Cloud/Server Basic Training Program | IPPO

IPPO Co., Ltd.is a real estate tech company whose main business is office brokerage. They specialize in proposing office solutions for startups and venture companies, and they develop and operate "specializesHaitte," a matching platform that

This time, we spoke with Nakagawa, the company's COO and director, about the behind-the-scenes use and utilization of Beyond's "Cloud Server Basic Training Program."

"The basic system training was given by a current server engineer, so I was able to review my system knowledge in line with the practical level of my company."

● Mr. Nakagawa, COO, IPPO Co., Ltd

Please tell us about your company, IPPO

● Mr. Nakagawa from IPPO:
IPPO Co., Ltd. is a real estate company that focuses on brokering office relocations, and alsoHitteplans and operates

"Hitte" allows users to freely search and register offices that are available for rent as is, and IPPO's cash points come from the brokerage fees that arise when a tenant is confirmed for a vacant property

Furthermore, there are surprisingly few services on the market that are based on the concepts of "for startups and ventures," "specializing in vacant properties," and "office brokerage platform," so in that sense, I think Hitte has been able to differentiate itself well from its competitors' real estate services. Recently, the trend in society has been favoring vacant properties, and thanks to this, the number of Hitte users has been increasing, attracting customers mainly through word of mouth without spending on advertising

Please tell us about the challenges/background you faced before using the service at IPPO

● Mr. Nakagawa from IPPO:
This relates to what was mentioned earlier, but the Hi-tte web service itself is seeing an increase in new inquiries thanks to word-of-mouth from people who are already using and familiar with Hi-tte. As we are considering launching a large-scale promotion in the future, we have become more conscious of the system aspects, such as whether the current server environment and configuration are correct.

I originally worked for a men's apparel e-commerce site operator, where I was in charge of managing internet advertising that generated hundreds of millions of yen per year. When we ran large-scale promotions, if the number of accesses suddenly increased, we would be aware that "since the site display is likely to slow down, at that time we would temporarily increase the server specifications or install a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to consider ways to reduce the access load on the origin server."

However, as we expand our business and hire new members to handle these internet advertising operations, it cannot be said that many of them are familiar with the logical aspects of the system itself, so I have come to think that if not only I, but the members themselves, do not have a certain level of knowledge about the system when using internet advertising in the future, it will cause problems in running "Hitte."

Please tell us what made you choose Beyond's services

● Mr. Nakagawa from IPPO:
I was aware that other companies' training services offered training menus for servers (such as Linux) and programming languages, but there were no services that provided training menus tailored to our company's practical work level.

What we wanted was to learn systematically what we could use in our work, such as "What kind of system processing is carried out and how the system behaves in this way with the servers and source code that run our websites? Also, if the server stops, what kind of problems occur, what steps must be taken to restore the system, and if the website loads slowly, this must be resolved or service opportunities will be lost." Beyond was also considerate enough to provide us with easy-to-understand lecture materials so that we could provide the same training to our new members in-house as our team grows in the future

In addition, we regularly outsource the operation, maintenance, and monitoring of the cloud/servers for Haitte's web services to Beyond's engineers, and ask them to support us with system maintenance and updates.We thought it would be quicker to have the infrastructure experts who currently provide support give us a lecture, so we asked Beyond to provide a system training course that was custom designed for our company

The majority of our frontline staff are account planners and salespeople, so-called non-engineers. Even these staff members only had vaguely heard of mechanisms like "IP addresses are converted, responses are returned from the server, etc...", so it seemed like it would take a lot of time to learn using a regular training service from another company. I remember immediately coming to the conclusion that "it would be quicker to just ask Beyond directly!" (laughs)

What effects did you experience after using Beyond's services?

● Mr. Nakagawa from IPPO:
There were two effects and benefits that I was able to experience firsthand from taking Beyond's Cloud/Server Basic Training course.

First of all, I think a major point was that the training content was truly applicable to our actual work. The training content, which was customized for non-engineers and tailored to the situation and challenges of our company, was very fruitful for us. For this Cloud/Server Basics training, Mr. Teraoka from Beyond, who usually handles Cloud/Server construction and operation projects, served as the instructor for a training session that lasted about 4 hours, and 5 to 6 members from our company participated.

They also provide solid materials and documentation after the training, which was helpful in allowing us to review the system knowledge with our company members later. Without materials and documentation after the training, it would be nearly impossible for our company members to digest the information on their own and incorporate it as internal knowledge

The second thing was that we realized that there are methods and means for running a website when it comes to servers. We didn't have a deep understanding of how servers and infrastructure work, but it's true that in the world of systems and the internet, there are many cases where you don't know what's going to happen, even if you're careful

Even among our own company members, the only keywords related to servers/infrastructure are the number of page views, number of sessions, and access rights. However, until now, we have never had the opportunity to receive in-depth lectures and advice on how to do things like, "With this type of system configuration, there are concerns and things to be careful about, and in the worst case scenario, the site display may not be updated at all, and you may experience system trouble or mechanical damage." This training allowed us to clear up some of the things that had previously seemed vaguely unclear to us

I also became clearer about what to ask someone for and how to ask them about the system, so I felt that once I had a certain level of knowledge about the underlying system, system problems would really decrease

Please tell us about IPPO's company PR and future prospects

● Mr. Nakagawa from IPPO:
I feel that we have been able to establish a certain level of branding for IPPO as a company that is "strong in relocating offices with existing fixtures and fittings" through our business development so far, but there are "three" things we would like to do going forward.

First, we have found that there are many benefits and needs in the field of "office relocation with existing space," so rather than limiting our service to the Tokyo metropolitan area, once the culture of relocating to existing space has taken hold in the Kansai area centered around Osaka and Fukuoka, we are considering expanding into areas outside of Tokyo, albeit in the long term

Secondly, IPPO is a company that places great importance on its "IPPO identity," so as IPPO and HAITT's services expand in the future, we would like to aim to strengthen our inside sales, customer support, and marketing departments in order to solidify our service operations while firmly ensuring IPPO's vision and values

Regarding the last point, although it is a more distant prospect, we would like to expand this beyond office relocations to include a matching service for regular office properties and other workplaces

● Thank you for your valuable feedback!
* The content published here reflects the interview conducted in June 2022.