Fujitsu

 is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services company, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu was the world's fourth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, after IBM, Accenture and AWS, in 2018. The hardware offerings from Fujitsu are mainly of personal and enterprise computing products, including x86, SPARC and mainframe compatible server products, although the company and its subsidiaries also offer a diversity of products and services in the areas of data storage, telecommunications, advanced microelectronics, and air conditioning. It has approximately 132,138 employees and its products and services are available in over 100 countries.
"Fortune" named Fujitsu as one of the world's most admired companies and a Global 500 company. Fujitsu is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and Nagoya Stock Exchange; its Tokyo listing is a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX 100 indices.
History.
1935 to 2000.
Fujitsu was established on June 20, 1935, the fact that makes it one of the oldest operating IT companies after IBM and before Hewlett Packard, under the name , as a spin-off of the Fuji Electric Company, itself a joint venture between the Furukawa Electric Company and the German conglomerate Siemens which had been founded in 1923. Despite its connections to the Furukawa zaibatsu, Fujitsu escaped the Allied occupation of Japan after the Second World War mostly unscathed.
In 1954, Fujitsu manufactured Japan's first computer, the FACOM 100 mainframe, and in 1961 launched its second generation computers (transistorized) the FACOM 222 mainframe. The 1968 FACOM230 "5" Series marked the beginning of its third generation computers. Fujitsu offered mainframe computers from 1955 until at least 2002 Fujitsu's computer products have included minicomputers, small business computers, servers and personal computers.
In 1955, Fujitsu founded Kawasaki Frontale as a company football club; Kawasaki Frontale has been a J. League football club since 1999. In 1967, the company's name was officially changed to the contraction . Since 1985, the company also fields a company American football team, the Fujitsu Frontiers, who play in the corporate X-League, appeared in 7 Japan X Bowls, winning two, and won two Rice Bowls.
In 1971, Fujitsu signed an OEM agreement with the Canadian company Consolidated Computers Limited (CCL) to distribute CCL's data entry product, Key-Edit. Fujitsu joined both International Computers Limited (ICL) who earlier began marketing Key-Edit in the British Commonwealth of countries as well as in both western and eastern Europe; and CCL's direct marketing staff in Canada, USA, London (UK) and Frankfurt. Mers Kutt, inventor of Key-Edit and founder of CCL, was the common thread that led to Fujitsu's later association with ICL and Gene Amdahl.
In 1986, Fujitsu and The Queen's University of Belfast business incubation unit (QUBIS Ltd) established a joint venture called Kainos, a privately held software company based in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
In 1990, Fujitsu acquired 80% of the UK-based computer company ICL for $1.29 billion. In September 1990, Fujitsu announced the launch of a new series of mainframe computers which were at that time the fastest in the world. In July 1991, Fujitsu acquired more than half of the Russian company KME-CS (Kazan Manufacturing Enterprise of Computer Systems).
In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch full-color plasma display. It was a hybrid, based upon the plasma display created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NHK STRL, achieving superior brightness.
In 1993, Fujitsu formed a flash memory manufacturing joint venture with AMD, Spansion. As part of the transaction, AMD contributed its flash memory group, Fab 25 in Texas, its R&D facilities and assembly plants in Thailand, Malaysia and China; Fujitsu provided its Flash memory business division and the Malaysian Fujitsu Microelectronics final assembly and test operations.
From February 1989 until mid-1997, Fujitsu built the FM Towns PC variant. It started as a proprietary PC variant intended for multimedia applications and computer games, but later became more compatible with regular PCs. In 1993, the FM Towns Marty was released, a gaming console compatible with the FM Towns games.
Fujitsu agreed to acquire the 58 percent of Amdahl Corporation (including the Canada-based DMR consulting group) that it did not already own for around $850 million in July 1997.
In April 1997, the company acquired a 30 percent stake in GLOVIA International, Inc., an El Segundo, Calif., manufacturing ERP software provider whose software it had begun integrating into its electronics plants starting in 1994.
In June 1999 Fujitsu's historical connection with Siemens was revived, when the two companies agreed to merge their European computer operations into a new 50:50 joint venture called Fujitsu Siemens Computers, which became the world's fifth-largest computer manufacturing company.
