IBM Unveils New All-Hard-Disk Data Storage System
… move data to the most appropriate storage tier, seamless to the user and easier for the operations teams to manage. This extends CSI’s capabilities in delivering a perpetual edge to our clients and reiterates IBM’s value for price and performance.”
The product improvements will also help CSI help customers find new opportunities with hybrid and multicloud, said Bingham.
Another partner, John Zawistowski, a global systems solutions executive with reseller Sycomp, said IBM’s improvements are notable enhancements.
“The ESS5000 brings additional storage capacity while maintaining the minimal rack unit space possible. Enhancements to throughput are also realized with IBM Power9 servers utilizing PCIe4 providing additional network port availability.”
The upcoming AI accelerator data storage software is also a positive move, he said.
“Adding AI Accelerator capabilities to IBM Spectrum Scale enables best-in-class data access for workloads that previously wrote data to an object store layer outside of Scale,” he said.
The moves show that IBM is truly listening to the channel and its clients, said Zawistowski.
“We have been asking for faster data platforms at reasonable costs to our end clients,” he added.
Portfolio Diversification
Dave Vellante is an analyst with Wikibon Research. He likes how IBM’s latest products focus on data-oriented workloads.
“This will help channel partners further diversify their portfolios and drive margin,” he said. “Everyone talks about being data-driven, but the reality is most organizations still aren’t. The pandemic has created a situation that if you’re not digital, you can’t transact business. Having new systems specifically designed for big data and AI apps that bring more automation is valuable. It gives channel partners another workload to target.”
Peter Burris, an independent storage analyst, said IBM is moving to meet customer storage needs wherever those requirements are.
“Storage technology no longer can force customers to move data to the device or cloud service,” he said. “Instead, a leading storage portfolio must be able to support data services where the data is created and used. IBM’s dramatically simplified storage portfolio does a good job of that.”
For partners, that means not having to convince customers about how to organize their data storage, he said. Instead, partners can apply IBM’s product and service portfolio to meet customer data needs.
Analyst Steve McDowell of Moor Insights & Strategy said the ESS5000 offers high-value enterprise engagements for IBM’s channel partners.
“It’s a win all the way around,” said McDowell.
The improvements to IBM’s Spectrum Scale software suite are particularly important, said McDowell.
“We’ve seen IBM dramatically ratchet up its software capabilities for object and unstructured data over the past two years,” he said. “This is no accident. Unstructured data is at the heart of modern analytics and AI. The ability to wrangle that data is a core challenge facing enterprise IT.”
The IBM Spectrum Scale updates are another example.
“The upcoming Data Acceleration for AI helps balance data between storage tiers,” said McDowell. “That’s one of the biggest challenges of hybrid cloud — keeping data where you need, when you need it.”
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