Company
Solutions
Who they are
Misawa Homes is a housing company committed to contributing to a more affluent society by supplying high‑quality homes. As a pioneer in the housing industry for more than 50 years, its motto is: “Lifelong commitment to customers through housing.” In addition to building houses, Misawa Homes develops a wide range of residential and commercial facilities, including refurbished apartments, buildings, hotels, rental housing, and compact‑city‑type real estate that integrates multiple functions such as healthcare, nursing, and childcare. Misawa Homes previously maintained its accounting systems, mission‑critical systems, internal file servers, and other applications across 300 physical servers.
The Challenge
The company was initially hesitant to migrate to the cloud due to concerns about the security of internet‑based connections. In 2012, however, Misawa Homes decided to migrate to AWS when dedicated cloud access through AWS Direct Connect became available. By moving its systems from physical servers to AWS, the company reduced hardware maintenance and management overhead. Server recovery time also improved dramatically — from six hours to just 30 minutes. “By migrating to AWS, we no longer have to be aware of hardware, and instead, we are able to focus on our own business,” said Mr. Morishima.
Over time, new challenges emerged.
- During AWS Direct Connect maintenance, existing backup lines lacked sufficient bandwidth.
- When Windows Updates were distributed via the WSUS server in a specific AWS VPC to approximately 10,000 devices simultaneously, communication stability for other mission‑critical processes deteriorated.
These issues prompted Misawa Homes to reassess its network environment.
The Colt Solution
“Colt has offered a fully redundant configuration combining services with different backbone lines, enabling us to have stable cloud connectivity across multiple offices while significantly reducing TCO. We are very satisfied with the quality of Colt's network as well as the comprehensive support in building the IT environment.” — Hiroyuki Morishima, Associate Director, Systems Planning Unit, Information Systems Division, MISAWA HOMES CO., LTD.
After comparing several providers, Misawa Homes chose Colt, which enabled the company to increase backup bandwidth tenfold while cutting running costs by half.
Colt implemented a fully redundant design that included:
- Colt Wave as the primary dedicated optical connection to AWS
- Colt Ethernet Line as the backup line, using a different backbone to avoid congestion and performance degradation during heavy WSUS traffic
This approach prevented main‑line performance issues and ensured stable bandwidth using the backup line as a bypass path.
Mr. Morishima added:
“In addition to Colt’s proven reliability, supported by a strong track record and SLAs in the financial industry, we chose Colt for its technological capabilities. Colt responded appropriately and promptly to our requests and challenges, enabling us to design an optimal network environment.”
Misawa Homes also implemented Colt Ethernet VPN for internal connectivity between group locations. The service provides carrier‑grade redundancy, with automatic rerouting in under 50 ms, ensuring strong business continuity.
“By reviewing our IT environment with Colt services, we saved more than 20 million yen in TCO. We are very satisfied with the availability delivered through redundancy across different backbone lines under a single agreement with Colt,” said Mr. Morishima.
Future Plans
For future growth, Misawa Homes is considering migrating most of its remaining 160 physical servers (currently operated under HaaS) to the cloud. A stable IT foundation will be essential to eventually operate around 500 servers in AWS.
“Normally, it takes time to implement and adjust the speed of dedicated lines. However, Colt owns its fibre network and responds quickly to requests to increase line speeds. As cloud usage continues to grow, we value Colt’s scalability,” said Mr. Morishima.
As Misawa Homes expands its business globally to countries such as Australia and North America, it anticipates further IT infrastructure growth.
“We hope that Colt continues supporting Misawa Homes Group’s service operations both in Japan and internationally, based on its high‑quality broadband networks and strong technological capabilities,” said Mr. Morishima.
