(upbeat music) >> (faintly) Three, two, one. >> Eric, Bina, thanks again for coming back. So, what I want to do now is, I want to talk a little bit about some kind of trends within the storage world, and what the next few years are going to mean. Eric, I want to start with you. I was recently at IBM Think, and Ginni Rometty talked about the idea of "putting smart to work". Now, I can tell you that means something to me, because the whole notion of how data gets used, how work gets institutionalized around your data. What does storage do in that context of "put smart to work"? >> Well, I think there's a couple things. First, we got to realize that it's not about storage. It's about the data and the information that happens to sit on the storage. So, you have to have storage that's always available, always resilient, is incredibly fast, and as I said earlier, transparently moves things in and out of the cloud automatically, so that the user doesn't have to do it. Second thing that's critical is the integration of AI, artificial intelligence, both into the storage solution itself, and what the storage does, how you do it, and how it plays with the data, but also, if you're going to do AI on a broad scale ... For example, we're working with a customer right now, and their AI configuration is 100 petabytes, leveraging our storage underneath the hood of that big giant AI analytics workload. So that's why AI ... both think of it in the storage, to make the storage better and more productive with the data and the information that it has, but then also as the undercurrent for any AI solution that anyone's deployed, big, medium, or small. >> So Bina, I want to pick up on that, because, there's some advanced technologies that are being exploited within storage right now to achieve what Eric's talking about, but there's going to be a lot more. >> Absolutely. >> There's going to be more intensive application utilization of some of those technologies. What are some of the technologies that are becoming increasingly important, from a storage standpoint, that people have to think about as they try to achieve their digital transformation objectives? >> That's right. Peter. In addition to some of the basics around making sure your infrastructure is enabled to handle the SLAs and the level of performance that's required by these AI workloads. When you think about what Eric said, this data is going to reside on premise. It's going to be be behind a firewall, potentially in the cloud or multiple public clouds. How do you manage that data? How do you get a visibility to that data? And then, be able to leverage that data for your analytics. So, data management is going to be very important, but also being able to understand what that data contains, and be able to run the analytics, and be able to do things like tagging the metadata, and then doing some specialized analytics around that is going to be very important. The fabric to move that data, data portability from on premise into the cloud and back and forth, bi-directionally, is going to be very important as you look into the future. >> Obviously, things like IOT is going to mean bigger, more, more available. So a lot of technologies, in a big picture, are going to become more closely associated with storage. In fact, I like to say that, at some point in time, we got to stop thinking about calling this stuff storage, because it's going to be so central to the fabric of how data works within a business. Eric, I want to come back to you and say, this is some of the big picture technologies, but where do some of the little picture technologies, that nonetheless are really central to being able to build up this vision over the course of the next few years? >> Well a couple things. One is the move to NVMe. So we've integrated NVMe into our Flash System 9100. We have fabric support. We already announced back in February, actually, fabric support for NVMe over an Infiband infrastructure with our Flash System 900. We're extending that to all of the other interconnects from a fabric perspective for NVMe, whether that be ethernet or whether that be fiber channel. We put NVMe in the system. We also have integrated our custom flash models. Our flash core technology allows to take raw flash, and create, if you will, a custom SSD. Why does that matter? We can get better resiliency. We can get incredibly better performance, which is very tied into your applications, workloads, and use cases, especially in a data-driven multi-cloud environment. It's critical that the flash is incredibly fast. It really matters. And resilient ... what do you do? You try to move it to the cloud, and you lose your data. So, if you don't have that resiliency and availability, that's a big issue. I think the third thing is, what I call the "cloudification" of software. All of IBM storage software is cloudified. We can move things simultaneously into the cloud. It's all automated. We can move data around all over the place. Not only our data, not only to our boxes, we can actually move other people's array's data around for them, and we can do it with our storage software. So, it's really critical to have this "cloudification". It's really critical to have this new technology. NVMe from an end-to-end perspective for fabric, and then inside the system to get the right resiliency, the right availability, the