IBM External Disk Storage Systems Outpaces Growth of Storage Market, According to Leading Research Firm

IBM today announced that it beat EMC, HP and Hitachi in external disk storage systems in year-over-year worldwide revenue growth for the first quarter of 2006, according to data released by IDC [1]. With worldwide year-over-year revenue growth in external disk storage systems of 14.8% for the quarter, IBM easily outpaced the overall marketplace, which grew by a strong 10.3%.

IBM delivered strong year-over-year revenue growth in North America in the first quarter of 2006 with 64% growth, beating all major vendors tracked by IDC for the report, including EMC, HP, Dell, Hitachi, NetApp and Sun. IBM also grew its revenue in the worldwide networked disk storage systems market (NAS plus Open SAN) with year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter of 22.6%.

"For the fifth quarter in a row, IBM has exceeded the growth rate of the external disk storage systems market by delivering innovative storage solutions that help our customers manage their information on demand requirements," said Barry Rudolph, IBM vice president, storage systems. IBM has the broadest storage product line, including world leading virtualization, which helped drive excellent growth across the product portfolio."

IBM continues to extend its leadership in storage in many areas. The company recently announced that it had demonstrated a world record in data density on linear magnetic tape by packing data onto a test tape at a density of 6.67 billion bits per square inch -- more than 15 times the data density of today's most popular industry standard magnetic tape products. Last week, IBM announced breakthrough enhancements to its storage virtualization engine software -- IBM® System Storage SAN Volume Controller 4.1 -- that are designed to extend its reach to greater distances, greater speeds and a greater number of platforms, while this week, IBM announced the latest additions to the IBM System Storage N series line of NAS offerings. Also in May, IBM announced that the IBM Federated Records Management solution and IBM System Storage DR550 were named AIIM's "Best of Show" in the records management and hardware storage categories.

IBM's external disk storage offerings are a key component of its Information of Demand strategy that is helping clients integrate their business processes to better address core functional and business requirements.

About Information on Demand

The desire by businesses to access, manage, deliver, secure and store information more efficiently is driving rapid change in the IT marketplace. Traditional low-tech, hardware-only approaches by proprietary vendors are meeting with resistance as companies grappling with new government mandates and business demands strive to capture and integrate information in a more seamless, real-time fashion across the enterprise. IBM's information on demand approach combines deep business insight with open standards, advanced storage systems, and sophisticated software for information, security and IT system management to create cost effective and flexible information infrastructures. Regardless of industry, IBM helps companies transform data into insight to enable information on demand.

For information about IBM and its storage solutions, please visit http://www.ibm.com/storage .

[1] Source: IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Disk Storage Systems Tracker Q1 2006.

Mike Darcy IBM 914-766-4777 mdarcy@us.ibm.com