IBM is taken an increasing share of the worldwide disk storage
market, according to a survey by IDC.
IDC's annual report,
Worldwide Disk Storage Systems Forecast and
Analysis 2000-2005, claims that IBM will be the only major
vendor to see growth in external systems in 2001.
IBM has begun to close the gap between itself and EMC, the market
leader. IBM's market share has risen from 7.8% to 12.2 %, while
EMC's overall share has fallen from 25.6% in 2000 to 21.2%.
IBM has also announced its intention to increase its presence in
the storage virtualisation market through an alliance with DataCore
software. The deal will see IBM offer customers virtualisation
technology from DataCore in advance of its own Storage tank
offering, which is still under development.
Unlike Storage Tank, which will start shipping early next year,
DataCore's SANSymphony will deal with data at the block level,
which is vital to database applications.