[Music] as you heard over the course of our program organizations where more people are using analytics who have deeper capabilities in each of the four e's that's everyone everything everywhere and easy analytics those organizations achieve more roi from their respective investments in analytics and automation than those who don't we also heard a great story from ebay a great example of an enterprise that is truly democratizing analytics across its organization it's enabling an empowering line of business users to use analytics not only focus on key aspects of their job but develop new skills rather than doing the same repetitive tasks we want to thank you so much for watching the program today remember you can find all of the content on thecube.net you can find all of the news from today on siliconangle.com and of course alteryx.com we also want to thank alteryx for making this program possible and for sponsoring the cube for all of my guests i'm lisa martin i want to thank you for watching and bye for now [Music]

>>Hey, Sue, my great to see you. Welcome to the Data Cloud Summit. Super excited to have you welcome. >>Hey, Chris. Very nice to be there. Thank you for having me >>tell us a little bit about alien spending lakhs. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your role. Italy and Benelux >>aliens, Benelux zits. Basically the aliens business in the region. Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. We serve the needs of the customer here by securing the future. We actually do both PNC asses. We call it properly and casualities in life investment management and health. We do retail, uh, small and medium enterprises. I am a regional chief Data and Biggs, officer for aliens. Benelux. I report directly to the regional CEO my job here in alliance to basically drive the data and analytics agenda for aliens. Vanilla, >>cinnamon. I understand you're getting your PhD in data science. It would be great for the audience to learn a little bit more about what's driving you to do that. And kind of what? What's most interesting to you about data science? A I m l >>the reason why I started to do this because there's so much relevance. Push that which is basically driving the agenda. We need to really look at the theoretical part off it as well. To kind of concrete eyes, Andi toe bring in a certain develop dependency, consistency, timelessness, etcetera. And obviously that which we're doing is very innovative. Here, Italians, monologues driven again by relevance and which is very good for the business. But the timelessness needs to also be the sustainability the scalability needs also has to be given to this particular relevance driven topic so that we don't just create superficial impact. But we create a long lasting and everlasting impact in our competitive intelligence intelligence that building against monologues. >>That's awesome. I mean, thanks for sharing that. So So I think. Cinnamon. When when you and I met back in March 1 of the big things that you were you were considering is, you know, uh, signing up with snowflake and becoming a customer. But part of that journey was convincing Ali on spent lakhs to move to the cloud in your journey. So kind of it would be great for you to explain to the audience. You know what that journey has been like. Was it hard to convince your organization moved to the cloud, What hurdles might you have seen in your journey to the cloud? >>It was not very different to any kind of a change on the kind of effort that you need to put in a change for a normal status go set up that which exists today. So, of course, in any kind of a change, your status could change or challenge that which you bring in. There is a considerable, uh, effort that you need to put in. And it's also your responsibility to basically do that because if you don't have that energy or if you don't have that commitment and you are not able to sustain the energy of the commitment that you show in the new agenda that you bring in, then probably you're not gonna be there to see the change through. Of course, it waas difficult, obviously, because, uh, there is already existing status. Go. And there we have a lot of benefits by moving to cloud, and obviously the benefits seems very interesting. But there is skepticism, and we s alliance is from a group perspective, and Benelux perspective is full of very, very clear on a point that we cannot take advantage off the data that which we have. We want to ensure that privacy is by design. Security is by design. And we give utmost care to our customer data. Um, mhm. And all of this basically brings in tow the concept off. Okay, what is it about moving to the cloud and where are we getting exposed? Where should we basically put together? A security by design privacy with some kind of concepts before we do it and etc. Are you ready? Can be ensured that we still keep the customers data A to a place where we basically can't bust. Well, those are the things that which had to be explained. A certain level of sensitization had to be created. A certain level of awareness. Uh, then the consideration part. Yeah, all of this basically takes its own cycle. >>Awesome. Thanks for sharing that. So we're super excited to call Ali on spending lakhs of customer. Now, what are you excited about with snowflake? And I know that you're you're looking at snowflake. Is this kind of data cloud and data cloud transformation project. Tell us a little bit more about, you know, What? What excites you about Snowflake? How you think you might use stuff like, um, in this kind of transformation of Ali on spending lakhs? >>I know that snowflake is brought to us as a product by you guys, but we look at snowflake is a kind off message. We are breaking down the silos. Literally. Onda. We look at snowflake as a kind often agent to do this. Uh, this is something that which is very important to understand that whatever you do with the organizational level, you still end up with a situation where you kind of reinforce the silos. But, snowflake, we have an opportunity here to even challenge that on break the data silos. Once the data silos is broke, you basically improve the find ability of data. You basically improve the understand ability of the data accessibility of the data interpret ability on everyone sees pretty much the same truth. And that's how the silos disappear. We're very, very excited about the journey that which, which we have in front of us because we're pretty new in it. In the sense that we are going toe haven't very exciting journey as we progress, we are also looking forward to see how Snowflakes road map is going to take us to the point off arrival, as I would call it in our own data revenge in >>today we live in this kind of multi cloud, multi cloud application world. What are some of the concerns you have as you transition from, you know, having stuff in a data center to using multiple clouds to using multiple tools? You know, what's what's some of the challenges you for? See having? What are the things that you're looking for from Snowflake to help you? Um, in that journey, >>there is always a reason why we basically make a change. And the reason is always mostly towards more efficiency, effectiveness and so on and so forth, right? I mean, basically, we have Catholics challenges on this. Catholic challenges can also be addressed with this move to the cloud, except but what We should be careful and should avoid us that the cost that which we have in terms of Camp X is just does not get re attributed into another cost called articulation, cost or arbitration cost. So having a multi cloud is definitely a challenge until you have a kind off orchestrator because we are doing a business here and we don't want to care about pretty much the orchestration. The are part off it on. This needs to be taken taken into account because there is this application cloud and there is this infrastructure cloud. You can have as many clothes as you want, whatever function that which is is supporting you. But that has to be encapsulate, er abstracted away from us so that we're able to focus on the business that we're here to do. And these are certain constraints that I really had as I was thinking about multi cloud or hybrid cloud and I was even focusing on how am I going toe orchestrate all of these different things Eso that you know, you kind of feel abstracted from those things. So well, those are the constraints that I think we still have toe conquer as we progress. I think we are evolving very fastly in that area. And you are the experts in that area, and you know exactly what you're doing there. But for me, what is very important is that uh, yeah, it gets abstracted away from us, and we just get the scalability that we need the elasticity that which we need the security by design the privacy by design on. Then I think this is perfect for us. >>Awesome. So? So I think a lot of customers that are listening to this are about to jump on the same journey that you're you're embarking on. What, is there a specific use case that you decided to kind of go? You know, you know, all in on Snowflake. What was the what was the kind of the initial driver for you to say? Hey, then the business driver on you saying, Hey, I'm gonna use this use case to drive transformation within within Ali and spend lakhs, >>I think virtualization, uh, it's the keep point that comes up the top of my head the moment you speak about what even did drive me to think about snowflake as an option, right? Why virtualization? Because obviously I don't want to move huge amount of data from left, right and center, because you know that when you start optimizing such a kind of an architectural, you end up creating pockets silos, which is totally against what we want to do. We want to break silos. But in the end, just because off the infrastructure needs in the computational needs, etcetera on the response rates and stuff like that, you start to create silos, bring with virtualization and especially with the performance that with Snowflake and provide us in that area. Now it seems like a possibility that we will be able to do that. I mean, it was not something that we just thought about, let's say, a few years back, but now it's definitely possible virtualization. It's one of the key points, but when you talk in the terms of use cases, we Italians monologues do not look at use cases. Actually, we look at business initiatives, so the reason why we don't look at it as use cases is because use cases used, kind off a start and stop. But we were not in the game. Off use cases were in the game off delivering future, that which our customer really wants to be secured. That's what the business we are in and that there are no use cases. There are initiatives there that which matches to the agenda for our customer. So when you start thinking about like that one of the most important things that snowflake offices is an opportunity is to obviously create on environment, so to say, on elastic scalable, uh, situation with the computer that which we need that which basically matches one on one with the agenda for our customer. So what I mean is the data warehousing on the cloud through data warehousing on the cloud is what waas on off our driving thought processes for We did not want to go and say that we will just do, uh, do Data Lake. We will just do data hub way don't belong toe religion. So to say, we basically are very opportunistic in this approach where we say we will have a data lake. We will have a data warehouse. We will have a data hub on. We will integrate it, you know, very a semantic way that which will match to the agenda of the customer and treat the customer as a sort of centric point. >>That's great. I appreciate that. So So, um, Suderman, thank you so much for for, you know, joining us today. Um, And again, thank you for your partnership. We snowflake is super excited. I'm I'm super excited Thio participate in this journey with you. Is there anything that you kind of like to let the audience know before we wrap up? >>Very happy about the way we started Toe talk. Converse. I think the proof of value as we did was a very good engagement with you guys. I mean, you guys were really there. I really appreciate the way that you took the proof of what I've worked with many other windows in terms of proof of value. But I think you had a marked difference in the way you you brought Snowflake. Tow us. Thank you so much and keep doing the good work. >>Thanks so much cinnamon for the partnership and were super pumped on, you know, making you very successful in your project. So thank you so much. >>Thank you.

