IBM unveils next generation Flash Storage solutions

Enterprises around the globe face the rising challenges posed by escalating data volumes, velocity, and variety. Flash – the memory technology used in everything from mobile phones to enterprise storage – is being used to help businesses address these challenges and transform the flood of information into tangible value and business insight.

IBM FlashSystem® storage can enable organizations to address new IT challenges while continuing to accelerate application performance and helping lower IT infrastructure cost and complexity. IBM FlashSystem V9000 offers the advantages of software-defined storage at the speed of flash. By deploying FlashSystem V9000, clients can consolidate their existing storage systems under one management domain, and implement leading-edge virtualization and storage services throughout. Meanwhile, IBM FlashSystem 900 will continue providing extreme performance, enterprise reliability, and macro efficiency that can be deployed in as little as two hours, rather than the days required for conventional systems.

At the heart of these all-flash storage arrays lies IBM FlashCore™ technology, the suite of innovations and capabilities that can enable FlashSystem to help deliver better performance than enterprise disk systems, making it flexible as well as easy to deploy across entire IT ecosystems. These technology enhancements can translate into tangible benefits for clients that want to build cost-effective cloud architectures, gain quick insight from analytics, engage with mobile customers at every opportunity, and help detect and prevent cyber fraud and data security threats in real time.

FlashSystem V9000 and FlashSystem 900 take enterprise storage to the next level, by helping to enable businesses such as Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated (CCBCC) unleash the power of big data, achieve real-time business insights, make better decisions, and gain competitive advantage. For more than two years, CCBCC has been deploying IBM FlashSystem storage to address the mounting volumes of data challenging the company’s ability to keep Coke products on store shelves. Leveraging FlashSystem technology, CCBCC was able to go from processing 100,000 data points to 3.5 million data points each day. As a result, the company improved their demand forecasting by narrowing the focus from warehouses down to individual customers to better predict how much of which products are needed on any given day and in any particular store or vending machine. CCBCC is currently rolling out IBM’s newest flash storage technology to process data even faster.

“The data we’re generating and analyzing daily is critical to our ability to stock Coke product on store shelves at the right time,” said Tom DeJuneas, IT Infrastructure Manager for Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated. “We turned to FlashSystem storage in 2013. It has helped us achieve a 75 percent reduction in data processing, reducing jobs that took 45 minutes down to just six. Today, we’re using IBM’s newest FlashSystem solution to process data and draw key insights even faster, so we can dramatically improve our demand forecasting and get our products on the right shelves at the right time.”

This announcement further illustrates IBM’s commitment to developing and offering flash-based storage solutions to enterprises of all sizes and industries and builds on the investment in flash storage which IBM announced in April 2013. The company made a one billion dollar investment in flash storage research, partnerships, product development, enhancements to flash sales and support infrastructures, and 12 new Centers of Competency across the globe.

“Many of our clients are pressured to derive greater business value from an ever-growing amount of data,” said Jamie Thomas, General Manager, Storage and Software Defined Systems at IBM. “In order to unlock key insights from big data through analytics, more and more clients, like Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, are using IBM FlashSystem to accelerate mission-critical applications and improve operations and services. These IBM solutions can offer extraordinary advantage to any business eager to make more, spend less, and move faster.”

IBM FlashSystem technology features Micron’s MLC flash chip technology. FlashSystem takes advantage of the chip’s density and cost benefits resulting in stronger data protection, improved reliability and enhanced application economics.

“IBM is a powerful leader in storage, globally recognized for delivering solutions that transform businesses,” said Darren Thomas, Vice President of Storage at Micron. “For FlashSystem, IBM draws on Micron’s flash expertise and deep flash media knowledge to deliver a truly differentiated storage solution. This unique collaboration signifies the future of enterprise storage.”