Fujitsu Restructures Big Data Offerings

Fujitsu Limited is restructuring its lineup of big data-related products and services under the Fujitsu big data initiative.

The company was an early leader in big data, and now, through this new initiative, the company will work with customers, partners, and start-ups to bolster big data business initiatives, utilizing data to accelerate the pace of innovation for customers and society. Fujitsu is also establised a new big data initiative center to support the use of big data on June 24.

The big data initiative is the latest of the company’s ongoing efforts to harness its technology and sophisticated data-analysis capabilities to create new value from data to support innovation among its customers and society at large.

The big data initiative center organization will be comprised of 800 people, with a core of 30 customer support staff providing a one-stop support programs for customers, partners, and start-ups.

The initiative will be the foundation from which the company delivers an array of big data products and services that accelerate innovation for customers.

Advances in ICT have made it possible to integrate conventional business data with sensor data, positioning data, social media postings, logs, and other forms of big data, and to collect, analyze, and use it in real time to create new business opportunities for customers. Big data has now come into serious use for social innovation that spans regions and industries such as food and agriculture, transport, health and medicine.

At the same time, companies are looking for ways to use big data to differentiate themselves from their competitors and develop new businesses, making the analysis and use of big data a pressing business issue.

         Concept behind the Fujitsu big data initiative

About the Fujitsu big data initiative
Fujitsu, an early leader in big data, offering products and services in the field as early as June 2011‚ has reorganized its portfolio of big data products and services under the new Fujitsu big data initiative. In so doing, the firm aims to utilize data to promote innovation among customers and society. The company will provide a coordinated set of products and services for each of the major themes involved in creating value from data to addres specific customer issues.

Previous efforts, future prospects
In April 2012, the company commenced its data curation service, a data analytics service available in a 100-person framework. The service performs as a professional ‘curator’ that takes an analytical approach to original data‚ even without any preexisting knowledge of a specific operation. The service creates data usage models required by customers to develop innovative products or revolutionize the way they conduct operations, and also discovers issues with regard to business and operations.

In the area of data utilization, June 2011 was when the company launched Spatiowl, a platform upon which value is created by combining positional data with information from social networks and elsewhere. In January 2013 it launched DataPlaza, a service that links together external data sources to provide a marketplace which can collect sensing data, open data, social-network data, and industry-spanning business data.

In data platforms, the company launched Fujitsu Cloud PaaS Data Utilization Platform Services in October 2012, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) to support the use of big data. In April 2013, it succeeded in using a high-performance PC cluster system to accelerate the use of big data, building on the parallel, distributed high-speed processing technology Fujitsu developed for the K computer.

Fujitsu will now launch a support program to utilize big data, and through its big data initiative, will bring these previous offerings within a single structure. It will continue to enhance its products and services, providing a selection of offerings to support the creation of new value from data in accordance with the needs of customers.

About Big Data Initiative Center
As a new big data initiative to accelerate innovation by customers and society, Fujitsu is establishing the big data initiative center, which will offer support programs for customers, partners, and start-ups. The center is comprised of 800 people, with a core of 30 customer support staff providing one-stop support for customers, partners, and start-ups.

About the support programs to create value using data

1. Support program for customers: This program for customers looks for ways to implement innovations that use big data. Customers can receive advice on big data utilization, participating in workshops on hypothesis framing, testing out analyses using actual data, and receiving proposals to help in the selection of the big data platform best suited to their needs, all of which leads to more effective big data utilization.
2. Support program for partners: Fujitsu will work with its partners to study and create new businesses that use big data. More specifically, this involves studying collaboration plans, test marketing, and jointly commercializing and promoting services.
3. Support program for start-ups: Fujitsu will seek out start-ups developing new services that use big data and support them in turning those services into businesses. More specifically, it will gather and judge proposals for new services that utilize big data on a regular basis, the first time being August 2013. The next step will be providing the data-analysis environment needed in the service-planning phase (over a 2-3 month period). Fujitsu will also provide support in commercializing the services and implement sales promotions.

New Facility
A new facility will be constructed within Fujitsu Trusted cloud Square. It will serve as a venue for holding workshops with customers on the use of big data and for performing verification testing.

• Name: Big Data Initiative Lab
• Opening: Early August 2013
• Location: World Trade Center Building, 30 F, 2-4-1 Hamamatsu-cho, Minato-ku, Tokyo
• Facilities: Seminar rooms, meeting rooms, testing area (server/storage/big-data middleware).