ARMONK, N.Y., Feb.
17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today 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. IBM's new
storage software creates an efficient "data footprint" that
dynamically stores every bit of data at the optimal cost, helping
maximize performance and security.
IBM Spectrum Storage incorporates more than 700 patents and is
designed to help clients transform to a hybrid cloud business model
by managing massive amounts of data where they want it, how they
want it, in a fast and easy manner 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.
To accelerate the development of next-generation storage
software, IBM also announced plans to invest more than $1 billion in its storage software portfolio over
the next five years. With this investment, the company aims to
extend its storage technology leadership having recently been
ranked #1 in software defined storage platforms for the first
three quarters of 2014 by leading industry analyst firm
IDC.1 The investment will focus on R&D of new cloud
storage software, object storage and open standard technologies
including OpenStack.
"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 is 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.
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. Both speed and data protection are essential to clients
in data-driven industries such as financial services, healthcare,
retail and telecommunications as they seek to deploy new workloads
on the hybrid cloud.
With this announcement, 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.
Using a single, user-friendly dashboard created by the IBM Design
Lab and industry leading designers, the software manages data
flexibly and cost-efficiently across clients' existing datacenters
and purpose-built cloud environments.
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.
Integrated Seamless Data Movement To and From Clouds
Building off an IBM Research invention, IBM later this year
plans to introduce a multi-cloud connecter as a software feature in
IBM Spectrum Storage.3 This feature will be designed to
help organizations dynamically migrate data across multiple clouds,
while keeping it confidential. The feature will employ a
"cloud-of-clouds" approach that invokes the resilience of separate
clouds to offer stronger protection against service outages and
data loss than any single cloud can deliver.
Like other IBM Spectrum Storage offerings, IBM Spectrum
Accelerate includes an intuitive, easy-to-use Graphical User
Interface (GUI) management dashboard, and integrates with IBM
Spectrum Control for consolidated management. The IBM Spectrum
Accelerate GUI can be run on any browser enabled device, from
desktops to iOS and Android mobile devices. The GUI, called
Hyper-Scale Manager, lets clients manage technical and
administrative operations through a mobile dashboard at the tap of
a screen. In the era of real-time data management, mobile
management of storage can help reduce storage downtime, data
overload, over-provisioning and application disruption.
IBM Spectrum Accelerate features an array of cloud-ready
features and technologies, including snapshot, synchronous and
asynchronous replication, multi-tenancy, automation through RESTful
API and OpenStack, VMware vCloud Suite integration and
self-provisioning. It is easy to acquire, license and install;
offers a flexible licensing model designed to mesh short- and
longer-term budget realities and is delivered via download from the
IBM Passport Advantage web site.
Thinking Outside of the Box: Global Clients Adopting IBM
Storage Software
Clients like NARI System and Integration Company, China State
Grid's IT division are looking to transform their business
operations by using software defined storage and are testing IBM
Spectrum Accelerate as they move toward a hybrid cloud
environment.
China State Grid is the largest state owned utility company in
the world. The company has prioritized software defined
infrastructure as a strategic imperative to deal with increasing
complexity and costs of information technology services. NARI
System and Integration Company, under NARI Group, a wholly owned
subsidiary under the governance of China State Grid's IT division,
invited IBM to introduce software defined storage technologies and
IBM Spectrum Accelerate was selected for evaluation. Mr.
Xu Ji, Chief Architect of NARI SI
Company, said "In our testing, we found IBM Spectrum Accelerate
provides the full functionality of the field proven XIV hardware
appliance, giving us the agility and ease of deployment to use
across our existing hardware infrastructure without sacrificing any
features. IBM Spectrum Accelerate is one of the most important
platforms in State Grid's software defined strategy future."
About IBM Spectrum Storage
IBM's Spectrum Storage portfolio can centrally manage more than
300 different storage devices and yottabytes of data. This
device interoperability is the broadest in the industry –
incorporating both IBM and non-IBM hardware and tape systems.
IBM Spectrum Storage can help reduce storage costs up to 90 percent
in certain environments by automatically moving data onto the most
economical storage device – either from IBM or non-IBM flash, disk
and tape systems.
In addition to Spectrum Accelerate, IBM Spectrum Storage
portfolio includes key storage software such as Spectrum
Virtualize, Spectrum Scale, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Protect and
Spectrum Archive.
For more information about software defined storage offerings
from IBM, visit www.ibm.com/spectrumstorage.
Follow us on Twitter at @ibmstorage and on our Tumblr at
http://ibmstorageexperience.tumblr.com/.
Join the conversation #softwaredefined.
Media Contact
Chaiti Sen
IBM Media Relations
csen@us.ibm.com
213-663-8154
1 IDC Worldwide Quarterly Storage Software
Qview, December 2014. 4Q 2014 report is pending.
2. Gartner Innovation Insight: Separating Hype From
Hope for Software-Defined Storage authored by Dave Russell and Arun
Chandrasekaran published on October
2014.
3 Statements regarding IBM's future direction
and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice, and
represent goals and objectives only.
Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO
To view the original version on PR Newswire,
visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ibm-redefines-storage-economics-with-new-software-300036703.html
SOURCE IBM