Fujitsu, Microsoft team up for Azure appliance

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 13 July 2010 10:42

IT Industry - Strategy

A partnership between Microsoft and Fujitsu will see the latter deploy the Windows Azure platform appliance in its data centres.

Rollout of the Windows Azure appliance in Fujitsu data centres will begin this year at the Fujitsu Tatebayashi System Center. It will spread to the company's other data centres in Japan, and then to those in other geographies.

Fujitsu intends to offer a range of services and solutions around the appliance, including system integration and managed services, and will also run its own applications on the appliance.

"Fujitsu is excited by the opportunity this relationship presents for our customers and will look to take advantage of this worldwide cloud computing engagement with Microsoft," said Rod Vawdrey, CEO of Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.

"Locally, our more than 600 Microsoft specialists will work with our customers, independent software vendors and Microsoft to ensure we have a solid understanding of our market requirements. We will promote the new cloud services and solutions, such as system integration, cloud migration and managed services, to our customers and independent software vendors utilising the Azure platform in both Fujitsu and Microsoft data centres locally and globally," he added.

According to Fujitsu officials, the appliance will support infrastructure as a service, applications as a service, and activity as a service. The latter is the company's term for business services specified in business rather than technology terms.

CONTINUED