Archive for the ‘IBMers’ Category
Solid State, Solid Storage
Solid state has evolved way beyond simply replacing vacuum tubes.
IBM today released the findings of a customer survey that demonstrates pent-up demand for solid state disk technology as a successor to flash and hard disk drives.
Customers are embracing high-performance solid-state disks to support growing data storage demands driven by cloud computing and analytics technologies.
More than half of the customer surveyed (57%) responded that their organization needs to develop a new storage approach to manage future growth. The survey of 250 U.S. IT professionals in decision-making positions was conducted by Zogby International in August 2011 on behalf of IBM.
The survey demonstrates a need for a new class of storage that can expand the market for solid-state drives (SSDs) by combining increased data delivery with lower costs and other benefits.
Nearly half (43 percent) of IT decision makers say they have plans to use SSD technology in the future or are already using it. Speeding delivery of data was the motivation behind 75 percent of respondents who plan to use or already use SSD technology. Those survey respondents who are not currently using SSD said cost was the reason (71 percent).
Anticipating these challenges years ago, IBM Research has been exploring storage-class memory, a new category of data storage and memory devices that can access data significantly faster than hard disk drives — at the same low cost.
Racetrack memory, a solid-state breakthrough technology, is a potential replacement for hard drives and successor to flash in handheld devices. A storage device with no moving parts, it uses the spin of electrons to access and move data to atomically precise locations on nanowires 1,000 times finer than a human hair.
This technique combines the high performance and reliability of flash with the low cost and high capacity of the hard-disk drive. It could allow electronic manufacturers to develop devices that store much more information — as much as a factor of 100 times greater — while using less energy than today’s designs. Racetrack memory is featured as one of IBM’s top 100 achievements as the company celebrates its Centennial this year.
These new storage technologies could also alleviate critical budget, power and space limitations facing IT administrators. Today, an average transaction-driven datacenter uses approximately 1,250 racks of storage, taking up 13,996 square feet and 16,343 kilowatts (kw) of power. By 2020, storage-class memory could enable the same amount of data to fit in one rack that takes up 11 square feet and 5.8 kws of power.
Following are further details from the survey:
- Nearly half (43 percent) say they are concerned about managing Big Data;
- About a third of all respondents (32 percent) say they either plan to switch to more cloud storage in the future or currently use cloud storage;
- Nearly half (48 percent) say they plan on increasing storage investments in the area of virtualization, cloud (26 percent) and flash memory/solid state (24 percent) and analytics (22 percent); and
- More than a third (38 percent) say their organization’s storage needs are growing primarily to drive business value from data. Adhering to government compliance and regulations that require organizations to store more data for longer — sometimes up to a decade — was also a leading factor (29 percent).
You can learn more about IBM Storage technologies here. Also visit the blog from IBM storage expert and Master Inventor, Tony Pearson, who’s a longtime storage consultant and who writes on storage and storage networking hardware, software and services.
20 Years @ Big Blue
Happy Anniversary to me!
Today, I celebrate my 20th year with the IBM Company.
When I tell people I’ve been here this long, they just shake their heads. People just don’t do that anymore!
It’s been a wild and amazing ride, and the interesting thing is, it only gets that more interesting. I can honestly say that I’ve honestly said at any number of particular points in my career, “it only gets more interesting.”
These days, it’s the opportunity to further explore the outer reaches of search marketing, customer response management online, and social media intelligence.
When I started IBM at its Southlake facility on August 19, 1991, near the DFW airport, it was desktop publishing.
In between, it was OS/2 v. Windows, the early commercialization of the Internet, the Y2K threat, IBM’s own transformation into an e-business, the rise of Linux and open computing, and so much more.
The day I started IBM was the same day that Boris Yeltsin stood on the tanks outside the Russian White House, in defiance of the coup plotters. But instead of getting the news from my iPad, I got it from a printed edition of The New York Times.
When I started work here, I was 25 years old and greener than Augusta National golf course. I remember them telling me I had to talk to people on the phone: What was I going to say??
