Since the joint venture was first formed, the world has not heard too much from Huawei Symantec, the company that was formed via an alliance between these two companies to market storage and security gateway appliances.
The concept behind the joint venture is relatively simple. Customers are tired of having to integrate software and hardware, so why not buy an integrated appliance that combines Symantec software with hardware developed by Huawei.
The Chinese conglomerate makes extensive use of Symantec software throughout its operations, so leveraging that expertise makes a lot of sense from the perspective of recouping that investment.
According to Jane Li, Huawei Symantec general manager for North America, the benefit of the Huawei-Symantec alliance will especially become apparent as Huawei Symantec starts to deliver cloud computing services around the storage appliances it had developed.
There’s no doubt that there will be a lot of competition in the space. But the rise of appliances and cloud computing creates an opportunity for new entrants that can leverage their scale to compete aggressively.
As the amount of data that needs to be stored and managed continues to grow, secondary storage is increasingly going to turn into a services market. After all, customers don’t want to pay for the privilege of owning the equipment that houses data they are not actively using.
Amazon has already shown us how cloud computing services can transform storage. Now it’s only a matter of time before conglomerates such as Huawei add their weight to a trend that is transforming the storage landscape.
