GMO Cloud

App Development’s Strong Future Begins Now

Reports such as Cloud Gaming Report 2012, highlight total global games software sales of $24 Billion in 2012, a figure expected to increase to $41 Billion in 2017.

Evolution of Application Development

Also quite notable is the proliferation of native applications (applications running on iOS, Android) use as against web applications (social apps), which more or less has a usage ratio of 70:30. Native applications are usually developed in platforms led by Gree, Mobage and Mixi. There are currently almost 1.3 million mobile apps in the stores of Apple and Android combined. Furthermore, just recently, Facebook announced that it had made its native app for iOS. This, alone, shows that the game market is almost totally dominated by social apps and undeniably, marketplaces like Google Play and the App Store.

No Technology is Without Challenges

There are of course, a few bumps on the road. In the application development industry, winners and losers are clearly distinguished, where winners are limited to SAP – having the capital, promotion capabilities, and IP (character rights). The most prevalent players enjoy the highest royalties of about 40%, while the not-so-popular ones are getting weaker. There are other issues taken into consideration such as:

• - Non-transparency of user rights
• - Games requiring anonymity are not popular in social networking services
• - Restrictions on card games
• - Outbreak of disputes on various copyrights and anti-trust laws

A Promising Future

Nonetheless, the future seems bright for the mobile app industry. One major identifier is SAP’s shift from major platforms to native apps. Other future trends seen are:

• - Evolution of web and native apps to hybrid
• - Emergence of related services such as app promotion and resale of the hit apps engine (white labeling)
• - Diversification of platforms and the marketplace
• - Provision of platforms specializing in adult games
• - Entry and introduction of other marketplaces similar to Google Play and App Store

Investment and development might appear costly, but in the long run might be economical. When you consider advantages of native applications like functionality, capability and overwhelming growth potential (profitability), the mobile app market is surely heading towards this direction. The most obvious question here is, “Where do I host my apps?”; the answer is, find a provider that can accommodate the requirements of your goals and objectives. For instance, if you intend to have a high volume of traffic accessing your applications, then you should get a host that will be able to handle this surge without downtime. Looking at GMO Cloud, they have high availability features that can surely hold all these future requirements. Visit the High Availability Feature page to find out more.

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Smashing Barriers in Japan’s Mobile App Market

Japan holds one of the top-grossing shares in mobile device consumption as well as application downloads. Consequently, developers worldwide see this market as having colossal potential returns on investment. For years, Western mobile companies have been trying to penetrate this inward and resistant market.

The advanced infrastructure in Japan allowed it to produce its own brand of mobile phones and applications that isolated it from the rest of the world.  Japanese mobile corporations knew that they could keep the local market happy and protected with localized applications that capture the attention of those willing to pay.

It seemed like the Japanese app market was already content with this existing setup. However, global developers such as Apple never gave up. When smartphones started to rise up, the Japanese market took notice and responded, with customers enjoying the diversity and high entertainment levels of applications, especially iPhone 4S.

One of the most successful Apple applications is iTunes’Sekai Camera produced by Tonchidot Corporation. Instead of the typical still pictures with background or border designs, Sekai Camera found harnessed local market quirkiness with enhanced reality features, allowing users to take photos and add air tags wherever. Other users can view these posts in the same location. Posts can also be shared on Facebook or Twitter.

The Japanese have always supported reality-based games or applications, whether virtual or augmented. By featuring real-time applications based on the actual environment, reality is merely enhanced with graphics or texts which the user can control.  Another popular app from Apple is “iButterfly” with its magnificent graphics, allowing users to add beautiful 3D butterflies to their actual gardens.

Android users, meanwhile, find solace in Google Play, which features different kinds of applications from e-books, movies, music and more.

Google Play uses cloud services and can be accessed on the internet by anyone with a phone. Amazingly, all types of applications are collected in one place, saving the user time and effort. By utilizing the cloud, anyone can enjoy this service as long as there is a Wi-Fi connection. There is increased flexibility and efficiency when applications are accessed on the cloud since users don’t have to use up all phone memory or battery when downloading. The Internet allows applications to store the needed information on the cloud instead of in the actual device.

