Storage area network provider Hitachi Data Systems couldnt acquire competitor BlueArc, so instead the two companies are entering into a five-year OEM partnership that already has resulted in a new product.
The two companies have been working for months on the new Hitachi High-Performance NAS Platform and the corporate relationship, which gives HDS, of Santa Clara, Calif., a new high-end enterprise product line to sell and BlueArc the worldwide marketing and sales arm it needs to continue growing.
Under the agreement, which was announced Dec. 11 and includes a minority stake investment in BlueArc by HDS, both companies will resell the others products.
HDS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi of Japan, sells products in 170 countries and has more than 1,000 resellers worldwide. BlueArc makes the Titan NAS (network-attached storage) system and is the worlds second-largest high-end enterprise NAS maker behind EMC.
In October, HDS began laying off sales engineers and managers to reorganize around solution and vertical specialization areas such as entertainment, health care and content management. The company declined to say how many salespeople were laid off.
“This is another step in what I refer to as the new Hitachi Data Systems,” said Tony Asaro, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group. “Less than two years ago, I used to say they were a great SAN [storage area network] storage company. But now it is clear that they are focused on being a great storage networking company with a more comprehensive portfolio of products.”
The Hitachi High-Performance NAS Platform features BlueArcs highly advanced file-based virtualization framework.
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