Fujitsu makes North American cloud move with free trial

Fujitsu has made a move into the North American public cloud market with the rollout of its Global Cloud Platform, launched as a free beta trial of Fujitsu’s infrastructure-as-a-service platform.

The launch is a first for the company in North America, but the platform already has been widely deployed in countries like Japan, Australia, Singapore and the United Kingdom, said Jody Little, VP of cloud portfolio marketing for Fujitsu. To appeal to enterprises that may be unfamiliar with its platform, Fujitsu is launching a free trial from May 31 to August 31 of its server or storage on demand services, along with testing and development, backup and business analytics, she said.

Fujitsu is aiming for globally minded customers with the platform, Little said.

“The user target is multinational enterprises,” she said. “The idea is that customers who do business in multiple environments can standardize their approach and get global support, making it much easier for them to run across different countries.”

The launch augments Fujitsu’s previously announced private cloud offering, Little said, and the company plans to add platform-as-a-service and software-as-a-service later this year. “The whole roadmap is really leading us to a hybrid cloud model,” she said. Fujitsu has invested heavily in the cloud and expects 30 percent of its revenue to come from the cloud by 2013, Little said.

The trial the company is currently offering includes access to:

Fujitsu is hopeful the effort will help raise the company’s awareness in the cloud space among North American users, and appeal to companies seeking more advisory services that Fujitsu can offer, Little said. “A big part of people’s resistance to the cloud is around education and needing assistance,” she said.