-cations plant planning management. For threeyears prior to his present position, he was incharge of the audio visual and sales departmentin NTT Learning Systems. He is currently a chiefof the R&D Planning Team for comprehensivecommercialization functions.

Masato MizoguchiSenior Manager, R&D Produce Group, NTT

Department III (R&D Strategy Department).He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in elec-

trical engineering from Tokyo University of Sci-ence, Tokyo in 1989 and 1991, respectively.Since joining NTT in 1991, he has mainly beenengaged in R&D of the personal handy-phonesystem (PHS) and high data rate wireless LANssuch as IEEE 802.11a. Since 2004, he has beenworking in the R&D Planning Team for compre-hensive commercialization functions. Hereceived the Young Researcher’s Award and theBest Paper Award from the Institute of Electron-ics, Information and Communication Engineers(IEICE) of Japan in 1998 and 2000, respectively.He is a member of IEICE and IEEE.

3 mm in diameter

Salmon eggs

2 m

m

3 mm

6 hours afterinsemination

2 days afterinsemination

Fig. 6. OCT images showing the growth state of masusalmon eggs.