Quantum Corp. announced an expansion of its relationship with EMC Corp., highlighting a software licensing and distribution agreement under which EMC will license Quantum’s target-based data de-duplication and replication software. The agreement builds on the strong collaboration the two companies have established over the last several years through EMC’s reselling of Quantum’s midrange and enterprise tape library platforms.

By eliminating redundant data in the backup process, de-duplication enables users to retain significantly more data on disk for fast recovery and reduces the bandwidth needed to replicate such data between sites for disaster recovery. The software that EMC will license from Quantum is designed to meet specific target-based de-duplication requirements for performance, scalability, availability and flexibility. Key differentiating components of the software include a high performance file system, very granular de-duplication algorithms and multiple, policy-based de-duplication methods.

"De-duplication has created new and rapidly growing market opportunities that EMC is addressing through a comprehensive range of backup and recovery solutions, which meet the widest variety of customer use cases," said Barbara Robidoux, vice president of product marketing, EMC Storage Division. "We looked at the target-based de-duplication software of all the major players in this market and concluded that Quantum’s technology was clearly best suited to meet the needs of our customers. As we develop and prepare to launch these new offerings, we’ve been very pleased with how it’s performed in our development, qualification and customer testing process."

"The licensing agreement with EMC is a strong validation of Quantum’s leadership in de-duplication technology and reflects our strategy of not only incorporating this technology into our branded DXi-Series family but also making it more widely available through key partnerships," said Rick Belluzzo, chairman and CEO of Quantum. "Like EMC, we believe that leveraging combined strengths through collaborations such as this can provide tremendous benefits to customers, and we look forward to working together to meet evolving data protection needs."