Digital Transformation Calls for New Storage Models.

Among the companies that are very aware of these requirements is IBM. The company develops and sells sophisticated storage technologies and offers a structured range of products for managing and storing corporate data[i]. These hardware and software storage offerings are divided into three main categories: Storage for Data and Artificial Intelligence, Storage for Hybrid Cloud, and Storage for Data Resilience[ii].

Storage for data and AI for maximum information value

IBM Storage for data and AI is designed to enable organizations to extract the maximum information value from data in the application and information supply chain. Value contained in data can be unlocked with this solution and used to accelerate innovation and improve business outcomes. This data and AI storage solution enables the elimination of data ingestion and aggregation challenges, increases data relevance, and enables faster large-scale data analytics. The solution is based on the following components:

• IBM Storage Scale: A scalable, software-defined file and object storage platform designed for AI, ML, (machine learning) and high-performance computing workloads.
• IBM Storage Ceph: An open source software-defined storage platform designed for block, file, and object requirements of general-purpose workloads. IBM Storage Ceph is a rebranding of Red Hat Ceph and is the industry-leading open source solution for software-defined block, file, and object storage.
• IBM Storage Scale System (formerly known as IBM Elastic Storage System): An all-flash and hybrid elastic compute and storage appliance designed to create high-performance clusters for IBM Storage Scale.

IBM Storage for Data and AI combines high-performance hardware as well as software-defined capabilities that are essential when building solutions for general purpose storage, AI, and data analytics workloads.

Storage technology for the hybrid cloud

The transformation towards a hybrid cloud makes it necessary and possible to make business data permanently available everywhere in the company - from the data center to the outermost edge. Powerful technologies are required to leverage both cloud and on-premises resources for data storage. IBM was one of the first technology providers to address the challenges of hybrid clouds and now offers IBM Storage for Hybrid Cloud, the storage technology to match. The solution is designed to drive application modernization, development, and faster innovation through data orchestration services for Red Hat OpenShift. It enables the deployment of on-premises cloud architectures and their seamless extension to public cloud environments. The solution is based on the following components:

• IBM Storage Fusion: A software-defined storage platform with flexible deployment options that provides data orchestration services to efficiently store, protect, manage, control, mobilize, and integrate data and applications hosted in Red Hat OpenShift environments.
• IBM Storage Fusion HCI-System: A purpose-built hyper-converged infrastructure that simplifies the design and deployment of Red Hat OpenShift with container-native data orchestration and storage services to enable faster and more consistent deployments of the Kubernetes architecture.

Storage technology for data resilience

IBM Storage for Data Resiliency helps organizations protect their data from attacks and even operational failures. At the same time, it aims to reduce costs and downtime. Machine learning and automation with storage technology are integrated to detect anomalies and threats, accelerate recovery, and optimize costs. The solution is based on IBM Storage Defender, which is designed to find the last clean copy of compromised data as quickly as possible. This is the first time IBM has offered a solution that integrates multiple IBM and third-party offerings, unifying backup management and primary and secondary replication. IBM Storage Defender includes:

• IBM Storage Protect (formerly known as IBM Spectrum Protect): Comprehensive data protection for physical file servers, virtual environments, and a variety of applications (including SaaS-based workloads) where organizations can manage billions of objects per backup server.
• IBM Storage FlashSystem: A cyber-resilient all-flash and hybrid storage platform for performance- and capacity-intensive workloads.
• IBM Storage Fusion: Container-native storage and data orchestration for Red Hat OpenShift.
• Cohesity DataProtect: Comprehensive protection for traditional and modern data sources on a multicloud platform.
• Cohesity DataProtect has been designed to provide customers with the ability to recover quickly and comprehensively across multiple environments. In addition, data can be copied across multiple locations, including multiple clouds, to ensure that an up-to-date copy of that data is available should a problematic situation arise.

IBM and UMB: Bundled storage expertise

IBM and UMB share decades of successful cooperation. With well over 350 IBM certifications, UMB has been the strongest IBM partner in Switzerland for many years. As the largest Swiss IBM Platinum Business Partner and the only IBM Storage and IBM Power Systems Specialty Elite Partner, UMB offers its customers the opportunity to implement their solutions on a highly flexible and scalable PaaS platform (Platform-as-a-Service) in the UMB cloud. The platform is based on leading technologies from IBM and Red Hat. Optimize your applications by harnessing this convergence of expertise in storage and cloud technology. Contact us.

[i]Enterprise Data Storage Solutions

[ii]Evolving the IBM Storage Portfolio Brand Identity and Strategy