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IBM IT

IBM Leads Team to Alleviate Data Storage Woes 64

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the square-peg-in-a-round-hole dept.
Kailash Nadh writes to tell us ABC News is reporting that IBM is teaming up with several other companies to form a group called Aperi. This group will attempt to "push the open source idea deeper into computing" and "free up the bottlenecks that can occur when a business has bought tape and disk storage systems from a variety of vendors." The partnership is to include companies like Cisco, Sun, Fujitsu, and several others.
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IBM Leads Team to Alleviate Data Storage Woes More

IBM Leads Team to Alleviate Data Storage Woes

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  • Although i am glad that IBM is further supporting Open Source, I'm confused as to why they are tackling this particular aspect of OSS, because it could hurt their current revenue from data storage.

    • Re:Doesn't IBM sell data storage solutions? (Score:4, Informative)

      by cerelib ( 903469 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @07:56PM (#13876890)
      No, that is completely the wrong way to think about it. This is a way to be able to sell to customers whose entire infrastructure is from a competitor(EMC, Sun, Fujitsu) by being able to integrate or "virtualize" all of it so it works as a cohesive unit. It is all about virtualization of storage.

    • Re:Doesn't IBM sell data storage solutions? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jason Earl ( 1894 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:10PM (#13876973) Homepage Journal

      IBM can make this sort of a play because it has such a wide array of services and a support arm that is right in the trenches. So, for example, it can see that its UNIX gear is selling well, but a lot of IBM's UNIX customers are opting for EMC storage. IBM's service arm is happy to set that up for you, but its sales arm is not nearly as happy. So IBM gets to work at making storage a commodity and then providing service, support, and hardware. This is a win for IBM because it no longer needs EMC's help to sell an IBM solution. The profit that used to go into EMC's pocket now goes into IBM's pocket. The margins probably aren't as large as EMC used to get, but IBM doesn't have to share. IBM is more than happy to shrink the size of a market that it happens to compete in if it thinks that it can get a bigger slice of the pie or more service revenue. Interestingly enough, commoditizing a market usually causes it to grow because more people can afford the good or service. By creating a commodity IBM can often finagle both a bigger market *and* a larger slice of the pie.

      The best part is that this sort of strategy doesn't necessarily mean that IBM has to give up its current data storage products. With a little bit of differentiation IBM might still be able to sell "high end" storage gear that works well with their specialty OSes and hardware while offering a lower-cost standards-based solution that competes favorably with IBM's competitors. Just because IBM is pushing Linux certainly hasn't made its AIX business go away. Just like Linux gives IBM more ammunition when competing with Microsoft commodity storage gives IBM more ammunition when competing with EMC.

      This also goes to show how the folks at IBM are much smarter than the folks at Sun. Sun was facing the same problem as IBM in the storage arena (people wanted EMC's gear instead of Sun's gear). Sun is trying to remedy that through the purchase of another storage vendor (StorageTek) that is likewise having trouble competing. IBM, on the other hand, has opted to kick the bottom out of the market and see if it can't dominate over a commodity storage field.

      • Insightful? How..this is a consortium of companies NOT IBM alone!! What they are trying to do is establish an "open standard" or some type of interoperability between storage vendors. If you own an IBM now and then decide your next gen SAN is EMC/Sun/etc. how to you get it all to work together is the concept. Making it work is a service the new vendor can provide. Services have higher margins than hardware.

        Far as I have seen StorageTek has done pretty good, EMC and IBM are the big dogs but ST held it's own.

        • Re:Doesn't IBM sell data storage solutions? (Score:4, Informative)

          by superpulpsicle ( 533373 ) on Wednesday October 26, 2005 @12:23AM (#13878070)
          I talk to a lot of companies deploying big servers & storage of all size all year round. Here is the current picture.

          EMC sym - They are only popular because they dominated the market in the 90s with many places already invested in them. Old school technology. Bloated as hell software, too many pieces.

          HDS - Tagma and lightning is the best technology in the market by a long shot period! However they are unfortunate in selling the best product in a shitty market.

          IBM - Shark has the ugliest hardware & software userbility there is. If you don't mind it, go for it.

          HP - If they didn't oem from HDS, they would have been toast.

          Sun - Storedge line started out confusing. Their marketing makes it even worse.

          • Part of my group here buys mega storage boxes..they tell me the Engenia software (unity) makes any vendor solution better. We currently run the software over a lot of EMC boxes, and some SGI storage too. I've been told we will be moving away from EMC for several reasons, cost/performance being one, reliability being another. They are looking at Sun and Fujitsu for new purchases. From what I was told both those vendors have good performance and very nice price points.
          • EMC sym - Once EMC gets in your shop, they will monopolize as much of your time as possible so that you don't have time to compare them with anyone else.

            HDS - The most expensive storage on the market. Whether its worth the extra cost is up to you.

            IBM - Don't listen to the hillbilly. The usability of the "Shark" is fine. The fact that you don't pay extra for multipath drivers can be a big plus.

            HP - Don't buy from a company that doesn't make what they sell. Don't reward them for being middlemen. If you want E

        • My comment was even less insightful because Sun is part of this new storage team. I missed that. I saw Cisco and figured that IBM, Cisco, and a bunch of bit players got together to create a standards-based market that would allow all of them to gain share. The fact that Sun is on the team means that someone at Sun understands the importance of commoditization.

