Fujitsu Launches Cloud Services as a Platform for Big Data

Tokyo, January 16, 2012

Fujitsu today announced the launch of Data Utilization Platform Services, which use cloud services as a platform leveraging big data⁽¹⁾.

This is a cloud service for gathering, compiling, and integrating massive quantities of sensing data; combining it with knowledge; processing it using realtime processing or batch processing; and using it for such purposes as making future projections. It covers four specific services offerings: Data Management & Integration Services, Communications Control Services, Data Collection and Detection Services, and Data Analysis Services.

Fujitsu is promoting Convergence Services that leverage big data to help resolve business and global issues, generate new sources of value, and bring about a more prosperous society. Data Utilization Platform Services will act as the core of these services.

To complement the new services, Fujitsu is also launching Data Curation Services to provide total support for these new ways of leveraging data, including customer data analysis and its application to business operations. Current customer-specific support menu options are to be standardized by April 2012 and gradually rolled out as services.

Background

Fujitsu's Convergence Services are the key to bring about a "human centric intelligent society" in which ICT resources are used to create a society that is more secure and more prosperous for everyone. By collecting, storing, and analyzing massive amounts of data and integrating it with knowledge in a feedback loop to society, Fujitsu aims to generate new sources of value and contribute to resolving the increasingly complex issues facing society, such as lowering healthcare costs, using energy more efficiently, and reducing traffic congestion.

Data Utilization Platform Services being introduced today are a core part of these Convergence Services, and are designed to help companies seeking to leverage big data to get new business initiatives off the ground quickly and add value to products and services.

About the Data Utilization Platform Services

This is a cloud service for gathering, compiling, and integrating massive quantities of sensing data, processing it using realtime processing or batch processing, and using it for such purposes as making future projections. For companies that are considering the use of big data, or quantities of data that are expected to expand to become big data, to develop new products and services or to solve problems, Data Utilization Platform Services offer a way to quickly, safely, and inexpensively get a planned system or business off the ground.

Four specific services are being offered: Data Management & Integration Services, Communications Control Services, Data Collection and Detection Services, and Data Analysis Services.

Fujitsu plans to gradually expand its Convergence Services to provide customers with the best possible options to suit their accumulated data and business growth.

Service Features

1. Comprehensive service that integrates all required technologies

All the technologies required to leverage big data including compound event processing⁽²⁾ and distributed parallel processing, are integrated into the cloud platform, which is provided as a service.

2. Different types of large data sets can be integrated

Data collected from different types of sensors, business-transaction logs, text data, binary streams⁽³⁾, and other types of data can be integrated for a variety of purposes to extract new value from them.

3. Offered as a cloud service with a la carte options

Customers can start small with the service and expand as their business grows. Customers use and pay for only those resources they need, enabling them to optimize costs.

Service Offerings

Service Description

Service Name	Description
Data Management & Integration Services	A huge volume of diverse data in different formats constantly being collected from sensors is efficiently accumulated and managed through the use of technology that automatically categorizes the data for archive storage.
Communications Control Services	Comprises three functions for exchanging data with various types of equipment (such as home appliances) over networks: communications control, equipment control, and GW management.
Data Collection and Detection Services	By applying rules(4) to the data streaming in from sensors, an analysis of the current status can be performed and based on that analysis, decisions can be made with navigation or other required procedures performed in real time.
Data Analysis Services	The huge volume of accumulated data is quickly analyzed using a parallel distributed processing engine to create value through the analysis of past data or through future projections or simulations.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing and Availability

Service Name	Pricing (excluding tax)	Availability	Comments
Data Management & Integration Services	By quotation	Now	Required
Communications Control Services	By quotation	Now	Optional
Data Collection and Detection Services	By quotation	Now	Optional
Data Analysis Services	By quotation	Now	Optional

Future Plans

Beginning in the second quarter of fiscal 2012, these four services will be augmented by a Data Exchange Service and an Information Application Support Service.

Data Exchange Service: Makes it possible to merge accumulated information among multiple tenants (customers) safely when needed, and in the format needed, through a federation⁽⁵⁾ in which access privileges are respected.

Information Application Support Service: Using service mashup technology⁽⁶⁾, the analytical results from the platform are integrated with multiple web services to easily create new navigation services. The analysis and judgment results are made visible and used to inform recommendations⁽⁷⁾ that are made to support end users.

Data Curation Services

To help customers generate new sources of value, Fujitsu will offer the techniques it has developed for leveraging its own data and using that data to make its operations more efficient or develop new businesses. This is done using "curators,"⁽⁸⁾ a variety of specialized analytics tools, including mathematical or statistical data modeling, multivariate analysis⁽⁹⁾, and machine learning⁽¹⁰⁾. Currently these are available to customers on an ad-hoc basis, but they are scheduled to be organized into a standardized set of offerings by April 2012.

As data increases in scope and volume, the number of types of data, both in open sources and the holdings of other companies, is going to increase as well. Individual companies may find it increasingly difficult to leverage this data on their own. To briefly mention some of the benefits that customers can gain through the use of these services, the following are some of the ways that Fujitsu can help customers get more value out of their data:

• Investigating ways to put existing data holdings to new uses (such as in new services).
• Investigating ways to use large accumulated data.
• Gaining insights from data to drive business reforms.
• Using data as the key to new businesses.
• Other