IBM has unveiled IBM Spectrum Storage, a new storage software portfolio designed to address data storage inefficiencies by changing the economics of storage with a layer of intelligent software.
The new solution creates an efficient "data footprint" that dynamically stores every bit of data at the optimal cost, helping maximise performance and security.
Incorporating more than 700 patents, IBM Spectrum Storage seeks to help clients transform to a hybrid cloud business model by managing massive amounts of data from a single dashboard.
The software helps clients move data to the right location, at the right time, from flash storage for fast access to tape and cloud for the lowest cost.
"A new approach is needed to help clients address the cost and complexity driven by tremendous data growth. Traditional storage is inefficient in today’s world where the value of each piece of data is changing all the time," said Tom Rosamilia, Senior Vice President, IBM Systems.
"IBM is revolutionizing storage with our Spectrum Storage software that helps clients to more efficiently leverage their hardware investments to extract the full business value of data."
As new applications require cloud delivery or deployment, the demand for storing data in the cloud is increasing. This requires a new approach to managing data with a layer of software on top of existing storage hardware to drive innovation.
Industry analyst firm Gartner predicts that by 2019, 70 percent of existing storage array products will also be available as "software only" versions. And, by 2020, between 70 percent and 80 percent of unstructured data will be held on lower-cost storage managed by software defined storage environments.2
To capture this opportunity, IBM claim that they are the first company in the industry to embark on an accelerated roadmap to extract intelligence from its traditional storage hardware products enabling clients to use it in any form – as-a-service, as an appliance, or, as software.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate is the first software product that the company has based on the software from its XIV high-end storage appliance.
The company is making IBM Spectrum Accelerate software open – based on industry standards and available to be used on commodity hardware. Clients can use Spectrum Accelerate to pool existing datacenter resources to build their own enterprise-grade, scalable, hyper-cloud environment.
The XIV architecture has been proven in large cloud environments with clients like Netflix, the on-demand Internet streaming media company.
Netflix recently turned to IBM for help creating a more agile storage infrastructure for its growing data management challenges. The company deployed IBM XIV Gen3 storage systems to manage its databases, development, testing and back-up operations.
As a result, Netflix was able to replace 16 existing storage systems with only three XIV systems for an 80 percent reduction in actual data center floor space, and it also expects the systems will enable the company to significantly boost its database transactions per minute.
