IBM Kills Runts of NAS Litter

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) has announced that it is discontinuing two NAS systems lines based on Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows OS, as first reported by Byte and Switch last month (see IBM to Scrap Windows NAS Lines?).

In a product withdrawal notice issued by IBM on July 15, the company says its TotalStorage NAS 100 and NAS 200 products will be dropped effective August 29, 2003, at which point they will be not be available from either IBM or its distributors. IBM did not provide a reason for the discontinuance in the withdrawal notices.

The NAS 100 is an entry-level, 1U-high system that offered up to 480 GBytes of storage; the midrange NAS 200 provided up to 7 TBytes in a single system. Big Blue last refreshed these product lines eight months ago (see IBM Turns NAS Crank).

However, industry sources familiar with IBM's plans say the company is definitely planning to stay in the NAS game. One source told Byte and Switch that while IBM is not considering making an acquisition or entering into a joint venture for its next-generation NAS platform, it will "continue to improve its ability to address the NAS marketplace." The source adds that the new NAS systems from IBM will not be based on either Windows or Linux. [Ed. note: Wow, maybe AIX?!]

In the NAS 100 and 200 withdrawal letters, IBM made no reference to the NAS Gateway 300, which provides connectivity to back-end SAN storage. IBM officials did not respond to requests for comment by press time.Todd Spangler, US Editor, Byte and Switch