Fujitsu has launched a new desktop managed service (DMS). The company has developed the service to improve the flexibility of its storage offerings and to offer better value of money.
Key to the new product is Fujitsu's Active Service Management (ASM) architecture, aimed at improving visibility of costs, something that is driving many purchasing decisions these days. Fujitsu said that it had implemented a programme called Total Cost Clarity to help customers keep tabs on the costs.
The company's European vice president for the storage division Helmut Beck, said the economic situation was having a profound effect on the way that customers bought products. In the current climate, businesses were tightening up on their purchasing decisions. "If company is looking to invest in a new technology it won't touch it if has a return on investment of less than a year - sometimes there even needs to be a return within the fiscal year," he said.
Although at first sight it looks as if Fujitsu has tapped into the growing interest in cloud computing, that's not the case said Beck. "This is not really cloud computing as the equipment is still on customer premises. They get transparency within their IT system and improve the balance sheet."
He added that one of the key elements was the ability to set different service levels and accompanying costs. "You can define security levels; you can define data tolerance levels - the number of tapes, number of different sites, recovery times etc - For example, one of the service levels could be that last five days of data are stored on disk while the rest is put on tape - showing how managed backup can reduce costs."
But he said, Fujitsu was trying to take a different approach to other vendors, many of whom were very focused on being storage suppliers. He said that the company was taking a more holistic approach. "From our company's point of view, we don't want to be a pure storage provider- we have a range of products that includes storage, servers and networking kit - we can create solutions out of these products."
Beck pointed out this approach was in line with the way that users were thinking, with the trend away from rigid specialisation. "In the last 10 to 15 years, the specialists were the heroes. We believe that the pendulum will go back to the guys who do everything, who offer differentiation from the specialists.
Fujitsu has rolled out DMS to about 20 organisations said Beck. Ultimately, he thought the trend would be for a menu of services. "You could store some data in a public cloud, some would be in a private cloud and some would be so sensitive that it would be run by the company," he said, "It's the choice that's important."