Cube alumna Pauline Nist made her latest appearance at this week’s IBM Information OnDemand Conference. The general manager for Intel’s enterprise software group discussed big data and how IBM fits in with SiliconAngle founder John Furrier and Wikibon’s Dave Vellante.

Nist starts out by elaborating a bit on IBM- and Intel’s relationship. The Big Blue is a major OEM partner for the chipmaker, and Intel in turn collaborates with the former’s own channel partners on end user solutions for its systems. The executive notes that IBM is the “adult supervision of big data,” a comment she explains later on.

According to Nist IBM is very well situation in the analytics space: it has both the portfolio that enables its clients to leverage their data, and the know-how to turn this technology into business edge.  Nist emphasizes the latter bit: she defines big data as a business solution, rather than an innovation to be regarded from the technical standpoint.

The Intel GM says that the open-source community is delivering tomorrow’s business tools. But there’s still a long way to go before the technology is mature enough to run mission critical apps, and for now, IBM is doing a very good job filling the gap.

The Big Blue invested billions in expanding its analytics line-up through both organic and non-organic growth, but it remains services oriented firm. The reason behind this aggressive expansion is very simple: data is changing the service businesses.

Nist says that there’s a shift from utility to value. IT and service providers are starting to play a bigger role in the enterprise: the focus is no longer on plain outsourcing and hosting, but on cloud and big data – tools with a direct impact on the bottom line.

Pauline Nist managed to cover a lot of ground in 20 minutes. She discussed the Intel perspective on big data and how they’re innovating on the hardware level as well as Hadoop and other topics. For the full scoop check out the interview below.