Fujitsu has kicked off Fujitsu Forum, its annual customer and partner event in Munich, Germany, by expanding on its vision for digitalising enterprises, launching a cloud platform called MetaArc to support capabilities around big data, mobility and the internet of things (IoT), and acquired French application delivery software house UShareSoft.
Billed by Fujitsu as a digital enablement platform to help customers thrive in the digital world, MetaArc will encompass the technologies, tools, services and partnerships needed to establish a strategic cloud foundation, whether that is public, private or hybrid, said the supplier.
It will support the delivery of more innovative, line-of-business driven IT projects, referred to by Fujitsu as fast IT, as well as the modernisation of what Fujitsu terms robust IT, meaning on-premise systems that are still core, but increasingly elderly.
Fujitsu senior vice-president and head of managed infrastructure services and digital business platform, global delivery Joel O’Halloran said the MetaArc platform would let customers embrace the delivery of two-speed business transformation – meaning fast IT and robust IT – from “a position of balance”.
“While modernising their core systems, Fujitsu customers can simultaneously leverage the flexibility their business units need, and the visibility, security and cost management responsible organisations require,” he said.
The platform will encompass third-party services alongside Fujitsu’s own cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS)platforms, he added.
The acquisition of UShareSoft, meanwhile, gives Fujitsu capabilities around automating the building, migration and governance of enterprise applications in multi-cloud environments.
Fujitsu will incorporate UShareSoft’s UForge product into MetaArc’s core product, Fujitsu Cloud Service K5, while positioning the business as its cloud services research and development practice in Europe.
Duncan Tait, Fujitsu executive vice-president and head of Europe, the Middle-East, India and Africa, said: “We expect MetaArc to let us take significant market share in private and hybrid IT.”
The supplier will also move a number of its own systems onto the platform over time.
To better support customers moving to digitalise their businesses, Fujitsu announced a major restructuring plan across its European business, which will be complete by the end of March 2016.
Having up to now been structured largely by geography, Fujitsu has created four businesses working across its Europe, the Middle-East, India and Africa organisation. These are products, managed infrastructure, business and application services and enterprise platform services.
According to Tait, as Fujitsu becomes less geographically focused and more line-of-business-focused, its ability to address the $160bn market for IT in Europe’s 100 largest businesses would improve. “Our previous structure made it cumbersome for us to address that,” he said.
