Saudi Arabia, 30 November, 2008: Saudi Business Machines Ltd. (SBM), the General Marketing and Services Representative (GMSR) of IBM World Trade Corporation in Saudi Arabia along with IBM held the Information Infrastructure Road show in Riyadh, Jeddah and Khobar.  The event highlighted IBM's new integrated System Storage strategy which helps clients build an information infrastructure with solutions designed to build the foundation they need to deliver improved service levels, reduce business risks, and manage the information explosion.

During the road show, IBM announced the launch of several new data storage products, among which are the DS5000 and DS8000 hard drive storage systems that achieve the best performance, security and cost-effectiveness on the market today. IBM's Storage solutions for information availability can help clients establish a solid foundation for keeping data available and securely managed. These solutions help to keep critical online processes available, to mitigate impacts to customer service and employee productivity.

The IBM System Storage DS5000 series storage system is designed to meet todays and tomorrow's demanding open-systems requirements while establishing a new standard for life cycle longevity. Building on many decades of design expertise, the DS5000 series' seventh-generation architecture delivers industry-leading performance, real reliability, multi-dimensional scalability and unprecedented investment protection. With its relentless performance and superior reliability and availability, the DS5000 series storage system can support the most demanding service level agreements (SLAs). And when requirements change, the DS5000 series can add or replace host interfaces, grow capacity, add cache and be reconfigured on the fly--ensuring that it will keep pace with your growing company.

The IBM System Storage™ DS8000™ Turbo series is designed to support the most demanding business applications with its exceptional performance and superior data throughput. This, combined with its world-class resiliency features, make it an ideal storage platform for supporting today's round-the-clock, global business environment. Moreover, with its tremendous scalability, broad server support and flexible virtualization capabilities, the DS8000 Turbo can help simplify the storage environment and consolidate multiple storage systems onto a single DS8000 system.

The road show also demonstrated IBM's capability to help companies reduce costs involved in maintaining large, sensitive databases, as well as improve efficiencies and reduce complexity while minimizing risks - legal and technical - and insuring compliance.

"As part of the support it extends to its current and potential clients, IBM always focuses on education. Not only that but IBM is also seeking to deliver best services and value to clients through its outstanding products, solutions and services" said Mr. Jason Birkett, Sales Leader at IBM Systems technology Group.

Mr. Jason added: "IBM perceives the Middle East and Africa region as one of its most important markets, and is focusing on providing top and integrated services to clients in this strategic region and shows how it can provide comprehensive solutions that work seamlessly to assure the security of sensitive data, no matter how large the application and the level of security required, depending on multiple primary and secondary data centers that provide backups at all times".

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About SBM
Based in Jeddah, and with branches in Riyadh, Al-Khobar and Jubail, with over 600 employees and 60 years of experience in the Kingdom, Saudi Business Machines Limited (SBM), has played a leading role in the development of information technology in the Kingdom. SBM continues to power both the private and public sectors in the Kingdom with innovative products, integrated services and e-business solutions. Partnering with the world's technology leader, IBM further extends SBM's status, positioning it as the most comprehensive information technology solutions provider in the region.

Visit www.sbm.com.sa

For further information, please contact:
Hussein Nasrallah
Media Relations Manager
Landmark Public Relations & Events
Tel: +966 2 661 4109    
Fax: +966 2 661 4239
Email: h.nasrallah@landmark-pr.com

© Press Release 2008