          Make no mistake though, the future of storage isn't "kick ass" performance but rather price/performance ratio, and the commodity guys are the one

      • Good analysis but I'd take it a bit farther. IBM is deriving an increasing amount of revenues from its service arm. If they can push for standards across the entire storage market this will be a huge boost for that arm of the company. Many companies will turn to IBM Services for their integration and support services rather than dealing with one or more vendor contracts. True, it will almost certainly cost them a bit of their hardware market sales but more and more IBM is winding that arm of the company

  • Haha (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @07:42PM (#13876801)
    So many people don't read the articles anymore that the submitter must have figured, "Screw it, why post it anyway?"

    • Re:Haha (Score:3, Funny)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 )
      So many people don't read the articles anymore that the submitter must have figured, "Screw it, why post it anyway?"

      Nah, he figured the next time the story is posted it would have links.

  • Entertainment for the Open Source community? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by msbsod ( 574856 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @07:44PM (#13876809)
    Companies channel their "news". And who else could bring us better entertainment than ABC News, a Disney channel? The whole idea that IBM is pushing Linux is just too funny. IBM has no interest in Linux. IBM wants to sell their stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but why do we need IBM between the Open Source community and customers who already bought their equipment? It is the good old strategy of putting yourself between the brain and the money. All distributors of entertainment industry work that way. So, let's welcome IBM in their new role as entertainer, with Disney as partner.

  • alleviating woes? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    alleviating woes?

    Yep, some might say IBM has a lot of experience working with Deep Blues.

  • Meh (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @07:47PM (#13876838)
    Brought to you by Cisco, Sun, CA, Brocade, NetApp, McData, and Fujitsu. In other words, the same bunch of jerks who got you into this mess in the first place. Great. I'll expect something really useless like Ultra Wide iSCSI or some other bullshit, for only $999 per node, of course.
    • I don't think you understand. They're trying to develop software to make all those solutions inter-operate, not some new hardware they can all sell. They'll all gain in the end if it works.

    • Re:Meh (Score:1)

      by Diag ( 711760 )
      Despite what some news articles are saying, Sun is not involved as far as I know.

      "But just as notable is the list of companies that are missing, among them EMC, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Symantec."

      http://www.storagepipeline.com/172900196?cid=rssfe ed_pl_stp [storagepipeline.com]

      [disclaimer : I work for Sun (and have heard nothing about this until today)]

  • I work for IBM. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I work for IBM.
    So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies.
    Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
    But trust me.... You don't.
    I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you dont
    know what you are talking about.
    This is how bad info gets passed around.
    If you dont know about the topic....Don't make yourself sound like you do.
    Cuz some Slashdotters belive anything they hear.
    • Cuz some Slashdotters belive anything they hear.
      Yes, and I work at IBM too. ;-)

    • Thank you :) (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You'll make an excellent apologist, telling us that we don't know anything about something.

      However, there's a little tiny detail... nothing important, you just you didn't provide any factual info to tell us what we SHOULD know about.

      But hey, this is slashdot, right? :)
    • Go back to Fark, mmmkay?
    • Thanks for giving us the info instead of just berating us for using the only information we have to voice our opinions. It's nice to see someone informing the community instead of just starting flame wars based on his own undeserved yet heightened sense of self worth. Also, good call on posting anonymously; you don't want anyone knowing who you are in case they become jealous of your brilliance and decide to track you down and kill you. Worse yet they might become obsessed with your incredible intellect and

  • Dear IBM, et al (Score:4, Insightful)

    by christurkel ( 520220 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @07:57PM (#13876901) Homepage Journal
    A good idea would be to encourage, nay, preinstall open source software on all computers you sell, including desktops.

    Yours truly, joe wantsomethingotherthanWindows
  • Hey, this article was just after Google [slashdot.org] announced that All Your Database Are Belong To Them. [arstechnica.com]

    (Does that make the IBM article a dupe, or have I pushed the Slashdot lame-joke envelope too far to get away with that? :-)

  • Open Source data archive and retrieval tool (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:00PM (#13876917)
    The Tape ARchive tool, reports IBM, will allow users to add and remove files from a data set, called a 'tarfile', via a well-documented API, which IBM wants OSS developers to leverage. This 'tarfile' can be created as a regular Unix or Wintel filesystem file, or directly written to tape or disk. This can be used to create any number of GUI and command line tools to provide low-level access to the data files contained within. A bonus to the extensible format used by IBM is that native Compress, GZ and BZ2 compression libraries can be used, when available on the system. A beta release of the utility set ALSO provides LZIP compression, previously only available as a Sourceforge patch to the existing OSS toolkit.

  • Deep (Score:3, Funny)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Tuesday October 25, 2005 @08:19PM (#13877024)

    This group will attempt to "push the open source idea deeper into computing"

    How much deeper [msn.com] can they go?

  • With IBM, it will be (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More like a team to alleviate your money storage woes..

  • SMI-S (Score:2, Interesting)

    by furry_wookie ( 8361 )
    We have this already..it's called the SNIA SMI... have you not heard of it?

    http://www.snia.org/smi/home [snia.org] ..no thanks IBM.

    • SMI-S is a merely a protocol. This effort looks like it is a proposed platform. Actual, running, useful, code, not just a spec for code that may or may not be written at some time in the future.

      SirWired

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