Can IBM Corp.’s new Cloud Object Storage Flex compete with Amazon S3? Unique user-friendly pricing might tip the scale its way, said Russ Kennedy, senior vice president of product strategy and customer solutions at Cleversafe, an IBM Company.

Currently, available storage is too rigid for many customers’ workloads, Kennedy told Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during IBM InterConnect 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (*Disclosure below.) 

“Traditional tiers are designed for hot workloads, mid-level workloads and very cold workloads,” Kennedy said. “The workload may be unpredictable. It may be cold for some period of time, and then it may become very active for a period of time and then go back to being cold again.”

Performing analytics or a cognitive process on a workload will make it hot, but when it is back at rest, it’s basically cold, for instance. Must customers resign themselves to paying the peak price all the time?

They won’t with Flex’s scalable payment model, said Kennedy. “Flex actually covers the whole gamut, and it ensures that you’re not paying too much for storing and using your data,” he said. Customers can move workloads to different pricing tiers easily or keep consistent loads on a single tier.

Bluemix Developer bonus

Beyond Flex, IBM has spread object storage out to additional cloud offerings. Coincidentally (or not), object storage also strengthens IBM’s Bluemix developer platform, according to Kennedy. (AWS is a developer favorite.)

“You have all of the Bluemix tools that you could use, and then you’ve got all of these technologies that are integrated, including the object storage system, which is the foundation,” Kennedy said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect 2017. (*Disclosure: SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE is a media partner at InterConnect. Neither IBM nor other conference sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

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