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California, it's theCUBE covering innovating to fuel the next decade of big data. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick, here with theCUBE. We are at the Western Digital Headquarters in San Jose, California. It's the Al-Mady Campus. A historic campus. It's had a lot of great innovation, especially in hard drives for years and years and years. This event's called Innovating to Fuel the Next Data Big Data. And we're excited to have a big brain on. We like to get smart people who's been watching this story for a while and will give us a little bit of historical perspective. It's John Rydning. He is the Research Vice President for Hard Drives for IEC. John, Welcome. >> Thank you, Jeff. >> Absolutely. So, what is your take on today's announcement? >> I think it's our very meaningful announcement, especially when you consider that the previous BIGIT Technology announcement for the industry was Helium, about four or five years ago. But, really, the last big technology announcement prior to that was back in 2005, 2006, when the industry announced making this transition to what they called at that time, "Perpendicular Magnetic Recording." And when that was announced it was kind of a similar problem at that time in the industry that we have today, where the industry was just having a difficult time putting more data on each disc inside that drive. And, so they kind of hit this technology wall. And they announced Perpendicular Magnetic Recording and it really put them on a new S curve in terms of their ability to pack more data on each disc and just kind of put it in some perspective. So, after they announce Perpendicular Magnetic Recording, the capacity per disc increased about 30% a year for about five years. And then over, really, a ten year period, increased about an average of about 20% a year. And, so today's announcement is I see a lot of parallels to that. You know, back when Perpendicular Magnetic Recording was announced, really they build. They increased the capacity per platter was growing very slowly. That's where we are today. And with this announcement of MAMR Technology the direction that Western Digital's choosing really could put the industry on a new S curve and putting in terms of putting more capacity, storage capacity on each one of those discs. >> It's interesting. Always reminds me kind of back to the OS in Microsoft in Intel battles. Right? Intel would come out with a new chip and then Microsoft would make a bigger OS and they go back and back and forth and back and forth. >> John: Yeah, that's very >> And we're seeing that here, right? Cuz the demands for the data are growing exponentially. I think one of the numbers that was thrown out earlier today that the data thrown off by people and the data thrown off by machines is so exponentially larger than the data thrown off by business, which has been kind of the big driver of IT spin. And it's really changing. >> It's a huge fundamental shift. It really is >> They had to do something. Right? >> Yeah, the demand for a storage capacity by these large data centers is just phenomenal and yet at the same time, they don't want to just keep building new data center buildings. And putting more and more racks. They want to put more storage density in that footprint inside that building. So, that's what's really pushing the demand for these higher capacity storage devices. They want to really increase the storage capacity per cubic meter. >> Right, right. >> Inside these data centers. >> It's also just fascinating that our expectation is that they're going to somehow pull it off, right? Our expectation that Moore's laws continue, things are going to get better, faster, cheaper, and bigger. But, back in the back room, somebody's actually got to figure out how to do it. And as you said, we hit these kind of seminal moments where >> Yeah, that's right. >> You do get on a new S curve, and without that it does flatten out over time. >> You know, what's interesting though, Jeff, is really about the time that Perpendicular Magnetic Recording was announced way back in 2005, 2006, the industry was really, already at that time, talking about these thermal assist technologies like MAMR that Western Digital announced today. And it's always been a little bit of a question for those folks that are either in the industry or watching the industry, like IDC. And maybe even even more importantly for some of the HDD industry customers. They're kind of wondering, so what's really going to be the next technology race horse that takes us to that next capacity point? And it's always been a bit of a horse race between HAMR and MAMR. And there's been this lack of clarity or kind of a huge question mark hanging over the industry about which one is it going to be. And Western Digital certainly put a stake in the ground today that they see MAMR as that next technology for the future. >> (mumbles words) Just read a quote today (rushes through name) key alumni just took a new job. And he's got a pin tweet at the top of his thing. And he says, "The smart man looks for ways "To solve the problem. "Or looks at new solutions. "The wise man really spends his time studying the problem." >> I like that. >> And it's really interesting here cuz it seems kind of obvious there. Heat's never necessarily a good thing with electronics and data centers as you mentioned trying to get efficiency up. There's pressure as these things have become huge, energy consumption machines. That said, they're relatively efficient, based on other means that we've been doing they compute and the demand for this compute continues to increase, increase, increase, increase. >> Absolutely >> So, as you kind of look forward, is there anything kind of? Any gems in the numbers that maybe those of us at a layman level are kind of a first read are missing that we should really be paying attention that give us a little bit of a clue of what the feature looks like? >> Well, there's a couple of major trends going on. One is that, at least for the hard drive industry, if you kind of look back the last ten years or so, a pretty significant percentage of the revenue that they've generated a pretty good percentage of the petabytes that they ship have really gone into the PC market. And that's fundamentally shifting. And, so now it's really the data centers, so that by the time you get to 2020, 2021, about 60 plus percent of the petabytes that the industry's shipping is going into data centers, where if you look back a few years ago, 60% was going into PCs. That's a big, big change