A technology exchange for EMC and Compaq

Compaq and EMC announced a technology cross-licensing agreement for their storage Application Program Interfaces (APIs) and an expanded cooperative support agreement.

  • Agreement covers Compaq HSG80 and EMC Symmetrix product lines
  • Compaq is licensing to EMC an API for managing StorageWorks
  • EMC is licensing to Compaq a storage API component for managing Symmetrix

This agreement does not cover the recently announced Compaq Enterprise Virtual Array, nor the EMC CLARiiON and Connectrix products. Spokespersons for both companies stated that these would be made available at a later date.

Evaluator Group comments:

This technology exchange announcement is the first of many that are anticipated as a result of EMC's announcement of its AutoIS strategy, and EMC Control Center/Open Edition. In order for EMC to be successful it must have similar agreements with all of the major storage vendors. The reverse is also true for the other vendors if they are to survive in today's rapid movement to a truly open and heterogeneous storage infrastructure. Any vendor that is not willing to participate will have a difficult time selling products outside of its captive base.

Although this announcement represents a major step in the right direction, it also raises an issue that customers need to investigate. An EMC spokesperson stated that APIs would be exchanged on a "function for function" basis. If this

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implies that the shared APIs may be limited in scope, customers will be faced with a major dilemma in determining the true management functions that are supported for other vendor's products.

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This was first published in December 2001

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