HP Continues Storage Partnerships with New Hitachi Agreement

Following similar deals this summer with IBM and EMC, Hewlett-Packard (HP) has announced an agreement with Hitachi: The two companies will cross-license storage APIs that will enable their storage-management software to manage each other's products. The agreement will add support to HP's OpenView Storage Area Management (SAN) software to let it manage Hitachi Freedom Storage Lightning 9900 and 9900 V Series and Thunder 9200 Series storage arrays. Hitachi's HiCommand Management framework will gain support to manage the HP StorageWorks XP and VA disk arrays, HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA), and HP StorageWorks Enterprise Modular Array (EMA) storage systems.

According to the two companies, the agreement is a step toward the standards-based storage-management initiatives currently evolving in the industry. According to Mark Sorenson, vice president, Storage Software Division, HP Network Storage Solutions, "The knowledge HP is gaining through integrating API technologies from Hitachi, Ltd. and other companies into a common software management platform will be used to assist the industry in making Bluefin and [Storage management Initiative] SMI a reality."

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/10sep02c.htm

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