EMC Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc. on Monday announced they are working together on an end-to-end storage consolidation solution for remote offices and long-distance data.

The product will combine Cisco"s WAFS (wide are file services) technology and EMC"s NAS products. Using the combined product, customers can consolidate branch office data into central datacenters, allowing that data to be centrally stored, managed, protected, and accessed, according to EMC officials.

Under terms of the deal, Cisco will sell and support the EMC NS Series/Integrated NAS solution together with the recently introduced Cisco File Engine, an appliance-based product that uses WAFS to give networks LAN-like performance when accessing central files from remote locations. Using the integrated solution, IT managers will be able to do centralized backup and disaster recovery of branch office data. Centralized management will help simplify and reduce the cost of data administration for remote offices throughout the enterprise, according to EMC officials.

"Both Cisco and EMC are strategic vendors of datacenter solutions for enterprise and service provider customers globally," said Luca Cafiero, senior vice president and general manager of the datacenter, switching, storage, and wireless technologies group at Cisco. "This agreement enables Cisco to offer a comprehensive network-enabled solution that spans customer requirements from the branch to the datacenter," he said.

"Today?s announcement is a natural extension of our ongoing partnering with Cisco to bring leading solutions to market that help our mutual customers manage information throughout its life cycle and solve some of their most pressing business challenges," said Howard Elias, executive vice president of corporate marketing and office of technology at EMC. "The combination of technology from these two industry leaders will form a compelling enterprise-class data consolidation and management solution."