IBM Enhances Data Economics and Storage Security for Cloud and Cognitive Era

IBM Corporation announced innovations in software-defined storage to help clients improve storage management, data security and reduce data costs as they deploy new technology to support cognitive and other data-driven applications across hybrid cloud environments.

IBM Spectrum Scale

Clients are storing more data than ever before from a diverse set of sources for analytics and applications directly serving customers, often through their mobile devices. IT leaders today are increasingly focused on storing, managing and protecting this data.

Enterprise Strategy Group research shows that improving information security along the data lifecycle was the most frequently mentioned IT priority this year among survey respondents representing organizations of all sizes.^[1] Similarly, new research on data protection reveals that encryption features are the top consideration to IT managers as they evaluate and select new backup vendors or solutions.

IBM Spectrum Archive Library Edition

Company’s Spectrum Storage is a family of software-defined storage solutions designed to help clients securely embrace the explosive growth of data and support both traditional and next generation applications. Today, the company is enhancing three Spectrum Storage offerings, providing new features to improve security and cost-effective management of large amounts of data and storage.

They include:

• Spectrum Virtualize storage virtualization helps clients improve data security and reduce costs with a new software feature providing data encryption on existing storage systems, eliminating the need to purchase new infrastructure.

• Spectrum Scale software and the company’s Elastic Storage Server integrated system helps clients reduce capital and operating expenses for large volumes of files and objects used by cognitive and cloud applications. New features include data compression to reduce storage space needed for files and objects, interfaces and the ability to accelerate Hadoop applications with a new Hadoop Filed System (HDFS) interface.

• Spectrum Control, which helps reduce IT cost and complexity by optimizing data and storage, now extends management and data analytics capabilities for company’s FlashSystem and Spectrum Scale file and object storage systems. These enhancements, along with broad support for traditional storage systems, provide an integrated control point for optimizing today’s diverse data infrastructures.

IBM Spectrum Control Storage Insights
(Click to enlarge)

“As more datacenters become software-defined, organizations increasingly require a solution that allows a path to faster insights from growing data that is stored safely and cost efficiently,” said Jamie Thomas, GM, storage and software defined, IBM. “The advancements in IBM Spectrum Storage that we are announcing today are critical to clients as they transform to cognitive, digital businesses by improving data value, increasing data security and enabling simpler data and storage management.“

During the last six months, both clients and company’s Business Partners have chosen products from the Spectrum Storage portfolio for their storage needs. Key Information Systems, Inc., an IBM Business Partner that provides compute and storage solutions for software-defined data centers, has helped clients improve management of large amounts of storage with Spectrum Storage.

“Data encryption has become one of the top priorities for our clients as they face more stringent corporate security requirements around storage,” said David Howard, solution architect, Key Information Systems. “Now, with IBM Spectrum Virtualize and its ability to encrypt external storage, customers have a single, standard storage encryption solution that protects their current storage investments eliminating the need for islands of encryption or the purchase of new storage systems.“

About Spectrum Storage
Based on more than 700 patents, Spectrum Storage is designed to simplify storage management, scale to keep up with data growth, and optimize data economics. It represents a new, more agile way of storing data, and helps organizations prepare themselves for the cloud and cognitive era. Spectrum Storage is based on proven technologies-integrated with a common interface-to help organizations simplify their storage infrastructures, cut costs, and gain more business value from their data.

Spectrum Storage family includes six software offerings: Spectrum Accelerate, Spectrum Archive, Spectrum Control, Spectrum Protect, Spectrum Scale and Spectrum Virtualize.