Fujitsu has launched a new strategic partnership with security-focused enterprise AI specialist Cohere to develop and provide new LLMs, including a new Japanese model called ‘Takane’.

As part of the move, Fujitsu said it has made a “significant investment” in the Canadian business alongside plans to jointly develop new AI technology with advanced Japanese language capabilities.

Fujitsu will become the exclusive provider of jointly developed services on the global market and will provide the fruits of the partnership to customers via its cloud-based operation platform, Fujitsu Data Intelligence PaaS, as well as Fujitsu Uvance, its cross-industry business model designed to tackle social issues.

In an announcement, Aidan Gomez, co-founder and CEO at Cohere, described the partnership as a “truly important step” in offering world-class LLM capabilities to “one of the most important enterprise markets in the world.”

“For AI technologies to reach their full potential, we need to be able to meet enterprises where they are, whether that means in their own cloud environment, or in the languages that they do business,” he explained.

“We are incredibly excited that our work with Fujitsu will help to unlock the enormous potential of Cohere’s technology to power the next generation of Japanese businesses.”

The partnership will see the pair jointly develop an advanced Japanese language model – tentatively dubbed ‘Takane’ – based on Cohere’s frontier enterprise-grade LLM, which Fujitsu will provide through its Kozuchi AI productivity services from September.

Aimed at private environments such as private clouds, Takane will be based on Command R+, Cohere’s latest multilingual LLM that includes enhanced retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) capabilities to help mitigate hallucinations.

To be developed as a service for those that require high security, the models will combine Fujitsu’s own expertise in Japanese language training and fine-tuning capabilities with Cohere’s enterprise-specific technologies to meet specific industry needs and boost productivity.

Fujitsu said it also plans to leverage Cohere’s Embed and Rerank models to provide advanced enterprise search applications and RAG technology that help organizations unlock business value from their data.

Additionally, Fujitsu’s AI amalgamation technology will be combined as part of Takane models developed through the Cohere collaboration and various models for specific domains and existing machine learning models.

“We are very pleased to strengthen our generative AI for enterprises portfolio through this partnership with Cohere,” commented Vivek Mahajan, Fujitsu’s corporate vice president, CTO, and CPO.

“Fujitsu has developed a knowledge graph extended RAG technology for logical inferences and a generative AI amalgamation technology for automatic generation of specialized generative AI models to meet the diverse needs of companies.

“Combining these with Cohere's latest highly secure enterprise LLMs, we aim to provide businesses with powerful and adaptable AI solutions that address specific needs and accelerate the adoption of generative AI globally.”

Fujitsu has revealed hackers may have stolen personal data following a cyber attack on the company. 

The Japanese tech giant said an investigation by security teams discovered malware on “several” company systems, with compromised files containing personal information and customer details that could have been exfiltrated by threat actors.

"After confirming the presence of malware, we immediately disconnected the affected business computers and took measures such as strengthening monitoring of other business computers,” the firm said in a statement.

Fujitsu said it’s continuing to investigate how the incident unfolded and whether information has been leaked. It hasn't revealed any details of the stolen data, but noted it hasn't had any reports that personal information has been misused.

Customers potentially affected by the breach will be informed, the company confirmed. Fujitsu has also reported the incident to Japan’s data protection authority, the Personal Information Protection Commission.

Some Fujitsu hack details remain unanswered

Fujitsu is yet to provide additional details on when the intrusion took place, how long attackers had access to internal systems, and what type of malware was used. 

This, according to Adam Pilton, cyber security consultant at CyberSmart, raises serious concerns over the potential scale of the incident. The tech company has previously been embroiled in data protection-related controversy, with regulators in Japan questioning standards last year.

"If we cast our minds back to July 2023, we saw the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications publicly criticizing Fujitsu and calling out their poor governance, demanding that they do better in future," he said .

"It would not be fair to critique Fujitsu just yet, as we do not know all the details. However, it is fair to say that Fujitsu's reputation is at stake, as is their contract with the Japanese government."

This is just the latest in a series of embarrassments for the company in recent years.

In May 2021, its ProjectWEB SaaS platform for enterprise collaboration and file-sharing was exploited, allowing the attackers to breach the offices of multiple Japanese government agencies.

More than 76,000 email addresses were stolen, along with proprietary data relating to its equipment systems, staff business email addresses, and information on its business relationships.

Last summer, it was rebuked by Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications for a security failing that led to a breach of its cloud service Fenics, used by government and large corporate customers.

Earlier this year, the firm was criticized for having knowingly supplied British sub-postmasters with faulty software that led to hundreds being wrongfully prosecuted for false accounting.

"Becoming a victim of a cyber attack does not always have obvious and immediate consequences, such as operational downtime or upfront financial costs," Pilton said.

"Reputational damage and the loss of business are also factors that must be considered as these will be felt over the longer term."

Fujitsu IT support staff working for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) are striking today, claiming the pay rise they've been offered is far lower than that for their colleagues in Japan.

The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) says that UK workers have been offered a pay rise of between 3% and 4%, while Japanese staff were awarded as much as 29%.

Around 300 staff contracted to HMRC based at Telford, Shropshire, and Stratford, East London will participate in the walk-out.

Some staff with crucial IT roles fixing HMRC computers and protecting critical high-end user systems will be taking further action from 18 January to 15 February, with workers expected to refuse overtime or do on-call work.

While HMRC has indicated that the strike action should not cause significant disruption, the union says it is likely to disrupt taxpayers aiming to complete their self-assessment tax returns by the end of the month.

"Why is it that workers in Japan are deemed worthy of a pay rise almost ten times more than those in the UK?" said PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka.

"Fujitsu made £22 million profit last year in the UK, so it can afford to pay our members a decent wage – it just chooses not to."

In April last year, Fujitsu raised monthly wages for employees at all levels in Japan by an average of 10%, with some getting as much as 29%.

Annual wages for employees in leadership positions rose to around 10 million yen ($67,696) or above, with senior management getting between 20 million yen ($135,392 and 30 million yen ($203,088).

The monthly wage for new university graduates increased by 25,000 yen ($169) from the previous year to 255,000 yen ($1,726).

This, said the company, would allow it to retain and acquire talent to help it create new corporate value, adding that it sees investment in its employees as a 'top priority' for growth investment.

A spokesperson for Fujitsu told ITPro the company aims to resolve the pay dispute swiftly and will engage with staff to reach an agreement in due course. 

"Fujitsu is aware of the planned action by PCS. This follows a number of pay discussions and offers made to the PCS members. We remain committed to continue pay talks to try to resolve this situation and welcome further discussions at any time," they said.

"Fujitsu will be taking all necessary steps to ensure operational continuity for all our customers and are working closely with those customers throughout the planning process."

Fujitsu is still raking in UK government contracts

The strike action has nothing to do with the continuing Horizon scandal, in which Fujitsu's faulty Horizon IT system produced phantom transactions, leading to the prosecution of hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters.

But despite the fact that problems were known for years, the government is still awarding major contracts to Fujitsu.

In November last year, it was given a further £36 million to keep the Horizon system running until 2025, and more recently has been awarded a further contract with the Environment Agency to handle flood alerts until December next year, at a cost of £2 million.

All in all, the company is believed to have received £6.8 billion in government contracts since 2012.

"Why is the UK government giving Fujitsu lucrative contracts when the company treats its UK workers so badly?" Serwotka said.

"Our government should be standing up for our members, demanding a fair pay rise in line with Japanese workers."

Fujitsu is reportedly set to sell its scanner business to imaging and electronics company Ricoh for 80 billion yen ($625 million) as it aims to focus on software development.

The Japanese IT services company will sell an 80% stake in its wholly-owned subsidiary PFU, a business scanner manufacturer, as reported by Nikkei Asia. Ricoh plans to combine office equipment and image data processing by incorporating PFU’s products in a new service.

Fujitsu is set to focus on software development in response to strong demand for digitisation of business processes like remote working.

The company has recently had success in this field. In March 2022, it emerged that Fujitsu had been awarded a £250 million contract by the UK’s HMRC for managed desktop services, extending a deal that originated in 2017. In early April, it was also awarded a £184 million contract by the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office to provide networking and communications to 532 British embassies.

The company continues to win UK government contracts despite its role in the Horizon scandal, where Fujitsu’s software had been used as evidence to successfully convict 736 Post Office workers of theft and false accounting between 2000 and 2014.

PFU hasn’t released its earnings for 2021, although it reported a net profit of 3,952 million yen ($31 million) in 2020. This was its lowest net profit over four years, with the year previously being 6,029 million yen ($47 million).

The two companies are set to make a formal decision on the deal by the end of the month and will also consider collaborating on the digitisation of office operations.

A spokesperson for Fujitsu acknowledged that it’s considering the matter carefully, although no decisions have been made as of this time. “Fujitsu will promptly announce matters that require disclosure as they arise,” they added.

Ricoh echoed this, with a spokesperson saying that no decision has been made at the moment, although the company is considering the matter.

Remote working has become increasingly important for Fujitsu, especially as it made 80,000 of its workers permanently remote in 2020 and planned to reduce its office footprint by 50%, as part of planning for a post-pandemic future. The company hoped to help employees enjoy unprecedented flexibility to improve their work-life balance.

Japan has selected six companies to help power new research into green data centre technology.

The country’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organisation (NEDO) has so far selected Fujitsu, NEC, AIO Core, Kioxia, Fujitsu Optical Components, and Kyocera to take part in the project, Fujitsu revealed today.

The project aims to address the challenge of increasing power consumption at data centres in today’s digital society. The companies taking part will work to develop innovative solutions to realise greater energy efficiency, larger capacity, and lower latency across data centres sites, ultimately contributing to net zero targets.

One of NEDO’s objectives is to achieve energy savings of 40% or more in domestic data centres by 2030, largely driven by growing energy demands across the sector.

The companies have been tasked with developing different technologies during the project:

Fujitsu: Low-power consumption CPUs and photonics smart network interface cards (NIC)

NEC: Low-power consumption accelerators and disaggregation technologies

AIO Core: Photoelectric fusion devices

Kioxia: Wideband SSD

Fujitsu Optical Components: Photonics smart NIC

Kyocera: Photonics smart NIC

Fujitsu said it will refine its microarchitecture technology, used in the supercomputer Fugaku, to develop a low-power consumption processing chip suited to data centre use. It will also work with its subsidiary Fujitsu Optical Components to develop a photonics smart network interface card (NIC) that reduces current network power consumption by applying optical transmission technology.

It hopes this will achieve greater efficiency in size and energy consumption, as well as greater data capacity, by refining software and hardware technologies.

"Fujitsu will harness this technology to deliver robust, yet environmentally-sustainable digital infrastructure that takes full advantage of Fujitsu's strengths in areas like computing and network technologies,” said Vivek Mahajan, corporate executive officer and CTO at Fujitsu.

“I am confident that our work on this initiative will help demonstrate Japan's technological capabilities, and show how Fujitsu can lead the way globally in innovation that contributes to the realisation of a carbon-neutral and sustainable society."

The past twelve months have brought challenges for almost all businesses, but they’ve also brought some terrific products. New generations of servers and appliances have arrived, offering levels of horsepower and capacity that would have seemed outlandish just a few years ago. At the same time, value has continued to climb, bringing new possibilities within reach of an SMB budget.

There’s been plenty of exciting developments for end users too. Stunning laptops, tablets and phones have turned our heads, along with powerful printers, scanners and screens. And while threats like phishing and ransomware haven’t gone away, the latest generation of security software is here to keep us safe.

As always, there’s no such thing as a perfect product – every business and every individual will have their own needs and preferences. But we’ve put together our selection of the greatest releases of the past twelve months, to reveal the standout products across a wide range of categories, and to celebrate the manufacturers who’ve driven innovation forward in 2021.

Best laptop 2021

WINNER: LG Gram 17

Weighing just 1.35kg, the Gram 17 is barely heavier than many 14in laptops – yet it has a huge, bright 17in display that’s fantastic for productivity and on-the-go presentations.

There’s plenty of horsepower here too, with an 11th-generation Intel Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM on board. With nearly 13 hours of battery life it won’t conk out half-way through the day, and a spacious keyboard and trackpad mean it’s also a pleasure to work on for extended periods. Throw in Thunderbolt 4 and Wi-Fi 6 and you have an excellent do-it-all, go-anywhere computer for a very reasonable £1,599 exc VAT.

Read our full LG Gram 17 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Razer Book 13

Razer made its name with gaming laptops, but the company’s first business-friendly model is a big hit. It looks stylish yet serious, with a superb screen that challenges the MacBook Pro for brightness and colour quality. Performance is top-notch too, thanks to an Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, and there’s a great selection of ports, including full-sized USB and HDMI connectors. At 1.4kg it’s a little weighty for a 13in laptop, but overall it’s a great, capable choice for an everyday working companion.

Read our full Razer Book 13 review

Best Chromebook 2021

WINNER: Acer Chromebook Spin 713

There are plenty of sub-£500 Chromebooks on the market, but Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 feels like something much more expensive. Its 13.5in QHD screen has a comfortable 3:2 aspect ratio, and it flips all the way around so you can work in laptop, stand or tablet mode. Unusually, there’s an HDMI output too, giving you additional working options.

Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 round out the feature set, and with a total weight of just 1.2kg the Spin 713 is deliciously portable too. It would have been nice if Acer had given that beautiful screen an anti-glare coating, but when the rest of the package is this good we can live with a few reflections.

Read our full Acer Chromebook Spin review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5

The Flex 5 is another Chromebook with a 360º-rotating screen, though its 16:9 aspect ratio is best suited to conventional laptop-style usage. It’s slimmer and lighter than the Acer Spin 713, and its bright display is less reflective. Connectivity is well covered with both USB Type-A and Type-C ports, along with Wi-Fi 6; if you’re looking for a no-nonsense Chrome OS workhorse, you won’t be disappointed.

Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 review

Best tablet 2021

WINNER: Apple iPad Pro 12.9in

With Apple’s mighty M1 processor, the iPad Pro is fully as powerful as a MacBook Pro. And it has several advantages over the laptop: at 680g it’s less than half the weight, and the touchscreen makes for a slick, tactile experience. The 120Hz mini-LED display is stunning, and a battery life of around 13 and a half hours means you can keep working all through the day and beyond.

No doubt, the 12.9in format is bulky for a tablet, while the optional keyboard pushes up the weight – and the price, which is already steep at £916 exc VAT for the base model. Even so, this is unquestionably the best tablet on the market: it doesn’t just excel at tablet tasks, it redefines what a tablet can do.

Read our full Apple iPad Pro 12.9in review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Nokia T20

It’s short on flashy gimmicks, but Nokia’s T20 feels like a professional tablet. The aluminium build is strong and sturdy, performance and features are up to par, and while we felt the 10.4in screen looked a little cold, its 5:3 aspect ratio is very comfortable to work on. The most impressive part is the price – just £150 exc VAT for the Wi-Fi 5 edition, or £167 exc VAT for the LTE model.

Read our full Nokia T20 review

Best smartphone 2021

WINNER: Apple iPhone 13

The iPhone 13 improves on last year’s iPhone 12 models with better cameras and a bigger battery, adding nearly two hours of daily performance in our tests. You get more storage in the standard model too, up from 64GB to 128GB, and the latest Apple A15 Bionic CPU for true Android-smashing performance.

All the usual iPhone strengths are here, including an excellent screen and a vast library of high-quality apps for work or play. It’s hardly an adventurous update from the iPhone 12, but if you’re choosing a new smartphone today – and aren’t already enmeshed in the Android ecosystem – then the iPhone 13 is the obvious choice.

Read our full Apple iPhone 13 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: OnePlus 9 Pro

Standing 163mm tall, the OnePlus 9 Pro is large, but it’s perhaps the most beautiful Android smartphone we’ve seen, with a tiny bezel and beautifully textured case. Its 120Hz AMOLED display is a joy to behold, and a collaboration with Hasselblad ensures excellent photo and video quality. Performance is very strong too, courtesy of a top-tier Snapdragon 888 processor; at £829 exc VAT it’s not a budget option, but you get what you pay for.

Read our full OnePlus 9 Pro review

Best desktop server 2021

WINNER: HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus

The MicroServer Gen10 Plus really can fit happily on a desktop, as its square chassis measures a mere 245mm along each side. Yet it’s powerful enough to run a wide range of business services, with your choice of a dual-core 3.8GHz Pentium Gold G5420 CPU or a quad-core 3.4GHz Xeon E-2224. Four integrated LFF SATA drive bays allow for plenty of storage.

The small size means there’s not much scope for internal expansion, but you do get a single PCI-E x16 slot, and remote management can be added via the cheap iLO5 enablement kit. With the entry-level diskless system starting at just £395 exc VAT, it’s an excellent SMB-friendly deal.

Read our full HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 Plus review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Dell EMC PowerEdge T550

The T550 is a real “tower of power” – we tested it with a 12-core 2.1GHz Xeon Silver 4310 CPU, but if you need more grunt it can handle twin CPUs with up to 32 cores each. It also supports up to 24 SFF or eight LFF drives, and a maximum of 1TB of DDR4 RAM. Dell’s comprehensive iDRAC9 remote management platform comes as standard, making this an ideal answer to demanding workloads.

Read our full Dell EMC PowerEdge T550 review

Best 1U server 2021

WINNER: Dell EMC PowerEdge R650

Dell’s latest PowerEdge R650 design crams an amazing amount of potential into a 1U chassis. It supports Xeon Scalable CPUs with up to 40 cores and a massive 4TB of memory, with space inside for up to ten SFF drives and 16 Intel Optane modules to accelerate performance.

If that’s not enough, you also get three PCI-E Gen4 x16 slots and an OCP 3.0 edge slot, plus Dell’s BOSS card for fast booting from SSD media. And as usual with Dell, the iDRAC9 controller provides terrific remote management. It’s not a budget option – our review unit came to £15,417 exc VAT – but the PowerEdge R650 is an incredibly powerful and space-efficient server.

Read our full Dell EMC PowerEdge R650 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Broadberry CyberServe Xeon

This low-profile server offers a solid chunk of power for just under £1,000. That gets you a quad-core Intel Xeon E-2224 CPU with 16GB of RAM – upgradeable to 128GB – and you’re free to fit your own drives in the four SFF bays and twin M.2 SSD slots. The single PCI-E Gen3 x16 slot can be used to add 10GbE networking, and the Asus motherboard supports web-based management, including full OS remote control and virtual media services as standard.

Read our full Broadberry CyberServe Xeon E-RS100-E10 review

Best 2U server 2021

WINNER: Broadberry CyberServe SP2 208-8I G3

The CyberServe SP2 208-8I G3 is designed for a hardcore server role. The system we tested came with a pair of 36-core Xeon Scalable Platinum CPUs, 512GB of DDR4 RAM, five 960GB SATA SSDs and eight 128GB Intel Optane PMEM 200 modules. This allows for insanely fast storage access – and to help you make the most of it, the system comes with not one but two dual-port Intel 100GbE network cards.

You can upgrade even further by going up to 26 SFF drives in total, plus eight NVMe drives, and the spacious 2U design allows for six free PCI-E Gen4 slots. It’s a magnificent hardware package, and while the £21,895 price tag won’t be within everyone’s budget, it’s superb value for what you get.

Read our full Broadberry CyberServe SP2 208-8I G3 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Dell EMC PowerEdge R750

Dell’s PowerEdge R750 comes in three versions – the R750xa is built for GPU-based workloads, while the R750xs is a cost-optimised version aimed at specific roles. The standard R750 is a great all-rounder though: the configuration we tested offered two 28-core 2GHz Xeon Scalable Gold 6330 CPUs and 1TB of RAM, upgradeable to a whopping 8TB using 256GB DIMMs. For storage you can choose between a 12-bay LFF backplane or a 16-bay SFF one, and add up to 24 NVMe SSDs. In short, there’s enough power and flexibility here for any business.

Read our full Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 review

Best storage array 2021

WINNER: HPE MSA 2060 Storage

With numerous hardware upgrades over the last generation, this is HPE’s fastest dedicated storage array ever. It’s also laden with powerful features: thin provisioning, snapshots and volume copies are all supported, along with striped SSD caches, RAID10, 5 and 6 options and HPE’s own MSA-DP+ array format, designed for improved performance and faster rebuild times.

The MSA 2060 even offers zero-configuration data tiering, automatically shunting data between regular SAS drives, fast solid-state storage and low-priority ML-SAS volumes according to usage. And it’s all configured and managed from a simple web portal, so there’s no need to be a storage expert to get the best from it.

Read our full HPE MSA 2060 Storage review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Qnap TS-h2490FU QuTS Hero Edition

When performance is a priority, pure NVMe storage is the way to go. This impressive appliance can take up to 24 hot-plug U.2 drives, while Qnap’s 128-bit ZFS-based OS provides enterprise-class data integrity, with compression and deduplication options provided as standard. It’s all based on a powerful AMD EPYC processor, and it comes with a pair of dual-port 25GbE network cards, to ensure you can get the full performance from your storage.

Read our full Qnap TS-h2490FU QuTS Hero Edition review

Best NAS drive 2021

WINNER: Qnap TS-h973AX

Though it looks unassuming, Qnap’s TS-h973AX runs the company’s advanced QuTS hero OS, which offers an impressive range of native storage features. Those include fast, near-unlimited snapshots, transparent self-healing of data corruption and inline data deduplication and compression to make the most efficient use of your storage. Five LFF SATA bays plus four SFF bays provide plenty of room for expansion, while 10GbE and twin 2.5GbE network ports provide high-speed connections to the outside world.

In our tests the TS-h973AX provided fast read and write speeds, and there’s a whole library of apps to expand its capabilities, including backup and virtualisation tools. Costing just over £1,000 exc VAT for the diskless enclosure, it’s well within reach of smaller businesses.

Read our full Qnap TS-h973AX review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Qnap TS-873A

Looking for a simple storage solution? The eight-bay TS-873A makes a great platform for Qnap’s lightweight, simple to manage QTS OS. Alternatively, for more advanced data-protection functions you can install the full QuTS hero OS and make use of all the same features as the TS-h973AX, above. Either way, it’ll run the full range of Qnap apps, and dual 2.5GbE ports help keep data flowing swiftly in and out.

Read our full Qnap TS-873A review

Best printer 2021

WINNER: Epson EcoTank ET-5880

Forget about overpriced cartridges – this A4 MFP uses bottled ink that works out to just 0.2p per mono page and 0.8p for colour. That alone will make it attractive to busy offices, but the ET-5880 has other strengths too, including a swish 10.9cm touchscreen, 802.11n wireless connectivity and excellent colour output. It comes with a pair of 250-sheet paper cassettes, so you won’t be continually restocking it, and the integrated scanner has its own 50-page duplex ADF.

