Sun alliance brightens StorageTek horizon

Under the two-year partnership, Louisville-based StorageTek and Sun will combine sales forces with StorageTek (NYSE: STK) reselling a Sun mid-range disk system – code-named “purple” – and Sun (Nasdaq: SUNW) reselling StorageTek tape drives and tape libraries.

StorageTek Chief Strategist Walt Hinton and Sun Vice President Joe Womack said each company would benefit with increased coverage in the SAN field. Hinton said StorageTek gains from Sun’s dot-com presence and that Sun gains from StorageTek’s experience in tape storage, which would back up the massive amounts of data that SANs would pool. “We need each other,” Hinton told an audience of about…