History (1999): StorageTek and Sun in Multi-Year Agreement

Under a new multi-year agreement, StorageTek will OEM next gen open enterprise disk technology from Sun Microsystems, while Sun will reciprocate as an OEM of StorageTek’s next gen enterprise 9840 tape automation systems, all with an eye to integrating SANs.

Both will sell the other’s products through direct and indirect channels.

The 2 companies have complementary businesses. The computer manufacturer was until now absent from the tape market. All of StorageTek’s efforts to construct disk arrays for open systems have not yielded much.

The storage company will now also be a major supporter of Sun’s Jiro platform, which uses Java and Jini technologies to make SANs more manageable and interoperable.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 140 on September 1999 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.