IBM Enterprise Storage Server Gaining Market Momentum; More than 1,000 'Sharks' Ordered by Companies in Every Industry - Product Information

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, Dec 13, 1999

IBM Wednesday announced that more than 1,000 Enterprise Storage Servers (ESS) -- code-named 'Shark' -- have been ordered since its availability in late September. The milestone shows that this breakthrough storage technology has begun to make significant strides in various industries.

"We're thrilled to be reaching this milestone and more committed than ever to regaining the lead in enterprise disk storage systems," said Frank Elliott, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Storage Systems Division. "Price and performance continue to set us apart from the competition. It's especially gratifying that we are winning over so many new customers in diverse industries around the world who are interested in obtaining the best performance available in the marketplace today. They're telling us that 'Shark' is blowing away other competitors' disk storage systems like EMC's Symmetrix and Hitachi Data Systems Freedom 7700E storage systems."

The 1,000th 'Shark' was ordered by a large utility company in the Southeastern United States, to meet its growing storage requirements for e-business and business intelligence applications. Hundreds of customers, including almost half of the top 100 global companies, have ordered 'Shark' and a variety of industry leaders -- from banking to insurance to health care, among others -- have benefited from the product's exceptional performance and scalability.

Built on the foundation of IBM's Seascape(1) Storage Enterprise Architecture, 'Shark' is the industry's most advanced disk storage system -- incorporating IBM-unique technology such as Parallel Access Volumes (PAV) and Multiple Allegiance which are currently unavailable in competing systems from EMC, Hitachi Data Systems and others.

The IBM Enterprise Storage Server offers customers unsurpassed scalability and performance:

Scales from 420 gigabytes to over 11 terabytes, by far the highest capacity in the industry.

Performance enhanced by two four-way symmetric multiprocessors (SMPs), Serial Storage Architecture (SSA) and a large cache with additional nonvolatile (battery-backed) memory, together with performance accelerators such as PAV and Multiple Allegiance.

Works with heterogeneous hosts and operating systems -- S/390, AS/400, UNIX, and Windows NT -- and with a variety of interfaces, including Fibre Channel, Ultra SCSI and ESCON.

Open Seascape architecture allows customers to easily add the latest technology to their current storage systems.

For more information on the Enterprise Storage Server, visit www.ibm.com/storage.> (1) Seascape is IBM's storage enterprise architecture, a blueprint for comprehensive storage solutions optimized for a connected world. The Seascape architecture outlines next-generation concepts for storage by integrating modular "building block" technologies from IBM, including disk, tape and optical storage media, powerful processors, and rich software. Integrated Seascape solutions are highly reliable, scalable and versatile, and support specialized applications on servers ranging from PCs to supercomputers.

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