While a growing number of data center technology vendors are turning their focus to hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) products, Fujitsu and NetApp have partnered on a converged infrastructure (CI) system that will ship in early 2018.

CI, the precursor to HCI, combines compute, storage, and networking into a single appliance. HCI also integrates compute, storage, and networking, but it’s software-defined and usually controlled by a hypervisor. This makes it more scalable and agile than CI. In fact, HCI is the fastest growing segment in the data center space.

NetApp last month launched its own HCI appliance, and it already partners with Cisco on a CI system, which has been on the market for seven years.

Its new product, developed jointly with Fujitsu, is called NFLEX. It combines Fujitsu x86 servers and compute with NetApp all-flash or hybrid-flash storage. NetApp’s data management software runs on top of the flash array.

In comes in racked or unracked configurations and can be ordered from either NetApp or Fujitsu.

The companies couldn’t be reached for comment by press time.

“NFLEX is an ideal platform for our customers who require simple, highly capable data center solutions that they can deploy with confidence for their business-critical applications,” wrote NetApp’s Andy Sayare in a blog post.

It can also support cloud and hybrid IT environments with Fujitsu’s hybrid cloud management software and NetApp’s Data Fabric, which integrates management across cloud and on-premises data centers, according to the companies.

NFLEX will be available starting in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa in early 2018.