The re-branded EMC products will be part of Cisco’s WAFS offering, which is based on the technology Cisco gained when it bought start-up Actona Technologies Inc last year. They will reach the market in the next quarter.

WAFS wide area file services – technology is aimed at reducing data storage at large companies’ branch offices, by relocating data to central data centers. As a result, when customers install a WAFS system, they are very likely to need to boost their central storage capacity. This is why Cisco wants an OEM deal with EMC.

Until now we haven’t had a ready answer when customers have asked where to store the data. Our answer was to leave it up to them, said John Henze. But Cisco’s answer in future will be to use EMC’s NS500 and NS700 NAS filers. These will have been re-badged as Cisco devices, and packaged together with Cisco’s WAFS systems, so giving customers a single source of support for the entire set-up.

There are other ways of doing this, and we could have just set up a co-marketing deal. But OEMing is the best way to provide one throat [to choke for support], said John Henze, director of marketing for the caching services business unit at Cisco.

Cisco entered the storage market in earnest in 2003 with the launch of its Andiamo-based SAN switches and directors, and has since clawed itself a mid-teens percentage market share which is still growing.

Cisco said it has sold disk storage before, including low-end OEMed NAS sold with its wireless routers. But the EMC gear will be the first mid-range and high-end storage disks and software to appear in Cisco’s portfolio.

They put their toe in the storage market, and now they’ve got half their foot in the water. The tide is rising, and it’s going to be the whole ankle soon, said Mesabi Group analyst David Hill.

Cisco stressed that the deal will not prevent customers from using Cisco’s WAFS products with NAS filers from other suppliers, such as Network Appliance Inc the other giant of the NAS market alongside EMC.

In any case the OEM deal will not have a measurable impact on EMC’s NAS market share for some while. Although WAFS sales are tipped for strong growth this year, the technology is only in its infancy, and Actona had made only a handful of sales before the Cisco take-over.

Hill said that Cisco’s decision to OEM filers from EMC rather than NetApp reflected EMC’s long established and close links to Cisco.