Fujitsu boss: We're no longer the channel's invisible man

UK market no longer a two-horse race between HP and Dell, claims Japanse vendor

Fujitsu's UK hardware boss claims the vendor is finally closing in on its "rightful" position in the UK market following three years of heavy investment in the channel.

Talking to CRN, Michael Keegan, who is executive director of Fujitsu's UK technology product group, said the Japanese vendor is now vying for UK datacentre deals on an equal footing with the likes of HP and Dell after consistently ploughing a seven-figure annual sum into its channel since 2012.

In its current fiscal year, ending 31 March 2014, alone, Fujitsu is set to pay out over £1m in rebates to UK partners, who are now supported by a team of over 60 dedicated staff, Keegan said.

Analysts now have Fujitsu's server marketshare ranging from 2.5 to five per cent, up from a single point before Fujtisu kicked off its channel splurge, he pointed out.

"Our issue has always been we are the people who make great technology that no one has heard of," Keegan said. "But if you take a look at our business over the last three years, we are starting to break through and get to our rightful position in the market as an important, growing vendor to rival HP."

He added: "I have been a huge proponent of the channel and the channel has responded and been very good to us."

For 2014, Keegan said he was keen to grow all product lines but with servers and storage topping the priority list

"[Servers] go to our heritage," he explained. "We understand the datacentre market as we run lots of them in the UK market and our Primergy servers are used at scale right across the geographies - we are the number one player in Japan and are top two in Germany."

Dell in particular will find itself in Keegan's cross-hairs this year following its privatisation and subsequent reorganisation.

"It's fair to say Dell is going through a very difficult time since its decision to have a leveraged buyout with many billions of debt on its balance sheet," he said. "Now we're seeing a very dramatic cutback in its human resource, which must impact its partner base in the amount of support they can expect from Dell going forward."

Fujitsu now trades with 3,000 UK partners, with the number of top-level Select partners rising from 10 to 150 over the last three years.

Keegan said Fujitsu had deliberately chosen to side with sector specialists such as European Electronique and Centerprise rather than trying to convert the largest resellers that are on "HP's drum". "We're doing a little bit of business with Softcat now and they're a hugely inspirational company," he added.

Keegan rejected the suggestion that, for all Fujitsu's progress, the client and server market remains a two-horse race between HP and Dell, highlighting that the vendor is now winning hefty datacentre deals worth upwards of £500,000.

"We are winning business against Dell and HP - my marketshare is increasing at their expense.," he said ."Perceptions are one thing but I want to run my business on reality and the reality is I'm growing servers and storage. We are seeing in every quarter a growth in every product from desktop to server to storage and that's quite at variance with both the experience of the market in general and some of our competitors."