ARMONK, N.Y. - 04 Nov 2015: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new innovations to its IBM Spectrum Storage family of software-defined storage to help clients improve storage management, data security and reduce data costs as they deploy new technology to support cognitive and other data-driven applications across hybrid cloud environments.

IBM Spectrum Storage is designed to help clients securely embrace the explosive growth of data and support both traditional and next generation applications. New features to improve security and cost-effective management of large amounts of data and storage, include:

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IBM Spectrum Virtualize storage virtualization, which helps clients improve data security and reduce costs, now offers a new software feature that provides data encryption on existing heterogeneous storage systems, eliminating the need to purchase new infrastructure.

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IBM Spectrum Scale software and the IBM Elastic Storage Server integrated system helps clients reduce capital and operating expenses for large volumes of files and objects used by cognitive and cloud applications. New features include, data compression to improve storage utilization and efficiency by reducing storage space needed for files and objects; and the ability to accelerate Hadoop applications with a new Hadoop Filed System (HDFS) interface.

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IBM Spectrum Control , which helps reduce IT costs and complexity by optimizing data and storage, now extends management and data analytics capabilities for IBM FlashSystem and IBM Spectrum Scale file and object storage systems. These enhancements, along with broad support for traditional storage systems, provide an integrated control point for optimizing today's diverse data infrastructures.

Clients are storing more data than ever before from a diverse set of sources for analytics and applications directly serving customers, often through their mobile devices. IT leaders today are increasingly focused on storing, managing and protecting this data.

Enterprise Strategy Group research shows that improving information security along the data lifecycle was the most frequently mentioned IT priority this year ** among survey respondents representing organizations of all sizes.¹ Similarly, new research on data protection reveals that encryption features are the top consideration to IT managers as they evaluate and select new backup vendors or solutions.²

“As organizations transform to digital business, they increasingly require a solution to store data safely and cost effectively.” said Jamie Thomas, General Manager, IBM Storage. “The advancements in Spectrum Storage that we are announcing today will help clients by increasing data security and improving data storage management.”

During the last six months, both clients and IBM Business Partners have chosen offerings from the IBM Spectrum Storage portfolio for their data storage needs. Key Information Systems, an IBM Business Partner that provides compute and storage solutions for software-defined data centers, has helped clients improve management of large amounts of storage with IBM Spectrum Storage.

“Data encryption has become one of the top priorities for our clients as they face more stringent corporate security requirements around data storage,” said David Howard, Solution Architect, Key Information Systems. “Now, with IBM Spectrum Virtualize and its ability to encrypt external storage, customers have a single, standard storage encryption solution that protects their current storage investments eliminating the need for islands of encryption or the purchase of new storage systems.”