For example, Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC announced plans at its user conference to integrate over the next 18 months its ControlCenter storage management functionality with the Smarts network management product family, which EMC acquired in 2004.

Hewlett-Packard Co. plans to incorporate over the next six to 12 months storage management technology gained with last October's acquisition of AppIQ Inc. into its OpenView network management products, said Ash Ashutosh, chief technical officer of storage management software at the firm's StorageWorks division.

HP's storage management software already works with network management software from competitors such as BMC Software Inc. and IBM.

IBM and network management tool makers BMC, CA Inc., Fujitsu Ltd. and HP Software Inc. agreed to jointly develop an industry standard for configuration management databases to ease the integration of storage and network management systems, said Kristof Kloeckner, vice president of development for IBM's Tivoli unit.

And Sun Microsystems Inc. this week will unveil several products that will bring it closer to offering combined storage and network management capabilities, said James Whitemore, vice president and chief marketing officer for Sun's data management group.