The one caveat is a print speed of 25ppm in standard quality mode: that’s not exactly slow, but it’s unexceptional for a modern office printer. Even so, the Epson’s user-friendliness and phenomenally low running costs make it our top choice for 2021.

Read our full Epson EcoTank ET-5880 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Kyocera Ecosys

This freestanding laser MFP won’t suit the smallest offices, but it offers a 35ppm print speed and a wide range of downloadable apps to extend its printing and scanning functions. It’s easy to operate, with a big 7in touchscreen, a range of mobile apps and a clear web-based management console. The clincher is the price: the basic model with wired networking and a single 250-page sheet feeder costs just £696 exc VAT, and low-cost consumables work out to a very reasonable 1p per mono page.

Read our full Kyocera Ecosys M6235cidn review

Best scanner 2021

WINNER: Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600

This desktop scanner has a great set of features, including integrated Wi-Fi, a 50-sheet ADF, double-sided scanning and a 4.3in colour touchscreen. It’s fast too: we were impressed to see it rip through our pile of test documents at 43ppm, creating 200dpi scans that were perfectly clear and clean enough for OCR and archival.

Even better, this hardware is partnered by one of the best software suites around. You can scan to a huge range of applications and cloud services, send scans directly to an email address or beam them to a mobile device. For anyone who needs to scan and share documents in a digital or cloud-first environment, the Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 is a terrific choice.

Read our full Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1600 review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Canon imageFormula DR-S130

With its output tray folded away the DR-S130 takes up barely any more desk space than a sheet of A4. Yet it scans at a swift 30ppm, and thanks to Canon’s CaptureOnTouch V4 Pro software it can perform all the same scan functions as much pricier, bulkier models. You can set up profiles for different job types, run single- and double-sided scans, perform OCR and save the output in your choice of format and location. The only thing it can’t do is scan directly to cloud services, but for most individuals and SMBs it’ll fit the bill admirably.

Read our full Canon imageFormula DR-S130 review

Best monitor 2021

WINNER: Dell UltraSharp 25 USB-C

We don’t see a lot of 25in monitors, but the format works well for desktop productivity, and the Dell UltraSharp lives up to its name with a crisp 2,560 x 1,440 resolution. It also delivers excellent coverage of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces, with an HDR400 certification for extended-range colour.

The final trump card is connectivity: the USB Type-C connector can handle both incoming video and outgoing power, so you can hook your laptop up to the big screen and charge it at the same time. It’s also possible to daisy-chain a second display via the DisplayPort connector, or to swivel the panel round through 90º and work in portrait mode. In short, it’s one of the cleverest monitors we’ve seen.

Read our full Dell UltraSharp 25 USB-C review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Acer ConceptD CP5271UV

The CP5271UV is an exceptionally versatile monitor. It offers custom display modes for print editing, video and games, and also supports high-end features including HDR600 for deep-colour content, dynamic refresh rates up to 170Hz and an incandescent peak brightness of 480cd/m2. It makes a great office monitor too, with integrated gigabit Ethernet and four USB 3.1 ports. At £667 exc VAT it’s considerably more expensive than your typical desktop display, but if you're in the market for a high-end screen it’s a steal.

Read our full Acer ConceptD CP5271UV review

Best endpoint security suite 2021

WINNER: Sophos Intercept X Advanced

There’s a lot of hype around artificial intelligence, but it does have real applications: Sophos’ Intercept X suite uses machine-learning techniques to recognise malware and neutralise zero-day threats. It also includes a full range of traditional protections, defeating ransomware by intercepting encryption attacks and silently restoring the original file, and preventing data leaks by blocking the transmission of certain types of information.

The Advanced subscription adds an analysis centre, where you can forensically review attempted attacks, allowing you to identify and plug the gaps in your armour. It’s easy to deploy and manage too: a central web console lets you email out installer links to all clients, and then administer policies and settings for the whole site.

Read our full Sophos Intercept X Advanced review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus

Kaspersky’s highly flexible licensing lets you protect workstations, laptops, servers and mobile devices all within a single subscription. As well as blocking viruses and intrusion attempts, the software can watch over your network for suspicious activity, and manage Windows Updates from a central portal. The premium Plus subscription adds the Security for Microsoft 365 component, which integrates into Exchange Online, OneDrive, SharePoint Online and Teams, providing monitoring and protection for your services as well as your endpoints.

Read our full Kaspersky Endpoint Security Cloud Plus review

Best antivirus suite 2021

WINNER: Kaspersky Internet Security

Kaspersky is no stranger to our awards, and this latest version of its security suite shows why – in multiple independent tests it scored perfect 100% protection scores without a single false positive. Other notable features include browser protection, ransomware blocking, defences against webcam hijacking and even a fully featured firewall.

Do you need to pay for this type of protection? It’s true that Windows’ built-in security modules are nowadays very effective on their own. However, Kaspersky is much easier to configure, especially when it comes to customising firewall rules. It also has less of an impact on system performance, which makes the modest £15/yr subscription fee easy to swallow.

Read our full Kaspersky Internet Security review

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Avast Antivirus Free

Avast is our favourite free antivirus solution for several reasons. First, it does a great job of blocking malware: independent labs have found its protection on par with Microsoft Defender and ahead of several paid-for suites. What’s more, it’ll run on older editions of Windows – which is ideal if you still have legacy machines running Windows 7 or 8.1 that can’t be upgraded. You do have to put up with a few in-application adverts for Avast’s paid-for products, but if you can’t use Windows’ built-in protections – or just don’t want to – then Avast Antivirus Free makes a lightweight and effective alternative.

Read our full Avast Antivirus Free review

Vodafone has filed a lawsuit against the UK government challenging a decision to award a £184 million networking contract to rival provider Fujitsu.

It's alleged that the contract, which is to upgrade the network infrastructure of 532 British embassies around the world, was awarded unfairly, as reported by Bloomberg.

Both Vodafone and Fujitsu failed to meet minimum quality thresholds for the contract, with a London judge revealing that Vodafone’s scores were worse than Fujitsu’s, according to court filings.

The Echo 2 contract was designed to connect the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s (FCO) ministers, staff, and agents in over 170 countries, as well as the country’s cultural relations arm, the British Council. The contract is set to replace the Echo 1 contract, which was awarded to Cable and Wireless, a company acquired by Vodafone in 2012 for £1.04 billion, and that has its roots in connecting the British empire to its colonies.

Vodafone has now launched legal proceedings in the courts after losing the contract it inherited following the acquisition of Cable and Wireless.

“We do not believe this procurement process has been run properly,” a Vodafone spokesperson said to Bloomberg. “The procuring authority themselves stated the Fujitsu Solution is ‘not fit for purpose.’”

The judge decided to expedite a full trial to take place in January 2022 and has allowed the government to enter into a conditional contract with Fujitsu.

Full details of the trial have been withheld by the judge for reasons of national security, who also said that the information could be useful to anyone wishing to harm the country.

The FCO has so far refused to comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.

Fujitsu's relationship with the UK government has been on shaky ground historically. Famously, the company was responsible for the creation of the Horizon accounting system, built for the Post Office in 1999, which would then be used to provide evidence to convict 736 subpostmasters in fraud cases spanning 2000 and 2014. It was later revealed that an error in the system had result in financial irregularities, leading to many of these convictions being overturned after almost two decades of legal battles.

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) has become popular in recent years for organisations that want to easily consolidate and scale their data centre hardware. To help meet these demands, Fujitsu has partnered with Nutanix since 2017 and this relationship is bearing plenty of fruit. Its latest Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud makes Fujitsu the first vendor to deliver a certified Intel Select Solution for Nutanix-based HCI.

Aimed at private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructure deployments, the Primeflex platform is delivered as a turnkey solution that’s pre-configured, pre-tested and ready for action. The hardware comes courtesy of a range of 1U and 2U Fujitsu Primergy Xeon Scalable rack servers with the Nutanix Acropolis cloud OS (AOS) preinstalled while for hypervisor duties, you can choose between VMware ESXi or the native Nutanix Acropolis HyperVisor (AHV).

SMBs can take advantage of Fujitsu’s Built4You services for easy setup, where they can choose from cost-effective Entry, Virtualization Starter, Database/File or VDI bundles and scale as required simply by adding more nodes. A key feature of all Primeflex solutions is that the three-year maintenance and support contracts include a single point of contact (SPOC) for all hardware, software components and upgrades.

Fujitsu Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud review: Hardware

Fujitsu offers a choice of five Intel Xeon Scalable rackmount platforms ranging from the 1P XF1070 up to the 4P XF9050. For our review, Fujitsu provided us with a triple node Nutanix cluster made up of the 2P XF3070 models.

These are Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M5 1U rack servers which came fitted with dual 2.2GHz 10-core Xeon Scalable Silver 4210 CPUs and a generous 256GB of DDR4 memory. Our nodes were configured for hybrid storage pools with each sporting dual 960GB SATA SSDs plus four 2.4TB SAS3 HDDs.

The servers are the 10-bay SFF models, so you have four free hot-swap bays for adding more storage devices. The Nutanix AOS is already loaded on each node’s SSDs, while AHV was installed for us on embedded 240GB M.2 SATA SSDs.

Along with dual embedded Gigabit ports, the servers came with dual-port 10Gbase-T network adapters for clustering and Fujitsu also offers 25GbE adapter options. To connect all the nodes together, Fujitsu supplied us with its Pswitch 2048T which offers 48 10GBase-T copper ports plus six QSFP+ 40GbE fibre ports.

Each server node can be managed remotely as they all come with Fujitsu’s iRMC S5 controller and dedicated Gigabit port. You can access each one from their own iRMC web console with the Nutanix Prism Central interface also offering web links in its hosts page, although we noted it was unable to manage the Pswitch, which showed as unidentified.

Fujitsu Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud review: Deployment

We were impressed with Fujitsu’s support when we reviewed its Primeflex for VMware vSAN Appliance and it keeps up the good work here as well. Our project came preconfigured for our lab environment with clear diagrams for cabling the servers to the relevant switch ports and a list of usernames and passwords required for the initial setup phase.

As each node already had AOS and AHV VMs installed, we just powered them up and ran SSH sessions to each one to provide fixed IP addresses for the controller VMs (CVMs) and hypervisors. Next, we hopped over to a web session on the first CVM to create our cluster services and provide a virtual IP address, after which it took an hour to install all the Nutanix components.

The cluster could now be accessed via the Nutanix Prism Element web console and after setting up NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) health scans, we moved over to the LCM (LifeCycle Management) page to run an inventory and see what updates were available. A smart feature of LCM is not only does it check for Nutanix software upgrades but also lists all Fujitsu server firmware upgrades and when you’re ready, it automatically updates each node in sequence so the cluster remains fully operational.

Fujitsu Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud review: Management

Ongoing configuration and management of the PrimeFlex solution is conducted in the normal manner from the Nutanix Prism console, and available features will depend on the license purchased. Our system came with the AOS Starter edition which is aimed at small-scale deployments and supports cluster expansion up to 12 nodes.

There are plenty of other features present including VM application-consistent snapshots, clones, data tiering, cluster expansion and contraction, cache deduplication, a redundancy factor (RF) of 2 and multiple cluster management with Prism Central. The AOS Pro and Ultimate editions target larger deployments and a key feature is their enormous scalability as on-premises clusters can support an unlimited number of nodes and VMs.

There’s little that needs doing for storage; all node SSDs and HDDs are automatically placed in a single tiered storage pool, with containers for self-service, management and general storage already created and ready for use. We could easily create more storage containers as required, use them for VM storage, enable cache deduplication and add file server services with the Starter license including support for 1TB.

Cluster expansion is simple, too. You order extra nodes from Fujitsu as demand increases and run a quick SSH session to set up their CVM and AVH VM IP addresses. Plug them into the cluster network and Prism will automatically discover them and add them to your cluster.

Fujitsu Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud review: Verdict

Businesses looking for an easy way to deploy a Nutanix-based HCI should make a beeline for Fujitsu. The Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud solution is delivered with everything preinstalled and preconfigured, so you can get your Nutanix cluster up and running straight from the box

The solution is delivered on top-quality Fujitsu Primergy server hardware and we had no problems deploying our system in the lab with it taking no more than two hours to go from cabling to clustering. Furthermore, the price we’ve shown for the review system includes full support for three years, with the package comprising 24x7 SPOC access to a support line, 9x5 two-hour response for Level 1/2 software support and 9x5 four-hour response on-site hardware support.

Fujitsu Primeflex for Nutanix Enterprise Cloud specifications (as reviewed)

With a footprint of just 292 x 161mm, the ScanSnap iX1400 is a supremely compact desktop scanner. Yet there’s nothing cut-down about its capabilities: it churns through 300dpi colour scans at 40ppm, supports double-sided scanning and includes a decently sized 50-page automatic document feeder.

What you don’t get is network support – this scanner only works over a USB 3 connection. There’s no screen, either, nor anything much in the way of controls, but the blue button at the front links up with Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Home software for one-touch scan operations.

Installation on a Windows 10 desktop was swift. All we had to do was visit the website as directed by the manual, download the latest version of ScanSnap Home and plug in the scanner. The installer offers to download a free single-user copy of the ABBYY FineReader OCR software, and also loads Fujitsu’s online update utility, which checks for new drivers and OCR language packs.

The ScanSnap Home app presents five preconfigured scan profiles, with the Auto-Scan profile assigned to the scanner’s button by default. This detects whether you’ve loaded A4 pages, business cards, receipts or photos and performs a scan with the appropriate settings, saving the output to a folder of your choice.

We found the recognition process worked fairly well, identifying documents, receipts and business cards – but it refused to recognise photos and saved them as PDFs.

Still, it’s easy to set up a scan profile to get the results you desire. You can specify resolution settings, choose whether to scan in colour, greyscale or mono, enable double-sided scanning and choose where your scans should be saved, with optional password protection for PDFs. We had no problem setting up a profile to save photos as JPEGs, which we could then launch directly from the ScanSnap Home menu.

On that note, be aware that you’ll have to use ScanSnap Home for all scanning operations because Fujitsu doesn’t include a TWAIN driver to allow you to acquire images from within third-party products. But this shouldn’t hold you back too much; in addition to JPEG and searchable PDF output, you can create profiles that automatically perform OCR on scanned items and export them in native Word, Excel, PowerPoint formats.

Another smart feature of ScanSnap Home is its support for scanning directly to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive and OneDrive. This requires you to have the relevant desktop apps loaded on your host PC, and logged into the accounts you want to send the scans to; you can then select the appropriate destination from the cloud services menu while setting up your profile. ScanSnap Home creates a new folder in your cloud account and drops scanned items into it, without your having to configure anything else.

The iX1400 is fast for its size. Set to greyscale at 200dpi, it scanned in our sheaf of 40 double-sided bank statements at a tidy 42ppm – and kept up exactly the same speed when we switched up to colour at 300dpi. Pressing on to 600dpi saw speeds fall to 10.8ppm, but you’ll probably never need to use this resolution, as scan quality at 200dpi was more than good enough for OCR and general document archival.

The ScanSnap iX1400 also tore through our stacks of business cards, small till receipts and courier waybills, using the supplied clip-on guide. On the rare occasion a paper jam occurred, the ultrasonic sensor stopped the job without damaging them – and throughout our various tests we were impressed by just how quiet the scanner was.

The lack of network support will be a sticking point for some roles, but the iX1400 and the versatile ScanSnap Home software work together to provide a slick and simple scanning solution. Speed and quality are strong too, making this an excellent desktop scanner for small businesses and homeworkers alike.

Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1400 specifications

There may be plenty of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) storage solutions on the market today but Fujitsu aims to flex its muscles with its latest entry. As the first member of VMware’s global partner appliance club, the Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware vSAN Appliance delivers a turnkey software-defined storage package that’s ready to go straight from the box.

The hardware comes courtesy of Fujitsu’s Primergy rack server and network switch portfolios, is fully certified for VMware HCI and is supplied pre-configured and pre-tested so all you need do is plug and go. A standout feature is Fujitsu’s Software Infrastructure Management (ISM) app which provides a single pane of glass for HCI system and data centre lifecycle management.

Another bonus is the Primeflex is designed to reduce a business’s support burden. Whereas many competing storage virtualization solutions require support contracts for each separate component, Fujitsu offers a single point of contact (SPOC) for the hardware, software components, maintenance and upgrades.

Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance review: Hardware features

For our review, Fujitsu supplied us with a three node VMware vSAN cluster comprising a triplet of its Server Primergy RX2530 M5 1U rack servers. Kitted out with single 8-core 2.1GHz Xeon Scalable Silver CPUs and 64GB of DDR4 memory, each included a 400GB SAS3 SSD plus four 1.2TB SAS3 HDDs for creating a hybrid storage cluster with vSAN flash cache.

Each server has three spare hot-swap bays where you add extra storage devices and incorporate them into the cluster. The Primeflex has huge scale-out capabilities, too; a single vSAN cluster supports up to 64 servers and 6,400 VMs.

The servers have quad 10GBase-T network ports and for testing purposes, Fujitsu supplied its Pswitch 2048T. Aimed at top-of-rack (ToR) deployments, this 1U switch is endowed with 48 10GBase-T copper ports plus six QSFP+ 40GbE fibre ports.

Each server node can be managed remotely as they all sport Fujitsu’s iRMC S5 controller and dedicated Gigabit port. You can access each one from their web console and the controller can also be managed and monitored directly from the ISM console.

Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance review: Deployment

When we reviewed Datacore’s HCI-Flex solution, we saw first-hand how a storage company can make such a mess of product support. Fujitsu showed a level of professionalism that puts Datacore to shame and we had the entire Primeflex package unboxed and running inside two hours – as opposed to the two months we wasted with Datacore.

The Primeflex shipment came preconfigured for our lab network environment with clear diagrams for cabling the servers to the relevant switch ports and VLANs plus a complete list of usernames and passwords required for the initial setup phase (all of which can be changed later on). The VMware HCI software package includes vSphere, vSAN and vCenter Server with each server preloaded with ESXi 6.7 on a 240GB M.2 SATA SSD and once they were powered up, we were required to SSH to each one and take them out of maintenance mode.

After starting the vSphere VM, we enabled cluster member updates and waited 10 minutes for all services to start. A quick trip to the vSphere web console was required to turn on VMware’s DRS and HA services and we were ready for our pre-booked remote session with a Fujitsu support engineer to run through the features.

Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance review: Management

Configuration of the HCI environment is carried out as normal from the vCenter web console,which showed all three nodes as cluster members. Along with their own local datastores, the main storage in the three servers was preconfigured as a hybrid datastore cluster and assigned the vSAN default storage policy.

Guest VM creation is a cinch - we just selected the cluster as their compute resource and pointed them at the vSAN datastore. We used the predefined management port group for their network connection but you can easily add more networks and place VMs on different subnets and VLANs.

The vSAN file service wasn’t licensed on our Primeflex so file shares were off the menu, but we could create iSCSI targets in the cluster’s datastore. It’s also possible to create MPIO links by logging initiators into each node’s management network or other network ports.

There’s nothing to configure for Fujitsu’s ISM, though; this is preinstalled on a dedicated VM and ready for action. The ISM web console opens with a dashboard view showing the status of all nodes, any alarms and a list of clusters.

The dashboard is widget-based so you can customise the view and add graphs and tables for node CPU and memory usage, virtual resources, event logs and even a graphic showing the physical position of each node in your rack cabinet. Switch to the node view and you can see all vitals provided by each server’s iRMC controller - although we noted the Fujitsu switch was currently unable to provide hardware information to ISM.

You can register other servers as nodes, use ISM to add them to an existing cluster, create new clusters, view a smart 3D floor map of all rack cabinets and load a network map that shows each node’s physical connections to the switch. ISM is designed to manage the entire lifecycle of data centres so you can use profiles to automatically deploy an OS to new nodes when they come online, upgrade their firmware and update drivers.

Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance review: Verdict

Organisations worried about the cost and complexity of deploying a VMware HCI solution can rest easy with Fujitsu by their side. We were very impressed with its Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance as all the hard work was done for us, making installation totally stress-free.

The price we’ve shown includes full support for 3 years and this comprises 24x7 SPOC access to a support line, 9x5 4-hour response for all software and 9x5 NBD on-site hardware support. And then there’s Fujitsu’s ISM software, which adds even more value as it can manage your VMware HCI ecosystems, and your entire data centre to boot.

Fujitsu Primeflex for VMware VSAN Appliance specifications (as reviewed)

Fujitsu’s SP series has long been a great choice for USB scanning – and now the SP-1130N ups the ante. It’s one of three new network-enabled models, along with the 1120N and 1125N, that offer the same speeds as their deskbound counterparts but add a Gigabit Ethernet port, giving you the freedom to locate the scanner where you want and drive it from any computer on the network.

Software-wise, all three stick with Fujitsu’s PaperStream IP software suite – and we’ve no complaints about that, as it offers a wealth of image-processing and scan-management features. Batch scanning in particular is made easy: you can create jobs that scan and process multi-page documents with a single click, and use barcode recognition or OCR zones for document separation or data extraction.

The SP-1130N on review is the fastest of the new models, citing a scan speed of 30ppm for both mono and colour scans at 300dpi. A claimed 4,500-page daily duty cycle shows it’s ready for high demand, and the automatic document feeder (ADF) has room for 50 pages, with a built-in ultrasonic sensor to detect paper jams and multi-feeds.

A single utility handles Windows host installation, offering the choice of USB or network port connections and loading the various PaperStream components. These include not only Fujitsu’s own software, but a custom version of ABBYY FineReader OCR, which adds options to export scans in a variety of Office document formats, or as searchable PDFs.

Also included is ABBYY FineReader 12 Sprint, which provides a simpler alternative to PaperStream Capture for quick scans, along with a system tray tool that lets you assign a defined action to the scanner’s start button. The package is rounded out by a network setup tool, and an agent that links up with Fujitsu’s free Scanner Central Admin web service for scanner fleet management.

This may all sound like a lot to take in, but setting up a scan profile is a simple wizard-driven process. You start by choosing colour, greyscale or mono output, then pick a resolution from 150 to 600dpi, specify a paper size and select single or double-sided scanning. Next, you set your scan destination, which might be a local folder, a network location, an FTP or SharePoint server, a printer or an email address. The one place you can’t scan to is cloud storage as Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Cloud app is only available with its iX series of scanners.

