Global services companyEDS and Xdrive Technologies Inc., an Internet storage infrastructure provider, this week announced a five-year marketing alliance to offer storage solutions to the mobile market.
Digitally hosted on EDS’ Intelligent Storage Services infrastructure, the new solution allows users to upload, download, store, share and manage any digital file, via any wireless or landline device with Internet access. Designated administrators can customize access privileges for individuals and workgroups.
EDS and Xdrive estimate the solution will net $100 million over the course of the agreement. The Gartner Group has estimated total market revenue from storage services will reach nearly $7 billion by 2003.
“Xdrive has an excellent solution for online data storage with intelligent, ubiquitous access,” said John Wilkerson, EDS vice president of Global Alliances and Indirect Market Strategies. “Combining that solution with our state-of-the-art storage infrastructure will create more productive, responsive and secure digital solutions for clients around the globe.”
Offsite storage will be managed in EDS’ 12 worldwide Service Management Centers. Through these ISO 9001-certified facilities, EDS said it delivers robust, exceptionally secure and highly scalable storage services to some of the largest and most respected public and private organizations in the world.
According to the company, the EDS Intelligent Storage Services platform enables the Xdrive solution to provide nearly unlimited scalability, allowing a client to go from as little as 100 megabytes of hosted storage to as much as a terabyte almost immediately.
The agreement also provides that custom solutions using technologies from both companies will be created to solve the specific needs of different vertical markets, including finance, health care and government agencies.
“We’re very pleased to be working with the company that invented the information technologies service business and is a leader in the digital economy to provide an innovative product on a previously impossible scale,” said Paul Gigg, president and CEO of Xdrive Technologies. “This alliance capitalizes on the core strengths of both companies to the advantage of our clients.”
