CTC Partners with FPT Japan to Promote Agile Development

ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (Satoshi Kikuchi, President & CEO; headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; hereinafter "CTC") and FPT Japan Holdings Co., Ltd. (Nguyen Viet Vuong, President & CEO; headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; hreianfter "FPT Japan") are forming a business alliance to strengthen the agile development structure, with the aim of further expanding the application development business.

FPT Japan is the Japanese subsidiary of FPT Software Company Limited (headquartered in Hanoi, Vietnam; hereinafter "FPT Software"), a global IT services company and a subsidiary of FPT Corporation, Vietnam's largest ICT company, which has around 28,000 employees and marked its 30th anniversary in 2018. FPT Software's strength lies in harnessing its abundant talent pool to provide offshore application development services. It has been appraised at Level 5 (the highest level of maturity) under the CMMI model, which measures the maturity of development processes and, since its establishment in 1999, has formed partnerships with IT companies around the world, including in Japan. FPT Software currently has around 15,000 employees and can build flexible development structures that meet the requirements of its clients and partners. It is also focusing on providing support for the utilization of advanced technologies such as cloud computing, business analytics, IoT and AI.

CTC and FPT Japan will collaborate in the field of agile development aiming to expand the application business in Japan. Agile development involves starting with minimal planning and progressively adding the necessary features in response to changes in the environment to build the optimum application. The two companies now intend to pursue joint projects using the OutSystems development platform, which is a good fit for agile development. They also plan to build a structure for remote agile development that will allow them to design, add and review various features remotely in Vietnam whilst maintaining a contact point with clients in Japan.

In the future, CTC and FPT Japan plan to leverage their partnership to provide development services to Toyota Systems Corporation, Toyota Motor Corporation and other Toyota group companies and to seek further rollout of these services, focusing on customers in the automotive and manufacturing industries.

CTC began handling OutSystems in 2015 and, since 2018, has opened "agile offices", dedicated spaces for agile development, at its Tokyo, Toyota and Nagoya offices respectively. Under its Medium-term Management Plan from fiscal 2018 to fiscal 2020, CTC identified the application business as a priority and, through its collaboration with FPT Japan, it will strive for business expansion based on agile development.