Anyone whose IT perspective is formed by the mainstream media, futurist publications such as Wired, and Silicon Valley's gung-ho venture capitalists, would be forgiven for thinking that the largest forces in the industry are companies that have come to the fore in the internet era - Google, Apple and, perhaps, Facebook.

But the real giants are those with staying power. Of the top five IT companies (all of which have annual revenues of over $50 billion), three - Fujitsu, HP and IBM - have been delivering innovation to customers since the early part of the last century.

That longevity stems from a single factor - a long-term commitment to research and development. The company with the second longest history in IT, Fujitsu, celebrates its 75th birthday in June 2010. And unlike many of its rivals, which channel less than 2.5% of their revenues into R&D, the Japanese company commits over 5% of revenues to innovation. In 2009, that amounted to around ¥240  billion ($2.6bn).

Such funding has delivered a long list of firsts. Not only was Fujitsu responsible for Japan's first computer, the FACOM 100 (built in 1954 and still up and running), the company created the world's first high-electron mobility transistor in 1980 (critical to imaging, radar and microwave communications), the first colour plasma display (a 42-inch model in 1995), and a series of pioneering submarine transmission devices (so robust that they have an expected lifespan of over 40 years).

More recent areas of innovation have included the FLEPia e-paper mobile terminal (the world's first colour e-reader), contactless biometric authentication that uses palm vein scanning (highly attractive when pandemics threaten, and already deployed in banking), "zero-watt" PCs that draw no power when inactive, and ultra-quiet servers (the PRIMERGY TX120 range run at a mere 32 decibels).

In terms of what's in the pipeline, Fujitsu Laboratories, the company's R&D wing, is also working on cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing gateways, super-efficient power conversion chips and intelligent transport systems.

As Satoru Hayashi, executive vice chairman of the board at Fujitsu Technology Solutions, highlighted at the company's annual European conference last November, that kind of long-term success takes long-term commitment: "Every working day we invest $10 million in R&D, and that has resulted in 34,000 patents - a figure that is growing every day."