Shark UPgrade.....
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IBM To Unveil Enhancements To Shark
(01/25/00, 4:03 p.m. ET) By Joseph F. Kovar, Computer Reseller News
IBM said it plans to enhance its Enterprise Storage System, code-named Shark, with Fibre Channel connectivity and other features to boost performance, said Andrew Hurter, business line manager of disk storage systems for the company's Storage Systems Division.
Adding Fibre Channel connectivity to Shark will simplify its connection to SANs because it will eliminate the need to use SCSI-to-Fibre Channel gateways.
Other enhancements, expected to be formally announced between Feb. 15 and Feb. 29, include flash copy and remote copy, Hurter said. During the second quarter, IBM plans to add other performance enhancements, although Hurter would not give anydetails.
And around September, IBM plans to add virtual technology, FICON connectivity, and enhanced flash copy and remote copy features, he said.
All the enhancements to come out this year can be added to the currently installed based of Sharks, Hurter said.
"There is no reason to wait [to sell a Shark] for a capability that will be added by IBM later," he said.
VARs with customers who have legacy IBM VSS or 7133 storage arrays will shortly be able to add that equipment to Sharks, Hurter said. The result will be an increase in the Shark's storage capacity by using existing equipment. The VSS products will attach directly to a Shark, while the 7133 disks will need to be mounted in a rack first, Hurter said.
Giving the Shark native Fibre Channel connectivity will be a boost to IBM storage sales, said Russell Schneider, president of Marketex, a Santa Clara, Calif., VAR that works with Fortune 1000 enterprise customers.
"Regardless of who the manufacturer is, none of the storage boxes have enough connectivity points to support the number of servers our customers have," Schneider said. "The solution is a storage-area network. It breaks the one-to-one link of one port in a storage system to one server."
Marketex uses SCSI-to-Fibre Channel gateways to connect the Shark to a SAN.
Attaching legacy equipment will also boost Marketex's business with its clients, he said.
"We have customers chomping at the bit, waiting to attach their SSA disk arrays to a SAN," Schneider said.
USinternetoworking results......
USinternetworking Posts Revenue Gains
(01/25/00, 8:26 p.m. ET) By Rick Whiting, InformationWeek
Application service provider USinternetworking Tuesday reported that revenue for the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, 1999, reached $14.7 million, a 306 percent increase from the same period a year earlier, and a 50 percent surge from the third quarter.
But the ASP has yet to turn a profit, reporting a net loss of$34.3 million for the quarter. For the full fiscal year the company reported a net loss of $103.3 million on revenue of $35.5 million. The company disclosed that at the end of the year it had ASP contracts with 109 customers, up from seven at the close of 1998.
AT&T
AT&T Targets ASPs, Enterprises
(01/27/00, 11:50 a.m. ET) By Chuck Moozakis, InternetWeek
AT&T on Thursday said it is targeting ASPs and enterprises with a set of data hosting capabilities.
The carrier unveiled what it is calling its Ecosystems for ASPs initiative, offering providers infrastructure, data and application hosting, and last-mile services, according to Kathleen Earley, president of AT&T data and Internet services.
As part of the initiative, AT&T also announced partnerships with IBM, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and storage vendor EMC -- all of which will resell AT&T's hosting capabilities as VARs.
The offering will also include two new hosting services, geared to ASPs and enterprises. The first -- intelligent content distribution -- will provide caching capabilities using technologies from Inktomi, InfoLibria, and Novell. The second, dynamic storage, will be based on enterprise-class storage products from EMC.
AT&T will offer the services from its network of data centers. The carrier now has four, but will grow that number to eight by midyear. By the end of 2002, AT&T will have 26 centers, Earley said.
The ASP program and intelligent caching is available. The storage service will be available in March.
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