Lenovo Outlines Its Vision for Hybrid AI

Lenovo CEO Yuanqing Yang, better known as YY, opened up the company’s 2024 Tech World event by discussing Lenovo’s stance on what it calls “hybrid AI,” a vision not dissimilar to hybrid cloud.

 

Hybrid AI is the ability to leverage both private (personal or enterprise) and public foundational models together to drive action. YY sees hybrid AI as the path forward for both consumer and enterprise users, with AI agents serving as the vector for combining these multiple data sources and connecting knowledge with specific tasks. AI agents will know their users by integrating disparate data into unified frameworks, will understand their users by creating models of a person or enterprise, and will work for their users by putting this knowledge into action.

 

The incoming era of agentic AI will require multiple agents work together to make critical connections across public and private data sets. During the Tech World keynote, Lenovo executives demonstrated a handful of capabilities of personal AI agents, from helping students study more effectively for exams to understanding the context of a consumer’s morning routine and ordering their favorite coffee from their usual coffee shop. These types of tasks require the ingestion, understanding and integration of user data across multiple applications.

 

While the discussion around consumer AI was focused on devices, Lenovo’s Enterprise AI showcase largely highlighted its IT infrastructure and services businesses. Core to the hybrid AI theme was the announcement of Hybrid AI Advantage with NVIDIA. Enabled by Lenovo’s full-stack portfolio and new Lenovo AI Library, the joint solution framework highlights how Lenovo believes its Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage will accelerate enterprises’ AI adoption. This announcement formalizes Lenovo in competition with similar NVIDIA-based joint solution portfolios from Dell Technologies and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE).

 

In contrast to these large-scale high-performance computing (HPC) systems, Lenovo arguably will have equal or greater success through its AI-centric edge business, where Lenovo has a track record of deploying retail, manufacturing and smart city use cases. Multiple server vendors’ AI stories center on their massive 8-GPU AI systems, but Lenovo points out that for many companies, AI will be executed on far smaller and more affordable systems, some with no GPU at all. This strategy plays directly into Lenovo’s “AI for all” mantra.

 

Underneath the enthusiasm for hybrid AI, Lenovo’s mission remains unchanged: It is driving transformation to become a technology leader in global devices, infrastructure solutions and services worldwide. Lenovo positions itself as having an end-to-end technology portfolio, a user-centered approach and an immense emphasis on open innovation. The company offers its customers choices thanks to its partnerships across semiconductor, AI platforms and ISVs; and it leverages its Solutions and Services Group (SSG) to accelerate solution development between its own portfolio and partner ecosystem.

Lenovo Develops Proprietary AI Features to Differentiate Its IDG Portfolio

Overall PC demand decreased over the past several quarters due to lengthening PC life cycles and the lingering effects of post-pandemic market saturation. However, during the pandemic the total addressable market for PCs increased robustly as the number of PCs per household jumped, driven by both work- and learn-from-home initiatives around the world.

 

As such, with these pandemic-bought machines aging, the next major PC refresh cycle is on the horizon and is expected to drive a material rebound in the market, supported by the upcoming end of Windows 10 support and mounting interest around AI PCs.

 

However, the lack of killer applications leveraging the neural processing unit (NPU) has throttled AI PC adoption thus far. At GIAC Lenovo emphasized that it expects new AI PC killer use cases and applications will come in 2025 and 2026, noting that there are already over 100 independent software vendors developing applications leveraging the NPU.

 

Lenovo had also recently announced AI PC Fast Start, an AI-centered advisory and deployment service that helps organizations transition to AI-ready devices and quickly unlock the potential of AI PCs.

Lenovo Announces Aura Edition AI PCs Ahead of the Next Major PC Refresh Cycle

To prepare for this refresh and capitalize on the market’s interest in AI and generative AI (GenAI), Lenovo unveiled a series of new AI PCs, including the company’s Aura Edition AI PCs, which the company developed in deep collaboration with Intel and includes three levels of “Smart” features to enhance the user experience.

 

The Smart Modes feature allows Aura Edition PCs to intelligently adapt to users’ workloads and environments through five submodes, including Shield Mode and Collaboration Mode, which enhance user privacy and optimize video from integrated PC cameras, respectively. The Smart Care feature integrates natural language processing capabilities to drive an enhanced user support experience, and the Smart Share feature allows for cross-device image sharing, supporting smartphones on both Android and iOS platforms.

