On March 2, 2016, SanDisk announced through its IT Blog the “Next-Generation Software-Defined All-Flash Unified Storage with IBM and SanDisk,” running IBM’s Spectrum Scale file system (aka GPFS) on SanDisk’s Infiniflash ultra-dense, high capacity Just a Bunch of Flash (JBOF) array.

Neuralytix views Infiniflash as a first-to-market high density JBOF.

The product, to be known as the Infiniflash for IBM Spectrum Scale Solution, will start with 512GB of flash memory and can scale to multiple petabytes, with impressive throughput performance.

Neuralytix believes this partnership is very positive for both companies. IBM needs to continue to promote its mature Spectrum Scale software of which GPFS is a component of the software-defined storage portfolio.

GPFS is already a favored file system by many high performance computing (HPC). GPFS has been designed to also replace HDFS in a Hadoop framework, enabling a mature, stable, and reliable file system to operate in big data analytics environment.

For SanDisk, this partnership brings additional validation for its Infiniflash product. Prior to IBM, SanDisk had forged partnerships with CloudBytes, Nexenta, SuperMicro and Tegile. Neuralytix research shows that of the early partnerships, Nexenta is leading the pack in terms of aggressive marketing of Nexenta software on Infiniflash.

This deal also emphasizes for Western Digital that its decision to acquire SanDisk is a smart decision, giving Western Digital a vast portfolio of flash products from the time the deal is closed later this year.

Neuralytix believes that IBM will continue to announce further partnerships with other unique storage solutions to enhance its overall storage business, which has seen declines for quite a while.