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// engineering mission-critical systems

Engineering systems that never stop.

From low-latency exchange connectivity to business SaaS and applied AI —
a technology company in Osaka, Japan.

ASH Inc. — Osaka, Japan

30+ yrs Systems development
5 Exchange protocols
6 In-house products
1/3 Network renewal cost achieved
01 — About

About

Company
ASH Inc.
Founded
2023
Development HQ
Kita-ku, Osaka
Satellite
Iki Island, Nagasaki
Domains
Finance, SaaS & AI
Experience
30+ years
02 — Services

Services

From contract development to in-house products and consulting — covering mission-critical financial systems, business SaaS and the practical application of AI.

Financial Systems & Exchange Connectivity Development

We build connectivity applications for Japan's major exchanges and trading systems for equities, derivatives and FX. Our team brings 25+ years in financial systems development and 15+ years building exchange connectivity on Nasdaq OMX Technology (OMnet API) and FIX. We also take on contract development well beyond finance, across industries.

Nasdaq OMX API / OMnet API

Application development for exchanges built on Nasdaq OMX Technology: order management, execution management and risk management systems.

order management / execution / risk

ITCH Protocol

Market data feed ingestion and decoding. High-throughput, real-time order book processing.

market data / multicast / high throughput

OUCH Protocol

Low-latency order entry. Microsecond-level optimization of order submission and execution reporting.

order entry / binary / μs-order latency

GLIMPSE Protocol

Snapshot-based recovery and initialization of ITCH feeds. Failure-recovery design.

snapshot / recovery / failover

FIX Protocol

FIX 4.2 / 4.4 / 5.0. Multi-venue connectivity and algorithmic trading infrastructure.

4.2 / 4.4 / 5.0 / multi-venue

In-house Test Infrastructure

We develop and maintain our own matching engine, compliant with major exchange specifications, used as an integration-test environment.

matching engine / in-house
Nasdaq OMX OMnet API ITCH OUCH GLIMPSE FIX Low latency C/C++ Exchange Connectivity
Discuss a development project →

PdM / FDE — Embedded Product Development Support

Going beyond conventional contract work, we embed with your team as Product Manager (PdM) or Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). From defining what to build to hands-on implementation, iteration and operations, we drive your business forward with both engineering depth and an understanding of how your work actually gets done. Backed by 30+ years of systems development and experience managing teams of up to 20, we operate as one team — not as a vendor across the table.

PdM (Product Manager)

The role that defines what to build. Grounded in market, customer and business understanding, we drive product strategy, requirements, prioritization, roadmaps and KPI design — connecting executive intent with engineering reality to maximize business impact with limited resources.

FDE (Forward Deployed Engineer)

An engineer embedded deep in your operations, combining domain understanding with hands-on engineering. FDEs write code while talking to the people doing the work, ship practical solutions fast, and feed field insight back into the product — a role pioneered at companies like Palantir and OpenAI, well suited to untangling tribal knowledge and legacy operations.

What ASH Brings

Our founder has led projects of up to 20 people as PM/PL, with implementation experience spanning finance, core enterprise systems, SaaS and AI. Not "strategy only" or "code only" — we own the full loop from planning through implementation and operations.

Typical PdM engagements

  • You want to launch a new product but have no product manager in-house
  • Requirements are too unsettled to hand off to a contract vendor
  • You need to redraw the improvement roadmap for an existing product

Typical FDE engagements

  • You need to move fast — developing on-site through conversation, without waiting for written specs
  • You want to turn ad-hoc Excel files and manual workflows into systems that follow how the work actually flows
  • You want to run quick POCs and find out, as fast as possible, whether something works in real operations
  • You want to embed AI in your business — including agent harnesses (tool definitions, evals, operations) — but lack in-house specialists
PdM FDE Product strategy Requirements On-site engineering 0→1 launch Domain understanding
Discuss PdM / FDE support →
Featured

Security Assessment

Vulnerability assessment for web applications and network infrastructure. We provide both comprehensive black-box assessments using OWASP ZAP / OpenVAS / Nessus and white-box assessments that review your source code from the inside. Track record includes corporate websites and online trading systems.

