Fujitsu Ireland has not ruled out redundancies following the announcement that the firm is to merge its three operating units across Europe.
A senior executive at the IT giant told siliconrepublic.com that “there may well be redundancies at the end of the day” but improving service delivery rather than cutting jobs was the prime objective of the merger exercise.
Asked whether the company also intended to close or restructure any offices, John Pierce, marketing director at Fujitsu Ireland, said: “We have no plans to, but we will look at everything. We’d be recalcitrant not to; our shareholders would expect it.”
The restructuring, which took effect on 1 April, sees the integration of three business units: Fujitsu Consulting, Fujitsu Services and Fujitsu Technology Solutions International into a single organisation called Fujitsu Services, both in Ireland and in the rest of Europe. In a statement, the company said it planned to achieve “significant efficiencies for its clients by offering all services including infrastructure, managed services and business solutions from one single point of contact.”
Fujitsu’s move arguably brings much-needed clarity to its services business. Under the old structure, Fujitsu Services handled IT infrastructure design and management; Fujitsu Consulting undertook software development and applications management and the third arm, Fujitsu Technology Solutions, focused primarily on mainframe implementations.
As a one-stop-shop IT services business, Fujitsu Services will be competing head on against the likes of IBM, HP, EDS and Accenture.
John Clare (pictured), the former head of the services division, has been appointed CEO of the new merged entity in Ireland.
“We’ll be aggressively pursuing market share with a strong, united sales and delivery team providing business solutions across consulting, application services and infrastructure,” he commented. “Our combined scale and industry knowledge will provide a compelling customer focused alternative in a competitive market. We will deliver greater business value for our customers in the public and private sectors.”
He continued: “We intend to upgrade our customer services through an integrated sales and account management function, backed-up by efficient management of resources, and will work with our clients and partners to offer best practice solutions across the full range of services.”
By Brian Skelly
