Moderator: Peter Burris
Analyst: Josh Krischer
IBM today (Oct. 23, 2007) delivered an announcement that is striking in its competency as much as any specific technical extension. After years of announcements that tended to underwhelm, IBM appears to have delivered one that hits the key issues of performance, capacity and functionality with a product set that is on par in all three storage dimensions.
The centerpiece of the announcement was important functional enhancements to the DS8000 Series including Flash Copy SE, Global Mirror for z/OS, a new technology for avoiding hot spots in an array, and a productivity center for better administering IBM-installed storage devices. These enhancements rectify some weaknesses in IBM’s storage functionality that often left it regarded as less than competitive, forcing it to discount against key competitors.
Specifically we point out the importance of the enhancements of the Global Mirror technology introduced by IBM that offer a marked improvement over the original XRC technology for remote copy. By adding multiple readers, IBM is effectively able to increase not only the amount of data managed but also the throughput of that data in remote copy applications. Clearly the DS8000 announcement puts IBM strongly back into a completely competitive position with HDS and EMC.
Many users expected to see the POWER6 microprocessor become the platform for the DS8000, but it appears IBM will push that off to a future announcement, leading us to anticipate more additions and advances on this important platform in the future.
The second part of the announcement was a set of modest but nonetheless pointed enhancements to the SVC SAN controller. While the enhancements are mostly focused on a new disk-to-disk copy technique and formal support on the SVC for VMware EXS server, these seemingly small enhancements nonetheless extend IBM’s strategic advantage and constant developments in the emerging area of storage virtualization.
As users continue to highlight their need for virtualization technologies, the SVC, which passed 3,400 system installations, has a clear advantage from the customer install as well as application affinity standpoints. Also very importantly, IBM introduced a virtual global file manager for the N series (OEMed from NetworkAppliance) which simplifies the traditional headaches associated with migrating and administering large stores of files. The final area of importance was enhancements to the TS7520 virtualization engine which actually seemed to be constrained compared to what we thought IBM might announce. The TS7520 now is running Tivoli Storage Manager directly on the box, and we expect this is likely to be an architectural direction for IBM – moving increasing numbers of storage-related applications directly to the controller.
As users consider this announcement, we think that they should closely focus on three things:
- IBM has muscled its way back into full membership in the high-end storage game, delivering functional performance and capacity parity with this announcement. As a result, it may be slower to discount pricing.
- The array of function now available on a wide variety of different boxes increases the requirement for users to identify their needs in performance, capacity and functionality explicitly and purchase to those storage needs. As storage packaging becomes more complex, users do not want to pay either out-of-pocket or operational dollars for things they will not exploit.
- Finally, the global mirror product turns the crank of remote functionality on new types of technology and technology exploitations. As users attempt to answer their overall data and processing resilience questions, the issue of how remote copy is handled from an operational and architectural standpoint will probably grow in importance.
Action Item: IBM’s Oct 23 announcement is a solid effort from a renewed storage supplier. While this announcement will not necessarily place IBM back into the leadership position in the enterprise storage industry, it is clear that users should fully take advantage of reemergence of IBM as major force in high-end storage and virtualization to achieve best price for right combination of capacity, performance and functionality.
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