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EMC TO BUY PRISA STORAGE SOFTWARE FOR $20 MILLION

Computer data storage heavyweight EMC Corp plans to announce that it will acquire privately held storage software maker Prisa Networks for about $20 million in cash.

San Diego-based Prisa, EMC's eighth software acquisition in three years, develops programs to manage low-end storage networks based on Microsoft's Windows operating system, an area that EMC says is becoming increasingly important.

Prisa already sells the software to personal computer maker Dell Computer Corp, which resells EMC low-end machines. EMC said it would rebrand the software and expand the market for it.

EMC, the biggest maker by revenue of high-end storage connected in networks, says that smaller companies are turning to network storage but need easy-to-use products.

"Without the management tools it is definitely a task they do not want to do," Erez Ofer, executive vice president at EMC, said in an interview. "The sweet spot (in the market) is definitely going to spread lower."