Fujitsu Global SELECT Innovation Award Celebrates how Fujitsu Channel Partners put Human Centric Innovation in Action

Luxembourg, November 18, 2015 World population is growing at a rate of around 75 million per year, putting extreme pressure on global resources including food. This is one of six key megatrends that Fujitsu identifies as the global challenges that are shaping business and society. So it is fitting that the first winner of the new SELECT Global Innovation Award is making effective use of Fujitsu technology to optimize food production.

Michael Keegan, Head of EMEIA Product Business at Fujitsu, says: “Fujitsu has a vision of society where people are empowered to innovate, and in doing so lives are enriched by ICT. Innovation is everywhere, delivering new business and social value to enable a more prosperous and sustainable future. Fujitsu is enabling its partners and customers to make this happen by creating new connections – between people, information and technology. We call this Human Centric Innovation, and regularly share customer stories that bring the concept to life. We created the SELECT Global Innovation Award in recognition of the outstanding role our channel partners also play, and help share more of these inspiring stories.”

Italian partner Gruppomega, a leader in the design and construction of turnkey technological systems for industrial, commercial and public buildings, takes first prize for its support of the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria Saf@med project to analyze food production and sustainable use of resources for the region of Calabria, Italy¹. Runners up were CSW of Germany, for a High Performance Computing (HPC) project to improve research and development for TLT-Turbo, the world’s leading manufacturer of technology driven industrial fans and ventilation systems², and Kernel IT of Greece for its Self Service Cloud App, a virtualized solution based on Fujitsu infrastructure to help digitalize municipal government services in Heraklion, the principal city of Crete³.

In our radically changing world, underlying IT technologies can be optimized and used to help businesses to respond and grow. However, many enterprises are struggling to find the right path to digital transformation. Part of Fujitsu’s roadmap for growth is enabling its 16,200 – and growing – SELECT Partner Program Members to better support enterprises’ innovative use of Fujitsu’s products, services and solutions. For example, this new SELECT Global Innovation Award acknowledges partners’ contribution to innovative use of integration, mobility, big data, security, cloud, integrated computing, and software-defined connected infrastructure solutions.

Veerle Limbos, Vice President, Global Channel Business, Fujitsu says: "The SELECT Global Innovation Award is an important component in Fujitsu's recognition of SELECT Registered Members and SELECT Experts. The finalists and overall winner, exemplify what it means to be a trusted business advisor and provide true transformative value by putting Human Centric Innovation in Action. Gruppomega will receive EURO 10,000 for sales development funds to be used in joint marketing with Fujitsu, among other great benefits for each of the top three finalists.”

Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria: Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life
Expo Milano 2015 reflected on various strategies for finding solutions to world issues around food and nutrition, under the theme ‘Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life’. In recent years, the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria, Italy, has grappled with exactly this topic by undertaking research relating to agricultural technologies. Its Saf@med project, which analyzes food production and the sustainable management of resources, will benefit not only the Calabria region at the southern tip of Italy, known for its agriculture, fishing and traditional food products, but also make an important contribution to the international scientific community.

When equipping the university to support this research, the opportunity was taken to update its data center to make it more flexible in responding to the evolving needs of various departments. Gruppomega, a Fujitsu SELECT Expert Advanced Server Solutions partner, recommended a hyperconverged system.

Salvatore Cipriano, account manager at Gruppomega explains: “We decided to offer integrated systems – specifically, FUJITSU Integrated System PRIMEFLEX for VMware EVO:RAIL – based on our customer’s wish to consolidate and rationalize existing IT data center resources to achieve a drastic reduction of man-hours devoted to maintenance, not to mention significant savings in terms of energy consumption and cooling. For Gruppomega this has meant additional services for the design, construction and maintenance of the infrastructure, being part of the project and advising the customer right from the very beginning of its definition.”

Santo Marcello Zimbone, General Director at the Mediterranean University of Reggio Calabria says: “The infrastructure created for the Saf@med project puts the Mediterranean University at the cutting edge in terms of facilities and infrastructure for food and agriculture research.” His colleague, Dr Melchiorre Monaca, Servizio Autonomo per l’Informatica di Ateneo, Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, adds: “Fujitsu and Gruppomega were able to understand our needs and meet our requirements, offering us a solution that was quick and easy to implement.”

International Finalists of the Fujitsu SELECT Awards 2015
Fujitsu also celebrated the outstanding contributions of its SELECT Partner Program participants from around the EMEIA (Europe, Middle East, India and Africa) region with an Awards ceremony at Fujitsu Forum Munich. As one of the most channel-centric global vendors of technology products, solutions and services, this Award is one way in which Fujitsu is incentivizing channel partners of all sizes, specializations and locations to share its success.

The SELECT Awards mark a pinnacle of the globalization of Fujitsu’s SELECT Partner Program in a year where Fujitsu has revamped its program to meet the evolving needs of its channel partners around the world and to enable channel partners to drive more profitable business.

The new SELECT Partner Program bore fruit in a time of much uncertainty in the technology industry, where vendor reliability and trustworthiness becomes ever more important. In fact, within six months of relaunching the SELECT Partner Program, Fujitsu now ranks #1 overall in the Canalys EMEA vendor benchmark (Candefero polling, October 23, 2015). This result demonstrates how Fujitsu’s channel partners are showing their appreciation of how well Fujitsu is supporting their business goals on a full variety of aspects – the company is currently outpacing every other vendor. Fujitsu is distinguished by the attributes of ease of doing business, margin retention and profitability, effectiveness of account management, and managing channel conflicts.