EMC and Microsoft renew deal

Storage giant EMC and its similarly big partner, Microsoft renewed their deal last week to bolster product innovation and interoperability in the virtualization, security and content management markets.

The alliance, which extends through 2011, was inked by CEO Joe Tucci and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer last week at the New York CIO Summit.

As a result of the deal, joint customers of EMC and Microsoft will be able to be more productive through the use of the companies’ products and be able to deploy less costly IT infrastructures.

The collaboration between the two companies includes a deep focus on data protection, increased productivity through centralized management of content and security software that helps prevent data breaches.

Part of the ongoing alliance is EMC’s commitment to developing solutions around Microsoft SharePoint so that customers can use Microsoft Office and SharePoint interfaces to interact with processes and workflows managed with EMC data protection products.

Microsoft has responded to the deal with tight interoperability between EMC’s RSA DLP Suite 6.5 and Microsoft Active Directory Rights Management Services. Because of the alliance, security managers can now implement information access and usage polices throughout the data center and on endpoints based on the sensitivity of information.