IBM Corp’s AdStar storage systems business has brilliant new technologies coming out of its ears, but the San Jose unit has completely lost the art of getting new storage subsystems right first time, and bringing them to market in a timely fashion – and following the embarrassing delays in the important Magstar tape drive programme, the company has now screwed up on the even more important Ramac-2 disk array, which is being held back for another two months initially, for additional quality testing. The new date, which may well still not prove to be the final one, is October 27. We are making some engineering changes, the company told Reuters. It is to conduct further quality assurance testing. This RAMAC product was advertised last June as the thing that will win back IBM’s market share that it had lost to EMC Corp, said Bob Djurdjevic. IBM said it had shipped 6,000 units of the first Ramac and that the later shipment date will put additional pressure on its ability to meet demand for the new product. IBM’s shares fell $4.625 to end at $106.75 on Monday in what Reuters inadvertantly but appropriately described as heaving trading. It seems likely that the Ramac problem is not unconnected with the reports that the personal computer versions of the new 2Gb and 4Gb 3.5 drives used in the thing have been afflicted by problems of stiction where the head sticks to the platter, for which IBM’s decidedly low-tech remedy for the awkward problem was to revove the drive and shake it violently to shake the stuck head loose (CI No 2,721).
