December 5, 2008 - IBM announced at RSNA 2008 new software features for the IBM Grid Medical Archive Solution (GMAS), a high performance, grid-based storage solution.
Its new software component, GAMS 2.1 will now support applications in digital pathology, mass spectrometry and high throughput screening that require ultimate performance and very reliable NAS storage.
GAM was invented to manage and store huge amounts of archive data, such as CT scans and mammograms, which are generally written only once and rarely updated but must be frequently accessed. However, many healthcare and research applications also produce vast amounts of transactional data which needs to be captured, analyzed, shared, be actively written, re-written and modified before it is archived or deleted. The new GAM 2.1 Distributed Gateway feature adds scalable NAS capability to GMAS for transactional and research data, enabling exceptional performance and support for up to 1 billion objects. This Distributed Gateway also acts as a traditional GMAS gateway that can be used to archive and protect data for life across any storage tier and location. As a result, medical and research facilities can leverage GMAS for both research and transactional as well as reference data while eliminating the complexity, hassle and cost of managing multiple solutions. The GAM v2.1 Distributed Control Node also adds more advanced control node software replication features to improve image access and network performance while still enabling universal data access from any location.
New GAM 2.1 now supports IBM Blade Center and IBM System Storage N series, continuing the GMAS track record of lowering long-term total cost of ownership. Clients can see a 100 percent increase in storage density, a reduction of up to 30 percent in hardware costs and 35 percent savings in power and cooling. New VMWARE ESX support also allows clients to see up to a 6 to 1 compression of Gateways at the data center. IBM GMAS adds iSCSI support with IBM N series storage.
October 25, 2026 
