HOPKINTON, MA -- EMC Corporation, a leading provider of network attached storage (NAS) systems and software, today unveiled a new customer support and technology qualification program, designed to help customers implement NAS-based applications more effectively and provide the highest levels of support and application availability. The EMC NAS Partner Program will facilitate EMC's work with some of the world's leading application, anti-virus, product lifecycle management (PLM), networking and other companies. A unique part of the EMC NAS Partner Program will be the development of joint cooperative support agreements (CSAs) between EMC and partners. These ensure service cooperation, joint escalation and rapid mutual response to provide customers with the highest levels of application availability and uptime. EMC is extending its renowned E-Lab Tested(TM)program and will qualify core NAS-based applications with EMC's industry-leading NAS solutions at EMC's 13,000 square-foot NAS Competency Center in Southboro, Mass. Qualification and the E-Lab Tested logo provide customers with additional assurances of interoperability and help them speed implementation and reduce risk when deploying these applications. Charter members of the new program include: Aelita Software Corp., Cisco Systems, Inc., Citrix Systems, Inc., CommVault Systems, Inc., EDS PLM Solutions, Legato Systems, Inc., Network Associates, Precise Software Solutions, PTC, Quest Software, Inc., Rational Software Corp., Small Wonders Software, Sophos Plc and Trend Micro, Inc. "Enterprise storage users are now deploying high-performance NAS in applications that place heavy demands on existing IP networks and storage infrastructure," said John S. Webster, Senior Analyst and Founder Data Mobility Group. "This presents challenges for those wishing to reduce complexity, mitigate risk, and see rapid return on their NAS investment - all at the same time. The EMC NAS Partner program addresses the complexity and risk by testing and qualifying configurations up front within pre-defined application environments, and by offering cooperative service agreements along with participating vendors after the sale." Soni Jiandani, vice president of Marketing for the Storage Technology Group at Cisco Systems, Inc., said, "Network technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet connectivity and intelligent network-based services for high availability, Quality of Service and security, play a critical role in the efficient delivery of NAS applications. Cisco's technology and support leadership in both of these areas combined with our work with EMC through this program, is yet another proof point on how we are working together to deliver easy-to-deploy solutions for our enterprise customers." Bill Thornburg, product marketing director, Rational Software Corporation, a charter member of the program, added, "Software developers rely on Rational's tools to liberate them from the chaos that can plague software projects, enabling them to increase productivity and meet their goals. By working closely with EMC on joint customer support and application interoperability, we will be able to provide our mutual customers with the robust NAS infrastructure required to meet their demanding requirements for information scalability, reliability, performance, protection and management." Chuck Hollis, EMC's Vice President of Markets and Products, added, "With NAS-based applications now critical to many core IT functions, customers want more from their technology providers. This program brings together EMC's focus on customer satisfaction and its engineering resources to provide customers with the best return on their NAS investment." According to Gartner Dataquest, EMC led the total NAS market with 48.6% revenue share in 2001, outpacing the previous market leader by nearly 14 percentage points.