MENUBy Charles Schnake, VP of Revenue, Tecplot Inc.
Our mission to empower engineers worldwide is taking a major step forward. Tecplot is establishing a direct presence in Japan.
This is an important step forward for our company and for the many engineers and researchers in Japan who rely on Tecplot 360, Focus, and FieldView. After many years of working through trusted distributors, we are now building a local sales and support team of our own. We are grateful for what has come before, and we are excited about what this change enables us to do next.
Japan is already Tecplot’s third largest market by revenue, and it continues to be a center of innovation in simulation and engineering. Our goal now is to move even closer: to build stronger partnerships, provide more responsive support, and ensure that our development roadmap continues to reflect the real-world needs of our users in Japan.
Visualization courtesy of the University of Electro-Communications, Japan. Flow field near the intake of a JAXA-designed reusable combined-cycle engineequipped rocket. This figure clearly illustrates the engine’s non-starting condition, revealing that flow separation occurs in front of the intake, preventing uniform flow from entering.
A Change Rooted in Trust and Continuity
Tecplot has a long history in Japan, and that success has been built with the help of our longstanding partners, Hulinks Inc. and VINAS Co., Ltd. Their teams have supported our users well for many years, and we remain deeply appreciative of their contributions.
Beginning July 1st, 2025, Tecplot 360 and Focus customers in Japan can now work directly with our in-house team. FieldView will follow on October 1st, 2025. As part of this transition, we are increasing our Japanese-language support, updating our website to serve local audiences, and taking a more active role in how we engage with our users in Japan.
For customers who have questions about how this transition will affect their licensing, support, or purchasing process, we’ve prepared a Frequently Asked Questions page in Japanese. It includes key dates, product details, and guidance on where to direct your inquiries.
This is not a short-term campaign or a handover. It is a long-term commitment built on a foundation of partnership, reliability, and care.
Teaming Up with Leaders in Engineering
Japan has long been a global leader in computational fluid dynamics and simulation. Whether in government research, commercial industry, or academia, we see our tools being used by some of the most advanced practitioners in the world.
Government organizations such as JAXA, which develops solvers like FASTAR, and the National Maritime Research Institute, known for its work in maritime and multiphase flows, have contributed significantly to the global CFD landscape. These institutions have created high-quality, widely adopted solvers. Many of these produce results that are fully compatible with Tecplot’s visualization and analysis tools.
With our direct presence in Japan, we expect these collaborations to grow even stronger. Closer technical engagement means faster feedback loops, smoother workflows, and deeper integration between our tools and the solvers trusted across Japan’s engineering landscape.
Visualization courtesy of the Osaka Metropolitan University 2025. This is the visualization result of the flow field of a flat plate with a single semi-cylindrical protuberance installed, indicating that the installation of a protuberance generates separation vortices.
Across industries including aerospace, marine, energy, automotive, and electronics, Japanese engineers are solving large, complex problems with precision and care. Tecplot’s tools help these teams visualize their results clearly, analyze performance, and communicate findings with confidence.
We’re also proud to support Japan’s academic community. Leading universities such as The University of Tokyo, Kyoto University, Tohoku University, Osaka University, and Tokyo Institute of Technology have produced generations of researchers whose work is globally recognized. There are also many more institutions across Japan where Tecplot products are used in classrooms and labs, training the next wave of CFD professionals and driving forward the state of the art.
Learning from Our Users
One of the most meaningful outcomes of this transition is the opportunity to listen more directly to our users.
By having conversations in the same language, and with fewer steps between the people using our software and the people developing it, we can make smarter decisions about where to focus next. Feedback from Japan will inform not just technical support but also future product direction.
In fact, we’re already putting that philosophy into action. Our upcoming releases include a new Vulkan-based rendering engine, delivering significantly faster performance in large, unsteady datasets. This is a critical need for many high-fidelity simulations. We’re also preparing to release Tecplot 360 MB, which introduces a new data architecture to better handle massive simulation results. Both are major leaps forward in usability and performance, and they are directly influenced by the kinds of workflows we see in advanced R&D environments like those in Japan.
A Local Team, Connected Globally
We are pleased to welcome Daisuke Sakata as our Director of Sales – Japan. With nearly ten years at MSC Software and deep experience in the CAE market, Daisuke is a thoughtful leader who brings both industry knowledge and a strong customer focus.
He will be joined by Japanese-speaking technical staff over the summer, with the full team in place to support both current and future users. This team will work closely with our development and product teams in North America and will be supported by visits from senior Tecplot staff across our global offices.
These visits are not ceremonial. They are part of an ongoing effort to build relationships, share ideas, and ensure that we remain closely aligned with the needs of our customers in Japan.
The Tecplot Team at the latest AIAA Aviation Forum in Las Vegas, Nevada. From left to right: Jared McGarry, Scott Fowler, Charles Schnake, Daisuke Sakata, and Yves-Marie Lefebvre.
Looking Ahead
This transition reflects the way we want to do business: with care, with respect, and with a long-term perspective. We are excited to begin this next chapter of our work in Japan, and we are committed to making it a success.
To all of our customers in Japan, both longstanding and new, thank you. We look forward to building an even stronger partnership in the years to come.
If you’re a customer in Japan and have questions or would like to speak with our team, we’re ready to help. For technical support, please contact us at support-jp@tecplot.com. For sales or general inquiries, reach out at sales-jp@tecplot.com.