Fujitsu Partners with NTUC First Campus to Deploy Cloud Computing in its Childcare Operations

Singapore, September 25, 2013

Fujitsu Singapore, a leading provider of IT-based business solutions, today announced that they have worked together with NTUC First Campus (NFC) to develop its information technology (IT) infrastructure. Originally hosted in a traditional Data Centre, NFC migrated its IT infrastructure to Fujitsu’s cloud solution to achieve greater efficiency, reliability and flexibility. NFC operates over 100 childcare centres in Singapore and serves about 12,000 families. It plans to continue its strategic expansion to meet the nation’s growing demand for childcare services.

The FUJITSU Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) is a fully configurable IT infrastructure hosted in data centres in Singapore. It is Fujitsu‘s global standard for IaaS and can be employed in accordance with an organisation’s needs while ensuring a high level of reliability to support NFC’s operational requirements while enhancing productivity.

Under the three-year partnership, Fujitsu is hosting NFC’s infrastructure on Fujitsu Cloud IaaS. As the largest childcare provider in Singapore, NFC needed flexible growth and efficient deployment of IT in both current and new centres. NFC is the first educational agency to host its infrastructure in Fujitsu Cloud IaaS, marking a breakthrough for the two organisations.

NFC is also pioneering innovative teaching practices through the use of technology tools in the classrooms. To better support the proliferation of such tools, Fujitsu is implementing its Desktop Management Services (DMS) to manage NFC’s centres across Singapore as part of the partnership. With child registration and enrolment expected to increase by 50 percent over the next few years, Fujitsu’s DMS will provide NFC with the scalability and flexibility to manage the diversity of technology tools and respond effectively to expected increase in capacity. A team of engineers from Fujitsu provides 24/7 support for the implementation, which also includes a monitoring system architecture, replications and disaster recovery services.

Mr Lim Chai Seng, Head of Information Technology at NFC shares: “NTUC First Campus believes that every child, regardless of their background, deserves a good start in life. To this end, we are constantly improving our operations and adopting innovative practices so that we can bring quality, affordable and accessible early childhood care and education to even more Singapore families. Cloud computing represents the opportunity for us to transform our infrastructure even as we rapidly grow our network of childcare centres. The infrastructure is now more effective and responsive to business requirements and, promises flexibility, lower operating costs and managed risk. It was important for us to work with a partner who is able to provide us with the capability to support the technological needs when we open a new centre and at the same time, ensure the ongoing maintenance and management of our existing centres. Fujitsu’s attentiveness and responsiveness to our requirements have resulted in the development of an infrastructure which addressed both our business and technological objectives.”

Further enhancements to the unified platform are also underway as discussions on other projects for network and application services are in progress. The success of this partnership thus far has resulted in NFC hosting their contact centre system within Fujitsu’s data centre facility.

“Seeing how this is a big step for NTUC First Campus since this marks the first time it embarks on cloud computing, it was evident that we could not develop the platform with an “one size fits all” approach. It had to be customised in order to support NTUC First Campus’ rapid growth, its current technological needs and more importantly, to ensure a smooth migration from its previous Data Centre. The key to this successful deployment was a result of ongoing communication and collaboration with NTUC First Campus,” said David Chee, Country Head for Managed Services, Fujitsu Singapore. “Cloud computing is an evolution and we are pleased that NTUC First Campus has selected us to be its partner on this journey.”