IBM has stated that, beginning in 2023, prices would rise across the board for its storage offerings.

It is likely that customers in the UK, Canada, Japan, most of Mainland Europe, and many regions of North Africa and the Caribbean may face price rises, while those in the US may be spared.

Prices for IBM’s enterprise-grade FlashSystem 5000 and FlashSystem 7000 servers, as well as the IBM Elastic Storage System (ESS), IBM SAN Volume Controller, and IBM Cloud Object Storage, may increase by 5–10% in these locations (COS).

The reason for the change is unclear

IBM has not commented on the price increases, although they appear to be in keeping with the strong worldwide inflation recorded so far in 2022 (which the World Economic Forum estimates will be approximately 8.8% for the whole year).

If you want a detailed explanation of the changes being made, see IBM’s website.

This announcement comes as IBM works to increase its storage options.

Aimed at hyperscalers that need to aggregate enormous client data sets, the new LTO-formatted product from the IT giant gives up to 27 petabytes (PB) of storage in a single rack.

IBM has been touting the security advantages of a system it has developed called the Diamondback Tape Library, which employs tape storage to establish a physical “air gap,” protecting both the primary and secondary copies of data from cybercriminals.