for the industry. And it's really that kind of change that's pushing the need for these higher capacity hard drives. >> Jeff: Right. >> So, that's, I think, one of the biggest shifts has taking place. >> Well, the other thing that's interesting in that comment because we know scale drives innovation better than anything and clearly Intel microprocessors rode the PC boom to get out scale to drive the innovation. And, so if you're saying, now, that the biggest scale is happening in the data center Then, that's a tremendous force for innovation in there versus Flash, which is really piggy-backing on the growth of these jobs, because that's where it's getting it's scale. So, when you look at kind of the Flash hard drive comparison, right? Obviously, Flash is the shiny new toy getting a lot of buzz over the last couple years. Western Digital has a play across the portfolio, but the announcement earlier today said, you're still going to have like this TenX cost differentiation. >> Yeah, that's right. >> Even through, I think it was 20, 25. I don't want to say what the numbers were. Over a long period of time. You see that kind of continuing DC&E kind of conflict between those two? Or is there a pretty clear stratification between what's going to go into Flash systems, or what's going to hard drives? >> That's a great question, now. So, even in the very large HyperScale data centers and we definitely see where Flash and hard disk drives are very complimentary. They're really addressing different challenges, different problems, and so I think one of the charts that we saw today at the briefing really is something that we agree with strongly at IDC. Today, maybe, about 7% or 8% of all of the combined HDD SSD petabyte shipped for enterprise are SSD petabytes. And then, that grows to maybe ten. >> What was it? Like 7% you said? >> 6% to 7%. >> 6% to 7% okay. Yeah, so we still have 92, 93%, 94% of all petabytes that again are HDD SSD petabytes for enterprise. Those are still HDD petabytes. And even when you get out to 2020, 2021, again, still bought 90%. We agree with what Western Digital talked about today. About 90% of the combined HDD SSD petabytes that are shipping for enterprise continue to be HDD. So, we do see the two technologies very complementary. Talked about SSD is kind of getting their scale on PCs and that's true. They really are going to quickly continue to become a bigger slice of the storage devices attached to new PCs. But, in the data center you really need that bulk storage capacity, low cost capacity. And that's where we see that the two SSDs and HDDs are going to live together for a long time. >> Yeah, and as we said the conflict barrier, complimentary nature of the two different applications are very different. You need the big data to build the models, to run the algorithms, to do stuff. But, at the same time, you need the fast data that's coming in. You need the real time analytics to make modifications to the algorithms and learn from the algorithms >> That's right, yeah. It's the two of those things together that are one plus one makes three type of solution. Exactly, and especially to address latency. Everybody wants their data fast. When you type something into Google, you want your response right away. And that's where SSDs really come into play, but when you do deep searches, you're looking through a lot of data that has been collected over years and a lot of that's probably sitting on hard disc drives. >> Yeah. The last piece of the puzzle, I just want to you to address before we sign off, That was an interesting point is that not just necessarily the technology story, but the ecosystem story. And I thought that was really kind of, I thought, the most interesting part of the MAMR announcement was that it fits in the same form factor, there's no change to OS, there's no kind of change in the ecosystem components in which you plug this in. >> Yeah, that's right. It's just you take out the smaller drive, the 10, or the 12, or whatever, or 14 I guess is coming up. And plug in. They showed a picture of a 40 terabyte drive. >> Right. >> You know, that's the other part of the story that maybe doesn't get as much play as it should. You're playing in an ecosystem. You can't just come up with this completely, kind of independent, radical, new thing, unless it'S so radical that people are willing to swap out their existing infrastructure. >> I completely agree. It's can be very difficult for the customer to figure out how to adopt some of these new technologies and actually, the hard disk drive industry has thrown a couple of technologies at their customers over the past five, six years, that have been a little challenging for them to adopt. So, one was when the industry went from a native 512 by sectors to 4K sectors. Seems like a pretty small change that you're making inside the drive, but it actually presented some big challenges for some of the enterprise customers. And even the single magnetic recording technologies. So, it has a way to get more data on the disc, and Western Digital certainly talked about that today. But, for the customer trying to plug and play that into a system and SMR technology actually created some real challenges for them to figure out how to adopt that. So, I agree that what was shown today about the MAMR technology is definitely a plug and play. >> Alright, we'll give you the last word as people are driving away today from the headquarters. They got a bumper sticker as to why this is so important. What's it say on the bumper sticker about MAMR? It says that we continue to get more capacity at a lower cost. >> (chuckles) Isn't that just always the goal? >> I agree. >> (chuckles) Alright, well thank you for stopping by and sharing your insight. Really appreciate it. >> Thanks, Jeff. >> Alright. Jeff Frick here at Western Digital. You're watching theCUBE! Thanks for watching. (futuristic beat)

