In recent years, Japan has been changing its relatively rigid workstyle policies with companies transitioning their resources from on-premise to the cloud. This trend has been supported by Google partners SoftBank and International Systems Research (ISR).  Since our partnership in 2011, we have been strong driving factors in the adoption of G Suite. From large enterprises to small businesses, we have worked together to ensure that all our clients’ needs are met and that end users can maximize productivity without compromising security.

SoftBank started as a package software reseller in 1981 and is now the third largest public company in Japan. Their contributions to the IT industry in their mother country has been nothing but impressive.  From telecommunications to robotics to cloud IT solutions, SoftBank has always been a trendsetter in the industry.  Among their achievements is their crucial role in developing the G Suite ecosystem in Japan.

“When we started G Suite sales, there was a small number of users for G Suite. Currently, it has been adopted by more than 1 million users.  These results indicate that, as a G Suite reseller, we have led the market and customers have appreciated our efforts,” said Kousuke Fujita, SoftBank’s Cloud Business Promotion Department Strategy Business Planning Section Manager.

Right alongside SoftBank in this endeavor is ISR with our single sign-on authentication service CloudGate. When the former became a G Suite reseller in 2011, they chose CloudGate as a value added service in the package to meet the strict security requirements among Japanese enterprises.

“Among SSO vendors of G Suite, from the start to now, ISR has been a model of security and trust. Especially with the first customers, they basically understood the concept of cloud services but many did not fully understand about the Google Cloud,” said Osamu Taniguchi, SoftBank’s Cloud Business Planning Strategy Business Division Director.

CloudGate’s authentication service boasts of flexible security policies that meet the needs of Japanese companies. From password policies to IP address restriction to multi-factor authentication among many other features, CloudGate ensures that data in the cloud is protected.  SoftBank put their trust in ISR and the quality of our service, and since then, we have cultivated a 7-year partnership that has helped propel the adoption of G Suite and shape the cloud market in Japan.

This strong partnership came from both companies’ dedication to providing quality service to their clients.  The hurdles at the beginning were overcome with hard work and cooperation from both parties.

“At the beginning, we had asked a lot of requests based on our own standard. I think that it was a period for ISR to understand our thoughts or process. ISR’s team was always there to help with issues as these came up,” said Taniguichi.

As the cloud market continues to grow, we at ISR hope to continue working closely with SoftBank to provide the best service to address our users’ evolving needs. We value our partners and believe that this kind of strong relationship is required to ensure that our customers, regardless whether they are large enterprises or small businesses, are fully satisfied.  We look forward to collaborating with our current partners and creating strong bonds with future partners in the years to come.

Interested in how ISR and SoftBank’s partnership developed into what it is today?