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Fujitsu Expands AI Strategy in Europe, Emphasizing Collaboration, Compliance and Customization

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‘AI can be a knowledge management accelerator, but only if well-fed by an enterprise’s own data’

In February TBR met with two AI leaders in Fujitsu’s European Platform Business to better understand the company’s approach to the AI market, its evolving AI capabilities and offerings, and what we can expect as 2025 unfolds. Maria Levina, AI Business analyst, and Karl Hausdorf, head of AI Business, gave a detailed presentation focused primarily on the European market. The following reflects both that briefing and TBR’s ongoing research and analysis of Fujitsu, the company’s partners and peers, and the overall AI landscape.
 
One highlight that illustrates many facets of Fujitsu’s approach to AI was Levina and Hausdorf’s description of Fujitsu’s customers’ choices between “bring your own data” and “bring your own AI.” The first allows more AI-mature customers to bring their data into a Fujitsu-provided on-premises solution with full support for scaling, maintaining hardware and software, and updating, as needed.
 
The second allows customers to run their own AI stack on a Fujitsu “validated and optimized” platform, developed and maintained by Fujitsu and select technology partners. Critical, in TBR’s view, is Fujitsu’s positioning of these options as responsive to clients’ needs, as determined by all AI stakeholders within an enterprise, including IT, AI and business leaders.
 
Levina and Hausdorf explained, “Together, with our ecosystem of partners, we’re committed to unlock the potential of generative AI for our clients” through “on-premises data sovereign, sustainable private GPT and AI solutions,” focused on “rapid ROI.” Fujitsu is not approaching clients with a technology solution, but rather with options on how to address and solve business problems. As the Fujitsu team said, “Understand the why, know the what, and co-create the how.” The Fujitsu team also noted that the company’s industry expertise resides in the processes and workflows unique and/or critical to an industry.
 

‘Maintaining control of data means owning your AI in the future’

Before diving into Fujitsu’s AI offerings, the Fujitsu team laid out their understanding of the European market, sharing data the company collected around AI adoption, use of AI platforms, and barriers to growth (in Fujitsu’s phrasing, “progress-limiting factors,” which is perhaps a more positive spin on the usual list of barriers and challenges). Fujitsu surveyed or spoke with 400 data and IT professionals across six European countries, and the results indicated that overcoming legacy mindsets continues to be a major impediment to adopting and harnessing the value of AI.
 
TBR’s November 2024 Voice of the Customer Research similarly noted challenges in Europe with “the lack of engagement from employees who are being asked to change.” The Fujitsu team noted that change management, therefore, had to involve all AI stakeholders, including “IT people, business people and AI people” within an enterprise.
 
In TBR’s experience, IT services companies and consultancies continue to find new constituents for change management at their clients as the promise — and disruption — of AI becomes more widespread, reinforcing Fujitsu’s strategy of bringing change management to all AI stakeholders. Lastly, the Fujitsu team noted that within European clients, expectations around AI have heightened, especially as AI initiatives have launched across multiple business units. Again, Fujitsu’s research and TBR’s Voice of the Customer Research align around ROI expectations as AI matures.
 
The Fujitsu team introduced their AI platform by delineating the key performance indicators they believe a successful platform must have: scaling, performance and speed, simplicity, energy efficiency, AI services in data centers, and GPUs.
 
Although TBR is not in a position to evaluate the technological strengths, completeness or complexity of Fujitsu’s platform, the expansive KPIs indicate Fujitsu has considered not only the IT needs behind an AI deployment but also the larger business factors, particularly the financial impacts. Levina and Hausdorf then dove into the details, including the two customer options described above (bring your own data and bring your own AI). They discussed how Fujitsu offers consulting around the technical and business implications of AI platforms and solutions, including an “AI Test Drive,” which allows clients to test AI solutions before investing in new technologies, large language models (LLMs) or other AI components.
 
Notably for TBR, Fujitsu’s presentation extensively highlighted the company’s AI alliance partners, including Intel, NVIDIA, AMD and NetApp, as well as a slew of LLM providers, demonstrating an appreciation for the collaborative and ecosystem-dependent nature of AI at the enterprise level. The Fujitsu team also stressed the European nature of its AI strategy and platform.
 
European clients, Fujitsu noted, had specific requirements related to the European Union’s (EU) General Data Protection Regulation and the EU AI Act, as well as a preference for on-premises solutions. Some of the use cases Levina and Hausdorf described included a law firm using Fujitsu-enabled AI solutions to analyze case data, contracts, corporate and public legal documents, and multiple deployments of Fujitsu-enabled private GPTs.

Additional observations

  • Fujitsu remains focused on targeting customers already aligned with the company around AI, a strategy that TBR believes speeds ROI and increases client retention.
  • In contrast to some peers in the IT services market, Fujitsu has capabilities across the entire AI technology stack — hardware, software and service — which Levina and Hausdorf called “highly appealing,” especially to European clients.
  • Levina and Hausdorf made two comments that, in TBR’s view, neatly sum up AI at present: “AI can be a knowledge management accelerator, but only if well-fed by an enterprise’s own data” and “maintaining control of data means owning your AI in the future.”

Fujitsu’s AI prowess makes it an invaluable partner

TBR has reported extensively on Fujitsu’s evolving AI capabilities and offerings, noting in a special report in May 2024: “TBR appreciates that Fujitsu’s combination of compute power and proven AI expertise makes the company a significant competitor and/or alliance partner for nearly every player fighting to turn GenAI [generative AI] hype into revenue.
 
“Second, Fujitsu’s vision of ‘converging technologies’ aligns exceptionally well with the more tectonic trends TBR has been observing in the technology space, indicating that Fujitsu’s market positioning is more strategic than transactional or opportunistic.” Add in Fujitsu’s deepening experience in delivering AI solutions to AI clients, and TBR continues to see tremendous near-term opportunity and growth for Fujitsu and its ecosystem partners.