>> Live from San Francisco. It's the cube covering IBM thing twenty nineteen brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to Moscow and everybody. The new, improved, shiny Mosconi Center. I'm Dave Lamont with Student of Men. This is Day one of IBM thinking you're watching the Cube, the leader and live tech coverage. Ed Walsh is here. He's the general manager of of IBM Storage and Software to find it. Great to see you again. Always. Pleasure. Thanks for coming on. I love the venue, You know, I agree. It's a saddle. Las Vegas. No offense to our friend. Thie shy. It's been a long time coming, Oscar, honey, but it looks really good. I agree. Three thousand people expected. So you must be excited. >> No, I think we have a lot of things that you're going to see announcements. Also, I think you're going to see some refinement of the overall message. I think it's going to exciting week. So it's kind of I'm I'm talking to before all the keynotes. But it's it's an interesting week, for sure. So >> so tease a little bit. What can you tell us is >> Okay, so you know my background, I've been outside IBM, coming to run storage,  I've said a couple of different times. My strategy is to drive the overall storage but also get more aligned with what we're trying to overall at IBM, because that's the strength of IBM, right? Really help the clients move forward And infrastructure matters, and what you're seeing is I think the market's coming our direction at IBM. And I'll give you a couple of things. You're gonna hear a lot about, you know, hybrid multicloud. Say AI at scale, right, and you're going to see that messaging, but that's where the markets come at us. You saw Red Hat talk about it, but all of our competitors are now doing that as well. But when it comes to once, you start a hybrid multicloud and we think it's like we're going to talk about that chapter two right? Chapter one was the first twenty percent of workloads and was all about these application driven events. And you know think about Office 365, etc. But the eighty percent of the workloads were still on premises, and there's a reason they're on premises. But what now is that people that next phase going leaving by the the organizations that have mission, critical data and how to do that? And there's a role for hybrid, which plays perfectly for us. >> And can you help help connect the >> dots for us because we've launched, you know, software to find wave come through through storage, but still many people on the outside, they'd be like, Okay, well, storage is a bunch of boxes sitting in my data center on all my new After being built here. I'm sass ify ing things. They're there, and it feels like death by a thousand cuts, too. The traditional storage markets help explain kind of what the modern storage market is. Data is at the center of everything, so we know that that's a huge thing that elwin for storage but help bring us inside your business. >> So I think in general everyone's trying to data driven, and it's easy to say hard to do and everyone at the platform going do that. It's a hybrid multi cloud and hybrid being the reason we're using the terminology, the industry. But also there is a rule for on premises. And how do you easily connect but getting the same, you know, agility and performance and cost benefit on Prem in an extended the right time for Cloud. So where you see us, we're looking, we focus on. We deal with a lot of clients somewhat advanced and some would say more laggards. And so we share loss stories where people are being successful being dad driven and we see it fall in tow. Kind of three. What I'll say is we try to success. Criteria are areas, right? So one is people just modernizing, going from traditional to go private clouds, making sure they extend use of benefits of public cloud and be more data driven. So some people are spending money to save money, and some people are spending money to make money. But even in traditional environments, you see the CEO having a bigger voice and we need to push him and show him how to do that right way. Also see another section, People really driving a I in general. We see that and definitely not hybrid people to cloud environment where we see a large on premises. But you're always looking for the different data. Sets are going to be in the multi cloud that they need. Bring it together and we see that being a very interesting and affected. How do you start with someone doing? We believe we have the best storage for a I, but we can scale from the smallest to the biggest super computer in the world. Right? Driving, You know, one point five terribly. It's a second, you know, huge monsters, but you can start small. But what we find is people are just getting started with the meets clients where they are so part of it in these different areas, meet them where they are, and there are different parts of the journey on AI is having them get going. But then really, how do you scale? You're gonna hear a lot about this. How do you scale AI? Everyone has these random acts of AI or machine learning, but they can't scale them for the business, let alone across the enterprise, which is where everyone needs to get to. And that's where we're really focused on the offering set. So from a storage that would be where we do the AI. And of course, the third one is just containers in general. Which, by the way, they intersect because a lot of things going to in containers going intersect with a especially when you go multicloud, but there's a whole different Hey, let me modernize my application infrastructure, and it's a different conversation with client. So we see people being very successful, and that's where you're seeing from a storage development. Investments is were going into that direction, helping clients those different. >> Why is a scale so difficult? Is it the silo data silo problem? >> So first of