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Uhuru Seeks to Further Expand Its IoT and Cloud Businesses Financing CompletedUhuru Corporation ("Uhuru", Headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo, Japan, President Takashi Sonoda) announces that it has raised a total of approximately ¥520 mln in financing from existing shareholder salesforce.com, inc. (Headquartered in California, USA, Chairman & CEO Marc Benioff (News - Alert)) and via a third-party placement of new shares to Mitsui & Co., Ltd. ("Mitsui & Co.", Headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan, President & CEO Tatsuo Yasunaga). 1. Financing Background Expansion of the Japanese Domestic IoT Market IDC (News - Alert) Japan released a report in February of this year forecasting the domestic IoT (Internet of Things) market(1), which it has divided into 7 technology categories: IoT Devices, Communication Modules, IoT Platforms, Analytics, IoT Infrastructure, Vertical Market Solutions/Professional Services, and Security Services. According to this report, during the forecast period (2014 - 2019), the sales growth for the industry is expected to rise a very brisk 11.9% (CAGR). Uhuru's Achievements as a Salesforce Consulting Partner In 2011, Uhuru was the first domestic consulting partner to receive an equity investment from salesforce.com. In addition to participating in Salesforce's "IoT Jumpstart Program", Uhuru has served as a driving force behind the domestic cloud market. In recent years, in addition to employing salesforce.com's technology as an IoT platform, Uhuru has developed a technology called enebular®, which is being used to expand IoT based on the cloud in combination with salesforce.com. Cooperation with Mitsui Bussan Electronics Ltd. (MBEL) and Mitsui & Co. In June of 2015, Uhuru issued a press release(2) announcing a collaboration with MBEL, a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co., to provide solutions in the field of IoT. Because of this collaboration, it was agreed that the two companies would strive to mutually expand each other's cloud businesses as artners of Mitsui & Co.'s IoT business. The goal of this financing was to further strengthen the cooperation and create an alliance with Mitsui & Co. in IoT solutions. (1) Source (News - Alert): IDC Japan press release: "Domestic IoT Market Forecast" (February 5, 2015) (2) Source: Uhuru press release: "Uhuru announces cooperation with Mitsui Electronics in the IoT field (June 9, 2015) 2. Purpose of Financing The new capital received from both salesforce.com and Mitsui & Co. serves to strengthen Uhuru's relationship with those companies. Through this investment, Uhuru will continue to aggressively pursue further expansion and development of opportunities within the Public Cloud, Marketing Cloud and IoT business areas. Strengthen IoT Data Integration Platform "enebular" Uhuru's Data Science Laboratory released "enebular" in 2014 as a data-integrating platform for IoT and Big Data perform research on big data analytics and machine learning. enebular has been promoted to bolster Uhuru's value added solutions and as a differentiation strategy. Considering the expansion market for IoT/M2M (machine to machine), this capital alliance will allow Uhuru to strengthen development ability for its IoT data integration platform enebular, and deepen the ability to provide solutions including connecting to the "Salesforce IoT Cloud"(3), which salesforce.com announced and is expected to make available in 2016. (3) Source: Salesforce.com Press Release: "Salesforce Unveils Breakthrough Salesforce IoT Cloud" (Sep. 15, 2015) Synergy (News - Alert) between Mitsui & Co. and salesforce.com: Enhancing IoT Business Mitsui & Co. is a leader in IoT devices through its various subsidiary companies. salesforce.com is the leading provider of cloud based Platform as a Service. Uhuru has years of experience integrating and developing on Salesforce's various cloud services and has created in-house capabilities around IoT and Big Data with its enebular platform. enebular is not only an IoT/M2M data integration platform, but can also freely connect to a myriad of cloud services and social media sites through APIs. Uhuru uses these data to create analytic dashboards to provide a comprehensive view of the data stored across a wide range of analytic services, databases, platforms, etc. for use in Public Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Social and other applications. ------------------------- About Uhuru Uhuru Corporation's corporate philosophy is "applying technology and free imagination to create the future". Since the company's formation, Uhuru has endeavored to provide clients with the revolutionary solutions that the Internet makes possible. Advances in technologies such as social media and IoT led to the 2014 formation of Uhuru's Data Science Laboratory, which was created as research institute to handle the diversification of digital data and information. enebular was developed as an IoT and Big Data integration platform and has been used to increase Uhuru's added value. About enebular enebular is a cloud service which allows a variety of API based data, such as major cloud services, databases, social media, etc. to be easily connected by simply drawing a flow on a digital canvas using drag and drop icons. It enables users to consolidate IoT/M2M and diverse cloud ecosystems graphically to visualize the flow of data. enebular can be employed in a wide range of applications like automating processing using machine learning.
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