Most app developers who thrive in Japan can attribute their success to localizing their product. It is crucial to localize the application to suit the particular whims and needs of the consumers. More than merely translating the language, app developers might consider partnering locally-based developers with a clear idea of what clicks with Japanese mobile users.

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About the Guest Author:

Rodolfo Lentejas, Jr. is a fulltime freelance writer based in Toronto. He is the founder of the PostSckrippt, a growing online writing business dedicated to producing top quality, original and fresh content. To know more about him, please visit www.postsckrippt.ca. Like him on Facebook or follow him on Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.

Cloud Computing: Changes in Japan’s Advertising Methods

Businesses in Japan are gradually veering away from traditional methods of advertising, switching to inexpensive and widely-broadcast digital methods. Internet has been regarded as the chief beneficiary of this switch when compared to other means of digital advertising.

In a report published by Dentsu (2009) and shown below, the amount spent on advertising by traditional media is said to have dwindled by 14.3%, alongside a corresponding increase in the spending on Internet advertising. And this trend seems to have been upswinging since then. Now, Japanese businesses are expanding Internet advertising because of comparative advantage and cost efficiency.

in Japan, mobile advertising appears to have grown more than Internet advertising lately. However, more people will surely turn to Internet as Japanese consumers now rely on Internet search engines to find goods or services they are interested in purchasing.

Apart from being cost-efficient, Internet advertising offers broader reach, with search engine advertising seeming to do best. Internet advertising enjoys higher production rate when compared with traditional advertising, meaning ads can hit the market faster.

With Internet advertising in Japan projected to increase, there is an accompanying requirement for proper data storage, flexible access to digital content, and smooth retrieval procedure. This is where cloud computing comes in; it is an indispensable technology that must be adopted for optimum performance and quick business operation. Adopting cloud computing will help businesses solve problems of sudden data overcrowding that cause servers to crash. Cloud technology will guarantee perpetual business activities.

In Japanese business circles, building business trust is a non-negotiable aspect of business practices. And the best approach for building trust is to provide uninterrupted supply of goods and services that consumers will grow to like and constantly request for. Cloud computing will help this.

There is no doubt that the Internet will assist business owners in Japan to personalize their ads. This is almost impossible in traditional models where advertisers follow rigid procedures in formatting and publication.

Cloud computing has the power to attract more customers due to its wide distribution power, and can also help businesses to retain customer loyalty through delivery of timely, efficient and reliable services. Interestingly enough, unbending loyalty is one of the rare attributes of Japanese customers that many service providers in other countries truly admire.

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About the Guest Author:

Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/

Unexpectedly Low Impact of Japan’s Social Game Regulations

A few months ago, the talk of social media gaming in Japan was centered around the new government regulations regarding kompu gacha. This mechanic was included by such leading Japanese gaming companies as GREE, Zynga, Klab, Konami, Sega, and Namco Bandai. Although the news caused shares to plummet and widespread panic about the future of social gaming, the ultimate effect of regulations on these companies’ bottom lines was minimal.

Understanding the basics of kompu gacha

Mobile gaming in Japan is an extremely lucrative industry. One reason is that many games incorporate “gacha” – a game mechanic involving a micro-transaction in exchange for random in-game items. Some game developers in Japan derive half of their revenue from gacha. The practice then spread from Japan, with many developers establishing gacha in North America (for example, Rage of Bahamut by DeNA immediately comes to mind.)

Kompu gacha goes a step further (“kompu” means “complete” in English). Here, players are rewarded for putting together sets of (usually very rare) items. Obtaining whole sets can be quite expensive, running into the hundreds of thousands of yen. However, the addictive nature of these practices prompted the Japanese Consumer Affairs Agency to regulate. Lucrative kompu gacha has thus lent itself to abuse, leading to many complaints from consumers, many related to children having easy access to gacha in games, often purchasing hundreds of thousands of yen of in-game items.

The predicted impact of regulation on the Japan’s social gaming industry

Pressures from the public and media caused many major gaming companies to self-regulate. However, the government stepped in due to this practice’s close resemblance to gambling (largely illegal in Japan). While the regulation is not particularly huge, it was predicted to have a huge impact on the industry. After all, kompu gacha was a key profit generator for companies like GREE and DeNA. The stock in these companies plummeted by twenty percent after regulation, and analysts predicted losses of up to fifty percent in these companies’ profits! More importantly, most Japanese social gaming companies are expanding into the US market, raising concerns about the impact of gacha regulations there.

