Fujitsu to support Windows 2000 Datacenter

Fujitsu Australia announced today that it has been selected by Microsoft Corporation as program partner for Windows 2000 Datacenter. Microsoft is ensuring maximum customer and system support for its new product by selecting only those partners who have the organisational depth and large systems expertise to ensure successful customer implementations.

"Fujitsu has extensive experience in large systems and mission critical platforms and is one of only four Microsoft Certified Support Center (MCSC) accredited organisations in Australia," said Tony Wilkinson, Windows Product Manager, Microsoft Australia.

Starting immediately, Fujitsu will initiate support for Windows 2000 Datacenter based on its range of PRIMERGY 8-way servers from Fujitsu Siemens Computers. Fujitsu will offer the Australian market three-nines (99.9%+) availability, including access to a joint problem queue with co-resident Microsoft personnel, and will become a Microsoft Certified Support Center (MCSC) for Datacenter servers. Fujitsu Japan will also establish a worldwide Windows Platform Centre where all Fujitsu customer configurations can be validated to Microsoft's exacting standards.

As a central building block for a high-end Windows 2000 Datacenter Server solution, Fujitsu offers the PRIMERGY N800, an 8-way compute node based on the current industry standard for 8-way multiprocessor systems (Profusion) and featuring Intel's latest processor technology (PentiumR III Xeon). The PRIMERGY N800 Compute Node makes an ideal building block for implementing multiserver configurations (server farms) running distributed applications as well as supporting professional datacenter operations.

"Fujitsu Limited and Microsoft recently announced global cooperation to strengthen the support, products and services available for the Windows platform for large scale mission critical and Internet business solutions,' said Peter McFarlane, Executive General Manager Fujitsu Services, Fujitsu Australia Limited. 'The agreement will also build close product-level technical cooperation between the companies for Fujitsu's offerings and Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server Products."

Fujitsu, through its worldwide group of companies, has extensive high-availability enterprise systems, data center, and call centre experience. Fujitsu is one of four national Microsoft Certified Support Centres offering Authorised Premier Support in conjunction with Microsoft.

"I am confident that Fujitsu's extensive large systems skills and expertise, coupled with our strong relationship with Microsoft, will ensure that Windows 2000 Datacenter and our PRIMERGY servers offer the highest possible levels of system availability for our customers," said Mr Peter McFarlane, Executive General Manager Fujitsu Services, Fujitsu Australia Limited. Fujitsu will exploit the advantages of Windows 2000 Datacenter servers in its own datacenters, and will focus on delivering server consolidation and mission critical business applications.

PRIMERGY and Windows 2000 Datacenter

As part of today's announcement, Fujitsu also revealed that it has drawn up plans for a new generation PRIMERGY server, currently unnamed but targeted at Windows 2000 Datacenter solutions. Following the validation of standard configurations based upon this new hardware, slated for Q1 2001, Fujitsu will commence full promotion of Windows2000 Datacenter solutions.

Fujitsu and Microsoft

Through its alliance with Microsoft, Fujitsu has set the following specific objectives: To offer Windows platform solutions with greater reliability, availability and scalability in order to provide customers with "one-to-one" individualised enterprise system solutions that they can rely on;

Double its Windows-related corporate solutions business (including hardware, software, support and service) in three years; and gain top share in the Windows-based IA server market in Japan.

The companies will also engage in joint development, promotional and sales activity on a global basis in the field of next-generation platforms such as high-end IA32/IA64 servers.

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