Fujitsu boss: UK's 2015 elections won't make any difference to us

Defence is a multi-national outsourcing market

That Fujitsu is attempting to reduce its reliance on public sector business while retaining its dominant role in this sector is not, perhaps, surprising. What is surprising is that defence and national security is going to be an increasing part of its public sector pitch.

The firm bought Globeranger an RFID logistics specialist back in May. Again, Tait argues that the reorganisation puts it in a better place to grab this sort of business – which might seem counterintuitive. A network of fiefdoms might seem to better mirror closely-held national defence pots of cash.

“Bizarrely this is a global market - you might think public sector isn’t, it’s country by country - [but] defence and national security is a global market full stop and a global market for Fujitsu.”

Globeranger is central to this strategy. “We made the acquisition of Globeranger while defence budgets are under pressure from a cost perspective But at the same time security concerns are heightened. How do you reduce the cost of logistics and parts to the department of defence in the US, in the UK, in Japan and Australia, for example? So I think Globeranger’s very important.”

“I probably can’t give you the break out of our defence business,” he continues, “but we have a major defence business and national security business in Australia in Japan, in Europe principally out of the UK but our Netherlands business also. And we’ve made some investments in our North American business.”

If this sounds like a lot of overlap with the Five Eyes alliance in particular, and capitalist democracies in general, well, that would hardly be be a surprise.

“From my perspective, who better to choose for defence collaboration between the UK and Japan than Fujitsu? We’re a very major player in UK defence. We’re a very major player in defence in Japan and therefore it kind of makes sense to me.” Which is not a surprise.

Asked who Fujitsu’s major rivals are in defence, Tait replies: “I’m not sure we have one.”

Really?

“Genuinely.” Perhaps this only goes to show how little this writer knows about the defence contracting sector.

At the same time, says Tait, the firm has to be “very very focused” about where it grows in central government: “Oracle shared services – we are knockout at that – so do I want more of that business, yes.

“But do we want to get wholesale into growing in central government? No.”

Why? just because of the balance thing or because the public sector can be a pain?

“I think the balance thing is very important. So how we use our valuable pre-sales expenditure, we have to make sure that we’ve addressed the balance in our business because actually it seems illogical, doesn’t it, for our business ... We’ve got to continue to grow in public and grow private a little bit faster I think.”

Given Futjisu’s growth in the last results showed consolidate revenues – down 2.4 per cent to 1.1tr yen ($10.3bn) with net profits of 7.2bn yen – top line growth is clearly on the agenda.

Which means Tait has a good few more early mornings before he can think job done.

Still, if it all goes wrong the newsagents is still in the family. Presumably those Apricots are getting a bit past it now. ®