Kathy Gibson is at Fujitsu Day in Johannesburg – Fujitsu is the fifth-largest IT vendor in the world and is gaining traction in the local market.
“In South Africa you have a very vibrant IT market which is an early adopter of technology,” says Juan Porcar, vice-president and head of EERA at Fujitsu.
This is reflected in the figures, he adds: the local office has shown considerable growth.
Porcar stresses that new innovations and digital transformation is important, but there is still a need to maintain and improve legacy systems.
“In your country, the technologies relate to digitalisation, but also the need for tools that move into the private cloud and those that support legacy applications has moved very fast.”
This efficiency will help to pull IT and the economy forward, he adds.
Porcar cites trends that he believes will be important for future business.
“The first is co-creation, where Fujitsu brings people of different expertise on to the same project to co-create solutions that include the best for the business, the best technology and the best economic set-up.
“This co-creation has accelerated the adoption of new technologies,” Porcar adds.
In the data centre this includes virtualisation and extending the data centre. “It has also driven the need for integrated systems, and South Africa is leading in this respect.”
Integrated technologies are beneficial in terms of skills adoption, training and maintenance, he points out. “It’s no wonder integrated systems are being adopted by organisations of all types.”
He adds that storage systems and big storage set-ups have been adopted in South Africa. “This is necessary if you are going to pull forward into digital transformation, since it’s the data that is important.”