Recently, Fujitsu Limited became a Platinum member of CNCF, joining the growing industry effort to advance and accelerate cloud native computing.
We had a chance to sit down with Kenji Kaneshige, director of Linux software development department, platform software division at Fujitsu, to discuss why cloud native is important to Fujitsu, how they will contribute to CNCF and what impact this work will have on Fujitsu’s digital business platform.
Q. What role will cloud native play in building the next-generation digital business platforms?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: In the future, services will unleash massive transformations at scale. Cloud native computing is a key concept for next-generation digital business platforms to build flexible, scalable and application centric computing environment. These environments will easily connect people, devices and services to enable customers to build information and communications technology (ICT) services for their business quickly.
Q. How will these business platforms benefit developers, CIOs and consumers?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: “Connecting people” means ICT services finally get an accurate feedback loop between providers and consumers. With consumer data, ideas, and behavior being collected, CIOs will be able to see real value and qualities of services, while developers will be able to hack services in quick ways based on their deep insights.
Q. Why is cloud native important to Fujitsu?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: Cloud native computing is a key concept for Fujitsu’s digital business platform, MetaArc, which provides connecting services and infrastructures in open standards such as, Linux, KVM, OpenStack and OCI. In some cases, applications are tightly coupled with the platform and customers need to make additional investment just to keep them running, not to mention the investment needed to evolve the applications in the future. Running applications on an open standard layer has been an important idea for decades, and another reason cloud native computing is important, as it allows businesses to decouple platforms and applications to protect their legacy investments.
Q. Open standards and open source are important parts of Fujitsu’s business. What other projects have you contributed to?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: We are a long-time member of The Linux Foundation in addition to founders of the Open Container Initiative (OCI) and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). We have been committed to open source software and contribute to Linux, KVM, OpenStack, Kubernetes and others. By joining open source and fairly governed open projects, Fujitsu will continue to create trusted open platforms for customers to rely on as long-term architectures.
Q. How did Fujitsu contribute to Kubernetes provisioning and OpenStack integration?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: We have been a contributor to Kubernetes, specifically in the areas of the Dashboard, Kubernetes provisioning and OpenStack integration. In March, Fujitsu released its Kubernetes-based offering FUJITSU Software ServerView Cloud Load Control (CLC) to the public, which helps platform operators to efficiently manage Kubernetes as part of the overall infrastructure.
Q. As part of its Platinum membership, how will Fujitsu continue to contribute to CNCF?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: Fujitsu developers will provide insight and experience in supporting enterprise systems and cloud services to the different open source projects hosted by CNCF. And we’d like to make proposals to APIs to enlarge the CNCF ecosystem. Additionally, I will be joining the CNCF’s Governing Board.
Q. Why is CNCF important to the APAC region?
Kaneshige, Fujitsu: CNCF will provide the necessary infrastructure for Internet companies and enterprises to scale their businesses. By nurturing a set of emerging cloud native technologies, CNCF is paving the way for faster code reuse, improved machine efficiency, reduced costs, and increased overall agility and maintainability of applications.