FW: IBM and Hitachi joint venture, what it means to you.

Just received this today. I'm not sure if I like the sounds of this. Does
this also include iSeries disks? See the first paragraph below between the
asterisks.

Chris Whisonant
The Comporium Group
Senior Mid-Range Systems Administrator
IBM Certified Specialist
(803) 326-7270
mailto:chris.whisonant@comporium.com


-----Original Message-----
From: champion.info@championsg.com [mailto:champion.info@championsg.com]
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 5:28 PM
To: chris.whisonant@comporium.com
Subject: IBM and Hitachi joint venture, what it means to you.


On Tuesday, April 16, 2002, IBM and Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)
announced a preliminary joint venture agreement that includes
the **sale of IBM's hard disk drive (HDD) business to HDS** and the
collaboration to accelerate the development and delivery of next
generation storage management technology.

What does this mean to you and how could it affect your business
infrastructure?

Champion views this announcement as a good business decision
for both organizations with customers benefiting from its
results as this venture is expected to provide customers with
improved:

·    Storage utilization for reduced TCO and ease of system(s)
     management
·    Interoperability and industry standards for storage networks
     and storage systems
·    Advanced functionality
·    Better price and performance from new technology offerings

This announcement emphasizes IBM's and HDS's commitment to
further developing open standards so that customer's have
more options.  By jointly developing a single approach (industry
standard) for storage virtualization, companies will reap the
rewards with improved storage manageability and lower cost of
ownership.

According to IBM, this announcement "is a testament to our
leadership in storage technology innovation, our commitment to
interoperability, and our insight into customer's business issues.
It firmly demonstrates our willingness to take the bold steps
necessary to address those issues".

To read the IBM announcement, please visit:
http://www-916.ibm.com/press/prnews.nsf/jan/4B33EA877A332CA585256B9D00761267

For additional information, please contact Champion Solutions
Group at:  800-771-7000 or via e-mail at
mailto:champion.info@championsg.com.