Brothers in arms: Compaq, IBM join forces to promote storage networking

Two of the world's largest computer and server companies, Compaq Computer and IBM, joined forces earlier this month to advance their respective positions in the storage networking market. They plan to move forward by driving the storage industry to a more open, standards-based environment with a special focus on interoperability.

Because industry organizations already are in place to drive open standards, some in which the two companies already participate - along with storage networking leader EMC and others - the move is a curious one.

An EMC spokesman called it "a bit of a desperation move."

Compaq and IBM will invest up to a combined $1 billion to accelerate customer acceptance of open storage networking solutions. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the length was not specified beyond "long term."

The companies have implemented OEM agreements to use each other's technology. Compaq will OEM IBM's Shark Enterprise Storage Servers and resell selected Tivoli system management software. IBM will OEM Compaq's StorageWorks Modular Array storage technology. IBM also will support Compaq's VersaStortechnology for storage virtualization.

While there exists a strategic melding of each other's technology, the agreement has more to do with determining which company decides what is or isn't an open standard.

"At the heart of this announcement is an overall plan to work together to define and promote standards for open network storage," said Michael Cappellas, CEO of Compaq. "We will work on a common open architecture to support storage virtualization, data sharing and policy-based storage management."

The companies expect to gain market share by ensuring the interoperability of their systems. "Whether a customer decides to implement software-based management from either company, they can be assured that each of our respective offerings will work in [an] open SAN environment," said Howard Elias, vice president and general manager of storage products for Compaq.

Compaq and IBM expect interoperability to drive the growth of the storage area network (SAN) market to $48 billion by 2003. Although they are working in cooperation, each company will pursue its share of that market. "While we are collaborating and working together on standards and interoperability, we will be competing vigorously in the marketplace for customers," Elias said.

Reselling each other's solutions, including their technologies in one another's platforms, and jointly investing up to $1 billion dollars to promote interoperability hardly seems to lend itself to a competitive environment. However, it may enable Compaq and IBM to better compete with EMC, the current leader in storage networking.

"The whole purpose behind industry standards is that they are applicable across the industry. Once they are defined, we would look for all storage vendors to support those standards in their products," said Linda Sanford, general manager of IBM's storage subsystem division.

Compaq and IBM consider EMC's Symmetrix storage system to be proprietary. EMC disagrees. "We invented open storage in the early '90s, based on the premise that the customer should be able to store data on an agnostic technology that gave no account to what kind of computer they were running," said the EMC spokesman. "[Interoperability] is a goal everyone has, and it is not accomplished by two companies going off in a corner and agreeing on things."

Defining the broad perspective is the goal of organizations such as the Storage Networking Industry Association. SNIA has an interoperability work group charged with accelerating the adoption of storage network technologies by promoting standards-based interoperability of storage network products and applications.

Compaq, IBM, EMC and many other companies are members of SNIA and have worked on interoperability issues in this forum. The IBM/Compaq alliance "is not to usurp any of the activity of SNIA or the Fibre Channel Association," Elias said. "But instead of just one company standing up and saying what we are going to do... you now have two leaders in the industry that will now guarantee at least two product lines will work together, and two is the start of the snowball."

Compaq and IBM are losing patience with the progress of SNIA. Though the companies may appear to be going outside the association to get the job done, they insist that isn't the case.

"We are including and actively working with SNIA and the standardization committees, but frankly, when you put six or eight of the largest IT vendors in a room and ask them to agree on something, it takes time," said Walter Raizner, vice president of marketing for IBM's storage subsystem division.

EMC was not asked to be part of this initiative, said EMC's spokesman. "We have done a lot of work toward standards. The notion that EMC somehow opposes it as the market leader is pure [bunk]," he said.