>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with our leaders all around the world. This is theCUBE conversation. >> Welcome to theCUBE and the special IBM Brocade panel. I'm Lisa Martin. And I'm having a great opportunity here to sit down for the next 20 minutes with three gentlemen please welcome Brian Sherman a distinguished engineer from IBM, Brian, great to have you joining us. >> Thanks for having me. >> And Matt key here. Flash systems SME from IBM, Matt, happy Friday. >> Happy Friday, Lisa. Thanks for having us. >> Our pleasure. And AIG Customer solution here from Brocade is here. AJ welcome. >> Thanks for having me along. >> AJ we're going to stick with you, IBM and Brocade have had a very long you said about 22 year strategic partnership. There's some new news. And in terms of the evolution of that talk to us about what's going on with with Brocade IBM and what is new in the storage industry? >> Yeah, so the the newest thing for us at the moment is that IBM just in mid-October launched our Gen seven platforms. So this is think about the stresses that are going on in the IT environments. This is our attempt to keep pace with with the performance levels that the IBM teams are now putting into their storage environments the All-Flash Data Centers and the new technologies around non-volatile memory express. So that's really, what's driving this along with the desire to say, "You know what people aren't allowed "to be in the data center." And so if they can't be in the data center then the fabrics actually have to be able to figure out what's going on and basically provide a lot of the automation pieces. So something we're referring to as the autonomous SAM. >> And we're going to dig into NBME of our fabrics in a second but I do want to AJ continue with you in terms of industries, financial services, healthcare airlines there's the biggest users, biggest need. >> Pretty much across the board. So if you look at the global 2000 as an example, something on the order of about 96, 97% of the global 2000 make use of fiber channel environments and in portions of their world generally tends to be a lot of the high end financial guys, a lot of the pharmaceutical guys, the automotive, the telcos, pretty much if the data matters, and it's something that's critical whether we talk about payment card information or healthcare environments, data that absolutely has to be retained, has to get there, has to perform then it's this combination that we're bringing together today around the new storage elements and the functionalities they have there. And then our ability in the fabric. So the concept of a 64 gig environment to help basically not be the bottleneck in the application demands, 'cause one thing I can promise you after 40 years in this industry is the software guys always figure out how to all the performance that the hardware guys put on the shelf, right? Every single time. >> Well there's gauntlet thrown down there. Matt, let's go to you. I want to get IBM's perspective on this. Again, as we said, a 22 year strategic partnership, as we look at things like not being able to get into the data center during these unprecedented times and also the need to be able to remove some of those bottlenecks how does IBM view this? >> Yeah, totally. It's certainly a case of raising the bar, right? So we have to as a vendor continue to evolve in terms of performance, in terms of capacity, cost density, escalating simplicity, because it's not just a case of not be able to touch the rates, but there's fewer people not being able to adjust the rates, right? It's a case where our operational density continues to have to evolve being able to raise the bar on the network and be able to still saturate those line rates and be able to provide that simply a cost efficiency that gets us to a utilization that raises the bar from our per capita ratio from not just talking about 200, 300 terabytes per admin but going beyond the petabyte scale per admin. And we can't do that unless people have access to the data. And we have to provide the resiliency. We have to provide the simplicity of presentation and automation from our side. And then this collaboration that we do with our network brother like Brocade here continued to stay out of the discussion when it comes to talking about networks and who threw the ball next. So we truly appreciate this Gen seven launch that they're doing we're happy to come in and fill that pipe on the flash side for them. >> Excellent and Brian as a distinguished engineer and let me get your perspectives on the evolution of the technology over this 22 year partnership. >> Thanks Lisa. It certainly has been a longstanding, a great relationship, great partnership all the way from inventing joint things, to developing, to testing and deploying to different technologies through the course of time. And it's been one of those that where we are today, like AJ had talked about being able to sustain what the applications require today in this always on time type of environment. And as Matt said, bringing together the density and operational simplicity to make that happen 'cause we have to make it easier from the storage side for operations to be able to manage this volume of data that we have coming out and our due diligence is to be able to serve the data up as fast as we can and as resilient as we can. >> And so sticking with you, Brian that simplicity is key because as we know as we get more and more advances in technology the IT environment is only becoming more complex. So really truly enabling organizations in any industry to simplify is absolute table stakes. >> Yeah, it definitely is. And that's core to what we're focused on and how do we make the storage environment simple. It's been one those through the years and historically, we've had entry-level us and the industry as a whole, is that an entry-level product mid range level products, high-end level products. And earlier this year, we said enough, enough of that it's one product portfolio. So it's the same software stack it's just, okay. Small, medium and large in terms of the appliances that get delivered. Again, building on what Matt said, from a density perspective where we can have a petabyte of uncompressed and data reduced storage in a two Enclosure. So it becomes from a overall administration perspective, again, one software stake, one automation stack, one way to do point in time copies, replication. So in focusing on how to make that as simple for the operations as we possibly can. >> I think we'd all take a little bit of that right now. Matt, let's go to you and then AJ view, let's talk a little bit more, dig into the IBM storage arrays. I mean, we're talking about advances in flash, we're talking about NBME as a forcing function for applications to change and evolve with the storage. Matt, give us your thoughts on that. >> We saw a monumental leap in where we take some simplicity pieces from how we deliver our arrays but also the technology within the arrays. About nine months ago, in February we launched into the latest generation of non technology and with that born the story of simplicity one of the pieces that we've been happily essentially negating of value prop is storage level tiering and be able to say, "Hey, well we still support the idea of going down "to near line SaaS and enterprise disc in different flavors "of solid state whether it's tier one short usage "the tier zero high performance, high usage, "all the way up to storage class memory." While we support those technologies and the automated tiering, this elegance of what we've done as latest generation technology that we launched nine months ago has been able to essentially homogenize the environments to we're able to deliver that petabyte per rack unit ratio that Brian was mentioning be able to deliver over into all tier zero solution that doesn't have to go through woes of software managed data reduction or any kind of software managed hearing just to be always fast, always essentially available from a 100% data availability guaranteed that we offer through a technology called hyper swap, but it's really kind of highlighting what we take in from that simplicity story, by going into that extra mile and meeting the market in technology refresh. I mean, if you say the words IBM over the Thanksgiving table, you're kind of thinking, how big blue, big mainframe, old iron stuff but it's very happy to say over in distributed systems that we are in fact leading this pack by multiple months not just the fact that, "Hey, we announced sooner." But actually coming to delivering on-prem the actual solution itself nine, 10 months prior to anybody else and when that gets us into new density flavors gets us into new efficiency offerings. Not just talk about, "Hey, I can do this petabyte scale "a couple of rack units but with the likes of Brocade." That actually equates to a terabyte per second and a floor tile, what's that do for your analytics story? And the fact that we're now leveraging NBME to undercut the value prop of spinning disc in your HBC analytics environments by five X, that's huge. So now let's take near line SaaS off the table for anything that's actually per data of an angle of value to us. So in simplicity elements, what we're doing now will be able to make our own flash we've been deriving from the tech memory systems acquisition eight years ago and then integrating that into some essentially industry proven software solutions that we do with the bird flies. That appliance form factor has been absolutely monumental for us in the distributed systems. >> And thanks for giving us a topic to discuss at our socially distant Thanksgiving table. We'll talk about IBM. I know now I have great, great conversation. AJ over to you lot of advances here also in such a dynamic times, I want to get Brocade's perspective on how you're taking advantage of these latest technologies with IBM and also from a customer's perspective, what are they feeling and really being able to embrace and utilize that simplicity that Matt talked about. >> So there's a couple of things that fall into that to be honest, one of which is that similar to what you heard Brian described across the IBM portfolio for storage in our SaaS infrastructure. It's a single operating system up and down the line. So from the most entry-level platform we have to the largest platform we have it's a single software up and down. It's a single management environment up and down and it's also intended to be extremely reliable and extremely performance because here's part of the challenge when Matt's talking about multiple petabytes in a two U rack height, but the conversation you want to flip on its head there a little bit is "Okay exactly how many virtual machines "and how many applications are you going to be driving "out of that?" Because it's going to be thousands like between six and 10,000 potentially out of that, right? So imagine then if you have some sort of little hiccup in the connectivity to the data store for 6,000 to 10,000 applications, that's not the kind of thing that people get forgiving about. When we're all home like this. When your healthcare, when your finance, when your entertainment, when everything is coming to you across the network and remotely in this version and it's all application driven, the one thing that you want to make sure of is that network doesn't hiccup because humans have a lot of really good characteristics. Patience would not be one of those. And so you want to make sure that everything is in fact in play and running. And that's as one of the things that we work very hard with our friends at IBM to make sure of is that the kinds of analytics that Matt was just describing are things that you can readily get done. Speed is the new currency of business is a phrase you hear from... A quote you hear from Marc Benioff at Salesforce, right. And he's right if you can get data out of intelligence out of the data you've been collecting, that's really cool. But one of the other sort of flip sides on the people not being able to be in the data center and then to Matt's point, not as many people around either is how are humans fast enough when you look... Honestly when you look at the performance of the platforms, these folks are putting up how is human response time going to be good enough? And we all sort of have this headset of a network operations center where you've got a couple dozen people in a half lit room staring at massive screens on the thing to pop. Okay, if the first time a red light pops the human begins the investigation at what point is that going to be good enough? And so our argument for the autonomy piece of of what we're doing in the fabrics is you can't wait on the humans. You need to augment it. I get that people still want to be in charge and that's good. Humans are still smarter than the Silicon. We're not as repeatable, but we're still so far smarter about it. And so we needed to be able to do that measurement. We need to be able to figure out what normal looks like. We need to be able to highlight to the storage platform and to the application admins, when things go sideways because the demand from the applications isn't going to slow down. The demands from your environment whether you want to think about take the next steps with not just your home entertainment home entertainment systems but learning augmented reality, right. Virtual reality environments for kids, right? How do you make them feel like they're part and parcel of the classroom, for as long as we have to continue living a modified world and perhaps past it, right? If you can take a grade school from your local area and give them a virtual walkthrough of the loop where everybody's got a perfect view and it all looks incredibly real to them those are cool things, right? Those are cool applications, right? If you can figure out a new vaccine faster, right. Not a bad thing, right. If we can model better, not a bad thing. So we need to enable those things we need to not be the bottleneck, which is you get Matt and Brian over an adult beverage at some point and ask them about the cycle time for the Silicon they're playing with. We've never had Moore's law applied to external storage before never in the history of external storage. Has that been true until now. And so their cycle times, Matt, right? >> Yeah you struck a nerve there AJ, cause it's pretty simple for us to follow the linear increase in capacity and computational horsepower, right. We just ride the X86 bandwagon, ride the Silicon bandwagon. But what we have to do in order to maintain But what we have to do in order to maintain the simplicity story is followed more important one is the resiliency factor, right? 'Cause as we increased the capacity as we increased the essentially the amount of data responsible for each admin we have to literally log rhythmically increase the resiliency of these boxes because we're going to talk about petabyte scale systems and hosting them really 10,000 virtual machines in the two U form factor. I need to be able to accommodate that to make sure things don't blip. I need resilient networks, right. Have redundancy and access. I need to have protection schemes at every single layer of the stack. And so we're quite happy to be able to provide that as we leapfrog the industry and go in literally situations that are three times the competitive density that we you see out there and other distributed systems that are still bound by the commercial offerings, then, hey we also have to own that risk from a vendor side we have to make these things is actually rate six protection scheme equivalent from a drive standpoint and act back from controllers everywhere. Be able to supply the performance and consistency of that service throughout even the bad situations. >> And to that point, one of the things that you talked about, that's interesting to me that I'd kind of like you to highlight is your recovery times, because bad things will happen. And so you guys do something very, very different about that. That's critical to a lot of my customers because they know that Murphy will show up one day. So, I mean 'cause it happens, so then what. >> Well, speaking of that, then what Brian I want to go over to you. You mentioned Matt mentioned resiliency. And if we think of the situation that we're in in 2020 many companies are used to DR and BC plans for natural disasters, pandemics. So as we look at the shift and then the the volume of ransomware, that's going up one ransomware attack every 11 seconds this year, right now. How Brian what's that change that businesses need to make from from cyber security to cyber resiliency? >> Yeah, it's a good point in, and I try to hammer that home with our clients that, you're used to having your business continuity disaster recovery this whole cyber resiliency thing is a completely separate practice that we have to set up and think about and go through the same thought process that you did for your DR What are you going to do? What are you going to pretest? How are you going to test it? How are you going to detect whether or not you've got ransomware? So I spent a lot of time with our clients on that theme of you have to think about and build your cyber resiliency plan 'cause it's going to happen. It's not like a DR plan where it's a pure insurance policy and went and like you said, every 11 seconds there's an event that takes place. It's going to be a win not then. Yeah and then we have to work with our customers to put in a place for cyber resiliency and then we spent a lot of discussion on, okay what does that mean for my critical applications, from a restore time of backup and mutability. What do we need for those types of services, right? In terms of quick restore, which are my tier zero applications that I need to get back as fast as possible, what other ones can I they'll stick out on tape or virtual tape in and do things like that. So again, there's a wide range of technology that we have available in the in the portfolio for helping our clients from cyber resiliency. And then we try to distinguish that cyber resiliency versus cyber security. So how do we help to keep every, everybody out from a cybersecurity view? And then what can we do from the cyber resiliency, from a storage perspective to help them once once it gets to us, that's a bad thing. So how can we help? How help our folks recover? Well, and that's the point that you're making Brian is that now it's not a matter of, could this happen to us? It's going to, how much can we tolerate? But ultimately we have to be able to recover. We can't restore that data and one of those things when you talk about ransomware and things, we go to that people as the weakest link insecurity AJ talked about that, there's the people. Yeah there's probably quite a bit of lack of patients going on right now. But as we look as I want to go back over to you to kind of look at, from a data center perspective and these storage solutions, being able to utilize things to help the people, AI and Machine Learning. You talked about AR VR. Talk to me a little bit more about that as you see, say in the next 12 months or so as moving forward, these trends these new solutions that are simplified. >> Yeah, so a couple of things around that one of which is iteration of technology the storage platforms the Silicon they're making use of Matt I think you told me 14 months is the roughly the Silicon cycle that you guys are seeing, right? So performance levels are going to continue to go up the speeds. The speeds are going to continue to go up. The scale is going to is going to continue to shift. And one of the things that does for a lot of the application owners is it lets them think broader. It lets them think bigger. And I wish I could tell you that I knew what the next big application was going to be but then we'd be having a conversation about which Island in the Pacific I was going to be retiring too. But they're going to come and they're going to consume this performance because if you look at the applications that you're dealing with in your everyday life, right. They continue to get broader. The scope of them continues to scale out, right. There's things that we do. I saw I think it was an MIT development recently where they're talking about being able to and they were originally doing it for Alzheimer's and dementia, but they're talking about being able to use the microphones in your smartphone to listen to the way you cough and use that as a predictor for people who have COVID that are not symptomatic yet. So asymptomatic COVID people, right? So when we start talking about where this, where this kind of technology can go and where it can lead us, right. There's sort of this unending possibility for it. But what that on, in part is that the infrastructure has to be extremely sound, right? The foundation has to be there. We have to have the resilience, the reliability and one of the points that Brian was just making is extremely key. We talk about disaster tolerance business continuous, so business continuance is how do you recover? Cyber resilience is the same conversation, right? So you have the protection side of it. Here's my defenses. Now what happens when they actually get in. And let's be honest, right? Humans are frequently that weak link, right. For a variety of behaviors that the humans that humans have. And so when that happens, where's the software in the storage that tells you, "Hey, wait there's an odd traffic behavior here "where data is being copied "at rates and to locations that that are not normal." And so that's part of when we talk about what we're doing in our side of the automation is how do you know what normal looks like? And once you know what normal looks like you can figure out where the outliers are. And that's one of the things that people use a lot for trying to determine whether or not ransomware is going on is, "Hey, this is a traffic pattern, that's new. "This is a traffic pattern. "That's different." Are they doing this because they're copying the dataset from here to here and encrypting it as they go, right? 'Cause that's one of the challenges you got to, you got to watch for. So I think you're going to see a lot of advancement in the application space. And not just the MIT stuff, which is great. The fact that people are actually able to or I may have misspoken, maybe Johns Hopkins. And I apologize to the Johns Hopkins folks that kind of scenario, right. There's no knowing what they can make use of here in terms of the data sets, right. Because we're gathering so much data, the internet of things is an overused phrase but the sheer volume of data that's being generated outside of the data center, but manipulated analyzed and stored internally. 'Cause you got to have it someplace secure. Right and that's one of the things that we look at from our side is we've got to be that as close to unbreakable as we can be. And then when things do break able to figure out exactly what happened as rapidly as possible and then the recovery cycle as well. >> Excellent and I want to finish with you. We just have a few seconds left, but as AJ was talking about this massive evolution and applications, for example when we talk about simplicity and we talk about resiliency and being able to recover when something happens, how did these new technologies that we've been unpacking today? How did these help the admin folks deal with all of the dynamics that are happening today? >> Yeah so I think the biggest the drop, the mic thing we can say right now is that we're delivering 100% tier zero in Vme without data reduction value props on top of it at a cost that undercuts off-prem S3 storage. So if you look at what you can do from an off-prem solution for air gap and from cyber resiliency you can put your data somewhere else. And it's going to take whatever long time to transfer that data back on prem, to read get back to your recover point. But when you work at economics that we're doing right now in the distributed systems, hey, you're DR side, your copies of data do not have to wait for that. Off-prem bandwidth to restore. You can actually literally restore it in place. And you couple that with all of the the technology on the software side that integrates with it I get incremental point in time. Recovery is either it's on the primary side of DRS side, wherever, but the fact that we get to approach this thing from a cost value then by all means I can naturally absorb a lot of the cyber resiliency value in that too. And because it's all getting all the same orchestrated capabilities, regardless of the big, small, medium, all that stuff, it's the same skillsets. And so I don't need to really learn new platforms or new solutions to providing cyber resiliency. It's just part of my day-to-day activity because fundamentally all of us have to wear that cyber resiliency hat. But as, as our job, as a vendor is to make that simple make it cost elegance, and be able to provide a essentially a homogenous solutions overall. So, hey, as your business grows, your risk gets averted on your recovery means also get the thwarted essentially by your incumbent solutions and architecture. So it's pretty cool stuff that we're doing, right. >> It is pretty cool. And I'd say a lot of folks would say, that's the Nirvana but I think the message that the three of you have given in the last 20 minutes or so is that IBM and Brocade together. This is a reality. You guys are a cornucopia of knowledge. Brian, Matt, AJ, thank you so much for joining me on this panel I really enjoyed our conversation. >> Thank you. >> Thank you again Lisa. >> My pleasure. From my guests I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching this IBM Brocade panel on theCUBE.

(upbeat funk jazz music) >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, California for another CUBE Conversation, where we go in depth with thought leaders driving innovation across tech industry. I'm your host, Peter Burris. What does every CIO want to do? They want to support the business as it evolves and transforms, using data as that catalyst for better customer experience, improved operations, and more profitable options. But to do that we have to come up with a way of improving the underlying infrastructure that makes all this possible. We can't have a situation where we introduce more complex applications in response to richer business needs and have that translated into non-scalable underlying technology. CIOs in 2020 and beyond have to increasingly push their suppliers to make things simpler. And that's true in all domains, but perhaps especially storage, where the explosion of data is driving so many of these changes. So what does it mean to say that storage can be made more simple? Well to have that conversation we're going to be speaking with Eric Herzog, CMO and VP of Global Channels at IBM Storage, about, quite frankly, an announcement that IBM's doing to specifically address that question, making storage simpler. Eric, thanks very much for coming back to theCUBE. >> Great, thank you. We love to be here. >> All right, I know you got an announcement to talk about, but give us the update. What's going on with IBM Storage? >> Well, I think the big thing is, clients have told us, storage is too complex. We have a multitude of different platforms, an entry product, a mid-range product, a high-end product, then we have to traverse to the cloud. Why can't we get a simple, easy to use, but very robust feature set? So at IBM Storage with this FlashSystem announcement, we have a family that traverses entry, mid-range, enterprise and automatically can go out to a hybrid multicloud environment, all driven across a common platform, common API, common software, our award-winning Spectrum Virtualize, and innovative technologies around, whether it be cyber-resiliency, performance, incredible performance, ease of use, easier and easier to use. For example, we can do AI-based automated tiering from one flash array to another, or from storage class memory to flash. Innovation, at the same time driving better value out of the storage but not charging a lot of extra money for these features. In fact, our FlashSystems announcement, the platforms, depending on the configuration, can be as much as 50% lower than our previous generation. Now that's delivering value, but at the same time we added enhanced features, for example, the capability of even better container support than we already had in our older platform. Or our new FlashCore Modules that can deliver performance in a cluster of up to 17.2 million IOPS, up from our previous performance of 15. Yet, as I said before, delivering that enterprise value and those enterprise data services, in this case I think you said, depending on the config, up to as much as 50% less expensive than some of our previous generation products. >> So let me unpack that a little bit. So, historically, when you look at, or even today, when you look at how storage product lines are set up, they're typically set up for one footprint for the low end, one or more footprints in the mid-range, and then one or more footprints at the high-end. And those are differentiated by the characteristics of the technologies being employed, the function and services that are being offered, and the prices and financial arrangements that are part of it. Are you talking about, essentially, a common product line that is differentiated only by the configuration needs of the volume and workloads? >> Exactly. The FlashSystem traverses entry, mid-range, enterprise, and can automatically get you out to a hybrid multicloud environment, same APIs, same software, same management infrastructure. Our Storage Insights product, which is a could-based storage manager and predictive analytics, works on the entry product, at no charge, mid-range product at no charge, the enterprise product at no charge, and we've even added, in that solution, support for non-IBM platforms, again. So, delivering more value across a standard platform with a common API, a common software. Remember, today's storage is growing exponentially. Are the enterprise customers getting exponentially more storage admins? No. In fact, many of the big enterprises, after the downturn of '08 and '09 had to cut back on storage resources. They haven't hired back to how many storage resources they had in 2007 or '8. They've gotten back to full IT, but a lot of those guys are DevOps people or other functions, so, the storage admins and the IT infrastructure admins have to manage extra petabytes, extra exabytes depending on the type of company. So one platform that can do that and traverse out to the cloud automatically, gives you that innovation and that value. In fact, two of our competitors, just as example, do the same thing, have four platforms. Two other have three. We can do it with one. Simple platform, common API, common storage management, common interface, incredible performance, cyber-resiliency, but all built in something that's a common data management infrastructure with common data software, yet continuing to innovate as we've done with this release of the FlashSystem family. >> OK, so talk about the things that, common API, common software, also, I presume, common, the core module, that FlashCore Module that you have, common across the family as well? >> Almost all the family. At the very entry space we still do use interstandard SSDs but we can get as low as a street price for all-flash config of $16,000 for an all-flash array. Two, three years ago that would've been unheard of. And, by the way, it had six lines of availability, same software interface and API as a system that could go up to millions of dollars at the way high end, right? And anything in between. So common ease of use, common management, simple to manage, simple to deploy, simple to use, but not simple in the value proposition. Reduce the TCO, reduce the ROI, reduce the operational manpower, they're overtaxed as it is. So by making this across the portfolio with the FlashSystem and go out to the hybrid multicloud but bringing in all this high technology such as our FlashCore Modules and, as I said, at a reduced price to the previous generation. What more could you ask for? >> OK, so you've got some promises that you made in 2019 that you're also actually realizing. One of my favorite ones, something I think is pretty important, is storage class memory. Talk about how some of those 2019 promises are being realized in this announcement. >> So what we did is, when we announced our first FlashSystem family in 2018 using our new NVMe FlashCore Modules, we had an older FlashSystem family for several years that used, you know, the standard SaaS interface. But our first NVMe product was announced in the summer of 2018. At that time we said, all the way back then, that in early '20 we would be start shipping storage class memory. Now, by the way, those FlashSystems NVMe products that we announced back then, actually can still use storage class memory, so, we're protecting the investment of our installed base. Again, innovation with value on the installed base. >> A very IBM thing to do. >> Yes, we want to take care of the installed base, we also want to have new modern technologies, like storage class memory, like improved performance and capacity in our FlashCore Modules where we take off the shelf Flash and create our own modules. Seven year media warranty, up to 17.2 million IOPS, 17 mites of latency, which is 30% better than our next nearest competitor. By the way, we can create a 17 million IOP config in only eight rack U. One of our competitors gets close, 15 million, but it takes them 40 rack U. Again, operational manpower, 40 rack U's harder to manage, simplicity of deployment, it's harder to deploy all that in 40 rack U, we can do it in eight. >> And pricing. >> Yes. And we've even brought out now, a preconfigured rack. So what we call the FlashSystem 9200R built into the rack with a switching infrastructure, with the storage you need, IBM services will deploy it for you, that's part of the deal, and you can create big solutions that can scale dramatically. >> Now R stands for hybrid? >> Rack. >> Rack. Well talk to me about some of the hybrid packaging that you're bringing out for hybrid cloud. >> Sure, so, from a hybrid cloud perspective, our Spectrum Virtualize software, which sits on-prem, entry, mid-range and at the upper end, can traverse to a cloud called Spectrum Virtualize for Cloud. Now, one of the keys things of Spectrum Virtualize, both on-prem and our cloud version, is it supports not only IBM arrays, but through a storage virtualisation technology, over 450 arrays from multi-vendors, and in short our competition. So we can take our arrays, and automatically go out to the cloud. We can do a lot of things. Cloud air gapping, to help with malware and ransonware protection, DR, snapshots and replicas. Not only can the new FlashSystem family do that, to Spectrum Virtualize on-prem and then out, but Spectrum Virtualize coming on our FlashSystem portfolio can actually virtualize non-IBM arrays and give them the same enterprise functionality and in this case, hybrid cloud technology, not only for us, but for our competitors products as well. One user interface. Now talk about simple. Our own products, again one family, entry, mid-range and enterprise traversing the cloud. And by the way, for those of you who are heterogeneous, we can deliver those enterprise class services, including going out to a hybrid multi-cloud configuration, for our competitors products as well. One user interface, one throat to choke, one support infrastructure with our Storage Insights platform, so it's a great way to make things easier, cut the CAPEX and OPEX, but not cut the innovation. We believe in value and innovation, but in an easy deploy methodology, so that you're not overly complex. And that is killing people, the complexity of their solutions. >> All right. So there's a couple of things about cloud, as we move forward, that are going to be especially interesting. One of them is going to be containers. Everybody's talking about, and IBM's been talking about, you've been talking about this, we've talked about this a number of times, about how containers and storage and data are going to come together. How do you see this announcement supporting those emerging and evolving need for container-based applications in the enterprise. >> So, first of all, it's often tied to hybrid multi-cloudness. Many of the hybrid cloud configurations are configured on a container based environment. We support Red Hat OpenShift. We support Kubernetes environments. We can provide on these systems at no charge, persistent storage for those configurations. We also, although it does require a backup package, Spectrum Protect, the capability of backing up that persistent storage in an OpenShift or Kubernetes environment. So really it's critical. Part of our simplicity is this FlashSystem platform with this technology, can support bare metal workloads, virtualised workloads, VMware, HyperV, KVM, OVM, and now container workloads. And we do see, for the next coming years, think about bare metal. Bare metal is as old as I am. That's pretty old. Well we got tons of customers still got bare metal applications, but everyone's also gone virtualized. So it's not, are we going to have one? It's you're going to have all three. So with the FlashSystems family, and what we have with Spectrum Virtualized software, what we have with our container support, we need with bare metal support, incredible performance, whatever you need, VMware integration, HyperV integration, everything you need for a virtualized environment, and for a container environment, we have everything too. And we do think the, especially the mid to big accounts, are going to try run all three, at least for the next couple of years. This gives you a platform that can do that, at the entry point, up to the high end, and then out to a hybrid multi-cloud environment. >> With that common software and APIs across. Now, every year that you and I have talked, you've been especially passionate about the need for turning the crank, and evolving and improving the nature of automation, which is another one of the absolute necessities, as we start thinking about cloud. How is this announcement helping to take that next step, turn the crank in automation? >> So a couple of things. One is our support now for Ansible, so offering that Ansible support, integrates into the container management frameworks. Second thing is, we have a ton of AI-type specific based technology built into the FlashSystem platform. First is our cloud based storage and management predictive analytics package, Storage Insights. The base version comes for free across our whole portfolio, whether it be entry, mid-range or high-end, across the whole FlashSystems family. It gives you predictive analytics. If you really do have a support problem, it eases the support issues. For example, instead of me saying, "Peter send me those log files." Guess what? We can see the log files. And we can do it right there while you're on the phone. You've got a problem? Let's make it easier for you to get it solved. So Storage Insights across AI based, predictive analytics, performance, configuration issues, all predicatively done, so AI based. Secondly, we've integrated AI in to our Spectrum Virtualize product. So as exemplar, easier to your technology, can allow you to tier data from storage class memory to Flash, as an example, and guess what it does? It automatically knows based on usage patterns, where the data should go. Should it be on the storage class memory? Should it be on Flash core modules? And in fact, we can create a configuration, we have Flash core modules and introduce standard SSDs, which are both Flash, but our Flash core modules are substantially faster, much better latency, like I said, 30% better than the next nearest competition, up to 17.2 million IOPS. The next closest is 15. And in fact, it's interesting, one of our competitors has used storage class memory as a read cache. It dramatically helps them. But they go from 250 publicly stated mites of latency, to 125. With this product, the FlashSystem, anything that uses our Flash core modules, our FlashSystems semi 200, our FlashSystem 9200 product, and the 9200-R product. We can do 70 mites of latency, so almost twice as fast, without using storage class memory. So think what that storage class memory will offer. So we can create hybrid configurations, with StorageClass and Flash, you could have our Flash core modules, and introduce standard SSDs if you want, but it's all AI based. So we have AI based in our Storage Insights, predictive analytics, management and support infrastructure. And we have predictive analytics in things like our Easy Tier. So not only do we think storage is a critical foundation for the AI application workload and use case, which it is, but you need to imbue your storage, which we've done across FlashSystems, including what we've done with our cloud edition, because Spectrum Virtualize has a cloud edition, and an on-prem edition, seamless transparency, but AI in across that entire platform, using Spectrum Virtualize. >> All right, so let me summarize. We've got an absolute requirement from enterprise, to make storage simpler, which requires simple product families with more commonality, where that commonality delivers great value, and at the same time the option to innovate, where that innovation's going to create value. We have a lot simpler set of interfaces and technologies, as you said they're common, but they are more focused on the hybrid cloud, the multi-cloud world, that we're working in right now, that brings more automation and more high-quality storage services to bear wherever you are in the enterprise. So I've got to ask you one more question. I'm a storage administrator, or a person who is administering data, inside the infrastructure. I used to think of doing things this way, what is the one or two things that I'm going to do differently as a consequence of this kind of an announcement? >> So I think the first one, it's going to reduce your operational expenses and your operational man power, because you have a common API, a common software platform, a common foundation for data management and data movement, it's not going to be as complex for you to pull your storage configurations. Second thing, you don't have to make as many choices between high-end workloads, mid-range workloads, and entry workloads. Six lines across the board. Enterprise class data services across the board. So when you think simple, don't think simple as simplistic, low-end. This is a simple to use, simple deploy, simple to manage product, with extensive innovation and a price that's- >> So simple to secure? >> And simple to secure. Data rest encryption across the portfolio. And in fact those that use our FlashCore Modules, no performance hit on encryption, and no performance hit on data compression. So it can help you shrink the actual amount you need to buy from us, which sounds sort of crazy, that a storage company would do that, but with our data reduction technologies, compression being one of them, there's no performance hits, you can compress compressable workloads, and now, anything with a FlashCore Module, which by the way, happens to be FIPS 140-2 certified, there's no excuse not to encrypt, because encryption, as you know, has had a performance hit in the past. Now, our 7200, our 5100 FlashSystem, and our FlashSystem 9200 and 9200R, there's no performance on encrypting, so it gives you that extra resiliency, that you need in a storage world, and you don't get a non-compression, which helps you shrink how much you end up buying from IBM. So that's the type of innovation we deliver, in a simple to use, easy to deploy, easy to manage but incredible innovative value, brought into a very innovative solution, across the board, not just let's innovate at the high end or you know what I mean? Trying to make that innovation spread, which, by the way, makes it easier for the storage guy. >> Well, look, in a world, even inside a single enterprise, you're going to have branch offices, you're going to have local this, the edge, you can't let the bad guys in on a lesser platform that then can hit data on a higher end platform. So the days of presuming that there's this great differentiation in the tier are slowly coming to an end as everything becomes increasingly integrated. >> Well as you've pointed out many times, data is the asset. Not the most valuable one. It is the asset of today's digital enterprise and it doesn't matter whether you're a global Fortune 500, or you're a (mumble). Everybody is a digital enterprise these days, big, medium or small. So cyber resiliency is important, cutting costs is important, being able to modernize and optimize your infrastructure, simply and easily. The small guys don't have a storage guy, and a network guy and a server guy, they have the IT guy. And even the big guys, who used to have hundreds of storage admins in some cases, don't have hundreds any more. They've got a lot of IT people, but they cut back so these storage admins and infrastructure admins in these global enterprise, they're managing 10, 20 times the amount of storage they managed even two or three years ago. So, simple, across the board, and of course hyper multicloud is critical to these configurations. >> Eric, it's a great annoucement, congratulations to IBM to actually delivering on what your promises are. Once again, great to have you on theCUBE. >> Great, thank you very much Peter. >> And thanks to you, again, for participating in this CUBE conversation, I'm Peter Burris, see you next time. (upbeat, jazz music)

(funky music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto, California for another CUBE conversation, where we go in-depth with thought leaders driving innovation across the tech industry. I'm your host Peter Burris. Well, as I sit here in our CUBE studios, 2020's fast approaching, and every year as we turn the corner on a new year, we bring in some of our leading thought leaders to ask them what they see the coming year holding in the particular technology domain in which they work. And this one is no different. We've got a great CUBE guest, a frequent CUBE guest, Eric Herzog, the CMO and VP of Global Channels, IBM Storage, and Eric's here to talk about storage in 2020. Eric? >> Peter, thank you. Love being here at theCUBE. Great solutions. You guys do a great job on educating everyone in the marketplace. >> Well, thanks very much. But let's start really quickly, quick update on IBM Storage. >> Well, been a very good year for us. Lots of innovation. We've brought out a new Storwize family in the entry space. Brought out some great solutions for big data and AI solutions with our Elastic Storage System 3000. Support for backup in container environments. We've had persistent storage for containers, but now we can back it up with our award-winning Spectrum Protect and Protect Plus. We've got a great set of solutions for the hybrid multicloud world for big data and AI and the things you need to get cyber resiliency across your enterprise in your storage estate. >> All right, so let's talk about how folks are going to apply those technologies. You've heard me say this a lot. The difference between business and digital business is the role that data plays in a digital business. So let's start with data and work our way down into some of the trends. >> Okay. >> How are, in your conversations with customers, 'cause you talk to a lot of customers, is that notion of data as an asset starting to take hold? >> Most of our clients, whether it be big, medium, or small, and it doesn't matter where they are in the world, realize that data is their most valuable asset. Their customer database, their product databases, what they do for service and support. It doesn't matter what the industry is. Retail, manufacturing. Obviously we support a number of other IT players in the industry that leverage IBM technologies across the board, but they really know that data is the thing that they need to grow, they need to nurture, and they always need to make sure that data's protected or they could be out of business. >> All right, so let's now, starting with that point, in the tech industry, storage has always kind of been the thing you did after you did your server, after you did your network. But there's evidence that as data starts taking more center stage, more enterprises are starting to think more about the data services they need, and that points more directly to storage hardware, storage software. Let's start with that notion of the ascension of storage within the enterprise. >> So with data as their most valuable asset, what that means is storage is the critical foundation. As you know, if the storage makes a mistake, that data's gone. >> Right. >> If you have a malware or ransomware attack, guess what? Storage can help you recover. In fact, we even got some technology in our Spectrum Protect product that can detect anomalous activity and help the backup admin or the storage admins realize they're having a ransomware or malware attack, and then they could take the right corrective action. So storage is that foundation across all their applications, workloads, and use cases that optimizes it, and with data as the end result of those applications, workloads, and use cases, if the storage has a problem, the data has a problem. >> So let's talk about what you see as in that foundation some of the storage services we're going to be talking most about in 2020. >> Eric: So I think one of the big things is-- >> Oh, I'm sorry, data services that we're going to be talking most about in 2020. >> So I think one of the big things is the critical nature of the storage to help protect their data. People when they think of cyber security and resiliency think about keeping the bad guy out, and since it's not an issue of if, it's when, chasing the bad guy down. But I've talked to CIOs and other executives. Sometimes they get the bad guy right away. Other times it takes them weeks. So if you don't have storage with the right cyber resiliency, whether that be data at rest encryption, encrypting data when you send it out transparently to your hybrid multicloud environment, whether malware and ransomware detection, things like air gap, whether it be air gap to tape or air gap to cloud. If you don't think about that as part of your overall security strategy, you're going to leave yourself vulnerable, and that data could be compromised and stolen. So I can almost say that in 2020, we're going to talk more about how the relationship between security and data and storage is going to evolve, almost to the point where we're actually going to start thinking about how security can be, it becomes almost a feature or an attribute of a storage or a data object. Have I got that right? >> Yeah, I mean, think of it as storage infused with cyber resiliency so that when it does happen, the storage helps you be protected until you get the bad guy and track him down. And until you do, you want that storage to resist all attacks. You need that storage to be encrypted so they can't steal it. So that's a thing, when you look at an overarching security strategy, yes, you want to keep the bad guy out. Yes, you want to track the bad guy down. But when they get in, you'd better make sure that what's there is bolted to the wall. You know, it's the jewelry in the floor safe underneath the carpet. They don't even know it's there. So those are the types of things you need to rely on, and your storage can do almost all of that for you once the bad guy's there till you get him. >> So the second thing I want to talk about along this vein is we've talked about the difference between hardware and software, software-defined storage, but still it ends up looking like a silo for most of the players out there. And I've talked to a number of CIOs who say, you know, buying a lot of these software-defined storage systems is just like buying not a piece of hardware, but a piece of software as a separate thing to manage. At what point in time do you think we're going to start talking about a set of technologies that are capable of spanning multiple vendors and delivering a more broad, generalized, but nonetheless high function, highly secure storage infrastructure that brings with it software-defined, cloud-like capabilities. >> So what we see is the capability of A, transparently traversing from on-prem to your hybrid multicloud seamlessly. They can't, it can't be hard to do. It's got to happen very easily. The cloud is a target, and by the way, most mid-size enterprise and up don't use one cloud, they use many, so you've got to be able to traverse those many, move data back and forth transparently. Second thing we see coming this year is taking the overcomplexity of multiple storage platforms coupled with hybrid cloud and merging them across. So you could have an entry system, mid-range system, a high-end system, traversing the cloud with a single API, a single data management platform, performance and price points that vary depending on your application workload and use case. Obviously you use entry storage for certain things, high-end storage for other things. But if you could have one way to manage all that data, and by the way, for certain solutions, we've got this with one of our products called Spectrum Virtualize. We support enterprise-class data service including moving the data out to cloud not only on IBM storage, but over 450 other arrays which are not IBM-logoed. Now, that's taking that seamlessness of entry, mid-range, on-prem enterprise, traversing it to the cloud, doing it not only for IBM storage, but doing it for our competitors, quite honestly. >> Now, once you have that flexibility, now it introduces a lot of conversations about how to match workloads to the right data technologies. How do you see workloads evolving, some of these data-first workloads, AI, ML, and how is that going to drive storage decisions in the next year, year and a half, do you think? >> Well, again, as we talked about already, storage is that critical foundation for all of your data needs. So depending on the data need, you've got multiple price points that we've talked about traversing out to the cloud. The second thing we see is there's different parameters that you can leverage. For example, AI, big data, and analytic workloads are very dependent on bandwidth. So if you can take a scalable infrastructure that scales to exabytes of capacity, can scale to terabytes per second of bandwidth, then that means across a giant global namespace, for example, we've got with our Spectrum Scale solutions and our Elastic Storage System 3000 the capability of racking and stacking two rack U at a time, growing the capacity seamlessly, growing the performance seamlessly, providing that high-performance bandwidth you need for AI, analytic, and big data workloads. And by the way, guess what, you could traverse it out to the cloud when you need to archive it. So looking at AI as a major force in the coming, not just next year, but in the coming years to go, it's here to stay, and the characteristics that IBM sees that we've had in our Spectrum Scale products, we've had for years that have really come out of the supercomputing and the high-performance computing space, those are the similar characteristics to AI workloads, machine workloads, to the big data workloads and analytics. So we've got the right solution. In fact, the two largest supercomputers on this planet have almost an exabyte of IBM storage focused on AI, analytics, and big data. So that's what we see traversing everywhere. And by the way, we also see these AI workloads moving from just the big enterprise guys down into small shops, as well. So that's another trend you're going to see. The easier you make that storage foundation underneath your AI workloads, the more easy it is for the big company, the mid-size company, the small company all to get into AI and get the value. The small companies have to compete with the big guys, so they need something, too, and we can provide that starting with a little simple two rack U unit and scaling up into exabyte-class capabilities. >> So all these new workloads and the simplicity of how you can apply them nonetheless is still driving questions about how the storage hierarchies evolved. Now, this notion of the storage hierarchy's been around for, what, 40, 50 years, or something like that. >> Eric: Right. >> You know, tape and this and, but there's some new entrants here and there are some reasons why some of the old entrants are still going to be around. So I want to talk about two. How do you see tape evolving? Is that, is there still need for that? Let's start there. >> So we see tape as actually very valuable. We've had a real strong uptick the last couple years in tape consumption, and not just in the enterprise accounts. In fact, several of the largest cloud providers use IBM tape solutions. So when you need to provide incredible amounts of data, you need to provide primary, secondary, and I'd say archive workloads, and you're looking at petabytes and petabytes and petabytes and exabytes and exabytes and exabytes and zetabytes and zetabytes, you've got to have a low-cost platform, and tape provides still by far the lowest cost platform. So tape is here to stay as one of those key media choices to help you keep your costs down yet easily go out to the cloud or easily pull data back. >> So tape still is a reasonable, in fact, a necessary entrant in that overall storage hierarchy. One of the new ones that we're starting to hear more about is storage-class memory, the idea of filling in that performance gap between external devices and memory itself so that we can have a persistent store that can service all the new kinds of parallelism that we're introducing into these systems. How do you see storage-class memory playing out in the next couple years? >> Well, we already publicly announced in 2019 that in 2020, in the first half, we'd be shipping storage-class memory. It would not only working some coming systems that we're going to be announcing in the first half of the year, but they would also work on some of our older products such as the FlashSystem 9100 family, the Storwize V7000 gen three will be able to use storage-class memory, as well. So it is a way to also leverage AI-based tiering. So in the old days, flash would tier to disk. You've created a hybrid array. With storage-class memory, it'll be a different type of hybrid array in the future, storage-class memory actually tiering to flash. Now, obviously the storage-class memory is incredibly fast and flash is incredibly fast compared to disk, but it's all relative. In the old days, a hybrid array was faster than an all hard drive array, and that was flash and disk. Now you're going to see hybrid arrays that'll be storage-class memory and with our easy tier function, which is part of our Spectrum Virtualize software, we use AI-based tiering to automatically move the data back and forth when it's hot and when it's cool. Now, obviously flash is still fast, but if flash is that secondary medium in a configuration like that, it's going to be incredibly fast, but it's still going to be lower cost. The other thing in the early years that storage-class memory will be an expensive option from all vendors. It will, of course, over time get cheap, just the way flash did. >> Sure. >> Flash was way more expensive than hard drives. Over time it, you know, now it's basically the same price as what were the old 15,000 RPM hard drives, which have basically gone away. Storage-class over several years will do that, of course, as well, and by the way, it's very traditional in storage, as you, and I've been around so long and I've worked at hard drive companies in the old days. I remember when the fast hard drive was a 5400 RPM drive, then a 7200 RPM drive, then a 10,000 RPM drive. And if you think about it in the hard drive world, there was almost always two to three different spin speeds at different price points. You can do the same thing now with storage-class memory as your fastest tier, and now a still incredibly fast tier with flash. So it'll allow you to do that. And that will grow over time. It's going to be slow to start, but it'll continue to grow. We're there at IBM already publicly announcing. We'll have products in the first half of 2020 that will support storage-class memory. >> All right, so let's hit flash, because there's always been this concern about are we going to have enough flash capacity? You know, is enough going to, enough product going to come online, but also this notion that, you know, since everybody's getting flash from the same place, the flash, there's not going to be a lot of innovation. There's not going to be a lot of differentiation in the flash drives. Now, how do you see that playing out? Is there still room for innovation on the actual drive itself or the actual module itself? >> So when you look at flash, that's what IBM has funded on. We have focused on taking raw flash and creating our own flash modules. Yes, we can use industry standard solid state disks if you want to, but our flash core modules, which have been out since our FlashSystem product line, which is many years old. We just announced a new set in 2018 in the middle of the year that delivered in a four-node cluster up to 15 million IOPS with under 100 microseconds of latency by creating our own custom flash. At the same time when we launched that product, the FlashSystem 9100, we were able to launch it with NVME technology built right in. So we were one of the first players to ship NVME in a storage subsystem. By the way, we're end-to-end, so you can go fiber channel of fabric, InfiniBand over fabric, or ethernet over fabric to NVME all the way on the back side at the media level. But not only do we get that performance and that latency, we've also been able to put up to two petabytes in only two rack U. Two petabytes in two rack U. So incredibly rack density. So those are the things you can do by innovating in a flash environment. So flash can continue to have innovation, and in fact, you should watch for some of the things we're going to be announcing in the first half of 2020 around our flash core modules and our FlashSystem technology. >> Well, I look forward to that conversation. But before you go here, I got one more question for you. >> Sure. >> Look, I've known you for a long time. You spend as much time with customers as anybody in this world. Every CIO I talk to says, "I want to talk to the guy who brings me "or the gal who brings me the great idea." You know, "I want those new ideas." When Eric Herzog walks into their office, what's the good idea that you're bringing them, especially as it pertains to storage for the next year? >> So, actually, it's really a couple things. One, it's all about hybrid and multicloud. You need to seamlessly move data back and forth. It's got to be easy to do. Entry platform, mid-range, high-end, out to the cloud, back and forth, and you don't want to spend a lot of time doing it and you want it to be fully automated. >> So storage doesn't create any barriers. >> Storage is that foundation that goes on and off-prem and it supports multiple cloud vendors. >> Got it. >> Second thing is what we already talked about, which is because data is your most valuable asset, if you don't have cyber-resiliency on the storage side, you are leaving yourself exposed. Clearly big data and AI, and the other thing that's been a hot topic, which is related, by the way, to hybrid multiclouds, is the rise of the container space. For primary, for secondary, how do you integrate with Red Hat? What do you do to support containers in a Kubernetes environment? That's a critical thing. And we see the world in 2020 being trifold. You're still going to have applications that are bare metal, right on the server. You're going to have tons of applications that are virtualized, VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, OVM, all the virtualization layers. But you're going to start seeing the rise of the container admin. Containers are not just going to be the purview of the devops guy. We have customers that talk about doing 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 containers, just like they did when they first started going into the VM worlds, and now that they're going to do that, you're going to see customers that have bare metal, virtual machines, and containers, and guess what? They may start having to have container admins that focus on the administration of containers because when you start doing 30, 40, 50,000, you can't have the devops guy manage that 'cause you're deploying it all over the place. So we see containers. This is the year that containers starts to go really big-time. And we're there already with our Red Hat support, what we do in Kubernetes environments. We provide primary storage support for persistency containers, and we also, by the way, have the capability of backing that up. So we see containers really taking off in how it relates to your storage environment, which, by the way, often ties to how you configure hybrid multicloud configs. >> Excellent. Eric Herzog, CMO and vice president of partner strategies for IBM Storage. Once again, thanks for being on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> And thanks for joining us for another CUBE conversation. I'm Peter Burris. See you next time. (funky music)

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum, World 2019 brought to you by the M Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to San Francisco. Day three of our coverage here on the Cube Of'em world 2019. I'm John Wall's Glad to have you here aboard for our continuing coverage here Day Volonte is also joining me, as is the sartorially resplendent Eric Herzog, cm of and vice president. Global storage channels that IBM storage. Eric, good to see you and love the shirt. Very >> nice. Thank you. Well, always have a wine shirts when I'm on the Cube >> I love in a long time Cuba to we might say, I'm sure he's got the record. Yeah, might pay. Well, >> you and pattern, neck and neck. We'll go to >> the vault. And well, >> since Pat used to be my boss, you know, couch out a path. >> Well, okay. Let the little show what IBM think. Maybe. Well, that's OK. Let's just start off a big picture. We're in all this, you know. Hybrid. Multilingual. This discussion went on this week. Obviously, just your thoughts about general trends and where the business is going now supposed to wear? Maybe we're 23 years ago. Well, the >> good thing is for IBM storage, and we actually came to your partner and titty wiki Bond when our new general manager, Ed Walsh, joined. And we came and we saw Dave and John at the old office are at your offices, and we did a pitch about hybrid multi cloud. Remember that gave us some feedback of how to create a new slide. So we created a slide based on Dave's input, and we were doing that two and 1/2 years ago. So we're running around telling the storage analyst Storage Press about hybrid multi cloud based on IBM storage. How weaken transparently move data, things we do with backup, Of course. An archive. You've got about 450 small and medium cloud providers. Their backup is a service engine. Is our spectrum protect? And so we talked about that. So Dave helped us craft the slide to make it better, because he said, we left a couple things >> out that Eric >> owes you. There were a few other analysts I'm sure you talked to and got input, but but us really were the first toe to combine those things in your in your marketing presentations. But >> let's I'd love to get >> an update on the business. Yes, help people understand the IBM storage organization. You guys created the storage business, you know, years and years and years ago. It's a it's a you know you've got your core business, which is column arms dealers. But there's a lot of Regent IBM, the Cloud Division. You've got the service's division, but so help us understand this sort of organizational structure. So >> the IBM story division's part of IBM Systems, which includes both the mainframe products Z and the Power Server entities. So it's a server in storage division. Um, the Easy guys in particular, have a lots of software that they sell and not just mainframe. So they have a very, very large software business, as do we. As you know, from looking at people that do the numbers, We're the second largest storage software company in the world, and the bulk of that software's not running on IBM gear. So, for example, spectrum protect will back up anyone's array spectrum scale and our IBM Cloud Object storage are sold this software only software defined as the spectrum virtualized. You could basically create a J. Bader Jabo after your favorite distributor or reseller and create your honor. Rates are software, but the all of the infrastructure would actually not be ours, not branded by us. And you call us for tech support for the software side. But if you had a bad power supplier fan, you'd have to call, you know, the reseller distributor said this very robust storage software business. Obviously you make sure that was compatible with the other server elements of IBM systems. But the bulk of our storage is actually sitting connect to some server that doesn't have an IBM logo on it. So that's the bulk of our business connected to Intel servers of all types that used to include, of course, IBM Intel Server division, which was sold off to Lenovo. So we still have a very robust business in the array space that has nothing to do with working on a power machine are working on a Z machine, although we clearly worked very heavily with them and have a number of things going with him, including something that's coming very shortly in the middle of September on some new high end products that we're going to dio >> went 90 Sea Counts All this stuff. Do they >> count to give IBM credit for all the storage that lives inside of the IBM Cloud? Do you get you get credit for that or >> not get credit for that? So when they count our number, it's only the systems that we sell and the storage software that we sell. So if you look at if we were a standalone company, which would include support service made everything, some of which we don't get credit for, right, the support and service is a different entity at IBM that does that, UM, the service's group, the tech support that all goes to someone else. We don't have a new credit >> so hypothetical I don't I don't think this is the case, but let's say hypothetically, if pure storage sold an array into IBM Cloud, they would get credit for it. But if you're array and I'm sure this happens is inside of the IBM, you don't get credit for it. >> That's true interesting, so it's somewhat undercounts. Part of that is the >> way we internally count because we're selling it to ourselves. >> But that's it. >> It's not. It's more of an accounting thing, but it's different when we sell the anybody else. So, for example, we sell the hundreds of cloud providers who in theory compete with the IBM Cloud Division >> to you Get credit for that. You get credit for your own away. That's way work. But if we were standing >> on coming for, say, government, we were Zog in store and I bought the company away, we would be about a $6.3 billion standalone storage software company. That's what we would be if we were all in because support service manes. If we were our own company with our own right legal entity, just like net app or the other guys, we'd be Stanley would be in that, you know, low $6 billion range, counting everything all in. When we do report publicly, we only report our storage system because we don't report our storage software business. And as you notice a few times, our CFO has made comments. If we did count, the storage software visit would be ex, and he's publicly stated that price at least two times. Since I've been an idea when he talks about the software on, but legally we only talk about IBM storage systems. When he publicly state our numbers out onto Wall Street, that's all >> we publicly report. So, um, you're like, you're like a walking sheet of knowledge here, but I wonder if you could take the audience through the portfolio. Oh, it's vast. How should we think about it? And the names have changed. You talk about, you know, 250 a raise, whatever it is the old sand volume control. And now it's a spectrum virtualized, >> right? So take us to the portfolio. What's the current? It's free straight for. >> We have really three elements in the portfolio, all built around, if you will, solution plays. But the three real elements in the portfolio our storage arrays, storage systems, we have entry mid range and high end, just like our competitors do. We lead with all flash, but we still sell hybrid and obviously, for backup, an archive. We still sell all hard drive right for those workloads. So and we have filed blocking object just like most other guys do, Um, for an array, then we have a business built around software, and we have two key elements. Their software defined storage, and we saw that software completely stand alone. It happens, too, by the way, be embedded on the arrays. So, for example, Dave, you mentioned Spectrum virtualized that ship's on flash systems and store wise. But if you don't want our raise, we will sell you just spectrum virtualized alone for block spectrum scale for Big Big Data A. I file Workloads and IBM caught object storage, which could all of them could be bought on an array. But they also could be bought. Itjust Standalone component. Yes, there's a software so part of the advantage we feel that delivers. It's some of the people that have software defined storage, that air raid guys. It's not the same software, so for us, it's easier for us to support and service. It's easier for a stack developing have leading it. Features is not running two different pieces of software running, one that happens to have a software on Lee version or an array embedded version. So we've got that, and then the third is around modern data protection, and that's really it. So a modern data protection portfolio built around spectrum, protect and Protect Plus and some other elements. A software to find storage where we sell the software only, and then arrays. That's it. It's really three things and not show. Now they're all kinds components underneath the hood. But what we really do is we sell. We don't really run around and talk about off last race. We talk about hybrid multi cloud. Now all of our flash raise and a lot of our software defined storage will automatically tear data out, too. Hybrid multi cloud configurations. We just So we lead with that same thing. We have one around cyber resiliency. Now, the one thing that spans the whole portfolio of cyber resiliency way have cyber rebellion see and a raise. We have some softer on the mainframe called Safeguarded Copy that creates immutable copies and has extra extra security for the management rights. You've got management control, and if you have a malware ransomware attack, you couldn't recover to these known good copies. So that's a piece of software that we sell on the mainframe on >> how much growth have you seen in that in? Because he's never reveals if you've got it resonating pervasive, right, Pervasive. So >> we've got, for example, malware and ransomware detection. Also, Inspector protect. So it's taken example. So I'm going to steal from the Cube and I'm gonna ask Dave and for you, I want a billion dollars and Dave's gonna laugh at me because he used a spectrum protect. He's gonna start laughing. But if I'm the ransomware guy, what do I do? I go after your snapshots, your replicas and your backup data sets. First, I make sure I've got those under control. And then when I tell you I'm holding you for ransom, you can't go back to a known good copy. So Ransomware goes after backup snaps and replicas first. Then it goes half your primary storage. So what we do, inspector protect, for example, is we know that at Weeki Bond and the Cube, you back up every night from 11 32 1 30 takes two hours to back you up every night. It's noon. There's tons of activity in the backup data sets. What the heck is going on? We send it out to the admin, So the admin for the Cube wicky bond takes a look and says, No server failure. So you can't be doing a lot of recovery because of a bad server. No storage failures. What the heck is going on? It could be a possible mount where ransomware attack. So that type of technology, we encrypt it, rest on all of our store to raise. We have both tape and tape and cloud air gapping. I'm gonna ask you about that. We've got both types of air gapped >> used to hate tape. Now he loves my love, right? No, I used to hate it, But now I love it because it's like the last resort, just in case. And you do air gapping when you do a WR gapping with customers, Do you kind of rotate the You know, it's like, uh, you know, the Yasser Arafat used to move every night. You sleep in a different place, right? You gonna rotate the >> weird analogy? You do >> some stuff. There's a whole strategy >> of how we outlined how you would do a tape air gap, you a cloud air gap. Of course you're replicating or snapping out to the cloud anyway, so they can't get to that. So if you have a failure, we haven't known good copy, depending on what time that is, right. And then you just recover. Cover back to that and even something simple. We have data rest, encryption. Okay. A lot of people don't use it or won't use it on storage because it's often software based, and so is permanent. Well, in our D s platform on the mainframe, we can encrypt with no performance hit on our flash system products we can encrypt with no performance it on our high end store. Wise, we have four models on the two high end stores models we could encrypt with no performance penalty. So why would you not encrypt all your debt? When there's a performance penalty, you have to sort of pick and choose. My God, I got to encrypt this valuable financial data, but, boy, I really wish it wasn't so slow with us. There is no performance it when you encrypt. So we have encryption at rest, encryption at flight malware and ran somewhere detection. We've got worm, which is important, obviously, doesn't mean I can't steal from wicked Bond Cube, but I certainly can't go change all your account numbers for all your vendors. For sake. of argument, right? So and there's obviously heavily regulated industries that still require worm technology, right? Immutable on the fine, by the way, you could always if it's wormed, you could encrypt it if you want to write. Because Worm just means it's immutable. It doesn't. It's not a different data type. It's just a mutable version of that data. >> So the cyber resiliency is interesting, and it leads me to another question I have around just are, indeed so A lot of companies in this industry do a lot of D developing next generation products. I think, you know, look a t m c when you were there, you know, this >> was a lot of there. Wasn't a ton, >> of course, are a lot of patents and stuff like that. IBM does corps are a lot of research and research facilities, brainiac scientists, I want if you could talk about how the storage division takes advantage of that, either specifically, is it relates to cyber resiliency. But generally, >> yes, so as you know, IBM has got, I think it's like 12 12 or 15 research on Lee sites that that's all they do, and everyone there is, in fact, my office had to be. Akiyama didn't labs, and there's two labs actually hear. The AMA didn't research lab and the Silicon Valley lab, which is very close about five miles away. Beautiful. Almost everything. There is research. There's a few product management guys I happen, Navid desk there every once. Well, see a sales guy or two. But essentially, they're all Richard with PhDs from the leading inverse now at Al Madden and many sites, all the divisions have their own research teams there. There's a heavy storage contingent at Al Midan as an example. Same thing in Zurich. So, for example, we just announced last week, as you know, stuff that will work with Quantum on the tape side. So you don't have to worry about because one of things, obviously, that people complain about quantum computing, whether it's us or anyone else, the quantum computing you can crack basically any encryption. Well, guess what? IBM research has developed tape that can be encrypted. So if using quantum computer, whether it be IBM or someone else's when you go with quantum computing, you can have secured data because the quantum computer can't actually cracked the encryption that we just put into that new tape that was done at IBM Research. How >> far away are we from From Quantum, actually being ableto be deployed and even minor use cases. >> Well, we've got available right now in ibm dot com for Betas. So we've got several 1000 people who have been accidents in it. And entities, we've been talking publicly in the 3 to 7 year timeframe for quantum computer crap out. Should it? Well, no, because if you do the right sort of security, you don't but the power. So if you're envisioning one of my favorite movies, I robot, right where she's doing her talking and that's that would really be quantum in all honesty. But at the same time, you know, the key thing IBM is all about ethics and all about how we do things, whether it be what we do with our diversity programs and hiring. And IBM is always, you know, at the forefront of doing and promoting ethical this and ethical. Then >> you do a customer data is huge. >> Yeah, and what we do with the customer data sets right, we do. GDP are, for example, all over the world were not required by law to do it really Only in Europe we do it everywhere. And so if you're not, if you're in California, if you happen to be in Zimbabwe or you're in Brazil, you get the same protection of GDP are even though we're not legally required to do it. And why are we doing that? Because they're always concerned about customers data, and we know they're paranoid about it. We want to make sure people feel comfortable with IBM. We do. Quantum computing will end up in that same vein. >> But you know, I don't worry about you guys. I were about the guys on the other side of the fence, the ones that I worry about, the same thing Capabilities knew that was >> on, of course. And you know, he talked about it in his speech, and he talked about action on the Cube yesterday about some of his comments on the point, and he mentioned that was based on Blockchain. What he said was Blockchain is a great technology. They've got Blockchain is no. IBM is a big believer in Blockchain. We promoted all over the place and in fact we've done all kinds of different Blockchain things we just did. One announced it last week with Australia with the Australian. I think it is with their equivalent of Wall Street. We've done some stuff with Merrick, the big shipping container thing, and it's a big consortium. That's all legal stuff that was really talking about someone using it the wrong way. And he's very specific point out that Blockchain is a great technology if used ethically, and IBM is all about how we do it. So we make sure whether be quantum computing, Blockchain, et cetera, that everything we do at IBM is about helping the end users, making sure that we're making, for example, open source. As you know. Well, the number one provider of open source technology pre read had acquisition is IBM. We submit Maur into the open community. Renounce Now are we able to make some money off of that? Sure we are, but we do it for a reason, because IBM believes as day point out in this core research. Open computing is court research, and we just join the Open Foundation last week as well. So we're really big on making sure that what we do ourselves is Ethel now We try to make sure that what happens in the hands of people who buy our technology, which we can always track, is also done ethically. And we go out of our way to join the right industry. Associations work with governments, work with whatever we need to do to help make sure that technology could really be iRobot. Anyone who thinks that's not true. If you talk to your grandparent's goto, go to the moon. What are you talking about? >> What Star Trek. It's always >> come to me. Oh, yeah, >> I mean, if you're your iPhone is basically the old community. Transport is the only thing I wish I could have the transfer. Aziz. You know, >> David has the same frame us up. I'm afraid of flying, and I I felt like two million miles on United and David. He's laughs about flowers, so I'm waiting for the transport. I know that's why anymore there's a cone over here. Go stand. Or maybe maybe with a little bit of like, I'm selling my Bitcoin. No, hang on, just hold on. There's always a comeback. Not always. There could be a comeback because Derek always enjoy it as always. Thanks for the good seeing you. All right, Back with more Veum. World 2019 The Cube live in San Francisco.

>> Voiceover: Live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone, CUBE's live coverage for VMworld 2019 in Moscone North, in San Francisco, California. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. Dave, our 10 years, we have Eric Herzog, the CMO and vice president of Global Storage Channels at IBM. CUBE alum, this is his 11th appearance on theCUBE at VMworld. That's the number one position. >> Dave: It's just at VMworld. >> Congratulations, welcome back. >> Well, thank you very much. Always love to come to theCUBE. >> John: Sporting the nice shirt and the IBM badge, well done. >> Thank you, thank you. >> What's going on with IBM in VMworld? First, get the news out. What's happening for you guys here? >> So for us, we just had a big launch actually in July. That was all about big data, storage for big data and AI, and also storage for cyber-resiliency. So we just had a big launch in July, so we're just sort of continuing that momentum. We have some exciting things coming out on September 12th in the high end of our storage product line, and then some additional things very heavily around containers at the end of October. >> So the open shift is the first question I have that pops into my head. You know, I think of IBM, I think of IBM Storage, I think of Red Hat, the acquisition, OpenShift's been very successful. Pat Gelsinger was talking containers, Kubernetes-- >> Eric: Right. >> OpenShift has been a big part of Red Hat's offering, now part of IBM. Has that Red Shift, I mean OpenShift's come in, to your world, and how do you guys view that? I mean, it's containers, obviously, is there any impact there at all? >> So from a storage perspective, no. IBM storage has been working with Red Hat for over 15 years, way before the company ever thought about buying them. So we went to the old Red Hat Summits, it was two guys, a dog, and a note, and IBM was there. So we've been supporting Red Hat for years, and years, and years. So for the storage division, it's probably one of the least changes to the direction, compared to the rest of IBM 'cause we were already doing so much with Red Hat. >> You guys were present at the creation of the whole Red Hat movement. >> Yeah, I mean we were-- >> We've seen the summits, but I was kind of teeing up the question, but legitimately though, now that you have that relationship under your belt-- >> Eric: Right. >> And IBM's into creating OpenShift in all the services, you're starting to see Red Hat being an integral part across IBM-- >> Eric: Right. >> Does that impact you guys at all? >> So we've already talked about our support for Red Hat OpenShift. We do support it. We also support any sort of container environment. So we've made sure that if it's not OpenShift and someone's going to leverage something else, that our storage will work with it. We've had support for containers now for two and half years. We also support the CSI Standard. We publicly announced that earlier in the year, that we'd be having products at the end of the year and into the next year around the CSI specification. So, we're working on that as well. And then, IBM also came out with a thing that are called the Cloud Paks. These Cloud Paks are built around Red Hat. These are add-ons that across multiple divisions, and from that perspective, we're positioned as, you know, really that ideal rock solid foundation underneath any of those Cloud Paks with our support for Red Hat and the container world. >> How about protecting containers? I mean, you guys obviously have a lot of history in data protection of containers. They're more complicated. There's lots of them. You spin 'em up, spin 'em down. If they don't spin 'em down, they're an attack point. What are your thoughts on that? >> Well, first thing I'd say is stay tuned for the 22nd of October 'cause we will be doing a big announcement around what we're doing for modern data protection in the container space. We've already publicly stated we would be doing stuff. Right, already said we'd be having stuff either the end of this year in Q4 or in Q1. So, we'll be doing actually our formal launch on the 22nd of October from Prague. And we'll be talking much more detail about what we're doing for modern data protection in the container space. >> Now, why Prague? What's your thinking? >> Oh, IBM has a big event called TechU, it's a Technical University, and there'll be about 2,000 people there. So, we'll be doing our launch as part of the TechU process. So, Ed Walsh, who you both know well and myself will be doing a joint keynote at that event on the 22nd. >> So, talk a little bit more about multi-cloud. You hear all kinds of stuff on multi-cloud here, and we've been talkin' on theCUBE for a while. It's like you got IBM Red Hat, you got Google, CISCO's throwin' a hat in the ring. Obviously, VMware has designs on it. You guys are an arms dealer, but of course, you're, at the same time, IBM. IBM just bought Red Hat so what are your thoughts on multi-cloud? First, how real is it? Sizeable opportunity, and from a storage perspective, storage divisions perspective, what's your strategy there? >> Well, from our strategy, we've already been takin' hybrid multi-cloud for several years. In fact, we came to Wikibon, your sister entity, and actually, Ed and I did a presentation to you in July of 2017. I looked it up, the title says hybrid multi-cloud. (Dave laughs) Storage for hybrid multi-cloud. So, before IBM started talkin' about it, as a company, which now is, of course, our official line hybrid multi-cloud, the IBM storage division was supporting that. So, we've been supporting all sorts of cloud now for several years. What we have called transparent cloud tiering where we basically just see cloud as a tier. Just the way Flash would see hard drive or tape as a tier, we now see cloud as a tier, and our spectrum virtualized for cloud sits in a VM either in Amazon or in IBM Cloud, and then, several of our software products the Spectrum line, Spectrum Protect, Spectrum Scale, are available on the AWS Marketplace as well as the IBM Cloud Marketplace. So, for us, we see multi-cloud from a software perspective where the cloud providers offer it on their marketplaces, our solutions, and we have several, got some stuff with Google as well. So, we don't really care what cloud, and it's all about choice, and customers are going to make that choice. There's been surveys done. You know, you guys have talked about it that certainly in the enterprise space, you're not going to use one cloud. You use multiple clouds, three, four, five, seven, so we're not going to care what cloud you use, whether it be the big four, right? Google, IBM, Amazon, or Azure. Could it be NTT in Japan? We have over 400 small and medium cloud providers that use our Spectrum Protect as the engine for their backup as a service. We love all 400 of them. By the way, there's another 400 we'd like to start selling Spectrum Protect as a service. So, from our perspective, we will work with any cloud provider, big, medium, and small, and believe that that's where the end users are going is to use not just one cloud provider but several. So, we want to be the storage connected. >> That's a good bet, and again, you bring up a good point, which I'll just highlight for everyone watching, you guys have made really good bets early, kind of like we were just talking to Pat Gelsinger. He was making some great bets. You guys have made some, the right calls on a lot of things. Sometimes, you know, Dave's critical of things in there that I don't really have visibility in the storage analyst he is, but generally speaking, you, Red Hat, software, the systems group made it software. How would you describe the benefits of those bets paying off today for customers? You mentioned versatility, all these different partners. Why is IBM relevant now, and from those bets that you've made, what's the benefit to the customers? How would you talk about that? Because it's kind of a big message. You got a lot going on at IBM Storage, but you've made some good bets that turned out to be on the right side of tech history. What are those bets? And what are they materializing into? >> Sure, well, the key thing is you know I always wear a Hawaiian shirt on theCUBE. I think once maybe I haven't. >> You were forced to wear a white shirt. You were forced to wear the-- >> Yes, an IBM white shirt, and once, I actually had a shirt from when I used to work for Pat at the EMC, but in general, Hawaiian shirt, and why? Because you don't fight the wave, you ride the wave, and we've been riding the wave of technology. First, it was all about AI and automation inside of storage. Our easy tier product automatically tiers. You don't have, all you do is set it up once, and after that, it automatically moves data back and forth, not only to our arrays, but over 450 arrays that aren't ours, and the data that's hottest goes to the fastest tier. If you have 15,000 RPM drives, that's your fastest, it automatically knows that and moves data back and forth between hot, fast, and cold. So, one was putting AI and automation in storage. Second wave we've been following was clearly Flash. It's all about Flash. We create our own Flash, we buy raw Flash, create our own modules. They are in the industry standard form factor, but we do things, for example, like embed encryption with no performance hit into the Flash. Latency as low as 20 microseconds, things that we can do because we take the Flash and customize it, although it is in industry standard form factor. The other one is clearly storage software and software-defined storage. All of our arrays come with software. We don't sell hardware. We sell a storage solution. They either come with Spectrum Virtualize or Spectrum Scale, but those packages are also available stand-alone. If you want to go to your reseller or your distributor and buy off-the-shelf white-box componentry, storage-rich servers, you can create your own array with Spectrum Virtualize for block, Spectrum Scale for File, IBM Object Storage for Cloud. So, if someone wants to buy software only, just the way Pat was talking about software-defined networking, we'll sell 'em software for file blocker object, and they don't buy any infrastructure from us. They only buy the software, so-- >> So, is that why you have a large customer base? Is that why there's so much, diverse set of implementations? >> Well, we've got our customers that are system-oriented, right, some you have Flash system. Got other customers that say, "Look, I just want to buy Spectrum Scale. "I don't want to buy your infrastructure. "Just I'll build my own," and we're fine with that. And the other aspect we have, of course, is we've got the modern data protection with Spectrum Protect. So, you've got a lot of vendors out on the floor. They only sell backup. That's all they sell, and you got other people on the floor, they only sell an array. They have nice little arrays, but they can't do an array and software-defined storage and modern data protection one throat to choke, one tech support, entity to deal with one set of business partners to deal with, and we can do that, which is why it's so diverse. We have people who don't have any of IBM storage at all, but they back up everything with Spectrum Protect. We have other customers who have Flash systems, but they use backup from one of our competitors, and that's okay 'cause we'll always get a PO one way or another, right? >> So, you want the choice as factor. >> Right. >> Question on the ecosystem and your relationship with VMware. As John said, 10th year at VMworld, if you go back 10 years, storage, VMware storage was limited. They had very few resources. They were throwin' out APIs to the storage industry and sayin' here, you guys, fix this problem, and you had this cartel, you know, it was EMC, IBM was certainly in there, and NetApp, a couple others, HPE, HP at the time, Dell, I don't know, I'm not sure if Dell was there. They probably were, but you had the big Cos that actually got the SDK early, and then, you'd go off and try to sell all the storage problems. Of course, EMC at the time was sort of puttin' the brakes on VMware. Now, it's totally different. You've got, actually similar cartel. Although, you've got different ownership structure with Dell, EMC, and you got (mumbles) VMwware's doin' its own software finally. The cuffs are off. So, your thoughts on the changes that have gone on in the ecosystem. IBM's sort of position and your relationship with VMware, how that's evolved. >> So, the relationship for us is very tight. Whether it be the old days of VASA, VAAI, V-center op support, right, then-- >> Dave: V-Vault, yeah yeah. >> Now, V-Vault two so we've been there every single time, and again, we don't fight the wave, we ride the wave. Virtualization's a wave. It's swept the industry. It swept the end users. It's swept every aspect of compute. We just were riding that wave and making sure our storage always worked with it with VMware, as well as other hypervisors as well, but we always supported VMware first. VMware also has a strong relationship with the cloud division, as you know, they've now solved all kinds of different things with IBM Cloud so we're making sure that we stay there with them and are always up front and center. We are riding all the waves that they start. We're not fighting it. We ride it. >> You got the Hawaiian shirt. You're riding the waves. You're hanging 10, as you used to say. Toes on the nose, as the expression goes. As Pat Gelsinger says, ride the new wave, you're a driftwood. Eric, great to see you, CMO of IBM Storage, great to have you all these years and interviewing you, and gettin' the knowledge. You're a walking storage encyclopedia, Wikipedia, thanks for comin' on. >> Great, thank you. >> All right, it's more CUBE coverage here live in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier for Dave Vellante, stay with us. I got Sanjay Putin coming up, and we have all the big executives who run the different divisions. We're going to dig into them. We're going to get the data, share with you. We'll be right back. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are continuing our coverage of VMworld 2018 day 3. I'm Lisa Martin, with two very stylish men next to me. I'm quite impressed. Dave Vellante, my esteemed co-host. >> Oh shucks. >> Rocking the salmon, King Salmon Vellante. And The Zog is back, Eric Herzog. Great to have you back. I was looking at you on Twitter and you have been on theCUBE 17 times. Is this 18 or 19? >> You know, I think Dave said I was on one of the very first CUBEs way back in 2010. So I've been on a few. >> That's a whole other criteria of VIP level. Well thank you for coming back. You have been, not only is he, you can't do a CUBE without Eric Herzog. You've been everywhere all over VMworld. I saw you're speaking at IBM booth on VMware and IBM, you're at Cisco, you're giving sessions. How do you fit it all in and still have time for us? >> Well, I always make time for theCUBE. >> Always? Thank you, thanks for that. >> Always make time for you guys. Love talking to CUBE. You guys have been very helpful. We appreciate everything that you do. Love doing shows, love 'em. I may be 60 years old, but I'm really 18 down underneath, so if I only sleep three hours a night, not a problem. >> What do you love about them? I mean, is it? >> Number one is meeting customers. Customers and channel partners, right? Well, all of the employees of all the various companies here get a paycheck from whoever that may be, me, IBM, someone from other companies, people from VMware. That's not who pays your salary. It's the end-users and the channel partners, if they buy through the channel. They're the ones that really pay your salary. So being close to the customers and the partners is number one. Second thing, of course, is seeing all the cool technology. You know, seeing what's going on, what's hot, what can we leverage from our perspective, what can we tie ourselves to. So for example, the hot things, that IBM's really been doing from a storage perspective. Cloud and modern data protection. Those are the two big things we've been focused on for the last couple of years. And how do we integrate our storage solutions and our modern data protection with cloud infrastructure, and then also how do we, if you're not in the cloud, how do we help customers protect their data better in a modern way and reuse their secondary data, instead of making 27,000 copies of the same data. >> So when theCUBE first started at VMworld, modern data protection at the time was dealing with the lack of physical resources, 'cause you went from 10 servers down to one, and you didn't have all that excess capacity to do a run up back up job anymore. Today, modern data protection is all around cloud and multi-cloud and software defined, so I wonder if you can help us sort of paint a picture of what modern data protection is for IBM? >> Sure, I think there's a couple, couple aspects too. So, first of all, you have to support the cloud, and that's two ways. So for us, several of our backup products are used by cloud service providers. In some cases they use our name, and say, "Featuring IBM Spectrum Protect or Spectrum Protect Plus." Other cases, they have their own brand but it's our software underneath the hood so that if the end user is backing up to their cloud, they're actually using our software. So that's item number one. The second thing is you need to make sure that your traditional storage software can TEAR to the cloud, can migrate data to the cloud, can transparently move data to the cloud in an automated fashion using AI. So using artificial intelligent when the data's hot if you connote a target, and that target could be a cloud, and when the data's hot it TEARs the data to the cloud. Sorry, when it's cold. When it's hot it pulls it back in and that needs to be all automated through AI base. So we've done both, we have our backup software which is available from several cloud providers as a backup as a service, we also offer it through the cloud so IBM Cloud actually sells spectrum protect backup as a service solution All of our primary storage software and even our spectrum scale software can automatically TEAR data to a cloud target device. >> Eric I got to ask you so TEARing used to be predominantly, correct me if you disagree but, it used be a one way trip to the bit-bucket. You just described going there and coming back. Has cloud changed that because of big data, analytics? Where people want to pull back data increasingly? >> So I think of a couple of things. So first of all, there's no doubt that the world is data driven. The most valuable asset isn't gold, it's not silver, it is absolutely not oil, it's not diamonds. It is data. And it doesn't matter whether you're one of the largest banks in the world, you're in manufacturing, you're in the government, or whether you're Herzog's barn grill. The data is your most valuable asset. What you do with your customer data, how you manage your business, what you do with your supply chain if your a services company, how are you servicing, what are you charging, what are you billing, all of that is the most critical thing that you have. So in a data driven world, its critical that you use the data. And that also means that because of valued data, when you backup the data or you snapshot or replicate the data, you now created a secondary copy. Well what if you could use it to do tests? What if you could use it to do big data analytics? What if you could use it for DevOps? So instead of making one copy for tests, one copy for disaster recovery, one copy for this, and have basically a plethora of copies all over the place, with what we've provided in modern data protection, you can use a backup, you can use a snap or a replica, and you can use that to do tests or development or to do big data analytics. And using that one copy not making multiple copies. So that's- >> I just want to pick up on something you said there's going to be some folks in our audience like, "yeah yeah we hear that data is more valuable than oil or more valuable than gold, et cetera, more valuable than platinum." There's evidence, if you look at the market value of the top five companies, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, they've surpassed the banks, they've surpassed the energy companies, and I would argue its cuz of data. People are recognizing that they're data companies, you agree? >> But if you look at that name the only one that actually builds anything of substance, as a fair amount of their volume of revenue, is Apple. >> Is Apple, right. >> Amazon doesn't, they ship stuff. Facebook clearly doesn't, Google has a few things but not really builds stuff its really about the data. Absolutely and if your a more traditional company like a bank or someone building the table. Whoever builds this table if they have their act together and they're using that data right, they're building the table cheaper than anyone else, they're shipping it to theCUBE cheaper than anyone else could ship it to you. They got more colors because they know what their doing. And they ship you the right color table and they don't screw it up and send you a black table when you want it this color table because black won't show up on theCUBE very well. The more you do that the more money you make. Even something as simple as a table manufacturer. And that's all about the data and how you use that data. >> So Eric you love talking with customers which is great as the CMO for IBM storage. Got to talk to those customers. Let's talk about how you're seeing customers take the efficiencies of what IBM is doing with data protection, storage, et cetera. to be able to harness the power of AI, the superpowers that Pat Gelsinger talked about on Monday, and transform their businesses. Give us some of your favorite customer examples where its really revolutionary. >> So we had a great example today, we did a panel with a bunch of end users as part of the show agenda. And one of the customers is a provider of softwares of service to universities and schools. 45,000 customers between the universities, junior colleges, schools districts, et cetera. In North America so Canada and the U.S. And they are doing softwares of service so for them performance is critical, they can't go down. All of the college bookstores, if you go into a college bookstore, all of the infrastructure behind that is them. So they're called Follet. So a couple of things, one because they're doing softwares of service and managing all that. Its critical, can't go down. Got to be available, it's got to be performant, it's got to be resilient, it's got to be reliable. So that's how the storage melds in. From modern data protection the way it melds in is how many books did Dave buy? What did Eric buy? Oh is Dave buying a used book? Or is Eric buying a new book? Okay say we know that the propensity is certain of members of the community. I went to UC Davis, University of California Davis, are going to buy used books, Dave, whereas Herzog's going to buy new. They can figure that out, how many used books they need, how many new books they need, that's all about efficiency and how they make more money. What are the store hours? Certain universities it's this, other universities it's that. What do they do in the winter time? At UC Davis you can go in the winter time, I know you went to school in Boston its probably snowing, no one's going in the bookstore in the wintertime. >> Trend towards book rentals, how do we capitalize on that? >> That's all they do. One of the things they talked about was how they always have to protect that data and back it up. The other thing they talked about was they have to assume a lot of capacity. So what they do is they bought assuming they would have to refresh in 18 months. And because our storage arrays have a ton of different data reduction technology whether that be block, D2, compression, et cetera. And they have petabytes of data. Petabytes. 12 Petabytes. They've actually calculated it out they won't need to buy new storage for 36 months instead of 18 so they just saved on CapX. Through the intelligence of the storage. So in that case you've got both modern data protection and you've got a storage message. One of our other customers who's a public reference, not here at the show, which is a hospital, they were backing up all their data, both cloud and on premise with our backup software, and they went down and their entire system went down and they didn't lose one stitch of data and its a hospital. It's a teaching hospital, think they're in Pennsylvania, and in the public reference in the video he said, "and we went down and off that backup we were able to get all of the data back. We didn't lose any patient data, we didn't lose any research data, we didn't lose any billing data, if you break your arm they do bill you, they didn't lose anything." >> That's not just money, that's lives so that's huge. >> Absolutely. >> I want to ask you about you know that table example you were giving, and we were talking about the big five companies in terms of market cap being data orientated. There seems to be a gap between those sort of traditional companies and those data companies and that gap tends to be the data is often is often in silos its human expertise or expertise around a bottling plant or the manufacturing plant or whatever it is versus a data model with humans who understand how to leverage that data. Do you see, whether its through new data protection techniques or other storage techniques that IBM is working on, ways to help customers break down those data silos so they can become more digital and be able to take advantage of data? >> So I think there's a couple of things. So first of all at the very tactical level we provide this automated IA based data TEARing. We can tear from anything to anything so we can take data from an IBM array and TEAR it to an EMC array. We can take data from an EMC array and TEAR it to a net app array. A net app array to a Tachi array, an HP array back to our array, so we can do this transparent data move based on hot and cold. Not only does that allow you to control CapX and OpX you can move the data from array to array, and once you move that data set it might be working that other array could be hooked up to a different set of servers through the SAN that's running a different workload and then takes that dataset and use it with that other piece of software out on the server side. So that's item number one. Item number two is IBM not just in the storage but overall has a global program where IBM is promoting, through universities all over the world, data scientists. Part of that is training data scientists not only how to do the science of data and analyzing data and mining data and doing it, but to break down those walls. The value is more there. And we also have from a storage perspective some products are spectrum scale products, one of our customers who's one of the largest banks in the world they run 300,000 servers attached to a giant spectrum scale repository, petabytes and petabytes, and they do real time data analytics to see if Dave Vellante or Lisa's credit card was stolen. >> Thank you! >> Oh yes, thank you! >> So that's real world analytics they run but they need petabytes of data. And then with our IBM cloud object storage technology where we have several customers at the exabyte level in production with an exabyte of data, you put the data out when its cold but guess what, if you want to mine it you might want to pull it back and guess what, you can TEAR data from spectrum scale to IBM cloud object storage and then spectrum scale can pull it back in to do the big data analytic workloads. >> And that AI you're using is it heavy open source? Is there a little bit of Watson sprinkled in there? >> It's stuff the storage division developed years ago and then has peppered in the AI based technology into that software to determine when the dataset is hot or cold and then move it back or forth. We also do the old style, so if you go back 10 years ago, the automation of storage was policy based. So we had it way back when which was if the data is 30 days old move it to this array. >> The old HSM kind of... >> Yeah and it was automated so once it hit 30 days, but now what we've done is, we started with that, what I would call automation, and now we've moved that to AI. And by the way, if you still want to do it the old way and say move this data when its 60 days old, you can still do that. But the modern way is let the storage figure out for you and move it back and forth whether it be to the cloud or whether it be on premises. >> So it's intelligent hierarchical storage management? So if the characteristics change the system knows what to do as opposed to- >> So when it's hot it'll pull the data back into flash, for example, when its cold it'll put it out to cloud, it'll put it out to tape or it'll put it out to slow hard drives, either way. >> Alright Eric, so we're almost out of time here. You've been at IBM a long time, IBM's been around a long time, you said you even have customers at exabyte scale. I'm hearing heterogeneity, customer choice, but if I'm a small hospital in the middle of America and I have choice with data protection vendors, storage vendors, some smaller than IBM that might be able to move faster, what are the top three differentiators of why I would want to go with IBM's storage solutions? >> Sure so the first thing is our broad portfolio. Whether it be file block or object, whether it be modern data protection, whether it be archiving if you still want to use tape, we're the number one provider of tape in the world and we sell gobs of it to the web scale guys. >> Of course you do. >> They're the guys that buy it. >> Cuz its cost effective. >> So we've got one throat to choke, all of it talks to each other, and happens to work with all the cloud vendors not just IBM cloud. We work with Amazon, we work with Microsoft, we work with Google, and we work with IBM's own cloud. So we can work with anything. That's out of mind. Second thing, for smaller shops we have a network of business partners all over the world, some of them even deal with the big global Fortune 500 and others deal with small accounts. And then really the third thing is that IBM makes sure that our stuff works with everyone else's stuff. Whether that be cloud, our spectrum tech software which has been around for years and is the leading enterprise backup package, the bulk of what it backs up is not IBM storage. The vast bulk of it is from two of the competitors on the floor of this show, they also back up our stuff too. And we backup everyone's. There's probably 20 storage vendors we backup every one of their data. So if someone buys storage from XYZ, call me, we can back it up. If someone buys it from one of the big competitors we back it up, from us we back it up. So the fact that our software works with everyone's gear is of an advantage for both the small shop and the big shop. We make sure that our software, whether its embedded in our arrays or whether we sell it as just a pieces storage software and we are the number one storage software provider on the planet as well, we can meet the needs of any company big or small because we have this flexibility of working with our stuff and working with everybody else stuff and most of the other guys don't do that. If its a small shop their stuff usually only works with their stuff. >> And from a support perspective, you play with everybody? >> Global network. I mean we're known for our support whether it be IBM direct or what we do with our partners all the partners are certified, its a big certification process, and if they can't certify the product they can't sell IBM's stuff. That's just how we operate. Other people, if they can move a lot of boxes but they don't have anyone pick up the phone or can come out to Dave's house to install, they let them sell, we don't do that at IBM. We don't use those box mover types we go for guys that add value and know how to work with the cloud, know how to do hybrid cloud. One of our resellers designed a Watson based AI system that's used in bottle factories. Packaging. Beer, soda, milk, and it can figure out if its full or not full, if the bottle or can or carton is damaged. And they used Watson to do it. Now they're regular resell. They resell all the storage, they resell our power, they resell mainframe, but they've gone into the software development side using this Watson thing and they're selling a full solution with the software included to bottling plants all over the world. >> Wow, Eric. This has been a super charged conversation. Thanks for stopping by and talking with Dave and me about not just your excitement about talking with customers but really how IBM is really empowering customers of any size worldwide to succeed. We know we'll see you again soon but thanks for stopping by a couple of times this week. >> Great well thank you. Thank you, really appreciate the time. >> And the outfit choices are just on point guys, you blend well too. For Eric, Dave Vellante, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from VMworld 2018 day 3. Stick around, we'll be back with our next guest after a short break. (electro music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are continuing our coverage of VMworld 2018 day 3. I'm Lisa Martin, with two very stylish men next to me. I'm quite impressed. Dave Vellante, my esteemed co-host. >> Oh shucks. >> Rocking the salmon, King Salmon Vellante. And The Zog is back, Eric Herzog. Great to have you back. I was looking at you on Twitter and you have been on theCUBE 17 times. Is this 18 or 19? >> You know, I think Dave said I was on one of the very first CUBEs way back in 2010. So I've been on a few. >> That's a whole other criteria of VIP level. Well thank you for coming back. You have been, not only is he, you can't do a CUBE without Eric Herzog. You've been everywhere all over VMworld. I saw you're speaking at IBM booth on VMware and IBM, you're at Cisco, you're giving sessions. How do you fit it all in and still have time for us? >> Well, I always make time for theCUBE. >> Always? Thank you, thanks for that. >> Always make time for you guys. Love talking to CUBE. You guys have been very helpful. We appreciate everything that you do. Love doing shows, love 'em. I may be 60 years old, but I'm really 18 down underneath, so if I only sleep three hours a night, not a problem. >> What do you love about them? I mean, is it? >> Number one is meeting customers. Customers and channel partners, right? Well, all of the employees of all the various companies here get a paycheck from whoever that may be, me, IBM, someone from other companies, people from VMware. That's not who pays your salary. It's the end-users and the channel partners, if they buy through the channel. They're the ones that really pay your salary. So being close to the customers and the partners is number one. Second thing, of course, is seeing all the cool technology. You know, seeing what's going on, what's hot, what can we leverage from our perspective, what can we tie ourselves to. So for example, the hot things, that IBM's really been doing from a storage perspective. Cloud and modern data protection. Those are the two big things we've been focused on for the last couple of years. And how do we integrate our storage solutions and our modern data protection with cloud infrastructure, and then also how do we, if you're not in the cloud, how do we help customers protect their data better in a modern way and reuse their secondary data, instead of making 27,000 copies of the same data. >> So when theCUBE first started at VMworld, modern data protection at the time was dealing with the lack of physical resources, 'cause you went from 10 servers down to one, and you didn't have all that excess capacity to do a run up back up job anymore. Today, modern data protection is all around cloud and multi-cloud and software defined, so I wonder if you can help us sort of paint a picture of what modern data protection is for IBM? >> Sure, I think there's a couple, couple aspects too. So, first of all, you have to support the cloud, and that's two ways. So for us, several of our backup products are used by cloud service providers. In some cases they use our name, and say, "Featuring IBM Spectrum Protect or Spectrum Protect Plus." Other cases, they have their own brand but it's our software underneath the hood so that if the end user is backing up to their cloud, they're actually using our software. So that's item number one. The second thing is you need to make sure that your traditional storage software can TEAR to the cloud, can migrate data to the cloud, can transparently move data to the cloud in an automated fashion using AI. So using artificial intelligent when the data's hot if you connote a target, and that target could be a cloud, and when the data's hot it TEARs the data to the cloud. Sorry, when it's cold. When it's hot it pulls it back in and that needs to be all automated through AI base. So we've done both, we have our backup software which is available from several cloud providers as a backup as a service, we also offer it through the cloud so IBM Cloud actually sells spectrum protect backup as a service solution All of our primary storage software and even our spectrum scale software can automatically TEAR data to a cloud target device. >> Eric I got to ask you so TEARing used to be predominantly, correct me if you disagree but, it used be a one way trip to the bit-bucket. You just described going there and coming back. Has cloud changed that because of big data, analytics? Where people want to pull back data increasingly? >> So I think of a couple of things. So first of all, there's no doubt that the world is data driven. The most valuable asset isn't gold, it's not silver, it is absolutely not oil, it's not diamonds. It is data. And it doesn't matter whether you're one of the largest banks in the world, you're in manufacturing, you're in the government, or whether you're Herzog's barn grill. The data is your most valuable asset. What you do with your customer data, how you manage your business, what you do with your supply chain if your a services company, how are you servicing, what are you charging, what are you billing, all of that is the most critical thing that you have. So in a data driven world, its critical that you use the data. And that also means that because of valued data, when you backup the data or you snapshot or replicate the data, you now created a secondary copy. Well what if you could use it to do tests? What if you could use it to do big data analytics? What if you could use it for DevOps? So instead of making one copy for tests, one copy for disaster recovery, one copy for this, and have basically a plethora of copies all over the place, with what we've provided in modern data protection, you can use a backup, you can use a snap or a replica, and you can use that to do tests or development or to do big data analytics. And using that one copy not making multiple copies. So that's- >> I just want to pick up on something you said there's going to be some folks in our audience like, "yeah yeah we hear that data is more valuable than oil or more valuable than gold, et cetera, more valuable than platinum." There's evidence, if you look at the market value of the top five companies, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, they've surpassed the banks, they've surpassed the energy companies, and I would argue its cuz of data. People are recognizing that they're data companies, you agree? >> But if you look at that name the only one that actually builds anything of substance, as a fair amount of their volume of revenue, is Apple. >> Is Apple, right. >> Amazon doesn't, they ship stuff. Facebook clearly doesn't, Google has a few things but not really builds stuff its really about the data. Absolutely and if your a more traditional company like a bank or someone building the table. Whoever builds this table if they have their act together and they're using that data right, they're building the table cheaper than anyone else, they're shipping it to theCUBE cheaper than anyone else could ship it to you. They got more colors because they know what their doing. And they ship you the right color table and they don't screw it up and send you a black table when you want it this color table because black won't show up on theCUBE very well. The more you do that the more money you make. Even something as simple as a table manufacturer. And that's all about the data and how you use that data. >> So Eric you love talking with customers which is great as the CMO for IBM storage. Got to talk to those customers. Let's talk about how you're seeing customers take the efficiencies of what IBM is doing with data protection, storage, et cetera. to be able to harness the power of AI, the superpowers that Pat Gelsinger talked about on Monday, and transform their businesses. Give us some of your favorite customer examples where its really revolutionary. >> So we had a great example today, we did a panel with a bunch of end users as part of the show agenda. And one of the customers is a provider of softwares of service to universities and schools. 45,000 customers between the universities, junior colleges, schools districts, et cetera. In North America so Canada and the U.S. And they are doing softwares of service so for them performance is critical, they can't go down. All of the college bookstores, if you go into a college bookstore, all of the infrastructure behind that is them. So they're called Follet. So a couple of things, one because they're doing softwares of service and managing all that. Its critical, can't go down. Got to be available, it's got to be performant, it's got to be resilient, it's got to be reliable. So that's how the storage melds in. From modern data protection the way it melds in is how many books did Dave buy? What did Eric buy? Oh is Dave buying a used book? Or is Eric buying a new book? Okay say we know that the propensity is certain of members of the community. I went to UC Davis, University of California Davis, are going to buy used books, Dave, whereas Herzog's going to buy new. They can figure that out, how many used books they need, how many new books they need, that's all about efficiency and how they make more money. What are the store hours? Certain universities it's this, other universities it's that. What do they do in the winter time? At UC Davis you can go in the winter time, I know you went to school in Boston its probably snowing, no one's going in the bookstore in the wintertime. >> Trend towards book rentals, how do we capitalize on that? >> That's all they do. One of the things they talked about was how they always have to protect that data and back it up. The other thing they talked about was they have to assume a lot of capacity. So what they do is they bought assuming they would have to refresh in 18 months. And because our storage arrays have a ton of different data reduction technology whether that be block, D2, compression, et cetera. And they have petabytes of data. Petabytes. 12 Petabytes. They've actually calculated it out they won't need to buy new storage for 36 months instead of 18 so they just saved on CapX. Through the intelligence of the storage. So in that case you've got both modern data protection and you've got a storage message. One of our other customers who's a public reference, not here at the show, which is a hospital, they were backing up all their data, both cloud and on premise with our backup software, and they went down and their entire system went down and they didn't lose one stitch of data and its a hospital. It's a teaching hospital, think they're in Pennsylvania, and in the public reference in the video he said, "and we went down and off that backup we were able to get all of the data back. We didn't lose any patient data, we didn't lose any research data, we didn't lose any billing data, if you break your arm they do bill you, they didn't lose anything." >> That's not just money, that's lives so that's huge. >> Absolutely. >> I want to ask you about you know that table example you were giving, and we were talking about the big five companies in terms of market cap being data orientated. There seems to be a gap between those sort of traditional companies and those data companies and that gap tends to be the data is often is often in silos its human expertise or expertise around a bottling plant or the manufacturing plant or whatever it is versus a data model with humans who understand how to leverage that data. Do you see, whether its through new data protection techniques or other storage techniques that IBM is working on, ways to help customers break down those data silos so they can become more digital and be able to take advantage of data? >> So I think there's a couple of things. So first of all at the very tactical level we provide this automated IA based data TEARing. We can tear from anything to anything so we can take data from an IBM array and TEAR it to an EMC array. We can take data from an EMC array and TEAR it to a net app array. A net app array to a Tachi array, an HP array back to our array, so we can do this transparent data move based on hot and cold. Not only does that allow you to control CapX and OpX you can move the data from array to array, and once you move that data set it might be working that other array could be hooked up to a different set of servers through the SAN that's running a different workload and then takes that dataset and use it with that other piece of software out on the server side. So that's item number one. Item number two is IBM not just in the storage but overall has a global program where IBM is promoting, through universities all over the world, data scientists. Part of that is training data scientists not only how to do the science of data and analyzing data and mining data and doing it, but to break down those walls. The value is more there. And we also have from a storage perspective some products are spectrum scale products, one of our customers who's one of the largest banks in the world they run 300,000 servers attached to a giant spectrum scale repository, petabytes and petabytes, and they do real time data analytics to see if Dave Vellante or Lisa's credit card was stolen. >> Thank you! >> Oh yes, thank you! >> So that's real world analytics they run but they need petabytes of data. And then with our IBM cloud object storage technology where we have several customers at the exabyte level in production with an exabyte of data, you put the data out when its cold but guess what, if you want to mine it you might want to pull it back and guess what, you can TEAR data from spectrum scale to IBM cloud object storage and then spectrum scale can pull it back in to do the big data analytic workloads. >> And that AI you're using is it heavy open source? Is there a little bit of Watson sprinkled in there? >> It's stuff the storage division developed years ago and then has peppered in the AI based technology into that software to determine when the dataset is hot or cold and then move it back or forth. We also do the old style, so if you go back 10 years ago, the automation of storage was policy based. So we had it way back when which was if the data is 30 days old move it to this array. >> The old HSM kind of... >> Yeah and it was automated so once it hit 30 days, but now what we've done is, we started with that, what I would call automation, and now we've moved that to AI. And by the way, if you still want to do it the old way and say move this data when its 60 days old, you can still do that. But the modern way is let the storage figure out for you and move it back and forth whether it be to the cloud or whether it be on premises. >> So it's intelligent hierarchical storage management? So if the characteristics change the system knows what to do as opposed to- >> So when it's hot it'll pull the data back into flash, for example, when its cold it'll put it out to cloud, it'll put it out to tape or it'll put it out to slow hard drives, either way. >> Alright Eric, so we're almost out of time here. You've been at IBM a long time, IBM's been around a long time, you said you even have customers at exabyte scale. I'm hearing heterogeneity, customer choice, but if I'm a small hospital in the middle of America and I have choice with data protection vendors, storage vendors, some smaller than IBM that might be able to move faster, what are the top three differentiators of why I would want to go with IBM's storage solutions? >> Sure so the first thing is our broad portfolio. Whether it be file block or object, whether it be modern data protection, whether it be archiving if you still want to use tape, we're the number one provider of tape in the world and we sell gobs of it to the web scale guys. >> Of course you do. >> They're the guys that buy it. >> Cuz its cost effective. >> So we've got one throat to choke, all of it talks to each other, and happens to work with all the cloud vendors not just IBM cloud. We work with Amazon, we work with Microsoft, we work with Google, and we work with IBM's own cloud. So we can work with anything. That's out of mind. Second thing, for smaller shops we have a network of business partners all over the world, some of them even deal with the big global Fortune 500 and others deal with small accounts. And then really the third thing is that IBM makes sure that our stuff works with everyone else's stuff. Whether that be cloud, our spectrum tech software which has been around for years and is the leading enterprise backup package, the bulk of what it backs up is not IBM storage. The vast bulk of it is from two of the competitors on the floor of this show, they also back up our stuff too. And we backup everyone's. There's probably 20 storage vendors we backup every one of their data. So if someone buys storage from XYZ, call me, we can back it up. If someone buys it from one of the big competitors we back it up, from us we back it up. So the fact that our software works with everyone's gear is of an advantage for both the small shop and the big shop. We make sure that our software, whether its embedded in our arrays or whether we sell it as just a pieces storage software and we are the number one storage software provider on the planet as well, we can meet the needs of any company big or small because we have this flexibility of working with our stuff and working with everybody else stuff and most of the other guys don't do that. If its a small shop their stuff usually only works with their stuff. >> And from a support perspective, you play with everybody? >> Global network. I mean we're known for our support whether it be IBM direct or what we do with our partners all the partners are certified, its a big certification process, and if they can't certify the product they can't sell IBM's stuff. That's just how we operate. Other people, if they can move a lot of boxes but they don't have anyone pick up the phone or can come out to Dave's house to install, they let them sell, we don't do that at IBM. We don't use those box mover types we go for guys that add value and know how to work with the cloud, know how to do hybrid cloud. One of our resellers designed a Watson based AI system that's used in bottle factories. Packaging. Beer, soda, milk, and it can figure out if its full or not full, if the bottle or can or carton is damaged. And they used Watson to do it. Now they're regular resell. They resell all the storage, they resell our power, they resell mainframe, but they've gone into the software development side using this Watson thing and they're selling a full solution with the software included to bottling plants all over the world. >> Wow, Eric. This has been a super charged conversation. Thanks for stopping by and talking with Dave and me about not just your excitement about talking with customers but really how IBM is really empowering customers of any size worldwide to succeed. We know we'll see you again soon but thanks for stopping by a couple of times this week. >> Great well thank you. Thank you, really appreciate the time. >> And the outfit choices are just on point guys, you blend well too. For Eric, Dave Vellante, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from VMworld 2018 day 3. Stick around, we'll be back with our next guest after a short break. (electro music)

>> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, NetApp, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Hello, everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Orlando, Florida for Cisco Live 2018. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Our next guest, Eric Herzog, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President Global Channel Sales for IBM Storage. CUBE alum, great to see you. Thanks for comin' by. >> Great, we always love comin' and talkin' to theCUBE. >> Love havin' you on. Get the insight, and you get down and dirty in the storage. But I gotta, before we get into the storage impact, the cloud, and all the great performance requirements, and software you guys are building, news is that the CEO of Cisco swung by your booth? >> Yes, Chuck did come by today and asked how-- Chuck Robbins came by today, asked how we're doin'. IBM has a very broad relationship with Cisco, beyond just the storage division. The storage division, the IOT division, the collaboration group. Security's doin' a lot of stuff with them. IBM is one of Cisco's largest resellers through the GTS and GBS teams. So, he came by to see how were doin', and gave him a little plug about the VersaStack, and how it's better than any other converge solutions, but talked about all of IBM, and the strong IBM Cisco relationship. >> I mean, it's not a new relationship. Expand on what you guys are doin'. How does that intersect with division that he put on stage yesterday with the keynote. He laid out, and said publicly, and put the stake in the ground, pretty firmly, "This is the old way." Put an architecture, a firewall, a classic enterprise network diagram. >> Right, right. >> And said, "That's the old way," and put in a big circle, with all these different kinda capabilities with the cloud. It's a software defined world. Clearly Cisco moving up the stack, while maintaining the networking shops. >> Right. >> Networking and storage, always the linchpin of cloud and enterprise computing. What's the connection? Share the touch points. >> Sure, well I think the key thing is everyone's gotta realize that whether you're in a private cloud, a hybrid cloud, or a public cloud configuration, storage is that rock solid foundation. If you don't have a good foundation, the building will fall right over, and it's great that you've got cloud with its flexibility, it's ability to transform, the ability to modernize, move data around, but if what's underneath doesn't work, the whole thing topples over, and storage is a cruel element to that. Now, what we've done at IBM is we have made all of our solutions on the storage side, VersaStack, our all-flash arrays, all of our software defined storage, our modern data protection, everything is what we'll say is cloudified. K, it's, I designed for multiple cloud scenarios, whether it be private, hybrid, or public, or, as you've probably seen, in some the enterprise accounts, they actually use multiple public cloud providers. Whether it be from a price issue, or a legal issues, because they're all over the world, and we're supporting that with all our solutions. And, our VersaStack, specifically, just had a CVD done with Cisco, Cisco Validated Design, with IBM Cloud Private on a VersaStack. >> Talk about the scale piece, because this becomes the key differentiator. We've talked about on theCUBE, many of the times with you around, some of the performance you guys have, and the numbers are pretty good. You might wanna do a quick review on that. I'm not lookin' for speech and feeds. Really, Eric, I'd like to get your reaction, and view, and vision, on how the scale piece is kicking, 'cause clients want scale optionality. They're gonna have a lot of stuff on premise. They have cloud goin' on, multi cloud on the horizon, but they gotta scale. The numbers are off the charts. You're seein' all these security threats. I mean, it's massive. How are you guys addressing the scale question with storage? >> So, we've got a couple things. So first of all, the storage itself is easily scalable. For example, on our A9000 all-flash array, you just put a new one, automatically grows, don't have to do anything, k? With our transparent cloud tiering, you can set it up, whether it be our Spectrum Scale software, whether it be our Spectrum Virtualize software, or whether it be on our all-flash arrays, that you could automatically just move data to whatever your cloud target may be. Whether that be something with an object store, whether that be a block store, and it's all automated. So, the key thing here on scalability is transparency, ease of use, and automation. They wanna automatically join new capacity, wanna automatically move data from cloud to cloud, automatically move data from on premise to cloud, automatically move data from on premise to on premise, and IBM's storage solutions, from a software perspective, are all designed with that data mobility in mind, and that transportability, both on premise, and out to any cloud infrastructure they have. >> What should Cisco customers know about IBM storage, if you get to talk to them directly? We're here at Cisco Live. We've talked many times about what you guys got goin' on with the software. Love the software systems approach. You know we dig that. But a Cisco deployment, they've been blocking and tackling in the enterprise for years, clouds there. What's the pitch? What's the value proposition to Cisco clients? >> So, I think they key thing for us talkin' to a Cisco client is the deep level of integration we have. And, in this case, not just the storage division, but other things. So, for example, a lot of their collaboration stuff uses under pitting software from IBM, and IBM also uses some software from Cisco inside our collaboration package. In our storage package, the fact that we put together the VersaStack with all these Cisco Validated Designs, means that the customer, whether it be a cloud product, for example, on the VersaStack, about 20 of our public references are all small and medium cloud providers that wheel in the VersaStack, connect 'em, and it automatically grows simply and easily. So, in that case, you're looking at a cloud provider customer of Cisco, right? When you're looking at a enterprise customer of Cisco, man, the key thing is the level of integration that we have, and how we work together across the board, and the fact that we have all these Cisco Validated Designs for object storage, for file storage, for block storage, for IBM Cloud Private. All these things mean they know that it's gonna work, right outta the box, and whether they deploy it themselves, whether they use one of our resellers, one of our channel partners, or whether they use IBM services or Cisco service. Bottom line, it works right out of the box, easy to go, and they're up and running quickly. >> So, Eric, you talked a bunch about VersaStack, and you've been involved with Cisco and their UCS since the early days when they came up, and helped drive, really, this wave of converged infrastructure. >> Right. >> One of the biggest changes I've seen in the last couple years, is when you talk to customers, this is really their private cloud platform that they're building. When it first got rolled out, it was virtualization. We kinda added a little bit of management there. What, give us your viewpoint as to kinda high-level, why's this still such an important space, what are the reasons that customers are rolling this out, and how that fits into their overall cloud story? >> Well, I think you hit it, Stu, right on the head. First of all, it's easy to put in and deploy, k? That is a big check box. You're done, ready to go. Second thing that's important is be able to move data around easily, k? In an automated fashion like I said earlier, whether that be to a public cloud if they're gonna tier out. If I'm a private cloud, I got multiple data centers. I'm moving data around all the time. So, the physical infrastructure and data center A is a replica, or a DR center, for data center B, and vice versa. So, you gotta be able to move all this stuff around quickly easy. Part of the reason you're seeing converge infrastructure is it's the wave of what's hit in the server world. Instead of racking and stacking individual servers, and individual pieces of storage, you've got a pre-packed VersaStack. You've got Cisco networking, Cisco server, VMware, all of our storage, our storage software, including the ability to go out to a cloud, or with our ICP IBM Private Cloud, to create a private cloud. And so, that's why you're seeing this move towards converge. Yes, there's some hyperconverged out there in the market, too, but I think the big issue, in certain workloads, hyperconverged is the right way to go. In other workloads, especially if you're creating a giant private cloud, or if you're a cloud provider, that's not the way to go because the real difference is with hyperconverged you cannot scale compute and storage independently, you scale them together, So, if you need more storage, you scale compute, even if you don't need it. With regular converge, you scale them independently, and if you need more storage, you get more storage. If you need more compute-- If you need both, you get both. And that's a big advantage. You wanna keep the capex and opex down as you create this infrastructure for cloud. 'Member, part of the whole idea of cloud are a couple things. A, it's supposed to be agile. B, it's supposed to be super flexible. C, of course, is the modern nomenclature, but D is reduce capex and opex. And you wanna make sure that you can do that simply and easily, and VersaStack, and our relationship with Cisco, even if you're not using a VersaStack config, allows us to do that for the end user. >> And somethin' we're seeing is it's really the first step for customers. I need to quote, as you said, modernize the platform, and then I can really start looking at modernizing my applications on top of that. >> Right. Well, I think, today, it's all about how do you create the new app? What are you doin' with containers? So, for example, all of our arrays, and all of our arrays that go into a VersaStack, have free persistent storage support for any containerize environ, for dockers and kubernetes, and we don't charge for that. You just get it for free. So, when you buy those solutions, you know that as you move to the container world, and I would argue virtualization is still here to stay, but that doesn't mean that containers aren't gonna overtake it. And if I was the CEO of a couple different virtualization companies, I'd be thinkin' about buyin' a container company 'cause that'll be the next wave of the future, and you'll say-- >> Don't fear kubernetes. >> Yeah, all of that. >> Yeah, Eric Herzog's flying over to Dockercon, make a big announcement, I think, so. (laughing) >> Evaluation gonna drop a little bit. I gotta ask you a question. I mean, obviously, we watch the trends that David Floy and our team, NVMe is big topic. What is the NVMe leadership plan for you, on the product side, for you? Can you take a minute to share your vision for what that is gonna be? >> Sure, well we've already publicly announced. We've been shipping an NVMe over fabric solution leveraging InfiniBand since February of this year, and we demoed it, actually, in December at the AI Conference in New York City. So, we've had a fabric solution for NVMe already since December, and then shipping in February. The other thing we're doing is we publicly announced that we'd be supporting the other NVMe over fabric protocols, both fabric channel and ethernet by the end of the year. We publicly already announced that. We also announced that we would have an end to end strategy. In this case, you would be talking about NVMe on the fabric side going out to the switching and the host infrastructure, but also NVMe in a storage sub-system, and we already publicly announced that we'd be doing that this year. >> And how's the progress on that plan? You feel good about it? >> We're getting there. I can't comment yet, but just stay tuned on July 1st, and see what happens. >> So, talk about the Spectrum NAS, and other announcements that you have. What's goin' on? What are the big news? What's happening? >> Well, I think that, yeah, the big thing for us has been all about software. As you know, for the analysts that track the numbers, we are, and ended up in 2017, as tied as the number one storage software company in the world, independent of our system's business. So, one of the key powers there is that our software works with everyone's gear, whether it be a white box through a distributor or reseller, whether it be our direct competitors. Spectrum Protect, which is a, one of the best enterprise backup packages. We backup everybody's gear, our gear, NetApp's gear, HP's gear, Pure's gear, Hitachi's gear, the old Dell stuff, it doesn't matter to us, we backup everything. So, one of the powers that IBM has, from a software perspective, is always being able to support not only our own gear, but supporting all of our competitors as well. And the whole white box market, with things that our partners may put together through the distributors. >> I know somethin' might be obvious to you, but just take me through the benefits to the customer. What's the impact to the customer? Obviously, supporting everything, it sounds like you guys have done that with software, so you're agnostic on hardware. >> Right. >> So, is it a single pane of glass? What's the benefit to the customer with that software capability? >> Yeah, I feel there's a couple things. So, first of all, the same software that we sell as standalone software, we also sell on our arrays. So if you're in a hybrid configuration, and you're using our Flashsystem V9000 in our Storwize family, that software also works with an EMC, or NetApp box. So, one license, one way to do everything, one set of training, which in a small shop is not that important, but in a big shop, you don't have to manage three licenses, right? You don't have to get trained up on three different ways to do things, and you don't have to, by the way, document, which all the big companies would do. So it dramatically simplifies their life from an opex perspective. Makes it easier for them to run their business. >> Eric, we'd love to get your opinion on just how's Cisco doin' out there? It's a big sprawling company. I looked at the opening keynote, the large infrastructure business doing very well in the data center, but they've got collaboration, they do video, they're moving out in the cloud. Wanna see your thoughts as to how are they doing, and still making sure they take care of core networking, while still expanding and going through their own transformation, that they're talkin' very public about. How do we measure Cisco as a software company? >> Well, we see some very good signs there. I mean, we partner with 'em all the time, as I mentioned, for example, in both the security group and our collaboration group, and I'm not talkin' storage now, just IBM in general, we leverage software from them, and they leverage software from us. We deliver joint solutions through our partners, or through each of the two service organizations, but we also have products where we incorporate their software into ours, and they incorporate software in us. So, from our perspective, we've already been doing it beyond their level, now, of expanding into a much greater software play. For us, it's been a strong play for us already because of the joint work we've been doing now for several years on software that they've been selling in the more traditional world, and now pushing out into the broader areas, like cloud, for example. >> Awesome work. Eric, thanks for coming on. I gotta ask you one final, personal, question. >> Sure. >> You got the white shirt on, you usually have a Hawaiian shirt on. >> Well, because Chuck Robbins came by the booth, as we talked about earlier today, felt that I shouldn't have my IBM Hawaiian shirt on, however, now that I've met Chuck, next time, at next Cisco Live, I'll have my IBM Hawaiian shirt on versus my IBM traditional shirt. >> Chuck's a cool guy. Thanks for comin' on. As always, great commentary. You know your stuff. >> Great, thank you. >> Great to have the slicing and dicing, the IBM storage situation, as well as the overall industry landscape. At Cisco Live, we're breakin' it down, here on theCUBE in Orlando. Second day of three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, stay with us for more live coverage after this break.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering VM World 2017, brought to you by VMWare and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat techno music) >> Hey, welcome back to day two of VM World 2017 theCUBE's continuing coverage, I am Lisa Martin with my co-host Dave Vellante and we have a kind of a cute mafia going on here. We have Eric Herzog the CMO of IBM Storage back with us, and we also have Steve Kenniston, another CUBE alumni, Global Spectrum Software Distance Development Executive at IBM, welcome guys! >> Thank you. >> Thank you, great to be here. >> So lots of stuff going on, IBM Storage business health, first question, Steve, to you, what's going on there, tell us about that. >> Steve: What's going on in IBM Storage? >> Yes. >> All kinds of great things. I mean, first of all, I think we were walking the show floor just talking about how VMWare, VM World use to be a storage show and then it wasn't for a long time. Now you're walking around there, you see all kinds of storage. Now IBM, really stepping up its game. We've got two booths. We're talking all about not just, you know, the technologies, cognitive, IOT, that sort of thing but also where do those bits and bytes live? That's your, that's your assets. You got to store that information someplace and then you got to protect that information. We got all we're showcasing all kinds of solutions on the show floor including Versus Stack and that sort of thing where you you know make your copies of your data, store your data, reissue your data, protect your data, it's a great show. >> Lisa: Go ahead. >> Please. So I ever want to get into it, right, I mean, we've watched, this is our eighth year doing theCUBE at VM World, and doing theCUBE in general, but to see the evolution of this ecosystem in this community, you're right, it was storage world, and part of the reason was, and you know this well Eric, it was such a problem, you know. And all the APIs that VMWare released to really solve that storage problem, Flash obviously has changed the game a little bit but I want to talk about data protection if you're my backup specifically. Steve you and I have talked over the years about the ascendancy of VMWare coincided with a reduction in the physical capacity that was allocated to things like the applications like Backup. That was a real problem so the industry had their re-architect its backup and then companies like VM exploded on the scene, simplicity was a theme, and now we're seeing a sort of a similar scene change around cloud. So what's your perspective on that sort of journey in the evolution of data protection and where we are today, especially in the context of cloud? >> Yeah, I think there's been a couple, a couple big trends. I think you talked about it correctly, Dave, from the standpoint of when you think about your data protection capacity being four X at a minimum greater than your primary storage capacity, the next thing you start understanding is now with a growth in data, I need to be able to leverage and use that data. The number one thing, the number one driver to putting data in the cloud is data protection, right? And then it's now how can I reuse that data that's in the cloud and you look at things like AWS and that sort of thing the ability to spin up applications, and now what I need to do is I need to connect to with the data to be able to run those applications and if I'm going to do a test development environment if I'm going to run an analytics report or I'm going to do something, I want to connect to my data. So we have solutions that help you promote that data into the cloud, leverage that data, take advantage of that data and it it's just continually growing and continually shifting. >> So you guys are really leaning in to to VM World this year, got a big presence. What's going on there? You know, one would think, okay you know VMWare it's you know clearly grabbing a big piece of the market. You got them doing more storage. What's going on Eric, is it just, "Hey, we're a good partner." "Hey we're not going to let them you know elbow us out." "We're going to be competitive with the evil machine company." What's the dynamic in the VMWare ecosystem with you guys? >> Well I think the big thing for us is IBM has had a powerful partnership with VMWare since day one. Way back when IBM use to have an Intel Server Division everything was worked with VMWare, been a VMR partner, years and years ago on the server world as that division transferred away to Lenovo the storage division became front and center so all kinds of integration with our all Flash arrays our Versus Stack which you do jointly with Cisco and VMWare providing a conversion for structured solution, the products that Steve's team just brought out Spectrum Protect Plus installs in 30 minutes, recovers instantly off of a VM, can handle multiple VMs, can recover VMs or files, can be used to back up hundreds and thousands of virtual machines if that's what you've got in your infrastructure. So, the world has gone virtual and cloud. IBM is there with virtual and cloud. You need to move data out to IBM cloud, or exams on our azure Spectrum Protect Plus, Spectrum Scale, Spectrum Virtualize all members of our software family, and the arrays that they ship on all can transparently move data to a cloud; move it back and forth at the blink of an eye. With VMWare you need that same sort of level of integration we've had it on the array side we've now brought that out with Spectrum Protect Plus to make sure that backups are, in fact Spectrum Protect Plus is so easily, even me with my masters degree in Chinese history can back up and protect my data in a VMWare environment. So it's designed to be used by the VMWare admin or the app owner, not by the backup guy or the storage admin. Not that they won't love it too, but it's designed for the guys who don't know much about storage. >> I'll tell you Dave I saw it, I watched him get a demo and then I watched him turn around and present it, it was impressive. (laughing) >> I want to ask you a quick question. Long time partners IBM and VMWare as you as you've just said. You were an EMC guy that's where I first met you, from a marketing and a positioning perspective what have you guys done in the last year since the combination has completed to continue to differentiate the IBM VMWare strengths as now VMWare's part of Dell EMC. >> So I think the key thing is VMWare always has been the switch under the storage business. When I was at EMC, we owned 81 percent of the company and you walked into Palo Alto and Pat Gelsinger who I used to work for at EMC is now the CEO of VMWare you walk into the data center and there's IBM arrays, EMC arrays, HP arrays, Dell arrays and then app arrays. And a bunch of all small guys so the good thing is they've always been the switch under the storage industry, IBM because of it's old history and the server industry has always had tight integration with them, and we've just made sure we've done. I think they key difference we've done is it's all about the data. CEO, CIO they hate talking about storage. It's all about the data and that's what we're doing. Spectrum Protect Plus is all about keeping the data safe protected, and as Steve talked about using it in the cloud using real data sets for test and dev for dev opps, that's unique. Not everyone's doing that we're one of the few guys that do that. It's all about the data and you sell the storage as a foundation of that data. >> Well I mean IBM's always been good about not selling speeds and feeds, but selling at the boardroom level, the C level I mean you're IBM. That's your brand. Having said that, there's a lot of knife fights going on tactically in the business and you guys are knife fighters I know you both you're both startup guys, you're not afraid to get you know down and dirty. So Steve, how do you address the skepticism that somebody might have and say, "Alright, you know I hear you, this all sounds great but, you know I need simplicity." You guys you talk simplicity your Chinese History background, but I'm still skeptical. What can you tell me, proof points share with us to convince us that you really are from a from a simplicity standpoint competitive with the pack? >> I think, I think you seen a pretty big transformation over the last 18 months with what the some of the stuff that we've done with the software portfolio. So, a lot of folks can talk a good game about a software defined strategy. The fact that we put the entire Spectrum suite now under one portfolio now things are starting to really gel and come together. We done things like interesting skunkworks project with Spectrum Protect Plus and now we even had business partners in our booth who are backup architects talking about the solution who sell everybody else's solution on the floor saying, "This is, the I can't believe it, "I can't believe this is IBM. "They're putting together solutions that "are just unbelievably easy to use." They need that and I think you're exactly right, Dave. It used to be where you have a lot of technical technicians in the field and people wanted to architect things and put things together. Those days are gone, right? Now what you're finding is the younger generation coming in they're iPhone type people they want click simplicity just want to use it that sort of thing. We've started to recognize that and we've had to build that into our product. We were, we are a humbler IBM now. We are listening to our business partners. We are asking them what do we need to be doing to help you be successful in the field, not just from a product set, but also a selling you know, a selling motion. The Spectrum suite all the products under one thing now working and they're operating together, the ability to buy them more easily, the ability to leverage them use them, put it in a sandbox, test it out, not get charged for it, okay I like it, now I want to deploy it. We've really made it a lot easier to consume technology in a much easier way, right, software defined, and we're making the products easier to use. >> How've you been able to achieve that transformation is it cultural, is it somebody came down and said you thou shalt simplify and I mean you've been there a couple years now. >> Yeah so I think, I think the real thing is IBM has brought into the division a bunch of people from outside the division. So Ed Walsh our general manager who's going to be on shortly five startups. Steve, five startups. Me, seven startups. Our new VP of Offering Manager in the Solutions said not only Net Up, four startups. Our new VP of North American sales, HDS, three startups. So we've brought in a bunch of guys who A, use to work at the big competition, EMC, Net Up, Hitachi, et cetera. And we've also brought in a bunch of people who are startup guys who are used to turning on dime, it's all about ease of use, it's all about simplicity, it's all about automation. So between the infusion of this intellectual capital from a number of us who've been outside the company, particularly in the startup world, and the incredible technical depth of IBM storage teams and our test teams and all the other teams that we leverage, we've just sort of pointed them in the direction like it needs to be installed in 30 minutes. Well guess what, they knew how to do that 30 years ago. They just never did because they were, you know stuck in the IBM silo if you will, and now the big model we have at IBM is outside in, not inside out, outside in. And the engineering teams have responded to that and made things that are easy to use, incredibly automated, work with everyone's gear not just ours. There're other guys that sell storage software. But other than in the protection space all the other guys, it only works with EMC or it only works with Net Up or it only works HP. Our software works with everyone's stuff including every one of our major competitors, and we're fine with that. So that's come from this infusion and combination of the incredible technical depth and DNA of IBM with a bunch of group of people about 10 of us who've all for come from either A, from the big competitors, but also from a bunch of startups. And we've just merged that over the last two years into something that's fortunate and incredibly powerful. We are now the number one storage software company in the world, and in overall storage, both systems and software, we're number two. >> Dave: So where's that data, is that IDC data? >> Yeah, that's the IDC data. >> And what are they what are they, when they count that what are they counting? Are they sort of eliminating any hardware you know, associated with that or? >> Well no, storage systems would be external systems our all Flash arrays, our Ver, that's all the systems side. Software's purely software only, so. >> Dave: No appliances >> Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> Dave: The value of those licenses associated with that >> Well as our CFO pointed out, so if you take a look at our track record of last at the beginning of this year, we grew seven percent in Q1, one of the only storage companies to grow certainly of the majors, we grew eight percent in Q2, again one of the only storage companies to grow of the major players, and as our CFO pointed out in his call in Q2, over 40 percent of the division's revenue is storage software, not full system, just stand alone software particularly with the strength of the suite and all the things we're doing you know, to make it easy to use install in 30 minutes and have a mastery in Chinese History be able to protect his data and never lose it. And that's what we want to be able to do. >> Okay so that's a licensed model, and is it a, is it a, is it a ratable model is it a sort of a perpetual model, what is it? >> We've got both depending on the solution. We have cloud engagement models, we can consume it in the cloud. We got some guys are traditionalists, gimme an ELA, you know Enterprise License Agreement. So we, we're the pasta guys. We have the best pasta in the world. Do you want red sauce, white sauce, or pesto? Dave I said that because you're part Italian, I'm half Italian on my mother's side. >> I like Italian. >> So we have the best pasta, whatever the right sauce is for you we deliver the best pasta on the planet, in our case the best storage software on the planet. >> You heard, you heard Michael up there on stage today, "Don't worry about it." He was invoking his best Italian, I have an affinity for that. So, so Steve, this is your second stint at IBM, Ed's second stint, I'm very intrigued that Doug Balog is now moved over this is a little inside baseball here, but running sales again. >> Steve: Right. >> So that's unique, actually, to see have a guy who use to run storage, leave, go be the general manager of the Power Systems division, in OpenPOWER, then come back, to drive storage sales. So, you're seeing, it's like a little gravity action. Guys sort of coming back in, what's going on from your perspective? >> Well I I think, I think Eric said it best. We've done an outside in. We've been bringing a lot of people in and I think that the development team and I wanted to to to bounce off of what Eric had said was they always knew how to do it, it's just they they needed to see and understand the motivation behind why they wanted to do it or why they needed to do it. And now they're seeing these people come in and talk about in a very, you know caring way that this is how the world is changing, and they believe it, and they know how to do it and they're getting excited. So now there's a lot more what what people might think, "Oh I'm just going to go develop my code and go home," and whatever they're not; they're excited. They want to build new products. They want to make these things interoperate together. They're, they're passionate about hearing from the customer, they're passionate about tell me what I can do to make it better. And all of those things when one group hears something that's going on to make something better they want to do the same thing, right. So it's it's really, it's breathing good energy into the storage division, I think. >> So question for you guys on that front you talked about Eric, we don't leave it at storage anymore, right? C levels don't care about that. But you've just talked about two very strong quarters in storage revenue perspective. What's driving that what's or what's dragging that? Is it data protection? What are some of the other business level drivers that are bringing that storage sale along? >> So for us it's been a couple things. So when you look at just the pure product perspective the growth has been around our all Flash arrays. We have a broad portfolio; we have very cost effective stuff we have stuff for the mainframe we have super high performance stuff we have stuff for big data analytic workloads. So again there isn't one Flash, you know there's a couple startups that started with one Flash and that's all they had. We think it's the right Flash tool for the right job. It's all about data, applications, workloads and use case. Big data analytics is not the same as your Oracle database to do your ERP system or your logistics system if you're someone like a Walmart. You need a different type of Flash for that. We tune everything to that. So Flash has been a growth engine for us, the other's been software defined storage. The fact that we suited it up, we have the broadest software portfolio in the industry. We have Block, we have File, we have Object, we have Backup, we have Archive. We've got Management Plane. We've got that and by packaging it into a suite, I hate to say we stole it from the old Microsoft Office, but we did. And for the in-user base it's up to a 40 percent discount. I'm old enough to remember the days of the computer store I think Dave might've gone to a computer store once or twice too. And there it was: Microsoft Office at eye level for $999. Excel, Powerpoint and Word above it at $499. Which would you buy? So we've got the Spectrum suite up to a 40 percent savings, and we let the users use all of the software for free in their dev environments at no charge and it's not a timeout version, it's not a lite version, it is a full version of the software. So you get to try a full thing out for free and then at the suite level you save up to 40 percent. What's not to like? >> And I think, I just wanted to compliment that too. I think to also answer the question is one of the things we've done so we've talked about development really growing, getting excited, wanting to build things. The other thing that's also happening is that is at the field level, we've stopped talking speeds and feeds like directly, right, so it has become this, this higher level conversation and now IBMers who go and sell things like cognitive and IOT and that sort of thing, they're now wanting to bring us in, because we're not talking about the feeds and speeds and screwing up like how they like to sell. We're talking about, Jenny will come out and say data is your is your most valuable asset in your company. And we say, okay, I got to store those bits and bytes some place, right? We provide that mechanism. We provide it in a multitude of different ways. And we want to compliment what they're doing. So now when I put presentations together to help the sales field, I talk about storage in a way that is more, how does it help cognitive? How does it help IOT? How does it help test and dev? And and by the way there's a suite, it's storing it, it's using it, it's protecting it. It's all of those things and now it's complimenting their selling motion. >> Well your both of the passion and the energy coming from both of you is very palpable. So thank you for sticking around, Eric, and Steve for coming back to theCUBE and sharing all the exciting things that are going on at IBM. That energy is definitely electric. So wish you guys the best of luck in the next day or so of the show and again, thank you for spending some time with us this afternoon. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> Absolutely, and for my co-host Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE's live continuing coverage of the Emerald 2017 day two. Stick around, we'll be right back. (techno music)

why from the mandalay bay convention center in las vegas it's the cues covering vmworld 2016 rock you buy vmware and its ecosystem sponsors now you're your host John furrier and John wall's well welcome back to Mandalay Bay here at vmworld along with John furrier I'm John wall's glad to be with you here on the cubes to continue our coverage what's happening at vmworld exclusive broadcast a partner here for the show and along with John we're joined by eric Herzog's the vice president product marketing and management at IBM storage and Erica I just found out you're one of the all-time 10 most popular cute guests or most prominent cube guests most prolific congratulations well thank you we always love coming to the cube it's always energizing you love controversy and I love controversy and you get down to the heart of it you're the hard copy of high tech they're like oh I loved and we could probably mark each of your appearances by the Hawaiian shirt I think what do you think either Hawaiian shirt or one of my luggage share we could trace those back ever stop vibe about the show I mean just your thoughts about they've been here for three four days now just your general feel about about the the messaging here and then what's actually being conveyed in the enthusiasm out on the show floor well it's pretty clear that the world has gone cloud the world is doing cognitive and big data analytics vmware is leading that charge their strong partner of IBM we do a lot of things with them both with our cloud division on our storage division and vmware is a very strong partner of IBM we have all kinds of integration in our storage technology products with vai with vasa with vcenter ops all the various product lines at vmware offers and the key thing is ever wants to go to the cloud so by working with IBM and vmware together makes it easier and easier for customers whether it be the small shop Herzog's barn grill or whether it be the giant fortune 500 global entity working with us together allow them to get to the cloud sooner faster and have a better cloud experience so you got you know everybody cloud and virtualization and you know big themes big big topics so why does storage still matter well the big thing is if you're going to go to a cloud infrastructure and you're going to run everything on the cloud you think of storage as at solid foundation it has to be rock solid it has to be highly resilient it has to be able to handle error codes and error messaging and things failing and things falling off the earth at the same time it needs to be incredibly fast where things like all-flash arrays come in and even flexible so things like software-defined storage so think of storage as the critical foundation underneath any cloud or virtualized environment if you don't have a strong storage foundation with great resiliency great availability great serviceability and great performance your cloud or your virtual infrastructure is going to be mediocre and that's a very generous term so that's a key point so controversial II speaking to get to the controversy the whole complexity around converged infrastructure hyper converge or whatever the customers are deploying for compute they're putting the storage close to that whether it's a SAS and the cloud which is basically a data center that no one knows the address of as we were saying they always going to have stores has to sit somewhere what is the key trends right now for you because software is leading the way iBM has been doing a lot of work I know and soft we've been covering you guys will be at IBM edge coming up shortly in a couple weeks where's the innovation on the storage side for you guys well how do you talk to the customer base to say ok I got some sass options now for back and recovery weird one of your partners earlier i'm talking about that where is the physical storage innovation is that the software what's your thoughts on so we have a couple paths of integration for us first software-defined storage several the other analyst firms have named it's the number one software-defined storage coming in the world for several years in a row now software-defined storage gives a flexible infrastructure you don't have to buy any of the underlying media or underlying array controller from us just by our software and then you could put on anybody else's hardware you want you can work with your cloud provider with your reseller with your distributor enterprises create their own cloud whether it's a software-defined storage gives you a wide swath of storage functionality backup archive primary store grid scale out software only so ultimate flexibility so that one area of innovation secondary ish is all flash all flash is not expensive essentially I love old Schwarzenegger movies in the 1980s was all about tape he was a spy go and show what is supposedly the CIA was Schwarzenegger I'll take mid 90s Schwarzenegger another spy movie show a datacenter all hard drive arrays now in the next Schwarzenegger movie hopefully it'll be all flash arrays from IBM in the background so flash is just an evolution and we do tons of humor white shirts I keep swapping monitors it so he's intimated I get one from Maui went from kawaii one from the Big Island so flash is where it's at from a system level perspective so you've got that innovation and then you've got converged infrastructure as you mentioned already will you get the server the storage the networking and VMware hypervisor all packaged up dramatically so we have a product called the vs tak we do jointly with Cisco and vmware we were late to market on that we freely admit that but just give you an idea in the first half of this year we have done almost 2x what we did in the entire year of 2015 so that's another growth ending particularly cloud service providers love to get these pre-canned pre racked versus tax and deploy them in a number of our public references are cloud service providers both big and small essentially wheel in a versus stack when they need it whelan not own will another pre-configured ready to go and they get up and up and quit going so those are three trends we just had a client on Scott equipment not a Monroe Louisiana went to the Versa stack and singing your praises like a great example of medium size small sized businesses so we keep think about enterprises and all this and that it doesn't have to be the case their services that you're providing the companies of all sizes that are gaining new efficiencies in protocol al people everybody needs storage and you think about it is really how do you want to consume the storage and in a smaller shop you may choose one way so versus stack is converged infrastructure our software-defined storage like spectrum accelerate spectrum virtualize a software-only model several of the products like spectrum accelerate inspect can protect are available through softlayer or other cloud is he consumed it as a cloud entity so whether you want to consume an on-premises software only full array full integrated stack or cloud configuration we offer any way in which you want to eat that cake big cake small cake fruit cake chocolate cake vanilla cake we got kicked for ever you need and we can cover every base with that a good point about the diversity of choices from tape to flash and they get the multi multi integrated Universal stack so a lot of different choices I want to ask you about you know with that kind of array of options how you view the competitive strategy for IBM with storage so you know I know you're a wrestler so is there a is there a judo move on the competition how would you talk about your differentiation how do you choke hold the competition well couple ways first a lot from a technical perspective by leading with software-defined storage and we are unmatched in that capacity according the industry analysts on what we do and we have it in all areas in block storage we got scale-out file storage and scale out big data analytics we got back up we got archive almost no one has that panoply of offering in a software-defined space and you don't need to buy the hardware from us you can buy from our competitors two things I hear software and then after the array of eyelash what's specifically on the software are you guys leading and have unmatched as-safir already well spectrum protect is you know been a leader in the enterprise for years spectrum scale is approaching 5,000 customers now and we have customers close to an exabyte in production single customer with an exabyte pretty incredible so for big data analytic workloads with on gastronomic research so for us it's all about the application workload in use case part of the reason we have a broad offering is anyone who comes in here and sits in front of you guys and says my array or my software will do everything for you is smoking something that's not legal just not true maybe in Colorado or yeah okay me but the reality is workloads applications and use cases very dramatically and let's take an easy example we have multiple all-flash arrays why do we have multiple all flash arrays a we have a version for mainframe attached everyone in there wants six or seven 9s guess what we can provide that it's expensive as they're all is that our six or seven 9s but now they can get all flash performance on the mainframe in the upper end of the Linux world that's what you would consume at the other end we have our flash our store wise 50 30 f which can be as low street price as low street price as eighteen thousand dollars for an all-flash array to get started basically the same prices our Drive rang and it has all the enterprise data services snapshot replication data encryption at rest migration capability tiering capability it's basically what a hard drive array used to cost so why not go all flash threat talk about the evolution of IBM storage actually them in a leader in storage in the beginning but there was a period of time there and Dave when I won't talk handling the cube about this where storage my BMC it took a lot of share but there's been a huge investment in storage over the past i'd say maybe five years in particular maybe past three specifically i think over a billion dollars has been spent I think we thought the Jamie talent variety of folks on from IBM what is the update take a minute to explain how IBM has regained their mojo in storage where that come from just add some color to that because I think that's something that let people go hmm I great for things from my being but they didn't always have it in the storage so as you know IBM invented the hard drive essentially created the storage industry so saying that we lost our mojos a fair statement but boy do we have it back explain so first thing is when you have this cloud and analytic cognitive era you need a solid foundation of storage and IBM is publicly talked about the future of the world is around cloud on cognitive infrastructure cognitive applications so if your storage is not the best from an availability perspective and from a performance perspective then the reality is your cloud and cognitive that you're trying to do is basically going to suck yeah so in order to have the cloud and convey this underlying infrastructure that's rock-solid so quite honestly as you mentioned Dave we've actually invested over three and a half billion dollars in the last three years not to mention we bought a company called Texas memory systems which is the grandfather our flash systems knocks before that so we've invested well over three billion dollars we've also made a number of executive hirings ed walls just joined us CEO of several startups former general manager from emc i myself was a senior vice president at emc we just hired a new VP of Sales they're serious you guys are serious you guys are all in investing bringing on the right team focusing on applications work gloves in use case as much as I love storage most CEOs hate it yeah there's almost no cio that whatever a storage guy they're all app guys got to talk their lingo application workload in use case how the storage enables their availability of those apps workloads and use cases and how it gives them the right performance to meet their essays to the business guy what's interesting I want to highlight that because I think it's a good point people might not know is that having just good storage in and of itself was an old siloed model but now you mentioned could we cover all the IBM events world of Watson we should call insights edge and and interconnect the cloud show cognitive is front and center there's absolutely the moon shot and the mandate from IBM to be number one in cognitive computing which means big data analytics integrated to the application level obviously bluemix in the cloud Philip blank was here on stage about IBM cloud the relation with VMware so that fails if it doesn't have good steward doesn't perform well and and latency matters right I mean data matters well I add a couple things there so first of all absolutely correct but the other thing is we actually have cognitive storage ok if you automate processes automatically for example to your data some of our competitors have tiering most of them tier only within their own box we actually can tear not only within our own box for from our box to emc our box to netapp our box to HP HP to del Delta hitachi we can t r from anything to anything so that's a huge advantage right there but we tier we don't just set policy which is when data's 90 days old automatically move it that's automation cog nation is where we not only watch the applications and watch the data set we move it from hot to cold so let's take for example financial data your publicly traded company cuban SiliconANGLE going to be public soon i'm sure guys are getting so big your finance guys going to say Dave John team this financial data is white-hot got to be on all flash after you guys do your announcement of your incredible earnings and thank God I hopefully get friend of the company stock and my stock goes way up as your stock goes way up what are we spoking now come on let me tell you when that happens the date is going to go stone-cold we see that you don't have to set a policy two-tier the data with IBM we automatically learn when the data is hot and when it's cold and move it back and forth for you you know there's no policy setting cognition or cognitive its storage understand or stands out as the work for some big data mojo coming into the storage right and that's a huge change so again not only is it critical for any cognitive application to have incredibly performance storage with incredible resiliency availability reliability ok when there is cognitive health care true cognitive health care and Dave's on the table and they bring out their cognitive Juan because they found something in your chest that they didn't see before if the storage fails not going to be good for Dave yeah at the same time if the storage is too slow that might not be good for Dave either when they run that cognitive wand a that hospital knows that it's never going to fail that doctor says Oh Dave okay we better take that thing out boom he takes it out Dave's healthy again well that's a real example by the way not necessary Dave on the table but there was a story we wrote insult an angle one of our most popular post last month IBM Watson actually found a diagnosis uncured a patient the doctor had missed I don't know if you saw that story when super viral but that's the kind of business use case that you're in kind of illuminating with the storage yeah well in fact that one of the recent trade shows what's called the flash memory summit we won an award for best enterprise application commercial developer spark cognition they developed cyber security applications they recommend IBM flash systems and actually Watson's embedded in their application and it detects security threats for enterprises so there's an example of combining cognition with Watson the cognition capability of flash systems and then their software which is commercially available it's not an in-house thing or they're you know a regular software all right now we're a now we're in like the big time you know intoxication mode with all this awesome futuristic real technology how does a customer get this now because now back to IT yeah the silos are still out there they're breaking down the silos how do you take this to customers what's to use case how do you guys deploy this what's the what are you seeing for success stories well the key thing is to make it easy to use and deploy which we do so if you want the cloud model we're available in software IBM Global resiliency services uses us for their resiliency service over 300 cloud providers you spectrum protect for backup pick the cloud guy just pick one you want we work with all of them if you want to deploy in-house we have a whole set of channel partners globally we have the IBM sales team IBM global services uses IBM's own storage of course to provide to the larger enterprises so with your big shop medium swaps well flop we have a whole set of people out there with our partner base with our own sales guys that can help that and you get up and then we back it up as you know IBM is renowned for supporting service in all of our divisions in all of our product portfolio not just in storage so they need support and service our storage service guys are there right away you'd it installed we can install it our partners can install this stuff so we try to make it as brain dead as possible as easy as possible Jen being cognitive and are some of our user interfaces are as easy as a Macintosh I mean drag-and-drop move your lungs around run analytics on when you're going to run out of storage so you know ahead of time all these things that cut things people want today remember IT budget cut dramatically in the downturn of 08 09 and while budgets have returned they're not hiring storage guys there are hiring developers and they're hiring cloud guys so those guys don't know how to use storage well you got to make it easy always fast and always resilient that way it doesn't fail anyway but when it does you just go into the GUI it tells you what's wrong bingo and IBM service our partner service comes right out and fix it so that's what you need today because there aren't as many storage guys as you used to be no question you've got the waterfront covered no doubt about that and again congratulations on cracking the top 10 way back we consider that an honor and a privilege to be a part of that great welcome picture we really appreciate it thank you we'll continue the coverage here on the Cuba vmworld right after this

(soft music) >> There are many constants in the storage business, relentlessly declining cost per bit, innovations that perpetually battled the laws of physics, a seemingly endless flow of venture capital, despite the intense competition. And there's one other constant in the storage business, Eric Hertzog, and he joins us today in this CUBE video exclusive to talk about IBM's recent storage announcements. Eric, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Great, Dave, thanks very much, we love being on theCUBE and you guys do a great job of informing the industry about what's going on in storage and IT in general. >> Well, thank you for that. >> Great job. >> We're going to cover a lot of ground today. IBM Storage, made a number of announcements the past month around data resilience, a new as-a-service model, which a lot of folks are doing in the industry, you've made performance enhancements. Can you give us the top line summary of the hard news, Eric? >> Sure, the top line summary is of course cyber security is on top of mind for everybody in the recent Fortune 500 list that came out, you probably saw, there was a survey of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, they named cybersecurity as their number one concern, not war, not pandemic, but cybersecurity. So we've got an announcement around data resilience and cyber resiliency built on our FlashSystem family with our new offering, Safeguarded Copy. And the second thing is the move to a new method of storage consumption. Storage-as-a-Service, a pay-as-you-go model, cloud-like the way people buy cloud storage, that's what you can do now from IBM Storage with our Storage-as-a-Service. Those are the key, two takeaways, Dave. >> Yeah and I want to stay on the trends that we're seeing in cyber for a moment, the work from home pivot in the hybrid work approach has really created a new exposures, people aren't as secure outside of the walled garden of the offices and we've seen a dramatic escalation in the adversaries capabilities and techniques, another least of which is island hopping, in other words, putting code fragments in the digital supply chain, they reform once they're inside the company and it's almost like this organic creepy thing that occurs. They're also living as you know, stealthily for many, many months, sometimes years, exfiltrating data, and then just waiting and then when companies respond, the incidents response trigger a ransomware incident. So they escalate the cyber crime and it's just a really, really bad situation for victims. What are you seeing in that regard and the trends? >> Well, one of the key things we see as everyone is very concerned about cybersecurity. The Biden administration has issued (indistinct) not only to the government sector, but to the private sector, cyber security is a big issue. Other governments across the world have done the same thing. So at IBM Storage, what we see is taking a comprehensive view. Many people think that cybersecurity is moat with the alligators, the castle wall and then of course the sheriff of Nottingham to catch the bad guys. And we know the sheriff of Nottingham doesn't do a good job of catching Robin Hood. So it takes a while as you just pointed out, sitting there for months or even longer. So one of the key things you need to do in an overall cybersecurity strategy is don't forget storage. Now our announcement around Safeguarded Copy is very much about rapid recovery after an attack for malware or ransomware. We have a much broader set of cyber security technology inside of IBM Storage. For example, with our FlashSystem family, we can encrypt data at rest with no performance penalty. So if someone steals that data, guess what? It's encrypted. We can do anomalous pattern detection with our backup product, Spectrum Protect Plus, why would you care? Well, if theCUBE's backup was taking two hours on particular datasets and all of a sudden it was taking four hours, Hmm maybe someone is encrypting those backup data sets. And so we notify. So what we believe at IBM is that an overarching cybersecurity strategy has to keep the bad guys out, threat detection, anomalous pattern behavior on the network, on the servers, on the storage and all of that, chasing the bad guy down once they breach the wall, 'cause that does happen, but if you don't have cyber and data resilience built into your storage technology, you are leaving a gap that the bad guys can explain, whether that be the malware ransomware guys oh by the way, Dave, there still is internal IT theft that there was a case about 10 years ago now where 10 IT guys stole $175 million. I kid you not, $175 million from a bunch of large banks across the country, and that was an internal IT theft. So between the internal IT issues that could approach you malware and ransomware, a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy, must include storage. >> So I want to ask you about come back to Safeguarded Copy and you mentioned some features and capabilities, encrypting data at rest, your anomalous pattern recognition inferring, you're taking a holistic approach, but of course you've got a storage centricity, what's different about your cyber solution? What's your unique value probability to your (indistinct) . >> Well, when you look at Safeguarded Copy, what it does is it creates immutable copies that are logically air-gapped, but logically air-gapped locally. So what that means is if you have a malware or ransomware attack and you need to do a recovery, whether it be a surgical recovery or a full-on recovery, because they attacked everything, then we can do recovery in a couple hours versus a couple of days or a couple of weeks. Now, in addition to the logical local air-gapping with Safeguarded Copy, you also could do remote logical air-gapping by snapping out to the cloud, which we also have on our FlashSystem products and you also of course, could take our FlashSystem products and back up to tape, giving you a physical air gap. In short, we give our customers three different ways to help with malware and ransomware. >> Let me ask you- >> Are air-gapped locally. >> Yeah, please continue, I'm sorry. >> So our air-gapping locally for rapid recovery, air-gapping remotely, which again, then puts it on the cloud provider network, so hopefully they can't breach that. And then clearly a physical air gap going out to tape all three and on the mainframe, we have Safeguarded Copy already, Dave and several of our mainframe customers actually do two of those things, they'll do Safeguarded Copy or rapid recovery locally, but they'll also take that Safeguarded Copy and either put it out to tape or put it out to a cloud provider with a remote logical air-gap using a snapshot. >> I want to ask you a question about management 'cause when you ask CSOs, what's your number one challenge, they'll say lack of talent, We've got all these tools and all this lack of skills to really do all this stuff. Can't hire people fast enough and they don't have the skills. So when you think about it, and so what you do is you bring a lot of automation into the orchestration and management. My question is this, when you set up air gaps, do you recommend, or what do you see in terms of not, of logically and physically not only physically separating the data, but also the management and orchestration and automation does that have to be logically air-gapped as well or can you use the same management system? What's best practice there? >> Ah, so what we do is we work with our copy management software, which will manage regular copies as well, but Safeguarded Copies are immutable. You can't write to them, you can't get rid of them and they're logically air-gapped from the local hosts. So the hosts, for the Safeguarded Copies that immutable copy, you just made, the hosts don't even know that it's there. So you manage that with our copy management software, which by the way, we'll manage regular snapshots and replicas as well, but what that allows you to do is allows you to automate, for example, you can automate recovery across multiple FlashSystem arrays, the copy services manager will allow you to set different parameters for different Safeguarded Copies. So a certain Safeguarded Copy, you could say, make me a copy every four hours. And then on another volume on a different data set, you could say, make me a copy every 12 hours. Once you set all that stuff update, it's completely automated, completely automated. >> So, I want to come back to something you mentioned about anomalous pattern recognition and how you help with threat detection. So a couple of a couple of quick multi-part question here. First of all, the backup corpus is an obvious target. So that's an area that you have to protect. And so can, and you're saying, you've used the example if your backups taking too long, but so how do you do that? What's the technology behind that? And then can you go beyond, should you go beyond just the backup corpus, with primary data or copies on-prem, et cetera? Two part questions. >> So when we look at it, the anomalous pattern detection is part of our backup software, say Spectrum Protect and what it does it uses AI-based technology, it recognizes a pattern. So it knows that the backup dataset for the queue takes two hours and it recognizes that, and it sees that as the normal state of events. So if all of a sudden that backup that theCUBE was doing used to take two hours and starts taking four, what it does is that's an anomalous pattern, it's not a normal pattern. It'll send a note to the backup admin, the storage admin, whoever you designate it to and say the backup data set for theCUBE that used to take two hours, it's taken four hours, you probably ought to check that. So when we view cyber resiliency from a storage perspective, it's broad. We just talked about anomalous pattern detection in Spectrum Protect. We were talking most of the conversation about our Safeguarded Copy, which is available on the mainframe for several years and is now available on FlashSystems, making immutable local air-gap copies, that can be rapidly recovered and are immutable and can help you recover for a malware or ransomware attack. Our data at rest encryption happens to be with no performance penalty. So when you look at it, you need to create an overarching strategy for cybersecurity and then when you look at your storage estate, you need to look at your secondary storage, backup, replicas, snaps, archive, and have a strategy there to protect that and then you need a strategy to protect your primary storage, which would be things like Safeguarded Copy and encryption. So then you put it all together and in fact, Dave, one of the things we offer is a free cyber resilience assessment. It's not only for IBM Storage, but it happens to be a cyber resilience assessment that conforms to the NIST Framework and it's heterogeneous. So if you're a big company, you've got IBM EMC and HP Storage, guess what? It's all about the data sets not about the storage. So we say, you said these 10 data sets are critical, why are you not encrypting them? These data sets are XYZ, why are you not air-gapping them? So we come up based on the NIST Framework, a set of recommendations that are not IBM specific, but they are storage specific. Here's how you make your storage more resilient, both your secondary storage and your primary storage. That's how we see the big thing and Safeguarded Copy of course fits in on the primary storage side, A on the mainframe, which we've had for several years now and B in the Linux world, the Unix world and the Windows Server world on our FlashSystem portfolio with the announcement we did on July 20th. >> Great, thank you for painting that picture. Eric, are you seeing any use case patterns emerge in this space? >> Well, we see a couple of things. First of all, is A most resellers and most end-users, don't see storage an overarching part of the cybersecurity strategy, and that's starting to change. Second thing we're seeing is more and more storage companies are trying to get into this bailiwick of offering cyber and data resilience. The value IBM brings of course is much longer experience to that and we even integrate with other products. So for example, IBM offers a product called QRadar from the security divisions not a storage product, a security product, and it helps you with early data breach recognition. So it looks at servers, network access, it looks at the storage and it actually integrates now with our Safeguarded Copy. So, part of the value that we bring is this overarching strategy of a comprehensive data and cyber resilience across our whole portfolio, including Safeguarded Copy our July 20th announcement. But also integration beyond storage now with our QRadar product from IBM security division. And there will be future announcements coming in both Q4 and Q1 of additional integration with other security technologies, so you can see how storage can be a vital COD in the corporate cybersecurity strategy. >> Got it, thank you. Let's pivot to the, as-a-service it's, cloud obviously is brought in that as-a-service. Now, it seems like everybody has one now. You guys have announced obviously HPE, Dell, Lenovo, Cisco, Pure, everybody's gotten out there as-a-service model, what do we need to know about your as-a-service solution and why is it different from the others? >> Sure. Well, one of the big differences is we actually go on actual storage, not effective. So when you look at effective storage, which most of them do that includes creating the (indistinct) data sets and other things, so you're basically paying for that. Second thing we do is we have a bigger margin. So for example, if theCUBE says we want SLA-3 and we sell it by the SLA, Dave, SLA-1, two and three. So let's say theCUBE needs SLA-3 and the minimum capacity is a 100 terabytes, but let's say you think you need 300 terabytes. No problem. You also have a variable. One of the key differences is unlike many of our competitors, the rate for the base and the rate for the variable are identical. Several of our competitors, when you're in the base, you pay a certain amount, when you go into the variable, they charge you a premium. The other key differentiator is around data reduction. Some of our competitors and all storage companies have data reduction technology. Block-level D do thin provisioning, compression, we all offer those features. The difference is with IBM's pay-as-you-grow, Storage-as-a-Service model, if you have certain data sets that are not very deducible, not very compressible, we absorbed that with our competitors, most of them, if the dataset is not easily deducible, compressible, and they don't see the value, they actually charge you a premium for that. So that is a huge difference. And then the last big difference is our a 100% availability guarantee. We have that on our FlashSystem product line, we're the only one offering 100% availability guarantee. We also against many of the competitors offer a better base nines, as you know, availability characteristics. We offer six nines of availability, which is five minutes and 26 seconds of downtime and a 100% availability of offering. Some of our competitors only offer four nines of availability and if you want five or six, they charge you extra. We give you six nines base in which has only five minutes and change of downtime in a year. So those are the key difference between us and the other as-a-service models out there. >> So, the basic concept I think, is if you commit to more and buy more, you pay less per. I mean, that's the basic philosophy of these things, right? So, if- >> Yes. >> I commit to you X, let's say, I want to just sort of start small and I commit to you to X and great. I'm in now in, maybe I sign up for a multi-year term, I commit this much, whatever, a 100 terabytes or whatever the minimum is. And then I can say, Hey, you know what? This is working for me. The CFO likes it and the IT guys can provision more seamlessly, we got our chargeback or showback model goes, I want to now make a bigger commitment and I can, and I want to sort of, can I break my three-year term and come back and then renegotiate, kind of like reserved instances, maybe bigger and pay less? How do you approach that? >> Well, what you do is we do a couple of things. First of all, you could always add additional capacity, and you just call up. We assign a technical account manager to every account. So in addition to what you get from the regular sales team and what you get from our value business partners, by the way, we did factor in the business partners, Dave, into this, so business partners will have a great pay-as-you-go Storage-as-a-Service solution, that includes partners and their ability to leverage. In fact, several of our partners that do have both MSP and MHP businesses are working right now to leverage our Storage-as-a-Service, and then add on their own value with their own MSP and MHP capability. >> And they can white label that? Is that right or? >> Well, you'd still have Storage-as-a-Service from IBM. They would resell that to theCUBE and then they'd add in their own MHP or MSP. >> Got it. >> That said partners interested in doing a white label, we would certainly entertain that capability. >> Got it. I interrupted you, carry on please. >> Yeah, you can go ahead and add more capacity, not a problem. You also can change the SLA. So theCUBE, one of the leading an industry analyst firms, you bought every analyst firm in the world, and you're using IBM Storage-as-a-Service, pay-as-you-go cloud-like model. So what you do is you call up the technical account manager and say, Eric, we bought all these other companies they're using on-prem storage, we'd like to move to Storage-as-a-Service for all the companies we acquire. We can do that, so that would up your capacity. And then you could say, now we've been at SLA-2, but because we're adding all these new applications of workloads from our acquired companies, we want some of it to be at SLA-1. So we can have some of your workloads on SLA-2, others on SLA-1, you could switch everything to SLA-1, and you just call your technical account manager and they'll make that happen for you or your business partner, obviously, if you bought through the channel. >> I get it, the hard question is what if all those other companies theCUBE acquired are also IBM Storage-as-a-Service customers? Can I, what's that discussion like? Hey, can I consolidate those and get a better deal? >> Yeah, there are all Storage-as-a-Service customers and Dave I love that thought, we would just figure out a way to consolidate the agreement. The agreements are one through five years. What I think also that's very unique is let's say for whatever reason, and we all love finance people. Let's say the IT guys have called the finance and say, we did a one-year contract, we now like to do a three-year contract. The one year is coming up and guess what? Finance's delayed for whatever reason, the PO doesn't go through. So the ITI calls up the technical account manager, we love your service, it's delayed in finance. We will let them stay on their Storage-as-a-Service, even though they don't have a contract. Now, of course they've told us they want to do one, but if they exceed the contract by a quarter or two, because they can't get the finance guys are messing with the IT guys, that's fine. What the key differentiators? Exactly the same price. Several of our competitors will also extend without a contract, but until you do a contract, they charge you a premium, we do not, whatever, if you're an SLA-3, you're SLA-3, we'll extend you and no big deal. And then you do your contract, when the finance guys get their act together and you're ready to go. So that is something we can do and we'll do on a continual basis. >> Last question. Let's go way out. So, we're not doing any time, near-term forecasts, I'm trying to understand how popular you think as-a-service is going to be. I mean, if you think about the end of the decade, let's think industry total, IBM specific, how popular do you think as-a-service models will be? Do you think it will be the majority of the transacted business or it's kind of more of a, just one of many? >> So I think there will be many, some people will still have bare metal on-premises. Some people will still do virtualization on-premises or in a hybrid cloud configuration. What I do think though is Storage-as-a-Service will be over 50% by the end. Remember, we're sitting at 2021. So we're talking now 2029. >> Right. >> So I think Storage-as-a-Service will be over 50%. I think most of that Storage-as-a-Service will be in a hybrid cloud model. I think the days of a 100% cloud, which is the way it started. I think a lot of people realize that a 100% cloud actually is more expensive than a hybrid cloud or fully on-prem. I was at a major university in New York, they are in the healthcare space and I know their CIO from one of my past lives. I was talking to him, they did a full on analysis of all the cloud providers going a 100% cloud. And their analysis showed that a 100% cloud, particularly for highly transactional workloads was 50% more expensive than buying it, paying the maintenance and paying their employees. So we did an all in view. So what I think it's going to be is Storage-as-a-Service will be over 50%. I think most of that Storage-as-a-Service will be in a hybrid cloud configuration with storage on-prem or in a colo, like what our IBM pay-as-you-go service will do and then it will be accessed and available through a hybrid cloud configuration with IBM Cloud, Google, Amazon as or whoever the cloud provider is. So I do think that you're looking at over 50% of the storage being as-a-service, but I do think the bulk of that as-a-service will be as-a-service through someone like IBM or our competitors and then part of it will be from the cloud providers. But I do think you're going to see a mix because right now the expense of going a 100% cloud cloud storage is dramatically understated and when someone does an analysis like that major university in New York did, they had a guy from finance, help them do the analysis and it was 50% more expensive than doing on-premise either on-prem or on-prem as-a-service, both were way cheaper. >> But you own the asset, right? >> Yes. >> As-a-service model. >> We, right, we own the asset. >> And I would bet, >> I would bet that over the lifetime value of the spend and it as-a-service model, just like the cloud, if you do this with IBM or any of your competitors, I would bet that overall you're going to spend more just like you've seen in the cloud, but you get the benefit is the flexibility that you get. >> Yeah, yeah. If you compare it to the, so obviously the number one model would be to buy. That's probably going to be the least expensive. >> Right. >> But it's also the least flexible. Then you also have leasing, more flexibility, but leasing usually is more expensive. Just like when you lease your car, if you add up all the lease payments and then you, at the end, pay that balloon payment to buy, it's cheaper to buy the car up front than it is to lease a car. Same thing with any IT asset, now storage network servers, all are available on leasing, the net is at the bottom line, that's more than buying it upfront. And then Storage-as-a-Service will also be more expensive than buying it, my friend, but ultimate capability, altering SLAs, adding new capacity, being able to handle an app very quickly. We can provision the storage, as you mentioned, the IT guys can easily provision. We provision, the storage in 10 minutes, if you bought from IBM Storage or any competitor you bought and you need more storage, A you got to put a PO through your system and if you're not theCUBE, but you're a giant global Fortune 500, sometimes it takes weeks to get the PO done. Then the PO has to go to the business partner, the business partner has got to give a PO to the distributor and a PO to IBM. So it can take you weeks to actually get the additional storage that you need. With Storage-as-a-Service from IBM with our pay-as-you-go, cloud-like model, all you have to do is provision and you're done. And by the way, we provide a 50% overage for free. So if they end up needing more storage, that 50% is actually sitting on-prem already and if they get to 75% utilization of the total amount of storage, we then call them up, the technical account manager would call them up and their business partner and say, Dave, do you know that you guys are at 75% full? We'd like to come add some additional storage to get you back down to a 50% margin. And by the way, most of our competitors only do a 25% margin. So again, another differentiator for IBM Storage-as-a-Service. >> What about, I said, last question, but I have another question. What about day one? Like how long does it take, if I want to start fresh with as-a-service? >> Get it. >> How long does it take to get up and running? >> Basically you put the PO through, whatever it takes on your side or through your business partner, we then we'll sign the technical account manager, will call you up because you need to tell us, do you want to, in a colo facility that you're working with or do you want to put it on on-prem? And then once we do that, we just schedule a time for your IT guys do the install. So, probably two weeks. >> Yeah. >> It all depends because you've got to call back and say, Eric, we'd like it at our colo partner, our colo partners, ABC, we got to call ABC and then get back to you or on-prem , we're going to have guys in the office, a good day when it's not going to be too busy. Could you come two weeks from Thursday? Which now would be three weeks for sake of argument. But that would be, we interface with the customer, with the technical account manager to do it on your schedule on your time, whether you do it in your own facility or use a colo provider. >> Yeah, but once you tell, once I tell you, once we get through all that stuff, it's two weeks from when that's all agreed. >> Yeah. >> It's like the Xerox copier salesman, (Dave chuckles) Where are you going to put it? Once you decide where you're going to put it, then it's a couple of weeks. It's not a month or two months or yeah. >> Yeah, it's not. And we need additional capacity, remember there's a 50% margin sitting there. So if you need to go into the variable and use it, and when we hit a 75%, we actually track it with our storage insights pro. So we'll call you up and say, Dave, you're at 76%. We'd like to add more storage to give you better margin of extra storage and you would say, great, when can we do it? So, yeah, we're proactive about that to make sure that you stay at that 50% margin. Again, our competitors, all do only have 25% margin. So we're giving you that better margin, a larger margin in case you really have a high capacity demand for that quarter and we proactively will call you up, if we think you need more based on monitoring your storage usage. >> Great. Eric got to go, thank you so much for taking us through that great detail, I really appreciate it. Always good to see you. >> Great, thanks Dave, really appreciate it. >> Alright, thank you for watching this CUBE conversation, this is Dave Vellante and we'll see you next time. (soft music)

