As a number of you know, I have been blogging about the merits of Real-time Compression.  It may be of some interest to know that when Ed Walsh, CEO of Storwize, asked me to join and told me the company focused on "compression", I first thought he was joking.  I mean the industry has had compression available for years.  The reality is, there is no other technology like Real-time Compression available from any vendor, and it is today, even more clear, why IBM chose to own this technology.  In the next few blog pieces I plan to talk about a few of the concepts of the IP that make this technology so far advanced than any / all of its competition. Today’s piece is about fixed input versus variable input compression.  This is a very simple concept to understand really.  Traditional compression uses a process called 'fixed input' / 'variable output'.  If we refer to the diagrams below, we start off with the original file on the left and the compressed file on the right.  The way traditional compression works (and you can actually watch this on your home computer if you winzip a file) is the following: The compression algorithm will 'chunk up' the original file into 'manageable' sizes before it compresses the file.  The tradeoff here, and why this process happens, is like with anything in computer science, performance for optimization.  The first diagram shows the large file being 'chunked up', compressed and stuffed into the smaller file.

Figure 1

There are two significant issues with this. The first issue is that the compression dictionary is not shared across multiple ‘chunks’ when compression is taking place.  The example in Figure 2 shows that the letter “F” in ‘chunk’ 1 does not get compressed with the letter “F” in ‘chunk’ 4.  This means that the compression ratio is simply not optimized across the file.

Second is that as a file gets modified, and the compression ratio of the modified ‘chunk’ changes, it will cause fragmentation in the compressed file.  Figure 3 shows ‘chunk’ 3 being updated from “1111” to “1100”.  The newly compressed ‘chunk’ 3 is smaller (referred to as 3’).  As the new compressed ‘chunk’ is added to the end of the file, a “hole” is left in the compressed file.

Figure 2

Figure 3

Best practices documentation from the competitors to Real-time Compression will tell users that if a file is frequently modified, that over time, the compressed file can actually be larger than the original file.  This does not help the storage administrator.

1)      Over time the file system can grow rather than shrink which was the premise for using compression in the first place

2)      The I/O performance on the array will be very taxing

3)      The CPU cycles taken up on the array for compressing and decompressing these files will also be taxing on the array and cause a significant performance impact.

The converse to ‘fixed input’ / ‘variable output’ is ‘variable input’ / ‘fixed output’ and this is how Real-time Compression compresses a file.  I should first note that because Real-time Compression operates as an appliance in NAS environments, in the network, we see the data stream into the array.  By looking at the data stream as it enters the array we have the ability to do some very unique things.  First, we are able to compress “like” data together.  In the case where there are two “F”’s in the same file, we are able to leverage the same compression dictionary and obtain additional compression in the file.  This is what is known as time based compression versus location based compression in the other scenario.  This is how Real-time Compression is actually able to get up to 10% better compression ratios than its competitors.

Figure 4

Figure 5

Having fixed segments in the output file also has added benefit.  First, each segment in the output is the equivalent of 1 I/O.  In an NFS environment the ‘chunk’ is 32KB in a CIFS environment the ‘chunk’ is 60KB.  This means that any read from the file can be done in 1 I/O saving significant I/O resources when accessing a file.  By maintaining an index of these segments (one in the cache of the appliance and a copy in the compressed file) Real-time Compression can eliminate fragmentation of the compressed file.  When a file is modified, the modified compressed ‘chunk’ is flagged by the index that it is available for the next write to come in and the newly compressed ‘chunk’ is added to the end of the file.  When the next modification comes in, the hole that was left by the last modification is now re-used.  This means:

1)      The compression ratio is maximized by looking at a stream of data versus chunking it up

2)      The compression ratio for the compressed files stay the same throughout the life of the file saving IT the space they desperately need

3)      Lowering the I/O on the array helps to maintain / improve performance to the application

4)      Removing the CPU cycles and having the appliance do the work means that the array is not overloaded when trying to do compression

This is just one example of the over 35 patents leveraged in Real-time Compression.  In an age where data growth is the single biggest challenge for IT, this technology has tremendous value to any companies business.  Weather it is trying to reduce storage budget costs, reduce utility expense, have more data on line and available for analytics or reduce footprint on primary storage to product backup savings, this technology has many business benefits.