2000 to 2020.
In April 2000, Fujitsu acquired the remaining 70% of GLOVIA International.
In April 2002 ICL re-branded itself as Fujitsu. On March 2, 2004, Fujitsu Computer Products of America lost a class action lawsuit over hard disk drives with defective chips and firmware. In October 2004, Fujitsu acquired the Australian subsidiary of Atos Origin, a systems implementation company with around 140 employees which specialized in SAP.
In August 2007, Fujitsu signed a £500 million, 10-year deal with Reuters Group under which Reuters outsourced the majority of its internal IT department to Fujitsu. As part of the agreement around 300 Reuters staff and 200 contractors transferred to Fujitsu. In October 2007, Fujitsu announced that it would be establishing an offshore development centre in Noida, India with a capacity to house 1,200 employees, in an investment of US$10 million.
In October 2007, Fujitsu's Australia and New Zealand subsidiary acquired Infinity Solutions Ltd, a New Zealand-based IT hardware, services and consultancy company, for an undisclosed amount.
In January 2009, Fujitsu reached an agreement to sell its HDD business to Toshiba. Transfer of the business was completed on October 1. 2009.
In March 2009, Fujitsu announced that it had decided to convert FDK Corporation, at that time an equity-method affiliate, to a consolidated subsidiary from May 1, 2009 (tentative schedule) by subscribing to a private placement to increase FDK's capital. On April 1, 2009, Fujitsu agreed to acquire Siemens' stake in Fujitsu Siemens Computers for approximately EUR450m. Fujitsu Siemens Computers was subsequently renamed Fujitsu Technology Solutions.
In April 2009, Fujitsu acquired Australian software company Supply Chain Consulting for a $48 million deal, just weeks after purchasing the Telstra subsidiary Kaz for $200 million.
Concerning of net loss forecast amounted 95 billion yen in the year ending March 2013, in February 2013 Fujitsu announced to cut 5,000 jobs of which 3,000 jobs in Japan and the rest overseas from its 170,000 employees. Fujitsu also merged its Large-scale integration chip designing business with that of Panasonic Corporation, resulting in establishment of Socionext.
In 2014, after severe losses, Fujitsu spun off its LSI chip manufacturing division as well, as Mie Fujitsu semiconductor, which was later bought in 2018 by United Semiconductor Japan Co., Ltd., wholly owned by United Microelectronics Corporation.
In 2015, Fujitsu celebrated 80 years since establishment at a time when its IT business embarked upon the Fujitsu 2015 World Tour which has included 15 major cities globally and been visited by over 10,000 IT professionals with Fujitsu presenting its take on the future of Hyper Connectivity and Human Centric Computing.
In April 2015 GLOVIA International is renamed FUJITSU GLOVIA, Inc.
In November 2015, Fujitsu Limited and VMware announced new areas of collaboration to empower customers with flexible and secure cloud technologies. It also acquired USharesoft which provides enterprise-class application delivery software for automating the build, migration and governance of applications in multi-cloud environments.
In January 2016, Fujitsu Network Communications Inc. announced a new suite of layered products to advance software-defined networking (SDN) for carriers, service providers and cloud builders. Virtuora NC, based on open standards, is described by Fujitsu as "a suite of standards-based, multi-layered, multi-vendor network automation and virtualization products" that "has been hands-on hardened by some of the largest global service providers."
In 2019, Fujitsu started to deliver 5G telecommunications equipment to NTT Docomo, along with NEC.
In March 2020, Fujitsu announced the creation of a subsidiary, later named Fujitsu Japan, that will enable the company to expand its business in the Japanese IT services market.
In June 2020, Fugaku, co-developed with the RIKEN research institute, was declared the most powerful supercomputer in the world. The performance capability of Fugaku is 415.53 PFLOPS with a theoretical peak of 513.86 PFLOPS. It is three times faster than of the previous champion. Fugaku also ranked first place in categories that measure computational methods performance for industrial use, artificial intelligence applications, and big data analytics. The supercomputer is located in a facility in Kobe.
