IBM Initiative To Address Major Shift In World's Dataflow

IBM has announced the launch of new storage hardware, software and services that will enable businesses, governments and other institutions to transform static data into more dynamic information that is accessible in a cloud computing environment. Backed by an investment of $2 billion over three years, the new portfolio will further strengthen IBM’s position as a provider of information infrastructure offerings.

With the proliferation of the mobile Web, the average individual’s ‘information footprint’ – the digitisation of entertainment, healthcare, security, social networking, retail preferences – will grow from 1 terabyte (about 50,000 trees cut and printed) per year to more than 16 terabytes by 2020, according to IBM.

“As India goes through a radical shift away from the decades-old client/server model to a radically more efficient Internet-style architecture, we have taken a step to address foreseen customer challenges with the new information infrastructure launch. With our future investments and key acquisitions throughout the last 24 months we have cemented our strategy to provide information on demand,” said Shashi B Mal, director, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/ South Asia.

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“Infrastructures need to adapt to meet this demand, and in response, IBM today is delivering critical elements for an information infrastructure as part of its New Enterprise Data Centre strategy. These elements focus on the availability, compliance and retention, and security pain points for clients as they re-design their data centres. New and upgraded products and services are being introduced across the IBM portfolio to meet these critical needs. These tools and technology resources, which IBM has been developing and amassing, open doors to new collaborations, and on demand storage technologies – a key pillar in the emergence of cloud computing,” said Shailesh Agarwal, vice-president (Business Systems), Systems and Technology Group – IBM India/South Asia.

Internet-Scale Availability

• IBM XIV system – A highly scalable disk storage system designed to handle today’s diverse mix of information - from Web 2.0 to traditional applications such as financial services. This new enterprise disk offering features a grid-based architecture that offers easier management, performance scalability, self-tuning/healing and thin provisioning to help reduce the cost and complexity of information storage while enabling quick access of data for today’s dynamic range of workloads.
• DS5000 - Designed to meet mid-range data centre requirements, DS5000 is a new disk storage system which can add interfaces, increase performance, grow capacity as Internet scale demands, and be reconfigured on-the-fly.
• IBM SVC - A new storage virtualisation software that helps clients more efficiently manage and consolidate volumes of business data, providing clients with a storage solution designed to help improve utilisation rates, energy efficiency, availability, and scalability of critical applications.
• Scale Out File Services (SOFS) - As a means to support storage optimisation, SOFS offers flexible storage virtualisation services that will help alleviate data storage challenges by enabling quick implementation of highly scalable, global, clustered network attached storage systems.

Consolidation and Retention

• IBM ProtecTier - A new data de-duplication software and hardware from the Diligent Technologies acquisition in April, which may help clients reduce redundant data by a factor of up to 25:1.
• Onsite and Remote Data Protection - Through IBM’s acquisition of Arsenal, onsite and remote data protection offerings will help clients retain and back-up copies of their critical data off-site, and ensure the continuous availability of e-mail and mission critical applications and data on site in the event of a disaster
• TS3500 - A new high density tape storage library frame that can hold up to three-times more cartridges in a 10 square foot footprint.
• DS8000 - An upgraded disk offering that adds more IBM mainframe storage functionality for customers dealing with large database growth in their mainframes. The updated disk offering will also have RAID 6 protection.

Security

To help clients cost-effectively monitor, secure and manage their IT infrastructures while addressing increasing workloads, IBM is announcing new Remote Managed Infrastructure Services (RMIS). These services offer clients a new model for efficient IT management and security with minimal disruption to existing environments, allowing clients to maintain their existing assets on-site.