For the head of Fujitsu America, Tony Doyle, there is nothing merely evolutionary about the onset of cloud computing. During a chat this week from corporate offices in Jamaica, Doyle claimed that clouds present a “revolutionary IT solution” that he expects will forever alter the course of global business.
Fujitsu, which by the way just reclaimed its interest in high performance computing not long ago, is investing heavily in the cloud computing “revolution” through new partnerships and cloud computing data center locations. This declaration comes almost exactly one year after they officially laid out their cloud strategy and brought their own variation on private cloud to bear shortly after.
Unlike some other major vendors in the cloud-plus-hardware space, Fujitsu’s focus seems almost entirely on enterprise cloud computing. Interviews with company officials indicate that their main cloud goals are to build data centers to host enterprise applications versus general web services or simple, no-frills IaaS. In short, their angle is that if they can demonstrate that they not only have the hosting piece solved but also have a vast range of partners (including Microsoft) to deliver enterprise-geared services, they can edge in with users who feel the more free-form IaaS isn’t enough.
As Doyle stated, “we are allowing customers to choose from private products they manage themselves all the way up to managed services offsite…whether you are in financial services where there is a strong leaning towards having your own cloud in terms of security or otherwise, our clients can have it all at our data center and we manage it remotely.”
Fujitsu’s enterprise emphasis is on making their cloud computing resources retain the feel of a private cloud by centering as much control as possible to the user. Some could argue whether or not there is any more control between one provider or another at this point if you’re still in a multitenant environment, but the company is offering data isolation to ensure an in here as well for some of its Australian and other customers.
Doyle noted that Fujitsu has “deployed in all the major regions of the world one standard operating environment which is consistent with a Fujitsu-based cloud…we start by selling infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service, etc…for smaller enterprises it’s a good way to get going with low capital cost” while he says that for the bigger customers it a way of doing R&D cost effectively.”