The computer giant says it has sold more than 1,000 large corporate computer storage systems since late September, a milestone in its race to catch EMC.

By Bloomberg News
Special to CNET News.com
December 31, 1999, 11:05 a.m. PT

 ARMONK, N.Y.--IBM said it has sold more than 1,000 large corporate computer storage systems since late September, a milestone in its race to catch EMC.

The storage systems, called Shark, together can store the equivalent of one petabyte of information, equal to the printed text on pages made from 50 million trees, IBM said. The systems the company has sold range in capacity from 420 gigabytes to more than 11 terabytes and cost $250,000 to $2 million. A typical home personal computer holds about 6 gigabytes of information.

About eight years ago, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM controlled three-quarters of the corporate computer data-storage market. EMC took the lead with new technology, advanced software and around-the-clock service. EMC now has about 35 percent of the market to IBM's 24 percent.

IBM unveiled Shark, which lets companies manage data on networks, to try to regain the top spot.

"This is the fastest that IBM has ever reached--the one petabyte milestone," Linda Sanford, general manager of IBM's Storage Subsystems Division, said in a statement.

In March, IBM said it won a $3 billion parts order from Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC and said the companies would work on projects beneficial to both. About half the computer disk drives EMC buys for its storage machines are from IBM. It gets the rest from Seagate Technology.

The agreement doesn't include IBM's Shark technology.

The market for large storage systems is forecast to rise about 20 percent a year to $45 billion by 2002, analysts estimate. The devices are the size of soft-drink vending machines and house data such as payrolls, customer buying habits, Internet pages and email.

Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.

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