The hybrid cloud is emerging as a central priority in IBM Corp.’s storage strategy.

The company today unveiled a new version of Spectrum Virtualize, the management stack powering most of its storage arrays, that introduces a native cloud replication feature. That means organizations will be able to move snapshots, or read-only copy of the data, they currently keep in on-premises systems to their infrastructure-as-a-service platform of choice.

Big Blue didn’t specify exactly which public clouds it plans to support, but the list can be expected to include market leader Amazon Web Services and its own competing platform at the very least.

The company’s goal is to free up capacity in customers’ storage infrastructure for more important workloads and thus reduce their infrastructure expenses in the long run. The less space snapshots take up, the more time passes before an organization needs to upgrade its gear.

Today’s Spectrum Virtualize update will affect users of Big Blue’s ultra-dense FlashSystem V9000, Storwize disk arrays, the VersaStack reference architecture it has developed with Cisco Systems Inc. and the SAN Volume Controller. The last is a standalone implementation of Spectrum Virtualize that supports more than 400 IBM and third-party platforms.

IBM is the latest in a long lineup of big-name storage suppliers that have recognized the need to address their customers’ growing reliance on the public cloud. Earlier this week, NetApp Inc. launched a software-as-a-service offering that allows companies to synchronize data from their in-house arrays to Amazon’s S3 object store. Dell Technology Inc. provides similar functionality in the CloudArray arrays that it obtained through its recently closed acquisition of EMC Corp.

IBM and its rivals will no doubt extend their hybrid cloud capabilities to other areas besides backup as companies continue moving more workloads off-premise. Many suppliers are also trying to position their systems as a more cost-effective alternative to platforms such as AWS. Cisco, for instance, on Tuesday introduced a new storage-optimized converged appliance that promises to provide a 53 percent lower total cost of ownership than Amazon S3 in certain circumstances.

Image via IBM