(upbeat techno music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of Postgres Vision 2021. Brought to you by EBD. >> Hello everyone, this is David Vellante, for the CUBE. And we're here covering Postgres Vision 2021. The virtual version, thCUBE virtual, if you will. And welcome to our power-panel. Now in this session, we'll dig into database modernization. We want to better understand how and why customers are tapping open source to drive innovation. But at the same time, they've got to deliver the resiliency and enterprise capabilities that they're used to that are now necessary to support today's digital business requirements. And with me are three experts on these matters. Abdul Sheik, is Global CTO and President of Cintra. Young Il Cho, aka Charlie, is High Availability Cluster Sales Manager, at Daone CNS. And Alan Villalobos, is the Director of Development Partnerships, at IBM. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave, nice to be here. >> Thank you, Dave. >> All right, let's talk trends and frame the problem. Abdul, I want to start with you? Cintra you're all about this topic. Accelerating innovation using EDB Postgres helping customers move to modern platforms. And doing so, you got to do it cost-effectively but what's driving these moves? What are the problems that you're seeing at the organizations that you serve? >> Oh, so let me quickly introduce, Abdul Sheik, CTO. I'll quickly introduce Cintra. So we are a multicloud and database architecture MSP. And we've been around for 25 plus years. Headquartered in New York and the UK. But as a global organization, we're serving our SMB customers as well as large enterprise customers. And the trends we're seeing certainly in this day and age is transformation and modernization. And what that means is, customers looking to get out of the legacy platforms, get out of the legacy data centers and really move towards a modern strategy with a lower cost base, while still retaining resiliency and freedom. Ultimately, in terms of where they're going. The key words that really I see driving this, number one is choice. They've been historically locked into vendors. With limited choice with a high cost base. So choice, freedom to choose in terms of what database technologies they apply to which workloads and certainly EDB and the work that has been done to closely marry what enterprise RD platforms offer with EDBs in a work that they've done in terms of filling those gaps and addressing where the resiliency monitoring performance and security requirements are, are certainly are required from an enterprise customer perspective. Choice is driving the move that we see and choice towards a lower cost platform that can be deployed anywhere. Both on-prem modernization customers are looking to retain on premise platforms or moving into any multi clouds whether it's an infrastructure cloud play or a platform cloud play. And certainly with EDBs offering in terms of, you know the latest cloud native offerings also very interesting. And lastly, aside from just cost and the freedom to choose where they deploy those platforms the SLA, the service level model where is the resiliency requirement where the which system is going to bronze, silver, gold? Which ones are the tier one revenue platform revenue generating platforms which are the lower, lower utility platforms. So a combination of choice, a combination of freedom to deploy anywhere and while still maintaining the resiliency and the service levels that the customers need to deliver to their businesses >> Abdul that was a beautiful setup. And, and we've got so much to talk about here because customers want to move from point A to point B but getting there and they, they need help. It's sometimes not trivial. So Charlie Daone is a consultancy. You've got a strong technical capabilities. What are you seeing in this space? You know, what are the major trends? Why are organizations considering that move? And what are some of the considerations there? >> Well, like in other country in South Korea or so our a lot of customers, banking's a manufacturing distributor. They are 90, over 90%. They are all are using Oracle DB and a rack system. But as the previous presenters pointed out, a lot of customers that are sick of the Oracle and they have to undergo the huge cost of a maintenance costs. They want to move away from this cost stress. And secondly, they can think about they're providing service to customer on their cloud base which is a private or the public. So we cannot imagine running on database, Oracle database running on the cloud the system that's not matches on this cloud. And first and second, and finally the customer what they want is the cost and they want to move away from the Oracle locking. They cannot be just a slave at Oracle for a long time and the premium for the new cloud the service for the customer. >> Great. Thank you for that. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Did you have something else to add Charlie go ahead and please. >> No that's all. >> Okay, great. Yeah, Allen, welcome to theCUBE. You know, it's very interesting to us. IBM, you, you, of course, you're a big player in database. You have a lot of expertise here. And you partner with EDB, you're offering Postgres to customers, you know, what are you seeing? Charlie was talking about Oracle and RAC. I mean, the, the, the thing there is obviously, we talked about the maintenance costs but there's also a lot of high availability capabilities. That's something that IBM really understands well. Do you see this as largely a cloud migration trend? Is it more modernization? Interested in what's IBM's perspective on this? >> I think modernization is the right word. The points that the previous panelists brought up or are on point, right? You know, lower TCO or lower costs in general but that of agility and then availability for developers and data scientists as well. And then of course, you know, hybrid cloud, right? You know, you want to be able to deploy on prem or in the cloud, or both in a mixture of all of that. And I think, I think what ties it together is the customers are looking for insights, right? And, you know, especially in larger organizations there's a myriad of data sources that they're already working with. And, you know, we, you know we want to be able to play in that space. We want to give an offering that is based on Postgres and open source and be able to further what they're strong at at and kind of, you know on top of that, you know, a layer of, of of need that we see is, is seamless data governance across all of those different stores. >> All right, I'm going to go right to the heart of the hard problem here. So if, I mean, I want to, it's just that I want to get from point A to point B, I want to save money. I want to modernize, but if I'm the canary in the coal mine at the customer, I'm saying guys, migration scares me. How do I do that? What are the considerations? And what do I need to know that I don't know. So Abdul, maybe you could walk us through what are some of the concerns that customers have? How do you help mitigate those? Whether it's other application dependencies, you know freezing code, you know, getting, again from that point A to point B without risking my existing business processes how do you handle that? >> Yeah, certainly I think a customer needs to understand what the journey looks like to begin with. So we've actually developed our own methodology that we call Rocket Cloud, which is also part of our cloud modernization strategy that builds in and database modernization strategy built into it starts with an assessment in terms of current state discovery. Not all customers totally understand where they are today. So understanding where the database state is, you know where the risks lie what are the criticality of the various databases? What technologies are used, where we have RAC or we don't have RAC but we have data God, where we have encryption. And so on. That gives the customer a very good insight in terms of the current state, both commercially and technically that's a key point to understand how they're licensed today and what costs could be freed up to free the journey to effectively fund the journey. It's a big, big topic, but once we do that, we get an idea and we've actually developed a tool called rapid discovery. That's able to discover a largest stake without knowing the database list. We just put the scripts at the database servers themselves and it tells us exactly which databases are suited to be you know, effectively migrated to Postgres with in terms of the feature function usage in terms of how heavy they are, would store procedures in the database amount of business logic use of technologies like RAC data guard and how they convert over to to Postgres specifically. That ultimately gives us the ability to give that customer an assessment and that assessment in a short sharp few weeks and get the customer view of all of my hundreds of databases. Here are the subset of candidates for Postgres and specifically than we do the schemer advisor tool the actual assessment tool from EDB, which gives us a sense of how well the schema gets converted and how best to then also look at the stored procedure conversion as well. That gives the customer a full view of their architecture mapping their specific candidate databases and then a cost analysis in terms of what that migration looks like and how we migrate. We also run and maintain those platforms once we're on EDB. >> Thank you for that again, very clear but so you're not replacing, doing an organ transplant. You may, you're you're, you know, this is not I don't mean this as a pejorative, but you're kind of cherry picking those workloads that are appropriate for EDB and then moving those and then maybe, maybe through attrition or, you know over time, sun-setting those other, those other core pieces. >> Exactly. >> Charlie, let me ask you, so we talked about RAC, real application clusters, data guard. These are, you know kind of high profile Oracle capabilities. Can you, can you really replicate the kind of resiliency at lower costs with open source, with EDB Postgres and how do you do that? >> It's my turn? >> yes, please. >> Quite technically, again, I go on in depths and technically the RAC, RAC system is so-called is the best you know, best the tool to protect data and especially in the Unix system, but apart from the RAC by the some nice data replication solution we just stream the application and log shipping and something and then monitor Pam and, and EFM solution which is enterprise failover manager. So even though it be compared to Apple the Apple RAC versus with EDB solution, we can definitely say that RAC is more stable one, but after migration, whatever, we can overcome the, you know, drawbacks of the HA cluster system by providing the EDB tools. So whatever the customer feel that after a successful migration, utilizing the EDB high availability failable solution they can make of themselves at home. So that's, that's how we approach it with the customers. >> So, Alan, again, to me, IBM is fascinating here with your level of involvement because you're the, you guys are sort of historically the master of proprietary the mainframes, VCM, CICF, EB2, all that stuff. And then, you know IBM was the first I remember Steve Mills actually announced we're going to invest a billion dollars in open source with Linux. And that was a major industry milestone. And of course, the, the acquisition of red hat. So you've got now this open source mindset this open source culture. So we, you know, as it's all about recovery in, in database and enterprise database and all the acid properties in two phase commits, and we're talking about, you know the things that Charlie just talked about. So what's your perspective here? IBM knows a lot about this. How do you help customers get there? >> Yeah, well, I mean the main, the main thrust right now IBM has a offering called IBM cloud Pak for data which from here, which runs EDB, right? EDB, Postgres runs on top of cloud Pak for Data But the, you know I think going back to Abdul's points about, you know migrating whatever's needed and whatever can be migrated to Postgres and maybe migrating other things other places, we have data virtualization and autoSQL, right? So once you have migrated those parts of your database or those schemes that can be, having, you know a single point where you can query across them and by the way, being able to query across them you know, before, during and after migration as well. Right? So we're kind of have that seamless experience of layer of SQL. And now with autoSQL of spark SQL as well, as you're, as you're migrating and after is, I'd say, you know, key to this. >> What, what's the typical migration look like? I know I'm sorry, but it's a consultant question but thinking about the, you know, the average, in terms of timeframe, what are the teams look like? You know who are the stakeholders that I need to get involved? If I'm a customer to really make this a success? maybe Abdul, you could talk about that and Charlie and Alan can chime in. >> Well, I think, well, number one you knew the exact sponsors bought into it in terms of the business case, supporting the business case an architect has got a big picture understanding not only database technology but also infrastructure that they're coming from as well as the target cloud platforms and how you ensure that the infrastructure can deliver the performance. So the architect role is important, of course the core DBA that lives within the scope of the database understands the schema of the data model the business logic itself, and the application on it. That's key specifically around the application certification testing connectivity and the migration of the code. And specifically in terms of timeline just to touch on that quickly. I mean, in our experience so far and we're seeing the momentum really really take off the last 18 months, a small project with limited business logic within the database itself can we migrate it in a couple of months but typically with all the testing and rigor around that you typically say three months timeline a medium-sized complexity projects, a six month timeline and a large complex project could be anything from nine months and beyond, but it really comes down to how heavy the database is with business logic and the database and how much effort it will take to re-engineer effectively migrate that PLC code, business logic into EDB given the compatibility level between Oracle and EDB it's relatively certainly an easier path than any other target platform in terms of options. Yeah. Not perspective. That's certainly looks like the composition of a team and timeline >> Charlie or Alan, anything you guys would add. >> Yeah. So, so I think all those personas make sense. I think you might, on the consumer side of the consumer the consumer of the data side the data scientists often we see, you know during migrations and then obviously the dev ops, I think or any operations, right, have to be heavily involved. And then lastly, you know, you see more and more data steward role or data steward type persona, CDO office type type person coming in there make sure that, you know, whatever data governance that is already in place or wants to be in place after the migration is also part of the conversation. >> Why EDB? You know, there's a lot of databases out there you know, it's funny, I always say like, you know, 10, 15 years ago databases were kind of sort of a boring market, right? It was like, okay, you're going to work or whatever. And now it's exploded. You got open source databases, you got, you know not only sequel databases, you got graph databases you know, you get cloud databases, it's going crazy. Why EDB? You wonder if you guys could address that? >> Allan why don't you go first this time? I'll compliment your answers. >> Yeah. I mean, again, I think it goes back to, to the, the I guess varying needs and, and enterprises. Right. And I think that's, what's driven this explosion in databases, whether it's a document store like you're saying, or, or new types of RDBMS, the needs that we talked about at the beginning, like lower TCO, and the push to open source. But you know, the fact of the matter is that that yes, there is a myriad, an ecosystem of databases, pretty much any organization. And so, yeah, we want to tap into that. And why EDB? EDB has done a great job of taking Postgres and making it enterprise ready, you know, that's what they're, they're good at and that, you know fits very nicely with the IBM story obviously. And, and so, you know, and they've they've worked with us as well. They have an operator on, on the runs on red hat OpenShift. So that makes it portable as well but also part of the IBM cloud Pak for data story. And, and yeah, you know, we want to break down those silos. We realized that that need is there for all of these, you know, there's this ecosystem of databases. And so, you know, we're, we see our role as being that platform, whether it's red hat OpenShift, or IBM cloud Pak for data that, that unifies, and kind of gives you that single pane of glass across all of those sources. >> And Charlie, you're obviously all in, you've got EDB in your background. Why EDB for you? >> Before talking about EDB you asked about the previous question about how the migration was different from Oracle to EDB. We had a couple of success story in Korea telecom and some banking area, and it was easier. So EDB provide MTK tool as a people know but it was an appropriate, like a 90%. So we are the channel partner of the EDB for four years. So what we have done was to hire the Oracle expert. So we train Oracle export as as EDB expert at the same time so that they can approach customer and make it easy. So you have no worry about that. Just migrating EDB, Oracle to EDB. There is a no issue. Those telltales include all the tasks, you know Stratus test and trainee, and a POC that we there. So by investing that Oracle expert that we could overcome and persuade the customer to adopt EDB. So, why EDB? Simply I can say there, is there any database they can finally replaced Oracle in the world? Why is the, it's the interoperability between Oracle to EDB as the many experts pointed out there is no other DBE. They can, you know, 90, 90% in compatibility and intercooperability with EDB. That's why, of course, there's the somewhat, you know budget issues or maintenance issue cost the issue escape from Oracle lock-in. But I think the the number one reason was the interoperability and the compatibility with database itself, Oracle database. That was a reason, I guess >> Great Abdul we've talked about, we all know the, as is, you've got a high maintenance costs. You got a lot of tuning, and it's just a lot of complexity. What about the 2B maybe you could share with us sort of the outcome some of the outcomes you've seen what the business impact has been of some of these migrations? >> Sure. I mean, I'll give you a very simple example then just the idea of running Oracle on prem a lot of customer systems teams, for example will drive a virtualization VMware strategy. We know some of the challenges of running Oracle MBM where from a license perspective. So giving the business the ability where I want to go customer in the financial services market in New York, heavy virtualization strategy the ability for them to move away from Oracle on, you know expensive hardware on to Postgres EDB on virtualization just leverage existing skillsets, leveraging existing investment in terms of infrastructure, and also give them portability in AWS. The other clouds, you know, in terms of a migration. More from a business perspective as well, I would say about some of the Allan's points in terms of just freeing up the ability for data scientists and data consumers, to, you know, to consume some of that data from an Postgres perspective more accessibility spinning up environments quicker less latency in terms of the agility is another key word in terms of the tangible differences, the business, lower cost agility, and the freedom to deploy anywhere at the end of the day. Choices, I think the key word that we could come back to and knowing that we can do that to Charlie's point specifically around maintaining service levels. And as architects, we support some of the big, big names out there in terms of airlines, online, cosmetic retailers, financial services, trading applications, hedge funds, and they all want one thing as architect: for us to deliver that resiliency and stand behind them. And as the MSP we're accountable to ensure those systems are up and running and performing. So knowing that the EDB is provided the compatibility but also plugged the specific requirements around performance management, security availability that's fundamentally been key. >> [Dave I mean, having done a lot of TCO studies in this area, it's, it's it Oracle's different. You know, normally the biggest component of TCO is labor with Oracle. The biggest component of TCO is licensed and maintenance costs. So if you can virtualize and reduce those costs and of course, of course the Oracle will fight you and say we won't support it in a VMware environment. Of course, you know, they will, but, but you got to really, you got to battle. But, so here's my last question. So if I'm a customer in that state that you described you know, a lot of sort of Oracle sprawl a lot of databases out there, high maintenance costs, the whole lock-in thing. I got to choices. I, you know, a lot of choices out there. One is EDB. You guys have convinced me that you've got the expertise If I can partner with firms like yours, it's safer route. Okay, cool. My other choice is Oracle is going to, The Oracle sales reps is going to get me in a headlock and talk about exit data and how their Oracle cloud, and how it's, they've invested a lot there. And they have, and, I can pay by the drink all this sort of modern sort of discussion, you know, Oracle act like they invented it late to the game. And then here we are. So, so help me. What's the pitch as to, well, that's kind of compelling. It's maybe the safe bet they're there. They're working with my CIO, whatever. Why should I go with the open source route versus that route? It sounds kind of attractive to me, help me understand that each of you maybe take me through that. Abdul, why don't you start. >> Yeah. I'd say, you know, Oracle's being the defacto for so many years that people have just assumed and defaulted saying, high availability, RAC, DR. Data guard, you know, and I'll apply to any database need that I have. And at the end of the day customers have a three tier database requirement: the lowest, less critical, bronze level databases that really don't need RAC or a high availability, silver tier that are departmental solutions. That means some level of resiliency. And then you've got your gold revenue producing brand impact databases that are they're down. And certainly they won. You see no reason why the bronze and silver databases can be targeted towards EDB. Admittedly, we have some of our largest customers are running platforms, are running $5 million an hour e-commerce platform or airlines running large e-commerce platforms. And exit data certainly has a place. RAC has a place in those, in those scenarios. Were not saying that the EDB is a solution for everything in all scenarios, but apply the technology where it's appropriate where it's required and, you know, generally wherever Oracle has being the defacto and it's being applied across the estate, that's fundamentally what's changed. It doesn't have to be the only answer you have multiple choices now. EDB provides us with the ability to probably address, you know more than 50% of the databases' state, and comfortably cope with that and just apply that more expensive kind of gold tier one cost-based but also capability, you know from the highest requirements of performance and availability where it's appropriate. >> Yeah. Very pragmatic approach. Abdul, thank you for that. And Charlie. Charlie, what's your perspective? Give us your closing thoughts. >> Well, it has been, Oracle has been dominating in Asia in South Korea has market or over many years. So customers got tired of this, continuous spending money for the maintenance costs and there is no discount. There is no negotiation. So they want to move away from expensive stuff. And they were looking for a flexible platform with the easygoing and the high speed and performance open source database like a possibly as career. And now the EDB cannot replace a hundred percent of existing legacy worker, but 10%, 20% 50% as time goes on the trend that will continue. And it will be reaching some high point or replacing the existing Oracle system. And it can, it can also leading to good business chance to a channel partner and EDB steps and other related business in open source. >> Great. Thank you, Charlie and Allen, bring us home here. Give us your follow up >> I think my, co- panelists hit the nail on the head, right? It's a menu, right? That's as things become more diverse and as people make more choices and as everybody wants more agility, you have to provide, I mean, and so that, that's where that's coming in and I liked the way that Andul I kind of split it into gold silver and bronze. Yeah. And I think that that's where, we're going, right? I mean you should ask your developers right? Are your developers like pining to start up a new instance of Oracle every time you're starting a new project? Probably not reach for their Postgres right? And so, because of that, that's where this is coming from and that's not going to change. And, and yeah, that that ecosystem is going to continue to, to thrive. And there'll be lots of different flavors in the growing open source ecosystem. >> Yeah. I mean, open source absolutely is the underpinning you know, the, the bedrock of innovation, these days. Gentlemen, great power panel. Thanks so much for bringing your perspectives and best of luck in the future. >> Thank you, next time we'll try and match our backgrounds >> Next time. Well, we'll up our game. Okay. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for theCUBE. Stay tuned for more great coverage. Postgres vision, 21. Be right back. (upbeat techno music)

(upbeat techno music) >> From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of Postgres Vision 2021. Brought to you by enterprise Enterprise DB. >> Hello everyone, this is David Vellante, for the CUBE. And we're here covering Postgres Vision 2021. The virtual version, thCUBE virtual, if you will. And welcome to our power-panel. Now in this session, we'll dig into database modernization. We want to better understand how and why customers are tapping open source to drive innovation. But at the same time, they've got to deliver the resiliency and enterprise capabilities that they're used to that are now necessary to support today's digital business requirements. And with me are three experts on these matters. Abdul Sheik, is Global CTO and President of Cintra. Young Il Cho, aka Charlie, is High Availability Cluster Sales Manager, at Daone CNS. And Alan Villalobos, is the Director of Development Partnerships, at IBM. