The Sohva service assumes end-to-end responsibility for the availability of the customer applications. Fujitsu provides the services and the required competence. As a service integrator, Fujitsu also assists the customer in vendor management and ensures that all players are heading for the common goal.

Fujitsu wants to ignite dialogue between business and ICT. ICT must not remain an obscure but unavoidable lump in a company, considered only as a cost item.

”The majority of companies and organisations spend an increasingly large amount of money on business applications. They don't, however, necessarily support the business as you'd expect them to," says director Mikko Lampinen of Fujitsu.

Business and ICT in unison

The main purpose of the Sohva service is to make ICT a servant to the business. "We are challenging companies to consider whether they could cut some ICT costs they have previously taken for granted. This thought process also gives us an opportunity to map out how ICT, and applications in particular, could be harnessed to serve the company's needs more efficiently than before," Lampinen sums up.

As Fujitsu sees it, half of today's ICT investments are redundant. One of the main guiding lights of Sohva is to streamline the customer's ICT and application environments. The service incorporates a development programme whereby the customer and Fujitsu together build up the customer's application environment with primary focus on the customer's business needs.

According to Lampinen, the method of joint development is actually about having a partnership between the customer and Fujitsu.

”Following through a development programme requires comprehensive governance, as this kind of programme cannot be implemented through a series of individual projects. Programme governance does not only support you in achieving your goal but also in realising the advantages of the programme.”

It's all about the people

Successful application management and development is not possible when approached solely from the system point of view, but through focusing particularly on the actual users of the applications by means of change management methods. If end users are not prepared and willing to use IT in their work or if they don't have the skills for it, the aspired advantages are left mid-way, in terms of cost-savings, for example. Therefore change management is exercised throughout the Sohva service lifecycle.

Lampinen says that change management aims at shared management models and transparency. By means of change management, we commit employees in the joint effort when deploying new systems and implementing other transformations. Changes and the related objectives are realised faster while uncontrollable expectations and disappointments are avoided.

Sohva is

an operational model whereby Fujitsu assumes the responsibility for the customer's applications. Sohva streamlines ICT to meet business needs. The service incorporates a joint governance model between the customer and Fujitsu, focusing on achieving advantages tied to goals. The complex issues are left to the shoulders of the service integrator, Fujitsu.

• Sohva brings
• cost-savings
• streamlined ICT and application environment
• secure future: application environment scalable to future needs.