In recent years, the co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s live roving news desk, interviewed many of the most insightful and knowledgeable tech industry luminaries on-sight at various conferences and events—executives from Michael Dell of Dell, Inc. to Pat Gelsinger of VMware to Inhi Cho Suh of IBM.

Some of the most memorable interviews happened at events such as BigData NYC, BigDataSV, Dell World, EMC World, IBM Edge, IBM Impact, IBM Insight, Oracle OpenWorld and VMworld.

For this series of 2014 Reflections, theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier, Dave Vellante, David Floyer, Jeff Kelly and Stu Miniman take a look back to remember their favorite theCUBE segments from the past year or so.

Furrier‘s favorite interviews included ones with Chad Sakac, Pat Gelsinger, Inhi Cho Suh, Bill Schmarzo, Abhishek Mehta, Michael Dell, Sheryl Chamberlain, Laura Guio and Brad Hunstable. Check out the interviews in their entirety below (listed in no particular order).

.

1. Chad Sakac, Senior VP at EMC, at EMC World 2014

.

Chad Sakac, Senior VP (for Global Presales Technical Resources) at EMC, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at EMC World 2014. Here, Sakac discusses EMC’s work with data stacks, including the ViPR controller software which enables the management of multivendor platforms (including those from third-party storage solutions). Sakac also discusses how EMC could court independent software vendors (ISVs)—something it had trouble doing in the past; EMC‘s XtremIO all-flash array, EMC’s project regarding Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) which help make storage virtual machine (VM)-centric, allowing users to snapshot, clone or replicate from the storage array on a per-VM basis; as well as touching upon the diversity of the tech ecosystem.

.

.

2. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, at VMworld 2013

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at VMworld 2013. Here, Gelsinger discusses topics including the software-defined data center, the maturity of the hybrid cloud, the agility and efficiency of OpenStack, the evolution of the IT worker, the virtual admin as the center of IT, and the blurring line between Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

.

.

3. Inhi Cho Suh, VP and GM of Big Data, Integration, and Governance at IBM, at IBM Insight 2014

Inhi Cho Suh, VP and GM of Big Data, Integration, and Governance at IBM, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at IBM Insight 2014. Here, Suh discusses two of IBM’s major announcements at IBM Insight 2014, which have their roots in Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities. The first announcement is regarding their DataWorks product. Suh shares how IBM provides a cloud-based, data refinement capability that uses Watson to find and shape information. Suh explains how the new Watson Curator uses cognitive solutions and applications to curate unstructured content. The second announcement is regarding IBM’s dashDB, which Suh says is also integrated with its Cloudant services (IBM’s Database-as-a-Service offering). It allows users to create data warehouses, among other capabilities.

.

.

4. Bill Schmarzo, CTO of the EIM Service Line for EMC, at BigData NYC 2013

Bill Schmarzo, CTO of the EIM Service Line for EMC, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at BigData NYC 2013. Here, Schmarzo discusses his newly released book, “Big Data: Understanding How Data Powers Big Business.” Schmarzo also explains why creating great data analytics tools is useless if they’re not presented in a way that’s actionable to users, and discusses some use cases for Big Data including “the 4 Ms of Big Data,” a concept he explores in his book. Schmarzo also discusses the new data-powered roles emerging in organizations such as Chief Data Officers (CDOs), Chief Analytics Officers (CAOs) and User Experience Officers (UXOs) and how they need to be separate from IT.

.

.

5. Abhishek Mehta, CEO and founder of Tresata, Inc., at BigDataSV 2014

.

Abhishek Mehta, CEO and founder of Tresata, spoke to Furrier and Kelly at BigDataSV 2014. Here, Mehta discusses the challenges of being an entrepreneur and pinpoints the three trends (and blind spots) of today’s tech industry. Mehta also discusses how data factories are now able to monetize data in ways never possible before, how Big Data is a bigger ecosystem than Hadoop, and how, as Big Data technologies democratize, they will commoditize. Mehta also delves into how he thinks the Big Data market isn’t a technology market but a business revolution, and how understanding customer behavior is a combination of open data, open tech and open science. Mehta also discusses the language of business versus the language of technology, and how data, as a fuel, is fundamentally transforming how we evaluate, measure and act on consumer behavior.

