IBM releases new storage software to redefine storage economy

IBM Spectrum Storage employs more than 700 patents and is designed to help customers transition to a hybrid cloud business model. With spectrum storage, customers can conveniently manage data from anywhere, anytime, anywhere with a single operator panel. The software can help customers migrate data to the right place at the right time, from flash-capable flash memory to tape and cloud for lowest cost.

To accelerate the development of next-generation storage software, IBM announced that it will invest more than one billion U.S. dollars in its storage software products over the next five years. With this investment, IBM hopes to further expand its leading position in storage technology. In the first three quarters of 2014, IBM was named IDC's leader in software-defined storage platform1. These investments will be mainly used for the development of new cloud storage software, object storage, and open standards technologies including OpenStack.

Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM's Systems Division, said: "We need a new approach to help customers solve the high cost and complexity problems caused by the massive data growth. Traditional storage is becoming more efficient as the value of all data is changing. IBM is innovating its storage with spectral storage software that helps customers use hardware inputs more efficiently and gain full commercial value in data."

As new applications require cloud delivery or deployment, cloud storage needs are growing. This requires innovative ways to manage data through a layer of software on top of existing storage hardware to drive innovation. Gartner predicts that by 2019, 70% of existing storage array products will also provide "software-only" versions. By 2020, 70%-80% of unstructured data will be placed on low-cost storage devices managed by software-defined storage2.

To seize this opportunity, IBM is the first company in the industry to accelerate the acquisition of intelligence from traditional storage hardware products and allows customers to use it in any form of service, equipment, or software. IBM Spectrum Accelerate is IBM's first software product based on its XIV high-end storage device software.

IBM Spectrum Accelerate allows customers to layer their infrastructure with intelligent capabilities derived from XIV. These features include a unique architecture that can help customers dynamically increase storage capacity in minutes without any adjustments, rather than spending months to complete the addition, installation, and operation of hardware systems as it is today. Unlike other store software that risks losing 15 minutes or more of data, IBM Spectrum Accelerate can provide business continuity to customers in the event of a disaster in all submitted data. Speed ​​and data protection are critical in data-driven industries such as financial services, healthcare, retail, and telecommunications because they want to deploy new workloads on hybrid clouds.

With this release, IBM has made IBM Spectrum Accelerate software open - based on industry standards and applicable to commodity hardware. Customers can use Spectrum Accelerate to integrate existing data center resources and build their own enterprise-class, scalable super cloud environment. With easy-to-use dashboards developed by IBM Design Labs in collaboration with industry-leading designers, IBM Spectrum Accelerate software can flexibly manage data at a cost-effective, customer-centric data center and private cloud environment.

The capabilities of the XIV architecture have been demonstrated in large cloud environments, such as Netflix, a streaming media on-demand media company.

Recently, Netflix hopes that IBM can help it build a more agile storage infrastructure to meet the increasingly severe data management challenges. The company deployed the IBM XIV Gen3 storage system to manage its database, development, test, and backup businesses. The results show that Netflix replaces the original 16 storage systems with only three XIV systems, which reduces the actual floor space of the data center by 80%. The company also expects the system to significantly increase its database transactions per minute. .

Integrate seamless data migration between clouds

Based on an IBM Research Institute invention, IBM plans to launch the Cloud Connector later this year as a feature software feature of IBM's spectral storage3. This function is designed to help enterprises dynamically migrate data on multiple cloud platforms and ensure security during the migration process. This capability can leverage the flexibility of different clouds through a "cloud-in-the-cloud" approach, providing more robust protection than any single cloud to prevent service interruptions or data loss.

Just like other IBM spectrum storage products, IBM Spectrum Accelerate has an intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) management dashboard that integrates with IBM Spectrum Control for unified management. IBM Spectrum AccelerateGUI runs on any browser-enabled device - from desktops to iOS and Android mobile devices. The GUI called Hyper-Scale Manager enables customers to manage technology and operations through a mobile dashboard with just a click of a screen. In the era of real-time data management, mobile management storage can help reduce storage downtime, data overload, over provisioning, and application disruption.

IBM Spectrum Accelerate employs a range of cloud-ready capabilities and technologies, including snapshots, synchronous and asynchronous replication, multi-tenancy, automation through RESTful APIs and Open Stack, VMware v Cloud Suite integration, and self-configuration. It is easy to obtain, license, and install; it offers a flexible license model for short-term and long-term budgets and can be downloaded from the IBM Passport Advantage website.

Creative thinking: Global customers using IBM storage software

Many customers, such as NARI's Information Systems Integration Corp., which is directly subordinated to the IT department of China State Grid Corporation of China, hope to promote business transformation through the use of software-defined storage and have tested IBM Spectrum Accelerate when it migrated to a hybrid cloud environment.

State Grid Corporation of China is the world's largest state-owned utility company. The company prioritized software-defined infrastructure as a strategic measure to address the increasing complexity and cost challenges of information technology services. NARI Information Systems Integration Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the State Grid Corporation of China, invited IBM to introduce software-defined storage technology and selected IBM Spectrum Accelerate for evaluation. Xu Wei, chief architect of NARI System Integration, said: "In the test, we found that IBM Spectrum Accelerate provides all the features of the field-proven XIV hardware device, allowing us to be agile on our existing hardware infrastructure. Easily deploy without sacrificing any features. IBM Spectrum Accelerate is one of the most important platforms for State Grid’s future software definition strategy.”