IBM unveiled a new container-native, software-defined storage platform called IBM Spectrum Fusion today in a bid to help customers and channel partners better manage data across hybrid environments.

The vendor also rolled out a new entry-level model in its IBM Elastic Storage System all-flash storage family.

Spectrum Fusion “fuses” several existing IBM storage software elements into a single, container-native software product, explained Eric Herzog, VP of business development and go-to-market for IBM Storage Division. This includes IBM’s general parallel file system technology (IBM Spectrum Scale) with its data protection software (IBM Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Discover). Herzog noted that high-availability and disaster recovery are part of the Spectrum Scale elements and backup and restore are from Spectrum Protect Plus.

High performance file access is often critical to artificial intelligence (AI), analytic, and big data workloads, Herzog said. However, the accelerated adoption of hybrid cloud and even AI is challenging and stressing data aggregation efforts. 

IBM is bringing Spectrum Fusion to market in two iterations. The first hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) system is slated to hit the market in the second half of 2021, and the second will be a software-defined storage product during the first quarter of 2021. 

HCI storage architectures use traditional data management protocols such as network file system (NFS) and server messaging protocol (SMB). The primary issue here is that many existing devices and applications don’t support data access over HTTP, specifically via Amazon S3 Application Programming Interface, better known as the S3 API.

The most common “language” of object storage is the S3 API, which is revolutionizing how applications can control data. And object storage employs the S3 API, so it speaks the language of the cloud.

To this end, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Amazon S3 and any S3 compliant object storage can be accessed by Spectrum Fusion. Additionally, it supports access to NFS Storage from EMC/Isilon and NetApp Filers, too, Herzog added.

“When we release the HCI solution, it will be one of the only systems of its kind that is container-native,” Herzog said. “Although other systems support containers, they are primarily VM-based. That’s important because containers are driving the hybrid cloud, and the hybrid cloud is fueling a lot of digital transformations.”

Herzog is referring to VMware’s Tanzu portfolio, which Forrester noted, while virtualized, “is monolithic, and the native scale-out features brought to the market by open source-derived alternatives will make some infrastructure managers take a second look before re-upping their existing licensing.”

Spectrum Fusion differentiates itself from VMware in being built from the ground up with containers.

“This new product is billed as a storage solution, but it is much more,” Forrester analysts wrote in a blog. “It is really a 'glue-all' product poised to change the HCI market.” Forrester calls it a Swiss Army knife,”letting you graft almost any storage technology into a single namespace and providing ease of portability for data as well as portability for workloads using Kubernetes.”

This is because, in addition to being container-native, Spectrum Fusion leans heavily on Red Hat OpenShift and Virtualization Manager, meaning the systems support virtual machine workloads, “to provide a bridge between the cloud and on-premises infrastructure in which many enterprises have invested heavily,” the analysts wrote.