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave, nice to be here. >> Thank you, Dave. >> All right, let's talk trends and frame the problem. Abdul, I want to start with you? Cintra you're all about this topic. Accelerating innovation using EDB Postgres helping customers move to modern platforms. And doing so, you got to do it cost-effectively but what's driving these moves? What are the problems that you're seeing at the organizations that you serve? >> Oh, so let me quickly introduce, Abdul Sheik, CTO. I'll quickly introduce Cintra. So we are a multicloud and database architecture MSP. And we've been around for 25 plus years. Headquartered in New York and the UK. But as a global organization, we're serving our SMB customers as well as large enterprise customers. And the trends we're seeing certainly in this day and age is transformation and modernization. And what that means is, customers looking to get out of the legacy platforms, get out of the legacy data centers and really move towards a modern strategy with a lower cost base, while still retaining resiliency and freedom. Ultimately, in terms of where they're going. The key words that really I see driving this, number one is choice. They've been historically locked into vendors. With limited choice with a high cost base. So choice, freedom to choose in terms of what database technologies they apply to which workloads and certainly EDB and the work that has been done to closely marry what enterprise RD platforms offer with EDBs in a work that they've done in terms of filling those gaps and addressing where the resiliency monitoring performance and security requirements are, are certainly are required from an enterprise customer perspective. Choice is driving the move that we see and choice towards a lower cost platform that can be deployed anywhere. Both on-prem modernization customers are looking to retain on premise platforms or moving into any multi clouds whether it's an infrastructure cloud play or a platform cloud play. And certainly with EDBs offering in terms of, you know the latest cloud native offerings also very interesting. And lastly, aside from just cost and the freedom to choose where they deploy those platforms the SLA, the service level model where is the resiliency requirement where the which system is going to bronze, silver, gold? Which ones are the tier one revenue platform revenue generating platforms which are the lower, lower utility platforms. So a combination of choice, a combination of freedom to deploy anywhere and while still maintaining the resiliency and the service levels that the customers need to deliver to their businesses >> Abdul that was a beautiful setup. And, and we've got so much to talk about here because customers want to move from point A to point B but getting there and they, they need help. It's sometimes not trivial. So Charlie Daone is a consultancy. You've got a strong technical capabilities. What are you seeing in this space? You know, what are the major trends? Why are organizations considering that move? And what are some of the considerations there? >> Well, like in other country in South Korea or so our a lot of customers, banking's a manufacturing distributor. They are 90, over 90%. They are all are using Oracle DB and a rack system. But as the previous presenters pointed out, a lot of customers that are sick of the Oracle and they have to undergo the huge cost of a maintenance costs. They want to move away from this cost stress. And secondly, they can think about they're providing service to customer on their cloud base which is a private or the public. So we cannot imagine running on database, Oracle database running on the cloud the system that's not matches on this cloud. And first and second, and finally the customer what they want is the cost and they want to move away from the Oracle locking. They cannot be just a slave at Oracle for a long time and the premium for the new cloud the service for the customer. >> Great. Thank you for that. Oh, go ahead. Yeah. Did you have something else to add Charlie go ahead and please. >> No that's all. >> Okay, great. Yeah, Allen, welcome to theCUBE. You know, it's very interesting to us. IBM, you, you, of course, you're a big player in database. You have a lot of expertise here. And you partner with EDB, you're offering Postgres to customers, you know, what are you seeing? Charlie was talking about Oracle and RAC. I mean, the, the, the thing there is obviously, we talked about the maintenance costs but there's also a lot of high availability capabilities. That's something that IBM really understands well. Do you see this as largely a cloud migration trend? Is it more modernization? Interested in what's IBM's perspective on this? >> I think modernization is the right word. The points that the previous panelists brought up or are on point, right? You know, lower TCO or lower costs in general but that of agility and then availability for developers and data scientists as well. And then of course, you know, hybrid cloud, right? You know, you want to be able to deploy on prem or in the cloud, or both in a mixture of all of that. And I think, I think what ties it together is the customers are looking for insights, right? And, you know, especially in larger organizations there's a myriad of data sources that they're already working with. And, you know, we, you know we want to be able to play in that space. We want to give an offering that is based on Postgres and open source and be able to further what they're strong at at and kind of, you know on top of that, you know, a layer of, of of need that we see is, is seamless data governance across all of those different stores. >> All right, I'm going to go right to the heart of the hard problem here. So if, I mean, I want to, it's just that I want to get from point A to point B, I want to save money. I want to modernize, but if I'm the canary in the coal mine at the customer, I'm saying guys, migration scares me. How do I do that? What are the considerations? And what do I need to know that I don't know. So Abdul, maybe you could walk us through what are some of the concerns that customers have? How do you help mitigate those? Whether it's other application dependencies, you know freezing code, you know, getting, again from that point A to point B without risking my existing business processes how do you handle that? >> Yeah, certainly I think a customer needs to understand what the journey looks like to begin with. So we've actually developed our own methodology that we call Rocket Cloud, which is also part of our cloud modernization strategy that builds in and database modernization strategy built into it starts with an assessment in terms of current state discovery. Not all customers totally understand where they are today. So understanding where the database state is, you know where the risks lie what are the criticality of the various databases? What technologies are used, where we have RAC or we don't have RAC but we have data God, where we have encryption. And so on. That gives the customer a very good insight in terms of the current state, both commercially and technically that's a key point to understand how they're licensed today and what costs could be freed up to free the journey to effectively fund the journey. It's a big, big topic, but once we do that, we get an idea and we've actually developed a tool called rapid discovery. That's able to discover a largest stake without knowing the database list. We just put the scripts at the database servers themselves and it tells us exactly which databases are suited to be you know, effectively migrated to Postgres with in terms of the feature function usage in terms of how heavy they are, would store procedures in the database amount of business logic use of technologies like RAC data guard and how they convert over to to Postgres specifically. That ultimately gives us the ability to give that customer an assessment and that assessment in a short sharp few weeks and get the customer view of all of my hundreds of databases. Here are the subset of candidates for Postgres and specifically than we do the schemer advisor tool the actual assessment tool from EDB, which gives us a sense of how well the schema gets converted and how best to then also look at the stored procedure conversion as well. That gives the customer a full view of their architecture mapping their specific candidate databases and then a cost analysis in terms of what that migration looks like and how we migrate. We also run and maintain those platforms once we're on EDB. >> Thank you for that again, very clear but so you're not replacing, doing an organ transplant. You may, you're you're, you know, this is not I don't mean this as a pejorative, but you're kind of cherry picking those workloads that are appropriate for EDB and then moving those and then maybe, maybe through attrition or, you know over time, sun-setting those other, those other core pieces. >> Exactly. >> Charlie, let me ask you, so we talked about RAC, real application clusters, data guard. These are, you know kind of high profile Oracle capabilities. Can you, can you really replicate the kind of resiliency at lower costs with open source, with EDB Postgres and how do you do that? >> It's my turn? >> yes, please. >> Quite technically, again, I go on in depths and technically the RAC, RAC system is so-called is the best you know, best the tool to protect data and especially in the Unix system, but apart from the RAC by the some nice data replication solution we just stream the application and log shipping and something and then monitor Pam and, and EFM solution which is enterprise failover manager. So even though it be compared to Apple the Apple RAC versus with EDB solution, we can definitely say that RAC is more stable one, but after migration, whatever, we can overcome the, you know, drawbacks of the HA cluster system by providing the EDB tools. So whatever the customer feel that after a successful migration, utilizing the EDB high availability failable solution they can make of themselves at home. So that's, that's how we approach it with the customers. >> So, Alan, again, to me, IBM is fascinating here with your level of involvement because you're the, you guys are sort of historically the master of proprietary the mainframes, VCM, CICF, EB2, all that stuff. And then, you know IBM was the first I remember Steve Mills actually announced we're going to invest a billion dollars in open source with Linux. And that was a major industry milestone. And of course, the, the acquisition of red hat. So you've got now this open source mindset this open source culture. So we, you know, as it's all about recovery in, in database and enterprise database and all the acid properties in two phase commits, and we're talking about, you know the things that Charlie just talked about. So what's your perspective here? IBM knows a lot about this. How do you help customers get there? >> Yeah, well, I mean the main, the main thrust right now IBM has a offering called IBM cloud Pak for data which from here, which runs EDB, right? EDB, Postgres runs on top of cloud Pak for Data But the, you know I think going back to Abdul's points about, you know migrating whatever's needed and whatever can be migrated to Postgres and maybe migrating other things other places, we have data virtualization and auto-sequel, right? So once you have migrated those parts of your database or those schemes that can be, having, you know a single point where you can query across them and by the way, being able to query across them you know, before, during and after migration as well. Right? So we're kind of have that seamless experience of layer of sequel. And now with auto sequel of sparks sequel as well, as you're, as you're migrating and after is, I'd say, you know, key to this. >> What, what's the typical migration look like? I know I'm sorry, but it's a consultant question but thinking about the, you know, the average, in terms of timeframe, what are the teams look like? You know who are the stakeholders that I need to get involved? If I'm a customer to really make this a success? maybe Abdul, you could talk about that and Charlie and Alan can chime in. >> Well, I think, well, number one you knew the exact sponsors bought into it in terms of the business case, supporting the business case an architect has got a big picture understanding not only database technology but also infrastructure that they're coming from as well as the target cloud platforms and how you ensure that the infrastructure can deliver the performance. So the architect role is important, of course the core DBA that lives within the scope of the database understands the schema of the data model the business logic itself, and the application on it. That's key specifically around the application certification testing connectivity and the migration of the code. And specifically in terms of timeline just to touch on that quickly. I mean, in our experience so far and we're seeing the momentum really really take off the last 18 months, a small project with limited business logic within the database itself can we migrate it in a couple of months but typically with all the testing and rigor around that you typically say three months timeline a medium-sized complexity projects, a six month timeline and a large complex project could be anything from nine months and beyond, but it really comes down to how heavy the database is with business logic and the database and how much effort it will take to re-engineer effectively migrate that PLC code, business logic into EDB given the compatibility level between Oracle and EDB it's relatively certainly an easier path than any other target platform in terms of options. Yeah. Not perspective. That's certainly looks like the composition of a team and timeline >> Charlie or Alan, anything you guys would add. >> Yeah. So, so I think all those personas make sense. I think you might, on the consumer side of the consumer the consumer of the data side the data scientists often we see, you know during migrations and then obviously the dev ops, I think or any operations, right, have to be heavily involved. And then lastly, you know, you see more and more data steward role or data steward type persona, CDO office type type person coming in there make sure that, you know, whatever data governance that is already in place or wants to be in place after the migration is also part of the conversation. >> Why EDB? You know, there's a lot of databases out there you know, it's funny, I always say like, you know, 10, 15 years ago databases were kind of sort of a boring market, right? It was like, okay, you're going to work or whatever. And now it's exploded. You got open source databases, you got, you know not only sequel databases, you got graph databases you know, you get cloud databases, it's going crazy. Why EDB? You wonder if you guys could address that? >> Allan why don't you go first this time? I'll compliment your answers. >> Yeah. I mean, again, I think it goes back to, to the, the I guess varying needs and, and enterprises. Right. And I think that's, what's driven this explosion in databases, whether it's a document store like you're saying, or, or new types of RDBMS, the needs that we talked about at the beginning, like lower TCO, and the push to open source. But you know, the fact of the matter is that that yes, there is a myriad, an ecosystem of databases, pretty much any organization. And so, yeah, we want to tap into that. And why EDB? EDB has done a great job of taking Postgres and making it enterprise ready, you know, that's what they're, they're good at and that, you know fits very nicely with the IBM story obviously. And, and so, you know, and they've they've worked with us as well. They have an operator on, on the runs on red hat OpenShift. So that makes it portable as well but also part of the IBM cloud Pak for data story. And, and yeah, you know, we want to break down those silos. We realized that that need is there for all of these, you know, there's this ecosystem of databases. And so, you know, we're, we see our role as being that platform, whether it's red hat OpenShift, or IBM cloud Pak for data that, that unifies, and kind of gives you that single pane of glass across all of those sources. >> And Charlie, you're obviously all in, you've got EDB in your background. Why EDB for you? >> Before talking about EDB you asked about the previous question about how the migration was different from Oracle to EDB. We had a couple of success story in Korea telecom and some banking area, and it was easier. So EDB provide MTK tool as a people know but it was an appropriate, like a 90%. So we are the channel partner of the EDB for four years. So what we have done was to hire the Oracle expert. So we train Oracle export as as EDB expert at the same time so that they can approach customer and make it easy. So you have no worry about that. Just migrating EDB, Oracle to EDB. There is a no issue. Those telltales include all the tasks, you know Stratus test and trainee, and a POC that we there. So by investing that Oracle expert that we could overcome and persuade the customer to adopt EDB. So, why EDB? Simply I can say there, is there any database they can finally replaced Oracle in the world? Why is the, it's the interoperability between Oracle to EDB as the many experts pointed out there is no other DBE. They can, you know, 90, 90% in compatibility and intercooperability with EDB. That's why, of course, there's the somewhat, you know budget issues or maintenance issue cost the issue escape from Oracle lock-in. But I think the the number one reason was the interoperability and the compatibility with database itself, Oracle database. That was a reason, I guess >> Great Abdul we've talked about, we all know the, as is, you've got a high maintenance costs. You got a lot of tuning, and it's just a lot of complexity. What about the 2B maybe you could share with us sort of the outcome some of the outcomes you've seen what the business impact has been of some of these migrations? >> Sure. I mean, I'll give you a very simple example then just the idea of running Oracle on prem a lot of customer systems teams, for example will drive a virtualization VMware strategy. We know some of the challenges of running Oracle MBM where from a license perspective. So giving the business the ability where I want to go customer in the financial services market in New York, heavy virtualization strategy the ability for them to move away from Oracle on, you know expensive hardware on to Postgres EDB on virtualization just leverage existing skillsets, leveraging existing investment in terms of infrastructure, and also give them portability in AWS. The other clouds, you know, in terms of a migration. More from a business perspective as well, I would say about some of the Allan's points in terms of just freeing up the ability for data scientists and data consumers, to, you know, to consume some of that data from an Postgres perspective more accessibility spinning up environments quicker less latency in terms of the agility is another key word in terms of the tangible differences, the business, lower cost agility, and the freedom to deploy anywhere at the end of the day. Choices, I think the key word that we could come back to and knowing that we can do that to Charlie's point specifically around maintaining service levels. And as architects, we support some of the big, big names out there in terms of airlines, online, cosmetic retailers, financial services, trading applications, hedge funds, and they all want one thing as architect: for us to deliver that resiliency and stand behind them. And as the MSP we're accountable to ensure those systems are up and running and performing. So knowing that the EDB is provided the compatibility but also plugged the specific requirements around performance management, security availability that's fundamentally been key. >> [Dave I mean, having done a lot of TCO studies in this area, it's, it's it Oracle's different. You know, normally the biggest component of TCO is labor with Oracle. The biggest component of TCO is licensed and maintenance costs. So if you can virtualize and reduce those costs and of course, of course the Oracle will fight you and say we won't support it in a VMware environment. Of course, you know, they will, but, but you got to really, you got to battle. But, so here's my last question. So if I'm a customer in that state that you described you know, a lot of sort of Oracle sprawl a lot of databases out there, high maintenance costs, the whole lock-in thing. I got to choices. I, you know, a lot of choices out there. One is EDB. You guys have convinced me that you've got the expertise If I can partner with firms like yours, it's safer route. Okay, cool. My other choice is Oracle is going to, The Oracle sales reps is going to get me in a headlock and talk about exit data and how their Oracle cloud, and how it's, they've invested a lot there. And they have, and, I can pay by the drink all this sort of modern sort of discussion, you know, Oracle act like they invented it late to the game. And then here we are. So, so help me. What's the pitch as to, well, that's kind of compelling. It's maybe the safe bet they're there. They're working with my CIO, whatever. Why should I go with the open source route versus that route? It sounds kind of attractive to me, help me understand that each of you maybe take me through that. Abdul, why don't you start. >> Yeah. I'd say, you know, Oracle's being the defacto for so many years that people have just assumed and defaulted saying, high availability, RAC, DR. Data guard, you know, and I'll apply to any database need that I have. And at the end of the day customers have a three tier database requirement: the lowest, less critical, bronze level databases that really don't need RAC or a high availability, silver tier that are departmental solutions. That means some level of resiliency. And then you've got your gold revenue producing brand impact databases that are they're down. And certainly they won. You see no reason why the bronze and silver databases can be targeted towards EDB. Admittedly, we have some of our largest customers are running platforms, are running $5 million an hour e-commerce platform or airlines running large e-commerce platforms. And exit data certainly has a place. RAC has a place in those, in those scenarios. Were not saying that the EDB is a solution for everything in all scenarios, but apply the technology where it's appropriate where it's required and, you know, generally wherever Oracle has being the defacto and it's being applied across the estate, that's fundamentally what's changed. It doesn't have to be the only answer you have multiple choices now. EDB provides us with the ability to probably address, you know more than 50% of the databases' state, and comfortably cope with that and just apply that more expensive kind of gold tier one cost-based but also capability, you know from the highest requirements of performance and availability where it's appropriate. >> Yeah. Very pragmatic approach. Abdul, thank you for that. And Charlie. Charlie, what's your perspective? Give us your closing thoughts. >> Well, it has been, Oracle has been dominating in Asia in South Korea has market or over many years. So customers got tired of this, continuous spending money for the maintenance costs and there is no discount. There is no negotiation. So they want to move away from expensive stuff. And they were looking for a flexible platform with the easygoing and the high speed and performance open source database like a possibly as career. And now the EDB cannot replace a hundred percent of existing legacy worker, but 10%, 20% 50% as time goes on the trend that will continue. And it will be reaching some high point or replacing the existing Oracle system. And it can, it can also leading to good business chance to a channel partner and EDB steps and other related business in open source. >> Great. Thank you, Charlie and Allen, bring us home here. Give us your follow up >> I think my, co- panelists hit the nail on the head, right? It's a menu, right? That's as things become more diverse and as people make more choices and as everybody wants more agility, you have to provide, I mean, and so that, that's where that's coming in and I liked the way that Andul I kind of split it into gold silver and bronze. Yeah. And I think that that's where, we're going, right? I mean you should ask your developers right? Are your developers like pining to start up a new instance of Oracle every time you're starting a new project? Probably not reach for their Postgres right? And so, because of that, that's where this is coming from and that's not going to change. And, and yeah, that that ecosystem is going to continue to, to thrive. And there'll be lots of different flavors in the growing open source ecosystem. >> Yeah. I mean, open source absolutely is the underpinning you know, the, the bedrock of innovation, these days. Gentlemen, great power panel. Thanks so much for bringing your perspectives and best of luck in the future. >> Thank you, next time we'll try and match our backgrounds >> Next time. Well, we'll up our game. Okay. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volante for theCUBE. Stay tuned for more great coverage. Postgres vision, 21. Be right back. (upbeat techno music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's the Cube with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi everybody welcome back, this is the Cube's coverage of VMworld 2020, of course,it's remote coverage virtual VMworld 2020, Dennis Kennelly is here. He's the newly minted, General Manager of IBM storage, Dennis, thanks so much for spending some time with us, and congratulations. >> Thank you, Dave. Great to be here and great to talk. >> Yeah, so you're 30 days in, you know, so you're an expert by now, but of course, long time IBMer and you've touched a lot of different basis at IBM. So that's very exciting, but your background is in engineering and products, which I think is significant. And I want to talk about that a little bit, but you've got expertise in Cloud, hybrid Cloud. You ran the security division for quite a bit of time. Actually spent some time in data management as well. So, why do you feel as though this is a great opportunity for you and of course for IBM, given your background? >> Yeah Dave, I think as you say, I'm a technologist, I'm a product guy for many, many years, almost 30 years in the business. I came to IBM as a lot of people through an acquisition, of a small company in the networking space. But since then I've had, you know, two or three careers in IBM where I worked in security, I worked in hybrid Cloud, and actually way, way back, I worked for EMC, in the storage business. >> Yeah Right now, you know, as you look at hybrid Cloud, we're in this hybrid multicloud world, I think, and again, that ties into what VMware is also talking about, I think we're the two vendors in the Mac that really pushing and focused on that strategy. And, you know, the reality is of Clouds, if you look at Cloud today where the world is, I mean, even though we have 10, 15 years, you know, 15 years into the Cloud business is 15 years since the first hyperscaler was launched. Reality is about 20, 25% of what I would call enterprise workload have actually moved on to the Cloud. And there are many reasons for that, be it security, compliance, data, privacy, et cetera, transformation, a lot of other people challenges, et cetera. But now we are actually right in the cusp of adapting that enterprise workload. The storage has a critical role to play in that, especially in the hybrid multicloud world, and we're making sure that storage is a key enabler on that genre. And that's why I think it's a critical time right now to be in storage and to help in that journey. >> And I want to come back to talk a little bit about it, but one of the things that I am excited about, in terms of your background, you've got a strong product background, and for years I had indicated that IBM sort of for a while, lost its formula in storage, you'd do all this R&D and it never hit the market, and then under your predecessor, I think IBM has done a much, much better job and you see it in your now, the last couple of quarters have been really strong for you guys. Of course, you've got the mainframe attached, which is the gift that keeps on giving, but how are you looking at your business? Again, I know you're only 30 days in, but there's been some tailwinds lately, you guys have seemed to do pretty well relative to the market. >> Yeah, my predecessor has done a fantastic job, I mean, if you look at our core storage business, as you said Dave, like our mainframe that's all was our flagship. I mean, you know, we continue to innovate there, particularly around the mainframe, things like, you know, copy services, et cetera, where we're driving a lot of innovation, and continue to lead there. But I think the more interesting, and the really exciting part is what we've done in an our what I would call our open system storage, our flash line up, where the team had got to a single core base, and a single hardware platform where we can scan right up and down the stack. And really innovating and driving very quickly there, is a critical part of what I'm driving right now and accelerate the work that has been done today. Then I think, you know, beyond, you know, the core storage platforms, if you start to look at some of the other areas like cyber resiliency, data protection, and really driving innovation there, but also leveraging other parts of IBM. I mean, we have a very strong base in security. I'm working very closely with our security teams, because I know from my days in security, you know, data protection, data recovery, real challenges for the CISO, I'm bringing those technologies and packaging those technologists so that they can help in those challenges critical for me. And last but not least, I mean, you know, as you look at things like getting an AI and I'm bringing AI to the enterprise. One of the big challenges is being able to identify where all the data is and to get an access to the data. And again, storage is a critical role to play there in terms of discovery services, et cetera, which again is a key innovation. So I think it comes down to those three things. making sure... Obviously you need a very strong product line-up, which I think we are very well equipped right now, and we have, based on the work the team have done over the last number of year. But then applying that to some of the critical problems around cyber resiliency, data protection, and also leveraging and enabling AI in the enterprise. >> So let's stay on cyber for a minute, It's an area obviously, you know, a lot about and we used to think, okay, what's the relationship between storage and cyber, and it was maybe it was encryption, you know, data at motion or data at rest, and now the lines between data protection, and cyber are really getting blurred. I mean, it's become a... Especially with COVID, it's become, >> Mhm >> A fundamental part of business resiliency, So how are you thinking about storage, and the intersection of cyber? >> Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, when, I had the, my security hat on, I mean, reality and security is, you know, the World is, you know, how you deal with a breach because at the end of the day, pretty much there is to be a security event. It's not a case of if, it's a case of when it happens, and you know, really how you respond to that, and that was where a lot of our focus was in terms of how you respond to those events, how you recover quickly, et cetera. Now, when you come across into storage, I mean, lately in the world we live in today, where at the end of the day, when there's a cyber attack, I mean, what is it that the nefarious actor is after, they are pretty much after your data assets. And, you know, things like ransomware now there's various different techniques. But how quickly your crew can respond or recover from those is really important. And that's where storage has a critical role to play. And a lot of what we are doing in the innovations, of course, things like base encryption and encryption everywhere, they are table stakes as far as IBM is concerned, we've had that for many years, within our mainframe and in our open systems, but now really thinking about how you actually recover very quickly when an event happens, and that's really where we see a lot of innovation, and where we want to talk to both sides of the house, both the storage I've been, but also on the CISO who have frankly, a big influence in terms of where investment dollars are put today and making sure that they have the capability in place to actually recover quickly when there's an attack. >> Well, as you well know for years it was, you know, security was the problem of the, you know, the Sec-Ops team, you know, >> Yes >> Not my Swim lane, but that has really changed. I mean, security has become a board level issue. Everybody's got to be involved. We're seeing more CISOs reporting into the CIO. We're also seeing CISOs have a seat at the table, they're reporting, you know, at quarterly board meetings, and so, we see every part of the IT stack, really focused on security, and even the lines of business as well. What do you say? >> Yeah, exactly, I mean, I think the CISO role has evolved over the last number of years, I mean, I think if I think back, you know, maybe five, 10 years ago, the CISO role was very much what I would call a compliance type role. So in other words, making sure we all the checks and balances in place that, you know, at the right time. putting the fast pace, changing world with Cloud and transformation, digital transformation, the CISO has to be an active part of that. We used to use the expression that the CISO was the doctor know, in other words, how to stop, you know, innovation, or how to stop things changing, That's, you know, yesterday's news, today, the CISO has to be much more pro-active, helping technology, helping transformation, and that's why you're seeing that, they have a seat at the top table right now, because they are critical, to all decisions that are made. The fact is that, you know, massive transformation is happening in every enterprise, but you're got to do that in a secure and safe manner, and the CISO is absolutely critical to that, and is influencing a lot of fine decisions around that as well. And by that we see that as a critical part of our strategy that we make sure that we have offerings and capabilities that addresses that need. >> Love to come back to the, the Cloud discussion, the hybrid Cloud, and multi-Cloud, you mentioned that early on, you guys obviously have a big play there with Red Hat and an open shift we've seen in our data that is becoming real multicloud and there used to be, you know, a lot of vendor talk, but now it's becoming a fundamental strategy. So you were saying it, you know, as a smaller portion of workloads, you know, are in the Cloud, it's all the, all the hard stuff has stayed on Prem. What's the motivation for your customers to move to a Cloud, or a hybrid Cloud strategy? What are they trying to achieve as an outcome? >> Well, I think when everything, you know, you got to stop at a business level, right? I mean, fundamentally what enterprises are doing is, especially in this cold world, everything is becoming increasingly digital going online, et cetera. So that transformation is accelerating that digital transformation, the rate and pace of that is accelerated. Now you actually stop to think about that and say, what does that mean in terms of your existing enterprise? In many cases, you know, especially for incumbents, right? They have existing systems that have existing data repositories, et cetera. So how do they leverage that and transform those to meet these new needs? And, and then of course back to the cyber concerns, right, you have security data privacy