Steve Kenniston of IBM sat down in theCube for the third segment of the Storage Optimization Spotlight at VMWorld 2011 (see parts 1 and 2 here).  Kenniston is in charge of the IBM Real-Time Appliance for NAS, and real-time compression was the topic (full video below).

“By us doing what I call compression offload, in the wire, we can actually compress the data before it gets to the array and there are a couple benefits of being able to do that.”

This compression offload reduces overall CPU resource usage and results in more work getting done in a given timeframe. Compression transparency is another advantage, which allows an increase in the storage cache and offers a performance boost for customers in some cases, Kenniston said.

Further into the conversation, Kenniston elaborated on what IBM will be focusing on to increase storage efficiency: tearing, thin provisioning, virtualization, dedupe and compression. What’s interesting is how the company plans on providing value to customers with the last one, and its new offering.

The first point, though not the core advantage,  is that it’s real-time. IBM’s competitors also offer data compression, but with the whole big data and analytics markets getting more and more involved with the real-time trend, its offering has higher long-term value.

“However, as the world slowly moves into real-time, where I don’t have this time to wait to access my information, my question back to people who are doing it not in real time why aren’t you?”

This is one highlight, though Kenniston said the real value is in how compression in the form of the appliance blends in with the rest of the real-time platform IBM put together out of tearing, thin provisioning and virtualization. The company approaches it as the next layer of this platform, offering added-in value that doesn’t impact performance and availability, unlike competing solutions.

The appliance will be imbedded into IBM’s still freshly launched V7000 technology and several others this year, and will be integrated with more offerings in the long run.


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