Hi,
We just had some events in Japan and some people from Liferay.com and other companies asked about me.
A simple introduction to who am I.
I'm an open source evangelist at OGIS (Osaka Gas Information System), a fully subsidiary of Osaka Gas. Osaka Gas is the second largest gas company in Japan. OGIS used to be a division within Osaka Gas before it was spun out to offer services gained from operating the data center to other companies. We are a multi-international corporation and have 3 data centers - one in Osaka, one in Tokyo, and one in Singapore.
Osaka Gas decided to switch to using open source software but the main problem was some software didn't work as expected on Japanese environment and necessary functionalities needed were missing. Non-Japanese open source companies and projects were telling us they were interested in the Japanese market but we actually weren't making too much progress because they were actually not too interested in making modifications themselves to make it usable.
Even when modification were made, it was requiring too much time for our tight project schedule - unlike software companies or regular open source partner companies, it was necessary to get all required features operational within the project time frame because the operations department aren't going to accept a solution that doesn't meet their standards and not operational ready within their project schedule. As such, we decided to customize software ourselves so they can actually be usable within our project timeframe.
After being able to use open source software ourselves, we're transferring our knowledge to our system engineering department so they can offer it to their customers.
Now, I think we are one of the leading company using open source software in Japan. There is a chart in the following page listing some software we are currently using. There are many more projects we are involved in now.
I usually post questions to a forum when I'm starting to get involved in a new software project and later while I'm building and testing my customizations - that is, number of forum posts are relational to modifications I'm making to the software.
BTW, I just finished externalizing Liferay IDE. I've already translated the documentation and Liferay messages so this was the last remaining promise I made Bryant. All done now.
http://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/17991873
Cheers,
We just had some events in Japan and some people from Liferay.com and other companies asked about me.
A simple introduction to who am I.
I'm an open source evangelist at OGIS (Osaka Gas Information System), a fully subsidiary of Osaka Gas. Osaka Gas is the second largest gas company in Japan. OGIS used to be a division within Osaka Gas before it was spun out to offer services gained from operating the data center to other companies. We are a multi-international corporation and have 3 data centers - one in Osaka, one in Tokyo, and one in Singapore.
Osaka Gas decided to switch to using open source software but the main problem was some software didn't work as expected on Japanese environment and necessary functionalities needed were missing. Non-Japanese open source companies and projects were telling us they were interested in the Japanese market but we actually weren't making too much progress because they were actually not too interested in making modifications themselves to make it usable.
Even when modification were made, it was requiring too much time for our tight project schedule - unlike software companies or regular open source partner companies, it was necessary to get all required features operational within the project time frame because the operations department aren't going to accept a solution that doesn't meet their standards and not operational ready within their project schedule. As such, we decided to customize software ourselves so they can actually be usable within our project timeframe.
After being able to use open source software ourselves, we're transferring our knowledge to our system engineering department so they can offer it to their customers.
Now, I think we are one of the leading company using open source software in Japan. There is a chart in the following page listing some software we are currently using. There are many more projects we are involved in now.
I usually post questions to a forum when I'm starting to get involved in a new software project and later while I'm building and testing my customizations - that is, number of forum posts are relational to modifications I'm making to the software.
BTW, I just finished externalizing Liferay IDE. I've already translated the documentation and Liferay messages so this was the last remaining promise I made Bryant. All done now.
http://www.liferay.com/community/forums/-/message_boards/message/17991873
Cheers,
Forgot to mention. I have an over 2 year backlog issues in JBoss. They keep pushing them back on every release. One guy in other project told me he didn't care if it didn't work in my Japanese environment because he doesn't have it. 
Not to get wrong idea, we are Redhat's partner and we have a very good relationship with our president even speaking at their forum.
Not to get wrong idea, we are Redhat's partner and we have a very good relationship with our president even speaking at their forum.