According to reports, Fujitsu UK & Ireland has landed three new private sector deals worth a total of £200m, in an announcement which many hope will signal a change in the fortunes of the UK IT industry.

The announcement comes after 30 months of extremely depressed sales in the private sector, with Fujitsu CEO Roger Gilbert explaining that the deals were done as part of a ‘flurry of activity’ in the last quarter, much of which was driven by mergers and acquisitions, as well as by demergers and ‘disaggregations.’

Gilbert, who confirmed that the three contracts, were for a desktop management programme, a global support and logistics programme, and mix of back office and shop floor systems for a major retailer, also said that the level of orders from the private sector had trebled in the first quarter of 2010.

The news comes in the same week that Fujitsu announced that it was restructuring its product lines in order to compete more vigorously as a global supplier of cloud-based and managed services.

Gilbert insisted that although the firm had yet to engage the government in detail to discuss their needs, he felt that the new approach, combined with new initiatives designed to give a quicker payback, such as sharing desktop architectures, consolidating network assets, could present the public sector with substantial savings.

Fujitsu was expected to announce its first-quarter 2010 results on 29 July, to reflect the new structure.