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California, it's theCUBE, covering Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Big Data, brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at Western Digital's headquarters in San Jose, California at the Almaden campus. Lot of innovation's been going on here, especially in storage for decades, and we're excited to be at this special press and analyst event that Western Digital put on today to announce some exciting new products. It's called Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Data. I'm super happy to have a long-time industry veteran, he just told me, 35 years, I don't know if I can tell (Mark laughs) that on air or not. He's Mark Grace, he's the Senior Vice President of Devices for Western Digital, Mar, great to have you on. >> Thanks Jeff, glad to be here. >> Absolutely, so you've seen this movie over and over and over, I mean that's one of the cool things about being in the Valley, is this relentless pace of innovation. So how does today's announcement stack up as you kind of look at this versus kind of where we've come from? >> Oh I think this is maybe one of the, as big as it comes, Jeff, to be honest. I think we've plotted a course now that I think was relatively uncertain for the hard drive industry and the data center, and plotted a course that I think we can speak clearly to the market, and clearly to customers about the value proposition for rotating magnetic storage for decades to come. >> Which is pretty interesting, 'cause, you know, rotating drives have been taking a hit over the last couple of years, right, flash has been kind of the sexy new kid on the block, so this is something new, >> Mark: It is. >> And a new S curve I think as John said. >> I agree, we're jumping onto a, we're extending the S curve, let's call it that. I think there's actually plenty of other S curve opportunities for us, but in this case, I think the industry, and I would say our customer base, we have been less than clear with those guys about how we see the future of rotating storage in the cloud and enterprise space, and I think today's announcement clarifies that and gives some confidence about architectural decisions relative to rotating storage going forward for a long time. >> Well I think it's pretty interesting, 'cause compared to the other technology that was highlighted, the other option, the HAMR versus the MAMR, this was a much more elegant, simpler way to add this new S curve into an existing ecosystem. >> You know, elegant's probably a good word for it, and it's always the best solution I would say. HAMR's been a push for many years. I can't remember the first time I heard about HAMR. It's still something we're going to continue to explore and invest in, but it has numerous hurdles compared to the simplicity and elegance, as you say, of MAMR, not the least of which is we're going to operate at normal ambient temperatures versus apply tremendous heat to try and energize the recording and the technologies. So any time you introduce extraordinary heat you face all kinds of ancillary engineering challenges, and this simplifies those challenges down to one critical innovation, which is the oscillator. >> Pretty interesting, 'cause it seems pretty obvious that heat's never a good thing. So it's curious that in the quest for this next S curve that the HAMR path was pursued for as long as it was, it sounds like, because it sounds like that's a pretty tough thing to overcome. >> Yeah, I think it initially presented perhaps the most longevity perhaps in early exploration days. I would say that HAMR has certainly received the most press as far as trying to assert it as the extending recording technology for enterprise HDDs. I would say we've invested for almost as long in MAMR, but we've been extremely quiet about it. This is kind of our nature. When we're ready to talk about something, you can kind of be sure we're ready to go with it, and ready to think about productization. So we're quite confident in what we're doing. >> But I'm curious from your perspective, having been in the business a long time, you know, we who are not directly building these magical machines, just now have come to expect that Moore's Law will contain, has zero to do with semiconductor physics anymore, it's really an attitude and this relentless pace of innovation that now is expected and taken for granted. You're on the other side, and have to face real physics and mechanical limitations of the media and the science and everything else. So is that something that gets you up every day >> Mark: Keeps me awake every night! >> Obviously keeps you awake at night and up every day. You've been doing it for 35 years, so there must be some appeal. >> Yeah. (laughs) >> But you know, it's a unique challenge, 'cause at the same time not only has it got to be better and faster and bigger, it's got to be cheaper, and it has been. So when you look at that, how does that kind of motivate you, the teams here, to deliver on that promise? >> Yeah, I mean in this case, we are a little bit defensive, in the sense of the flash expectations that you mentioned, and I think as we digest our news today, we'll be level setting a little bit more in a more balanced way the expectations for contribution from rotating magnetic storage and solid state storage to what I think is a more accurate picture of its future going forward in the enterprise and hyperscale space. To your point about just relentless innovation, a few of us were talking the other day in advance of this announcement that this MAMR adventure feels like the early days of PMR, perpendicular, the current recording technology. It feels like we understand a certain amount of distance ahead of us, and that's about this four-terabit per inch kind of distance, but it feels like the early days where we could only see so far but the road actually goes much further, and we're going to find more and more ways to extend this technology, and keep that order of magnitude cost advantage going from a hard drive standpoint versus flash. >> I wonder how this period compares to that, just to continue, in terms of on the demand side, 'cause you know, back in the day, the demand and the applications for these magical compute machines weren't near, I would presume, as pervasive as now, or am I missing the boat? 