IBM Unveils Midrange Storage ProductsIBM Unveils Midrange Storage Products

IBM has entered the midrange storage arena to battle it out with heavyweights EMC Corp. and Dell Computer. The competition means midsize companies will have access to the services and powerful systems usually reserved for large companies.

IBM unveiled three products Tuesday. The TotalStorage Fibre Array Storage Technology (Fast) 700 system will move data between servers at a rate of 200 Mbytes per second, includes high-end data replication software, and will complete as many as 120,000 input/output operations per second. The second, TotalStorage IP Storage 200i, will help move data over the IP network at increased speeds, thanks to three 1.13-GHz Pentium III processors. Finally, the vendor's upgraded network-attached storage appliances can store up to 300 Gbytes of data. Average pricing for a 1.47-terabyte Fast 700 is $99,000. The new NAS appliances are priced between $11,300 and $118,600. Pricing for the IP product has not been set. All three products will be available by the end of next month.

To help set itself apart from rivals Dell and EMC, IBM will include its Global Services for disaster tolerance, storage consolidation, and support for data protection.

Yankee Group analyst Jamie Gruener says this new arena of competition is great news for customers. "This shakes up the midrange market because IBM comes to the table with a full product line and a complete suite of services," he says. With a broad range of products and pricing models, Gruener foresees "long-term head-to-head challenges between IBM and EMC/Dell."