Sun Microsystems, Hitachi Ltd. and its wholly owned subsidiary, Hitachi Data Systems, recently announced a far-reaching agreement.
Sun has signed a distributor agreement for certain high-end Hitachi Data Systems products; Sun and Hitachi Data Systems will cross-license and distribute storage software; both companies will collaborate on the development of storage software; and the companies will work on expanding integration capabilities worldwide.
In addition, Sun and Hitachi Data Systems will work on expanding their joint-supplier relationship and invest in joint global mission-critical support centers.
Sun said the agreement will change the competitive landscape for storage and data management in the enterprise. “We’ve pulled together all the right pieces to liberate customers from the expensive lock-in that our competitors enforce,” said Mark Canepa, executive vice president of Sun Network Storage. “Sun’s investment in building customer choice, control and affordability is paying dividends — stay tuned for more milestones in the coming quarters.”
“Over the last five years, Sun has evolved from being No. 1 in workstation servers to being the premier server vendor for mission-critical datacenters,” said Ed Zander, president and chief operating officer at Sun. “Sun is building on a core competency in storage with this bold relationship. Our focus is on delivering end-to-end webtone solutions to meet the most demanding customer requirements.”
“Hitachi Ltd. is proud to announce our new agreement with Sun Microsystems,” said Hiroaki Nakanishi, managing officer and general manager of the International Operations Group for Information and Telecommunication Systems Group at Hitachi. “The complementary skills that Sun and Hitachi bring to each other will help both companies achieve continuing success in their storage businesses.”