Hitachi and IBM Team Up

Watch out EMC--Hitachi and IBM are teaming up! Hitachi and IBM have announced plans to form a business alliance to help develop advanced-storage technologies and products. The multiyear alliance calls for both companies to research and develop new open standards-based technologies for next-generation storage solutions.

A big part of the new alliance will be a common approach to virtualization. The new approach, based on IBM technology, will let customers easily manage all their networked storage systems as a single resource.

Hitachi and IBM's agreement doesn't stop at just research and development. In an addition to the announced business alliance, the two companies have stated that they intend to combine their various Hard Disk Drive (HDD) operations into a new standalone, joint-venture company. The new company will include selected HDD assets, employees, facilities, and intellectual property from both companies. The new company will research, develop, market, and sell HDD products. After formation of the company, Hitachi expects to own 70 percent of the joint venture and will pay for IBM's HDD assets.

http://www.hds.com

http://www.storage.ibm.com