UPDATED 11:06 EDT / JUNE 11 2013

NEWS

Storage Is Becoming Obsolete #IBMEdge2013

Broadcasting live from Las Vegas at the IBM Edge 2013 event, theCUBE hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante talked with Laura Guio, VP of Storage at IBM, first about the show itself. Compared to last year’s IBM Edge Conference, the number of participants has more than doubled, according to Guio. There are 4700 clients plus business partners, IBMers, analysts and press, with total attendance just over 5000.

The main topic of the event is Flash, and Guio noted that customers all over the world constantly approach IBM with different challenges, believing that Flash technology will satisfy their needs. Flash is changing from being perceived as “all about the price for gigabyte”, to a “business problems’ solver.”

From cost per gigabyte to cost per I/O

 

Vellante is not particularly fond about cost per I/O, calling it “just a boring metric”. He’s more into business value. The way the customers will measure business value will impact the valuation of Flash. Guio further explains:

“You take the amount of capacity that can go on a spinning disk – and how much of that is actually utilized – versus what you can do with Flash, couple that with the speed, at which you can get processing out”.

A company can really look at this real-time analytics data in order to change the way it conducts business. For instance, Flash technology could allow a retail client to look at what’s going on in the store and predict if shop-lifting is going to happen, before it takes place. From a business perspective, it is all about cutting down costs. Guio insists that Flash is not about “cost per gigabytes” anymore, but about “changing the business.”

Asked to talk more about IBM’s technology solutions and benefits, Guio explained that the solutions are really about the power of technology behind them. To be able to do that for a particular client, one needs to be able to understand the industry. IBM has industry-specific experts that are trying to understand what the clients are attempting to do, and then pair that with the relevant technology.

Storage is going to become obsolete

 

That statement actually means that storage will become so deeply ingrained in the infrastructure of the data center, no one will need to talk about anymore. It will be underneath, solving problems for the customers. Guio mentioned a A Memphis hospital which is using IBM technology to analyze slices of brain tumors out of children. The faster the speed that they can get those results back with the help of IBM technology, the quicker the response in administrating the proper medicine. In this particular case, survival rate goes up 10x. These are real stories about technology changing the world, insists Guio.

Picking on the Conference vibes of “openness” and “software-defined”, Vellante wanted to know how does Open play into the IBM’s positioning of Storage as a Platform in terms of operational efficiency. Laura Guio was adamant that “Openness was key in the technology going forward.” IBM has always been in the forefront of being open. 10 years ago when they started virtualization, ANY technology company that had the hardware could work in that virtualized environment.

No one possesses a tech solution that will solve a client’s problem on the go. It’s merely about intertwining legacy solutions with new technology and working out a plan for each customer, according to his needs.

Right now there is a major shift in customer behavior. Clients are aware about the rate of change in the technology environment and a bit panicked about the way it’s going to affect their business.

Talking about IBM’s competition, Guio stated boldly that currently there is no one on the planet that can put the building blocks together, from software services to hardware, in the way that IBM does. Using Openness as a Mantra and pulling all the companies that have real value on top of IBM, that will be the true differentiator in the market.


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