Egenera appoints CDG as first UK distributor

Converged infrastructure vendor claims it can offer resellers flexible alternative to Vblock

Converged infrastructure vendor Egenera is launching a VAR recruitment drive after appointing CDG as its first UK distributor.

The US-based outfit, which pitches itself as a cheaper and more flexible alternative to VMware, Cisco and EMC's Vblock infrastructure packages, has given CDG the task of hooking in more than 40 UK resellers to take its PAN Manager software to market.

PAN Manager, which has been deployed at about 50 UK sites and 1,600 globally, supports hardware from a range of server vendors including Dell, Fujitsu and HP.

John Banfield, EMEA channel sales director at Egenera, admitted Vblock is a powerful solution but argued that it does not cater for entry-level firms, and locks customers into Cisco blades.

"The primary objective of appointing CDG is to help us recruit and access new resellers," he added.

Banfield said Egenera is particularly strong in the financial services sector and SAP and Oracle environments.

Peter Thomas, non-executive director at CDG, claimed the distributor is hunting for two to three large SI partners of the SCC/Computacenter/Capgemini mould, 12 hosting firms and about 30 boutique virtualisation VARs.

"The alternative for these partners is to buy a Cisco Vblock for £750,000 which is not the sort of thing most people can afford to invest in," he said.

HP partners are of particular interest, added Banfield.

"For HP resellers addressing the datacentre we are very much a value-add to their message. We can offer additional value to customers that will save costs and improve efficiencies."