Intel and EMC have teamed up to target the SMB storage market, particularly in emerging nations China and India.

The tie-up, announced at Storage Networking World, is aimed at pushing Intel's SSR212PP storage solution to small and medium size customers. The Intel kit is based on EMC's Clariion AX150, also unveiled this week.

Under the deal, Intel will help EMC improve its storage systems toward greater efficiency and closer integration with chips and servers. Intel's 160,000-strong global reseller network will also be opened up to EMC.

Intel's Hans Geyer said: "[The partnership] gives us an extremely valuable lead for how we should develop and architect future CPUs and chips for future storage requirements."

Many SMBs' storage built is still embedded in their servers. Intel says its solution makes the shift to greater capacity and complexity simpler.

EMC SVP Joel Schwartz said: "We expect that the reach of Intel's channel will help give EMC an edge in serving a much broader set of SMBs in emerging markets around the globe.”

The two companies also mooted further collaborations aimed at mutually beneficial hardware development.

This is the latest in a recent series of double headers by EMC and Intel. In March, Intel and VMware, an EMC subsidiary, announced a broad collaboration to trumpet the benefits of virtualisation. ®