President Gachon : Mr.Kunihiro Tanaka

 2025/08/31

■ President Gachon : Mr.Kunihiro Tanaka

President of Sakura Internet. He has also held many public offices, including as chairman of the Computer Software Association of Japan (SAJ) and chairman of the Japan Data Center Association. He is a graduate of Maizuru National College of Technology and a star of the college. He has succeeded in starting a technology-driven business and is a young leader who is driving the Japanese economy. He is a role model for iU students. Welcome.

The current situation in Japan

With the establishment of the Digital Agency, momentum has finally been created for change. The Digital Agency has two meanings. One is the execution force. The other is the momentum created by the establishment of the Digital Agency. With these two things, digitalization will progress and the number of people using it will increase. Now is the time for a large rate of change.

◆ Impact of COVID-19

Sakura Internet's situation is flat. In terms of the rate of change, Japan has always had a low degree of digitalization. As the lows rise, Sakura Internet itself will not benefit immediately, but the number of users is increasing as regular customers, so in the medium to long term things have improved a lot.

◆Sakura Internet's Challenges and Japan's Challenges

The big story is how a software company can change its current state to become a hardware company and get back to being a software company.

Sakura Internet was a disruptive innovation that arose in the early 1990s. At the time, there were almost no businesses in Japan that sold servers online by installing an open source OS on personal computers. Internet companies focused on the idea of ensuring trust with software, rather than with hardware.

To increase reliability, hardware must be constantly improved, and the tendency to place more importance on hardware than on software is a challenge in Japan, and also for Sakura Internet. We built a data center in Ishikari, Hokkaido, to run our software under the best conditions, but as the hardware gained recognition, it became a business in itself. Our essence is to create good services using the power of software, even if it is cheap.

Japan is a manufacturing nation, so whether they make things or software, they want to deliver it as if it were a contract development project. It's an extension of the analogy of things. Sakura Internet should have had an identity of making software and providing services, but it inevitably becomes about how to strengthen the hardware. How do we turn it into a software- and service-based nation? That is the challenge for Sakura Internet, and for Japan as a whole.

◆Starting a business

I thought about starting a business when I was 18. The purpose of starting a business is twofold: "means" and "ends."

I was running a server at school, which I lent to a friend. The content became popular and traffic increased. As a result, it was becoming a nuisance to have it at school, so I had to remove it. Increasing traffic means that the content has value, so my friend should be able to make a profit and pay the server fee. In fact, my friend asked me if there was any way to keep the site running, even if he was willing to pay for it. That's when I started a business as a "means."

◆School

An important step in my life without which I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today.

School is a place to meet people, things, knowledge, and careers. I hope that in five or ten years, students will look back and say that they would never have encountered these things if they hadn't come to iU .

◆Challenges facing education in Japan

The challenge is to keep looking for issues. How do we count what the school is doing well? As is the case with local governments, in communities where the public sector is stronger in contributing to society than for-profit companies, we often start with issues. However, I think it's a set of two things: developing what you can do and making it possible to do what you can't do. The educational environment will change if we take into account how to develop what the school is doing well.

◆Message for you guys

Always search for what you want to do. It's like a digestive organ. If you look for it, you will find it right away. However, I haven't seen one yet today. Humans can only see what they want to see. Even if they see something or encounter it, they often don't acknowledge it. The focus you have enriches your life. People who are willing to search for what they want to do will find more and more of what they want to do.

Another important thing is that there are things you have to do in order to do what you want to do. You can endure the things you have to do that lead to what you want to do. However, many people don't have anything they want to do, or they are bored doing what they have to do. If you can clearly find what you want to do, you will surely make an effort if it is something you have to do to get there. As a result, even if it doesn't lead to what you want to do, if you have created the next thing you want to do, you can enjoy the things you have to do.