Stay tuned as I talk about another piece of the Real-time Compression IP.

On October 11, 2011, at Dell World, Dell announced a component to their DX6000G object based storage called an “SCN” or Storage Compression Node.  It is interesting that Dell would mention in their blog post that this is “Dell’s first Ocarina based solution…” What makes this interesting is the value proposition behind Ocarina was its ‘content aware’ deduplication, not necessarily compression.  That said, this blog post seems to be the ONLY information on Dell’s web site about the product and there is very little in the press about this product and the technology.

While it is nice to see that Dell, who has committed to their own storage technology, understanding that storage optimization is important, the reality is they are a little to late to the game.  I say this because the announcement that came from Dell around their 6000 is really bizarre.  First, the solution is an object based solution.  Didn't they learn anything from EMC?  The Centera is not gaining a lot of momentum these days, even if they had a lot of ISV partners.  In fact, it is loosing ground.  Object based storage was good before the whole 'Big Data' thing was the 'next big thing' but today, people need a big clustered file system, that is optimized, that can server not only unstructured based data, but also some structured data that allows you to find stuff quickly.  Also, the DX may be a good solution for data types that are of the media / entertainment only segment, but when it comes to running a business, it takes more than just this object based file structure to be successful.

To me, this solution is too little, too late.  Dell, in order to be a true competitor in the space that is highly scale-able, clustered file systems that are optimized, they need to advance their thinking.   This will be difficult for Dell.  First of all they are not known for technology advancement or integration.  Until they announced thier departure from EMC they didn't really have a major focus on storage and now with their acquisitions, the question is, what is their value prop.  Couple that with the fact that IBM has 1000's of patents in storage and Dell doesn't where does that leave the direction of Dell storage?

When you look at the fact that IBM has industry knowledge and studies that disk can't grow at the rate it did in the late 90's and keep costs low, you need optimization technology to help you maximize disk capacities.  Combine this with the fact that Dell doesn't invent anything but acquires it, and if we take a look at how long it took for Dell to deliver a "compression" product from their acquisition, it leads us to believe that there will be a long time before Dell is ready to be a formidable player in the storage business when it comes to delivering products or technology that move customers past the commodity infrastructure plays to the advanced solutions that deliver capacity at the right price.  If it took over a year for Dell to get the Ocarina stuff to the market in a technology that is really "old school" technology, what are we expecting for the future of Dell storage?

My opinion is Dell will always be the low cost supplier of commodity hardware to risk adverse small businesses.  Integrating next generation technology will not be their forte.

Some interesting data came out of this panel.  There were probably over 150 people in the audience.  It was a well-attended session.  Also, Dave is VERY good about asking the audience questions.  Let me start by making sure we all know where everyone sits at the “storage efficiency table” that was on the panel.

• Larry Freeman is from NetApp – they claim, and I believe them, that they have 10 storage efficiency technologies that are embedded into WAFL
• Craig Nunes main focus on the panel was ‘zero reclamation’ to optimize storage
• I have a Real-time Compression drum I am beating
• Jarred Floyed focuses on data deduplication

Here are some questions and answers Dave got when speaking to the audience:

One last comment too that Larry Freeman stated was that NetApp has 10 storage optimization / efficiency technologies embedded into WAFL.  The interesting thing is that NetApp gets a report from 150,000 systems that "report in" over the weekend and they have collected statistics that users only use 3.2 out of these 10 efficiency technologies on average.

When the question was posed "why" is it that you have technology, that is “free” (more on that later) that can help you better optimize your storage, why they don’t turn it on?  To which the end user response was that they didn't want any change in the infrastructure that could require a change in their processes.  (This means that transparency is another thing that an appliance has to ensure it has.)

I also want to publicly commend Larry for a good deal of his comments and his honesty.  See Larry and I are technologists and sometimes we see the marketing arms of our companies sometimes stretch the truth to get what they want in the market by way of some FUD.  My example is this.  The RtC technology does provide high compression, for the life of the file without performance degradation.  Well, as you can see, this is what customers want give the response from the audience.  However, our friends at NetApp will say “yes, but our compression is free” (like that is supposed to be better).  Anyway, Larry addressed this in the same way I do.  He said that “you don’t get anything for free and there are tradeoffs, specifically in this case around performance”.  Now, I am not saying this to say “see, I told you so” I am saying it because we, as technologists, want to give the user the best answer.  I also admitted that an embedded strategy for technology is the right way to go, IF you can accomplish what the end users’ needs are, performance in this case.

