In a press release on February 18th Fujitsu announced the plan to migrate its global internal infrastructure to a new cloud platform based on OpenStack.
My personal view is that with this significant commitment to OpenStack, Fujitsu makes the most significant contribution to OpenStack of all other sponsoring companies. Additionally, if this internal initiative proves to be successful – and I have no doubt it will be successful – it will enable Fujitsu to enter the “first-league of Cloud players” alongside with the likes of AWS, Google, HP or IBM.
Why I believe the internal OpenStack initiative is a game changer in the Cloud-provider landscape?
- By migrating all internal systems to a new cloud platform, Fujitsu finally recognized that their own cloud software product – Resource Orchestrator, internally known as Fujitsu ROR – was not the best way forward. ROR was a great piece of software developed to manage physical server infrastructure. However, due to its original design to address physical servers, it was well behind any other software designed to run the virtual infrastructure (such as VMware vCloud or OpenStack). During my Fujitsu days, I have estimated that it could take Fujitsu up to 10 years of Software Development efforts to catch up with the cloud management software players (both niche and well-established).
- By adopting the OpenStack, Fujitsu technical staff will become SMEs in architecting, consulting, designing, implementing and supporting OpenStack environments. It will position Fujitsu as the #1 subject matter experts on the market for OpenStack.
- Fujitsu also plans to use OpenStack in their integrated systems (formerly known as Fujitsu Dynamic Infrastructure Blocks or Cloud Ready Blocks). Teamed up with VMware and OpenStack, they will become a strong competition to VCE vBlock and IBM PureSystems.
- Once Fujitsu migrates its entire internal infrastructure to OpenStack, they will have available standardized building blocks in the form of intellectual capital and processes. They could use these assets to migrate their existing customer offering – the Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform – to OpenStack as well. As soon as this happens, Fujitsu will become one of the top global cloud provider player (space that is dominated by AWS and Google nowadays). It will complement Fujitsu’s already successful private cloud reference architecture offerings, such as Fujitsu vShape and Fujitsu Cloud Ready Blocks.
- Last but not least, Fujitsu has already invested more than $40 billion into Cloud since 2008. They have everything in place – Fujitsu Primergy server portfolio and Eternus Storage, technology alliances with Brocade for networking, and with both VMware and Microsoft for application and middleware software. The only missing piece was the integration software – a sort of a cloud operating system – which is where OpenStack fits in perfectly!
