Systems/Enterprise:

3PAR, COMPUTACENTER TO DELIVER UTILITY COMPUTING TO U.K. MARKET

3PAR, a provider of utility storage, and Computacenter, a European IT infrastructure services provider, announced a comprehensive partnership to deliver utility computing to financial services and government organizations as well as SMEs in the United Kingdom. The partnership encompasses technical, marketing and support relationships and confirms 3PAR as an integral component of Computacenter's utility computing offering.

Computacenter, widely recognized for its technology sourcing, infrastructure integration and managed services, chose to partner with 3PAR due to its highly differentiated utility storage platform. 3PAR offers a simple and highly efficient storage array for utility computing and storage consolidation deployments. With this platform as a key part of its utility computing portfolio, Computacenter is able to further differentiate itself by enabling its clients to substantially lower costs, react more quickly to change and improve their response time to user requests.

"Computacenter has built its business on technology sourcing, infrastructure integration and managed services," said Simon Gay, consultancy practice leader for Computacenter. "This relationship with 3PAR greatly enhances our delivery of utility computing at a time when customers are expressing greater interest in the subject."

At the forefront of this technology, 3PAR has become a leading supplier of utility storage. The company sought to extend its leadership outside the United States by developing a partnership in the United Kingdom which matched its vision for utility computing and simplification of the storage data center. Computacenter's reputation as a leading system integration company and service provider for financial services, government and the SME market is an excellent fit with 3PAR's market focus and momentum.

"We have established a global network of world-class solution-delivery partners to work with on our largest customers," said David Scott, president and CEO of 3PAR. "These organizations have one thing in common: they recognize that server and storage virtualization are at the core of the utility computing data center, and 3PAR is storage virtualization made simple. Computacenter's reputation as a leader in infrastructure integration and its vision for storage in the utility computing data center make them an ideal partner for us. We couldn't be more pleased."

"This partnership is a perfect match," said Hamish Macarthur, CEO and founder of pan-European market research company Macarthur Stroud International. "Computacenter's increasingly utility-oriented integration and services business will benefit from 3PAR's highly differentiated model of simple, efficient utility storage; and 3PAR will gain substantially from Computacenter's enterprise relationships, credibility and growing managed services opportunities. This relationship puts excessive cost and poor service levels in the past tense."

The scope of the relationship includes a VAR and support agreement, as well as a marketing relationship.