StorageTek To Resell Cisco Gear

Storage Technology Corp. said Tuesday it's adding Cisco's MDS 9000 line to the portfolio of SAN switches it resells.

This agreement is part of StorageTek's strategy layer to give users more options for managing their primary storage resources via network-hosted, intelligent virtualization technology and pushing intelligence into the fabric. The vendor already resells fabric switches and directors from Brocade and McData.

The deal with Cisco calls for StorageTek to resell the MDS 9000 multilayer intelligent directors and fabric switches and related services and support under Cisco's SmartNet program. The Cisco products include MDS 9500 directors and the MDS 9216 and 9100 fabric switches. The Cisco gear is intended for applications like virtual SANs, security, advanced traffic management and unified SAN management, the vendors said.

StorageTek also named Cisco to its TekSelect partner program, in which customers get a single point of contact and support for their integrated storage solutions.

"This alliance with Cisco will help our customers improve primary storage productivity, simplify backup and recovery, and enable a flexible compliance and archiving architecture for today and the future," said J.R. Roedel, senior director of StorageTek's information lifecycle management solutions, in a statement.