Kathy Gibson is at Fujitsu Forum 2018 in Munich – Fujitsu has been very clear that it is building a services-oriented company that prioritises hybrid cloud services to support its customers as they negotiate their digital transformation journeys.
“There can be little doubt that senior business leaders across Europe have digital transformation very much on their minds,” says Duncan Tait, head of EMEIA region at Fujitsu.
“But it is about more than just technology.”
A recent survey of 2 000 senior business leaders shows the Fujitsu has the highest-rated people skills with industry knowledge at 40%, leadership at 39% and creativity at 37%.
“It is refreshing that it is people and creativity that organisations around the world are prioritising,” Tait says
At the same time, senior business leaders are struggling to balance their stakeholders: some prioritise staff, some customers and some society.
What is clear is that GDP is quickly moving from established to new players, with the cloud driving customer expectations and letting them operate at consumer speed.
“More of our customer will take advantage of public cloud, which is why we are committed to lead in hybrid cloud and services that let our customers move to public cloud,” Tait says.
“We have had a long standing relationship with VMware and are building out VMware private clouds.
“We are also building out our relationship with AWS,” Tait adds.
“We are also taking Azure very seriously. In fact Fujitsu is seen as one of the leading cloud integrators. We are one of just seven global cloud integrators for Microsoft.”
Fujitsu has announced that it is accelerating the delivery of Microsoft Azure cloud for organisations with a new global systems integrator partnership
This will enable organisations to seamlessly take the next step in their digital transformation; by shifting mission-critical workloads in hybrid IT estates to a cloud-based one-stop delivery model.
Gartner predicts that the worldwide public cloud services market will show continued strong growth in 2019, having already expanded by an estimated 21% in 2018 to reach a total of $175,8-billion. This underlines that most organisations have already taken the first step towards cloud-based delivery and are now grappling with the challenges of managing sprawling hybrid IT estates, while aspiring to realise the cost and agility advantages of cloud-based systems.
The agreement between Fujitsu and Microsoft enables customers to establish robust foundations for their core systems, leveraging Fujitsu’s deep experience in integrating and managing complex hybrid IT estates, combined with access to Microsoft’s market-leading hyperscale public cloud platform Azure.
The partnership accelerates the delivery of robust, consistent cloud infrastructure and paves the way for next-generation cloud-native applications, based on Azure’s capabilities for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), as well as artificial intelligence (AI), analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Fujitsu has also announced new options for organisations to harmonise workloads between the cloud and on-premises with PrimeFlex for Microsoft Azure Stack.
The provision of Azure-consistent services and features across both cloud and on-premises enables the creation of advanced hybrid solutions that balance both on-premises and cloud in seamless harmony.
The latest addition to the Fujitsu PrimeFlex integrated systems line-up offers cloud-like economics for on-premises systems, with flexible licensing options including consumption-based and capacity-based models. The introduction of PrimeFlex for Microsoft Azure Stack also underlines the new global systems integrator partnership agreement between Fujitsu and Microsoft, which enables organisations to seamlessly take the next step in their digital transformation, providing the ability to shift mission critical workloads to a cloud-based delivery model.
In addition to fast deployment and standard 24/7 support, PrimeFlex for Microsoft Azure Stack is backed by Fujitsu’s consistent one-stop services to provide hybrid IT estates that have become reality for many enterprises today. As a result, organizations can run infrastructures with maximum agility and efficiency and speed up the development of new applications. Optionally, infrastructure operations can be outsourced to Fujitsu via a managed services or hosting agreement.
The solution is tested and delivered on a high-performance and energy-efficient Primergy server platform for Microsoft Hyper-V cluster environments, and delivers powerful virtualisation performance and economical, energy-efficient operation. Fujitsu Software Infrastructure Manager (ISM) simplifies the management of the infrastructure, providing the functionality needed for fail-safe, flexible and automated operation.
Primeflex for Microsoft Azure Stack combines on-premises private cloud with state-of-the-art consumption-based licensing models, allowing harmonized consumption of services. Features include monthly usage-based billing options, allowing Azure services to be integrated into existing license agreements.
Fujitsu can also help customers design licensing solutions in line with budget requirements. Optional backup for on-premises data is available, using an integrated Fujitsu Eternus CS appliance, and Azure can be integrated with other cloud solutions into one consistent, multi-cloud environment via the Fujitsu Enterprise Service Catalog Manager (ESCM).
Olivier Delachapelle, head of data centre category management at Fujitsu EMEIA, says: “Digital transformation is leading to increasingly complex hybrid IT infrastructures, as IT teams try to deliver against the flexibility, security and performance requirements of new applications. We developed PrimeFlex for Microsoft Azure Stack to ensure consistency and fluidity between workloads operating on-premises and in the cloud on Azure.
“This is perfect for organisations that are taking their first steps into the cloud – as well as those that want cloud-like benefits in terms of control, performance, agility and availability – but need to keep selected workloads on-premises due to legislative or latency issues.”
Natalia Mackevicius, GM: Azure Stack at Microsoft, comments: “The introduction of Fujitsu PrimeFlex for Microsoft Azure Stack helps underline Azure as the preferred choice for enterprises needing hybrid IT solutions. We’re pleased to work with Fujitsu to enable new hybrid cloud scenarios and applications for our joint customers.”