Fujitsu pledges to help customers tackle the climate change crisis

Fujitsu has announced it is committed to helping customers achieve their objectives around addressing social challenges, such as climate change, and will do this by focusing on developing seven core technologies: 5G, Internet of Things, blockchain, hybrid cloud, cybersecurity, computing, and artificial intelligence.    

"It is an urgent task to address climate change to achieve net-zero CO2 emission by 2050 … all stakeholders must come together to address this issue on a global scale," Fujitsu CEO and chief digital transformation officer Takahito Tokita said during his address as part of Fujitsu's digital ActivateNow conference on Wednesday.

"Until recently at Fujitsu, our action of climate change has been to focus on making our products and data centres energy efficient, but now we are acting as a transformation partner.

"Using our strength in technology, we will help your business and wider society find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We will work together with stakeholders to realise a carbon-free society and mitigate climate change."

He pointed to how the company has already been working with the UK Environment Agency to develop a cloud-based flood warning system so residents living in hazardous areas could be directly alerted.  

Meanwhile, an agreement between Fujitsu has been signed with Japan's Kawasaki city in Kanagawa prefecture to create what Tokita described would be a "sustainable community".

"This is about building a society that is resilient to disasters. For example, we are working on a system to provide effective evacuation guidelines. It uses AI to analyse the possibility of a disaster in every location, and it will share that information widely and in real-time," he said.

In addition, the company is jointly developing a supercomputer with Japanese scientific research institute RIKEN to help fight COVID-19 in Japan.

Internally, the company has also introduced a program to allow staff to proactively support the company's own environmental goals.

"Each colleague selects one of 17 goals and joins a virtual committee to collaborate with other colleagues who have the same goal …. every colleague is encouraged and supported by Fujitsu to take on an average of one hour a month.  Across a group of 23,000 people this will add up to a lot of time dedicated to social need," he said.

This strategy aligns with the Japanese conglomerate announcing earlier this month it would be spending over ¥100 billion on a company-wide digital transformation project that will involve a complete re-evaluation of its business processes, organisations, corporate culture, products, services, and business models.

Dubbed Fujitra for short, the transformation project, according to the company, will help the tech giant achieve its so-called "raison d'etre" of making the "world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation".

The digital transformation announcement coincides with Fujitsu Japan Ltd commencing operation this month. It was announced in July that the new business will help the company expand in the Japanese services market.

Fujitsu Japan Ltd is initially an integration of Fujitsu Marketing and Fujitsu FIP Corporation. Fujitsu said, by April 2021, it plans to also integrate the sales function of Fujitsu FSAS and Fujitsu Network Solutions.

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