IBM Storage Innovation: Modernizing Enterprise Storage for the AI Era

In a recent conversation with Sam Werner, Vice President of Product Management for IBM Storage, we gained valuable insights into the current trends and innovations reshaping enterprise storage solutions. Sam, whose expertise spans over two decades in the storage industry, shared his perspective on how IBM is addressing key challenges while preparing businesses for an AI-driven future.

Storage Management: Stuck in the Past

One of the most striking observations Sam made was that despite significant technological advancements, many organizations are still managing storage the same way they did 20 years ago. This outdated approach poses significant challenges for IT teams already stretched thin by increasing demands and shrinking resources.

“When you think about a server failing, usually your application just fails over to the next server and nobody even knows. But if the storage fails, all your applications go down,” Sam explained, highlighting the critical nature of storage infrastructure reliability.

Modernizing Storage Operations with AI

IBM’s response to these challenges focuses on two main approaches: modernization of existing infrastructure and complete transformation for future needs.

Flash System Grid: AI-Powered Workload Optimization

The IBM Flash System Grid represents a significant leap forward in storage management. This solution incorporates built-in AI that analyzes workloads and intelligently determines optimal placement across a fleet of Flash systems.

“What we’re trying to do is eliminate the need for all that skill and put the skill in the storage array,” Sam noted. The system makes recommendations for workload placement—whether to a lower-cost system to save money or to a higher-performance system for better utilization—and can execute the move with “absolute complete transparency to the application, while maintaining DR, maintaining snapshots for protection.”

This approach reminds me of what Turbonomic (now an IBM company) did for VMware environments years ago, but applied to storage infrastructure.

Storage Ceph as a Service: Cloud Experience On-Premises

For organizations looking to further reduce their management burden, IBM recently announced Storage Ceph as a Service. This managed service delivers a complete infrastructure solution—including rack, servers, networking, and software-defined storage—directly to a customer’s data center.

IBM handles all aspects of management, from deployment to capacity planning and code updates, while providing users with a cloud-like portal for self-provisioning block and object storage. According to Sam, “We give you that in your data center. You don’t have to manage the hardware, the lifecycle of the software.”

This service comes with both performance and capacity tiers, allowing customers to balance performance needs with cost-optimization, all while removing the operational burden from internal teams already challenged to “do 10% more with 10% less every year.”

Transformation Beyond VMware: IBM Fusion HCI

Beyond just modernizing existing storage, Sam highlighted IBM’s focus on supporting organizations transitioning from traditional VM infrastructures to containerized environments.

“As your application teams want to move beyond traditional VM infrastructure, because it’s still too slow and rigid, they want more of a cloud-native architecture,” Sam explained. To address this need, IBM developed Fusion and Fusion HCI, engineered infrastructure designed specifically for containerized and virtual machine workloads beyond VMware.

With OpenShift as the foundation, Fusion HCI provides a “build once, deploy anywhere” platform that supports both newly developed containerized applications and existing VMs through OpenShift virtualization. This offers an ideal path for organizations seeking alternatives to VMware while maintaining on-premises control.

Sam shared a compelling example of a financial services company that deployed OpenShift as their strategic platform alongside their existing VMware environment. Starting with Fusion HCI for its “turnkey bare metal capability,” they eventually migrated mission-critical workloads and have expanded to 29 HCI systems.

A key advantage of Fusion HCI is its comprehensive approach, with day zero, one, and two operations all engineered into a single solution. “We’ve already figured out the size of the servers, the amount of memory, the number of processor cores, the amount of storage. We have the backup software built in. We provide DR capability, high availability,” Sam emphasized. This eliminates the need for specialized OpenShift expertise and simplifies ongoing management of the software stack.

The AI-Driven Future of Storage

Looking ahead, Sam expressed excitement about AI becoming embedded into everyday applications. “What’s really exciting to me is how I believe all of this AI, not the big training clusters, but it’s actually becoming part of all of your applications and you’re going to be doing inferencing on so many things.”

This trend will make GPUs a common part of infrastructure, with platforms like IBM Fusion well-positioned to support these AI applications. The Watson X portfolio has been fully tested on this platform, providing a seamless path for organizations looking to implement AI capabilities.

More broadly, Sam emphasized IBM’s vision of “embedding AI into everything we do so that the platforms themselves do all the heavy lifting.” This platform approach allows customers to consume services while AI handles complex management tasks behind the scenes, freeing IT talent to focus on innovation rather than maintenance.

A Partnership Approach

Our discussion concluded with reflections on the valuable partnership between IBM and Clear Technologies in helping customers navigate this complex landscape. Sam highlighted how Clear helps clients understand the TCO implications of modernization and transformation, while providing expert guidance on hardware selection.

He specifically mentioned IBM’s new C200 storage platform with QLC-based flash storage, which offers a lower cost point for many workloads. However, Sam emphasized that customers still need expert partners to determine the right mix of technologies for their specific needs: “You need an expert partner that really understands where do I need TLC and where do I need QLC and where do I need spinning disks still?”

Conclusion

As businesses face increasing pressures to modernize their infrastructure while simultaneously preparing for an AI-driven future, IBM’s comprehensive approach to storage innovation provides multiple paths forward. Whether through AI-powered management of existing arrays, fully managed on-premises cloud experiences, or purpose-built platforms for containerized applications, IBM is addressing both the immediate challenges and future requirements of enterprise storage.

By embedding AI throughout their portfolio and simplifying the consumption model, IBM is enabling organizations to redirect their focus from infrastructure management to business innovation—a critical capability in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape.