IBM To Dedicate $1 Billion To Hybrid Storage Software Over Next 5 Years

To prove to customers it too can offer cloud-hosted storage service, IBM Tuesday announced it will dedicate more than $1 billion in research and development to hybrid storage software for the enterprise market. The investment will be used to create new technologies to allow enterprises to efficiently store data, whether it be on their own servers, in the cloud or a combination of both.

“A new approach is needed to help clients address the cost and complexity driven by tremendous data growth," Tom Rosamilia, senior vice president of IBM Systems, said in a statement. "Traditional storage is inefficient in today’s world where the value of each piece of data is changing all the time."

In addition to the billion-dollar investment, IBM announced IBM Spectrum Storage, a piece of intelligent software that optimizes costs for clients by storing data on servers and in the cloud in the most efficient manner. "Instead of the hardware itself doing all the heavy lifting, intelligent software that manages the storage infrastructure is proving highly effective in handling today’s unprecedented data," IBM General Manager of Storage Jamie Thomas wrote in Forbes.

The announcement comes weeks after IBM was forced to begin a round of layoffs that cost the jobs of 10,000 or more employees as the company struggles to adjust to the age of cloud computing. In the past few years, IBM has been losing storage enterprise customers to rivals like Google and Amazon, who can host data without forcing clients to pay for and multimillion-dollar mainframes and servers.

IBM's stock price closed at $160.96 on Tuesday, up 0.35 percent on the day.