Lenovo Plans to Leverage Its AI Now Agent to Drive Differentiation in the Market

Over the last decade the Windows PC market has become increasingly commoditized as all OEMs across the industry built machines based on the same PC silicon and operating system, resulting in a lack of material differentiation. However, the rise of AI PCs presents a new opportunity, and Lenovo is working to set itself apart from its peers by working with Meta to develop and integrate an on-device AI agent, dubbed AI Now, through a deepening of their partner engagement.

 

While Microsoft Copilot+ offers a series of GenAI features and experiences for Windows 11 machines leveraging several of Microsoft’s small language models, at GIAC Lenovo Executive Vice President and President of IDG Luca Rossi noted that not all Copilot+ functions are run natively on the device, with certain queries going to the cloud. In contrast, Lenovo AI Now leverages a local large language model to drive new capabilities that complement Copilot+’s feature set.

 

With significant support from Meta, Lenovo’s research team worked extensively to fine-tune the local large language model behind AI Now using Meta’s Llama 3. Through AI Now users can interact in real time with their device’s personal knowledge base, all without relying on cloud computing, providing enhanced data privacy and enabling GenAI features without internet connectivity.

 

AI Now’s capabilities include document management, meeting summarization, device control and content generation, with the AI assistant supporting natural language interaction. Additionally, it is worth reiterating that Lenovo sees AI Now complementing Copilot+ rather than replacing it, as the company does not want its AI PC agent to compete with other cloud-based or cloud-leveraging alternatives.

Lenovo Bets Big on MBG and moto ai

IDG is comprised of two business units: PCs and Smart Devices (PCSD) and Mobile Business Group (MBG). While the majority of IDG’s investment is focused on PCSD, the larger of the two business units, Lenovo remains committed to expanding its MBG business, which includes Motorola Mobility, to grow its global market share and increase the premium mix of its overall mobile portfolio.

 

Similar to its strategy in the AI PC space, Lenovo MBG continues to invest in the development and integration of AI features within its smartphone lineup through moto ai. While many of the company’s moto ai features showcased at Tech World are in proof of concept or beta stages, Lenovo made clear its plans to bring customized user experiences to market in the near term. New moto ai features include prompts and commands like “Catch me up,” which summarizes personal communications, and “Remember this,” which, when initiated, captures live moments and on-screen information while also providing AI-generated insights.

 

Additionally, Lenovo demonstrated the capabilities of its large action model, which allows Motorola devices to learn from users’ behaviors to offer increasingly personalized responses and translate natural language prompts into actions that can be executed automatically on behalf of the user.

 

Further, Lenovo provided an update on how the company plans to bolster the capabilities of its Smart Connect software solution, launched in February, to enable multidevice experiences across Lenovo’s portfolio of PCs, tablets and smartphones. The integration of new AI features with Smart Connect will enable users to not only transfer personal data across their connected devices but also benefit from cross-device searches and smart actions, allowing them to activate moto ai features directly from their PC using moto ai prompts and commands.
 
Perhaps most noteworthy, Smart Connect supports Lenovo’s hybrid AI strategy by fully integrating device ecosystems, allowing users to instruct their Motorola devices to carry out a complex AI task that cannot be performed locally on the device. Instead, Smart Connect uses a connected AI-enabled device, such as a Lenovo AI PC, to execute the task and return the results to the users’ smartphone.

Lenovo Uses One Lenovo Strategy to Bring Enterprise AI to Fruition

Enterprise AI Solutions Highlight ISG and SSG Integration

While Lenovo operates three distinct groups for devices, infrastructure and services, its enterprise AI solutions pull from expertise across the three businesses. This is particularly evident in the ISG and SSG space with the launch of Lenovo AI Fast Start services and Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage with NVIDIA.

 

Lenovo’s AI Fast Start professional services help customers identify AI use cases and begin generating value within 90 days. While this may seem like a lofty goal, particularly as the enterprise market struggles to identify and best deploy AI, Lenovo highlighted two examples of this service in action. SAP used AI Fast Start to build an interactive AI avatar for one of its newest experience centers. Formula One also used the service to deploy an AI-based solution that provides a more immersive viewer experience by pulling video from numerous video feeds, enhancing the content and delivering it to the user faster than through manual video management method.

 

While these use cases are examples of tangible needs that can be met using AI, other use cases are not as evident in the enterprise market. Lenovo has also built an AI advisory practice that identifies ways AI can create value for a business and develop an adoption road map leveraging Lenovo’s AI library of use cases. By using the term “library” to describe its collection of AI use cases, Lenovo is intentionally conveying the impression that it offers specific use cases for everyone.

 

In TBR’s view, this provides some subtle differences from the one-size-fits-most messaging around AI use cases coming from most of Lenovo’s peers and ecosystem players. In addition, TBR notes that Lenovo intends to fully root its AI advisory capability into its technology, rather than taking a McKinsey-like approach to business consulting, playing to Lenovo’s services strengths.

Lenovo Deepens Its Relationship with NVIDIA to Drive Enterprise AI Adoption

Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage with NVIDIA is first and foremost a collaboration that marries  Lenovo’s infrastructure and services portfolios with the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software platform, NVIDIA accelerators and NVIDIA networking solutions. While other companies have collaborated with NVIDIA in the enterprise market, including Dell Technologies with its Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA and HPE with its NVIDIA AI Computing by HPE, Lenovo intends to differentiate itself through its library of horizontal and vertical-specific accelerators, which will help customers build solutions more quickly.

 

Lenovo Hybrid AI Advantage with NVIDIA can be paired with Lenovo AI Advisory and Lenovo AI Fast Start services, Lenovo TruScale GPUaaS, or ISV offerings from Lenovo’s AI Innovators Program.

 

Lenovo is also using its 70,000-employee base as the test bed for AI use cases being brought to market. Ken Wong, executive vice president and president, SSG, notes that SSG’s biggest customer is Lenovo itself. For example, the company has built generative AI-based solutions to generate marketing content and to create customer service agents for its customer support centers.

Lenovo Highlights Engineering Distinctions in Its Wide-ranging AI Server Lineup

Sustainability is a difficult topic to broach when it comes to large-scale AI systems, which consume increasing amounts of electricity and generate more heat with each new generation of AI accelerators. Lenovo provides a compelling approach with its sixth generation of Neptune liquid cooling, which is integrated into its ThinkSystem SC750 and SC777 servers.

 

Unlike other water cooled systems, Lenovo’s liquid cooling uses conductive copper piping instead of PVC and is able to cool the systems with warm water instead of prechilled water, which consumes additional energy. Compared to air cooled server systems, Lenovo claims that Neptune can reduce energy consumption for server fans and data center air conditioners by 40%. Lenovo also pairs its in-house liquid cooling design expertise with its data center design and planning, implementation and management services to facilitate liquid cooling technology adoption for AI workloads.

 

Of the major server OEMs, Lenovo is the quickest to point out that not all enterprise AI use cases require high-performance computing. Lenovo’s edge computing business, which is now integrated with its AI business, features its ThinkEdge server portfolio including multiple small form factor servers that operate in edge environments. These servers are the foundation for many of the AI use cases featured in the 165-plus ISV solutions built through Lenovo’s AI Innovators Program.

Responsible AI Serves as Lenovo’s Guiding Principle

Lenovo’s company vision of hybrid AI, in which personal, enterprise and public data sets are used to inform AI agents, is the natural evolution of AI technology but is not without risks around security, privacy and sustainability.

 

In response to these risks, Lenovo has proactively implemented its own AI governance organization to create AI policies and establish trust among its employees, customers and partners. Lenovo has combined its chief security officer and chief AI officer positions into one role under Doug Fisher, based on the company’s belief that security, privacy and ethics are central to designing AI solutions.

Behind the Scenes, Lenovo Is Honing Its Strategy Execution

Following the pandemic and a related multiquarter slump in PC demand that impacted top-line revenue and profitability, Lenovo has underscored its strategy to diversify revenue away from PC, which made up about 74% of total revenue in 2021.

 

While Lenovo has made progress on this goal to some extent, as ISG and SSG have both experienced revenue growth, the company acknowledges it needs to make changes across its portfolio and go-to-market strategies to further accelerate revenue growth.

Lenovo 360 Continues to Target Growth Through Partner Channel

An effective channel strategy is critical to executing on Lenovo’s broad growth initiatives, particularly those around driving ISG hardware to profitable growth. The company’s Lenovo 360 partner framework has simplified the partner process by drastically reducing the number of partner programs and incentive structures, streamlining certification processes, and creating a digital hub that supports demand-generation activities and helps partners track their deal pipeline and sales performance.

