This morning Oracle announced a new storage offering that extends strategic options for enterprises on how, where and when to store data, all at an attractive TCO position. But it’s for data on… mainframes. Why would Oracle go after this market, at default unlikely and unusual for the vendor, so worth a blog post. 
 

So let’s take apart the press release in our customary style, it can be found here:
Redwood Shores, Calif.– March 1, 2016 – Oracle announces the all new StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager (VSM) 7 System, the most secure and scalable data protection solution for mainframe and heterogeneous systems with the additional capability to provide fully automated tiering directly to the public cloud. Furthermore, Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System has been architected to seamlessly integrate with Oracle Storage Cloud Service – Object Storage and Oracle Storage Cloud Service – Archive Service and provides storage administrators with a built-in cloud strategy. With Oracle, cloud storage is now as accessible as on-premise storage.

MyPOV – Summarizes well what VSM is about –give (IBM) mainframe customers an option to expand storage both on premises and to the cloud. With the integration to Oracle Cloud Service - Archive Service, VSM offers the option to bring this data to the cloud, if desired or required. Giving enterprises the option between on premises / cloud storage is a key capability to allow flexible deployment scenarios of storage, while enterprises are formulating their long term systems and application strategy.
 
“In the past, data protection solutions were designed to deal with exponential data growth on-premises, but an entirely different dynamic drove the design of the VSM 7,” said James Cates, senior vice president, Archive Product Development, Oracle. “The core is still there—elevated performance, twice the capacity, a higher degree of scalability, but we saw a gap in the market, so we developed Engineered Cloud Tiering to enable mainframe users to take advantage of cloud economics.”
MyPOV – Good quote by Cates, summing up both the traditional (on premises) and new (cloud) capabilities of VSM version 7.
Organizations can experience these benefits:

Performance & Scalability: Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System is a superior data protection solution for IBM z Systems mainframes with full data interchange across previous generation VSM systems and key features that IBM’s TS7700 virtual tape system lacks. Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System delivers, 34x more capacity, significantly higher scalability to 256 StorageTek VSM 7 Systems, data deduplication and native cloud tiering that provides mainframe and heterogeneous storage users the ability to access additional capacity on demand.
 MyPOV – It’s always key for vendors to build enough new capabilities and capacity in a new offering, to make it attractive enough for enterprises to consider adopting the new offering. At the same time a substantial gain of capabilities and capacity is essential in order to make sure the offering remains attractive given the effects of Moore’s Law on all things hardware. It looks like Oracle has built in enough of a capability and capacity progression in VSM 7. 
 
Enhanced Security: Powered by Oracle’s breakthrough SPARC M7 processor, Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System delivers wide-key encryption for data at rest and on removable tape media without performance compromise and also uses Silicon Secured Memory for data protection.
MyPOV – Good to see the recent hardware based security offerings being part of the offering. Another example of what Oracle can do with the integrated ‘chip to click’ technology stack - designing higher level offerings in conjunction with lower level system capabilities here taking advantage of building its own processors with SPARC M7.
 
Availability: Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System provides data protection solutions from on-premises to Oracle Public Cloud, with a single point of contact for all mainframe storage and heterogeneous storage requirements. Policies can be set to automatically copy or migrate files from external disk storage to low cost, off-site cloud storage. With native cloud tiering, customers benefit from end-to-end visibility and diagnostics from on-premise StorageTek VSM 7 System deployments to the Oracle Storage Cloud Service or Oracle Storage Cloud Archive Service.
MyPOV – As data volumes explode for enterprises, keeping and protecting data is key for next generation applications that these enterprises are supporting. Being able to manage policy based – and thus automated – on premises vs cloud storage choices is very valuable.
 
Disaster Recovery: Oracle’s StorageTek VSM 7 System enables a “lights out” disaster recovery strategy, as a mainframe is no longer required at remote sites, dramatically reducing costs and simplifying deployments. Electronic data sharing across separate complexes, clustering, replication, and DR to the Oracle Public Cloud provides a breadth of simple, flexible disaster recovery options.
MyPOV – Disaster Recovery remains a must have capability for most enterprises to ensure business continuity. Oracle provides a key capability not having to mirror complete system capabilities (here a mainframe) on both sides of a DR equation, opening scenarios with system replacement, cost saving and more agile qualities.
 
