Now based in Purchase, New York following its acquisition of IBM Corp’s personal computing division, Lenovo is clearly not resting on its laurels, and is entering the market for blade PC devices to provide customers and potential customers with more options on the desktop.
The deals sees blade PCs being added to Lenovo’s existing portfolio of ThinkPad laptops, ThinkCentre PCs, and China-only TianJiao media PC, ET960 Pocket PC, and Y200 series notebooks.
Austin, Texas-based ClearCube has championed the blade PC design, which takes the PC off the desktop and installs it in data center racks with links to the user’s keyboard, video, and mouse via Ethernet or standard cabling and small desktop port.
The privately held company is aiming to go public by the end of the year, having grown revenue three-fold and doubled its headcount in 2004, and the deal with Lenovo will also help it to expand the potential market for blade PC technology.
One of the problems with our solution is people don’t know about it, ClearCube’s CEO, Carl Boisvert, recently admitted to ComputerWire. Lenovo’s presence in the US, Europe, and particularly China, should help ClearCube clear that hurdle.
The deal sees Lenovo marketing and selling ClearCube-branded blade PC technologies and blade management software, particularly targeting it at the financial services, healthcare, and government sectors that have already proved fruitful for ClearCube.
Lenovo will be going up against HP in the market for blade PCs. Alongside ClearCube, HP is one of the few companies chasing the market, having begun its shipment of the HP Blade PC bc1000 solution in April 2004 as part of its Consolidated Client Infrastructure approach.
