[Heisei last] New Year's greetings from ISAO representative Nakamura

Happy New Year! This is Nakamura.

ISAO started its 2019 activities today, Monday, January 7th.

Thank you to everyone who took care of me throughout the past year. Thank you for your continued support this year.

By the way, the year-end and New Year holidays were well involved, so I think there were many people who were able to take 9 consecutive holidays. Some companies have 16 consecutive holidays for the entire company, and ISAO would like to have such a large holiday in the future.

Actually, 2019 is the 20th anniversary of ISAO's founding!

ISAO was born as the operating company of SEGA's Dreamcast Internet service, which appeared as the world's first game console connected to the Internet in October 20 years ago.

What kind of year was 1999!?

I looked up what kind of year 1999 was 20 years ago.

The Prime Minister at that time was Keizo Obuchi. He was a politician who left memorable episodes such as butch phones and cold pizzas.

Also in March, the Bank of Japan began a zero interest rate policy. Far from the economy recovering and getting out of zero interest rates, it seems that the economy is still in the process of recovering, such as partially negative interest rates.

On the other hand, it was also the year that the single currency euro started in Europe.

What was 1999 in the IT industry?

ISAO is an IT company, so let's take a look at industry news.

Since it was the year before the 2000 problem, the IT industry had a hard time dealing with the new year.

In addition, in 1999, i-mode was launched. Japan pioneered the world's most advanced technology, in which mobile phones are connected to the Internet.

In my personal experience, I was stationed in Germany for about six years from 2004, and I felt that Western phones at that time were five years behind Japanese phones in terms of technology. Japanese mobile phones have high-definition cameras, can capture videos, and are connected to the Internet.

On the other hand, mobile phones in Europe and the United States had almost no data communication with SMS, cameras with a small number of pixels, and of course few connected to the Internet.

There are still savings during the period of high growth, and Japan ranks second in GDP after the United States. China, which is currently in second place, was one-fourth the size of Japan.

Japan and ISAO after 20 years

Twenty years later, Japan has been left alone in world growth, and its GDP has fallen to almost one-third of that of China, which ranks second, although it ranks third. (The United States is twice as large as Japan 20 years ago → is now four times as large.)

ISAO has been born in the gaming industry and has grown with the IT industry for the past 20 years. Speaking of online game operation and support, there is no company in the industry that no one knows about.

Last year, we sold our game operation and support business, which was one of ISAO's feelings and symbols, and took a new step as a purer IT company. I felt lonely to be separated from my friends who had been with me for many years, but I made a big decision because of the difference in the direction we were aiming for.

In addition, the members who have been in charge of the business are continuing almost as they are at the new company, Whitone Co., Ltd., so they will further improve the quality of ISAO and develop the business.

ISAO's Vision for the Future

Now, the future of ISAO as an IT company is as follows.

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• Global
• Enjoy the world's shigoto!
• Only-one-number one

**

Global

When it comes to "global", the number of non-Japanese employees is increasing steadily, which was almost zero 20 years ago. These days, most of the new graduates are foreigners. About half of the engineers who join the company are foreigners.

The team is definitely going global.

In addition, in the past few years, we have introduced a personnel system that does not allow people who do not speak English to increase their grade. In the future, ISAO will clearly develop human resources who can play an active role in the world.

There are still many businesses for Japan, but I would like to globalize my team more and more and enter the global market.

Enjoy the world's work!

ISAO's 2020 Vision "Visionary Company to Entertain the World's Cities"

ISAO aspires to operate an open and flat company called Bali Flat, but we believe that our social mission is to unleash the abilities of workers in the world in the future and improve the quality of work while demonstrating overwhelmingly high performance.

We will further refine our philosophy, improve our ability to create services, and become a company that takes on global challenges.

Only One Number One

In order to become a company that realizes its vision globally, ISAO aims to be the only number one in a specific area, both as a team and as an individual.

It is also a recent trend of "you can come there".

We will take on new challenges in order to break away from such a cold way of thinking and bring out the greatest joy of "evolving the world" for our own work.

We are still looking for friends who want to join ISAO! https://recruit.isao.co.jp

We vow to evolve into a team that embodies "Shigoto Fun!" on our own, and we will conclude our New Year's greetings.