Three quarters after cutting the OEM deal, Dell has started delivering PAN, Egenera's data center virtualization and management software, in North America.

The Egenera widgetry has been parlayed into a factory-integrated, turnkey solution delivered on Dell servers and storage, meant to put Dell ahead of HP and IBM on the virtualization front.

The so-called Dell/PAN System virtualizes and pools data center resources, including SANs and networks - a notable fact - into scalable, changeable assets that translate into agility, high-availability and a more cost-efficient data center.

The companies say users shouldn't have to dedicate servers to applications because the Dell/PAN System creates a processing area network (PAN) that connects and centrally manages multiple Dell PowerEdge servers with standard network and storage resources.

There's a single resource pool and a single management tool for both physical and virtual servers, resulting in rapid response to the whims of the market.

It'll rapidly provision and redeploy the servers in minutes and reportedly guarantees site recovery at a lower total cost than competitive offerings.

PAN is a proven solution so it ought to work.

Egenera's been doing virtualization way longer than most people and claims that PAN is the epitome of what IDC calls "Virtualization 2.0," the next step beyond simple VMware-style single server virtualization replete with scalability, faster provisioning, high availability, disaster recovery and automated load balancing.

The Dell deal is PAN's first step off Egenera's own BladeFrame hardware. The company decided to port its software to other people's x86 machines late last year and is looking for other OEMs.

The widgetry's hypervisor-agnostic and runs on industry-standard servers and the usual storage. It's said to have anywhere from a two- to four-year lead on the market.