Dell to sell EMC's mid-range storage

Dell has inked a deal with EMC to resell its CLARiiON line of enterprise storage kit. The range will now form Dell's standard offering for SAN (Storage Area Networks) and NAS (Network Attached Storage).

The alliance extends over five years and is obviously intended to boost both players standing in the market, by giving Dell a respectable storage offering (it will co-brand the products) and giving EMC a huge new reseller for its gear.

It's a much-needed thing for EMC, with consolidation and partnership being the name of the game as everyone tries to be the real market gorilla (and after the shot to the pills it suffered recently when IBM allegedly nicked part of the huge Wal-Mart account from it).

Tony Lock, a senior analyst at Bloor Research, says the move is completely logical for both companies, but will depend on how well they manage to work together for it to become successful. Beyond the usual reseller deal, Lock highlights the clause showing that EMC will attempt to take advantage of Dell's procurement and manufacturing capabilities in the production of these CLARiiON products.

Recently, the Reg posted an interview with a top dog at Big Blue, Dietmar Wendt, who claimed that EMC was no longer the main competitor for it, advising people to watch Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) instead. He also commented that EMC was losing ground in major accounts due to bad strategy.

Dell will continue to offer other storage products in its portfolios, such as its PowerVault products. It plans to start offering the new products, which includes the FC4500, FC5300, FC4700 (all fibre channel storage arrays) and IP4700 (a high-end fibre channel NAS solution), from November.

It has also agreed to "work together" with EMC when its enterprise customers require more advanced products, which comes in the form of EMC's Symmetrix line of products. As to how closely they will work together, the release reads, "The companies will collaborate on the definition and explore the joint development of future open, networked storage systems." ®

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