My computer was a PS/2 workstation when I started, running my beloved OS/2, but a lot of our work was done via the mainframe green screen (VM!). I sometimes miss those character-based terminals. They weren’t always pretty, but they were FAST, and they got the job done (which, for me, at the time was as a writer and editor of several IBM magazines).
I still remember putting up my first Website. I was not then, and still am not, a programmer, but I taught myself HTML so I could publish our magazine Software Quarterly on the World Wide Web. Nobody knew what that was at the time, but that didn’t stop me.
During my tenure, I’ve visited cities and countries that I never envisioned I would ever see in person, and in the process I’ve gained a greater understanding of the world and our collective humanity.
I’ve also witnessed some dramatic evolutions of the conditions of the IBM business, of the use of our technology to solve real-world business problems, and dramatic changes in our communications and marketing.
When I first joined, IBM was talking to the world about building solutions for a smaller planet.
Now, responding to the challenging business conditions and the unique opportunities a smaller, networked world presents, we’re talking about a smarter planet instead.
That’s a perfect reduction of my past twenty years with Big Blue — my own world has become much smaller and much smarter.
And that, I can assure you, is because of the gift of having had the opportunity to work with some of the most talented people around on this smaller and smarter world.
Because if you think it’s a small world outside Big Blue, you should see what life is like inside IBM after twenty years.
You find yourself working with people for awhile, then moving on and working with another group of people, only to years later, finding yourself working with someone else you’ve worked with before, and this time, like you never missed a beat.
I think maybe we should start referring to the company as “Small Blue” instead.
No matter the moniker, it’s the rare opportunity a human gets to do work that one loves in collaboration with people whom one greatly admires in an effort to literally change the way the world does its business, and all while having the chance to travel to the nether regions of our smaller and smarter planet.
To all of you inside and outside “Small Blue” who have played a part in my 20- year journey thus far, in this, IBM’s own centennial year, I just wanted to take this quick opportunity to say “Thanks!”
Or should I say, T-H-I-N-K. ; )
Having An Impact
I’m heading out to Las Vegas on Sunday. Again.
And I’ve worn out all the “what happens in Vegas” and “Hangover” jokes, so I’ll get straight to the point:
I’m heading to Vegas to have an Impact.
Seriously.
Impact 2011 starts this weekend and kicks into high gear on Monday, and I’m going to be there to blog and provide some live videocasting support.
The IBM Impact 2011 Global Conference is expecting to bring together more than 6,600 technology and business leaders at a single event to learn how to work smarter for better business outcomes.
At Impact, IT professionals will be able to master the latest business process management, SOA and Cloud solutions and obtain certifications, and business professionals can sharpen their leadership skills and learn best practices for overcoming complexity with increased agility (including a track on marketing!)
The event will be hosted at The Venetian and Palazzo Hotels in Las Vegas, April 10 to 15, but if you can’t make it live and in person, there will be plenty of folks providing social media coverage.
Here’s how you can keep up with Impact both at the event and remotely:
First, follow TwitterID @ibmimpact and hashtag #ibmimpact
Second, check the IBM Impact Conversations site at ibm.com/social/impact.
Third, check the IBM Impact blog.
Fourth, keep an eye on the Impact Livestream channel.
And keep an eye on the main Impact portal to get a bird’s eye overview of the event agenda, speakers, and topics.
So, come on down to Vegas, leave your ATM card at home, stop by the trade show floor, keep an eye out for the klieg lights and stop by to say “hey” to Scott Laningham and I.
P.S. Speaking of having an impact, I want to take a moment to wish my esteemed IBM social media colleague, Adam Christensen, a bon voyage and best of luck in his new position as the social media lead for Juniper Networks. Adam has been a shining social media beacon at Big Blue these past few years, and I know I speak for many of his colleagues when I say we’re all very sorry to see him go, and that he’ll be very much be missed as he helped us all make IBM’s world-class social media efforts what they are today.
Clearly, our loss is Juniper’s gain, and we expect great things from him there. But, as Adam himself Tweeted earlier, “once an IBMer, always an IBMer.”
Good luck in the new venture, buddy…we’ll all be eagerly awaiting the latlong of the best taco stands in Silicon Valley.