Amperif Corp, the privately-held Chatsworth, California company that has caught the eye of Comparex Informationssysteme GmbH and Memorex Telex NV, says that it is on track with Viking disk array subsystem it is developing for the IBM Corp mainframe market. Viking is a direct challenge to Storage Technology Corp’s much-delayed Iceberg disk array, and is currently planned for launch late this year, although bearing in mind StorageTek’s embarrassment, Amperif is in no hurry to announce the product, although the company told Reuter that it expects to begin testing at customer sites in May or June this year. Every time you pre-announce you live to regret it, marketing vice-president Ron Najjar commented. We are going about this in a more cost efficient method than others participating or who will participate in this market, he said. Memorex Telex and Comparex, which already handle Amperif’s storage subsystems for Unisys Corp mainframes, will also market the Viking, meaning that Amperif will not have to invest in additional sales personnel. Observers expect that the product, which is believed to use 3.5 drives where Iceberg uses 5.25 drives, to equal or better the performance of the StorageTek system, but to offer fewer features.
