>> Live from Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Cisco Live 2018, brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. (electronic music flourish) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Cisco Live 2018 in Orlando Florida. Joining me, my co-host for this segment Dave Vellante sitting in for John Furrier and happy to welcome to the program Jeff Eckard, who's the Vice President of Storage Solutions at IBM. Jeff, thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you, good to see you guys. >> All right, and 26,000 people here. It'd been many years since I'd been to Cisco Live. There's some things that are same, many of the same faces, but a lot of new jobs, a lot of buzz going on. What's your impression been of the show this week? >> Yeah, it's been an interesting, great show for IBM and our presence, but it's a very large ecosystem of Cisco partners, a lot of their, our joint end users and a lot of focus on multi-cloud. You've consistently heard that as a theme from Cisco as well as IBM since last fall at their partner forum and they've continued it here with a lot of focus on being able to take tools and capabilities and enabling enterprises to manage data where they want to manage it. And it's really interesting, from traditional systems vendors like Cisco, to see that focus particularly around developers. >> It's been fascinating for me to watch. Jeff, you and I have some background in the storage and storage networking piece, specifically, where it was like, OK, where I sit in the stack and I've got a couple of integrations, and we work on our standards here. It's much broader. >> Oh, absolutely. The things that we're working on. We're talking about cloud. There's a lot of software that flows. Data and applications are critically important. Talk a little bit about some of that transformation and how you're seeing the expansion, and-- >> Yeah, no, it's a interesting time. If you think about the opportunities and challenges facing all enterprises, data is at the core of digital transformation, digital enhancement, whatever term you wanna use with it. Typically, it's focused in on wanting to provide realtime insights so that you make better decisions against threats or opportunities. Being able to deliver personalized services to your clients, and then also improving your internal processes and business outcomes. And so data is core for digital transformation, and you kinda see, kind of this web of what we're talking about here and then what we're doing with clients as well. >> You know, Jeff, you talk about multi-cloud, you've been in the business for a while, and throughout your career you've tried to help customers simplify their lives, and everybody felt, I thought, OK, I'm gonna put stuff in the cloud, it's gonna get simpler, and now you see this spate of clouds, whether it's infrastructures of service, private clouds, SaaS, and complexity is, in some regards, never have been higher, particularly as it relates to the data. >> That's right. >> You've gotta figure out, where do you put this stuff? How do you protect it, what about governance? Even if you think security's better in the cloud, it might be different for every cloud. So how is IBM approaching, generally in your team, specifically approaching simplifying the complex of this multi-cloud world? >> Sure, so from an IBM Perspective, at the top level we approached it with innovative technology and a lot of industry expertise, whether it's in financial services or healthcare, cloud and what we do with the public IBM cloud is really important around the services we provide there, data and AI, and then as you come down from that, modern infrastructure is key because modern infrastructure supports the data. So when you look at 80% of enterprises are intending to be multi-cloud. Something like 70% already are, right? Because of what you referenced with the consumption of SaaS. So, multi-cloud is the defacto operating model for applications and then, therefore, for the data. So from an IBM storage and SDI perspective, we kind of view... There are three primary adoption patterns that we're seeing with our clients. The first is around modernizing traditional applications or workloads, which also drags modern infrastructure, flash-based systems, leveraging more of storage efficiency technologies, like compression and dedupe, being able to protect that data, whether it's in a traditional VMware environment or the emerging containers environment. So, yeah, data's at the core. The partnership that we have with Cisco around VersaStack enables us to support traditional private clouds, whether those are built on the VMware set of tools or now, as last week we announced, the VersaStack for IBM Cloud Private. IBM Cloud Private is an enterprise platform for developers to leverage microservices and containerized IBM Middleware Services, whether that's WebSphere or MQ or Microservices Builder, as well as a whole catalog of open source technologies and tools to get agility out of the DevOps process and then also layer on analytics on top of that. >> So customers, they're gonna want consistency across all those clouds. So what role do you guys bring? Are you trying to be a platform of platforms, or is that too aspirational? Obviously, you can't have 100% market shares, so that's not practical. But to the extent that people adopt your technologies, is that how we should be thinking of about it? >> Well, so IBM Cloud Private is an open platform. It's built on Docker runtimes and Kubernetes orchestration. It's open to where you can leverage things like Red Hat OpenShift if you've chosen them for your containers platform, and then we also support the traditional Private Clouds with VMware. So, there's a whole set of tools in there. What we're trying to do from a data management perspective is protect it, whether that's backup and recovery, morphing into this new category of secondary data reuse. So, for instance, from a traditional workflow of just doing backup and recovery, we can now take native format copies of the data, whether that's in Oracle or SQL Server database, et cetera, and take that data to the Public Cloud, where different personas and use cases can act on that data. So you can spin up a VM from that Native format within our tools in the IBM cloud. So that's from a data protection standpoint. On data management, we have, later this year, we'll talk more formally about programs that we have around metadata management. That's where you can index and classify, for instance, unstructured or structured data, and act on that in terms of, where was it last accessed? Who should be accessing it? Is it personally identifiable information? Do I wanna run analytics on it? So the metadata management is an opportunity to plug in to broader IBM things, whether it's Watson data platform or information governance catalogs, to provide that kind of uber across cloud infrastructure management. >> And that's a machine sort of intelligence, automation component, that scale, right? >> It could absolutely be used for augmented intelligence, artificial intelligence, some of the machine learning pieces as well. >> Jeff, Jeff, I'm wondering if you could give us a little insight of some of the places that customers are falling down. We were just talking to a systems integrator before you came on and he said, "Well, sometimes I take a virtualized environment "and I move it and it's not really geared "for this modern platform." Containerization can help in a lot of these environments, so when you talk about the pattern we've seen that works many times is you modernize the platform, and then I can modernize the application, start pulling things apart, start refactoring, start playing with some of these environments because I can't just... Lift and shift can help, but it can't be that's the only move. There's a lot of work that needs to get done, and a lot of time that's underestimated. >> Right, well it's not a panacea, but there is a key tool called Transformation Advisor that is part of the IBM cloud platform. It's intended to assist with the challenge that you just stated, which is, OK, how do I take a traditional workload, determine if it's ready to be containerized, and then start the process of containerization. You can go back to some of the VM migration pieces, too. There's a whole set of tools that enterprises have used. Transformation Advisor is one tooling example of what we can do in the platform. And then we obviously have services through Global Services that can help at a large scale for enterprises to kinda make that step. >> You bring up a good point there, 'cause we always struggle with some of these tool transformations, but if you go back to virtualization it was really some of the organizational things that had to shift. Wonder if you can talk about some of the things that are changing here. This show, we've spent a