POWERING THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS WITH IBM FLASHSYSTEM STORAGE

predicting the future is usually an uncertain exer-cise at best. Ask nearly any expert to describe the future of IT these days, however, and their surpris-ingly confident and consistent answer will almost certainly revolve around the same five technology trends: cloud computing, analytics, mobile appli-cations, social media, and data security.

It’s a consensus that’s hard to dispute. Individually, cloud computing, analytics, mobility, and social media are already today’s most potent engines of IT innovation, and when accompanied by robust security they’re collectively helping companies spot trends and seize opportunities with unprec-edented speed.

Yet those five technologies share more in common than a starring role in an emerging generation of powerful new solutions. Cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security all have an unusually strong need for exceptionally

fast storage. And as businesses are discovering in rapidly growing numbers, no storage systems do a better job of satisfying that need than the IBM FlashSystem family of all-flash storage arrays.

REACHING NEW HEIGHTSLike the members of an IT all-star team, each of tomorrow’s five defining technology trends brings a different yet complementary strength to the table.

“Mobility is really helping people do the work they need to get done wherever they are,” says Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group Inc., of San Jose, Calif. Social media services are piggybacking on that roaming connectivity to keep users connected with friends, co-workers, and business partners on the go. And big data analytics is helping businesses mine the enormous volumes of information that mobile and social solutions are generating, yielding actionable insights in real time.

Cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social engagement, and security are driving powerful new IT solutions that demand the extreme performance of IBM FlashSystem storage.

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Without a crystal ball or time machine,

Security solutions, finally, protect all four other technologies from the ever-mounting perils of doing business in cyberspace. “As consumers and businesses produce more and more data, protecting it all becomes more and more impor-tant,” Algozzine observes.

Together, mobile, social, analytics, cloud computing, and security are enabling businesses to reach new heights in agility and efficiency. In the financial services industry, for example, they’re helping banks and stock traders enjoy first-mover advantage on fleeting investment opportunities. In retail and manufacturing, they’re helping businesses deliver exactly the right product to exactly the right buyer at exactly the right time. “Most companies can understand what a specific customer wants some of the time,” Enderle says. Securely combining cloud, analytics, mobile, and social, however, enables businesses to satisfy entire markets with lightning speed and laser-beam precision.

INDUSTRY-LEADING PERFORMANCEYet to achieve results like that, those powerful new solutions require the dynamic performance only IBM FlashSystem storage arrays can deliver. Unlike solid-state drives (SSDs) originally designed for slower disk-based systems, FlashSystem arrays are engineered for flash from the ground up. As a result, they provide microsecond response times, rather than the millisecond responsiveness of competing products.

And responsiveness is the name of the game when it comes to keeping mobile and social users happy. “People are very finicky and will walk away from a mobile or social platform if it’s not giving them the performance they expect,” Algozzine says. FlashSystem arrays provide the near-instant response times businesses need to keep mobile and social apps running fast, even when users are viewing high-resolution videos or exchanging torrents of quick status updates. “You need a storage infrastructure capable of supporting both large file downloads and millions of random little I/O reads, and IBM FlashSystem really excels in both areas,” Algozzine says.

Cloud computing, meanwhile, provides a super-efficient mechanism for delivering mobile, social, and analytics services. “Cloud has just incredible scale, and the end result is it can provide much more [capacity] for a far lower cost than you can get on-premises,” Enderle says.

Plus, cloud infrastructures are heavily virtualized and automated, so they can adjust that capacity dynam-ically as requirements fluctuate. “If your marketing video suddenly goes viral, your cloud environ-ment can automatically sense that and add more compute resources, so there’s no frustrating down-time or damage to your brand,” says Chris Algoz-zine, director of global storage portfolio marketing in the Systems and Technology Group at IBM Corp., of Armonk, N.Y. Well-architected clouds also reduce management costs and speed new applications to market by streamlining labor-intensive administrative and provisioning tasks, he adds.

2 WHITE PAPER ➔ Powering the Future of Business with IBM FlashSystem Storage

Big data analytics is helping businesses mine the enormous volumes of information that mobile and social solutions are generating, yielding actionable insights in real time.

3 WHITE PAPER ➔ Powering the Future of Business with IBM FlashSystem Storage

FlashSystem arrays also enable even the biggest big data analytics applications to process massive quantities of information rapidly. “Being able to take action automatically based on real-time analytics is a large part of IT’s future right now,” Algozzine says. IBM FlashSystem solutions give companies the “micro-latency” performance they need to adjust prices, optimize inventory, prevent fraud, and more at top speed.

That industry-leading latency also makes IBM FlashSystem an ideal platform for cloud computing environments. Running cloud solutions on fast FlashSystem arrays helps businesses compen-sate for the performance slowdowns that network bandwidth constraints and long-distance connec-tions can create. It also makes exploiting the cloud’s scalability advantages significantly easier. “You can accelerate policy-based automation of your IT infra-structure, which allows resources to come online and go offline faster,” Algozzine says. And since FlashSystem arrays consume less power, produce less heat, and require less floor space than compa-rable solutions, they enhance the cost-effectiveness of cloud environments as well.

Finally, IBM FlashSystem arrays rev up data protec-tion by helping security applications detect threats and enforce controls all but instantaneously, so businesses can safely harness the game-changing power of cloud computing, analytics, mobility, and social media.

In short, the future of IT and the future of storage turn out to be tightly interrelated. “Solutions combining cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security demand the absolute fastest possible access to data,” Algozzine says. “IBM FlashSystem arrays satisfy those demands more fully and efficiently than any other storage solutions available.” n

For more information, visit ibm.com/storage/flash

“Solutions combining cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security demand the absolute fastest possible access to data.”

—Chris Algozzine, director of global storage portfolio marketing, IBM Corp.

EXECUTIVEVIEWPOINT

Change has long been a constant in the world of IT. These days, however, it’s occurring on an unusually vast scale at an unusually rapid pace thanks to the rise of cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security. In this executive Q&A, IBM’s Marjorie Tenzer explains how those five core technology trends are combining to change the face of enterprise IT, as well as the strategic role IBM FlashSystem products play in helping businesses thrive in the era those technologies are bringing to life.

Q: Why does IBM view cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security as key to the future of IT?

A: Analytics, mobile, and social are energizing innova-tion in powerful new directions. Cloud is a new deploy-ment model that offers a scalable, efficient platform for analytics, mobile, and social. Security is what creates the foundational trust needed to enable the others. In short, those five technology trends are closely related to one another and defining where IT is headed. That’s why IBM is focused on them.

Q: What’s the long-term importance of cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security for businesses?

A: Simply stated, those technologies are how business will get done in the future. Mobile will define how we consume products and services. Social engagement will define how we market and sell. Analytics will inform all of those activities, security will protect them, and the cloud will deliver them.

Winning the Future of IT

“The reality is you can’t implement such solutions successfully without flash storage.”

Q: What implications do cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security have for storage?

A: Storage, in a very real sense, is one of the chief enablers of all those technologies. Together, those five technologies are producing an explosion of data along all four of its dimensions, the so-called “four Vs.” Data volumes are growing at phenomenal rates, the velocity of data moving around our world is accelerating, the varieties of data are proliferating, and the value of data has never been higher. Under such conditions, how well your data storage performs has a lot to say about how well your IT infrastructure—and therefore your entire business—performs.

Q: What makes IBM FlashSystem storage a strong fit for solutions combining cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security?

A: The reality is you can’t implement such solu-tions successfully without flash storage. Flash is less expensive than disk-based storage for active data sets, and it’s more reliable, more efficient, and certainly more scalable as well. Above all, though, flash is dramatically faster than disk. You need that performance to implement flexible, responsive cloud computing environments. You need it to transform cascades of data into meaningful, real-time business insights. You need it to prevent fraud as it happens and enhance security, and you won’t stay competitive in the fast-moving arenas of mobile consumption and social engagement without high-speed flash storage.

IBM FlashSystem arrays are the fastest flash storage solutions in the industry, as well as the most scalable, reliable, and efficient. If you need flash to benefit from the future of IT that cloud computing, analytics, mobility, social media, and security are creating—and you do—why not deploy the best flash storage avail-able? We believe that’s IBM FlashSystem. n

MARJORIE TENZERis vice president for marketing and strategy in IBM’s System Storage and Networking organization.