'Cause now clearly there is no shortage of demand for storage and compute. >> Yeah, depending on where you're coming from, you could take two different views of that. The engine that drove the scale of the hard drive industry to date has, a big piece of it in the long history of the hard drive industry has been the PC space. So you see that industry converting to flash and solid state storage more aggressively, and we embrace that, you know we're invested in flash and we have great products in that space, and we see that happening. The opportunity in the hyperscale and cloud space is we're only at the tip of the iceberg, and therefore I think, as we think about this generation, we think about it differently than those opportunities in terms of breadth of applications, PCs, and all that kind of create the foundation for the hard drive, but what we see here is the virtuous cycle of more storage, more economical storage begets more value proposition, more opportunities to integrate more data, more data collection, more storage. And that virtuous cycle seems to me that we're just getting started. So long live data, that's what we say. (both laugh) >> The other piece that I find interesting is before the PCs were the driver of scale relative to an enterprise data center, but with the hyperscale guys and the proliferation of cloud and actually the growth of PCs is slowing down dramatically, that it's kind of flipped the bit. Now the data centers themselves have the scale to drive >> Absolutely. >> the scale innovation that before was before was really limited to either a PC or a phone or some more consumer device. >> Absolutely the case. When you take that cross-section of hard drive applications, that's a hundred percent the case, and in fact, we look at the utilization as a vertically integrated company we look at our media facilities for the disks, we look at our wafer facilities for heads, and those facilities as we look forward are going to be as busy as busier than they've ever been. I mean the amount of data is relative to the density as well as disks and heads and how many you can employ. So we see this in terms of fundamental technology and component construction, manufacturing, busier than it's ever been. We'll make fewer units. I mean there will be fewer units as they become bigger and denser for this application space, but the fundamental consumption of magnetic recording technology and components is all-time records. >> Right. And you haven't even talked about the software-defined piece that's dragging the utilization of that data across multiple applications. >> And it's just one of these that come in to help everybody there too, yeah. >> Jeff: You got another 35 years more years in you? (both laugh) >> I hope so. >> All right. >> But that would be the edge of it, I think. >> All right, we're going to take Mark Grace here, only 35 more years, Lord knows what he'll be working on. Well Mark, thanks for taking a few minutes and answering your prospective >> No that's fine, thanks a lot. >> Absolutely, Mark Grace, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE from Western Digital headquarters in San Jose, California. Thanks for watching. >> Mark: All right.

(upbeat techno music) >> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California it's theCUBE, covering Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Big Data, brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here at theCUBE. We're at the Western Digital Headquarters off Almaden down in San Jose, a really important place. Western Digital's been here for a while, their headquarters. A lot of innovation's been going on here forever. So we're excited to be here really for the next generation. The event's called Innovating to Fuel the Next Generation of big data, and we're joined by many time Cuber, Dave Tang. He is the SVP in corporate marketing from Western Digital. Dave, always great to see you. >> Yeah. Always great to be here, Jeff. Thanks. >> Absolutely. So you got to MC the announcement today. >> Yes. >> So for the people that weren't there, let's give them a quick overview on what the announcement was and then we can dive in a little deeper. >> Great, so what we were announcing was a major breakthrough in technology that's going to allow us to drive the increase in capacity in density to support big data for the next decade and beyond, right? So capacities and densities had been starting to level off in terms of hard drive technology capability. So what we announced was microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology that will allow us to keep growing that areal density up and reducing the cost per terabyte. >> You know, it's fascinating cause everyone loves to talk about Moore's Law and have these silly architectural debates, whether Moore's Law is alive or dead, but, as anyone who's lived here knows, Moore's Law is really an attitude much more it is than the specific physics of microprocessor density growth. And it's interesting to see. As we know the growth of data is growing in giant and the types of data, and not only regular big data, but now streaming data are bigger and bigger and bigger. I think you talked about stuff coming off of people and machines compared to business data is way bigger. >> Right. >> But you guys continue to push limits and break through, and even though we expect everything to be cheaper, faster, and better, you guys actually have to execute it-- >> Dave: Right. >> Back at the factory. >> Right, well it's interesting. There's this healthy tension, right, a push and pull in the environment. So you're right, it's not just Moore's Law that's enabling a technology push, but we have this virtuous cycle, right? We've realized what the value is of data and how to extract the possibilities and value of data, so that means that we want to store more of that data and access more of that data, which drives the need for innovation to be able to support all of that in a cost effective way. But then that triggers another wave of new applications, new ways to tap into the possibilities of data. So it just feeds on itself, and fortunately we have great technologists, great means of innovation, and a great attitude and spirit of innovation to help drive that. >> Yeah, so for people that want more, they can go to the press releases and get the data. We won't dive deep into the weeds here on the technology, but I thought you had Janet George speak, and she's chief data scientist. Phenomenal, phenomenal big brain. >> Dave: Yes. >> A smart lady. But she talked about, from her perspective we're still just barely even getting onto this data opportunity in terms of automation, and we see over and over at theCUBE events, innovation's really not that complicated. Give more people access to the data, give them more access to the tools, and let them try things easier and faster and feel quick, there's actually a ton of innovation that companies can unlock within their own four walls. But the data is such an important piece of it, and there's more and more and more of this. >> Dave: Right, right. >> What used to be digital exhaust now is, I think maybe you said, or maybe it was Dave, that there's a whole economy now built on data like we used to do with petroleum. I thought that was really insightful. >> Yeah, right. It's like a gold mine. So not only are the sources of data increasing, which is driving increased volume, but, as Janet was alluding to, we're starting to come up with the tools and the sophistication with machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to