lot of time talking about Cisco's moving up the stack, network people are much more closer tied to some of those new application development, especially with things like intent-based networking. >> Well, it's a interesting reminder that we get often from clients, 'cause you're really touching at some of the remember the operational steps, things like containerization are interesting new technologies, and there's a lot of advantages to them. But just going back a minute, of the heritage with what we've been doing with Cisco around VersaStack, leveraging it on a VMware environment, we hear a lot from customers that their operational practices really are set around Vmware and the VMware tooling. So one of the things that we did with IBM Cloud Private is, it can run on top of VMware. So as customers want to take a kind of transitive step towards microservices, they can continue to leverage their operational practices around VMware. So it's important to, it sometimes takes enterprises a little bit longer than you may guess, right, to embrace the new set of things. Our product portfolio and our directions are set where they can leverage some of the operational pieces they already have. >> Well, just for our viewers who may not know, I mean, the recent history of IBM and Cisco is quite interesting. IBM at one point purchased a company called BNT, which got sold as part of the X86 sale to Lenovo. That opened up a huge opportunity for IBM and Cisco to partner because it was very clear swim lanes. And that sorta catalyzed a relationship that from your standpoint, VersaStack was sort of the first instantiation of that relationship. So, take us through, sort of, where you guys are in the partnership and where you see it going. >> Sure, yeah, so VersaStack, for folks who may not be familiar, it's a Converge System, right? So it's IBM storage, flash or otherwise, leverages Cisco UCS servers, and then their Nexus and MDS Switching. So it's integrated, validated as a single solution to, as the name implies, to be very versatile and provide agility and flexibility. And so, through our routes to market, either with distribution or resellers or system integrators, it is a way that we can address platforms that matter to our joint customers. We've talked about IBM Cloud Private. A lot of heritage around VMware and SQL server and Oracle and a lot of focus around SAP HANA. So, we typically will partner around which enterprise platforms are we going, and then we also partner, in general, around MDS Switching with Cisco, and we'll talk more about that in months to come as we enhance that relationship. >> So, the solutions part of your title, you just mentioned VMware, Oracle, SAP HANA, there may be others. How do you guys approach solutions? Maybe you can talk about that a little bit. >> Yeah, so a solution, at a PetaLogic level, is a successful repeatable outcome. And what we focus on, then, are the integrations that matter. Those could be, integrations with IBM tools, like we talked about with IBM Cloud Private. Could be the integrations that we do jointly with Cisco through the validated design process for some of these applications or databases. And so we have teams that do the validation work and figure out how we marry IBM capabilities with ecosystem capabilities. And there's a whole, whether we're automating private clouds or accelerating workloads including the partnership that IBM and Cisco have with Horton Works. And then in industry context as well, particularly in healthcare and financial services. We'll pick the platforms that really matter and then do the integrations that enable us to take, whether it's our systems or our software or IBM level capabilities to market. >> I wanna come back to this simplicity theme, specifically in the context of data protection. With all this multi-cloud, data protection has become a really hot topic. You guys have dramatically simplified your data protection offering with Spectra Protect Plus. Talk about data protection, how it's changing from where it used to be just, OK, it's a virtualized world. We kind of understand the challenges of virtual data protection. That has played itself out, and now there's a whole new wave coming. What's your perspective on this? >> Well, I don't know if the virtual is play, I mean, the virtualized environment is still kind of paying the freight, if you will. >> Yeah, played out in terms of-- >> Yes, no, no, yeah, right. >> We understand what had to change. >> Right. And customers have made that change >> Yeah, and your simplicity point on that is really key. So one of the enhancements that we announced last year at VMWorld was Spectrum Protect Plus. So that's an agent list, OVA based, VM based backup and recovery tool. And it's very simple to use. The trick is that we've focused its capabilities around secondary data re-use. So I mentioned earlier, that whole workflow has evolved to where the data has increasing value beyond its primary use, right? So backup and recover, but then we can leverage those native format copies. Spectrum Protect Plus is available either on a bring your own license or a monthly subscription in the IBM cloud, other clouds over time. And so we enable enterprises to not only do the traditional backup and protection, but very simply, move that data to either a secondary or tertiary data center, if that's still a part of their backup architecture, or into the public cloud. And so the simplicity factor comes in, again, that it's agent lists. There's a catalog of where all your copies are, and you can reuse that data for whether it's DevOps or DevTest or analytics purposes. >> OK, so that's helpful. So what I'm trying to get to was sort of the enablers, maybe from a technology standpoint, because in the virtualization world, it was all about efficiency because you didn't have the underutilized physical resources anymore. >> Yep, right. >> All the servers utilized 10%. (chuckles) Well, I got rid of a lot of those physical servers, and the one job that needed that power was backup, so I needed a new way to approach it. What I'm hearing is, in this multi-cloud world, it's a focus on simplicity. I'm inferring from that, a cloud-like experience, maybe some other capabilities that you guys are-- >> Yeah, so. >> Doing away with. >> The containers are a progression. I mean, VMware came around to maximize your CPU and storage utilization. Containers provide yet another level of efficiency on top of that. They bring with them the need for changes in your data protection. And so we, at Think in March, we talked about our directions around container aware data protection and container aware snapshots. Most vendors will use snapshots and then volume level controls of how we've traditionally done backup. We have a progression, and we'll talk more about it later in the year, of how we do snapshots, again, that are container aware. They leverage our tools, such as Spectrum Copy Data Management, Spectrum Protect Plus, integrate with our arrays. But they'll bring the same level of capability that we've had traditionally in a virtualized environment to also support data protection in a container world. >> Well, it's an interesting landscape right now in data protection. >> Oh, it's awesome! There's so many new tools, and it's great to be able, (Dave chuckling) like we talked about earlier, to partner with Cisco around some of this as well. >> Great, Jeff, I wanna give you the final word, as if, for those that couldn't make it to the show, either share key conversation you're having, you're hearing from customers, or a big takeaway from the show that you'd like to share. >> Sure, yeah, we've had a lot of customers come up and wanna know, OK, well, how do you start, right? And we talked about, there are three primary adoption patterns, whether it's modernizing, and typically it will start with modernizing traditional workloads. 70% of private cloud usage is for that particular use case. Well, you can pretty quickly show them, then, the progression to, OK, they wanna be more agile. They wanna go cloud-native. From that private cloud infrastructure, you can do that, and then you can have a consistent way that you interact around services in the public cloud. And so that's what we've been talking to clients about. They wanted to know, how do I start with what I have, and then how do I get to this better future? And how do I leverage your tools and capabilities? And so whether that's with IBM systems components or what we do with our partnership with Cisco, we're showing them how we, collectively, can help them on that journey. >> All right, Jeff, I really appreciate all the updates. Dave, thanks so much for joining me for this segment. >> Yeah, thank you. >> We still have a full day here, three days wall-to-wall coverage of theCUBE, Cisco Live 2018. Thanks so much for watching. (techno musical flourish)

