Egenera, Fujitsu Siemens in deal
Computer maker Egenera Corp. of Marlborough is going global, with a $300 million assist from giant Fujitsu Siemens Computers of Munich.
The two companies will unveil today a strategic partnership, with Fujitsu Siemens reselling Egenera's BladeFrame machines under the Fujitsu Siemens Primergy brand name in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
''It's expensive to open up sales offices and set up service infrastructures in 90 countries," said Egenera president and chief executive Bob Dutkowsky. ''By having Fujitsu Siemens market our product in that territory, we get to market much faster."
Under the three-year deal, Fujitsu Siemens will be committed to sell $300 million worth of Egenera products.
''The two companies have a very similar vision of the future," said Joseph Reger, Fujitsu Siemens' chief technology officer. ''We are looking forward to a continuing relationship."
Fujitsu Siemens, a joint venture of Japan's Fujitsu Ltd. and Siemens AG of Germany, had sales of $7 billion last year, nearly all of it in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Egenera is one of many companies that make ''blade server" computers -- full-powered computers mounted on a single circuit board. Blades are plugged into racks to create large, powerful clusters of dozens or hundreds of computers.
But many companies use only a fraction of their computing power. They buy enough blades for busy periods, but the machines are barely used at other times.
''For every dollar that an enterprise spends on servers," Dutkowsky said, ''they only get 20 cents of utilization back."
Egenera addresses the problem through ''virtualization," a technique that lets users easily distribute computing jobs among multiple machines.
This lets users get maximum benefit from each computer and reduces the need to buy more hardware.
Robert McCormick, chief executive of Savvis Inc., a computer systems outsourcing company in St. Louis, uses Egenera systems in 24 data centers around the world. McCormick said that his company has a 90 percent utilization rate on its BladeFrame servers, compared to traditional systems which are at work only about 30 percent of the time.
''That drives huge cost savings back to the customer," McCormick said.
Dutkowsky said that privately held Egenera has been on a roll even before the Fujitsu Siemens deal. ''Two years ago we had 14 customers," he said, ''and this year we closed our 100th customer."
The typical order for Egenera products is about $400,000, and Dutkowsky said that the company would take in far more than $100 million in revenue in 2005, a shift from earlier this year when Egenera was forced to abandon plans for an initial public stock offering due to a lack of interest from investors.
Dutkowsky said that he hoped the Fujitsu Siemens deal would help the company revive its plan to go public. But he also said that a possible acquisition by a larger computer firm is not out of the question. ''That's certainly a subject that our board considers each and every month," Dutkowsky said.
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com. 
