IBM today announced it is investing $1 billion in the research and development of new flash-based products to expand is line of servers, storage systems and middleware.
The convergence of big data, mobile, cloud and social technologies is putting pressure on enterprise businesses to obtain faster and more efficient business insights into data and flash technology is now at a point to help organizations achieve this, according to Ambuj Goyal, general manager of systems storage at IBM.
The company also announced the availability of the IBM FlashSystem line of all-flash storage appliances based on technology of solid-state storage maker Texas Memory Systems, which IBM recently bought out.
The new line of storage products includes the FlashSystem 720 and FlashSystem 820 arrays. The FlashSystsems are rack-mounted arrays that are 1.75-inch high. They are up to 20 times faster than similar-sized arrays with spinning drives and they are able to store up to 24TB of data.
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The FlashSystem arrays boast of sub 100 microsecond data access times. They are designed to accelerate the performance of multiple enterprise class applications, such as those for online transaction processing, online analytical processing databases, virtual desktop infrastructures, technical computing applications and cloud infrastructures.
IBM said it plans to open 12 Centres of Competency around the world that will enable customers to run proof-of-concept scenarios with real –world data to measure the projected gains that can be with IBM’s flash products.
Big Blue plans to have Centres of Competency in China, India, Japan, Singapore, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and South Africa, operational by the end of 2013.