The Financial Times has added servers from Fujitsu Siemens
to its existing Sun infrastructure in a move that is designed to
save the company more than £1m over the next three years and
provide computing capacity on demand.
Processors in the Fujitsu servers can be activated and deactivated
as required, giving an on-demand service that is better able to
handle fluctuating demands.
Ian Cohen, the Financial Times' IT director, said, "We now have the
ability to add more processing capacity and remove it when we do
not need it. The other dynamic of the saving is that Fujitsu prices
its processing power more competitively than Sun."
The deal signals the start of an innovative dual-supplier approach
by the Financial Times, which will see the company using servers
from two suppliers, Fujitsu and Sun Microsystems, to support the
Solaris operating system.
Thomas Meyer, server group manager at analyst firm IDC, said
companies could gain a number of benefits by adopting a
dual-supplier approach. "The neat thing is that staff do not need
extra training - it is also possible that the total solution costs
would be lower because you have two suppliers," he said.
"Companies that use this approach can start looking for competitive
offers from their two suppliers."
Cohen said the Financial Times already has processes in place to
manage what could be a potentially complex relationship with the
two suppliers. "We have good processes to allow us to effectively
manage a dual-supplier strategy - it is not an issue for us," he
said.
The Financial Times will use two Fujitsu Primepower 2000 Unix
servers to support a variety of business applications such as
advertising and the company's new publishing system, which is
currently being built and will be completed in the first quarter of
next year.