Intel, Huawei to Co-Develop New Big Data Storage

Huawei, one of China’s largest IT product and service providers and a company that dearly wants to make larger inroads into the U.S. markets, revealed April 8 that it has signed a new strategic partnership with Intel, the world’s largest processor maker.

Under terms of this agreement, both companies will augment their existing collaboration in new products, product R&D and joint marketing initiatives to drive the advancement of big data-related IT—mostly around storage.

However, the companies did not say that the agreement would preclude any other type of IT co-development, such as in big data analytics or networking—two hot areas of IT at the moment.

Huawei and Intel will staff a new technical team to conduct development in IT architecture, R&D road map sharing, and optimization of products, solutions and new technologies. The two companies will also start a new marketing operation that will include strategies, trade fair cooperation and joint branding initiatives.

Huawei and Intel already have had a long-term cooperative relationship in building storage IT, which will serve as the basis for the new big data developmental work.

Huawei’s OceanStor 9000 big data storage system, which uses Intel’s high-end architecture, will serve as a foundational solution.

The OceanStor 9000 big data storage system is designed to provide high performance, scalability and super-large single file system sharing for large, unstructured data workloads.

Intel didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment on the deal on April 8.