Looking to further expand its small business and midmarket reach through its reseller channel partners, Fujitsu announced its Primergy TX100 S1 server plus an expanded reseller agreement with Synnex.

The moves follow Fujitsu's appointment of Symantec's former vice president of global channel sales, Bill Buie, as senior vice president of Alliances, Channel and SI sales for Fujitsu America, and Fujitsu America's reorganization around customer segments, both in April.

And it's all part of a major shift in how Fujitsu does business in the Americas, moving to a model that favors the channel rather than one that favors direct sales.

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To show its commitment to its existing channel partners, says Buie, the company will be turning over a percentage of the business to channel partners.

"We are looking at strengthening our channel-centric focus with key partners in the future," he says. "We will help partners with our targeted list where we have an installed base … we want to do more business through our channel partners."

How much more? Buie says at the beginning of 2009 the mix was about 40 percent of revenues coming from channel and 60 percent direct. Today it's 50-50. And by the end of the year Buie says his goal is to derive 60 percent of revenues from the channel and 40 percent from direct sales.

The approach may be paying off so far. Fujitsu American has increased its client base in the midmarket by 20 percent since the introduction of Fujitsu Accelerator Partner Program in March, the company says.

Fujitsu says its expanded relationship with distributor Synnex calls for Synnex to now offer a complete range of Fujitsu hardware solutions including the company's Fujitsu LifeBook laptops and tablet PCs as well as its Eternus storage systems.

The Primergy TX100 S1 server is starting at less than $600 with a base configuration that includes 1GB of RAM, a single processor and a 160BG SATA hard drive. Typical configurations with faster processors and 2GB to 3GB of RAM run about $800, the company says. The server is designed to be very quiet, running at 21 db to 25 db, and satisfies the Energy Star 5.0, Server 1 requirements.