IBM has a new vision for software-defined storage that could turn the tide against its rivals in the competition to power the data centers of tomorrow. At the focal point of the strategy is a platform unveiled today that draws on the enterprise technology stalwart’s single biggest strength: its size.

Spectrum Accelerate is a standalone implementation of the management stack in IBM’s top-end disk array series that can run on any type of storage infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on commodity systems lacking the bells and whistles of proprietary hardware. The differences among the components are hidden under a graphical control panel (above) that allows for centralized provisioning and monitoring of the environment as a whole.

That’s a departure from the position that Woody Hutsell, a manager at IBM’s storage business, expressed on theCUBE just seven months ago when he discussed the advantages of data services built directly into the array over the software-based management approach. But with up to 80 percent of unstructured data expected to run on software-defined platforms within a few years, IBM is pivoting with the market.

The launch adds IBM to the steadily expanding list of vendors offering the ability to handle storage capacity separately from the underlying infrastructure. The most recent addition to the club came just this morning as SUSE Linux GmBh released its hardware-agnostic data management platform into general availability after more than a quarter of testing.

IBM is banking on its established power in the industry, and particularly its position as one of the world’s biggest producers of intellectual property, to stand out from that rapidly growing pack. The Spectrum Storage portfolio – which includes a number of existing products in addition to the new software-defined platform – incorporates more than 700 patents to provide unique features such as the ability to distribute data across multiple public clouds in a way that improves reliability.

The pitch is apparently resonating with the market. IBM has already landed a number of high-profile customers for its storage stack, including Netflix Inc., which made history as one of the first companies to move its entire operations almost entirely to the public cloud but apparently found the IBM technology appealing to enough deploy it in its data cetner.

Another notable user is China State Grid, which stands out not only as the world’s largest utility but also because Beijing is actively pushing local organizations – and especially government agencies – to move away from foreign vendors. The fact that IBM has apparently warranted an exception speaks to the strength of the pitch.

To maintain that edge amid the increasing competition from other vendors, the company has pledged to spend more than $1 billion on building out the portfolio over the next five years . That puts the storage-defined storage business in the same league as Watson and other strategic priorities that have received similar nine-figure investments, highlighting just how serious IBM is about this area.