Egenera pans "vendor lock-in"

HP and Cisco given dressing down by converged infrastructure vendor as it scouts for channel partners

Breaking out: Egenera is pledging an alternative to vendor lock-in

HP’s Converged Infrastructure and Cisco’s Unified Computing strategies have come under fire from rival Egenera as it launches its platform-independent alternative into the UK channel.

Egenera, which was founded in 2000 by a former Goldman Sachs chief technology officer, is aiming to recruit 10-20 UK resellers for its PAN Manager software, which it has just moved onto industry-standard hardware for the first time.

Designed to simplify datacentre infrastructure, operations and management, PAN Manager is already compatible with Dell and Fujtisu hardware with further options in the pipeline.

EMEA vice president John Warnants said many VARs are asking for an alternative to “vendor lock-in” with HP or Cisco.

He claimed US-based Egenera’s longevity would also appeal to resellers.

“The market is finally catching up with us but calling it Converged Infrastructure [HP] or Unified Computing [Cisco],” Warnants said.

“Hundreds of organisations run mission-critical applications on our platform. It is reliable and well behaved and some of our competitors have significant challenges [in that respect].”

Warnants said Egenera is hunting for medium-sized resellers working in horizontals such as networking or VDI with in-house services capabilities.

The first UK partner on board is networking and security VAR Metropolitan Networks.

Managing director Ashok Thomas said: “Customers may go down the IBM, Dell or HP route but with Egenera you can help them whatever they choose – it’s not going to be a vendor lock-in.”

Warnants claimed that Egenera could trump rivals on partner profitability.

“Because it is software rather than hardware we have much more flexibility to agree interesting margins and support them if they get into a competitive situation,” he said.

Both Cisco and HP declined to comment.