concerns, et cetera. So you have all these multiple variables going on, in our world, you know, and if you look at what has happened over the last, as I said, 15 plus years, you know, everybody said, you know, everything is moving to the public, game over, we're done. That hasn't actually happened. We really are in a multicloud world. When we talk about multicloud, that means, you know, you have the what we refer to as a traditional hyperscalers, but also the SAS properties, et cetera, that we see in every enterprise. And also you have to have a on-premise capability, but it's different than what it was traditionally, it has to have Cloud like economics. And what has been very good about the Cloud, a tremendous innovation is the elastic scaling, et cetera, on the economics that has come with the Cloud. But you have to bring that back on-premise. You can't just have one operating model in the Cloud and have something else on-premise, your infrastructure has to be flexible at scale and across border environments. And that is the true definition of what we call a hybrid multicloud. And one with critical technologies, will give you that consistency across that, and one of the reasons why, you know, we named the strategic pattern Red Hat, is containers, because from a number of years back, we could see that was the part of the technology that enabled a lot of these hybrid multicloud capabilities. IBM talked about hybrid Cloud long before, it was a popular thing to talk about a number of years back. But we could see that, you know, to enable that to happen, the critical technology was containers, and that because of both, combination of containers and Linux and hence the acquisition of Red Hat, and now we are actually leveraging that to actually drive footprint across the Hybrid Cloud environment, and everything we're doing is integrated into that container technology including storage. >> Yeah, well, of course we're here at VMworld again, virtually, but the big trends we're hearing from, from VMware and the ecosystem this week, they're, pounding on networking hybrid multicloud, as we've just talked about, you mentioned containers and Kubernetes, we're hearing a lot about security, which we just addressed the AI, ML, thinking about the points of commonality, you guys are big partners with VMworld. VMware have been for, for many, many years, a lot of open shift runs on VMware,We know that. a lot of your business critical, and mission critical workloads. So what are those points of commonality, and maybe what are some of the points of divergence in what you guys are doing? as part of >> Yeah, I mean, >> VMware tremendous partner of ours, I mean, a lot of VMware workload, as customers move to the cloud, moves to the IBM Cloud. We're probably their premier choice right now in terms of VMware workload. Also, I think in terms of, you know, I think if you look at VMware today, I think they also see a hybrid multicloud strategy, and I think there's the VMware, I would say a strategy has evolved over time. Clearly they have a huge installed base of virtual machines, which a lot of our container technology at Red Hat runs on top off. But VMware has also evolved into a container approach as well, with a lot of the announcements they've made. So I think we're on a very similar strategy when it comes to my own area on storage, in terms of how we integrate storage into that container world, there's a lot of commonality in how we approach that. I mean, developing CSI drivers, et cetera, into the container world, I think we're both doing that and doing that together. In areas, obviously we will compete and very much compete. I talked about that product lineup and obviously BMR, and obviously that relationship with Dell and others, is got to be areas where we will compete in the storage. But in terms of where we really will collaborate, I think is a lot around the hybrid multicloud strategy, and building an open ecosystem that everybody can play on. And they'll, you know, where we sit on them or they sit on us. I think you're going to see an open ecosystem across us in this hybrid multicloud World. >> Well, it seems as though from a storage standpoint, that you've got no choice, but to be open, you have to give clients as much optionality as possible. You can't say, okay, we're going to be all IBM Red Hat, you've been, you've got so many other opportunities for, term expansion. I wonder if you could talk about that, and maybe express your philosophy, just in terms of openness, and it's important in terms of competing in storage. >> I think that's been fundamental to storage since the very beginning of the storage industry. And of course, we absolutely, we have to be very open in terms of who we integrate with. And we go everywhere from like optical containers, to virtual machines to any system, all the ways for something as traditional as tape. I mean, tape, many have said, tape is dead. Tape is far from dead, even in the, hyperscaler world, where we're seeing a lot of the hyperscalers right now, are actually using tape technology and integrating tape into their environment. So there's an example, where you might not have thought about us, you know, it's something that we do, we do that in a very open fashion and continue to do that. Likewise, when it comes to security, when it comes to things like data and AI, you know, our philosophy is don't take another copy of the data, be able to access the data so that you can build your AI models, et cetera on top of that. we may have a lot to happen with some of our capabilities around spectrum scale, and we will integrate with backend arise from EMC, Hitachi, and others actually enable that to happen. So we're very open ecosystem, want to bring unique value, and if I'm making sure we can integrate both up and down the stack. >> Yeah. Well, I mean, you guys, of course, for those who have been around the storage industry, as much as I have the San volume controller, a hub was kind of the early days of storage virtualization, I think IBM was clearly one of the leaders there, and you've kind of taken that concept to data. We've seen that with Cloud packs, and so, you know, one IBM executive, you know, said to me one time, you know, we, learned our lesson many, many years ago about the importance of openness, and then you got the religion there. So I think it's pretty, >> pretty fundamental. >> I mean, >> Isn't it? >> It's pretty fundamental, I guess, we learned hard lesson many years ago, and I think, you know, when you talk about openness and something like Red Hat, I think we're definitely, putting our money where our mouth is in terms of being an open company, I'm really enabling something like Red Hat, and continue that ecosystem as you know, Red Hat is independent, was run independent of IBM, so that we want to drive that open ecosystem around Red Hat, and that is pretty fundamental to a lot of IBM, a lot of our platforms and our capability, I mean, you know, back for many years, we talked about the sound volume controller, but even if you go back far enough in history, which I can do in the storage World, and the storage API world, IBM was one of the leaders I'm building an open API around storage and storage access as well back then. So it's fundamental to the company has always been, and continues to be, I mean, we were one of the major contributors to things like Linux, That's not well known, but that, that is the truth, and, you know, things like that, what we have done over many, many years. >> Yeah, undoubtedly, I mean, I go back to Steve mills, epic decision to invest a billion dollars in Linux back in the day, and we've seen those billion dollar bets pay off in terms of flash and other areas. Dennis, what's your style going to be? I mean, again, I'm excited that you've got an engineering background, you're a product person at the end of the day, it's all about innovation, and getting that R&D out to market. What should we expect from your leadership style? >> I think you kind of said it there, I mean, I'm an engineer at heart, I really want to deliver value to our clients. You know, we have the big R&D spend in our storage unit, and I want to show value for that spend on IBM has given me a responsibility to deliver on. So to begin to deliver massive innovation and productivity from our engineering team. I mean, that's fundamentally what I do. So starting from day one, understanding our portfolio top to bottom, what are our strengths in the market, Where are our weaknesses, where we need to address some of the gaps, but also listening to our clients, which is very important to me and making sure that they see the innovation, the quality of the deliverables and that, you know, as a client or as a customer of IBM, you can be guaranteed that IBM would deliver and continues to deliver on innovation on a road map on storage. And that's really fundamental to my philosophy. I'm making sure that we can establish leadership, and continues to establish leadership, in the storage industry. So that we are a trusted partner, and a valued partner in your transformation journey. So that when you make investments with us, as a technology provider that we deliver on a roadmap and a vision that actually needs your needs going forward. I mean, that's fundamental to what, you know, my management style is about and making sure I have the right people that I can put in front of our clients and make sure they can deliver that value. >> I mean, I think that's critical, Dennis, and again, I keep hitting on your engineering background, because yes, while you have a big R&D budget, IBM probably spend $6 billion a year in R&D, you're fighting for that budget, with a lot of other divisions at IBM, so staying close to the customer is critical because you've got to place those bets. And I have firmly believed that with a strong technical background and product background, and staying close to the customer, you're going to have, you know, some big wins and more wins than losses, and you're going to be able to more efficiently deploy that capital in the form of R&D, and then quickly get it out into products. I see that as crucial today in terms of the innovation equation. >> Yeah. I mean, my philosophy, you know, fundamentally, you know, a lot of times, and I've been in engineering a long time, it's not about the size of the budget, be the dollar, be a $10, be it $100. It's how efficient we are with that dollar, and how innovative we are with that dollar. And sometimes, you know, you look at IBM and people look at a big company, maybe it doesn't move as quickly. I can guarantee you that, you know, that's fundamental that, you know, I run a startup within a small company, within a large company. I like to think of it that way and how we can innovate and move very quickly. And that's, you know, fundamental to my philosophy in terms of how I think, it's not about, okay, how can I get more budget to do exits? How can I be more efficient that I can drive more value? And then, you know, maybe then I get more budget, but you know, you got to think about detail more rather than saying, I don't want to have more inefficiency, I wanted to have more innovation, more creativity, entering new markets, looking at new capabilities, and being able to just create great new opportunities for IBM storage. >> Well, Dennis, again, congratulations on the new appointment, we look forward to at some point in the future of being able to meet face to face, but thanks so much for coming on the Cube and our coverage of VMworld. >> Thank you, Dave, and thanks for your time today, I appreciated the conversation. Thank you. >> All right, You're very welcome, and thank you for watching everybody, This is Dave Vellante for the Cube, again, wall to wall coverage of VMworld 2020, We'll be right back right after this short break. (soft music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston, it's theCUBE, covering IBM Think. Brought to you by IBM. >> All right everybody welcome back to theCUBE's continuous coverage of IBM Think 2020. It's digital event experience, my name is Dave Vellante, Aki Duvvur's here, he's the vice president of the IBM public cloud. Aki great to see you, thanks for coming on, hope you're safe and-- >> Hey Dave, Thanks for having us on. We're as safe as can be, appreciate it. >> Yeah, so your background is really interesting, your heading IBM cloud now, you got a CTO background, you been in sales, that's interesting to me because it gave you an opportunity to really try to understand the product market fit, if you will, from the customers point of view. But how did that shape your thinking about cloud generally and specifically where you're at today. >> Hey, great question Dave. So I'll tell you from my technology background it really gave me a good appreciation for how applications get built, from everything from the infrastructure all the way up and through the application itself. To all of the criticality around how those applications need to be built, how they need to be made highly available. With business continuance in mind, which is exactly what we're trying to do at scale right now from a public crown perspective, out from an architectural first principles perspective. And then I would say from a sales perspective it gave me a sense of speed and clarity of vision. In terms of just how you have to be very net in terms of the value proposition that you bring forward to a client and how you position the public cloud at large. So those two items or backgrounds have brought me full circle into my product role today and allow me to work with a sense of urgency for our clients and their journeys and their complex transformation as we build a cloud that is very enterprise centric to support their mission critical workload. >> I want to follow up with that. So I mean the traditional approach to developing enterprise apps, you walk inside any large financial institution and a healthcare, pharma, et cetera and you would have very much a waterfall approach. Understand the requirements, you'd have a development team, you'd have an operations team, they'd throw the code over the fence, they'd throw it back. Ah your code doesn't work, well it did when I sent it to you. And the cloud has really changed all that, hasn't it? And so now you're moving much faster, you're doing agile, how do you see that applying to sort of the traditional IBM base, is it being embraced? How is it being embraced? Is it different from other approaches? I wonder if you could address that. >> I think it's a transformation for the entire company, and when I say journey to cloud it really is around not just the public cloud as a destination but it's the entire hybrid approach that we have to take in delivering those applications you just alluded to. They're pretty much the mission critical heart of the enterprise, so it's a transformation from a public cloud perspective, it's a transformation from how our services schemes engage with our clients, how we migrate, how we modernize, how we take that middleware stack and we convert it into containerized software that we can actually leverage and deploy in the public cloud as part of this transformation,. So really it's a reinvention of not just the way our customers interact with the public cloud, but the way that we as a public cloud provider and a services provider can react and give our clients the best value across that entire hybrid transformation. >> So one of the things that of course IBM executives stresses, we've heard Ginni talk about it, we hear Arvind talk about it, across the whole company you guys are aligned on this topic, only 20% of the workloads have moved to the cloud, it's the hard stuff that hasn't moved, IBM has stated you want to be the preferred supplier for all the really challenging, hybrid, workloads et cetera. So what I want to get to is how you're approaching that, is it a combination of using open technologies and it's going to, blending those with your very large software state, what's your kind of secret sauce around succeeding with that vision? >> That's a really good question, so they're kind of three pillars to our strategy. Number one is around open technologies, embracing open technologies and one of the things that we did very early on in our transformation, in fact back in 2017, before any other cloud provider focused on this, we re-based our entire public cloud on Kubernetes as the base. Not only for the way we deliver up-stack services, whether it's Watson, our IOT or other service, but also in the way that we deliver our IaaS. So our entire control plane is built on Kubernetes. That was a big bet that we made probably two years before everybody else in the industry sort of followed suit. And we are the only cloud provider today that has their entire cloud based on Kube. That was one pillar, the second pillar was around pervasive security, so it's ensuring that our client have the controls required to be able to deliver pervasive security, whether it's encryption and flight at rest or in motion, but also ensuring that they're the only one's that have access to their keys. So nobody else, not even the provider can decrypt their data in the public cloud. And then finally it's around enterprise capabilities, so as you talked about this other 80% of workloads, a lot of those apps are brittle workloads, so they have upstream and downstream connectivity that creates a lot of complexity and chatter in the application itself. So you've got to be able to support those workloads from a public cloud perspective so that there is none of that chattiness and you can actually deliver those applications in a way that they can, one, be moved into the public cloud and then later transformed into microservices and or into microservices directly as part of that transformation, so that middleware content et cetera, delivered as containers allows for a lot of that transformation of different aspects of the cloud. >> Know what, take us back to that bet that you made, So Kubernetes obviously for portability, the decision had to be made strategically that, yeah, just going to try to lock everybody into the IBM cloud. You're going to support multiple clouds, and in all fairness you kind of were later to the cloud game so that became part of your strategy, hybrid is obviously a piece of that, but you embraced that. Many cloud providers out there were late to embracing that or flat-out don't embrace that sort of multicloud approach. Security's kind of table stakes and we're going to get into that later but that enterprise apps piece is critical. Take us back to that Kubernetes decision. What was that, was that the strategy of being open cloud and multicloud, was it sort of a Red Hat angle, pre-Red Hat acquisition where you had affinity towards not only Linux but OCP, maybe you can talk about that. >> I think it's a combination of many things, in fact it predates Red Hat too in that, this was back in 2017, and fundamentally after Google open-sourced Kubernetes, one of the big, if you look at the way that the virtual server platforms back in the late 90s, early 2000s, one of the big challenges was around management of those BM's at scale. So very similarly we saw containers as being a very rapid approach to application deployment and really sort of merging that DevOps transformation that many of our clients were going through. So we said that this was a perfect vehicle to not only deliver applications at scale but also ensure all of the attributes of a public cloud, which are higher levels of availability, self-healing and scale-up, scale-downing, able to turn on more storage, more memory so you weren't tied into the physical boundaries of a typical virtual machine. That really allowed us to sort of break the paradigm a little bit in terms of our approach. And the bet paid off, because we have a significant, almost 20,000 production clusters running across our enterprise clients today, so pretty significant footprint just on Kube alone. >> Well I can say and it gives clients the opportunity to have portability, hedges their bets, gives them an exit strategy if in fact they want one, and it just seems like good business. What about Open Shift, how does that fit in there in regards to OCP? >> Well I think Open Shift is a perfect complement right now. So as we talk about the fact that we have a cloud built on Kubernetes. Open Shift becomes the engine that runs all of our capabilities now. So as we think about how we deliver our services, how we deliver common sources whether it's logging or monitoring identity and access, all of the governance and orchestration required around a Kube environment, Open Shift is a terrific solution to be able to provide that at scale. Not just for our clients as a first class deployment in the public cloud but also as a look and deploy on prem so that they have multi-model deployments here with perhaps their applications that are very sensitive, that have PHI data, that they want to control on prem, they have that approach and they have the ability to be able to support it. They also have the ability to take advantage of strangler patterns, so parts of the application that sit, run perhaps in an Open Shift environment in the on prem environment with other aspects of it being controlled, orchestrated and run in the public cloud on our Red Hate Open Shift Kubernetes service. So we've got all of those attributes and capabilities to support that hybrid and even multicloud deployment. >> What if we get, sort of dive into security. You've seen this sort of interesting divergent narrative in the industry. On the one hand you've had executives like Pat Gelsinger come out and say security is broken. On the other hand you had, for instance, the CISO of AWS, say no security in the clouds great. So if you're a customer who do you believe? And you talk to CISO's and they say look it, it's on us, this problem will never be solved, it's an ongoing challenge. But I wonder if you could give us IBM's point of view on security, cause you're on both sides. You got the cloud, you got on prem, you got a deep history in security going back to Rack-F on the mainframes and so I wonder if you can share with us your thoughts on that. >> Well I think security is table stake, and always been table stakes and now more so than ever, especially as we look at that other 80% that we talked about. These are revenue generating applications, they're mission critical and they have significant impact if they're down in any way, shape or form, especially if there's a security attack of some kind and there's a breach. You're talking about businesses completely going out, I mean they're basically bankrupt at that point. So it is table stakes. We have taken a very long strategic look at how we build security, from the chip all the way up into the security architecture and into memory as well. Ensuring that every sort of attack vector is locked down. We have our dedicated HSM's with the highest FIPS, compliance FIPS 140-2 level four. As I mentioned before, we allow for keep your own key and bring your own key, everybody does bring your own key but keep your own key is a clients ability to bring and mange their own key in the public cloud. So if anybody tries to tamper with it, that just gets locked down and there's no access that even the provider could have in terms of decrypting. We have to get rid of that dedicated HSM at that point. So it really puts the control on our clients and ensures that every aspect of their environment from profiles to templates, you had mentioned CICD pipeline before, it's ensuring that we have a shift-left strategy which is really Sec DevOps because it really allows for us to focus on security in every interaction from the start of how code gets integrated and deployed into the cloud. So ensuring that we have that entire end to end approach nailed down is pretty important to us. >> One thing that's key if you're a CISO you don't want to have different security protocols for on prem and the cloud, you want that sort of end to end approach. Now maybe that doesn't happen overnight but presumably that's kind of the vision is that kind of consistency because every CISO will tell you the lack of skills is our biggest challenge. So the last thing we need to do is learn just a whole 'nother environment, all new processes. How have you made progress in terms of that end to end experience? >> Well we've tried to make it completely cloud native. We've tried to make it very API orientated. So it's basically really simple for them to integrate into the cloud and take advantage of the CICD pipeline as I mentioned. So if you look at how we deliver our code from a tekton perspective and if you look at how we can do signed images in the registry, so ensuring that developers are only authorized to run the appropriate applications that they have permission for and that they can't leverage other assets or pools that they're not. So ensuring that role-based access control is very tightly knit, ensuring least privileged access as opposed to opening up and ensuring that everybody has all access all the time and then working your way down into least privileged access is critical. So it's those core first principles that you would leverage in an on prem environment and extending it into the public cloud so that it becomes a very translatable experience for our client. >> Okay, I want to push you a little bit. We started out with openness and you sort of laid down the gauntlet as we made the decision early on to be open. What if I'm a security practitioner, I say hey I like Cloud Stripe or I like Okta or I want to use Zscaler. Can I use those in your environment? How open are you to that type of approach? >> You absolutely can and you can integrate into our security dashboard. So the nice thing about it is you can leverage our capabilities that we have in the cloud, or you can leverage your third-party tools and you can integrate them so you have a single plane of glass and you always know who's accessing your systems, where they're accessing them from, did they succeed or did they fail. This is table stakes allowing integration for best of class and best of breed security technology is core. >> So you're obviously cloud guy, the more cloud, better for you personally, your group, whatever. But what's the business case for moving those mission critical workloads in the cloud. Former CTO, I'm sure you've had a lot of discussions with customers, hey, why not just leave it there put a brick wall around it. It ain't broke, why fix it? What's the business case that you're seeing for putting those workloads in the cloud. >> I think the current healthcare crisis we're in is probably proving out a lot of the challenges of managing a data center in traditional sense, number one. And I think if you think about just the innovation agenda that many of our clients have, they're kind of hand strung by all of the legacy technologies and sometimes monolithic architectures that they've got deployed. They're unable to break out of that because of the amount of cost and the amount of resource it takes to manage those environments today and keep a lot of end of life infrastructure running. And really the move to public cloud and being able to transform and modernize your workloads frees up a lot of that budget in innovation that you can start to infuse into driving new revenue streams from a company perspective. I think that is the critical aspect to it and I think the current crisis just proves out that clients that have built for scale, who've kind of gone in with a cloud first set of principles are actually well setup to be able to navigate some of the current challenges a little bit better than others. >> Yeah and I think, listening to you talk reminds me of a conversation I had probably 10 years ago with a former IBMer legend, Steve Mills who said to me, look we spend way too much money on IT labor and it's just not productive so automation is key, you can't scale without it. I talked earlier about the skills gap, automation is at least one part of that answer. Because people just, to your point, if you're spending money on, wasting it on labor that's not giving you differentiation, that's stealing from the innovation budget. >> Yeah, totally agree Dave. >> So give me the final word, what's your vision for the IBM public cloud, where do you see all this in three to five years? >> Well I think we're just at the tip of the iceberg right now when it comes to a lot of the complex (murmurs) applications that we talked about before, ERP applications, mission critical back office apps that haven't moved and I think we are very, very early in that journey. And I think we're positioned really well to capture and win that marketplace. I think we have the right solutions, we have the right sort of core principles. As I mentioned open and secure and enterprise grade, having a multi-platform approach to support our clients applications, being able to modernize and kind of walk them through this crawl, walk, run approach to how they transform into the public cloud. And having all of the service expertise, so we're not just this CSP but we're also an MSP and we have sense around handling complex workload. We've done that all through our existence and we feel like this is where this starts to get interesting for our clients now as they take these next steps and as you probably heard last year with our announcement of the FFS ready public cloud with Bank of America. We're trying to bring all that together in terms of how we meet our client and ensure that we can take care of their regulatory requirements, which continue to change as well regardless of industry. >> Well it's a multi-trillion dollar, trillion plus dollar opportunity that you guys are after. And you're in the cloud game, a lot of people tried and failed, IBM made it through that knot hole and now you're in a position to really compete and participate in that modernization of those workloads. We've done research that shows that a lot of this, especially for the hard to move workloads is about risk, and to the extent that you can maintain that compatibility if you will, between what's on prem and what's in the cloud. You dramatically de-risk the cloud move and the decision, so yeah, I think you're in a good spot. And I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE. >> Hey Dave, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. >> All right, our please Aki. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE, this is our continuous coverage of IBM Think 2020, the digital event experience. We'll be right back right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE. (calming music)

