Digital storage systems are the core of any data-driven business, and the industry giant IBM has been making a number of moves to position itself in the storage market. Offering an array of products and a lineup of partners, IBM has set itself as a major player in the digital revolution.

To bring its strategy into focus, Dave Vellante of theCUBE, from the SilconANGLE Media team, talked with Eric Herzog, VP of Marketing at IBM Storage, and Michael Kuhn, VP and Business Line Executive at IBM Enterprise Storage, during the VMworld 2015 conference.

The talk opened up with a look at flash storage, a growing technology in the digital storage world. According to Herzog, flash represents an evolution but not a revolution in storage. For flash to be useful in a business, it must be priced right while offering performance and availability. Providing this was part of IBM’s plan.

Investing for the storage future

Kuhn then took a moment to explain how IBM was investing heavily into storage with the goal of delivering hybrid and all-flash solutions. It had moved its investment to follow where the market was going, looking toward a rock-solid enterprise stack that is optimized for flash. Such a stack could run very fast compared to older designs.

Herzog brought up the importance of IBM’s storage portfolio, which allows the company to offer the right tool for its clients’ needs. By expanding its partners, IBM could draw on a broad base of tools to help optimize data to produce business value.

Market-facing solutions

Another approach to IBM’s strategy involved changing how customers viewed it and its products. IBM wants to provide clarity for the market in what it bringg to the table and how it delivers it. This means changing over to a client-lead point of view. To make that happen, the company has reorganized its customer-facing business groups to be more obvious in its purpose and function.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE