Fujitsu offers an extensive range of solutions including a cloud platform that helps organisations looking to deploy more digital services. Farid Al-Sabbagh, VP & Managing Director at Fujitsu Middle East, discusses details

Discuss the cloud solutions portfolio of Fujitsu? Is that a growing focus in the region?

Cloud offers obvious agility, speed and cost efficiency advantages and has grown from an emerging trend to becoming part of the standard IT services delivery model for many organizations today. Fujitsu’s sees cloud as having a key role in underpinning our vision of a Human-Centric Intelligent Society, one where social and business innovation is driven by the intelligent use of information and communication technology. Fujitsu has extensive Cloud portfolio covering all Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud customer requirements. An example would be PrimeFlex for VShape mainly for customers looking to have their cloud running on VMWare stack. For those who prefer to run their environment based on open source, Fujitsu works with them on our offering, PrimeFlex for Openstack. Both these solutions can be deployed as an integrated infrastructure package on customer premises. For customers looking for hybrid/public cloud we have Fujitsu hybrid IT K5 Cloud platform deployed across several regions. This highly flexible cloud service includes network, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS). K5 enables you to modernize, innovate, extend and interoperate. It lets you build, test and deploy new digital services more easily than other approaches.

Fujitsu’s Cloud is the foundation of our digital services, delivered in a range of styles to meet customers’ needs for security, data regulation and business agility and it’s definitely a growing focus in the region. In the Middle East, cloud is picking up and we have seen many customers who are ready to adopt it. Fujitsu ME has already deployed Public cloud in partnership with one of the system integrators and seen multiple entities utilizing it successfully.

You have a comprehensive Big Data portfolio- elaborate on key elements in the portfolio?

Big Data is a great opportunity for organizations. Establishing the right infrastructure able to keep processing time constant while volumes are increasing, is a challenge which should not be underestimated. Fujitsu has advanced solutions, where organizations can get optimized Big Data infrastructure solutions including hardware, software and services – all from a single source.

FUJITSU Big Data portfolio is a powerful and scalable offering that provides business users with a more cost-effective way of creating actionable analytics from big data. Our portfolio consists of ‘PrimeFlex for SAP HANA’ and ‘PrimeFlex for Hadoop’.

PRIMEFLEX for Hadoop is provided as a ready-to-run Integrated System as well as a Reference Architecture for flexible deployment, and enables business users to tap hidden information from huge amounts of data. In addition, strategic big data consulting, analytics consulting, consulting for Hadoop, and integration and maintenance services supplement the offering. In Short, PRIMEFLEX for Hadoop analyses large volumes of data, extracting meaningful business-relevant information, combining the convenience of pre-configured and pre-tested hardware with the economic advantages of open source software.

Fujitsu PRIMEFLEX for SAP offerings help to accelerate the SAP transformation process by augmenting internal resources and delivering a robust, agile infrastructure which supports business growth and innovation. PRIMEFLEX for SAP HANA is backed by 40 years of experience in delivering fast, secure, high availability implementations with optimized Total Cost of Ownership, successfully reducing complexity. Our SAP knowledge and expertise has helped our customers to transform their SAP environments in a smarter, faster fashion, with proven cost reduction by up to 90% and increased enterprise agility by up to 50%. The result is a modernized IT environment centered on delivering business impact.

Has Big data deployments been a growing business in the region for Fujitsu and its partners?

Yes, we have seen tremendous growth specifically in SAP HANA solutions and this will remain one of the major focus area for Fujitsu ME with our partner eco system showing great interest in this area. As a matter of fact, Fujitsu is the largest provider of SAP HANA deployments in the Middle East.

Discuss if support and solutions for SAP and Oracle customers is also a significant area of focus for Fujitsu?
As one of the world’s largest IT services providers, and as global partners at the highest tier to both Oracle and SAP, this is definitely a significant area of focus for us. Case in point – Fujitsu has over than 3,500 Oracle specialists and has exhibited its deep knowledge of Oracle by achieving Specialization in more than 32 Oracle technologies and this number is increasing. Similarly, we have SAP deployments across the globe with more than 2500 specialists. We constantly keep abreast of latest technologies on offer, and have achieved successful certification and completion of various SAP projects including latest products.

We go beyond offering basic support and solutions and also help and advise customers entirely from an Enterprise Applications perspective.

Comment on the integrator partner strategy/focus for Fujitsu?
Fujitsu globally delivers an integrated portfolio of products, services and solutions that enable customers to innovate and achieve growth in a Human Centric Intelligent Society. To address each customer’s individual needs, Fujitsu uniquely combines the ability to deliver with deep technical expertise, significant global reach and the rare ability to orchestrate best-in-class offerings from one of the most comprehensive partner ecosystems. We work collaboratively with the world’s leading IT companies to develop products, services and solutions and enable customers to optimize their IT infrastructure investments, while transforming or modernizing their business. By integrating the innovative expertise of our partners, Fujitsu is able to help its customers turn technology into a competitive advantage.

As for the Middle East, except for a few global and extremely complex integration projects, most of our Datacenter Products are sold through a set of Select Expert direct partners, as well as through selected resellers.
We also constantly invest in training, joint market development plans and support for our partners.

You have recently opened an office in Qatar- what would be its focus?
Fujitsu has seen a huge demand for their IT infrastructure and ERP application services within the country. Smart city plans, which include smart security and surveillance, environmental management, and disaster management solutions are integral to the development of Qatar as a modern, forward-thinking country. Combined with the country’s far-reaching plans for urbanisation, harnessing of big data, developing the necessary ICT infrastructure, etc prominent clients such as Qatar Petroleum, Oryx GTI, Nakilat, Qatari Diar and Hassad Food, among others will look to benefit from Fujitsu’s new office.

The new office will also help us to work closely with our partners and large enterprise customers and offer them support whenever needed.

Are there any plans to open more offices in the GCC?
The number of cities getting smarter in the GCC is faster than anywhere else around the world which definitely calls for being closer to our customers. Hence, yes, we will be opening offices in other GCC countries as a part of our growth and investment plans for the region.

Discuss key verticals that are showing growth in region from Fujitsu’s perspective?
While Education and Healthcare verticals are consistently charting growth across all the countries, we also find a vibrant private sector and investments in the UAE across other verticals as well.