Fujitsu's ballsy bid

FUJITSU'S ANNOUNCEMENT of its Blade Server BX900 yesterday didn't go unnoticed, but it's what's in the background that's really got analysts in a frenzy... and anything that stirs these guys up is good enough to print in our INQpinion.

The staple of Japanese overseas business practice has long been based on moderately successful overseas bids which end up in limbo because some gaijin exec didn't tune in to the corporate culture. Results time usually translates to "let's see what we did wrong," followed by 'go red in the face, pack-up-and-head-home.' Amdahl and Fujitsu-Siemens are two companies that illustrate this model perfectly.

The fact is, Fujitsu is Japanese, isn't it? So, quite surprisingly, and very contrarily to established corporate culture over in the land of the Rising Sun, server shogun Yamamoto-San is taking the "global business" thingie seriously and has dispatched cadres of suited samurai to Germany to join forces with the x86 engineers in residence.

Unifying x86 R&D in one place, the company hopes to ambush Dell, HP and IBM - who, according to IDC, own 76 per cent of the market - in their own backyard. X86 thus becomes the tip of the sword driving deep into the enemy's flank.

This also means products are being developed for a world stage rather than a regional one, and at a faster pace, with the BX900 set to become the first global Fujitsu product on the market.

With this move, Fujitsu hopes to attain a very ambitious 10 per cent of the global server market, with a timeframe etched in the ether. More realistically, the firm wants to reach seven per cent by 2010, still a huge leap forward from the current 4 per cent.

"Yes, yukanna". µ