all, there's a coldness about a I everyone. It's a black box is mysterious. It's it's really just computer science. I mean, it's a process between time I'm eating their own deep learning. It is. You're you're doing stats, you're just driving you being in a river or that using custom, I silica do a faster, like abuse. Uh, the other one is it's easy, and it's not so in infrastructure matters. So when you get going, what we see is people just give a developed You give a particular data scientists on environments. You say You bring the data and you need and we'll help you with the governance of strategy, but still getting something to just be valuable to the business. Then what happens is they see another random act of a ay or another area that it becomes data silo, but they're trying their best to stay away from the data scientist. Given the right support, which I think the right thing is, the biggest thing is not having all controlled and centralized. You wantto let the business units drive. But then what happens is you have that almost like data warehousing in the past. You have these islands, and now you don't have any trusted, true source of the truth. And you don't have ability to get you force everyone to do the hard bit. The hard bit is actually having the right data. Do all the eighty percent of cleansing that dead guy having the right governance and security about that? Andi, you're adding to overtime. What if you do a couple applications and it's not on the first one? You do. But once you do the second third, maybe fifth deadly by the eighteenth application, you want to bring that together in a shared platform. And that's where IBM storage plays. And that's where we're truly differentiated. Compare the storage industry so we have no assets that no one else has. Like what we do. A spectrum scale where we can, Luli scale up from just individual server toe half rack and we can take the same environment into largest, eh? I submit computers in the world, but the key thing is, you need. You can have a without a information architecture, and that's on the software side. But it definitely has to be in the infrastructure, and we're doing a cross hybrid multi class. We're doing that on Prem. But trust me, eyes absolutely in the cloud so we can extend those environments and run the same thing in any of the public clouds. And >> what's the storage enabler eyes? It is its software, defined as you mentioned architecture. What is the linchpin there? >> Well, so one it is a softer to find. So in this particular area, where we're helping people is our file system called spectrum scale. But it allows us to do from the very small toe largest environments, right that allows you to scale, and it's also runs all different asset. So it's unstructured, be able to run a dupe Native spark. But you have the file you're able to block, able to bring it together, able, start small, but you're able to scale and keep up the thing about a eyes you go from, I want to collect that information. Get after it. You also need metadata. So we have products like Spectrum Discover to show you the metadata so we can actually track it, you know, So it doesn't become too junk drawer in the sky that we've seen with that a lot of data lease. But then it's interesting. You have to go in tow, actually do the training, and that's for using custom silicon. You know, G pews, and that dramatically changes a performance you require. So thes GP is used to run it sixty gigabytes a second. How they're one hundred fifty gigabytes a second. We no storage store. Traditional stories that you get from, you know, the environment we might get from pure net after emcee. They don't run it, run it sub twenty gigabytes a second. So how do you do this? It's a different architectures, actually, based upon a true scale out what we've seen in the largest super computers in the world. But you're able to bring that environment so we can actually do bring in all the data works, get under one governance and strategy. But then you can actually keep up with the performance of the true influencing and driving GPS that once you have a trusted source, you can scale us out. Lily, the largest, super covers the world so we can We can show you scale on the exact same components started half rack and goto. The biggest thing is in the world, but the key thing is right. You need to actually have a performance. So if you have this data back, plaintiff, you call that Now people still take a lot of the data. They'll bring it into the servers in the crunch it with GPS. They say, Well, okay, your stories doesn't need tohave that performance. But what you find is once you have a common back plane, which, how IBM did it. Now you have different business units almost hub and spoke, grabbing the data. But they have one true source of data they will get after it. They're able to get their other data that other groups are looking for. But now they're able to now scale it into the enterprise that because something is just a I call a pike, also your doing applications and they just want to have a P. I called in the same environment, and those have to be fast, cause now you're influencing, so it's sub seconds. But you need that performance. So what you need is by bring it all together. You can either do data silos, which are easy up front. But by the time you the second third, you do all that same work over and over, and you don't trust its source. You gotta bring it together. But you can't bring it together in any storage, and we don't bring it together on the same storage we do for of'em, where environment to others is different storage. And it's made specifically for this environment. And it's something that, actually IBM is no leaps and bounds above everyone supercomputer. They do these type of analysis, and we're like two x our best competitors benchmarks, by the way, that computer use spectrum