IBM, EMC In Storage Dogfight
(05/08/00, 9:00 a.m. ET) By Barbara Darrow, TechWeb
IBM is serious about storage and equally serious about publicizing customer wins at the expense of storage rival EMC.
Case in point: Bayer (stock: BAYR), the huge pharmaceutical company, is moving from EMC's 3430 Symmetrix server to IBM's Shark Enterprise Storage Server, according to IBM.
Observers said IBM (stock: IBM) is showing renewed interest in storage after watching EMC (stock: EMC) erode its market share for the past several years.
"IBM is back in the storage business. Shark represents a return to a competitive offering and an opportunity to reclaim some lost glory and share that EMC has taken away," said Mike Kahn, CEO of The Clipper Group, a Wellesley, Mass.-based researcher.
IBM announced Shark late last year and said it has helped the company penetrate 40 percent of EMC's accounts, a figure contested by EMC.
"That number is ludicrous and is the third number they've used in the past few weeks," an EMC spokesman said.
For it's part, EMC unveiled new hardware and software, including the high-end Symmetrix 8000 storage system, in late April.
IBM and EMC are hardly alone in what has become a huge market, with growth driven by the proliferation of Web-based data. Researcher IDC estimates that in 1999, Compaq (stock: CPQ) (which bought Digital Equipment and its storage business) ranks first in worldwide revenue for disk-storage systems, with 20.6 percent of the market. EMC follows with 14.4 percent, and IBM with 12.8 percent. Hewlett-Packard (stock: HWP) and Sun Microsystems (stock: SUNW) come in with 8.1 percent and 7.5 percent, respectively.
"Many customers around the world have redesigned their processes to take advantage of the Web, deployed new ERP, done business process re-engineering; all of that requires a new level of performance, in a world that was server-centric and is now data-centric," said Bob Samson, worldwide vice president of sales and strategy at IBM's Storage Subsystems Division, Somers, N.Y.
As for Bayer, it is unclear whether IBM won the business of the entire company or just for its Medfield, Mass., office.
Bayer could not be reached for comment.
EMC did not dispute the Bayer item, but said for every company that validates IBM storage, EMC can offer 10 that validate its product.
Analysts said IBM is making some good moves of late, after neglecting the storage market and seeing EMC eclipse it in market share. Kahn said the move to break the group out was a particularly good idea.
"They have a whole division now focused on selling storage," Kahn said. |
