Large IT vendors collaborating with SMEs is 'vital' for innovation, says Fujitsu chief

'No one company has all the answers or has the monopoly on good ideas,' says Michael Keegan, chairman of the UK & Ireland region for Fujitsu

Large IT companies need to collaborate with small and medium-sized technology providers in order to truly drive innovation in the sector.

That's according to Michael Keegan, chairman of the UK & Ireland region for Fujitsu, who made the comments at a TechUK event to mark the launch of a report that called for more help for SMEs using the govenment's G-Cloud procurement service.

Keegan described how Fujitsu believes the UK to be a "collaboration nation" and how partnerships between large IT firms and their smaller counterparts can bring benefits to everyone involved.

"Collaboration is absolutely vital in the IT industry because no one company, including the likes of Fujitsu, IBM, CapGemini or Atos, no one company has all the answers or has the monopoly on good ideas," he said.

Keegan told the audience gathered at TechUK's London headquarters that smaller firms are the driving force behind innovative new technologies.

"What we know about the SME market and what we know about the technology sector is that the SME market is the part of the economy and technology that will actually drive innovation and disrupt current business models," he said, before going on to describe how collaboration with SMEs represents an "important value" for Fujitsu.

"Within Fujitsu we have 500 companies in our supply chain and for every dollar, euro or pound we spend, 25 per cent goes to SMEs and that's a statistic which we monitor and track," Keegan explained, adding that Fujitsu is "looking to increase that and we want to make ourselves easy to do business with if you're an SME".

"The end point must be collaboration because nobody has all of the answers," he said.

Keegan argued that partnering with a company the size of Fujitsu can give an SME access to government contracts without the hassle of having to go through the procurement process themselves.

"What they want to do is provide a really great innovation that will help drive outcomes in a better way and drive that in a safe way for them. I think it's the responsibility of large IT companies to help small and medium companies fulfil that role," he said.

"It's not 'either/or', it's 'and' and about collaboration," Keegan concluded.

Fujitsu is part of the HP-led ATLAS consortium that was appointed by the Ministry of Defence to transform the department's IT infrastructure in a move designed to generate over £1bn in savings over a 10-year period.