Look, there is a reason why startups exist and why appliances exist.  Storwize didn’t invent compression; they invented a real-time platform that allowed compression to happen in real time.  We do “compression off load”.  We take the work off the array and put it on the appliance – how could that not be faster.  And yes, one day it will be embedded and there will be some other new great optimization technology that will start as an appliance and slowly find its way into the array.  It is the evolution of technology.

At the end of the day, here is what I have to say.  Every end user buys their storage for a reason.  It may be performance; it may be capacity who knows.  What I ask each user to do is to consider their BUSINESS needs for their storage and apply the RIGHT storage optimization technologies for their given environments.  There is not a “one size fits all” approach (this is why NetApp customers don’t choose to turn on all 10 optimization / efficiency technologies) but there are a handful that can help you get the most out of your storage.

Alright, landed safe in Prague and was picked up by one of my colleagues and whisked away to the IBM office.  There we did an interview with Czech writer Martin Noska from Computerworld for IDG in Czech Republic.  The first Noska informed me was that IBM is the number one in storage sales in Czech Republic (just like Poland!).  He also had some very good questions and he with “What are IBM’s biggest challenges in the storage business”?  I had thought about this for a while and I would have to say it is really about marketing our storage “solutions” to the customer base.  IBM is a double edge sword.  IBM is so big and has so many products it becomes difficult to market or message all of our products without inundating all of our customers and confusing them.  If you think about it, IBM has hundreds of thousands of customers and business partners, if not more.  This is one of our strengths.  When customers have needs or requirements we have very good input into our product portfolio, perhaps the best in the business.  Combine this with the fact that IBM has not only storage solutions but technology across the entire stack from servers to networking.  So when it comes to developing the right technology, that solves real customer problems, I would argue that IBM’s portfolio is the best in the business.  IBM takes an extreme amount of care when developing a solution to ensure that it matches the customer requirements based on the changing needs of IT.  Having an integrated portfolio that works well with our ISV partners, VMware for example, allows us to help customers speed their time to ROI and be very competitive in the market place.  The challenge is, how do we properly message our new solutions to our customers, in a timely manner so that they are well aware of new products without giving them too much information such that it just becomes noise?  It is difficult to say the least.

The interview went very well.  There were questions about tape, where we discussed the advantages of IBM’s LFTS technology for more advanced tape usage, we discussed the direction data deduplication will go as well.  Noska’s view was that there hadn’t been any advancement in data deduplication in the last 5 years.  I told him that for secondary storage, backup, that he is right, I also told him that the real advancement to deduplication will come when it is ready for primary storage.  Today deduplication isn’t ready for primary, but it will be soon.

On Monday the 13^th we traveled to visit Avnet.  They are a great IBM partner.  Like most partners they have a very large SMB install base and also like a lot of SMB feedback I have been getting, they are looking for a building block solution that has all of the software features implemented as a part of the stack.  SMB and Enterprise alike are starting to realize that the value in any array is becoming the software stack that makes the hardware, efficient, optimized, flexible, and dynamic.  IT’s job continues to get more and more challenging with developing strategic initiatives for the business to make them more competitive and it is the job of the vendor to make sure these solutions are as optimized and cost effective as possible.

We also visited DHL.  These guys have one of the greatest datacenters I have ever visited.  They are very advanced and push a lot of data.  The do some very strategic logistics for a number of companies in Europe and Asia.  They, like many others have a number of challenges.  Since my blog post about “The 5 Most Interesting things at VMworld” (#4) I heard something very interesting today.  I asked “What is your most challenging storage issue”?  He told me that storage was not is “most difficult” challenge.  Storage efficiency was important to him in order to keep driving down costs for his organization as they deliver a service to the different groups that make up DHL, but his most difficult challenge was with server I/O in his VMware environment.  If you read #4 in my post, regarding Proximal Data, this is exactly the issue the address.  As VM instances grow on the physical servers, the I/O starts to become the big problem.  DHL runs over 4000 instances of VMware and as the business demands more applications and application resources, they are bound by the I/O of the server, which also causes them to WAY over provision their storage for performance reasons.  This is very time consuming, management intensive and expensive.  The combination of a solution like Proximal Data as well as compression can help them optimize their infrastructure to save money and deliver better, more cost effective services to their lines of business.

