In Brief Next month, IBM will start selling a new fleet of storage systems aimed at the midrange market. The N5000 series systems mark the second set of gear to come from partner NetApp.

Both the N5200 and N5500 will be sold with single and dual-controllers. The lower-end N5200 will start at $60,000, while the N5500 will start at $85,000. The boxes arrive on Dec. 9 and will support Ethernet, iSCSI, IP SAN and FCP for Fibre Channel protocols.

IBM reckons that smaller data centers and remote offices will embrace the N5000 series. "The IBM System Storage N5200 and IBM System Storage N5500 support a combination of up to 30 advanced software features ranging from comprehensive system management and storage management to disaster recovery and backup solutions," IBM said. Customers will probably turn to the boxes for basic storage, disk-to-disk backups and archiving.

In August, IBM started selling the lower-end N3700 - also a result of its reselling arrangement with NetApp. ®

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