So far the biggest update that that came out of the IBM Edge conference is that Big Blue has rolled out several major enhancements to the offerings in its Smart Computing portfolio, with an emphasis on data-driven efficiency.

The gist of it is that several of systems are getting some big boosts. IBM is adding real-time compression to both the Storwize V7000 unified storage system and the System Storage SAN Volume Controller, and claims that the technology can shrink actively used data by up to 80 percent. This puts a new twist on the traditional approach of compressing low activity data, and effectively increases the V7000’s capacity to 1.4 petabytes.

“From the move to electronic records to the ballooning sizes of medical images, storage in medical centers as large as ours, is rapidly becoming ground zero for Big Data,” said Rick Haverty, director of information systems division at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “IBM has recognized the need to start approaching the management of the growing data volumes in a strategic, smarter way, through built-in intelligence, automation, and the cloud, to gain greater performance, reliability and better economics.”

IBM also paid some attention to VDI.  The DS3500 SME system and the higher-end configuration now feature ‘Enhanced FlashCopy’ capabilities that allow for 50 percent more snapshots, and faster backup. This is coupled with thin provisioning that increases disk utilization.

In the backup department, the IBM Tape System Library Manager has been debuted as an admin tool that lets the user monitor tape libraries from a single pane of glass. There’s also the Linear Tape File System media files lifecycle management software, and the company stated it will be incorporating flash into future solutions.