INSIGHTS

We recently held our second CIO Roundtable of 2024, inviting CIOs from large Japanese companies in the manufacturing, financial services, technology and eCommerce industries.

We hold these closed-door roundtables with Japan’s top CIOs－especially professional CIOs who tend to be early adopters and industry influencers－to learn more about their challenges and what they are interested in, on behalf of our current and prospective portfolio companies.

They’re also a great opportunity to share information from Japan Cloud’s global ecosystem of US and European VCs, technology investment banks and SaaS companies. These CIOs are always interested in future trends and what Japan Cloud is looking at globally.

As with previous roundtables, the executives we invited were incredibly candid and passionate about leveraging SaaS, and increasingly generative AI, to bolster their companies’ productivity and accelerate their business growth. Following are key takeaways from our recent session.

Key takeaways

1. GenAI – from trials to full rollout but with an eye on costs

Despite the growing interest in GenAI, APIs calls are proving expensive, highlighting the need for an “AI gateway” between the various models, including self-hosted models, to run, secure and govern AI traffic.

One CIO mentioned that, as the outputs from LLMs are non-deterministic, with little perceived differences in output from one model to another, they switched to a more cost-effective model and employees did not even notice the difference!

2. Acquisition of developer resources

A few of these CIOs are looking outside Japan to hire quality developers. One company is even sponsoring visas to work in Japan. These engineers, proficient in English, are able to access global best practices around the tech-stack, APIs and more.

Related to this is the continued dependence on Japanese Systems Integrators and this means initial development is waterfall, with agile practices employed for ongoing improvements.

3. Access to information

These CIOs are hungry for global information. One executive relies on his network of contacts in the Bay Area. Most get input from Japan-based software vendors, and they realize the limitations of this approach. All the CIOs attending were keen to get information from Japan Cloud. A case in point was how, in the security space, many rely on the large “platform” players but there are many best-of-breed point solutions.

4. Future Focus Areas

For the future, the executives are focused on data integration, real-time processing tools, and enhanced AI capabilities for business intelligence and decision-making. They are also interested in security audit and compliance requirements, improved tools for finance productivity, IT finance and asset management.

Our next CIO Roundtable (and why the photo of hydrangea?)

I love doing these roundtables. They’re intimate, relaxed and a great way to further deepen our relationships－over wine and Tokyo’s most delightful cuisine!－with Japan’s leading CIOs. We’ve scheduled our next meeting for July in Osaka, the fruits from which we will of course share.

As always, special thanks to my colleagues Yasu Fukuda for inviting his business associates and to our marketing expert Tomoko Hashimoto for another flawlessly executed event!

As for the hydrangea… If April is cherry blossom season in Japan, June thru July is the rainy season here when hydrangeas are in full bloom. The Japanese love their seasons, along with the flowers and feelings that accompany them!

Aruna