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By Mel Duvall
IBM says it plans to get into the cloud-based storage business with the launch of a service aimed at offering enterprises access to petabytes of storage capacity.
The latest in a series of moves by IBM on the cloud computing front, the company said Tuesday that its Smart Business Storage Cloud service will utilize "low-cost components in a true scale-out clustered model." The service includes support for multiple petabytes of storage capacity, billions of files, and performance levels that were previously limited to the largest high-performance computing system.
In June, IBM unveiled a cross-company strategy to enter the cloud computing race. Since then it has moved forward with several key initiatives, including the launch of a public beta on Oct. 1 of the Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud, a test bed for application development. On Monday it announced a low-cost hosted Lotus e-mail service, which puts it in direct competition with the likes of Google's Gmail offering.
In conjunction with the storage service, the company also announced the availability of IBM Information Archive, an integrated hardware and software offering that allows organizations to archive data in a private cloud environment, including tape-stored data.
The storage cloud service utilizes IBM XIV storage arrays and BladeCenter servers in conjunction with IBM's General Parallel File System technology. The company claims the system is highly secure and can make use of a client's existing security and authentication infrastructure.
IBM also unveiled three new cloud consulting offerings designed to help enterprises that are looking for an end-to-end cloud IT strategy, or to assist clients in choosing the right cloud delivery model.
No pricing details for the storage service were released, though the company did say it will continue to build out this area of its cloud portfolio, "including a business-grade public cloud for storage, which will be offered with flexible consumptions models and a self-service user interface."
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