scale so But it is a different architecture. But if you don't put together on, and I would also say that when you get started, no one starts with the big, in fact, that that's almost a mistake. What you want to do is let the data scientists have the creative driving get business outcome, but they need to be thinking ahead. How do you bring it together? So you have a shared because again, The way you're really gonna drive across enterprise. All that processes is actually having soon AP I calls come in and which are not going to their own environment altogether. Makes sense. >> Yeah, you've mentioned a couple times infrastructure matters, and I wantto wanna tie that into the eighty percent Sure it was at this very venue in two thousand nine when Paul Marat said is the CEO of the M where we're going to run any workload. Any application? Virtualized and a lot of people were skeptical, and I remember the time thinking about mainframes. I kind of did that. Um, >> and you can say that I can >> How you're talking about the eighty percent and, you know, Veum, where I think largely proved that that you could run that at high performance. Att. Least adequate performance. Now you're seeing a similar discussion around cloud. But it's somewhat different because of some of the things that you were just mentioning it. What does that world look like? Obviously, hybrid fits in. You mentioned the red Hat acquisition. That's key. Part of idea mes go forward. You know, multi cloud strategy. So should we think about what you know what similar and what's different than a sort of V M wear virtual ization, mainframe virtual ization days. >> Okay, that's interesting. And then you're tying into the cloud adoption as well, right? So and we do think about twenty in this idea. See, about twenty percent of workers have gone, but eighty percent are waiting, and that's that I never thought of that way. It's a good analogy. Virtual ization. That easy stuff went first, and then what you have to do is have the databases. Remember, that was a big issue. You couldn't do that for years, but then also, you move. It's like, Why would you do it? But what's happening is what we're seeing. Is this the mission? Critical workloads, And they're either regulated industries, but it's for different reasons. They're running in different places. But it might be a security concern. It might be scaled that he might be regulated industries, but there's reasons. Or maybe after reef, actually applications. Actually one cloud native because lifted shift was it the same economics as you thought. So what we think is the next eighty percent is not going to lead by the application, you know, or things like Office three sixty five we actually think is going to be people putting the real mission critical workloads. And that's a different conversation. That's where we think the market's complaints what we do at I BM and infrastructure, where you need to have the technology, but also the expertise and industry moving on. Then security becomes key concern. >> So way mentioned red hat here and you can't say too much, but we know about kind of the cloud native modern, you know, multi cloud stuff. But Red had also has, you know, quite a bit of a storage portfolio, you know, seven cluster acquisitions, open source. Wondering what you can just, you know, as an IBM or tell us about what you think of that portfolio. >> So you know, we can talk about what's gonna happen afterwards, but also I think we made it very clear we believe redheads and used the inn where I think it's a good analogy. We're going to keep it. They're going to be independent. They serve a world we're not going to change it. And I think that's a very important part of the message. But we can't talk about the assets. And I did my own kickoff to my team. My partners and I used a kid around. That was a storage acquisition, you know? So it was my thirty four billion dollars right? So but I think it has a good play. It's completely complimentary to what we do. They have some great to two technologies, but also we bring things to them. They're interesting, but a conversation when someone strikes, they were my going and for strategy. We believe containers are critical. We believe Lennox is critical. If you look at what people are doing on the cloud, it is theirs. It's already cross. It's mostly Lennox and the enterprises have chosen red hat. Now, if you think of what we could do with that particular environment, tohave the conversation make relevance about what we could do to help you on Prim. But now you can run the same thing on prime. You can put it literally anywhere. Now that's a strength of red hat would bring us on a story side. They have great assets. I'm kind of salivating to help him out with that now what they don't do with some of things that we can add to them. Right? So I don't think we're commenting any road map, I think, but they haven't. What we have is, to be honest, complimentary, if that makes >> sense. Well, and I think you you're familiar with our old troop private cloud nomenclature. It's evolving to true hybrid cloud, and what you just described is true hybrid cloud. Run it wherever you want. You're agnostic to where it runs, but don't want that cloud operating model yet to be the underpinning of the experience. >> You don't want me locked in, so that's where I think if you look a hybrid, you want to make sure. And I think it allows us to that. I think IBM is synergistic to it. I think we can bring a lot of how do you bring the integration capabilities that IBM brings on applications and help these mission critical environments that have need some industry expertise. To do that? Bring them to the cloud itself. And it doesn't matter where in the cloud. >> Yeah, at one of the things we were commenting on the open is, you know, the hybrid multicolored world. It's complicated, and IBM has a, you