Misou System Corporation
| Industry | Systems Integration, Information Services, Software Sales |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Cloud, Design & IT Infrastructure Virtualization, Email Systems, Shared Email, Cost Reduction, Operational Efficiency, System Migration |
| Results from Adoption of Cloud Computing |
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| Service Currently Used | GMO Cloud Hosting |
Delivering centralized management of company email enquiries, "mi-Mail" by Misou System Corporation improves operational efficiency and quality via the process of shared-contact-managed email support service. The company migrated its base systems to GMO Cloud during Spring 2012 and completed the entire migration within four months. We asked Mr Soichi Tokoro, CEO of Misou System Corporation, to explain the reasons behind the migration to GMO Cloud.
First of all, please describe the "mi-Mail" solutions offered by your company.
Misou System Corporation
CEO: Soichi Tokoro
Whilst our core business is system development, we felt - after working with a wide variety of industry systems - that the importance of email would grow with the spread of e-commerce. We therefore came up with the email business support solution known as "mi-Mail." This service uses the customer's main email address to provide a cloud/SaaS interface for multiple people to deal with emails simultaneously, preventing both duplication and leakage of information. We offer a full feature set, an interface with easy-to-use, intuitively-operated features, and - of course - low prices.
Based on this, please explain how you went about adopting GMO Cloud Hosting.
Before migrating to GMO Cloud Hosting, we had been providing the service with a dedicated server since August 2010. However, as dedicated servers share resources, any issues such as access spikes or server restarts would affect all users simultaneously. Thus, even when we wanted to extend functionality, we had to be extremely careful about timing. It seemed a contradiction in terms: our infrastructure was supposed to be providing added convenience to businesses, and yet our infrastructure was only able to help them at its own convenience!
In contrast, our big hope was that cloud would enable us to isolate resources due to its virtual machine architecture, and operate flexibly. With a virtual machine, you can do the same thing as with a conventional VPS. But with cloud, we needn't concern ourselves with memory limitations, disk size or hardware. In fact, there is no need to keep extra margins, meaning that we can select the optimum scale depending on the situation. That was the appeal.
Cost-performance was the most decisive factor when choosing GMO Cloud Hosting. We compared several services and GMO Cloud was clearly best-placed to combine our need for multiple virtual machines running simultaneously with a comparatively low cost structure. GMO Cloud Hosting's flexible resource-type architecture also allowed us to achieve cost optimization.
What was your impression after actually putting it into production?
Since migrating to the cloud, we have set up virtual machines for each of our processes. We now have separate environments for testing, production, demonstrations and development, etc. By utilizing separate virtual machines for each use, we can run various tests without fear of affecting the service given to customers using our production environment. We have already verified replication and validated the operation of two million mails with absolutely no problems. In the past, it was impossible to undertake such testing without considerable impact on the production environment.
With regards to performance and stability, we haven't experienced any particular problems so far. We have been satisfied with the friendly support staff who respond promptly to questions and requests. The overall impression is of a very convenient cloud service that allows us to keep costs low and operate flexibly. Migration to GMO Cloud Hosting allows us to focus on core business without worrying about infrastructure.
Did you experience any kind of problems during transition from the dedicated server?
We started using GMO Cloud Hosting from just before Spring 2012, migrating units of virtual machines to the cloud gradually. Since June all of our systems including the production environment have been operating on the cloud. During the transition, we changed to a 64-bit OS and made several upgrades to the application. No other changes were made and no major issues occurred. It was not as if we drastically altered our in-house operations. The transition was actually very smooth - somewhat anticlimactic, even!
Finally, please tell use about your future plans.
Thanks to cloud, we can not only scale up flexibly without trouble but devote our focus to continually increasing user numbers. In the future, we would like to offer an "Enterprise Plan" which allows customers the option of occupying a single virtual machine exclusively. With GMO Cloud Hosting it is relatively easy to increase the number of virtual machines, so we would like to take advantage of this. As there is also a US data center location, we will consider how to take advantage of replication across locations.
Thank you for taking the time to talk to us.
Client Profile
| Company Name | Misou System Corporation |
|---|---|
| Head Office | A Building 2F, 1-1-5 Kinshi, Sumida-ku, Tokyo, 130-0013 |
| Business |
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| Website | www.misou.co.jp |
Introduction of main products/merchandise
"mi-Mail"
mi-Mail is a system for enterprises to efficiently manage emails sent to general addresses (info@~, sales@~, support@~) allowing for multiple staff to deal with them. This results in significant improvements to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, leading to more successful IT businesses.
* Company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies and product names.
* Interview conducted: August 2012
