Fujitsu readiness for COVID-19

Updated March 18, 2020, Noon CT

A Message from Mike Kiname, President and CEO, Fujitsu America, Inc.

As part of a global company community, we at Fujitsu deeply understand the growing concern surrounding COVID-19. As the situation continues to evolve, we are hard at work to support our clients and minimize the effects as much as possible. I want to thank you for your business and your support during this period.

The health and safety of our people, clients and communities are our top priorities. Fujitsu has already put in place tried and tested business continuity systems and processes that are aimed at minimizing the spread of COVID-19 and safeguarding our service delivery across our operations. These actions are being managed centrally and executed locally in collaboration with our regional business owners, Global Delivery Centers (GDCs), Occupational Health and Safety teams, Security, HR and Communications – and we are fully aligned and compliant with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization and other local public health agencies.

New guidance from regional, state/provincial and local authorities is fast-emerging; we continue to comply with local regulations where Fujitsu operates, and we have further advised our employees to always follow the most stringent of guidance, should these various sources differ in their direction. This includes guidance from our clients for client locations.

This site is dedicated to sharing information with our stakeholders related to our business continuity plan and what action Fujitsu is taking to safeguard our employees, clients and broader communities, minimize our risk, and fulfill our obligations to our valued clients, partners and communities. Our collective teams have been working incredibly well together with a great spirit of client focus and with the safety of our people at the forefront.

This site will be updated on a regular basis to reflect new developments and additional measures that are put in place. If you have any important questions that are not addressed here, please do not hesitate to contact your account representative directly.

We at Fujitsu are working around the clock to stay apprised of the situation and make prudent decisions to mitigate risk to all of our important stakeholders. While we have some busy weeks in front of us, we are proactively managing the crisis and ready to implement more rigorous and heightened contingency plans should the situation escalate further.

We are here to support you during these trying times, and thank you as always for your business.
Sincerely,

Mike Kiname
President and CEO
Fujitsu America, Inc.

Business continuity planning measures
Measures to protect our workforce, clients and communities, and minimize COVID-19 exposure
Specific considerations for data centers
Special considerations for the use of shared equipment
Supply chain considerations

Business continuity planning measures

To assist in continuing to provide our services and products to our customers, all Fujitsu locations including our Global Delivery organization have implemented business continuity planning measures as a result of COVID-19. These tested systems and processes allow for extended use of remote working by our personnel and are intended to seek to maintain business as usual for the services and products supplied by Fujitsu to its customers.

Activities include, but are not limited to:

Daily status and alert meetings to review preparedness for pandemic threat based on advisory received from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization as well as the many sources of official guidance from international, national, state/provincial and county-wide authorities.
Monitoring developments at the local, national and global levels
Working with industry peers and software forums such as Nasscom to further implement best practices
Preparing for extended work-from-home scenario including preparing additional equipment, VPN access expansion/configuration, infrastructure stress testing, expedited delivery, priority access, etc.
Establishing national help line for Global Delivery Centers

Measures to protect our workforce, clients and communities, and minimize COVID-19 exposure

As a responsible business, Fujitsu has already implemented steps to protect its employees and others from being exposed to the Coronavirus. These preventive measures aim to reduce exposure and lower the risk that the virus could be transmitted.

These measures include:

Teleworking and Social Distancing

Facts tell us that the virus spreads more readily in areas where large groups of people are in close proximity. As such, we are canceling all in-person meetings and conferences in favor of virtual alternatives.

Furthermore, all employees in Fujitsu offices are being asked to telework, where possible. This is especially important for employees who:

Exhibit symptoms of illness, regardless if these are consistent with Coronavirus, as well as those who recently traveled, regardless of the travel destination
Have been in contact with family members or others who experience symptoms or recently returned from the affected countries
Are expectant mothers or parents with children under the age of five who require care due to the shutdown of childcare and educational facilities

Employees working remotely are expected to remain productive, efficient, responsive, and compliant with all applicable company policies and regulations as well as all contractual obligations with clients. With such a large virtual workforce, Fujitsu is already very adept at working in a digital world and interfacing with clients and colleagues with robust digital tools from Fujitsu. The level of telework is successfully increasing in every location, and our infrastructure remains stable.

Employees who continue to work in a Fujitsu office will be adequately spaced apart to ensure we maintain a recommended distance of six feet between employees, including during lunch and breaks.

