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Storage vendors team up
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June 4, 2001: 3:44 p.m. ET
EMC, IBM are among the six storage providers in cooperative effort
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Six of the leading data-storage equipment suppliers on Monday said they will work together to make it easier for customers to mix and match their products when building their data-storage systems.
The alliance, aimed in large part at speed the adoption of storage-area-networks, involves these companies' agreeing to use a common standard. They also have agreed to support one another's products.
EMC (EMC: up $0.17 to $31.62, Research, Estimates), IBM (IBM: up $0.97 to $113.86, Research, Estimates), and Compaq Computer (CPQ: up $0.02 to $15.92, Research, Estimates), which are fierce rivals in the market for data-storage systems, are the largest firms to pledge their support to the initiative.
They are joined by: Hitachi Data Systems, a U.S. unit of Hitachi Ltd.; Brocade Communications Systems (BRCD: up $0.62 to $39.42, Research, Estimates); and McData (MCDT: down $0.31 to $31.69, Research, Estimates).
Storage-area-networks, or SANs, are comprised of any number of data-storage devices that are networked in a cluster and can be accessed by different computers.
Storage-system manufacturers historically have created their own proprietary systems, making it complicated for customers to add products from competitors into their existing SANs.
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We're walking a very thin line between the operability our customers are asking us for while maintaining our competitive edge.
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Mark Sorenson
Vice President
Compaq |
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By cooperating on standards and support, the companies involved in this program are hoping their sales will be lifted by offering customers: increased flexibility for their SAN infrastructures; reduced costs from consolidating existing systems; greater investment protection; and maximized value of storage networking technology.
Some of the companies involved acknowledged that this kind of cooperation in what has become a fiercely competitive technology market segment poses some real challenges in addition to its potential benefits.
"We are all very fierce competitors, so we're walking a very thin line between the operability our customers are asking us for while maintaining our competitive edge ourselves," said Mark Sorenson, vice president of Compaq's Storage Software and Solutions division.
And the benefits of interoperability will for the time being be limited to systems provided by only the six companies. That leaves customers of Sun Microsystems (SUNW: down $0.48 to $16.15, Research, Estimates), Hewlett-Packard (HWP: up $0.25 to $29.50, Research, Estimates), and others which recently have stepped up their efforts in data storage left working under the proprietary framework.
"They weren't invited [to participate]," Sorenson said. "We didn't see them as serious players in storage." He added, however, that he expects those companies might want to join at some point in the near future. 
-- Reuters contributed to this report.
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