Hammerhead Nails Down Reseller Deal With Fujitsu

Hammerhead Systems today announced a reseller agreement with Fujitsu Network Communications under which Fujitsu will sell and support Hammerhead's HSX 6000 edge switch to North American telecom service providers.

Such a relationship was a necessary ante for Hammerhead to give the startup a seat at the service-provider table, since large telcos are typically loathe to purchase equipment from unproven startups. Hammerhead, which announced its first product last month, had hinted at reseller deals at that time, but had not named any partners. Hammerhead's HSX 6000 allows service providers to pool bandwidth across the switch as well as provide simultaneous connections over ATM and MPLS, features which both assist in service migration.

Now, as part of Fujitsu's previously announced Flexible Architecture for Subscriber Service Termination (FASST) architecture, an advanced-services implementation scheme that also involves Fujitsu's reselling of optical gear from Atrica and subscriber-management equipment from CoSine Communications, Hammerhead will have a partner with deep pockets that service provider customers can rely on, or complain to, depending on the performance of the gear.

"The advantage we offer to the carrier is that we can certify that this is already a tested [product]," said Rodney Boehm, senior vice president of data and customer solutions at Fujitsu. "It also gives them one throat to choke."

Boehm said Fujitsu chose Hammerhead's product to assist carriers who were looking to migrate their services to an IP-based backbone. "We've had a lot of customers tell us they were trying to get to an IP/MPLS network, but didn't know how to get there," Boehm said.