Daily Post August 19 2025

Duplicated Chat Services in Japan

In Japan, many organizations from global corporations to small and medium enterprises have fully embraced digital chat and conferencing platforms to keep employees connected. Yet a troubling trend has taken root here, and that is the duplication of communication services. A company might subscribe to Microsoft 365 for Teams, deploy LINE WORKS for group chats, and use Zoom for video conferencing, all simultaneously. What may look like flexibility on the surface really translates into spiraling costs, unnecessary complexity, and compromised data security.

This phenomenon is not just about inefficiency, but a deeper cultural reliance on convenience and familiarity rather than accountability and ownership. When looking at the financial waste, the vulnerabilities of proprietary Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), and the potential of open source alternatives such as Matrix or Jitsi, it becomes clear that Japanese businesses really shoul rethink their communication strategies.

The Financial Waste of Duplicated Systems

At first glance, subscribing to multiple communication tools may appear to be an investment in productivity. Teams has tight integration with other Microsoft 365 tools, LINE WORKS reflects domestic habits by mirroring the LINE messaging app familiar to Japanese society, and Zoom has become synonymous with online meetings. Each service, however, comes with its own recurring subscription fees, usage policies, licenses, and administrative overhead.

For large firms, these costs accumulate into large expenditures. Consider a multinational company with thousands of employees in Japan. They purchase Microsoft 365 enterprise licenses, granting access to Teams. Yet certain departments resist Teams due to habits or the learning curve and push management to adopt LINE WORKS, arguing that it “feels more natural” for staff engagement. Soon after, executives insist that official client-facing meetings should remain on Zoom, claiming brand perception and ease of use. The result is three separate services being paid for, each overlapping in its core functionalities.

This is not a matter of choice dictated by productivity needs, but largely repetition of tools that already exist within the enterprise ecosystem. A single decision to streamline would not only reduce redundant fees but also cut down operational confusion. Yet inertia, employee preference, and the pursuit of simplicity for the short term lead companies to bleed money unnecessarily. In many cases, the annual waste can run into millions of yen. That financial leakage could otherwise be reinvested into innovation, local talent development, or customer-centric improvements.

The Security Illusion of SaaS-Based Communication

Proprietary SaaS communication tools such as Teams, LINE WORKS, and Zoom come with glossy marketing promises of enterprise-grade security. Encryption, compliance measures, and elaborate privacy statements are touted as assurances to users. However, true ownership and accountability are weak when the service provider retains ultimate control. Data housed on foreign servers or controlled by third-party providers is never truly in the hands of the company generating it.

In practice, this means that sensitive discussions, customer records, and strategic documents exchanged through these platforms are technically accessible by employees of the service provider, or by government requests issued in the jurisdictions where the servers operate. Even premium subscriptions with supposed “enhanced privacy” do not eliminate this fundamental concern. The organization renting the service remains at the mercy of corporate policies and external entities beyond their control.

Moreover, the reliance on external SaaS solutions creates systemic vulnerabilities. Service outages at a global level, sudden changes in pricing models, policy updates, or even data shocks such as breaches expose companies without recourse. Japanese companies, while prizing efficiency and stability, seem to overlook this issue in favor of convenience. But the actual situation is alarming: internal data that should be sovereign to the firm is effectively outsourced to another company’s infrastructure.