Egenera adds support for Fujitsu servers
eGenera announced today that Fujitsu has joined both eGenera and Dell in the PAN Manager club. Now there are three suppliers of industry standard systems that can offer off-the-shelf systems that can be joined together to create a unified computing environment. It also demonstrates that it is not necessary to purchase systems that are based upon a single vendor's choice of network, storage and other critical system components unless that meets the business objectives of the organization.
What eGenera has to say about this announcement
Egenera today announced it has added PAN Manager® Software support for the Fujitsu PRIMERGY® BX900 Blade Server, in addition to existing support for Dell hardware and Egenera’s own BladeFrame® offering – continuing its thrust to deliver converged infrastructure solutions compatible with multiple vendors’ servers and Virtual Machine (VM) technologies. Converged Infrastructure – also referred-to as unified computing – simplifies data center infrastructure management by pooling server, I/O, networking and storage resources, and then reallocating them automatically.
About Egenera PAN Manager Software
PAN Manager Software is a form of converged infrastructure that combines the simplification benefits of unified computing with integrated high availability and disaster recovery services for both physical and virtual servers. The software uses standard servers and standard Ethernet to create resource pools that can be rapidly and automatically re-allocated based on business requirements. The result is a simple-to-configure, business-critical infrastructure with massive efficiencies and low-cost operation. The software currently supports hardware available from Egenera, Dell and Fujitsu, and storage from 3Par, Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, HDS, HP, IBM, NetApp and others.
Snapshot Analysis
IT and facilities folks loved mainframes because everything (processors, memory, storage and networking functions) was tightly coupled and, thus, much easier to manage. Industry standard systems, however, took a different approach, i.e., a box for every function and a different vendor for every box. While this allowed the environment to grow and develop rapidly, it also created complexity.As any administrator would tell you, complexity leads directly to increased costs, greater opportunity for a problem and can be the enemy of smooth operations over the long term. So, now we see the industry moving back towards a more tightly integrated environment once again.
eGenera was one of the first supplier of industry standard systems that went down that path. I've followed the company for a very long time and have always thought that they offered a very powerful computing solution.
During the early years, I often suggested that PAN Manager, the software that made the environment appear unified and easy to manage, was much too good for eGenera to keep to itself. I guess that all of the customers, analysts and journalists saying the same thing must have eventually convinced the company that it had to broaden its base. The first partner was Dell and now Fujitsu. PAN Manager also supports components from an impressive array of other partners.
This proves that it is possible to build a unifed computing environment without having to resort to using a single vendor solution that may include lock-ins that an organization may not wish to accept. This will also be seen has a great move by resellers and solutions suppliers who want to build using this technology, but don't like the terms and conditions offered by other suppliers.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn about other suppliers joining the club in the future.