Fujitsu and Cisco Expand Strategic Alliance to Deliver Unified Communications Solutions in Japan

Both Companies Combine Expertise and Deliver Collaboration Solutions That Help Enterprises Become More Productive

TOKYO - Fujitsu and Cisco today announced the expansion of their strategic alliance to deliver unified communications in the Japanese market. As a part of the expanded alliance, Fujitsu and Cisco have agreed to work together to develop unified communications solutions and collaborate on services and marketing activities.

The market environment has been changing rapidly in recent years, and unified communications is gaining attention as an effective means of increasing personal and organizational productivity. Unified communications also fosters innovation by enabling collaboration between individuals and groups-no matter what location or time zone they are in. Finally, unified communications can help enterprises become more competitive and customer-centric by improving business processes, linking unified communications tools to business and industry-specific applications, to help enable businesses to be more collaborative with both suppliers and customers.

This expansion of the Fujitsu and Cisco strategic alliance combines Cisco’s industry-leading Unified Communications advanced technology and proven global footprint with Fujitsu’s track record and product development capabilities in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) business. This combination results in a set of comprehensive collaboration tools and unified communications solutions for customers in the Japanese market.

The following elements will be implemented in this new unified communications alliance agreement.

1. Migration from legacy systems to more effective Unified Communications solutions.
Fujitsu and Cisco will implement collaborative go-to-market strategies to support the delivery of combined unified communications solutions. Fujitsu and Cisco will provide unified communications and mobile groupware solutions that help mobile users check their e-mail and their schedules from mobile terminals. The two companies will also promote linking unified communications tools to business and industry-specific applications, and develop products for connecting to various carriers’ IP telephony services to support migration from existing telephony networks to more effective unified communications solutions. These solutions will be delivered by Fujitsu with Cisco Services support.

2. Development and release of comprehensive unified communications solutions. Fujitsu and Cisco will work together to share product road maps and collaborate to support Fujitsu’s development of solutions that meet the needs of the Japanese market. As part of this collaboration, Fujitsu and Cisco have combined the Fujitsu VJ-110 series access unit with Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

The Fujitsu VJ-110 connects diverse mobile terminals (e.g. smart phone, PHS cordless phones) in Japan with Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Fujitsu will also develop middleware to help customers to link existing customer relationship management (CRM) applications to Cisco Unified Communications Manager to deploy next-generation call centers. Using Cisco Unified Communications technology, Fujitsu will integrate customer communications with Microsoft Exchange Server, and IBM Notes/Domino. Fujitsu will also provide software for linking Fujitsu’s TeamWARE groupware and Cisco Unified Communications Manager (available from July 2009) with various business and industry-specific applications.

3. Strengthened support and services framework for unified communications in business. The two companies will work together to increase the adoption of unified communications in Japan. Together, the companies will deliver solutions that respond to customer needs for collaboration, that help increase the efficiency of the customers’ business and speed delivery of solutions to the Japanese market. To improve customer support, Fujitsu will also train 300 unified communications technical support personnel in the first year, mainly made up of system engineers. This will create one of the largest UC service organizations in Japan.

Since 2004, Fujitsu and Cisco have built a strategic alliance in the networking field including routers and switches, such as the collaboration towards the joint development of the Cisco IOS® XR operating system for high-end routers. Based on the success of this alliance, Cisco and Fujitsu will continue to provide combined solutions that lower costs and increase growth for business customers in Japan, Asia-Pacific and Europe.
About Fujitsu

Fujitsu is a leading provider of IT-based business solutions for the global marketplace. With approximately 160,000 employees supporting customers in 70 countries, Fujitsu combines a worldwide corps of systems and services experts with highly reliable computing and communications products and advanced microelectronics to deliver added value to customers.Headquartered in Tokyo, Fujitsu Limited (TSE:6702) reported consolidated revenues of 5.3 trillion yen (US$53 billion) for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2008. For more information, please see: www.fujitsu.com.
About Cisco

Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com.

Cisco, the Cisco logo, Cisco Systems, Catalyst and Cisco Nexus are registered trademarks or trademarks of Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company. This document is Cisco Public Information. Information provided in this press release is accurate at time of publication and is subject to change without advance notice.