know, strong history with services to help drive that gives a little bit of your insight is toe what IBM brings tea. Kind of that multi cloud environment. >> It's almost too much. Right? So what we're doing is really working on the overall. How do we simplify? So we're going to meet the client where they are, So everyone's at different. You have to almost find out where they are on the journey and then even a particular client. You'll find different business units on different parts of journey so we can help him anywhere from helping figure out, you know, architect, where they would go. We could have moved to the cloud. We can actually help them manage a cloud, and they're also going to meet them where they are. So we have. If you think about what we could do with a I, we have full Aye aye stacks enterprise capabilities. But some people choose to just use their own open source and we can help them. In fact, are you see, our multi club manager allows you to manage, regardless of what you've young for your build environment. So what we're gonna do is meet clients where they are and help them do the last mile. And then we're servers and support were ableto, You know, if you look at what we do, gts were the largest red hat support organization. You look what we do with GPS. We can help people build up their own platforms and given overall struck shen and how to go drive a ay at scale in their environments. So I think I think it does play to us. And I think the red acquisition just ads. I think one of these three. >> Well, and I think, you know, we were talking about in our open that just even IBM giant application, modernization opportunity, right? I mean, because we tend to think about, you know, a I and leading edge, but there's just so much modernization opportunity and a lot of guys, you know, they don't want to go it alone with open source. The fact that IBM is there, you know, with that big blue blanket I called It's. Okay, we're gonna help you through your modernization initiatives. You know, we think a big deal. You know, we're excited about that chapter. Think about Red >> Hat that does a lot of consulting, but they have been discipline. They help you get rail going once you start Doc and open stack rights to be open shifts. Now, that is a whole different way. Tau. Look at your environment, your applications, and that takes a higher level. So it's like one and one is three. They don't do a lot of that now, right so >> well, and it's it's instant developers to That's the other thing. We said just that, while how many developers ready with a million? We're talking about Sisko before with a half a million, which is great. But you're talking eight million. Andi, you know, despite IBM's efforts around, you know, blue mix. So that was a heavy slog. Now, all of a sudden, you got eight million developers. It is. Look, Red hat. Lennox is running the Internet. You know we know this, so that's exciting. I want My last question is you've made a career early part of your career in and taking startups and getting them to a point where they could be acquired very, very successful career there. Then you joined IBM, spent some time at M. I t. You know, getting even smarter when you sit back and look at the industry, the storage industry in particular somehow that despite the trend toward, you know, cloud and bigger is better. You still see the specialist, you know, popping up all the place. You see guys like pure. You see, guys like Nutanix and you know, we saw that early with the comm Palance and the three powers and the ice Alonso, it's okay. Maybe this is the last way. But somehow, storage innovation and it continues to occur. Do you think we're seeing sort of the end of that sort of storage? Startup crazed can can independent storage companies continue to survive? What do your thoughts as an industry observer? >> So I think, is more difficult. But there's plenty of innovation. So you're seeing it as we just help people get to their journey. You're going to see different technologies that even IBM against your portfolio changed rather dramatically to keep up with the trends. And you need to do. It s Oh, I don't think it's over with, so I never want to quoted that I think there's no innovation left and there's a role for you saw storage, you know, grow last year, right? So it was. There's always been growth areas, but it's been flat also really took off on a lot of that is because we're doing >> on a I, >> which is not your average, is definitely not what pure does as faras for storage, right? But you're going to see, I think I'm going to see innovation. I think you're going to see that continue, but I think it's harder and harder for these independent firms, mostly when they scale. I think it's the innovation piece, and I think you're seeing guys like us and I am seeing others innovate very quickly and you can tell innovation is speeding up with investment cause we have to >> get our clients are demanding it, and the VCs keep pouring money in. I mean, you're seeing that in the data protection space and >> data protection isn't now cool, right? So Waseem all time. I think in general, if you look at data protection becomes now your secret weapon. When you talk about being dad driven in a classical environment, you can get copies your data at the AP Eyes anywhere in environment. So I think it's a really big play, so >> well and it opens up new opportunities beyond just back up right for whether it's Dev ops or maybe disaster recovery ransom, where even analytics? Because the backup Corpus is, you know, has all the data, and it's a lot of possibilities. Thanks so much for coming. I think we're going to see you also on Wednesday, right? And looking forward to that. So thank you. All right. Keep it right to everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching the Cube from day one. IBM thinking Mosconi right back.