Anyone with a shed, an extension cord, a couple of GPUs and an overdraft is building datacenters. Fujitsu just offloaded five

The advent of generative AI spurred an enormous and controversial datacenter building boom that has seen almost anyone who knows how to run a bit barn try to expand their business ASAP. Fujitsu, however, wants out. The Australian outpost of the Japanese giant’s business this week announced the sale of five datacenters down under …

[Paul Herber]

a shed

My neighbour, a Mr Jackson, has two sheds.

[segfault188]

Re: a shed

My neighbour, a Mr Jackson, has two sheds.

That's a shedload of sheds.

[J. Cook]

Re: a shed

Is one shed inside the other shed? :: inception BONG ::

[DrManlyJPanda]

Re: a shed

How is old Arthur? I haven’t listened to him in ages.

[Tron]

Re: a shed

My neighbour has 3 sheds, 2 greenhouses and a building resembling an upmarket ski lodge in his back garden. That SimCity has a lot to answer for.

[Paranoid android]

Re: a shed

If memory serves he has only one.

[Graham Newton]

Re: a shed

This may explain why a prospective purchaser of my old house looked at the very small garden and asked "Is there just the one shed". I did wonder at the time if there were any invisible or camouflaged sheds I had somehow missed in the 14 years I lived there.

[Fr. Ted Crilly]

Re: a shed

And he writes software in both sheds or just one?

[Rob Daglish]

Re: a shed

Jackson? I think that's Boggy Marsh in disguise...

[Bebu sa Ware]

[Fujitsu Australia] "helping organisations modernise critical systems"

Please keep them well away from Australia Post.

[Korev]

Re: [Fujitsu Australia] "helping organisations modernise critical systems"

What's the Horizon on that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: [Fujitsu Australia] "helping organisations modernise critical systems"

The company said selling the bit barns “enables us to further invest in the technology services where customer demand is growing ..."

Really?

How interesting.

The first thing that came to mind when I read that bit was that this:

"Crikey, they must have landed yet another Post Office type gig that will make them even more money than those datacenters they are flogging."

Could it possibly be with the Australia Post?

Please keep them well away from Australia Post.

Indeed ...

You better come out in force with pitchforks and torches.

Otherwise you will get shafted, thoroughly.

.

[Jimjam3]

Re: [Fujitsu Australia] "helping organisations modernise critical systems"

My experience of Fujitsu IT supplier’s was they had a confident marketing team as well as an efficient billing process. However, Didn’t rate the IT products much above unfinished amateur level.

[simonlb]

Private Equity you say?

Well, once they've wrung as much money as they can out of these units, expect the remnants to be sold on to some idiot with too much money to someone else, or shuttered completely and sold for scrap. I'll give it three years.

[Someone Else]

Re: Private Equity you say?

[...] expect the remnants to be sold on to some idiot with too much money to someone else, or shuttered completely and sold for scrap.

Sold for scrap, then, as I am not buying.

[Cris E]

Re: Private Equity you say?

>> Sold for scrap, then, as I am not buying.

Oh, come now. The whole cloud computing thing is just Someone Else's computers, so why should this be any different?

[IGotOut]

And other

" cyber resilience, adopt sovereign AI, and access the high-performance and quantum computing capabilities "

Oh look Quantum, the new bullshit buzzword bingo hype machine.

[Ensign Nemo]

Margin call

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to be first.”

“Sell it all. Today.”

[xyz123]

Fujitsu is over $300 billion in debt. Assets are mortgaged to the hilt, sales are down.

Dozens of government Contract lawsuit breaches being settled for vast sums. etc.

[Alpy]

Following IBM down the fail path

Well at least Fujitsu will have a friend awaiting them in the fail room, IBM. IBM completely keep missing market transitions. Fujitsu had all the ingredients to transform their investment into something market ready but hit the eject button instead. Bold move Cotton, let's see how it works out!

TBH it smells of a cash flow issue to me. Can't afford to modernise the existing infrastructure to meet modern demands, sell it to someone else who can.

[MyffyW]

Re: Following IBM down the fail path

IBM-like failure certainly conceivable, given my experience of Fujitsu.

Although, in a gold rush the people who get rich are selling shovels and maps, not the people running mines. So maybe there's a game plan there?

[BadRobotics]

Could I attach a mini datacentre to my house and use the hot water to heat in the winter?

[Missing Semicolon]

There's people use cryptominer boxes as shed heaters.

[sal II]

Smart move

This is smart move - sell their aging stock at the peak, while ignorant investors whip out their check books at the sound of Datacenter. Then by the dip after the AI bubble bursts and Datacenters got for dime a dozen.

[Tron]

Digital sheds are of questionable value as investments.

The cost of operating a datashed, the decline in the value of xPUs and need to refit with next gen ones every couple of years mean that you are not investing but subscribing to a rapidly depreciating asset.

That con worked when they switched from selling software to making people pay for SaaS every month as a lock in, but it shouldn't work for an investment product.