When IBM Corp. acquired object storage provider Cleversafe Inc. in 2105, it undoubtedly foresaw that the technology would be needed to manage growing volumes of enterprise data. Yet, it’s unlikely that even IBM had the ability to forecast then there would be 103 billion terabytes of information in the global data pool eight years later, as estimated by IDC Research Inc.

Data volumes at this scale have put pressure on IBM and others to provide information management in the cloud, and this is where object storage has emerged as a key solution.

“Object storage is the foundation for modern cloud-native data lakes,” said Phil Buckellew (pictured), general manager of IBM Cloud Object Storage. “It’s great because it can go to exabyte scale and beyond. It’s a cost-effective way to store a lot of data and get access to that data in new and exciting ways.”

Buckellew spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Actifio Data Driven event in Boston. They discussed the solutions generated through IBM’s partnership with Actifio Inc. and how object storage can significantly leverage data efficiencies in the cloud (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Need for data resilience

In January, IBM announced an original equipment manufacturer deal involving Actifio’s Virtual Data Pipeline technology to provide production data copies for more rapid development and analytics. The news added another chapter to a relationship between the two firms, which began when a large financial services customer for IBM needed help protecting data after suffering ransomware attacks, according to Buckellew.

“They needed a standard way to have those data sets and databases running in a resilient fashion against object storage,” Buckellew said. “That’s what drew the IBM object storage team and the Actifio team together.”

In addition to resilience, there is also another potential benefit to using object storage. It saves time.

IBM recently ran a benchmark for its object storage technology combined with Actifio’s VDP solution, according to Buckellew. “We were able to show you could set up five replicas of the database within 90 minutes compared to the two weeks it would take to do full replication,” he said. “One of the benefits of using a virtual data approach is being able to leverage cloud economics.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Actifio Data Driven event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Actifio Data Driven event. Neither Actifio Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE