It would not be a company `event’ without some new products to launch, and last week’s Fujitsu Forum in Munich was no exception in that respect. But arguably the more important side to the conference and exhibition was the strong underlying theme of pragmatism about the Cloud .
The hype about the Cloud has been long and pretty sustained it has to be said, but if the classic Gartner Hype Cycle is to be followed the Cloud should by now be sliding ever-faster in a slump of disillusionment. But the evidence at the Forum was that this does not seem to be happening.
What is happening, however, is this growth in pragmatism in what the Cloud is really about and, with that in mind where its real strengths actually lie.
Though by no means the first to say this, Fujitsu’s Chief Technology Officer, Dr Joseph Reger, used the event to put the Cloud in its place.
That, of course, is the fundamental message that has to get through to the majority of legacy IT systems vendors, and to be fair there are signs that it is starting to get through, though most of them have spent the last couple of years fighting the Cloud hype rather than seeing the underlying theme.
And that theme, according to Dr Reger, comes in two basic parts. First is the democratisation of software, with more open APIs, the need for increasing levels of standardization that allow for more straight forward integration of applications and services, and more comprehensive, coherent management of the service delivery environment.
The second component is the expansion of innovation that this can bring, and in particular the collective innovation that can come from working in collaboration with partners. To help this process along, especially as the ratio of initial ideas to implemented innovations is expected to be around 250:1, Fujitsu has established a structured innovation management process that partners can exploit.
This takes raw ideas from both partners and internal sources and starts by defining the scope and intent of the idea, which is then filtered and matched against identified market opportunities. Here its potential can be fully assessed and selections of suitable candidates made. This is when the candidates are also assessed for their ease of implementation and their associated business plan.
An integral part of this process is that all candidates are also compared against a rolling marketplace and technology watch list, which should stifle most temptations to re-invent unnecessary wheels. As is the fundamental nature of the Cloud , this process should also help identify future potential partners.
There are four main innovation targets he has in mind: revolutionising IT, making IT more green, simplifying IT, and creating compelling Cloud solutions. Continued innovation is seen as an integral part of the company’s plan to build a comprehensive Cloud ecosystem.
When it comes to the infrastructure side of that plan, he indicated that the key approach will be to target the development of both PaaS and SaaS delivery models.
Dr Reger’s use of the word `democracy’ had the side issue of identifying another trend in the development of Cloud delivery, that of re-purposing existing words or phrases in attempts to define what happens with technology and how it is different from legacy IT models. For example, Jeremy Worrell, Director of Cloud Computing for Fujitsu UK and Ireland, had some doubts about the `D-word’.
His own favourite choice is still `agility’, not only because the approach helps to create the ecosystem and range of services choice that can empower users, but also because it produces an environment where small vendors can provide highly granular levels of service by working within a comprehensive, trusted service delivery environment.
In his view this then gives the company the ability to be flexible in how it markets service delivery, particularly in the approaches it can offer. By growing the ecosystem and building a wide range of partnerships it becomes possible to market services on what Worrell calls a `stand in front/stand behind’ model.
And the new products? Three main developments caught the eye, with two of them having direct Cloud service delivery implications.
Targeting the simplification of datacentre infrastructure is the launch of Dynamic Infrastructure Blocks (DI Blocks). The aim here is to give IT operations the tools to ready their operations for on-premise private Cloud infrastructures, and be prepared to meet changing business needs.
DI Blocks are pre-integrated, factory-configured, customizable modules that comprise orchestrated server, storage, network and virtualisation technologies, integrated with dynamic resource management software. They provide a route out of the rigid structures of legacy silo technology, and are intended to transform datacentres into flexible, automated pools of compute resources. If needed, of course, integration and lifetime services such as system maintenance can be provided by Fujitsu’s consulting and operations support services.
FlexFrame Compact targets mid-sized organisations looking to get better business performance and availability from SAP business applications. It is a new entry-level version of the fully-virtualised dynamic FlexFrame used by large enterprises to optimise entire SAP solution environments and help reduce total cost of ownership.
At the other end of the scale, and only of marginal interest to Cloud users for the moment, is the introduction of the PRIMEHPC FX10 supercomputer. This is a commercial, `off-the-shelf’ implementation of the company’s `K computer’, which headed the Supercomputer top 500 listing in June this year. It is capable of scaling to a top theoretical processing performance of 23.2 petaflops.
Though Jeremy Worrell noted that, for now at least, this would be an unlikely addition to the resource list of most Cloud service providers, he readily acknowledged that there could indeed be a market demand. It has the ability to run highly complex, compute-intensive applications of exactly the type that are now being used for high-end commercial and business applications, such as financial risk management.
This, however, could become a useful tool to service the needs of bleeding-edge small and medium-sized businesses that require such a resource, but find the acquisition price inevitably punitive.