On the lighter side, I spend the weekend in Prague.  What an amazing city.  The weather was fantastic and I was able to take a lot of great photos.  I walked around Prague Castle, ate some authentic Czech food, visited the memorial for the Czech hockey players that passed in the Russian plane crash and met some pretty interesting people.  You can check out some of my photos of Prague at www.facebook.com/skenniston.  Coincidentally the photo above shows the "Golden Lane" where the Alchemists worked to turn anything they could find into gold in the city of Prague.

After landing in Warsaw, I got into a car with the local sales leader for Poland and we drove to the event location.  It was a 2 hour drive.  First, the roads and the land in Poland reminded me very much of my home time in Maine.  Very scenic and rural but beautiful and peaceful.  We talked storage for 2 hours and I am always festinated at the thirst for knowledge there is when I travel.  It was a great ride followed up by a customer reception and some local Polish brew.

Thursday I spent the day in Sterdyn, Poland for IBM Storage University.  There were 30 customers at the event and it went very very well.  The event was at Palac Ossolinski, today used as an event center but has a very rich history, in fact at one point it was used as a medical facility in WWII.  The photo is of the building where we had the event.  The topics we covered were:

• Storage Efficiency
• EasyTier
• ProtecTIER
• XIV
• Real-time Compression
• V7000

The customers were very interactive and provided a lot of insight to their environments.  Interestingly enough I learned during our customer reception that IBM storage is #1 in Poland with HP second and EMC third.  This is a true testament to the IBM sellers and the customers who use the IBM products every day to drive their business.  I also learned that the data break down in Poland is 90% block, 10% file which I found interesting and would be interested to check back 12 months from today to see how it will be different.

I did learn something very interesting in Poland.  The question was asked “Why XIV”?  What is so special about XIV.  The answer was awesome.  The answer started with 2 questions:

1)      How old is RAID?

2)      How old is your iPhone?

The reality is data growth is out pacing what traditional RAID can handle and data profiles are changing as well.  These combined have driven new technologies like Cleversafe, Cloud Computing, Hadoop and XIV.  Just like the iPhone is a new approach to the smart phone based on new things we know about how these smart phones are being used, we know more about how data and storage is being used.  New ways to deliver capacity and performance are needed in order to keep up with the changing times.  I thought it was a very good answer in terms that make customers think.

Thursday evening I traveled back to Warsaw where I got in a bit late and just went to a local pub, Sketch.  Grabbed a small bite and some local mead and then headed back to the hotel.  I did get to see the local Palace of Culture and Science in the middle of Warsaw, very impressive, built as a gift from Russia to Poland.

I have an early flight to Prague.  I am very excited about this part of the journey as I have always wanted to travel to Prague.  Press meeting right when I land.  Stay tuned.

The first city on my Eastern European trip was Moscow.  I think the traffic here is worse than the 101 in Silicon Valley during the dot com era.  That said, it was a great visit.  I spoke at the Information Infrastructure Conference at the Swissotel convention center in Moscow.  It was the first time I spoke to a group of people with an interpreter.  It was like being at the UN.  The two main topics were Storage Efficiency and Real-time Compression.

I spoke with a few customers and the press and in dealing with the data growth challenges they wanted to know, “When it comes to big data, what is next, is it ‘huge data’”?  Data growth clearly a concern.  Interesting enough though most of the questions, came around my title of “Evangelist”.  One report told me, “if an Evangelist is ‘preaching the word of storage’ then why not just call yourself an Apostle”?  How do you think that would look on an IBM business card: Global Storage Efficiency Apostle?

The next day I did a day of “sales enablement” in the Moscow office.  We discussed mostly how to sell and position Real-time Compression and what is next for the technology.  I was very impressed with the team.  They were very technical and knew quite a bit about Real-time Compression and really wanted to know in more detail how the technology was invented.  This means they are really talking about the technology and the customers are drilling down into the next level of detail.  There are a lot of good opportunities for the technology in Moscow and I look forward to hearing more about the success of Real-time Compression there.

