Kathy Gibson at Fujitsu World Tour, Bryanston — Fujitsu made a decision to increase the focus on its South African operation just two years ago, and the investment it made then is showing results.
Juan Porcar, vice-president and head of Eastern Europe, Russia & CIS and Africa, explains that the local operation was increased in size, new management came on board, and a new focus was put on equipping the sales team to take the co-creation message to market.
“We are now seeing the results of those interventions,” he says. The news that Fujitsu is involved in well over 800 installations in South Africa bears testimony to this.
Part of the new approach to the local market is engagement with more partners than ever before, Porcar adds. “We work with many more systems integrators than we did just two years ago.”
Geographical expansion has also increased Fujitsu’s footprint in South Africa, with the company growing its Cape Town office and setting up a new operation in Port Elizabeth.
“So we have invested in a number of areas: geographically, in our operations, in our partners and in new accounts,” Porcar says.
Within the South African market, Fujitsu’s focus has been on the data centre, and helping customers to deploy data centre solutions.
Porcar explains that a number of customers still run quite old legacy systems and are simply not able to stay efficient and competitive.
Consolidation can help them to reduce their data centre real estate while improving performance and cutting costs substantially.
These cost-savings relate not only to physical hardware, he adds, but extend to power consumption and even software licences.
Because Fujitsu takes a co-creation approach to customer deployments, it helps to identify pain points — and their solutions; and shows customers all the ways they can save costs while improving their data centre outcomes.
“Because we understand all the elements of the data centre infrastructure, we are able to help customers on all fronts,” Porcar says. “We are going to market in South Africa with a very simple message: we can work with you to improve your data centre performance and achieve the best possible total cost of ownership.
“Co-creation is not just about bringing in the infrastructure you need to run the data centre; it’s about moving the business to digital transformation.”
Customers and partners have shown their appreciation for this message, he adds.
Security is another focus that Fujisu is bringing to the local market. This is always an issue, and constantly top of mind for the CIO.
“But security means different things to different customers,” says Porcar. “The doors to a breach can be in many different places — in the business, with the end users or in the broader ecosystem.”
Fujitsu is able to help companies identify their security threats, monitor them, and provide solutions that address the individual organisations’ specific needs.
With PalmSecure, Porcar explains how companies can not only protect their employees and ecosystem partners, but also drive accountability for security issues to the end user as well.
Fujitsu’s South African operation is its springboard into the rest of Africa, he adds. The local office is well-staffed with highly-skilled people and, along with partners, is able to bring the co-creation message to the rest of the continent.
