SalesForce.com Making Moves in Tokyo

Salesforce.com has made a series of new strategic moves in the Japanese market with several key announcements here: http://bit.ly/kV7tL8

Salesforce.com Accelerates Strategic Investments in Japan

Salesforce.com announced its latest strategic investments in Japan. The goal of these investments is to drive the continued growth of Japan’s Cloud 2 industry and accelerate the availability of locally developed social, mobile, and open cloud computing services. Salesforce.com will invest in a Tokyo data center scheduled to open in November of this year; further development of the Ruby programming language in collaboration with Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto; Toyota Motor Corporation’s open cloud platform development organization Toyota Media Service Co.; and e-marketing firm Netyear Group Corporation.

Salesforce.com’s Latest Strategic Investments in Japan

Tokyo Data Center with NTT Communications Scheduled to Open in November 2011
Its build-out complete, salesforce.com’s Tokyo Data Center announced with NTT Communications in 2010, is currently in testing phase and is scheduled to be operational in November of this year. The data center was established in order to serve Japan’s rapidly growing customer base. Salesforce.com’s large customers in Japan, such as Fast Retailing, Japan Post and Sompo Japan, are world leaders in cloud computing innovation. Small and medium-sized businesses, the bedrock of the Japanese economy, also make up a large portion of salesforce.com’s customer base in Japan.

Further Development of Ruby Programming Language
Heroku, the leading Ruby cloud platform, will lend support to Ruby creator Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto’s efforts to further develop the Ruby programming language as part of a broad initiative to accelerate the growth of the Ruby developer community in Japan and worldwide. Ruby is emerging as the leading development language for social and mobile applications in the cloud. Salesforce.com acquired Heroku in December of 2010.

Investment in Toyota Media Service Co.
Salesforce.com plans to make an investment of approximately 223 million yen in Toyota Media Service Co., which oversees the Toyota Motor Corporation’s global cloud platform development. Announced on May 23, 2011, the investment will be part of salesforce.com’s strategic alliance with the Toyota Motor Corporation to build Toyota Friend, a private social network for Toyota customers and their cars. Toyota Friend will be powered by Salesforce Chatter, a private social network service for businesses. Toyota Friend will be offered, first in Japan, initially with Toyota’s electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid vehicles slated to ship in 2012.

Investment in Netyear Group Corporation
Salesforce.com will invest in the Netyear Group Corporation, which offers e-marketing and business consulting services to large enterprises. Salesforce.com has been investing in Japanese start-ups since October of 2010, when it announced a strategic investment in marketing automation firm Synergy Marketing. In March of this year, salesforce.com purchased a stake in cloud systems integrator Uhuru. All of these firms plan to develop applications with salesforce.com’s proven, open cloud computing technologies. Further, in order to accelerate its investments in Japanese companies, salesforce.com has appointed a head of strategic investments for Japan