EMC Opens Up

EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) today adopted a new strategy regarding the results of the massive amount of interoperability testing with other vendors products that it conducts every year (see EMC Touts Interoperability).

Rather than limit access to the results to EMC’s partners and customers, as it’s done up until now, it’s put the whole shebang on public display in the form of “Interoperability Support Matrices” on its Website. These PDF files, accessible via http://www.emc.com/horizontal/interoperability/interop_support_matrices.jsp, effectively tell users what works with what in EMC-centric storage networks.

With the matrices, for instance, users can look up their particular type of server and operating system and see at a glance what vendors' host bus adapters (HBAs) and other storage network elements it will work with, according to EMC.

At least, that’s the idea. At press time, however, the PDF files still appeared to be password protected, and EMC was looking into the cause of the problem.

EMC freely admits that its Interoperability Support Matrices are a sales tool – although it also emphasizes that they can help users save a lot of time and money by taking the testing that EMC has done for granted. Overall, the company estimates that users now spend a staggering $30 billion a year on doing their own testing; it says its matrices could help reduce this “interoperability tax.”