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| Fujitsu eyes professional services, virtualisation | | Print | |
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With virtualisation technology going mainstream and as organisations view the technology as the ideal way to consolidate existing, server, desktop, business applications and network infrastructure, enterprises in the Middle East region are turning their attention to three key issues as they adopt virtualisation technologies. The three key areas are: system performance, guaranteed headroom for growth, and resilience. For Fujitsu Technology Solutions, the virtualisation push and focus in the Middle East region stems from the fact that enterprise organisations in this region are looking at investing into technologies that take out redundancies in their IT systems and infrastructure.
Although the company is still transitioning after Fujitsu Siemens Computers became a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited and had its name changed, the vendor has stated that it remains focused on providing solutions in the mobile phone arena, notebooks and desktops, and enterprise products and services.
Top of the agenda in the Middle East region, is Fujitsu Technology Solutions’ quest to develop a full-fledge IT professional services offering that will provide support for both channel partners and enterprise customers. In addition, the company is also aiding enterprises to become more solutions focused. Another area of focus is the vendor’s enterprise infrastructure products which forms the core of its offerings in the region.
What business proposition does Fujitsu Technology Solutions have up its sleeves? How will the vendor rollout the IT professional services? Will it offer generic IT professional services or specific services around its Fujitsu Technology Solutions platform?
Professional services
Chandan Mehta, Product Manager at Fujitsu Technology Solutions Middle East, says as the demand to provide professional services for enterprise organisations in the region continues to grow, the company’s approach has been to offer such services that they include IT infrastructure as a service. “The market is slowly maturing and we are seeing the services business in the Middle East developing over time,” he says.
Mehta says the company’s approach to developing the services business is to provide specific services that support installed Fujitsu environments. To this end, he says, the company is forming alliances with ISVs who will receive training and certification. “This is vital if they are to provide support services to enterprise clients they sell bundled solutions to,” he says.
According to Mehta, Fujitsu is also engaging directly with its enterprise partners helping them with skills advancement initiatives and required certifications that will enable them to provide support services for enterprises. “We are cautious of the fact that we would like CIOs in the region to see the Fujitsu value proposition from the services we are developing,” he notes.
He says that IT professional services in the Middle East region are still in the infancy stage but will develop over time as vendor offerings in this regard continue to mature with enterprises widely using these services.
Virtualisation technology
Although virtualisation technology has garnered so much momentum in the last 12 to 18 months with most vendors touting their own offering, Mehta is of the view that the technology has been around for some time. “Our focus on virtualisation technology has concentrated mainly on the inter architecture side of the technology,” he says. “We are approaching this market space by filling the addressable gap that our offerings can fill.”
Mehta says the wide acceptance of virtualisation technologies in the Middle East shows that enterprises are seeing the benefits that come with virtualising their IT system environments.
Mehta says what has changed now is the fact that virtualisation technology has become widely accepted and many organisations in the region are seeing the rewards of managing a virtual IT infrastructure.
Against this backdrop, Fujitsu Technology Solutions has through its Primergy server offerings been optimising support for VMware’s recently released vSphere4 server virtualisation technology on its Primergy rack and blade servers.
The vendor states that all current-generation Primergy server models are tuned to deliver best results in performance, efficiency and reliability for VMware’s new virtualised computing platform, providing a solid foundation for data centre consolidation projects.
Primergy BX900
Through its Primergy BX900 blade server system offering, Fujitsu has built this array on four guiding principles. The first is a dynamic new power and cooling concept to reduce energy costs. The second according to the vendor is to achieve improvements in operational performance, through dynamic virtualisation. The third principle of the BX900 concept is to deliver unmatched uptime, via dynamic high availability.
And finally, says the vendor a guaranteed investment protection is accomplished through the fourth principle, new system architecture offering dynamic scalability.
Mehta says these four guiding principles of the Primergy BX900 have been designed to ensure that it meets the needs of data centre operations where achieving cost savings and increasing IT systems’ agility are immediate concerns for CIOs. “This is the case with almost every data centre in the Middle East region,” he says.
According to Fujitsu, the Primergy BX900 is a complete dynamic server infrastructure in a single blade cube. By using the BX900, enterprises can adapt dynamically to different IT usage scenarios, increasing the agility of IT infrastructures while reducing costs in their IT environment.
Mehta adds that the unplanned shutdown of a single physical server can have a domino effect in a virtualised system environment. He says before awarding certification to VMware’s vSphere 4, Fujitsu wanted to confirm its full compatibility with its ServerView Management suite. “Consequently, customers who base their virtualisation scenerios on vSphere4 on Primergy servers can be assured of an optimised solution,” he says.
Green initiatives
Fujitsu is taking a green activities within the organisation serious. Mehta says this includes minimising environmental-impact in the areas of industrial pollution and consumption of natural resources in its own businesses, and the creation of strategies and products that shrink energy use in customer data centres and offices.
However, Mehta points out that most enterprise organisations in the region have not been sensitised enough to green initiatives. “Power efficiencies are still taken for granted as many government departments, that are the main IT spenders are still taking power issues for granted,” he says.
On the contrary, in Europe and north Africa the scenario is a different one as power is really an issue hence enterprises have put green IT at the forefront of their IT decision making.
Mehta says choosing low environmental-impact products means improved environmental sustainability contributions. “Fujitsu has stipulated strict product standards, referred to as ‘Green Environmental Product Regulations’, to support customers in reducing their energy use and in saving space in their data centres,” he says. These standards allow organisations to find the right products and also the best match to their Green IT requirements.
He says Fujitsu recommends SparcEnterprise range as these products have a low environmental impact product. “By moving server platforms to Sparc Enterprise, organisations will enhance their IT environmental performance.
In addition, Mehta points out that consolidating older servers into one new Sparc Enterprise server will allow organisation to further reduce power consumption and space requirements.
Given the importance Fujitsu attaches to green computing initiatives and its push in the virtualisation and professional services space, Middle East enterprise organisations are waiting to see how all these initiatives will be executed. The success upon which the vendor delivers these initiatives will be the yard stick upon which it will be adjudicated. Share/ Bookmark: 
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