IBM has outlined a new enterprise storage roadmap, with storage
management software, Linux-based storage virtualisation and open
storage architectures featuring heavily among the company's
plans.
Guided by its recently appointed general manager of storage
software Michael Zisman, a former president of Lotus Software
Group, IBM's new plan of action has finally brought Big Blue up to
speed with enterprise storage players such as EMC and Hitachi Data
Systems, according to industry experts.
"We're impressed at the rate of change that Zisman has been able to
bring to IBM's storage organisation," Tony Prigmore, a senior
analyst with the Enterprise Storage Group, said. "This new plan
will no longer give IBM sales representatives the excuse to tell a
customers that [IBM] doesn't have a certain storage
technology."
IBM has laid out its enterprise storage strategy as a three-prong
plan - heavy on the software side. Similar to competitors EMC and
Hitachi, IBM's aim is to migrate its primary storage revenue stream
to software while "reducing its dependency on lower-margin
hardware," Prigmore said.
Linux-based virtualisation, IBM's Storage Tank file system and
storage network designs based on mixed-vendor interoperability
guidelines set forth by the Storage Networking Industry Association
(SNIA), represent the three areas of innovation that IBM will
pursue along its enterprise storage roadmap.
Virtualisation efforts from IBM will improve users' ability to
manage multiple pools of storage as a single, virtual storage disk.
IBM's commitment to Linux will drive its efforts in storage
virtualisation as many of the storage appliances that foster
virtualisation are Linux-based, Prigmore said.
Big Blue's Storage Tank file system will also fuel IBM's progress
along its enterprise storage roadmap, company representatives said.
Storage Tank is IBM's upcoming storage file system for mixed-vendor
hardware and software environments.
Both Storage Tank and IBM's storage virtualisation technology will
arrive in 2003, according to IBM.
Following many of the interoperability guidelines currently being
set forth by SNIA, open storage architectures will also play a key
role in IBM's enterprise storage. SNIA is a storage industry group
with a membership ledger that includes nearly every major and minor
storage player in the industry.
Zisman said IBM embraces SNIA's belief that storage management must
include technology that improves both block-level and file-level
data transfers.
Until the late arrival of IBM's Shark storage server in mid-1999,
IBM was not generally regarded as an enterprise storage player in a
market that was quickly moving away from mainframe-style
direct-attached storage to networked storage such as SANs (storage
area networks).
Now, after two years of what Prigmore called "playing catch-up,"
IBM is positioned to go head-to-head against the biggest giants in
the storage sector as its enterprise storage roadmap unfolds.
"Now IBM is going to able to have discussions with the customers
which are much more complete discussions regarding storage
management, higher functionality options and the integration of
things like replication to backup," Prigmore said.
"Our message is very simple and very crisp, and we are working hard
to educate not only the sales organisation but the marketing and
development organisation," Zisman said. "We've gone through a long
process of distilling this strategy down, and I think we now have
it down to the point where it's pretty simple."