Impact of gacha regulations lower than expected

Although the media covered the initial news extensively, the exact regulations on kompu gacha are yet to be made public. However, the impact of regulations was considerably lower than expected. Although the media was predicting huge losses, most social gaming companies in Japan have reported profits, some (such as DeNA) with impressive growth of around twenty percent. This growth is all the more impressive considering companies like DeNA and GREE have stopped using kompu gacha mechanics almost entirely. It seems that spending on virtual money has allowed companies to overcome the loss of kompu gacha.

Is kompu gacha really necessary for success?

Kompu gacha is an important but not an essential element for profiting in the Japanese social media gaming market. While smaller companies started to abuse and manipulate this unsavory aspect of social media gaming, the largest players have proven the necessity of strong fundamentals. These three basic points of building a successful gaming company in Japan include:

• Mobility
• Ability to monetize
• Global appeal

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About the Guest Author:

Nida Rasheed is a freelance writer and owner of an outsourcing company, Nida often finds herself wanting to write about the subjects that are closest to her heart. She lives in Islamabad, Pakistan and can be found on Twitter @nidarasheed.

Cloud Disaster Prevention and Recovery for Businesses in Japan 

“Please help, save me! Do something!” These are simple messages that people convey when they experience a natural disaster like the 2011 Japanese Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

A natural or man-made disaster of intense magnitude can disrupt power supply, destroy hardware infrastructure, or limit connectivity, causing entire business establishments to tumble down.  In a technologically-advanced nation like Japan, the impacts of outages in data centers can be catastrophic. The earthquake scenario underscored the growing need for effective cloud disaster prevention and backup strategies and most Japanese enterprises. When tragedy struck, it delivered a key blow to business processes, rendering millions unable to carry out their activities.

Loss Prevention:

Disasters are inevitable, but the question is: Are you prepared? According to a study by Gartner, 80 percent of all companies that experience a major disaster will go out of business if they cannot gain access to their data within 24 hours. As far as cloud computing is concerned, there are several key aspects to note while initial infrastructure for such business models is planned and implemented. As with any issue, prevention is better than cure, and the latest methods to prevent data loss or information damage are the safest way to combat outages in cloud services.

During the great north eastern earthquake and tsunami, one of the key problems to befall Japanese businesses was their data centers and cloud infrastructure being set up in seismically-sensitive and disaster-prone geographical locations. That soon changed!

Identify the disaster recovery plan:

Having an effective disaster recovery procedure is key. For countries like Japan, it is wise for businesses to have an effective disaster recovery procedure prepared and documented as soon as they shift to cloud.

Decisions should be made as to who will head the recovery team and how many members should they manager. What kind of software and hardware tools are required? Also important is to estimate time and cost required for every individual recovery module, as well as total recovery time. Criticality and priority of tasks should be documented so that higher priority tasks with high criticality can resume their services first. These procedures may seem easy to read, but require months of effort and teamwork.

Periodic drills carried out for disaster recovery procedures will aid the recovery team in preparing for catastrophe without having to wait for instructions. Working on live scenarios of recovery would provide valuable expertise to recovery staff.

Recovery of cloud-based business models is a critical task in modern business enterprise. No data should be lost or damaged and the procedures should be completed as fast as possible, because every second of service disruption can prove to be fatal for the businesses’ future. As such, technical staff with proper expertise should be deployed and enterprises should not take chances with any aspect of recovery. In the event that there is scarcity of staff to monitor and conduct the DR plan, businesses should consider getting a cloud provider that can do all these work so they no longer need to be highly burdened with these problems. GMO Cloud shares in its Network and Data Center section (in addition to their Security measures), the features of their network and data centers that will prevent disasters from happening.

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About the Guest Author:

Mandira Srivastava is a fulltime freelance writer who specializes in technology, health and fitness, politics, and financial writing. Equipped with degree of mass communication and having worked for both private and corporate clients, I have experience meeting a wide range of writing requirements and styles.