Hewlett Packard Co has a strategic alliance with Austin, Texas-based Crossroads Systems Inc, under which the two will work together to develop fibre channel products for storage area networks. The two will focus on increased network speed, data availability and storage management, with HP contributing its automated backup software, combined with storage routing technology from Crossroads. Crossroads technology will be included within HP’s SureStore Fibre Channel SCSI Bridge 21000 ER, due out at the start of next year. The bridge enables a 15 slot HP digital linear tape library to back up eight servers. HP contributed to Crossroads’ third round of funding, taking its total funding up to $13m.