Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

DELL, EMC EXPAND PARTNERSHIP

In a recent news conference, Dell President and Chief Operating Officer Kevin Rollins and EMC President and CEO Joe Tucci outlined new initiatives that expand the successful partnership between the two industry leaders and are designed to deliver the benefit of Dell and EMC solutions to a broader base of customers from small organizations to large enterprise data centers.

The companies unveiled a new entry-level networked storage system and announced that Dell will offer backup and replication software from EMC's LEGATO Software division.

"The vision of the Dell and EMC partnership is to combine our strengths to scale advanced storage solutions down into volume markets as well as to improve the TCO equation for customers," said Rollins. "As we enter our third year of the partnership we mark our success today by delivering unprecedented levels of performance and value to customers of all sizes."

Tucci added, "The new system introduced today and the inclusion of LEGATO Software as part of the successful EMC/Dell relationship will enable a wider range of customers to better manage and protect their information. Now, even the smallest of enterprises have a simple, affordable way to deploy the world's leading networked storage infrastructure with the features, functions and reliability found in data centers."

Dell and EMC have teamed to provide small, medium organizations and remote workgroups with SANs (storage area network) that are affordable, easy to use and offer functionality previously found only in larger systems. The market for sub-$15,000 SANs is expected to grow to more than $1.5 billion by 2007 according to industry analysts.

Dell and EMC have also extended their manufacturing agreement, enabling Dell to manufacture the Dell/EMC AX100 systems. This is in addition to the Dell/EMC CX300 system it offers. Dell will manufacture the array worldwide for its customers at facilities in Austin, Texas; Limerick, Ireland and Penang, Malaysia.

For enterprise data centers that require bullet-proof back up and recovery capabilities for mission-critical data, Dell and EMC have created solutions using the industry's performance-leading data protection and replication software from EMC's LEGATO Software division.

The resulting LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition and LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition provide record-breaking fast back up and recovery and data replication, respectively, with characteristic Dell value. The new solution has enhanced manageability for ease of use, bundling for easy ordering, leading value and is backed by award-winning Dell and LEGATO Software support.

LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition helps reduce total cost of ownership for large customers with heterogeneous requirements, large data centers and multiple locations by simplifying, centralizing and automating data protection across the enterprise. LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition uses asynchronous, real-time data replication to copy Microsoft Windows data across any distance via LAN and WAN networks.

LEGATO NetWorker Dell Edition is available immediately worldwide and LEGATO RepliStor Dell Edition will be available worldwide this summer. Customers who purchase the Dell Editions will also receive three years of upgrade protection for no extra charge..

About EMC

EMC Corp is a provider of products, services and solutions for information storage and management that help organizations extract the maximum value from their information, at the lowest total cost, across every point in the information lifecycle. Information about EMC's products and services can be found at www.EMC.com.