Special report from the Fujitsu Forum in Munich
Having been hyped for many years the cloud, as a host for IT solutions, is increasingly being adopted by retailers as they recognise its cost efficiency during tough economic times. By Glynn Davis in Germany.
Speaking at the Fujitsu Forum in Munich today (Wednesday) Joseph Reger, Chief technology officer at Fujitsu, said: “Previously retailers said ‘no way’ to running CRM [solutions] in the cloud but the attitude to it is changing as there is a new reality. IT budgets are getting cut and retailers are becoming interested in things they said ‘no’ to a couple of years ago.”
He suggested that many successful businesses have gone on to build solutions in the cloud: “This year it is big data that is top of what people are talking about while the cloud is in implementation phase. There is so much interest in it that there are capacity issues”.
In fact such is the growing demand for cloud-based software solutions that Rod Vawdrey, responsible for international business at Fujitsu, believes that 90% of the world’s organisations will be using the cloud for hosting IT software by 2015.
“It’s on an amazing trajectory, we’ve 3,000 customers of our cloud solutions around the world who achieve 50% cost savings. It’s providing new opportunities for our business,” he says.
Vawdrey believes a trend is emerging that is leading to what he calls ‘cloud fusion’ whereby multiple cloud types – public, private and hybrid – are becoming integrated.
Another trend involves data, with the prediction that there will be a 50-fold growth in its usage by 2020. “We’ll see new technologies in data storage and new techniques to access it. It’s not only a challenge but a terrific opportunity,” he suggests.
