ITWire

The two companies will continue to maintain interoperability between IBM i series (Power Systems) and EMC’s storage products.

EMC also announced the D910 interface, which was developed with and supported by IBM.

The D910 provides a native I series device type and interface, but allows the use of industry standard flash, Fibre Channel, SAS and SATA drives.

The interface and device type are supported by IBM I 6.1.1 and later, and by EMC VMAX 20K and 40K storage arrays running Enginuity v5876 or later.

"The extension of this agreement with EMC to ensure broader storage compatibility and support is another example of the investments we are making to the future of IBM i as an important, strategic element in the IBM systems portfolio," said Ari Kugler, IBM’s director of business development for Power and z Systems.

Peter Conway, vice president of EMC’s enterprise storage division, said “This exclusive collaboration between EMC and IBM-with the development of technologies like D910-unlocks the ability for our customers to leverage all of the advantages of EMC VMAX storage natively in IBM i environments-helping customers to preserve and extend their mission critical investments in IBM i."