This article is more than 1 year old

Oh Big Blue, can't you think of anything new for your product line?

Here, I'll help: Object storage, scalable NAS...

Storagebod "If in doubt, rebrand" ... has IBM completely run out of ideas with its storage offerings? The Spectrum rebrand of its storage offerings feels like the last throw of the dice.

In fact, it is not all of its storage offerings that have rebranded, but appears to be only the software offerings.

DS8K, for example, is missing from the line-up but perhaps Spectrum Zombie – the Storage Array that Will Not Die – was a step too far.

We do, however, have Spectrum Virtualise. This is a hardware offering currently in the form of SVC but is this going to morph into a software offering? There is little reason why it shouldn’t.

There are also products such as the hardware XIV, the Vxxxx series and also the ESS GPFS appliance that are missing from the Spectrum family. Are we going to see IBM discontinue these products over time? It feels like the clock's ticking.

The DS8K is probably a safe product because of the mainframe support, although users of other IBM products are going to be nervous.

Why has IBM managed to completely mess up its storage portfolio? There are still massive gaps in it after all this time: object storage, scalable NAS and, indeed, an ordinary workaday NAS of their own.

The products it has are generally good. I’ve been a fan of SVC for a long time, a GPFS advocate and a TSM bigot. Products that really work!

I feel sorry for the folks who develop them; they have been let down again and again by their product marketing. The problem isn’t the products.

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