UPM opts for Fujitsu’s Primequest open servers

• Research university was first Primequest customer, buying soon after 2013 launch
• Revamps campus HR and Finance systems, saves 50% on annual software costs

FUJITSU has announced that Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM) has opted for its Primequest open server technology as part of a core IT transformation investment.
 
This makes the university the first Primequest user in the country, Fujitsu said in a statement. Financial terms were not disclosed.
 
According to the director of UPM’s InfoComm Development Centre, Khairulmizam Samsudin, the university has embarked on several IT system upgrade projects to boost campus operational efficiency, as well as to fulfil standard accounting compliance.
 
“UPM is revamping its IT support systems to facilitate more research for national development, as well as reduce operational costs,” he said.
 
Khairulmizam said Fujitsu’s Primequest servers would be used to integrate UPM’s systems across different departments into a central business operation environment.
 
“[It] will also reduce our annual recurring software expenses by up to 50%,” he said, without disclosing actual figures.
 
UPM also adopted Fujitsu Primergy servers to replace its existing systems to support its growing human resource (HR) application workloads, and protect mission-critical HR applications from hardware or software failures during migration to other environments, such as the cloud, the Japanese multinational said.
 
“Before rolling out the new Primergy servers, our HR payroll system took three hours to compute; now it is 75% faster and completes in approximately 45 minutes,” said Khairulmizam.
 
He said the overall upgrade of UPM’s IT infrastructure was part of the university’s business continuity effort, and to also adhere to the ISMS/IEC 27001 2007 certification for security, which has already been awarded to UPM.
 
The upgrade is also to comply with the Standard Accounting System for Government Agencies (Saga), an initiative under the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (Mampu) and the Department of National Accountants of Malaysia to standardise government agencies’ financial reporting and help them to meet the international accounting requirements of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.
 
The servers were purchased in two phases in March and April last year. Today, the servers are fully operational, Fujitsu said.
 
Open servers for mission-critical apps
 
“Fujitsu brought in the Primequest open server technology to Malaysia in early 2013,” said According to Edward Ling, senior manager of Platform Products for Infrastructure Services and Solutions, Fujitsu Malaysia.
 
“UPM was our first customer, buying the system immediately right after its official sales [began]. It clearly indicated a strong demand for high reliability and high performance servers in this market,” he added.
 
Ling said that more businesses were seeking open platforms for their mission-critical operations to avoid vendor dependency and optimise their return-on-investment (ROI) on IT infrastructure, making Primequest systems a feasible alternative for enterprise customers in Malaysia.
 
“Primequest’s mainframe-like enterprise platform reliability, error prevention and self-healing capabilities allow organisations to run mission-critical computing with industry open standards supporting multiple operating systems such as Microsoft Windows and Linux, as well as industry-grade software and databases,” he claimed.
 
“We continue to see encouraging interests in Primequest … from other industries including commercial, education, retail, communications, public sector and financial services,” he said.
 
Related stories:
 
Mike Warren back at MDeC after 3mths at Fujitsu
 
Fujitsu remains bullish in tough economic times
 
Fujitsu unveils energy-efficient server
 
 
For more technology news and the latest updates, follow @dnewsasia on Twitter or Like us on Facebook.