7 February 2002 Sun Microsystems and storage specialist EMC have become embroiled in a public spat after Sun declared its intention to push EMC from its dominant position in the data storage market.

The row was ignited on the day that systems vendor Sun released an array of new mid-range data storage products, as well as new high-end storage systems, software and services in a bid to increase its share of the corporate storage market.

More particularly, the company announced new models for its ‘T3’ storage arrays, called ‘StorEdge 3900’ and ‘StorEdge 6900’, which are aimed at the mid-range Unix market.

But EMC has been quick to respond to Sun’s challenge. It accused Sun of merely re-branding and re-packaging “the same old devices”, while failing to meet the needs of its customers. EMC said that Sun’s products are technically inferior and that they are not up to current industry standards.

Sun dismissed EMC’s criticisms as sour grapes from a company that has been losing market share in recent years. But Sun has been trying to push into storage for a number of years with mixed results and it still stands a long way behind EMC in the enterprise storage market.

Sun’s new tack is to try and push through a set of open standards that could help customers manage large networks of storage systems with products supplied from a range of vendors. EMC has been slow to adopt such standards for fear of undermining its position.