Huawei-Symantec is now selling storage in North America in partnership with Force10 Networks.

Huawei-Symantec (H-S) is a joint venture between data protection and information management software vendor Symantec and Chinese IT giant Huawei, which says it has over 1,000 customers in more than 40 countries.

Huawei builds a line of OceanSpace file and block-access storage products and the N8000 unified storage system, released in 2010, is paired with Force10's S601Gbit/E switch.

The two products in various configurations, including Force10's top-of-rack switches, are sold through Synnex distribution in North America and Zycko in EMEA.

We understand that a 10Gbit/E line is coming from Force10, supported by H-S, with 40Gbit/E coming after that.

H-S and Force10 will look for SYNNEX and Zycko resellers to target what they are calling strategic vertical markets: the cloud, finance, healthcare, high-performance computing, oil and gas, and telecommunications.

For Symantec this represents another step forward to selling hardware, albeit indirectly. There are potential synergies to be realised by providing Symantec software products with the Huawei OceanSpace storage and the Force Ten switches. It will be small potatoes at first but, if H-S and Force10 have a good channel story, then there could be growth. ®