right performance for your applications, workloads, and use cases, and you've got to make sure that everything is cloudified, and portable, and mobile. We've done that with the solutions that are wrapped into our Flash System 9100 that we launched a couple weeks ago. >> So you are both thought leaders in the storage industry, I think that's very clear. The whole notion of storage technology. You work with a lot of customers, you see a lot of use cases. So I want to ask you kind of one quick question to kind of close here, and that is, if there was one thing that you would tell a storage leader, a CIO, or someone who thinks about storage in a broad way, one mindset change that they have to make to start this journey and get it going so that it's going to be successful. What would that one mindset change be? Bina, what do you think? >> You know, I think it's really around, there's a lot of capabilities out there. It's really around simplifying your environment, and making sure that, as you're deploying these new solutions or new capabilities, that you've really got a partnership with a vendor that's going to help you make it easier. Take those complex tasks, make them easier, deliver those step-by-step instructions and documentation, and be right there when you need their assistance. I think that's going to be really important. >> So looking at it from a portfolio perspective, where best-of-breed is still important, but it's got to work together, because it leverages itself. >> Got to work together, absolutely. >> Eric, what would you say? >> Well I think the key thing is people think storage is storage. All storage is not the same. One of the central tenets at IBM storage is to make sure that we're integrated with the cloud. We can move data around transparently, easily, simply. Bina pointed out the simplicity. If you can't support the cloud, then you're really just a storage box. That's not what IBM does. Over 40 percent of what we sell is actually storage software. All that software works with all of our competitors gear. In fact, our Spectrum Virtualize for Public Cloud, for example, can simultaneously have data sets sitting in a cloud instantiation, and sitting on premises, and then we can use our Copy Data Management to take advantage of that secondary copy. That's all because we're so cloudified from a software perspective. So, all storage is not the same, You can't think of storage as, "I need the cheapest storage." It's got to be, "How's it drive business value for my ocean's of data?" That's what matters most. By the way, we're very cost-effective anyway, especially because of our custom flash module allows us to have a real price advantage. >> You ain't doing business at a level of 100 petabytes if you're not cost-effective. >> Right. Those are things that we see as really critical, is storage is not storage. Storage is really about data and information. >> Let me summarize your point, if I can really quickly. In other words, that we have to think about storage as the first step to great data management. >> Absolutely, absolutely, Peter. >> Eric, Bina, great conversation. >> Thank you. >> Alrighty. >> Thank you. >> I forgot the security (drowned out by music)

(upbeat music) >> Bina, it's great to see you again. Thanks for coming back in theCUBE and participating in this digital community event. >> Oh, thanks for having me. It's an exciting event. I'm looking forward to it. >> So, Bina, I want to build on some of the stuff that we talked to Eric about. Eric did a good job of articulating the overall customer challenge. As IBM conceives how it's going to approach customers and help them solve these challenges, let's talk about some of the core values that IBM brings to bear. What would you say would be one of the, what are the three things that IBM really focuses on as it thinks about its core values to approach these challenges? >> Sure, sure. It's really around helping the client, providing a simple one-stop shopping kind of an approach, ensuring that we're doing all the right things to bring the capabilities together so that clients don't have to take different component technologies and put them together themselves. They can focus on providing business value. And it's really around delivering the economic benefits around capex and opex, delivering a set of capabilities that help them move on their journey to a data-driven multi-cloud, make it easier and make it simpler. >> So making sure that it's one place they can go where they can get the solution. But IBM has a long history of engineering. Are you doing anything special in terms of pretesting, prepackaging some of these things to make it easier? >> Yeah; we, over the years, have worked with many of our clients around the world and helping them achieve their vision, their strategy around multi-cloud. And, in that journey and those set of experiences, we've identified some key solutions that really do make it easier, and so we're leveraging the breadth of IBM, the power of IBM, making those investments to deliver a set of solutions that are pretested, they are supported at the solutions level, really focusing on delivering and underpinning those solutions with blueprints, step-by-step documentation. And as clients deploy these solutions, if they run into challenges, having IBM support to assess, really bringing it all together. This