Tag: Fujitsu

Good Technology VP heads to Symantec

Posted on September 17, 2013 by - Moving People, News

symanteclogoGood Technology’s VP and GM Huw Owen has been snapped up and appointed to VP sales and marketing for EMEA at Symantec.

Previously overseeing Good’s channel growth in Europe and introducing the firm to the Nordics, Benelux and the Middle East, Symantec has snapped him up to win and retain customers as well as growing in all regions across EMEA.

Owen has been named twice in Global Telecoms Business’ Top 40 Under 40 for telecoms, globally, and has been quoted regularly offering comment on mobility.

Before his time at Good, Owen was executive director at Lenovo’s EMEA team, where he helped in servicing and sales in EMEA and globally. He has also held positions at Veritas and Fujitsu, and served as senior director of EMEA northern region services at Symantec.

Commenting on his return to Symantec, Owen said the opportunities at Symantec are “huge”.

“The EMEA region is a key area of focus for Symantec, contributing significantly to the global company revenues,” Owen said.

Matthew Ellard, senior vice president EMEA, Symantec, said: “Huw has an exceptional amount of knowledge in the channel sector which will be of tremendous value”.

IBM tops server charts, revenues fall

Posted on August 28, 2013 by - News

ibm-officeIDC’s latest worldwide server market figures are out, and IBM was top dog yet again despite a 10 percent yearly decline in factory revenue, and soft demand for System x and Power Systems.

Factory revenue overall worldwide decreased by 6.2 percent – but still netted $11.9 billion for the second quarter of 2013 alone. This was the second consecutive year of revenue decline as demand weakened in most regions around the world, while server unit shipments dropped 1.2 percent to 2.0 million units, the third consecutive quarterly decline.

Volume systems dropped 2.4 percent, while midrange system demand decreased a chunky 22.3 percent. High end systems decreased 9.5 percent.

HP was just behind IBM with 25.9 percent of the market. HP also experienced a 17.5 percent decline in factory revenue, as well as poor demand for the x86 ProLiant servers and continued declines in HP Integrity demand.

Dell came in third with 18.8 percent factory market share for the quarter, but factory revenues were up 10.3 percent compared to the same time last year, pitching Dell at its highest ever market share.

Oracle stayed at number four, holding six percent market share, with factory revenue decreases of 5.7 percent compared to the same time last year. Cisco was fifth with 4.5 percent share, but experienced a 42.6 percent yearly revenue growth, putting it above last quarter’s tie with Fujitsu.

IDC’s GM for enterprise platforms, Matt Eastwood, said: “Mainstream SMB and enterprise server customers around the world continue to focus on consolidation, virtualization, and migration initiatives aimed at increasing efficiency and lowering datacenter infrastructure costs. At the same time, challenging economic conditions are dampening demand for new IT projects necessary to grow the server market globally”.

“It is clear that the competitive dynamics in the server market remain fierce as the leading server vendors work to offset weak demand for generally higher margin Unix and blade servers with lower margin rack and density optimised servers,” Eastwood said.

Store stays as hub for connected customers

Posted on May 24, 2013 by - News

highA pan-European retail survey commissioned by Fujitsu reveals that most retailers believe stores are still important despite the fact that online shopping is going mainstream.

Even in the age of multichannel, 65 percent of Europear retailers interviewed said they believe the importance of stores is rising rather than diminishing. However, eight out of ten believe online is the top distribution model for the future.

The survey found that the humble store will continue to serve as a hub for retail engagement with “connected” consumers. Ongoing competitive pressures and the widespread adoption of smartphones will force retailers to combine the efficiency of online, while at the same time delivering a good in-store customer experience.

It echoes the findings of a recent Google survey, which concluded smartphones are slowly starting to improve the shopper experience both at home and in actual retail stores. In other words, retailers cannot afford to ignore either component of their multichannel approach.  Fujitsu’s survey also stresses the importance of a unified view of all customers across all channels, on top of technology innovations designed to deliver new multichannel solutions.

