Fujitsu first major global ICT services vendor to launch a UK self-service Cloud offering

Launches with offer of 30-day free trial

London, 16 May 2011 – Fujitsu is adding to its existing and established Cloud portfolio by becoming the first of the major global ICT services vendors to launch a self-service Cloud platform in the UK. Known as ‘Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform’, organisations will be able to take advantage of the most robust and reliable self-service Cloud-based ICT infrastructure (compute, storage, network, test and development) available to organisations today. It offers organisations a globally standardised approach to service – regardless of size of organisation.

The ‘Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform’ is already in live service in Japan, Australia and Singapore and is being rolled out worldwide, hence its name. It hits the two most critical business imperatives head on – it gives companies direct control over managing their Cloud-based infrastructure and protects their business information as data resides in the UK. It offers more resilience than similar offerings on the market as it is the only company to host data in a Tier III certified data centre*; has multiple layers of redundancy to ensure data is not lost to disk failure and has automatic failover servers as standard. The company estimates that an organisation can save up to 40% of its annual IT costs by moving services to the Cloud.

At the heart of this Cloud offering is a self-service portal that allows organisations to retain full control and management but with a massive leap forward in terms of ICT productivity, flexibility and agility. The portal includes its own drag and drop functionality meaning system managers can easily change the configuration of servers, hard disks or load balancers. Equally, applications can be installed or firewall polices changed all from a drop-down menu.

The service is available immediately and businesses can be up and running, controlling and allocating ICT infrastructure in a matter of 30 minutes, chargeable by the hour. Fujitsu is launching with a free 30 day trial and customers can sign up at http://cloud.get-there-sooner.com.

Declan Monaghan, business manager for Cloud computing at Fujitsu UK and Ireland, commented: “The adoption of Cloud technologies is driving a more agile, responsive and innovative approach to ICT. However, we know that organisations moving to the new Cloud model of working need the assurance that they are working with a provider they can trust and one they can work with as their use of applications in the Cloud grows and evolves. As an ICT provider working with some of the UK’s most high profile organisations Fujitsu fits that bill.”

Organisations will not only be able to take advantage of Fujitsu’s 75-year heritage in leading ICT as they move into the new and more agile model of Cloud computing, but will be able to consume the same Cloud services globally should they wish. The same Cloud service will be available anywhere in the world, operating out of the existing similarly configured Cloud centres in Japan, Australia and Singapore, with other regions launching soon. Each will hold data locally in that territory.

This announcement follows on from the launch of Fujitsu’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in November 2009; Global Cloud Strategy in April 2010 and Cloud Consultancy offering in April 2011.

* Fujitsu’s London North data centre is the first and only data centre in Europe to be certified as Tier III by the global authority, The Uptime Institute. In February 2011 it was awarded the Tier III Operational Sustainability Gold Certification for its data centre operation.