IBM Unveils New Entry in Workstation Market

IBM unveiled a line of computer workstations today that experts say should help the computer giant win a stake in an important market it never has mastered.

“The opportunity is big. It’s growing at over 30% a year, and it’s mostly a new opportunity for IBM,” President Jack D. Kuehler told a news conference.

Kuehler said the new workstations designed for business users “outperform the newest and best that our competitors offer.”

International Business Machines Corp. aides showed reporters nine high-performance workstations and computer file-servers, with prices ranging from $13,000 to more than $74,000.

Industry analysts say the machines are impressive for their operating speed and features and should be received favorably by engineers, their target market.

Workstations are desktop machines that are much more powerful than personal computers. Some even match the power of mainframes. They are used for such processing-intensive tasks as computer modeling of new products.

While the workstation market is a small segment of the overall computer industry, it is among the fastest growing, and uses for the machines are expanding.

IBM introduced a workstation line several years ago, the RT line, but it captured less than 3% of the market. Experts consider the machines underpowered and overpriced.

The workstation field is dominated by Sun Microsystems Inc., Digital Equipment Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co.