Egenera to Carve Out Space in Software Market

Egenera’s Blade Frame offering has long been known for incorporating two of the hottest technology trends into a single product: virtualization and blades.

Egenera’s BladeFrame line is a server blade system powered by its Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture, which follows a virtualization paradigm. Users manage the PAN architecture through the aptly named PAN Manager.

In a nutshell, PAN Manager bypasses hardware infrastructure in favor of software-driven integrated automation. The software virtualizes compute, storage and networking resources that are then dynamically allocated, as required.

Up until now, PAN Manager was only available for BladeFrame systems. Earlier this week Egenera revealed it would be expanding into the software business. It’s first software offering? PAN Manager, which Egenera will make available for other vendors’ hardware platforms.

Now, organization curious about PAN Manager will be able to try their hand with it without committing to an entire blade infrastructure. On the flip side, decoupling PAN Manager from the hardware increases Egenera’s addressable market and global distribution channels.

Egenera did not, however, get into specifics at this time as to the third-party platforms on which it would run.

Egenera believes PAN Manager software complements more traditional hypervisor-based server virtualization solutions, as it virtualizes the entire infrastructure with simple and seamless provisioning and management for physical and virtual servers, virtual networks, and storage. It also offers right-sizing and scalability through dynamic repurposing and effective chargeback capabilities, logical, secure partitioning and named pools of resources.

In addition, PAN Manager’s N+1 technology is designed to enable cost-effective high-availability and verifiable disaster recovery via Egenera’s N+1 technology.

Egenera said it plans to continue to innovate and advance the BladeFrame product line, which is its bread and butter. BladeFrame will remain positioned for mission-critical apps at the high-end of the server market.