Fujitsu has launched its new service portfolio “Fujitsu Computing as a Service (CaaS)” to accelerate digital transformation (DX) and empower customers globally by offering access to advanced computing technologies via the cloud for commercial use.
The new service encompasses advanced computing resources like Fujitsu’s quantum-inspired Digital Annealer technology, the computing technology at the heart of the world’s fastest supercomputer, Fugaku, and software applications that allow a wide range of users to solve problems with AI and machine learning. Fujitsu will begin delivery of these new services to the Japanese market starting in October 2022 with a global rollout to international regions including Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Americas to follow.
Access to supercomputing
As the first step, Fujitsu will begin preorders for “Fujitsu Cloud Service HPC,” which offers the computing power of the “Fujitsu Supercomputer PRIMEHPC FX1000,” which shares the same CPU at the heart of the supercomputer Fugaku. Fujitsu will begin sales of the service for the general public and organizations in Japan starting April 6, 2022, with delivery to commence from October. In the months ahead, Fujitsu will further add services for its Digital Annealer technology and AI cloud services to its service lineup in order to provide further value-added services that seamlessly integrate various solutions.
Vivek Mahajan, Chief Technology Officer (Corporate Executive Officer, SEVP) Fujitsu Limited said: “CaaS will provide customers with seamless access to services on the public cloud to meet rapidly increasing computing demands, leveraging Fujitsu’s world-leading advanced computing technologies. In the future, we look to further expand the portfolio with access to technologies like quantum computing. This move marks an important milestone toward democratizing high-performance and quantum computing and will play an important role in the achievement of Fujitsu’s Purpose: ‘to make the world more sustainable by building trust in society through innovation.”
Further, to realise the vision of a more sustainable world embodied by its global business brand “FUJITSU Uvance,” Fujitsu will draw on CaaS to promote the commercial use of a range of advanced computing technologies, which have until the present been largely limited to applications in an academic context due in part to prohibitively high investment costs and implementation and operational loads.
Fujitsu anticipates that CaaS will contribute to solving societal issues, as well as persistent challenges in a wide range of industries, including finance, manufacturing, distribution, logistics, disaster prevention (including earthquake and tsunami prediction), and medical fields such as drug discovery and gene therapy.
Satoshi Matsuoka, Director, Center for Computational Science, RIKEN said:
“Fugaku was developed as a supercomputer featuring the latest high-performance computing technology and is being used in research and development with the aim of realizing DX and Society 5.0 to contribute to the fulfillment of various SDGs. Within the past two years, 149 companies have already utilized Fugaku in 48 use cases primarily in manufacturing, including trial operations prior to full-scale implementation. The demand for technological capabilities offered by Fugaku continues to grow, coinciding with successful use cases in the shift toward the cloud. We are working with Fujitsu to make its CaaS to be highly compatible with Fugaku to support such requirements, and we expect CaaS to become an important service for quickly connecting R & D on Fugaku to industrial use and practical implementation in society. Moving forward, we will collaborate with Fujitsu to further synergize Fugaku with this new service to provide its capabilities seamlessly in the cloud.”
Lowering entry barriers
Cost remains a major obstacle for many companies and organizations aiming to apply advanced computing technologies like Fujitsu’s Digital Annealer and high performance computing (HPC) in their business. To address this issue, Fujitsu will offer users easy access to a range of services under its new CaaS portfolio, allowing users from a wide range of industries to easily tap into the power offered by Fujitsu’s advanced computing technologies.
The cloud services portfolio of CaaS will offer comprehensive support for customers, featuring software, a service integration platform, as well as consulting and tuning services that operate on top of the cloud. This allows users to enjoy the problem-solving capabilities and access to world-class computing resources without the deployment and operational costs typically associated with technologies like supercomputers.
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