Competition in servers from IBM.
April 5, 1999
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
IBM To Unveil New RS/6000 Internet Servers Tuesday
By CHRISTOPHER GRIMES
Dow Jones Newswires
NEW YORK -- International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) said it will release new RS/6000 servers that are 75% faster at handling Internet data than the current version of the machine.
The new models, known as H70, are mid-range servers based on IBM's flavor of the Unix operating system and run up to four of IBM's 64-bit chips. The machines are expected to be unveiled Tuesday and will begin shipping April 23, about a year after the initial rollout of its predecessor, the H50.
In its first quarter earnings report, IBM said its hardware sales sagged by 2%, in part because of weak RS/6000 sales. IBM said at the time that customers postponed RS/6000 in anticipation of new models.
These machines are positioned to compete primarily with offerings from Hewlett-Packard Corp. (HWP), Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) and Compaq Computer Corp. (CPQ).
Mike Maas, manager of server product marketing at IBM, said the new RS/6000s are aimed at medium-sized businesses running electronic commerce applications over the Internet.
-Christopher Grimes; 201-938-5253 |
