The same source reports that IBM sees a bigger threat from the big disk drives announced by Fujitsu Ltd and Hitachi Ltd to compete with its new 3390 drive than from competitors bringing 5.25 disk arrays to market any time soon, and accordingly it is thought to have put back launch of its own first disk array pro duct for the mainframe market, reg arding the introduction of higher capacity 3390s as a higher priority. Customers have not rushed to buy the 3390, so IBM is also thought to want to keep it active longer in order to make a good return on the investment it made in developing it – but soft demand means that the next model is likely to offer only 1.5 to 1.6 times the 22.7Gb of the current big gest 3390 rather than the two times that IBM no doubt has up its sleeve.
