Rethinking Storage: Key Insights From IBM’s Storage Summit 2023

IBM is revamping its storage portfolio, announcing last March that they’re rebranding some of its offerings. However, it's only becoming clear now that IBM isn’t just seeking a rebrand but rethinking storage entirely. That was the key takeaway from the IBM Storage Summit held in late July 2023. 

Comprising of keynotes and interviews with IBM executives, the IBM Storage Summit was conducted via theCUBE, the live-streaming studio of SiliconANGLE Media. The executives featured included Sam Werner, vice president of IBM Storage, Ian Shave, director of distributed storage sales, Pete Grey, global product executive, and Karen Hsu, vice president of storage ecosystem.

The panels and interviews revealed IBM’s direction with its storage products. 

In this article, we will review the following from the IBM Storage Summit:

• Discussions around the future of storage.
• Discussions around new hardware and storage offerings.
• Discussions around cybersecurity.
• Discussions around artificial intelligence (AI).

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About IBM’s Storage Ambitions

Like many other technology vendors invested in storage solutions, IBM is taking a more profound approach to storage. The changing landscape of technology, where data is an indispensable asset, is driving companies like IBM to develop innovative solutions for storing data in arrays inside data centers. 

IBM recognizes that data is an invaluable asset for businesses and that most companies want to find ways to monetize it. Gone are the days when data would just sit on storage on racks. Companies want to derive value from the data residing on storage hardware. And, of course, storage itself has a significant role to play in it. 

IBM is gradually aligning its storage offerings with its vision of preparing storage for AI. The storage lineup shows that IBM’s ambition with this particular hardware piece is much more significant. It may even become the industry leader in modern, cloud-friendly, AI-ready storage, providing a blueprint for other vendors. 

Key Insights From IBM Storage Summit

While IBM executives, hosts, and analysts discussed many important things regarding data storage, here are the main takeaways from the discussions. 

The New Role of Storage in Data Infrastructure

Storage’s role in data center architecture was straightforward for the longest time. It wasn’t responsible for processing or analyzing data. Storage’s job was just that: storage. However, with the advent of new technologies heavily reliant on data, a renewed value of hardware holds it. 

In simpler words, storage’s role is changing and becoming more important, as people now see storage as a critical piece of infrastructure that needs to be secure and have more capabilities than simply housing data. 

Before this, storage was all about input/output speeds. Data centers were ready to invest in equipment that delivered faster throughput to get the most out of storage arrays. Now, the conversation is changing, and enterprises want more from storage. 

The role’s significance is also growing because of the need for more robust security and resilience. The data, which can enable technologies like machine learning, must be protected at every point, including where it’s stored. 

From Bare Storage to Data Platform

IBM is turning storage into a data platform that caters to the needs of distributed, hybrid infrastructures. Most enterprises don’t have data residing in a single location. Ideally, they’d want all their data to be in one place so it can be processed and used. However, that’s far from the reality. 

IBM’s Storage Fusion, a cloud-native platform for consistent and scalable data services, aims to reduce complexity by bringing different data technologies into one platform.

Security Becomes Paramount

Perhaps the most consequential development in storage from IBM is in security. IBM is taking the security capabilities of its storage product lines to the next level. Now, the products can detect data anomalies with high accuracy. 

Using entropy, the storage can assess incoming data and detect any anomaly before it’s even stored. That’s unprecedented, as it can help detect malware that has already penetrated the initial layers and reached the drives. IBM claims the accuracy is up to 75 percent, which means the chances of a threat getting detected in real time are very strong. 

In addition to detecting threats, the anomalies in data streams also help storage managers to adapt to unique storage requirements. 

Regarding security, IBM is also investing in making storage more resilient. So, if an attack is successful, data isn’t entirely compromised. The storage solutions must make data backups resilient and secure so that enterprises can recover data lost due to a ransomware attack. 

IBM’s Flashcore Modules, a series of high-performing flash drives, already offer data resilience with backups that are easy to recover. 

AI Demands for Storage

IBM’s new take on data storage derives partly from the AI revolution. Storage will play the part of an enabler as more and more companies dabble with language models and machine learning. Storage equipment and servers will have to handle increasingly demanding data-intensive workloads. 

IBM executives acknowledged the increasing workloads in different industries owing to the incorporation of AI-enabled tools. 

The considerable shifts in the data demands by AI, going from small to large in nanoseconds, require infrastructure that can adapt to such requirements and deliver data as needed. 

One of the challenges that enterprises now face is data structuring and organization. The data needs to be well-structured to leverage the power of AI models. In other words, the storage solutions must be able to organize the data according to rules or policies before one can train AI models on them. 

The data platform IBM has created will realize this goal, as it can traverse through all the unstructured data and give it structure based on the defined data policy. 

The Future of Storage Is Here

The takeaway from the IBM Storage Summit is that storage equipment and software will play an essential role in enterprises, especially those leveraging AI. It’s no longer a piece of bare metal holding data but an intelligent device capable of securing, structuring, and, to some extent, processing data. 

IBM’s latest line of storage is bringing new capabilities to the table that can help enterprises get the most value out of their data. These products also reflect the trajectory of storage devices and software solutions.

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