The two companies announced this week that they intend to swap API access to each others’ storage arrays, and have dropped the patent infringement lawsuits they fired at each other last year. Those lawsuits were traded within days last year, around the same time that the two companies gave up on an attempt to negotiate an API swap which had begun in 2001. The negotiations had ended badly, and at one stage EMC described Hitachi as neurotic.

This week the companies said that the details of the API swap will be finalized over the next few weeks. The decision by both parties to return to the table reflects the advantages that both have gained in being able to offer their customers software that will manage both companies’ hardware.

Hitachi has previously emphasized its support for the CIM-based Bluefin or SMI storage management standard, which eventually will allow cross-vendor support to be achieved without using APIs. The standard will take some time to develop, however.

Chuck Standerfer, analyst at the Enterprise Storage Group said: Hitachi probably saw the light of day. The world won’t wait for the standard, and life goes on. The first version of BlueFin is hoped to be completed this summer, and Standerfer said it will be at least two years before it eliminates the need for API swaps. Both Hitachi and EMC made predictable statements that their deal and the use of proprietary APIs does not compromise their support for BlueFin.

EMC has promised that via its WideSky middleware its management software will eventually be able to handle a wide range of third-party hardware. It has said previously that even if its rivals do not provide it with API access, it will simply interoperability engineer access to their arrays via CLIs or other routes. The practicality of such an approach has been questioned however, and it may represent more of a bluff than an intention by EMC.

The agreement with Hitachi will be the first API swap between high-end storage vendors that has not involved Hewlett Packard Co. HP has swapped APIs with EMC, Hitachi and IBM, but until this week none of those three companies had arrived at any deals among themselves, although Hitachi has struck a deal with Sun Microsystems Inc, which allows its software to manage Sun’s mid-range T3 storage arrays. The loneliest of the high-end suppliers is now IBM Corp, which has signed just one deal with HP.

Asked whether EMC will call IBM next, EMC’s vice president of corporate communications Mark Fredrickson said: The question should be when will they call us? They stand alone because of their absence of an API agreement with us, the market leader.

Until last month, IBM did not have a full API with which to offer access to its flagship Shark storage array. Now, it appears to be the most solitary of the three top high-end storage vendors. It needs to complete a swap of that API soon with either EMC or Hitachi in order to offer its customers the same cross-vendor support as they or HP can offer. But the extra third-party coverage that the latest deal has given to EMC and Hitachi reduces their need to deal with IBM, while making it even more important for IBM to deal with them. For the Evaluator Group, Standerfer said however: There’s a sizeable installed base for the Shark out there. It’s not something that can be ignored.

Hitachi could not confirm whether the deal will give EMC access to the re-badged Hitachi Lightning hardware sold by HP and Sun Microsystems Inc. Neither of those companies was able to comment on the situation.

As well as dropping their patent lawsuits filed against each other, EMC and Hitachi said they have signed a deal to swap access to each others patented technologies. The two companies would not say whether this covers only the patents named in the lawsuits, or whether more patents are involved. Either way, Hitachi has made a balancing payment to EMC to compensate for the fact that it has done better out of the patent swap than EMC.

EMC’s lawyers are still daggers drawn with their counterparts from HP, as the two companies have not dropped the patent-infringement lawsuits they traded last October.

Source: Computerwire