IBM Storage in 2020: another powerful year of innovation and industry leadership!

It has been another banner year for IBM Storage! While we are very proud of our comprehensive storage offerings, more importantly, our clients and industry experts see the huge value IBM’s offerings deliver. Between two of the most trusted channel publications in the world and one of the leading storage industry analysts, our storage solutions and support were recognized for excellence fifteen times in just this past month.

“I am very excited and proud to share our industry and analyst accolades achieved in just the 2^nd half of 2020,” said Sam Werner, VP, Storage Offering Management. “These numerous awards clearly demonstrate the outstanding value that IBM Storage solutions continue to provide our clients and partners. These awards show IBM’s industry leadership across our storage portfolio and come at the perfect time to help you get a running start for the new year!”

Bragging rights

Gartner just named IBM FlashSystems and DS8000 a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage.

According to Gartner, ”vendors in the Leaders quadrant have the highest composite scores for their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. A vendor in the Leaders quadrant has the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies.

These vendors demonstrate a clear understanding of market needs. They are innovators and thought leaders with well-articulated plans that customers and prospects can use when designing their storage infrastructures and strategies. In addition, they have a presence in the five major geographical regions, consistent financial performance and broad platform support.”^[1]

IBM Storage awards continued

The Flash Memory Summit named IBM’s Elastic Storage System 3000 All Flash Storage Array as the 2020 Best of Show Award Winner for the Most Innovative AI Application.

The Storage Magazine 2020 Awards (Storries XVII) announced IBM as the winner for three categories and the runner-up for three additional categories as follows:

• WINNER:
  • Object Storage Vendor of the Year
  • Hybrid Storage Vendor of the Year
  • Cloud Storage Vendor of the Year

• RUNNER-UP:
  • Storage Company of the Year
  • Data Management Vendor of the Year
  • Software-Defined Storage Vendor of the Year

In early November Channel Reseller News (CRN) released its 2020 Tech Innovator Award list:

Fig. 1: IBM Cloud Paks dashboard display screen

• IBM’s Storage Suite for IBM Cloud Paks was named winner for the Storage Software-Defined
• IBM’s Spectrum Protect Plus was named a finalist for the Cloud Data Protection/Disaster Recovery
• IBM’s FlashSystem 9200 was named a finalist for the Storage-Enterprise
• IBM’s FlashSystem 7200 was named a finalist for the Storage-Midrange
• IBM’s FlashSystem 5010, 5030, and 5100 were named finalists for the Storage-SMB

HPCwire recognized IBM Storage with their prestigious 2020 Reader’s Choice and Editor’s Choice awards:

• IBM Spectrum Scale & IBM Spectrum Protect were named Winner of the 2020 Readers’ Choice Award for the Best Use of High-Performance Data Analytics & Artificial Intelligence by the University of Birmingham with IBM. Click to view award presentation.
  
• IBM Elastic Storage System and IBM Spectrum Scale were named Winner of the 2020 Editors’ Choice Award for the Best HPC Collaboration (Academia/Government/Industry) for the COVID-19 HPC Consortium created by the DOE and IBM. Click to view award presentation.

In October, for a fifth consecutive year, Gartner named IBM Spectrum Scale & IBM Cloud Object Storage a Leader in the 2020 Magic Quadrant for Distribute File Systems and Object Storage.

Storage Insiders awarded IBM FlashSystems the 2020 Reader’s Choice Silver Award in Germany for excellence.

Coldago Research’s 2020 Storage Unicorn Survey identified IBM as a File Storage and Object Storage as a leader.

In August, DCIG recognized IBM Storage as a leader and recommended solution in a number of categories including the following:

• IBM Spectrum Protect Plus as a Top 5 Enterprise AWS Cloud Backup Solution in 2020.
  

  Fig. 2: IBM Spectrum Protect Plus Snapshot Restore Kubernetes source select page

• IBM’s FlashSystem 9200 was recommended for Enterprise All-Flash Arrays.
• IBM Spectrum Protect Plus was selected as a Top 5 SME AWS Cloud Backup Solution for 2020.
• IBM’s FlashSystem 9000 Series (9200) was selected as a TOP 5 high-end Storage Array.
• IBM’s FlashSystem 7200 was recommended for Enterprise All-Flash Arrays.

In July, CRN named the IBM FlashSystem Family one of The 10 Hottest SSD and Flash Storage Products of 2020!

“IBM in February said it would eliminate two of its primary non-mainframe storage lines–Storwize and the Flash Systems A9000–replacing them with a single new FlashSystem family. The FlashSystem family includes five new storage arrays, all running the same IBM Spectrum Virtualize software platform, which IBM said helps simplify customer’s entire storage environment by supporting over 500 multi-vendor storage systems and offering enterprise-class data services and non-disruptive data movement all controlled by a single management plane. The new IBM FlashSystem family also offers 99.9999-percent availability, full hardware redundancies, and two-site or three-site replication, and provide seamless hybrid multicloud support with a full range of security capabilities. “^[2]

Wrapping up this long list of accolades over the past 6 months, for the ninth consecutive year, IBM has been named a leader in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant for Data Center Backup and Recovery Solutions. 

What does this all mean?

What do these accolades mean? They mean that you will benefit from the top solutions for your hybrid cloud, container, modern data protection and cyber resiliency, and AI, big data, and analytics applications and workloads. These awards demonstrate IBM’s continued leadership in storage excellence and commitment to delivering you the right tools to optimize your business.

Disclaimer: Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner document available from IBM upon request.