New Sharks Patrol Storage Waters

In a move to grab a bigger bite of market share in the competitive storage
server space, IBM unveiled two new version of its Shark
enterprise storage server, saying they would double its current performance
while slashing data processing costs in half.

IBM said the Shark 800 and Shark 800 Turbo would be available by the middle
of August, featuring 2 Gbps data transfer rates, 64 GB internal cache, an
increased 3.2 Gbps internal bandwidth, and a six-way “turbo” configuration
that can handle one and a half times more data operations per second.

“We’re bringing out two new models to answer specific customer
requirements,” said John Power, worldwide product marketing manager for
IBM’s TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server.

Power pointed to two major customer needs the new Sharks address: creating
business efficiencies and planning for emergency business continuance.

With the Shark 800 and 800 Turbo, IBM said it would boast the most flexible
and cost-efficient server around, beating out offerings from its two major
competitors in the high-end enterprise storage space, Hitachi and EMC.

“This is a major upgrade of both the disks as well as the processors,” said
Mike Kahn, chairman of the Clipper Group, a technology-acquisition
consultancy. “The thing that will be most noted is that it is a
high-performance box that puts them equal or ahead of Hitachi.”

The models boast technology from IBM’s 8-month-old Project eLiza, which is
Big Blue’s attempt to
create a nervous system capable of automatically regulating and healing
servers. The eLiza technologies, Power said, would increase data
availability while cutting downtime.

“These are all significant improvements that will extend our leadership in
the space,” Power said.

A big bonus of the Model 800, Power said, is that it would allow a company
to cut down on support staff needed to maintain the servers.

“The most expensive part of managing storage today is the people,” he added.

IBM is battling storage incumbents such as EMC and Veritas for the lead of
the lucrative storage market. According to researcher Gartner Group, the
storage management software market was worth $6.6 billion last year, with it
forecast to top $16.7 billion in 2005. Since unveiling the Shark in 1999,
IBM said it has sold 10,000 units.

While IBM relies on Shark to battle for the large enterprise market, it has
also made a play for the mid-market, most recently introducing the
NAS 100 server.