Sun Microsystems, Imation Expand Storage Partnership

Sun Microsystems and Imation reported Wednesday that they will extend their existing strategic partnership in storage technologies to work together to develop and launch an extension of the Sun StorageTek T9840 tape drive platform and to investigate alternative storage technologies.

In recent months, both firms have been acquiring their respective ways to more advanced storage technologies primarily in the area of tape and archival storage.

The firms also said they will examine whether Imation's Ulysses hard disk cartridge technology can be integrated into Sun's automated tape library product family. Imation's Ulysses technology-- whose HDD cartridges are the same size and shape of industry standard tape drive cartridges--is a promising product development that can enable users to store data at much higher speeds than tape technology.

Sun and Imation have partnered in the past and the partnership has been growing since last year when Sun acquired storage vendor StorageTek, which also was a longtime user of Imation tape media.

"We have a long history of working with StorageTek, now a subsidiary of Sun, in the development of advanced tape cartridges," said Frank Russomanno, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Imation, in a statement.The firms noted that Imation is the approved supplier to Sun StorageTek for its branded LTO-2 and LTO-3 tape cartridges.