With this release, IBM continues in its role as a leader in both mainframe technology and enterprise storage. The integration between IBM Z and the IBM DS8000 series continues to be a differentiator for IBM, and it should entice organizations to prioritize the DS8000 for IBM Z environments. While the performance and efficiency advances in Gen 10 (such as the integration of NVMe and PCIe Gen4) will provide added value for application consolidation, it is IBM’s zHyperLink technology and its ability to accelerate data to IBM Z mainframe environments that will provide the greatest performance benefit to mainframe application environments.

IBM complements the performance of the DS8000 with enhanced protection and cyber-resilience, claiming to offer 99.999999% (eight nines) data availability along with features such as multisite replication and immutable Safeguarded Copies for protection against ransomware.

The end takeaway is this: If your organization leverages IBM Z mainframe technology, you should already be considering the DS8000. If not, the increased efficiency combined with the impressive cyber-resilience, should place the IBM DS8000 on the short list for consideration as well.