Retail managers in some countries believe the importance of stores is going up, especially in France and to some extent in Italy, which is also betting on hypermarket and supermarket models. However, German retailers believe online shopping is currently more attractive to their customers. In the UK, however, there is a greater balance across all models.

“It is clear the store remains the shopping ‘hub’ for the majority of consumers across Europe, but the store operating model is changing rapidly to meet the needs of the multichannel shopper.” said Richard Clarke, Vice-President, Global Retail at Fujitsu. “Fujitsu helps retailers to achieve this goal by simplifying their technology deployments and radically increasing agility and customer intimacy.”

Although e-taliers and m-commerce are still on the rise, the study found that traditional retailers are still convinced there is plenty of room for brick-and-mortar stores in the future of retail, no matter how connected it might be. However, service is slowly becoming a key value-add for the store, and some hybrid services such as click and collect are also emerging. Interestingly, British retailers lead the way when it comes to their confidence in traditional stores and their role as a shopping point.

BT in line for BDUK

Posted on March 19, 2013 by - News

ukflagWith Fujitsu pulling out of the Broadband Delivery UK Framework there is just one ISP most think could win the contract – BT.

Despite this, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is not too fussed. A spokesperson told V3 that although it wants as much competition in place for the contracts, the department accepts some projects are “not as commercially competitive” because of the required scale and infrastructure.

BT has that infrastructure.

Fujitsu for its part said that it was pulling out of the process after conversations with the Department. Ultimately, the company decided there wasn’t enough value. It did not detail the “various conditions surrounding the BDUK process” that ruled it out of the competition.

BT promised it would make good on its investments of up to £1 billion. So far, BT has won Wales, Rutland, North Yorkshire, Surrey, Suffolk and Lancashire, V3 reports.

 

Fujutsu orders 5,000 to fall on sword

Posted on February 8, 2013 by - News

seppuku-p1000701Troubled Japanese electronics maker Fujitsu has announced that its wants 5,000 workers to dispatch themselves in the company carpark while PR bunnies throw cherry blossom in the air. Not literally, of course.

The company said that nearly three percent of its global workforce will have to surrender to the company’s vigorous restructuring, write a haiku of resignation  and clean out their desks.

Fujitsu is desperate to boost profitability by reshaping its computer chip business and its overseas operations.

In a statement, it said that the job cuts will be completed by the end of this fiscal year, next month, and will rely on early retirement, layoffs and “other methods”.

Meanwhile another 4,500 workers will be shifted to other parts of Fujitsu. There is a computer chip company being set up with Panasonic, which does sound better than the dole queue. It should be pointed out that Panasonic is not exactly in the best of health either.

Japan’s electronics sector, which has been flapping around on the floor of the IT industry like a bloated fugu fish waiting to be prepared, has been getting a boost lately from the the weakening yen. Still, 2012 will be remembered as the year that the Japanese government finally gave up Elpida Memory and the outfit filed for bankruptcy.

ARM set to grow share in server market

Posted on January 21, 2013 by - News

arm_chipA report from Markets and Markets (M&M) suggested that the micro server market will be worth $26.55 billion by 2014 and microprocessors based on ARM technology are set to take a significant share.

Micro servers major on low power consumption and have small footprints, and use multiple mobile processors. The main market will be small to medium sized businesses and applications use light duty web serving, can be used for dedicated hosting, cloud computing and analytics.

Right now, this sector only accounts for 2.3 percent of total server sales, but M&M predicts that in the next five years to reach between 25 and 30 percent of sales worldwide.

While some large enterprises are already using micro servers in an area dominated by Intel Atom and Xeon CPUs, 64 bit ARM processors are set to appear in 2014 and that will change the market dynamics, the research company said.

North America is the biggest market for micro servers currently, followed by Europe, but it is expected that the Asian region will overtake Europe by 2018.  Vendors already in the game include Intel, HP, Dell, Fujitsu and Samsung.