Document separation for large batch scans can be enabled too, using blank pages, page counts, predefined OCR zones, barcodes or Fujitsu’s patch codes. You can also tell the software to extract data from scanned documents by dragging a box around the area where you want zonal OCR to be applied; the information within can then be exported as a TXT, CSV or XML file.

Finally, it’s time to select any processing options you want applied, such as page rotation, image adjustment and clean up, deskewing, hole filling and blank page removal.

Once we’d got our profiles set up, we were pleased to find that performance fully lived up to Fujitsu’s promises. Our well-thumbed wad of 30 bank statements was scanned on both sides in 55 seconds, in greyscale and colour and at 200dpi and 300dpi. Factor in the five-second wait for each network scan to start and you’re looking at 30ppm precisely. As usual, switching to 600dpi causes speeds to tumble �� in this case to just over 8ppm – but you’ll very rarely need to use such a high resolution because output quality at 200pdi is absolutely fine for document archival purposes. OCR performance is similarly good, with text as small as 6pt on our test bank statements being captured accurately.

Nor did we hit any problems with paper handling. Our till receipts and thin waybills passed through the scanner without any jams, and on the rare occasion when two pages were picked up at once, the multi-feed detector immediately spotted the problem and stopped the scan before any pages were damaged.

If cloud features are important to you then you may need to look elsewhere, but Fujitsu’s SP-1130N delivers good performance and great output quality at a very reasonable price. Factor in the highly capable PaperStream IP software and this desktop scanner is a top contender for SMBs that are looking to soup up their scanning provision.

Fujitsu SP-1130N specifications

Fujitsu has always had a sharp focus on delivering affordable all-Flash arrays to enterprises and SMEs, but its latest family of Eternus AF appliances goes one step beyond. These aim to beat the competition soundly on value and claim an impressive ‘six nines’ of redundancy, along with a wealth of data protection features.

On review is the entry-level Eternus AF250 S3, a 2U rack appliance which supports SAS3 SSDs and comes with dual controllers functioning in active/active mode for transparent failover. It also sees a substantial hardware upgrade over the older AF250 S2, sporting a faster 8-core 2.2GHz Intel Xeon D CPU, while DDR4 cache memory receives a doubling in maximum capacity to 128GB per controller.

Extra features keep on coming; the new controllers can handle up to 8 ports of 32Gbps FC or 16 ports of 16Gbps FC or 10GbE iSCSI. Storage expansion is also vastly superior as the AF250 S3 supports up to 10 external drive enclosures for a total of 264 drives – the AF250 S2 only supports a single disk enclosure and a maximum of 48 drives.

The improved hardware gives a substantial performance boost, with Fujitsu claiming an increase over the AF250 S2 of nearly 40% to 600,000 IOPS for random read operations. Cache protection remains the same with the controllers incorporating Ni-MH batteries plus NVRAM to protect the cache contents in the event of a power failure.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S3 review: Installation

For initial deployment, we pointed a browser at the primary controller’s remote access network port and followed the quick start wizard to configure basic details. These include the system hostname, administration security and the IP address of the maintenance port, which is used for general web management access and for the SF Express software.

It’s important to set up SNMP correctly on the array as SF Express uses this for all management. You need to create a new SNMP user on the array assigned with the ‘Software’ role and over on the SF Express host, add dedicated admin groups with management and monitoring privileges.

The appliance’s web console hasn’t changed from previous versions and you start by creating RAID Groups (RGs). The price we’ve shown includes two 960GB SAS SSDs but for testing, we fitted eleven 960GB SAS SSDs, which we used to create a single RAID10 RG with a global hot-spare.

For thin provisioned volumes (TPVs), you create a dedicated storage pool and as volume space gets used, the array dynamically assigns new blocks to it from the pool. Attention and warning capacity thresholds are applied to a pool and when they are reached, the appliance will send out an alert.

Inline deduplication and compression are included and can be applied only to TPVs. Another valuable feature is integral data encryption; you can request that this is carried by the controller’s firmware or use SEDs (self-encrypting drives).

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S3 review: Data protection

All volume cloning, snapshots and replication are configured using the SF Express software, which can manage multiple arrays from a central host. We installed it on a Windows Server 2019 system and logged into it with the local user we had previously created.

We’ve included the Storage Cruiser upgrade too, which enables data tiering, automated QoS (Quality of Service) and enhanced performance monitoring. This adds a lot of versatility - you could for example, enable QoS on an all-Flash tier for high-demand apps and use TPVs with deduplication and compression where the priority is on storage savings.

Next up is OPC (one point copy), which creates a one-off clone of a source volume to a local destination while QuickOPC clones a volume and updates it incrementally. Meanwhile, EC (equivalent copy) mirrors one volume to another in real-time on the same array while the REC (remote EC) performs this to a remote array for disaster recovery.

Create dedicated SDVs (snap data volumes) and you can use SnapOPC+ (one point copy plus) to take copy-on-write snapshots of selected source volumes. Capacity management is eased by the ability to create a dedicated SDV pool- so if an SDV runs out of space, it can take some from this until you increase the SDV’s size.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S3 review: Performance

Our review system was supplied with two 16Gbps FC ports in each controller and for performance testing, we used a Dell PowerEdge T640 server running Windows Server 2019 and equipped with a quad-port ATTO Celerity FC-164P FC adapter.

Access controls are tight, and Fujitsu’s Affinity Groups manage connections between hosts, ports and LUNs. Our server’s four FC connections were automatically discovered by the appliance, so we put them all in one host group and linked them together with LUN and port groups.

You can modify a volume’s ALUA (asymmetric logical unit access) settings so we changed it to active/active for our mapped volume. This allowed us to achieve a high performance quad-port MPIO link to the server with all four FC paths active and optimised.

For sequential read and write operations, we recorded impressive Iometer rates of 39.1Gbits/sec and 32.4Gbits/sec which remained rock steady when we swapped to random operations. Dropping to Iometer 4KB block sizes returned equally good sequential read and write rates of 579,000 and 208,700 IOPS while our random tests saw 580,000 and 220,000 IOPS.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S3 review: Verdict

Our only issue with Fujitsu’s Eternus AF arrays is their complicated deployment processes. There are a lot of features to manage and all too often, we found ourselves hunting through the web console, SF Express interface and copious software documentation to remind ourselves where they were lurking.

Even so, there’s no doubt the improved hardware specification has had a big impact on performance as the Eternus AF250 S3 is considerably faster than its predecessor. Combining this with the high expansion potential and low starting price makes this all-Flash array a good choice for demanding enterprises and SMEs.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S3 specifications

If you’re seeking effortless passport and ID card scanning, the Fujitsu fi-800R will suit you down to the ground. Its ingenious design sucks an open passport in through a slot at the front, then ejects it the same way, so the bulk of the passport never needs to pass through the mechanism. Even better, it’s small enough to be kept at the front desk, so the customer’s passport need never leave their sight.

Don’t think of the fi-800R as solely a specialist scanner, though. With a 20-page ADF and an advertised 40ppm scan speed, it’s more than equal to everyday scanning tasks. And we can’t quibble with Fujitu’s performance claims: our sheaf of 20 bank statements was digitised at 41ppm at 200dpi and 300dpi, in both colour and greyscale. A clever motorised stacker keeps the space requirements down by holding scanned pages upright in front of the rear feeder, rather than spitting them out onto the desk.

Passport scanning, meanwhile, is wonderfully speedy, taking no more than three seconds to scan the personal information page from a standard EU passport – although Fujitsu recommends you take a moment to slip the passport into an optional protective sheet before feeding it in.

The scanner comes with Fujitsu’s full PaperStream IP software suite, comprising custom TWAIN and ISIS drivers, plus the PaperStream Capture image-processing app. As usual, this allows you to set up quick-access profiles that combine scan settings, destinations and various other options. A wizard walks you through the process of creating new profiles, meaning you can’t really go wrong, and there’s an impressive range of advanced features on offer, including image-processing options such as hole filling, blank page removal and automatic skew correction.

One part that particularly stands out is the software’s data-extraction module: alongside the familiar zonal OCR and barcode options, Fujitsu has also provided capture options specifically for passports, which can be used to automatically pull out and store key details such as the passport number, the holder’s date of birth and the country of issue.

Scans can be saved in a range of formats including JPEG, BMP and searchable PDF, while the included ABBY FineReader for ScanSnap plugin adds Word, Excel and PowerPoint formats too. If you want to try out extra features such as enhanced metadata fields, you can activate a 30-day trial of PaperStream Capture Pro, which costs £370 to fully license.

The last thing to configure is your scan destination. The software can scan to local or network folders, FTP and SharePoint servers, or make a photocopy by forwarding your scan directly to a printer. If you want to email a scan to someone, the software will open the local email app and attach the file, ready for you to fill in the dispatch details; cloud storage isn’t explicitly supported, but you can set up a profile that scans to a synchronised folder.

Once your profiles are configured, you simply need to click in the software to launch your desired type of scan. The scanner doesn’t have its own display, but its single physical button can also be bound to a nominated scan operation.

With its 20-page ADF, the fi-800R isn’t the perfect choice if you have a huge archive of documents to digitise, but its great performance, versatile software and space-saving design add up to a classy bundle that’s more flexible than you might assume.

Fujitsu fi-800R specifications

Fujitsu, the Japan-based tech company, announced it’s developed an artificial intelligence (AI) monitor to help health care, hotel and food industry workers wash their hands properly.

The announcement comes just weeks after the World Health Organization (WHO) issued its hand-washing guidelines.

According to Fujitsu, it developed the AI using crime surveillance technology designed to detect suspicious body movements. Not only can the AI recognize complex hand movements, but it can also detect when people don’t use soap.

Further, the AI can determine whether or not a person is washing their hands in accordance with the Japanese health ministry’s six-step hand-washing procedure.

Much like WHO guidelines, the Japanese health ministry encourages people to wash their palms, between their fingers, scrub their nails, wash their thumbs and lather each wrist with soapy water.

Although Fujitsu announced the AI amid the coronavirus outbreak, it began the project before the pandemic, after Japanese companies began implementing stricter hygiene regulations.

Genta Suzuki, a senior researcher at Fujitsu, told Reuters: “Food industry officials and those involved in coronavirus-related business who have seen it are eager to use it, and we have had people inquiring about price.”

Though the AI still can’t identify people from their hands, Suzuki claims the technology could be coupled with identity-recognition technology, giving companies the opportunity to track employees’ hand-washing habits.

To train the AI, Suzuki worked alongside a team of developers who used a variety of soaps and hand-washing basins to determine 2,000 hand-washing patterns. Fujitsu employees participated in the trials. The company also paid other people in Japan and overseas to assist with developing the AI.

According to Suzuki, Fujitsu has yet to formally decide on whether or not to market the AI technology to other businesses.

Fujitsu has agreed on a deal with Thales to integrate the security firm’s cloud and encryption services into its own portfolio to expand its security offerings to customers in Europe.

Thales’ Cloud Hardware Security Modules (HSM) and Key Management services will be adopted by the Japanese tech firm, with a view to bolstering its public key infrastructure (PKI) based services.

The security company’s Cloud HSM service, Data Protection on Demand, will be used by Fujitsu within its core security infrastructure in order to provide businesses with a more secure key management service.

The decision to opt for Thales technology lies in a need for Fujitsu to raise the level of security in its existing customers’ infrastructure and to remain compliant with regulations, the company said.

The security firm’s Cloud HSM service offered a cost-effective way to provide customers access to a Microsoft certification authority-based PKI regime.

“We’re always looking to ensure our customers have access to the very best security solutions on the market and this partnership with Thales offers exactly that,” said Fujitsu’s security offering architect, Petri Heinälä.

“One of our customers, a leading European pharmaceutical company, is already benefitting from our adoption of Data Protection On Demand. The client needed to shore up their key management practices, with increased healthcare regulations related to data protection, data privacy and audit controls.”

The partnership has also been strengthened with the launch of an enterprise data encryption service that uses Thales’ key management platform.

The companies claim this platform ensures effective compliance with data protection legislation while offering a secure means of encrypting sensitive business data.

This new service will form part of Fujitsu’s Data Protection suite of services and will be made available to customers across on-premise, hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

“Data protection is a clear priority for many businesses as they fight to prevent breaches and comply with increasing regulatory requirements,” said Thales’ vice president for encryption solutions, Todd Moore.

“Protecting core assets such as identities and data using encryption and PKI management should now be the minimum security posture for every organisation.

“It’s vital that managed services providers are able to respond to the changes quickly, efficiently and affordably, while meeting the security requirements head on.”

VMware has provided a glimpse into the changes that partners can expect when the vendor re-launches its channel programme in February 2020.

The company is overhauling its channel strategy to reward partners for competencies and delivering customer outcomes within the new Partner Connect programme.

"We have grown our portfolio and acquired new technologies to a point at which we have a strong set of capabilities that will be the foundation for our customers' digital transformation. What that means though is that we need some different capabilities from our partners than we needed in the past," Alanzo Blackstock, director of Partner Organisation UK&I at VMware, explained to Channel Pro.

"Partner Connect is about us moving away from a programme that incentivised our partners for transacting software to a new programme that incentivises our partners to deliver on the whole of the customer lifecycle. It's about delivering the outcomes and having the right levels of services and service capabilities to make the customer successful in their digital transformation journey."

Blackstock points to VMware technologies which now include hyperconvergence, networking and security, citing a need for greater integration capabilities, which "requires a skill set that our partners haven't necessarily needed in the past."

To this end the firm focusing on "six or seven" Master Services Competencies, requiring partners to specialise in areas such as networking security, data centre virtualisation, digital workspace and cloud-native applications.

"[VMware] is reshaping and realigning to the way that customers are actually buying technology these days and running it," says Gavin Jolliffe, CEO of Xtravirt, the first VMware partner in the UK to achieve all five current Master Services Competencies. "It's a very sensible move," he adds, describing the new programme as "a massive change, [and] a multi-year journey."

VMware is currently assessing where it's three and a half thousand partners in the UK and Ireland will be placed in the new programme, based on their history and existing skills set. "We're trying to prepare our partners for that journey and fill any gaps there might be," says Blackstock.

The vendor also notes that the new programme will be much simpler for partners to navigate, including providing just one agreement under which different types of partners can sell multiple technologies in multiple ways.

"We're trying to reduce the complexity to our partners and make it simpler for them to engage with us. But at the same time, making it clear that they can sell in many ways; it's not just about the licences, it's also about cloud services especially, about professional services."

There’s something indefinably exciting about getting a new piece of hardware to play with; whether it’s a smartphone or a server, there’s a certain joy in unpacking a new device and getting to grips with its capabilities, seeing how far you can push its limits.

As 2019 draws to a close, we’re taking a look back over the best products of the year. It’s been a strong year in most product categories, with new iterations of some of our favourite ranges. Although this year hasn’t seen the release of any particularly revolutionary products - and we’re discounting foldable phones, as they haven’t been widely released as yet - there have been some strong showings across the board.

Here, then, are our hand-picked awards for the top products of 2019.

Best laptop

WINNER: Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme

Lenovo’s monster ThinkPad X1 Extreme is a masterclass in how to create a £2,000-plus laptop that still feels like good value. This sleek machine packs an outstanding touchscreen display, powerful components and the ThinkPad’s reliably excellent keyboard into an attractive and relatively portable chassis, blending serious horsepower with boardroom looks.

As if that wasn’t enough, the X1 Extreme also includes a number of business-friendly features, including security and privacy protections and even eye-tracking features to help boost productivity. It may be expensive, but if you need a do-it-all laptop, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme is tough to beat.

Read our full Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: HP EliteBook x360 830 G6

While not quite as outstanding as the ThinkPad X1, the HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 is nevertheless an excellent all-rounder that offers all the functionality and polish an enterprise needs. While technically a convertible, it’s as a laptop that the x360 really excels and, despite a few drawbacks, it’s one of the smartest devices we’ve seen this year.

Read our full HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 review.

Best tablet

WINNER: Apple iPad mini 5

Apple has so thoroughly dominated the tablet computing space that for many people, ‘iPad’ is synonymous with the category as a whole, and the iPad mini is one of the most impressive of the lot. The latest edition is the first update to the range in almost four years, but it’s retained all the qualities that made us love the mini in the first place.

It’s more powerful than the MacBook Air, and the arrival of iPadOS’ productivity-boosting features has made it a genuine option for business users. On top of that, it’s also got support for the Apple Pencil - and all of this goodness is packed into a device that can still conceivably fit into a pocket.

Read our full Apple iPad mini 5 review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Samsung Galaxy Tab S6

Samsung is one of the few manufacturers still flying the flag for premium tablets, most of the other rivals having since ceded the fight to the iPad. It’s gratifying, then, that the Galaxy Tab S6 is an exemplary Android tablet, including a bundled stylus, great battery life and an impressive desktop-style UI in the form of Samsung DeX.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Tab S6 review.

Best 2-in-1

WINNER: Microsoft Surface Pro 7

We have our qualms with Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro - the Core i5 model’s performance leaves something to be desired, and the battery life is less than we were hoping for - but despite these drawbacks, the Surface Pro 7 is still the zenith of the 2-in-1 form factor. It’s portable, versatile, and it’s still more than capable of handling everything up to proper media rendering tasks.

The Surface Pro’s design is near-perfect, and it truly comes into its own with the addition of USB-C, allowing you to flit seamlessly from a desk-based monitor, mouse and keyboard setup to on-the-go notetaking with the Surface Pen. Combine that with the smart improvements Microsoft has been making to Windows 10 and you’re got the ideal multi-purpose machine.

Read our full Microsoft Surface Pro 7 review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1

The Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 is aimed squarely at business users, but that doesn’t mean it has to be clunky or unattractive. On the contrary, it’s one of the more appealing convertibles we’ve tested this year - albeit in a professional, businesslike sort of way. Aside from the nice design and the smooth hinge action, it’s also a really well-rounded machine, making it perfect for mass deployments.

Read our full Dell Latitude 7400 2-in-1 review.

Best smartphone

WINNER: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+

The Galaxy S10 may be Samsung’s more mainstream device, but don’t be fooled - the ‘prosumer’ Note 10+ is where the real action’s at. With a screen measuring almost 7in and a weight of just under 200g, it’s a bit of a behemoth, but that size is concealing some of the most powerful components Samsung has ever put into a smartphone.

As with the Tab S6, DeX is a standout feature that really elevates the Note 10+, and for the truly hyper-productive, the S-Pen is still the pinnacle of mobile note-taking. Aside from this barrage of productivity-friendly features, the Note 10+ also has one of the best cameras available on a top-end flagship device.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Google Pixel 3a

The Pixel 3a is the poster-child for doing more with less. Despite on paper being a less-sophisticated device than the Pixel 3, it takes all of the things we love about Google’s handsets and - thanks to its lower-powered processor - fixes its biggest issue by improving the battery life. In fact, for our money, it’s still a better bet than its successor, the Pixel 4.

Read our full Google Pixel 3a review.

Best 1U server

WINNER: Dell EMC PowerEdge R340

Dell EMC’s PowerEdge R340 might be among the most affordable of its servers, but don’t mistake it for a budget model; this pint-sized beauty is highly scalable, thanks to its support for up to eight SFF hot-swap bays, 12Gb/sec SAS speeds and a meaty quad-core Xeon E-2134.

The real attraction here, however, is Dell’s superlative iDRAC9 remote management software, which offers an HTML5-based web console for monitoring and administrating your server. The upgraded Enterprise edition allows full OS control and virtual media services, making admin tasks a breeze.

Read our full Dell EMC PowerEdge R340 review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen10

Big things come in small packages, so the saying goes, and rack servers don’t get much smaller than the 1U HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen10, which is just 41cm deep. Despite its small proportions, it still offers a wealth of storage options and plenty of power, making it an excellent choice for space-conscious organisations - although it’s not quite as scalable as the R340.

Read our full HPE ProLiant DL20 Gen10 review.

Best tower server

WINNER: Fujitsu Server Primergy TX1320 M4

Like HPE’s DL20, the Fujitsu TX1320 M4 is a dinky little machine standing just over 40cm tall, but it’s managed to cram a lot of functionality into its slim frame. Not an inch of space is wasted, and there’s a surprisingly fulsome selection of configurations to choose from, including ten Xeon E-2100 CPUs and up to eight hotplug SFF drive bays.

It’s highly configurable and has great expansion potential, which makes it a great fit for businesses that want a server that can grow along with their needs. It even includes Fujitsu’s free ServerView Suite management tool - although SMBs may be better off sticking to the simpler System Monitor utility instead.

Read our full Fujitsu Server Primergy TX1320 M4 review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen10

A bit of a beast in comparison to the TX1320, this squat, black monolith is nonetheless a capable alternative for businesses with modest infrastructure needs that don’t want to splash out on a full server cabinet. Like the Fujitsu, it features a Xeon E-2100 and a range of storage options, in addition to a range of storage options - although the fact that storage isn’t included as standard lessens its appeal a little.

Read our full HPE ProLiant ML30 Gen10 review.

Best storage array

WINNER: Lenovo ThinkSystem DE4000F

This appliance is the result of a partnership between Lenovo and NetApp, and it marks the company’s first serious foray into the enterprise storage market. As an entry-level all-Flash array with an affordable price, it’s the kind of product that should give industry mainstays like HPE and Dell EMC pause for thought.

Overall performance is excellent, with FC SAN speeds a particular highlight, and there’s an embarrassment of port options for the host interface. Showcasing the best aspects of both Lenovo and NetApp, this appliance is perfect for mid-level enterprises.

Read our full Lenovo ThinkSystem DE4000F review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: StorageCraft OneXafe 4417

StorageCraft has built the OneXafe 4417 primarily with data protection and resiliency in mind, and it’s a perfect match for these kinds of tasks thanks to a heap of clever features. Expanding the size of your estate is simple too, with remarkably quick and easy deployment. It’s the ideal one-stop-shop for backup and disaster recovery.

Read our full StorageCraft OneXafe 4417 review.

Best NAS drive

WINNER: Synology SA3400

Marking the first of Synology’s new ‘SA’ appliances, the SA3400 is a firmly enterprise-class NAS unit that introduces both SAS3 and SATA storage. That’s in combination with a powerful eight-core Xeon-D processor and a maximum memory capacity of 128GB, which offers a pleasing amount of expandability.

It’s good value based on the price tag, but where this appliance really excels is in its performance, with blazing 10GbE speeds of more than 9.3Gbits/sec. Combine that with Synology’s well-rounded library of apps and you have an outstanding NAS that suits a range of uses.

Read our full Synology SA3400 review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Qnap TS-983XU-E2124-8G

This 1U NAS product may not look as imposing as some of its rivals, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in versatility. It’s well-suited to running private clouds and containers, and its smart internal design makes it easy to mix and match your drives. Its biggest flaw is that it’s not quite as affordable as we may have liked.

Read our full Qnap TS-983XU-E2124-8G review.

Best printer

WINNER: Xerox VersaLink C500DN

The main strength of Xerox’s VersaLink C500DN lies in its ConnectKey app platform, which lets users access a range of print-related apps, services and functions from its 5in colour touchscreen. Not only does that include a wide range of mobile and cloud printing tools, but it also includes things like automatic translation services - although this is only an option on models with a built-in scanner.

Even without the smart app gallery though, the C500DN is still an outstanding printer thanks to its lightning-fast speeds and fantastic output quality, combined with strong security measures to prevent misuse. Ideal for medium to large enterprises, this machine is a true workhorse.

Read our full Xerox VersaLink C500DN review.

HIGHLY COMMENDED: Kyocera Ecosys P6235cdn

The low price of the Kyocera Ecosys P6235cdn’s consumables, combined with high-capacity bundled cartridges, make this printer fabulously cheap to run. Not only that, but quality and speeds are both great. If you want wireless printing, however, you’ll need to invest £250 in an adapter card, which is a little steep for our tastes.

Read our full Kyocera Ecosys P6235cdn review.

Don't judge Fujitsu's little tower server on size alone. It's certainly small, standing just 405mm tall - but it's a powerful package that's more versatile than many much larger servers.

That's partly thanks to its highly configurable design. The model we tested had a quad-core Xeon E-2134 and 16GB of DDR4 RAM - expandable to a maximum of 64GB - but Fujitsu offers a choice of ten Xeon E-2100 CPUs, with prices starting at just £827 for a base system with 8GB of memory.

There's a wide range of storage choices, too. The entry models support two LFF SATA drives, but for storage-hungry roles, you can specify up to eight hotplug SFF drive bays. If you don't want to go the whole hog right away, you can start with one four-bay cage and add a second extension box when required.

It's worth noting that if you want to use all eight drives, you'll need to add a dedicated RAID controller; happily, Fujitsu offers a great choice of affordable SATA/SAS3 cards. Costing £108, the CP400i adds RAID5 and 50 to the mix, while for around £190 the top-dog EP420i supports RAID6 and 60 arrays, as well as an optional battery backup pack to protect its 2GB of onboard cache.

For faster access, the motherboard also has dual M.2 SSD slots, one of which supports both SATA and NVMe modules. Invest in one of Fujitsu's PRAID EP540i or EP580i dual-function controllers and the server can support up to four high-performance NVMe SSDs.

Expansion in other areas is good, too. Four PCIe slots and a pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports are partnered with a dedicated management port for Fujitsu's iRMC S5 management controller. This can be used in concert with Fujitsu's free ServerView Suite software, but that's primarily aimed at large businesses managing multiple server. Smaller companies will find the System Monitor utility more practical: its browser-based console provides at-a-glance details on critical components and power consumption, with an automated system update service. Upgrading the Standard licence to an Advanced one enables OS remote control and virtual media services as well.

To power it all, starter systems use a fixed 250W PSU, but our configuration included a 450W hotplug PSU with room for another alongside. The second bay also accepts Fujitsu's battery backup module (FJBU) which costs around £300 and includes a Windows management tool that gracefully powers the server down in the event of an outage lasting longer than four minutes.

While the TX1320 M4 may be modest in size, it's no lightweight: the steel chassis is reassuringly solid and offers good physical security, as the side panel can be padlocked shut and the two sections of the front bezel locked with a single key.

Open it up, and everything is nicely accessible. LFF drives are fixed in their cage with thumbscrews and are easy to remove, while the slimline optical drive above is connected to a dedicated SATA port on the motherboard. A spare bay next door can take an optional RDX backup cartridge drive, and the motherboard has an embedded USB port located right next to it.

Thanks to a tidy internal design, not much in the way of cooling is required. There's no need for a rear-mounted fan; instead, the CPU has a smart active heatsink with a fan neatly sandwiched inside it. The LFF model also has a single cooling fan servicing its drive bays, while the SFF model gets a clip-on fan module for each four-bay cage.

This sparing use of fans keeps the server admirably quiet. We measured sound levels of only 37.6dB from one metre in front, so you don't have to worry about nearby workers being disturbed by the noise: it's fine for a small office, or even a library.

In all, the Fujitsu Primergy TX1320 M4 is ideal for space-constrained businesses. Compact yet capable, it's great value, and can be configured to suit a wide range of demanding workloads.

Fujitsu is known for its affordable single-socket servers, and the Server Primergy TX1330 M4 is its most powerful yet. Designed for growing businesses and branch offices, this modestly sized tower crams in a Xeon E-2100 CPU and offers plenty of room to expand as needed.

That starts with the RAM: our test system came with a six-core 3.3GHz Xeon E-2136 CPU and 16GB of DDR4 memory, but you can expand this to 64GB -- and a future BIOS upgrade will increase the limit to 128GB.

If storage capacity is a priority, the TX1330 M4 has you well covered here. Our starter system came with an eight-bay SFF drive cage, and you can add two further eight-bay cages with a field-installable kit that includes a 24x SAS expander board. Those using LFF drives can start with four bays and boost capacity to 12 - and if the available cage options don't quite suit your needs, you can contact Fujitsu's Made4you team and have a custom system specially created.

If you're going down this route, just be aware that the integrated RAID controller only supports four SATA drives. To use all eight SFF bays in our review system, we had to add Fujitsu's PRAID CP400i eight-port SATA/SAS3 controller, adding 108 to the cost.

Similarly, you can fit up to four high-performance NVMe SSDs, but you will need to specify a PRAID EP540i or EP580i dual-function RAID controller to control them. The motherboard itself offers dual M.2 SSD slots, of which one takes SATA modules and the other supports NVMe. Next to these, a microSD slot is used by the optional embedded Lifecycle Management (eLCM) tool to store OS images and server updates.

Around the back, you'll find four free PCIe slots, dual Gigabit Ethernet ports and a dedicated port for Fujitsu's iRMC S5 remote management controller. This isn't as slick as Dell EMC's iDRAC9, but it provides plenty of detail on critical components and power consumption, and adding an Advanced licence enables virtual media services and OS remote control.

In addition to this, you can access a useful toolbox of monitoring and management tools via Fujitsu's web-based System Monitor utility. This provides a simple homepage showing an overview of system health, from which you can drill down and see the status of individual components, configure email alerts, schedule update downloads from Fujitsu's support site and directly access the iRMC web console.

Physical security is good because the two front panel sections can be locked with a key to keep the drives, peripheral bays and power button safe from wandering fingers. The key also unlocks the side panel and, with this removed, a tidy interior awaits.

The motherboard is covered by a large plastic air shroud; Fujitsu offers both a single fan model and a larger version with 9cm fans fore and aft. The Cool-safe chassis design employs honeycomb grilles to improve airflow, allowing the fans to run slowly and quietly: even though our test system had the dual fan module, we measured noise levels of just 41.8dB from one metre in front.

The server is energy efficient, too. With Windows Server 2019 sitting idle, we recorded a tiny draw of 18W, rising to only 120W with the CPU under maximum load. The juice is provided by a 450W hotplug PSU, and a spare bay alongside it will accept either a second redundant PSU or Fujitsu's battery backup module. Costing 304, this comes with a Windows management tool that cleanly powers the server down if the power goes out for more than four minutes.

If you're in the market for a Xeon E-2100 server, the Fujitsu Server Primergy TX1330 M4 is a very persuasive proposition. It's compact, quiet and affordable, and it offers enormous upgrade potential, making it a smart investment for upwardly mobile businesses.

Verdict

SMBs that want Xeon E-2100 server power at a low price will love Fujitsu’s Primergy TX1330 M4. This compact and quiet tower is very well built while its upgrade potential and superb storage expansion capabilities make it a trusty long-term investment.

Tower chassis

3.3GHz 6-core Xeon E-2136

16GB 2,667MHz DDR4 ECC (max 64GB)

Intel C246

Supports RAID0, 1, 10 (4 SATA drives)

8 x hot-swap SSF bays

No HDDs included

DVD-RW

2 x M.2 SSD slots

4 x PCI-E 3

2 x Gigabit

450W hot-plug PSU (max 2)

Fujitsu iRMC S5 Standard with Gigabit

177 x 560 x 455mm (WDH)

1 year on-site NBD warranty

Power 18W idle, 120W peak

If you’re running an environment where storage density is a priority, then the Fujitsu Server Primergy RX1330 M4 makes for a very strong choice. While the LFF variant only has a conventional four-drive capacity, the model we tested has eight SFF drive bays – and there’s another design with room for ten drives, which is excellent for such a compact server.

As if that weren’t enough, the ten-bay model can be additionally fitted with up to four PCIe SSDs – although you’ll need to add a PRAID EP540i or EP580i controller card to drive them. Entry-level systems rely on the motherboard’s C246 chipset to provide striped and mirrored arrays for SATA drives, while our system includes a PRAID CP400i PCIe card that brings SAS3 support plus RAID5 and RAID6 arrays into the equation.

All of that’s topped off with dual embedded M.2 slots, which you can use to house your OS on a pair of SSDs (although you can’t use a pair of NVMe modules because one of the slots is SATA-only). Or, for around £130, Fujitsu’s microSD Enterprise card slips neatly into the motherboard’s internal USB 3 port and provides a VMware ESXi boot drive running off a mirrored pair of 64GB microSD cards.

Alongside these terrifically flexible storage options, Fujitsu offers plenty of CPU choices, ranging from low-cost Celerons to the latest Xeon E-2200 models. Our test system sports a speedy 3.4GHz six-core Xeon E-2236, supported by 32GB of DDR4 memory, which can be boosted right up to the CPU limit of 128GB.

A feature of Primergy servers that has always impressed us is their superb interior design. Lift the lid off and you’ll find very little in the way of cable clutter. This, combined with Fujitsu’s Cool-safe chassis design, honeycomb air grilles and dedicated airflow channels, means the five cooling fans in front of the CPU can run comparatively slowly, which theoretically reduce power consumption and noise levels.

We confirmed this in practice: our power meter recorded a total power draw of just 40W with the operating system idle, peaking at 145W with the CPU under maximum load. We also measured sound levels of only 39dB from a metre away, making this an excellent server for offices that value tranquillity.

Our system came with dual hotplug 450W PSUs, but in place of the second standard PSU you can specify a Fujitsu Integrated Battery Backup Unit (FJBU), which costs around £315. It’s a smart alternative that obviates the need for a standalone UPS; the companion tool for Windows will gracefully power the server down if there’s a blackout lasting more than four minutes.

Connectivity is handled by a pair of dual embedded Gigabit Ethernet ports, and if you want to add extra connections there’s plenty of room to expand; even with the EP400i RAID card in residence, you’re left with two low-profile PCIe slots available.

There’s also a separate Gigabit Ethernet port dedicated to Fujitsu’s iRMC S5 remote management controller. This presents an informative web console with plenty of information about server hardware, along with graphs of power consumption. To enable video redirection for OS remote control and virtual media services, you’ll need an iRMC Advanced licence, which costs about £250.

The RX1330 M4 also works with Fujitsu’s ServerView management suite, which now comes with a revamped and more informative web console. This details all discovered Primergy servers and provides quick links for viewing server components, power consumption and RAID configurations, while a local agent feeds it with details on the OS, running services and file systems.

SMBs that want a compact server with plenty of room for expansion will love Fujitsu’s Primergy RX1330 M4. It’s quiet, energy-efficient and well built, with storage features that go well beyond what you might expect from a server of this size.

Fujitsu Server Primergy RX1330 M4 specifications

Fujitsu may not have the same high profile as Dell EMC and HPE in the rack server market, but you can always count on its Primergy family to deliver great design and quality at a good price. And so it is with the RX2530 M4: this 1U rack server is a well-built and powerful package offering a high processing density.

Targeting a range of workloads including virtualization, scale-out, small databases and HPC, the server packs a lot in with support for dual Xeon Scalable CPUs up to the mighty 28-core Platinums. Specify 'M'-designated CPUs and the server's 24 DIMM slots allow you to push memory capacity to a full 3TB of 3DS DDR4 as well.

Storage options look good; the chassis can handle up to 10 SFF drives or high-performance PCIe NMVe SSDs. Fujitsu offers plenty of RAID controller choices and with four free PCI-e slots, there's lots of room to expand.

Prices start as low as 1,300 which gets you out of the starting blocks with a single 2.1GHz 8-core Silver 4110 CPU and 16GB of DDR4, to which you can add your choice of storage. Our review server has a street price of 12,000 and delivers a very powerful system for the price, which includes dual 3GHz 12-core Gold 6136 CPUs, a meaty 192GB of 2,666MHz DDR4 memory, two 800W hot-plug PSUs and a bunch of SSDs.

Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M4: Design

The chassis is solidly built and removing the lid confirms our views on Fujitsu's quality with an interior which is very well designed. Cable-related clutter is minimal and all components are easily accessible for routine maintenance and upgrades.

Fujitsu's Cool-Safe technology uses a honey-comb grill design to improve airflow and the Advanced Thermal Design (ATD) option allows the server to run in higher ambient temperatures in data centres. Fujitsu also offers a liquid cooling kit which is available on special request.

Cooling is handled by a bank of eight hot-plug dual-rotor fan modules behind the drive backplane. Airflow is also aided by a solid transparent air shroud covering the CPU sockets and memory slots.

Power choices are plentiful as along with the dual 800W Platinum PSUs in our server, Fujitsu offers 450W, 1200W and 1300W versions. Overall power consumption for our system was good with it drawing only 82W in idle and peaking at 442W with both Gold CPUs under a 100% load.

Fujitsu's DynamicLOM OCP network adapters avoid using any of the PCI-e slots, instead snapping into a proprietary connector on the motherboard. High-speed networking is on the cards as along with quad-port Gigabit, Fujitsu offers dual-port copper and fibre 10GbE adapters and a quad-port fibre 10GbE version.

Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M4: Management

For remote monitoring, the server sports Fujitsu's embedded iRMC S5 controller and dedicated Gigabit port. It isn't as clever as HPE's iLO5 or Dell EMC's iDRAC9, but its web console offers good access security and plenty of information about critical components.

It provides a complete breakdown of power consumption for key components plus detailed event logs and alerting facilities. As with HPE and Dell EMC, you'll need to upgrade the iRMC S5 with an advanced license for full OS remote control, virtual media services and video capture.

The iRMC firmware supports Fujitsu's eLCM (embedded Lifecycle Management) feature which is licensed separately. This automates firmware updates and can use the motherboard's microSD slot to store local ISO images for booting the server from.

Fujitsu advised us some time ago that it was developing a new data centre management software product but this still hasn't materialised. Consequently, you're stuck with the old ServerView Suite for monitoring multiple servers and this pensionable package simply can't compete with HPE's OneView or Dell EMC's OpenManage Enterprise.

Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M4: Storage

Base systems start with a pair of four-port embedded SATA connectors on the motherboard. This supports four LFF or up to eight SFF SATA drives but the Intel C624 chipset only offers mirrors and stripes.

If you start with a four-drive SFF backplane, you can order an upgrade kit to push this to eight drives where the second backplane is connected to the spare SATA port on the motherboard. If you don't need the front operator panel with optical drive, VGA and USB 3 ports, you can order the system with a 10-drive SFF backplane and plug-in SAS expander.

For more performance and array choice you can add one of Fujitsu's PRAID PCI-e cards which bring 12Gb/sec SAS3 support into the storage equation. These start with the CP400i card which adds RAID5 and 50 arrays while the EP420i brings RAID6 to the mix, plus 2GB of cache memory.

NMVe SSD support for four devices requires either a PRAID EP500i series RAID card or Fujitsu's PCI-e Retimer controller card which provides pass-through services. You can have 10 NVMe SSDs which requires a special backplane with 10 x OcuLink connectors and dual Retimer cards

Along with the embedded microSD card slot, the server has a pair of M.2 SATA SSD slots which support card lengths up to 110mm. The review system came populated with dual 150GB modules which could be used to load an embedded hypervisor and protect it with a mirrored array.

Fujitsu Server Primergy RX2530 M4: Verdict

Fujitsu's remote server management software sorely needs updating but there's no denying this rack server's excellent hardware credentials. The Server Primergy RX2530 M4 offers businesses a low-profile, powerful Xeon Scalable platform with plenty of room to grow and the best build quality.

Verdict

Dated remote management software but the sleek and affordable RX2530 M4 has the power to handle a wide range of business workloads with room to grow

Chassis: 1U rack

CPU: 2 x 3GHz 12-core Xeon Scalable Gold 6136

Memory: 192GB 2,666MHz ECC DDR4 RDIMM (max 3TB)

Storage bays: 8 x SFF hot-swap (max 10), 2 x M.2 SATA SSD

RAID: Intel C624

Array support: RAID0, 1

Storage included: 2 x 240GB Intel S3520 SATA SSD, 2 x 150GB Intel S3520 M.2 SATA SSD

Network: 2 x Gigabit

Expansion: 4 x PCI-e 3.0 slots

Power: 2 x 800W 80+ Platinum hot-swap PSUs

Cooling: 8 x hot-plug fans

Management: Fujitsu iRMC S5 Standard with Gigabit

Warranty: 3yr on-site NBD

Fujitsu sub-division PFU has just unveiled the new ScanSnap iX1500, a new addition to its personal document scanner range. The device is targeted at personal, home office and SMB users, and Fujitsu channel partners have warmly welcomed the new device.

Designed around ease of use, the iX1500 allows multiple users to create their own pre-set scan tasks, such as automatically uploading scanned documents to CRM systems or spreadsheets, and even automatically totalling up the values of scanned receipts.

“From what I've seen so far, it's a fantastic product, said Dean Atkinson, managing director at The Document Management Group. “What I've been really impressed with, I've got to be honest with you, is the software that now comes with it as well, and some of the features that can be offered to customers. Along with the traditional scanner, the software that used to be there was a bit limited, but now, it's got quite a lot of features. It's an ideal entry model into that product range.”

“I would imagine that this is for departmental use within offices, as opposed to having a workgroup scanner, where you've got one big scanner which looks after a number of staff. The possibility of being able to have this for a small group of staff who've all got their own individual profiles, can set up predefined settings and walk up - it's just the comfort and the ease of being able to use it.”

Atkinson told Channel Pro that his company has already received at least one pre-order for the new device. He said that while it could be sold as part of a wider solutions package, the bigger market will likely be for the unit as a standalone device.

“This particular model I believe has enough features on it - at this price range - to be able to sell it on its own merit, because the software with it is very good. Obviously, you can attach it to an enterprise system, but it's certainly got enough features.”

Peter Lunn, senior category manager for distributor Tech Data's print division, was similarly effusive.

“It's a really exciting scanner. As a distributor, the iX500 and the product that came before it have been our top-selling consumer scanners and the extra functionality on these is really, really nice; the cloud scanning and the multiple users and profiles. Not just for home, but for small offices as well. We expect it to be a big, big success.”

“We sell quite a few other scanner vendors as well, and nobody's come out with anything that's quite as fully-functional in the consumer space.”

Lunn pointed to regulatory changes such as GDPR and the Making Tax Digital initiatives as key investment drivers for SMBs looking to spend more on scanning solutions.

“For the small business that wants to - well, probably has to - be looking at scanning solutions, with the GDPR, where they need to keep that workflow and document flow and keep all the records behind it - the software suite works really well for that kind of stuff,” he said.

This sentiment was echoed by Emma Filmer, business development manager for the document solutions division of Midwich.

“As we're finding in distribution, more and more of the smaller organisations are looking for low-cost compact scanners to be able to cope with digitisation of all their documents, with all the GDPR stuff coming in and everything,” she told Channel Pro. “[The iX1500] seems really easy to understand, the software's had an upgrade from the standard ScanSnap suite, so I would say that makes it more user-friendly.”

Filmer also noted that many customers are also looking at standalone document scanners to bolster their existing print solutions portfolios.

“We're finding with a lot of customers that there's a place for a multi-function device, there's a place for a network scanner or shared device, and there's a place for a dedicated document scanner within the business. We're finding a lot of the multifunctional cousins looking at ways where they can complement their product range, but also where they're selling managed print services contracts.”

“Let's say customers are spending £20-£30 a month on leasing contracts but the scan functionality on the multifuntion devices isn't up to scratch or it's breaking down, it's costing them money to send engineers out,” she said. “People are looking at dedicated network-shared devices such as this to provide support value, and it takes away the risk factor of eating into their revenue.”

The ScanSnap iX1500 will be available within the next few weeks, with a list price of £509.

Fujitsu has championed bringing the price of all-Flash storage down to a point where SMEs will take notice and it now goes further with its latest Eternus AF250 S2. This 2U storage array builds on the successes of its predecessor, the AF250, and aims to make all-Flash storage even more appealing.

Hardware redundancy is excellent as along with dual hot-plug PSUs, the AF250 S2 comes with dual controllers functioning in active/active mode. Data port choices have improved too, as each controller has two expansion slots which now support dual-port 32Gbps FC modules, as well as 8/16Gbps FC and 10GbE copper or SFP+ iSCSI options.

Their integral SAS expansion ports were made active in the original AF250 last year so the S2 model also allows you to double SFF drive capacity to 48 by adding a single drive shelf. The new controllers see a small speed boost with the 6-core 2GHz Xeon in the AF250 replaced with a 2.2GHz version, but maximum system cache memory stays pegged at 64GB.

Fujitsu has also made a few tweaks to its OS and its combined efforts result in a small reduction in latency and some IOPS throughput improvements. The array incorporates Fujitsu's new Cache Protection feature which replaces the capacitor in the older controllers with a long-life Ni-MH battery plus NVRAM and in the event of a blackout, the cache contents are written to memory.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S2: IP SAN performance

Our review system came with four 10GbE SFP+ iSCSI ports and six 1.92TB HGST SS200 SSDs which we used to create a high-speed RAID10 array. For performance testing, we used a pair of Xeon E5-2600 v4 Windows Server hosts equipped with Emulex dual-port 10GbE SFP+ adapters.

With one server logged on to a 500GB target over a dual-port MPIO link, Iometer reported excellent sequential read speeds of 18.1Gbits/sec but considerably lower write rates of 9Gbits/sec which remained constant when swapping over to random operations. Dropping to 4KB block sizes saw I/O throughput for random reads and writes settle at 71,000 IOPS and 31,500 IOPS.

We logged the second server onto a dedicated target over an MPIO link and watched cumulative sequential read and write rates increase to 34.7Gbits/sec and 15.1Gbits/sec. Random operations saw a similar picture with cumulative read and write IOPS stepping up to 104,000 and 63,500.

A key feature of Fujitsu's all-Flash arrays is their low latency and the AF250 S2 didn't disappoint. For both the single server and dual server 4KB IOPS tests, we measured average read and write latencies of only 0.6ms and 1.3ms.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S2: Installation and provisioning

Management contact is initially made via a direct connection to the first controller's remote access port. Its web console fires up a wizard which guided us through setting a hostname, securing admin access, configuring SNMP and setting the IP addresses of the controller's maintenance ports.

The main web interface hasn't seen any cosmetic changes but is easy enough to use. For storage provisioning, you start by adding selected SSDs to RAID Groups (RGs) and can choose from stripes, mirrors, RAID5 or 6 plus high-performance RAID10.

Within each RG, we created multiple volumes which were automatically assigned a LUN. For thin provisioning, you create a dedicated storage pool and as space in thin provisioned volumes (TPVs) is used, new blocks are dynamically assigned to them from this pool.

The AF250 S2 includes inline deduplication and compression which can be applied as required to TPVs. When creating a TPV, you can decide whether to have either or both of these features enabled.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S2: Affinity Groups

Access controls are strict as Affinity Groups manage connections between hosts, ports and LUNs. First, you need to create groups for selected hosts, ports and LUNs and then link them together with Affinity Groups.

For host groups, we were disappointed to find that the array still can't auto-discover iSCSI connections so we had to enter each host's full IQN and IP address manually. From previous Eternus tests, we know that the auto-discover feature works fine with FC hosts.

The AF250 S2 scores for its integral Quality of Service (QoS) feature. This is very versatile as you can set bandwidth limits in IOPS on individual volumes, host connections and ports or choose to leave some with unlimited bandwidth.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S2: SF Express features

All volume cloning, snapshot and replication functions are managed by the SF Express software which is installed on a separate Windows host. We loaded it on a virtualized Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V VM and connected it to the array via its management port IP address.

The price we've shown includes the SF Express software, the SF Cruiser upgrade and the AdvancedCopy Manager licenses. These handle volume copy, snapshot and cloning services plus synchronous and asynchronous replication to remote Eternus appliances.

Other valuable features include advanced performance monitoring and fully automated QoS. Activating the AdvancedCopy Manager also enables copy functions for backing up targets mapped to Exchange and SQL Server hosts.

Fujitsu Storage Eternus AF250 S2: Verdict

The Eternus AF250 S2 doesn't offer any major improvements over its predecessor but it scores for its excellent data protection features and high levels of redundancy. IP SAN performance is a mixed bag but read speeds are very good while its low latency makes it ideal for performance-sensitive applications.

The price of our review system is the list price provided by Fujitsu and includes all software, the quad 10GbE iSCSI ports and the six 1.92TB SSDs which each cost around 1,800 apiece. With Fujitsu's current promotions, you can save up to 40% on the list price making the Eternus AF250 S2 an affordable all-Flash option for SMEs.

Verdict

Fujitsu’s new Eternus AF250 S2 is great choice for SMEs that want all-Flash storage, low latency and abundant data protection features at a sensible price

Chassis: 2U rack

Storage: 24 SFF hot-swap drive bays

Drives included: 6 x 1.92TB HGST SS200 SSDs

Power: 2 x 805W hot-plug PSUs/fans

Dual hot-plug SAS3 controllers each with the following:

CPU: 6-core 2.2GHz Ivy Bridge Xeon

Memory: 32GB DDR3 cache/BBU

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50, global/dedicated hot-spare

Data ports: 32Gbps FC, 8/16Gbps FC or 10GbE iSCSI (max 8)

Ports included: 2 x dual-port 10GbE SFP+ iSCSI

Expansion: External SAS3 port

Management: Web browser, SF Express

Software: Fujitsu SF Express, Cruiser Standard/QoS, AdvancedCopy Manager Local/Remote

Warranty: 3 years on-site NBD

Anyone on the lookout for a detachable Windows 2-in-1 will have no shortage of consumer-grade models to choose from. Business-focused hybrids, on the other hand, are more elusive, with devices like the Stylistic R727 being downright rarities: with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, Windows 10 Pro and 4G LTE capability, it's the kind of no-nonsense 2-in-1 that could put a smile on any discerning IT manager's face.

What's more, it comes with its own keyboard attachment and stylus pen right there in the box. That would seem to give it an immediate advantage over its arch rival, the Microsoft Surface Pro; however, that particular range rules the enterprise world for good reason, and the Stylistic R727 will need a lot more than free peripherals if it wants to mount a convincing challenge.

Fujitsu Stylistic R727: Design & connectivity

It's lucky that this device is an office-dweller, because by consumer standards it's not exactly a slick piece of hardware. At 830g without the keyboard (and nearly 1.2kg with it), it's heavier than the Surface Pro, and dimensions of 201x319x9.5mm mean it's thicker and wider too. The massive bezels don't help in this regard - they serve a purpose in giving room to grip the tablet without accidentally activating the touchscreen, but it's hard not to find them unsightly.

At least the magnesium alloy chassis feels reasonably durable, and the pull-out kickstand deserves credit for being both fully adjustable and sturdier than its thin frame suggests. Our only complaint is that it could have done with something like rubber lining along the edge, to improve grip on a desk.

The range of ports is pretty good: there's no USB-C connector, but the full-size USB 3.0 port is arguably even more useful. A mini DisplayPort handles video output well enough, and a microSD slot can be used to expand on the 256GB of integrated SSD storage. Most interesting of all is the micro SIM slot: you'd need to provide the card yourself, but this can enable 4G LTE connectivity, so the loss of a Wi-Fi signal doesn't have to mean a loss in productivity.

Another key business feature is, of course, Windows 10 Pro. This provides numerous benefits over the Home edition when using the Stylistic R727 in a working IT environment: Bitlocker encryption is great for safeguarding sensitive data, and the Group Policy feature makes it easy for managers to configure devices for multiple users. The Pro edition also includes Windows Update for Business, which allows for far greater control over when potentially disruptive OS updates are applied.

Fujitsu Stylistic R727: Keyboard, trackpad & stylus

To be sure, it's both convenient and economically agreeable that both the keyboard and stylus are included rather than sold separately. Still, the keyboard suffers a similar ailment to the tablet: it slides about on a smooth desk surface. You also can't set it at an angle, so typing flat is the only option.

The keys themselves are quite good, though. They're chiclet-style, with more than adequate sizing and spacing, so accurate typing is a breeze.

Conversely, the trackpad feels rather cramped. It's nice for it to be accompanied by two separate, tactile left- and right- mouse buttons, but it often feels like there's hardly any room for broad finger swipes or multi-touch gestures.

The stylus is fine; it's precise enough and comfortably proportioned. Sadly, this too is compromised by the Stylistic R727 offering absolutely nowhere to store it: not a magnetic clip on the tablet, nor a fabric loop on the keyboard.

Fujitsu Stylistic R727: Display

This is not a 2-in-1 you should be using for serious image- or video-editing work, as our tests showed the 1080p, 12.5in touchscreen display seriously struggled with colours. For instance, it only covers a relatively paltry 62.2% of the sRGB colour gamut, and judging by its average delta E of 4.64, it's nowhere near reaching professional-grade accuracy either.

That said, by other metrics the Stylistic R727's screen isn't too bad at all. Contrast is respectable, at 1,053:1, and we measured peak brightness at a high 432.7cd/m2. This luminance, combined with a glass screen that's glossy without being blindingly reflective, means it can be used quite easily under strong lights.

Fujitsu Stylistic R727: Hardware & performance

Fujitsu has fitted this 2-in-1 with a dual-core Intel Core i5-7300U processor and 8GB of RAM, the very same core specs you get from the mid-range Surface Pros. As such, it wasn't a surprise when the Stylistic faltered a bit in our heavy multitasking test - scoring 28 - but ultimately managed a very decent 44 overall.

That's plenty of power for everyday office tasks; 2-in-1s often go for Intel's weaker, low-power chip, but the inclusion of a laptop-spec CPU here ensures it's about as responsive as it needs to be for the price.

The processor also has a little bonus for business users: the TPM chip. This helpfully provides a safe place to store passwords and encryption keys, so it works very well with, say, Windows 10 Pro's Bitlocker feature.

Battery life was a bit of a letdown, sadly. In our video rundown test, the Stylistic R727 fell short of the 7 hours or so that we'd expect from a 2-in-1: in fact, it wasn't even particularly close, running dry after a little over five and a half hours. You could perhaps point towards the CPU's power drain, but we've seen a Core i7-equipped Surface Pro last twice as long in the same test.

Fujitsu Stylistic R727: Verdict

Ultimately, that's the biggest problem with the Stylistic R727: it isn't the Surface Pro. The price of Microsoft's hybrid has dropped to the point where you can buy a model with the same CPU, RAM and SSD capacity as this, and still have change left over for a compatible keyboard and trackpad. That's disastrous for the Fujitsu, as it can only really offer 4G LTE in its favour - the Surface Pro, meanwhile, still provides Windows 10 Pro and a TPM chip, while having a far superior display, a generally nicer design, a more comfortable trackpad and much, much longer battery life. The choice, if you can call it that, is yours.

Verdict

While the Stylistic R727 makes a commendable effort to be business-ready, it’s outclassed in almost every other way by the Microsoft Surface Pro. Low colour accuracy and a battery that won’t even last a full day are just two of the issues it faces.

Fujitsu has a history of producing business-grade devices for enterprise users, but more and more companies have begun issuing their workers with consumer-oriented laptops like the Apple MacBook, taking advantage of the boom in attractive, powerful and affordable notebooks. So can Fujitsu's enterprise pedigree propel it to victory over the upstarts, or has the sun officially set on the company as a laptop manufacturer?

Design

We had some issues with the construction of the U757's stablemate, the Fujitsu Lifebook U937, but thankfully Fujitsu has improved the build quality substantially for this model. Gone is the flimsy, plastic-feeling chassis, replaced with a body that feels much more high-quality.

The U757 is solidly-constructed, and the lid and keyboard surround actually feel like aluminium, unlike the U937. It's a chunky beast, with a starting weight of 1.7kg and a thickness of just under 20mm, but it feels comfortably substantial, rather than unwieldy.

It's nowhere near as portable as the 15in MacBook Pro, and you'll want to have it on a desk rather than in your bag most of the time, but if you do need to take it out of the office, you're not going to need a forklift.

Interestingly, while parts of it are constructed from aluminium, it doesn't use an aluminium unibody design - the chassis itself is plastic, with an aluminium overlay over the top of it. This doesn't feel quite as sturdy as an all-metal design would (although it's far from the worrying flimsiness of the U937) but the benefit of using a plastic design is that the U757 can be much more versatile.

The underside of the laptop features numerous panels and hatches, allowing users (or more likely IT support staff) to actually access its internal hardware for the process of upgrades and repairs.

This is an oft-overlooked feature of business IT devices - MacBooks are all very well, but if your IT staff don't have the specific, specialised tools needed to actually get into the devices, every hardware fault can result in a time-consuming and costly trip back to the manufacturer. Having an accessible chassis prevents this from becoming a problem.

Display

Unfortunately, the display is less successful. Although the 15.6in Full HD panel offers heaps of space for whatever you're doing, the maximum brightness of just 261cd/m2 was rather dim, and made it a little difficult to use even in a brightly-lit office. It's also lacking the matte screen coating often used by business-grade laptops, so glare may well be a problem when using it outside.

The colour accuracy was also a little disappointing, with an sRGB coverage rating of 84% - quite a bit below rival devices, which frequently manage coverage ratings of 90% and above. It shows, too. Colours appear muted and dull - although it's unlikely to adversely impact most business tasks, it's not really suitable for any graphics work.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard was another area where we felt that the U937 let us down, but thankfully, this has been greatly improved with the U757. The keys have greater travel distance and a firmer, more satisfying feedback, resulting in a much better overall typing experience. The U757 also features a full numpad, which is a nice addition - although, like most tenkey laptop keyboards, it does have a tendency to feel ever-so-slightly cramped.

The trackpad, on the other hand, is still a disappointment - we wish Fujitsu would adopt the same all-in-one integrated trackpad design that other manufacturers use. Instead, Fujitsu's Lifebooks use separate, physical mouse buttons, which means you have to move your finger off the trackpad every time you want to click on something, rather than simply pressing down.

It's a black mark that makes an otherwise relatively capable and sophisticated machine feel significantly behind the times.

Specs and hardware

You'd expect a business machine of this size and weight to be packing some some very capable hardware under the hood, and sure enough, Fujitsu can fit the Lifebook U757 with some pretty impressive components, all the way up to one of Intel's Kaby Lake Core i7-7600U processors and 8GB of RAM.

The unit we tested came with a Kaby Lake vPro Core i5-7300U, with 8GB RAM, the same specifications as the U937, oddly enough. What's even more odd is that the U757 achieved a markedly worse score in our benchmarks than the U937, with an overall result of 47 compared to 55. This is somewhat disappointing, but those who need additional performance can always upgrade to a more powerful configuration.

Unfortunately, one thing that's lacking on all configurations is a dedicated GPU. This a serious oversight in a laptop this big and expensive. The U757 is going up against devices like the MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 15 - both of which have discrete graphics chips, which allow the devices to be used for more intensive photo and video editing tasks, as well as 3D rendering and other graphics workloads.

Ports and features

If there's one area where the U757 begins to make up for its shortcomings, it's in terms of its business-grade features, chief among which is its selection of ports. We thought the U937 had a wide variety of ports, but its big brother puts it in the shade.

The usual suspects are all present and correct - two USB 3 ports, a USB C port and an HDMI port - but there's also some more esoteric options. Like the U937, there's a Smart Card reader, an SD card slot and an Ethernet port, but there's also a DisplayPort connector, an optional SIM card slot and even a VGA port.

If that's still not enough for you, the U757 includes a connector on the underside, allowing it to be attached to a docking station and port replicator. The enterprise features don't stop there, either - as the U757 is compatible with Intel's vPro platform, you'll have access to all the business-grade management and support tools that come with it.

It's also got support for Intel's PalmSecure biometric authentication technology - although there's no support for Windows Hello, which offers a far superior user experience.

Battery and charging

Battery life is - once again - a little bit of a disappointment. We wouldn't expect it to hit the 10-hour mark set by smaller laptops, given the large screen and power-hungry components, but a score of 4 hrs 49 mins is disappointing even so. At less than five hours, the U757's battery life will barely see you past lunchtime. There's no way you'll get a full working day's worth of charge out of this.

We also found that, while Fujitsu has included a USB C port with power delivery functionality, we couldn't use it to charge the U757. When we connected to our USB C monitor, the laptop's battery level merely remained constant, rather than actively increasing.

Verdict

The Fujitsu Lifebook U757 offers a litany of compromises which conspire to drag down what should otherwise be a very competent laptop. It has a number of desirable features for businesses, including vPro support, user-replaceable hardware and all the ports you could wish for.

Unfortunately, it's hampered by a disappointing screen, the lack of a dedicated GPU and a rather paltry battery life. Compared to more accomplished and comparably-priced machines from Apple and Dell, the U757 looks like it has fallen behind in a major way.

There's simply no reason to buy a Fujitsu Lifebook U757. While it has some features that enterprise customers might find appealing, the poor performance and uninspiring design won't prove much of a hit - especially when you can pick up the gorgeous and better-performing XPS 15 for the same price (if not cheaper).

Pictures: Adam Shepherd/IT Pro

Verdict

The Fujitsu Lifebook U757 just isn't good enough to compete compete with rivals. Disappointing performance, a poor-quality display and a sub-par battery life make this one to avoid, despite business-friendly features.

Fujitsu is one of the stalwarts of the enterprise IT industry, and has been producing fit-for-purpose laptops and PCs for decades.

But, is enterprise-grade performance and functionality still enough in a world where more and more workers are demanding IT equipment that's as satisfying as the kit they use at home? As manufacturers like Dell start offering devices that can match the likes of the MacBook range for aesthetic value, for example, Fujitsu's new Lifebook U937 may have some work to do to keep up.

Design

Weighing in at around 960g, the U937 feels very light indeed. It's comfortably under the 1kg upper limit of what we'd consider an ultraportable, and feels a lot less hefty than many of its competitors. Put it in your bag, and you're liable to forget that you're carrying anything at all.

It's also appealingly slim. At 15.5mm thick, it's not the thinnest laptop on the market, but it's very far from bulky, and the fact that the increased thickness allows Fujitsu to include a very robust selection of ports (which we'll talk more about later) means it's a trade-off well worth making.

One trade-off that isn't quite so easy to stomach is that the U937 feels incredibly flimsy. The company claims it's constructed from magnesium, but it feels distinctly thin and plasticky, with the lid in particular feeling very insubstantial indeed. It bends alarmingly under the slightest pressure, and we've little doubt that we could snap it clean in two without applying much force.

Although this is likely part of what makes it so light, it's got worrying implications for the U937's longevity and build quality. We'd be incredibly worried about it breaking if we ever dropped it, and we have serious concerns about its long-term longevity over a period of, say, several years.

The textured, matte-black finish doesn't feel articularly pleasant, either. It's got a distinctly cheap, tacky feel to it, and presents a much less satisfying user experience than aluminium-bodies rivals like the MacBook Air. Visually-speaking, it's not too hideous - its matte-black and charcoal colour scheme is professional and understated - but it's definitely not winning any beauty contests, either.

Keyboard and trackpad

Alas, the keyboard is a letdown too. Although feedback and response is excellent, the chiclet keys are slightly lacking in travel depth, and there's no backlighting to speak of - which is a serious oversight in a laptop as expensive as this. We also found ourselves frequently hitting the Page Up and Page Down keys by mistake, as they're located directly over the left and right arrow keys.

The trackpad is another disappointment. It uses separate left and right mouse buttons, rather than the all-in-one trackpad design that has become the norm. Having to reposition our finger every time we wanted to click on something proved to be a persistent annoyance, and we had to tweak the sensitivity to stop it feeling sluggish.

It's disappointing to see compromises like this being made - particularly in a machine that's supposed to be an enterprise-grade device and which carries an enterprise-grade pricetag.

Display

Thankfully, the U937's 13.3in touchscreen IPS panel puts on a strong display. The 1080p screen has a measured contrast ratio of just under 1000:1, which is very good, and a maximum brightness of 318cd/m2 is bright enough to use in all but the harshest of lighting conditions. It's lacking the matte, non-reflective coating seen on other laptops, however, which means that screen glare could be a problem when using it in direct sunlight.

We measured its colour accuracy at more than 92% of the sRGB colour spectrum, so it should be more than good enough to use for graphic design and editing work. Movies and video are also rich and detailed so a joy to watch on this machine.

Specs and performance

Another area where Fujitsu hasn't scrimped is the specifications, and it's here that the U937 really shows off its credentials as a business laptop. It features Intel's latest business-grade chips and a healthy complement of memory. The model we tested had a Core i5-7300U vPro processor and 8GB of RAM under the hood, but various configurations are available, topping out with an i7-7600U and a whopping 20GB of RAM.

As we expected, it proved to be more than a match for our benchmarks, racing through them to earn a highly commendable final result of 55, which is better than most Core i7-powered business laptops and even creeping up on the performance of lower-end workstations.

Despite the high-powered components, battery life hasn't suffered a huge amount either. In our tests, it lasted 8hrs 7mins before the battery ran out and although that's trailing behind the 10-hour scores clocked up by recent releases, it's not too shabby considering the power-hungry internals.

The only complaint we had with it was an occasional tendency to run slightly hot, but this is a minor problem compared to how sterling the performance is otherwise. It's incredibly fast, and more than capable of handling anything the average enterprise user will likely throw at it.

Ports and features

One of the headline features is Fujitsu's enterprise-grade security, which offers numerous login methods, including facial recognition, smart card identification and even the company's PalmSecure technology, which reads the unique pattern of veins in your hand to provide biometric authentication.

Unfortunately, they're not available right out of the box. Instead, we had to download the Workplace Protect management software, as well as the drivers for the PalmSecure reader itself. Once we'd downloaded and installed the necessary software, however, setting up the advanced security measures was quick and relatively painless.

Facial recognition is fast and accurate - provided you're in brightly-lit conditions. Rather than the special depth-sensing IR cameras used by Windows Hello's facial recognition, Fujitsu's version uses the standard webcam built into the U937 - which means that if the lighting isn't good, then it won't be able to match your face.

Logging in via PalmSecure takes longer and needs a bit of maneuvering. Indeed, it requires you to hold your hand in a very specific position before it will read it. It's not especially convenient and we're not convinced it's that much more secure than standard biometric authentication methods like fingerprint readers. These login methods also don't integrate with Windows Hello, which means they can't be centrally managed through the OS, and don't integrate with it quite as smoothly.

If you're looking for a laptop that's all but guaranteed to support your existing IT equipment, the U937 is the one for you. It's sporting just about every port imaginable, including a HDMI output, an SD card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB-C port, a SIM card tray, and a SmartCard reader. Fujitsu has even managed to cram an Ethernet port into the 15.5mm-thin chassis, thanks to a nifty pull-out design.

Rounding out its business credentials, the U937 also ships with Windows 10 Pro, so it's ready to integrate into an enterprise environment out of the box.

Verdict

The Fujitsu Lifebook U937 is a seriously mixed bag. The internal hardware is excellent, and offers business-grade performance that will easily see you through all but the most high-intensity tasks. The display, too, is excellent and Fujitsu has included a number of business-friendly features like heaps of connectivity and authentication options.

Where it falls down, on the other hand, it falls hard. The build quality is extremely disappointing and the chassis feels cheap, plasticky and decidedly not robust. The keyboard and trackpad, too, feel like they belong on a much less expensive machine. Using the U937 doesn't feel anywhere near as premium or satisfying as it should, given the eye-watering price.

Inside this laptop beats the heart of a formidable business beast - it's just a shame that it's housed in the body of a five-year old mid-range notebook.

Verdict

This powerful business ultraportable is betrayed by a flimsy chassis and decidedly disappointing build quality. It's got heaps of potential, but there's just too many compromises to recommend.

High performing all-flash storage has traditionally been beyond the budgets of SMEs but Fujitsu's Storage Eternus AF250 aims to put it firmly within their grasp. Along with 24 SFF drive bays, this 2U appliance sports dual controllers running in active/active mode for fully transparent failover and supports up to eight 16Gbps FC or 10GbE IP SAN data ports.

