It’s been about a year since I shared my thoughts on this blog, so to make up for lost time, here is the first in a six-part series of notes on how to get the most bang from your storage buck. Did that get your attention? If so, please read on and watch in the coming weeks for additional installments.

As a storage consultant for LRS, it is both my job and my passion to help companies find ways to save money and improve their IT infrastructures. There are various types of storage from many manufacturers at many price and capability levels. But when it comes to speed and efficiency, Flash storage is the logical choice. Specifically, I argue that IBM Flash storage is the best choice.

Choice. That’s a word I like a lot. My contention is that customers get maximum value when they have choices. Making a good one requires information, and that is what I hope to deliver in this six-part series of blog articles.

First, a quick storage quiz:

So, why are we taking your time to talk about IBM Flash Storage?

In a sentence: IBM Flash is superior to its top competitors in terms of functionality, performance, price, and in its ability to ensure your enterprise is quickly up and running after a cyber-attack. As a pure hypothetical, think about your current flash storage environment and ask yourself:

1. What if we could get the performance of the competition’s storage next 2 or 3 upgrades NOW, without paying additional monthly payments on the promise of new controllers? And what if, after making payments for 36 months, we didn’t have to sign another 36-month contract BEFORE we receive the controllers we already paid for?
2. What if our cost was up to 50% lower on a price per TB basis, even after calculating effective capacity?
3. What if we could have a single array which offered the performance of TLC chips at the price of QLC? What if our organization didn’t need one array for fast performance, using TLC, and another array for medium performance, using QLC. Fewer arrays could mean fewer support contracts, less energy consumption, lower third-party software costs and less management.

If your environment sees no benefit from better performance or lower costs, we don’t need to waste any more of your time. Keep on buying what you buy today. But what if your organization had the performance NOW that you will expect from IBM’s top competitor two or three controller upgrades from now? What would that mean to your business?

The challenge with storage is that you only know that you need more performance when you realize you don’t have it. Why take that chance? If your business is growing, or moving into modern workloads like analytics, AI, ML and IOT, you WILL need performance. Why not benefit from the ability to do modern workloads now, so that when realize your need it, that storage is already in place?

That’s the vision at a high level, but in the following weeks, subsequent articles will provide more details on IBM Flash regarding pricing, performance, technology, function, and Cyber Resiliency. Find out why IBM’s storage star is rising.

Click here for more information on IBM Flash storage and click here for more information on LRS infrastructure solutions.