Earlier this month, BDK, Inc., an IBM Silver Business Partner, participated in a two day IBM partner workshop hosted by TD SYNNEX at its headquarters in Clearwater, Florida. The event convened IBM experts, TD SYNNEX leaders, and a select group of hand picked business partners from across the country to explore the latest advancements in IBM’s storage and modern infrastructure technologies. Representing BDK at the workshop were Allison Shellhamer, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, and Peter Kuyatt, Systems Engineer. Over the course of the event, the two engaged with IBM subject matter experts, attended technical deep dive sessions, and explored live product demonstrations designed to highlight IBM’s expanding portfolio of enterprise solutions.
Introducing IBM’s 5th Generation FlashSystem: Faster, Smarter, Quantum Safe A major highlight of the workshop was IBM’s announcement of the new 5th generation FlashSystem, available March 6th. This next evolution of IBM’s storage platform brings a suite of powerful capabilities designed for performance, security, and simplified management. This includes: ransomware detection in under one minute; quantum safe immutable copies, ensuring long term protection of critical data; AI agents serving as co administrators, reducing administrative effort and optimizing operations; and seamless integration with broader IBM storage and cyber resilience solutions Attendees explored live demonstrations of the platform’s new AI enhanced capabilities and its role in next generation storage management.
Day Two: Accelerating Modern Infrastructure With IBM Fusion and Fusion HCI The second day focused on IBM Fusion, the company’s all in one platform for deploying modern infrastructure—especially AI workloads and containerized environments. Fusion provides a streamlined, integrated approach to deploying Red Hat OpenShift, widely recognized as the industry standard for container orchestration. With VMware pricing changes impacting organizations nationwide, IBM highlighted Fusion as a fast, cost efficient pathway for modernization, offering: simple, rapid OpenShift deployment; migration services from VMware to OpenShift; a hyperconverged infrastructure option (Fusion HCI) for on premise, high performance environments, with a pre-architected stack covering application, data, and infrastructure layers; and built in high availability (HA), disaster recovery (DR), and cyber resilience Because container-based platforms use up to 80% less hardware and allow rapid scale-up/scale-down, Fusion provides organizations with the flexibility to expand into AI workloads quickly. IBM also highlighted that its flagship AI platform, watsonx, runs natively on OpenShift containers. The combined architecture of FlashSystem + Fusion + OpenShift makes for a secure, simplified, and scalable AI deployment via a single provider—which is available through BDK as a business partner.
What This Means for BDK’s Customers “All of the innovations showcased this week reinforce IBM’s commitment to delivering secure, scalable, and truly modern infrastructure,” said Allison Shellhamer, VP of Sales and Marketing at BDK, Inc. “With FlashSystem’s quantum safe protection and Fusion’s ability to simplify AI ready deployments, we’re able to bring our customers cutting edge solutions that make their environments more resilient and future proof than ever.” The insights gained at the TD SYNNEX/IBM workshops will directly strengthen BDK’s ability to support customers seeking stronger ransomware protection; faster and more efficient AI adoption; migration pathways away from VMware price increases; ore scalable, cost effective container infrastructure; a modern data center architecture that can be deployed in weeks, not months For organizations across the region—including business and municipal customers in Salisbury, Maryland—the combination of IBM FlashSystem, Fusion HCI, and Red Hat OpenShift positions BDK to deliver solutions that are secure, high performing, and ready for the next generation of AI driven workloads. Learn more about IBM Power and IBM Storage service offerings on our website, or contact BDK, Inc. today at bdkinc.com/contact-us/.
