Frontia Corporation - Venture Incubation & support in central Japan

Innovative, Affordable & Reliable solutions for startups and ventures in Japan

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Infrastructure:

To successfully develop a customer oriented service company in the IT field, you need excellent infrastructure. It is simply not possible to consistently serve customer needs on a one-to-one basis if you lack scalability, reliable servers and telecommunications, and technical support (24 hours a day). Obtaining or developing such infrastructure is often expensive, and is one of the key reasons why new venture businesses in Japan often struggle to become established, and why foreign businesses setting up in Japan find that their early returns are lower than expected.

At Frontia, we can considerably reduce your expenses for office space, conferencing/meeting space, local/wireless area networks, telecoms, climate controlled server rooms, recording studio, off street parking, 24x7 security, kitchen space / amenities etc.

Office Space:

Frontia is able to provide both open plan and closed office space. Most offices are about 28 square meters (approximately 300 square feet) in area, though there are several larger and smaller rooms available if required. Each office is lockable, has free flooring for LAN cables, ample power outlets, good telecoms, airconditioning/heating (each room has independent climate control so that you can adjust the conditions easily if you are running large numbers of machines), sound insulation and natural lighting. Frontia staff are available if necessary to help when setting up your office.

Conferencing:

Small IT business often need conference space for training, development, presentations and customer services. When not in use though, meeting/conference space can become a major cost burden, especially in the early part of a development project. At Frontia there is a seminar room suitable for meetings of up to 10-12 people, which has the same infrastructure as each of the offices. In addition, there is a 60 seat theater which the company shares with the Yamasa Institute - this theater is LAN equipped and is perfect for presentations. It includes a simultaneous translation booth, video projection booth, as well as a technical support booth if the presentation needs to be recorded and/or streamed over the internet.

LAN/WAN:

A new IT business is extremely dependent on its connectivity, and established a reliable high speed environment can quickly add up in terms of cost. All customers can make use of Frontia's current fiber optic LAN, installation of a new WAN will be completed during 2003. A project that requires considerable bandwidth can also receive a dedicated LAN at minimal expense.

Telecoms:

Telephone services in Japan are considerably more expensive than the OECD average, particularly in terms of installation. Frontia can provide external and internal lines, support services and connections to the CALL center for a fraction of the cost involved in setting up your own systems from scratch.

Server Rooms:

A server requires more than just a high speed environment. For enterprise, web and mail servers to operate efficiently over the long term, they need to be located in a cool climate controlled server room with minimal temperature variation. A good server room also requires reliable power supply, excellent security and monitoring, as well as workspace for whenever maintenance is required.

Amongst small firms, there are relatively few new established IT ventures that can afford to build a dedicated server room, and this is one of the key advantages of working with Frontia. Our server room facilities have ample space, high speed internet connectivity, and 24 x 7 security. The (considerable) cost of air-conditioning is shared, and your project can also draw upon the support and expertise of our engineering staff whenever required.

Recording/Editing:

In addition to a distance learning project in the incubator that makes extensive use of streaming media, Frontia's customers include a datacaster and a community radio station. Enriching a website or database with high quality streaming audio and/or video requires a dedicated recording studio as well as excellent hardware. The recording studio is relatively small, but is used extensively for commercial quality broadcasts and narrowcasts. Technical support is also available from Frontia staff to assist new ventures with audio/video editing, planning and programming.

Off street parking:

One of the unusual features of the facilities at Frontia is that we have access to a parking lot capable of handling around 30 vehicles. Internet based businesses often need vehicles for customer support and sales, and there is ample room for light trucks and minivans. The parking lot is well illuminated at night, and regularly patrolled by security guards.

Security:

Each office is lockable, and most of the offices can only be accessed through an internal corridor that is secured by access-code protected doors at either end. The outer doors of the building are secured at night and regularly patrolled. Customers who need access to facilities after hours are able to obtain keys to the outer doors.

Kitchen/Amenities:

Frontia's facilities include an equipped kitchen. Establishing an IT business often requires working long hours during the development phase, and the kitchen is available to ensure that you can minimize "downtime". The kitchen facilities can also be converted into a bar for entertaining a (very useful for keeping costs down at product/service launches). During 2002 a joint venture between Electrolux (Sweden) and Hattori Kogyo Ltd (Okazaki) established Japan's first "Cooking Theater" onsite, this means that catering services for seminars and functions can also be easily arranged.

For more detailed information please contact us.