IBM Spectrum Storage, the company’s new storage software, allows customers to use a single dashboard to manage massive amounts of information across existing storage infrastructure, including data centres and the cloud.
IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty has been trying to entice customers with new products, such as software-defined storage, to help reverse falling sales.
After 11 quarters of declining revenue, she’s still trying to find growth from higher-margin software and services delivered online via the cloud. “We are investing in things that can be growth potential for us,” Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
“I actually have to prove it, but we’re in a good place.” Customers who increasingly rent cloud-computing capacity have cut back on purchasing their own large machines to store data.
Meanwhile, IBM and competitors like EMC have sought to sell more storage that uses faster flash memory, as well as add-on software tools. IBM stopped buying and reselling storage systems from NetApp last year, instead encouraging customers to buy its own products, according to an internal memo reviewed by Bloomberg in May