Dell and EMC announce storage partnership

PC maker Dell Computer plans to team up with EMC to resell the storage giant's hardware and software storage systems. The move is aimed directly at the merged Hewlett Packard (HP)/Compaq.

Sources said that Dell and EMC, which are renewing a sales and development relationship that was cancelled about two years ago, are expected to announce the partnership as early as Wednesday.

As part of the agreement, Dell will resell and co-operate on the development of EMC's Clariion storage systems, a mid-range offering which EMC gained with its purchase of Data General.

According to Bob Zimmerman, a storage analyst at Giga Information Group, Dell has been the leading storage area network (San) installer for storage departmental systems in enterprise accounts for the last six months.

"Dell has no storage product capable of tying these together or of building enterprise sized Sans. This quarter, and probably for the next three, EMC will grasp at any dollar revenue it can get. Sounds like a marriage made in the proverbial Swiss bank," he said.

Furthermore, an IDC storage analyst said the partnership would be beneficial to both companies as EMC has struggled to sell its Clariion systems, and the deal would fill a hole in the high-end systems for Dell.

Earlier this year, Dell introduced its PowerVault high-end storage products which it said work with Windows servers from IBM, Compaq and HP.

EMC captured nearly 26.1 per cent of the overall storage market last year, up from 24.4 per cent the year before. Rivals such as HP, IBM and Sun Microsystems saw their share reduced, according to IDC.

Yet EMC's stock is off about 80 per cent this year. The company also warned that it would take a number of steps to cut costs including reducing its workforce from 23,400 to 21,000 by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Sony has already signed a deal to use EMC's lower-end storage products as part of computing equipment it sells to broadcasting companies which need to edit videos digitally. As part of its XPRI editing system, Sony will sell EMC's Clariion products re-branded with its own logo.