Fujitsu unveils global cloud offering

Beverley Head
Thursday, 22 April 2010 17:30

Business IT - Technology

Japanese computing giant Fujitsu has outlined its roadmap for global cloud computing – with Australia the first market outside Japan to trial the service.

Infrastructure as a service is the first service offered in Fujitsu’s cloud, with the company also planning to offer applications as a service, activity as a service, and eventually content as a service to round out its cloud based offerings.

Trials of Fujitsu’s standardised global cloud will begin in Japan in May with the service offered there commercially from October. Besides Japan and Australia, the other countries in line to offer Fujitsu’s cloud services are Singapore, US, UK and Germany.

Cameron McNaught, general manager of solutions for Fujitsu in Australia and New Zealand , said that in Japan 29 pilots were already lined up. In Australia he said the company was “talking to a couple of global operations,” but acknowledged that Fujitsu’s cloud platform would not be deployed locally until the end of the year.

It will not be available commercially until the first quarter of 2011.

In Japan the company has also been pulling together vertical market solutions which can be offered as cloud based services – an agriculture focussed cloud service is one of the first cabs off the rank, along with transport and water. Although McNaught would not specify which vertical markets Fujitsu would focus on in Australia he noted “We are strong in the public sector, and want to do a lot around Federal and State Government” suggesting that a g-cloud, or government-cloud, could be a local option.

Financial services were also a vertical market of great interest, he said.