>>live from Miami, Florida It's the Q covering IBM is data in a I forum brought to you by IBM. >>We're back in Miami and you're watching the cubes coverage of the IBM data and a I forum. Tony hi. Amiss here is a distinguished engineer for Ditch the Digital and Cloud Business Analytics at IBM. Tony, first of all, congratulations on being a distinguished engineer. That doesn't happen often. Thank you for coming on the Cube. Thank you. So your area focus is on the B I and the Enterprise performance management space. >>Um, and >>if I understand it correctly, a big mission of yours is to try to modernize those make himself service, making cloud ready. How's that going? >>It's going really well. I mean, you know, we use things like B. I and enterprise performance management. When you really boil it down, there's that's analysis of data on what do we do with the data this useful that makes a difference in the world, and then this planning and forecasting and budgeting, which everyone has to do whether you are, you know, a single household or whether you're an Amazon or Boeing, which are also some of our clients. So it's interesting that we're going from really enterprise use cases, democratizing it all the way down to single user on the cloud credit card swipe 70 bucks a month >>so that was used to be used to work for Lotus. But Cognos is one of IBM's largest acquisitions in the software space ever. Steve Mills on his team architected complete transformation of IBM is business and really got heavily into it. I think I think it was a $5 billion acquisition. Don't hold me to that, but massive one of the time and it's really paid dividends now when all this sort of 2000 ten's came in and said, Oh, how Duke's gonna kill all the traditional b I traditional btw that didn't happen, that these traditional platforms were a fundamental component of people's data strategies, so that created the imperative to modernize and made sure that there could be things like self service and cloud ready, didn't it? >>Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, the work clothes that we run a really sticky were close right when you're doing your reporting, your consolidation or you're planning of your yearly cycle, your budget cycle on these technologies, you don't rip them out so easily. So yes, of course, there's competitive disruption in the space. And of course, cloud creates on opportunity for work loads to be wrong, Cheaper without your own I t people. And, of course, the era of digital software. I find it myself. I tried myself by it without ever talking to a sales person creates a democratization process for these really powerful tools that's never been invented before in that space. >>Now, when I started in the business a long, long time ago, it was called GSS decision support systems, and they at the time they promised a 360 degree view with business That never really happened. You saw a whole new raft of players come in, and then the whole B I and Enterprise Data Warehouse was gonna deliver on that promise. That kind of didn't happen, either. Sarbanes Oxley brought a big wave of of imperative around these systems because compliance became huge. So that was a real tailwind for it. Then her duke was gonna solve all these problems that really didn't happen. And now you've got a I, and it feels like the combination of those systems of record those data warehouse systems, the traditional business intelligence systems and all this new emerging tech together are actually going to be a game changer. I wonder if you could comment on >>well so they can be a game changer, but you're touching on a couple of subjects here that are connected. Right? Number one is obviously the mass of data, right? Cause data has accelerated at a phenomenal pace on then you're talking about how do I then visualize or use that data in a useful manner? And that really drives the use case for a I right? Because A I in and of itself, for augmented intelligence as we as we talk about, is only useful almost when it's invisible to the user cause the user needs to feel like it's doing something for them that super intuitive, a bit like the sort of transition between the electric car on the normal car. That only really happens when the electric car can do what the normal car can do. So with things like Imagine, you bring a you know, how do cluster into a B. I solution and you're looking at that data Well. If I can correlate, for example, time profit cost. Then I can create KP eyes automatically. I can create visualizations. I know which ones you like to see from that. Or I could give you related ones that I can even automatically create dashboards. I've got the intelligence about the data and the knowledge to know what? How you might what? Visualize adversity. You have to manually construct everything >>and a I is also going to when you when you spring. These disparage data sets together, isn't a I also going to give you an indication of the confidence level in those various data set. So, for example, you know, you're you're B I data set might be part of the General ledger. You know of the income statement and and be corporate fact very high confidence level. More sometimes you mention to do some of the unstructured data. Maybe not as high a confidence level. How our customers dealing with that and applying that first of all, is that a sort of accurate premise? And how is that manifesting itself in terms of business? Oh, >>yeah. So it is an accurate premise because in the world in the world of data. There's the known knowns on the unknown knowns, right? No, no's are what you know about your data. What's interesting about really good B I solutions and planning solutions, especially when they're brought together, right, Because planning and analysis naturally go hand in hand from, you know, one user 70 bucks a month to the Enterprise client. So it's things like, What are your key drivers? So this is gonna be the drivers that you know what drives your profit. But when you've got massive amounts of data and you got a I around that, especially if it's a I that's gone ontology around your particular industry, it can start telling you about drivers that you don't know about. And that's really the next step is tell me what are the drivers around things that I don't know. So when I'm exploring the data, I'd like to see a key driver that I never even knew existed. >>So when I talk to customers, I'm doing this for a while. One of the concerns they had a criticisms they had of the traditional systems was just the process is too hard. I got to go toe like a few guys I could go to I gotta line up, you know, submit a request. By the time I get it back, I'm on to something else. I want self serve beyond just reporting. Um, how is a I and IBM changing that dynamic? Can you put thes tools in the hands of users? >>Right. So this is about democratizing the cleverness, right? So if you're a big, broad organization, you can afford to hire a bunch of people to do that stuff. But if you're a startup or an SNB, and that's where the big market opportunity is for us, you know, abilities like and this it would be we're building this into the software already today is I'll bring a spreadsheet. Long spreadsheets. By definition, they're not rows and columns, right? Anyone could take a Roan Collin spreadsheet and turn into a set of data because it looks like a database. But when you've got different tabs on different sets of data that may or may not be obviously relatable to each other, that ai ai ability to be on introspect a spreadsheet and turn into from a planning point of view, cubes, dimensions and rules which turn your spreadsheet now to a three dimensional in memory cube or a planning application. You know, the our ability to go way, way further than you could ever do with that planning process over thousands of people is all possible now because we don't have taken all the hard work, all the lifting workout, >>so that three dimensional in memory Cuba like the sound of that. So there's a performance implication. Absolutely. On end is what else? Accessibility Maw wraps more users. Is that >>well, it's the ability to be out of process water. What if things on huge amounts of data? Imagine you're bowing, right? Howdy, pastors. Boeing How? I don't know. Three trillion. I'm just guessing, right? If you've got three trillion and you need to figure out based on the lady's hurricane report how many parts you need to go ship toe? Where that hurricane reports report is you need to do a water scenario on massive amounts of data in a second or two. So you know that capability requires an old lap solution. However, the rest of the planet other than old people bless him who are very special. People don't know what a laugh is from a pop tart, so democratizing it right to the person who says, I've got a set of data on as I still need to do what if analysis on things and probably at large data cause even if you're a small company with massive amounts of data coming through, people click. String me through your website just for example. You know what if I What if analysis on putting a 5% discount on this product based on previous sales have that going to affect me from a future sales again? I think it's the democratizing as the well is the ability to hit scale. >>You talk about Cloud and analytics, how they've they've come together, what specifically IBM has done to modernize that platform. And I'm interested in what customers are saying. What's the adoption like? >>So So I manage the Global Cloud team. We have night on 1000 clients that are using cloud the cloud implementations of our software growing actually so actually Maur on two and 1/2 1000. If you include the multi tenant version, there's two steps in this process, right when you've got an enterprise software solution, your clients have a certain expectation that your software runs on cloud just the way as it does on premise, which means in practical terms, you have to build a single tenant will manage cloud instance. And that's just the first step, right? Because getting clients to see the value of running the workload on cloud where they don't need people to install it, configure it, update it, troubleshoot it on all that other sort of I t. Stuff that subtracts you from doing running your business value. We duel that for you. But the future really is in multi tenant on how we can get vast, vast scale and also greatly lower costs. But the adoptions been great. Clients love >>it. Can you share any kind of indication? Or is that all confidential or what kind of metrics do you look at it? >>So obviously we look, we look a growth. We look a user adoption, and we look at how busy the service. I mean, let me give you the best way I can give you is a is a number of servers, volume numbers, right. So we have 8000 virtual machines running on soft layer or IBM cloud for our clients business Analytics is actually the largest client for IBM Cloud running those workloads for our clients. So it's, you know, that the adoption has been really super hard on the growth continues. Interestingly enough, I'll give you another factoid. So we just launched last October. Cognos Alex. Multi tenant. So it is truly multi infrastructure. You try, you buy, you give you credit card and away you go. And you would think, because we don't have software sellers out there selling it per se that it might not adopt as much as people are out there selling software. Okay, well, in one year, it's growing 10% month on month cigarette Ally's 10% month on month, and we're nearly 1400 users now without huge amounts of effort on our part. So clearly this market interest in running those softwares and then they're not want Tuesdays easer. Six people pretending some of people have 150 people pretending on a multi tenant software. So I believe that the future is dedicated is the first step to grow confidence that my own premise investments will lift and shift the cloud, but multi tenant will take us a lot >>for him. So that's a proof point of existing customer saying okay, I want to modernize. I'm buying in. Take 1/2 step of the man dedicated. And then obviously multi tenant for scale. And just way more cost efficient. Yes, very much. All right. Um, last question. Show us a little leg. What? What can you tell us about the road map? What gets you excited about the future? >>So I think the future historically, Planning Analytics and Carlos analytics have been separate products, right? And when they came together under the B I logo in about about a year ago, we've been spending a lot of our time bringing them together because, you know, you can fight in the B I space and you can fight in the planning space. And there's a lot of competitors here, not so many here. But when you bring the two things together, the connected value chain is where we really gonna win. But it's not only just doing is the connected value chain it and it could be being being vice because I'm the the former Lotus guy who believes in democratization of technology. Right? But the market showing us when we create a piece of software that starts at 15 bucks for a single user. For the same power mind you write little less less of the capabilities and 70 bucks for a single user. For all of it, people buy it. So I'm in. >>Tony, thanks so much for coming on. The kid was great to have you. Brilliant. Thank you. Keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You watching the Cube live from the IBM data and a I form in Miami. We'll be right back.

(cheerful music) >> Live from San Francisco. It's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2019. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin. We are at day one of IBM Think 2019, I'm with Dave Vellante. Hey Dave! Hey Lisa, good to see you. The new improved Moscone. >> Exactly, and Stu Miniman, yeah. >> Shiny. >> Yeah, this is the new, it is shiny, The carpets smells new. This is the second annual IBM Think, gentleman where there's this conglomeration of five to six previous events. Doesn't really kick off yet today. I think Partner World starts today but here we are in San Francisco. Moscone North, I think south, and west they have here expecting about 25,000 people. No news yet today, Dave, so let's kind of talk about where IBM is right now with the early part of Q1 of 2019. Red Hat acquisition just approved by shareholders last month. What are your thoughts on the status of Big Blue? >> Well, I think you're right, Lisa, that the Red Hat news is the big news for IBM. We're now entering the next chapter but if you look back for the last five years IBM had to go out and pay two billion dollars for a soft layer to get into the cloud business. That was precipitated by the big, high profile loss of the CIA deal against Amazon. So that was a wake up call for IBM. So they got into the public cloud game. So that's the good news. The bad news is the public cloud's not easy when you're going up against the likes of Google and Microsoft and of course, Amazon. But the linchpin of IBM's cloud strategy is it's SAS portfolio. Over the last 20 years Steve Mills and his organization built a very large software business which they now have migrated into their cloud and so they've got that advantage much like Oracle. They're not a big, dominant cloud infrastructure as a service player but they have a platform where they can put things like Cognitive Solutions and Watson and offer those SAS services to clients. So you'll check on that but when you'll peel through the numbers IBM beat it's numbers last quarter. Stock was up. You know, when it announced the Red Hat acquisition the stock actually got crushed because when you spend 34 billion dollars on a company, you know the shareholders don't necessarily love that but we'll talk about the merits of that move. But they beat in the fourth quarter. They beat on the strength of services. So IBM remains largely a services company, about 60% plus of it's revenues comes from services. It's a somewhat lower margin business, even though IBM margins have been ticking up. As I say, you go back the last five, six years IBM Genesys did Mike's it's microelectronics business, which was a, you know, lost business. It got rid of it's x86 business which is a x86 server business, which is a low margin business. So again, like Oracle, it's focusing on high margin software and services and now we enter the era, Stu, of hybrid cloud with the Red Hat acquisition. A lot of money to pay, but it gets IBM into the next generation of multi cloud. >> Yeah, Dave, the knock I've had against IBM is in many ways they always try to be all things to all people and of course we know you can be good at some things but, you know, it's really tough to be great at everything. And, you know, you talked about cloud, Dave, you know, the SoftLayer acquisition to kind of get into public cloud but, you know, IBM is not one of the big players in public cloud. It's easy. It's Amazon and then followed by you know, Azure, Google, and let's talk Alibaba if we're talking globally. In a multi cloud world IBM has a strong play. As you said, they've got a lot of application assets, they have public cloud, they partner with a lot of the different cloud players out there and with Red Hat they get a key asset to be able to play across all of these multi cloud environments whether we're talking public cloud, private cloud, across all these environments. IBM's been pushing hard into the Kubernetes space, doing a lot with Istio. You know, where they play there, in Red Hat is a key piece of this puzzle. Red Hat running at about three billion dollars of revenue and paying 34 billion dollars but, you know, this is a linchpin as to say how does IBM stay relevant in this cloud world going forward? It's really a you know, a key moment for IBM as to what this means. A lot of discussion as to you know, it's not just the revenue piece but what will Red Hat do to the culture of IBM? IBM has a strong history in open source but you know, you got to, you have a large bench of Red Hat's strong executive team. We're going to see some of them here at the show. We're even going to have one Red Hat executive on our program here and so what will happen once this deal finally closes, which is expected later this year, probably October if you read, you know everything right. But what will it look like as to how will, you know, relatively small Red Hat impact the larger IBM going forward? >> Well, I think it's a big lever, right? I mean we were, Lisa, we were at Cisco Live in Barcelona last week kind of laying out the horses on the track for this multi cloud. Cisco doesn't own it's own public cloud. VMware and Dell don't own it's own public cloud. They both tried to get into the public cloud in the early days and IBM does own it's own public cloud as does Oracle but they're also going hard after this notion of multi cloud as is Cisco, as is VMware. So it sort of sets up the sort of Cisco, IBM Red Hat, VMware, Dell, sort of competing to get after that multi cloud revenue and then HPE fits in there somewhere. We can talk about that. >> So I saw a stat the other day that said in 2018, 80% of companies moved data or apps from public cloud. Reasons being security, control, cost, performance. So to some of the things I've read, Dave, that you've covered recently, if IBM isn't able to really go head to head against the Azures and the AWS, what is their differentiator in this new, hybrid multi cloud world? Is it being able to bring AI, Watson, Cognitive Solutions, better than their competitors in that space that you just mentioned? >> Yeah, IBM does complicate it. You know and cloud and hybrid cloud is complicated and so that's IBM's wheelhouse. And so it tends not to do commodity. So if it's complicated and sophisticated and requires a lot of services and a lot of business processing happening and things like that, IBM tends to excel. So, you know, if you do the SWOT analysis it's big opportunity is to be that multi-cloud provider for it's largest customers. And the larger customers are running, you know, transaction systems on mainframe. They're running cognitive systems on things like power. They've got a giant portfolio, at IBM that is, and they can cobble things together with their services and solve problems and that's kind of how IBM approaches the marketplace. Much different than say, Stu, Cisco or VMware. >> Yeah, Dave, you're absolutely right. You know one of the things I look at is you know, in this multi-cloud space we've see the SI's that are very important there. Companies like Accenture and KPMG and the like. IBM partners with them but IBM also has a large services business. So, you know who's going to be able to help customers get in there and figure out this rather complicated environment. So we are definitely one of the things I want to dig into this week is understand where IBM is at the Cisco Show, Dave. We've talked about their messaging was the bridge to you know what's possible. You know meet the customers where they are, show them how to reach into the future and from Cisco's standpoint, it's strong partnerships with AWS and Google at the forefront. So IBM has just one of the broadest portfolios in the industry. They absolutely play in every single piece but you know customers need good consulting as to Okay, what's going to be the fit for my business. How do I modernize, how do I go forward? And IBM's been down this trip for a number of years. >> Well the in the legacy of Ginni Rometty, in my opinion is going to be determined by the pace at which it can integrate Red Hat and use Red Hat as a lever. Ginni Rometty, when she was doing the roadshow with Jim Whitehurst kept saying it's not a backend loaded deal, and the reason it's not a backend loaded deal is because IBM is a 20 plus billion dollar outsourcing business and they're going to plug Red Hat right into that business to modernize applications. So there's a captive revenue source for IBM. In my view they have to really move fast, faster than typically IBM moves. We've been hearing about strategic initiatives and cloud, and Watson and it's been moving too slow in my opinion. The Red Hat acquisition has to move very very quickly. It's got to move at the speed of cloud and that's going to determine in my opinion-- >> So, actually, so a couple of weeks after the acquisition Red Hat had brought in an analyst to hear what was going on, and while the discussion is Red Hat will stay a distinct brand, there's going to be no lay offs were >> Yeah absolutely. >> Going to keep them separate, what they will get is IBM can really help them scale so >> Yep. Red Hat is getting into some new environments, you know that whole services organization, Red Hat doesn't have that. So IBM absolutely can plug in there and we think really accelerate, the old goal for Red Hat was okay how do we get from that three billion dollars to five billion dollars in the next couple of years. IBM thinks that they can accelerate that even faster. >> And Lisa I think the good news is IBM has always had an affinity toward open source. IBM was really the first, really to make a big investment you know they poured a billion dollars into Linux as a means of competing with Microsoft back in the day, and so they've got open source chops. So for those large IBM customers that might not want to go it alone on open source and you know Red Hat's kind of the cool kid on the block. But at the same time, you know there's some risks there. Now IBM can take that big blue blanket wrap it around it's largest customers and say okay, we've got you covered in open source, we've got the Red Hat asset, and we've got the services organization to help you modernize your application portfolio. >> One of the things too that Stu, you brought up a couple minutes ago is culture. And so looking at what, Red Hat estimates that it's got about eight million developers world wide using their technologies and this is an area that IBM had historically not been really focused on. What are some of the things that you're expecting to hear this week or see this week with respect to the developer community embracing IMB? >> Yeah and Lisa it's not like IBM hasn't been trying to get into the developer community. I remember back at some of the previous shows Edge and Pulse and the like, they would have you know Dev at and try to do a nice little piece of it but it really didn't gain as much traction as you might like. Compare and contrast that with cisco, we've been watching over the last five years the DevNet community. They've got over half a million developers on that platform. So you know, developer engagement usually requires that ground level activity where I've seen good work from IBM has been getting into that cloud native space. So absolutely seen them at the Kubernetes shows working in the container space very heavily and of course that's an area that Red Hat exceeds. So the Linux developers are absolutely there. Now you mentioned how many developers Red Hat has and in that multi cloud, cloud native space, you know Red Hat one of the leaders if not kind of the leader in that space and therefore it should help super charge what IBM is doing, give them some credibility. I'd love to see how many developers we see at this show, you know, you've been to this show Dave and you've been to this show before, it looked more enterprisey to me from the outside-- >> Well, I'm glad you brought up developers because that is the lynch pin of the Red Hat acquisition. If you look at the companies that actually have in the cloud that have a strong developer affinity obviously Microsoft does and always had AWS clearly does Google has you know it's developer community. Stu you mentioned Sisco. Sisco came at it from a networking standpoint and opened up it's network for infrastructure's code. One of the few legacy hardware companies that's done a good job there. VMware, you know not so much. Right? Not really a big developer world and IBM has tried as you pointed out. When they announced Bluemix but that really didn't take off in the developer world. Now with Red Hat IBM, it's your point eight million developers. That is a huge asset for IBM and one that as I said before it absolutely has to leverage and leverage fast. >> And what are you expectations in terms of any sort of industry deeper penetration? There's been some big cloud deals, cloud wins that IBM has made is recent history. One of them being really big in the energy sector. Are you guys kind of expecting to see any sort of industry deeper penetration as a result of what the Red Hat Acquisition will bring? >> Well thats IBM's strength. Stu you pointed out before, it's Accenture, you know Ernie Young, to a lesser extend maybe KPNG but those big SI's and IBM. When IBM bought PWC Gerstner transformed the company and it became a global leader with deep deep industry expertise. That is IBM's you know, savior frankly over these past many many years. So it can compete with virtually anybody on that front and so yes absolutely every industry is being transformed because of digital transformation. IBM understands this as well as anybody. It's a boon for services, it's a good margin business and so that's their competitive advantage. >> Yeah I mean it ties back into their services. I think back when I lived on the vendor side I learned a lot of the industry off of watching IBM. I see how many companies are talking about smarter cities. IBM had you know a long history of working In those environment's. Energy, industrial, IBM is very good at digging into the needed requirements of specific industries and driving that forward. >> So we're going to be here for four days as we mentioned, today is day one. We're going to be talking a lot about this hybrid multi-cloud world. But some of the double clicks we're going to do is talking about data protection, modern data protection, you know a lot of the statistics say that there's eighty percent of the worlds data isn't searchable yet. We all hear every event we do guys, data is the new oil. If companies can actually harness that, extract insights faster than their competition. Create new business models, new services, new products. What are your expectations about how, I hear a lot get your data AI ready. As a marketer I go, what does that mean? What are your thoughts Stu on, and we're sitting in a lot of signage here. How is IBM going to help companies get AI, Data rather AI ready and what does that actually mean? >> So IBM really educated a lot of the world and the broader world as to what some of this AI is. I mean I know we all watched many years ago when Watson was on Jeopardy and we kind of hit through the past the peak and have been trying to sort out okay well how can IBM monetize this? They're taking Watson and getting it into healthcare, they're getting it into all these other environments. So IBM is well known in the AI space. Really well known in the data space but there's a lot of competition and we're still relatively early in the sorting how this new machine learning and AI are going to fit in there. You know we spent a lot of time looking at things like RPA was kind of the gateway drug of AI if you will robotic process automation. And I'm not sure where IBM fit's into that environment. So once again IBM has always had a broad portfolio they do a lot of acquisitions in the space. So you know how can they take all those pieces, pull them together, get after the multicloud world, enable developers to be able to really leverage data even more that's possible and as you said you know more than eighty percent of data today isn't used, you know from an infrastructure stand point I'm looking at how do things like edge computing all get pulled into this environment and lot of questions still. >> IBM is going after hard problems like I said before. You don't expect IBM to be doing things like ad serving with Alexa. You know that's not IBM's game, they're not going to appropriate to sell ad's they're going to take really hard complex problems and charge a lot of money for big services engagements to transform companies. That's their game and that's a data game for sure. >> It's a data game and one of the pieces too that I'm excited to learn about this week is what they're doing about security. We all know you can throw a ton of technology at security and infrastructure but there's the people piece. So we're going to be having a lot of conversations about that as well. Alright guys looking forward to a full week with you and with John joining us at IBM Think I'm Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. You're watching theCUBE live day one IBM Think 2019. Stick around we'll be right back with our next guest. (energetic electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Chicago Illinois, it's theCUBE! Covering VeammOn 2018. Brought to you by Veamm. >> Welcome back to VeammOn 2018 everybody, and you're watching theCUBE. The leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. This is day one of our coverage of VeammOn, the second year theCUBE has been here. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Stu Miniman. Zeb Ahmed is here, he's the Senior Offering Manager for VMWare, with the IBM Cloud, at IBM of course. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, good to see you Zeb. >> Thank you for having me, very excited to be here. >> Yeah so IBM, Cloud, big part of our business. Obviously VMWare, you've been there for a long time. Partnerships with Veamm. Lay it all out for us, what's going on at IBM, IBM Cloud. >> Yeah so we started the VMWare partnership a couple years ago, and our goal was really to build a practice run VMWare which was automated, take it to the next level essentially, not just be a me too player, what everybody else was doing out there, but rather, make the transition from on premises to the Cloud much easier for those VMWare customers. So we've automated a lot of things on the VMWare platform, you can deploy the inverse stack, in a matter of minutes, instead of days and months. So it's a much easier transition, we also work with a lot of partners, such as Veamm, but customers was using on premises, and we've allowed them to have those capabilities in the Cloud as well, in a very automated fashion. >> Quickly if I remember, I think you guys were first doing something with VMWare in the Cloud, you're kind of a year ahead of most. I mean-- >> Stu: It was a few months ahead, they were the first big partner out there with the VMWare Cloud basically. We got, put in Cloud air and everything. >> But in terms of shipping, actually, you guys-- >> We were the first ones, yeah. So we were the first ones to market with Cloud foundation stack right? Yeah and then the other vendors followed as well, but yeah that's been doing great, right? And again, it's fully automated, matter of minutes you can deploy the whole stack, a lot of value add there. >> Yeah Zeb, maybe help set the picture for us a little bit. 'Cause we talk about this multi-cloud world, IBM owns a lot of applications, IBM partners with a lot, where does IBM see themselves playing in this multi-cloud, multi-app world? >> Great question, I think I, so I refer to it two T's. So the first one being the transition, and then the transformation. So the transition is really where the challenge has been for those customers, the barrier to entry, how do these customers actually make that move seamless to the Cloud, especially the space that IBM is in on the enterprise side, these applications are legacy, very very complicated design, a lot of dependencies, so that was a challenge that we tried to solve for. And I think we're at a state now where we've not only solved for that, we've also, I don't know if you guys have seen HCX that we had with VMWare recently, which was a great migration tool, and helps customer on board Cloud, and adapt to Cloud much much faster. And then also build that ecosystem partner network. So all those tools, that we were using on premises like Veamm, right? Making those available in the Cloud for those customers, and it has been great, and also in the transformation side, right? So not only just move them to the Cloud, but also help them leverage, and go up the stack. So micro-services, blockchain, Watson, containers, all those things are available to our customers. >> I think that's a key point that I wanted to highlight is, people often say, how does IBM compete with some of the big Cloud players? You're not just infrastructure as a service, you've got a giant SAS portfolio, you mentioned Watson so, talk about your strategy in that regard. >> Yeah I mean so, the enterprise customer, typical customer, whether it's financial industry or whether health care or transportation et cetera, nobody is just looking for a partner where they can just move the infrastructure too. They're looking for the next state, they're looking to transform the business, they're trying to utilize all those new capabilities that exist in the Cloud today. And IBM has sought for that exactly because not only just use, move your infrastructure and workloads, but now you can consume all those additional gallywads, in the Cloud like Watson, make it for a more intelligent solution in the end. >> Right, so that's a key differentiator. There's only a couple of companies that have that, well I guess you guys, Oracle, Microsoft obviously has the applications, and IBM talks a lot about the cognitive piece, am I correct you can only get Watson in the IBM Cloud, is that still the case, or are you now have it on prem? >> No no, Watson can be consumed using an API. So it's a PAS platform, and if somebody wanted to consume Watson for the on premises workloads and wanted to bring that intelligence for that on premises environment they can do that. >> Dave: Are you seeing more demand for that? >> Oh yes. >> Or is it primarily in the Cloud? >> We've got huge traction in the healthcare space especially, there's a lot of financial customers that are onboarding that as well. So Watson's doing great in that regard. >> Sort of privacy reasons and-- >> Zeb: That's right. >> Zeb one of the things we've been watching with Veamm for the last few years is how do they penetrate deeper into the enterprise. Of course IBM has a strong position in the enterprise, help connect for us how the Veamm and IBM partnerships go together. >> So I think this was a very easy answer for a lot of our customers, because Veamm has a lot of penetration on the on premises workloads, especially on the back-up and business continuity space. So when we looked at the partners and the products that existed in the space, we really looked at the market space, what the customers were consuming. Veamm had a huge market share, and like I said previously, we wanted to solve for those problems and we wanted to keep the tools at the same tool set that they were using today on the premises, so this was very seamless for us, and it is seamless for the customers, to move to IBM Cloud and leverage those same tools exactly. >> So talk about choice because, I can imagine you're getting a call from Ed Walsh, "Hey, how about using my data protection software instead of Veamm?". How do you manage that? >> Zeb: It is tough, right? It is obviously tough, IBM also has a huge portfolio of products, right? In the end the decision was or it really came down to, what is it the customers are looking for? When it came to the back-up space, especially on the VMWare platform, The answer was there, a lot of the VMWare customers use Veamm. In addition to that, Veamm also checks a lot of other boxes for us. So, not only does VMWare stack, but also, I don't know if it's been announced yet or not, but AIX is something of beta that they're launching, at this event, so that is huge for IBM. >> Dave: Really? >> Oh yes, they're also in the bare metal space, so a consolidated view of all your back-ups, all your bare metal, for AIX, for virtualized platform. >> So the power guys will be happy. >> For those that aren't as familiar anymore, I mean remember AIX back in the day, but this is second week in a row I'm talking about AIX. It was Nutanix last week, and it's Veamm today. How much AIX is there still out in the wild? >> There's quite a bit, I mean IBM, if you guys know the background, right? When software was acquired it was a bare metal shop. So with that a lot of the power stuff came as well. So we have a huge power practice in IBM. >> Right, and well it's still, I remember the Steve Mills charts, which showed the availability of AIX versus, the only more available platform was the mainframe, and then with AIX, and then, and you had all that other stuff that everybody else buys but, it's a volume market so it kind of makes sense though. People will pay up for that. And still, a huge install base, now growing, and Nutanix has a relationship with the power guys, so maybe that's where sort of factored in, right? But Linux, of course, is the hot space, right? I mean sure you see it's powering the web. >> Well I'm a VMWare guy, so (laughs). >> There's Linux sitting on top of some of that. >> That's right, of course, of course. >> You've got Linux of mainframe, right? Okay, alright so, talk a little bit more about what you're seeing from the VMWare customer base, how it's synergistic and not just sort of a one way trip into a hotel California. >> Yeah, so a typical VMWare customer that we're seeing who's on premises today are looking to IBM Cloud, or actually take a leap into the Cloud, especially on the enterprise base, these customers want to transform. I mean, there has been a lot of questions for them, especially the customer base IBM focused on, questions around security, compliance, business continuity and data protection and such. So these customers not only want to just make the leap into the Cloud, but they also want to solve for some of these challenges, and also go up to stack like I was mentioning. So, we're seeing a huge push for containers, for those customers that are moving to VMWare, they want to build up the stack, on the PAS layer, and also want to leverage Watson and services like that. >> Yeah, could you expand on that a little more, things like are you working with PKS, the solution with VMWare and Pivotal, and the Kubernetes stuff, or? >> Yes, Kubernetes, Dockers, we also give the customers ability to do their own stuff, go up the stack. I mean, in the end, you know, they can consume us from an IS standpoint and build their PAS on top, or we can, they can use our own, so Kubernetes, Dockers, et cetera. >> What's the story, Stu, with Cloud foundry these days? There was a big push early on, and I fell like I can, I'm not as close as you are, but there seems to be a, I don't want to say a pull back, but maybe less enthusiasm, what's the lay of the land? >> Sure, I mean IBM was one of the earliest bloomix, I believe, and with IBM Cloud, IBM has a few different offerings, I didn't see as big of a push from IBM at the Cloud foundry summit I was at last month, but IBM, like most of the Cloud providers are giving customers choice. >> Zeb: That's right. >> So I guess the question is what-- >> And heavy in Open Source, I mean I'm seeing IBM heavy push, I'm wondering server-less, if you've got any commentary there. We've been looking at like Open Whisk and some of the pieces there. >> Yeah Open Whisk is there, there's, server-less is a thing that a lot of these customers, back to your own original question, a lot of these customers are looking for those types of services, and they're all available in the catalog. >> It's still pretty early, that hasn't overtaken the discussions of the (mumbles) and the (mumbles) stuff in your world has it? >> It hasn't, but I think the enterprise customers who are looking to move to Cloud, they are thinking about those things. So these are some of the check boxes that need to be checked for them for the future growth, et cetera. >> So you've got VMWare's obviously visualization strategy, you've got containers coming, I remember when we had Pat Gelsinger on theCUBE several years ago, when containers were, docker was rocketing, and everybody was like oh docker's going to kill VMWare. And Pat's response was, "Look, we've got the best containers in the world. We're going to embrace containers". They're like, oh sure. But that's exactly what happened. What's IBM's point of view on it? >> Yeah, here's the thing, we want to give them the option to do whatever they want to do. We're seeing a lot of traction on the micro-services side, on the containerization, but I think it's going hand in hand, a lot of the customers are using VMWare platform still, yet they're also leveraging some of these other micro-services and containers, so I think Pat's right on. I think originally what was people were talking about getting rid of the IS layer of VMWare and just going containers completely. Our take is, give the customers all the functionality and the ability to do whatever they want to do, we are seeing it's more of a mix at the moment. >> And we had Edouard Bugnion on recently, found of, one of the founders of VMWare, and he was talking about the challenges in the data center at scale. And in particular when you introduce virtualization and you reduce some of the hardware resources, how do you deliver predictable, high-performance, at scale, and some of the challenges there. That's even on prem. Now introduce Cloud, and you've got distance and latency and other physics so, what's the discussion like with customers around how to architect the ideal Cloud, on prem, hybrid. >> It's a great question, because that is a question I get asked all the time, because in the enterprise base like I said, these customers in a lot of cases have a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy, so network becomes a key part of that discussion. For us, the answer is very simple. We've laid down the fiber of (mumbles) across all these data centers, so when you're talking about latency, and data transfer, and those types of speeds, or having a multi-cloud strategy across the globe, it's a very simple and easy conversation because not only do we make all that information available to our customers, far as what latency they expect from which data center to another one across the globe, but also it's all private, and it's all secure, and it makes for a very good multi-cloud story. >> I don't know if you saw Jenny Remmetti's talk at IBM Think, but she used the term, a lot of people tongue in cheek, but I kind of like it, "incumbent disruptors". I mean look if you're IBM and you've got the client base that IBM has, you better come up with a term like that because that's exactly what you're trying to help your customers do. So, my question is, where does the Cloud and your offering with VMWare fit into the incumbent disruptive scenario? >> Yeah, so VMWare like I said earlier, we didn't want to be a me too player with VMWare. Not only did we want to have a good story with VMWare because obviously VMWare is a huge market share when it comes to virtualization, but on top of that, we wanted to be more futuristic, and solve for those, some of those questions and concerns that the enterprise customer had. So, tight integration on the enterprise base, on the micro-services, containerization, Watson is a huge part of the VMWare platform, you can seamlessly integrate into Watson and really have intelligent decision making on the VMWare platform. So, we wanted to ensure that we were helping our enterprise customers move to Cloud, yet also solve for the future problems. >> So the incumbent piece, both VMWare and IBM, right, incumbent customers, the disruptor would be I guess Cloud, all the new Cloud services, certainly the machine intelligence cognitive, et cetera, components is the disruptive capability, now it's up to you to figure out, okay, how do you apply all that, presumably IBM and your partners can help. >> Yeah and here's the thing, you mentioned earlier, IBM is one of the only companies in the world that can have an end-to-end, not just infrastructure, but also services wrapped around it. So if you're a customer who's not only looking to move to the Cloud but also have services wrapped around, to go end-to-end, IBM is the company to do that for you. >> Dave: Well that's interesting. Okay, I got to ask him Stu. So we had, we were at Dell Technologies World a couple weeks ago, and we had Jeff Clark on, and we asked him, we said, "Look, companies like IBM, HPE, sort of, IBM selling off its X86 division, and HPE splitting, Dell did the opposite. The mega merger". And his comment was, "Well I don't see how you can do end-to-end without both ends". Now, his definition of end is obviously different to your end definition, and I have to ask you, what do you mean by end-to-end? Is the client sort of just a commodity, we can get that anywhere, it's not really an integration challenge? >> So when I'm saying end-to-end what I'm talking about is a enterprise customer looking to move to the Cloud, solve for the future problems, essentially re-invent themselves, transform their business, leverage the new applications, micro-services that are there, but also have services wrapped around it, right? Somebody who's there to help them end-to-end, whether it's just doing migrations for example, right, from on premises to the Cloud, but also help them onboard and guide them on what is there in the Cloud, or the micro-services, or our PAS layer, and how they can transform really. >> So that to me Stu is, Zeb's talking about not a hardware view, of end-to-end, but a, maybe a systems and a software view of end-to-end, in the Cloud services. Alright, Zeb, thank you very much for, do you have one more? You good? Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Guys, thank you very much, appreciate it. >> Appreciate it. Alright, keep it right there buddy, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from VeeamOn 2018, in Chi-town, we'll be right back. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. >> We're back at IBM Think 2018. You're watching the Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm here with my co-host, Peter Burris. Ken King is here; he's the general manager of OpenPOWER from IBM, and Sumit Gupta, PhD, who is the VP, HPC, AI, ML for IBM Cognitive. Gentleman, welcome to the Cube >> Sumit: Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> So, really, guys, a pleasure. We had dinner last night, talked about Picciano who runs the OpenPOWER business, appreciate you guys comin' on, but, I got to ask you, Sumit, I'll start with you. OpenPOWER, Cognitive systems, a lot of people say, "Well, that's just the power system. "This is the old AIX business, it's just renaming it. "It's a branding thing.", what do you say? >> I think we had a fundamental strategy shift where we realized that AI was going to be the dominant workload moving into the future, and the systems that have been designed today or in the past are not the right systems for the AI future. So, we also believe that it's not just about silicon and even a single server. It's about the software, it's about thinking at the react level and the data center level. So, fundamentally, Cognitive Systems is about co-designing hardware and software with an open ecosystem of partners who are innovating to maximize the data and AI support at a react level. >> Somebody was talkin' to Steve Mills, probably about 10 years ago, and he said, "Listen, if you're going to compete with Intel, "you can copy them, that's not what we're going to do." You know, he didn't like the spark strategy. "We have a better strategy.", is what he said, and "Oh, strategies, we're going to open it up, "we're going to try to get 10% of the market. "You know, we'll see if we can get there.", but, Ken, I wonder if you could sort of talk about, just from a high level, the strategy and maybe go into the segments. >> Yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, you're absolutely right on the strategy. You know, we have completely opened up the architecture. Our focus on growth is around having an ecosystem and an open architecture so everybody can innovate on top of it effectively and everybody in the ecosystem can profit from it and gains good margins. So, that's the strategy, that's how we design the OpenPOWER ecosystem, but, you know, our segments, our core segments, AIX in Unix is still a core, very big core segment of ours. Unix itself is flat to declining, but AIX is continuing to take share in that segment through all the new innovations we're delivering. The other segments are all growth segments, high growth segments, whether it's SAP HANA, our cognitive infrastructure in modern day to platform, or even what we're doing in the HyperScale data centers. Those are all significant growth opportunities for us, and those are all Linux based, and, so, that is really where a lot of the OpenPOWER initiatives are driving growth for us and leveraging the fact that, through that ecosystem, we're getting a lot of incremental innovation that's occurring and it's delivering competitive differentiation for our platform. I say for our platform, but that doesn't mean just for IBM, but for all the ecosystem partners as well, and a lot of that was on display on Monday when we had our OpenPOWER summit. >> So, to talk about more about the OpenPOWER summit, what was that all about, who was there? Give us some stats on OpenPOWER and ecosystem. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, it was a good day, we're up to well over 300 members. We have over 50 different systems that are coming out in the market from IBM or our partners. Over 20 different manufacturers out there actually developing OpenPOWER systems. A lot of announcements or a lot of statements that were made at the summit that we thought were extremely valuable, first of all, we got the number one server vendor in Europe, Atos, designing and developing P9, the number on in Japan, Hitachi, the number one in China, Inspur. We got top ODMs like Super Micro, Wistron, and others that are also developing their power nine. We have a lot of different component providers on the new PCIe gen four, on the open cabinet capabilities, a lot of announcements made by a number of component partners and accelerator partners at the summit as well. The other thing I'm excited about is we have over 70 ISVs now on the platform, and a number of statements were made and announcements on Monday from people like MapD, Anaconda, H2O, Conetica and others who are leveraging those innovations bought on the platform like NVLink and the coherency between GPU and CPU to do accelerated analytics and accelerated GPU database kind of capabilities, but the thing that had me the most excited on Monday were the end users. I've always said, and the analysts always ask me the questions of when are you going to start penetration in the market? When are you going to show that you've got a lot of end users deploying this? And there were a lot of statements by a lot of big players on Monday. Google was on stage and publicly said the IO was amazing, the memory bandwidth is amazing. We are deploying Zaius, which is the power nine server, in our data centers and we're ready for scale, and it's now Google strong which is basically saying that this thing is hardened and ready for production, but we also (laughs) had a number of other significant ones, Tencent talkin' about deploying OpenPOWER, 30% better efficiency, 30% less server resources required, the cloud armor of Alibaba talkin' about how they're putting on their on their X-Dragon, they have it in a piler program, they're asking everybody to use it now so they can figure out how do they go into production. PayPal made statements about how they're using it, but the machine learning and deep learning to do fraud detection, and we even had Limelight, who is not as big a name, but >> CDN, yeah. >> They're a CDN tool provider to people like Netflix and others. We're talkin' about the great capability with the IO and the ability to reduce the buffering and improve the streaming for all these CDN providers out there. So, we were really excited about all those end users and all the things they're saying. That demonstrates the power of this ecosystem. >> Alright, so just to comment on the architecture and then, I want to get into the Cognitive piece. I mean, you guys did, years ago, little Indians, recognizing you got to get software based to be compatible. You mentioned, Ken, bandwidth, IO bandwidth, CAPI stuff that you've done. So, there's a lot of incentives, especially for the big hyperscale guys, to be able to do more with less, but, to me, let's get into the AI, the Cognitive piece. Bob Picciano comes over from running a $15 billion analytics business, so, obviously, he's got some knowledge. He's bringin' in people like you with all these cool buzzwords in your title. So, talk a little bit about infrastructure for AI and why power is the right platform. >> Sure, so, I think we all recognize that the performance advantages and even power advantages that we were getting from Dennard scaling, also known as Moore's law, is over, right. So, people talk about the end of Moore's Law, and that's really the end of gaining processor performance with Dennard scaling and the Moore's Law. What we believe is that to continue to meet the performance needs of all of these new AI and data workloads, you need accelerators, and not just computer accelerators, you actually need accelerated networking. You need accelerated storage, you need high-density memory sitting very close to the compute power, and, if you really think about it, what's happened is, again, system view, right, we're not silicon view, we're looking at the system. The minute you start looking at the silicon you realize you want to get the data to where the computer is, or the computer where the data is. So, it all becomes about creating bigger pipelines, factor of pipelines, to move data around to get to the right compute piece. For example, we put much more emphasis on a much faster memory system to make sure we are getting data from the system memory to the CPU. >> Coherently. >> Coherently, that's the main memory. We put interfaces on power nine including NVLink, OpenCAPI, and PCIe gen four, and that enabled us to get that data either from the network to the system memory, or out back to the network, or to storage, or to accelerators like GPUs. We built and embedded these high-speed interconnects into power nine, into the processor. Nvidia put NVLink into their GPU, and we've been working with marketers like Xilinx and Mellanox on getting OpenCAPI onto their components. >> And we're seeing up to 10x for both memory bandwidth and IO over x86 which is significant. You should talk about how we're seeing up to 4x improvement in training of MLDL algorithms over x86 which is dramatic in how quickly you can get from data to insight, right? You could take training and turn it from weeks to days, or days to hours, or even hours to minutes, and that makes a huge difference in what you can do in any industry as far as getting insight out of your data which is the competitive differentiator in today's environment. >> Let's talk about this notion of architecture, or systems especially. The basic platform for how we've been building systems has been relatively consistent for a long time. The basic approach to how we think about building systems has been relatively consistent. You start with the database manager, you run it on an Intel processor, you build your application, you scale it up based on SMP needs. There's been some variations; we're going into clustering, because we do some other things, but you guys are talking about something fundamentally different, and flash memory, the ability to do flash storage, which dramatically changes the relationship between the processor and the data, means that we're not going to see all of the organization of the workloads around the server, see how much we can do in it. It's really going to be much more of a balanced approach. How is power going to provide that more balanced systems approach across as we distribute data, as we distribute processing, as we create a cloud experience that isn't in one place, but is in more places. >> Well, this ties exactly to the point I made around it's not just accelerated compute, which we've all talked about a lot over the years, it's also about accelerated storage, accelerated networking, and accelerated memories, right. This is really, the point being, that the compute, if you don't have a fast pipeline into the processor from all of this wonderful storage and flash technology, there's going to be a choke point in the network, or they'll be a choke point once the data gets to the server, you're choked then. So, a lot of our focus has been, first of all, partnering with a company like Mellanox which builds extremely high bandwidth, high-speed >> And EOF. >> Right, right, and I'm using one as an example right. >> Sure. >> I'm using one as an example and that's where the large partnerships, we have like 300 partnerships, as Ken talked about in the OpenPOWER foundation. Those partnerships is because we brought together all of these technology providers. We believe that no one company can own the agenda of technology. No one company can invest enough to continue to give us the performance we need to meet the needs of the AI workloads, and that's why we want to partner with all these technology vendors who've all invested billions of dollars to provide the best systems and software for AI and data. >> But fundamentally, >> It's the whole construct of data centric systems, right? >> Right. >> I mean, sometimes you got to process the data in the network, right? Sometimes you got to process the data in the storage. It's not just at the CPU, the GPUs a huge place for processing that data. >> Sure. >> How do you do that all coherently and how do things work together in a system environment is crucial versus a vertically integrated capability where the CPU provider continues to put more and more into the processor and disenfranchise the rest of the ecosystem. >> Well, that was the counter building strategies that we want to talk about. You have Intel who wants to put as much on the die as possible. It's worked quite well for Intel over the years. You had to take a different strategy. If you tried to take Intel on with that strategy, you would have failed. So, talk about the different philosophies, but really I'm interested in what it means for things like alternative processing and your relationship in your ecosystem. >> This is not about company strategies, right. I mean, Intel is a semiconductor company and they think like a semiconductor company. We're a systems and software company, we think like that, but this is not about company strategy. This is about what the market needs, what client workloads need, and if you start there, you start with a data centric strategy. You start with data centric systems. You think about moving data around and making sure there is heritage in this computer, there is accelerated computer, you have very fast networks. So, we just built the US's fastest supercomputer. We're currently building the US's fastest supercomputer which is the project name is Coral, but there are two supercomputers, one at Oak Ridge National Labs and one at Lawrence Livermore. These are the ultimate HPC and AI machines, right. Its computer's a very important part of them, but networking and storage is just as important. The file system is just as important. The cluster management software is just as important, right, because if you are serving data scientists and a biologist, they don't want to deal with, "How many servers do I need to launch this job on? "How do I manage the jobs, how do I manage the server?" You want them to just scale, right. So, we do a lot of work on our scalability. We do a lot of work in using Apache Spark to enable cluster virtualization and user virtualization. >> Well, if we think about, I don't like the term data gravity, it's wrong a lot of different perspectives, but if we think about it, you guys are trying to build systems in a world that's centered on data, as opposed to a world that's centered on the server. >> That's exactly right. >> That's right. >> You got that, right? >> That's exactly right. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Alright, you guys got to go, we got to wrap, but I just want to close with, I mean, always says infrastructure matters. You got Z growing, you got power growing, you got storage growing, it's given a good tailwind to IBM, so, guys, great work. Congratulations, got a lot more to do, I know, but thanks for >> It's going to be a fun year. comin' on the Cube, appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Appreciate you having us. >> Alright, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching the Cube live from IBM Think 2018. We'll be right back. (techno beat)

