Flash is the ‘new found love’ for IBM

Akhil Kamat,
Platform Manager, Storage, Systems and Technology Group,
IBM India/ SA

Storage scenario has transformed for good in the country. It has definitely changed from buying just a bunch of disks to features storages offer, software and integration capabilities it offers. Customers realize the need for smarter storage and IBM believes in making it efficient.  “Clients are looking at compression of storage i.e. how to do more with less. Simplification of storage is important to avoid complexity. We at IBM have something called as Storage Infrastructure Optimization study wherein we tell our customers as to how they simplify their architecture,” explains Akhil Kamat, Platform Manager, Storage, Systems and Technology Group, IBM India/ SA.

IBM’s focus on Flash Technology

IBM leads the storage arena with a lot of innovation. “We are the oldest storage company. We have the maximum number of patents on the storage front. We do a lot of investments for the research and development on the storage side of things. And that’s how Flash Technology has come. IBM thinks Flash is a game changer,” Kamat informs.

For instance, if somebody wants to implement storage which gives a hundred thousand times IOPS performance, about 600-700 SAS disk will be needed to deliver that performance or 35-40 SSB drives can be used to deliver that performance or implement one new flash.With Flashdelivering 100,000 IOPS, customers now look atthe cost rather than the cost per terabyte.

Flash will help people solve their performance issue and also will help them compress their data-centres. And it helps them get much more space.

The power intake in Flash is very less compared to disks. Flash is a size of a card. So a company would spend less on space footprint.  Performance of Flash is higher. For e.g. if 800 to 1000 disks are required for 500,000 IOPS, then 1U is required for same performance in Flash.  Also the cost per IOP in Flash is $1. When it comes to power consumption in Flash it is tremendously low. 

Role of Channel

 Channels do have an important role to play in Flash Technology. nstrate the business benefit of the same in customers’environments. Channels with their skills on system integration, in understanding various operating systems, databases shall help customers in demonstrating that benefit and ROI. IBM has made a good amount of investment in demo equipments and are enabling partners demonstrating the value of flash to customers.So the Channels will have a vital role in understanding the advantages of this technology and reach out to the markets. 

Going ahead…

“In our discussions with customer we find that there is a latent need for such technology. We find customers are definitely excited by this technology and also to our surprise clear on their deployment of this within their storage architecture. So essentially it is about demonstrating the proof points, showing them the required performance and ROI of the same. We along with our channel have deployed a robust plan around this,” shares Kamat.

Customers with high transaction load, batch processing, large databases essentially are the target customers irrespective of verticals for the Flash Technology. Customers who have deployed large virtualization and require high IOPS are the one's who shall need this technology.