IBM is about to end its partnership with NetApp in favor of selling its own gear, according to a report in Bloomberg this weekend.

Citing “an internal memo”, Bloomberg says that Big Blue will quit reselling NetApp’s N-series network attached storage devices in favor of its own home-made gear. That would include its own v3500, Storwize v5000 and Storwize V7000 Unified products, which are pretty much like-for-like replacements for NetApp’s N3000 Express, N6000 and N7000. Given that IBM’s storage sales haven’t exactly rocked the world of late, it’s a no-brainer for the company to ditch NetApp and keep as much of the profits for itself as it can.

Not that NetApp will be too pleased. It’s said that around two percent of its revenues comes from its alliance with IBM, not too mention the credibility it gains from the partnership. NetApp’s balance sheet isn’t exactly a stellar one either – and so the last thing it needs is to be ditched by one of its main partners.

IBM’s move comes as the Network Attached Storage (NAS) market faces a number of external threats. Services like Dropbox for business offer many of the functions of NAS, with the added advantage that there’s no hardware to maintain. For those who only need file access, it’s a much more sensible alternative. Meanwhile, software-as-a-service also threatens NAS as it removes the need for storage to serve the transactional needs of on-premises apps.

Both IBM and NetApp will feel threatened by these emerging technologies. But while IBM has a big puffy cloud it can use to negotiate its way through this shift, NetApp is hedging its bets on more enterprise adoption of OpenStack.

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