IBM said it has scored a victory for its Internet server business by beating
out Sun Microsystems for a new contract for servers to be installed at Network
Solutions, which manages most of the world’s Web-site addresses. Network
Solutions has more than 10 million online addresses registered in its database
and handles several billion Web-address queries every day.
Network Solutions said it chose IBM’s machines because they could handle
the increasing queries from Web browsers, said Network Solutions registry senior
vice president and general manager Bruce Chovnick. "IBM seemed to perform
better in the type of applications we're running." At Sun, vice president
of product marketing for computer systems Shahin Khan said, the one IBM contract
win does not mean much. "It's not on my radar. What is on my radar are the
IBM mainframes we're replacing."
The IBM sale to Network Solutions, however, is important to IBM’s sales
force, which is struggling to ignite demand for the company’s high-end
computers. First-quarter sales of IBM computer hardware fell 12 percent. Overall
sales fell 4.8 percent to $19.35 billion.