IBM challenges EMC

Wei Gu

NEW YORK: IBM Corp. unveiled a family of storage systems that it said will help it double its market share in the $30 billion storage market during the next four years.

The new offerings include a tiny storage system the size of a video recorder that targets the mid-range market and a refrigerator-sized storage system for the high-end sector.

Those two products are designed to compete directly against two comparable systems offered by EMC Corp., according to IBM.

The smaller box, called DS 6000 and priced at just below $100,000, is half the size and cost of EMC's comparable system. The bigger system, priced at $250,000, is the first in the storage industry to use technology that virtualizes a pool of storage systems, IBM said.

The so-called virtualization technology was first used by IBM for mainframe management software and has helped it surpass Sun Microsystems for server market share.

"We believe we have the market opportunity to have twice the (storage) market share four years from now," said, Bill Zeitler, senior vice president for system and technology, adding that its systems can easily be integrated with other systems.

IBM invented computer storage but has fallen behind EMC and Hewlett-Packard Co. in recent years with 14 percent market share.

Hewlett-Packard has 21 percent share and EMC has 19 percent, according to fiscal 2003 figures provided by research firm IDC. The market for storage systems is growing at 6 percent a year, IDC said.