Storage sector smokes a peace pipe
Storage sector smokes a peace pipe
The storage sector entered a new détente this week as vendors sat down, smoked a peace pipe and settled their differences. Central to the cold relations in the storage sector was EMC, but EMC, Veritas and Hitachi have all settled their differences now, and say the consumer will benefit.
EMC and Veritas announced on Monday that their 18 month long feud was over, and that the two companies would start sharing code so that their respective storage software programs could interoperate. Under the agreement, EMC will licence its application programming interface (API) to Veritas, who in turn will licence its APIs to EMC.
Veritas had been the leading software supplier to EMC, but EMC's move into software to compliment its strong presence in the storage hardware market led to a spate of hardware vendors moving into the storage management software market. Following EMC's October 2001 move, Hitachi and Sun Microsystems moved into the market.
In April 2002 EMC filed a suit against Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) alleging that HDS was shipping software that infringed six of their patents(read story). Hitachi responded by counter suing EMC(read story), alleging that EMC's Clariion and Symmetrix devices infringed eight of their patents.
On Tuesday both companies announced that they had settled their infringement litigation and Hitachi would make "balancing payments" to EMC. The terms of these payments were said to be confidential. EMC will exchange APIs with Hitachi.
All concerned believe the customer is the ultimate winner. EMC is in the advantageous position of being able to offer a complete bundle of hardware and software and could have further software systems to offer customers if it does buy out Legato, as has been rumoured in the United States.
Isao Ono, the chief executive officer and president of Hitachi's information and telecommunications systems division said of the settlement; "These agreements show how concern for customers' needs and a desire to explore business relationships that provide benefits for each company are the principal factors in each company's decision making."
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