Fujitsu Ltd has long been the pioneer among Japanese computer companies in seeking to acquire knowledge about and penetration of foreign markets by acquisition, investment in start-ups, and by joint ventures – and it is not finished yet. It announced yesterday that it has formed a company called Intellistor Inc by acquiring certain assets of Intelligent Storage Inc, a Longmont, Colorado-based engineering company on undisclosed terms. The new Fujitsu America company, 49-employee Intellistor, will specialise in design of controllers and high-performance interfaces for disk and tape drives in Longmont. Fujitsu America says that Intelligent Stor-age was recognised as a leading engineering design firm and had developed products for industry leaders including Memorex. Intelligent Storage and Fujitsu America jointly developed a disk controller with the IPI-3 interface, which is capable of transferring 10Mbytes of data per second between peripheral devices and superminis, a speed previously only available on large mainframes or scientific supercomputers. It was introduced in June.
