EMC, IBM get interoperable

Data storage rivals EMC and IBM are increasing their products' interoperability.

The companies said in the US on October 6 they had agreed to a framework for exchanging programming interfaces and to co-operate more to serve customers mixing each other's servers, storage and software products.

Other data storage players facing pressure from cost-conscious customers have been formally agreeing to increase their products' compatibility. The industry is also working on standards that would make it easier for customers to mix products.

Chuck Hollis, vice-president of platform marketing at EMC in the US, claimed greater product interoperability would make it easier for the channel to work with both vendors.

"IBM and EMC have been vigorous competitors," he said. "We compete on our own merits, but at the end of the day we will co-operate to support customers who implement both [vendors' products]."

Roland Hagan, vice president of storage marketing at IBM in the US, said the agreement would help spur storage sales and confidence in IBM and EMC products.

Kevin Reith, manager of strategic technology at EMC partner Info Systems, praised the decision. "I like seeing the big boys playing nice with each other," Reith said. "It's all for the common good."

He said EMC was pushing into software and so would gain more than IBM. "One of EMC's Achilles heels is IBM connectivity, which is ironic, because EMC invented (third-party) IBM connectivity," he said.

Products flowing from the agreement will probably not appear until first quarter 2004, EMC's Hollis said.

In the deal, EMC and IBM have agreed on a framework to exchange programming interfaces for EMC's Symmetrix DMX arrays and IBM's Enterprise Storage System, also known as Shark.

Hollis said they will work within the industry-standard SMI-S (Storage Management Initiative Specification) as much as possible but will also move beyond those specifications.

Exchanging APIs for replication management and performance management is  scheduled to be addressed in SMI-S in the future, but IBM and EMC would forge ahead on this, he said.

IBM and EMC have agreed to increase joint support of each other's technology when both are used in a customer site. "For instance, if a customer with AIX-based servers and EMC storage has a problem and calls us, we can contact IBM to escalate the issue,” Hollis said.

Also, EMC will license interfaces from IBM's Shark array for use in its Symmetrix DMX arrays to make the DMX compatible with such IBM mainframe functions as Peer-to-Peer Remote Copy, Extended Remote Copy, FlashCopy, Multiple Allegiance, and Parallel Access Volumes, said IBM's Hagan.

Financial details of the licensing agreement were not disclosed. However, Hagan did say that IBM earned about US$1 billion in licensing fees from over the last year from a variety of vendors.

The API exchange agreement is the latest in several similar storage vendor agreements.

In September last year, HP and Hitachi Data Systems agreed to allow each company's storage management software to manage the other's arrays.

A month earlier, HP and IBM signed a similar agreement. That July, EMC and HP signed an agreement extending a similar arrangement EMC signed earlier with Compaq.