OWASP ZAP OpenVAS Nessus White-box Financial-grade experience
Security assessment services

Business SaaS & AI Solutions (Japan market)

We design, build and operate four business SaaS products for the Japanese market — client records, inventory, business documents and health tracking — all PWA, offline-capable and registration-free. We also deliver AI-embedded knowledge systems that capture domain expertise, corporate AI adoption training, and IT consulting covering network design and hardware/software selection, with a track record of cutting renewal costs to one third of the original estimate.

PWA TypeScript AI Knowledge systems AI training IT consulting

Technical Advisory & Website Operations

We serve as an outside technical advisor: taking stock of the systems a company already runs, mapping how data actually moves between them, and putting improvements in priority order. Current engagements include technical advisor to a regional energy trading company (fuel delivery), and running public websites on WordPress and Cloudflare Pages — with ongoing SEO and AI search optimization on the WordPress site.

Technical advisory Workflow mapping SEO / AI SEO WordPress Cloudflare Pages
03 — Track Record

Track Record

30+ years of delivery, leading teams of up to 20 as PM/PL. Client names are withheld under NDA; engagements are described by industry and scale.

Head of Engineering — 30+ years of systems development

Decades as PM/PL across core enterprise systems for major corporations, public-sector systems and financial systems. Led projects of up to 20 people. Worked in English with overseas exchanges and technology vendors. Since founding ASH Inc., has driven planning, development and operations of our in-house products end to end.

FINANCE / EXCHANGE

Connectivity Systems for a Major Japanese Exchange

Context
A trading platform demanding microsecond-order latency and zero-downtime operation, including specification work in English with overseas exchanges and vendors.
Delivered
Designed and implemented connectivity applications for OMnet API / ITCH / OUCH / GLIMPSE / FIX, with integration testing against our in-house matching engine.
Outcome
Long-running development and maintenance of the exchange connectivity stack, including risk management and execution management systems.
5 Protocols supported
MANUFACTURING / ERP

Core Systems for Major Automotive & Electronics Manufacturers

Context
Building and renewing business-critical core systems — budgeting, sales, procurement, bill-of-materials management and employee expense settlement — that cannot afford downtime.
Delivered
Led engagements end to end as PM/PL, from requirements through development and maintenance, across core domains for multiple major manufacturers.
Outcome
Brought core systems in multiple domains to stable operation, on schedule.
20 Largest team managed
INFRASTRUCTURE / CONSULTING

Network Renewal Consulting

Context
The original quote for a network renewal was prohibitively expensive; the challenge was cutting cost without compromising quality.
Delivered
Redesigned the architecture, selected hardware and software, and supported the rollout.
Outcome
Reduced renewal cost to under one third of the original estimate while maintaining quality and availability.
1/3 Of the original cost estimate
TRANSPORT / TELECOM

Express Ticketing for a Major Railway / Sales Support for a Telecom Carrier

Context
High-reliability systems supporting daily rail operations — express ticket issuance and commuter-pass reservations — plus the sales support platform of a major telecom carrier.
Delivered
Design, development and maintenance of business systems, including adjacent domains such as research paper management, data warehousing and authentication.
Outcome
Long-term stable operation across transport and telecom — true social infrastructure.
24/7 Non-stop operation domains
04 — Technology

Technology Stack

From low-latency financial systems to web SaaS — we pick the right technology for each project's requirements.

Languages

C / C++ Java Go Rust Python Ruby TypeScript JavaScript Swift Kotlin Dart C#

Backend

Spring Boot Struts Node.js / Express Ruby on Rails Go net/http

Frontend

React Next.js Backbone.js jQuery PWA

Legacy & Desktop

Visual Basic 6.0 Visual C++ 6.0 VB.NET ASP Classic Access Excel VBA Delphi / Object Pascal COBOL MCOBOL Perl / CGI

Mobile & Cross-Platform

React Native Swift / iOS Kotlin / Android Unity Xamarin Cordova Electron Cocos2d-x

Financial Protocols & Exchange APIs

Nasdaq OMX API OMnet API ITCH OUCH GLIMPSE FIX 4.2 / 4.4 / 5.0

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS GCP Azure CloudFormation Terraform ECS / Fargate Lambda API Gateway Vercel Docker Docker Swarm Kubernetes Proxmox VMware vSphere