In June 2020, Fujitsu developed an artificial intelligence monitor that can recognize complex hand movements, built on its crime surveillance technology. The AI is designed to check whether the subject complete proper hand washing procedure based on the guidelines issued by the WHO.
Operations.
Fujitsu Laboratories.
Fujitsu Laboratories, Fujitsu's Research and Development division, has approximately 900 employees and a capital of JP¥5 billion. The current CEO is Hirotaka Hara.
In 2012, Fujitsu announced that it had developed new technology for non-3D camera phones. The technology will allow the camera phones to take 3D photos.
Fujitsu Electronics Europe GmbH.
Fujitsu Electronics Europe GmbH entered the market as a global distributor on January 1, 2016.
Fujitsu Consulting.
Fujitsu Consulting is the consulting and services arm of the Fujitsu group, providing information technology consulting, implementation and management services.
Fujitsu Consulting was founded in 1973 in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, under its original name "DMR" (an acronym of the three founder's names: Pierre Ducros, Serge Meilleur and Alain Roy) During the next decade, the company established a presence throughout Quebec and Canada, before extending its reach to international markets. For nearly thirty years, DMR Consulting grew to become an international consulting firm, changing its name to Fujitsu Consulting in 2002 after being acquired by Fujitsu Ltd.
Fujitsu operates a division of the company in India, resulting from an acquisition of North America-based company, Rapidigm. It has offshore divisions at Noida, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore with Pune being the head office. Fujitsu Consulting India launched its second $10 million development center at Noida in October 2007, a year after starting operation in the country. Following the expansion plan, Fujitsu Consulting India launched the fourth development center in Bengaluru in Nov 2011.
Fujitsu General.
Fujitsu Ltd. has a 42% shareholding in Fujitsu General, which manufactures and markets various air conditioning units and humidity control solutions under the General & Fujitsu brands. In India, The company has ended its long-standing joint venture agreement with the Dubai-based ETA group and henceforth will operate under a wholly owned subsidiary Fujitsu General (India) Pvt Ltd, which was earlier known as ETA General.
PFU Limited.
PFU Limited, headquartered in Ishikawa, Japan is a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Limited. PFU Limited was established in 1960, has approximately 4,600 employees globally and in 2013 turned over 126.4 billion Yen (US$1.2 Billion). PFU manufactures interactive kiosks, keyboards, network security hardware, embedded computers and imaging products (document scanners) all under the PFU or Fujitsu brand. In addition to hardware PFU also produce desktop and enterprise document capture software and document management software products. PFU has overseas Sales & Marketing offices in Germany (PFU Imaging Solutions Europe Limited), Italy (PFU Imaging Solutions Europe Limited), United Kingdom (PFU Imaging Solutions Europe Limited) and United States of America (Fujitsu Computer Products of America Inc). PFU Limited are responsible for the design, development, manufacture, sales and support of document scanners which are sold under the Fujitsu brand. Fujitsu are market leaders in professional document scanners with their best selling fi-series, Scansnap and ScanPartner product families as well as Paperstream IP, Paperstream Capture, ScanSnap Manager, ScanSnap Home, Cardminder, Magic Desktop and Rack2Filer software products.
Fujitsu Glovia, Inc..
Fujitsu Glovia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu Ltd., is a discrete manufacturing enterprise resource planning software vendor based in El Segundo, California, with international operations in the Netherlands, Japan and the United Kingdom. The company offers on-premise and cloud-based ERP manufacturing software under the Glovia G2 brand, and software as a service (SaaS) under the brand Glovia OM. The company was established in 1970 as Xerox Computer Services, where it developed inventory, manufacturing and financial applications. Fujitsu acquired 30 percent of the renamed Glovia International in 1997 and the remaining 70 percent stake in 2000.
Fujitsu Client Computing Limited.
Fujitsu Client Computing Limited (FCCL), headquartered in Kawasaki, Kanagawa, the city where the company was founded, is the division of Fujitsu responsible for research, development, design, manufacturing and sales of consumer PC products. Formerly a wholly owned subsidiary, in November 2017, FCCL was spun off into a joint venture with Lenovo and Development Bank of Japan (DBJ). The new company retains the same name, and Fujitsu is still responsible for sales and support of the products; however, Lenovo owns a majority stake at 51%, while Fujitsu retains 44%. The remaining 5% stake is held by DBJ.