 

In tandem with transforming partner engagement, Lenovo is simplifying the ISG product portfolio to focus on the hardware configurations that comprise the most sales volume. This strategy is one of the key ways Lenovo plans to trim costs within its operations and make its portfolio easier for channel partners to sell. Additionally, a simplified infrastructure portfolio will also help Lenovo more easily maintain healthy channel inventory levels.

 

Lenovo acknowledges that the landscape of resellers is evolving from traditional value-added resellers to a services-led approach. As such, the company is evolving its partner framework to better engage with a broader set of ecosystem players, including managed services providers and global systems integrators, that are increasingly relevant partners in complex, multivendor solutions.

Lenovo Will Expand into Tangential Markets Where It Can Tap into Existing Strengths

Lenovo wants to capitalize on new markets, including the auto industry where technology is shifting from using multiple distributed computing resources throughout vehicles to more centralized computing, specifically around infotainment and autonomous driving systems.

 

Yong Rui, Lenovo’s former CTO, has been appointed to lead the company’s newly formed Emerging Technology Group (ETG), which will spearhead the expansion into in-vehicle computing as well as other emerging tech areas.

 

Lenovo feels its strengths in hardware design and manufacturing will help it expand into a brand-new market with an entirely different set of competitors. Through this expansion, Lenovo will remain true to its own DNA, focusing specifically on compute and leaving other aspects such as software, algorithms and vehicle manufacturing to ecosystem partners.

Lenovo Is Investing in Brand Recognition and Perception

Lenovo is investing in brand recognition through major sports sponsorships. At Tech World, Lenovo announced an expansion of its existing sponsorship of Formula One, which will include Lenovo’s subsidiary Motorola becoming the global smartphone partner for Formula One.

 

Further, Lenovo announced a partnership with FIFA to become the technology partner for the FIFA World Cup 2026 and the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2027. These investments will help Lenovo drive brand recognition and expand into key growth markets including premium PC, premium smartphone, IT infrastructure and related solutions and services.

On Oct. 1, TBR attended Fujitsu’s Executive Analyst Day in Santa Clara, Calif., and engaged with Fujitsu leaders, including Tim White, chief strategy officer; Ted Okada, SVP and head of Technology; Ted Nakahara, SVP and Head of Strategic Alliances; Fleur Copping, VP of Strategic Alliances in Regions; and Asif Poonja, EVP and CEO of Fujitsu Americas. The following reflects main stage presentations, breakout sessions and one-on-one discussions, as well as TBR’s ongoing analysis of Fujitsu’s business model, strategy and performance.

Fujitsu in Transition, with Clear Direction and Intent, Playing to Strengths

Three things about Fujitsu stand out in a crowded IT services and consulting market. First, the company is in the middle of an organizational evolution, changing its business model to fit emerging client demands and orienting its go-to-market strategy around Uvance. Second, Fujitsu’s commitment to change in the Americas has completely remade the company around IT services and consulting, with aspirations to become a technology consulting leader. And third, Fujitsu’s alliances strategy, while still dependent on labor-intensive relationships and persistent account-level management, includes all the best practices TBR has seen from larger competitors, with at least one unique twist. In short, Fujitsu’s evolution will likely make the company a highly capable contender as the IT services and consulting market changes.

 

At the start of the analyst event, Tim White, chief strategy officer, explained that Fujitsu’s transition has been underway for a few years and has included allowing the Americas business to shed everything except services. As part of the overall transition, Fujitsu committed to expanding consulting while continuing to deliver on core IT services and modernizations. White noted that Fujitsu is roughly halfway through a three-year plan to grow services and the Americas region has already surpassed targets for 2024. For example, Uvance accounts for 37% of Fujitsu Americas’ business, above the 30% goal.

 

Critically, according to White, Fujitsu has not lost a step on technology advances or quality of services delivered, so clients and alliance partners continue to be well served. The change — the evolution — is primarily in how Fujitsu sees itself and its future. And that future is Uvance.
 

In TBR’s view, understanding Fujitsu’s existing and evolving business model, strategy and performance requires, perhaps surprisingly, a certain separation from the typical analysis, if only because of Fujitsu’s current transition.
 
While there is perhaps some uncertainty among analysts around Fujitsu’s brand, specific offerings and organizational structure, TBR sees no evidence that Fujitsu’s clients and technology alliance partners lack the clarity required to make decisions about Fujitsu’s capabilities, scale and skills.
 
Undoubtedly, Fujitsu’s brand in the Americas could use a significant boost — without which a ceiling could remain for the company’s growth — but the importance of marketwide brand recognition pales in comparison to a successful track record of delivering IT services and consulting, providing innovative solutions, and leveraging the latest technologies to solve clients’ problems.

