Hewlett-Packard Co and Storage Technology Corp (StorageTek) have stepped up their OEM agreement, extending it to include the storage vendor’s new generation of tape technology, the 9840 drive.
HP already OEMs StorageTek’s 97xx tape library family pitched at the open systems environment, a relationship which has been in existence since December 1997. The new stage of the agreement extends to the 9840 high-end drive, which will be offered by Hewlett-Packard to customers in its HP9000 Enterprise Server market.
The extension of the HP/StorageTek deal also comes only days after HP switched from its reseller deal with EMC for disk drives to an OEM agreement with Hitachi Ltd (CI No 3,655). This is a three-year deal for SAN storage area network arrays and software, and while Hitachi’s international marketing arm HDS has effectively replaced EMS as HP’s supplier, StorageTek sees the change as a good omen for its own business.
Martin Medhurst, senior customer consultant at StorageTek’s UK operations, said the move underscored HP’s desire to have a more open SAN strategy than was possible with EMC, which is good for his own company, given its commitment to open systems. In addition, as the HDS drives, like EMC’s, require special conditions such as raised floors, there may be opportunities for StorageTek disk arrays in HP environments that don’t have that kind of infrastructure.
