Fujitsu tight-lipped on cloud channel plans

Fujitsu Australia is expected to soon start selling its cloud services through the channel, allowing resellers to ‘white label’ products supported by its fast-growing data centre infrastructure.

Head of cloud services Cameron McNaught confirmed to CRN that the company was looking at expanding its sales channels for cloud products in Australia but said that it was not yet ready to provide specifics on opportunities for local resellers.

“Fujitsu has a strong cloud services portfolio and we are currently exploring opportunities to further grow this business,” he said.

“We are looking at additional channels to promote and offer our cloud services, however we have not finalised our plans in this area.”

Fujitsu said that it expects to see strong uptake of its cloud offerings in Australia amongst enterprise and government customers as well as SMEs, largely because of the wide range of products on offer as well as the fact that all data is hosted in Australia.

Fujitsu already provides independent software vendors (ISVs) in Australia with access to its cloud platforms.

Fujitsu is investing heavily in its local cloud infrastructure, most recently announcing a new data centre in Perth as well as in Western Sydney and Melbourne.

Last October Fujitsu launched an enterprise-grade cloud service hosted at two Western Sydney data centres targeting government and financial services customers.

Fujitsu said the solution would allow customers to provision virtual machines in around five minutes. Although it also touted the solution as pay-per-use, it required that companies sign up for a minimum of 30 days.

The news of an imminent cloud channel program comes less than a month after a changing of the guard at Fujitsu when Rod Vawdrey departed as Australian CEO to become president of the company’s global business group.

Two weeks ago the company formally anointed acting CEO Mike Foster as Vawdrey’s successor. Foster had been the boss of IT systems company Kaz Computing, bought from Telstra by Fujitsu in 2009 for $200 million