Fujitsu Asia Opens Third Data Centre In Singapore

Singapore, January 13, 2009

Leading regional IT services provider Fujitsu Asia today opened the Fujitsu East Data Centre (FeDC) in Singapore to accommodate the growing demand for cost-efficient and energy-efficient managed IT services throughout ASEAN.

Located at The Fort, a high-security building in Changi, the Data Centre (DC) is the third by Fujitsu Asia in Singapore, with the first two centres based in Ayer Rajah and Tampines.

The FeDC is the most energy-efficient of Fujitsu Asia’s four DCs in ASEAN, and conforms to best practices from Tokyo-based parent firm Fujitsu Limited, one of the world’s top four IT services and DC providers.

With a set-up cost of S$15 million, the FeDC represents Fujitsu Asia’s latest capital investment in the Singapore economy. Fully operational since last month, phase 1 occupies 7,400 sq ft of space, with options for extending the floor area to 18,000 sq ft. The facility also incorporates a full security system incorporating Fujitsu’s PalmSecure palm vein biometric access, closed-circuit television surveillance, on-site electricity generation and uninterruptible power supplies. This represents a Tier III+ availability for all the infrastructure and telecommunications.

Energy-efficient and green motivated features include:

• Power distribution units (PDU) fitted with Branch Circuit Monitoring (BCM) This feature allows Fujitsu Asia to constantly monitor and precisely control the power usage levels for individual racks of servers, storage systems or other devices. This ensures optimal electricity consumption and minimal heat dissipation based on operational needs.
• Proactive cooling practices The FeDC has thermometers installed at regular intervals to monitor ambient temperatures, and perforated floor tiles fitted with dampers to ensure optimum air flow. Such state-of-the-art practices allow Fujitsu Asia to take steps (such as adjusting the electrical loads for individual racks) for maintaining thermal equilibrium within the DC. A stable and uniform ambient temperature will, in turn, lower overall cooling requirements and costs.
• Efficient and effective lighting practices The ambient lighting in the “lights out” DC is deliberately dimmed to minimise ancillary power consumption while still allowing the closed-circuit surveillance cameras to operate normally.

These features allow the DC to minimise its electricity consumption – and thus reduce its carbon footprint – while simultaneously allowing customers to save costs. The FeDC allows customers to realise energy savings ranging from 10 to 30 per cent, depending on operational requirements which are in turn based on business needs.

A utility-based pricing model for managed services at the FeDC provides customers with further cost savings. Fees for collocation services (assigning private racks for individual customers) are levied on a per-rack basis while server administration charges are computed on a per-server basis. Server monitoring and network administration charges are similarly calculated based on usage levels. This utility-based pricing model is available for SME customers seeking to host up to five servers on-site. Fujitsu Asia is also able to create optimal pricing schemes for MNCs or other large clients based on their overall requirements and larger deployments.

Such a consumption-based pricing mechanism allows customers greater flexibility to plan or adjust their IT expenditures based on operational needs. In contrast, a lump-sum pricing scheme requires customers to pay for a fixed set of computing resources which may represent excess capacity.

Alternatively, the FeDC also offers customisable packages of managed services on a per-project basis. With this option, Fujitsu procures new capacity for meeting drastic short-term surges in a customer’s computing requirements and once the demand subsides, Fujitsu will take back the excess capacity. This offers improved technology-to-business alignment, increased flexibility and cost savings for clients.

Fujitsu offers the following services at the FeDC:

• Collocation (assigning private racks for individual customers)
• Server and database administration
• Local area network, wide area network and firewall administration
• DC design-and-build services
• Disaster recovery and business continuity services

These FeDC services are available to all the ASEAN markets (Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam) which the company operates in.

“The opening of the FeDC augurs well for our ASEAN customers. It provides high-quality data centre services in a cost-efficient and energy-efficient manner, and allows customers to scale their computing needs to maintain their competitiveness amid ever-changing business conditions. This investment is in line with plans by Fujitsu Asia, the ASEAN HQ for Fujitsu Limited, to expand its regional presence while consolidating all administrative, logistics, marketing and sales operations in Singapore. Its opening marks a significant milestone in our corporate history," said Mr. Masaki Kajiyama, President (Singapore Operations), Fujitsu Asia.

Tokyo-based Fujitsu Limited operates 53 DCs in Japan and 32 more DCs in 16 other countries worldwide. The Japanese conglomerate views DC services as a core business and actively helps customers to grow their businesses using such means.