Oracle is also addressing the needs of mission critical heterogeneous environments
underserved by other solutions. Extending its enterprise-proven architecture to a broader customer base, Oracle is providing robust mainframe data protection capabilities with flexible disaster recovery options.
MyPOV – Good to hear that VSM supports scenarios beyond mainframes, while keeping mainframe quality to allow support for more heterogeneous system deployments. Enterprises have heterogeneous system landscapes, and having the option of high quality system choices at disposal is very valuable for decision makers.
 

Overall MyPOV

The cloud has brought new life to many areas of the technology stack that have lived a more quiet life in the recent decade. Storage is one of these areas, where suddenly a well understood, on the path to commoditization IT offering, has become strategic (again). All of the 7 next generation application use cases Constellation Research has identified and that enterprises are evaluating, building and looking to procure, show how strategically important storage is. In many cases, Storage is the critical path from enabling the overall use case both from a capability and / or cost perspective. So seeing innovation in the space, giving enterprise more deployment options and reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) is a positive development for CxOs making strategic next generation application platform decisions.

Moreover, the combination of these offerings with the cloud gives enterprise key new strategic choices. Still necessary older on premises architectures can be extended while taking advantage of cloud bases technologies and deployments, while enterprises formulate their systems and platform strategy going forward. Oracle’s symmetrical architecture for both on premises and on cloud based products, increases the deployment choices and flexibility substantially: Enterprises know with higher level of confidence that they can move data from on premises to cloud and vice versa. This confidence into a capability is crucial for deployment flexibility that has risen to even more importance given the recent data residency challenges enterprises face with the invalidation of the E.U. / USA Safe harbor agreement.

So overall VSM 7 is a further proof point of the Oracle ‘chip to click’ technology stack, deployed either seamlessly on premises or in the Oracle cloud. Enterprise with storage needs should take note / a look.


 
Recent blog posts on Oracle:
 
  • Market Move - Oracle acquires Ravello Systems - makes good on nested hypervisor roadmap - read here
  • Progress Report - Oracle Cloud - More ready than ever, now needs adoption read here
  • Event Report - Oracle Openworld 2015 - Top 3 Takeaways, Top 3 Positives & Concerns - read here
  • News Analysis - Quick Take on all 22 press releases of Oracle OpenWorld Day #1 - #3 - read here
  • First Take - Oracle OpenWorld - Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways - read here
  • Event Preview - Oracle Openworld - watch here


Future of Work / HCM / SaaS research:
  • Event Report - Oracle HCM World - Full Steam ahead, a Learning surprise and potential growth challenges - read here
  • First Take - Oracle HCM World Day #1 Keynote - off to a good start - read here
  • Progress Report - Oracle HCM gathers momentum - now it needs to build on that - read here
  • Oracle pushes modern HR - there is more than technology - read here. (Takeaways from the recent HCMWorld conference).
  • Why Applications Unlimited is good a good strategy for Oracle customers and Oracle - read here.

Also worth a look for the full picture
 
  • Event Report - Oracle PaaS Event - 6 PaaS Services become available, many more announced - read here
  • Progress Report - Oracle Cloud makes progress - but key work remains in the cellar - read here
  • News Analysis - Oracle discovers the power of the two socket server - or: A pivot that wasn't one - TCO still rules - read here
  • Market Move - Oracle buys Datalogix - moves more into DaaS - read here
  • Event Report - Oracle Openworld - Oracle's vision and remaining work become clear - they are both big - read here
  • Constellation Research Video Takeaways of Oracle Openworld 2014 - watch here
  • Is it all coming together for Oracle in 2014? Read here. 
  • From the fences - Oracle AR Meeting takeaways - read here (this was the last analyst meeting in spring 2013)
  • Takeaways from Oracle CloudWorld LA - read here (this was one of the first cloud world events overall, in January 2013)

And if you want to read more of my findings on Oracle technology - I suggest:
  • Progress Report - Good cloud progress at Oracle and a two step program - read here.
  • Oracle integrates products to create its Foundation for Cloud Applications - read here.
  • Java grows up to the enterprise - read here.
  • 1st take - Oracle in memory option for its database - very organic - read here.
  • Oracle 12c makes the database elastic - read here.
  • How the cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
  • Act I - Oracle and Microsoft partner for the cloud - read here.
  • Act II - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Salesforce.com - read here.
  • Act III - The cloud changes everything - Oracle and Netsuite with a touch of Deloitte - read here. 

Finally find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.
2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016 (C) Holger Mueller - All Rights Reserved

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