Fujitsu number three on Top Green-IT Organizations list
On April 20, Fujitsu announced that IDG's Computerworld, the "Voice of IT Management," had selected it as one of the top Green-IT Organizations for 2009 for the second consecutive year. Fujitsu was number five on the 2008 ranking. This honor is part of the IT media outlet's annual Top Green-IT Organizations feature, which was published in the April 20 issue of Computerworld and online at www.computerworld.com. Fujitsu was selected based on its approach to meeting environmental challenges.
Among the highlights of the Fujitsu green program, Computerworld noted the following:
• Fujitsu establishes mid-range environmental action programs in its Green Policy Innovation program to provide concrete objectives for implementing environmental policies. Fujitsu is on track to achieve a cumulative reduction of more than 7 million tons of CO2 from fiscal 2007 through fiscal 2010.
• By the end of fiscal 2009, all Fujitsu business units will increase the number of Super Green Products (those with the most advanced environmental-friendly characteristics) by at least 20 percent.
• Through its Product Recycling Program, Fujitsu offers customers a used IT product take-back service. More than 40% of Fujitsu customers currently use the service, which covers a wide variety of products.
• Fujitsu recently introduced a nationwide paper recycling system in Japan to process ordinary and confidential wastepaper disposed of by offices of Fujitsu Group companies in Japan.
• Fujitsu is a SmartWay(SM) Transport Partner, a voluntary collaboration between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and organizations committed to significantly reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution in their freight operations.
• Fujitsu was the first company in Silicon Valley to install a hydrogen fuel cell.
• Fujitsu is a member of the Business and Biodiversity Initiative. In joining the initiative, Fujitsu will further promote the conservation of biodiversity and the sustainable use of natural resources.
• Fujitsu holds worldwide compliance with ISO 14001 certification, an integrated environmental management system.
For more information about the dedication to the environment that Fujitsu demonstrates every day, be sure to visit the related news page.
First global PRIMERGY system released under Fujitsu brand name
On May 12, Fujitsu America introduced the Fujitsu PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Server as part of the first global release of a PRIMERGY server under the Fujitsu brand name.
The BX900 Blade Server employs the versatile, highly-reliable BX920 server blades that provide high performance and maximum redundancy with minimum rack space, power consumption and cabling effort required.
The blade server market is forecast to be the biggest growing server market for the near future. To address that market, the PRIMERGY BX900 offers the maximum number of blades, maximum networking power, high memory density and the best power efficiency rates.
PRIMERGY BX Blade Servers are the perfect choice for data center solutions in which the key demands are reliable and innovative platforms for performance and connectivity. The PRIMERGY BX series is designed for a broad range of application areas, from Web server or terminal server farms with lower performance demands all the way to high performance database or application server configurations. As your business changes, PRIMERGY Blade Servers can easily grow in order to match your new requirements.
PRIMERGY BX920 Server Blades are the workhorses in the PRIMERGY BX900 Blade Server system. They contain highly reliable motherboards with high performance rates as well as energy-efficient processors, main memory modules and onboard network controllers. The server blades may also optionally be equipped with local hard disk drives and additional mezzanine cards as prerequisites for enhanced external connectivity.
To learn more about the BX900 line, visit the PRIMERGY BX900 web page.
To view a webinar about the new blade server, click on this link to register today.
Fujitsu Named a Strong Performer in Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing
Fujitsu was among the select companies that Forrester Research invited to participate in its April 6, 2009, report "The Forrester Wave(TM): Global IT Infrastructure Outsourcing, Q1 2009." In this evaluation, Fujitsu was selected as a strong performer in global IT infrastructure outsourcing.
The Forrester team, led by Principal Analyst Paul Roehrig, Ph.D., evaluated each leading global IT infrastructure outsourcing service provider against 31 criteria and compared that evaluation against other global vendors. According to the report, "Fujitsu demonstrated a good balance of current offering capabilities and strategy to land in the Strong Performer category."
Fujitsu also received top scores for the following criteria:
• Client feedback on account management
• Infrastructure services client base
• Total employees
Jack Noble, executive vice president, IT Services Group at Fujitsu America, says the company is building upon the major pieces of IT infrastructure capability that make Fujitsu America a full-spectrum IT solutions provider. The initiative will fuel growth in North America and support globalization.
"Only the strongest global firms with demonstrable track records for success in IT infrastructure outsourcing were included in this report," said Noble. "This is a great achievement for Fujitsu, but we will not rest on our laurels. Our company has long delivered premium IT infrastructure solutions and services to clients worldwide, and the new Fujitsu America will continue this commitment through enhanced offerings and initiatives for companies across North America."
To view the complete press release, please visit this link.
Fujitsu Reports Fiscal 2008 Financial Results
On April 30, Fujitsu Limited reported consolidated operating income of 68.7 billion yen (US$702 million*) for fiscal 2008 (April 1, 2008 – March 31, 2009), surpassing its target as a result of a 4.7% increase in Technology Solutions income.
Net sales for fiscal 2008 were 4,692.9 billion yen (US$47,888 million), a decrease of 12% compared to fiscal 2007. Excluding the impact of yen appreciation, net sales declined by 6%. As a result of business reform expenses and impairment losses, the company posted a net loss of 112.3 billion yen (US$1,147 million).
