Wal-Mart Selects IBM Over EMC

Wal-Mart has awarded a $40 million contract to IBM to replace Wal-Mart's older IBM mainframes and EMC storage units with IBM z900 mainframes and IBM Enterprise Storage Servers. The award is particularly timely for IBM, which has been trying to make inroads on storage leader EMC.

Traditionally, IBM has sold its own storage solutions with mainframes, but in recent years the company has been losing storage business to competitors that were able to provide technologically superior storage solutions. However, IBM's recently released Enterprise Storage Servers have helped the company become more competitive with systems that rivals such as EMC offer.

Wal-Mart plans to use the new IBM equipment to improve its worldwide infrastructure. The servers will help it process data from more than 4000 locations around the world.

http://www.ibm.com/news/us/2001/10/151.html