Long troubled by the art of selling storage, Sun Microsystems has decided that buttering up rivals might help it move gear. The company this week celebrated a new partner program with the likes of EMC and HP and finally announced its heterogeneous tape management plans.

The Sun StorageTek Ready program looks more fluff than substance. Sun has long depended on the kindness of partners in the storage game, so teaming with third parties is hardly news. Although, Sun does appear to be drawing closer ties to traditional enemies such as EMC and HP. The members of Sun's exclusive partner gig have pledged to make their gear work well with Sun's own products and to consider reselling arrangements where appropriate.

Touching stuff.

BakBone Software, Brocade, Dot Hill, EMC, Hitachi, HP, LSI Logic, McData, Oracle, and Symantec are the members of Sun's storage club.

On the product front, Sun announced that its VTL (virtual tape library) Plus appliance will ship this quarter. The product is essentially Sun's replacement for the Virtual Storage Manager Open tape technology crafted more than two years ago by the StorageTek crew. Sun whacked StorageTek's efforts, post acquisition, much to the dismay of customers.

FalconStor is apparently involved with making some of the software for Sun's VTL product, although neither company will provide solid details. ®

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