Todd Brooks, CEO, FalconStor
Although often attributed to Steve Jobs, “The journey is the reward” is an ancient Chinese proverb meant to encourage the path rather than focus exclusively on the goal. I think this applies well to FalconStor’s multi-year partnership with IBM. In 2021, FalconStor made a strategic decision to go all in on IBM, and we haven’t looked back since. This decision paved the way for a transformative journey that we’re proud to highlight today. Our strategic partnership was officially announced in May 2022, and the results have been nothing short of extraordinary.
FalconStor’s focus on Hybrid Cloud began several years earlier with a set of strategic decisions around our move to provide software-only solutions, a simplification of the portfolio for easier customer adoption of value for complete data protection solutions, and a pivot to a recurring revenue pricing model as FalconStor took on a “cloud first” mindset. The partnership with IBM around Hybrid Cloud became that next big step in the journey with FalconStor making a unwavering commitment to meet IBM Power customers wherever they are in their own cloud strategy and deployment.
Here are some of the incredible milestones we’ve achieved during this collaboration with IBM:
Optimized Backup and Recovery for IBM Power: We started with a focus on IBM i backup optimization in Power Virtual Server (“PowerVS”), to solve the problem native solutions encountered once they were moved from on-premises to PowerVS. With that in hand and many successful deployments such as Tupperware, we added AIX and Linux environments. What’s more, we recently extended our capabilities to IBM Cloud Object Storage (“COS”), providing unparalleled ransomware protection through COS data storage immutability.
Expanding Our Reach: Through our partnership with IBM, we’ve expanded our marketing reach by forging new alliances with IBM Business Partners (resellers) around the globe. Our participation in various IBM events, such as IBM Power Hours, the IBM TechXchange, and many IBM Common events, has been instrumental in reaching a wider audience. Now we are tightly engaged with IBM-centric Business Partners around the globe, helping them broaden their business with new offerings such as Backup-as-a-Service, and extending their reach with hybrid and cloud solutions.
IBM Cloud Catalog Inclusion: FalconStor made its mark in the IBM Cloud Catalog with the addition of FalconStor StorSafe VTL for PowerVS tile in August 2022. We further extended our offering with FalconStor StorSafe VTL for Power On-Premises in spring 2023, making it easier for customers to procure and deploy our solutions, while receiving credit against their cloud commitment contracts.
FalconStor Becomes a Customer of the IBM Cloud. We decided the best way for FalconStor to deliver hybrid and cloud solutions to customers was to start with our own use of IBM PowerVS. We migrated our development and test workloads to PowerVS, using scripts we developed to enable the transition easily. Now our engineers are running software development natively in PowerVS, lowering our CAPEX costs as well as increasing our engineering agility and efficiency.
What’s next??? We are actively exploring the IBM watsonx next-generation AI platform to better understand how it can be leveraged internally at FalconStor and potentially as embedded functionality for select FalconStor solutions.
Hybrid Cloud Bonus Program: This year IBM introduced a bonus program for IBM Business Partners, aptly named the Hybrid Cloud Bonus to encourage cloud adoption. FalconStor is thrilled to be a part of this program, empowering our partners to reap additional benefits from our collaboration.
Remarkable Growth in Customer Adoption: Thanks to these initiatives, we’ve witnessed significant growth in both on-premises Power and cloud PowerVS customers and instances, resulting in a 224% year-over-year increase in Hybrid Cloud annual recurring revenue run-rate at the end of our most recent quarter.
At FalconStor, our unwavering focus is on delivering superior Hybrid Cloud data protection and migration solutions to IBM Power customers around the globe. We’re dedicated to investing in initiatives that foster the growth of our partnership with IBM. We’re actively supporting our partners with joint events, Market Development Funds, co-selling activities, training, and more.
The impact of this partnership has been profound, not only for us but for IBM and their customers as well. FalconStor has enabled IBM to offer their IBM i, AIX, and Linux customers a solution that optimizes backup, increases ransomware protection, and reduces backup data storage requirements by up to 95%. This is truly a win-win partnership, and we couldn’t be more excited about the future. Thank you to IBM, all our partners, customers, and the entire FalconStor team for making this journey so rewarding! And of course, we are far from done as the journey will continue with certainly much excitement and rewards to come.