>> Narrator: Live from New York, it's the Cube. Covering Machine Learning Everywhere: Build Your Ladder to AI. Brought to you by IBM. >> And welcome back here to New York City. We're at IBM's Machine Learning Everywhere: Build Your Ladder to AI, along with Dave Vellante, John Walls, and we're now joined by Sam Lightstone, who is an IBM fellow in analytics. And Sam, good morning. Thanks for joining us here once again on the Cube. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Great to be back. >> Yeah, great. Yeah, good to have you here on kind of a moldy New York day here in late February. So we're talking, obviously data is the new norm, is what certainly, have heard a lot about here today and of late here from IBM. Talk to me about, in your terms, of just when you look at data and evolution and to where it's now become so central to what every enterprise is doing and must do. I mean, how do you do it? Give me a 30,000-foot level right now from your prism. >> Sure, I mean, from a super, if you just stand back, like way far back, and look at what data means to us today, it's really the thing that is separating companies one from the other. How much data do they have and can they make excellent use of it to achieve competitive advantage? And so many companies today are about data and only data. I mean, I'll give you some like really striking, disruptive examples of companies that are tremendously successful household names and it's all about the data. So the world's largest transportation company, or personal taxi, can't call it taxi, but (laughs) but, you know, Uber-- >> Yeah, right. >> Owns no cars, right? The world's largest accommodation company, Airbnb, owns no hotels, right? The world's largest distributor of motion pictures owns no movie theaters. So these companies are disrupting because they're focused on data, not on the material stuff. Material stuff is important, obviously. Somebody needs to own a car, somebody needs to own a way to view a motion picture, and so on. But data is what differentiates companies more than anything else today. And can they tap into the data, can they make sense of it for competitive advantage? And that's not only true for companies that are, you know, cloud companies. That's true for every company, whether you're a bricks and mortars organization or not. Now, one level of that data is to simply look at the data and ask questions of the data, the kinds of data that you already have in your mind. Generating reports, understanding who your customers are, and so on. That's sort of a fundamental level. But the deeper level, the exciting transformation that's going on right now, is the transformation from reporting and what we'll call business intelligence, the ability to take those reports and that insight on data and to visualize it in the way that human beings can understand it, and go much deeper into machine learning and AI, cognitive computing where we can start to learn from this data and learn at the pace of machines, and to drill into the data in a way that a human being cannot because we can't look at bajillions of bytes of data on our own, but machines can do that and they're very good at doing that. So it is a huge, that's one level. The other level is, there's so much more data now than there ever was because there's so many more devices that are now collecting data. And all of us, you know, every one of our phones is collecting data right now. Your cars are collecting data. I think there's something like 60 sensors on every car that rolls of the manufacturing line today. 60. So it's just a wild time and a very exciting time because there's so much untapped potential. And that's what we're here about today, you know. Machine learning, tapping into that unbelievable potential that's there in that data. >> So you're absolutely right on. I mean the data is foundational, or must be foundational in order to succeed in this sort of data-driven world. But it's not necessarily the center of the universe for a lot of companies. I mean, it is for the big data, you know, guys that we all know. You know, the top market cap companies. But so many organizations, they're sort of, human expertise is at the center of their universe, and data is sort of, oh yeah, bolt on, and like you say, reporting. >> Right. >> So how do they deal with that? Do they get one big giant DB2 instance and stuff all the data in there, and infuse it with MI? Is that even practical? How do they solve this problem? >> Yeah, that's a great question. And there's, again, there's a multi-layered answer to that. But let me start with the most, you know, one of the big changes, one of the massive shifts that's been going on over the last decade is the shift to cloud. And people think of the shift to cloud as, well, I don't have to own the server. Someone else will own the server. That's actually not the right way to look at it. I mean, that is one element of cloud computing, but it's not, for me, the most transformative. The big thing about the cloud is the introduction of fully-managed services. It's not just you don't own the server. You don't have to install, configure, or tune anything. Now that's directly related to the topic that you just raised, because people have expertise, domains of expertise in their business. Maybe you're a manufacturer and you have expertise in manufacturing. If you're a bank, you have expertise in banking. You may not be a high-tech expert. You may not have deep skills in tech. So one of the great elements of the cloud is that now you can use these fully managed services and you don't have to be a database expert anymore. You don't have to be an expert in tuning SQL or JSON, or yadda yadda. Someone else takes care of that for you, and that's the elegance of a fully managed service, not just that someone else has got the hardware, but they're taking care of all the complexity. And that's huge. The other thing that I would say is, you know, the companies that are really like the big data houses, they got lots of data, they've spent the last 20 years working so hard to converge their data into larger and larger data lakes. And some have been more successful than others. But everybody has found that that's quite hard to do. Data is coming in many places, in many different repositories, and trying to consolidate, you know, rip the data out, constantly ripping it out and replicating into some data lake where you, or data warehouse where you can do your analytics, is complicated. And it means in some ways you're multiplying your costs because you have the data in its original location and now you're copying it into yet another location. You've got to pay for that, too. So you're multiplying costs. So one of the things I'm very excited about at IBM is we've been working on this new technology that we've now branded it as IBM Queryplex. And that gives us the ability to query data across all of these myriad sources as if they are in one place. As if they are a single consolidated data lake, and make it all look like (snaps) one repository. And not only to the application appear as one repository, but actually tap into the processing power of every one of those data sources. So if you have 1,000 of them, we'll bring to bear the power 1,000 data sources and all that computing and all that memory on these analytics problems. >> Well, give me an example why that matters, of what would be a real-world application of that. >> Oh, sure, so there, you know, there's a couple of examples. I'll give you two extremes, two different extremes. One extreme would be what I'll call enterprise, enterprise data consolidation or virtualization, where you're a large institution and you have several of these repositories. Maybe you got some IBM repositories like DB2. Maybe you've got a little bit of Oracle and a little bit of SQL Server. Maybe you've got some open source stuff like Postgres or MySQL. You got a bunch of these and different departments use different things, and it develops over decades and to some extent you can't even control it, (laughs) right? And now you just want to get analytics on that. You just, what's this data telling me? And as long as all that data is sitting in these, you know, dozens or hundreds of different repositories, you can't tell, unless you copy it all out into a big data lake, which is expensive and complicated. So Queryplex will solve that problem. >> So it's sort of a virtual data store. >> Yeah, and one of the terms, many different terms that are used, but one of the terms that's used in the industry is data virtualization. So that would be a suitable terminology here as well. To make all that data in hundreds, thousands, even millions of possible data sources, appear as one thing, it has to tap into the processing power of all of them at once. Now, that's one extreme. Let's take another extreme, which is even more extreme, which is the IoT scenario, Internet of Things, right? Internet of Things. Imagine you've, have devices, you know, shipping containers and smart meters on buildings. You could literally have 100,000 of these or a million of these things. They're usually small; they don't usually have a lot of data on them. But they can store, usually, couple of months of data. And what's fascinating about that is that most analytics today are really on the most recent you know, 48 hours or four weeks, maybe. And that time is getting shorter and shorter, because people are doing analytics more regularly and they're interested in, just tell me what's going on recently. >> I got to geek out here, for a second. >> Please, well thanks for the warning. (laughs) >> And I know you know things, but I'm not a, I'm not a technical person, but I've been a molt. I've been around a long time. A lot of questions on data virtualization, but let me start with Queryplex. The name is really interesting to me. When I, and you're a database expert, so I'm going to tap your expertise. When I read the Google Spanner paper, I called up my colleague David Floyer, who's an ex-IBM, I said, "This is like global Sysplex. "It's a global distributed thing," And he goes, "Yeah, kind of." And I got very excited. And then my eyes started bleeding when I read the paper, but the name, Queryplex, is it a play on Sysplex? Is there-- >> It's actually, there's a long story. I don't think I can say the story on-air, but we, suffice it to say we wanted to get a name that was legally usable and also descriptive. >> Dave: Okay. >> And we went through literally hundreds and hundreds of permutations of words and we finally landed on Queryplex. But, you know, you mentioned Google Spanner. I probably should spend a moment to differentiate how what we're doing is-- >> Great, if you would. >> A different kind of thing. You know, on Google Spanner, you put data into Google Spanner. With Queryplex, you don't put data into it. >> Dave: Don't have to move it. >> You don't have to move it. You leave it where it is. You can have your data in DB2, you can have it in Oracle, you can have it in a flat file, you can have an Excel spreadsheet, and you know, think about that. An Excel spreadsheet, a collection of text files, comma delimited text files, SQL Server, Oracle, DB2, Netezza, all these things suddenly appear as one database. So that's the transformation. It's not about we'll take your data and copy it into our system, this is about leave your data where it is, and we're going to tap into your (snaps) existing systems for you and help you see them in a unified way. So it's a very different paradigm than what others have done. Part of the reason why we're so excited about it is we're, as far as we know, nobody else is really doing anything quite like this. >> And is that what gets people to the 21st century, basically, is that they have all these legacy systems and yet the conversion is much simpler, much more economical for them? >> Yeah, exactly. It's economical, it's fast. (snaps) You can deploy this in, you know, a very small amount of time. And we're here today talking about machine learning and it's a very good segue to point out in order to get to high-quality AI, you need to have a really strong foundation of an information architecture. And for the industry to show up, as some have done over the past decade, and keep telling people to re-architect their data infrastructure, keep modifying their databases and creating new databases and data lakes and warehouses, you know, it's just not realistic. And so we want to provide a different path. A path that says we're going to make it possible for you to have superb machine learning, cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, and you don't have to rebuild your information architecture. We're going to make it possible for you to leverage what you have and do something special. >> This is exciting. I wasn't aware of this capability. And we were talking earlier about the cloud and the managed service component of that as a major driver of lowering cost and complexity. There's another factor here, which is, we talked about moving data-- >> Right. >> And that's one of the most expensive components of any infrastructure. If I got to move data and the transmission costs and the latency, it's virtually impossible. Speed of light's still up. I know you guys are working on speed of light, but (Sam laughs) you'll eventually get there. >> Right. >> Maybe. But the other thing about cloud economics, and this relates to sort of Queryplex. There's this API economy. You've got virtually zero marginal costs. When you were talking, I was writing these down. You got global scale, it's never down, you've got this network effect working for you. Are you able to, are the standards there? Are you able to replicate those sort of cloud economics the APIs, the standards, that scale, even though you're not in control of this, there's not a single point of control? Can you explain sort of how that magic works? >> Yeah, well I think the API economy is for real and it's very important for us. And it's very important that, you know, we talk about API standards. There's a beautiful quote I once heard. The beautiful thing about standards is there's so many to choose from. (All laugh) And the reality is that, you know, you have standards that are official standards, and then you have the de facto standards because something just catches on and nobody blessed it. It just got popular. So that's a big part of what we're doing at IBM is being at the forefront of adopting the standards that matter. We made a big, a big investment in being Spark compatible, and, in fact, even with Queryplex. You can issue Spark SQL against Queryplex even though it's not a Spark engine, per se, but we make it look and feel like it can be Spark SQL. Another critical point here, when we talk about the API economy, and the speed of light, and movement to the cloud, and these topics you just raised, the friction of the Internet is an unbelievable friction. (John laughs) It's unbelievable. I mean, you know, when you go and watch a movie over the Internet, your home connection is just barely keeping up. I mean, you're pushing it, man. So a gigabyte, you know, a gigabyte an hour or something like that, right? Okay, and if you're a big company, maybe you have a fatter pipe. But not a lot fatter. I mean, not orders of, you're talking incredible friction. And what that means is that it is difficult for people, for companies, to en masse, move everything to the cloud. It's just not happening overnight. And, again, in the interest of doing the best possible service to our customers, that's why we've made it a fundamental element of our strategy in IBM to be a hybrid, what we call hybrid data management company, so that the APIs that we use on the cloud, they are compatible with the APIs that we use on premises. And whether that's software or private cloud. You've got software, you've got private cloud, you've got public cloud. And our APIs are going to be consistent across, and applications that you code for one will run on the other. And you can, that makes it a lot easier to migrate at your leisure when you're ready. >> Makes a lot of sense. That way you can bring cloud economics and the cloud operating model to your data, wherever the data exists. Listening to you speak, Sam, it reminds me, do you remember when Bob Metcalfe who I used to work with at IDG, predicted the collapse of the Internet? He predicted that year after year after year, in speech after speech, that it was so fragile, and you're bringing back that point of, guys, it's still, you know, a lot of friction. So that's very interesting, (laughs) as an architect. >> You think Bob's going to be happy that you brought up that he predicted the Internet was going to be its own demise? (Sam laughs) >> Well, he did it in-- >> I'm just saying. >> I'm staying out of it, man. >> He did it as a lightning rod. >> As a talking-- >> To get the industry to respond, and he had a big enough voice so he could do that. >> That it worked, right. But so I want to get back to Queryplex and the secret sauce. Somehow you're creating this data virtualization capability. What's the secret sauce behind it? >> Yeah, so I think, we're not the first to try, by the way. Actually this problem-- >> Hard problem. >> Of all these data sources all over the place, you try to make them look like one thing. People have been trying to figure out how to do that since like the '70s, okay, so, but-- >> Dave: Really hasn't worked. >> And it hasn't worked. And really, the reason why it hasn't worked is that there's been two fundamental strategies. One strategy is, you have a central coordinator that tries to speak to each of these data sources. So I've got, let's say, 10,000 data sources. I want to have one coordinator tap into each of them and have a dialogue. And what happens is that that coordinator, a server, an agent somewhere, becomes a network bottleneck. You were talking about the friction of the Internet. This is a great example of friction. One coordinator trying to speak to, you know, and collaborators becomes a point of friction. And it also becomes a point of friction not only in the Internet, but also in the computation, because he ends up doing too much of the work. There's too many things that cannot be done at the, at these edge repositories, aggregations, and joins, and so on. So all the aggregations and joins get done by this one sucker who can't keep up. >> Dave: The queue. >> Yeah, so there's a big queue, right. So that's one strategy that didn't work. The other strategy that people tried was sort of an end squared topology where every data source tries to speak to every other data source. And that doesn't scale as well. So what we've done in Queryplex is something that we think is unique and much more organic where we try to organize the universe or constellation of these data sources so that every data source speaks to a small number of peers but not a large number of peers. And that way no single source is a bottleneck, either in network or in computation. That's one trick. And the second trick is we've designed algorithms that can truly be distributed. So you can do joins in a distributed manner. You can do aggregation in a distributed manner. These are things, you know, when I say aggregation, I'm talking about simple things like a sum or an average or a median. These are super popular in, in analytic queries. Everybody wants to do a sum or an average or a median, right? But in the past, those things were hard to do in a distributed manner, getting all the participants in this universe to do some small incremental piece of the computation. So it's really these two things. Number one, this organic, dynamically forming constellation of devices. Dynamically forming a way that is latency aware. So if I'm a, if I represent a data source that's joining this universe or constellation, I'm going to try to find peers who I have a fast connection with. If all the universe of peers were out there, I'll try to find ones that are fast. And the second is having algorithms that we can all collaborate on. Those two things change the game. >> We're getting the two minute sign, and this is fascinating stuff. But so, how do you deal with the data consistency problem? You hear about eventual consistency and people using atomic clocks and-- Right, so Queryplex, you know, there's a reason we call it Queryplex not Dataplex. Queryplex is really a read-only operation. >> Dave: Oh, there you go. >> You've got all these-- >> Problem solved. (laughs) >> Problem solved. You've got all these data sources. They're already doing their, they already have data's coming in how it's coming in. >> Dave: Simple and brilliant. >> Right, and we're not changing any of that. All we're saying is, if you want to query them as one, you can query them as one. I should say a few words about the machine learning that we're doing here at the conference. We've talked about the importance of an information architecture and how that lays a foundation for machine learning. But one of the things that we're showing and demonstrating at the conference today, or at the showcase today, is how we're actually putting machine learning into the database. Create databases that learn and improve over time, learn from experience. In 1952, Arthur Samuel was a researcher at IBM who first, had one of the most fundamental breakthroughs in machine learning when he created a machine learning algorithm that will play checkers. And he programmed this checker playing game of his so it would learn over time. And then he had a great idea. He programmed it so it would play itself, thousands and thousands and thousands of times over, so it would actually learn from its own mistakes. And, you know, the evolution since then. Deep Blue playing chess and so on. The Watson Jeopardy game. We've seen tremendous potential in machine learning. We're putting into the database so databases can be smarter, faster, more consistent, and really just out of the box (snaps) performing. >> I'm glad you brought that up. I was going to ask you, because the legend Steve Mills once said to me, I had asked him a question about in-memory databases. He said ever databases have been around, in-memory databases have been around. But ML-infused databases are new. >> Sam: That's right, something totally new. >> Dave: Yeah, great. >> Well, you mentioned Deep Blue. Looking forward to having Garry Kasparov on a little bit later on here. And I know he's speaking as well. But fascinating stuff that you've covered here, Sam. We appreciate the time here. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. >> And wish you continued success, as well. >> Thank you very much. >> Sam Lightstone, IBM fellow joining us here live on the Cube. We're back with more here from New York City right after this. (electronic music)

>> Live from Boston, Massachusetts, it's the CUBE covering IBM Chief Data Officer Summit. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to the CUBE's live coverage of the IBM CDO Strategy Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Dave Vellante. We're joined by Mark Lack. He is the Strategy Analytics and Business Intelligence Manager at Mueller Inc. Thanks so much for joining us, Mark. >> Thank you for the invite. >> So why don't you tell our viewers a little bit about Mueller and about what you do there. >> Sure, Mueller Inc. is based in the southwest. Ballinger, Texas, to be specific. And, I don't expect anybody, unless they Google it right now, would be able to find that city. But that's where our corporate headquarters and our main manufacturing plant has been. And, we are a company that manufactures and retails steel building products. So, if you think of a warehouse, or a backyard building or even a metal roof, or even I was looking downtown, or downstairs, earlier today, this building is made out of big steel girders. We take those and form them into a product that a customer can use for storage or for living or for any of whatever their use happens to be. Typically, it might be agricultural, but you also find it in very, very large buildings. Mueller is a retailer that happens to manufacture its products. Now, that's a very important distinction, because the company, up until about 15, 20 years ago, viewed itself as a manufacturer that just happened to retail its products. And so when you take the change in the emphasis, your business changes. The way you approach your customers, the way you approach your products, the way you market yourself, is completely different from one side to the other. We've been in business since 1930s, been around for a very long time. It's a family owned business that has it's culture and it's success rooted in West Texas. We have 40 locations all over the southwest. We're headquartered in Ballinger, Texas. We're as far east as Oak Grove, Louisiana and as far west with locations as Albuquerque, New Mexico. >> So you do cognitive analytics for Mueller, so tell our viewers a little bit about what you do there. >> Sure. Mueller has always been on the forefront of technology. Not for technology's sake, but really for effectiveness and efficiency's sake. So Mueller did business process reengineering when it was common for much larger organizations to do. But Mueller took it under as the reality for us to manage our business in the future. We need to have the professional tools to be able to do this. So we set on in our industry using technology in novel ways that our competition just doesn't do. So with the implementation of technology, what you have is a lot of data that comes along. And so we've been very effective using it for our balance scorecard to report metrics and keep the organization on track with that. Giving information back to various parts of the organization and then also creating an analytics platform and program that allows us to really dive deep into the organization and the data and everything that's being thrown off from modern technology. So cognitive analytics. This is something, as you hear about in technology today is, from the robots to artificial intelligence. Cognitive analytics, I think is for us a better way of looking at it of augmented intelligence. We have all of this data, we have these wonderful systems that help give us information to give us the answers we need on our business processes. We have some predictive analytics that help us to identify the challenges going ahead. What we don't have is the deep dive into using these technologies of cognitive to take all of this big data and find answers to situations that it would take a hundred people a hundred years to find out to be able to mine through. So the cognitive analytics is our new direction of analytics, and to be honest with you it's really the natural progression from our traditional analytic system. So as I said before, we have the regular analytics, we have the predictive analytics. As we get into cognitive, this is the next generation of how do we take this data that we have, that's coming at a volume and a velocity and a variety that is so difficult to look at as it is in a spreadsheet, and offload this onto system that can help us to interpret, give us some answers that we can then judge and then make decisions from. >> So, as you said, you have a lot of data. You got customer data, you got supply chain data, you got product data, you got sales data, retail location data. What's the data architecture look like? I mean, some data is more important than other data. How did you approach this opportunity? >> So, a few years ago I went to the first World of Watson, which was in New York. There was about a thousand attendees and Ginni Rometty had had this great presentation and it was very inspiring and she asked, "What will you do with Watson?" And at the time I had no idea what we were going to do with Watson, and so I sat on the plane on the way back and I thought through what are the business case scenarios that we can use to use artificial intelligence in a steel building company in Ballinger, Texas. Don't forget the irony of that part. As we're going to to go back to start using cognitive. So I thought through this and I went to our owner and we had many, many conversations on cognitive. You had the jeopardy, the Watson championship and you started thinking about all of these systems. But the real question was how could we take a new technology and apply it to our existing business to make a difference? And I'm getting to the answer to your question on how it got structured. So we went down the path of investigating Watson, and we've realized that the cognitive is part of our future. And so we plan on leveraging cognitive in many ways. We'd like to see it sales effectiveness, operations effectiveness, transportation effectiveness. There are all sorts of great ideas that we have. One of the challenges we have, and the reason I'm here at the CDO Summit, is when we start to look at our data, the question is are we cognitive ready? And I'll be honest to you, we are for today for a sliver of what cognitive capability is. As you've always heard the numbers 80% of your data is in unstructured format. So we have lots and lots of unstructured data. We have a lot of structured data. When it comes to the analytics around our structured data, we're pretty good, but when you start talking about unstructured data, how do we now take this to add to our structured data and then have a more complete picture of the problem that we're searching? So what I'm hoping to gain here at the CDO Summit is talking to some of these world-class leaders in data operations and data management to help understand what their pain points were. Learn from them so I can take that back and help to architect what our needs are so that we can take advantage of this entire cognitive future that's... >> So you're precognitive. So cognitive ready, let's unpack that a little bit. That means, that what you've got a level of confidence in the data quality? You've got an understanding of how to secure it, govern it, who gets access to it? What does that mean, being cognitive ready? >> So it's going to to be all of those. All of the above. First is, do you have the data? And we all have data, whether it's in spreedsheet on our systems, whether it's in our mobile phone, whether it's on our websites, whether it's in our EIP systems, and I can keep going on >> You got data. >> We have data, but the question is, do we have access to the data? And if you talk to some people, well sure, we have access to the data. Just tell me what data you want and I'll get you access. Okay, well, that is one answer to a much larger problem, because that's only going to give you what your asking for. What the cognitive future is promising for us is we may not know the questions to ask. I think that's the difference between traditional analytics and then the cognitive analytics. One of the benefits of cognitive will be the fact that cognitive will give answers to questions that we're never asked. And so now that this happens, what do we do with it? You know, when we start thinking about having attacking a problem, you know, being data ready, having the data there, that's part of the problem. And I think most companies say we're pretty good with our data. But with the 80% that we don't have access to, the real question is, are we missing that crucial piece of information that prevents us from making the right decision at the right time? And so our approach, and what I'm going to go back with, is understanding the data architecture that those who have gone before me that I can pick up and bring back to my organization and help us to implement that in a way that will make it cognitive ready for the future. You know, it's not just the access to the data; it's having the data. And I had lunch a few years ago with Steve Mills who was a senior executive for IBM, and one of the people at lunch was bold enough to ask him, "How do we know what data to capture?" And he said, very bluntly, "All of it." Now this was about five years ago. So, back then, you're shaking your heads saying, "We don't have storage capabilities. "We don't have the ability to store all these data." But he had already seen the future, and what he was telling us right then was all of it is going to be valuable. So where we are today, we think we know what data's valuable. But cognitive's going to help us to understand what other data might me valuable as well. >> So I'm interested in your job from the perspective of the organizational change. And you work for, as you said, a small family-owned company. Smallish of family-owned company. And we've heard a lot of today about the business transformation, the technology involved, and how that has really changed dramatically over the last decade. But then, there's also this other piece which is the social and cultural change within these organizations. Can you describe your experience in terms of how your colleagues interpret your world? >> You're asking me those questions 'cause you can see the bruises from whatever I have to accomplish. (laughter) You know, within an organization, one of the benefits of working that I found at Muller, and it's a family organization, is that those who work there, and I've been there for 18 years, and I'm still considered a newcomer to the organization right