Salesforce Japan was also a joint venture between Salesforce.com and a Sunbridge (that Salesforce.com eventually bought out). Sunbridge was founded by Allen Miner who already had experience building out Oracle in Japan and the team that helped him there also helped build out Salesforce.com in Japan.

I recently was talking with some folks from that team and they did share with me that the experience was anything but easy but that it was all par for the course for SAAS sales in Japan.

Edit/Addition: I would disagree with points 1 and 5 that patio11 are making though. Past experiences (working at both SAAS and other internet companies) and also current experiences (starting up an Cloud Telephony platform https://www.fullcourt.co ) has me believing that the following from the article is always a great issue.

People were saying, “It’s a really good product. It is reasonably priced. But, who else is using it?” In consensus driven Japan, where nobody budges unless the next guy is doing the same, Winder faced a chicken and egg problem.

I've/we've often been asked about our other customers. Another thing that also often comes up is that we're asked for a comparison study with competitors, this usually happens because our point of contact doesn't have final authority and needs to build a biz case for his/her superiors.

Regarding "1) Japanese companies don't buy SaaS.", this definitely isn't true at all. I dare say that all of my former employers, a number of their partners and customers did use SAAS products from both domestic and foreign companies. It takes a long time to sell but once you get a few key companies that you can reference (for whom the sales process can often take months and sometimes years), then customers will start lining up.

Yeah, my bad -- I was being slightly hyperbolic on my iPhone. A more nuanced comment would have been "It is very difficult to convince a Japanese company to purchase SaaS on the low-touch sign-up-with-your-credit-card-and-go model."

Right - but the article is about building a startup from the ground up.

As opposed to a company that was already enterprise level when it entered Japan.

This makes a huge, huge difference in Japan.

Disclaimer: The article is about me.

i was replying to the particular comment of patio11 which is simply not true. Japanese companies do buy SaaS. the company i work for just opened offices in japan (after eu and china) and rented out data center space. we already have local clients. we are a start-up by any means, although enterprise focused (little bit over 5 years old).