IBM (NYSE: IBM) 
announced a host of improvements to its line of storage offerings aimed at businesses large and small.
The enhancements provide greater efficiency in tiered storage infrastructures that bring businesses increased cost savings, integrated data security 
and enhanced archival solutions, according to IBM. They're aimed at helping companies meet compliance requirements necessary in an information on demand environment .
"The new storage offerings and enhancements we announced today will enable customers of all sizes to maintain highly resilient, high-performance, next generation network infrastructures," said Barry Rudolph, vice president of storage stack solutions at IBM.
The Next Generation
Included in IBM's regular update of its storage product lines is the newly improved N7000 series, which offers both an appliance and gateway in the N7700 and N7900 models. Large and mid-sized business users will benefit from improved scalability for their large-scale data center operations as well as storage consolidation for clients with large open systems, the company said.
The new systems support up to 1,176 terabytes (TB) of raw capacity to meet the storage needs of large data centers. In addition, the N7000 line allows businesses to consolidate SAN (storage area network) and NAS (network attached storage) needs on a single platform that can provide support for primary, near-line, regulatory compliant data retention and archival storage in a single system.
For small and mid-sized businesses, IBM's N3300 and N3600 now support both SATA (serial advanced technology attachment) and SAS (serial attached SCSI) drives in the controller for greater flexibility and options. The company has also increased the scalability of these two models so the devices can grow as business grows. The N3300's capacity has been boosted to 68 TB and 104TB for the N3600.
IBM has also doubled the capacity for the remainder of the N-series, taking the N5300 to 336 TB, the N5600 to 504 TB, the N7600 to 840 TB and the N7800 to 1,008 TB. In addition, IBM said SnapManger for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) SharePoint Server is now available the N-series.
Two Protocols, One Box
"With all of the N-series, we see significant interest [from users] for this type of combination and the opportunity to combine two different protocols onto one box. It's important and is pretty much standard for all N-series products, and the new models are no exception," said Natalya Yezkhova, Research Manager for Storage Systems at IDC.
The N7700 and the N7900 will be available worldwide April 18 and have a starting price of US$125,000 and $190,000, respectively. Neither pricing nor availability were announced for the remaining N-series models.
"The enhancements IBM has made are important for customers who want to expand their capabilities," Yezkhova told TechNewsworld. "And they are now in line with their competitors."
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