A Happy New Year!!
We at Hitachi believe that the year 2010 will be a huge leap forward for us. It just so happens that 2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Hitachi.
In 2009, the world was still reeling from the Lehman shock that occurred in the US in 2008. Investments in IT equipment decreased worldwide, and JP1 felt the effects of the financial crisis.
However, we expect these trends to turn around in 2010. In the upcoming year, we believe that improvements in technical infrastructure will bring about the use of cloud computing and establish the cloud as a practical business tool. These developments will enable us to satisfy the market need for products that promote the efficient use of IT assets.
We at JP1 will offer a lineup of products for the cloud and virtualization era, and we will work to further expand our business in the 100th year since the founding of Hitachi. We are ever thankful for our customers' and partners' continued cooperation and support.
To better express our goals for the new year, we would like to use the following analogy.
Mt. Fuji
Have you ever encountered the name or image of Mt. Fuji in Japan?
Of all the mountains in Japan, Mt. Fuji is the most cherished, and thus it is often used as the cover page for Japanese calendars. Mt. Fuji stands approximately 3,000 meters tall, and is well known for its beautiful silhouette.
Mt. Fuji is well known to people who come to Japan from overseas. It ranks as one of the top three places to visit among visitors to Japan, accompanied by Kyoto and Tokyo Disneyland. It also seems that many visitors from Korea have climbed Mt. Fuji.
However, when the summit of Mt. Fuji is enveloped by cap clouds, the mountain provides us with an entirely different visage.
The appearance of cap clouds implies that a sudden and major weather change is in the air, and that a storm is likely to hit within the next few hours.
Much like the cap clouds, we believe that the beginning of the cloud computing era in 2010 will bring about rapid and major changes in business models. The question we now face is how to overcome these changes and reach the top of Mt. Fuji. The same is also true for global JP1 business in coming three years from 2010 to 2013, for we must determine how we are to realize our goal of becoming number one in Asia.
While many challenges await us by 2013, we will optimistically embrace these challenges and move forward into a new era.
Akio Takahashi
Department Manager
JP1 Global Business Center
System Management Software