I didn’t have a lot of time to sight see but I did make it to Red Square.  You can actually buy a beer outside in Red Square and walk around.  So I did.  I took a few photos and then as the US was getting going, I had some work calls to attend to.  That evening I spent on the 34^th floor of my hotel having dinner.  It was a great view of Moscow.  I hope to come back.

Next stop, Warsaw Poland.  Stay tuned.

Two solid days at VMworld 2011 and I got to do and see a lot.  Here is a breakdown of the top 5 things I saw at VMworld.

#1 The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube

You couldn’t miss it.  You walk into the show floor and there they were, larger than life.  The SiliconAngle / Wikibon Cube broadcasting live from VMworld2011.  Guests that were on the cube included, Tom Georgens (NTAP), Pat Gelsinger (EMC), David Scott (HP), Rick Jackson (VMware) as well as many more.  The Cube also had 12 Industry Spotlights.  The most interesting spotlight had to do with Storage Optimization, especially for VMware.

Oh the times they are a changing.  Now that you can deliver HD TV live over the internet, the Cube has broadcast from a number industry shows and user conferences.  The great part about this, it is like the ability to watch a sporting event being covered by ESPN but for tech.  The Cube brings all of the highlights of these events right into your computer screen.  Now if you can’t make an event, no problem, you can catch all the most important messages from the Cube.  The Cube is now the new mechanism for delivering content to users in the way they want to receive the content, TV.  For more, check out www.siliconangle.tv

#2 Storage Optimization – Industry Spotlight

In the Storage Optimization industry spotlight, the first 15 minutes Dave Vellante and his co-host John Furrier tee up the concept.  They discussed storage optimization, where it has come and were it is going, especially in VMware environments.  We are hearing more and more about storage efficiency technologies.  During the next 15 minutes Dave and I discussed the 5 essential storage efficiency technologies including:

• Tiering
• Thin Provisioning
• Virtualization
• Compression
• Deduplication

We also discussed the fact that the IBM Real-time Compression technology is not only the most efficient and effective compression technology in the industry; we also learned that IBM really acquired not just a real-time “compression” technology but a platform that can do a number of things in real time.  In fact, the 5 IBM storage efficiency technologies all operate in real time which is the most effective for customers.

We have been hearing a great deal about storage optimization in a VMware environment due to the fact that virtualizing servers was successful for the server side of the house but it didn’t do all it set out to do, it didn’t fix the overall IT budget.

Virtualizing servers only pushed the financial problem to the storage side of the house.  Users have told us that when they virtualize their servers, storage grows as much as 4x.  By leveraging the right storage optimization technologies together, users can get their budgets back under control and also deliver the promise that server virtualization set out to do.

#3 More Free Time for “Real-life”

While on the Cube as a panelist with my good friend Marc Farley (HPsisyphus, formally @3ParFarley) Dave asked us what was the most interesting thing we saw on the show floor while walking around.  I didn’t hesitate in my response.  There were two in my mind.  First, it couldn’t be any more obvious at how fast data is growing.  Over 50% of the 19,000 people there had cameras taking pictures and taking video.  That data is going to be stored somewhere.  Additionally, they had these cameras for a reason.  Either we have more bloggers and tweeters than we know about, more marketing people are going to these events or more people are using social media to inform and educate others.  The way in which users want to receive data is always changing and evolving, and at least at VMworld 2011 we were delivering content in a number of ways especially photos and video.  All that data will end up in the “cloud” somewhere.

The second thing I noticed was the amount of free time VMware has given back to the IT user.  I heard, on more than one occasion, end users talking about family, vacations and travel instead of the usual banter about how challenging their jobs are and the issues they have with their vendors which is the normal think I hear at these shows.  This was not an anomaly.  I am chalking it up to the fact that VMware makes people’s lives easier.

#4 Proximal Data

These “most interesting things” are not in any particular order.  I say this because I believe that Proximal Data is THE most interesting thing I saw at the show.  Now Proximal Data just came out of “stealth” in early August.  They didn’t have a booth at VMworld but they did have a “whisper suite”.  So, I have to confess, since I used to be an analyst, sometimes people will ask me to come take a look at their technology and their message to see if it is in line with what is going on in the industry so I got to hear the pitch.

Proximal Data’s message is right on.  It hits a very important and growing topic with VMware these days, the I/O bottle neck on virtual servers, and they solve this problem in a very unique and intelligent way.

