When IBM Corp. announced its second quarter earnings in June, the news of two straight growth quarters in the company’s storage business got some attention. With flash as a catalyst and storage hardware margins on the rise, it made sense that the company would seek to capitalize on that momentum with announcements as part of its participation in this week’s VMworld 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sure enough, IBM announced a zHyperLink card for its DS8880 flash array series, reportedly designed to connect with the company’s Z-mainframe systems at a very fast 20-microsecond response time. “We really work to reduce the complexity of delivering major functions,” said Calline Sanchez (pictured), vice president of enterprise storage at IBM. “Historically we always talked about betas. Now we’re talking about alphas.”

Sanchez spoke about IBM’s storage business during a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, where she spoke with co-hosts Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LisaDaliMartin) at VMworld 2017. In addition to the flash array news, they discussed a new software release and IBM’s continued commitment to tape storage. (* Disclosure below.)

In addition to the DS8880 news, IBM announced a new product called Spectrum Protect Plus. The software tool is designed to backup virtual machines and can facilitate data movement from on-prem storage to private or public clouds. “The clients are pushing us to improve overall and meet the cloud economics that they require,” Sanchez said.

New record for tape storage

Tape seems to be a storage medium whose time has come and gone. However, IBM’s research arm recently declared a record jump of 201 Gb per square inch for the amount of data that can be stored on tape.

The economics of tape storage in the enterprise has helped its cause as well, costing about one cent per gigabyte, according to Sanchez. “It’s cost effective, as well as a high performer, high capacity element that we intend to deliver. Our intent is to accelerate the entire roadmap as it relates to tape,” she said.

IBM’s “alpha first” philosophy was on full display this week at the VMware show, and recent positive quarterly results for storage, coupled with new product announcements involving hybrid cloud and flash array solutions, have given the company a focused message.

“It’s important that we deliver value to our clients or we’re not relevant,” Sanchez concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor IBM have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE