Steve Duplessie, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group Inc., said the deal will provide EMC with more opportunities to sell its systems to small and midsize businesses without significantly disrupting its long-standing agreement with Dell Inc.

Dell manufactures and resells EMC's midrange and low-end Clariion arrays.

"Intel has 160,000 -- for the most part small -- VARs with incredible reach around the planet," Duplessie said. "Dell doesn't sell into Asia-Pacific. And Dell doesn't even sell a lot of the AX [models]. So it extends EMC's potential reach, and it's really not competitive."

As part of the reseller agreement, Intel will specifically enhance its processors to meet the increasing requirements of networked storage systems. Intel will also help EMC enhance its storage architectures and identify future market requirements, the companies said in a statement.