IBM announced an expansion of storage capabilities that left no doubt about its strategic approach: It is a containerized world, and IBM — through its integration with Red Hat’s OpenShift platform for Kubernetes — intends to be a major part of it.

“We are launching a number of solutions for various workloads and applications built with a strong container element,” said Eric Herzog (pictured, left), chief marketing officer and vice president of global storage channels at IBM. “Containers are the wave. You don’t fight the wave; you ride it. At IBM, we’re doing that.”

Herzog spoke with Jeff Frick, host of SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming video studio theCUBE. He was joined by Sam Werner (pictured, right), vice president, offering manager and business line executive of storage at IBM, and they discussed new storage solutions from IBM for data protection, the need for backup and recovery in a multicloud world, and how software-driven infrastructure will be essential in hybrid models. (* Disclosure below.)

Modern data protection

Among the several announcements released by IBM was the news that IBM Storage Suite for Cloud Paks would be tightly integrated with Red Hat OpenShift and CoreOS platforms. In addition, IBM Spectrum Protect Plus data protection software would be supporting OpenShift with containers deployed using IBM Cloud Operator.

“We’re taking that industry-leading data protection software and integrating it into Red Hat container native storage, giving you the ability to solve one of the biggest challenges in this digital transformation which is backing up your data,” Werner explained. “This move toward modern data protection is all about a move towards doing data protection in a different way. It’s about leveraging snapshots, taking instant copies of data that are application aware, allowing you to reuse and mount that data for different purposes and protect yourself from ransomware.”

Behind IBM’s data protection solution is a key message: Backup and recovery are essential in a multicloud world.

“We’re showing that multicloud management is important and then leveraging that in this launch with a very strong element of container centricity,” Herzog said. “You need to look at what it would take to run the company if there was a fire and your data center was destroyed. We can provide disaster recovery and business continuity to different cloud vendors, and we can give the capability of replicating and protecting a cluster to a cloud configuration.”

In addition to leveraging cloud for data protection, IBM has also been focused on meeting the needs of its customers for hybrid deployments. The company and its customers clearly view containers as a core element in this approach as well.

“They’re using containers to modernize the infrastructure and complete the digital transformation; they want to get into a hybrid cloud environment,” Werner said. “They’re trying to figure out how to piece those different components together, so you need a software-driven storage infrastructure that gives you the flexibility to deploy and automate in a common way, both in the public cloud and on-premises. That’s what we’re working on at IBM and with our colleagues at Red Hat.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: IBM sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither IBM nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE