While Fujitsu Siemens’ CEO Bernd Bischoff said he did not want to anger Siemens by commenting on rumors surrounding the issue, company insiders felt that the company’s growth would be hobbled if it followed the example of Hewlett-Packard and competed with its channel partners.
Certainly, the full year figures of Fujitsu Siemens, which supplies hardware to the EMEA region, must tempt the Siemens’ bean counters to throw the struggling SBS operation in with a company that can produce results.
Those with a business brain will see in its performance the benefits of separating hardware sales from services. In the year to March 31, pre-tax income rose 53% to 95m euros ($123.1m) on revenue 13.8% higher at 6bn euros ($7.8bn).
Bischoff took particular pleasure from the fact that company revenue had grown at 5% faster than the market as a whole and he forecast that it would continue to outperform the rest of the industry. While pre-tax income will not emulate the growth rates of this year, Bischoff is looking for double-digit expansion.
For the current year, Fujitsu Siemens has high hopes of the potential of its dynamic data center, the company’s take on utility computing, which is based on Fujitsu’s recently announced Primequest server.
Unfortunately, Fujitsu Siemens does not break down the figures and the company fed the persistent rumors of a SBS merger when it announced a 46% increase in SAP related revenue in the last year.
The company would not give the figures that produced this increase. But it seems that rather than add a SAP consultancy to its operations, it was merely referring to its bundled hardware and software offering. Actual SAP consultancy is handled by its partners, who it does not want to upset by offering competition.
Siemens and Fujitsu already co-operate on the services market. In October 2003, they announced an alliance under which SBS would support Fujitsu’s clients in areas of Europe and North America where it did not have a presence and Fujitsu would support SBS accounts in the Asia-Pacific region.
