STORAGE NETWORKING WORLD, PHOENIX, Ariz., April 5, 2004 - AppIQTM, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise software that enables data storage to be managed as an IT utility, today announced that its award-winning storage area networking (SAN) management and storage resource management (SRM) solution family will support the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Intelligent directors and fabric switches. The integration of AppIQ StorageAuthorityTM Suite with the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN switches will offer enterprise customers a more efficient, cost-effective, and manageable way to store, retrieve and protect business-critical data.
To help ensure solution interoperability, Cisco and AppIQ have also entered into a technical collaboration under the guidelines of the Cisco AVVID Partner program. Supporting this collaboration are several points of synergy:
- Cisco and AppIQ mutually offer their respective storage products through Hitachi Data Systems (HDS). For Cisco, HDS is an original storage manufacturer (OSM) reselling partner for the Cisco MDS 9000. For AppIQ, HDS is a strategic OEM partner for AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite. Customers benefit greatly through this mutual HDS relationship, as HDS offers an integrated storage solution comprised of HDS storage array products, AppIQ Storage Management applications and Cisco SAN switches.
- Cisco and AppIQ are active participants and leaders in the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). Cisco will utilize AppIQ's expertise in the Storage Management Initiative Specification (SMI-S) to enhance its SMI-S interface for the Cisco MDS 9000, while AppIQ will qualify its native SMI-S client to work with the Cisco SMI-S interface.
"Cisco and AppIQ share a number of common customers and channel partners who will benefit from the integration of our solutions. The two companies have also demonstrated strong support for the industry-wide efforts such as the SMI-S standard," said Bill Erdman, technology alliance director within Cisco's Storage Technology Group. "Through our collaboration, our joint customers will be able to build highly available storage networks that are cost-effective and simple to manage, and deliver the quality of service demanded by today's real-time enterprise."
Cisco's and AppIQ's solutions both won the Gold award in their respective categories in Storage magazine's most recent Product of the Year awards. The Cisco MDS 9509 director won Gold in the Networking Equipment category, while AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite won Gold in the Storage Management Software category. Customers will benefit from the integration of these best-in-class storage solutions.
AppIQ expects to deliver support for the Cisco MDS 9000 Family in this year's third calendar quarter, which will represent a culmination of the work the companies have done at recent SNIA-sponsored "plugfests" to validate Cisco's embedded SMI-S implementation. Both companies invite customers to preview the integrated solutions at the Interoperability and Solutions Demo at Storage Networking World, April 5-7, 2004 in Phoenix, AZ.
"AppIQ's collaboration with Cisco is further proof that standards for storage management interoperability have arrived, and that integrated, open storage management solutions based on the SMI-S offer a more reliable, scalable, and efficient solution to managing SANs than point tools and spreadsheets," said Tom Rose, vice president of marketing, AppIQ. "By supporting the Cisco MDS 9000 Family with AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite, we will help customers more quickly and cost-effectively deploy and manage an enterprise-class storage area network, without having to increase IT staffing levels or bring on costly storage specialists."