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone, and welcome to this "Cube Conversation." My name is Dave Vellante and you know, containers, they used to be stateless and ephemeral but they're maturing very rapidly. As cloud native workloads become more functional and they go mainstream persisting, and protecting the data that lives inside of containers, is becoming more important to organizations. Enterprise capabilities such as high availability or reliability, scalability and other features are now more fundamental and important and containers are linchpin of hybrid cloud, cross-cloud and edge strategies. Now fusing these capabilities together across these regions in an abstraction layer that hides that underlying complexity of the infrastructure, is where the entire enterprise technology industry is headed. But how do you do that without making endless copies of data and managing versions not to mention the complexities and costs of doing so. And with me to talk about how IBM thinks about and is solving these challenges are Eric Herzog, who's the Chief Marketing Officer and VP of Global Storage Channels. For the IBM Storage Division is Sam Werner is the vice president of offering management and the business line executive for IBM Storage. Guys, great to see you again, wish should, were face to face but thanks for coming on "theCUBE." >> Great to be here. >> Thanks Dave, as always. >> All right guys, you heard me my little spiel there about the problem statement. Eric, maybe you could start us off. I mean, is it on point? >> Yeah, absolutely. What we see is containers are going mainstream. I frame it very similarly to what happened with virtualization, right? It got brought in by the dev team, the test team, the applications team, and then eventually of course, it became the main state. Containers is going through exactly that right now. Brought in by the dev ops people, the software teams. And now it's becoming again, persistent, real use clients that want to deploy a million of them. Just the way they historically have deployed a million virtual machines, now they want a million containers or 2 million. So now it's going mainstream and the feature functions that you need once you take it out of the test sort of play with stage to the real production phase, really changes the ball game on the features you need, the quality of what you get, and the types of things you need the underlying storage and the data services that go with that storage,. to do in a fully container world. >> So Sam how'd we get here? I mean, container has been around forever. You look inside a Linux, right? But then they did, as Eric said, go mainstream. But it started out the, kind of little experimental, As I said, their femoral didn't really need to persist them, but it's changed very quickly. Maybe you could talk to that evolution and how we got here. >> I mean, well, it's been a look, this is all about agility right? It's about enterprises trying to accelerate their innovation. They started off by using virtual machines to try to accelerate access to IT for developers, and developers are constantly out, running ahead. They got to go faster and they have to deliver new applications. Business lines need to figure out new ways to engage with their customers. Especially now with the past year we had it even further accelerated this need to engage with customers in new ways. So it's about being agile. Containers promise or provide a lot of the capabilities you need to be agile. What enterprises are discovering, a lot of these initiatives are starting within the business lines and they're building these applications or making these architectural decisions, building dev ops environments on containers. And what they're finding is they're not bringing the infrastructure teams along with them. And they're running into challenges that are inhibiting their ability to achieve the agility they want because their storage needs aren't keeping up. So this is a big challenge that enterprises face. They want to use containers to build a more agile environment to do things like dev ops, but they need to bring the infrastructure teams along. And that's what we're focused on now. Is how do you make that agile infrastructure to support these new container worlds? >> Got it, so Eric, you guys made an announcement to directly address these issues. Like it's kind of a fire hose of innovation. Maybe you could take us through and then we can unpack that a little bit. >> Sure, so what we did is on April 27th, we announced IBM Spectrum Fusion. This is a fully container native software defined storage technology that integrates a number of proven battle-hardened technologies that IBM has been deploying in the enterprise for many years. That includes a global scalable file system that can span edge core and cloud seamlessly with a single copy of the data. So no more data silos and no more 12 copies of the data which of course drive up CapEx and OpEx. Spectrum Fusion reduces that and makes it easier to manage. Cuts the cost from a CapEx perspective and cuts a cost for an OpEx perspective. By being fully container native, it's ready to go for the container centric world and could span all types of areas. So what we've done is create a storage foundation which is what you need at the bottom. So things like the single global namespace, single accessibility, we have local caching. So with your edge core cloud, regardless of where the data is, you think the data's right with you, even if it physically is not. So that allows people to work on it. We have file locking and other technologies to ensure that the data is always good. And then of course we'd imbued it with the HA Disaster Recovery, the backup and restore technology, which we've had for years and have now made of fully container native. So spectrum fusion basically takes several elements of IBM's existing portfolio has made them container native and brought them together into a single piece of software. And we'll provide that both as a software defined storage technology early in 2022. And our first pass will be as a hyperconverged appliance which will be available next quarter in Q3 of 2021. That of course means it'll come with compute, it'll come with storage, come with a rack even, come with networking. And because we can preload everything for the end users or for our business partners, it would also include Kubernetes, Red Gat OpenShift and Red Hat's virtualization technology all in one simple package, all ease of use and a single management gooey to manage everything, both the software side and the physical infrastructure that's part of the hyperconverged system level technologies. >> So, maybe it can help us understand the architecture and maybe the prevailing ways in which people approach container storage, what's the stack look like? And how have you guys approached it? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Really, there's three layers that we look at when we talk about container native storage. It starts with the storage foundation which is the layer that actually lays the data out onto media and does it in an efficient way and makes that data available where it's needed. So that's the core of it. And the quality of your storage services above that depend on the quality of the foundation that you start with. Then you go up to the storage services layer. This is where you bring in capabilities like HA and DR. People take this for granted, I think as they move to containers. We're talking about moving mission critical applications now into a container and hybrid cloud world. How do you actually achieve the same levels of high availability you did in the past? If you look at what large enterprises do, they run three site, for site replication of their data with hyper swap and they can ensure high availability. How do you bring that into a Kubernetes environment? Are you ready to do that? We talk about how only 20% of applications have really moved into a hybrid cloud world. The thing that's inhibiting the other 80% these types of challenges, okay? So the storage services include HA DR, data protection, data governance, data discovery. You talked about making multiple copies of data creates complexity, it also creates risk and security exposures. If you have multiple copies of data, if you needed data to be available in the cloud you're making a copy there. How do you keep track of that? How do you destroy the copy when you're done with it? How do you keep track of governance and GDPR, right? So if I have to delete data about a person how do I delete it everywhere? So there's a lot of these different challenges. These are the storage services. So we talk about a storage services layer. So layer one data foundation, layer two storage services, and then there needs to be connection into the application runtime. There has to be application awareness to do things like high availability and application consistent backup and recovery. So then you have to create the connection. And so in our case, we're focused on open shift, right? When we talk about Kubernetes how do you create the knowledge between layer two, the storage services and layer three of the application services? >> And so this is your three layer cake. And then as far as like the policies that I want to inject, you got an API out and entries in, can use whatever policy engine I want. How does that work? >> So we're creating consistent sets of APIs to bring those storage services up into the application, run time. We in IBM have things like IBM cloud satellite which bring the IBM public cloud experience to your data center and give you a hybrid cloud or into other public cloud environments giving you one hybrid cloud management experience. We'll integrate there, giving you that consistent set of storage services within an IBM cloud satellite. We're also working with Red Hat on their Advanced Cluster Manager, also known as RACM to create a multi-cluster management of your Kubernetes environment and giving that consistent experience. Again, one common set of APIs. >> So the appliance comes first? Is that a no? Okay, so is that just time to market or is there a sort of enduring demand for appliances? Some customers, you know, they want that, maybe you could explain that strategy. >> Yeah, so first let me take it back a second. Look at our existing portfolio. Our award-winning products are both software defined and system-based. So for example Spectrum Virtualize comes on our flash system. Spectrum Scale comes on our elastic storage system. And we've had this model where we provide the exact same software, both on an array or as standalone piece of software. This is unique in the storage industry. When you look at our competitors, when they've got something that's embedded in their array, their array manager, if you will, that's not what they'll try to sell you. It's software defined storage. And of course, many of them don't offer software defined storage in any way, shape or form. So we've done both. So with spectrum fusion, we'll have a hyper-converged configuration which will be available in Q3. We'll have a software defined configuration which were available at the very beginning of 2022. So you wanted to get out of this market feedback from our clients, feedback from our business partners by doing a container native HCI technology, we're way ahead. We're going to where the park is. We're throwing the ball ahead of the wide receiver. If you're a soccer fan, we're making sure that the mid guy got it to the forward ahead of time so you could kick the goal right in. That's what we're doing. Other technologies lead with virtualization, which is great but virtualization is kind of old hat, right? VMware and other virtualization layers have been around for 20 now. Container is where the world is going. And by the way, we'll support everything. We still have customers in certain worlds that are using bare metal, guess what? We work fine with that. We worked fine with virtual as we have a tight integration with both hyper V and VMware. So some customers will still do that. And containers is a new wave. So with spectrum fusion, we are riding the wave not fighting the wave and that way we could meet all the needs, right? Bare metal, virtual environments, and container environments in a way that is all based on the end users applications, workloads, and use cases. What goes, where and IBM Storage can provide all of it. So we'll give them two methods of consumption, by early next year. And we started with a hyper-converged first because, A, we felt we had a lead, truly a lead. Other people are leading with virtualization. We're leading with OpenShift and containers where the first full container-native OpenShift ground up based hyper-converged of anyone in the industry versus somebody who's done VMware or some other virtualization layer and then sort of glommed on containers and as an afterthought. We're going to where the market is moving, not to where the market has been. >> So just follow up on that. You kind of, you got the sort of Switzerland DNA. And it's not just OpenShift and Red Hat and the open source ethos. I mean, it just goes all the way back to San Volume Controller back in the day where you could virtualize anybody's storage. How is that carrying through to this announcement? >> So Spectrum Fusion is doing the same thing. Spectrum Fusion, which has many key elements brought in from our history with Spectrum Scale supports not IBM storage, for example, EMC Isilon NFS. It will support, Fusion will support Spectrum Scale, Fusion will support our elastic storage system. Fusion will support NetApp filers as well. Fusion will support IBM cloud object storage both software defined storage, or as an array technology and Amazon S3 object stores and any other object storage vendor who's compliant with S3. All of those can be part of the global namespace, scalable file system. We can bring in, for example, object data without making a duplicate copy. The normal way to do that as you make a duplicate copy. So you had a copy in the object store. You make a copy and to bring that into the file. Well, guess what, we don't have to do that. So again, cutting CapEx and OpEx and ease of management. But just as we do with our flash systems product and our Spectrum Virtualize and the SAN Volume Controller, we support over 550 storage arrays that are not ours that are our competitors. With Spectrum Fusion, we've done the same thing, fusion, scale the IBM ESS, IBM cloud object storage, Amazon S3 object store, as well as other compliance, EMC Isilon NFS, and NFS from NetApp. And by the way, we can do the discovery model as well not just integration in the system. So we've made sure that we really do protect existing investments. And we try to eliminate, particularly with discovery capability, you've got AI or analytics software connecting with the API, into the discovery technology. You don't have to traverse and try to find things because the discovery will create real time, metadata cataloging, and indexing, not just of our storage but the other storage I'd mentioned, which is the competition. So talk about making it easier to use, particularly for people who are heterogeneous in their storage environment, which is pretty much the bulk of the global fortune 1500, for sure. And so we're allowing them to use multiple vendors but derive real value with Spectrum Fusion and get all the capabilities of Spectrum Fusion and all the advantages of the enterprise data services but not just for our own product but for the other products as well that aren't ours. >> So Sam, we understand the downside of copies, but then, so you're not doing multiple copies. How do you deal with latency? What's the secret sauce here? Is it the file system? Is there other magic in here? >> Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll build a little bit off of what Eric said, but look one of the really great and unique things about Spectrum Scale is its ability to consume any storage. And we can actually allow you to bring in data sets from where they are. It could have originated in object storage we'll cash it into the file system. It can be on any block storage. It can literally be on any storage you can imagine as long as you can integrate a file system with it. And as you know most applications run on top of the file system. So it naturally fits into your application stack. Spectrum Scale uniquely is a globally parallel file system. So there's not very many of them in the world and there's none that can achieve what Spectrum Scale can do. We have customers running in the exabytes of data and the performance improves with scales. So you can actually deploy Spectrum Scale on-prem, build out an environment of it, consuming whatever storage you have. Then you can go into AWS or IBM cloud or Azure, deploy an instance of it and it will now extend your file system into that cloud. Or you can deploy it at the edge and it'll extend your file system to that edge. This gives you the exact same set of files and visibility and we'll cash in only what's needed. Normally you would have to make a copy of data into the other environment. Then you'd have to deal with that copy later, let's say you were doing a cloud bursting use case. Let's look at that as an example, to make this real. You're running an application on-prem. You want to spin up more compute in the cloud for your AI. The data normally you'd have to make a copy of the data. You'd run your AI. They have to figure out what to do with that data. Do you copy some of the fact? Do we sync them? Do you delete it? What do you do? With Spectrum Scale just automatically cash in whatever you need. It'll run there and you get assigned to spin it down. Your copy is still on-prem. You know, no data is lost. We can actually deal with all of those scenarios for you. And then if you look at what's happening at the edge, a lot of say video surveillance, data pouring in. Looking at the manufacturing {for} looking for defects. You can run a AI right at the edge, make it available in the cloud, make that data available in your data center. Again, one file system going across all. And that's something unique in our data foundation built on Spectrum Scale. >> So there's some metadata magic in there as well, and that intelligence based on location. And okay, so you're smart enough to know where the data lives. What's the sweet spot for this Eric? Are there any particular use cases or industries that we should be focused on or is it through? >> Sure, so first let's talk about the industries. We see certain industries going more container quicker than other industries. So first is financial services. We see it happening there. Manufacturing, Sam already talked about AI based manufacturing platforms. We actually have a couple clients right now. We're doing autonomous driving software with us on containers right now, even before Spectrum Fusion with Spectrum Scale. We see public of course, healthcare and in healthcare don't just think delivery at IBM. That includes the research guys. So the genomic companies, the biotech companies, the drug companies are all included in that. And then of course, retail, both on-prem and off-prem. So those are sort of the industries. Then we see from an application workload, basically AI analytics and big data applications or workloads are the key things that Spectrum Fusion helps you because of its file system. It's high performance. And those applications are tending to spread across core ,edge and cloud. So those applications are spreading out. They're becoming broader than just running in the data center. And by the way they want to run it just into the data center, that's fine. Or perfect example, we had giant global auto manufacturer. They've got factories all over. And if you think there isn't compute resources in every factory, there is because those factories I just saw an article, actually, those factories cost about a billion dollars to build them, a billion. So they've got their own IT, now it's connected to their core data center as well. So that's a perfect example that enterprise edge where spectrum fusion would be an ideal solution whether they did it as software defined only, or of course when you got a billion dollar factory, just to make it let alone produce the autos or whatever you're producing. Silicon, for example, those fabs, all cost a billion. That's where the enterprise edge fits in very well with Spectrum Fusion. >> So are those industries, what's driving the adoption of containers? Is it just, they just want to modernize? Is it because they're doing some of those workloads that you mentioned or is there's edge? Like you mentioned manufacturing, I could see that potentially being an edge is the driver. >> Well, it's a little bit of all of those Dave. For example, virtualization came out and virtualization offered advantages over bare metal, okay? Now containerization has come out and containerization is offering advantage over virtualization. The good thing at IBM is we know we can support all three. And we know again, in the global fortune 2000, 1500 they're probably going to run all three based on the application workload or use case. And our storage is really good at bare metal. Very good at virtualization environments. And now with Spectrum Fusion are container native outstanding for container based environments. So we see these big companies will probably have all three and IBM storage is one of the few vendors if not the only vendor that could adroitly support all three of those various workload types. So that's why we see this as a huge advantage. And again, the market is going to containers. We are, I'm a native California. You don't fight the wave, you ride the wave. and the wave is containers and we're riding that wave. >> If you don't ride the wave you become driftwood as Pat Gelsinger would say. >> And that is true, another native California. I'm a whole boss. >> So okay, so, I wonder Sam I sort of hinted upfront in my little narrative there but the way we see this, as you've got on-prem hybrid, you got public clouds across cloud moving to the edge. Open shift is I said is the linchpin to enabling some of those. And what we see is this layer that abstracts the complexity, hides the underlying complexity of the infrastructure that becomes kind of an implementation detail. Eric talked about skating to the park or whatever sports analogy you want to use. Is that where the park is headed? >> Yeah, I mean, look, the bottom line is you have to remove the complexity for the developers. Again, the name of the game here is all about agility. You asked why these industries are implementing containers? It's about accelerating their innovation and their services for their customers. It's about leveraging AI to gain better insights about their customers and delivering what they want and proving their experience. So if it's all about agility developers don't want to wait around for infrastructure. You need to automate it as much as possible. So it's about building infrastructure that's automated, which requires consistent API APIs. And it requires abstracting out the complexity of things like HA and DR. You don't want every application owner to have to figure out how to implement that. You want to make those storage services available and easy for a developer to implement and integrate into what they're doing. You want to ensure security across everything you do as you bring more and more of your data of your information about your customers into these container worlds. You've got to have security rock solid. You can't leave any exposures there and you can't afford downtime. There's increasing threats from things like ransomware. You don't see it in the news every day but it happens every single day. So how do you make sure you can recover when an event happens to you? So yes, you need to build a abstracted layer of storage services and you need to make it simply available to the developers in these dev ops environments. And that's what we're doing with spectrum fusion. We're taking, I think, extremely unique and one of a kind storage foundation with Spectrum Scale that gives you single namespace globally. And we're building onto it an incredible set of storage services, making extremely simple to deploy enterprise class container applications. >> So what's the bottom line business impact. I mean, how does this change? I mean, Sam, you I think articulated very well through all about serving the developers versus you know, storage, admin provisioning, a LUN. So how does this change my organization, my business? What's the impact there? >> I've mentioned one other point that we talk about an IBM a lot, which is the AI ladder. And it's about how do you take all of this information you have and be able to take it to build new insights, to give your company and advantage. An incumbent in an industry shouldn't be able to be disrupted if they're able to leverage all the data they have about the industry and their customers. But in order to do that, you have to be able to get to a single source of data and be able to build it into the fabric of your business operations. So that all decisions you're making in your company, all services you deliver to your customers, are built on that data foundation and information and the only way to do that and infuse it into your culture is to make this stuff real time. And the only way to do that is to build out a containerized application environment that has access to real-time data. The ultimate outcome, sorry, I know you asked for business results is that you will, in real time understand your clients, understand your industry and deliver the best possible services. And the absolute, business outcome is you will continue to gain market share and your environment and grow revenue. I mean, that's the outcome every business wants. >> Yeah, it's all about speed. Everybody's kind of, everybody's last year was forced into digital transformation. It was sort of rushed into and compressed and now they get some time to do it right. And so modernizing apps, containers, dev ops developer led sort of initiatives are really key to modernization. All right, Eric, we've got, we're out of time but give us the bottom summary. We didn't talk, actually, we had to talk about the 3,200. Maybe you could give us a little insight on that before we close. >> Sure, so in addition to what we're doing with Fusion we also introduced a new elastic storage system, 3,200 and it's all flash. It gets 80 gigs, a second sustained at the node level and we can cluster them infinitely. So for example, I've got 10 of them. I'm delivering 800 gigabytes, a second sustained. And of course, AI, big data analytic workloads are extremely, extremely susceptible to bandwidth and or data transfer rate. That's what they need to deliver their application base properly. It comes with Spectrum Scale built in so that comes with it. So you get the advantage of Spectrum Scale. We talked a lot about Spectrum Scale because it is if you will, one of the three fathers of spectrum fusion. So it's ideal with it's highly parallel file system. It's used all over in high performance computing and super computing, in drug research, in health care in finance, probably about 80% of the world's largest banks in the world use Spectrum Scale already for AI, big data analytics. So the new 3,200 is an all flash version twice as fast as the older version and all the benefit of Spectrum Scale including the ability of seamlessly integrating into existing Spectrum Scale or ESS deployments. And when Fusion comes out, you'll be able to have Fusion. And you could also add 3,200 to it if you want to do that because of the capability of our global namespace and our single file system across edge, core and cloud. So that's the 3,200 in a nutshell, Dave. >> All right, give us a bottom line, Eric. And we got to go, what's the bumper sticker. >> Yeah, bumper sticker is, you got to ride the wave of containers and IBM storage is company that can take you there so that you win the big surfing context and get the big prize. >> Eric and Sam, thanks so much, guys. It's great to see you and miss you guys. Hopefully we'll get together soon. So get your jabs and we'll have a beer. >> All right. >> All right, thanks, Dave. >> Nice talking to you. >> All right, thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for "theCUBE." We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto and Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the CUBE, coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a CUBE conversation. we've got a couple of a CUBE alumni veterans who've been on a lot of times. They've got some exciting announcements to tell us today, so we're excited to jump into it, So let's go. First we're joined by Eric Herzog. He's the CMO and VP worldwide storage channels for IBM Storage, made his time on theCUBE Eric, great to see you. >> Great, thanks very much for having us today. >> Jeff: Absolutely. And joining him, I think all the way from North Carolina, Sam Werner, the VP of, and offering manager business line executive storage for IBM. Sam, great to see you as well. >> Great to be here, thank you. >> Absolutely. So let's jump into it. So Sam you're in North Carolina, I think that's where the Red Hat people are. You guys have Red Hat, a lot of conversations about containers, containers are going nuts. We know containers are going nuts and it was Docker and then Kubernetes. And really a lot of traction. Wonder if you can reflect on, on what you see from your point of view and how that impacts what you guys are working on. >> Yeah, you know, it's interesting. We talk, everybody hears about containers constantly. Obviously it's a hot part of digital transformation. What's interesting about it though is most of those initiatives are being driven out of business lines. I spend a lot of time with the people who do infrastructure management, particularly the storage teams, the teams that have to support all of that data in the data center. And they're struggling to be honest with you. These initiatives are coming at them, from application developers and they're being asked to figure out how to deliver the same level of SLAs the same level of performance, governance, security recovery times, availability. And it's a scramble for them to be quite honest they're trying to figure out how to automate their storage. They're trying to figure out how to leverage the investments they've made as they go through a digital transformation and keep in mind, a lot of these initiatives are accelerating right now because of this global pandemic we're living through. I don't know that the strategy's necessarily changed, but there's been an acceleration. So all of a sudden these storage people kind of trying to get up to speed or being thrown right into the mix. So we're working directly with them. You'll see, in some of our announcements, we're helping them, you know, get on that journey and provide the infrastructure their teams need. >> And a lot of this is driven by multicloud and hybrid cloud, which we're seeing, you know, a really aggressive move to before it was kind of this rush to public cloud. And that everybody figured out, "Well maybe public cloud isn't necessarily right for everything." And it's kind of this horses for courses, if you will, with multicloud and hybrid cloud, another kind of complexity thrown into the storage mix that you guys have to deal with. >> Yeah, and that's another big challenge. Now in the early days of cloud, people were lifting and shifting applications trying to get lower capex. And they were also starting to deploy DevOps, in the public cloud in order to improve agility. And what they found is there were a lot of challenges with that, where they thought lifting and shifting an application will lower their capital costs the TCO actually went up significantly. Where they started building new applications in the cloud. They found they were becoming trapped there and they couldn't get the connectivity they needed back into their core applications. So now we're at this point where they're trying to really, transform the rest of it and they're using containers, to modernize the rest of the infrastructure and complete the digital transformation. They want to get into a hybrid cloud environment. What we found is, enterprises get two and a half X more value out of the IT when they use a hybrid multicloud infrastructure model versus an all public cloud model. So what they're trying to figure out is how to piece those different components together. So you need a software-driven storage infrastructure that gives you the flexibility, to deploy in a common way and automate in a common way, both in a public cloud but on premises and give you that flexibility. And that's what we're working on at IBM and with our colleagues at Red Hat. >> So Eric, you've been in the business a long time and you know, it's amazing as it just continues to evolve, continues to evolve this kind of unsexy thing under the covers called storage, which is so foundational. And now as data has become, you know, maybe a liability 'cause I have to buy a bunch of storage. Now it is the core asset of the company. And in fact a lot of valuations on a lot of companies is based on its value, that's data and what they can do. So clearly you've got a couple of aces in the hole you always do. So tell us what you guys are up to at IBM to take advantage of the opportunity. >> Well, what we're doing is we are launching, a number of solutions for various workloads and applications built with a strong container element. For example, a number of solutions about modern data protection cyber resiliency. In fact, we announced last year almost a year ago actually it's only a year ago last week, Sam and I were on stage, and one of our developers did a demo of us protecting data in a container environment. So now we're extending that beyond what we showed a year ago. We have other solutions that involve what we do with AI big data and analytic applications, that are in a container environment. What if I told you, instead of having to replicate and duplicate and have another set of storage right with the OpenShift Container configuration, that you could connect to an existing external exabyte class data lake. So that not only could your container apps get to it, but the existing apps, whether they'll be bare-metal or virtualized, all of them could get to the same data lake. Wow, that's a concept saving time, saving money. One pool of storage that'll work for all those environments. And now that containers are being deployed in production, that's something we're announcing as well. So we've got a lot of announcements today across the board. Most of which are container and some of which are not, for example, LTO-9, the latest high performance and high capacity tape. We're announcing some solutions around there. But the bulk of what we're announcing today, is really on what IBM is doing to continue to be the leader in container storage support. >> And it's great, 'cause you talked about a couple of very specific applications that we hear about all the time. One obviously on the big data and analytics side, you know, as that continues to do, to kind of chase history of honor of ultimately getting the right information to the right people at the right time so they can make the right decision. And the other piece you talked about was business continuity and data replication, and to bring people back. And one of the hot topics we've talked to a lot of people about now is kind of this shift in a security threat around ransomware. And the fact that these guys are a little bit more sophisticated and will actually go after your backup before they let you know that they're into your primary storage. So these are two, really important market areas that we could see continue activity, as all the people that we talk to every day. You must be seeing the same thing. >> Absolutely we are indeed. You know, containers are the wave. I'm a native California and I'm coming to you from Silicon Valley and you don't fight the wave, you ride it. So at IBM we're doing that. We've been the leader in container storage. We, as you know, way back when we invented the hard drive, which is the foundation of almost this entire storage industry and we were responsible for that. So we're making sure that as container is the coming wave that we are riding that in and doing the right things for our customers, for our channel partners that support those customers, whether they be existing customers, and obviously, with this move to containers, is going to be some people searching for probably a new vendor. And that's something that's going to go right into our wheelhouse because of the things we're doing. And some of our capabilities, for example, with our FlashSystems, with our Spectrum Virtualize, we're actually going to be able to support CSI snapshots not only for IBM Storage, but our Spectrum Virtualize products supports over 500 different arrays, most of which aren't ours. So if you got that old EMC VNX2 or that HPE, 3PAR or aNimble or all kinds of other storage, if you need CSI snapshot support, you can get it from IBM, with our Spectrum Virtualize software that runs on our FlashSystems, which of course cuts capex and opex, in a heterogeneous environment, but gives them that advanced container support that they don't get, because they're on older product from, you know, another vendor. We're making sure that we can pull our storage and even our competitor storage into the world of containers and do it in the right way for the end user. >> That's great. Sam, I want to go back to you and talk about the relationship with the Red Hat. I think it was about a year ago, I don't have my notes in front of me, when IBM purchased Red Hat. Clearly you guys have been working very closely together. What does that mean for you? You've been in the business for a long time. You've been at IBM for a long time, to have a partner you know, kind of embed with you, with Red Hat and bringing some of their capabilities into your portfolio. >> It's been an incredible experience, and I always say my friends at Red Hat because we spend so much time together. We're looking at now, leveraging a community that's really on the front edge of this movement to containers. They bring that, along with their experience around storage and containers, along with the years and years of enterprise class storage delivery that we have in the IBM Storage portfolio. And we're bringing those pieces together. And this is a case of truly one plus one equals three. And you know, an example you'll see in this announcement is the integration of our data protection portfolio with their container native storage. We allow you to in any environment, take a snapshot of that data. You know, this move towards modern data protection is all about a movement to doing data protection in a different way which is about leveraging snapshots, taking instant copies of data that are application aware, allowing you to reuse and mount that data for different purposes, be able to protect yourself from ransomware. Our data protection portfolio has industry leading ransomware protection and detection in it. So we'll actually detect it before it becomes a problem. We're taking that, industry leading data protection software and we are integrating it into Red Hat, Container Native Storage, giving you the ability to solve one of the biggest challenges in this digital transformation which is backing up your data. Now that you're moving towards, stateful containers and persistent storage. So that's one area we're collaborating. We're working on ensuring that our storage arrays, that Eric was talking about, that they integrate tightly with OpenShift and that they also work again with, OpenShift Container Storage, the Cloud Native Storage portfolio from, Red Hat. So we're bringing these pieces together. And on top of that, we're doing some really, interesting things with licensing. We allow you to consume the Red Hat Storage portfolio along with the IBM software-defined Storage portfolio under a single license. And you can deploy the different pieces you need, under one single license. So you get this ultimate investment protection and ability to deploy anywhere. So we're, I think we're adding a lot of value for our customers and helping them on this journey. >> Yeah Eric, I wonder if you could share your perspective on multicloud management. I know that's a big piece of what you guys are behind and it's a big piece of kind of the real world as we've kind of gotten through the hype and now we're into production, and it is a multicloud world and it is, you got to manage this stuff it's all over the place. I wonder if you could speak to kind of how that challenge you know, factors into your design decisions and how you guys are about, you know, kind of the future. >> Well we've done this in a couple of ways in things that are coming out in this launch. First of all, IBM has produced with a container-centric model, what they call the Multicloud Manager. It's the IBM Cloud Pak for multicloud management. That product is designed to manage multiple clouds not just the IBM Cloud, but Amazon, Azure, et cetera. What we've done is taken our Spectrum Protect Plus and we've integrated it into the multicloud manager. So what that means, to save time, to save money and make it easier to use, when the customer is in the multicloud manager, they can actually select Spectrum Protect Plus, launch it and then start to protect data. So that's one thing we've done in this launch. The other thing we've done is integrate the capability of IBM Spectrum Virtualize, running in a FlashSystem to also take the capability of supporting OCP, the OpenShift Container Platform in a Clustered environment. So what we can do there, is on-premise, if there really was an earthquake in Silicon Valley right now, that OpenShift is sitting on a server. The servers just got crushed by the roof when it caved in. So you want to make sure you've got disaster recovery. So what we can do is take that OpenShift Container Platform Cluster, we can support it with our Spectrum Virtualize software running on our FlashSystem, just like we can do heterogeneous storage that's not ours, in this case, we're doing it with Red Hat. And then what we can do is to provide disaster recovery and business continuity to different cloud vendors not just to IBM Cloud, but to several cloud vendors. We can give them the capability of replicating and protecting that Cluster to a cloud configuration. So if there really was an earthquake, they could then go to the cloud, they could recover that Red Hat Cluster, to a different data center and run it on-prem. So we're not only doing the integration with a multicloud manager, which is multicloud-centric allowing ease of use with our Spectrum Protect Plus, but incase of a really tough situation of fire in a data center, earthquake, hurricane, whatever, the Red Hat OpenShift Cluster can be replicated out to a cloud, with our Spectrum Virtualize Software. So in most, in both cases, multicloud examples because in the first one of course the multicloud manager is designed and does support multiple clouds. In the second example, we support multiple clouds where our Spectrum Virtualize for public clouds software so you can take that OpenShift Cluster replicate it and not just deal with one cloud vendor but with several. So showing that multicloud management is important and then leverage that in this launch with a very strong element of container centricity. >> Right >> Yeah, I just want to add, you know, and I'm glad you brought that up Eric, this whole multicloud capability with, the Spectrum Virtualize. And I could see the same for our Spectrum Scale Family, which is our storage infrastructure for AI and big data. We actually, in this announcement have containerized the client making it very simple to deploy in Kubernetes Cluster. But one of the really special things about Spectrum Scale is it's active file management. This allows you to build out a file system not only on-premises for your, Kubernetes Cluster but you can actually extend that to a public cloud and it automatically will extend the file system. If you were to go into a public cloud marketplace which it's available in more than one, you can go in there click deploy, for example, in AWS Marketplace, click deploy it will deploy your Spectrum Scale Cluster. You've now extended your file system from on-prem into the cloud. If you need to access any of that data, you can access it and it will automatically cash you on locally and we'll manage all the file access for you. >> Yeah, it's an interesting kind of paradox between, you know, kind of the complexity of what's going on in the back end, but really trying to deliver simplicity on the front end. Again, this ultimate goal of getting the right data to the right person at the right time. You just had a blog post Eric recently, that you talked about every piece of data isn't equal. And I think it's really highlighted in this conversation we just had about recovery and how you prioritize and how you, you know, think about, your data because you know, the relative value of any particular piece might be highly variable, which should drive the way that you treated in your system. So I wonder if you can speak a little bit, you know, to helping people think about data in the right way. As you know, they both have all their operational data which they've always had, but now they've got all this unstructured data that's coming in like crazy and all data isn't created equal, as you said. And if there is an earthquake or there is a ransomware attack, you need to be smart about what you have available to bring back quickly. And maybe what's not quite so important. >> Well, I think the key thing, let me go to, you know a modern data protection term. These are two very technical terms was, one is the recovery time. How long does it take you to get that data back? And the second one is the recovery point, at what point in time, are you recovering the data from? And the reason those are critical, is when you look at your datasets, whether you replicate, you snap, you do a backup. The key thing you've got to figure out is what is my recovery time? How long is it going to take me? What's my recovery point. Obviously in certain industries you want to recover as rapidly as possible. And you also want to have the absolute most recent data. So then once you know what it takes you to do that, okay from an RPO and an RTO perspective, recovery point objective, recovery time objective. Once you know that, then you need to look at your datasets and look at what does it take to run the company if there really was a fire and your data center was destroyed. So you take a look at those datasets, you see what are the ones that I need to recover first, to keep the company up and rolling. So let's take an example, the sales database or the support database. I would say those are pretty critical to almost any company, whether you'd be a high-tech company, whether you'd be a furniture company, whether you'd be a delivery company. However, there also is probably a database of assets. For example, IBM is a big company. We have buildings all over, well, guess what? We don't lease a chair or a table or a whiteboard. We buy them. Those are physical assets that the company has to pay, you know, do write downs on and all this other stuff, they need to track it. If we close a building, we need to move the desk to another building. Like even if we leasing a building now, the furniture is ours, right? So does an asset database need to be recovered instantaneously? Probably not. So we should focus on another thing. So let's say on a bank. Banks are both online and brick and mortar. I happened to be a Wells Fargo person. So guess what? There's Wells Fargo banks, two of them in the city I'm in, okay? So, the assets of the money, in this case now, I don't think the brick and mortar of the building of Wells Fargo or their desks in there but now you're talking financial assets or their high velocity trading apps. Those things need to be recovered almost instantaneously. And that's what you need to do when you're looking at datasets, is figure out what's critical to the business to keep it up and rolling, what's the next most critical. And you do it in basically the way you would tear anything. What's the most important thing, what's the next most important thing. It doesn't matter how you approach your job, how you used to approach school, what are the classes I have to get an A and what classes can I not get an A and depending on what your major was, all that sort of stuff, you're setting priorities, right? And the dataset, since data is the most critical asset of any company, whether it's a Global Fortune 500 or whether it's Herzog Cigar Store, all of those assets, that data is the most valuable. So you've got to make sure, recover what you need as rapidly as you need it. But you can't recover all of it. You just, there's just no way to do that. So that's why you really ranked the importance of the data to use sameware, with malware and ransomware. If you have a malware or ransomware attack, certain data you need to recover as soon as you can. So if there, for example, as a, in fact there was one Jeff, here in Silicon Valley as well. You've probably read about the University of California San Francisco, ended up having to pay over a million dollars of ransom because some of the data related to COVID research University of California, San Francisco, it was the health care center for the University of California in Northern California. They are working on COVID and guess what? The stuff was held for ransom. They had no choice, but to pay them. And they really did pay, this is around end of June, of this year. So, okay, you don't really want to do that. >> Jeff: Right >> So you need to look at everything from malware and ransomware, the importance of the data. And that's how you figure this stuff out, whether be in a container environment, a traditional environment or virtualized environment. And that's why data protection is so important. And with this launch, not only are we doing the data protection we've been doing for years, but now taking it to the heart of the new wave, which is the wave of containers. >> Yeah, let me add just quickly on that Eric. So think about those different cases you talked about. You're probably going to want for your mission critically. You're going to want snapshots of that data that can be recovered near instantaneously. And then, for some of your data, you might decide you want to store it out in cloud. And with Spectrum Protect, we just announced our ability to now store data out in Google cloud. In addition to, we already supported AWS Azure IBM Cloud, in various on-prem object stores. So we already provided that capability. And then we're in this announcement talking about LTL-9. And you got to also be smart about which data do you need to keep, according to regulation for long periods of time, or is it just important to archive? You're not going to beat the economics nor the safety of storing data out on tape. But like Eric said, if all of your data is out on tape and you have an event, you're not going to be able to restore it quickly enough at least the mission critical things. And so those are the things that need to be in snapshot. And that's one of the main things we're announcing here for Kubernetes environments is the ability to quickly snapshot application aware backups, of your mission critical data in your Kubernetes environments. It can very quickly to be recovered. >> That's good. So I'll give you the last word then we're going to sign off, we are out of time, but I do want to get this in it's 2020, if I didn't ask the COVID question, I would be in big trouble. So, you know, you've all seen the memes and the jokes about really COVID being an accelerant to digital transformation, not necessarily change, but certainly a huge accelerant. I mean, you guys have a, I'm sure a product roadmap that's baked pretty far and advanced, but I wonder if you can speak to, you know, from your perspective, as COVID has accelerated digital transformation you guys are so foundational to executing that, you know, kind of what is it done in terms of what you're seeing with your customers, you know, kind of the demand and how you're seeing this kind of validation as to an accelerant to move to these better types of architectures? Let's start with you Sam. >> Yeah, you know I, and I think i said this, but I mean the strategy really hasn't changed for the enterprises, but of course it is accelerating it. And I see storage teams more quickly getting into trouble, trying to solve some of these challenges. So we're working closely with them. They're looking for more automation. They have less people in the data center on-premises. They're looking to do more automation simplify the management of the environment. We're doing a lot around Ansible to help them with that. We're accelerating our roadmaps around that sort of integration and automation. They're looking for better visibility into their environments. So we've made a lot of investments around our storage insights SaaS platform, that allows them to get complete visibility into their data center and not just in their data center. We also give them visibility to the stores they're deploying in the cloud. So we're making it easier for them to monitor and manage and automate their storage infrastructure. And then of course, if you look at everything we're doing in this announcement, it's about enabling our software and our storage infrastructure to integrate directly into these new Kubernetes, initiatives. That way as this digital transformation accelerates and application developers are demanding more and more Kubernetes capabilities. They're able to deliver the same SLAs and the same level of security and the same level of governance, that their customers expect from them, but in this new world. So that's what we're doing. If you look at our announcement, you'll see that across, across the sets of capabilities that we're delivering here. >> Eric, we'll give you the last word, and then we're going to go to Eric Cigar Shop, as soon as this is over. (laughs) >> So it's clearly all about storage made simple, in a Kubernetes environment, in a container environment, whether it's block storage, file storage, whether it be object storage and IBM's goal is to offer ever increasing sophisticated services for the enterprise at the same time, make it easier and easier to use and to consume. If you go back to the old days, the storage admins manage X amount of gigabytes, maybe terabytes. Now the same admin is managing 10 petabytes of data. So the data explosion is real across all environments, container environments, even old bare-metal. And of course the not quite so new anymore virtualized environments. The admins need to manage that more and more easily and automated point and click. Use AI based automated tiering. For example, we have with our Easy Tier technology, that automatically moves data when it's hot to the fastest tier. And when it's not as hot, it's cool, it pushes down to a slower tier, but it's all automated. You point and you click. Let's take our migration capabilities. We built it into our software. I buy a new array, I need to migrate the data. You point, you click, and we automatic transparent migration in the background on the fly without taking the servers or the storage down. And we always favor the application workload. So if the application workload is heavy at certain times a day, we slow the migration. At night for sake of argument, If it's a company that is not truly 24 by seven, you know, heavily 24 by seven, and at night, it slows down, we accelerate the migration. All about automation. We've done it with Ansible, here in this launch, we've done it with additional integration with other platforms. So our Spectrum Scale for example, can use the OpenShift management framework to configure and to grow our Spectrum Scale or elastic storage system clusters. We've done it, in this case with our Spectrum Protect Plus, as you saw integration into the multicloud manager. So for us, it's storage made simple, incredibly new features all the time, but at the same time we do that, make sure that it's easier and easier to use. And in some cases like with Ansible, not even the real storage people, but God forbid, that DevOps guy messes with a storage and loses that data, wow. So by, if you're using something like Ansible and that Ansible framework, we make sure that essentially the DevOps guy, the test guy, the analytics guy, basically doesn't lose the data and screw up the storage. And that's a big, big issue. So all about storage made simple, in the right way with incredible enterprise features that essentially we make easy and easy to use. We're trying to make everything essentially like your iPhone, that easy to use. That's the goal. And with a lot less storage admins in the world then there has been an incredible storage growth every single year. You'd better make it easy for the same person to manage all that storage. 'Cause it's not shrinking. It is, someone who's sitting at 50 petabytes today, is 150 petabytes the next year and five years from now, they'll be sitting on an exabyte of production data, and they're not going to hire tons of admins. It's going to be the same two or four people that were doing the work. Now they got to manage an exabyte, which is why this storage made simplest is such a strong effort for us with integration, with the Open, with the Kubernetes frameworks or done with OpenShift, heck, even what we used to do in the old days with vCenter Ops from VMware, VASA, VAAI, all those old VMware tools, we made sure tight integration, easy to use, easy to manage, but sophisticated features to go with that. Simplicity is really about how you manage storage. It's not about making your storage dumb. People want smarter and smarter storage. Do you make it smarter, but you make it just easy to use at the same time. >> Right. >> Well, great summary. And I don't think I could do a better job. So I think we'll just leave it right there. So congratulations to both of you and the teams for these announcement after a whole lot of hard work and sweat went in, over the last little while and continued success. And thanks for the, check in, always great to see you. >> Thank you. We love being on theCUBE as always. >> All right, thanks again. All right, he's Eric, he was Sam, I'm I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We'll see you next time, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman. This is theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020 of course, happening virtually. And there are certain people that we talk to every year at theCUBE, and this guest, I believe, has been on theCUBE at VMworld more than any others. It's actually not Pat Gelsinger, Eric Herzog. He is the chief marketing officer and vice president of global storage channels at IBM. Eric, Mr. Zoginstor, welcome back to theCUBE, nice to see you. >> Thank you very much, Stu. IBM always enjoys hanging with you, John, and Dave. And again, glad to be here, although not in person this time at VMworld 2020 virtual. Thanks again for having IBM. >> Alright, so, you know, some things are the same, others, very different. Of course, Eric, IBM, a long, long partner of VMware's. Why don't you set up for us a little bit, you know, 2020, the major engagements, what's new with IBM and VMware? >> So, a couple of things, first of all, we have made our Spectrum Virtualize software, software defined block storage work in virtual machines, both in AWS and IBM Cloud. So we started with IBM Cloud and then earlier this year with AWS. So now we have two different cloud platforms where our Spectrum Virtualize software sits in a VM at the cloud provider. The other thing we've done, of course, is V7 support. In fact, I've done several VMUGs. And in fact, my session at VMworld is going to talk about both our support for V7 but also what we're doing with containers, CSI, Kubernetes overall, and how we can support that in a virtual VMware environment, and also we're doing with traditional ESX and VMware configurations as well. And of course, out to the cloud, as I just talked about. >> Yeah, that discussion of hybrid cloud, Eric, is one that we've been hearing from IBM for a long time. And VMware has had that message, but their cloud solutions have really matured. They've got a whole group going deep on cloud native. The Amazon solutions have been something that they've been partnering, making sure that, you know, data protection, it can span between, you know, the traditional data center environment where VMware is so dominant, and the public clouds. You're giving a session on some of those hybrid cloud solutions, so share with us a little bit, you know, where do the visions completely agree? What's some of the differences between what IBM is doing and maybe what people are hearing from VMware? >> Well, first of all, our solutions don't always require VMware to be installed. So for example, if you're doing it in a container environment, for example, with Red Hat OpenShift, that works slightly different. Not that you can't run Red Hat products inside of a virtual machine, which you can, but in this case, I'm talking Red Hat native. We also of course do VMware native and support what VMware has announced with their Kubernetes based solutions that they've been talking about since VMworld last year, obviously when Pat made some big announcements onstage about what they were doing in the container space. So we've been following that along as well. So from that perspective, we have agreement on a virtual machine perspective and of course, what VMware is doing with the container space. But then also a slightly different one when we're doing Red Hat OpenShift as a native configuration, without having a virtual machine involved in that configuration. So those are both the commonalities and the differences that we're doing with VMware in a hybrid cloud configuration. >> Yeah. Eric, you and I both have some of those scars from making sure that storage works in a virtual environment. It took us about a decade to get things to really work at the VM level. Containers, it's been about five years, it feels like we've made faster progress to make sure that we can have stateful environments, we can tie up with storage, but give us a little bit of a look back as to what we've learned and how we've made sure that containerized, Kubernetes environments, you know, work well with storage for customers today. >> Well, I think there's a couple of things. First of all, I think all the storage vendors learn from VMware. And then the expansion of virtual environments beyond VMware to other virtual environments as well. So I think all the storage vendors, including IBM learned through that process, okay, when the next thing comes, which of course in this case happens to be containers, both in a VMware environment, but in an open environment with the Kubernetes management framework, that you need to be able to support it. So for example, we have done several different things. We support persistent volumes in file block and object store. And we started with that almost three years ago on the block side, then we added the file side and now the object storage side. We also can back up data that's in those containers, which is an important feature, right? I am sitting there and I've got data now and persistent volume, but I got to back it up as well. So we've announced support for container based backup either with Red Hat OpenShift or in a generic Kubernetes environment, because we're realistic at IBM. We know that you have to exist in the software infrastructure milieu, and that includes VMware and competitors of VMware. It includes Red Hat OpenShift, but also competitors to Red Hat. And we've made sure that we support whatever the end user needs. So if they're going with Red Hat, great. If they're going with a generic container environment, great. If they're going to use VMware's container solutions, great. And on the virtualization engines, the same thing. We started with VMware, but also have added other virtualization engines. So you think the storage community as a whole and IBM in particular has learned, we need to be ready day one. And like I said, three years ago, we already had persistent volume support for block store. It's still the dominant storage and we had that three years ago. So for us, that would be really, I guess, two years from what you've talked about when containers started to take off. And within two years we had something going that was working at the end user level. Our sales team could sell our business partners. As you know, many of the business partners are really rallying around containers, whether it be Red Hat or in what I'll call a more generic environment as well. They're seeing the forest through the trees. I do think when you look at it from an end user perspective, though, you're going to see all three. So, particularly in the Global Fortune 1000, you're going to see Red Hat environments, generic Kubernetes environments, VMware environments, just like you often see in some instances, heterogeneous virtualization environments, and you're still going to see bare metal. So I think it's going to vary by application workload and use case. And I think all, I'd say midsize enterprise up, let's say, $5 billion company and up, probably will have at least two, if not all three of those environments, container, virtual machine, and bare metal. So we need to make sure that at IBM we support all those environments to keep those customers happy. >> Yeah, well, Eric, I think anybody, everybody in the industry knows, IBM can span those environments, you know, support through generations. And very much knows that everything in IT tends to be additive. You mentioned customers, Eric, you talk to a lot of customers. So bring us inside, give us a couple examples if you would, how are they dealing with this transition? For years we've been talking about, you know, enabling developers, having them be tied more tightly with what the enterprise is doing. So what are you seeing from some of your customers today? >> Well, I think the key thing is they'd like to use data reuse. So, in this case, think of a backup, a snap or replica dataset, which is real world data, and being able to use that and reuse that. And now the storage guys want to make sure they know who's, if you will, checked it out. We do that with our Spectrum Copy Data Management. You also have, of course, integration with the Ansible framework, which IBM supports, in fact, we'll be announcing some additional support for more features in Ansible coming at the end of October. We'll be doing a large launch, very heavily on containers. Containers and primary storage, containers in hybrid cloud environments, containers in big data and AI environments, and containers in the modern data protection and cyber resiliency space as well. So we'll be talking about some additional support in this case about Ansible as well. So you want to make sure, one of the key things, I think, if you're a storage guy, if I'm the VP of infrastructure, or I'm the CIO, even if I'm not a storage person, in fact, if you think about it, I'm almost 70 now. I have never, ever, ever, ever met a CIO who used to be a storage guy, ever. Whether I, I've been with big companies, I was at EMC, I was at Seagate Maxtor, I've been at IBM actually twice. I've also done seven startups, as you guys know at theCUBE. I have never, ever met a CIO who used to be a storage person. Ever, in all those years. So, what appeals to them is, how do I let the dev guys and the test guys use that storage? At the same time, they're smart enough to know that the software guys and the test guys could actually screw up the storage, lose the data, or if they don't lose the data, cost them hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars because they did something wrong and they have to reconfigure all the storage solutions. So you want to make sure that the CIO is comfortable, that the dev and the test teams can use that storage properly. It's a part of what Ansible's about. You want to make sure that you've got tight integration. So for example, we announced a container native version of our Spectrum Discover software, which gives you comprehensive metadata, cataloging and indexing. Not only for IBM's scale-out file, Spectrum Scale, not only for IBM object storage, IBM cloud object storage, but also for Amazon S3 and also for NetApp filers and also for EMC Isilon. And it's a container native. So you want to make sure in that case, we have an API. So the AI software guys, or the big data software guys could interface with that API to Spectrum Discover, let them do all the work. And we're talking about a piece of software that can traverse billions of objects in two seconds, billions of them. And is ideal to use in solutions that are hundreds of petabytes, up into multiple exabytes. So it's a great way that by having that API where the CIO is confident that the software guys can use the API, not mess up the storage because you know, the storage guys and the data scientists can configure Spectrum Discover and then save it as templates and run an AI workload every Monday, and then run a big data workload every Tuesday, and then Wednesday run a different AI workload and Thursday run a different big data. And so once they've set that up, everything is automated. And CIOs love automation, and they really are sensitive. Although they're all software guys, they are sensitive to software guys messing up the storage 'cause it could cost them money, right? So that's their concern. We make it easy. >> Absolutely, Eric, you know, it'd be lovely to say that storage is just invisible, I don't need to think about it, but when something goes wrong, you need those experts to be able to dig in. You spent some time talking about automation, so critically important. How about the management layer? You know, you think back, for years it was, vCenter would be the place that everything can plug in. You could have more generalists using it. The HCI waves were people kind of getting away from being storage specialists. Today VMware has, of course vCenter's their main estate, but they have Tanzu. On the IBM and Red Hat side, you know, this year you announced the Advanced Cluster Management. What's that management landscape look like? How does the storage get away from managing some of the bits and bytes and, you know, just embrace more of that automation that you talked about? >> So in the case of IBM, we make sure we can support both. We need to appeal to the storage nerd, the storage geek if you will. The same time to a more generalist environment, whether it be an infrastructure manager, whether it be some of the software guys. So for example, we support, obviously vCenter. We're going to be supporting all of the elements that are going to happen in a container environment that VMware is doing. We have hot integration and big time integration with Red Hat's management framework, both with Ansible, but also in the container space as well. We're announcing some things that are coming again at the end of October in the container space about how we interface with the Red Hat management schema. And so you don't always have to have the storage expert manage the storage. You can have the Red Hat administrator, or in some cases, the DevOps guys do it. So we're making sure that we can cover both sides of the fence. Some companies, this just my personal belief, that as containers become commonplace while the software guys are going to want to still control it, there eventually will be a Red Hat/container admin, just like all the big companies today have VMware admins. They all do. Or virtualization admins that cover VMware and VMware's competitors such as Hyper-V. They have specialized admins to run that. And you would argue, VMware is very easy to use, why aren't the software guys playing with it? 'Cause guess what? Those VMs are sitting on servers containing both apps and data. And if the software guy comes in to do something, messes it up, so what have of the big entities done? They've created basically a virtualization admin layer. I think that over time, either the virtualization admins become virtualization/container admins, or if it's a big enough for both estates, there'll be container admins at the Global Fortune 500, and they'll also be virtualization admins. And then the software guys, the devOps guys will interface with that. There will always be a level of management framework. Which is why we integrate, for example, with vCenter, what we're doing with Red Hat, what we do with generic Kubernetes, to make sure that we can integrate there. So we'll make sure that we cover all areas because a number of our customers are very large, but some of our customers are very small. In fact, we have a company that's in the software development space for autonomous driving. They have over a hundred petabytes of IBM Spectrum Scale in a container environment. So that's a small company that's gone all containers, at the same time, we have a bunch of course, Global Fortune 1000s where IBM plays exceedingly well that have our products. And they've got some stuff sitting in VMware, some such sitting in generic Kubernetes, some stuff sitting in Red Hat OpenShift and some stuff still in bare metal. And in some cases they don't want their software people to touch it, in other cases, these big accounts, they want their software people empowered. So we're going to make sure we could support both and both management frameworks. Traditional storage management framework with each one of our products and also management frameworks for virtualization, which we've already been doing. And now management frame first with container. We'll make sure we can cover all three of those bases 'cause that's what the big entities will want. And then in the smaller names, you'll have to see who wins out. I mean, they may still use three in a small company, you really don't know, so you want to make sure you've got everything covered. And it's very easy for us to do this integration because of things we've already historically done, particularly with the virtualization environment. So yes, the interstices of the integration are different, but we know here's kind of the process to do the interconnectivity between a storage management framework and a generic management framework, in, originally of course, vCenter, and now doing it for the container world as well. So at least we've learned best practices and now we're just tweaking those best practices in the difference between a container world and a virtualization world. >> Eric, VMworld is one of the biggest times of the year, where we all get together. I know how busy you are going to the show, meeting with customers, meeting with partners, you know, walking the hallways. You're one of the people that traveled more than I did pre-COVID. You know, you're always at the partner shows and meeting with people. Give us a little insight as to how you're making sure that, partners and customers, those conversations are still happening. We understand everything over video can be a little bit challenging, but, what are you seeing here in 2020? How's everybody doing? >> Well, so, a couple of things. First of all, I already did two partner meetings today. (laughs) And I have an end user meeting, two end user meetings tomorrow. So what we've done at IBM is make sure we do a couple things. One, short and to the point, okay? We have automated tools to actually show, drawing, just like the infamous walk up to the whiteboard in a face to face meeting, we've got that. We've also now tried to make sure everybody is being overly inundated with WebEx. And by the way, there's already a lot of WebEx anyway. I can think of meeting I had with a telco, one of the Fortune 300, and this was actually right before Thanksgiving. I was in their office in San Jose, but they had guys in Texas and guys in the East Coast all on. So we're still over WebEx, but it also was a two and a half hour meeting, actually almost a three hour meeting. And both myself and our Flash CTO went up to the whiteboard, which you could then see over WebEx 'cause they had a camera showing up onto the whiteboard. So now you have to take that and use integrated tools. One, but since people are now, I would argue, over WebEx. There is a different feel to doing the WebEx than when you're doing it face to face. We have to fly somewhere, or they have to fly somewhere. We have to even drive somewhere, so in between meetings, if you're going to do four customer calls, Stu, as you know, I travel all over the world. So I was in Sweden actually right before COVID. And in one day, the day after we had a launch, we launched our new Flash System products in February on the 11th, on February 12th, I was still in Stockholm and I had two partner meetings and two end user meetings. But the sales guy was driving me around. So in between the meetings, you'd be in the car for 20 minutes or half an hour. So it connects different when you can do WebEx after WebEx after WebEx with basically no break. So you have to be sensitive to that when you're talking to your partners, sensitive of that when you're talking to the customers sensitive when you're talking to the analysts, such as you guys, sensitive when you're talking to the press and all your various constituents. So we've been doing that at IBM, really, since the COVID thing got started, is coming up with some best practices so we don't overtax the end users and overtax our channel partners. >> Yeah, Eric, the joke I had on that is we're all following the Bill Belichick model now, no days off, just meeting, meeting, meeting every day, you can stack them up, right? You used to enjoy those downtimes in between where you could catch up on a call, do some things. I had to carve out some time to make sure that stack of books that normally I would read in the airports or on flights, everything, you know. I do enjoy reading a book every now and again, so. Final thing, I guess, Eric. Here at VMworld 2020, you know, give us final takeaways that you want your customers to have when it comes to IBM and VMware. >> So a couple of things, A, we were tightly integrated and have been tightly integrated for what they've been doing in their traditional virtualization environment. As they move to containers we'll be tightly integrated with them as well, as well as other container platforms, not just from IBM with Red Hat, but again, generic Kubernetes environments with open source container configurations that don't use IBM Red Hat and don't use VMware. So we want to make sure that we span that. In traditional VMware environments, like with Version 7 that came out, we make sure we support it. In fact, VMware just announced support for NVMe over Fibre Channel. Well, we've been shipping NVMe over Fibre Channel for just under two years now. It'll be almost two years, well, it will be two years in October. So we're sitting here in September, it's almost been two years since we've been shipping that. But they haven't supported it, so now of course we actually, as part of our launch, I pre say something, as part of our launch, the last week of October at IBM's TechU it'll be on October 27th, you can join for free. You don't need to attend TechU, we'll have a free registration page. So just follow Zoginstor or look at my LinkedIns 'cause I'll be posting shortly when we have the link, but we'll be talking about things that we're doing around V7, with support for VMware's announcement of NVMe over Fibre Channel, even though we've had it for two years coming next month. But they're announcing support, so we're doing that as well. So all of those sort of checkbox items, we'll continue to do as they push forward into the container world. IBM will be there right with them as well because we know it's a very large world and we need to support everybody. We support VMware. We supported their competitors in the virtualization space 'cause some customers have, in fact, some customers have both. They've got VMware and maybe one other of the virtualization elements. Usually VMware is the dominant of course, but if they've got even a little bit of it, we need to make sure our storage works with it. We're going to do the same thing in the container world. So we will continue to push forward with VMware. It's a tight relationship, not just with IBM Storage, but with the server group, clearly with the cloud team. So we need to make sure that IBM as a company stays very close to VMware, as well as, obviously, what we're doing with Red Hat. And IBM Storage makes sure we will do both. I like to say that IBM Storage is a Switzerland of the storage industry. We work with everyone. We work with all these infrastructure players from the software world. And even with our competitors, our Spectrum Virtualized software that comes on our Flash Systems Array supports over 550 different storage arrays that are not IBM's. Delivering enterprise-class data services, such as snapshot, replication data, at rest encryption, migration, all those features, but you can buy the software and use it with our competitors' storage array. So at IBM we've made a practice of making sure that we're very inclusive with our software business across the whole company and in storage in particular with things like Spectrum Virtualize, with what we've done with our backup products, of course we backup everybody's stuff, not just ours. We're making sure we do the same thing in the virtualization environment. Particularly with VMware and where they're going into the container world and what we're doing with our own, obviously sister division, Red Hat, but even in a generic Kubernetes environment. Everyone's not going to buy Red Hat or VMware. There are people going to do Kubernetes industry standard, they're going to use that, if you will, open source container environment with Kubernetes on top and not use VMware and not use Red Hat. We're going to make sure if they do it, what I'll call generically, if they use Red Hat, if they use VMware or some combo, we will support all of it and that's very important for us at VMworld to make sure everyone is aware that while we may own Red Hat, we have a very strong, powerful connection to VMware and going to continue to do that in the future as well. >> Eric Herzog, thanks so much for joining us. Always a pleasure catching up with you. >> Thank you very much. We love being with theCUBE, you guys do great work at every show and one of these days I'll see you again and we'll have a beer. In person. >> Absolutely. So, definitely, Dave Vellante and John Furrier send their best, I'm Stu Miniman, and thank you as always for watching theCUBE. (relaxed electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California it's theCUBE, covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, day two of our coverage of Cisco Live. We are live also from San Diego. I'm Lisa Martin, Stu Miniman is my co-host. And one of our alumni is back with us, Eric Herzog, the CMO of IBM Storage. >> Great, thank you for having us. >> Welcome back. So, lots of buzz, we're in the DevNet Zone. This has been, I hear, one of the busiest expos at Cisco Live this year. The community is, I'm hearing, approaching 600,000 strong. Yesterday we were talking a lot about the big waves of innovation, one of them being GPU's everywhere, AI, but also some of the challenges with respect to data, that companies are generally getting less than 1% of that data to really extract insights from it. So let's talk about what IBM is doing with respect to AI and big data, and really helping customers really turn that dial up on getting more value out of what they have. >> Well, so we're doing a lot in that space. First of all, when you're running AI in particular, if you're really going to do something like run a robotic factory, you'd better make sure the storage doesn't fail. But that's sort of, you know, the checkbox item, just the way a car always has a spare tire. So the real differentiator, from a storage perspective, is what do you do to help the data prep, what do you help to do to make sure that the data is always in the right kind of pipeline? For example, just like a human always learns, right, at least smart humans always learn, so you learned certain things when you were seven or eight, they might've changed by the time you were in college, by the time you have your first kid they might be different again, and by the time you're getting ready to retire, but it could be still the same topic and the data's recycling, and then you learn new things about that topic. So in the case of a data workload, what you need to do is make sure you have data prep along the entire pipeline. And that's what we've done with a whole bunch of software that we offer for the big data and AI workloads and applications. >> So, Eric, we've talked with you many times about what's happening in the multi-cloud world. It feels like IBM and Cisco are on similar, parallel paths as to the move from, traditionally we think about boxes, and from a Cisco standpoint it's ports, and, you know, more and more it's about the software. So can you talk a little bit about that software-defined world in where IBM and Cisco are going together along that journey. >> So, one of the things that we've done from a storage division perspective, we do what we call the VersaStack. It's a converge infrastructure that includes Cisco UCS, our all-flash arrays, but it's packed with a bunch of software. So we can use that to transparently move block data out to a cloud, any cloud, IBM cloud, Amazon, Azure. We could move it out to a block store or to an object store. Now obviously to move it out to an object store, that can help you, can prevent ransomware and malware. And it's all automated. We've done the same thing with Scale-Out File, where we just see cloud as just a tier, and we've done the same thing with object storage. So the big thing we see from a hybrid, multi-cloud perspective at the IBM storage division, is everything needs to be able to have the data easily portable, easily migrateable, and easily replicable back, and constantly moving back and forth, not just going out to the cloud and staying there. So we've done that from our software-defined portfolio. But we also did it with our modern data protection portfolio, Spectrum Protect, which is one of the most award-winning products in the backup space. We've got over 400 small-medium cloud providers where their backup-as-a-service offering is based on Spectrum Protect. So if they go to Wikibon and Wikibon says, we want to back up to the cloud and you're using Tectrade or Cloud Temple or i-Virtualize, all those cloud providers, the backup-as-a-service they sell you is based on IBM Spectrum Protect. So for us cloud is just another tier. Just like hard drives and flash and tape, cloud's just the new tier. >> So in this pivot towards software-defined everything, with, say, VersaStack for example, give us one of your favorite customer success stories that really highlights the value of what IBM and your partnerships deliver. >> Sure, sure. So one of them would be Tectrade. So Tectrade is one of our public references. They only do PCI data. So, Wikibon couldn't be a customer, IBM can't be a customer, theCube can't be a customer, Cisco can't be, because we don't specialize, as you know, in financial-centric data. So they back up about, they do about two million backups a day, all of financial data across Europe and into North America, and they've got a VersaStack that happens to run Spectrum Protect on it. It's all flash, so they're not worried about performance. And then they back up to giant hard drive farms that they've also bought from IBM. But the real thing on the VersaStack is having that very fast edge, and then having the software that allows them to A, control the storage side, but then run Spectrum Protect to do backup. So if you were a bank, if theCUBE was a bank, then you guys could use Tectrade and they use a VersaStack for backing up data as a service. That's a perfect example of what we've done with the VersaStack solution, in this case in a hybrid cloud scenario. >> What are some of the business impacts that they have achieved so far? Are they finding new revenue streams, are they unlocking more valuable data to be more competitive? >> So, what they do is obviously in the PCI world. They're very centered, you can't lose anything. Because it's financial data. So for them, it's all about the security of the data, making sure the data gets there, the data's encrypted in flight, they know that the customers can do a lot of different things, because Spectrum tech is very much a big enterprise package that's very strong in the global Fortune 2000. So they like it for that. Now, we've had some other customers, and their the value has been things like the return on investment. For example, the second-largest dating site on the planet uses VersaStack. And they got a four month return on investment. They bought it, and in four months it paid for themselves, so they bought like four or five more. We had another customer who saved, and this is also a cloud service provider by the way, so they saved the equivalent of five full-time employees that were writing custom code and managing stuff, and they used Spectrum Protect also for backup. But in this case you and I could use them because they're not specialists like Tectrade is, and they'll back up anybody's data. And they saved five full-time equivalents. So they've now redeployed those full-time employees to do something else. So those are just examples from three different companies of ways that they've saved money and really driven a business value, not just about the data, and yeah, the data's fast, but really, if you're a storage guy, been doing it as long as I have, the data's always fast and it just gets faster every generation, so okay, it's fast. And in this case it's really about business value, about the value of the data, not about the storage. >> Eric, you mentioned security. Of course security is one of those topics that's hitting all of the environments here at Cisco, but bring us inside, especially from a storage division, modern data protection and how that's getting involved in the security discussion. >> Sure, so what we've done across the portfolio, even in primary storage, is made sure that we've done all sorts of things that help you against a ransomware or malware attack, keep the data encrypted. I think the key point actually, I think Silicon Angle wrote about this, something like 98% of all enterprises are going to get broken into anyway. So it's great that you've got security software on the edge, whether that be IBM or RSA or BlueCoat or Checkpoint, or who cares who you buy the software from. But when they're in, they're stealing. And sometimes, some accounts have told us that they can track them down in a day, but if you're a giant global Fortune 500 with data centers up, it might take you a week. They could be stealing stuff right and left. So we've done everything from, we have write-once technology, so it's immutable data, you can't change it. We've got encryption, so if they steal it, guess what, they can't use it. But the other thing we've done is real protection against ransomware and malware. So I am going to attack Wikibon, theCUBE, and I am going to charge you $10 million, and I'm going to steal every video you've ever created and hold it for ransom. So the way I would do that is I look at your snapshots, your replicas, and your backups first. So what do we do? We can actually snapshot a replica out to an object store, and ransomware and malware, at least today, doesn't attack object storage. So that way, when I'm talking to you or Stu and said I want $10 million, you start laughing, and go, what are you talking about? We replicate every night. Okay, we lose one day of data. He can't get half the $10 million. So that's ransomware or malware protection. We've also built that into Spectrum Protect, because what happens is when you're starting to, if you will, look at that data to get it wrapped up in the ransomware or malware, you have a whole bunch of extra activity around the backup data sets, so we send an alert. We'd send an alert to you, Lisa, and you would say, oh my god, what's going on? Why is all this activity going on the backup set? Because the backup's not scheduled, let's say, for tonight. And we would send you a note now, at two o'clock, that there's all kinds of activity, and you would go, what is going on, and you would check it out. So we can help with ransomware and malware, encryption on primary data. So we've really integrated across the portfolio, whether it be primary storage or secondary storage. And by the way, almost nobody thinks about storage. They always say, whose security package should I buy? And they never say okay, I'm going to buy it, but I, might buy some security for the storage, too. No one ever talks like that, which is why we're bringing up, and we actually launched a sales play for the field, all around storage for cyber resiliency. >> And how is that going, if you're saying it's-- >> It's actually gone incredibly well. We started with a product called Safeguarded Copy on the mainframe, and we actually got, in the first four months, almost $60 million a pipeline in the first four months of the product shipping. And now we've got it all over the whole portfolio, so we tried it just when we first got started, and now we're now talking about the ransomware and malware stuff, which by the way we've had for three years, but we were never emphasizing it to the end user. Now we're saying, by the way, has it happened or are you worried about it? Well guess what, if you're backing up with Spectrum Protect, we'll warn you. Why don't you go out to tape and air gap? Or why you don't go out to the cloud and we can do essentially a cloud air gap to object storage? And we weren't really talking like that until really we started doing it in Q4 and then really expanded it in Q1, so it's been very, very successful. The end users love it, our business partners who sell to the end users, they're loving it. And by the way, no one else is really talking about it. It's all about the security software company. So we're going beyond that. >> So, Eric, you talked about some of the products with Cisco and IBM working together. I wonder if you can up-level a little bit. You're a great watcher of the industry out there. Chuck Robbins, now four years into his tenure as CEO, Wall Street's doing well with the stock on there, finances look well. IBM and Cisco, two of the bellwethers in tech out there. How's Cisco doing? When you talk to your customers, what are they liking about Cisco, what do they want to see more from Cisco, are they aware of the transformation that Cisco's going through? >> Well, I think there's a couple things. First of all, IBM and Cisco have a mutual relationship that spans billions of dollars. Whether that be, for example, as they publicly have disclosed, IBM is the biggest customer for WebEx on the planet, and they talked about that. There's products that we sell to them that they're one of our biggest customers in the world as well. But then beyond that, whether it's common end users or common channel partners, we make sure that we deliver the right solutions together. So I think the feedback I get from both the end users and the partners is that Cisco's back. Right when Chuck came in, said, oh, what's going on with Cisco? They're still big, but the big sometimes fall over big, right? Like in the beanstalk, the giant falls over, right? So that's what I think people were thinking four years, I don't think people are thinking that now. From our perspective, we've always kept working tightly with them, between our relationship with them as a customer and us as their customer. But more importantly, it's really the common customers we have and the common channel partners, and we've never wavered for that support from a Cisco perspective. But just sort of off the cuff, when people make a comment that's like, hey, those Cisco guys are back. And four years ago people were saying, ehh, what do you think about Cisco? My wife works at Cisco, and my ex-wife works at Cisco, so it's a little easier for them to ask me that. Because I'm a Cisco shareholder too. But now you don't hear that question. It's like Cisco's got their act together, they're doing all the right stuff. So that's very good for me personally with my stock, but it's also good just for the industry. You know, you don't want someone to not be able to make the transition. And the valley's littered with that. DEC, Compaq, they're all gone. They're not the only guys that are gone. So Cisco's not going to go the way that other big companies have. They've made the transition and are transforming to what the end users really need. >> And I think the DevNet community growth is a great, speaks to the pivot that Cisco's making. DevNet has been in large part an accelerator of Cisco's transition from network appliance provider to more of a software services provider. But that community symbiosis with their end user customers, with their partners, and with their developer community, is really a driving force here. And I think just being in this DevNet Zone and how big it is, is a great example of how they're leveraging those other feedback channels to not just persist but be successful. So here we are, their Q3 2019 results are really strong, growth across all three business segments, we're in the middle of their fourth quarter. So for Cisco's FY 2020, what are some of the big bets that you can share with us that IBM and Cisco-- >> Well, the one we've done together has been one on security, so we have joint security products that we've done. We have a joint product on the system side with the VersaStack. We've done joint products with them also in the cloud solution area, both, if you think about hybrid cloud, but also in private cloud, so IBM Cloud Private for example is available on their HCI box, right, so their hyperconverged infrastructure solution includes an option for IBM Cloud Private. So IBM has made many bets with them in the security space, in the cloud space. Also, by the way, one of the biggest providers of service on Cisco solutions is actually IBM. So our services divisions do tons of business with Cisco, whether that's servicing the physical gear or servicing the software. And we've been doing that for years. So whether it be service, whether it be cloud, whether it be infrastructure, IBM is doing joint solutions across the board with the Cisco community. >> Got to ask you one last question, Eric. You've been in this industry a long time, you're a veteran extraordinaire. What keeps you excited about storage? >> Storage always change. Storage is not boring. Storage is boring for the uneducated. It is the most exciting thing, it changes all the time. I remember one of the good things about IBM was not just an array, come here, we only just do backup software, we've got high-end storage arrays, we still do tape. We're by far the dominant player, and we're having a huge resurgence there with hyperscalers and cloud providers. We're going crazy with tape because, for them, they're all about saving money for backup and archive, and we're critical to that. We are the number two storage software company in the world, all of our software works off of our gear. Some of the other guys that sell lots of software, yeah, they sell lots, but it only works on their products. Our software works with all of our competitor's products. So that makes everything exciting. I've done this now for 35 years. I've seen hard drives that were the size of a dishwasher to now flash that fits into your phone, or my MacBook, I've got five terabytes of flash. So, you know, to me that's all exciting. And the software is where it really matters. You know, we've gone from bare metal to virtualization, now to containers and cloud. So there's always new stuff going on. But I really think part of the problem with storage is everybody takes it for granted and doesn't realize, if your storage doesn't work, isn't performing, isn't reliable, and isn't available, basically your entire infrastructure caves in. I don't care whether you're in the cloud, whether you're in a virtual world, or you're still doing it really old hat with bare metal, the storage doesn't work, you're shutting down your company until that storage is back up and running again. So it is the critical foundation for every application workload and use case, in any company, big, medium, or small. And it's always evolving. So to me it's very exciting, although some people think storage is boring. I'd say networking is boring. That, to me, is boring. (Lisa laughs) Storage is exciting. >> Stu: Don't say that too loud, here. (Eric laughs) >> That's true, storage is sexy. Well Eric, it's been a pleasure to have you back on theCUBE once again, and we very much appreciate your time. >> Great, well thank you for having us. >> Our pleasure. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live, from Cisco Live in San Diego.

