If you’re a solution provider selling anything into the data center these days the major vendors want you to choose sides. The current vendor thinking is that in order to reduce the cost of managing the data center, IT organizations need to standardize on a common set of integrated server, storage and networking infrastructure.

The two best known instances of these integrated platforms are the Unified Computing System from Cisco and the BladeSystem Matrix from Hewlett-Packard. But the folks at eGenera would argue that a hardware-centric approach to data convergence and integration is the wrong way to go, particularly for solution providers in the channel that value their independence.

Egenera, which just launched a new partner program, is making the case that a software-centric approach to data center convergence will give customers all the cost benefits of tighter integration with requiring them to give up their favorite server, storage or networking vendor.

Pan Manager software from Egenera adds a layer of software across the major elements of the data center that allow an IT organizations to holistically manage server, storage and networking assets. According to Ken Oestreich, Egnera vice president of marketing, Pan Manager provides  all the benefits of data center convergence without trying to force customers to upgrade their hardware.

In these challenging economic times a lot of customers are hard pressed to come up with the capital needed to fund major data center upgrades. By taking a software-centric approach Egenera is betting that solution providers in the channel will get a warmer reception from customers that still need to reduce the operating costs associated with their existing data center systems.