Sun Tuesday announced it has combined its service offerings with that of StorageTek, the storage vendor it acquired one year ago for $4.1 billion.

The new Sun StorageTek Service Plans support program is a combination of Sun's SunSpectrum and StorageTek's TekCare programs.

Combining storage support service plans has been part of the overall integration of StorageTek into Sun, said Nigel Dessau, vice president of storage marketing for Sun.

"We wanted to make the integration with as little disruption as we could," by operating each service plan separately at first, Dessau said. "But StorageTek customers began telling us, 'There must be some added benefit to being part of Sun.'"

StorageTek customers will be able to use features of SunSpectrum's service offerings that hadn't been available to them until now, said Kitty Kelly, product marketing director for Sun Storage Services.

For instance, Sun's vendor integration program will provide support to enterprises whose StorageTek products are made up of technology from different vendors, Kelly said.

"We will case manage their problem and work with other vendors to provide support. That is an important value-add for them," she said.

StorageTek customers will also be able to access Sun's eLearning Library and continue to access the StorageTek knowledge base for product support. Sun StorageTek Service Plans also offer remote diagnosis and problem resolution of an enterprise's IT network to minimize downtime and reduce the need for service calls.

A StorageTek customer will have the opportunity to move to one of the Sun StorageTek Service Plans when their original StorageTek service contract expires, Kelly said, with comparable features and pricing, or enhanced features should they choose.

The merger brings more than 2,000 StorageTek service experts into Sun, a work force largely untouched by the merger or by Sun's announced 5,000-person workforce reduction announced in June, Kelly said.

"Service has been minimally affected, driven by the fact that we need to maintain a certain quality of service," she said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.