Databases

Oracle MySQL PostgreSQL SQL Server SQLite RDS Aurora DynamoDB Supabase IndexedDB PL/SQL PL/pgSQL T-SQL MyBatis Hibernate / JPA

Monitoring & Observability

CloudWatch Datadog Zabbix Prometheus

APIs & Messaging

GraphQL gRPC REST SOAP Kafka RabbitMQ

CI/CD & Build

GitHub Actions Jenkins CodePipeline

Testing & Quality

Selenium Playwright JUnit pytest JMeter Gatling

AI & Data Analytics

OpenAI API Claude API pandas NumPy Tableau QuickSight Power BI

Version Control & Project Management

Git GitHub GitLab SVN CVS Jira Redmine Confluence Notion

Shell, Automation & Configuration Management

Bash / Shell PowerShell AWK / sed cron Ansible Chef Puppet

Data Formats & Documents

XML / XSLT / XSD JSON YAML / TOML CSV / TSV / fixed-length PDF generation Excel reporting

External Integrations

SMTP SendGrid Amazon SES Stripe Slack API Teams API LINE API

Operating Systems & Servers

RHEL CentOS Ubuntu Windows Server macOS Solaris HP-UX AIX

Web Servers & Middleware

Nginx Apache Tomcat JBoss WebLogic HAProxy F5

Network Equipment

Cisco Juniper Fortinet

Storage, Cache & Search

S3 GCS NFS CIFS iSCSI Redis Memcached Elasticsearch

Authentication & Authorization

OAuth 2.0 OpenID Connect SAML Active Directory LDAP Keycloak Auth0 SSL / TLS PKI

Security

Zero Trust WAF / IDS / IPS SIEM Security Hub GuardDuty OWASP Top 10 SAST / DAST
05 — Insights

Insights

Longer-form articles for executives and system owners, on the questions that sit between technology and management.

All articles →

06 — Other Business

Other Business

ASH also operates hospitality and trading businesses in Japan, including a guesthouse on Iki Island, Nagasaki. See the Japanese site for details.

Online Services and Website Operations

Services we plan and run ourselves, plus public websites we operate on behalf of clients.

Today’s Iki (ikijima.com) home screen, showing ferry status, weather and tides at a glance

Today’s Iki (ikijima.com)

A real-time information hub for Iki Island, Nagasaki: ferry and jetfoil status, weather, tides, restaurant opening hours, events, local buses, and on-duty clinics on public holidays — all on one page. The same site also hosts more than 40 browser mini-games drawn from the island’s own places, customs and local specialities — no install, and no login unless you want your score on the leaderboard. Planned, built and operated in-house.

ikijima.com
Illustration of mini apps running inside a smartphone messaging app

Official LINE account (LIFF mini apps)

We publish a range of mini apps (LIFF) that run inside LINE with no installation required. They launch straight from the rich menu, with no app store in between.

Add us on LINE
Illustration of rising search impressions and an AI search answer panel

Website operations, SEO and AI search optimization

We run the official website of an amusement park on a remote island (aquarium and visitor experiences) on WordPress, with ongoing SEO and AI search optimization, and we built and operate the official site of a nationwide fireworks event on Cloudflare Pages.

WordPress / Cloudflare Pages / structured data / page speed

07 — Contact

Contact

The inquiry form is in Japanese, but inquiries in English are welcome — we respond in English.

Company
ASH Inc.
Location
Kita-ku, Osaka, Japan
URL
www.ash.osaka
08 — Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

ASH Inc. ("we") handles personal information obtained through the inquiry form and elsewhere in accordance with the following policy.

Information collected
Name, email address and the content of your inquiry
Purpose of use
Responding to inquiries and communicating about our services
Third-party disclosure
Not disclosed to third parties without your consent, except as required by law
Safeguards
Appropriate measures are taken to prevent unauthorized access and data leakage
Disclosure and deletion
Requests for disclosure, correction or deletion are handled promptly
Contact
Please reach us via the inquiry form on this page