notion of a multi-cloud architecture around delivering modern infrastructure capabilities, NVMe acceleration, but also some of our really core differentiation that we deliver through FlashCore data reduction capabilities along with things like modern data protection. That segment is changing, and we really want to enable clients, their IT and their line of business, to really free them up and focus on a business value versus putting these components together. So it's really around taking those complex things and make them easier for clients. Get improved RPO, RTO, get improved performance, get improved cost, but also flexibility and agility are very critical. >> Well, that sounds like, therefore, the history of storage has been tradeoffs. This disk can only go that fast, and that tape can only go that fast. But now, when we start to think about Flash NVMe, the tradeoffs are not as acute as they used to be. Is IBM's engineering chops capable of pointing how you can, in fact, have almost all of this at one time? >> Oh, absolutely. The breadth and the capabilities in our R&D, and the research capabilities, also our experiences that I talked about, engagements, putting all of that together to deliver some key solutions and capabilities like... Look, everybody needs backup and archive, backup to recover your data in case of a disaster occurs, archive for long-term retention. That data management, the data protection segment, is going through a transformation. New emerging capabilities, new ways to do backup. And what we're doing is pulling all of that together. The things that we introduce, for example, our Protect Plus in the fourth quarter, along with this FS-9100 and the cloud capabilities, to deliver a solution around data protection, data reuse, so that you have a modern backup approach for both virtual and physical environments that is really based on things like snapshots and mountable copies, so you're not using that traditional approach of recovering your copy from a backup by bringing it back. Instead, all you're doing is mounting one of those copies, and instantly getting your application back and running for operational recovery. >> So, to summarize some of those values: one-stop, pretested advanced technologies smartly engineered. You guys did something interesting on July 10th. Why don't you talk about how those values and the understanding of the problem manifest itself as kind of an exciting set of new products that you guys introduced on July 10th? >> Absolutely. On July 10th, we not only introduced our flagship FlashSystem's FS-9100, which delivers some amazing client value around the economic benefits of capex, opex reduction, but also seamless data mobility, data reuse, security, all the things that are important for a client on their cloud journey. In addition to that, we infused that offering with AI-based predictive analytics and, of course, that performance and NVMe acceleration is really key. But, in addition to doing that, we've also introduced some very exciting solutions, really three key solutions, one around data protection, data reuse, to enable clients to get that agility, and second is around business continuity and data reuse to be able to really reduce the expense of having business continuity. In today's environment, it's a high-risk environment, it's inevitable to have disruptions, but really being prepared to mitigate some of those risks and having operational continuity is important, and by doing things like leveraging the public cloud for your DR capabilities, that's very important, so we introduced a solution around that. And the third is around private cloud. Taking your IBM storage FS-9100 along with the heterogeneous environment you have and making it cloud-ready, getting the cloud efficiencies, making it to where you can use it for environments to create things like native cloud applications that are portable from on-prem into the cloud. So those are some of the key ways that we've kind of brought this together to really deliver on client value. >> So can you give us just one quick use case of some of your clients that are applying these technologies to solve their problems? >> Yeah, so let me use the first one that I talked about, the data protection and data reuse. So to be able to take your on-premise environment, really apply an abstraction layer, set up catalogs, set up SLAs and access control, but then be able to step away and manage that storage all through API base. We have a lot of clients that are doing that and then taking that, making the snapshots, using those copies for things like, well, there's disaster recovery, or secondary use cases like analytics, DevOps. DevOps is a really important use case and our clients are really leveraging some of these capabilities for it, because you want to make sure that, as application developers are developing their applications, they're working with the latest data and making sure that the testing they're doing is meaningful, and finding the maximum number of defects so you get the highest quality of code coming out of them. And being able to do that in a self-service-driven way, so that they're not having to slow down their innovation. We have clients leveraging our capabilities for those kinds of use cases. >> Great conversation! >> All right, we're clear, thank you. >> Did it hit on [Cuts Off] (upbeat music)