Fujitsu President calls for new approach to application development

IT service providers need to bridge the gap between technological innovation and IT utilisation if they want to stimulate demand for new products and services to arrest the current slump affecting the IT industry, according to Fujitsu Limited President and CEO Naoyuki Akikusa.

Mr Akikusa told delegates at the World Congress on Information Technology 2002 in Adelaide today that customers were waiting for IT service providers to develop applications that take full advantage of advances in hardware performance, bandwidth, multimedia and online capabilities.

"Technological innovation is advancing exponentially, but utilisation of IT is only growing linearly. As a result, the gap between technology development and IT utilisation is rapidly growing wider, a factor that I believe has contributed to the reduced demand for IT products and services," he said.

"What is needed right now is for the IT industry to create breakthrough applications that exploit recent technological innovations to inspire businesses and enable them to push the envelope in the way they deliver products and services to the market."

The head of Fujitsu's global operation, Mr Akikusa is recognised as one of Asia's foremost business leaders and a key player in shaping the worldwide information and communications technology industry.

His WCIT2002 keynote presentation entitled "The Future Challenge for the IT Industry" addressed the changing role required of IT service providers in an increasingly competitive, globalised knowledge economy.

"In order to achieve application breakthroughs we must change the way we think, putting aside past constraints in relation to CPUs, networks and storage systems, and harness improved hardware performance to improve software productivity."

He cited examples where Fujitsu is partnering with specialist developers in medical imaging, bioinformatics, e-learning and other industry sectors, combining technologies from different disciplines to create new types of applications and services.

Mr Akikusa also said the IT services industry is moving away from the traditional focus on systems integration to a model where services are packaged as individual products and marketed to customers as part of an end-to-end services strategy.

"The end of systems integration is the beginning of services businesses for all stages of the application lifecycle, from Training and Education through to Data Storage, Application Maintenance and Network Monitoring.

"Thanks to high speed networks, these services are increasingly being provided remotely to achieve fast delivery and maximise cost competitiveness," he said.

"The emergence of new specialist entrants from other industry sectors will offer both new competitive pressures as well as opportunities for collaboration. The process of achieving Application Breakthrough will require us to challenge conventional views and play on interdisciplinary fields.

"We recognise that the emerging IT services model will involve converging many technologies under a new approach. At Fujitsu, with its broad value chain ranging from technologies to services, we are committed to playing a pioneering role by using our integrated total capabilities to deliver the new era of IT utilisation and services."