IBM to Invest $1 billion in R&D of Flash Products

IBM has announced that it is planning to make an investment of $1 billion in the research and development to design, create and integrate new flash-based products in its expanding portfolio of servers, storage systems and middle ware.

As part of its commitment to flash development, IBM  is also aiming to open 12 Centers of Competency around the globe that will allow customers measure the projected performance of IBM flash products.

Ambuj Goyal, IBM's general manager of systems storage said, "The economics and performance of flash are at a point where the technology can have a revolutionary impact on enterprises, especially for transaction-intensive applications. The confluence of Big Data, social, mobile and cloud technologies is creating an environment in the enterprise that demands faster, more efficient, access to business insights, and flash can provide that access quickly."

The IBM FlashSystem line includes the FlashSystem 720 and FlashSystem 820 arrays which are based on the technology it acquired from Texas Memory Systems.

IBM's FlashSystem 820 and IBM FlashSystem 720 are designed to speed up the performance of multiple enterprise-class applications, including online transaction processing and online analytical processing databases, virtual desktop infrastructures, technical computing applications and cloud-scale infrastructures.

As per IBM , the  flash solutions can provide real-time decision support for operational information, and help improve the performance of mission-critical workloads, such as credit card processing, stock exchange transactions, manufacturing and order processing systems.

The company also said it plans to incorporate TMS products into IBM's PureSystems prepackaged hardware systems, as well as into other storage, server and software product lines.