IBM today announced availability next week of the IBM System Storage DS5020 Express, a new storage disk offering that delivers enterprise-class storage capabilities for midrange businesses.

Midsized organizations in a variety of industries, including retail, healthcare, insurance, government and manufacturing, are facing the same issues as larger organizations, which is managing, storing and securely analyzing an ever-increasing flow of data. The IBM System Storage DS5020 delivers the high performance, availability and solutions to midrange businesses that enterprise customers are accustomed to, yet at a price point that’s designed for midmarket organizations.

The System Storage DS5020 Express disk system includes an industry leading 8 GB/second Fibre Channel (FC) as well as iSCSI host capability that seamlessly integrate into existing and new infrastructures, while providing the balanced performance needed to satisfy the mixed workloads created by consolidation. Balanced performance supports the needs of consolidated or virtualized environments such as IBM PowerVM, Microsoft Windows 2008 Hyper-V and VMware vSphere 4, while delivering outstanding response times. (For more information on the System Storage DS5020 Express, visit http://www.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ds5020/index.html).

Its modular architecture and efficiencies help lower acquisition and operational costs as performance and configuration requirements can be met with minimal raw capacity. And when it’s time to expand, the DS5020 can add incremental capacity with no downtime.

The System Storage DS5020 will also be the first midrange disk product in the industry to offer self-encrypting drives, making it ideal for housing business-critical applications. Full-disk encryption provides data security at the most basic level, the hard drive, protecting against many exposures and vulnerabilities at virtually no performance loss. This expands IBM’s commitment to providing industry-leading security and encryption for both tape and disk. Earlier this year, IBM announced availability of disk encryption with its high-end System Storage DS8000 line.

“Midsized businesses are no different than their larger counterparts, as they are facing relentless data growth and shrinking budgets, which is why they’re seeking storage solutions that will help reduce costs through efficiencies, said Doug Balog, vice president, disk storage and business line executive, IBM. “The IBM System Storage DS5020 Express addresses those needs, while its full-disk encryption also makes it ideal for hosting business-critical applications.”

The DS5020 comes with four 8 GB/second FC interfaces for connectivity to hosts or storage area networks, and can support an additional four ports, which can be either 8 GB/second FC or 1 GB/second iSCSI. The DS5020 supports up to 112 drives with EXP520 expansion units. Drive options include FC, self-encrypting FC, and SATA.

The DS5020 supports all current premium features, including encryption, partitioning, FlashCopy, VolumeCopy and Enhanced Remote Mirroring.

The System Storage DS5020 Express will be available September 4, with prices starting at $22,500, which includes IBM service support and a three-year warranty.

According to a recent IBM study, information management was ranked as the most critical IT priority for improving business performance by approximately 75 percent of participants. The System Storage DS5020 Express is built to help midrange customers address their information management needs. At a time when digital information is growing every day at a rate eight times the volume housed in all U.S. libraries, organizations need smarter ways to cope with today's increasing information overload by turning this data into real intelligence. To download the study, visit http://www.ibm.com/press/attachments/ibm_midmarket_trend_study.pdf.

For more information about Express Advantage and the new Express Advantage offerings, visit http://www.ibm.com/expressadvantage.