GEMSTONE SYSTEMS OPENS OPERATION IN JAPAN, APPOINTS MANAGING DIRECTOR TO STRENGTHEN PRESENCE IN ASIA PACIFIC

Takashi Kerakawachi to Head GemStone Systems KK

Beaverton, Ore. and TOKYO, JAPAN – September 10, 2007 – GemStone Systems, the leading provider of distributed data management and virtualization solutions, today announced the establishment of new offices in Japan and the formation of GemStone Systems KK, a wholly-owned subsidiary of GemStone Systems, Inc.  In addition, GemStone has appointed Takashi Kerakawachi as managing director, GemStone Systems KK.  In this role, Kerakawachi will be responsible for growing GemStone’s direct sales in the Asia Pacific region as well as enhancing strategic partnerships.   

GemStone’s flagship product, GemFire Enterprise, is a high-performance, distributed data caching platform that serves as the core component of the GemFire Enterprise Data Fabric (EDF). It supports multiple topologies that allow it to be easily embedded into application architectures such as J2EE, .NET, Grid, SOA and portals and provide high performance throughput and scalability at significantly lower costs. Proven in mission-critical programs in financial services, telecommunications, energy, logistics and federal programs, GemFire Enterprise is built on one of the industry's fastest and most reliable data distribution and caching systems. GemStone’s expertise in fulfilling clients’ demands for high-performance data management in US and European financial institutions is now extended to offer field-proven solutions to the rapidly globalizing Japanese and Asian markets.  

According to Neil Katkov, group manager of Asia research at Celent, “Financial services institutions in Asia-Pacific are augmenting their investment in external software and external IT services far more than any other region.”  Celent estimates IT spending growth at financial services institutions in Asia-Pacific at 11.4 percent per year from 2006 to 2008.

With extensive experience in grid computing and over 25 years of sales and strategic planning experience in Japan, Kerakawachi will lead GemStone System KK’s sales and partnership efforts across the Asia-Pacific region.  Previously, Kerakawachi served as a senior manager, sales and marketing at Hitachi, Ltd. and BEA Systems Japan, Ltd, where he worked on both direct and channel sales teams across industries including financial. 

“This moment is the culmination of the work and commitment of our Japanese partners who collectively have trained large teams of their engineers to ensure our Japanese customers have the local support and expertise required to succeed in their mission critical applications. We continue to demonstrate our commitment to Japan and our leadership in this space.  said Juan Menendez, senior vice president, GemStone Systems.  “Kerakawachi’s proven expertise and deep knowledge of the local market will help us grow our presence in the region and strengthen our ability to target and engage key customers and partners.”

The GemStone offices in Japan are located on the 3rd Floor of the AIG Kabuto-cho Building, 5-1 Nihonbashi Kabuto-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 103-0026, Japan.

As part of GemStone’s global expansion strategy and commitment to quality, customer service, and best-of-breed solutions, GemStone is proud to partner with and receive endorsements from many of the top providers in Japan, including:

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation
Director & Senior Vice President, Mr. Yoshinori Warashina

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) welcomes the establishment of GemStone Systems KK.  CTC expects that the high performance data management products of GemStone Systems will be widely used not only in western markets but also in the Japanese market.  CTC will partner with GemStone Systems to provide the next generation enterprise data managment solutions to our customers.

Intel Kabushiki Kaisha
Strategy and Business Development Group, General Manager, Mr. Yoshie Munakata

Intel K.K. welcomes the establishment of GemStone Systems KK.  Intel Corporation and GemStone Systems has already performed the grid computing pilot system demonstration based on Intel ®Xeon™ processor in collaboration with US major financial institutions.  We have already gained the good performance result.

Hitachi, Ltd.
Financial Information Systems Division
Finanical Information Systems Business Unit 2 Senior Manager Mr. Satoshi Mitsunaga

Hitachi, Ltd. welcomes the establishment of GemStone Systems KK.  Recently companies are working on deploying the systems, which require large scale data manipulation, especially at financial industry.  It is becoming more and more important to build these systems to handle large volumes of data with high performance for application like program trading.  Hitachi has been building its GemFire expertise through multiple pilot projects.  Hitachi will provide data management and virtualization solutions with GemStone Systems.

NIWS Co., Ltd.
Solution Promotion Planning Division, Managing Director Mr. Yukio Sakamoto

NIWS welcomes the establishment of GemStone Systems KK.  With commoditization and price decrease of IT hardware these days, the deployment of grid-computing system has been growing especially in the financial IT area.  GemStone Systems’ product is the data-grid product essential to grid-computing system.  NIWS has already built the grid-computing system with GemStone Systems’ product in the Japanese market.  NIWS will strengthen the alliance relationship with GemStone Systems further to provide the best grid-computing solution to our customers’ needs.

IBM Japan, Ltd.
Strategic Growth Business, Director Mr. Yutaka Hoshino

IBM Japan Ltd. welcomes the establishment of GemStone Systems KK.  We expect that this will accelerate the wide use of Grid Computing further at the financial institutions as well as commercial areas in Japan.  In addition, we will promote the implementation of Grid Computing infrastructure by our blade server ‘IBM BladeCenter’ with GemStone Systems KK.

About GemStone Systems, Inc.
GemStone Systems is a privately held infrastructure software company that provides data services solutions for enterprise business architects and data infrastructure managers that are building, enhancing or simplifying access, distribution, integration and management of information within and across the enterprise.  Founded in 1982, and with over 200 installed customers, GemStone is recognized worldwide for its unique competency and patented technology in object management, virtual memory architectures, high-performance caching, and data distribution technologies.