 

Uvance Is “the Future State of Fujitsu’s Portfolio”

Fujitsu’s leaders stressed the centrality of Uvance in the company’s strategy and vision for IT services, consulting and technology. White described Uvance as “the future state of Fujitsu’s portfolio.” Asif Poonja, CEO of Americas, said, “Uvance is the center of our strategy.” At the center of Uvance is consulting. Fujitsu announced a goal to hire 10,000 consultants, but White and others explained that Fujitsu’s focus is not the number but the portfolio shift toward consulting while still serving clients who need core IT services and modernization.
 
Poonja noted that Fujitsu will focus on technology consulting, rather than McKinsey-style business consulting, playing to Fujitsu’s legacy technology strengths. In TBR’s view, technology-led consulting reflects the current demand among enterprise consulting buyers to infuse every consulting engagement with technology, a trend well underway before the hype began around generative AI (GenAI). Fujitsu’s leaders added that Uvance Wayfinders — essentially business and technology consultants — are able to pull together all of Fujitsu’s capabilities and offerings.

 

In TBR’s view, Uvance is the framework around the company’s “SaaS-like” business model, with the leaders using the term “SaaS-like” but recognizing the phrasing may need further refinement and/or explanation. Fujitsu will use platform-enabled services to drive higher-value conversations and engagements, led by the consultants the company is planning to hire and/or acquire. Fujitsu will sell IP when needed and drive managed services through its delivery capabilities. The shift in the Americas toward becoming an asset-light organization is the first step, and the second step is expanding consulting capabilities and scale. The third step is organizing delivery under a globally run P&L (which Fujitsu may have already begun).
 
Meanwhile, modernization services — moving from mainframe to cloud — remains the engine that keeps Fujitsu running. The company still has its own data centers outside the U.S. and also still has plenty of clients running on mainframe, especially in their core verticals, like public services. For TBR, Uvance’s success may depend on broader adoption of the asset-light Americas strategy, albeit at a pace that does not compromise quality or lose clients in core markets. Again, Uvance is the future state of Fujitsu’s portfolio.

Fujitsu Americas: “Leveraging Global Pillars to Grow”

As described by Poonja and White, Fujitsu in the Americas has persistently pared down its offerings to focus only on IT services and technology consulting, playing to Fujitsu’s strengths and concentrating on industries in which the company has proven capabilities, well-established relationships with clients and differentiated offerings.

 

Poonja added that, although Fujitsu Americas earned a small percentage of Fujitsu’s overall revenues, corporate leadership in Japan recognize the importance of the Americas market and understand the challenges of building a more widely known brand. Poonja stressed that Fujitsu Americas would continue “leveraging global pillars to grow” while staying focused on regional strengths, specifically in government, manufacturing and AI.

 

In TBR’s view, Fujitsu Americas’ current state and trajectory align well with Fujitsu’s overall corporate strategy. The business aspires to be a top technology consulting company and appreciates the difference between being skilled at technologies and being able to make the business case for Fujitsu’s solutions. As an integral part of its strategy, Fujitsu Americas consistently pulls in the global company’s broader strengths and capabilities.

 

The use cases that Fujitsu’s leaders shared during the event highlighted the company’s technology, such as 5G and AI, and its deployable, offshore scale. Overall, Fujitsu Americas’ leadership presented a compelling story of evolution, strategic focus, early positive results and appreciation for current weaknesses. In contrast to analyst events dominated by marketing messages, Fujitsu maintained a substantive and clear-eyed atmosphere, with discussions centered on realistic expectations for Fujitsu Americas’ changing position in the IT services and consulting market.

Fujitsu’s Alliances: Doing the Hard Work While Taking Customer Zero to Another Level

In both the formal presentations and the informal discussions, Fujitsu’s leaders impressed TBR with the fullness and maturity of the company’s alliances strategy. The ecosystem has changed substantially in recent years, forcing companies to rethink their partnering strategies and more closely examine the best practices of peers, competitors and alliance partners. This shift has been an ongoing focus of TBR’s research, which has increasingly been used by alliance leaders at global technology companies as they undergo this transformation.