First, the problem.  One of the issues facing VMware today is the number of virtual machines that can be hosted by one physical machine.  The more users can get on one system, the more efficient they can be.  The problem is, today systems are running into I/O workload bottlenecks that are causing a limitation in the number of virtual machines one system can run.

One way to solve this problem is add more memory to the host but that could be very very expensive.  You can add more HBA’s or NIC cards but that can be expensive and also difficult to manage.  You can add more flash cache to your storage to improve the I/O bottleneck but doing that only solves ½ the problem, you still need to solve the challenge on the host side, again with memory or host adaptors.

The solution: Proximal Data.  With some advanced I/O management software capabilities combined with PCI flash cards on the host, for a very reasonable price per host.  The software combined with the card is 100% transparent to both the virtual servers and to the storage, which to me is one of the most important features of the implementation.  Transparency is the key to any new technology.  IT has a ton of challenges and has done a great deal of work to get their environment to where it is today.  To implement a technology that causes all of that work to be undone is very painful.  Remember, the hardest thing to change in IT is process, not technology.  It’s important to preserve the process.  That is what Proximal Data does.  Proximal Data can increase the I/O capability of a VMware server with just a 5 minute installation of the PCI card and their software.  This technology can double and even triple the number of virtual machines on any physical server and that is a tremendous ROI.  A new win for efficiency.

There are a number of folks entering this market these days; however Proximal does it transparently with no agents making it the most user friendly implementation.  While these guys won’t have product until 2012, when it hits the market, I am sure it will be very successful.

#5 Convergence to the Cloud

Are we seeing the coming of the “God Box”?  A number of vendors are talking more and more as well as investing in public / private cloud.  There are more systems popping up that have servers, networks, high availability and storage all in one floor tile.  These systems are designed to integrate, scale, manage VM’s simply, increase productivity and ease the management of all possible application deployments in any business.  Additionally these boxes help you to connect to the cloud to ease the cost burden.  Is the pendulum swinging back to the “open systems” main frame?  Only time will tell.

Bonus

One more for fun.  The first meeting I had at VMworld was with a potential OEM prospect of the IBM Real-time Compression IP.  I have always said that this technology could revolutionize the data storage business much like VxVM did for Veritas many years ago.  Creating a standard way to do compression across a number of system can help users with implementation as well as ease the storage cost burden.  I hope this moves forward and I hope more folks step up who want to OEM the technology.

Today I begin a 12 day trip to Easter Europe to talk about IBM Storage.

The trip will take me to:

• Moscow, Russia
• Warsaw, Poland
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Umag, Croatia

In Russia, on September 6, I will be at the Information Infrastructure Conference and the following day meeting with customers to discuss storage and storage efficiency.

In Poland on September 8, I will be presenting IBM’s Real-time Compression at Storage University.

In Prague I will be meeting with the press as well as speaking with customers.  Additionally, I will be spending the weekend in Prague, a city I have always wanted to visit.

In Slovenia on September 14, I will be presenting at IBM’s Innovation Center at an IBM Solutions Event.

Finally in Croatia on September 15, I will be at the IBM Forum, the largest IBM even in Croatia.

In each location, I will be speaking with partners and customer on IBM’s innovation in storage, storage efficiency and Real-time Compression.  I am looking forward to learning what the largest storage challenges are across Eastern Europe and users go about solving their challenges.  Additionally, I will be doing some local enablement for our partners and sellers.

I will blog from each location.  I will talk about the professional part of my travels as well as, hopefully, one personal event.  I have tried to make sure that in each city I have time to do one interesting thing.  I don’t know when, if ever, I’ll be back to these cities and these are some places I have always hoped to go.  Too often we travel and its all business.

Also stay tuned, when I land I will have an update from my trip to VMworld.  It was fantastic.  Truly the best end user show around.  I learned a great deal and can’t wait to share some of what I saw.  As always – comments are always welcome.

IBM @ VMworld 2011

After a full first day at VMworld, I started to think more about IBM and their technology solutions that help customers in a VMware environment.  Here is a top ten list of things to consider when looking at a VMware implementation and how IBM can help.

#1 Integration

VMware is playing Switzerland and ensuring all vendors are on a level playing field, so when other vendors state that they have “better” or “closer” technology integration than other vendors its probably not true.  Some vendors may not choose to integrate with certain things, but rest assured, all of   VMware’s APIs are open to all vendors.  Take a look and see how IBM is providing plug-ins for vSphere, SRM, and VAAI in XIV as well as other storage platforms.

