InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

The new system has a starting capacity of 420 Gbytes and scales to 11 terabytes. Despite its power, the system is easy to use, according to IBM, because it's built with pluggable components that customers can configure easily.

Even so, some customers might be concerned that they'll have to wait until early next year for features such as remote copying, which is available on IBM's current Ramac OS/390 storage systems. However, Frank Elliott, VP of marketing and strategy of IBM's storage systems division, says the Enterprise Storage Server and its Unix software architecture will let the vendor add new features faster than in the past.

"You can't turn function over fast enough with custom microcode on a proprietary controller," Elliott says. "We'll now be able to quickly add functionality for data replication, database management, and application management."

One early customer looks forward to conducting volume testing on the Enterprise Storage Server because of a new feature that's already available. "Parallel access volumes will let us make multiple re- quests for the same volume of data or a single request to multiple volumes of data," says Bill Anderson, CIO of Prudential Securities Inc. in New York. "That will contribute to faster I/O, which is critical for the millions of transactions we process each day."

The Enterprise Storage Server will be available in the fourth quarter. A 420-Gbyte system will be priced at about $147,000; an 11-terabyte system will be about $3 million. The server will operate over IBM's version of a Fibre Channel storage area network, which promises easier, more efficient data access.