IBM and HItachi Data Systems Inc. (HDS) announced that they have signed joint licensing agreements to extend the interoperability and compatibility of their storage systems. The companies also said they will collaborate on product interoperability testing to support Hitachi's storage systems' compatibility with IBM's zSeries mainframe. IBM has licensed its mainframe Ficon and Escon attachment specification for its high-end TotalStorage DS8000 Series and Shark storage array to Hitachi.

Under the agreement, Hitachi's storage systems will support IBM's mirroring and replication software, including Global and Metro data mirroring functions, z/OS Global Mirror, FlashCopy, parallel access volumes, as well as IBM's Geographically Dispersed Parallel Sysplex clustering technology.