"Microsoft Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd are expanding an existing global systems integration alliance to work together on software and hardware for mission-critical systems, the two companies announced Monday. Under the alliance, the companies will collaborate on the development of Fujitsu servers based on Intel Corp.'s Itanium processors and Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and next-generation operating system code-named Longhorn and work on improving interoperability between their respective software applications. Fujitsu will also place engineers in Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus and integrate .Net into its Triole software suite," reports IDG News Service in Tokyo.
"Fujitsu hopes to see worldwide revenue of ¥800 billion ($7.2 billion) by 2007 from sales of enterprise servers, software products and services as a result of the alliance, it said. Their existing alliance has already reported revenues of $2.2 billion in fiscal year 2002 and $2.3 billion in 2003, according to Fujitsu."
Comment: Historically, Fujitsu has been the biggest supporter of Sun's Sparc processor, and as the story notes: "Announcement of the deal comes less than a month after Fujitsu committed to work more closely with Sun Microsystems Inc through merging their Sparc processor-based server product lines by 2006." Also, what used to be the UK government's "computer champion", ICL, has been subsumed into Fujitsu, so presumably it will be flogging Windows/Itanium "mission-critcal servers" to government bodies.
