IBM To Invest $1 Billion In Flash Technology Research, Reflecting Obsolescence Of Hard Disk Drives

April 11, 2013 at 13:35 PM EDT

IBM plans to invest $1 billion in research to design, create and integrate Flash into its servers, storage systems and middleware, a reflection of the changing requirements needed for companies to manage massive amounts of data. As part of the news, IBM also announced a new line of Flash appliances. These storage appliances are based on technology acquired from Texas Memory Systems. IBM says the appliances can run 20 times faster than spinning hard drives, and can store up to 24 terabytes of data. The move comes as more companies need better ways to manage the data that is now coming in such volume with the unleashing of mobile apps, the web and the ease for people to create data with updates in pictures, video and trillions of text messages. All that data makes for major bottlenecks in systems that have long depended on mechanical hard disks to process information. Those hard disk systems did just fine in an age when vendors built vertical stacks for transaction-based systems such as ERP and business management solutions. Today, the market is shifting to a more distributed horizontal mesh where data is spread over tens of thousands of servers. IBM has a deep history in the server market, middleware and is showing a new focus on storage. But who is this for? If you look at the news, it’s apparent this move is to support its existing customer base, that have long-term investments in credit card processing, manufacturing and operations that require large enterprise resource planning environments That’s the difference here and why the Flash investment shows more than anything else how companies like IBM, Google and Facebook are all calibrating their strategies according to their customer base, growth projections and the different ways Flash can be applied to deal with all that data, either vertically or horizontally in the Internet style of things.

As part of the news, IBM also announced a new line of Flash appliances. These storage appliances are based on technology acquired from Texas Memory Systems. IBM says the appliances can run 20 times faster than spinning hard drives, and can store up to 24 terabytes of data.

The move comes as more companies need better ways to manage the data that is now coming in such volume with the unleashing of mobile apps, the web and the ease for people to create data with updates in pictures, video and trillions of text messages.

All that data makes for major bottlenecks in systems that have long depended on mechanical hard disks to process information. Those hard disk systems did just fine in an age when vendors built vertical stacks for transaction-based systems such as ERP and business management solutions. Today, the market is shifting to a more distributed horizontal mesh where data is spread over tens of thousands of servers.

IBM has a deep history in the server market, middleware and is showing a new focus on storage. But who is this for? If you look at the news, it’s apparent this move is to support its existing customer base, that have long-term investments in credit card processing, manufacturing and operations that require large enterprise resource planning environments That’s the difference here and why the Flash investment shows more than anything else how companies like IBM, Google and Facebook are all calibrating their strategies according to their customer base, growth projections and the different ways Flash can be applied to deal with all that data, either vertically or horizontally in the Internet style of things.