Goulden says the features of the MDS 9000 that EMC is "very excited" about are that it's a multiprotocol switch -- with support for Fibre Channel, Fibre Channel over IP, and iSCSI -- and so it is well suited for customers who are looking to merge their storage infrastructures with IP networking. He also points to Cisco's Virtual SAN (VSAN) and management modules as standout features.
EMC's ControlCenter management software will support the Cisco MDS 9000 family -- and beyond that, EMC will port certain of its storage applications to run on the "intelligent" applications module, about which Cisco has not furnished many details.
"Storage networks are not too intelligent today," Goulden says. "That's where the new intelligence will be added incrementally." Neither EMC nor Cisco would say when these "intelligent" features will be available, but Goulden says the applications will include path optimization and data classification.
EMC and Cisco also plan to define an industry standard -- which they expect to submit to the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) -- for application programming interfaces (APIs) to intelligent switches.
There had been some speculative chatter in the industry that EMC would certify Cisco's SAN switches but not resell them. Today's announcement, however, not only shows EMC will resell the switches but also that the two companies are engaging in broader codevelopment projects. EMC currently resells switches from both Brocade Communications Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: BRCD) and McData Corp. (Nasdaq: MCDTA), the two leading SAN switch vendors today. [Ed. note: Perhaps only until Cisco really starts sinking its teeth into this market?]
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