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Pure Accelerate 2017. Brought to you by Pure Storage. >> Welcome back to Pier 70 in San Francisco, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, and we're here covering Pure Accelerate 2017. Andy Vandeveld is here. He's the Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Veeam, and Rajiev Rajavasireddy. I'm going to do that again, Rajavasireddy. >> Awesome. >> Did I get it? >> Love it. >> VP of Solutions at Pure. I thought I had it, Rajiev. >> You were so close. >> Alright, next time. I hope you come back so I can get it right. Anyway, welcome to theCUBE. Andy, good to see you again. I tweeted out today, I was joking, Veeam is like theCUBE. They're everywhere. You guys have been having great fun, hosting parties. Of course you're here now. We heard you up on the main stage today. So, let's start with the partnership. What are you guys doing with Veeam? >> So, we get a lot of requests from the field to partner more closely with Veeam. So, we have a lot of common customers. If you look at basically where we come from and where Veeam comes from, both of us have virtualization as a common thread. And the traditional backup software had to come into virtualization after the fact, so retro (mumbles) virtualization, whereas if you look at where Veeam started with virtualization, if you look at Pure it's a similar history, right? So, we came during the virtualization phase where people were trying to 100% virtualized data centers. So, both of us have this affinity for simplicity, virtualization centric, and efficiency and performance. Obviously, Pure is all about performance. So, there is a lot of natural synergies between Veeam and what Pure does. >> And we talk about this all the time, backup. For years, this has been a bolt on. It's been an afterthought. It's been one size fits all. I've written a lot about some of the challenges with backup. Now, talk about the announcement that you're making. Snapshots are not backups, right? >> Rajiev: That's right. >> But, they could be a critical enabler. So talk about the announcement and exactly what you guys are doing. >> Yeah, so as Rajiev was saying, we hear a lot from customers and a lot from partners about the customers wanting native snapshot integration with Pure Storage. So, that's what we announced today. We're in the lab. We're working through development right now. We provided the APIs to Pure, and our target is to get full snapshot integration out in GA sometime shortly after our Version 10 hits the market. >> Okay, and this is starting with block, and then eventually is files in the road map. >> So basically, as Andy was mentioning, we have the SDK. We have to sign the non disclosures, usual non disclosures with each other, and we have Veeam's SDK. So, our engineering is working on it, and we're planning to get this out, snapshot based integration with Veeam. And we're also in parallel working on solutions for FlashBlade along with Veeam as well. >> Okay, so I want to definitely talk about solutions, because that's important, and that's obviously your title. What about, what are the real use cases that you guys are seeing that you're going after? Let's start there and then we'll get into solutions. >> Rajiev: You want to take or do you want me to take? >> Andy: Yeah, go ahead. >> Sure. So obviously, the no brainer, virtual server, virtual desktops, Veeam is very strong. Pure has a ton of that in their customer base, and those are basically low hanging fruit for both of us. >> Alright. Others that you feel like will emerge over time? >> Pretty much. I mean if you really think about it, even databases-- >> Host: Right, I was going to say-- >> It runs well, but they run in VMs, and so we do those backups as well. So, there's a lot of databases that are on Pure, as well. >> Are you doing much, does Veeam do much in Oracle? Is that a big market for you or not so much yet, or is it emerging? >> Oracle Database is certainly a backup source for us, but in terms of applications I think we look at more of how do we facilitate the movement of those virtual machines and the backing up and the availability of those virtual machines from the storage perspective. So, we'll move into the application layer as we go along, and as we make more and more of our push into the enterprise, but I think right now it's focused on how do we take the virtual machines and the files in the storage environments and orchestrate those across the various environments that customers are finding themselves in, whether it's on premise, whether it's in the cloud, some combination of the both of them. >> Well, that's fundamental to the strategy, kind of like snoop, multi cloud. (Rajiev laughs) >> Good reference. >> Rajiev let's talk about... Inside joke. We won't bore our audience. Maybe we'll tweet out a picture, show you what we mean. Anyway Rajiev, let's talk about solutions. What are solutions to you and Pure, and what specific solutions are you working on? >> So basically, if you look at our portfolio of offerings, we have FlashArray, which is a block based array, which is (mumbles) and fiber channel as protocols. Then we have FlashBlade, which we did earlier this year, and FlashBlade is targeting next gen applications, so a very large customer is using us for artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are targeting applications like IoT, big data analytics. So, all the cool stuff, the next gen workloads, that's where FlashBlade is targeted. We're doing file and object. So just today we GAd our S3 implementation on FlashBlade, and we have NFS support, and we also have native, not native, but SMB support with FlashBlade. So, that's targeting the next gen workload, the file and object workloads, sorry, FlashBlade is, and FlashArray is targeting the block workloads. And then we have a partnership with Cisco. It's a jointly branded converged infrastructure we call FlashStack. So, these are all the portfolios that we have. And as you can tell, the solutions on the FlashArray side are mostly, if you will, virtual servers, virtual desktops, databases, Oracle, SQL, and of that nature, and they're already talking about the FlashBlade application. FlashStack can incorporate FlashArray as well as FlashBlade. >> Okay, and then in talking to some of the Veeam customers over the last several weeks, many of them lacked, before they found you guys, a disaster recovery strategy, and they sort of got one by default. Does that fit in terms of what you guys are doing together? Do you find that similar in the Pure customer base? Wondering if you could talk about DR for a moment. >> Yeah, DR is definitely a strong solution and value proposition that we can bring together. Customers need that. As we move more and more into the enterprise, that becomes so mission critical for that enterprise class of customers. Not only do they want the availability, but in the event of some disaster they want to have that ability to recover. I think doing the native snapshot integration gives us an even stronger solution to take into the DR market, whether it's DR on premise, DR as a service with service providers, whatever that mix is, it really does give us that more robust solution, and I think that's in addition to the other value propositions and other use cases that Rajiev talked about. That is a big one. >> Rajiev, maybe you can talk about the nature of the partnership. We talked about there's some engineering integration going on. What about the go to market? What's going on in the channel? >> So basically, again, there's a lot of synergies there. So, we have a direct sales force, and so does Veeam, but we are 100% go through the channel, and so does Veeam. And it turns out a lot of our channel partners are also Veeam's channel partners, and there is scope for us to do incentive programs and so on and so forth. So, there's a lot of synergy right there. Combine that with Cisco and the FlashStack, both of us have Cisco as a partner, and it turns out Cisco's channel partners are pretty much near 100% overlap with ourselves. And I'll let Andy speak for Veeam, but I suspect there's a lot of the same partners that also sell Veeam. >> Yeah, I think that's another aspect of the relationship that really when we started looking at what's the next integration that we're going to do, this was an important one for us, and we'll soon go to market. It just seemed so aligned, and it was aligned with not just between ourselves, but with that common partner in Cisco and the reseller communities around all of our businesses. So, that was a real point of interest for us in deciding to do this integration. Not only were you hearing it from customers, but the infrastructure, the ecosystem, of partners was something that we just readily take advantage of. >> Well, it's no secret that you guys both compete with Dell EMC, and obviously a merger of that size has to have an effect on the channel. How