Co-creating with the Power of Three

This article is sponsored by Cisco, Equinix and Fujitsu.

The global market is evolving at breakneck speed. Enterprises are turning to tech-driven solutions to try and meet the growing demands of their audiences, and deal with the shifting sands of the global enterprise landscape battered by the pandemic.

As a way of addressing these challenges, Fujitsu, Cisco and Equinix have joined hands to deliver the desired outcomes through technology. Combined with the trust, expertise, and experience you need to unleash innovation at a speed that keeps up with the wider changes in customer demand and business growth.

This technology collaboration brings about a new frontier where the digital possibilities are endless.

Why Fujitsu, Cisco and Equinix?

Among all the technology providers in the market, the three technology leaders bring to the table the perfect mix of governance, compliance, security, connectivity, and accessibility.

Cisco, for instance, represents best-in-breed technology. Our cloud-scale architecture simplifies IT operations thereby enabling faster resolutions and updates supported by built-in security and advanced network functionality.

The infrastructure expertise of Equinix allows for global connectivity around data centers. We build a foundation for hybrid, private, and multi-cloud solutions so you can connect to clients, resources, and service providers with ease.

Fujitsu provides the wraparound services while working alongside customer teams. Our co-creation approach looks into the specifics of your business objectives, processes, and people to ensure you adopt a solution that is right for the individual needs of your organization.

Mapping technology needs to business outcomes

‘Innovation’ means different things in different vertical contexts, but there are rules-of-thumb that need to be followed regardless of the industry. The key is to work backwards from business needs and identify the best technology platform, service or tool that fits the purpose. For example, if you want to improve customer experience in a retail store, ask yourself what better customer experience looks like, then work your way back from that.

Co-creation comes into the picture when an enterprise works with a partner to help it fulfil these goals. A partner that is consultative is able to work with the enterprise in the long term – while bringing an entire ecosystem in tow – is advisable in the long run.

Below, we highlight two strategic paradigms to keep in mind when thinking about innovation and co-creation in the context of a large enterprise and how the Power of 3 helps precisely in getting a handle on them.

  • Check how you consume technology

Consider the agility of how you consume a service provider’s catalog of services rather than on the specific technology. Everything now is moving towards the Everything-as-a-Service (XaaS) model where you pay-per-use. It gives you the flexibility to buy more or buy less as well as the granularity to charge back to the business.

More often than not, IT continues to be a cost center in most organizations and they always have to justify their value. In more mature organizations, there exists a mechanism to charge back to the various business units (BUs) based on how the BU consumes IT as a service internally.

Many organizations are stuck with the old-world approach where IT gets a portion of the BU’s budget. The BU then determines whether the spending is justified, is too much, or too little.

The pay-per-use model helps IT organizations in any user environment to be able to charge back to the business. In that sense, it offers flexibility as business outcomes change. The way technology is going to be used to meet those business outcomes will also continue to change.

  • ‘Plug-in’ services for maximum agility

It is important to have a managed service provider who plays a hybrid role. They know your business as well as how to help you achieve a particular goal technologically. At the same time, they’re able to bring the right parties and/or components to the table.

Place business outcomes first as you’ll find that technology can be broken down into “services” that fit a particular purpose in your unique business setting. Solutions being consumed as a service often come in the form of “plug-ins” – instead of standalone software, they serve as functions or micro-services.

These plug-ins could be across different providers and cloud platforms. They amplify the level of complexity to drive that one outcome or one customer experience. To achieve the best possible customer experience, you must have the best of all worlds. Imagine all kinds of plug-ins being aggregated by a partner who understands your business and who knows what the best building blocks and micro-services are.

Most managed service providers help companies with agility, which is the ability to swap in and out specific plug-ins while keeping the rest for high flexibility. This way, should the business directions change, there’s no need for an entire stack change. Some of the modules can be modified or new ones attached. There can be an on-boarding of new plug-ins or a change in micro-services to cater to the new business objectives.

There is no uprooting or groundbreaking change every time but a modular approach in adapting to changing business outcomes.

A vision for sustainable innovation

An ecosystem of partners can offer agility, and have the best-of-breed technologies to support your growth, but in the long term, is it sustainable – both for your enterprise, and for the environment. This is where the Power of 3 takes on a superpower: a vision for the future that is aligned with the greater good.

Our partnership is among like-minded organizations. Not only do we agree about having a globally distributed platform in place, but we’re all doing our part in protecting the environment.

Cisco has set long-term goals to address the environmental impact from our business operations and products. We have implemented more than 440 projects for reducing emissions and costs over the last five years. As of 2020, around 83% of our electricity comes from renewable sources in the regions where we operate.

Equinix wants to bring forth a better future through our Future First sustainability strategy. Over $129 million has been invested in energy efficient retrofits, improvements, and upgrades across our data centers. We’ve also been recognized as the US EPA Green Power Partner of the Year in 2020.

The Fujitsu Climate and Energy Vision aims to bring all carbon emissions from our business activities to zero by 2050. We are continuing to clean up volatile organic compounds (VOCs) through pumping and aeration at our Kawasaki, Oyama, and FDK Washizu Plants to reduce soil and groundwater pollution.

By joining forces, Fujitsu, Cisco, and Equinix combined digital trust, co-creation, resilience, agility, diversity, and interconnection to imagine and deliver innovation to enterprises.