Site Access Restrictions

As the COVID-19 situation progresses, we are tightening the rules concerning visitors to our locations as follows:

Regional Office Locations

In order to reduce the risk of infection to our staff and increase our resilience, we are limiting visitors to our sites to the extent possible. Our location access restrictions are implemented on a case-by-case basis by local health and safety officials as prescribed our business continuity plans. As a general rule, clients, vendors, job candidates and other visitors are not to be invited to and are not permitted inside any Fujitsu officelocation without the express approval of the site’s respective business unit or functional head.

Global Delivery Centers

Our GDCs, which are production centers that serve as critical hubs of our service delivery, are subject to additional protections to safeguard mission-critical systems, delivery capabilities and employees. Until further notice, GDC locations are closed to all visitors without prior authorization – this includes clients. There are no exceptions to this rule, and all visitors are required to have express approval from the Head of the Global Delivery Group. In practice, this means that non-essential visits from clients, employees from other Fujitsu offices, etc., are not permitted. However, necessary visits from engineers, contractors or auditors may be approved, though their scope of access and timing of visits will be limited.

Enhanced Hygiene

Our facilities teams are implementing additional and more-frequent cleaning regimens, especially in highly populated and high-traffic areas. This includes heightened levels of cleaning and disinfecting of frequently touched surfaces including tables, doorknobs, light switches, countertops, handles, desks, phones, keyboards, toilets, faucets and sinks. Furthermore, our employees have been instructed to continue practicing good hygiene and infection control in the office and beyond. This includes hand-washing and hand sanitizer guidelines, as well as instructions on how to minimize exposure to infection. Our GDCs have adopted further measures, equipping transport facilities and office entry points with hand sanitizers and commencing deep cleaning and regular fumigation regimes.

We’ve also enacted a rigorous communication across the Fujitsu Group to share the latest information on our business continuity plan implementation and preventive measures against COVID -19. This includes emails, intranet sites, FAQs, posters and hygiene guidelines on employees’ lock screen’s in each office.

Travel Restrictions

Fujitsu has prohibited international business travel until further notice; any exceptions must be approved by the Fujitsu America, Inc., President and CEO Mike Kiname. In addition, all non-essential national business travel is being deferred or canceled, and any exceptions must be approved by the business unit or functional head of the travel requestor. Fujitsu will continue to comply with all local and federal government travel restrictions, which are rapidly-changing and may necessitate more rigorous controls in due course.

Self-isolation

In line with CDC recommendations, we’ve put in place guidelines for self-isolation. Employees who do not feel well are being asked to stay home, while employees with a fever are further prohibited from entering Fujitsu offices.

Employees requested to self-isolate by the health authorities or as a result of state authority or Fujitsu guidance, should adhere to the following:

Make contact with the line manager at the earliest opportunity
Agree a new work pattern with the manager
Follow advice from the health authority, which may include the following instructions:

Stay at home and do not go to work, school or public places
Do not use public transport or taxis
Try to avoid visitors coming to your home (with the exception of friends, family or food and goods delivery)
Self-isolate for 14 days to help reduce the possible spread of infection
Consult local health authority for additional guidelines on coping with self-isolation

If an employee tests positive and is confirmed to have COVID-19, the employee must contact his or her manager and self-quarantine for the incubation period of 14 days. The line manager is required to ask the following questions of his or her employee:

What is the primary base location?
Where on site is the employee based?
Does the employee work on a customer account and if so which one(s)?
Has the employee traveled to any other Fujitsu or customer sites in the last 14 days?
Can the employee provide a list of colleagues and clients with whom he or she has been in contact in the last 14 days?

For any confirmed cases of COVID-19 at the Fujitsu workplace, Fujitsu Americas will follow all guidance from the relevant national, state and provincial authorities for reporting, self-isolation and quarantine, and in compliance with federal and local disclosure and confidentiality requirements.

Specific considerations for data centers

We are also taking additional measures to maintain continuity of services and protect, to the extent possible, the safety of our clients and staff at our data centers, including the following:

Increased core building cleaning across all data center sites.
Additional measures to promote hygiene including positioning of hand sanitizer at key locations as well as informational posters on the importance of good hygiene.
Fujitsu has a specific data center pandemic plan, and we have assessed that we are currently in the “Level 4 – Contain” phase of the plan. As per the expectations of this level of the Plan:
- Fujitsu staff who do not need to access the data center facilities will be working remotely. Critical maintenance will continue as needed.
- As Fujitsu data center staff are cross-trained to operate between data center sites, the pool of resources can be utilized across sites to maintain coverage as needed.
- We have imposed restrictions to access to our sites for anyone who has a travel history subject to Fujitsu or government policy, displays any flu-like symptoms, or has had close contact with others who have the virus.
- We have also postponed activities that are not essential or time-critical, such as tours, meetings and audits.