have you specifically been able to take advantage of that, or have you been, and has it been substantial? >> Of course, right? Anytime you have mergers of that size there's some level of uncertainty in the channel market. Customers don't deal with uncertainty well. When you combine two big companies that have a lot of overlapping products, there's always that, and so we've definitely made the A out of that. >> So, you've specifically picked up channel partners that say like, "Hey, I really want to give you guys a look," that might not have before? >> So basically, that is part of what we've done. The other part is also the existing channel, I mean there are some channel partners who sell both portfolios. A lot of channel partners have multiple portfolios. >> And so what's that? A mix, a share shift, a mix in the... >> Rajiev: It's a combination I would say. >> Okay, how about you guys? >> Yeah, I would say the same thing. Eventually they're going to figure it out and they're going to get it right. Everybody should expect that. But in the meantime there has been some disruption, and I think partners are looking around and saying, "Where am I going to make my money? "Are the assets in that portfolio "of those two merged companies going to even still exist?" And as that all starts to get, it works its way out, there's a gap in time, and I think that we've been able to fill that gap from a data protection standpoint. Pure has been able to fill that from a storage standpoint. And we're taking advantage of this opening that we've got. >> And it's interesting, I want to talk more about the channel, in the context of solutions, Rajiev, because if you look at the channel and the way it's evolving, you've got the box sellers. We love them. That's probably where most of the business still is even today. But, that business is declining, and we know that. Those channel partners, they had great businesses. They still do. They've got boats and mansions and whatever else, but that business is in decline. The margins are under pressure. And then you've got the solution folks, and this is where I want to get your feedback. Solutions used to be defined as SAP, Oracle, VMware. Now you're talking about these emerging solutions around data, analytics, IoT, machine learning, a whole new set of solutions players, and then of course there's the cloud, the cloud service providers, and ISVs. It seems like the channel is in flux in a big way. So, to the extent that a company like EMC, and maybe we saw this somewhat with IBM as well when they sold off x86 and BNT, to the extent that their channel is in any kind of uncertainty, how do you see the channels shaping and emerging, and how are you taking advantage of... First of all, is what I described accurate, and how are you guys taking advantage of it? >> Absolutely. You know, there's also another trend that you didn't talk about. I mean cloud. It's the elephant in the room. The cloud is here, and people want to look at what they want to do with the cloud when we talk about customers. It is a challenge as well as an opportunity for channel partners, right? So basically, if you look at, for example, what we're doing with FlashStack and with Veeam, we are still providing infrastructure, and infrastructure by itself is not a solution. If you look at what the IT folks are dealing with is their developers. So, you can go to the cloud, and you can actually go ahead, the developers can go ahead and provision themselves VMs and everything else very quickly. They don't even know what infrastructure is running underneath it. Now, the challenge for the IT folks is to see how they can provide a similar experience to their user base, and a lot of the times it could be developers. So, it's incumbent on us, and Veeam, and everybody else to provide an infrastructure that also ties in. When you say solutions, there's tiers of solutions. You need to have automation orchestration. They're solutions. You need to have management solutions that still provide infrastructure, and then you have applications that run on top of that infrastructure. So, the channel partners have a lot of scope to actually add services. And if you really think about channel folks, I mean the good ones, they always want to make money on services, not on pushing boxes, like you called earlier. >> Host: That's where they get their margin. >> And it's a great opportunity for them. >> Margins, stickiness, loyalty, I mean all that stuff. And the fact that the definition of a solution is evolving is an opportunity for those players who can move really fast. >> And we see our channel partners trying to do a good job in that space right now and evolving there. >> Both of you, when you look at that mix that I talked about, I said 70% are sort of box sellers. Well, you guys don't sell boxes, but you know what I mean. Is your mix weighted more toward solutions in your companies? >> Yeah, I would say we kind of measure it more on on-prem versus cloud, or some sort of subscription managed service environment. But, we definitely see the higher growth coming from those non on-prem environments. And I think that's a place where the more advanced resellers are spinning up services. And we're following that trend. We're seeing that trend right before our eyes. >> And yesterday we had our global partner forum here, and Hatfield, our COO, was on stage, and he basically highlighted what we call the scarcity model. We don't sign up thousands of channel partners. We sign up a few channel partners who will add real value, and we make sure that they're doing just as well as we're doing. So, if you look at Pure, right, we have about, I think the official number is north of 3,300 or so customers, but our revenue is very high relative to that. So, we are selling to enterprise customers who need... You add a lot of value. You have to sell solutions. You just can't sell a box and be done with it. >> Yeah, I think that's a really important point. Alright gents, we got to leave it there. Thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. Good to see you guys. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Alright, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is theCUBE; we're live from Pier 70 in San Francisco at Pure Accelerate. We'll be right back. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering InterConnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay for exclusive Cube coverage for three days for IBM InterConnect 2017. I'm John Furrier. My co-host, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Ed Walsh, General Manager of Storage and Software-Defined Infrastructure at IBM. Welcome back. >> Ed: That was a mouth full wasn't it? >> Welcome back to The Cube. Welcome back to the fold at IBM. >> Thank you very much, always good. >> You're leading up a big initiative. Take a quick second to talk about what you're the general manager of scope wise, and then we'll jump right in. >> Yeah, so I run basically the storage division, which has all of our storage from mainframe to open systems, tape, software defined storage and software defined compute, but it's all under our storage portfolio. So development, sales, you know, run the PINA. >> Right, and the new innovations that are coming out, what do you have your eye on? What's your goal, you know, you got a spring in your step. What's the objective? >> So we talked probably in October, I was 90 days in. So now I'm a whopping 8 months in. I think we kind of talked about it. I kind of... my hypothesis for coming here was you know, clients are going through this big change and some of your write ups lately about the True Private cloud and how they're trying to go from where they are now to where they're trying to get to. And that confusion eats up leadership so as confusion... IBM has the right vision, but it's like clouding cognitive, as is much on PRIM. So we have the right vision to help them get through that. And we have a history of doing that. And the second one was that we have a portfolio that's pretty broad. So we almost have an embarrassment of riches on what we can do with someone when they're really trying to look to modernize environments or transform, we can help them from anything. From the biggest and baddest. But it really doesn't matter. The broad portfolio allows us to engage and bring it forward and get them to the... Whatever their path forward is we can give that vision. And then, the one thing I was really talking about is he could bring in IBM. If I could bring in IBM, the greater IBM, the True Cognitive, the analytic team, and bring that together to bear for our infrastructure clients, or inside storage itself, that would be where we'd have the trifecta taking off. So we're in the middle of that transformation. Going very well. But along the same lines I have a fantastic product line. We're going to continue, in fact we're putting more