Ideal bags Fujitsu Siemens' Primepower

Ideal Hardware is to offer Fujitsu Siemens' Primepower servers in an exclusive agreement for the company's enterprise products.

Ideal Hardware is to offer Fujitsu Siemens' Primepower servers in an exclusive agreement for the company's enterprise products.

"Ideal is delighted to win this tender," said Mark Walker, enterprise solutions director at Ideal. "Ideal has had a strong relationship with Fujitsu Siemens for several years now and this new alliance further reinforces this association."

Ideal will incorporate the servers into its enterprise solutions group. Launched late last year, the Primepower servers presented Sun Microsystems with direct competition less than one week after it expanded its own distribution network to include GE Access and Clarity.

The company inherited its Solaris business unit from the spin-off merger of Fujitsu and Siemens in October 1999 but took almost a year to adapt what was a direct Unix division to the channel.

Primepower runs on the same Sparc architecture as Sun's Sparc64 servers and is Solaris-compatible. Ideal will also distribute the firm's storage area network, network attached storage and back-up products.

Ian Snadden, channel sales director at Fujitsu Siemens, said: "With this deal in place we are in a strong position to expand into the Sun market."

In a separate move, enterprise-level storage manufacturer Ciprico has signed an exclusive agreement with Ideal to supply its NETarray range of direct-attached and networked storage products to the distributor.

US-based Ciprico counts defence and aerospace firms among its key customers.