Products and services.
Computing products.
Fujitsu's computing product lines include:
In May 2011, Fujitsu decided to enter the mobile phone space again, Microsoft announcing plans that Fujitsu would release Windows Phone devices.
Fujitsu PRIMERGY and ETERNUS are distributed by TriTech Distribution Limited in Hong Kong.
LIFEBOOK, AMILO: Fujitsu's range of notebook computers and tablet PCs.
Cloud computing.
Fujitsu offers a public cloud service delivered from data centers in Japan, Australia, Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany based on its Global Cloud Platform strategy announced in 2010. The platform delivers Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) – virtual information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure, such as servers and storage functionality – from Fujitsu's data centers. In Japan, the service was offered as the On-Demand Virtual System Service (OViSS) and was then launched globally as Fujitsu Global Cloud Platform/S5 (FGCP/S5). Since July 2013 the service has been called IaaS Trusted Public S5. Globally, the service is operated from Fujitsu data centers located in Australia, Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan.
Fujitsu has also launched a Windows Azure powered Global Cloud Platform in a partnership with Microsoft. This offering, delivering Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), was known as FGCP/A5 in Japan but has since been renamed FUJITSU Cloud PaaS A5 for Windows Azure. It is operated from a Fujitsu data center in Japan. It offers a set of application development frameworks, such as Microsoft .NET, Java and PHP, and data storage capabilities consistent with the Windows Azure platform provided by Microsoft. The basic service consists of compute, storage, Microsoft SQL Azure, and Windows Azure AppFabric technologies such as Service Bus and Access Control Service, with options for inter-operating services covering implementation and migration of applications, system building, systems operation, and support.
Fujitsu acquired RunMyProcess in April 2013, a Cloud-based integration Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) specialized in workflow automation and business application development.
Fujitsu offers local cloud platforms, such as in Australia, that provide the ability to rely on its domestic data centers which keep sensitive financial data under local jurisdiction and compliance standards.
Microprocessors.
Fujitsu produces the SPARC-compliant CPU (SPARClite), the "Venus" 128 GFLOP SPARC64 VIIIfx model is included in the K computer, the world's fastest supercomputer in June 2011 with a rating of over 8 petaflops, and in October 2011, K became the first computer to top 10 petaflops. This speed was achieved in testing on October 7 - 8, and the results were then presented at the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC11) in November 2011.
The Fujitsu FR, FR-V and ARM architecture microprocessors are widely used, additionally in ASICs and Application-specific standard products (ASSP) like the Milbeaut with customer variants named Nikon Expeed. They were acquired by Spansion in 2013.
Advertising.
The old slogan "The possibilities are infinite" can be found below the company's logo on major advertisements and ties in with the small logo above the letters J and I of the word Fujitsu. This smaller logo represents the symbol for infinity. As of April 2010, Fujitsu is in the process of rolling out a new slogan focused on entering into partnerships with its customers and retiring the "possibilities are infinite" tagline. The new slogan is "shaping tomorrow with you".
Criticism.
Fujitsu operated the Horizon IT system mentioned in the trial between the Post Office and its sub-postmasters. The case, settled in December 2019, found that the IT system was unreliable and that faults in the system caused discrepancies in branch accounts which were not due to the postmasters themselves. Justice Fraser, the judge ruling on the case, noted that Fujitsu had given ‘wholly unsatisfactory evidence’ and there had been a ‘lack of accuracy on the part of Fujitsu witnesses in their evidence’. Following his concerns, Justice Fraser sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Environmental record.
Fujitsu reports that all its notebook and tablet PCs released globally comply with the latest Energy Star standard.
Greenpeace's Cool IT Leaderboard of April 2013 "examines how IT companies use their considerable influence to change government policies that will drive clean energy deployment" and ranks Fujitsu 4th out of 21 leading manufacturers, on the strength of "developed case study data of its solutions with fairly transparent methodology, and is the leading company in terms of establishing ambitious and detailed goals for future carbon savings from its IT solutions."