Fujitsu Siemens: ‘Everyone’ wants Win2k for IA-64

Fujitsu Siemens yesterday rebranded its server products in a bid to establish a global presence. Intel-based products will now carry the Primergy label, while the company's Unix offerings will be named Primepower. The thinking being that Fujitsu will use the brand in APAC, Amdahl in the US, and Fujitsu Siemens in Europe.

The first three Primergy boxes feature four 550MHz Pentium III Xeons and will offer Cascades PIIIs at 700 and 800MHz 'within the next few weeks'. Cascades will apparently deliver a performance boost of around 20 per cent.

The company's VP of strategic marketing, Joseph Reger, also sais Fujitsu Siemens is beefing up its Unix range with the introduction of a 128-way, 256GB Sparc box before the end of the year.

"We'll have a 64-way, 128GB system available for shipment by September, and we've already taken an order for a 64-way, 64GB machine from a German customer," he claims. "The systems use a switch developed in Japan for Fujitsu supercomputers which will deliver an increase in performance of 60 per cent over existing products."

But Reger denied Unix was dead on the company's Intel boxes:

"What we're seeing is a definite shrinking in demand for low end Unix systems, and that shrinkage is moving into the mid range too. It's at the high end that Unix's future lies."

The company also yesterday outlined its plans for Intel's forthcoming entry-level 64-bit Itanium and apparently already has around 60 customers trialling four way Itanium servers.

"Most users want Windows 2000, others ask for Linux, but hardly anyone is interested in Monterey," said a Fujitsu Siemens source.

Reger restated the company's ambitious aim to become the number one IT supplier in Europe by 2001. "In the NT sector, we're currently lying in fourth place on 10.8 per cent, behind Compaq on 36.2 per cent, IBM and HP." ®