>> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley. HOLLOWAY ALTO, California It is a cube conversation >> high on Peter Birds and welcome to another cube conversation from our beautiful Palo Alto studios. One of the things that makes a cube so exciting as we get great guest from great companies coming on here and talking about some of their new products that they're trying to get in the marketplace of customers Khun Doom or with their technology. And we've got that today. Eric Herzog, cmon VP of worldwide storage channels that IBM storage. He's here to talk about some new things that IBM is doing that especially relevant to high performance, closer, more down market, branch oriented kinds of applications. Eric, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you, Peter. Really appreciate. Very excited to be with Cuba's Always. >> All right, So what? Start Give us the quick business update and IBM, And let's talk about how that inform some of the new announcement. You >> sure? So two thousand eighteen was a great year for IBM storage. Lots of new introductions and portfolio continue with our multi cloudiness. Everything we've doing now for seven years, all about my multi cloud hybrid private, multiple public cloud providers would continue that mantra. You always something very interesting from a storage array system level perspective brought out extensive portfolio around Envy Me the newest high performance protocol, both inside of a storage array and connecting a storage rate into a network fabric for storage. >> Now let's talk about that. Envy me because envy Me has been associate ID a little bit more higher and stuff. Some of the new things you're doing are bringing envy me and related classes of technology flash to a new class of workload. New class of Hugh's case. Tell us about it. >> Absolutely so what we're doing is bringing out the >> brand new >> refresh store wise portfolio. We start with R V seven thousand, which has envy me both inside the array and support for envy him Over Fibre channel. We have our fifty one hundred just below that, also supporting Envy me in the storage system. We're bringing out a new version of our fifty thirty called the fifty thirty at the very entry space are fifty tenny. These solutions all deliver dramatic performance gains but incredible price discounts as well. For example, the fifty ten e is not only twice as fast as the older fifty ten, but it happens to be up to twenty five percent less expensive. More for the money. That's the key watchword in the store. Wai's family. >> So tell us a little bit more about the fifty Tenney. What kind of use you love talking about applications, workload? Use cases? What kinds of applications were close use cases Are we talking about? >> So we've done a couple things. So first of all, we're leading with all flash across the portfolio. Yes, we still sell hybrids and hard drive a ways, and we'LL still do that in the fifty Tenney, for example. So if you're using hard drive, raise backup in archive work loads. Of course. Now, when using all flash arrays in a smaller shop, it could be your primary storage. Herzog's Barn Grill. That might be the great way to go when you're thinking more of the broader enterprises. It's great for edge. So branches of a bank, all of the outlets of a retail location and even a core data center. Not every workload is even not every data set is even so. Certain things need more expensive arrays and other ways you can go with an entry product. Still deliver the availability, the reliability of the performance you need, but you don't need to spend the most amount of money and stories gives you. That breath gives you the right price point the right software, and it even gives you six nines of availability, which is only thirty one seconds of downtime in a full year on an entry product. That's incredible. >> Well, I would think that the fifty thirty he would be especially relevant for some of those scale at work loves. Tell us about that. >> So in the fifty thirty, we can scale out into two note cluster up to thirty two petabytes, but we start small. You could get it at twelve. Same thing two. Ex Performance. Up to thirty percent less money and all of the store West family comes with our award winning Spectrum Virtualized software, which delivers enterprise class data services. Such a snapshot replication data rest, encryption, tearing, migration, et cetera, et cetera, not only for IBM store wise portfolio, but actually could work with over four hundred fifty raise, most of which are not ours. Great value for the money. Great software and bring better performance at a lower price. The fifty thirty and the whole portfolio includes our spectrum virtually software family. >> Now that's important because as we think about that, the relationship between these and other IBM or other products in the portfolio and multi cloud I know there's some work that's being done there tell us a bit about some of the some of the new updates that you've made. How that spectrum family is becoming even more relevant in the multi club so >> well, when you look at the whole family, everything in the spectrum family has heavy clarification in a multi cloud environment. Let's take spectrum protect not new from an announcement perspective of what we're doing and what we're