EMC Kisses Microsoft's NAS: Page 4 of 4

In addition to EMC licensing Microsoft's Windows-Powered NAS, the two companies are collaborating in other areas. Other aspects of today's EMC/Microsoft deal:

• EMC will integrate Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 storage APIs -- Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS), Virtual Disk Services (VDS), and Multipath I/O (MPIO) -- into EMC ControlCenter and its storage platforms. "For the first time in an operating system, you're seeing very clearly defined and widely supported APIs," Hollis says.
• They will enter into a cooperative support agreement for deployments of EMC products in Windows environments, and will initiate a joint sales and marketing effort.
• EMC has signed a license agreement under Microsoft's Communication Protocol Licensing Program (MCPP) -- mandated under the agreement Microsoft reached with the U.S. Department of Justice in November 2002 -- to enable protocol interoperability between EMC's networked storage devices and Windows client PCs. In January 2003, NetApp signed on to the Microsoft protocol program (see NetApp Scores Windows Protocols).

Today's announcement follows a previous, less formal alliance EMC and Microsoft formed in February 2000, under which EMC developed and tested configurations for the Microsoft architecture.

Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch