A REPORT SAID that Fujitsu will adopt Longhorn for its mainframe technology and target IBM with the combination. According to a report on nikkei.net, Microsoft and Fujitsu have today announced a global alliance, following a visit to Japan by Steve Ballmer, CEO of the software firm. It quoted Fujitsu chairman Naoyuki Akikusa as saying that it and Microsoft will use Windows Server 2003 for Intel based high performance servers using 64-bit processors in the first half of 2005.
These must be Intel EM64T chips, we suppose, rather than Itaniums, although that"s far from clear from the report. Fujitsu also has a lucrative SPARC based series of mainframes but like its partner Siemens in Europe, sells Intel and SPARC based machines into different markets. In 2007, both firms will push Microsoft"s long promised "Longhorn" software to aim at the high performance market.