EMC, IBM work to extend interoperability, support for customers

EMC Corporation and IBM Corporation today announced an agreement that will extend interoperability and compatibility for their respective storage systems, servers and software. The companies believe this effort will help customers to more easily install both EMC and IBM products in heterogeneous storage environments.

The agreement spans a spectrum of offerings from both companies, including:

* EMC and IBM have agreed on a framework for the exchange of programming interfaces for their disk storage products, including interfaces that are conformant with the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S). The intent of this effort is to improve interoperability between the companies` products.

* The companies have also agreed upon a framework to extend their existing cooperative support agreement to include a wider range of servers, storage and software products, to support more rapid escalation and resolution processes for issues arising in joint installations.

* To support EMC`s ability to implement compatibility on its Symmetrix DMX storage systems with Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy and Extended Remote Copy (XRC) functions, IBM has licensed interfaces for its TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server to EMC. Additional IBM functionality including FlashCopy, Multiple Allegiance, and Parallel Access Volumes (PAV) are also included in the licensing agreement and will be supported on EMC Symmetrix systems.