>> Host: Live from San Diego, California, it's the CUBE, covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, welcome back to the CUBE, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, covering day one of Cisco Live from sunny San Diego. We're pleased to welcome back a couple of our alumni. To my right Eric Herzog, CMO of IBM Storage. Eric it's always great to have you. >> Great. >> And you fashion choices on the CUBE. >> Always wear a Hawaiian shirt for the CUBE. >> I know, it's a thing. And we've also got Evaristus Mainsah, General Manager of IBM Cloud Private Ecosystem. Evaristus it's great to have you back on the program. >> Thank you very much, delighted to be here. >> So guys here we are, we're in the dove nut zone. Lots of collaboration, lots of conversations day one of Cisco Live. But this events been around for 30 years. Long time, I think Chuck Robins said this morning what also turned 30 this year is Tetris. Anybody a big fan of Tetris? So, so much progress, so much change. I know you've seen a lot of it. Eric lets start with you. The global economy, what are the impacts it's having on IT? >> Well I'd say the number one thing is everyone is recognized the most valuable asset is data. It's not gold, it's not silver, it's not plutonium and it definitely isn't oil, it's all about data. And whether it be a global Fortune 500, a midsize company or Herzogs Bar & Grill, data is your most valuable asset. So at IBM Storage, what we've done is making sure that our focus is on being data-driven. It's all about solutions, it's not about speeds and feeds. Of course, having done this for 35 years I could have whacked poetically on speeds and feeds. And even if you have some speeds and feeds that Stu may not even remember anymore. That said, it's really about data, it's not about storage speeds and feeds. How really storage is that critical foundation for applications, workloads and use cases. And that's what's most important. >> Yeah, so Eric, when they rolled out on stage this morning that 30 year old box with ribbon cable, yeah, that predated a little bit when I was looking at IT. But, I remember when I started in IT, when we talked about security, the main thing was lock the door of the cabinet that everything was in there, because it was kind of self-contained. Security's gone through a few changes in the last you know 20 25 years though. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that kind of security resiliency. Obviously, something that's impacted the network for a long time, something that IBM sees front and center. >> What I think the big deal is what most people think when they think of security, is I got to buy security software. So I got to call up IBM Security or RSA or the Intel Security Division and buy some security software. And while that's great the reality is as many people have written about, in fact Wikibon SiliconANGLE's written about it. Close to 98% of all enterprises, and I mean big enterprises now are going to get to be broken into. And you've seen this all over the news. So the key thing is once they're inside, storage can help you with a cyber resiliency play. And at IBM Storage whether that be data at rest encryption. Whether that be malware or ransomware protection. We put together a whole set of technology that when the bad guys in the house they can't steal the TV. Because we've locked it down. It's almost as if it was in a safe. Maybe it's almost like the cloak in science fiction where you can't even see the Romulan ship, because it's cloaked. Well guess what, that's what IBM storage can do for your data and it is your most valuable asset. So critical to cyber resiliency. >> So helping customers go from reactive to this expectation breach has happened very very frequently every few seconds to being proactive? >> Yeah, I mean. >> Eventually predictive? >> Well what we do is for example with our Spectrum Protect software. When there's a malware or ransomware attack, what happens is they always go after you're secondary data sets first. I know that sounds weird but they go after your backups, your snapshots and your replicas. 'Cause when they attack your primary data, if they've you can just recover from a backup they can't hold you for $10 million of ransom. So our Spectrum Protect software for example, when it sees anomalous activity in backup data sets, sends an email on a warning out to all the admins and says you have weird activity going on, you might want to check it out and that way you would know. Because secondarity is attacked first in a cyber resiliency strategy. >> You know, the other thing we're seeing a lot is just the scope of what's happening in IT. When you talk about things like scale and you talk about you know edge computing and so much change going on. There's got to be AI in there or machine learning to help us because humans alone can't keep up with what's going on here. Tell us a little bit about that Eric. >> So Big data and AI is like the hot topic right now. Cyber resiliency is important 'cause people obviously have been buying security software for a while. So it's more what we do is really an adjunct to that. In the case of Big data and AI, it's a brand new open field. Everyone is looking for solutions in both of those spaces. We have created a complete set of data infrastructure we've called the AI pipeline. It involves not only physical storage arrays but a whole bunch of software. In fact our Spectrum Discover software which allows you to create metadata catalogs about file and object data is being expanded. And we already publicly said this in the second half To include EMC and Netapp and AWS, not just IBM Storage. So it's a critical thing, you've got to make sure the other thing is when you're using AI. Let's say you're going to use AI to run a factory. If the storage goes down, those robots aren't working. So storage is that critical underlying foundation. A in a Big data network load to be able to have this pipeline to get the data. But if you don't have the resiliency, the performance and the availability of the underlying storage everything shuts down if the storage fails. 'Cause the AI software won't run. So that's how we see fitting in to their both the critical foundation also this AI data pipeline with all of our software. >> So before we get in to this Cisco partnership with Evaristus, it's one more question Eric for you. As Chief Marketing Officer, you talk about the customers all of the time. In that example that you just gave about the criticality of storage for AI where are you having conversations within customer organizations. Is it at the level of the storage girls and guys or has it gone up to lines of business to executives. >> Yeah so, from an AI perspective it runs a gamut. It could be sometimes the storage people. Sometimes the infrastructure people. A lot of times it's actually in the line of business or at the data scientist level. On the Big data side it's a little bit more mature so people know they need to do analytics versus AI. And so when you look at it from that perspective on that side it's often the storage guy but it's also the data scientist as well. So that's who we talk to to get things rolling. And it's not, we don't just talk to the storage admin for either of them, because they're both so new and they have such a big impact on the data scientists and the analytic engine committees inside of those giant enterprises. >> I can imagine eventually maybe question for you. Of that conversation elevating it up to the sweet sweet. Because if you can't access the data, if it can't be protected, what good is it? Right, it's really, to say it's the lifeblood is a silly thing, but we say it all the time. But it's critical, it's table stakes. >> Well one of the things that's interesting is I just got my Fortune 500 magazine at home, that had the Fortune 500 list in it. And there was an interesting article on AI and the enterprise. And they did a survey according to Fortune magazine, 50% of the CIO's that are in the Fortune 500 said they're using AI and Big data of some type. So it's sweeping the world. And it started of course in HPC in the academics. But now it's going into all enterprises of all types. >> Alright so we've talked a few years about the Versastack Partnership. But the last year or so we've really been talking about where Hybrid cloud and multi-cloud fit in to this. We talked a little bit at IBM Think. Evaristus we talked at another show about some of the IBM Cloud Private. Give us the update where we are with customers and how that fits, Eric lets start with you and Evaristus just go into the partnership. >> Sure from a storage version perspective, we've been talking about a Hybrid multi-cloud now for several years. And in fact I did a presentation two years ago at Cisco Live on Hybrid cloud using Versastack. Today I gave one on the data driven enterprise and why hybrid multi-cloud is important to use. So that was the 30 minutes presentation I did today. So I think the key thing is we make sure that we A our Hybrid it's not going to all public or all private. And we can move data seamlessly back and forth. And then also multi-cloud. When you look at enterprise shops, they're not just going to use IBM Cloud. I wish they would I'm an IBM shareholder but they're not. They use IBM, they're going to use ABS, they're going to use Amazon and in many cases they're going to use some smaller cloud provider. So we make sure that we can move data around across any multi-cloud of various different providers to accompany. But also Hybrid cloud as well. >> So the status talk to use about you know from a partnership Cisco IBM Cloud Private perspective, what's going on there Evaristus? >> Well Thank you very much. Well IBM and Cisco have been partners for a long long time. And what we are doing now is given the realities, the fact that those clients have found themselves in a multi-cloud environment, >> Hybrid multi-cloud environment. What we can do to help clients so they can develop they can test, they can manage the applications in a consistent manner, whether they are on prime or in the cloud. And there are a couple of initiatives that we are announcing. One of them is that IBM Cloud Private is going to run on Hyperflex, so Cisco's Hyperflex. As well as hyperflex, hyper-conversed infrastructure. What it means is a client who currently has hyperflex can have IBM Cloud Private on it. Which effectively means they have themselves a Private Cloud environment that also connects to other public cloud environments and allows you to really begin to work within a Hybrid cloud environment the way that most clients need to. The second initiative is that we will have ACI pods or V pods, virtual ACI, running in the IBM public cloud. Which basically means that again, Cisco customers, ACI Network customers who currently use the produce on Prime will be able to use exactly you know the same control pane to manage their deployments and to manage their security preferences on Prime as they do in the cloud. And this again surrounding the Public Cloud is running on bare metal on the IBM Cloud. >> Alright, Evaristus can you bring us inside a little bit the applications you know. Eric talked about you know data we know is so important. Really it's the applications that are driving that. It's where we're seeing the most change in customers, as to how they're moving or building new applications. And in Hyber cloud it's one of the biggest questions for customers is what do they do with that application portfolio? >> Yes so what we're seeing is clearly because you know. Clients have now lots of different Public clouds. They also have Private clouds to deal with them. They have lots of applications that are currently that need to move right. We believe 20% of those applications have moved, the remaining 80% are still on Prime. And so the trend that we are really seeing is applications moving to the cloud. And the two ways of doing it you could do this by simply lifting and shifting on VM, you get the contraction benefit of your stack right. So you can some cost impacts. But the really interesting way that you see lots of clients moving is modernizing the applications. Because the real valued driver with infinite cloud is not so much cost as innovation. And when you convert those applications into Microsoft this is the right and let me run them in containers it gives them plenty of flexibility. And wasting lots of clients that want to use IBM Cloud Private as a platform to enable that modernization journey. >> So as every industry is living in this Hybrid multi-cloud world for many reasons. But it sounds like to me is that the IBM Cisco relationship is deepening as a result to enable these organizations that are in these very amorphous environments. You know as we see the explosion of Edge and Mobile, that's what it sounds like to me. Is that this long standing partnership is getting deeper and maybe a stronger foundation. To help customers not just live in this Hybrid multi-cloud world but be successful so that their businesses gain competitive advantage. They can identify new products and services and revenue streams. >> Yeah, I think multi-cloud and Hybrid cloud actually requires partnerships. Because as Eric said later on of course you like everybody to be on the IBM Cloud and it's a great cloud. But we recognize that many clients who have a variety of different plights to deal with. They have a variety of different infrastructures. And that's why when you look at IBM Cloud Private which is you know our offering that really enables that Hybrid cloud. It is designed to managed that. So It is multi-model, so if you want to run it as a VM you can, you want to run your containers, you can run serverless, you can run them bare metal. But also, it supports a range of different infrastructure. So not only does it run on Z, it runs on power, it runs on Spectrum Storage. We announce running now on Hyperflex. It also runs on other peoples Public clouds. It runs on Azure, it runs on Amazon web services, it runs on Google Cloud platform, it runs on the IBM Cloud. And the intent here is to enable clients to basically manage and work with that infrastructure as if it was one. The way that Stu said in the data center where you locked everything up. Well it's not like that anymore. But the most that we can do is to enable clients to treat all of that infrastructure as one. And that's what sort of aim to do with our platforms. >> Alright, I guess last question I'd like to get both of your comments on. Is your advice for customers, you know, customers have that they have a lot of you know existing things that they have to deal with, that they're looking to modernize. What advice do you give them? Where do you start them you know I guess you know one of the things you're starting where they are. But you know what are some of the first steps and recommendations that you have for customers today? >> We have a process that works really well, which is called the IBM Garage. Which is effectively a way that we used to co-create with our clients to solve the immediate problems. So a client for example, who is looking at app modernization but isn't sure where to start, which app. What we do is we get their teams together with our teams line of business together with IT and our teams and we spend a couple of days in a design thinking workshop to identify a minimum viable product. Which is something that solves a problem not big enough that it will take forever, but big enough to matter. Then we get our teams to work side-by-side, we code it, we test it, we deploy it, we'll run it in the IBM Cloud. We manage it, at like in one week sprints. And then you spend another few days at the end of week four or five to do a see retrospective to see whether it solved the problem as you expected. And if it did, you pick the next piece of work to continue your journey. So before you know, five weeks in, you have your first application modernized. Or you have your first cloud negative ready. >> Now from a storage perspective it's a little bit easier. We supported storage on bare metal. We supported storage in all the virtual environments. KVM, OVM, obviously VM we're in Hyper V. And now, we've been supporting containers for over two years. So we say is leave no data behind. If certain data needs to stay on bare metal, that's fine we can support that. But we can also transparently migrate data back and forth between the various tiers of container-based virtualization-based or the old style bare metal. So from our perspective, we help them move data around where they need it. And if they're still running in a hybridized world in this case, containers, virtual and bare metal that's fine. If they just go containers that's fine. If they just go virtual it's fine. So for us, because of what we've been supporting now for several years, we can help them on that journey. And traverse from any one of those three layers, which is where data sits in today's data centers and cloud environments. >> So overall a lot of collaboration, a lot of customer choice. Gentlemen, Thank you for joining Stu and me the program this afternoon, great to have you back. >> Thank you >> Great, Thank you. Glad to be on the CUBE. >> Oooh our pleasure. For Stu Miniman, I am Lisa Martin. You're watching the CUBE, live from day one of our coverage on Cisco Live. Thanks for watching. (energetic music)

(upbeat music) [Announcer] From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto, California. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hi, I'm Peter Burris, and welcome to another CUBE conversation from our studios in beautiful Palo Alto, California. One of the biggest challenges that every user faces is how are they going to arrange their resources that are responsible for storing, managing, delivering, and protecting data. And that's a significant challenge, but it gets even worse when we start talking about multi-cloud. So, today we've got Eric Herzog who's the CMO and VP of Worldwide Storage Channels at IBM Storage to talk a bit about the evolving relationship of what constitutes a modern, comprehensive storage portfolio and multi-cloud. Eric, welcome to theCUBE. >> Peter, Thank you, thank you. >> So, start off, what's happening with IBM Storage these days, and let's get into this kind of how multi-cloud is affecting some of your decisions, and some of your customer's decisions. >> So, what we've done, is we've started talking about multi-cloud over two years ago. When Ed Walsh joined the company as a general manager, we went on an analyst roadshow, in fact, we came here to theCUBE and shot a video, and we talked about how the IBM Storage Division is all about multi-cloud. And we look about that in three ways. First of all, if you are creating a private cloud, we work with you. From a container, whether you're Vmware based, whether you are doing a more traditional cloud- private cloud. Now the modern private cloud, all container based. Second is Hybrid Cloud, data on parem, out to a public cloud provider. And the third aspect, and in fact, you guys have written about it in one of your studies is that no one is going to use one public cloud provider, they're going to use multiple cloud providers. So whether that be IBM Cloud, which of course we love because we're IBM shareholders, but we work with Amazon, we work with Google, and in fact we work with any cloud provider. Our Spectrum Protect backup product, which is one of the most awarded enterprise backup packages can backup to any cloud. In fact, over 350 small to medium cloud providers, the engine for their backup as a service, is Spectrum Protect. Again, completely heterogeneous, we don't care what cloud you use, we support everyone. And we started that mantra two and a half years ago, when Ed first joined the company. >> Now, I remember when you came on, we talked a lot about this notion of data first and the idea that data driven was what we talked about >> Right, data driven. >> And increasingly, we talked about, or we made the observation that enterprises were going to take a look at the natural arrangement of their data, and that was going to influence a lot of their cloud, a lot of their architecture, and certainly a lot of their storage divisions or decisions. How is that playing out? Is that still obtaining? Are you still seeing more enterprises taking this kind of data driven approach to thinking about their overall cloud architectures? >> Well the world is absolutely data-centric. Where does the data go? What are security issues with that data? How is it close to the compute when I need it? How do I archive I, how do I back it up? How do I protect it? We're here in Silicon Valley. I'm a native Palo Alton, by the way, and we really do have earthquakes here, and they really do have earthquakes in Japan and China and there is all kinds of natural disasters. And of course as you guys have pointed out, as have almost all of the analysts, the number one cause of data loss besides humans is actually still fire. Even with fire suppressant data centers. >> And we have fires out here in Northern California too. >> That's true. So, you've got to make sure that you're backing up that data, you're archiving the data. Cloud could be part of that strategy. When does it need to be on parem, when does it need to be off parem? So, it's all about being a data-driven, and companies look at the data, profile the date and time, What sort of storage do I need? Can I go high end, mid-range and entry, profile that data, figure that out, what they need to do. And then do the same thing now with on parem and off parem. For certain data sets, for security reasons, legal reasons you probably are not going to put it out into a public cloud provider. But other data sets are ideal for that and so all of those decisions that are being made by: What's the security of the data? What's the legality of that data? What's the performance I need of that data? And, how often do I need the data? If you're going to constantly go back and forth, pull data back in, going to a public cloud provider, which charge both for in and out of the data, that actually may cost more than buying an Array on parem. And so, everyone's using that data-centricity to figure out how do they spend their money, and how do they optimize the data to use it in their applications, workloads and use cases. >> So, if you think about it, the reality is by application, workload, location, regulatory issues, we're seeing enterprises start to recognize and increase specialization of their data assets. And that's going to lead to a degree of specializations in the classes of data management and storage technologies that they utilize. Now, what is the challenge of choosing a specific solution versus looking at more of a portfolio of solutions, that perhaps provide a little bit more commonality? How are customers, how are the IMB customer base dealing with that question. >> Well, for us the good thing was to have a broad portfolio. When you look at the base storage Arrays we have file, block and object, they're all award winning. We can go big, we can go medium, and we can go small. And because of what we do with our Array family we have products that tend to be expensive because of what they do, products that mid-price and products that are perfect for Herzog's Bar and Grill. Or maybe for 5,000 different bank branches, 'cause that bank is not going to buy expensive storage for every branch. They have a small Array there in case core goes down, of course. When you or I go in to get a check or transact, if the core data center is down, that Wells Fargo, BofA, Bank of Tokyo. >> Still has to do business. >> They are all transacting. There's a small Array there. Well you don't want to spend a lot of money for that, you need a good, reliable all flash Array with the right RAS capability, right? The availability, capability, that's what you need, And we can do that. The other thing we do is, we have very much, cloud-ified everything we do. We can tier to the cloud, we can backup to the cloud. With object storage we can place it in the cloud. So we've made the cloud, if you will, a seamless tier to the storage infrastructure for our customers. Whether that be backup data, archive data, primary data, and made it so it's very easy to do. Remember, with that downturn in '08 and '09 a lot of storage people left their job. And while IT headcount is back up to where it used to be, in fact it's actually exceeded, if there was 50 storage guys at Company X, and they had to let go 25 of them, they didn't hire 25 storage guys now, but they got 10 times the data. So they probably have 2 more storage guys, they're from 25 to 27, except they're managing 10 times the data, so automation, seamless integration with clouds, and being multi-cloud, supporting hybrid clouds is a critical thing in today's storage world. >> So you've talked a little bit about format, data format issues still impact storage decisions. You've talked about how disasters or availability still impact storage decisions, certainly cost does. But you've also talked about some of the innovative things that are happening, security, encryption, evolved backup and and restore capabilities, AI and how that's going to play, what are some of the key thing that your customer base is asking for that's really driving some of your portfolio decisions? >> Sure, well when we look beyond making sure we integrate with every cloud and make it seamless, the other aspect is AI. AI has taken off, machine learning, big data, all those. And there it's all about having the right platform from an Array perspective, but then marrying it with the right software. So for example, our scale-out file system, Spectrum Scale can go to Exabyte Class, in fact the two fastest super computers on this planet have almost half an exabyte of IBM Spectrum Scale for big data, analytics, and machine learning workloads. At the same time you need to have Object Store. If you're generating that huge amount of data set in AI world, you want to be able to put it out. We also now have Spectrum discover, which allows you to use Metadata, which is the data about the data, and allow and AI app, a machine learning app, or an analytics app to actually access the metadata through an API. So that's one area, so cloud, then AI, is a very important aspect. And of course, cyber resiliency, and cyber security is critical. Everyone thinks, I got to call a security company, so the IBM Security Division, RSA, Check Point, Symantec, McAfee, all of these things. But the reality is, as you guys have noted, 98% of all enterprises are going to get broken into. So while they're in your house, they can steal you blind. Before the cops show up, like the old movie, what are they doing? They're loading up the truck before the cops show up. Well guess what, what if that happened, cops didn't show up for 20 minutes, but they couldn't steal anything, or the TV was tied to your fingerprint? So guess what, they couldn't use the TV, so they couldn't steal it, that's what we've done. So, whether it be encryption everywhere, we can encrypt backup sets, we can encrypt data at rest, we can even encrypt Arrays that aren't ours with our Spectrum Virtualize family. Air gapping, so that if you have ransomware or malware you can air-gap to tape. We've actually created air gapping out with a cloud snapshot. We have a product called Safeguard Copy which creates what I'll call a faux air gap in the mainframe space, but allows that protection so it's almost as if it was air gapped even though it's on an Array. So that's a ransomware and malware, being able to detect that, our backup products when they see an unusual activity will flag the backup restore jam and say there is unusual activity. Why, because ransomware and malware generate unusual activity on back up data sets in particular, so it's flaky. Now we don't go out and say, "By the way, that's Herzog ransomware, or "Peter Burris ransomware." But we do say "something is wrong, you need to take a look." So, integrating that sort of cyber resiliency and cyber security into the entire storage portfolio doesn't mean we solve everything. Which is why when you get an overall security strategy, you've got that Great Wall of China to keep the enemy out, you've got the what I call, chase software to get the bad guy once he's in the house, the cops that are coming to get the bad guy. But you've got to be able to lock everything down, you'll do it. So a comprehensive security strategy, and resiliency strategy involves not only your security vendor, but actually your storage vendor. And IBM's got the right cyber resiliency and security technology on the storage side to marry up, regardless of which security vendor they choose. >> Now you mention a number of things that are associated with how an enterprise is going to generate greater leverage, greater value out of data that you already know. So, you mentioned, you know, encryption end to end, you mention being able to look at metadata for AI applications. As we move to a software driven world of storage where physical volumes can still be made more virtual so you can move them around to different workloads. >> Right. >> And associate the data more easily, tell us a little bit about how data movement becomes an issue in the storage world, because the storage has already been associated with it's here. But increasingly, because of automation, because of AI, because of what businesses are trying to do, it's becoming more associated with intelligent, smart, secure, optimized movement of data. How is that starting to impact the portfolio? >> So we look at that really as data mobility. And data mobility can be another number of different things, for example, we already mentioned, we treat clouds as transparent tiers. We can backup to cloud, that's data mobility. We also tier data, we can tier data within an Array, or the Spectrum Virtualize product. We can tier data, block data cross 450 Arrays, most of which aren't IBM logo'd. We can tier from IBM to EMC, EMC can then tier to HDS, HDS can tier to Hitachi, and we do that on Arrays that aren't ours. So in that case what you're doing is looking for the optimal price point, whether it be- >> And feature set. >> And feature sets, and you move things, data around all transparently, so it's all got to be automated, that's another thing, in the old days we thought we had Nirvana when the tiering was automatically moved the data when it's 30 days old. What if we automatically move data with our Easy Tier technology through AI, when the data is hot moves it to the hottest tier, when the data is cold it puts it out to the lowest cost tier. That's real automation leveraging AI technology. Same thing, something simple, migration. How much money have all the storage companies made on migration services? What if you could do transparent block migration in the background on the fly, without ever taking your servers down, we can do that. And what we do is, it's so intelligent we always favor the data set, so when the data is being worked on, migration slows down. When the data set slows down, guess what? Migration picks up. But the point is, data mobility, in this case from an old Array to an new Array. So whether it be migrating data, whether it be tiering data, whether you're moving data out to the cloud, whether it be primary data or backup data, or object data for archive, the bottom line is we've infused not only the cloudification of our storage portfolio, but the mobility aspects of the portfolio. Which does of course include cloud. But all tiering more likely is on premise. You could tier to the cloud, but all flash Array to a cheap 7200 RPM Array, you save a lot of money and we can do that using AI technology with Easy Tier. All examples of moving data around transparently, quickly, efficiently, to save cost both in CapEx, using 7200 RPM Arrays of course to cut costs, but actually OpEx the storage admin, there aren't a hundred storage admins at Burris Incorporated. You had to let them go, you've hired 100 of the people back, but you hired them all for DevOps so you have 50 guys in storage >> Actually there are, but I'm a lousy businessman so I'm not going to be in business long. (laughing) One more question, Eric. I mean look you're an old style road warrior, you're out with customers a lot. Increasingly, and I know this because we've talked about it, you're finding yourself trying to explain to business people, not just IT people how digital business, data and storage come together. When you're having these conversations with executives on the business side, how does this notion of data services get discussed? What are some of the conversations like? >> Well I think the key thing you got to point out is storage guys love to talk speeds and feeds. I'm so old I can still talk TPI and BPI on hard drives and no one does that anymore, right? But, when you're talking to the CEO or the CFO or the business owner, it's all about delivering data at the right performance level you need for your applications, workloads and use cases, your right resiliency for applications, workloads and use cases, your right availability, so it's all about application, workloads, and use cases. So you don't talk about storage speeds and feeds that you would with Storage Admin, or maybe in the VP of infrastructure in the Fortune 500, you'd talk about it's all about the data, keeping the data secure, keeping the data reliable, keeping it at right performance. So if it's on the type of workload that needs performance, for example, let's take the easy one, Flash. Why do I need Flash? Well, Mr. CEO, do you use logistics? Of course we do! Who do you use, SAP. Oh, how long does that logistics workload take? Oh, it takes like 24 hours to run. What if I told you you could run that every night, in an hour? That's the power of Flash. So you translate what you and I are used to, storage nerdiness, we translate it into businessfied, in this case, running that SAP workload in an hour vs. 24 has a real business impact. And that's the way you got to talk about storage these days. When you're out talking to a storage admin, with the admin, yes, you want to talk latency and IOPS and bandwidth. But the CEO is just going to turn his nose up. But when you say I can run the MongoDB workload, or I can do this or do that, and I can do it. What was 24 hours in an hour, or half an hour. That translates to real data, and real value out of that data. And that's what they're looking for, is how to extract value from the data. If the data isn't performant, you get less value. If the data isn't there, you clearly have no value. And if the data isn't available enough so that it's down part time, if you are doing truly digital business. So, if Herzog's Bar and Grill, actually everything is done digitally, so before you get that pizza, or before you get that cigar, you have to order it online. If my website, which has a database underneath, of course, so I can handle the transactions right, I got to take the credit card, I got to get the orders right. If that is down half the time, my business is down, and that's an example of taking IT and translating it to something as simple as a Bar and Grill. And everyone is doing it these days. So when you talk about, do you want that website up all the time? Do you need your order entry system up all the time? Do you need your this or that? Then they actually get it, and then obviously, making sure that the applications run quickly, swiftly, and smoothly. And storage is, if you will, that critical foundation underneath everything. It's not the fancy windows, it's not the fancy paint. But if that foundation isn't right, what happens? The whole building falls down. And that's exactly what storage delivers regardless of the application workload. That right critical foundation of performance, availability, reliability. That's what they need, when you have that all applications run better, and your business runs better. >> Yeah, and the one thing I'd add to that, Eric, is increasingly the conversations that we're having is options. And one of the advantages of a large portfolio or a platform approach is that the things you're doing today, you'll discover new things that you didn't anticipate, and you want the option to be able to do them quickly. >> Absolutely. >> Very, very important thing. So, applications, workload, use cases, multi-cloud storage portfolio. Eric, thanks again for coming on theCUBE, always love having you. >> Great, thank you. >> And once again, I'm Peter Burris, talking with Eric Herzog, CMO, VP of Worldwide Storage Channels at IBM Storage. Thanks again for watching this CUBE conversation, until next time. (upbeat music)