Alliances Pair Storage, Content ManagementAlliances Pair Storage, Content Management

Records management is emerging as the fastest-growing segment of the content-management market. Capitalizing on that trend, storage vendor Storage Technology Corp. last week formed a global alliance with content-management supplier Ixos Software AG, just three weeks after rival EMC Corp. said it would buy content-management vendor Documentum Inc. for $1.7 billion.

StorageTek will immediately start selling Ixos' E-mail-archiving software. Companies dealing with regulatory-compliance issues look at E-mail as a logical place to begin developing a comprehensive content-storage strategy, StorageTek director of global services Roger Good said in a conference call announcing the alliance. "Individual users are making real-time decisions about what to throw away, what to archive, and how to manage it, not realizing they're making decisions that are vital to corporate assets," he said.

Next year, StorageTek plans to offer additional Ixos tools. Hitachi Data Systems just signed a distribution agreement with Ixos as well.

Selling a unified system, though, requires convincing some execs to give up existing systems filled with historical data. Investment banking firm Thomas Weisel Partners uses iLumin Software Services Inc.'s Assentor to archive E-mail. Chief technology officer Beth Cannon says EMC's ability to offer records management won't affect her decision about whether to award it a disk-storage contract. "I don't really want to change who's doing archiving," she says. What could change her mind? "If it'll make things simpler and cost less."