HP, AppIQ Strike Storage Management Alliance

Hewlett-Packard and AppIQ Inc. on Tuesday said they have formed an OEM alliance to develop heterogeneous storage management products.

The two vendors said they will invest in joint product development, marketing, and services delivery. HP will make AppIQ StorageAuthority Suite available as part of HP Storage Essentials, an umbrella effort from HP to unify server and storage management. StorageAuthority is AppIQ's multi-vendor storage resource management (SRM) and storage area network (SAN) management product line.

The partnership builds on a key component of HP's unified infrastructure management strategy, permitting it to offer a best-in-class storage area management solution that fits well with its server management platform, said Steve Duplessie, senior analyst, for the Enterprise Strategy Group, in a statement. "It's also good that the companies share a common strategic vision, with AppIQ's storage utility message and HP's Adaptive Enterprise message both focused on making IT more responsive to business needs," Duplessie added.

The alliance provides the first offering to integrate into HP Systems Insight Manager, the software foundation of HP's unified server-storage management strategy. Insight Manager enables basic server and storage management functions and supports an open architecture.

HP Storage Essentials, Powered by AppIQ, is expected to be available later this month, the vendors said.