investments on that. Not only on the hardware raise, but as much on the software-defined, and going all flash just because a lot of operational benefits. But then really what we're able to do by bringing the large IBM behind us... IBM also did some interesting organizational changes in January. Arvind Krishna is now running Hybrid Cloud and research for IBM so it's bringing the girth of IBM behind what's on PRIM hybrid into the Cloud. So it allows us to play a very strategic role. >> So a couple Wikibomb buzzwords, right? The True Private Cloud, we talked about server sandwiches, really sort of instantiation of software-defined. Really the impetus is that customers on PRIM want to run the Public Cloud. With that kind of agility and automation. So what are you seeing? What is IBM delivering to support that? First of all, are you seeing that? >> So it's kind of funny, so that... I do talk about study a lot because I thought the True Private Cloud, the way you coined it, is the right way to almost just say it's not what you're thinking I'm about to say. But the study, it's everything you get in the Public Cloud and you want to bring it on PRIM. All the flexibility, all the development models, right? How you engage developers. All the financial models as well, but bring that. And then it easily extends the Hybrid Cloud. When you start going through that, every one of our clients we engage, they know we understand the value of Cloud. They're at different maturity levels of how they're using Cloud, but it's all in their vision. We do a lot of work to help people bridge. So where are you know, let's talk about where you need to get to and have some meaningful steps to get there. So the True Private Cloud resonates with them. And then what we're doing is launching. In fact we launched this week with Cisco. So we have a converged offering with Cisco called VersaStack. But what we're operating on is, how do you make a Private Cloud as agile, and has the same use cases specifically for developers or DBA's that you have on the Public Cloud? And we're bringing that to the offering set for a converged offering. So what we do around on API later... So a key use case would be to do would be, why do people go to Public Cloud? Business units like it because the developers. It's easy to use, they have true DevOps capabilities. They're able to swipe a credit card. Single line of code. Spin up an environment. Signal out a code. Spin it down. They don't have to talk to an IT guy. They don't have to wait three weeks or do a ticket system. So how do you do that on PRIM? So what we have now, in market is, imagine a API abstraction layer, that for storage allows all the orchestration and all the DevOps tools to literally do the exact same thing on PRIM. So once you set it up, it allows the IT team, it's called Spectrum Copy Data Management, allow the IT team to set up templates. But through roles based access, allow a developer or a DevOps tool like Chef or Puppet to literally infrastructures code. Single line of code, spin up a whole environment. An environment would be, let's say three or four VM's, last good snapshot, maybe Datamaster or not. Most times it's Datamast. Bring up an offense network, but literally it goes from, on PRIM I just can't get it done. It takes me two or three weeks. So that's why I go the Public Cloud for other reasons. I can not only choose where I put it, where it's the right place to do, but I can give the exact same use case on PRIM by just doing API calls and they use exactly the same tools for development that are used in the Cloud, like Chef, Puppet, Urbancode, Python scripts. >> How's the reaction been to that? Give us some anecdotal... >> So once you have that conversation, that's just one of the things we're doing to make the True Private Cloud come to life. Of course the extension to SoftLayer, in other Clouds to get the... People, all of the sudden they see a path forward. It's not as easy to... You have to explain how it works, but the fact of the matter is they don't have a lot of tools now to make... We can bring down cost, give you a little bit more efficiancy, consolidate it. But that's not really how True Private Cloud is. You need the automation. So they're responding to it well. In fact it's the number one demo on the floor. For us, as far as systems, people trying figure out actually how to do the DevOps on the PRIM. >> John: That's awesome. >> Talk more about he Cisco relationship. There's a lot of interesting things going on in the storage business. There's consolidation, and you know the whole VCE thing and then Cisco looking for partners. You guys selling off BNT, it opens up a whole new partnership potential. So how has that evolved and where do you want to take it? >> So I think, match made in heaven between us, especially in storage, and Cisco. If you look at the overall environment conversion Hipaa converts account for about a third of the storage industry, so we play well. There's no overlap between us and Cisco. It's great. We're after the exact same accounts and actually, from a... You think of the very top level of our organization all the way down, the two companies have a lot of the same cultures and to be honest we're very tight. So it allows us to have a great relationship. We've already had a good relationship. About 25 thousand joint clients, which is amazing. And then what we're doing with VersaStack specifically is we're putting in the next generation, so we have a great converged offering that has all our all flash storage, but also software-defined. But what we added is we brought in what they did with their CliQr acquisition, which is called CloudCenter, and you add that on top make it single click, deploy and application anywhere, both on PRIM in the different Clouds, and it makes it very simple for developers. We talked about the API Layer. You bring that in to DevOps environment. So we feel really strong that as far as, if you're looking to bring in a True Private Cloud probably the best answer that we could do, is what we do with VersaStack. And we just announced it this week. And also we gave a preview. It's Cisco live in Melbourne a week ago. I think it's been a good uptake. But it kind of plays to... When you know what people were trying to do, but you need to bring the automation. You got to make it self-service and that really drives, for the business units, as well as developers. That drove what we brought into VersaStack. So we brought different assets in it from Cisco and IBM to make that kind of a reality. >> John and I were talking earlier on theCUBE this week and somebody brought up, yeah the CIO, they really don't think about storage. They certainly don't want to be thinking about the media. And the conversation shifted way off... Even flash now, it's like, oh yeah, yeah we get it. But you mentioned something earlier and this is very relevent to CIO's. They want to get from point a to point b with this minimal disruption, they don't want to have to buy a boat load of services to get it done. And now you're talking about things like automation and self-service. What are the discussions like with senior IT executives and how are you helping them get from point a to point b with minimum disruption? >> So the good thing about... You think about the IBM brand. It's as much about trust and helping people through it. So people give us just a credit to say I can engage with them, get the innovation. But also we've been through the zeros So a lot of the times they're asking how are we doing it? How are we transforming our company? How are we doing it internally? And then if you jut kind of, common sense, walk them through because of the broadness of the portfolio, we don't just have this point solution and every answer is, well you buy this box, right? We're able to have that conversation and when you get that broader IBM together that's where it kind of differentiates and they love it. Now I've been to a lot of, oh I'll say, IBM friendly accounts which is great. But also, some people that have never dealt with us are eyes wide open because it's a new day. People are struggling with this big transfer, right? How do you get from now to where you want to go in Cloud is a big change. >> Those new customers, what are they getting wide-eyed about? What are they focusing on? What's the big focus? >> So we'll talk about, we'll do True Private Cloud, but really what you can do as far as data, and what we're doing around Cognitive is really telling, right? The ability to really show 'em with symbol API calls they get more... So to have a Cognitive conversation that's an industry specific conversation really gets people lit up. In the end it ends up being, okay I see the possible. Then, how do I get from here to there. And typically it doesn't start, well I'm just going to go directly that direction. It's help me with a multi-year plan to get to there, while