Enterprise IT vendor IBM is planning to invest more than $1 billion in its storage software business over the next five years — to accelerate its development.
The IT company aims to extend its storage leadership. IDC ranked IBM as the #1 in software defined storage platforms vendor for the first three quarters of 2014.
The focus of the investment will be on Research and Development of cloud storage software, object storage and open standard technologies including OpenStack.
Meanwhile, IBM announced the launch of its storage software to address data storage inefficiencies.
The new software called IBM Spectrum Storage, which incorporates more than 700 patents, creates an efficient data footprint that dynamically stores every bit of data at the optimal cost, helping maximize performance and ensuring security.
Importantly, the IBM Spectrum Storage assists enterprises to transform to a hybrid cloud business model by managing data from a single dashboard. The IBM software assists clients move data to the right location from flash storage for fast access to tape and cloud for the lowest cost.
By 2019, 70 percent of existing storage array products will be available as software only versions. By 2020, between 70 percent and 80 percent of unstructured data will be held on lower-cost storage managed by software defined storage environments, said Gartner.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate is the first software product that the company has based on the software from its XIV high-end storage appliance. IBM Spectrum Accelerate enables clients to layer their infrastructure with intelligent features derived from XIV.
These features include unique architecture with zero-tuning that can help clients dynamically add storage capacity in minutes versus the months it takes today to add, install and run storage hardware systems. The software can help provide business continuity upon disaster for all committed data, compared to the risk of losing 15 minutes of data or more with certain other competing storage software.
Netflix recently tapped IBM for creating a more agile storage infrastructure for its data management challenges. The company deployed IBM XIV Gen3 storage systems to manage its databases, development, testing and back-up operations.
As part of the networking deal, Netflix has replaced 16 existing storage systems with only three XIV systems for an 80 percent reduction in actual data center floor space. Netflix expects the systems will enable the company to boost its database transactions per minute.
Image by IBM: Jamie Thomas, General Manager Storage and Software Defined with the Spectrum Accelerate mobile dashboard
Baburajan K
editor@infotechlead.com
