Regarding establishment of Canadian office

I'm Haraoka, the representative of Beyond!

This time, we will be reporting on the establishment of Beyond's overseas base, the Canadian office (Beyond GTA.inc)

The reason for establishing the Canadian office

Since its founding 10 years ago, Beyond has been building and operating physical servers (hosting and on-premise) in data centres

However, in 2017, the data center they were using at the time was closed, so they replaced their physical servers and transferred all of their systems to the cloud. This meant they could work without being tied to a specific location, but it also meant they still had issues with the workload and health of their engineers due to 24-hour night shifts, as well as recruitment

So, the question "How can we improve night shifts?" was asked, and the idea that arose was to take advantage of the time difference to carry out work during the late night hours, turning night shifts into daytime work

When I came up with this idea, I looked at a world map and wondered where would be best. South America is far away and I was a bit worried about the security situation, and the cost of living in the US was high, so I came to the conclusion that Toronto, Canada would be the best place to base my base. My previous experience of studying abroad in Canada also helped me decide, "Let's go to Toronto!"

Launch process

Even after we decided to go, we started the project without any plans or connections, and we had to grope our way through it. The founding members were decided with a single word from Masataka Sato, the technology manager of the infrastructure department, who said, "Let's go!"

Next, since Beyond had no bases outside of Osaka, we realized that expanding overseas would be too difficult, so we established a satellite base, the Shikoku Office, in Miyoshi City, Tokushima Prefecture, and set up a system to operate the infrastructure and enable operations even from remote locations

While our Shikoku office was being set up, we were able to connect with people at the Canadian Embassy, ​​and with their help, we were introduced to Mississauga, a city next to Toronto. In April 2019, we visited Canada and met with people from legal, accounting, and human resources departments to register the company, and in October 2019, we completed the corporate registration of Beyond GTA.inc

Start of work

We were scheduled to start operations in April 2020, but had to postpone the start of operations due to the COVID-19 state of emergency declaration

After that, in October 2020, when restrictions were relaxed, Sato decided to go to Toronto alone. He managed to enter the country and it seemed like things would go smoothly from there, but Toronto went into lockdown shortly after his arrival, and he had to start the trip with restrictions on going out

However, one month later, another founding member, Abosbek, a second-year employee from Uzbekistan, arrived in Canada and gradually began carrying out operational work there. In the spring, two more talented members were recruited locally, and in October 2021, the night shift was completely transferred to Canada. This marked a major change in Beyond's 24-hour system

Achievements and future prospects of the Canadian office

With the establishment of the Canadian office, night shifts were eliminated and the company's business hours were shortened from 24 hours to 15 hours. As a result, members were able to go home earlier and the working environment improved. Furthermore, the stability of nighttime work has also improved the quality of operations

Furthermore, night work costs were reduced to zero, which gradually had a positive impact on our public relations and recruitment. There was also a rise in awareness of the importance of learning English within the company, and the positive effects were enormous

In October 2022, Director Morita will be posted to Canada and will be fully engaged in sales activities there. Going forward, we will be taking on new challenges to expand our business and put down roots locally, such as by developing new services in Canada and the United States, and conversely, by providing nighttime operations for North American customers in Japan. We also want to explore new possibilities beyond borders, such as translating our own services into English and localizing services provided by Canadian companies into Japanese versions

Beyond will continue to take on flexible and proactive challenges, and will continue to expand its business globally with the goal of "creating services that can be used worldwide."

*Please see below for details of services in North America*
https://beyondjapan.com/service/china-msp

https://beyondjapan.com/service/north-america-msp/