I'm taking out costs, adding agility over time. But I would say the kind of conversations are especially with an industry lens, which is what IBM brings to it, is really telling. >> So I got to ask you about the Convergent reStructured markup because the hot trend that's in the Cloud native world is server lists. So is there a storage list version? Cause what you're basically saying with the True Private Cloud is, you're essentially doing server lists, storage lists, philosophy. Is that, I mean how do you guys rationalize this server list trend. Cause servers and storage are basically the same things in my mind these days. But, I mean, you might disagree. >> I think in general people aren't looking to the different components. They're looking for a way to operate in their environment that's more efficient. They're looking for use cases. They're also trying to have IT not be in the way of what they're trying to do in development, but actually give the right tools. So that's why, to be honest, go back to True Private Cloud, I've been using it a lot cause it really resonates with people. Is how do you get that same experience but on PRIM, cause there's different reasons to be on PRIM. >> It's like Cloud native on PRIM. You could get all the benefits of what Serverless promotes, which is here's an unlimited pool of resources. The software will just take of that for you. That's DevOps. >> And doing... >> John: On PRIM. >> And doing true DevOps, Chef, Puppet, no compromises is exactly how you do it. So you change nothing for your developers. But now you're running it on PRIM or in a Hybrid Cloud. Cause there's a lot good use cases for Hybrid Cloud even if it's born in the Cloud application. You're making a web application or iPhone application, the fact of the matter is, you might want to test it against the back end. So being able to do a Hybrid Cloud, bring this system record data there, to be able to do DevOps on what production looked like maybe last night, or a week ago is much different than the current DevOps models. >> Well it's a good strategy too. If you think about the True Private Cloud, the way you're looking at it, which I think is the right way, is a lot of the things that we look at on theCUBE, and talk about, is three areas. Product gaps, organizational gaps, and process gaps. The number one thing is organizational gaps. So when you have that True Private Cloud on PRIM, it's not a big leap to go Cloud Native Public. >> It's seamless in fact. >> John: It's totally seamless. >> And on that case that a lot of the stuff we're talking about is, we help people modernize and transform their environment. And the message is all about optimization on the traditional application environment. It's all about freeing up the resources. So... >> John: That's the ovation strategy. That's the creativity, that's the Dev element. >> And if you don't free up the key resources they can't be on the digital transformation. And without the right skill set, because they're kind of trapped in operation. So a lot of the automation things we're doing are things that, to be honest, the storage team, or the admin team will be doing. It's manual error prone, but take it away. But also you free up the team. So it kind of plays to all those. >> That must really resonate with the CIO. I mean, I would imagine CxO goes, okay I could have Cloud on PRIM and then train my organization to then start thinking Hybrid workloads as they start moving Hybrid pretty quickly. >> And here's the thing, is what do you have to change for developers? Tell me what I have to get by the developer or DBA's? And the answer is nothing. Use the exact same tools. So you know, on stage it'll literally show me how Chef or Puppet... They're not doing trouble tickets or spinning things up, down, but... Same thing with deploying applications. It's like Cloud Center application. Set up the stack and deploy either on PRIM, different architectures, both converged and non-converged or in different Clouds. And they allow you to just, one click and deploy it. And they deal with all those differences. But that's how you want to make it, you use it serverless. They don't have to worry about the infrastructure. But also we're freeing up the team. >> So Ed, I got to ask ya, on a sort of personal note, I mean I've followed your career for a long time. John and I call you the Five Tool Star. You've had the start-up experience, you've got technical chops, you did a stint at IBM, you went to MIT and came back with that big MIT brain, brought it to IBM, so pretty awesome career. By no means even close to over. What have you brought to IBM? I think I've known every GM of storage, since the first GM of storage at IBM. What specific changes have you brought and what's the vision and the direction that you want to take this organization? >> It's a great culture, great history of storage. So I guess that I would be the first outsider coming into storage. But I don't think it's any different. I've been in storage my entire career. I understand it. Some of it is optimizing their current model. The portfolio of what we're doing. Some of it is just making sure we have the right things in sales and working with channels, which one of my companies was an actual channel partner. So I think it's just the perspective of maybe a fresher look, but again we are a great team. Great portfolio. We're quietly number two in storage hardware software. Shhhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone. Cause we don't do a good job of getting the news out... But the fact of the matter is... >> Now we'll tell everyone. You say don't tell anyone, we're telling everybody. You tell us to tell everyone, we don't tell anyone. >> Together: (laughing) >> But we still get people, are you guys still doing storage? We're like, literally we're number two by revenue. And this is IDC and Gartner software hardware. So we are a player in the space. We have a lot of technology and I guess what I'm bringing is just maybe a little spice of vision and... >> Well you guys have a strategy that's unique and different but aligned with the mega trend. That, to me I think, is something that's been in the works for a while. It's been cobbled together. Dave always points it out, how the storage groups change. But the game is still the same, right? Ultimately it's about storage. Now the market conditions are changing on the organizational side. That seems to be the thing. >> Ed: Agreed. >> Well all flash is probably the thing. >> But also what you're going to start seeing is bringing Cognitive capabilities. So we're not going to call in Watson for storage, but imagine bringing Watson to storage, right? Think of all the metadata we have. Not only for support but for insight. You're going to all start doing more Cognitive data management, and not only look at metadata, but taking action on them. Using Watson to look at images, so very interesting use cases that I think only IBM can do. >> I can just envision the day where I just voice activate, Watson spin me up more servers. And provision all flash petabyte. Done. >> (giggling) Believe it or not, we can do a chat, but we have that working. >> John: (laughing) >> We're looking for applicability of that, so. >> And then Watson would tell me, well you can't right now. >> You're not authorized. (laughing) >> You got to grab the Watson for storage url. He's been grabbing url's all day on GoDaddy. (laughing) >> Ed, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Congratulations on taking names and kicking butt in storage, in the strategy. True Private Cloud, a good one, love that research, again from Wikibomb. >> Yup. >> Kind of new but different, but relevant. >> Ed: Very relevant. >> Thanks so much. >> Ed: (mumbles) So thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate it. >> Okay, live coverage here at Mandalay Bay here at IBM Interconnect 2017. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Stay with us. More coverage coming up after this short break. (pulsing tech music)

