My History
Before starting my own company, I worked at two organizations. The first was Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, the former state-run telephone company of Japan. There, I was involved in integrating telephony with computer systems and was introduced to the UNIX operating system. I was fascinated by its ability to allow multiple users to share a single computer simultaneously—an innovation that was revolutionary in the 1980s. Over time, I became determined to build UNIX-based systems on my own. With that ambition as an engineer, I left a large established corporation with hundreds of thousands of employees and joined a small venture with just three.
At the start-up company, I was able to dive into the middleware development I had been hoping for, and my days were extremely rewarding. However, the company eventually shifted its policy to focus on profitability above all else, drifting away from its original ideals. That led me to decide to start my own company—the predecessor of ComDesign. Early on, the business gained traction, and we successfully developed next-generation middleware platforms for call centers, steadily growing our performance.
But as president, I became eager to expand the company even further. In doing so, I found myself walking the same “profit-first” path. Driven by a desire for higher earnings, I became increasingly harsh with my executives. Eventually, my approach reached a breaking point, and I was asked to step down as president. Under the new management, however, the company—already struggling with severe cash flow issues—teetered on the verge of bankruptcy. After various twists and turns, I returned to management, but things still did not improve, and I was ultimately forced into personal bankruptcy.
What remained with me after losing so much was my passion for system development. Even when I had only a few hundred yen left, I continued working as an engineer, developing the architecture for “CT-e1.” This became the foundation for what now sustains our business: the cloud-based CTI service “CT-e1/SaaS.” CT-e1 is an innovative system that integrates computers with telephones and other communication channels. In 2008—when the term “cloud” was not yet widely understood (AWS officially launched its services in 2006)—we began offering this architecture in the form of a cloud service.
A major turning point came three years later, in 2011. One of our clients could not access its branch office due to the Great East Japan Earthquake, putting its call center operations at risk. Leveraging the unique features of cloud CTI, we enabled a system that allowed calls to be received from anywhere, supporting their business without disruption. Since then, our service has been adopted across a wide range of industries, and today we are proud to hold one of the leading track records for cloud CTI adoption in Japan.
The Present
Having once prioritized profits to the point of damaging relationships, and experiencing both removal as president and the near-collapse of my company, I was forced to reflect deeply on myself as a leader. Today, I follow a simple guiding principle: “Be a good person.” To me, this means respecting others, acting with sincerity, and building trust.
This principle is at the core of how we provide our services. At ComDesign, we offer all customizations of our service at no additional cost. By nature, SaaS is built on the idea of “a shared platform used by many.” For this reason, most SaaS vendors either refuse individual customizations or provide them only in very limited ways. In contrast, we assign dedicated engineers to listen closely to user needs and respond with tailored solutions.
Why can CT-e1/SaaS offer customizations free of charge? The answer lies in its flexible design. Instead of a single massive system, it is structured as separate functional modules that integrate smoothly with external solutions. Because many requirements can be met simply through configuration changes or different combinations of modules, additional development costs rarely occur.
The greatest reward from this approach is the genuine gratitude we receive from our clients. When they discover that features perfectly suited to their operations are provided at no extra cost, the heartfelt “thank you” we hear carries special meaning. That appreciation is our greatest motivation. People who find value in working for the benefit of customers are truly our greatest strength. I believe that our achievement of a top track record in Japan is the direct result of making customer satisfaction the very source of our organizational competitiveness.
As we handle a wide variety of customizations day by day, our engineers’ technical skills continue to advance. Employees who support our flexible, high-quality platform grow not only as professionals but also as good people. This virtuous cycle may well be our company’s greatest asset. I am convinced that the single principle of “Be a good person” has reshaped how we deliver services, strengthened our organization, and, in turn, fueled our business growth.
For the Future
Together with colleagues who are both good people and highly skilled engineers, we are working toward our goal of becoming the “#1 Telephony Platform for Mashups.” To achieve this, we are focusing on evolving into a platform optimized for mashups. A mashup is a technical approach that creates new value by combining multiple applications and services. CT-e1/SaaS is ideally suited as the foundation for such mashups, designed for flexible integration with other services.
With the rapid advancement of technology, the telephony industry is now entering an era where generative AI is becoming mainstream. Traditional call center operations are undergoing major change, and CT-e1/SaaS continues to evolve along with them. We have already introduced AI-driven features such as automated FAQ responses, call summarization, and sentiment analysis to multiple clients, achieving significant results. All of this has been possible thanks to the platform’s ability to seamlessly integrate external technologies with our own.
As mentioned earlier, CT-e1/SaaS is not a massive monolithic system. It uses a modular structure, with functions divided into components that can be flexibly combined. This allows us to provide solutions that fit any business or third-party tool. This flexibility is our strength as a mashup platform and the key reason we can meet such a wide variety of needs.
We are also actively collaborating with Japanese AI vendors as well as developers and companies with unique technologies. For those who want to combine their AI with a telephony platform, we aim to be the partner that can always say, “We can connect with you anytime.” In this way, CT-e1/SaaS will continue to serve as an “open platformer,” co-creating new value.
In terms of capital, we may not rival Big Tech. However, our ability to stay close to customer needs and create practical value flexibly through mashups is a major strength. Our goal is not to defeat the giants, but to engage with them on equal footing. Ultimately, we aspire to become one of the world’s leading platforms: the “#1 Telephony Platform for Mashups.” That is the future we are striving toward.
Together with good people—our employees—and passionate developers and companies, we will continue to grow CT-e1/SaaS as a “connected foundation” where anyone can freely turn ideas into reality, helping to shape the future of the telephony industry.