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Fujitsu bigwig: Microsoft's doing us a favour with Surface either way

'I'm not panicking at all', says slablet CTO

Last week's launch of Microsoft’s Surface product is a good thing for tablet veteran Fujitsu, even if it only shows the battle is actually between Android and iOS.

The Japanese vendor, in its various European incarnations as International Computers Limited and Fujitsu-Siemens, has often been a lonely voice pushing tablet-like form factors. It currently aims its own Windows 7 and Android tablets at business customers, and is considering whether to launch its Android smartphone in the European market.

So Dr Joseph Reger, CTO at Fujitsu Technology Solutions, might be expected to be rather put out that now the technology building blocks for a mass commercial tablet appear to be in place, Microsoft is barging in with its own hardware platforms based around the upcoming Windows 8.

“I’m not panicking at all,” he told The Register in London last week. “Two things can happen. It’s successful, and grabs market share and the market is growing.”

Alternatively, “If it’s not successful, that brings clarity. Then we know the tablet space is a fight between Android and iOS.”

And, he continued, “If both are successful, then we can have a debate about what’s more important.”

For Fujitsu, what’s important – apart from shifting its own branded kit – is being able to sensibly plug mobile devices into the corporation. The vendor was a big fan of BYOD, Reger said, particularly when the D element was Fujitsu's own devices.

However, that endorsement was conditional on employees' devices being “manageable” by the corporation – and enterprise management platforms, tools and services are, unsurprisingly, a major preoccupation of the firm.

“Without that, BYOD is one of the most dangerous things ever,” Reger declared.

He said that while the extremist positions were for companies to supply just one device, or to accept “any device”, the sensible position was for companies to support a reasonable degree of choice among users. ®

Anonymous Coward

Um...

Was there a story in there somewhere?

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Anonymous Coward

Fan of BYOD are they really?

Fujitsu's internal policy for BYOD allows you to purchase one of a handful of supported devices which you can then take/send to the mobile support team who will lock the device down to prevent it from acting as a USB storage device, prevent installation of "unapproved" apps, disable camera and sound recording capability, configure corporate email and calendar access and prevent any additional accounts being added. (As well as a bunch of other stuff.)

Yes, BYOD, but not in any meaningful way; I buy the kit and then they behave as if they had supplied it and it belongs to them.

I wouldn't care, but if you order the device as a company product through normal channels, they don't do any of that.

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Re:"Was there a story in there somewhere?"

A CEO saying something sensible in public?

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