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Technology Stocks : Network Appliance -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DownSouth who wrote (1199)	7/15/1999 11:44:00 AM
From: Sam	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

<<But how amateurish to name their product so that it causes confusion! We haven't heard the last of this yet. >> I'm sure you're right about that.

To: DownSouth who wrote (1199)	7/26/1999 8:53:00 AM
From: Beltropolis Boy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10934

*slightly OT* article on IBM -vs- EMC in today's ny times that may interest a few on this board. ----- July 26, 1999 IBM Challenges EMC With New Data-Storage Line By STEVE LOHR International Business Machines Corp. is making a bid to regain its leadership position in the high-performance end of the data storage business with the introduction on Monday of a new generation of big disk systems. The new product line, code-named Shark, arrives at a time when the demand for data storage is growing at a torrid pace because of the Internet, electronic commerce and data mining -- all of which require fast access to vast amounts of information. And the new storage line, analysts say, represents IBM's effort to challenge the current leader in high-end storage systems, EMC Corp. EMC may not be a household name, but it is one of the most striking success stories in high technology. By commercializing a flexible high-performance storage technology known as RAID (redundant array of independent disks), EMC grabbed the top spot in the lucrative market for large external storage systems away from IBM. Today, big Internet companies like America Online and many major corporations -- including those using IBM mainframe computers -- employ EMC systems as their main data storehouses. EMC, based in Hopkinton, Mass., has grown to become a $4 billion-a-year company. Its stock has been the second-best performer among the Standard & Poor's 500 companies during the 1990s, trailing only Dell Computer. And its market capitalization exceeds that of such corporate stalwarts as General Motors and Boeing. The IBM Enterprise Storage Server line, according to analysts who have been briefed in advance by the company, promises to be stiff competition for EMC both in terms of price and performance. "IBM's strategy is to try to come out with higher performance systems at significantly lower prices," said John McArthur, an analyst at International Data Corp., a research firm. The proof, analysts cautioned, will be in the marketplace as the big systems, which can cost $1 million or more, become generally available in September. "But this could be just what IBM needs to be competitive with EMC," said James Porter, president of Disk/Trend Inc., a research firm. The new high-performance storage systems, IBM said, have data-retrieval times that are far faster than rival products on the market. The company asserts that users can scale the systems from 420 gigabytes to 11 terabytes (enough to hold all the words in the Library of Congress). And IBM says that its new line of storage products can be used with a variety of computer systems: IBM 390 mainframes, Unix computers and machines running Microsoft's Windows NT operating systems. In an internal memo, James Vanderslice, senior vice president of IBM's technology group, called the new product "the biggest storage announcement" the company had made in the high-performance end of the market since the 1960s. In the memo to Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the chairman, and the rest of IBM's top management, Vanderslice described the new storage line as an Internet-related product that would allow Big Blue to deliver "the advanced functions our customers need to manage the explosion of data as they become e-businesses." Other computer makers have also recognized the importance of high-performance data storage products -- and the business opportunity in that market. Sun Microsystems Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Co. are entering the market, for example. "These companies feel they have to, because storage is becoming a central strategic product -- as important as the computer itself," observed Steven Milunovich, an analyst at Merrill Lynch & Co. "Data drives everything else in electronic commerce." The $14-billion market for sophisticated external storage systems increasingly spans a variety of computing platforms -- mainframes, machines running the Unix operating system and Windows NT servers. "This product hits the high-end of each of those market segments," observed Ronald Kilpatrick, the general manager of IBM's storage systems division. nytimes.com