IBM, NetApp Join Forces to Battle EMC
In a move that may shake up the storage industry, IBM and Network Appliance have established a strategic relationship to capture market share away from EMC. Under the agreement, Big Blue will sell NetApp's attached storage and information lifecycle management solutions and NetApp will make IBM its preferred supplier of tape products and use IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager.
EMC may be the overall market leader, but according to IDC, Network Appliance is the incumbent in the NAS market. IDC forecasts that the NAS segment alone will be valued at $3 billion USD by 2008. By partnering with IBM, NetApp will have access to more international markets than it would through its OEM resellers.
The partnership is perceived by industry analysts to be mutually beneficial. David Freund, Practice Leader, Information Architectures Illuminata, told BetaNews, "The alliance looks to be fairly symbiotic. IBM's logo, along with the support that backs it up, will help place more NetApp gear into more Fortune 500 enterprises.
"At the same time, having "NetApp Inside" will catapult IBM's new NAS products into its reseller channels with relative ease. Neither would be good news for EMC."
Freund also pointed out that IBM has had a "sizeable hole" in its NAS product portfolio after it withdrew from the low-end of the market. With the growing demand for NAS offerings in the small business space, IBM has had to "turn elsewhere" to "solution completers" that were commonly using NetApp products to fill in the gaps in IBM's solutions.
"A more formal relationship seems a natural move," added Freund.
IBM will begin to brand Network Appliance's NAS, iSCSI, IP-SAN and NearStore solutions by the second half of 2005.
"The choice for customers in the management and storage of information could not be more clear - open solutions from IBM and NetApp that provide systems level innovation versus proprietary point solutions from EMC," said Andy Monshaw, General Manager, IBM Storage Systems.
In a recent interview with BetaNews, IBM Global Storage Software general manager Jens Tiedemann stressed the important role open solutions play in IBM's storage game plan, saying, "It's by only embracing Linux and open standards that IBM has had a big comeback in servers. Frankly, that is what we are counting on for virtualization to do in the marketplace, to level the playing field."
The agreement was announced to the press during a joint teleconference on Wednesday. Financial terms have not yet been disclosed.