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CloudGate Story
This is the story of how CloudGate achieved its current leading position in the Japanese market.
BECOMING THE DE FACTO MARKET LEADER:
FROM ON PREMISE TO THE CLOUD
We believed in the potential of G Suite. We believed that it would eventually replace the existing on-premise solution…
We believed in the potential of G Suite. We believed that it would eventually replace the existing on-premise solution…
In December of 2007, ISR met Japan’s Google Enterprise team and offered to support their newly launched Google Apps™ (currently known as G Suite) as a system integrator (SI). Their team consisted of only three people, but we believed in the potential of G Suite. We believed that G Suite would eventually replace the existing on-premise solution prevalent at that time. Our belief was based on our own experience of having used G Suite internally at ISR for more than 6 months.
The shift from our own on-premise mail server (OPMS) to G Suite brought us many advantages. First, we did not have to operate our own mail server anymore. There was no need to worry about increasing our server capacity and disk hardware as the number of employee increased. Second, we did not need to have one engineer specially dedicated to running the mail server. The third and most important factor was that G Suite could filter spam, which at that time was more than 80% of received mail and was difficult for our mail server engineer to control.
After making a presentation about ISR, the Google team agreed to have ISR as their SI partner.
“…in the early spring of 2008, we got our first deal. Unicharm with 3,500 employees across five countries.”
Working with the Google team entailed going with them on sales calls. This was a hard slog. From January to March of 2008, we visited a number of large enterprises who all turned down the opportunity to shift to the cloud. However, in the early spring of 2008, we got our first deal, Unicharm, with 3,500 employees across five countries.
Unicharm’s CIO had been given the mission of increasing employee productivity. He saw that a browser-based product was easier to use and more intuitive than a special mail client. Ultimately, the critical factor in his choosing to go with G Suite was that Unicharm’s IT staff in Tokyo did not have to worry about controlling its OPMS in five different countries operated by IT staff speaking different languages and on different time zones and calendars. All the IT operators had to do was to facilitate the initial setup of G Suite and then mail service operation was left up to Google.
We believed in the potential of G Suite. We believed that it would eventually replace the existing on-premise solution…
In December of 2007, ISR met Japan’s Google Enterprise team and offered to support their newly launched Google Apps™ (currently known as G Suite) as a system integrator (SI). Their team consisted of only three people, but we believed in the potential of G Suite. We believed that G Suite would eventually replace the existing on-premise solution prevalent at that time. Our belief was based on our own experience of having used G Suite internally at ISR for more than 6 months.
The shift from our own on-premise mail server (OPMS) to G Suite brought us many advantages. First, we did not have to operate our own mail server anymore. There was no need to worry about increasing our server capacity and disk hardware as the number of employee increased. Second, we did not need to have one engineer specially dedicated to running the mail server. The third and most important factor was that G Suite could filter spam, which at that time was more than 80% of received mail and was difficult for our mail server engineer to control.
After making a presentation about ISR, the Google team agreed to have ISR as their SI partner.
“…in the early spring of 2008, we got our first deal. Unicharm with 3,500 employees across five countries.”
Working with the Google team entailed going with them on sales calls. This was a hard slog. From January to March of 2008, we visited a number of large enterprises who all turned down the opportunity to shift to the cloud. However, in the early spring of 2008, we got our first deal, Unicharm, with 3,500 employees across five countries.
Unicharm’s CIO had been given the mission of increasing employee productivity. He saw that a browser-based product was easier to use and more intuitive than a special mail client. Ultimately, the critical factor in his choosing to go with G Suite was that Unicharm’s IT staff in Tokyo did not have to worry about controlling its OPMS in five different countries operated by IT staff speaking different languages and on different time zones and calendars. All the IT operators had to do was to facilitate the initial setup of G Suite and then mail service operation was left up to Google.
At the second sales meeting with Unicharm, ISR made a presentation about CloudGate, our single sign-on (SSO) product, which at that time existed only in prototype form. An SSO server controls access to third party services such as Google’s e-mail service. It also verifies the identity of each employee before allowing access to the service. As such, Unicharm employees are the only ones who can access their Google e-mail accounts. We were to operate the SSO server at our own data center and provide our services to Unicharm for an annual fee. Unicharm’s switch over to G Suite did not take place until our CloudGate service was ready in November of 2008.
“CloudGate became the de facto SSO solution for G Suite. G Suite and CloudGate created an ecosystem that would eventually replace the established OPMS within the next five years.”
In December of 2008, we officially announced CloudGate as an SSO service for G Suite. Starting in 2009, a number of large accounts, including Fuji Soft, switched from their OPMS to G Suite and CloudGate. By enabling access control and user authentication, CloudGate complemented G Suite. Since enterprises’ on-premise security policy in Japan required access control and authentication, CloudGate became a must-have product when choosing G Suite in the Japanese market. CloudGate became the de facto SSO solution for G Suite. These two products created an ecosystem that would eventually replace the established OPMS within the next five years.
“CloudGate became the de facto SSO solution for G Suite. G Suite and CloudGate created an ecosystem that would eventually replace the established OPMS within the next five years.”
In December of 2008, we officially announced CloudGate as an SSO service for G Suite. Starting in 2009, a number of large accounts, including Fuji Soft, switched from their OPMS to G Suite and CloudGate. By enabling access control and user authentication, CloudGate complemented G Suite. Since enterprises’ on-premise security policy in Japan required access control and authentication, CloudGate became a must-have product when choosing G Suite in the Japanese market. CloudGate became the de facto SSO solution for G Suite.
These two products created an ecosystem that would eventually replace the established OPMS within the next five years.
