Mr. Hiroshi Ogasawara

AT TOKYO is a Japanese company that was established in 2000 to provide data centre services and infrastructure on the back of a highly reliable power supply. Hiroshi Ogasawara, its managing executive officer, speaks as the company is taking part in the Asia Pacific Rim Conference on Operational Technologies that is being organised in HCM City.

Can you tell us about your company? Who are your main customers?

AT Tokyo is the greatest data centre in Japan. The special thing about our data centre is that we have a significantly strong and stable power source.

Our power supply directly comes from Tokyo Electric Power Company, and about 20 per cent of the power supply from Tokyo Electric Power Company will be delivered to our data centre. Electricity plays an important role in the operation process of our data centre. Thus, we guarantee there will never be a power outage at our data centre.

The majority of our clients are finance-related partners.

One of them is Tokyo Stock Exchange. Their server is currently placed at our data centre. All stock exchange activities will have to go through Tokyo Stock Exchange, whose data is at our company’s head office now.

A vast number of big companies are foreign and foreign direct investment (FDI) companies, who account for about 30 per cent of our total clients. They are from America and Europe, Singapore and Hong Kong.

It explains why we use both English and Japanese in running our business, performing operations as well as solving technical issues. Not only Japanese is used, but English is also widely practised.

Currently we do not have any clients from the Vietnamese market, and we hope this event will give us a chance to get in contact with several Vietnamese companies and to win our very first Vietnamese clients.

How was the Asia Pacific Rim Conference on Operational Technologies? Why did you decide to take part in the conference and what has your company gained from it?

A lot of companies, organisations, experts, engineers in information technology and the internet from more than 50 countries including Viet Nam are attending this event. So it is a good opportunity for us to reach and raise our corporate awareness.

We wanted to utilise this event to gather basic information such as customers' needs and interests in Viet Nam and other Asian regions.

At the same time we would like to build a good relationship with Vietnamese customers and it has been amazing so far that we could communicate with them face to face at this conference.

We had a few private meetings with certain companies in Viet Nam during the event and hope to have a chance to co-operate with them.

Staff of AT Tokyo introduces customers the company’s services at its booth in the Asia Pacific Rim Conference on Operational Technologies which was organised in HCM City.

What do you think about the potential of the Vietnamese market?

I would like to share my feelings since I am here in Viet Nam. This is my first time here in HCM City, and I am thrilled. The city is young and more crowded than I had expected. I heard that a great number of Japanese tourists are travelling to Vietnam every year, about 50,000. There are many Vietnamese companies which invest or run businesses in Japan or partner with Japanese companies; they are the potential clients we are interested in.

In recent years the rapid changes in the developing information society have led to greater diversity in the demands placed on the data centre industry all over the world, and Asia is one of the target regions for AT TOKYO, Viet Nam being no exception.

Nowadays we hear a lot of news about Viet Nam as it is set to become one of the fastest growing economies.

Many new businesses are establishing themselves in this country and it has been fascinating for AT TOKYO.

Today it is a good chance for us to witness the potential growth of this country with our own eyes through the conference.

Furthermore, the number of young clients and young workers in Viet Nam is huge. I learnt that Viet Nam’s technology is transforming from 3G to 4G. We are in the age of technology, and the number of young people is rising, and it is no surprise that the demand for fast information as well as smart phone applications is increasing, too. With a constantly developing IT and technology environment, the need for information is going be huge. Thus, I think that, essentially, there will be many clients seeking data centre services like ours very soon. Not to mention that Viet Nam is quite big and densely populated.

How do you expect your services to assist Vietnamese and other customers?

There are many various data centres in Asia.

AT TOKYO is very confident of satisfying customers’ expectations in all aspects like location, device, network environment, security, maintenance and support.

Definitely, Vietnamese cus-tomers can consider AT TOKYO as a reliable data centre hub in Asia.

On the other hand, we believe we can be helpful as a secondary data centre point or backup data centre to support Vietnamese and other customers in the region.

What are the strengths of AT TOKYO's data centre services and how can they support Vietnamese and clients in other region?

Firstly, AT TOKYO's data centres ensure highly dependable power supply with multiple power supply systems and reliable facilities. Incoming power is received via underground cables and multiple routes, and are not subject to risks such as lightning strikes and others.

With 24-hour, 365-day monitoring of all buildings by guards and central monitoring systems as well as multiple security mechanisms, we maintain a secure environment with the highest level of technology and know-how in terms of both hardware and software.

After undergoing an earthquake risk analysis by the world-class risk management company ABS Consulting: EQE Japan Division, AT TOKYO's data centres have attained the highest PML ranking. With this world-leading strength of core buildings, we can safely support the continuous operation of the customers' businesses and vital information assets.

We hope our customers, especially Vietnamese customers, can develop their business and create new value by using our data centre services. — VNS