put that data to new use as well as to find the pieces of data to interconnect, to drive these new capabilities and new insights. >> Yeah, but unlike petroleum it doesn't get used up. I mean that's the beauty of data. (laughing) >> Yeah, that's right. >> It's a digital process that can be used over and over and over again. >> And a self-renewing, renewing resource. And you're right, in that sense that it's being used over and over again that the longevity of that data, the use for life is growing exponentially along with the volume. >> Right, and Western Digital's in a unique position cause you have systems and you have big systems that could be used in data centers, but you also have the media that powers a whole bunch of other people's systems. So I thought one of the real important announcements today was, yes it's an interesting new breakthrough technology that uses energy assist to get more density on the drives, but it's done in such a way that the stuff's all backward compatible. It's plug and play. You've got production scheduled in a couple years I think with test out the customers-- >> Dave: That's right. >> Next year. So, you know, that is such an important piece beyond the technology. What's the commercial acceptance? What are the commercial barriers? And this sounds like a pretty interesting way to skin that cow. >> Right, often times the best answers aren't the most complex answers. They're the more elegant and simplistic answers. So it goes from the standpoint of a user being able to plug and play with older systems, older technologies. That's beautiful, and for us, to be able to, the ability to manufacture it in high volume reliably and cost effectively is equally as important. >> And you also talked, which I think was interesting, is kind of the relationship between hard drives and flash, because, obviously, flash is a, I want to say the sexy new toy, but it's not a sexy new toy anymore. >> Right. >> It's been around for a while, but, with that pressure on flash performance, you're still seeing the massive amounts of big data, which is growing faster than that. And there is a rule for the high density hard drives in that environment, and, based on the forecast you shared, which I'm presuming came from IDC or people that do numbers for a living, still a significant portion of a whole lot of data is not going to be on flash. >> Yeah, that's right. I think we have a tendency, especially in technology, to think either or, right? Something is going to take over from something else, but in this case it's definitely an and, right. And a lot of that is driven by this notion that there's fast data and big data, and, while our attention seems to shift over to maybe some fast data applications like autonomous vehicles and realtime applications, surveillance applications, there's still a need for big data because the algorithms that drive those realtime applications have to come from analysis of vast amounts of data. So big data is here to stay. It's not going away or shifting over. >> I think it's a really interesting kind of cross over, which Janet talked about too, where you need the algorithms to continue sharing the system that are feeding, continuing, and reacting to the real data, but then that just adds more vocabulary to their learning set so they can continue to evolve overtime. >> Yeah, what really helps us out in the market place is that because we have technologies and products across that full spectrum of flash and rotating magnetic recording, and we sell to customers who buy devices as well as platforms and systems, we see a lot of applications, a lot of uses of data, and we're able to then anticipate what those needs are going to be in the near future and in the distant future. >> Right, so we're getting towards the end of 2017, which I find hard to say, but as you look forward kind of to 2018 and this insatiable desire for more storage, cause this insatiable creation of more data, what are some of your priorities for 2018 and what are you kind of looking at as, like I said, I can't believe we're going to actually flip the calendar here-- >> Dave: Right, right. >> In just a few short months. (laughing) >> Well, I think for us, it's the realization that all these applications that are coming at us are more and more diverse, and their needs are very specialized. So it's not just the storage, although we're thought of as a storage company, it's not just about the storage of that data, but you have contrive complete environments to capture and preserve and access and transform that data, which means we have to go well beyond storage and think about how that data is accessed, technical interfaces to our memory products as well as storage products, and then where compute sits. Does it still sit in a centralized place or do you move compute to out closer to where the data sits. So, all this innovation and changing the way that we think about how we can mine that data is top of the mind for us for the next year and beyond. >> It's only job security for you, Dave. (laughing) >> Dave: Funny to think about. >> Alright. He's Dave Tang. Thanks for inviting us and again congratulations on the presentation. >> Always a pleasure. >> Alright, Dave Tang, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from Western Digital headquarters in San Jose, California. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> Male voiceover: Live from San Jose California, it's the Cube, covering Innovating to Fuel the Next Decade of Big Data. Brought to you by Western Digital. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Western Digital World Headquarters It's the Almaden Campus in San Jose. If you know anything about the tech world, you know there's a lot of innovation that's been happening on this campus for years and years and years. Big announcement today called Innovating to Fuel the Next Generation of Big Data. Lot of exciting announcements and here to join us to tell us all about it is Brendan Collins. He's the Vice President of Product Marketing Devices for Western Digital. Brendan, great to see you. >> Thank you, glad to be here. >> Absolutely so, really exciting announcement. You know, I've talked to Kim Stevenson at Intel, we had an interview talking about Moore's law. And one thing she really reinforced is that Moore's law is really more of an attitude than it is specifically physics, and whether you want to argue the physics is one thing, but the attitude for innovation, to continue to deliver a lot more for less, just continues, continues, and continues, and you guys announced a huge step in that direction