PowerFlex 4.5: agility meets innovation

In today's digital era, businesses are at a crossroads of opportunity and complexity. The meteoric rise of data, propelled by advancements in artificial intelligence and the spread of connected devices, offers both unprecedented growth potential and significant challenges. While AI-driven insights herald new avenues for business differentiation, the infrastructure underpinning this growth often feels the strain. With GenAI projected to add nearly $10 trillion to global GDP over the next 10 years1, the moment to invest in a modern infrastructure is now. Today, we aim to put forth a dynamic resolution with the release of PowerFlex 4.5, APEX Block Storage for Microsoft Azure, and the AWS Outposts ready designation for PowerFlex.    

Enter PowerFlex: a Beacon in the Complexity 

PowerFlex software-defined infrastructure is architected to keep pace with the dynamic needs of today’s workloads. What sets PowerFlex apart is its unparalleled performance and scalability, seamlessly consolidating various diverse workloads to ensure organizations can confidently deliver under the most demanding conditions. Its suite of features offers unmatched agility, including the capacity to scale compute and storage independently or in tandem in on-premises environments. The built-in automation tools streamline DevOps processes, enhancing overall IT efficiency. Its innate resilience is evident with a self-healing architecture that minimizes downtime and allows businesses to function smoothly. The platform is designed to meet the most rigorous performance metrics and Service Level Agreements (SLAs). By embracing a software-first architecture, PowerFlex offers unprecedented consolidation, optimizing the value derived from IT investments. With broad support for hyperscaler and container orchestration platforms for block and file, across bare metal and hypervisors, delivered on a single infrastructure platform2 — PowerFlex's adaptability is evident. In sum, PowerFlex plays a key role in strategic agility, ensuring businesses remain resilient, efficient, and forward-looking. 

Building on these foundational capabilities, the PowerFlex 4.5 release introduces significant advancements. Deeply rooted in our unwavering commitment to software-driven innovation, this iteration promises a continuously modern storage experience while enriching the platform's core strengths, pioneering breakthrough efficiency, and enabling trailblazing multicloud capabilities. 

Breakthrough Efficiency 

With this release, the CloudIQ integration with PowerFlex has been further enriched. The CloudIQ suite now offers an array of capabilities that significantly enhance system visibility, monitoring, and real-time license management that cover both PowerFlex and APEX Block Storage for public clouds. Organizations can proactively address issues, optimize infrastructure, and elevate performance. These features ensure unparalleled control, improved efficiency, and peace of mind from data-driven decision-making. 

In addition, we've also introduced enhancements in management and operations, including enriched alert reporting and an expanded range of supported operating systems. These are all designed to provide a seamless and efficient customer experience. 

The consolidation prowess of PowerFlex is further amplified with this release. While PowerFlex remains predominantly a block-based storage solution, its capability to address file use cases has been expanded. The upgrades offer users benefits like a single global namespace for enhanced capacity, unified storage pool management, and impressive file scalability improvements such as a 400% increase in NAS Servers2 and 22x more file snapshots3. Such improvements arm our customers with essential tools, ensuring adept data management, sustained peak performance, and scalability aligned with future growth.