IBM Adding Cloud-Ready Features to Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Accelerate

IBM Corporation is adding cloud features to two Spectrum Storage software offerings as part of the company’s investment in software-defined storage.

Spectrum Protect Management Dashboard
Click to enlarge

Over the last six months, more than 1,000 new clients have chosen products from the IBM Spectrum Storage portfolio for their storage needs.

Spectrum protect backups more data in the cloud
IBM has been recognized as a ‘leader’ in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances ⁽¹⁾ for five consecutive years for Spectrum Protect. With new features, Spectrum Protect can help businesses backup data to on-premises object storage or the cloud, without the need for cloud-gateway appliances. Spectrum Protect supports IBM Cloud infrastructure today with a plan to expand the support to other public clouds in future.

A single Spectrum Protect server performs the work of up to 15 CommVault servers. ⁽²⁾ This means that large enterprises can consolidate backup servers to reduce cost and complexity, while managing data growth from mobile, social and internet of things. Small and medium size businesses (SMBs) can eliminate the need for additional backup servers, media servers or deduplication appliances. Analysis with beta customers indicate that the enhanced IBM Spectrum Protect software can help clients reduce backup infrastructure costs by up to 50%. ⁽³⁾

Cloud service provider Tectrade,
backups more than 13,000 systems per day using Spectrum Protect:
“IBM Spectrum Protect offers significant enhancements and richer functionality than many other virtual backup technologies that are available in the market today,” said William Bush, technical services manager, Tectrade BV. “You don’t have to run a separate virtualization-only technology to supplement IBM Spectrum Protect, so you get a single comprehensive management and storage experience.“

In the fourth quarter of 2015, Spectrum Protect will be offered as an option on the VersaStack solutions jointly developed by IBM and Cisco Systems, Inc.

Spectrum Accelerate brings hyperscale storage to cloud
Spectrum Accelerate on cloud provides Spectrum Accelerate as a service to company’s cloud customers via its SoftLayer infrastructure. It helps companies to deploy block storage on SoftLayer without having to buy new storage hardware or manage a large appliance farm.

“IBM Spectrum Accelerate on cloud enables us to do off-site copies, snapshots and asynchronous replication of data from our data centers to IBM cloud from a unified management dashboard,” said Juha Kukka, services design manager, Enfo Oyj, cloud service provider (video). “This helps simplify management, reduce administration and lower costs, allowing us to bring efficiency to our clients.“

The company is enhancing the software-only version of Spectrum Accelerate to reduce costs by consolidating storage and compute resources on the same servers. Spectrum Accelerate is available with portable licensing across XIV systems, on- premises servers, and cloud environments to offer greater operational flexibility and help support clients as they transform their IT infrastructures to software defined storage.

⁽¹⁾ Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup Software and Integrated Appliances, June 15, 2015. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
⁽²⁾ Based on CommVault sizing and configuration guidelines, compared to IBM, article link.
⁽³⁾ IBM customer assessments using Butterfly software.