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Feb 11th 2020 IBM announced the launch of their new IBM Flash system as the most transformational storage solution in the market. What was announced today was a single family for hybrid-multi-cloud storage, from entry to enterprise there is one single family for all use cases. Including enterprise reliability and support. The only issue is I am not so sure this is real innovation or some interesting marketing. 

What did IBM say:

• ·      “One single product for all” 
• ·      “One single management interface” 
• ·      “99.9999% of uptime from entry to enterprise”
• ·      “enterprise level support”
• ·      “max 18M IOPS and 70µs of latency”
• ·      “included with Storage Insight for analytics”
• ·      “automated copy data management”
• ·      “spectrum virtualize to manage any storage”

Let’s break this down, this is not one product it’s a single storage OS, there are 4 different models in the IBM announcement… not one!  Is this new though… I am not so sure this is transformational in the market today, SVOS and now SVOS RF has been a single storage OS for Hitachi from entry to enterprise for the last 5 years. That includes a single management interface from entry to enterprise and allows you to migrate and replicate data in a single pain of glass. 

Let’s have a look at the 6x9’s of data availability stated as best in class, hello? IBM? We have been offering 100% data availability guaranteed for our entry level customers right up-to the high-end enterprise. Oh, and we only have one level of support here at Hitachi – we don’t have a separate team for our entry solutions. :) 

Power and scale is always a good marketing play, but if we are going to play top trumps I am going to stick with my Hitachi Vantara cards thanks. 18M IOPS from IBM vs 21M IOPS from Hitachi. 70µs of latency from IBM matched with 70µs from Hitachi. 69PB of capacity from Hitachi…. What’s that? You don’t want to tell us your scale out capacity? 

Ahhh, what is more exciting then included analytics and copy data management. This should be a given, customers should expect this from any vendor, so I welcome this from IBM catching up with the market. Hitachi has been offering this in our VSP platforms with Hitachi Ops Center for the past 2 years. In fact, we don’t just offer copy data management with HDID (offering data continuity in the public cloud today) and analytics with Ops Center Analyzer, but also allow customers to automate their workloads with Ops Center Automator. Bringing a true cloud consumable capability by integrating tasks with IT ticketing solutions. 

Finally, we were shown how IBM Spectrum Virtualize can take any 3^rd party storage and virtualize this to become a target for management and consumption into the FlashSystem solution. Ok, I am only going write this out…. Virtualized Storage Platform powered by Storage Virtualization Operating System. LOL! NEXT! 

So what are my thoughts – I have to congratulate IBM for looking at the SVOS RF and Ops Center software family and thinking, that’s a good idea. Sorry the live demo didn't work, but that's happened to all of us. 

Welcome to the party IBM J

Ian