Fujitsu's global cloud launches in Aus
Fujitsu announced the Australian and New Zealand launch of its global cloud yesterday, the first region outside of Japan to be turned on for the worldwide service.
(Data centre image by The Planet, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The global cloud will run in Tier III datacentres around the world on Fujitsu kit and a Fujitsu version of the Xen hypervisor, and provides multinationals with a global standardised ICT infrastructure. It will also allow local companies to take advantage of international cloud resources if they so choose.
Only one Australian datacentre will be hosting the Fujitsu cloud, so although the service offers backup and data replication, it won't offer a local failover service, according to Fujitsu general executive director solutions and cloud services Cameron McNaught. However, there's the option to failover to Singapore if desired and if the right customer came along, Fujitsu would consider putting a second global hub in Australia, he said. The service was built on 16 storage area networks, McNaught said, so that multiple storage area networks could be lost and the cloud would still be available.
Fujitsu had already been offering a local cloud service via a partnership with VMware, CA, Cisco, Symantec and Microsoft in two Sydney datacentres, catering to concerns about data sovereignty from sectors such as finance and government.
"Local cloud meets the needs of our customers today," McNaught said. "The global cloud sets the foundation for the next two to three years."
The global cloud will be the focus of most of Fujitsu's research and development, according to McNaught.
The company also plans to provide the Azure platform in Australia via a partnership with Microsoft sometime this year, he said.
According to McNaught, the different platforms were necessary to give customers what they needed.
"One platform was never going to [cover] it all," he said.
The Australian roll-out of the global cloud will be followed by launches in Singapore, USA, UK and Germany.
When asked about why Australia was second in line for the global cloud roll-out, McNaught said it was due partly to where Australia was and partly to its market.
"The time zone's a great benefit for a pilot," he said, adding that the "depth and breadth" of Fujitsu's client portfolio in the country was also responsible.
McNaught said it had spent 14 months in-house building and testing the platforms from the ground up. The global cloud service uses a portal that allows users to adjust their cloud services via drag and drop, changing capacity and usage in real time.
He said that Fujitsu would never compete with Amazon on brand for cloud services, but that it would be on par for price and would add extra features and functionality.
It will be the "same underlying tech" with "better service", he said.
Another Sydney datacentre is planned for Western Sydney, according to McNaught. It will be 9000 square metres, with a possible 6000-square-metre expansion — the biggest in NSW, the executive said.