.

.

6. Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell, at Dell World 2012

.

Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO of Dell, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at Dell World 2012. Here, Dell discusses how the IT world is changing and how his company, because it does not have a huge legacy of hardware products to defend, is in a near-ideal position to capitalize. Dell also discusses how his company can help customers move to technologies such as software-defined networking (SDN), virtualized data centers and cloud services. Dell discusses how the key to success in business is understanding the customer’s needs, how the focus and profits of the market are moving up the stack from hardware to software and services, and he touches upon the state of his company’s hardware business as well. Dell also explains how the big problems facing the world—clean energy, medicine and transportation—are all problems that technology can solve. Dell also discusses the end-user/mobile area, saying how his company has a complete BYOB support suite to help customers manage multiple platforms.

.

.

7. Sheryl Chamberlain, VP at Cap Gemini S.A., at VMworld 2014

.

Sheryl Chamberlain is VP (and Global Partner Executive) at Cap Gemini. She spoke to Furrier and Vellante at VMworld 2014. Here, Chamberlain discusses how Cap Gemini is focused on helping customers enhance their businesses through social, mobile, analytics and the cloud. Chamberlain also discusses how new open-source technologies have opened up what Chamberlain calls a “new world of collaboration.” Chamberlain also discusses how momentum has been building around open sourcing the Internet of Things (IoT). Chamberlain describes some ways Cap Gemini is facilitating customer change through “Cloud-ification” and “SaaS-ification,” citing a use case from an agriculture company. Chamberlain also discusses how retail is an industry hungry for transformative technology because brick-and-mortar retailers now have to compete with online stores.

.

.

8. Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, at VMworld 2014

.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, makes his second appearance on Furrier’s list of favorite interviews. This time, he spoke to Furrier and Vellante at VMworld 2014. Here, Gelsinger discusses his keynote presentation on Day 1 of VMworld 2014, which had the theme of “Enabling brave, new IT.” In his keynote, Gelsinger outlined his new vision for the company and what his offensive moves will be in the coming year to curb encroaching competition from virtualized services. In this interview, Gelsinger recaps his keynote and even comments on hot-button topics such as the rise of Docker, Inc., a company that’s pushing the envelope on virtualized tactics with the use of containers. Gelsinger discusses how VMware now supports OpenStack APIs and containerization. He then explains why his company is embracing containers now. Gelsinger discusses whether or not VMware is moving into the hardware business with its revamped vision, and then details VMware’s offensive strategy for maintaining a leadership position in the virtualization market.

.

.

9. Laura Guio, VP and Business Line Executive at IBM, at IBM Edge 2014

.

Laura Guio, VP and Business Line Executive at IBM, spoke to Furrier and Vellante at IBM Edge 2014. Here, Guio discusses how IBM’s new “Infrastructure Matters” initiative ties into changes that IBM is rolling out for its customers. Guio explains that it’s about giving customers the ability to take advantage of IBM’s storage technology and utilize it in a software lay down fashion, which gives them the freedom to choose the hardware they want to use. Guio explains how IBM’s customers won’t be boxed in to only software-defined; rather, they will still have the option to use the appliance approach. Guio discusses how c-suite executives are excited about this new approach but how engineering teams are a little cautious because they’re concerned about their data center getting disrupted.

.

.

10. Brad Hunstable, CEO and founder of Ustream, Inc., at IBM Impact 2014

.

Brad Hunstable, CEO and founder of Ustream, spoke to Furrier and SiliconANGLE editor Paul Gillin at IBM Impact 2014. Here, Hunstable discusses the importance of media production in the enterprise, the capability of Ustream to safely transmit media for organizations, and what the future holds for Ustream. Hunstable also discusses how Ustream is currently the largest HD-capable, live-streaming option on the market; and the origin of Ustream. Hunstable also discusses why the growth in video is happening within the enterprise, the role that cloud is playing in that growth, and how every company is a media producer that is creating content in many different ways. While the opportunities for growth are at the enterprise level, Hunstable points out that his full solution can be utilized by smaller companies as well.

.

.

Photo of Michael Dell courtesy of theCUBE

All videos are courtesy of SiliconANGLE