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IBM Expands Storage Solutions for Small and Medium Businesses

Strategic Insights

— 1 min read

IBM has announced the expansion of its lineup of storage solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, including a new unified storage system and expanded virtualization interoperability and database backup software. The company has also extended its relationship with Network Appliance, a leading provider of network-attached storage (NAS) solutions. This announcement addresses the concerns of IBM's customers, who have been seeking easier scalability, virtualization, resource optimization, and database interoperability.

Key Takeaways:

  • IBM introduced a new unified storage system, the IBM System Storage N5600 appliance, aimed at small to medium-sized businesses poised for growth.
  • The N5600 appliance offers an easy migration path to IBM's enterprise-class offerings, scaling to 252 terabytes of physical capacity.
  • The N5600 comes in two models: the N5600 A10, a single storage controller offering, and the N5600 A20, which includes dual storage controllers.
  • The N5600 will be positioned between IBM's N5500 and N7600 appliances and will feature simultaneous connectivity to 4Gbps Fibre Channel and high-speed GbE iSCSI networks.
  • The appliance features a 64-bit architecture and PCIe controllers, designed for seamless updates and easy upgrades.
  • IBM also announced interoperability between N series gateways and the IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC), allowing customers to attach N series gateways to their SVC storage pool.
  • SnapManager for Oracle is designed to automate and simplify the complex manual and time-consuming processes associated with the backup, restore, recovery, and cloning of Oracle databases.

Statistics:

  • The IBM System Storage N5600 appliance will be generally available on December 8, 2006, at a starting list price of $97,500.
  • SnapManager for Oracle will also be generally available on December 8, 2006, and will be offered at a list price of $3,125 per managed host.
  • The N5600 appliance will offer up to 50% more spindles and capacity, twice the memory, and up to three times the maximum total bandwidth compared to the N5500.
  • The new appliance will support simultaneous connectivity to 4Gbps Fibre Channel and high-speed GbE iSCSI networks.

Sources:

  • IBM (NYSE: IBM) press release, dated November 16, 2006.
  • Market Wire via COMTEX, dated November 16, 2006.
  • Comtex SmarTrend(SM) Alert, dated July 28, 2006, and November 12, 2006.

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