Arnott's outsources data centre operations to Fujitsu

Fujitsu Australia today announced that leading food manufacturer Arnott's will outsource its data centre operations to Fujitsu under a five-year arrangement valued at approximately $7.5 million. Arnott's will move to Fujitsu from IBM Global Services Australia.

Fujitsu will provide data centre management and dual-site disaster recovery services for Arnott's in Australia and the regional operations of its parent company, Campbell Soup Company. Under the contract, Fujitsu will host the food giant's AS/400, Sun Microsystems and Microsoft Windows NT requirements at its new and expanded Internet Data Centre (IDC) in North Ryde, Sydney. It will also provide database administration, system administration, system software maintenance and 24-hour help desk services.

Arnott's Asia-Pacific Vice President for Information Technology, Ms Sue Sutton said: "We were looking for a proactive partner that would bring ideas for improvements to services, service level agreements and costs to the table. Fujitsu built all of these features into the contract."

The transition to Fujitsu's data centre will commence immediately and is expected to be completed by November 2002. The first step will be the migration of Arnott's Sun and NT-based equipment from its own offices to the IDC. Fujitsu will also provide new AS/400s within the North Ryde facility to replace those at IBM GSA.

"We are delighted to welcome Arnott's as a customer," said Mr Phil Kerrigan, Chief Executive of Fujitsu Australia. "Fujitsu's IDC is among the most sophisticated data centres in Asia Pacific and this is a positive endorsement of our decision to target the AS/400 outsourcing market."

Fujitsu acquired the 7,000-square-metre facility from Exodus Communications Australia in April 2002. The transaction has enabled it to expand its already broad range of outsourcing solutions and meet burgeoning corporate demand for highly reliable and secure data centre services.

Speaking at the time of the acquisition, Mr Kerrigan said: "The capital investment required to establish and maintain facilities such as this is beyond the scope of most businesses. Fujitsu's push to offer a managed solution gives customers access to world-class infrastructure with state-of-the-art security and data integrity - an approach that is attractive both to start up companies and large enterprises seeking to leverage the Web to sell products and services online."