after 18 years. But we're not there unless we have a strong commitment to the organization and to the culture of the company. So, while we may not always agree as to what the future needs to hold, okay? We all understand we need to do what's best for this company for its long term survival. At the end of the day, that's what we're there to do. So culturally, when you first come up with saying you're going to do artificial intelligence, you know, you got a lot of head-scratching, especially in West Texas. I have a hard time explaining even to those around me what it is that I do. But, once you start telling the story that we have data, we have lots of data, and that there might be information in that data that we don't know now but in the future we may have, and so, it's important for us to capture that data and store it. Whether or not we know that there's immediate value, we know there's some value, okay? And if we can take that leap that there's going to be some value, and we're here with the help of the organization faces, we know that there are challenges to every organization. We're a still building company in Ballinger, Texas. Now I know I keep saying that, but what if a company like Uber comes up with metal building and all of a sudden, we have new challenges that we never thought we'd face? Many organizations that have been up, industries that have been in upheaval from these changes in either technology access or a new idea that splits the difference. We want to make sure we can stay ahead, and so when we start talking about that from a culture, we're here for the long term value of the company. We're committed to this organization, so what it do we need to do? And so, you know, the term "out of the box thinking" is something that sometimes we have to do. That doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean that we all immediately say, "Aha! This is what we're going to do." It takes convincing. It takes a lot of conversation, and it takes a lot of political capital to show that what it is that we're going to do is going to make sense and use a lot of good examples. >> Well, and you come to tongue-in-cheek about people rolling their eyes about AI and so forth, but any manufacturer who sees 3D printing and the way it's evolved goes "Wow!" And then the data that you can capture from that, so, I wanted to ask you, when you talk to your colleagues and people are afraid that robots are going to take over the world and so forth, but what are the things that when you think about augmented intelligence that, you know, where do the machines leave off and the humans pick up? What kinds of things do humans do in your world that machines don't do that well? >> So, you know, if I go back and think about analytics, for example, there's a lot of time collecting data, storing data, translating data, creating contract to retrieve that data, putting that data into a beautiful report and then handing it out. Think of all that time that it takes to get there, right? A lot of people who are in analytics think that they're adding value by doing it. But to be honest with you, they're not. There's no value in the construct. And so, what the value is in the interpretation of that data. So what do computers do well and what do we do well? We do well at interpreting what those findings tell us. If we can offload those transactions back to a machine that can set the data for us, automatically construct the data, put it into a situation for us that can then allow us to then interpret the results? Then we're spending the majority of our time adding value by interpreting and making changes with the company versus spending that same time going back and constructing something that may or may not be something that may add value. So we spend 80% of our time creating data for a report. The report, now we have to test the report to determine, can I communicate this the right way? You have machine learning now and you have tools that will then take this data and say, "Oh, this is numerical data. "This looks like general ledger data. This is the type of way this data should be displayed." So I don't have to think of a graph. It suggests one for me. So what it does is then allow me to interpret the results, not worry about the construct. >> So you can focus on the things that humans do well. But the other thing I want to talk to you about is the talent issue. I mean you guys, you've mentioned before that you're based in West Texas and you are working on a real vanguard in your industry. As I said, you were someone who is thinking about whether or not Uber is going to say, "Let's make steel buildings." I mean, is that a problem that you're facing, that your company is facing? >> Well, there is no joke, right, that the fact of the future's going to have a man and a dog. And the man's job is to feed the dog, and the dog's job is to bite the man if he tries to touch any of the machinery, right? So, I don't think that we're there. The jobs aren't going to be eliminated to where people are not able to add value. But finding a talent, back to your question, is the expectation that we have of talent, it is scarce. Finding people that have the skills to now interpret the data, so you can find people that have a lot of time that can do any of those steps in between. But now, what's happened is, you want people to add value, not create constructs that don't add the value. So the type of talent that you look for are people who can interpret this information to give us the better answers that we need for the organization to thrive. And that's really where I see the talent shifting is on more forward-looking, outcome-based, value-based decision making, not as much on the development of items that could be offloaded to a machine. >> Yeah, I mean, interpretation, creativity, ideation. I mean, machines have always replaced humans. We've talked about this on The Cube before, but the first time in human history, machines are replacing humans in cognitive functions. I mean, you gave an example of the workflow of developing a report, which... >> Kenney Company can relate to, yeah. >> But yeah, 10 years ago, that was like super valuable. Today it's like, "Let's automate that." >> Well, but the challenge I think where people have is where do they add value? What is the problem that we're trying to solve? It's where do we add value. If we add value creating the construct, you aren't going to be employed, because something else is going to do that. >> But if you add value on focusing on the output and being able to interpret that output in a way that adds value to your company, you'll be employed forever. So, you know, people that can solve problems, take the information, make decisions, make suggestions that are going to make the company better, will always be employed. But it's the people who think they add value flipping a switch or programming a lever, now, they think their value's very important there, but I think what we have to do and it behooves us, is to translate those jobs into where do you add value? Where is the most important thing you need to be doing for the success of this company? And that I think is really the future. >> Are you... We haven't asked any IoT questions today. I want to ask you, are you sort of digitizing, instrumenting for your customers the end products of what you guys produce, and how was that creating data? >> You know, we haven't, we talked about it. We don't have products that, we're not selling things that are machinery that might break down and give us information, and so, we're building final products that are there, that people will then do different things with. So, IoT hasn't worked for us from a product standpoint, but we are looking at our various machinery and making sure that we have understanding as to those events that are causing a break down. One of the challenges we have in our industry is if we have a line that manufactures apart, if it goes down, okay, now it shuts everything down. So we have a duplicate, which can get very expensive. We have duplicates of everything, and how many duplicates do you need to have to make sure you have duplicates of the duplicates? So if we can start to look at the state of this coming from our machinery, and use that as a predictor, then we can use that, and so you have sort of an IoT thing there by looking at the data that's there. But is it feeding back into our normal reporting systems? It's not necessarily like it is from a smartphone are enabled like that. >> No, but it's anticipating a potential outage. >> Sure. >> And avoiding that. Yeah, great. >> Well Mark, thanks so much for coming on The Cube. It was wonderful conversation. >> Thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight with Dave Vellante. We will have more from the CDO Summit just after this. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to The Cube's continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. Day 2, lots of stuff going on. I'm Lisa Martin with my esteemed colleague Dave Vellante. >> Hey hey. >> Hey hey! I'm excited to welcome an old friend, Eric Herzog, the CMO of IBM, as well as Sam Warner offering management IBM software-defined storage. Welcome, guys! >> Well thanks, we always love to be on The Cube, always. >> Dave: Love the shirt. >> Thank you, I'm glad I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt again. >> Dave: Thank you for making sure you wore that, yeah. >> I think it's like my 25th time on The Cube with a Hawaiian shirt. >> Lisa: Oh you're like the Alec Baldwin of The Cube. (laughs) >> Lisa: Alright guys, so here we are- >> Dave: If we have the record, that is the same shirt you wore last year, isn't it? >> Yes, but I did clean it, Dave. (laughs) >> He wears it once a year. >> I've never had to ask anyone about dry cleaning on The Cube but there's a first time for everything. Alright guys, so here we are at VMworld. What's new with IBM and VMware? Kind of talk to us, Eric, from a marketing perspective. What's going on there? >> Sure, well the big thing is IBM and VMware have a very strong alliance across our entire portfolio. The Cloud Division has a big agreement with VMware that was announced with Pat Gelsinger and the head of the division last year, the Storage Division has all kinds of heavy duty integration with our VersaStack product, as well as in all of our all-flash arrays, and then Sam's team brought out a new backup and recovery product, Spectrum Tech Plus, which is optimized for VMware and hypervisor and cloud environments. >> Excellent. And that's one of the things actually thematically that we heard yesterday is that, you know, backup is hot. So tell us a little bit more about that hotness and how you guys are working with VMware to dial that- >> Dial that heat. >> Yeah, dial that heat up. >> Sam: Well it's actually, it's more than backup, right, it's about data availability, and ensuring your data's safe, data's the bloodline of your company now, right? Everything's moving toward cognitive and AI, you can't do that without data. Most of your data's trapped as a backup. And what we're trying to do now is make it really easy for people to get at that data and use it for other purposes. So first of all, making sure you're safe from things like ransomware, but also making sure you can get some value out of that data. Make it very easy to recover that data. >> So, lots of topics that we could cover there, I wonder, did you have one more and I want to jump in. >> I did. Just, Eric from a, as the CMO, from a messaging perspective now we've heard backup is hot, you've just kind of articulated that a little bit more, same with storage. From a conversation perspective, and you talked about the importance of data, Michael Dell talked about that this morning, that the data conversation is a CEO agenda. How is the conversation changing, and the position of IBM changing when you guys are talking to customers that, is backup, is storage a conversation around data that you're having with the C-suite of your customers? >> So, a couple things, and I've done storage for 32 years. EMC, IBM twice, seven startups, and the C-suite hates storage, including the CIO, but they do love their data. So they all know they need storage but when you talk about data, data availability, the resiliency of the data, the data always needs to be there, you don't even use things like data resiliency 'cause the CEO doesn't know what that is, so you need to say, so how'd you like it if you were in Star Trek, and Bones wanded you with a new healthcare wand, and it came back with no answer? (laughs) That's 'cause your storage is not resilient and it's not fast enough. So the data has to be available and it has to be fast. So we're moving to this world where everything is AI and everything is immediate. If your storage goes down and you're in dark trading, you just lost ten million bucks per second. So, but it's all about the data. So basically what we're doing is getting out of the storage conversation and talking about the data conversation. How data is used to optimize their business, and then you weave the storage in underneath as, well as you know if you've got a bad foundation to your building and the earthquake hits, boom. You building falls down. So data is that building, and storage is the foundation on which your data rests. >> I love this conversation, and I think you're right on. The C-suite, they hate storage because it's to them, it's just an expense, but I want to pick up on something that was one of my favorite interviews thus far this year. Believe it or not, it was the interview that you and Burris and Ed Walsh did in our studio in Palo Alto. And I wonder if you could add some color, and then Sam I want you to chime in. What I loved about that interview is you guys talked about digital business and digital business being all about data and how you leverage data. And you said something there, and I want to unpack it a little bit. Storage should not be just a dumb target that is unintelligent. it should be an active element of your data and digital strategy. >> Eric: Right. >> So what did you mean by that and how does IBM make it, storage, an active element of a data strategy? >> So the first thing you want to do is you want to make it all automated. You want to make it transparent to the user. So, whether it's in the healthcare space, I don't care what your business, Herzog's bar and grill? My storage is transparent. Okay I'm running a bar and grill, I don't have time to fool around with the storage. I need it automated, I need it fast, I need to see who's drinking what, how many cigars I can sell, I don't have time to fart around. Right? Storage can make that happen. So you've got certain CPU that's done on the server level or in the virtual machines, and then you've got to have storage that's intelligent. So, we're working on some products we're not ready to announce yet, but we've got some products that have built-in AI into the storage themselves. So things like, you can search in the storage instead of search on the server. How do like, be able to look at metadata and have the storage actually fetch the data not the server fetch the data, so the server's crunching, crunching, crunching, and the storage is smart enough to go grab the data on its own and then bring it to the server. Versus the server having to do that work. So all that's about making data more available, more resilient, and again, having smart storage not dumb storage. >> So Sam, when we were talking about backup it's how you say, it's not just backup, it's more than that. >> Sam: Right. >> Pick up on what Eric just said. How is Spectrum Protect more than just backup and playing into what Eric just talked about? >> Well a lot of things Eric was just talking about you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily going to be able to do all this analysis reporting, analytics on your production data, you don't want to get in the way of your critical workloads, so how can we make copies off to the side where you can do things like analytics, where you can do dev test, quickly build new applications, so we give the ability to have access to that data in a way that's not going to jeopardize your core applications as well. And of course, that data, you can't lose it, right? I mean, you've got to make sure it's protected. So we also offer you a very simple way to protect it, and very rapidly restore it. >> So, let's go through an example or use case. You mentioned ransomware before. >> Yeah. >> So a lot of people think okay I'll create an air gap, but air gap, in and of itself, you know, you watch these Black Hat shows, and they go, "Air gap is a joke. It's easy for me to get through an air gap." >> Sam: Right. >> So how do you deal with that problem? Presumably, you have insights and analytics that can help you identify anomalies, but I wonder if you can address what's the conversation like with your customers and how are you solving a problem like that? >> Well I think there's a lot of stages that would solve it. First of all, there's simple things you can do like have copies that are immutable, so they can't be changed, encryption can't go and encrypt a read-only volume, there is air gapping, which like you said there are ways around that, but then there's also, Eric touched on some of the metadata analysis. If you can find anomalies and changes in the metadata that are unexpected, you can take action and alert an administrator and let them know that something doesn't seem right, so there's a lot more work we're doing to introduce cognitive capabilities that can also detect that. >> One of the things actually that Pat Gelsinger said this morning, and this may have put a smile on your face when you said there's something you can't quite talk to yet is, companies have to integrate AI into their products. And machine learning. >> Eric: So, that's the plan at IBM, and we've already done some of that, we have some products that we've hinted at, that's product code name Harmony, and we've already done a public blog on that, a statement of direction, and that is our first step in implementing AI technology directly into the storage, again it's part of what I talked about a couple weeks ago when I filmed at your Palo Alto office, storage is not dumb anymore. I may be dumb, but storage is not. Storage is smart, storage is intelligent, storage is active not passive, and in the old worlds, when I started doing storage a long time ago, storage was just passive. Just a big brick. It's no longer a brick. It's a brain, and it thinks and it acts, and it relieves the CPU, and the other areas of your IT infrastructure from having to do the work, which is part of the metadata action that Sam talked about that we're working on and also this project Harmony that we talked about, is adding AI intelligence, things like Watson for example, maybe, but I can't quote me on that yet, but maybe we might put Watson inside of our storage, since we happen to own Watson, the dominant AI platform on the planet, we could probably put that into our storage. Maybe we will. >> So there's still a... okay why not? There's still a lot of dumb storage out there though. >> Yes. >> Huge install base. You actually probably sold a lot of it back in the day, so fixing the problem that you created, that's smart marketing. (laughs) But when you talk about the technical debt that exists, how do you go from point A to point B, going from that dumb storage to that active element? What's that conversation like with customers? >> So, it's actually pretty easy. First of all, storage refreshes every three to five years anyway. So now you can say, "Well you know the storage you had only did this, how about if we could do this, this, this or this, and really raise the bar?" The other thing of course is that IBM is the number one storage software company in the world, so anything we do is going to be integrated into the software side of our business, not just embedded in the storage systems we sell. And that software works with everyone's arrays. So that, if you will, artificial intelligence that we can bring to bear in an IBM Storwize or flash systems would also work on an EMC VNX2, would also work on a Dell Compellent, would also work on an HP 3PAR, would also work on this guy, that guy, and the other guy, because we are the number one storage software company in the world, for the guys that track the numbers, and all of this is being implemented into the software layer, which means it'll work with the other guys' gear. So we can take the old stuff I used to do at the evil machine company and make that stuff smart. >> What do you mean when you say you're the number one software company, because when you worked for that company you guys would always tell me, us as analysts, "Look, we don't really have any hardware engineers any more, we spend all our time on software, so we're a software company." You're talking about something different today, you guys leaned in to software to find, you've put your chips in, you did your billion dollar Steve Mills bet, what does it mean today to be a software company in storage? >> So for us, let's take all of our storage systems for example, FlashSystem V9 comes with Spectrum virtualized software, which works with over 400 arrays that aren't IBM logo. That software comes on that system. FlashSystem A9000 comes with Spectrum Accelerate, which is a scale-out block infrastructure that works both on-premise and in the cloud. Again, not just with our own gear. So we basically decided that, do we want to sell the full system solution? Sure we do. But if we sell the software only, that's fine with us, and remember, most of the big shops in IBM is exceedingly strong, enterprise to the Global Fortune 1000, and the Global Fortune 1000 down to those sort of, you know, one billion dollar company and up, most of them are heterogeneous anyway, so you're, if you're smart, and we think we are at IBM, to this effect, we made sure our software works with everybody else's gear. Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus will back up any storage from any vendor, old or new, will go to any tape drive, will go to any cloud, we can automatically back up to the cloud, will automatically go to an object store, not just to our own object store, but other object stores. Will automatically go to disk or flash, so we've made it completely heterogeneous and, if you will, media and technology independent. And we're doing that across the board with all the IBM storage software. >> So that compatibility matrix, if I can call it that, is very important, has always been important in the storage business, but I feel like it's insufficient in today's cloud world. And let me tell you, explain what I mean and get your reaction. I'll start with Sam. So we've been talking all week about the imperative to not try to reform your business and bring it to the cloud, but rather to shape the cloud and bring cloud services to your data. And that's the right model, and now part of that, a big part of that, a huge part of that is simplicity. So we're here at VMworld, we're talking about backup and data protection, simplicity is fundamental. What are you guys doing in that regard, generally and specifically with regard to Spectrum Protect? >> Yeah, I think what you want is a very simple way to do data protection, and a methodology to do data protection that's consistent between your applications that you're running in your own data center and what you're running in the cloud. So you don't want to find out that, yeah your traditional applications that you've been you know, running in your data center for years are all protected, but it turns out all the new applications being built out on the cloud don't have the same rigor, aren't following the same standards, you're breaking your governance models, and you're at risk. So what you want is a simple way to manage both sides, you want a simple dashboard that gives you visibility to the entire environment in one space, so you know I've got 2,000 VMs, 1,800 of them are backed up, two of them aren't backed up, oh those are in the cloud, somebody didn't set it up correctly. You want to be able to see it very easily on a simple dashboard, and that's what we're bringing with Spectrum Protect Plus. >> Speaking of simple, Eric, last question to you, as the CMO, how do you make this message simple for a C-suite to comprehend and understand and help take them to the next level for them? >> Well for us, we don't even talk storage anymore. We just talk data, applications, their workloads and their use cases. That's it, and then you bring storage up underneath it, again it's the foundation of your data infrastructure, your data is the primary building, but if you don't have a solid foundation and, being from Silicon Valley and being from the '89 earthquake, when the earthquake hits, if you have a solid foundation, the building stays up, if you don't the building falls down. So, we lead with data, data, data, ease of use, simplicity, but really focus on what's your application, what's the workload you're trying to accomplish, what's the use case you need. And when you do it that way, you take the discussion away from being, "You're a storage guy." It's, "You're the data guy. You're the business guy." And that's how you have to pitch it. >> I like that. Hashtag data data data you heard it here first. (laughs) Eric and Sam, thank you so much for joining us on The Cube, I wish you best of luck and we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open for what's coming with AI and machine learning. Thank you for watching The Cube, continuing coverage live from VMworld 2017 Day 2, I'm Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante. Stick around, we've got more great conversations coming right back up. (upbeat music)

from the noise it's the cube covering vmworld 2015 brought to you by vmware and it's ecosystem sponsors and now your host dave vellante we're back at Moscone everybody this is the cube SiliconANGLE Wikibon it's continuous production of vmworld 2015 we're riding the data wave Eric Harris dog is here he's a vice president marketing IBM storage in the Hawaiian shirt great to see you again my friend well Dave thank you very much as I keep telling people it's not about data lakes people have oceans a day to these days yes I oceans a day to dos today that oceans a data now so what's the story get the Hawaiian shirt on what do you got going on across the straw our big thing really is oceans of data so between all the solutions we have from a storage solution set a platform computing environment our joint deal that we do with Cisco with what we call the versus stack and our spectrum family of software now our customers are saying everything's going digital and it doesn't matter whether you're a global enterprise a midsize company or even an SMB with everything going digital it isn't about lakes of data it's about oceans of data so let's start maybe at the versus stack as a hyper converge is sort of taken the world by storm you're seeing vmware's obviously talking about it you got a bunch of startups talking about it when you guys made the move to to sell the the server business the x86 server business to lenovo BNT the acquisition of B&C went with it opened up whole new opportunities for IBM from a partnership standpoint and one of the first guys you went to a cisco so talk about that well we've had a great partnership with Cisco we deliver the versus tak through our mutual channel partners so globally so we have channel partners in all of the gos that are selling the versus stack solution we started originally with our v7000 product which allows us to not only provide a strong mid to your offering but because of our integration of our spectrum virtualized actually will virtualize heterogeneous torso over 300 arrays from our competitors can be virtualized giving any data center or cloud deployment single way to replicate single way to snapshot and of course a single way actually my great dinner which is a huge issue obviously in big deployment well and the same volume controller was really the first platform to do that that was the right gold standard and the whole the original you know tier 1 tier two storage sort of was defined by the sand volume controller kept really now you've built those capabilities into an end to the array so we started with our v7000 storwize was the first with a versus tack we announced last week two new versions one hour v nine thousand which incorporates that same value of the sand volume controller but an all-flash array okay that product is been incredibly successful for us we have thousands of customers we have deployed more petabytes than anyone in the industry and more units than anyone in the issue for you know some of those analysts that track the number side of the business we've done more than any pricing it right is what you're telling me we are definitely pricing it right we do north petabytes more minutes and more units than anybody by far but not the most revenue second most revenue so you well we're a fair price for a fair job as opposed to a high price for okay job that's what we believe in delivering more value for the money so we've got that so that opens up heavy virtualized environments heavy cloud environments big data analytics all those applications were all flash high-end Oracle deployments SP Hana configs all those sort of things are ideal same time you brought in the v5000 at the lower entry place of the mid-tier and it's with the UCS mini from Cisco so it gives you a lower entry price and allows a couple things one you can go in department until deployments a big enterprise to you can go into remote office deployments and also of large enterprise but three it allows you to take the value of a converged infrastructure down into smaller customers because it's a lower entry price point it's got all the value of the virtualization engine we have in all of our V family of products that v5 to be seven in the v9 all flash but it's at a much lower price point with a lower cost UCS mini and a lower cost switch infrastructure from from Cisco so it's a great solution for those big offices but again remote and department level and ideal though to move converged infrastructure down into smaller companies so so cisco has been incredibly successful with that space when Cisco first came out I a misunderstood I said how they going to fall flat in their face and servers and I was totally wrong about that because I didn't understand that they were trying to change the game what's it like partnering with those guys and how is it added value to your business well it's been very strong for us one they've got an excellent channel two they have a great direct sales model as does IBM three we've been partnering them for ages and ages and ages in fact in the 90s we sold a bunch of our networking technology to Cisco and is now deployed by Cisco so some of the networking technology at Cisco puts out there to the to their end users to their channel partners into you know their big telcos that actually came from IBM when we sold our networking division to Cisco in the mid-90s so strong partnership ever since then so let's talk more about the portfolio particularly i'm sickly interested in the whole TSM vs TSM came over to the storage group which thrilled me i think there was a great move by IBM to do that whoever made that decision smart move how has that affected having that storage software capability embedded into the storage business how has that affected your ability to go to market well it's been great so that's our spectrum family there are six elements to that spectrum protect which used to be TSM