New alliances raise stakes in the enterprise storage arena

In two separate deals last week, rivals EMC and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) aimed at ratcheting up sales for enterprise storage systems in their most coveted market: China.

EMC has expanded its longstanding alliance with personal computer maker Dell, which has a growing enterprise customer base in the mainland, to deliver what is arguably the lowest-priced, brand-name networked storage system in the market.

The new Clariion AX100 was announced by EMC and Dell as the first easy-to-use and affordable storage area network (SAN) system designed for small businesses and workgroups.

It is available in configurations costing less than US$5,000 and under $10,000.

'Now, even the smallest of enterprises has a simple, affordable way to deploy the world's leading networked storage infrastructure with the features, functions and reliability found in data centres,' said EMC president and chief executive Joe Tucci.

That announcement came a day after HDS, a unit of Japanese electronics giant Hitachi, launched its strategic partnership with mainland computer giant Lenovo. HDS and Lenovo have agreed to co-brand and jointly distribute in China HDS' Thunder 9500 V-Series system, which is suited to supporting distributed and departmental storage applications of large businesses or small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).