■Company Overview
3. Business environment
First, I will give an overview of the cloud service market targeted by the secure cloud system business, which is the main business of BB Systems ＜4447＞. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications's Reiwa 5 Information and Communications White Paper, the domestic public cloud service market size in fiscal 2022 recorded sales of approximately 2.2 trillion yen. Compared to the previous fiscal year, it is an increase of about 29.8%, and it can be seen that it is a business field where market size expansion can be expected in the future against the backdrop of IT industry trends such as the transition from an on-premise environment focusing on cost performance and convenience to the cloud.
Also, similarly, in the Reiwa 5 Information and Communication White Paper, there is a description of estimated values for the same market until 2026 that markets around the world may continue to grow, and it is expected to expand to about 4.2 trillion yen within Japan. Note that the same estimate relates to the public cloud service market, and although it does not directly overlap with the private cloud market that the company excels at, the probability that the cloud field will continue to grow due to future advances in information and communication technology and the evolution of various IT-related services, etc., not only around the world but also within Japan, is extremely high, and we believe that the cloud service market is basically a good growth market.
Thus, as the importance of the cloud in business is increasing, the need for stable operation of services, that is, infrastructure construction that pays attention to security, is unavoidably increasing at the same time. Therefore, we will also check the status of cyber attacks (cybersecurity). In the “NICTER Observation Report 2023” compiled by the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), “total number of observation packets per year per IP address” is considered as an index representing the activity of cyber attack-related activities on the Internet. Looking at this number, about 570,000 packets were observed in 2017, but in 2023 it was about 2.26 million packets, or about 3.9 times the number, so it is obvious at a glance how active cyber attacks have become in a few years. Even in comparison between 2023 and 2022, it expanded drastically, with a 23.3% increase from the previous year. In fact, many listed companies and government offices have been targeted by cyber attacks, and a lot of damage has been reported.
In addition to cyber attacks, the business environment surrounding the company, which has deep knowledge and abundant experience at a practical level of resilience against system failures caused by natural disasters and accidents, etc., and the strengthening of the system itself, that is, “resilience,” has been improving in recent years. Furthermore, based on this situation, the company began providing Emotet countermeasures and cyber resilience building services in 2022.
Finally, I would like to briefly touch on the metaverse market, which will be the target market for the company's business in the medium to long term. It is more prominent in the US, but it is clear that huge amounts of investment funds have already flowed into metaverse-related areas even domestically. There are times when social interest is rapidly increasing recently, and each research company estimates the market size, but it suggests that no matter which one you look at, it will grow into a super huge market. In the Reiwa 5 edition of the Information and Communication White Paper, it is described that “the global metaverse market, which was 65.51 billion dollars in 2022, is expected to expand to 9365.7 billion dollars in 2030,” and the Japanese metaverse market is also “expected to be 182.5 billion yen (up 145.3% from the previous fiscal year) in fiscal 2022, and it is predicted that it will expand to 1.42 trillion yen in 2026.”
(Author: FISCO Analyst Tomokazu Murase)