The AF250 brings even more to the table as inline deduplication and compression are included and can be set on a per-volume basis. Data protection features include support for up to 4,096 snapshots plus optional tools for volume mirroring, cloning plus remote replication and the price we've shown activates them all.

The appliance's local web interface provides an overview of storage and pool usage

Swift installation

The appliance's web interface provides a quick start wizard on first contact. This helped us configure details such as a hostname, a new administrator password, SNMP community names and license registration.

We were supplied with five 960GB Toshiba MLC SSDs and our first task was to create RAID Groups (RGs) which define a collection of drives, an array type, a total capacity and the primary controller. We opted for a high-performance RAID10 array using four SSDs but RGs also support standard striped, mirrored, RAID5 and 6 arrays.

Thinly provisioned volumes (TPVs) require a dedicated storage pool and as volume space gets used, the appliance dynamically assigns new blocks to it from the pool. These are also required for deduplication and compression as only volumes created from a thinly provisioned pool can have these enabled.

Access controls are good as affinity groups link hosts, LUNs and data ports together

Manual labours

Configuration gets more complicated from here on and this isn't helped by Fujitsu's confusing documentation. The appliance's web console manual, for example, is over 1,100 pages and looks like it was written by a committee.

After creating volumes, we set up groups for our hosts, LUNs and data ports. Multiple volumes can be assigned to LUN groups where they each get their own LUN number and hosts must be connected and discovered before they can be added to groups.

We tested using a Windows server host equipped with a 16Gbps Emulex FC card which was discovered without any problems. Once we had created all our host, port and LUN groups, we used Fujitsu's affinity groups to link them together allowing us to enforce strict access controls.

The SF Express web console is designed to manage multiple Eternus arrays

Good FC Performance

For performance testing, we mapped a volume to a Lenovo System x3550 M5 Windows server with dual E5-2650 v4 Xeons and 128GB of DDR4 memory. With Iometer configured for 256KB transfer requests, we saw top raw sequential read and write rates for a 16Gbps FC connection of 12.3Gbits/sec and 11.3Gbits/sec.

Random reads delivered the same 12.3Gbits/sec throughput while random writes improved to 12.3Gbits/sec. I/O performance is also good as with Iometer set to 4KB transfer requests, we saw 171,800 and 85,000 IOPS for sequential reads and writes.

Swapping over to random operations saw a drop in throughput for reads and writes to 152,000 and 72,000 IOPS. Response times were impressively low as our IOPS tests with 50 outstanding I/Os returned latencies of between 0.9ms and 1.5ms.

Data protection features are extensive and include volume snapshots and clones

SF Express and the rest

Fujitsu's SF Express software provides a central web console for managing multiple arrays and all snapshot, cloning and backup features. It accesses the appliance over SNMP and requires a special user created on the appliance with the Software' role assigned.

The price includes the SF Storage Cruiser upgrade which, along with enhanced performance monitoring and reporting, enables data tiering and automated QoS. Note the latter two work together and only support FTVs (flexible tier volumes). Fujitsu's thinking here is businesses can enable QoS on a single flash tier for high-performance apps while TPVs with deduplication are employed where storage savings are important.

Data protection features are excellent with the AdvancedCopy services managing all volume snapshot, cloning and copy operations. All jobs start by creating a copy pair and then choosing the operation to be performed.

OPC (one point copy) creates a one-off clone of a source volume to a local destination volume while QuickOPC clones a volume and then updates it incrementally. EC (equivalent copy) mirrors one volume to another on the same array in real-time while the REC (remote EC) performs this to a remote array for disaster recovery.

SnapOPC+ (one point copy plus) uses dedicated SDVs (snap data volumes) to take copy-on-write snapshots of selected source volumes and are ideal as temporary staging areas for offloading backups. You can also create an SDV pool so if any SDV runs out of space it can grab some from here until you increase the SDV's size.

Inline data deduplication is included and our tests saw a near 4:1 reduction ratio

Conclusion

We've had all-flash arrays in the lab that are easier to deploy than the Eternus AF250 and we recommend taking up Fujitsu's offer of installation and training services. That said, none of them can beat it for data protection features as Fujitsu's snapshot, cloning and replication tools are extensive.

All-flash performance is very good and the starting price of under 10K for our system is also comparatively good value. Along with the dual controller hardware, it includes licenses for the SF Express software, the Cruiser upgrade plus local and remote replication.

Verdict

Fujitsu’s Eternus AF250 all-flash array is great value, delivers good FC performance and its all-inclusive data protection software won’t be beaten for features

Chassis: 2U rack

Storage: 24 SFF hot-swap drive bays

Power: 2 x 805W hot-plug PSUs/fans

Dual hot-plug SAS3 controllers each with the following:

CPU: 2GHz 6-core Xeon

Memory: 16GB DDR3 cache (max 32GB)

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50, global/dedicated hot-spare

Data ports: 16Gbps FC or 10GbE iSCSI (max 8)

Expansion: External SAS3 port (future support)

Management: Web browser

Software: Fujitsu SF Express, Cruiser Standard/QoS, AdvancedCopy Manager Local/Remote

Leaders at technology giant Fujitsu say the company is committed to the UK market, but that it wants to see certain results in a Brexit deal.

At the Fujitsu Forum 2016 in Munich, Duncan Tait, SEVP and head of Americas and EMEIA at Fujitsu, told me that the multinational tech company intends to continue investment in the UK. This confidence, however, comes alongside clear ideas about what the company wants from a potential Brexit arrangement between the UK and the European Union.

"Does Brexit affect anything at the macro level about how we'll continue to invest? No, it absolutely does not," said Tait. "It means we have to be careful operationally around some things, like careful management of foreign exchange rates and how that impacts our business.

"Near-term, there is no change. We'll look at some operational things that affect our business, and then we're being clear with both the European Union and the UK about what we believe is essential. If you believe that digital is a powerful force for good for the economy, then you need to make sure that, in exit from the EU, it is not damaged."

So, what does Fujitsu want from a possible Brexit deal? The company's head of product business for the EMEIA region, Michael Keegan, told me that these requirements cover three main areas: data passporting, movement of skilled individuals, and customs arrangements.

"We need to have an easy way to transport data from the UK to Europe and vice versa," said Keegan. "Currently, data centres in the UK have a lot of national details for EU nationals. If we don't get data passporting so that effectively a UK data centre can only hold the information of UK nationals this would be a really poor outcome for the UK, and a poor outcome for everyone else in Europe.

"Secondly, we require skilled individuals, whether they're in continental Europe or in the UK, to be able to be relocated to help our customers, whatever market they're in. If, within the European geography, it becomes difficult for a UK data-centre engineer to help a customer in Germany, that will become an issue for the industry in general. Similarly, if a German engineer couldn't help a UK customer, that would also be a poor outcome."

Keegan said that this matter boils down to a smart visa system, which would enable skilled workers to pass efficiently between the EU and UK for short-term jobs.

The third area for Keegan is a means to prevent slowdown when exporting goods. "For any organisation exporting into the UK market, if the UK market is no longer within the EU then we need a smart set of customs arrangements, that do not result in goods being left in customs houses for long periods of time. That will bring latency and delay into supply chains."

When asked whether Fujitsu's future relationship with the UK hinged on these requirements being met, Keegan hinted that, while the UK is a fundamental market for Fujitsu, the scale of the company's involvement in that market could change.

"The more the UK is open for business with these sorts of arrangements in place, the more attractive it would be for inward investment, and the simpler it would be to headquarter businesses and capabilities in the UK," said Keegan. "If the UK didn't have these things in place, then I think Fujitsu would always be present in the UK, but I think largely our role in the UK would be about the UK domestic market."

Speaking to Tait, it's clear that the issue of worker movement is a key consideration for the company and for the prosperity of the digital economy in both the EU and the UK in general. "The skills of science, technology, engineering and mathematics are key to the future of digital, and we need to make sure that those skills can go where customer demand is," he commented.

Around 300 Fujitsu employees are on a two-day strike in Manchester, following an ongoing battle over pay, pensions and job cuts.

The planned strike, which began at midnight on Monday, was first announced last week by members of the Unite union, who claim Fujitsu has been unfairly cutting wages despite generous increases to senior management pay.

Among the list of grievances was the claim that there is an estimated 16% pay gap between women and men, with female workers receiving an average of 5,500 less per year than men. Fujitsu has also enforced a ban on overtime since the 31 October.

Today's walkout follows news that the IT giant will cut 1,800 jobs, almost 18% of the workforce, across sites including Belfast, Crewe, Manchester and London. Unite claim there has also been a significant retrospective pension cut for staff over the age of 60.

"Today's strike has been strongly supported by our members and the message is getting out that our members won't be steam rollered into submission by the management," said Sharon Hutchinson, regional officer for Unite.

"Fujitsu is a highly profitable and successful company - its main UK subsidiary made 85.6 million profit last year and continues to be highly profitable," added Hutchinson. "So there is plenty of scope for the company to be positive in meeting our legitimate concerns on pay, pensions and job security."

"If the company continues its hard line, our members will continue to take industrial action in the run-up to Christmas that will severely impact on its customers, including those at Salford's 'media city'," said Hutchinson.

IT Pro reached out to Fujitsu for comment but has yet to receive a reply.

Workers staged a similar 24-hour strike on the 1 November over Fujitsu's refusal to become to become an accredited living wage employer. Fujitsu has implemented the statutory national living wage, however, it has since cut performance bonuses leading to an overall drop in take-home pay, according to Unite.

SMBs that want an affordable tower server with some innovative features will find Fujitsu's Server Primergy TX1330 M2 could be the perfect fit.

Despite its modest dimensions, the TX1330 M2 has an impressive expansion potential and Fujitsu's integrated battery backup unit (FJBU) provides power protection without the expense of an external UPS.

Its low price will also appeal to IT managers on a tight budget. Our review system costs 1,663 ex VAT and includes a fast 3.3GHz E3-1225 v5 Xeon, a generous 32GB of DDR4 memory, a good storage starter package and the FJBU.

The server can be tailored to fit your budget as Fujitsu offers cheaper dual-core Pentium G4400 or Core i3-6100 CPUs. If you want quad cores you can choose from five standard Xeon E3 v5 models including a low-power 2GHz E3-1240L v5 version with a small 25W TDP.

The server has a clean internal design and tons of room for storage expansion

Storage galore

The server starts with a basic four-bay LFF cold-swap cage and can be expanded all the way to 24 SFF hot-swap drives. The entry LFF model has the drive cage located at the front behind the lockable cover and utilizes the motherboard's Intel C236 chip to provide support for SATA drives plus stripes and mirrors.

You can add two more 4-bay LFF cages and a neat feature is the backplanes are SAS 3-ready. Our system came with one 8-drive SFF cage cabled directly to Fujitsu's PRAID CP400i PCI-Express RAID card.

This SAS3 card adds support for RAID5 and 50 arrays. If you want 1GB or 2GB of cache then specify the EP400i or EP420i SAS3 models which both offer RAID6 and 60 arrays.

With room for two more cages in the front panel you can add blocks of eight drives as required making the TX1330 M2 a good long-term investment. SFF and LFF drive cages can also be mixed in the same chassis and the optional SAS expander board allows one RAID card to rule them all.

The embedded iRMC S4 chip provides power usage graphs for up to five years

Remote management

The server is remotely monitored via its embedded iRMC S4 controller and dedicated Gigabit port. It isn't as well designed as HPE's iLO4, but the iRMC's web interface provides plenty of data on critical components and remote power controls but you will need an Advanced Pack license upgrade (around 250) for OS remote control.

Fujitsu includes its ServerView Suite software with all Primergy servers which is looking dated and in need of a redesign. Smaller businesses can get by easily with the System Monitor utility as this provides a simple console with at-a-glance details on critical components and system alerts.

Loading an OS on the server still requires it to be booted with the ServerView Installation Manager CD. It only took 40 minutes to install Windows Server 2012 R2 but we prefer Dell's LifeCycle Controller and HPE's Intelligent Provisioning which both provide embedded OS deployment services.

Fujitsu's System Monitor provides a tidy dashboard of details on system and component status

Battery backup

To use the FJBU you must specify your server with the dual hot-plug PSU bay as it occupies the second slot. It uses a Ni-MH battery and has a small cooling fan, status LED and quick release lever at the rear.

It scores over a server-grade UPS as it only costs 227 to purchase separately, lasts up to five years and doesn't need any extra floor space. For system protection, the FJBU comes with free Windows management software.

From its web console, we monitored the status of the battery and set up OS shutdown times. It's also recognised by the Server Operations management software, which provides a quick link to its web console.

To test the FJBU we pulled the mains plug and after our set delay of 220 seconds, the server was gracefully powered down automatically. When power was restored, the server was rebooted to active duty without a hitch and we saw that battery capacity had dropped from 100% to 63%.

The Operations Manager software is aware of the server's FJBU and can monitor its status

Noise and power usage

On the base 4-bay models, cooling is handled by a single fan mounted in a shroud that fits over the CPU's heatsink. In our SFF drive model, we had the redundant version where the shroud has fans fore and aft.

Fujitsu's Cool-safe thermal design allows the server to run in ambient temperatures up to 40 degrees C and another bonus is reduced noise levels. With our iPad placed one metre in front of the server, the SPLnFFT iOS app recorded a pleasingly quiet 42dB.

It's easy on the power supply too, as we measured the review system drawing 40W with the OS in idle and spiking at only 81W with the CPU under extreme load. When the FJBU was charging, idle power usage went up to 55W but it only took 20 minutes to fully charge itself from a 63 percent battery capacity.

The FJBU comes with monitoring software that will shut the server down safely during a blackout

Conclusion

There's no denying the Server Primergy TX1330 M2 is offering a lot for your money with the review system looking particularly good value. It's a great choice for small businesses as storage capacity can easily grow with demand, its clever FJBU option provides low cost power protection and it's exceedingly quiet as well.

Verdict

The TX1330 M2 is great choice for SMBs as this tower server has room to expand with demand plus integral power protection. What's more, it's very good value, too

Chassis: Tower CPU: 3.3GHz Xeon E3-1225 v5 Memory: 32GB 2,133MHz ECC DDR4 (max 64GB) Storage: 2 x 300GB Fujitsu SAS SFF hot-swap hard disks (max 24) RAID: Fujitsu PRAID CP400i PCI-Express card Array support: RAID0, 1, 5, 10, 50 Network: 2 x Gigabit Expansion: 4 x PCI-e 3 (3 free) Power: 450W hot-plug PSU and FJBU Management: Fujitsu iRMC S4 Standard with Gigabit Warranty: 1 year on-site NBD

Aimed squarely at cost-conscious SMBs, Fujitsu's Server Primergy RX1330 M2 is a powerful little 1U rack server at a very tempting price. Features haven't been compromised as it supports Intel's E3-1200 v5 Xeon processors, has plenty of expansion capabilities and has a few surprises in the storage department.

The system on review costs a shade under 800 ex VAT. This gets you a 3GHz E3-1220 v5 Xeon, 8GB of DDR4 memory plus four cold-swap SATA LFF drive bays - two of which are populated with 1TB hard disks.

Other CPU choices include a 3.3GHz Pentium G4400 or 3.7GHz Core i3-6100 while a low-cost 2.8GHz Celeron G3900 is available on special order. If you don't fancy any of these, the server is available with seven other E3 v5 Xeon CPUs including 25W and 45W low-voltage chips.

Along with the four-bay LFF model on review, Fujitsu offers a four-bay SFF version that can be field upgraded to eight bays. And then there's the top-dog model that dispenses with the slim-line optical drive and squeezes 10 SFF hot-swap bays into the front panel.

Fujitsu sells a version of the RX1330 M2 with 10 SFF hard disk bays

Cool runnings

The server gets the benefit of Fujitsu's Cool-safe advanced thermal design allowing it to run comfortably in ambient temperatures up to 40 degrees Celsius. Honeycomb style air grills are prevalent throughout the chassis and drive carriers. The most obvious benefit of all this are the reduced noise levels as this server is almost silent.

Cooling is handled by a bank of five dual-rotor fans in front of the motherboard and we could barely hear them during testing. With our iPad placed one metre in front of the server, the SPLnFFT iOS app only recorded 37dB - the background noise level in the lab with all equipment turned off was 35dB.

Entry-level models have a 300W fixed PSU, but our system had dual PSU bays with one 450W power supply included. Overall power consumption is extremely low with the server drawing 30W in idle and peaking at only 67W under extreme load.

This dual PSU model has a clever trick as, instead of fitting a redundant power supply, you can use the second bay for a modular UPS (which Fujitsu calls a FJBU). We weren't provided with one but based on our own power readings and Fujitsu's technical data, we estimate that this battery backup unit will keep the review server running for around 15-20 minutes.

The RX1330 M2 has a simple, clean internal design with room to grow

Storage choices

The four-bay entry-level model relies on the Intel C236 chip and embedded MegaRAID controller to handle storage. The cold-swap drive backplane is cabled to the motherboard's SATA connector with RAID options extending to mirrors and stripes only.

If you want hot-swap capabilities and SAS support you'll need to pick one of Fujitsu's optional RAID PCI-Express cards. First up is the PRAID CP400i which costs around 110 and brings 12Gbps SAS3 into play along with support for RAID5 and 50 arrays.

Next comes the PRAID EP400i which adds 1GB of cache memory but doubles the asking price. If you want dual drive redundant RAID6 arrays then consider the PRAID EP420i. Along with 2GB of cache memory, it supports an optional flash battery backup unit where the cache contents will be written to it in the event of a power outage.

The server has plenty of room inside as it has three PCI-Express riser cards with the first slot dedicated to Fujitsu's modular RAID cards. The server also has space inside for a full-height expansion card if you remove the central riser.

Remote management

The RX1330 M2 is endowed with Fujitsu's embedded iRMC S4 controller and a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet port for remote server monitoring. Its informative web interface displays plenty of information about critical components along with graphs showing power consumption in periods ranging from one hour to a whole year.

The embedded iRMC S4 management chip provides handy power monitoring services

It provides remote power controls while the component status view lists the status of any user replaceable components. Sensor thresholds can be tied in with email alerts, but full server and OS remote control requires an iRMC Advanced Pack license which costs around 200.

Fujitsu's ServerView Suite software provides centralised monitoring and management for all Primergy servers, but its clunky interface looks in dire need of a refresh. Of more use to SMBs is the System Monitor utility which provides a console with graphical information about the server's status, system alert lists, a software update tool and direct access to the iRMC web console.

Fujitsu's ServerView software has plenty of management features but really needs updating

For OS deployment, we booted the system with the ServerView Installation Manager CD and had Windows Server 2012 R2 loaded in around an hour. Pop a micro-SD card in the slot on the motherboard and you can use Fujitsu's eLCM (embedded Lifecycle Management) feature of the iRMC controller to download ISO images and boot the server from them.

The System Monitor displays a tidy status view of the server's health

Conclusions

The Server Primergy RX1330 M2 compares well on price with Dell's PowerEdge R230 and is a superior choice if you want to deploy it in locations such as a small office or library as it's much quieter (around 20dB less in fact). It's well built, has plenty of storage permutations and the optional UPS adds an extra level of versatility.

Verdict

A low-cost, low-profile rack server ideally suited to SMBs that want plenty of expansion options and minimal noise levels

Chassis: 1U rack

CPU: 3GHz Xeon E3-1220 v5

Memory: 8GB UDIMM ECC DDR4 (max 64GB)

Storage: 2 x 1TB cold-swap SATA hard disks (max 4)

RAID: Intel C236

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10

Network: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet

Expansion: 2 x PCI-E x8, 1 x PCI-E x4 slots

Power: 450W hot-plug PSU (max 2)

Management: Fujitsu iRMC S4 Standard with Gigabit Ethernet

Warranty: One year on-site NBD

Fujitsu has named Paul McLean as its new enterprise manager for indirect channels.

The HP veteran previously managed a £1bn Enterprise Group Channel Business with more than 500 resellers, developing a team of over 30 field and inside sales partner business managers.

For the past two years he has been the owner of Channel Optimiser, an IT consultancy described as “focused on channel transformation, optimisation and maximising the efficiencies, relationships and business growth between channel partners and its vendors.”

Head of channel and direct services at Fujitsu UK & Ireland, Kevin Matthews – who joined Fujitsu after leaving HP earlier this year – comments: “This is a very exciting time for Fujitsu and its channel campaign. As enterprise manager for indirect channels, Paul brings years of industry expertise and insight that will prove invaluable as we embark onto the next phase of our strategy. We are excited to have Paul driving this vision in our indirect channel space.”

Matthews has already seen some success in bringing HP partners over to Fujitsu, and this appears to be reflected in the company’s internal channel hires.

Says McLean: “I didn’t anticipate joining another vendor. But after meeting with Kevin Matthews, understanding Fujitsu’s vision for the channel and plans moving forward, it became a no brainer. I understand the challenge – I’ve been there before – and I am up to the task.”

Fujitsu sales director Kevin Matthews has revealed his plans to target partners in a bid to grow the vendor’s channel sales.

“I’ve got some really clear ideas about where we can make a difference,” he tells Channel Pro.

This includes luring some partners away from Fujitsu’s dominant rivals – particularly those the exec says could “fall between the cracks” following Dell’s forthcoming acquisition of EMC.

Matthews – who joined Fujitsu after leaving HP earlier this year – says vendor consolidation “will drive those vendors to work with certain channel partners to drive scale. That leaves for us a set of partners that fall between the cracks.”

Matthews (pictured) describes these types of partner as “Championship” rather than “Premiership” resellers when it comes to size and revenue.

“The big vendors are really wedded to the big guys that can drive scale, for obvious reasons and I believe we have real good opportunity to focus on those partners in the Championship playoff area,” he explains.

“The bigger resellers are turned on by rebates and programmes and things like that – which we do – but the other resellers want to do something that helps them generate more sales.”

Another part of the plan is to bring over partners from the exec’s 16-year tenure at HP.

Longstanding HP storage partner, Future Generation Solutions, recently joined Fujitsu’s channel programme, with managing director Peter Stroud admitting the move was based less on his knowledge of the vendor’s portfolio, and more on his trust in channel veteran Matthews.

“It’s because Kevin has gone to Fujitsu and he seems enthused about it. And if he’s enthused, obviously there’s something good going on. I do trust him, and if he gets his way in how big the channel should go, I think there’ll be more success,” he tells Channel Pro.

“It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with, but I have faith in Kevin.”

“The changes they’ve made to the organisation make it clear they’re serious about taking market share in the UK,” says Andrew Griffiths, director at Q Associates. “They see it as an opportunity give that the UK is behind some other geographies that it’s strong in. And I think they’re made a very clear statement with the appointment of Kevin.

