Dell, EMC expand storage partnership

Dell and EMC said Tuesday that they have extended their partnership through 2013. As part of that agreement, EMC will allow Dell to sell its Celerra NX4 storage system.

EMC and Dell formed a partnership in October 2001 as the duo focused on storage customers. The alliance had mostly focused on the midmarket, an area where Dell is strong. EMC at the time had been primarily focused on large storage deployments.

Dell and EMC have deployed 60,000 storage systems. Current plans call for EMC's Celerra NX4, which was launched in August, to be added to Dell's storage lineup in early 2009. Dell's EMC portfolio also includes networked storage systems designed to support solid state drives, data warehousing gear and other mid-range systems.

Storage has been one of the strong areas for Dell and the company has been filling in its portfolio via the EMC partnership and acquisitions such as the EqualLogic purchase. In Dell's most fiscal third quarter, the company said that server storage and services now represents half of its gross profit, up from 44 percent at the beginning of the fiscal year.