Armonk, NY - November 8, 2005 -- IBM today announced the introduction of the IBM® System Storage™ N5000, a new series of networked storage systems designed to help midrange customers dramatically reduce their total cost of ownership, particularly enterprises operating distributed networks across remote sites.

The N5000 series represents the second major technology offering resulting from IBM's relationship with Network Appliance (Nadsaq: NTAP), announced in April.

The N5000 series provides network attached storage solutions for small to midrange enterprises to help address a wide range of data storage needs, including high performance mission-critical data access, disk-to-disk backup, and data retention and archive scenarios utilizing non-erasable and non-rewritable (WORM) technology.

The IBM System Storage N5200 and IBM System Storage N5500 support a combination of up to 30 advanced software features ranging from comprehensive system management and storage management to disaster recovery and backup solutions.

"Customers are constantly striving for a low total cost of ownership and long-term investment protection when purchasing storage solutions," said Barry Rudolph, vice president, storage systems, IBM. "As the second set of solutions to be announced as part of the IBM and NetApp relationship, the N5000 series supports a broad range of network attached storage needs, and is designed to provide more scale, more attachment flexibility, and a richer set of software capabilities."

The N5000 series is suited for small data centers and remote regional offices. For distributed enterprises with remote and branch office sites, the solution can help improve business continuity and reliability. Advanced software features provide additional high availability features offering centralized disk-to-disk based backup and disaster recovery solutions for organizations requiring the need to implement cost-effective data protection environments.

The N5000 systems can help increase data availability, simplify backup and restore operations by implementing centralized backup through a single methodology, helping to reduce tape management requirements and the need for remote systems administration. It also supports sites with computer and data-intensive enterprise applications such as database, data warehousing, workgroup collaboration and messaging.

The N5000 series is designed to provide customers with access to their storage investments through all major storage access protocols including NAS, iSCSI for IP SAN and FCP protocol for Fiber Channel SAN environments. Support for NAS, IP SAN and FC SAN environments operate concurrently or separately based on the customer's needs.

The IBM System Storage N5200 and N5500 products differ only in high availability features, scalability and performance capabilities. IBM plans to make them generally available on December 9, 2005 in both single and dual storage controller models, with list prices for the N5200 starting at approximately $60,000, and list prices for the N5500 starting at approximately $85,000.

Today's announcement represents the second set of product offerings resulting from the technology and marketing alliance between IBM and NetApp that was announced in April. In August, IBM introduced the IBM System Storage N3700, which is designed to offer an economical and robust network attached storage solutions for small and medium-sized businesses of less than 1,000 employees.

About IBM
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Press Contact:
Mike Darcy
IBM
914-766-4777
mdarcy@us.ibm.com