“He’s not trying to court the big guys to come over and switch from HP or Dell – it’s not going to happen. He’s looking for partners that want to differentiate, that want to go out and sell a concept, and that’s the type of organisation we are.

“The strategy certainly seems to be investing in finding quality partners that can operate at the enterprise level, rather than going for the volume players.”

In addition, that Matthews heads up a single organisation that includes both channel and end user sales is also seen as “a real step forward” by Griffiths.

Says Matthews: “I want to see a greater emphasis on talking to more customers together with our channel. We’re not having enough joint customer conversations,” he says, adding that he intends to bring in more specialists around key verticals like education and health.

Matthew also admits Fujistu hasn’t done a good enough job in the past communicating with five UK distributors.

“All five do a really good job, but I – we – have to do a better job at giving them direction on where they focus,” he says. “Because five without any direction will not deliver any growth for us.”

He adds: “I recognise there are people in the UK that don’t know us, so we’ve got to work hard to build brand awareness in the market.”

Fujitsu outlines go-to-market changes

Fujitsu's storage division has traditionally focused on mid-sized businesses and enterprises, but it now wants a piece of the SMB market. The Eternus DX60 S3 IP SAN array delivers all the key features of its bigger brothers but at a very affordable price.

The 2U chassis is available with 12 LFF or 24 SFF drive bays along with single or dual controllers. For host data ports, Fujitsu offers controllers with dual 4/8Gbps Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet or 6Gbps SAS.

The appliance supports SAS and NL-SAS drives, but only 6Gbps speeds are supported. Furthermore, if you want faster data port speeds such as 10GbE then you'll need to upgrade the system with Fujitsu's DX100 S3 controllers which can be done in the field.

Expansion options are limited as the DX60 S3 only supports a maximum of 24 hard disks, so the SFF model can't be expanded as it's maxed out already. The 12-bay LFF model supports one expansion shelf allowing maximum capacity using certified 6TB NL-SAS drives to be pushed to 144TB.

Deployment

Initial installation is simple enough as the appliance's web interface provides a quick start wizard. This requests details such as a hostname, a new administrator password, SNMP community names and license registration.

Next, we created a RAID group which defines a collection of drives, a total capacity and the primary controller that will look after it. Multiple data volumes are created within each RAID group and for each one, we could choose from stripes, mirrors, RAID10, 5, 6 or 50 arrays.

RAID groups can be migrated from one array type to another and volumes expanded into spare space. Thin provisioning requires a dedicated storage pool and as volume space gets used, the appliance dynamically assigns new blocks to it from the pool.

The appliance's web console keeps you posted on the status of RAID groups, thin provisioning and SDVs

Affinity groups

It gets more complex from here on as before mapping volumes to our host systems, we needed to create host, data port and LUN (logical unit number) groups first. Multiple volumes can be assigned to groups where they each get their own LUN number.

Host servers are placed in groups but their initiators need to be logged in to the appliance's data ports first. The wizard provides an auto-discover feature, but it failed to locate our hosts so we had to enter their IQN details manually.

With our host, port and LUN groups created, we could now use Fujitsu's affinity groups to link them all together. It's a lengthy process, but does provide tight access controls as hosts can only access selected volumes via the assigned data ports.

Affinity groups bring hosts, LUNs and data ports together and are used for strict access controls

Performance

To test performance, we used the lab's HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9 rack server running Windows Server 2012 R2. After manually adding it as a host, we used an affinity group to link it up with a RAID5 volume accessible from data ports on both controllers.

With Iometer configured for 256KB transfer requests, we saw raw sequential read and write rates for a 500GB target of 113MB/sec and 112MB/sec. With a dual-port MPIO link to the same target, we saw speed double to 226MB/sec and 224MB/sec.

The appliance's web interface provides a good range of performance monitoring tools. From the Component tab, we could view bar graphs of physical disk utilisation and move to the Volume tab to see read and write IOPS plus throughput in MB/sec for each volume.

Data protection features

The appliance provides a wealth of snapshot, cloning and backup features, but most of them require the Eternus SF Express management server which is installed on a separate Windows host system. This connects to the appliance remotely via SNMP and provides access to Fujitsu's Advanced Copy services.

Fujitsu's Eternus SF Express web server is used to manage multiple appliances and IP SAN hosts

Basic volume cloning is achieved using the one point copy (OPC) feature which takes a source volume and creates a single copy of it. QuickOPC takes an initial volume copy and updates it incrementally while Equivalent Copy (EC) manages mirrors of one volume to another on the same array.

SnapOPC+ (one point copy plus) take point-in-time copies, or snapshots, of selected source volumes but requires dedicated snap data volumes (SDVs) to be created on the appliance. These can be used for offloading backup as once the SnapOPC+ task has finished, the SDV can be mapped to a backup server where it appears as a perfect copy of the original.

Remote Equivalent Copy (REC) mirrors volumes from one array to another, but isn't supported by the DX60 S3. Other options also not available are Fujitsu's optional data tiering and support for NAS services.

Advanced Copy snapshot and cloning features are also configured remotely from the SF Express web console

Conclusions

The Eternus DX60 S3 is inexpensive as we were quoted a price of 3,749 ex VAT by Ebuyer.com for a diskless SFF chassis with dual redundant Gigabit Ethernet-equipped controllers. It's fast, but small businesses could find the deployment processes and management software overly complex. Fujitsu advised that it provides engineer-assisted installation and training services which we would strongly recommend taking advantage of if you want the DX60 S3.

Verdict

Dual controllers and plenty of storage features make this a good IP SAN disk array, but expansion is limited and its data protection services are all handled by a separate management utility

Chassis: 2U rack

Storage: 24 SFF hot-swap drive bays

Power: 2 x 800W hot-plug PSUs

Dual hot-plug controllers each with the following:

CPU: 1.2GHz Pentium

Memory: 2GB DDR3

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10, 5, 6, 50, hot-spare

Data ports: 2 x Gigabit Ethernet

Expansion: SAS port (only supported on LFF chassis)

Management: Web browser

Software: Fujitsu Eternus SF Express

Fujitsu has revealed further details of its organisation-wide overhaul as it looks to adopt a more global approach to its go-to-market strategy.

The changes, which were first laid out to analysts by Fujitsu president Tatsuya Tanaka at the end of October, will see the vendor target the top 100 enterprises in Europe, while leaving its channel partners to its midmarket business.

Speaking today at the Fujitsu Forum 2015 in Munich, the vendor’s EVP and head of EMEAIA, Duncan Tait, said: “We will continue to serve that market, increasingly by our distribution and channel partners in our product business. But to be very clear…in a global world the big money is in the big companies. As Fujitsu globalises, it gives us the ability to take on that very large market, which for us is largely untapped today.”

He added: “The way we’re moving the whole company globally gives us the ability to target this bigger market.”

Traditionally geograpically-structured, Fujistu’s four business units – Products, Managed Infrastructure Services, Business and Application Services and Enterprise Platform Servces – will now operate across all geographies.

“This, we believe, will give us the ability to react with speed, with one operating model for how we go to market,” said Tait, who revelead that Fujitsu has been working with its Workers’ Council since April on the changes.

Digital and industry focused

The vendor also said it will focus on services and digitisation as part of its plans, with Tait stating that the biggest challenge facing organisations today is how to manage digital transformation.

“You have to be able to interract with your customers in a radically different way; you have to build digital into your products and the way your internal organisation works, and you have to do it in a balanced way and with confidence in an ever more uncertain world.”

In addition, the exec said the firm would also be more industry-focused, citing government, transportation, retail and financial services as target markets.

Tait added that Fujitsu isn’t ruling out further acquisition of software companies to deploy into specific verticals. (One recent example of this is Fujitsu’s acquisiton of UK-based smart ticketing firm ACT, which enables the vendor to pursue transportation providers.)

Elsewhere, the vendor unveiled MetaArc, its new Digital Business Platform that Tait says will be Fujitsu’s “global answer to how we address this balance question our customers are facing.”

“We expect this platform to enable us to take significant market share of private hybrid IT,” said Tait, adding the platform will be deployed globally.

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO)'s 2015 Global Cloud Index (GCI) has predicted that global cloud traffic will increase from 2.1 to 8.6 zettabytes a year by 2019, while datacentre traffic will increase to 10.4 zettabytes a year.

The company said the reason for this acceleration of cloud services is the move by businesses to embrace public cloud services and increasing trend for virtualisation in private clouds.

By 2019, more than half of data will operate out of public cloud environments, compared to under a third today and private datacentre usage will decrease by almost 40 per cent.

Cisco thinks overall virtualised data centre workloads will more than double from 2014 to 2019, but cloud workloads will treble.

An additional factor is the growth of mobile devices and the Internet of Everything (IoE). Today, 73 per cent of data is stored on PCs, but by 2019, Cisco predicts 51 percent will be moved to non-PC-based devices such as mobiles, tablets and M2M modules.

The data created by IoE devices will soar to 507.5 zettabytes per year by 2019, up from 134.5 zettabytes per year in 2014 and the introduction of smart cities will contribute 180m gigabytes of data per day, per location.

“The Global Cloud Index highlights the fact that cloud is moving well beyond a regional trend to becoming a mainstream solution globally, with cloud traffic expected to grow more than 30 percent in every worldwide region over the next five years,” says Doug Webster, vice president of service provider marketing at Cisco.

“Enterprise and government organisations are moving from test cloud environments to trusting clouds with their mission-critical workloads. At the same time, consumers continue to expect on-demand, anytime access to their content and services nearly everywhere. This creates a tremendous opportunity for cloud operators, which will play an increasingly relevant role in the communications industry ecosystem.”

Fujitsu has introduced two new products into its Eturnus DX range that it claims could solve the problem of over or under provisioning enterprise storage.

The new systems, the Eturnus DX8700 S3 and DX8900 S3 are, at the top end, capable of up to four million IOPS and can scale up to 14-petabytes in capacity.

Frank Reichart, senior director of product marketing for storage at Fujitsu, told IT Pro: "These products are aimed at data centre users that are either in the upper terabyte level of data today in the data centre, or the very big data centres that are running petabyte levels of storage today."

He said these types of customers are seriously affected by uncertainty around data growth.

"In previous years, these users knew to add just 30 per cent or 50 per cent on what they had and that would be sufficient for the next five or seven years, but today there are so many new applications creating so much more data," Reichart said.

"IT is constantly doing consolidation projects as well. So, if you have to buy storage today, you either go on the safe side and buy systems that are too big, which kills the IT department's budget, or you go more conservative and buy a smaller amount, but then you hit a ceiling within the lifetime of the system and you have to buy something extra," he added.

Additionally, a significant proportion of enterprise IT departments' time is spent tuning and tweaking existing infrastructure to try and get the best performance out of it, which is a waste of resources.

According to Fujitsu, the Eturnus DX8700 S3 and DX8900 S3 offer a fundamentally different proposition from traditional enterprise storage.

"We decided to build a system that has a lot of headroom, but you don't have to invest up-front, it should be automated to make it easy to operate for the same team, and it should not fail," said Reichart.

Consequently, the new systems are flexible, the company believes, allowing datacentre operators to add additional storage as needed, and automate flexibly as well depending on which apps they want to prioritise.

Fujitsu said it is also able to offer 100 per cent up-time through the new devices, even in the event of multiple component failure, although, as Reichart explained, it does involve additional hardware.

"In the past, achieving zero downtime in storage was extremely expensive and complicated," Reichart said. "So we simplified it using a storage cluster, meaning there are two systems, and it is always ensured that the data is on both of them so that if one fails the other takes over."

Reichart said users don't have to put virtualisation on top to enable this, and that the failover part of the cluster can be any size from Fujitsu's DX range.

The DX8700 S3 and DX8900 S3 are available as spinning disk, flash or a mixture of both. They can be ordered immediately and will begin shipping on 1 August.

Fujitsu has recruited Computacenter exec Colin Smith to lead its enterprise servers and converged systems.

Smith held the post of HP alliances director at the VAR after previous channel-facing roles at Tech Data, Symantec and LG Electronics.

“Fujitsu has a great reputation and has been making a really powerful impression in the enterprise channel,” says Smith, who describes Fujitu’s “drive and hunger” as admirable.

“This is a company with a real desire to succeed and being a part of that has a very strong appeal for me.”

“This new appointment shows our commitment to the channel,” says Craig Parker, head of product marketing in the Fujitsu Technology Products Group. “Colin is a valuable addition to our growing channel support team. He has a great deal of experience and deep understanding of the needs of both distributor and reseller partner and will play an important role in helping Fujitsu and its partners to develop enterprise server and converged infrastructure business.”

Fujitsu says it has seen accelerating sales in its Cluster-in-a-Box converged solution, which runs Microsoft HyperV, through channel partners in recent weeks. It also cites strong take-up of its VMware-based VShape offering and recently released Fujitsu Integrated System Appliance for VMware EVO: RAIL.

Says Parker: “The new generation of converged platforms are expanding the total available market and bringing virtualised systems that are fast-to-deploy and affordable within the reach of many more customers. We see excellent opportunities for our partners in this market.”

It's been nigh on 20 years since Fujitsu unveiled its Primergy range of servers and it celebrates this milestone with the launch of Xeon E5-2600 v3 equipped systems. We reviewed the RX2540 M1 - a 2U rack server offering a fine range of features and a few storage tricks up its sleeve.

Fujitsu has taken the same view as HP and designed these servers to allow businesses to buy now and upgrade later as demand dictates. The RX2540 M1 offers a number of flexible storage options and its DynamicLOM technology makes it easy to upgrade to 10GbE when the need arises.

Our base system had 4 LFF bays which can be upgraded to 8 with a new backplane. Watch out as the 8 LFF bay model cannot be upgraded to 12 bays as this model must be ordered at the point of sale.

Fujitsu has also just released a model with 24 SFF drives. For sheer capacity, the M2540 M1 sits alongside Dell's R730xd extreme disk model as you can slip in 4 more SFF drive bays at the back.

OS deployment still requires the server to be booted with the Installation Manager disk

Server deployment

For OS deployment, Fujitsu can't compete with Dell's and HP's respective LifeCycle Controller and Intelligent Provisioning which negate the need for a boot disc. For the MX2540 M1, we still had to boot it with the ServerView Installation Manager CD which, it has to be said, does handle deployment well as we had Windows Server 2012 R2 loaded on the system inside an hour.

Fujitsu's embedded iRMC S4 controller and dedicated Gigabit port provide remote monitoring. It's not as pretty as Dell's iDRAC8 or HP's iLO4, but the iRMC's web interface has status views of critical components along with graphs showing power consumption in periods ranging from one hour to a year.

Fujitsu's ServerView Suite software provides centralised monitoring and management for all Primergy servers. It hasn't seen a significant update for a while now but servers with the agent installed are displayed in the ServerList interface and can be placed in different collections for easier management.

It lists all hardware components and their status plus performance tables and power usage graphs. Hardware inventory is gathered, errors or failures can be linked with alerts and the RAID Manager utility provided us with direct access to the array controller.

The RX2540 M1 is well built and designed with plenty of room for more hardware

Cool-safe design

The RX2540 M1 shows off Fujitsu's latest Cool-safe Advanced Thermal Design (ADT) technology which allows it to run constantly in ambient temperatures as high as 40 degrees C. The most obvious feature is the honeycomb air grills throughout the server, but improved PSU, power backplane and motherboard design also play their part in reducing consumption.

Fujitsu offers plenty of power choices as along with the dual 800W Platinum supplies in our system, there are 450W and 1200W options. You can also choose between Platinum and Titanium efficiency models and all share a common form factor.

Internal cooling is handled by a bank of five hot-plug fans across the centre of the chassis. During testing, we found the RX2540 M1 was slightly noisier than the PowerEdge R730 although this won't be an issue in a server room.

It all works well together as we measured the review system with its OS in idle pulling a modest 107W and peaking at 360W under heavy load from SiSoft Sandra. By comparison, the R730 we reviewed had an almost identical specification and drew 118W and 381W in our power tests.

ServerView provides a big toolbox of management utilities but it's now looking a tad dated

DynamicLOM and RAID

Fujitsu's DynamicLOM cards do away with the need for a PCI-Express slot as they snap into a proprietary connector on the motherboard and present their ports at the rear of the server. We had the quad Gigabit card but you can opt for a cheaper dual Gigabit version or upgrade to dual 10GbE RJ45 or SFP+ cards.

The motherboard's Intel C612 chipset extends mirrors and stripes to the pair of embedded 4-port SATA connectors. Our system included Fujitsu's CP400i card which adds RAID5 and 12Gbps SAS support.

If you want battery backup and RAID6, go for the EP420i card which also has 2GB of onboard cache. Whereas Dell and HP offer their respective Smart Array and PERC controller options as snap-in mezzanine cards, Fujitsu only provides standard PCI-Express cards.

However, even with one slot occupied by the RAID card, there's still plenty of room for further expansion as the server has 5 more available. The total slot count can be pushed to 8 by adding a couple of optional riser cards and the server has enough room for Nvidia's Grid K1/K2 and Quadro GPUs

Along with server remote control, the embedded iRMC S4 chip shows power consumption for up to a year

Conclusion

There's little to criticise the RX2540 M1 for as it's very well built and designed. Our only complaints are with the ServerView management software as it hasn't seen a significant update for years and is looking dated. That aside, the RX2540 M1 stacks up well against Dell's R730 for value, its power consumption is slightly lower and there's plenty of room for future growth.

Verdict

The RX2540 M1 can’t match Dell or HP for features or management tools but it is better value. Build quality is excellent, Fujitsu’s Cool-safe works well in practise and its offers big expansion and storage possibilities.

Chassis: 2U rack

CPU: 2 x 2.3GHz Xeon E5-2695 v3 (14-core)

Memory: 64GB DDR4 2,133MHz (max 1.5TB)

Storage: 4 x 300GB 12Gbps SAS 15K SFF hard disks (max 8)

RAID: Fujitsu PRAID CP400i 12Gbps SAS PCI-Express card

Array support: RAID0, 1, 1E, 10, 5

Network: 4 x Gigabit DynamicLOM

Expansion: 6 x PCI-e 3.0 slots (max 8)

Power: 2 x 800W hot-plug PSUs

Management: Fujitsu iRMC S4 with dedicated Gigabit port

Warranty: 3yrs on-site NBD

Scottish Water has extended Fujitsu's contract to provide IT support services by two years to August 2018.

The extension means Fujitsu will continue to support 4,500 employees of Scottish Water and its partners, managing day-to-day issues and support for 4,600 devices.

Those include 2,700 laptops and 1,200 desktops, as well as 700 tougher devices designed for the water services body's field workforce.

The contract extension comes after Fujitsu won the initial eight-year deal back in 2008.

The infrastructure management part of the contract tasks the tech giant with looking after 1,400 servers, 200 databases and 20 storage area networks.

Mark Dickson, director of technology and information at Scottish Water, said: "We are pleased to be continuing our partnership with Fujitsu and look forward to ensuring that technology enables Scottish Water to build on our improved performance for the benefit of customers."

Fujitsu is one of three firms working with Scottish Water as part of a Master Services Agreement covering much of the organisation's IT.

BT is providing network and communication services while Tata Consultancy Services is responsible for application development.

Scottish Water claims the agreement will help cut operating costs by 1 million a year.

Jeph Hamilton, of Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said: "Service quality, competitiveness and commercial sensibility are central to our role as a key IT partner of Scottish Water, and we're honoured to help them define and deliver on their ongoing IT strategy."

Labour's failed Connecting for Health NHS IT scheme could end up costing taxpayers 700 million, following reports that a legal dispute between Fujitsu and the NHS has been settled in the IT supplier's favour.

According to a report in The Telegraph, Fujitsu was pursuing compensation after its 896m contract with the NHS was cancelled.

The IT supplier reportedly won 700m, although it seems Fujitsu is feeling a little hard done by, and pressing for higher levels of compensation.

The case was heard in secret to protect the parties' reputations and save on legal bills and, as yet, neither the Cabinet Office nor Fujitsu has commented on the results.

Connecting for Health was part of the 12bn NHS National Programme for IT and sought to digitise patient records in the South of England.

The Labour government revealed the plans in 2001 it, but the project was closed down in 2008, after disputes about changes to the plans including the storing of X-rays.

In 2010, the Cabinet Office took over the case and tried to come to an agreement with Fujitsu out of court, but it led to arbitration and a 31.5m legal bill instead.

This is the most recent tale of the government's failed IT strategy.

Last month, it was revealed that the Home Office was caught up in another arbitration, worth 500m of compensation, with border IT supplier Raytheon.

A Cabinet Office spokesman told the BBC: "Fujitsu are an important supplier of IT services to the government. The government does not comment on contractual disputes with suppliers."

Fujitsu also said it wouldn't comment on the case but explained: "Fujitsu has been a strategic partner to the UK government implementing critical IT for the last 40 years and we are committed to working closely with the UK public sector for the next 40 years and beyond."

Fujitsu has named Tom Roche as executive director of its Technology Product Group (TPG), replacing Michael Keegan, who was recently appointed head of Fujitsu UK & Ireland.

“I am excited about taking on this new challenge. Michael has done a fantastic job at building Fujitsu’s product and channel business in the UK and I look forward to continuing his legacy,” says Roche.

As executive director, Roche will oversee Fujitsu’s products businesses, which includes Fujitsu’s offerings from servers and storage, tablets, notebooks and desktop PCs and workstations, and in particular he will focus on growing Fujitsu’s security portfolio.

“Fujitsu has a solid product portfolio and best-in-class expertise, so together with our long-term, valued partners and the new ones who will soon be on board, we believe we are in a very strong position to help businesses protect against modern-day attacks,” he comments.

Roche has worked at Fujitsu for 15 years across both the public and private sectors – including roles in financial services and strategic alliances teams. For the past three years, Tom has held the position of Sales Director of Fujitsu’s public sector division.

“As a natural leader with strong experience across Fujitsu’s business, Tom has both the personality and experience to drive Fujitsu’s products business forward,” commetns Michael Keegan. “As a Fujitsu stalwart who knows our business inside and out, he is perfectly placed to take this part of the business to the next level.”

Roche’s appointment forms part of a larger restructure for Fujitsu, promoting increased collaboration amongst business units as the company seeks to take advantage of growing globalisation in the ICT market. This has resulted in the creation of larger regions, all of whom report directly in to the Japanese headquarters.

Fujitsu also claims it has seen “huge” channel sales growth since the company embarked on its strategic Channel Acceleration Programme three years ago, under Keegan. The vendor is set to announce its next phase of channel development, with a specific focus on the education and health markets, to its partners at its forthcoming event, Fujitsu World Tour next month.

