QIQ takes its tools to Japan

Socrates Cappas, MD at QIQ Solutions, said an opportunity came along a while back to make its Dashboard, Dashboard Builder and Designer software – built as front ends to Brio Software's business intelligence (BI) tools - available to the Japanese market.

Two QIQ staff can speak Japanese and the company has also developed Japanese version of the products. “On February 12, we ran a course in Tokyo, and took about half a dozen [Japanese] Brio resellers through the product. We're rolling out the second phase of training at this stage,” he said.

Cappas said Japanese system integrators will do most of the work for end users around the products, whereas in other markets such as Australia and Europe, the company focuses more on the developer market.

Steve Dolan, national channels manager at Brio Software, said the company has around 10,000 customers worldwide of which around 1000 or 10 percent are based in Japan. Cappas said QIQ is hoping to secure between 200 and 300 of these Japanese customers over the next 12 months.

Cappas didn't rule out the possibility of developing a version for the Chinese market, but said it hadn't yet due to a lack of demand for the product in China. “At the moment Japan is a major opportunity for us. We'll see how it goes from there. We are selling English versions into places like Singapore,” he said.