Storage Fusion

Last October Oxford Economics and IBM conducted a study in which they asked 6,000 CIOs, CTOs, and senior IT leaders in six industries from organizations that are using cloud services in some capacity and at least experimenting with AI, about the importance of cloud architecture and AI in enabling their businesses to adapt and thrive. One high-level trend that emerged from the data was that those taking a strategic approach to adopting cloud were outperforming their peers in key metrics.

In this report 77% of IT leaders say a unified platform for cloud, data, and AI is critical for long-term success and nearly 66% of IT leaders expect to host customer-facing applications, in hybrid environments within two years’ time.¹   The landscape is moving fast and and so is IBM.  At IBM Storage we are focused on the data and that’s why in this hybrid-cloud era we have created a data platform that unifies data from edge to core to cloud and specifically designed for application modernization.  We call our technology the IBM Global Data Platform.

The Global Data Platform provides the foundation to simultaneously connect multiple data sources using multiple data interfaces from edge to core to cloud.  We provide “faster access” with “simultaneous parallel data paths anywhere, everywhere and for anyone.

IBM Spectrum Fusion

For Kubernetes container environments and Red Hat OpenShift we have created IBM Spectrum Fusion.  IBM Spectrum Fusion is a container-native hybrid cloud data platform for OpenShift and built with a storage platform based on IBM Spectrum Scale and the IBM Global Data Platform.  IBM Spectrum Fusion includes the essential elements necessary for mission critical containers and the hybrid cloud with storage services that are necessary for enterprise applications and a data driven Red Hat OpenShift environment. IBM Spectrum Fusion is also built with data services integrated with such key capabilities such as backup, data optimization, security and data protection all included.  Our platform connects the cloud to the data center and the edge with a Global Data Platform.

To help customers on their journey to Red Hat OpenShift and the hybrid cloud, IBM has created a comprehensive solution so you can start in the data center or on the edge and connect to all your data globally and centrally manage all your resources.  IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI is IBM Spectrum Fusion in a fully configured hardware/software appliance that makes OpenShift easy!

Key features of IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI are:

• Bare metal OpenShift without the overhead of a hypervisor 
• Fast to deploy, simple to scale,  and easy manage
• Optimized with persistent data for containers and seamlessly to cloud
• High performance parallel file system with Integrated backup/restore
• Commodity x86 storage rich 1U servers
• Populated with high performance NVMe flash drives
• Optional NVIDIA A100 GPUs to accelerate AI/ML
• Global data platform and data services to expand data anywhere and access data everywhere
• Single point of contact for all components of the solution 
  

There is a lot of momentum with IBM Spectrum Fusion and after only a couple months we wanted to share a very exciting success story with a major US financial institution. This customer is in a very competitive landscape and is looking to accelerate their modernization efforts for the future.  They are developing new applications and migrating some existing apps to run as containerized workloads and using cloud resources to increase agility.   Their modernization journey is constantly under pressure with operational complexity and the integration challenges of adopting new technologies.

After a thorough investigation into alternatives to Kubernetes environments the customer chose Red Hat OpenShift.  Then the investigation turned to how best to deploy OpenShift in their environment.  The customer evaluated a number of alternative solutions, some based on current technology already deployed in their data center and some based on new containerized technologies.  After careful consideration the customer chose a fully configured and comprehensive all-in-one solution from IBM.  This IBM solution would allow them to move at a more rapid pace to leverage the capabilities of OpenShift and the hybrid cloud and integrate their current data for faster insights and faster time to market.  The customer chose a dual IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI cluster that not only connects to each other but also to IBM Cloud Satellite, the IBM Cloud and other existing data resources already deployed in their data center.   The customer commented that they felt IBM's completeness of vision that included the hybrid cloud was a key contributor to IBM's success vs. the competition.  The Customer is now able to drive modernization faster by many months and IT is able to quickly move OpenShift deployments forward and has more confidence in the management, configuration, scalability and the integration thanks to IBM's all in one approach to an OpenShift solution.   Another key driver for IT operation was how easy IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI made Red Hat OpenShift and integrated Kuberneties data into their current data resources and provided a comprehensive integrated approach to data services which included the IBM Global Data Platform.  Finally the Global Data Platform provided a fast and easy way for DevOps to move more quickly with application modernization and leverage global resources including the public cloud.

For more information on IBM Spectrum Fusion and IBM Spectrum Fusion HCI visit us at : https://www.ibm.com/products/spectrum-fusion



1 Greater than the sum of their parts (PDF, 216 KB), Oxford Economics, September 2020