Kazuaki MoriBy Jack Beazly
How a niche player has worked its way into the Japanese back offices, with the help of some of the world’s best-known technology brands.

When most people think of outsourcing, their thoughts quickly turn to Ross Perot and the massive outsourcing business he formed as the EDS Corporation out of Plano, Texas. Indeed, in terms of size and singular focus, EDS was the first and still one of the best examples of the outsourcing concept. Born in 1962, the company offered American companies and various arms of the US government, including the military, a new way to cut costs in non-core areas of expertise, namely IT infrastructure and services. It was a powerful vision and today, EDS is still a major vendor of outsourced services to GM, as well as being the second largest IT services outsourcing company overall in the world, after IBM’s Global Services operation.

The Tyler FoundationBy Kim Forsythe
Cricket stars gather for leukemia fundraiser.

Once there was the sweetest, smiley-est of toddlers–Tyler Ferris. There was just one problem. Tyler had a very aggressive and difficult-to-cure form of leukemia. In spite of nearly two years of treatment, including a bone marrow transplant, Tyler’s short life ended in June of 2005. His parents, Mark Ferris and I, Kim Forsythe, reeling from the unacceptable loss of our baby, took the only action we thought was acceptable to us, and created an NPO to provide support for kids and their families who face a similar experience.

Nobuyuki MatsuiBy Jack Beazley
Photocatalysts do more than clean windows and toilets.

Like this writer’s own 9-year old daughter, many kids in Japan suffer from hay fever or related allergies such as asthma. Every spring and sometimes in the fall as well, their eyes go red and itchy, their mucous membranes swell up. Each day starts with a sore throat and runny nose, not to mention, on really bad days, the pounding headaches. As parents, we can’t help feeling slightly helpless when hay fever hits (“kafunsho” in Japanese), and dream of finding a solution to the problem.

Brian NelsonBy Terrie Lloyd
—ValueCommerce’s Brian Nelson tells how it is done

Foreigners starting up and running Japanese companies in Japan are still somewhat of an anomaly and therefore don’t receive much press in this country. Thus, it was with some surprise that we were greeted with articles in the morning newspapers of February 2005, that Yahoo! Japan had agreed to buy a 49% stake in an Internet affiliate marketing company called ValueCommerce for JPY10.9bn (US$93.1m) in cash, the largest deal Yahoo! Japan had done until that time. “Who is ValueCommerce?” asked many around the nation. Over the next 18 months, they were to witness not just a rocket ride to a July 2006 IPO, but significantly one which was steered by foreign founders and a largely foreign management team.