Dell, HP lure storage customers

Cox Communications has installed eight high-end Dell Computer storage systems, the companies said Tuesday. The company purchased 20 terabytes worth of storage capacity on eight "storage area networks," or SANs, special-purpose high-speed networks devoted to data storage tasks. Cox declined to say which products were used other than that they stemmed from Dell's partnership to sell gear from storage specialist EMC.

Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard, a competitor to Dell and EMC, announced a new customer of its own. Maritz, which supplies travel and marketing research, has selected HP's midrange Enterprise Virtual Array storage system as part of a two-year project to consolidate its computing infrastructure.