Johannesburg, 26 Mar 1999
IBM and EMC Corporation today announced a five-year strategic technology and business alliance valued at $3 billion. The alliance, which significantly expands an existing business relationship between the two industry leaders, will result in major benefits for many of IBM`s and EMC`s mutual customers.
Under terms of the accord, EMC will continue to purchase advanced IBM disk drives for incorporation into EMC`s Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems. In the future, the agreement is likely to include other IBM technologies, such as microprocessors and advanced custom chips.
The alliance also provides for a broad patent cross-license between the two companies for storage and other technologies. In addition, the companies agreed to work together to further develop mutually beneficial business opportunities.
Paul Noble, EMC`s Executive Vice President, Products and Offerings, said, "We consider EMC`s disk drive testing and qualification process to be the most stringent in the world. Through its leadership component technology and commitment to building its OEM business, IBM has been one of the few suppliers able to meet our requirements. We began integrating IBM`s advanced disk drives into our Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems more than a year ago, and the results have been excellent. We believe customers will welcome this long-term commitment to work together for their benefit, ensuring not only the continued integration of IBM components into EMC`s software-driven intelligent storage systems, but also the promise of even greater levels of interoperability between EMC and IBM systems a combination that already represents the world's most common environment for mission-critical information management and protection.
"Today one of IBM's fiercest rivals in the storage systems business now becomes one of our best customers for advanced technology," said Jim Vanderslice, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Technology Group. "We look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship with EMC, one of the most sophisticated users of advanced disk drive technology. We also view this agreement as further evidence of the success of our strategy to aggressively pursue new growth opportunities for IBM`s leadership OEM technology products.
IBM has identified services, software and the sale of its leadership technologies as key growth areas for the company. Last October IBM created a new organisation, the IBM Technology Group, to pursue new growth opportunities and focus additional attention on the OEM marketplace. The first results stemming from this initiative were announced March 4, when IBM and Dell Computer Corp. announced a $16 billion technology pact, the largest agreement of its kind in the information technology industry.
EMC Corporation, a Fortune 500 company based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, is the world`s technology and market leader in the rapidly growing market for intelligent enterprise storage systems, software and services. The company`s products store, retrieve, manage, protect and share information from all major computing environments, including UNIX, Windows NT and mainframe platforms. The company has offices worldwide, trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol EMC, and is a component of the S&P 500 Index. For further information about EMC and its storage solutions, EMC`s corporate web site can be accessed at http://www.EMC.com.
This release contains forward-looking statements as defined under the Federal Securities Laws. Actual results could differ materially from those projected as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to:
component quality and availability;
delays in the development of new technology and the transition to new products;
competitive factors;
economic trends in various geographic markets;
deterioration or termination of the agreements with certain of the Company's OEMs, suppliers or resellers;
Year 2000 issues; and
other one-time events and other factors disclosed previously and from time to time in EMC`s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
More information about IBM and its advanced storage, microelectronics, networking, displays and other OEM technologies can be found on the Web at www.ibm.com.
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