Should Fujitsu move to “Level 5 – Sustain”, additional data center entry restrictions will be introduced to ensure that only essential staff and service personnel will gain access to the facilities.

Special considerations for the use of shared equipment

When utilizing shared equipment, such as scanners, hot-desk computers, forklifts and other logistics equipment, personnel have been advised to follow the advice around hand cleaning and personal hygiene measures prior to and after usage. Managers of areas with such equipment are tasked to ensure that regular cleaning of that equipment occurs.

Our Retail customers have unique concerns and questions about how they can minimize the spread of disease, particularly as it relates to Point of Sale and Self Check-Out solutions. In addition to the general cleaning instructions Fujitsu provides in user manuals for specific products, below are ways to enhance equipment cleaning during this time*:

For touch screens and other LCD screens, use a diluted mixture of 70% Isopropyl Alcohol and 30% water. Surface Contact Time is 5 Minutes.
For plastics and metal components, use a diluted mixture of 70% Isopropyl Alcohol and 30% water. Alternately, alcohol wipes that are 70% isopropyl alcohol can be used. Some equivalent products are listed below. Gently wipe the hard, nonporous surfaces of your Fujitsu product, such as the display housing, keyboard, mouse or other exterior surfaces that are in contact with humans.
We understand that there are some issues with acquiring Isopropyl alcohol. Here are a few more examples of product, or their equivalent, that are approved by CDC and tested by Fujitsu. Surface contact time for these two are 2 minutes.

For more information, please visit https://www.epa.gov/pesticide-registration/list-n-disinfectants-use-against-sars-cov-2 or https://www.fujitsu.com/us/covid19/index.html

CAUTIONS:

Never spray any cleaning solution directly onto your display, keyboard, or any other piece of your Point of Sale Equipment. Otherwise, liquid may leak into the equipment and cause damage.
Always apply the cleaning solution to a microfiber cloth and then use the cloth to wipe the Point of Sale equipment. Do not oversaturate the cloth; liquid should not drip from it onto the product.
Do not spray or otherwise put cleaner into the mag stripe reader or chip reader.
Surface Contact times must be understood by the end user and observed. Here are examples for the products listed above.

Product	Surface contact time
Isopropyl Alcohol (70% dilution)	5 minutes
Clorox Wipes EPA 67619-25, Hydrogen Peroxide	2 minutes
Sani Cloth Wipes EPA 9480-4, Quaternary Ammonium	2 minutes

Leave the system powered on if you are cleaning surfaces that are touched during normal business operations. For surfaces that are not normally touched during regular use, our recommendation is to power the machine off.

*Note: Please do not use commercial glass cleaning products, rubbing alcohol, bleach, abrasive cleaning brushes or pads, or aerosol sprays, as all may damage screens and other parts of your equipment.

Importantly, Fujitsu has provided lengthy guidance to its field engineers who service your retail equipment, on how to minimize risk of exposure, maintain our service delivery and interface with customers. All employees are instructed to stay home if they are unwell, and we have provided self-isolation guidance for employees who experience symptoms and/or have traveled to impacted countries. Furthermore, we have instructed all employees who have face-to-face interactions with customers to, at a minimum, comply with the policies and guidance established by our customers.

Supply chain considerations

Our business continuity planning includes our global supply chain, and Fujitsu is ready to implement contingency plans where issues with our supply chain caused by the virus affect our operations.

As you may expect, we have started to experience delays in isolated areas – so far exclusive to components from Chinese suppliers. This is having an impact on the supply of certain hardware, in particular Fujitsu notebooks. In this respect, notebook orders are now being rescheduled. Our supply chain team is working hard to mitigate these challenges and provide further clarity on product availability and lead times.

Our procurement team is working with our third party parts and repair services suppliers to identify any future supply issues and put mitigations in place to minimize impact on our services to our customers. Fujitsu is monitoring its spare parts stock on hand and distribution daily and, where appropriate, has increased stock on hand to meet extended lead times.

We continue to monitor the situation very carefully and follow guidelines from relevant national and international health authorities and those of the Fujitsu Group. Should the situation escalate further, Fujitsu is prepared to implement additional business continuity measures.

Please refer to this site, where we will continue to update our valued employees, clients and community stakeholders.