 Intercom Computer Systems is a 25 year old company, with headquarters in Grafenau, Germany. The company has offices in Munich Germany, Woodbridge Virginia and Tampa, Florida. The company developed as a result of expertise in I/O channel technology, especially the IBM mainframe environment. This expertise permitted the company to develop programmable channel devices serving a market niche, especially where channel switching is a requirement.
Several years ago the company recognized the growth in storage products for the information enterprise, and began producing systems based upon our channel experience. Industry experts have pegged this growth at between 60% to 100% per year for the foreseeable future. In fact, storage will account for more IT dollars spent than for processors by 2002 (IDC).
Some of the channel products include the channel interface for large printers (OCE and Xerox), a significant SCSI Switch business (2 X 1 to 24 X 24) and Channel to SCSI interfaces.
The baseline storage product for the company is the I-5590 Controller. This product, while unique, is at the same time plug compatible. It is best described as a Universal Removable Media Controller, that is both backward and forward compatible. By this we mean, we can attach peripherals that satisfy the need for discontinued devices such as 9-track and 18-track tape. We can attach current technology such as 36-track, and 128-track devices. We can also attach the latest technology such as 256-track drives and optical devices, as well as non-standard devices such as DVD, DLT, AIT, LTO, and CD, 8mm and more. When attached to a System 390, they all appear as devices supported by the OS390 Operating System.
This controller also serves as the basis for our Virtual Storage product suite.
The company has two strategies:
- A standard set of pre-packaged solutions, interfacing open peripherals to the mainframe.
- Custom development for very special or unique interface or data exchange needs.
Examples of pre-packaged solutions are:
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Replacement of 9, 18 and 36 track tape subsystems with new “Open Systems” drives and libraries. One Intercom 5590 replaces all three Controller and Drive Units for an 80% saving in maintenance, floorspace and
environmentals.
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The 7595 Optical Library, plug compatible with IBM’s 3995 or used in 3490 compatible mode. The 7595 provides 75% greater capacity per disk, 4 times more total storage at a significant cost savings.
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The 6990 Virtual Tape Subsystem providing a virtual alternative to physical tape,
accommodates users of all sizes. The 6990 provides as much as 10TB of cache, up to 4 simultaneous copies and back-end support for almost any removable media library. This includes
DLT, AIT, LTO, Optical, etc., as well as standard mainframe library technologies. |
Intercom customers benefit from being able to select the devices with the characteristics that match their application requirements of Cost, Capacity and Performance while still being compatible with their Mainframe environment. |
