Fujitsu Touts Benefits Of Converged Infrastructure To Cloud-Shy Firms

Fujitsu says its new PrimeFlex range of converged systems will help businesses quickly and simply take advantage of the latest data centre technologies and provide organisations who can’t migrate to the cloud with some of the benefits of off-premise technology.

PrimeFlex comprises 20 systems and reference architectures that have been pre-tested for certain workloads and can be rapidly deployed as businesses expand. The systems have server, storage and connectivity with software and management layers on top and can be used for both Fujitsu cloud services and products from other vendors.

These include Microsoft, SAP and VMware’s EVO:RAIL hyper-converged infrastructure platform that makes it easy for businesses to deploy virtualised machines. One new product announced at the Fujitsu Forum in Munich this week is PrimeFlex for Hadoop, which helps business analyse big data.

Fujitsu PrimeFlex

Fujitsu says this epitomises the benefits of PrimeFlex as it combines pre-tested hardware for convenience, the economic advantages of open source software and system support and lifecycle management.

Converged infrastructure systems have often been dubbed ‘data centres in a box’ but Fujitsu CTO Joseph Reger says this is not accurate term and prefers to describe them as the building blocks for companies that want to quickly create a data centre.

“The key is to have these building blocks that are pre-integrated and pre-tested,” he told the audience in Munich adding that many businesses, such as those in the banking sector, cannot migrate many processes to the cloud, while others are bound by security and geographical restrictions.

Open source support

“They respond to a very particular need in the market”, he said. “For those who can’t migrate to the cloud, what equipment should they be using? The answer is the same as service providers so they can enjoy some of the economics of scale.”

Reger outlined his support for open source technologies declaring its use can reduce cost, increase security and customisation, and avoid vendor lock-in. Open technology, he said, presents an opportunity for Fujitsu to sell services and differentiate with software if it can’t with hardware, citing Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) as examples.

“In general in the European market, open source is becoming more and more popular,” he explained. “There’s always a services opportunity. Some might argue that’s the only way to make money from open source.

“If we can’t differentiate with the product, we can with the services.”

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