IBM's Major Product Areas & Competitors

by P. Bryan Edge-Salois
IBM offers a vast array of products and services for virtually every business need.
Below is a brief list of some of IBM's major product offerings and its biggest competitors.

PRODUCT CATEGORY DESCRIPTION DETAILS THE COMPETITION

PCs
Notebook PCs Powerful, portable computers good for travel or replacement for a • ThinkPad R, T, X, A, and G Series • Integrated Wi-Fi • Dell Inspiron and Latitude
full-sized desktop PC. • Intel Pentium 4-M CPU up to 2GHz • 15-inch TFT Display notebooks
• WinXP Professional • 3.6 to 7.7 pounds • HP Pavilion and Compaq
Presario notebooks

Desktop PCs Low cost desktop PCs with largely integrated components. Suitable • Intel CPU up to 3.2GHz • Up to 120GB hard drive • Dell OptiPlex and
as home or home office PCs. • Integrated audio, NIC, and graphics (graphics card Dimension Series PCs
can be upgraded in ThinkCentre M and NetVista PCs) • HP Pavilion and Compaq
Presario desktops

Workstations Ultra high-end Unix workstations for extremely advanced and/or • Power PC 604 CPU • Up to 16GB RAM • Dell Precision Workstation
technical users (CAD/CAM, Design, Engineering, Technical Analysis). • Unix OS • Up to 1.4MB L2 and 32MB L3 Cache 650 Series PCs
• HP Workstation zx2000
and zx6000 workstations

Servers
Blades Modular, dual-CPU servers designed for optimal scalability and
performance. Can be used with the eServer Bladecenter Chassis to
support up to 14 servers in a single, 7U rack.
• Up to two Intel Xeon processors at 3.2GHz. • HP Proliant BL e-class
• 512MB standard up to 8GB maximum ECC DDR SDRAM blade servers
• Supports up to two IDE or two hot-swappable SCSI hard drives
• Dual Gigabit Ethernet connections
• System management and failure prediction

Mainframe High-end, high-security scalable mainframe system for virtually any • Z990 CPU • Gigabit Ethernet • Linux, z/OS, OS390 • HP9000 Superdome
enterprise application, including high-end scientific and technical • Up to 2Gbps FICON (Fiber Channel Connectivity) link speeds Mainframe PCs
analysis, application servers, ecommerce, accounting functions, • Integrated self-healing fault tolerance and fault avoidance features
materials management, distribution, manufacturing, human resources, • Capacity on demand allows resources to be turned on and off
asset management, business intelligence, and data mining.

SAN Storage Systems Scalable SAN servers with Fiber Channel host to drive technology.
The t200 occupies the low end of the TotalStorage series, scalable
to 1.47TB. The T900 occupies the high end and is scalable as high
as 56TB.
• Scales from 18GB (t200 series) to as high as 56TB (t900 series) • Dell /EMC Fiber Channel
• Redundant, hot-swappable components RAID Array CX200, CX400
• Multiple RAID levels and enhanced Management software included and CX600 Series
• Flashcopy software for quick data duplication
• Fiber Channel host to disk drives

Entry Level & High-end storage server. Supports storage sharing for many • Dual RISC CPU • Large cache • Dell/EMC Fiber Channel
Midrange Servers systems including WinNT/2000/XP/2003, Linux, Novell Netware, • Supports FICON, ESCON, Ultra • RAID 5 and RAID 10 protection RAID Array CX600 Series
Irix, Unix, and IBM eServer iSeries, pSeries, and zSeries servers SCSI, Fiber Channel, 2Gb Fibre • Scalable to 55.9TB
Channel, and redundant hardware

Clusters Powerful, low-cost 64-bit servers that don't sacrifice 32-bit comput- • Dual 2GHz AMD Opteron Processor • 1GB RAM, upgradeable to 12GB • HP HP9000 and RP5430
ing performance. Ideal for technical and scientific analysis oriented • Supports up to two hot swap IDE • Integrated dual Gigabit Ethernet servers
operations. or Ultra 320 SCSI hard drives

Software
Enterprise/Desktop High-end, high-capacity ultra-scalable data storage system • Intel Xeon CPU up to 3.06GHz • Up to 8GB RAM • HP Linux LC Clusters
Office designed for ultimate reliability and availability. Includes cluster • 512KB cache • Linux OS
management software designed to simplify deployment and reduce • CSM (Cluster Systems Management) and
administrative costs. GPFS (General Parallel File System) software

Suite/Productivity Office Suite includes word processing, database management, • Lotus 1-2-3 • Lotus Approach • Lotus Organizer • Microsoft Office XP or
Software spreadsheet program, and graphics/presentation software. • Lotus Word Pro • Lotus SmartCenter • Lotus FastSite Office 2003 Professional
• Lotus Freelance Graphics