Fujitsu To Launch Services Arm, Sell Through Channel

Fujitsu Technology Solutions

FTS, which manufacturers Solaris-compatible servers, plans to combine its professional services with Amdahl IT Services, a unit of Amdahl that Fujitsu acquired in 1997 along with Amdahl.

FTS also plans to sell its combined services offerings through channel partners and is recruiting a director to build its channel business, the company said.

The FTS services arm plans to launch its new services offering April 1. The services unit will provide multivendor support to customers with heterogeneous server and SAN environments, said Richard McCormack, vice president of product and solutions marketing at FTS.

The company is targeting much the same market space as IBM Global Services and EDS, he said.

FTS has been on a yearlong effort to rebrand the various parts of Amdahl with the Fujitsu name, and the time has come to retire the Amdahl name in the services space, McCormack said.

"About three or four years ago, Amdahl was well-known as a mainframe manufacturer," he said. "Then the company decided not to follow IBM in terms of 64-bit mainframe development. So the company name is not so well-known anymore."

While the services offerings will initially be targeted at the FTS' direct enterprise clients, FTS is recruiting a channel director who will then recruit channel sales managers, said Jeff Whitney, vice president of strategic partner and channel operations at the company.

"We're hoping this new [services group will turn into a full-blown division on the channel side," he said.

FTS has about 2,000 employees in the United States, of which 90 to 100 are involved in selling services and related hardware, Whitney said.

"We're up against some really big players," he said. "We need a channel to do it."

FTS will probably focus its channel efforts on services related to the Fujitsu Solaris-compatible PrimePower servers and the GR series of storage arrays, although other products resold by FTS direct may be available to the channel as part of a bundle of hardware and services, Whitney said. The company already has an agency relationship with channel partners for the company's hardware, he said.

It is hard to be a volume vendor in North America without a channel program, but FTS' goal is not to sign up hundreds of resellers, Whitney said.

"We want to sign a few large national or regional resellers," he said. "We will start out in baby steps, and plan to have a few partners that by the end of the year will say we are their best partner."

Whitney said channel conflict between FTS' direct and indirect sales will be minimal because Amdahl's direct sales manager ran Amdahl's channel programs in the past. "I will compensate the direct sales if they do a deal with the channel," Whitney said.