launching on what we're doing from a new perspective. But it's been ableto backup to the cloud for years. In fact, over three hundred fifty cloud providers use spectrum protect as the engine further back. Oppa's a service portfolio Spectrum virtualized Computer Club. But we also have spectrum virtualized for public cloud that allows you to do staff shot replication only for IBM arrays, but for competitive a raise out to a public loud and even supports a rhe air gapping with a snapshot so you don't have to worry about ransomware malware, that's all. With Spectrum Virtualized family are spectrum sale product can automatically tear to the cloud IBM clad object storage could go from on premise toe off premise. So the big thing we've done with all of our portfolio, the software and then the arrays that sit on it when the case of spectrum protect backup is make sure we can work with any and almost every single cloud in the industry. Whether it's a big cloud like IBM Cloud, Amazon or Microsoft or a small cloud provider, you may want to use a local cloud provider depending on where you're located, not use one of the big club fighters. We work with that cloud provider to, But you made >> some made some special for spectrum virtual eyes. I mean spectrum virtualized. You're adding a new brother to the portfolio >> so that spectrum virtualized Republic Cloud. We first brought it out on IBM Cloud only. It now supports a ws. We know customers multi cloud most end users and you guys have written about it extensively at Weeki Bond in the Cube and silicon angle. That and users will not use one public loud. They will have four, five, six different public clouds. So spectrum virtualized republic loud delivers to onsite arrays. All the capability spectrum virtualized for public cloud sits in a V m wear virtualized in stand station out of the public cloud provider. Giving all those enterprise class functionalities and allowing us to move data back and forth to IBM. Cloud allows to move data back and forth to an Amazon cloud not only first store wise but also for again over four hundred fifty Raise that aren't ours using the spectrum virtualized software. So that's a great edition. We had it for IBM Cloud now for Amazon. As Republican Stanley first brought it out last year. It will also be extended to more clouds in the future as well. >> So store rise gonna refresh nooooo spectrum virtualized for public cloud Also getting, you know, adding to the portfolio great stuff. How do you anticipate that customers are gonna respond? >> Well, we've already had a great response for those customers we talked to under a non disclosure agreement. Now we're public with this new portfolio. What's not to like? You get extensive software capably spectrum virtualized with our fifty one hundred store wise and are seven thousand stories. Now get thie Envy Me technology, which is white hot performance technology in the storage injury, except at a much lower price point that when our competitors are brought out. So he brought Andrea me high end technology into the entry price point space, which is great. And we also have a nice portfolio that gives you certain products. Accuse the court data center other pranks that you would use the edge like banking and all the locations or in retail. So you're not going to put the most expensive practice. But you have a great six nines of availability, extensive software, twice the performance, and I said up to twenty five percent or thirty percent less, depending on which of our products than the older product. Bigger, faster, better, cheaper. >> So, Eric, let me be one of first congratulate you thie IBM storage journey since you and Ed Assualt have shown up at IBM or come backto idea in some cases has it's been a great thing to watch. You really refreshed portfolio made some great strides and we're getting great feedback from customers about the effort. So congratulations. >> Great. Thank you. And the new store lives is the latest in that and look for more just like we did in two thousand eighteen. Refresh across the plug. There's more coming in the second half here in other elements of our portfolio. >> Great sea IBM back and relevant in storage World Eric Herds on CMO VP of worldwide store channels, IBM Storage Thanks once again for being on the Cube. >> Thank you, Peter on. >> I'm Peter Burroughs. Thanks for listening until next time. Thanks for participating in this cube conversation.

>> Live from New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering, Lenovo Transform 2.0 brought to you by Lenovo. >> Welcome back everyone, we are wrapping up day one of coverage of Lenovo Transform here in New York City I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We have a final guest, Peter Hortensius. He is the Senior Vice President Data Center Group and CTO and Chief of Strategy. