20.05.2009

Consolidation Through Virtualization

By: Stephan De Maria

A study by the market research company IDC attributes a high level of customer satisfaction to the concept. Those surveyed confirmed reductions in total cost of ownership (TCO) and administrative effort, as well as increases in flexibility and scalability.

Further alternatives: managed services and data centers

Fujitsu’s managed services represent additional means of optimizing IT processes. The company takes over responsibility for all infrastructure operations, while the infrastructure itself remains with and is owned by the customer. “Or we can take it a step further and offer to run the systems at our data centers,” Dörken adds.

However, Dörken sees each customer’s ideal product as a balance of varying demands with regard to costs, security, flexibility, and resources – not a matter of one-size-fits-all. In addition to virtualization, he mentions Fujitsu’s intensive efforts to converge SAP and open-source products such as Linux. “That’s also reducing costs,” he says.

Rehau lowers energy costs by 40 percent

Two aspects that are constantly growing in importance are energy efficiency and green IT. “Greenpeace named us the ‘greenest’ IT provider in 2008, based in part on servers and monitors that consume no wattage in standby mode,” Dörken says.

He immediately follows up with a customer example: Thanks in no small measure to Fujitsu’s dynamic infrastructure, the polymer specialist Rehau reduced its energy consumption by 40 percent. “As a result, Information Week awarded them the Green CIO Award last year,” Dörken says.

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