Lenovo adds ClearCube PC blades to portfolio

Lenovo Group, which became the world’s No. 3 PC maker earlier this year when it acquired IBM’s PC division, is adding ClearCube’s PC blades to its menu of offerings.

The two companies Monday announced that they have entered into a joint marketing agreement in which Lenovo will market and sell ClearCube-branded PC Blades and management software.

PC blades separate the guts of the PC from the desktop, putting processing power in data centers and computer rooms. Employees then have only a monitor, keyboard and mouse on their desks, along with a client appliance that is linked back to a blade server. ClearCube offers PC blade configurations that provide a dedicated blade to each user or a pool of blades that can be dynamically allocated.

End users say PC blades offer a range of benefits, including streamlined management and tighter security since all the hardware is centralized. In addition, spare blades can be used to provide hot backup to avoid system outages, they say.

ClearCube already has a similar relationship with IBM’s services division, but this expands the company’s reach, says Raj Shah, chief marketing officer at ClearCube.

Today, ClearCube targets much of its sales at the public sector and the financial services and healthcare industries. “There are other sectors where [Lenovo is] strong like industrials and manufacturing. We have a good chunk of customers there, but we haven’t targeted that sector with resources that Lenovo will have,” Shah says. “This is a big force multiplier.”

The joint marketing agreement is limited to the U.S. and Canada initially, Shah says. “We’ll see where it goes over time,” he adds.

ClearCube leads the PC blade market, though HP entered the market last year.