In autumn in 2009, the IT Planning Office, Corporate Planning Headquarters of TEIJIN LIMITED started enhancing the information exchange infrastructure supporting the 'Chemistry (good human relationships)' within the group.

The Teijin Group is a comprehensive chemicals manufacturer that runs a variety of businesses including high-performance fiber, pharmaceuticals and home health care, and services. The networks and systems within the group were separated by groups of networks, and the challenge was to achieve cross-sectional sharing and use of information within the Teijin Group. So the following approach was taken as a solution for the issue.

A group portal and group scheduler was introduced as a hub for information sharing among the Group employees. Hoping to support human networks, CACHATTO was chosen as the infrastructure for mobile access.

Director of the IT Planning Office Kenichi Ishikawa, who was in charge of the promotion of the project, recalled those days.

‘We renovated the group portal site to enhance its function as an information-sharing infrastructure available for both domestic and international use. At the time, there was a request for a mechanism that enabled the sharing of schedules across the Group rather than within each business section. So we immediately considered introducing the group scheduler. That was around the autumn of 2009.

　At that time, while we had a system for viewing internal emails using mobile phones, a product that linked with portal browsing or scheduler system didn't exist. So we considered the introduction of the product to achieve the information sharing. We first determined the groupware that could serve as a hub with high response, capable of handling large amount of accesses, and then selected CACHATTO as the solution for linking with the groupware while focusing on security. We also learned that CACHATTO worked well with the groupware we selected.’

System configuration diagram of Teijin

‘The product has been highly evaluated for its security function that does not leave information on the terminal and versatility that enables various types of terminals to be used together. There was no product other than CACHATTO that was compatible with so many devices, from mobile phones to smartphones to also handy terminals, which was valuable,’ said Ishikawa.

‘Two years have passed since we started using the product in June 2010. We have now as many as 1,700 users. There are requests from some group companies for connection with CACHATTO, so we are expecting further expansion of use,’ commented Yuko Miyairi, Section Chief of the IT Planning Office.

‘After the East Japan Great Earthquake, we sped up the building of a work-from-home environment. Assuming that traffic networks fall into confusion immediately after a large-scale disaster, which makes it hard for the employees to commute to their respective companies, we introduced the remote desktop using a PC at home. However, as it was difficult to apply the system to all employees, we promoted the expansion of using CACHATTO when, for example, an internal email needs to be checked immediately while outside the office.‘CACHATTO provides behind-the-scenes support for the BCP measures of the Teijin Group.

A unique way of using CACHATTO has been found through this interview. In the home health care business of Teijin Pharma Co., Ltd., CACHATTO is used by maintenance staff members of medical equipment as well as by the sales representatives.

‘The maintenance personnel visits a patient’s home with a handy terminal to check the operational status of the equipment used for home therapy by a patient with a respiratory disorder (home oxygen therapy). For security reasons, we had not allowed our staff members to view emails from outside the company, but had considered introducing CACHATTO at the time of replacing the handy terminals with new models. Considering that the product had already been introduced in the group successfully and no information is left on the terminal via connection with CACHATTO SecureBrowser, we made a decision to introduce CACHATTO.’

While recognizing the convenience of viewing emails from outside the company, the company did not allow the employees to do so because of the sensitive information handled by their business. However, CACHATTO has satisfied them for both convenience and security because neither emails nor attachments are left in the system. Director Ishikawa even gave us a business proposal, 'There are so many such other businesses to which you could make an appeal'.

We asked about the use of the product overseas. ‘We have yet to move to a full-scale overseas deployment. Some employees assigned overseas use CACHATTO using their private smartphones (BYOD*1). It would be helpful if a CACHATTO PC version is available overseas because it costs a great amount for infrastructure development using VPN…’ We have recently many requests for functions and enhancement of the support system of CACHATTO for overseas use.

‘We are considering overseas use of the system with an eye for public cloud in the near future. We would like you to consider providing support for the system for overseas use along with seamless operation between CACHATTO and public cloud applications. I think it would bring great advantages if a variety of systems could be accessed from the offices around the globe.’(Mr. Ishikawa)

'We are evolving CACHATTO'.

All e-Jan Networks members will once again dig in and continue to push forward with product development to satisfy the expectations of our clients.