IBM Pushes Software-Defined Storage

This announcement was published on a blog of IBM Corp.‘s and written by Eric Herzog, VP, product marketing and management, storage systems.

Storage innovation that drives 21st century business

IBM Storage – the #2 storage software vendor by revenue market share[1] – is announcing a range of innovations to our software-defined storage (SDS), data protection and storage systems portfolio.

Driven by the exponential volumes of data growth and the underlying value in this huge treasure trove of information, many 21st century enterprises are moving quickly to modernize their traditional IT infrastructures while taking advantage of multi-cloud architectures and AI applications. Continuing IBM investments in enhancing our SDS, data protection and storage systems capabilities, these announcements demonstrate IBM’s commitment to storage solutions as the foundation for multi-cloud and cognitive/AI applications and workloads.

“As data has become the driving force behind successful companies, clients derive business value using analytics and AI technologies on a multi-cloud infrastructure that is flexible and agile,” said Ed Walsh, GM, IBM storage and software-defined infrastructure. “Software-defined storage, modern data protection and all-flash arrays are critical solutions for this journey. With this launch, we are extending their reach to transform on-premises infrastructure to meet these new business imperatives.”

Innovations and enhancements across the IBM storage portfolio expand the range of data types supported, deliver new function, and enable new technology deployment:

Spectrum NAS delivers enterprise capabilities and SDS simplicity with cost benefits for common file workloads, including support for Microsoft environments.
Spectrum Protect Plus, an easy-to-use backup solution for virtual environments, is improved with enhanced database support and faster restores.
Spectrum Protect Plus provides simple automated data protection and provisioning for VMware in IBM cloud.
Spectrum Protect helps address data security concerns with support for the GDPR and automated detection and alerting of ransomware.
Spectrum Storage Suite, a complete solution for software-defined storage needs, gains expanded range and value with the inclusion of Spectrum Protect Plus at no additional charge.
Spectrum Connect simplifies management in complex server environments by providing a consistent experience when provisioning, monitoring, automating and orchestrating IBM storage in containerized, VMware and Microsoft PowerShell environments.
Spectrum Virtualize helps lower storage costs with new and better performing data reduction technologies for the Storwize family, SAN Volume Controller (SVC) and FlashSystem V9000, as well as for over 440 multi-vendor storage systems.
Cloud Object Storage addresses client needs for unstructured data in regulated industries with FIPS PUB 140-2 support and SEC 17a-4(f) and CFTC 1.31(c)-(d) compliance assessment from Cohasset Associates.
Storage Utility Offering usage-based pricing now enables switching costs from a CAPEX-centric model to an OPEX for on-premises IBM cloud object storage.
Hyper-Scale Mobility enables migration from XIV Gen3 systems to all-flash FlashSystem A9000/R without application and workload disruption.
FlashSystem 900 helps better meet demanding application requirements with lower latency storage access through support for IB NVMe over Fabric.
Forward-looking planning statements help inspire confidence for organizations acquiring storage systems by demonstrating how storage systems available today will be enhanced in the future with a new NVMe over Fabric networking capability through coming releases of Spectrum Virtualize and Spectrum Accelerate.

“With advances in AI, businesses are able to leverage data more effectively than ever to become both more efficient and more effective,” said Scott Sinclair, ESG senior analyst. “As data becomes more closely tied to business success, the importance of an optimized storage infrastructure increases. SDS technology, such as IBM’s Spectrum Storage – recently boosted with a number of significant new capabilities – plays a pivotal role in delivering the requisite infrastructure flexibility that can enable IT to keep pace with the business’s demand for data.”

With these innovations, the company is expanding the scope of DS solutions, data protection and all-flash arrays in addressing more use cases, adding new capabilities and leveraging our leadership in the storage market to offer more competitive advantage to our clients. This level of storage innovation is critical to driving your 21st century business.

[1] Source: IDC 3Q17 Enterprise Storage Software Qview

Comments

Two days ago IBM has made a significant storage launch in Half Moon Bay during the IBM Storage Summit. The title of the launch was "IBM Spectrum Storage and Flash Foundations for Multi-Cloud and AI" aligned with the IBM Index conference in San Francisco, CA, this week.

The master of ceremony was Eric Herzog, CMO and VP WW storage channels at IBM storage and software-defined infrastructure (SDI.)

Surprisingly, only Herzog was on stage and no product guys at all, meaning that this launch was only about announcements. We check the IBM Think conference agenda scheduled in Las Vegas, NV, in March and find some storage sessions with some dedicated to software-defined storage (SDS). One of these is titled #SDS: The Future of Your Storage is Soft, interesting for a player like IBM.

Herzog has insisted essentially on two things: the new NAS offering and the NVMe IBM strategy. Let's speak about NAS.

Announcing a new member in the storage product family is a confirmation and a recognition of the hole IBM has for a few years now, having stopped the business agreement with NetApp and the SONAS iteration based on GPFS and Scale-Out File Services in the past. Since that, Big Blue had difficulties in the file space having 'only' Spectrum Scale in the file storage line. The company let other emerging players to finally fill this market space.

This hole is perfectly illustrated by the IBM slide showing where the Spectrum NAS fits in the unstructured data product line.

Gamme IBM SDS Line
Click to enlarge

It's almost a joke as IBM didn't unveil the product they pick from the market but they use the original features image from that player. In other words, IBM says: "We don't tell you who it is but if you check carefully the content of our announcement, you will find it," and we did our homework so the vendor is public and Spectrum NAS relies on Compuverde vNAS. Founded in 1994 and 'rebooted' in 2008, Compuverde is a Swedish storage ISV we discovered several years ago when object storage then SDS became hot. It is an alternative player developing a multi-protocol SDS with block, file and object interfaces. Besides several interesting features, vNAS is a confidential solution and we're surprised that IBM didn't add the term Scale-Out with this new NAS flavor as it is one of the core characteristics of the Swedish product. Starting now, IBM is able to push a pure software scale-out NAS product on any x86 hardware. What a change.

Compuverde vNAS
Click to enlarge

IBM chooses to position the product for generic purpose and Microsoft environments promoting flexible NAS interfaces with multiples versions of NFS and SMB supported. It also limits the multi-protocols aspect of vNAS as the solution, the Compuverde one, is able to expose block and object protocols. We understand that the company doesn't want any overlap with other product in the portfolio such Cloud Object Storage or other block storage arrays.

IBM needs this new blood that will allow better perception on the market but we're still surprised that the company needs to rely on an external partner with all the brilliant talents in house. This is a mystery.

Now we anticipate a more active IBM presence on generic file storage deals.