INTERVIEW

Kenji Sugisaki has a total of 19 years of engineering experience at CTC Technology and CTC. He joined xGN in anticipation of new technologies and challenges, and is currently taking on the challenge of building his first server. He says that xGN’s culture supports even veteran engineers to take on new challenges, acquire new skills, and acquire the latest technologies.

The Next Challenge as a Veteran Engineer

After joining CTC (ITOCHU Techno-Solutions) in 2001, I was assigned to CTC Technology for 17 years, and then spent the next two years working at CTC. During his career of 19 years in total, he was in charge of the construction and maintenance of network for client KDDI’s Ezweb system, including construction and maintenance of networks such as switches, routers, and load balancers, supervision of customer engineers at the data center, and design, construction, and testing of firewall products, I have been in charge of infrastructure and other operations.

In March 2020, my manager at the time asked me, “We have an opportunity at xGN, are you interested?” I answered “yes” to my supervisor with a simple “yes” because I wanted to challenge myself and see how far I could make use of my skills in a new environment.

Until then, my work at CTC had been as a Sier, working on system construction projects commissioned by clients, and as a matter of course, the work I was to be responsible for was assigned within the estimated scope of the project. However, if you come to xGN, you will not only be able to be involved in new technologies, but you will also be able to see the entire picture from system construction to maintenance and operation, not just a part of the work you are responsible for. I also wanted to see how services are provided to end users and how they use them.

Efficient and High-Quality Large-Scale Server Construction

Currently, I am in charge of the design, construction, and operation of the infrastructure operation environment, which collectively refers to the common HW infrastructure on which 5G systems operate and the components necessary for their operation.
In my past three years in charge of servers, I have built thousands of servers, but this is the first time for KDDI to build such a large scale server. We are working on how to improve quality efficiently and speedily – we are thinking and designing how to construct and operate the servers ourselves, and using automated construction tools to determine how to hand them over to the NF team members who are involved in the later processes.

Since it was my first time to build a server, I have been inputting the skills necessary for the task with the help of the vendor, through training, and by researching documents.
Because xGN has all the people in charge of facilities, infrastructure, applications, and operations involved in the construction of the 5GC within the company, it is easy to approach them and talk with them immediately. The ability to quickly exchange information with people who have expertise in each of these areas enables us to quickly deepen our understanding of the system construction process.
I am also able to experience the entire process of building, maintaining, and operating the entire system at once, which was my expectation before being assigned to xGN.

To be a Multiskill engineer who truly understands the end-user

At xGN, there is an atmosphere and organizational culture of sharing a variety of information within the company to broaden each person’s insight. I participate in every meeting thinking that the many opportunities to learn about and experience tools, systems, and initiatives with which I was previously unfamiliar are precious.

For this reason, since coming to xGN, I have been increasingly motivated to acquire the skills and knowledge that I lack. Now, I would like to acquire a wide range of skills, including not only technical acquisition, but also improvement of business processes and human skills.

In the future, I would like to become an engineer who can handle the entire system. I would like to work at xGN, which is close to end-users, with members with wide range of skills, achieving even higher goals while supporting the social infrastructure of communication infrastructure as an engineer.