Given the world’s increasing dependency on IT, the complexity of data centers grows significantly. In a collaboration project, Fujitsu and the Magdeburg Research and Competence Cluster (MRCC) compare Fujitsu’s new quantum-inspired solution with state-of-the-art solution algorithms in order to evaluate the potential of the Digital Annealer for server consolidation and optimization problems. This problem class frequently appears as part of modern IT infrastructure optimization services which are subject to ongoing research of the MRCC in cooperation with the Fujitsu Global SAP Competence Center.

In a top down manner, IT services are to be aligned with ever-changing business requirements and, at the same time, must utilize hardware components efficiently. This challenge is addressed by server consolidation exercises which aim at balancing operational costs and non-functional requirements such as performance. Idling components represent saving potential that can be identified and addressed by optimization techniques in order to find an optimal or near-optimal distribution of IT services across the component layer. Therefore, server consolidation is a field with various challenges and thus a good opportunity to assess the capabilities of the Digital Annealer.

We summarize our results in a joint white paper which compares the new quantum-inspired solution, developed by Fujitsu, with state-of-the-art solution algorithms, in order to evaluate the potential of the Digital Annealer for server consolidation and optimization problems as they frequently appear as part of Fujitsu’s SAP SystemInspection Service.

Link to Fujitsu's related blog entry  |  Link to the joint white paper (PDF)