from the noise it's the cube covering vmworld 2015 brought to you by vmware and it's ecosystem sponsors and now your host dave vellante we're back at Moscone everybody this is the cube SiliconANGLE Wikibon it's continuous production of vmworld 2015 we're riding the data wave Eric Harris dog is here he's a vice president marketing IBM storage in the Hawaiian shirt great to see you again my friend well Dave thank you very much as I keep telling people it's not about data lakes people have oceans a day to these days yes I oceans a day to dos today that oceans a data now so what's the story get the Hawaiian shirt on what do you got going on across the straw our big thing really is oceans of data so between all the solutions we have from a storage solution set a platform computing environment our joint deal that we do with Cisco with what we call the versus stack and our spectrum family of software now our customers are saying everything's going digital and it doesn't matter whether you're a global enterprise a midsize company or even an SMB with everything going digital it isn't about lakes of data it's about oceans of data so let's start maybe at the versus stack as a hyper converge is sort of taken the world by storm you're seeing vmware's obviously talking about it you got a bunch of startups talking about it when you guys made the move to to sell the the server business the x86 server business to lenovo BNT the acquisition of B&C went with it opened up whole new opportunities for IBM from a partnership standpoint and one of the first guys you went to a cisco so talk about that well we've had a great partnership with Cisco we deliver the versus tak through our mutual channel partners so globally so we have channel partners in all of the gos that are selling the versus stack solution we started originally with our v7000 product which allows us to not only provide a strong mid to your offering but because of our integration of our spectrum virtualized actually will virtualize heterogeneous torso over 300 arrays from our competitors can be virtualized giving any data center or cloud deployment single way to replicate single way to snapshot and of course a single way actually my great dinner which is a huge issue obviously in big deployment well and the same volume controller was really the first platform to do that that was the right gold standard and the whole the original you know tier 1 tier two storage sort of was defined by the sand volume controller kept really now you've built those capabilities into an end to the array so we started with our v7000 storwize was the first with a versus tack we announced last week two new versions one hour v nine thousand which incorporates that same value of the sand volume controller but an all-flash array okay that product is been incredibly successful for us we have thousands of customers we have deployed more petabytes than anyone in the industry and more units than anyone in the issue for you know some of those analysts that track the number side of the business we've done more than any pricing it right is what you're telling me we are definitely pricing it right we do north petabytes more minutes and more units than anybody by far but not the most revenue second most revenue so you well we're a fair price for a fair job as opposed to a high price for okay job that's what we believe in delivering more value for the money so we've got that so that opens up heavy virtualized environments heavy cloud environments big data analytics all those applications were all flash high-end Oracle deployments SP Hana configs all those sort of things are ideal same time you brought in the v5000 at the lower entry place of the mid-tier and it's with the UCS mini from Cisco so it gives you a lower entry price and allows a couple things one you can go in department until deployments a big enterprise to you can go into remote office deployments and also of large enterprise but three it allows you to take the value of a converged infrastructure down into smaller customers because it's a lower entry price point it's got all the value of the virtualization engine we have in all of our V family of products that v5 to be seven in the v9 all flash but it's at a much lower price point with a lower cost UCS mini and a lower cost switch infrastructure from from Cisco so it's a great solution for those big offices but again remote and department level and ideal though to move converged infrastructure down into smaller companies so so cisco has been incredibly successful with that space when Cisco first came out I a misunderstood I said how they going to fall flat in their face and servers and I was totally wrong about that because I didn't understand that they were trying to change the game what's it like partnering with those guys and how is it added value to your business well it's been very strong for us one they've got an excellent channel two they have a great direct sales model as does IBM three we've been partnering them for ages and ages and ages in fact in the 90s we sold a bunch of our networking technology to Cisco and is now deployed by Cisco so some of the networking technology at Cisco puts out there to the to their end users to their channel partners into you know their big telcos that actually came from IBM when we sold our networking division to Cisco in the mid-90s so strong partnership ever since then so let's talk more about the portfolio particularly i'm sickly interested in the whole TSM vs TSM came over to the storage group which thrilled me i think there was a great move by IBM to do that whoever made that decision smart move how has that affected having that storage software capability embedded into the storage business how has that affected your ability to go to market well it's been great so that's our spectrum family there are six elements to that spectrum protect which used to be TSM spectrum control which used to be the tsc product spectrum virtualized which is a software version of the sand volume controller so you can get as a software-only solution spectrum archive spectrum accelerate which is a scale-out block solution think of it as a software version of our XIV platform but software only and spectrum scale which gives incredible scale-out nas capability in fact spectrum scale has a number of customers in the enterprise side not in the HPC market but in global enterprises over 100 petabytes and we even have one customer that has one exabyte in production under spectrum scale exabyte one exabyte in production and not an hpc customer or not not one of the big universities not one of the think tanks but a commercial large global fortune 500 company we an exabyte with spectrum scale so so talk a little bit more about the strategy I think people all times misunderstand IBM's approach they say okay IBM getting out of the hardware business which they think Inferno must get another storage business you're not get out of the storage business obviously they hired hogging store oh so talk more about the strategy and how you're you know pursuing that yeah well I'd say a couple things so first of all our commitment to storage is very strong we're investing a billion in all flash technology and a billion in spectrum software in addition to our normal engineering development for our store wise family and our other members of our products that we've already had so a billion extra in flash and a billion extra in our software family in addition to that we've got a method of consumption that we're looking at so some end users want a full storage solution our ds8000 our flash systems are storwize some customers want to move to the software-defined storage and in several cases such as XIV software only spectrum virtualize okay we've got a number of different ways that you can consume the product and then lastly in several of the products such as spectrum scale spectrum accelerate and a lite version of spectrum control that we call spectrum control storage insights available through a cloud consumption model so if the customer wants a comprehensive solution we have it if the customer wants software-defined storage we have it if the customer wants integrated infrastructure with our vs stack we have it and if the customer wants a cloud storage model of consumption we have that too and quite honestly we think in bigger accounts they may have multiple consumption models for example core data center might go for a full storage solution but guess what the cloud solutions would be ideal for a remote or branch office so talk to me more about the cloud you're talking about the SoftLayer we here we go to the IBM shows you a soft layer of bluemix you know so a lot of money or the devops crowd what's going on bactrim accelerate spectrum scale and spectrum control are all available as a soft layer offering they are not targeting test and Dev they are not targeting you know just the bluemix out these are targeting core data center they could be testing dev or they could be remote office branch office opportunities for large enterprises that want to spend a full storage solution and spend that money on the core data center but for the remote office have spectrum scale delivered over softlayer an ideal solution and various consumption models which ever fits their need so David flora just wrote a piece on Wikibon calm of talking about latency and capacity storage at a very high level sort of segmenting the market those ways it's sort of sizing it up and projecting some of the trends and obviously latency storage he's thinking you know more flash oriented capacity storage more more disk spinning disk and tape is that a reasonable way to look at the business and how does it apply to your portfolio so we do think that's a reasonable way to look at it