Fujitsu takes aim at Sun share

When we met Fujitsu-Siemens suits earlier this year in good old Munchen, we managed to extract the admission from the boys that its Hal-based Sparc server, running the Slowaris operating system, was a better Sun than Sun.

Rumours were spreading like wildfire (oops) that Fujitsu-Siemens was gonna kick Scott McNealy's butt, and now it appears those rumours are fact.

The boys are just about to deliver on their promise, with the roll out of the PrimePower server family, which is based on the Fujitsu-designed Sparc 64 processor.

Unlike Sun's UltraSparc III processor, delayed until god knows when, the Hal processor will not require the massive swapping out of big tin, and, said Ian Stewart, head of enterprise marketing at Fujitsu-Siemens UK, the firm will compete with Sun at the sales level.

Although Fujitsu and Sun have a high level strategy agreement to promote Slowaris, that does not prevent them competing furiously in the marketplace, Steward said.

Yesterday, he said, Fujitsu-Siemens scored its first major corporate win with the PrimePower Unix-based family, with Churchill Insurance signing up to use the boxes.

The firm has roped in EMC, Oracle and Intel, as well as a number of other firms, to sponsor a three day conference called Energising the Enterprise, at the Royal Air Force museum in Hendon to be held on July 11th.

And if Sun was in any doubt that Fujitsu-Siemens would let it rule the ASP roost, the agenda for the conference tells a different tale, with the company taking particular care to shoot straight, rather than just casually engage in wildfire. Oops. ®