Case Study: Nara Institute of Science and Technology stores 2.7x more research data and cuts US$5.3M in operating costs with Oracle

Nara Institute of Science and Technology Stores 2.7x More Research Data, Cuts Operating Costs by US$5.3 Million, and Supports Future Growth

Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), a leading Japanese research university, needed to expand and modernize its university‑wide research platform to keep pace with rapidly growing archived data and electronic‑library content. The Information Initiative Center faced a four‑year asset‑renewal cycle requiring frequent hardware upgrades, rising data‑center operating costs, and the need to enable fast access to cold data and collaboration with external researchers.

NAIST deployed an Oracle hierarchical storage solution—including StorageTek SL8500 tape libraries with T10000D drives, Oracle FS1‑2 flash, ZFS ZS3‑2, Oracle HSM and QFS, and SPARC T5‑2 servers—to tier data automatically and provide fast access. The rollout (completed in five months, on time and on budget) cut operating costs by US$5.3 million (from US$7.9M to US$2.6M), reduced power use by 90% and halved floor space, increased usable capacity 2.7x to 25.4 PB with headroom to scale to ~850 PB, and improved reliability and collaboration.

Nara Institute of Science and Technology

Tsujii Takahiro

IT Group Leader and Research Associate, Information Initiative Center