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE Peter. >> Well thanks for having me. >> It's your first time. >> I was told, I can't believe after all these years it's my first time but it's my first time. >> It's kind of true. If you're in this industry, we're going to be on a lot more after this, trust me. So, before the cameras were rolling we were talking about how cloud is an outcome not a destination. What do you mean by that? And do you think of that as your perspective, or do you think that that is industry-wide? >> There are people in the industry who do think of it as the destination. "My life will be good when" But the reality is, when I talk to our customers and I talk to your business owners and what they are really looking for. What they are looking for is a way and a method of working. They are looking for, "How do I deploy things quickly? "How do I worry more about, "Can my applications run properly?" not "How many petabytes of storage did I need for this?" or "How many VMs did it take to run that?" And so for us, it's all around trying to provide advice and counsel around that. And we found an interesting statistic that sort of justified things we're hearing from a lot of customers, which is, while everybody has a strategy of what do they get to the cloud, eight out of 10 customers are trying to think about the things they need to bring back. So, it's not just a one-way street, which tells you it's definitely not a destination if people are telling you, "Hey there's a few things I put in there "that may not be the best place for it." >> It's interesting, 'cause in general I'd agree with you. I think we've said it is more of an operating model and there's processes there. When I evaluate companies and analysts, a lot of time it's like, okay. But tell me where your positioning is, if I give you private cloud and public cloud, do you have a real heavy leaning one way or biased towards one or the other? Of course the big public cloud providers tend to lead that way even though most of them are shifting not just all public, but, even Amazon is getting deeper into what we do in private cloud. One of the things I like about Lenovo is, we are talking about hyper-scale, we are talking about HPC, we are talking about all the various pieces. So, in your portfolio of offering, you're selling solutions into the big 10 cloud guys. So, you're not only saying, well, no, public cloud's bad. You have a measured approach to how that looks and I think pragmatic as to how the customer's going to be. >> You're right. We do sell in the six as a top 10 public clouds in the world. Enormous volumes and all the things. So, we understand what it takes to do those environments well. But we also have this huge business. We sell to people on premise and they want to all move to public clouds and private cloud technology and hybrid and multi-cloud and I can give you 100 other acronyms. The challenge is, people just want to run their business and this is, not running my business. This is a cost of doing business. So, for me it's really around, how do we provide them simple ways to get there? And I think Lenovo, because of it's legacy-free heritage we don't have a big business tied up in the old way of doing things. We can be a much more simpler vendor to work with because, okay, you want to take that to the public cloud? I get it, it makes sense. I sell to them, they are my customers, so, I'm still okay. I'm not hung up that, "No, no, no. I really don't think "that's what you want to be doing." And then vice-versa, when they wanted to look at private cloud technologies or hybrid technologies or multi-cloud technologies. Again, I have multiple ways of supporting that because I'm not hung up on why you need to buy this much storage from me of exactly this kind, I'm there. We see way too many of our competitors have a story with their customers. It sounds really good when the executive talks to them but the Regional Sales Manager is going like, "No, no, no. You don't understand. "We got to sell this or I'm done." And, so what happens? They don't sell the new thing. >> One of the challenges customers have is, they tend to do multiple things. They start out with a simple idea but, new applications and different business units pull things together. So, they are looking for partners that can help keep them up-to-date as to what's happening and help them focus on the outcomes of their business, focus on the applications and help them try to keep up in an ever changing world. So, maybe give us a little bit as to how the portfolio view from Lenovo helps customers keep up. >> We look at the, call it the "On ramp to the cloud" People want to build up their private clouds and hybrid clouds from all the parts. They are well skilled, well capable or for whatever reason they decide to do that. So we have our portfolio of products that can support you to do that all the way from our ThinkSystem lines. All the building blocks and then working closely with partners like Red Hat and so on. You carry all the way through the continuum of true turnkey solutions. You had Naj and Rod on earlier and they were really talking about a turnkey solution that we've just recently brought out with Naj's company. But Microsoft's Azure and Azure stock is another example of a turnkey hybrid cloud. As Kirk mentioned in his keynote, four times our regular market share in that market, 'cause again, we're perfectly happy to sell that. And then the big software to find on Ramp are Nutanix and VMware and a bunch of others that people have. That's another on ramp to the cloud. It's again another place where we have a lot of growth and we've been growing at, we've doubled our share basically every year, year on year share comparison every quarter for the last six quarters. We're perfectly