[Internal case]
Fujitsu Limited

As a global business employing 156,000 people across the world, Fujitsu Limited (Fujitsu) began developing a new Global Communications Platform in 2010 to promote workstyle transformation and innovation.

As a first step, Fujitsu started the process of unifying its communications platforms in 2010. Head of IT Strategies Unit, Senior Vice President Takahiko Kouketsu comments, "Our aim was to enable all 156,000 employees around the world to use the same tools for email, schedule sharing, web conferencing and other tasks."

In 2013, Fujitsu took the second step by focusing on transforming workstyles through the adoption of an internal social network for knowledge sharing and a softphone system for voice communications. Then from 2015, while increasing the quality of information sharing through higher quality video and other content, the company deployed a virtual desktop system to support a wide range of workstyles and also bolster security.

Use of the Global Communications Platform is already generating solid results. For example, 95% of the Fujitsu workforce actively participates in web conferencing, with 1.7 million meetings expected during the fiscal year to March 2017. According to Takahiko Kouketsu, this represents "an annual saving of several hundred million yen for business travel expenses in Japan alone." As of January 2017, there are also 4,500 communities on Fujitsu's internal social network, with 20 patent applications resulting from these community activities.

However, the operational situation in 2015 was such that the communications platform was being provided via various Fujitsu data centers around the world using on-premise software. "Different circumstances in each region resulted in variations in the rollout speed and the functionality available to users," comments Takahiko Kouketsu. (For details please see page 44, Book2)