News
Dell, EMC Extend Storage Alliance
- By Scott Bekker
- 06/11/2003
About two years and 4,100 customers into a storage partnership, Dell and EMC have decided that the arrangement is working out well enough to extend it.
Dell and EMC originally announced a five-year deal to sell co-branded storage products in October 2001. This week the companies extended the deal by two years to last until December 2008.
Originally, the arrangement gave Dell an opportunity to grow its storage business without investing in its own technology research. For EMC, the deal gave the enterprise storage giant a path to market for the low-end Clariion line of storage systems it inherited through the acquisition of Data General.
Now the companies are making noises about extending the agreement so that Dell gets more of a shot at bringing in higher end storage business. According to a joint statement, the companies will launch "a new series of Dell/EMC networked storage systems spanning customer needs from entry-level to enterprise-class." About 2,000 Dell professionals will also get joint services training.
Other parts of the agreement call for Dell to manufacture Dell/EMC CX200 storage systems worldwide; for the companies to launch a SAN system integrating low-cost ATA and high-performance Fibre Channel technologies to lower storage costs; to launch storage software suites; and for joint work on convergence of SAN and NAS.
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.