happy going at it in all three of those paths and it works very well for us. >> I want to get back to the idea, you just started by saying, customers at the end of the day just want to run their businesses. And they want things to be easy and intuitive. So how would you say that customers are thinking that way about the cloud, or is there this pressure of, "I got to get to the cloud, "I've got to have a cloud strategy." >> I think there is some of that, I got to get to the cloud 'cause it's in vogue and if I'm not getting into the cloud, my CEO's going to think that I'm-- >> I'm not cool. >> Well, worse than not cool, not competent. That's much worse. But I think we're seeing some moderation. What we're seeing now is people are becoming more mature in how they look at this, and there are things that a public cloud environment is outstanding at, there are things that it's not as well suited for. And likewise you're seeing that as people looking at private cloud technologies and the key there really is, one of the things that makes a cloud environment so attractive is, I focus much more on managing applications than I do on managing hardware. The hardware just kind of happens for me. I think if you really going to give people those private cloud environments to do that, it's the same thing. If you look at our CP solution, it's a great example of that. I dial in, or dial on, there's my age showing on, I just connect in, I assign how I want the systems allocated to my applications and the hardware just takes care of it. That's the cloud. >> One of the real challenging things for customers is, once they've modernized that platform, what about the applications on top of it? There's so much happening in the database world, you talk about cloud native applications, AI, IoT and edge solutions are spending a lot of time for companies. Can you talk a little bit about what you're hearing from customers and how Lenovo has positioned itself for-- >> I think this is why you are seeing some of that eight out of 10 coming near as a direction. If you've written for that kind of a world as the application, this is great for you. This is what you want. There are clearly a lot of legacy applications that weren't written with the cloud in mind. There was no cloud there. So they are much harder to deploy in that model. And so, those are becoming, call it, the more stubborn and obstinate part of the business. Now, that's still a great business for us to sell to and we're very happy to support customers and in many of those instances, it doesn't pay to redo it. But, there'll be a long, long tale of those kinds of applications where they are just not written with the cloud in mind. But anything new, generally is written with that kind of environment in mind. >> Okay, so are you saying the cloud native apps should run in public clouds, or? >> They'd run everywhere. A well written app will run private, public or hybrid. >> How about AI? We've been hearing a lot this year for infrastructure, for AI, how does Lenovo play there? >> The big challenge in AI is you have to sort of step back to its core principles. What's AI about? Well AI is about crunching a lot of numbers against a very large amount of data. So, it becomes much more about, where's the data than it is about the actual algorithm or computation. That can run on almost anything, but if it's not local to the data, you got a problem. So, that becomes more and more of how that problem's defined. So, if the data is something that I'm pumping into a certain data center, whether it's cloud based or my own then that's typically where that AI algorithm will run and if it's not, then I've got to figure out how to get the data to where I want it. >> Little bit of an over-simplification when you just say, there is usually some central place where you train but it needs to be out at the edge, where there's of course autonomy vehicles leading example-- >> Training is a very different problem than you'd call it inferencing, but basically I've learned how to recognize speech, that takes a lot of computation. To recognize it doesn't take that much. Learning is what takes all the effort. >> Well, I'm actually interested in the idea of recruiting and retaining the right kind of talent, and the kind of challenges you're having. This is as we've discussed a very fast-changing technology landscape. Are you able to find the right people? >> The biggest challenge in any technology industry and since every business is getting an IT component to it, it's becoming everyone's problem. And yes, if you want to tell your kids where to go to school in, this is the place. There's going to be lots of jobs for a long time. So, we face the same challenges everybody else faces in terms of recruiting the skills. A part of that is why having cloud as the deployment model is much better for you because it is a lesser skill than what's required to manage it and deal with it and the complexities of it are simpler. Underneath the coverage, you just need fewer people that really understand that. That helps your skill problem. >> In terms of the, last year at Lenovo Transform, you announced ThinkAgile. Can you talk a little about the portfolio of customers that you have developed and what you're seeing there? >> We made a very conscious decision last year when we announced. We collected all the brands together and it was a building block, it's ThinkSystem and if it's a integrated system or cloud solution, it's ThinkAgile. Particularly integrating it in our factory and deploy. And so, we announced that, we deployed it with ThinkAgile Advantage, which is a special service that goes with it, that makes it even easier to sort of deal with the changes and IT configurations. And we've been, since then been very pleased with the kind of ramp that we've managed to get out of all our solutions in that bucket. And people really buy the idea of, hey, I'd like to get to a point where, Lenovo will configure the thing in the factory including the rack, maybe all the cables, everything. It's literally wheeled in, it's plugged in, I change my password, and I'm up. Whereas, the old world was, it shows up in 53 boxes over the course of 10 days, then I spend two weeks trying to fit it all together, pray I connected it correctly and there you go. So, it's a totally different model. >> Peter, wonder if you can help us connect the dots on some of the edge and IoT pieces. A lot of people we look at and say, okay, you've got the Motorola phones out there, you've got PC division, but the Data Center Group, how much does the Data Center Group touch and interact with the consumer in edge and other devices? >> To me, there's multiple ways to look at IoT. And when you are Lenovo, you have our own view of it, just like every other company has. So, clearly the Internet of Things, we sell a lot of things. We're going to do a lot of Internet of Things. That's what the phone and our PC and smart devices and all that stuff is about. But, there's also a lot of, we call it all that data has to get processed by something. Guess who shows up when that happens, it's the Data Center Group. So we view that as, that's just an energy whether the rest of Lenovo had all those things or not, that's just good for our business. It's just going to lift us with it. But more importantly, having that insight into what's happening at the edge, with all those devices, what's happening is customers are looking at, okay, one of the big things is now I'm starting to see movement of some of the data center to the edge. They're moving the computation, the server needs out and closer to where they think where the data is generated. That's a big opportunity for us. That's a whole new thing, and it's not something that easily moves to the cloud, 'cause there's a reason why it moved closer to the data. So for us, it's a big opportunity and it's a huge one. So, when you look at Lenovo, we all have our individual business group's view of what this thing means to me if I wasn't in, been a business. And then we layer across that then, okay, but here's what I can do with that opportunity because I do know how to make all these things, or I do know how to do that and I do know how to do that. So, that's our huge, as Wai Wai calls it our third wave. That's our real next key win. >> So you are all thinking about how, as the data center evolves, where your businesses fit in? >> Right now the bulk of our business is clearly in that data center. I would expect over time, you'll see more and more happen as these pieces over the edge come together. >> Great. That's what we'll be talking about next year. >> Hopefully, yes absolutely. We have a lot of plans in place. I think you'll see a lot from us by this time next year. >> Yeah. But maybe give us a little bit view on that as, edge has been a very hot topic, what do you see as some of the impediments and what will happen faster as you talk about that change of view of data center and edge. >> The biggest impediment is, unlike a lot of other problems in IT, there is no formula. So, if I want to run a production system, I'm going to go see Oracle, or I'm going to go see SAP, or I'm going to see someone else like that, and, they've got lots of consultants and knowhow and boom, I just got to kind of pick between ways of doing it. When you're looking at big IoT solutions, there isn't one. Everything is, "Hmm what am I going to instrument? "Hmm, what am I going to get back as the information on that? "Hmm, how am I going to justify the ROI on this? "Hmm, how am I going to deploy this at scale, "because I don't know how to do that?" All of those are things that are going on. So, what we are finding as we work, we work with a lot of system integrators, people who help people understand proof of concepts and testing and studying. So we see certainly some areas, those 20 billion things that Wai Wai talked about by 2020. Those are going to places obviously, but businesses are really struggling with, how do I do this at scale, in my business? How do I drive that intelligent transformation? That I know I've got to do, 'cause if I don't do it my competitors are going to do it. And that's to me where our opportunity sits and why it's interesting to be at Lenovo in that kind of a context. >> Great, excellent. Well, Peter Hortensius, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. We've had a great time. >> Thank you so much. >> I enjoyed it very much, we'll have to do this again. Thank you. >> Indeed, indeed. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman, that wraps up Lenovo Transform 2018. We hope to see you back here next time on theCUBE.