IBM Creates Cloud Storage Consortium

IBM is reaching out to a consortium of its partners in Europe to try to define the next generation of standards for cloud storage.

The company today announced the formation of Vision Cloud, a consortium of European companies led by IBM that over three years will develop an approach to managing data in the cloud based on object storage.

According to Yaron Wolfstahl, a senior manager in the IBM Research group, the fruits of the Vision Cloud project will be released in stages over the next three years. One area that the group will focus on is how to create a meta layer for managing data storage, handing data deduplication, and then finding ways to more efficiently transfer storage around open global networks.

Wolfstahl says existing storage controller technology is too limited in its ability to effectively manage data storage in the cloud, which is what prompted IBM to form this consortium.

The membership of the consortium, which is being funded by the European Union to the tune of 15.7 million Euros, consists largely of telecommunications companies, media companies and universities. But Wolfstahl said that IBM expects to contribute a fair amount of the technology being developed to standards bodies. The European arm of the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) is also participating in the project.

Other goals of the consortium are to enable the execution of computations close to the stored content, provide content-centric access, and full data interoperability.  As a result, IBM expects to be able to deliver new classes of services that come with quality of service guarantees and built-in security.