(upbeat jazz music) >> From our studios, in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alta, California. This is a Cube Conversation. >> Hi, welcome to the Cube Studio for another Cube Conversation where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving business outcomes with technology. I'm your host Peter Buriss. As enterprise is look to take advantage of new classes of applications like AI and others that make possible this notion of a data first or data driven enterprise in a digital business world. They absolutely have to consider what they need to do with their stored resources to modernize them to make possible new types of performance today, but also sustain and keep open options for how they use data in the future. To have that conversation we're here with David Floyer, CTO and co-founder of Wikibon. David welcome to the conversation. >> Thank you. >> So David you've been looking at this notion of modern storage architectures for 10 years now. >> Yeah. >> And you've been relatively prescient in understanding what's gonna happen. You were one of the first guys to predict well in advance of everybody else that the crossover between flash and HDD was gonna happen sooner rather than later. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time quizzing you. What do you see as a modern storage architecture? Let's, just let it rip. >> Okay well let's start with one simple observation. The days of standalone systems for data have gone we're in a software defined world and you wanna be able to run those data architectures anywhere where the data is. And that means in your data center where it was created or in the cloud or in a public cloud or at the edge. You want to be able to be flexible enough to be able to do all of the data services where the best place is and that means everything has to be software driven. >> Software defined is the first proposition of modern data storage facility? >> Absolutely. >> Second. >> So the second thing is that there are different types of technology. You have the very fastest storage which is in the in the DIRUM itself. You have NVDIMM which is the next one down from that expensive but a lot cheaper than the DIMM. And then you have different sorts of flash. You have the high performance flash and you have the 3D flash, you know as many layers as you can which is much cheaper flash and then at the bottom you have HDD and even tape as storage devices. So how. The key question is how do you manage that sort of environment. >> Where do we start because it still sounds like we still have a storage hierarchy. >> Absolutely. >> And it still sounds like that hierarchy is defined largely in terms of access speeds >> Yeap. >> And price points. >> Price points. Yes. >> Those are the two Mason and bandwidth and latency as well are within that. >> which are tied into that? >> which are tied into those. Yes. So what you, if you're gonna have this everywhere and you need services everywhere what you have to have is an architecture which takes away all of that complexity, so that you, all you see from an application point of view is data and how it gets there and how is put away and how it's stored and how it's protected that's under the covers. So the first thing is you need a virtualization of that data layer. >> The physical layer? >> The virtualization of that physical layer. >> Right right. >> Yes. And secondly you need that physical layer to extend to all the places that may be using this data. You don't wanna be constrained to this data set lives here. You want to be able to say Okay, I wanna move this piece of programming to the data as quickly as I can, that's much much faster than moving the data to the processing. So I want to be able to know where all the data is for this particular dataset or file or whatever it is, where they all are, how they connect together, what the latency is between everything. I wanna understand that architecture and I want to virtualize view of that across that whole the nodes that make up my hybrid cloud. >> So let me be clear here so, so we are going to use a software defined infrastructure >> Yeah. that allows us to place the physical devices that have the right cost performance characteristics where they need to be based on the physical realities of latency power availability, hardening, et cetera. >> And the network >> And the network. But we wanna mask that complexity from the application, application developer and application administrator. >> Yes. >> And software defined helps do that, but doesn't completely do it. >> No. Well you want services which say >> Exactly, so their services on top of all that. >> On top of all that. >> Absolutely. >> That are recognizable by the developer, by the business person, by the administrator, as they think about how they use data towards those outcomes not use storage or user device but use the data. >> Data to reach application outcomes. That's absolutely right. And that's what I call the data plane which is a series of services which enable that to happen and driven by the application requirements themselves. >> So we've looked at this and some of the services include end end compression, duplication, >> Duplication. backup restore, security, data protection. >> Protection. Yeah. So that's kind of, that's kind of the services that now the enterprise buyer needs to think about. >> Yes. >> So that those services can be applied by policy. >> Yes. >> Wherever they're required based on the utilization of the data >> Correct. >> Where the event takes place. >> And then you still have at the bottom of that you have the different types of devices. You still have you still won't >> A lot of hamsters making stuff work. >> You still want hard disk for example they're not disappearing, but if you're gonna use hard disks then you want to use it in the right way for using a hard disk. You wanna give it large box. You want to have it going sequentially in and out all the time. >> So the storage administration and the physical schema and everything else is still important in all these? >> Absolutely. But it's less important, less a centerpiece of the buying decision. >> Correct. >> Increasingly it's how well does this stuff prove support the services that the business is using to achieve your outcomes. >> And you want to use costs the lowest cost that you can and they'll be many different options open, more more options open. But the automation of that is absolutely key and that automation from a vendor point of view one of the key things they have to do is to be able to learn from the usage by their customers, across as broad a number of customers as they can. Learn what works or doesn't work, learn so that they can put automation into their own software their own software service. >> So it sounds like we talking four things. We got software defined, still have a storage hierarchy defined by cost and performance, but with mainly semiconductor stuff. We've got great data services that are relevant to the business and automation that mask the complexity from everything. >> And a lot of the artificial AI there is, automated >> Running things. Fantastic. David Floyer, talking about modern storage architectures. Once again thanks for joining us on the Cube Conversation. And I'm your host Peter Burris. See you next time. (jazz music)