you have if you will a performance segment and a capacity segment depending the number of things that people need to really look at when they buy storage first of all I'm a storage guy for 30 years no one cares about storage it's all about the data it's all about the data that your storage optimizes it's about the workload the activation the use case for me I do too but unfortunately almost every time you know see how it's going to say almost every CIO is a software guy so it's how does the storage optimize my software environment and that's what's critical to them so we see certain applications that are very performance exit certain SLA s they need to meet we have some that are medium sensitive and we have some that of course are very capacity oriented which is our spectrum scale one exabyte with a single customer now that's capacity that's an ocean of data but we also have solutions we're able to put it together so for example in a lot of data analytics workloads that would run in spectrum scale we actually sell a lot of our all flash flash systems use the flash to ingest the data use flash to manage the metadata use the flash to run the search engine in a big giant config such as that and when you're running an analytics workload you run the analytics workload on that flash yet you're really doing a very large deployment hundreds of petabytes to an exabyte with our spectrum scale so we see if you will a continuum and the key thing as IBM offers all of the various piece parts to any level of the continuum and in that example I just gave combining high performance and deep high capacity software in a single solution to meet a business I mean IBM is an unbelievable company think about Watson cloud bluemix the analytics business deep deep heavy rd z mainframe so you got all the pieces how is the storage business how can it better leverage those other pieces and and is it or is it is it relevant or is it just just take the storage hill so we see our storage products as integrating with our other so for example we do a lot of deals where they buy a mainframe in our ds8000 sure we offer integrated infrastructure not only with cisco but actually with the power family as well it's called pure power and that has an integrated v7000 with a power server and we're looking at deepening that relationship as well a lot of analytics were lot alex workloads going scale so whether they buy the big insights whether they use in Watson we've got several customers use Watson but by flash systems because it's obviously very compute intensive so they use flash systems to do that so you know we fit in at the same time we have plenty of customers that don't buy anything else from IBM and just buy storage so we are appealing to a very broad audience those that are traditional IBM shops that by a lot of different products from IBM and those that go in fact one of our public references general mills they had not bought anything from any division of IBM for 50 years and one of our channel partners in Minnesota we are able to get in there with our XIV product and now not only do they buy XIV and some spectrum protect for backup but they've actually started to buy some other technology from IBM and for 50 years they bought nothing from IBM from any division so in that case storage led the way so again in certain accounts we're in there with the ds8000 and Z or were in there with Watson and flash systems and other accounts were pioneering and in some cases we're the only product they buy they don't buy from IBM we will meet whichever need they have now in periods in the last I mean it's been Evan flow in the storage business for IBM periods the last decade IBM deep rd but the products couldn't seem to go to market now you shared with me under under NDA so we can't talk about it in detail but shared with me the roadmap and and the product roadmap is accelerating from release maybe it's just my impression from what I'm used to should we expect to see a much more you know steady cadence of product delivery from IBM going forward absolutely so keeping in our spirit of oceans we ride the wave we don't fight the way and in today's era in any era of high-tech not just in store it doesn't matter whether storage whether its servers whether it's web to know whatever it is it's all about innovation and doing it quickly so we're going to ride that wave of innovation we're going to have a regular cadence of releases we released four different members of spectrum plus two verses stocks and next quarter you'll see five really five major product releases in one quarter and then in q1 you're going to see another three so we're making sure that as this trajectory of innovation hits all of high tech in all segments that IBM storage is not going to be left behind and we're going to continue to innovate on an accelerated pace that pace is is really important you know IBM again spends a lot of money on R&D it's key to get that product into the pipeline let's talk about vmware and vmworld obviously we're here at vmworld so on vmware very important constituency a lot of customers you got a you got to talk to vmware if you want to be in the data center today what is your strategy around vmware specifically but also generally as it relates to multi cloud environments whether it's your own cloud or other clouds OpenStack or what if you could talk about those so let's take virtualization first so we support a number of different hypervisors we support VMware extensively we support hyper-v we support kvm we support ovm we support open initiatives like OpenStack cinder we support Hadoop we have Hadoop connectors in many of our products so whether it's a cloud deployment or a virtual deployment we want to make sure we support everybody for example spectrum protect was announced last week with support for softlayer as a target device basically a tier well guess what in 1h we're going to support amazon and as you're not just softlayer so again we want to make sure we support everything with VMware specifically for the first time ever VMware has invited IBM storage on stave at three questions iBM has done things in the server world in the past but we have never ever ever been invited by VMware to their technical sessions in fact when is it five o'clock today it's called Project capstone which they publicly announced last week and it's about deploying Oracle environments in VMware virtualization it's a partnership with VMware with IBM flash systems all flash and with HP superdome servers and that's going to be on stage at five o'clock today here at moscone center awesome so we're starting to see a tighter relationship with with VMware building out the portfolio what do you say to the customer says yeah I hear you but vmware's doing all this sort of interesting stuff around things like v san what do you what do you tell a customer you know what about that so we see the San as it you know in this era of behemoths everyone is your partner everyone is your competitor but we work with Intel all the time other divisions of IBM think Intel's a major competitor some of our server division work with some of our storage competitors so we think you know we will work with everyone and while we work with VMware a number of angles so if he sounds a little bit of a competitor that's fine and we see an open space for all of the solutions in the market today we got to leave it there the last question so take us through sort of your objectives for IBM storage over the you know near and midterm what do you what should we be well so our big thing is to make sure we keep the cadence up there's so much development going on whether that be in software defined and integrated infrastructure in all flash in all the areas that we are going to make sure that we continue to develop in every area we've got the billion dollars in all flash in the billion dollars in software to find we are going to spend it and we're going to bring those products to market that fit the need so that the oceans of data that everyone is dealing with can be handled appropriately cost-effectively and quite honestly that oceans of data it's about the business value of the data not the storage underneath so we're going to make sure that for all those oceans a data we will allow them to drive real business value and make sure that those data oceans are protected meet their SLA s and are always available to their end user base I love it yet the Steve Mills billion-dollar playbook obviously worked in Linux it was well over a billion in analytics business IBM's a leader they're applying it to flash great acquisition of Texas memory systems you become a leader they're now going after the software to find Eric Herzog thanks very much for coming to the cubes great very much we love to have all right everybody will be back with our next guest right after this World we're live from vmworld and Moscone keep right there you