IBM Introduces Storage Ceph as a Service Software-Defined Storage Solution

IBM Corp. has announced the addition of IBM Storage Ceph as a Service to its emerging portfolio of flexible as a service solutions for on-premises infrastructure.

The portfolio includes IBM Power delivered as a service, which already offers the distributed compute platform in new form factors and flexible consumption options.

An IDC study underscores this shift, revealing that by 2028, 80% of IT buyers will prioritize as a service consumption for key workloads. This trend is driven by the demand for optimized IT spending, enhanced operational efficiency, and the attainment of critical sustainability metrics. ⁽¹⁾ The company is addressing this moment by providing IBM Storage Ceph via an as a service model, empowering clients to integrate cloud-based as a service solutions with on-premises environments.

“The need for seamless, automated operations is an increasing priority as organizations leverage AI capabilities, shift to digital infrastructure, and adopt new delivery models,” said McLeod Glass, VP, growth and innovation programs, IBM Infrastructure. “Delivering IT built on infrastructure as a service is key to unlocking the power of flexibility, speed, and ease of consumption.“

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Introducing IBM Storage Ceph as a Service
The company has unveiled a new way of deploying IBM Storage Ceph via an as a service model so clients can leverage the software-defined unified storage solution as a cloud storage experience on-premises. it unifies block, file, and object data to help organizations address data silos and modernize data lakes or VMs storage.

IBM Storage Ceph as a Service is a fully managed offering that is designed to deliver the scale, flexibility, availability, and cost efficiency of cloud storage to the data center, leaving the management and maintenance of Ceph clusters to the firm’s experts. With this solution, IT staff can focus resources on critical business priorities and emerging technologies, rather than the complicated task of managing storage infrastructure.

“With data being the lifeblood of any organization, data storage plays a critical role in every workstream, but it shouldn’t be as challenging as it is for IT teams to manage,” said Sam Werner, VP, storage product management, IBM. “With IBM Storage Ceph as a Service, we’re taking on the headache for our clients, expediting the provisioning and streamlining the management of storage resources.“

IBM Power Delivered as a Service
The company has continued to innovate and invest in operating environments on IBM Power to help ensure business continuity, reliability, availability, serviceability, and security for clients. This includes the Power Virtual Server Private Cloud integrated into the IBM Cloud Catalog, which supports enterprise workloads such as SAP, IBM i, Oracle, and AI. Power Virtual Server is designed to help clients quickly adopt and expand their on-premises infrastructures both efficiently and economically while providing security and compliance capabilities.

National Van Lines, an Power Virtual Server client, is a moving, packing and service company that provides relocation services for both individuals and businesses. The impact of major weather events in recent years has led to power outages in the Chicago area impacting the availability of their servers for days. This created a major disruption in their operations. The importance of Power architecture to their business drove them to seek out a way to improve their business continuity plan.

Working with the company and the firm‘s business partner, Mainline Information Systems LLC, National Van Lines adopted IBM Power Virtual Server, which provides VMs as a service on Power architecture designed to support mission-critical applications. With a consistent architecture across on-premises and cloud environments, workload migration helps eliminate the need for re-platforming. This allowed National Van Lines to reduce IT costs and improve disaster recovery times from days to hours by mitigating the need for physical backup tapes.

“IBM Power Virtual Server is a solid, secured, and reliable solution, so much so that we’re now going through the same process with the National Forwarding business unit,” said Greg Moore, VP, IT, National Van Lines. “It works and we’re so confident in it that we’re implementing it in other areas of our business.”

Since Power Virtual Server is an as a Service offering, enterprises will only pay for the computing resources used such as memory, storage, and CPU managed by IBM in their data centers.

Similarly, IBM Storage Ceph as a Service is designed to reduce operational costs by aligning spending with actual usage, avoiding underutilization and overprovisioning. It can also scale on-demand so IT teams can start small and grow to adapt to business needs as priorities change. With as a service offerings emerging as one of the prominent solutions built for improved operational efficiency, lower IT costs, and reduced risk and complexity, IBM is dedicated to helping enterprises both accelerate and simplify this IT journey.

⁽¹⁾ IDC FutureScape: Worldwide Future of Digital Infrastructure 2024 Predictions, doc #US50401023, December 2023

Resources:
Webinar : Next-Gen High-Performance Object Storage for Modern Applications: IBM Storage Ceph 8.0 – Apr 15, 2025 11:00 AM EDT (5:00 PM Europe/Paris) – Registration required
IBM Storage Ceph Live Demo (28:30 min)
IBM Storage Ceph Solutions Guide    
IBM Storage Ceph Concepts and Architecture Guide    
Unlocking Data Insights and AI: IBM Storage Ceph as a Data Lakehouse Platform for IBM watsonx.data and Beyond   
Information on IBM Power Virtual Server