Broadcom CA 1 Flexible Storage Solution Enables Hybrid Storage Options for Mainframe Data

Broadcom Inc. announced the availability of a solution that enables enterprises to store their mainframe data anywhere they choose, including the cloud.

The company’s CA 1 Flexible Storage solution provides secure, cost-effective mainframe storage options for hybrid IT environments, making it possible for customers to achieve cost savings and protect vs. ransomware.

“Hybrid cloud promises flexibility and cost efficiencies for businesses today and into the future,” said Greg Lotko, SVP and GM, mainframe software division. “We’re partnering closely with clients and delivering significant new capability within products so they can seamlessly integrate the mainframe with the cloud. The beauty of CA 1 Flexible Storage is that, if mainframe clients want to use commodity storage in their data center, or write to the cloud, on-prem or off, they can –  with no changes to their day-to-day operations or applications.”

Managing data growth
Installed storage capacity for enterprises is growing at more than 27% annually. IT budgets are challenged with this level of growth. Storage teams that have been frustrated with limited and costly options now have new alternatives for success. Typically, a petabyte of storage costs companies $1.4 million annually when it is stored on tape on their premises. Moving select data to cloud storage can save as much as 95% of this cost each year.

“With the rising volumes and cost of storing data, this solution is timely for our business,” said Rick Laneau, GM, IT, Hillsborough County Public Schools. “We’ll be able to re-architect our mainframe storage strategy to include the cloud in a meaningful way, while saving on storage costs and complying with data retention policies – it’s an all-around win for us.”

“With CA 1 Flexible Storage, customers have the option to use cloud storage for potentially less cost than on-premises systems, but with the security required for enterprise data. The simplicity of implementing the CA 1 solution is key for enterprise operations, targeting cloud storage without operational impact allowing customers to realize the economic value quickly. IT organizations strive to accomplish more with limited resources and CA 1 Flexible Storage is a valuable solution to achieve that,” said Randy Kerns, senior strategist, Evaluator Group.

Complete mainframe storage solution

• Flexible and cost-effective: CA 1 Flexible Storage provides businesses with the freedom to match the type of storage that best fits particular data, either on premise or in the cloud, as needed. Businesses can move archive and backup data to the cloud or any other low-cost storage without the need for special hardware or software. This flexibility opens opportunities to reduce storage costs.

• Efficient: Businesses can reuse existing CA 1 policy-based automation for all storage types, including their preferred cloud storage. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. CA 1 Flexible Storage ensures that all offload-eligible data is processed using low-cost specialty processors, further minimizing resource consumption. In addition, internal testing has demonstrated that batch backup performance is improved by up to 25%, lessening tight capacity requirements.

• Secure: With the threat from cyberattacks growing dramatically, data security is a top concern for IT leaders. CA 1 Flexible Storage provides an approach to securing data, by leveraging the latest z crypto hardware accelerator and quantum-safe algorithms. This enables backups at a dataset (file) level. This offers protection over other solutions that only provide encryption at a device level, which leaves sensitive information vulnerable to insider threats and external attackers.

Data protection from ransomware
CA 1 Flexible Storage expands support for immutable backups, meaning they cannot be modified after being created. This reduces risk businesses may face from accidental modification or ransomware attacks.

In addition, the solution positions customers to exploit the latest advancements in IBM z16 and z15 while maximizing the value they get from their current software stack – all without the need for any specialized hardware or non-native z/OS software.

Existing CA 1 Tape Management customers are automatically entitled to the CA 1 Flexible Storage solution and can begin leveraging these new capabilities at no additional cost.