Zendesk, Cybozu Enter Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Cloud Adoption Across U.S. and Japan Markets

November 7, 2013

SAN FRANCISCO, CA / TOKYO—, JAPAN – November 7, 2013 -San Francisco-based Zendesk and Tokyo-based Cybozu today announced a strategic marketing and product partnership to accelerate adoption of one another’s cloud-based software in their respective home markets. Through the partnership, Cybozu will market Zendesk’s leading customer service software to its business customers in Japan, and Zendesk will promote Cybozu’s cloud platform for business collaboration to its U.S. customers. The two companies also plan to jointly develop integrations with one another’s platforms to help businesses strengthen relationships inside and out of their companies.

“The cloud is here to stay and increasingly becoming the preferred way to deliver software in both the U.S. and Japan,” said Mikkel Svane, founder and CEO of Zendesk. “We’ve seen strong demand since enter Japan last year. Now by partnering with Cybozu, we’ll be able to reach even more Japanese companies and develop new integrations specific to that market while introducing our U.S customers to Cybozu’s cloud collaboration applications.”

A partnership between leading U.S.-Japan cloud software companies is rare and signals the growing importance of cloud computing among companies in Japan. The cloud service market for SMBs in Japan grew 25 percent in the past year to reach $2 billion in summer 2013, and it is expected to reach $3.1 billion by 2016 ¹.  Cloud-based business applications are the fastest growing category and expected to grow 21 percent year-over-year in Japan to reach $1.5 billion by 2016.

Zendesk and Cybozu are partnering to address this growing market and help transform the way companies work. More than 30,000 companies around the world use Zendesk to provide great customer service to more than 200 million people. About half of Zendesk’s customers are in the United States. Cybozu has more than 60,000 customers, mainly in Japan. Its business cloud platform “cybozu.com” exceeded 5,000 business installations since it launched in 2011, and its cloud-based collaboration software application called “kintone” launched in the U.S. market in July 2013.

“Cybozu is the No. 1 provider of collaboration tools in Japan and is aiming to be the market leader for the rest of the world,” said Cybozu CEO Yoshihisa Aono. “We’ve grown rapidly with internationalization and global sales efforts for ‘kintone.com,’ and as our customers increasingly adopt cloud-based software. Our partnership with Zendesk enables us to take a significant step toward growing the reach of our collaboration tools even farther around the globe.”

The companies are kicking off their joint marketing efforts on Nov. 8, 2013, when Zendesk’s Svane will join Cybozu ‘s Aono during his keynote speech at the cybozu.com conference 2013 being held at the Tokyo Dome Hotel (https://www.cybozu.com/c2013/). Both companies also have begun deployed one another’s cloud software within their companies, and they expect to begin joint product integration later this year.

About Zendesk

Zendesk builds cloud software for better customer service, bringing companies and their customers closer together. With Zendesk, companies engage directly and openly with customers, building more meaningful customer relationships that last a lifetime. More than 30,000 companies, such as Gilt Groupe, Disney and Box, use Zendesk to provide service to more than 200 million people worldwide. Founded in 2007 and based in San Francisco, Zendesk has offices in eight countries and funding from Charles River Ventures, Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, GGV Capital, Index Ventures, Matrix Partners and Redpoint Ventures. Learn more at www.zendesk.com.

About Cybozu

Cybozu provides web-based collaboration software and cloud services to the global market. The company is listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with over 60,000 companies and 4.7 million users using their products. In 2011, Cybozu started a new business cloud platform “cybozu.com“, now hosting over 5,000 companies. Cybozu entered the U.S. market in 2013 with “kintone” (http://kintone.com/), a business cloud collaboration service to simplify internal and external collaboration with easy-to-build business applications.

¹ Source: Parallels SMB Cloud Insights for Japan

This is a translation of a press release originally issued in Japanese.