A lot of cloud companies treat vendor lock-in as a marketing angle, touting products that help clients circumvent the rigidity of many cloud infrastructures.  Egenera, however, has an unmatched story for its cloud journey, starting with a business focus on hardware, and ending with software distribution.  With its core competency having always been fluidity amongst cloud management tools, Egenera has had to shift gears over the past decade in order to survive this evolving space.  Vindication finally arrived last year, with four straight quarters of profitability–a precedent for Egenera and a reflection of the struggles it’s overcome in order to reach this milestone.

Egenera’s PAN Manager software enables customers deploying unified computing infrastructure to integrate with their choice of platform and storage vendors, preventing vendor lock-in while maintaining massive efficiencies and low total cost of ownership.

“What’s exciting is that we got the business model correct,” Pete Manca, CEO of Egenera, tells me in an interview.  “It’s very difficult as a hardware vendor to grow to scale.  We went through a different transition from hardware to software, and a lot of companies have tried that in the past, and failed.  My challenge was to shift to a profitable software company, and last year was our validation. We had to answer questions about company structure and who we were going to partner with.”

Marking its best financial year on record, Egenera posted four consecutive quarters of profitability in 2010.  Software orders doubling quarter-over-quarter, as enterprises took on Egenera’s PAN Manager to simplify and open up the management of their cloud infrastructures.  Sales are up 200% year-over-year, with the average PAN Manager order size doubling during that time frame.

“Hardware comes with baggage–inventory, higher cost of sales and goods,” Manca explains.  “With software, costs are lower.  We distribute our stuff differently now, and we’re able to sell indirectly through channels, which is much more cost efficient.”

These emerging distribution channels require strategic partnerships, more easily nurtured with software versus hardware.  The lowered costs of software distribution have enabled Egenera to keep its own costs low, and manifest sleeker delivery mechanisms around partner channels.  As with many cloud companies, partnerships play an important role in business expansion, allowing them to delve into new verticals.  For Egenera, fresh team-ups with Dell and Fujitsu have served well for their global expansion.  The company’s now heading into government, financial and managed services verticals, with an eye towards reinforcing its presence in Asian regions.

“We invented this space eleven years ago,” affirms Manca.  “We were the first to create a converged infrastructure and we have the knowledge in this space.  We want to exploit that knowledge in an open way.  I think it sets us apart in this space.”

Below we have a SiliconANGLE.tv interview with Manca, discussing whether or not a converged stack is open or closed.