Industry

Fujitsu today announced the recent opening of the new annex of the Tatebayashi System Center, in Gunma Prefecture outside Tokyo, to serve as a core platform for its outsourcing services and next-generation cloud services business in Japan.

To ensure reliable, high-quality operations, the center combines advanced technologies in the areas of facilities design, power, air-conditioning, and security with Fujitsu's years of experience in operations management. As part of Fujitsu's "Green Policy Innovation" green IT project, the new annex also showcases the latest eco-friendly technologies.

Clients can outsource their complex IT systems and services needs to Fujitsu with guaranteed assurance, while at the same time Fujitsu can contribute to reducing its customers' environmental footprint.
Background

As IT systems have become an increasingly critical part of corporate infrastructure in recent years, companies have sought to improve the reliability and quality of IT while trying to contain its steadily increasing costs.

To address these concerns, Fujitsu opened the Tatebayashi System Center in 1995 in Gunma Prefecture, and began to develop its outsourcing business. Since then, it has provided a range of outsourcing services to meet client needs. These have included not only datacenter services, but SaaS/ASP services, as well as business process outsourcing services for specific business functions. As a result, according to a report published by IDC Japan in August 2009(1), Fujitsu has held the top spot by revenue in the Japanese outsourcing market for five consecutive years.

Fujitsu has striven to further expand its outsourcing services, and constructed the new annex of the Tatebayashi System Center to serve as its core for new business. The center is the most advanced in Japan, combining cutting-edge disaster-readiness, security, and environmentally friendly facilities. With 14 years of uninterrupted operations, the Tatebayashi System Center's highly reliable operations provide a solid foundation to support client IT systems.

Building Features

   1. Advanced high-density, high-security facilities
      The datacenter is earthquake-proof and covers approximately 23,000 m2 of a 126,000 m2 site, with five stories above ground and one below. The machine rooms have a floor weight capacity of 1.2 tons/m2, with 3000 mm ceilings and 820 mm of space below the floor to accommodate a maximum rack mount power supply of 20 kVA. In addition, the facility's latest physical security features incorporate biometric authentication, RFID tags to track personnel movement, and electrically locked racks. Security measures are extremely thorough, with as many as seven checkpoints on the way leading to the machine area.

   2. Environmentally friendly datacenter reduces power consumption by 40%
      This eco-friendly datacenter employs solar power generation, and is equipped with high-efficiency electrical facilities (UPS, cooling, and transformers) and server rooms with optimized layouts based on thermo-fluid simulations. Its low-energy operations management system (visualizing per-rack power consumption, temperature, and airflow, in addition to optimizing air-conditioning control) and spot air-conditioning units (patent pending) were designed in collaboration with Fuji Electric Systems Limited. All of these initiatives combine to lower the power and cooling required for IT facilities, reducing power consumption by 40% compared to existing datacenters.

   3. High-quality solutions employ proprietary, well-tested operational technology
      Based on years of proven achievement in operations, Fujitsu is committed to dependable operation of client IT systems. In addition to applying its proprietary operations automation tools and standard methods of delivery, it holds regular technical and ethics training sessions for its service managers and technicians, who are the cornerstone of its operations. The datacenter keeps parts on hand to maintain a 98% system uptime within the center (using Fujitsu equipment), to flexibly handle problems that may arise. It is not only the robust facilities, but also the additional operation technologies that demonstrate the overwhelming strength of Fujitsu's datacenter services to respond to a vast array of customer needs.

   4. Next-generation datacenter supports highly reliable services
      The datacenter possesses a number of features as a platform for next-generation cloud services, ensuring that clients utilize their IT resources efficiently. In its initial configuration, the datacenter will contain a server farm configured with 1,000 servers, which will be expanded over time. With an eye towards creating new markets, Fujitsu is pursuing technological advances to implement virtualization, autonomy, scalability, and usability, further advancing its Trusted-Service Platform for cloud services in Japan.