Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

EMC AND MICROSOFT EXPAND STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

Building on a common goal to help customers extend the use of Windows in networked storage environments, EMC Corporation and Microsoft Corporation announced that they have extended their strategic business and technology relationship for storage.

The significantly broader and deeper agreement -- unveiled today by Joe Tucci, EMC's president and CEO, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft Corp's CEO, at the annual EMC Technology Summit -- involves tighter collaboration and integration of networked storage technologies and offerings. Included in the expanded licensing and technology agreement are: integration of Windows storage technologies, new marketing and sales initiatives, and new service and support agreements. The results of these efforts will be improved manageability and seamless integration of Windows technology in automated networked storage environments.

The initial focus of the expanded agreement includes the following:

• EMC will integrate Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 storage APIs (VSS, VDS, MPIO) with its storage platform functionality. This tight integration will provide a consistent Windows interface to advanced storage functionality, allowing customers to extend their use of Windows in automated networked storage environments. Additionally, through the adoption of Microsoft's storage APIs, EMC will integrate its ControlCenter open storage management applications, enabling customers to better manage large-scale Windows deployments in the enterprise.
• EMC and Microsoft will work together to define best practices and reference implementations for open storage management based on the emerging storage management standards.
• EMC will license Microsoft's Windows Powered NAS software as the basis for a new family of EMC NAS products.
• Both companies will collaborate to deliver compatibility of Windows-based products with EMC's Celerra NAS family. This effort will provide customers with a broad, scalable family of NAS solutions and assure compatibility of EMC's Celerra with future Microsoft releases.
• EMC and Microsoft will enter into a cooperative support agreement to ensure mutual support methodologies for enterprise deployments of EMC products in Windows environments.
• The companies will initiate joint sales and marketing efforts to educate customers on the benefit of integrated Microsoft and EMC technology in networked storage environments and drive adoption of EMC's Windows Powered NAS solutions.
• EMC and Microsoft have signed a license agreement under Microsoft's Communication Protocol Licensing Program (MCPP) to enable protocol interoperability between EMC's networked storage devices and Windows client PCs.

Bill North, IDC research director for storage software, said, "This announcement represents a breakthrough in the management of network attached storage. Now EMC and Microsoft customers will be able to use a single, integrated console to manage all their storage, rather than having to launch separate tools to manage the NAS and disk array functions. The use of Microsoft's storage APIs to manage capabilities like replication and multi-path I/O will give EMC customers tighter integration between familiar Windows features and storage based functionality. It has the added advantage of providing advanced storage support for a wide range of applications already coded to make use of Microsoft storage APIs. This means the entire storage solution should be easier to deploy and manage."

Joe Tucci, EMC president and CEO, said, "This agreement combines the power of Microsoft's presence in industry standard platforms with EMC's unmatched strength in automated networked storage. Our two organizations bring impressive synergies, talent and resources to bear on helping customers across the globe reduce costs and simplify the management of their increasingly complex networked storage environments."

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, added, "Microsoft is making significant investments in Windows Server 2003 to improve the management, reliability, and interoperability of storage systems in a Windows environment. Our partnership with EMC will broaden the usage of key Windows Server 2003 based storage technologies and Windows Powered NAS to provide end-to-end enterprise class storage solutions that scale, are easier to manage, and deliver higher service levels, thus reducing risk and improving customers' return on investment."

EMC and Microsoft partners are enthused about the expanded partnership:

"Today's announcement underscores the power of the Windows platform and importance of networked storage in meeting business-critical requirements for customers of all sizes, today and in the future," said Kevin Rollins, president and Chief Operating Officer, Dell. "Dell's partnership with EMC and Microsoft is critical in helping customers realize lower TCO, increased performance and greater investment protection, and we believe today's announcement will expand and accelerate those benefits."

"We are extremely pleased that our strategic partners, EMC and Microsoft, are significantly expanding and strengthening their relationship," said Dr. Helmut Beck, vice president, Storage, at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. "This will open up new options for even closer cooperation among our companies in order to deliver optimal solutions into the rapidly growing NAS market."

The EMC and Microsoft Alliance

The EMC and Microsoft strategic global alliance was formed in February 2000 to help customers better utilize their information storage, management and protection resources through common operating environments. As part of the alliance, EMC and its partners were the first to develop and test configurations for the Microsoft Systems Architecture. The resulting blueprints simplify and reduce the time and cost associated with deployment of data center solutions built on the Windows 2000 Server platform. EMC Automated Networked Storage serves as the core storage platform for the Microsoft Partner Solution Center in Redmond, Wash. The two companies are working together in a number of areas to develop and implement solutions that combine Windows Server 2003 with EMC networked storage systems, software and services. EMC is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for Service and a Gold Certified Partner for Software.