Consolidated operating income in the Technology Solutions segment was 188.7 billion yen, an 8.5 billion yen increase over fiscal 2007. The increase was largely due to higher sales of systems integration services and router equipment to telecom carriers in Japan, along with an expansion of the services business in Europe.
"We ended the fiscal year with strong performance in our IT services and platforms business, thanks to the ability of Fujitsu employees to respond to customers’ changing needs and deliver solutions that improve their competitiveness during these challenging times," said Kuniaki Nozoe, president of Fujitsu.
For more detailed information about Fujitsu’s better–than-expected performance, check out the press release.
Fujitsu Launches Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews™ to Increase Sales
Bazaarvoice, the market and technology leader in hosted social commerce applications that drive sales, has announced that Fujitsu has launched the Bazaarvoice social commerce platform with Ratings & Reviews™ at www.shopfujitsu.com. Now consumers and business professionals can easily access authentic and credible opinions of their peers as they research Fujitsu LifeBook® notebook and Stylistic® tablet PC purchases, allowing them to make the smartest decisions about the mobile computer that best fits their needs. By offering this valuable content directly on its eCommerce site, Fujitsu improves the shopping experience while also increasing site traffic and search engine rankings, and decreasing product returns and customer service calls.
Fujitsu, which added Ratings & Reviews in February of 2009 is also analyzing review content to identify areas of improvement for its products and services and feeding review data to the teams directly responsible for solution development. The company also plans to place this user-generated content at the center of its advertising and marketing initiatives this spring and beyond.
“Fujitsu strives to be a valued and trusted partner, and Bazaarvoice’s social commerce solution provides a valuable tool for gaining first-hand customer feedback,” said Paul Moore, senior director of mobile product management, Fujitsu America. “With Ratings & Reviews, Fujitsu customers have an easy way to share their opinions and ultimately make better decisions about their purchases - both online and offline.”
For more about the new alliance, click this press release link.
New FTSJ edition focuses on human-centered design
The recently-issued Special Volume 2009-4 of the Fujitsu Scientific & Technical Journal (FTSJ) introduces the current state of human-centered design (HCD) in Japan and other countries and describes how HCD is progressing throughout the Fujitsu Group in many areas. This special issue describes processes and organizational restructuring to promote HCD, the development of HCD-related guidelines and tools, and product case studies in Fujitsu.
The opening paragraph of the article entitled “Fujitsu’s Activities for Human-Centered Design states: “Information technology (IT) has become an indispensable part of our lives from work to everyday living. It has also become extremely complex as it attempts to support a variety of objectives at the same time. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly important that IT systems, as an indispensable element of modern society, be designed so that a wide variety of people can use them with ease. To provide customers with quality IT systems on an ongoing basis under such conditions, attention must be focused on the people that use these systems.”
Some of the articles contained within this issue include:
• Human-Centered Design Approach for Middleware (PDF)
• Human-Centered Business Process Management (PDF)
• Proposal for Service-Oriented Design Processes (PDF)
• Human-Centered Design in Medical Fields (PDF)
• Activities for Improving Web Accessibility (PDF)
To access the latest edition of the FTSJ, go to the journal’s website.
SAN Solution Heals Aging Infrastructure Woes at Hospice of Michigan
Hospice of Michigan (HOM), the largest hospice program in Michigan and the second-largest
nonprofit hospice in the country, provides palliative care – comfort measures and pain control – for people with a terminal illness. The approach to palliative care is a team effort, directed by the patient, family members, and physicians, and supported by nurses, social workers, home health aides, spiritual advisors and trained volunteers. The goal is to help each person live as fully as possible and to help the family and loved ones participate in the person’s care. Hospice of Michigan serves nearly 1,000 patients every day in 56 counties throughout the state.
HOM has five main sites, a headquarters, and nine hub sites for weekly patient discussion meetings. Unfortunately, the organization’s existing IT infrastructure was dated, and its siloed storage systems were reaching capacity. Performance, speed and reliability were also issues.
“We had lots of hardware that needed to work together in a complex network infrastructure – otherwise the quality of care would be at risk, as would patient confidentiality,” said John Pryor, corporate director of information systems at Hospice of Michigan. “But we faced some serious challenges with the old environment. Individual servers had been bought to support specific applications, resulting in a lot of random pieces, and storage was added by attaching SCSI disk arrays to the servers, creating information silos that were difficult to access. We also relied on very expensive dedicated T1 lines, but our servers lacked the performance and memory to take advantage of the bandwidth.”
In 2007, just as the technology need was growing critical, HOM learned that $13 million in Fujitsu products and services were being made available as part of a $30 million independently managed technology grant to the U.S. hospice industry.
“The grant was a godsend for us, allowing us to create the technology platform we needed,”
said Pryor. “We were still using the Fujitsu LifeBook T3010 Tablet PCs we’d purchased in 2003, and we’d loved the experience of working with Fujitsu. Everyone was helpful and concerned about meeting our needs. We felt it was a true win-win partnership, not just folks trying to hawk tin. We were very excited to standardize our new infrastructure on Fujitsu.”
To read more about this aggressive plan and the results, go to the case study online.