Between time off with the family this summer and all the work required to get done between 'signing' a deal to be acquired and 'closing' a deal to get acquired, the blog has been a bit slow. But I am here now to tell you it is official. Storwize is now Storwize, an IBM company.
As for myself, I am looking forward to the work of integrating the Storwize Technology into the IBM Storage portfolio. The Storwize group will live under the STG organization under Brian Truskowski. There is a new ground swell taking head at IBM these days all around storage efficiency. To get a better understanding, please have a look at my new colleague, Tony Pearson's blog discussing storage efficiency. My job will be now to evangelize how IT now needs to take a look at all of the available storage "services" (clones, snapshots, thin provisioning, replication, compression, deduplication, etc...) can help to create an overall storage solution that allows them to reduce their over all $/TB on not only capital expense, but also on operational expense.
Lets face it, data growth isn't slowing down and there is never a one size fits all solution for storage. The great part about being a part of IBM now is that we have all the tools to pick from to architect a data storage solution, end to end, that allows customers to reduce their overall $/TB for both primary as well as secondary storage and make that storage much more efficient and work for the end user.
This is going to be an exciting time. I am also anxious to continue the Storage Alchemist blog. EMC, under the guise of Polly Pearson and Chuck Hollis taught me that social media is great, but social media done right, in a collaborative and thoughtful way can drive influence. I join some of the best bloggers around from IBM. (I have added Tony's "Inside System Storage" - It is a great read.)
The basics that we know about today with regard to the acquisition is that this is good for Storwize employees as they get to continue working on a great technology that they have matured over the last 5 years and will continue to mature. This acquisition is great for IBM and Storwize customers as for IBM it adds the ONLY real-time compression technology to their storage portfolio driving storage efficiency. And for Storwize customers, you now have the backing of a global 2000 company that is committed to continued development of an already great product as well as now have the resources to go after new features and functionality that often comes at the hands of limited budgets in a stratup.
For IBM resellers and partners, hold on to your socks because now you have one of the most competitive technologies in the market that will allow you to 1) provide a great service to your customer through efficient storage and not just sell customers more disk drives (I have talked to over 600 customers in the last 2 years, customers don't want more disk drives, they want smarter ones) 2) a competitive, value added solution that allows you to be much more competitive in selling your clients better solutions that aren't wrapped around infrastructure, but around business solutions that allow your customers to be more successful and happier and you to make more margins.
Seems like a win for all.
Over the course of the next few weeks we will be learning more as a collective team on what the roadmap looks like for IBM Storwize but we are all excited. Stay tuned.
This blog will be taking a turn to more on storage technology can turned into IT Gold!