IBM’s Watson Technology To Power New Elastic Storage Products

IBM is set to commercialise storage technology developed for the Watson artificial intelligence project.

The company said it will release a number of software-defined storage products that reduce the cost of IT infrastructure by automatically moving data onto the most suitable storage device, while offering infinite scaling across all data types.

“Digital information is growing at such a rapid rate and in such dramatic volumes that traditional storage systems used to house and manage it will eventually run out of runway,” said Tom Rosamilia, SVP at IBM Systems and Technology Group. “Our technology offers the advances in speed, scalability and cost savings that clients require to operate in a world where data is the basis of competitive advantage.”

Ask Watson

Watson became famous after beating two human champions on the quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011. The computer system was specifically developed to answer questions posed in natural language, by processing terabytes of structured and unstructured data.

Earlier this year, IBM announced it was creating a new business unit to explore the practical applications of Watson cognitive computing technology. Meanwhile, the company’s Storage division announced that it was working on a number of software-defined products derived from the Watson project, which include the patented “Elastic Storage” technology.

IBM says its Elastic Storage is capable of reducing storage costs by up to 90 percent. The software, which builds on IBM’s global file system, virtualises physical drives into shared pools of storage and automates common tasks. It includes online storage management, scalable access and integrated data governance tools capable of handling billions of files.

And since Elastic Storage is not reliant on a centralized system to determine file location, customers can enjoy continuous access to their data in the event of a software or hardware failure.

Since IBM’s Elastic Storage doesn’t involve any hardware, it can work with any third party storage systems to add automation and virtualization features.

IBM Research has demonstrated that Elastic Storage can successfully scan ten billion files on a single cluster in just 43 minutes – a capability which will be particularly useful in Big Data analytics.

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