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Powering business at the speed of life

01 July, 2018
Levi Norman
IBM

Mark Peters, Practice Director and Senior Analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) observes: “Time and again our market research reminds us that it’s the needs of overall business, more than any other factors, that drive the choice and adoption of IT technologies. And, whatever those overall needs, what’s equally clear is that right now businesses want to go faster. A lot faster.”

Your business growth can be accelerated when the applications that power your data-driven business run faster. In today’s multi-cloud environments, “real-time” isn’t a slogan; it’s a necessity. For applications to provide answers and insights at the speed of life, your storage must respond in microseconds – at the speed of memory – not a thousand times slower, as storage did for decades, until the 21st century brought mobile banking and worldwide social engagement to the palm of your hand along with artificial intelligence (AI)… and so much more.

These are the reasons why the Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) protocol and NVMe-based technologies and solutions are attracting so much attention – ever-accelerating business needs for more speed and greater efficiency.

For decades, IBM Storage has been one of the leaders in developing and bringing to market high performance IT infrastructure solutions. For example, IBM FlashCore technology and its precursors have been providing ultra-low latency data storage for over 30 years, helps improve your application, and workload results. More recently, IBM solutions such as the Coherent Accelerator Processor Interface (CAPI) and IBM zHyperLink™ technology demonstrate that there has been plenty of IBM focus on ultra-low latency storage.

Over the past few years, IBM Storage has maintained a steady cadence of NVMe-related innovation and announcements, while always offering very fast and efficient high-performance storage options, such as IBM FlashSystem 900[1]. NVMe innovation from IBM has accelerated in recent years:

  • In 2016, IBM responded to the transformation in data value with sweeping additions to its all-flash solutions such as IBM FlashSystem A9000, which included features intrinsic to NVMe functionality.[2]
  • By May 2017, IBM announced our NVMe strategy based on optimizing the entire storage system stack, from applications to flash technology.NVME over fabrics
  • In December 2017, IBM exhibited the IBM FlashSystem 900 using NVMe over an InfiniBand fabric integrated with an IBM POWER9 Systems server.
  • In February of this year IBM began shipping NVMe over Fabrics (NVMe-oF) for IBM FlashSystem 900 for an Infiniband fabric, and software support for NVMe fabrics for the IBM Spectrum Accelerate and IBM Spectrum Virtualize families.

Today, you can take advantage of a wide range of NVMe capabilities within IBM Storage solutions:

NVMe-based all-flash solutions offer lower storage latencies than traditional protocols, but the advantages don’t stop there as IBM’s upcoming all-flash solutions include a panoply of software designed to drive the most value from your data driven multi-cloud enterprise.

High-performance technologies such as NVMe help power the real-time and AI applications that enable your business to keep pace with life in the 21st century. IBM Storage is at the forefront of NVMe innovation, regularly announcing new NVMe capabilities and solutions – see what is coming from IBM Storage this month.  The market momentum surrounding NVMe is still building and IBM Storage is leading the way. Join us on 10 July and see how IBM could be transforming your data driven multi-cloud organization.

[1] Silverton Consulting StorInt Briefing: IBM FlashSystem 900 Enhancements, September 2017

[2] IBM Press Release: IBM Supports New Faster Protocols for Flash Storage, May 2017 (https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/52280.wss)

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