Fujitsu Shifts Artisanship to Industrialisation
Fujitsu Shifts Artisanship to Industrialisation
November 9, 2006: With Gartner onside, Fujitsu has launched a program to address what they label, the emerging shift from an ‘artisanship’ style of IT services to the industrialisation of the sector.
Fujitsu are naming the move ‘Triole,’ and say the method is set to revolutionise IT services in Australia and New Zealand. While similar innovation occurred decades ago in industries such as car manufacturing and textiles, both Gartner and Fujitsu view IT as a relatively ‘immature’ industry, desperately in need of modernisation.
Fujitsu claims industrialisation could make IT services 30% more efficient through the combination of repeatable development processes, reusable templates and the idea that most organisations have predominantly the same need when it comes to IT services.
The sheer scope of IT services in our everyday lives has Gartner giving its blessing to Fujitsu’s concept of industrialisation. Craig Baty, Vice President Research for Garnet says, “IT services are pervasive. For everything you do, you’re using an IT service.” He points away from business services to travel and communications to indicate the true impact of IT services in our lives. On top of this, Gartner believes IT project failure rates are unacceptably high, unpredictable and cause for a significant risk factor. Gartner projects that in the future, customer spending will reward better services.
Gartner views the industrialisation approach as shifting the existing project-orientated ideal to one that puts more emphasis in the actual product. Products are customer centric, have negotiation capabilities and are made to market rather the made to order.
“The solutions already exist and have been tested. You’ve gone through the ‘make phrase,” says Baty. “You buy the car you don’t go out and make it yourself.”
For Fujitsu, it’s the industrial revolution. A little different this time round but it’s the general consolidation of the means to production that is central to their new take on IT service delivery. The sector depends on advanced technology developments yet Fujitsu claims it is still an ‘artisan craft, part skill and part black magic.’
Fujitsu points to Toyota as an originator of ‘lean thinking’ and a revolutioniser in the manufacturing of cars through their cost-effective, mass-customisation and minimisation of waste in the supply chain. For Toyota, it was a process of ensuring all suppliers in the chain understood the end result and worked for the overall success of the company. Fujitsu says it’s about time this movement occurred in the IT services sector. It’s a move enthusiastically taken on board in Japan and some parts of Europe, but the move towards the industrialisation of IT services in Australia remains to be decided.
In labelling the project ‘Triole,’ Fujitsu says the word is inspired by the Japanese approach to management. “The word comes from triplet – a musical term and a positive number in Asia,” says Rod Vawdrey , chief executive officer, Fujitsu Australia and New Zealand.
Vawdrey says 80 percent of organisations have IT requirements that are standard. In addressing IT industrialisation in the Australia New Zealand market, he says that if so much of the sector is already ‘standard,’ there is no need to answer an IT requirement with a completely new solution. “Why then do projects start off on a blank piece of paper and therefore a blank cheque?”
Dr Kyung-soo Ahn, corporate senior vice president, head of Asia Pacific operations, Fujitsu Limited believes that while the industry as a whole won’t change drastically, he does expect some serious changes to services over the next five to ten years. He compares the success of Dell in the PC market as similar to what Triole is attempting to answer in the IT services sector. “Whatever our customers need, we will give them preconfigured, pre-tested solutions,” he says.
Fujitsu tells us it’s not a simple 12 month process but something years in the making. It’s not complex but requires a change in thinking from both the buyers and providers of IT sectors. Question is, can Fujitsu be the Toyota of the IT sector?