today. >> Yeah, we have a challenge that storage is growing at a rate of about 40 percent per year. And budgets from the data centers are not growing, right? So the challenge is for us to develop new technologies that allow us to stay on the technology curve, and cut costs and do that efficiently. >> Then this is a big one, so let's jump in. So actually it was years ago I was actually at the event when you guys introduced the Helium drives, and that was a big deal there, and you've continued to kind of move that innovation but then you can see a plateau. And the density of this data, so you guys had to come up with something new. >> Yeah, what we've seen is that our PMR technology that we use currently is slowly running out of steam, right? So in order to come down the cost curve, we needed to boost areal density. And luckily we were able to come up with a new breakthrough in MAMR technology that will allow us to do that for the next decade. >> It's interesting in the talk, you talked about you guys could see this kind of coming and you actually put a lot of bets on the table, you didn't just bet on MAMR, you bet on HAMR, and you continued along a number of multiple tracks, and you've been at this for a while. What was kind of the innovation that finally gave you a breakthrough moment that got us to where we are today? >> Well, there were multiple technologies that we could have invested in, and we decided to continue on the two major ones which were HAMR and MAMR but we made a decision to invest in a process called, a head fabrication process called damascene that allowed us to extend the life of PMR for the last five to six years, and it's been in all the products we've been shipping since 2013. >> And you talked the areal density, so that's basically the amount of information we can put on the square inch of surface area And you've really, you attacked it on two vectors. One is how many tracks, just think of a record, how many tracks can you get on an album, in terms of the number of lines, and then how much density then you can have on each of those tracks. >> That's right, that's right. And you're now seeing major improvements on both of those factors. >> Well if you look at, we've had three enabling technologies in our products for the past three to four years, right. One is helium, one is micro actuation, and the other is the damascene process. Damascene and micro actuation actually push track density which enables higher capacity. But the newer technology that we're talking about, MAMR, addresses both factors. So we push the track density even tighter together, But we also boost the linear density at the same time, and we do that without adding cost. >> Right. The other thing you talked about, and I think it's a really important piece, right it's not only the technology breakthrough, but it's also how does that fit within the existing ecosystem of your customers, and obviously big giant data centers and big giant cloud providers, we actually have a show going on at a big cloud show right now, and this technology was innovative in that you've got a breakthrough on density, but not so crazy that you introduced a whole bunch of new factors into the ecosystem that would then have to be incorporated into all these systems, because you guys not only make your own systems, but you make the media that feeds a whole host of ecosystems, and that was a pretty important piece. >> If you look at some previous technologies we've introduced whether it be even 4K sectors in the industry, or shingled magnetic reporting, both of those require whole side modifications. Any time you have whole side modifications, it generally slows down the adoption, right? With HAMR, one of the challenges that we had was because of the concerns with thermals on the media, we needed a process called wear leveling, and that required whole software changes. In contrast, when we go to MAMR, everything is seamless, everything is transparent, and it's great. >> Right. I thought it was much simpler than that. I thought just heat is bad, HAMR is heat, and MAMR is microwave, and you know, heat and efficiency and data centers and all those, kind of again, system-level concerns; heat's never a good thing in electronics. >> Well, and in the case of MAMR versus HAMR, there's like an order of magnitude difference in the temperature on the disk, which is the key concern. >> And then of course as you mentioned in the key note, this is real, you've got sample units going on, correct me if I'm wrong, as early as next year >> That's right. >> you're hoping you'd be in scale production in 2020. Where some of these other competing technologies, there's really still no forecasted ship date on the horizon. >> Yeah, you can generate samples, you can build lower quantities of these HAMR drives, but you still have that big concern out there in front of you, how do I address the reliability, how do I address the complexity of all these new materials, and then if I got all of that to work, how do I do it commercially because of the cost additives. >> Right; so I just want to get your perspective before we let you go, you're busy, there's a high demand for your time, as you kind of think back and look at these increasing demands for storage, this increasing demand for computers, and I think one of the data points given is, you know, the data required for humans and machines and IOT is growing way way way way faster than business focused data which has been the driver of a lot of this stuff, if you just kind of sit back and take a look, you know, what are some of your thoughts because I'm sure not that long ago you could have never imagined that there would be the demand for the types of capacities that we're talking about now and we both know that when we sit down five years from now, ten years ago, you know, ten years from now, we're going to look back at today and think, you know, that was zero. >> Yeah, way back in the day there were just PCs and servers and there was traditional IT with rate, today with autonomous cars and IOT and AI and machine learning, it's just going to continue, so that exponential growth that you saw, there's no sign of that slowing down, which is good news for us. >> Yeah, good job security for you for sure. >> You bet! >> Alright Brendan, well, again, thanks for taking a few minutes to sit down and congratulations on the great event and the launch of these new products. >> Thank you, thank you. >> He's Brendan Collins, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching the Cube from the Western Digital Headquarters in San Jose California. Thanks for watching.