University of Tokyo and Fujitsu Launch Pilot for Cross-Regional Data Center Workload Shifting December 24, 2025 In a significant step towards building a more sustainable and resilient digital infrastructure, the University of Tokyo and Fujitsu have commenced a pilot project to test the dynamic shifting of computing workloads between geographically dispersed data centers in Japan. The initiative addresses two critical industry challenges: optimizing energy consumption in the face of growing AI-driven demand and supporting national decarbonization goals by better integrating renewable energy sources into data center operations. The pilot, which forms part of the broader Watt-Bit Collaboration Project for Green Transformation, is scheduled to run from January 5 to March 21, 2026. It aims to verify the technical and economic feasibility of migrating computational tasks between regions in response to real-time conditions on the power grid, such as network load and electricity market prices. The University of Tokyo will contribute supercomputing systems at its Information Technology Center and provide AI research-related workload use cases. Fujitsu's role involves integrating the workload shifting mechanism using container technology and providing its cloud infrastructure, the Fujitsu Cloud Service powered by Oracle Alloy. The partners stated that the project was influenced by the dual need to decentralize data center capacity in the Japanese market and to bolster the country's decarbonization efforts. They plan to collaborate with national and related bodies to expand connected locations and conduct further validations, including tests utilizing an All Photonics Network (APN). A longer-term objective is to develop technologies enabling a "sovereign distributed data center" concept, where data and operational control are maintained primarily in regions rich with renewable energy. This pilot represents a concrete move towards an adaptive infrastructure model where compute follows green energy. If successful, it could pave the way for more widespread adoption of workload mobility, allowing large-scale computing users—particularly in research, AI, and high-performance computing—to significantly reduce their carbon footprint and operational costs by leveraging surplus renewable power across different regions. Source: datacenterdynamics
University of Tokyo and Fujitsu Launch Pilot for Cross-Regional Data Center Workload Shifting