 

As part of this research, TBR has analyzed a wide range of alliance strategies and activities, from inadequate and underfunded to strategically thoughtful and exceptionally well managed. Fujitsu Americas, in TBR’s assessment, lands solidly in the latter category, based on the full range of investments and activities that Fujitsu’s leaders described with respect to their five strategic partners: Amazon Web Services (AWS), SAP, Microsoft, Salesforce and ServiceNow. (Note: See TBR’s ecosystem reports for more information.)

 

According to Fujitsu’s leaders, the next strategic partner will be determined by Uvance’s business strategy and continued evolution in the technology space, particularly AI. Keeping perspective on the challenges of managing technology partners, Fleur Copping, VP of Strategic Alliances in Regions, noted that every alliance relationship requires constant attention and, often, engagement-by-engagement reinforcement around Fujitsu’s offerings, capabilities and value proposition. Copping further acknowledged that Fujitsu needs to strengthen partner cosell activities. In other words, even when executing on all the best practices, alliance management remains a hard slog.

 

During the event, TBR noted two additional points on alliances — areas that are perhaps unique to Fujitsu. First, TBR has consistently heard that the customer zero approach to new technologies and offerings resonates with clients by bringing credibility and assurance. IT services companies, consultancies and their technology partners have also told TBR that the customer zero approach helps solidify alliances and can lead to innovations and new solutions. Fujitsu appears to be taking customer zero to the next level. For example, Copping described how Fujitsu brought its internal human resource management professionals to a client meeting about a joint Fujitsu-ServiceNow opportunity. The Fujitsu professionals told the client about their own experiences using the ServiceNow solution. This more personal touch resonated with the client and demonstrated the fullness of Fujitsu’s capabilities to alliance partner ServiceNow.

 

Second, Copping noted that because many of Fujitsu’s customers “don’t have as much of a voice” with the cloud vendors and software giants as the largest enterprises, Fujitsu can be an advocate for these small and midsize enterprises, amplifying their concerns and needs to the likes of Microsoft and SAP. TBR has not heard Fujitsu’s peers explicitly state this marketing message. As a matter of positioning, particularly with technology partners, Fujitsu’s message could be another way of gaining mindshare and differentiating from IT services and consulting competitors.

Consulting Is Harder Than It Looks; Fujitsu Has a Good Plan

White “unabashedly” characterized Fujitsu as a technology company, but emphasized using technology as a means to deliver services rather than making technology a commodity play. In the Americas in particular, Fujitsu would not “move away from our heritage as a technology company” but would more fully embrace consulting and the future portfolio of Uvance.

 

In TBR’s view, keeping Fujitsu’s heralded research, innovation and technology capabilities as foundational strengths makes strategic sense while leaving open questions around consulting. For example, one Fujitsu leader outlined the company’s AI sales approach in four basic steps:

1. Get the client interested in Fujitsu’s technology
2. Do a proof of concept with Fujitsu’s AI platform
3. Allow the client to use a precommercial instance of the platform
4. Bring in Uvance to develop a full solution, highly customized to the client

 

The fourth step, at a minimum, requires consulting skills, business knowledge and industry expertise, although many of Fujitsu’s peers include those elements throughout the sales and delivery process. Recruiting (or acquiring), retaining and managing consulting talent could affect Fujitsu’s corporate culture and undoubtedly will challenge Fujitsu’s leadership.

 

Further, and perhaps the most significant obstacle for Fujitsu in the Americas, will be gaining permission from clients to deliver consulting. By narrowing its scope to technology consulting — not the broad swath of strategy and operations consulting — Fujitsu plays to its own strengths, lessens the marketing load, and likely does not give up market share as the company is unlikely to displace firms like McKinsey & Co. or Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

 

Part of gaining permission, in TBR’s view, will be positioning Fujitsu differently with its current clients, particularly with respect to the key personas interacting with Fujitsu professionals. During the event, one Fujitsu leader described current clients’ struggles to adopt GenAI as a combination of an inability to do the basic work of making their data usable, the uncertainty around return on investment, and a fear of running afoul of the law as new regulations come into effect.

 

Yes, Fujitsu can address all of these concerns, but these hurdles impact and reflect the responsibilities of three different personas within an enterprise. Fujitsu’s challenge will be to become the preferred technology consulting provider for all three personas. In short, consulting is harder than it looks, and TBR believes Fujitsu has the right vision, strategy and approach. We will continue to monitor the company’s ability to execute.

 

TBR’s ongoing coverage of Fujitsu includes dedicated quarterly reports and inclusion in appropriate benchmarks, market landscapes and ecosystem reports. Log in to TBR Insight Center™ to view all current research.