This looks like the first result of the 5/22/2000 Strategic Lab Services Agreement between Microsoft and McDATA. Of course, Intel and Microsoft have had broad strategic alliances with EMC (including Data General) for several years now.
A element of Microsoft's Enterprise Day this week will be a joint project by Hitachi, McData, and Microsoft combining Exchange servers with Hitachi storage and McData network switches to create an Exchange-based storage area network. "Companies are disappointed with Exchange because it crashes a lot," says a source with knowledge of the deal. "Hitachi builds storage that doesn't break. McData builds switches that don't break." This kind of capability was supposed to be a future offering for Exchange, says the source, but "with this partnership, the system is available now."
siliconinvestor.com
"Microsoft is teaming with McDATA because of its extremely robust product features and value-added services provided by the Systems Integration Lab," said Dave Roush, director of Availability and Benchmarking Services at Microsoft. "No other SAN provider in the industry today can provide the high availability features or depth of application expertise that was required to underlay highly available SAN and Windows 2000-based deployments. By teaming with McDATA, we can reduce SAN implementation barriers and offer our customers a unique opportunity to see first-hand that our software technology meets enterprise high-availability computing requirements."
In addition to the High Availability Solution Center, McDATA is a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider and a customer of Microsoft Premier Support for Developers services. Through these programs, McDATA gains full access to Microsoft development, support and testing services. As a result, both companies can address enterprise customer requirements quickly and efficiently, while alleviating the risk associated with deploying SANs
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