Network Appliance and Cisco Systems have entered an agreement whereby Network Appliance will qualify and tune Network Appliance unified storage systems for maximum performance and functionality with the Cisco MDS 9000 Family of Multilayer Intelligent directors and fabric storage area networking (SAN) switches and sell them in conjunction with the NetApp enterprise storage portfolio.

The strategic relationship aims to deliver storage networking solutions through technology collaboration, joint sales and marketing activities, while providing collaborative support to help customers architect, deploy and benefit from these solutions for a variety of database and layered application needs, storage consolidation, data protection/disaster recovery, and archive/reference data requirements.

"As customers continue to demand greater end-to-end value from their storage infrastructures, they will seek out integrated solutions that are fully compatible and drive down the cost and complexity of managing expanding IT environments," said Brad Nisbet, senior research analyst at IDC. "Cooperative agreements, such as the one announced between Network Appliance and Cisco, offer customers investment protection by giving them the flexibility to grow their storage networks with more scalable solutions."