Fujitsu has confirmed Michael Keegan’s promotion to head of its £1.8bn business in the UK & Ireland.

Keegan takes over from Duncan Tait, who was recently promoted to head of EMEIA, corporate senior vice president, Fujitsu Ltd.

Keegan has spent the last three and a half years leading Fujitsu’s successful Technology Products Group for the UK & Ireland. Under his leadership, the business will focus on growth in the private sector and defence, as well as its strategic work in government and driving success in its product business units.

“Michael has the breadth of commercial experience that is required to continue to drive the UK & Ireland forward,” says Tait. “With nearly thirty years’ experience in the IT sector, and over six years leading various business units for Fujitsu UK & Ireland he has a proven ability to lead and accelerate growth.”

Keegan’s experience in the IT sector includes holding senior leadership roles at the Royal Mail Group/Post Office Ltd, Magex, MasterCard and Nat West. Since joining Fujitsu in 2006, he has worked across a number of business units, including Government.

Keegan, who will report directly to Tait in his new role, says he is excited to take on the new challenge: “Duncan has built a solid foundation in the UK & Ireland which will allow us to continue to grow our region rapidly. With a more global approach to our business, we will be able to service our large private sector customers across borders, realising our full potential and becoming a formidable player in the IT sector globally.”

Keegan’s promotion to the head of the UK & Ireland forms part of a larger restructure for the vendor, promoting increased collaboration among business units as the company seeks to take advantage of growing globalisation in the ICT market. This has resulted in the creation of larger regions, all of whom report directly in to the Japanese headquarters. The UK & Ireland will now form part of the EMEIA region.

Fujitsu’s Michael Keegan: Seeing opportunity from volatility

The Fujitsu SV600 scanner is a contactless scanner, differentiating it from typical products which rely on an automatic document feeder (ADF) and a fixed contact image sensor (CIS).

Comprising of a thin mat marked with various paper sizes, and a scanner that stands upright over it; the SV600 resembles a small desklamp. The head of the scanner contains rotating optics to capture images.

The SV600 isn't different for the sake of it. Doing away with an ADF makes it possible to scan misshapen, under-sized or poor quality documents that would otherwise risk a jam. It's also ideal for fragile or valuable originals, which you wouldn't want to entrust to pinch-rollers of a high-speed scanner. It can handle up to A3 paper, thick and inflexible media such as heavy card, and with no glass to scratch it's fine to leave in staples or paperclips.

Placing the optics further away from the originals allows for a greater depth of field, meaning that thicker objects can be captured without a loss of focus at their extremities. As a result, the SV600 can scan small 3D objects, and it comes with software custom designed to help capture magazine and book content. As with other ScanSnap models, plugins are available to scan directly to Microsoft SharePoint, or to the cloud services Dropbox, SugarSync and Evernote.

While a typical A3-capable device would be huge and heavy, the SV600 is the size of an entry-level desktop A4 scanner, making it easier to store. In use it needs a footprint larger than A3 paper. The scanner has a slightly top-heavy look that made us worry at first that it would be prone to wobbling on an unsteady desk, but it turned out to be stable. That said, we wouldn't advise using it where colleagues could brush past and knock it over.

Scanning

Installation is as simple as any USB device, and Fujitsu's software makes scanning simple. To begin you line up the first original and press the large, robust-feeling Scan button. After a moment's delay for you to get your hands out of the frame, the scanner head sweeps the scan area with a slit of white light. When this goes out it's safe to remove the original.

You continue scanning by placing additional pages on the mat and pressing Scan when each is set - we found that the scan head had always returned to its resting position before we could line up the next original, meaning that we never had to wait for the scanner before we could continue. After you've finished scanning, the software presents a preview of the pages, which you can either accept or correct. At the default settings, saving the scan produces a straightforward image-only PDF file.

The SV600 comes with its own version of Fujitsu's ScanSnap Manager software, modified with options that help make the most of the scanner's potential. When scanning a bound original it can divide double-page spreads into individual pages, and also straighten out page curvature in a book or magazine - although you'll need to show it where the page corners and spine are. The results are impressive, although the optical character recognition (OCR) component failed on one image that had undergone a lot of straightening.

Some of the software's features are so smart they are easy to overlook. We worried before the first scan that it wasn't clear how to line originals up, or even exactly where you should put them on the mat, but we needn't have: in our tests, images were cropped, deskewed, and rotated without a single error - scanners almost always have the odd failing here. Users aren't limited to scanning single documents, either: we crowded the scan area with a scruffy assortment of receipts, business cards and postcards, and the software delivered an individual image of each.

We spent a fair amount of time changing settings between scans, finding that the defaults could be slightly better chosen and that changing them could be a little fiddly. Accessing the scan settings involves right-clicking a taskbar icon, and when enabling OCR for PDF file output the default is to apply it to the first page only. Although the page-turn mode (where a scan is triggered each time you turn the page of a bound original) is a great idea, we had to consult the user manual to discover how to enable it. In practice we found it too easy to turn the page before the scanner was ready; sometimes having to turn back and forward again to trigger a scan.

Speed tests

A well-specified duplex document scanner will outpace the SV600, but it's still rapid. For our standard test, which involves 10 sheets of paper, we manually flipped over the six double-sided pages for duplex scanning. At 150 dots per inch (dpi) the job took two minutes and 25 seconds, including a few seconds of post processing before the document was ready to save. A 10-page simplex test took a minute and a half. Scanning a single A4 page took 11 seconds, while capturing a postcard-sized photo at 600dpi took 14. In page-turn mode, capturing five double-page spreads in sequence took just over 90 seconds.

Image quality isn't this scanner's strong point. Scans from paper laid flat on the mat appeared to suffer from a small amount of distortion, causing straight lines of text to appear wavy. Images appeared processed to boost their contrast, which didn't always improve them, and the scanner was sensitive to light as demonstrated by the image on the right.

We scanned successfully in a range of lighting conditions, contrast and colour fidelity seemed at their best with less ambient light. Allowing a shaft of sunlight to fall across the page proved too much for the scanner to handle, however; the bright area was completely washed out.

Conclusion

This scanner's image quality is disappointing and a tad on the slow side. Plus it can't be left unattended like a similarly-priced ADF scanner. But it can make true A3 scans without folding, capture stapled or bound originals without the need for unpicking, and scan and straighten even thick books.

It's also easy to use, and smaller and quieter than conventional rivals. While not ideal where outright speed or quality are essential, the SV600's flexibility makes it a good all-rounder for low-volume archiving, or the perfect partner to an existing sheet feeding product.

Verdict

A unique and versatile scanner, the SV600 is good, but you'll have to make sure that you use it in low-light conditions to avoid washed out images.

Scan capability: 285x283dpi, 24-bit colour, simplex

Speed: 3 seconds per page (up to A3)

Paper handling: none

Interfaces: USB

Supported operating systems: Windows XP/Vista/7/8

Power consumption: Off 0W, Standby 5W, Active 12W

Size: 210x156x383mm

Weight: 3kg

Benchmarks Scan speed (A4 document): 6.7ppm (150dpi colour)

Scan speed (6x4" photo): 4.3ppm (600dpi colour)

Top UK Fujitsu exec Michael Keegan has warned that Michel Dell's recent leveraged buyout of his company may lead to Dell suffering the same fate as fallen service provider 2e2.

Referring to 2e2's bankruptcy earlier this year, Keegan commented: "They went bust because they took on too much debt and they couldn't meet their interest re-payments on the debt. Michael Dell is now playing that game. He's a brave guy."

Speaking to IT Pro's sister title Channel Pro at the Fujitsu Forum in Munich this week, Keegan added: "There are so many companies that have done this a leveraged buyout and it has not worked, and they've become a zombie' company. A zombie company is weighed down by debt on its balance sheet; they don't have any profits they can re-invest in the channel, into its R&D all the profits go to pay the people they borrowed the money from to buy the company. It's like being mortgaged to the hilt."

The executive director of Fujitsu's Technology Product Group at Fujitsu UK and Ireland also scoffed at Michael Dell's recent appearance at Dell's Tech Camp in Paris, where he said that no longer answering to shareholders will allows Dell more freedom to build its enterprise business, with increased investment in R&D.

"It's the freedom you have when you're 100 per cent mortgaged," said Keegan. "The truth of it is, they have $22bn of re-financing; most of it is debt. Why did he come? He came because he needs to reassure everybody the business is still there."

Keegan continued: "He's bought businesses that could bring margin, but the truth of the matter is they haven't really been integrated well. This is a classic problem with companies. When you get famous for one thing, and you know who to do that very well, then the game changesit's a big job to show you can move your business model [from PCs] to do the new stuff to take you forward. I think the problem they've got, is that they are, at their heart, a PC company. When you boil it all down, that's their problem."

Speaking of Fujitsu's own growth, he said the year-on-year the vendor was posting overall low single digit revenue growth, which he was "really happy about." He said: "In a market that's seeing the desktop market decline, the PC business decline, flat on server and low single digit growth on storage, growing the UK & Ireland in Fujitsu is a strong powerful message."

Keegan also said the firm's UK channel is now double the size of its direct business the opposite of just three years ago.

"We've definitely got out channel proposition right, now. Three years ago we were going to market in entirely the wrong way, but we've found out what works, listen more rather than spoke, and got ourselves educated. Now I think we're serving ourselves up the channel in a way that's going to lead to success."

This article was originally published on IT Pro's sister title Channel Pro.

Single socket Xeon E5-2400 servers are designed to offer small businesses a potent alternative to Xeon E3 systems but the market lacks options. Dell impressed us with its compact PowerEdge T320, but IBM, Lenovo and even HP don't offer such systems.

Fujitsu's latest Primergy TX150 S8 aims to provide a good value alternative to the PowerEdge T320. The compact, well built tower server has storage potential and expansion high on its agenda and claims to be a good virtualisation platform as well.

The TX150 promises ultra-reliability thanks to Fujitsu's comprehensive stress testing, which includes pushing the system through 5,000 boot cycles. Available at Insight for a reasonable 1,267 ex VAT, the TX150 S8 on review includes a 1.9GHz E5-2420 which is the entry point of Intel's Standard E5-2400 family.

Core specifications include a 6-core CPU with 15MB L3 cache, a 7.2GT/sec QPI, supports HyperThreading plus the standard Turbo Boost and can handle memory speeds up to 1,333MHz. The price also includes 8GB of DDR3 and the server's six DIMM slots support a maximum of 96GB.

The server's interior is well designed with green touch points' highlighting all user serviceable components

Storage and RAID options

The TX150 comes with a standard 4-bay LFF hot-swap cage, allowing it to match the storage offered by its Dell counterpart. This can be augmented with a second 4-bay cage which replaces the upper 5.25in bays or you can go for models with 8 or 16 SFF hot-swap drives.

RAID options are similar to Dell with the C602 chipset supporting four SATA drives and stripes or mirrors. Add Fujitsu's optional Upgrade Kit and support for SAS drives is activated but you still have the same RAID choices.

If you're planning on using over four hard disks, one of Fujitsu's RAID PCI-e cards is needed. They're all based on an LSI MegaRAID chip, support up to RAID-6 and you can choose from 512MB or 1GB of cache plus battery or Flash backup.

The TX150 isn't the best choice for virtualisation duties as it doesn't have any internal USB ports for booting into a hypervisor. The T320, on the other hand, accepts Dell's optional dual SD card controller which provides automatic hypervisor redundancy.

OS deployment is handled nicely by the Installation Manager although you do need to boot the server from the supplied DVD

Power and cooling

Power options start with a cabled 500W PSU but the review system came with a single 450W hot-plug module rated at 94 per cent efficiency, 80 PLUS platinum. The second bay is ready and waiting and an extra 450W PSU costs around 205 ex VAT. Note that the 4-bay cabled version of Dell's T320 doesn't support redundant PSUs.

We found power consumption to be very low as the review system drew a modest 45W with Windows Server 2008 R2 in idle. With SiSoft Sandra punishing all twelve logical CPU cores, we saw this rise to just 89W.

Fujitsu has gone to town on cooling. Whereas the T320 has a single 12cms diameter fan for the entire chassis, the TX150 has four with one at the rear and three in a removable full height panel behind the drive and expansion bays.

Noise levels are incredibly low as we could hardly hear the fans turning. Not that you need it but there's also an LNM (low noise mode) feature in the BIOS. To enable this you can only have four SATA disks plus one PSU and no PCI-e cards or redundant fans.

The embedded iRMC3 chip provides full remote management including power consumption monitoring

Remote management

For OS deployment, Fujitsu is lagging behind Dell and HP as their respective LifeCycle Controller and Intelligent Provisioning do away with the need for a setup disc. To get an OS on the TX150 we had to boot it with the Installation Manager CD and although it handles the process well, still requires quite a bit of disc juggling.

Remote management features are good as the TX150 has Fujitsu's embedded iRMC3 controller and dedicated management port. It provides a smart web interface with detailed status views of critical components and environmental values along with graphs showing power consumption in periods ranging from one hour to a whole year.

The ServerView Suite provides additional monitoring tools for all Primergy Servers running the agent

The price includes the advanced iRMC3 upgrade which activates KVM over IP remote control and virtual media features. These allow you to remotely control the server, access its BIOS menus or OS and present devices on other hosts to the server as boot media.

For general server management Fujitsu provides its ServerView Suite software. The ServerList interface shows all servers with the ServerView agent installed and provides a complete listing of hardware components along with their status plus more performance tables and graphs.

Conclusion

Stacking the Primergy TX150 S8 up against the PowerEdge T320 shows it wanting in the OS deployment and virtualisation stakes. However, small businesses looking for their first proper server won't go far wrong with the TX150 S8 as this compact and very quiet tower offers plenty of features and good expansion at a tempting price.

Verdict

The Primergy TX150 S8 is a fine choice as a first server as you can grow it easily with demand. It's great value, quiet and full remote management is included as standard.

Chassis: Tower with 4-bay LFF hot-swap drive cage

CPU: 1.9GHz Xeon E5-2420

Memory: 8GB DDR3 (max 96GB)

Storage: 2 x 500GB WD Enterprise SATA hot-swap hard disks

RAID: C602 embedded SATA controller

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10

Network: 2 x Gigabit

Expansion slots: 3 x PCIe3; 2 x PCI-e2; 1 x PCI

Power: 450W hot-plug PSU (max 2)

Management: Fujitsu iRMC3 Advanced

Warranty: 1yr on-site NBD

Multi-node servers have been eating into the blade server market for years thanks to their lower costs, higher rack density and greater flexibility. Fujitsu wants to enter this lucrative territory with the Primergy CX400 S1 Cloud eXtension server.

The CX400 squeezes up to four servers and 24 hard disks into 2U of rack space and targets an extensive range of applications including cloud computing, HPC and big server farms. The nodes are hot-pluggable for easy maintenance while power and cooling are shared across all nodes.

There are currently two node choices and if you want four in your chassis then go for the CX250 S1. There's also the double height CX270 S1 which has three PCI-Express slots but you can't mix the two node types in the same chassis.

The nodes slip in from the back and mate with a midplane in front of the cold-swap cooling fans

Chassis design

The design isn't new as Supermicro introduced this format a couple of years ago with its Twin system which we reviewed as the Boston Quattro 2296-T. And then there's Dell's PowerEdge C6220 which also uses the same format.

First impressions are that Fujitsu's build quality is superior. The system looks and feels more solid than the Supermicro and Dell alternatives.

The CX400 comes as standard with a two 1400W hot-plug PSUs. These are cabled through to the chassis midplane where each node receives juice and hard disk allotments from their edge connectors.

Cooling is handled by four dual-rotor fans fitted in front of the midplane. These are not hot-pluggable and access to them requires twelve grub screws to be removed before the centre panel above can be lifted off.

Little and large the CX400 supports two CX270 S1 or four CX250 S1 nodes

Storage permutations

The chassis is available with twelve LFF or 24 SFF drive bays. The LFF model supports SATA III and Nearline SAS hard disks whereas the SFF model can handle SATA III, NL-SAS, SAS 2 and SSDs.

The drive backplane is split vertically into four groups each with their own connector. The CX250 S1 nodes have one connector and are allotted either three LFF bays or six SFF drives.

The CX270 S1 nodes have two connectors and can take six LFF drives but there are limitations on the number of SFF drives supported. A backplane expander version is due out but in the current non-expander chassis model, each CX270 S1 supports a maximum of six SFF drives and the nodes must be fitted with a Fujitsu PCI-Express RAID card.

There are also thermal limitations for CPUs with a 130W TDP or higher. If you go for E5-2680 or E5-2690 Xeons then the CX250 S1 nodes are only permitted to have two SFF drives each.

The node's embedded IPMI chip provides handy remote control and component monitoring tools

Nodes and power usage

Our review system came with a pair of CX270 S1 nodes each kitted out with dual 2GHz E5-2620 Xeons and 32GB of DDR3 which can be expanded to 512MB. At the rear you have dual Gigabit, serial, VGA and two USB2 ports.

Node design and built quality is very good and the CX270 S1 has two PCI-Express slots for half-length cards. A third PCI-Express slot is fitted further back and is specifically designed for Nvidia's mighty Tesla GPGPU cards.

The review system performed well in our power tests where we linked it to our inline meter and then powered each node up. We took measurements with them running in idle and with SiSoft Sandra pushing all cores on each one to near maximum utilisation.

In idle we saw one and two nodes draw a total of 140W and 237W. Under pressure these figures rose to only 248W and 432W respectively.

Fujitsu's ServerView software provides more management tools and can also monitor chassis fans and PSUs

Remote management

The chassis itself has no remote management features but each node sports an embedded IPMI chip routed to a dedicated network port at the back. You don't get Fujitsu's iRMC controller and the web interface for this MegaRAC chip bears more than a passing resemblance to that used by Supermicro.

It's not as informative as the iRMC interface but does provide readouts of sensor data for all critical components. Each sensor has thresholds which can be linked to SNMP traps and email alerts if breached.

Supermicro recently added power graphing and monitoring to its web interface but this is absent on the CX270 S1. However, you can remotely control power and it includes KVM-over-IP remote control and virtual media services as standard and not as options.

For general server management Fujitsu offers its ServerView Suite software which monitors all nodes running the agent software. It lists all hardware components and a useful feature is its ability to monitor both chassis PSUs and cooling fans. Conclusion

With the review system coming in at well under eight grand, the CX400 S1 beats blade servers for value and its plentiful storage choices make it a lot more flexible. Support for E5-2600 Xeons allows it to pack an impressive processing density and we found build quality to be superior to the competition.s

Verdict

Cheaper and more versatile than Blade servers, the Primergy CX400 S1 offers a good rack density with a wide range of storage options. Power consumption is commendably low and it’s better built than Supermicro’s and Dell’s multi-node servers.

Chassis: 2U rack

Power: 2 x 1400W hot plug PSUs

Storage: 12 x 3.5in. SATA III hot-swap drive bays

Server Nodes: 2 x CX270 S1 (each with the following)

CPU: 2 x 2GHz Xeon E5-2620

Memory: 32GB DDR3 (max 512GB)

Storage: 2 x 1TB WD Enterprise SATA hot-swap hard disks

RAID: Fujitsu D2607 Ctrl SAS 6G 0/1 PCI-Express card

Array support: RAID0, 1, 10

Network: 2 x Gigabit, IPMI

Expansion slots: 3 x PCI-Express

Management: Embedded MegaRAC IPMI

Warranty: 3yrs on-site NBD

Infrastructure management and design firm Balfour Beatty has embarked on a multi-million pound technology overhaul to help standardise the way it delivers IT to its global workforce.

Balfour Beatty, which has offices in more than 80 countries, has enlisted the help of IT services giant Fujitsu to oversee the project, which is being undertaken to improve the overall efficiency of the business.

The company bills itself as an infrastructure lifecycle management firm, which means it is responsible for designing, building and managing core pieces of the UK's infrastructure.

The firm's UK arm has undergone a major reorganisation in recent years, and claims to have experienced significant business growth, which has resulted in its IT systems becoming disparate and fragmented.

Fujitsu has been set the task of rectifying this by agreeing to host and mange the company's data in a shared storage environment, and reduce its reliance on the 1,500 servers the company currently uses.

As well as server consolidation, the company hopes to significantly reduce the number of applications its staff use, which should cut the amount it spends on software licensing.

The project will also see Fujitsu provide desktop services, support and hardware to 14,000 users spanning 900 sites across the UK, and through TUPE transfers result in 67 Balfour Beatty staff joining the IT firm.

Richard Bull, executive director of end user Services at Fujitsu UK and Ireland, said the five-year project should help reduce Balfour Beatty's overall IT costs.

"It is also giving Balfour Beatty the opportunity to truly innovate its business and to future proof for trends such as bring your own device," he added.

"We are confident that we'll achieve that and are looking forward to a long and successful partnership with Balfour Beatty."

Fujitsu UK and Ireland has confirmed that its Japanese subsidiary has made good on its promise to pay 800 million into three of the vendor's pension schemes.

The payment was announced during the firm's third quarter financial results, and is designed to shore up the financial standing of three of the firm's UK pension schemes, which have around 21,000 members.

The move will allow Fujitsu's UK and Ireland arm to reduce its annual pension scheme contributions, and in turn ramp up its investments in the company's continued UK growth.

In a statement, Fujitsu UK and Ireland said: "This action underlines the company's responsible approach to invest in the UK economy and to honour its commitments to current and former employees."

Fujitsu employs around 14,000 staff in the UK and claims to have increased its headcount by 3.6 per cent over the past 12 months.

Duncan Tait, chief executive of Fujitsu UK & Ireland, said the payment will allow the company to maintain its contribution to the economic health of UK PLC.

"Our 2012 investment in the UK was close to 50 million, including more than 14 million spent on R&D. Our total investment is more than 3 billion. This move only strengthens our ability to contribute to economic growth on these shores," said Tait.

"[This] has created space for the UK and Ireland business to invest over the coming years and to continue to drive growth within the UK," he added.

Richard Holway, chairman of UK analyst house TechMarketView, said the investment from Fujitsu Japan constitutes a huge vote of confidence for the firm's UK operations and management team.

"I make no excuses for being an out-and-out supporter of UK Tech," said Holway in an email alert to TechMarketView's subscribers.

"Of course, I'd prefer those companies to be UK-owned, [but] ownership is not as important as the good' companies can do to the UK economy by creating jobs, supporting an SME ecosystem, paying taxes and generally being a Good Citizen'. On that basis, Fujitsu UK really does score highly."