Hewlett-Packard Co. and Network Appliance Inc. are working on devices to connect network-attached storage (NAS) devices to storage area networks (SANs). Software coming from both companies will hopefully unify storage management by adding NAS gateways to SANs. This will allow applications to access data from independent NAS devices and will consolidate file servers.

HP will launch a new NAS-to-SAN software offering in December of this year. The product is aimed at users of the HP StorageWorks NAS 2000 device who are looking to repurpose NAS appliances as HP StorageWorks 4000s SAN gateways. HP will also produce a new NAS management simplification tool to make the job of managing such systems easier.