EMC extends technology licensing deal with IBM

CEBU, Philippines - EMC Corporation, a company engaged in information infrastructure technology solutions, was recently granted an extension and expansion of technology licensing with IBM.

The five year agreement, which extends and expands the initial agreement signed in March 2006, will allow customers to continue to deploy combinations of EMC storage and IBM Power Systems technologies. The financial terms, however, were not disclosed.

“The extension and expansion of our agreement with IBM will help us continue to deliver the benefits of EMC’s information infrastructure solutions to IBM Power Systems customers,” said Barbara Robidoux, EMC vice president for Storage Product Marketing.

Robidoux added that technology licensing agreements such as this would help EMC to strengthen its commitment to provide customers using the IBM i operating environment with industry leading storage systems, software and services.”

IBM i is an operating system used on IBM Power Systems, a unified server platform from the former IBM System i and IBM System p servers. IBM i was formerly known as i5/OS or OS/400. OS/400 and AS/400 were introduced in 1988.

IBM Power System Hardware Business Line director Jun Herring said the agreement underscores IBM’s commitment to open innovation and is consistent with its drive towards industry interoperability.

“The ability for IBM i clients to attach IBM and/or EMC storage provides them with broad industry choices to meet their growing workload needs,” Herring said.

This is the latest in a series of agreements between EMC and IBM.

In June 2007, the companies extended their licensing agreement for the zSeries attachment architecture which enables the interoperability of EMC Symmetrix family of storage systems with IBM System z.

In addition to the initial IBM i licensing agreement signed in March 2006, EMC and IBM announced a licensing agreement in October 2003 that provided EMC with access to a range of storage interfaces and functionality for other IBM Systems lines and agreed to a mutual exchange of open-standards based interfaces for improved manageability and interoperability.

In June 2005, the companies extended their cooperative support agreement, which facilitates mutual response to joint customer issues including, the IBM Power System and all other IBM Systems lines.

EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) is the world's leading developer and provider of information infrastructure technology and solutions that enable organizations of all sizes to transform the way they compete and create value from their information.