Originating Author: David Floyer
One of the technology questions that IT organizations should ask about IBM’s Grid Access Manager Software announcement is “what type of software is it?” Is it a medical application that plays in the medical record vertical marketplace, or is it a storage application that plays as a horizontal component across the fixed record management marketplace? If a product has a significant presence in a market, it confers economies of scale and protection for adopters that the solution will remain cost effective over time. It is very unlikely that a product will become a market leader in both horizontal and vertical markets.
In the case of the IBM Grid Access Manager, the product is clearly positioned as a hospital vertical solution. However, the concepts behind the Bycast approach hold great promise for the management of unstructured data over time.
Action Item: Storage managers looking to adopt IBM's Grid Access Manager solutions will require simple storage skill-sets optimized around the acquisition and management of low-cost commodity storage that will be software-managed. Senior storage architects should study the IBM/Bycast and Google File System to understand its applicability in broader applications.
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