February 25, 2009 : Experienced Appirio Team Already Engaged with Largest International Force.com Implementation
TOKYO AND SAN MATEO, CA.?February 25, 2009?Appirio, a products and professional services company accelerating the adoption of on-demand in the enterprise, announced its first international expansion into Japan. As part of this expansion, Appirio announced that it will be working closely with salesforce.com to lead the Force.com platform implementation at Japan Post Network Co., Ltd. Japan Post Network Co., Ltd. offers postal, banking and life insurance services and is the largest employer in Japan, serving over 50 million individual customers and employing over 100,000 people. It is also the largest Force.com cloud computing platform implementation in the world.
"Japan was both a strategic and natural fit for Appirio as we expand internationally," said Chris Barbin, CEO of Appirio. "We have a very experienced management and technical consulting team already on the ground and are working closely in the region with two early innovators in cloud computing – Japan Post and salesforce.com. SaaS is seeing a lot of growth in Japan, perhaps partly due to the region's historical reliance on custom-built applications which has reduced the entrenchment of traditional off-the-shelf software. Cloud computing platforms like Force.com are a great opportunity to update and extend those applications into new areas."
According to a September 2008 user survey published by industry analyst firm Gartner, Inc., 60 percent of respondents in Asia Pacific said they plan to increase their investment in SaaS subscriptions, integration and consulting in the next two years. More than 50 percent of Asia Pacific respondents in the same survey said they were currently transitioning from a current on-premise solution to a SaaS solution.*
"We see huge potential for cloud computing and the Force.com platform in our organization, and Appirio's proven success with enterprises and insight into the platform's capabilities will help us realize that potential," said Akira Iwasaki, CIO of Japan Post Network Co., Ltd. "Appirio has already completed a strategic analysis of our existing applications infrastructure and they are helping us plan our ongoing migration to the Force.com platform. That's just the beginning."
"Appirio has been a strong partner of salesforce.com over the last few years, working on some of our largest and most sophisticated enterprise implementations throughout the rest of the world," said Carl Schachter, President and COO, Asia Pacific and Japan, salesforce.com. "This, along with Appirio's knowledge, regional experience and willingness to invest in building out its Japanese team were among the reasons we selected them as a key partner in Japan."
Appirio's Japan office is being led by Jason Park, managing director of Japanese operations at Appirio. Prior to this, Mr. Park led Appirio's West Coast U.S. sales efforts, growing revenue in that region by 100 percent in 2008. Mr. Park has extensive experience in Japan and the greater Asia Pacific region. Prior to joining Appirio, he was a sales and consulting executive at Borland Japan and served in a number of management positions at IBM (Asia Pacific and Japan).
About Appirio
Appirio (www.appirio.com) provides products and services that help enterprises accelerate their adoption of on-demand. Appirio has a proven track record of delivering business value to customers by implementing mission-critical Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions based on platforms such as Salesforce and Google Apps, and developing innovative applications that connect and extend today's leading on-demand platforms. Appirio was founded in 2006, is the fastest growing partner of salesforce.com and Google, and is backed by Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.
* Gartner, Inc. "User Survey Analysis: Software as a Service, Enterprise Application Markets, Worldwide, 2008" by Sharon Mertz et al, October, 2008.