Fujitsu Computers Ltd yesterday announced an 8-way addition to its Teamserver range and said it expects the Intel Profusion-based box to be the first genuine open systems challenge to proprietary RISC offerings in the sub-mainframe enterprise space. The T800i is set to go head to head with 8-way machines from IBM Corp, Compaq Computer Corp and Hewlett-Packard Co, and European marketing director Tony Reilly said he expects to maintain Fujitsu’s number one position in the IDC’s ranking of over 4-way server sales in Europe.
Fujitsu established its market leading position in the European 4-way+ domain last year with its 6-way Teamserver, but the new 8-way takes it into altogether higher ground, offering a choice between 1Mb and 2Mb cache arrayed against Pentium III 550-MHz processors, and capable of directly addressing up to 5.2Tb of storage. Reilly said the unit market for the machine, which is not expected to gain any momentum until after the Y2K threshold, is not projected to be large, but the average price for the systems will certainly range to around 100,000 pounds ($158,450) and over.
The T800i will ship in September, starting at around 15,000 pounds for an entry-level machine. But we don’t expect too many people to buy an 8-way capable machine and only install four processors said Reilly. A more typical configuration price will be 50,000 pounds ($80,000) for a an 8-way array with 2Mb cache, with storage and after sales support extra, Reilly said
