An HP source has confirmed that Toshiba will indeed be reselling HP’s Unix servers. The source was unsure if the deal includes PA-RISC servers but said that it definitely includes the Itanium-based Integrity servers running HP-UX. The source was also unsure if running Linux or Windows on these Integrity servers would be allowed (although there will be nothing technically to stop customers who buy joint HP-Toshiba Integrity servers from using these environments on their machines). According to the rumors, the deal does not include selling HP’s ProLiant servers.
However, if you know that the deal was not inked with Toshiba, but rather with its Toshiba Solutions division, and find the announcement in Japanese on its site (no easy thing), and run it through a translation program, you’ll discover that Toshiba Solutions, which sells servers and applications to big manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in Japan, has been an HP partner for OpenView system management software and has been selling ProLiant servers to customers since 2001.
Moreover, you will see that Toshiba is not only going to be reselling both HP 9000 and Integrity servers but also that it has received the specifications for HP-UX that will enable it to better tune the software it sells for HP-UX servers. HP and Toshiba will also be jointly developing the resulting Unix boxes and plan to sell storage, software, and other system components together. Specifically, Toshiba and HP will port Toshiba’s DNCWARE ClusterPerfect clustering software to HP-UX and will create drivers to connect Toshiba’s ArrayFort disk arrays to HP-UX servers as well.
Toshiba is no newcomer to the Unix market. Back in 1995, Toshiba inked a deal to resell Solaris servers in Japan as well as to use Java technologies in its consumer products. In 1998, when Sun Microsystems Inc first tried to pump up Solaris on x86, Toshiba was one of the early and enthusiastic licensees and put it on its Magnia x86 servers (within a few years, support for Solaris was dropped).
Toshiba has also resold Unix-based, fault-tolerant computers from Stratus Technologies throughout the 1990s, and is currently a member of the fault tolerant server consortium that Stratus recently established.
