IBM buys data-compression vendor Storwize 29 July, 2010 By Mark Cox

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The deal continues a trend in which the big storage vendors are clearly moving towards the reduction of primary storage, said Brian Babineau, senior consulting analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG).

"ESG has been saying that primary data reduction would come to a storage environment near you," Babineau blogged following this acquisition. "We even pointed at NetApp as proof. The response was 'one vendor does not make a trend.' EMC talked about it quietly, but no one gave them any credit. So, let's say it again. 'Data reduction is coming to PRIMARY storage ; Data reduction is coming to PRIMARY storage.' Dell now owns Ocarina and IBM bought up compression-technology leader StorWize. Someone will be smart enough to own / partner with Permabit soon."

Storwize, founded in 2004, is one of the Israeli high-tech success stories that has since moved its' head offices to he U.S., while maintaining its' development facilities in Israel (where they will stay following the acquisition). The company has over one hundred customers such as Mobileye, Polycom Israel, Shopzilla, Inc. and Sumitomo Mitsui Construction across a wide range of industries including energy, manufacturing, finance, insurance, telecommunications and cloud services.

"This is our third significant acquisition in storage since 2008," said Brian Truskowski, general manager of IBM Storage. "We have aggressively pursued a strategy to grow through innovation, both organically and targeted acquisitions."

Tom Cook, CEO of Permabit, an OEM-focused vendor in the dedupe optimization space, was impressed by the IBM acquisition.

"We think this looks like a great move for IBM," Cook said. "It's a solid first move in data optimization, as the data compression that StorWize brings when combined with dedupe creates a best of breed solution. We see them moving to leading the market with this.

Cook also sees this acquisition as marking another push towards data reduction coming to primary storage.

"That vision is becoming reality, with both performance and data safety both being maintained here in the dedupe and decompression technologies."

With Storwize, IBM is acquiring storage technology that can compress primary data, or data that clients are actively using, of multiple types -- from files to virtualization images to databases -- in real-time while maintaining performance. This is in contrast to other storage compression technologies that only compress secondary or backup data. By compressing primary data, Storwize users can store up to five times more data using the same amount of storage, preventing storage sprawl and lowering power and cooling costs.

Compression shrinks data so files and databases take up less space. Storwize's Random Access Compression Engine (RACE) is based on the industry-standard compression algorithm and uses Storwize's patented technology for real-time data compression without any performance degradation.

With Storwize, analytics applications can improve decision making by scanning many more years of historical data from multiple sources without the need to add additional storage equipment. Compressing data in real-time can also help make data available up to four times faster for transaction workloads .

Running Storwize data compression does not affect business and IT processes or other applications and does not require special skills to maintain. Product installation can be completed in as little as four hours, with little or no downtime.

"IBM has the strongest vision for the future direction of storage and we are pleased to become a part of that vision," said Ed Walsh, CEO, Storwize. "Our customers will benefit significantly as our talented employees and innovative storage solutions merge with IBM's world-wide reach in sales, service and research and development."