Shinichiro Oikawa, Executive Officer and General Manager of Pre-Sales Engineering, Hewlett-Packard Japan, LLC　

Thinking about changing IT infrastructure with a data-first approach

Hewlett-Packard Japan, LLC Executive Officer, General Manager of Pre-Sales Engineering　Shinichiro Oikawa　(Oikawa Shinichiro)

■Profile

He is primarily responsible for server technology and serves a wide range of customers in industries including the telecommunications industry. In 2017, HPE released a new generation of server products that focused on security, and since then he has been promoting zero trust security from a hardware layer perspective to a wide range of people, from developers and operators to executives. He currently leads the pre-sales team in Japan.

Hewlett-Packard Japan (HPE) supports a wide range of IT infrastructure, from familiar internet services to hidden areas we are unaware of. We spoke to Executive Officer Oikawa, who has been with the company for 26 years and has had a variety of work experiences, about the appeal of the company and the type of students he would like to work with.

When I was a university student, I studied international politics and comparative culture, but it was the media that most interested me. In particular, I wanted to work in the meta-media that will change the world in the future, and in the IT that will underpin it. While applying to several IT companies, I found Hewlett-Packard, where the founder of Apple worked and highly regarded as an original Silicon Valley venture, to be a company I thought would be great. At the time, foreign IT companies rarely hired liberal arts students, so I was surprised when I got a job offer. I was also impressed by the company's selection process and the fact that the offer was confirmed by a handshake with the HR representative, rather than a written document. I felt this was a truly amazing company, different from other companies, and decided to join in 1997.

■ If you realize you can't win, change the arena

After joining the company and being assigned to a department, I was in a sort of training period for a while, with no specific tasks, and I mostly just packaged products. However, by having more hands-on experience with more products than anyone else, I became very knowledgeable about actual parts and such. Despite being surrounded by many accomplished seniors, I realized that I would never be able to keep up in the existing commercial UNIX world, no matter how many decades I spent working there. So, I bet my future on PC servers like Windows and Linux, which were only used by a very limited number of people in the company at the time, and got involved in launching the x86 server business. Looking back, more than 20 years have passed since then, and PC servers have taken the world by storm. If you find yourself thinking, "I can't compete in this," I believe it's important to change the arena.
After that, I worked on a knowledge management project, which explored how to digitize and utilize knowledge. Then, as the venture boom began in the early 2000s, I was put in charge of supporting ventures. I think I gained some insight into the difficulties of starting a successful business, which differ from what one might see from the outside. It was also a year in which I learned the joy of taking risks and expanding into new fields. After that, I was put in charge of telecommunications customers, due to the rapid growth of Japan's broadband and mobile phone markets at the time. I worked there for about 10 years, and I think I experienced the joy of implementing various systems based on customer requirements. At the time, I was an engineer involved in a trial to determine how to deliver full-HD video streaming to homes over fiber optic lines. While streaming video to homes is now commonplace, at the time, streaming over general public lines was unprecedented, even in the United States, and extremely difficult. Many engineers made repeated mistakes, but the technology matured and became standardized, and now it's commonplace to enjoy it in the home. Through this experience, I realized that cost and technology issues will eventually be resolved over time if the service is truly necessary. I think this is a very important premise when thinking about the future. After that, I moved to my original PC server department, and after serving as a general manager and general manager, I was appointed as an executive officer, where I remain to this day.

■Providing a wide range of IT infrastructure

HPE handles IT infrastructure, including networks, storage, servers, and related services. These services are used for online services such as online shopping and convenience stores, credit card payments, design and simulation, healthcare, and AI (artificial intelligence). For example, in recent years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, working from home has become the norm, and the importance of network infrastructure has come to the forefront. Nowadays, the number of places where data is generated has exploded, including smartphones, surveillance cameras, and various IoT devices. HPE is focusing on data-first modernization, which involves thinking about infrastructure from the perspective of "where to store the data generated" and "how to utilize that data."

■ Don't get bogged down in success stories, always catch the changes

What makes my job rewarding is that even if I stay at the same company, my responsibilities change completely every five years or so. Each time, I have to start from the starting line, learn, and compete with everyone else, which is both challenging and fun. The content of my work changes, but the fundamental principles of how computers work remain the same, so I think the basics are still important. At the same time, I think it's important not to get bogged down in past successes. I'm motivated by constantly thinking about how we can all work together in a harmonious and fun atmosphere, and by constantly keeping up with change.

■ The ability to connect interests with learning

The people I want to work with are those who say, "I want to work for this company for a long time." When you hear "foreign-owned," you might imagine building your career and constantly changing locations, but I think it's best to find someone who can empathize with the company's philosophy and invest in themselves over the long term. Having studied properly is also an important factor. Although studying at school and work are different, continuing to learn is essential even after entering the workforce, and I think that the ability to persevere and connect interests with learning can be used in the workplace as well.

■Message to university students

Students often ask me, "What should I do in the time between my interview and joining the company?" Since you can only be a student for that long, I answer, "Do the things that only a student can do." It's good to look ahead, but I also want them to make good use of their time now and find something that connects to what they want to do. Once they enter the workforce, many people seem to think, "Studying is so much fun after all," or "I wish I'd studied more." At the same time, I think curiosity wanes as we get older, so I think it's good for students to dig deeper into their interests while they're still students.

Interviewed by Student Newspaper Online on August 9, 2023 by Shiori Ohno, a second-year student at Sophia University Junior College