Big Blue blog: Research group builds mammoth storage array – 200,000 drives. Plus: Making big data easy for small firms.

Latest news from IBM (NYSE: IBM).

200,000 hard drives: IBM builds record 120 petabyte storage array. TechCrunch has the details.

• Big Blue’s Research group has set a record for data storage by building a drive array capable of 120 petabytes of information.

“The drive collective, when it is complete, is expected to store one trillion files — or to put it in Apple terms, two billion hours of MP3 music,” reports ExtremeTech.

The array was built for a client that IBM didn’t name. It’s needed to run simulations.

Devin Coldewey reported the story for TechCrunch.

Read more details here.

• Read here for more information about the array from ExtremeTech.

Read more details here.

• IBM makes big data easy for the little guy, GigaOm reports.

Writer Ryam Kim takes an in-depth look at an IBM program known as Big Sheets.

“Big Sheets works like a big spread sheet and can be used to gather and analyze petabytes of unstructured data,” Kim writes.

Read more details here.

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