spectrum control which used to be the tsc product spectrum virtualized which is a software version of the sand volume controller so you can get as a software-only solution spectrum archive spectrum accelerate which is a scale-out block solution think of it as a software version of our XIV platform but software only and spectrum scale which gives incredible scale-out nas capability in fact spectrum scale has a number of customers in the enterprise side not in the HPC market but in global enterprises over 100 petabytes and we even have one customer that has one exabyte in production under spectrum scale exabyte one exabyte in production and not an hpc customer or not not one of the big universities not one of the think tanks but a commercial large global fortune 500 company we an exabyte with spectrum scale so so talk a little bit more about the strategy I think people all times misunderstand IBM's approach they say okay IBM getting out of the hardware business which they think Inferno must get another storage business you're not get out of the storage business obviously they hired hogging store oh so talk more about the strategy and how you're you know pursuing that yeah well I'd say a couple things so first of all our commitment to storage is very strong we're investing a billion in all flash technology and a billion in spectrum software in addition to our normal engineering development for our store wise family and our other members of our products that we've already had so a billion extra in flash and a billion extra in our software family in addition to that we've got a method of consumption that we're looking at so some end users want a full storage solution our ds8000 our flash systems are storwize some customers want to move to the software-defined storage and in several cases such as XIV software only spectrum virtualize okay we've got a number of different ways that you can consume the product and then lastly in several of the products such as spectrum scale spectrum accelerate and a lite version of spectrum control that we call spectrum control storage insights available through a cloud consumption model so if the customer wants a comprehensive solution we have it if the customer wants software-defined storage we have it if the customer wants integrated infrastructure with our vs stack we have it and if the customer wants a cloud storage model of consumption we have that too and quite honestly we think in bigger accounts they may have multiple consumption models for example core data center might go for a full storage solution but guess what the cloud solutions would be ideal for a remote or branch office so talk to me more about the cloud you're talking about the SoftLayer we here we go to the IBM shows you a soft layer of bluemix you know so a lot of money or the devops crowd what's going on bactrim accelerate spectrum scale and spectrum control are all available as a soft layer offering they are not targeting test and Dev they are not targeting you know just the bluemix out these are targeting core data center they could be testing dev or they could be remote office branch office opportunities for large enterprises that want to spend a full storage solution and spend that money on the core data center but for the remote office have spectrum scale delivered over softlayer an ideal solution and various consumption models which ever fits their need so David flora just wrote a piece on Wikibon calm of talking about latency and capacity storage at a very high level sort of segmenting the market those ways it's sort of sizing it up and projecting some of the trends and obviously latency storage he's thinking you know more flash oriented capacity storage more more disk spinning disk and tape is that a reasonable way to look at the business and how does it apply to your portfolio so we do think that's a reasonable way to look at it you have if you will a performance segment and a capacity segment depending the number of things that people need to really look at when they buy storage first of all I'm a storage guy for 30 years no one cares about storage it's all about the data it's all about the data that your storage optimizes it's about the workload the activation the use case for me I do too but unfortunately almost every time you know see how it's going to say almost every CIO is a software guy so it's how does the storage optimize my software environment and that's what's critical to them so we see certain applications that are very performance exit certain SLA s they need to meet we have some that are medium sensitive and we have some that of course are very capacity oriented which is our spectrum scale one exabyte with a single customer now that's capacity that's an ocean of data but we also have solutions we're able to put it together so for example in a lot of data analytics workloads that would run in spectrum scale we actually sell a lot of our all flash flash systems use the flash to ingest the data use flash to manage the metadata use the flash to run the search engine in a big giant config such as that and when you're running an analytics workload you run the analytics workload on that flash yet you're really doing a very large deployment hundreds of petabytes to an exabyte with our spectrum scale so we see if you will a continuum and the key thing as IBM offers all of the various piece parts to any level of the continuum and in that example I just gave combining high performance and deep high capacity software in a single solution to meet a business I mean IBM is an unbelievable company think about Watson cloud bluemix the analytics business deep deep heavy rd z mainframe so you got all the pieces how is the storage business how can it better leverage those other pieces and and is it or is it is it relevant or is it just just take the storage hill so we see our storage products as integrating with our other so for example we do a lot of deals where they buy a mainframe in our ds8000 sure we offer integrated infrastructure not only with cisco but actually with the power family as well it's called pure power and that has an integrated v7000 with a power server and we're looking at deepening that relationship as well a lot of analytics were lot alex workloads going scale so whether they buy the big insights whether they use in Watson we've got several customers use Watson but by flash systems because it's obviously very compute intensive so they use flash systems to do that so you know we fit in at the same time we have plenty of customers that don't buy anything else from IBM and just buy storage so we are appealing to a very broad audience those that are traditional IBM shops that by a lot of different products from IBM and those that go in fact one of our public references general mills they had not bought anything from any division of IBM for 50 years and one of our channel partners in Minnesota we are able to get in there with our XIV product and now not only do they buy XIV and some spectrum protect for backup but they've actually started to buy some other technology from IBM and for 50 years they bought nothing from IBM from any division so in that case storage led the way so again in certain accounts we're in there with the ds8000 and Z or were in there with Watson and flash systems and other accounts were pioneering and in some cases we're the only product they buy they don't buy from IBM we will meet whichever need they have now in periods in the last I mean it's been Evan flow in the storage business for IBM periods the last decade IBM deep rd but the products couldn't seem to go to market now you shared with me under under NDA so we can't talk about it in detail but shared with me the roadmap and and the product roadmap is accelerating from release maybe it's just my impression from what I'm used to should we expect to see a much more you know steady cadence of product delivery from IBM going forward absolutely so keeping in our spirit of oceans we ride the wave we don't fight the way and in today's era in any era of high-tech not just in store it doesn't matter whether storage whether its servers whether it's web to know whatever it is it's all about innovation and doing it quickly so we're going to ride that wave of innovation we're going to have a regular cadence of releases we released four different members of spectrum plus two verses stocks and next quarter you'll see five really five major product releases in one quarter and then in q1 you're going to see another three so we're making sure that as this trajectory of innovation hits all of high tech in all segments that IBM storage is not going to be left behind and we're going to continue to innovate on an accelerated pace that pace is is really important you know IBM again spends a lot of money on R&D it's key to get that product into the pipeline let's talk about vmware and vmworld obviously we're here at vmworld so on vmware very important constituency a lot of customers you got a you got to talk to vmware if you want to be in the data center today what is your strategy around vmware specifically but also generally as it relates to multi cloud environments whether it's your own cloud or other clouds OpenStack or what if you could talk about those so let's take virtualization first so we support a number of different hypervisors we support VMware extensively we support hyper-v we support kvm we support ovm we support open initiatives like OpenStack cinder we support Hadoop we have Hadoop connectors in many of our products so whether it's a cloud deployment or a virtual deployment we want to make sure we support everybody for example spectrum protect was announced last week with support for softlayer as a target device basically a tier well guess what in 1h we're going to support amazon and as you're not just softlayer so again we want to make sure we support everything with VMware specifically for the first time ever VMware has invited IBM storage on stave at three questions iBM has done things in the server world in the past but we have never ever ever been invited by VMware to their technical sessions in fact when is it five o'clock today it's called Project capstone which they publicly announced last week and it's about deploying Oracle environments in VMware virtualization it's a partnership with VMware with IBM flash systems all flash and with HP superdome servers and that's going to be on stage at five o'clock today here at moscone center awesome so we're starting to see a tighter relationship with with VMware building out the portfolio what do you say to the customer says yeah I hear you but vmware's doing all this sort of interesting stuff around things like v san what do you what do you tell a customer you know what about that so we see the San as it you know in this era of behemoths everyone is your partner everyone is your competitor but we work with Intel all the time other divisions of IBM think Intel's a major competitor some of our server division work with some of our storage competitors so we think you know we will work with everyone and while we work with VMware a number of angles so if he sounds a little bit of a competitor that's fine and we see an open space for all of the solutions in the market today we got to leave it there the last question so take us through sort of your objectives for IBM storage over the you know near and midterm what do you what should we be well so our big thing is to make sure we keep the cadence up there's so much development going on whether that be in software defined and integrated infrastructure in all flash in all the areas that we are going to make sure that we continue to develop in every area we've got the billion dollars in all flash in the billion dollars in software to find we are going to spend it and we're going to bring those products to market that fit the need so that the oceans of data that everyone is dealing with can be handled appropriately cost-effectively and quite honestly that oceans of data it's about the business value of the data not the storage underneath so we're going to make sure that for all those oceans a data we will allow them to drive real business value and make sure that those data oceans are protected meet their SLA s and are always available to their end user base I love it yet the Steve Mills billion-dollar playbook obviously worked in Linux it was well over a billion in analytics business IBM's a leader they're applying it to flash great acquisition of Texas memory systems you become a leader they're now going after the software to find Eric Herzog thanks very much for coming to the cubes great very much we love to have all right everybody will be back with our next guest right after this World we're live from vmworld and Moscone keep right there you

>>The cube at IBM. Impact 2014 is brought to you by headline sponsor. IBM. Here are your hosts, John furrier and Paul Gillin. >>Hey, welcome back everyone. This is Silicon angle's the cube. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events district as soon from the noise. We're ending out day two of two days of wall to wall coverage with myself and Paul Galen. Uh, 10 to six 30 every day. I'm just, we'll take as much as we can just to get the data. Share that with you. Restrict the signal from the noise. I'm John furrier the bonus look at angle Miko is Paul Gilliam and our special guests, Holger Mueller, Mueller from constellation research analyst covering the space. Ray Wang was here earlier. You've been here for the duration. Um, we're going to break down the event. We'll do a wrap up here. Uh, we have huge impact event for 9,000 people. Uh, Paul, I want to go to you first and get your take on just the past two days. And we've got a lot of Kool-Aid injection attempts for Kool-Aid injection, but IBM people were very, very candid. I mean, I didn't find it, uh, very forceful at all from IBM. They're pragmatic. What's your thoughts on it? >>I think pragmatism is, is what I take away, John, if it gets a good, that's a good word for it. Uh, what I saw was a, uh, not a blockbuster. Uh, there was not a lot of, of, uh, of hype and overstatement about what the company was doing. I was impressed with Steve mills, but our interview with him yesterday, we asked about blockbuster acquisitions and he said basically, why, why, I mean, why should we take on a big acquisition that is going to create a headache, uh, for us in integrating into your organization? Let's focus on the spots where we have gaps and let's fill those. And that's really what they've, you know, they really have put their money where their mouth is and doing these 150 or more acquisitions over the last, uh, three or four years. Um, I think that the, the one question that I would have, I don't think there's any doubt about IBM's commitment to cloud as the future about their investment in big data analytics. They certainly have put their money where their mouth is. They're over $25 billion invested in big data analytics. One question I have coming out of this conference is about power and about the decision to exit the x86 market and really create confusion in a part of their business partners, their customers about about how they're going to fill that gap and where are they going to go for their actually needs and the power. Clearly power eight clearly is the future. It's the will fill that role in the IBM portfolio, but they've got to act fast. >>Do you think there's a ripple effect then so that that move I'll see cause a ripple effect in their ecosystem? >>Well, I was talking to a, I've talked to two IBM partners today, fairly large IBM partners and both of them have expressed that their customers are suffering some whiplash right now because all of a sudden the x86 option from IBM has gone away. And so it's frozen there. Their purchasing process and some of them are going to HP, some of them are looking at other providers. Um, I don't think IBM really has has told a coherent story to the markets yet about how >>and power's new. So they've got to prop that up. So you, so you're saying is okay, HP is going to get some new sales out of this, so frozen the for IBM and yet the power story's probably not clear. Is that what you're hearing? >>I don't think the power story is clear. I mean certainly it was news to me that IBM is taking on Intel at the, at this event and I was surprised that, that, >>that that was a surprise. Hold on, I've got to go to you because we've been sitting here the Cuban, we've been having all the execs come here and we've been getting briefed here in the cube. Shared that with the audience. You've been out on the ground, we've bumped into you guys, all, all the other analysts and all the briefings you've been in, the private sessions you've been in the rooms you've been, you've been, you've been out, out in the trenches there. What have you, what are you finding, what have you been hearing and what are the, some of the soundbites that you could share with the audience? It's not the classic God, Yemen, what are the differences? >>The Austin executives in cloud pedal, can you give me your body language? He had impact one year ago because they didn't have self layer at a time, didn't want to immediately actionable to do something involving what? A difference things. What in itself is fine, but I agree with what you said before is the messaging is they don't tell the customers, here's where we are right now. Take you by the hand. It's going to be from your door. And there's something called VMs. >>So it's very interesting. I mean I would consider IBM finalized the acquisition only last July. It's only been nine months since was acquired. Everything is software now. It leads me to think of who acquired who IBM acquired a software or did soflar actually acquire IBM because it seems to, SoftLayer is so strategic. IBM's cloud strategy going forward. >>Very strategic. I think it's probably why most transformative seemed like the Nexans agenda. And you've heard me say assault on a single thing. who makes it seven or eight weeks ago? It's moving very far. >>What do you think about the social business? Is that hanging together, that story? Hang on. It's obviously relevant direction. It's kind of a smarter planet positioning. Certainly businesses will be social. Are you seeing any meat on the bone there? On the collaboration side, >>one of the weakest parts, they have to be built again. Those again, they also have an additional for HR, which was this position, this stuff. It's definitely something which gives different change. >>I have to say, John, I was struck by the lack of discussion of social business in the opening keynote in particular a mobile mobile, big data. I mean that that came across very clear, but I've been accustomed to hearing that the social business rugby, they didn't, it didn't come out of this conference. >>Yeah. I mean my take on that was, is that >>I think it's pretty late. I don't think there's a lot of meat in the bone with the social, and I'll tell you why. I think it's like it's like the destination everyone wants to go to, but there's no really engine yet. Right. I think there's a lot of bicycle riding when they need a car. Right? So the infrastructure is just not is too embryonic, if you will. A lot of manual stuff going on. Even the analytics and you know you're seeing in the leaderboard here in the social media side and big data analytics. Certainly there are some core engine parts around IBM, but that social engine, I just don't see it happening. You risk requires a new kind of automation. It's got some real times, but I think that this is some, some nice bright spots. I love the streams. I love this zone's concept that we heard from Watson foundations. >>I think that is something that they need to pull out the war chest there and bring that front and center. I think the thinking about data as zones is really compelling and then I'll see mobile, they've got all the messaging on that and to give IBM to the benefit of the doubt. I mean they have a story now that they have a revenue generating story with cloud and with big data and social was never a revenue generating story. That's a software story. It's not big. It's not big dollars. And they've got something now that really they're really can drive. >>I'll tell you Chris Kristin from mobile first. She was very impressive and, and I'll tell you that social is being worked on. So I put the people are getting it. I mean IBM 100% gets social. I think the, the, it's not a gimmick to them. It's not like, Oh, we got some social media stuff. I think in the DNA of their soul, they, they come from that background of social. So I give them high marks on that. I just don't see the engine yet. I'm looking for analytics. I'm looking for a couple of eight cylinders. I just don't see it yet. You know, the engine, the engines, lupus and she wants to build the next generation of education. Big data, tons of mobile as the shoulder equivalent to social. I'm skeptical. I'm skeptical on Bloomix. I'll tell you why. I'm not skeptical. I shouldn't say that. >>It's going to get some plane mail for that. Okay. I'll say I'll see what's out there. I'll say it. I'm skeptical of Blumix because it could be a Wright brothers situation. Okay, look, I'm wrong guys building the wrong airplane. So the question is they might be on the wrong side of history if they don't watch the open source foundations because here's the problem. I have a blue mix, gets rushed to the market. Certainly IBM has got muscle solutions together. No doubt debting on cloud Foundry is really a risk and although people are pumping it up and it's got some momentum, they don't have a big community, they have a lot of marketing behind it and I know Jane's Wars over there is doing a great job and I'm Josh McKinsey over there with piston cloud. It'll behind it. It has all the elements of open collaboration and architecture or collaboration. However, if it's not a done deal yet in my mind, so that's a, that is a risk factor in my my mind. >>We've met a number of amazing, maybe you can help to do, to put these in order, a number of new concepts out there. We've got Bloomex the soft player, and we've got the marketplace, and these are all three concepts that approval, which is a subset of which, what's the hierarchy of these different platforms? >>That's hopefully, that's definitely at the bottom. The gives >>us visibility. You talk about the CIO and CSI all the time. Something you securities on every stupid LCO one on OCS and the marketplace. Basically naming the applications. Who would folded? IBM. IBM would have to meet opensource platform as a service. >>Well, it's not, even though it's not even open source and doing a deal with about foundries, so, so they've got, I think they're going in the middle. Where's their angle on that? But again, I like, again, the developer story's good, the people are solid. So I think it's not a fail of my, in my mind that all the messaging is great. But you know, we went to red hat summit, you know, they have a very active community, multiple generations in the data center, in the Indiana prize with Linux and, and open, you know, they're open, open shift is interesting. It's got traction and it's got legit traction. So that's one area. The other area I liked with Steve mills was he's very candid about this turf. They're staking out. Clearly the cloud game is up, is there is hardcore for them and in the IBM flavor enterprise cloud, they want to win the enterprise cloud. They clearly see Amazon, they see Amazon and its rhetoric and Grant's narrative and rhetoric against Amazon was interesting saying that there's more links on SoftLayer and Amazon. Now if you count links, then I think that number is skewed. So it's, you know, there's still a little bit of gamification going to have to dig into that. I didn't want to call him out on that, but know there's also a hosting business versus, you know, cloud parse the numbers. But what's your take on Amazon soft layer kind of comparison. >>It's, it's fundamentally different, right? Mustn't all shows everything. Why did see retailers moves is what to entirely use this software, gives them that visibility machine, this accommodation more conservatively knowing that I buy them, I can see that I can even go and physically touch that machine and I can only did the slowly into any cloud virtualization shed everything. >>Oh, Paul, I gotta say my favorite interview and I want to get your take on this. It was a Grady food. She was sat down with us and talk with us earlier today. IBM fell up, walks on water with an IBM Aussie legend in the computer industry. Just riveting conversation. I mean, it was really just getting started. I mean, it felt like we were like, you know, going into cruising altitude and then he just walked away. So they w what's your take on that conversation? >>Well, I mean, certainly he, uh, the gritty boujee interview, he gave us the best story of, of the two days, which is, uh, they're being in the hospital for open heart surgery, looking up, seeing the equipment, and it's going to be used to go into his chest and open his heart and knowing that he knows the people who program that, that equipment and they programmed it using a methodology that he invented. Uh, that, that, that's a remarkable story. But I think, uh, uh, the fact that that a great igloo can have a job at a company like IBM is a tribute to IBM. The fact that they can employ people like that who don't have a hard revenue responsibility. He's not a P. and. L, he's just, he's just a genius and he's a legend and he's an IBM to its crude, finds a place for people like that all throughout his organization. >>And that's why they never lost their soul in my opinion. You look at what HP and IBM, you know, IBM had a lot of reorganizations, a lot of pivots, so to speak, a lot of battleship that's turned this in way. But you know, for the most part they kept their R and D culture. >>But there's an interesting analogy too. Do you remember the case methodology was mutual support of them within the finance language that you mailed something because it was all about images, right? You would use this, this methodology, different vendors that were prior to the transport itself. Then I've yet to that credit, bring it together. bring and did a great service to all for software engineering. And maybe it's the same thing at the end, can play around diversity. >>You've got to give IBM process a great point. Earlier we, Steve mills made a similar reference around, it wasn't animosity, it was more of Hey, we've helped make Intel a big business, but the PC revolution, you know, where, what's in it for us? Right? You know, where's our, you know, help us out, throw us a bone. Or you know, you say you yell to Microsoft to go of course with the licensing fee with Gates, but this is the point, the unification story and with grays here, you know IBM has some real good cultural, you know industry Goodwill, you agree >>true North for IBM is the Antal quest customer. They'll do what's right where the money and the budget of the enterprise customers and press most want compatibility. They don't want to have staff, of course they want to have investment protection >>guys. I'd be able to do a good job of defining that as their cloud strategy that clearly are not going head to head with Amazon. It's a hybrid cloud strategy. They want to, they see the enterprise customers that legacy as as an asset and it's something they want to build on. Of course the risk of that is that Amazon right now is the pure play. It has all the momentum. It has all the buzz and and being tied to a legacy is not always the greatest thing in this industry, but from a practical revenue generating standpoint, it's pretty good. >>Hey guys, let's go down and wrap up here and get your final thoughts on the event. Um, and let's just go by the numbers, kind of the key things that IBM was promoting and then our kind of scorecard on kind of where they, where they kind of played out and new things that popped out of the woodwork that got your attention. You see the PO, the power systems thing was big on their messaging. Um, the big data story continues to be part of it. Blue mix central to the operations and the openness. You had a lot of open, open openness in their messaging and for the most part that's pretty much it. Um, well Watson, yeah, continue. Agents got up to Watson. >>Wow. A lot of news still to come out of Watson I think in many ways that is their, is their ACE in the hole and then that is their diamond. Any other thoughts? >>Well, what I missed is, which I think sets IBM apart from this vision, which is the idea of the API. Everybody else at that pure name stops the platform or says, I'm going to build like the org, I'm going to build you. That's a clear differentiator on the IBM side, which you still have to build part. They still have to figure out granularity surface that sets them apart that they have to give one. >>Yeah, and I think I give him an a plus on messaging. I think they're on all the right fault lines on the tectonic shifts that we're seeing. Everyone, I asked every every guest interview, what's the game changing moment? Why is it so important? And almost consistently the answers were, you know, we're living in a time of fast change data, you know, efficiency spare or you're going to be left behind. This is the confluence of all these trends, these fall lines. So I think IBM is sitting on these fall lines. Now the question is how fast can they cobbled together the tooling from the machineries that they have built over the years. Going back to the mainframe anniversary, it's out there. A lot of acquisitions, but, but so far the story and the story >>take the customer by the hand. That's the main challenge. I see. This wasn't often we do in Mexico, they want zero due to two times or they're chilling their conferences. It's the customer event and you know, and it's 9,000 people somehow have to do something to just show, right? So why is my wave from like distinguished so forth and so and so into? Well Lou mentioned, sure for the cloud, but how do we get there, right? What can we use, what am I SS and leverage? How do I call >>guys, really appreciate the commentary. Uh, this is going to be a wrap for us when just do a shout out to Matt, Greg and Patrick here doing a great job with the production here in the cube team and we have another cube team actually doing a simultaneous cube up in San Francisco service. Now you guys have done a great job here. And also shout out to Bert Latta Moore who's been doing a great job of live tweeting and help moderate the proud show, which was really a huge success and a great crowd chat this time. Hopefully we'll get some more influencers thought leaders in there for the next event and of course want to thank Paul Gillen for being an amazing cohost on this trip. Uh, I thought the questions and the and the cadence was fantastic. The guests were happy and hold there. Thank you for coming in on our wrap up. >>Really appreciate it. Constellation research. Uh, this is the cube. We are wrapping it up here at the IBM impact event here live in Las Vegas. It's the cube John furrier with Paul Gillen saying goodbye and see it. Our next event and stay tuned if it's look at angel dot DV cause we have continuous coverage of service now and tomorrow we will be broadcasting and commentating on the Facebook developer conference in San Francisco. We're running here, Mark Zuckerberg and all Facebook's developers and all their developer programs rolling out. So watch SiliconANGLE TV for that as well. Again, the cube is growing with thanks to you watching and thanks to all of our friends in the industry. Thanks for watching..