Japan, the second largest economic power in the world, is undergoing massive socio-economic restructuring likely to last for another three to five years. The public sector is seeking to reform and add value by using the Internet to provide new and better services for its citizens.

To support its strategic "eJapan initiative," for example, the government has set aside tens of billions of investment dollars for Internet infrastructure in the next five years. The goal is to leverage the benefit of the Internet more consistently across the country as a catalyst for the next economic cycle and as part of its public/private sector plan to focus and stimulate the economy to ensure economic longevity. Cisco Japan and IBSG are involved in the eJapan initiative focusing on providing Internet-based productivity benefits with its ecosystem partners and developing broad awareness through the i-Executive Education Program.

From the business standpoint, most companies have basic Web sites, but client-server custom development still prevails, and companies are just starting to experiment on a broad scale with Internet applications that can be adopted to their business structures. For example, Cisco IBSG's Japan team is helping one of the top Japanese corporations consolidate 38 different human resources systems globally to a single, Internet-based HR system.