LAS VEGAS, Nevada (EMC Technology Summit) - April 29, 2003 - EMC Corporation and Cisco Systems Inc. today announced that the two companies have signed a letter of intent to expand their existing relationship and together will deliver next generation storage area network (SAN) technology.
Under the terms, EMC plans to resell and support the Cisco MDS 9000 family of Multilayer directors and fabric switches as part of its comprehensive set of Connectrix SAN infrastructure products. EMC also intends to develop software applications hosted on the MDS 9000 platform to provide customers with unparalleled interoperability, management, storage intelligence and connectivity options for their current and future storage networking needs.
The flexible Cisco MDS 9000 family is a high performance, scalable and intelligent multi-protocol storage networking solution, which helps customers more efficiently manage and utilize their storage resources. The Cisco MDS 9509 Multilayer Director and the Cisco MDS 9216 Multilayer Fabric Switch offer a wide variety of networking and storage interfaces, including Fibre Channel connectivity as well as capabilities for iSCSI and FCIP connectivity, and a number of innovative intelligent network services such as Virtual SANs, security, diagnostics and troubleshooting. The Cisco MDS 9000 family will be supported by a wide range of storage management capabilities being developed as part of EMC's AutoIS (Automated Information Storage) management strategy.
"The cooperation between Cisco and EMC will allow us to integrate industry-leading networking and storage technologies as part of a fully supported, comprehensive SAN solution," said Luca Cafiero, senior vice president and general manager of the Switching, Voice, and Storage Technology Group at Cisco. "Our mutual customers will benefit from this agreement by being able to build larger, more scalable, and heterogeneous SANs that provide simplified, centralized management along with greater storage intelligence."
The Cisco MDS 9000 family has undergone extensive interoperability testing to optimize support and manageability with EMC's Symmetrix and CLARiiON networked storage systems and is expected to be qualified as E-Lab Tested by EMC in May 2003. The Cisco MDS 9000 family will be supported by EMC's ControlCenter family of open management software products. Additionally, EMC will work on the development of network hosted open storage applications. These applications will tightly integrate EMC's storage delivery services such as storage management, path optimization and data classification with Cisco's intelligent network services such as security and traffic management. Cisco intends to provide technical support to EMC to accelerate EMC ControlCenter integration and development of network hosted open storage applications on the Cisco MDS 9000 family. EMC and Cisco will also work under the planned agreement to promote industry standards for intelligent switch application programming interfaces (APIs) as part of their work with the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).
"EMC's goal with automated networked storage is to automate and simplify customer environments," said David Goulden, EMC's Executive Vice President of Global Marketing and New Business Development. "The scalability, intelligence and manageability of the Cisco MDS 9000 family fits very well into that strategy. We've utilized our experience as the world's leading provider of SAN technology to put these multilayer switches and directors through our renowned E-Lab testing process to ensure SAN components are interoperable and integrated as a total solution. This expanded relationship with Cisco gives our customers a scalable SAN infrastructure with multi-protocol connectivity, a platform for future network intelligence capabilities and the assurance of service and support by the world leader in networked storage."
EMC and Cisco have worked together for over four years to develop, test and validate joint solutions that are aimed to ensure interoperability with the highest level of availability, performance and cooperative support. In April 2000, EMC, Cisco and Oracle formed the ECOstructure Initiative to help reduce complexity and ease implementations of their joint solutions for customers. Cisco is EMC's leading network infrastructure partner providing universal connectivity to EMC storage worldwide. EMC is a leading storage partner in Cisco's Storage Networking and AVVID (Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data) Partner Program initiatives.
Availability
The Cisco MDS 9000 family will be generally available from EMC this quarter.
