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By Pia Heikkila, 23 November 2001 16:40

NEWS Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has added fuel to the turbulent storage debate by slamming EMC's ability to deliver open architecture products to its customers. Earlier last month, EMC announced it will begin manufacturing storage software for other vendors under its AutoIS scheme. However, AutoIS has come under fire from rival HDS which said EMC is not to be trusted to be fully open with other vendors. Vincent Franceschini, senior director of future technologies at HDS, said EMC has turned down his company's request to join the AutoIS initiative. He told silicon.com: "We were one of the first companies to offer our products to be interoperable with EMC's but they refused point blank. "That sort of behaviour only sends one message to their customers: 'what is the point in investing in EMC's technology if their devices won't work with other vendors' technology?'" He added that customers are at risk of losing money if they invest in EMC's technology. He added: "In order to get the maximum ROI from their storage investment, companies have to make sure all their technology is interoperable. Otherwise they might end up losing money." But Nigel Ghent, UK marketing manager at EMC, claimed HDS is only trying to sling mud at EMC. He said: "We deal with about 85 different vendors, Compaq is our latest partner, which just goes to prove that we are actually putting our money where our mouths are rather than getting involved in a war of words."