#2 Ease of Use

IBM has seen, firsthand, a number of our customers switch from different competitive platforms to XIV because of the simplicity of the XIV solution.  A large manufacturer is one example of a customer who is provisioning new VMware instances in less than five minutes with XIV. 

Another XIV customer, who is a very experienced storage administrator, saw the XIV GUI and quoted "I don't get it (XIV GUI).  It can't be that easy.  Either I'm missing something or they are not showing me everything."  Well, the reality is, it is that easy and that interface is prolific throughout the IBM storage portfolio including the Storwize V7000 and SVC.

#3 Storage Efficiency

Probably one of the most important topics this year is Storage Efficiency and IBM is a leader in this department.  The N-Series with the Real-time Compression appliance can reduce the VMware storage footprint up to 75%.  Users tell us that by implementing VMware, their storage footprint has grown by as much as 4x.  Therefore their overall IT budgets didn’t get better, the dollars just shifted from servers to storage.  IBM’s Real-time Compression users can save up to 75% without any performance impact.  Additionally, Real-time Compression is the only compression technology that works in conjunction with deduplication, compressing the data before it is dedplicated, giving an added benefit to the technology.

Now users have the opportunity to get their overall IT budget back under control.

#4 Data Protection

The reality here is that many enterprises are waiting for the war to be fought out between the vendors in this space, or looking to embedded snapshots and disk based technologies with mirroring to cut out all of the host based challenges with data protection. 

A report by Taneja Group, sponsored by multiple clients, suggests that the biggest issue in virtual environment is data protection as many enterprise do not know what they need to do and they are looking at their current vendors to provide solutions.  So work closely with the IBM team and leverage all of the work that IBM has done with Tivoli and VMware to help solve your data protection challenges. 

A lot of folks like to talk about deduplication when it comes to VMware, just make sure it is implemented properly and at the right place.  ProtecTIER has great deduplication ratios and great  performance. 

#5 Flexibility

I am not sure how you get more flexible then working with IBM.  From hardware to software to services to partners, IBM offers solutions across a wide spectrum.  Whether it be hardware solutions that can meet a range of performance requirements and application types, to software that can help users analyze their data more effectively.  IBM can also deliver all of these solutions through our relationships with or ISVs as well as partners offering superior flexibility. 

#6 Availability

When it comes to high availability in storage, it is hard to beat the new V7000 or the XIV product.  Innovatively designed specifically around high availability, users can move to a virtualized storage platform such as XIV and users can see the real-world of availability and reliability that does not sacrifice performance in any of their applications. 

#7 Scalability

With IBM XIV, you can simple scale as you need to and automatically and take advantage of new capacity and linear performance improvements as well as managing the entire enterprise from a single, easy to use GUI.

Also, with Real-time Compression, you now have the added benefit of putting more capacity in your existing footprint to do even more analytics while saving on footprint, power and cooling – all in real-time.

#8 Services / Solutions

IBM is the worldwide leader in providing services.  IBM is the largest OEM of VMware solutions on the planet and provides support and services in 170 countries around the globe.   IBM’s Global Services team has architected and installed hundreds, if not thousands of VMware implementations, helping customers go from a non-virtualized to a virtualized world.  IBM, as well as its partners, can help migrate customers to a virtualized environment without a long outage and maintain application and customer production.

#9 TCO / ROI

IBM offers great solutions that reduce the risk, cost, and complexity of the virtualized world.  IBM focuses on the real-world customer challenges.  Customers have been hit hard these last few years when it comes to budgets in order to manage their IT environments.  We keep helping our customers do more with less by enabling a more efficient storage platform than any other vendor.  IBM XIV, V7000, N-Series, SVC and ProtecTIER solutions are great fit for solving difficult VMware challenges and we have real-world references to prove it.

#10 100 Years of Innovation

The bottom line: there is always more to do, IT changes at a rapid pace and it is the vendors job to keep up with the needs of its customers.  IBM has been doing this for 100 years and we will continue to do so.  

For more on IBM and Storage Efficiency at VMworld, see us on SiliconAngle.tv live this week at 3:30 PT.