IBM has added new cloud features to two of its Spectrum Storage software offerings to help companies back up data without the need for cloud-gateway appliances.

The enhanced IBM Spectrum Protect software consolidates servers, helping to reduce backup infrastructure costs by 53%. It also enables users to deal with increased data flow from mobile, social and Internet of Things. 

IBM will offer Spectrum Protect in the fourth quarter as an option on the VersaStack solutions jointly developed with Cisco.

Spectrum Protect currently supports IBM Cloud infrastructure and will be later extended to other public clouds.

The storage portfolio can centrally manage over 300 different storage devices and yottabytes of data. It automatically transfers data onto the most economical storage device, either from IBM or non-IBM flash, disk and tape systems.

IBM said over 1,000 new clients have selected products from its Spectrum Storage portfolio in the past six months for their data storage requirements.

The company is also enhancing the software-only version of IBM Spectrum Accelerate by uniting storage and compute resources on the same servers, resulting in cost reduction.

It is being offered with portable licensing across XIV systems, on- premises servers, and cloud environments.