As the IBM InterConnect event continued to gain steam, services and solutions were discussed between visitors and representatives, exploring ways in which the problems of tomorrow are already being addressed.

One of the key areas of interest for these forward-looking efforts is, of course, Big Data. Larry Weber, program director of analytics platform and cloud data services at IBM, sat down with John Furrier and Dave Vellante, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, to talk about some of the ways his department is finding to streamline the gathering, storage and analysis of data, as well as what they see as important preparations to make to stay competitive.

The main thread

Weber began by laying things out simply: “Data’s that single thread across everything … Everyone’s tackling Big Data.” With a near-endless variety of data applications and utilities being utilized and actively developed, along with people creating their own solutions instead of relying on companies to provide them, larger companies seeking to stay on the cutting edge have to put in significant effort to anticipate coming revolutions while also improving existing tech.

Weber and theCUBE’s hosts went through a number of the ways in which these two-prong movements are coming together, including the merging of analytics and transaction data, pushing data-stores closer to their linked databases, doing data analytics directly in the data warehouses, improving analytics distribution, decreasing latency for global companies pushing data to local centers, and much more.

On-premise and cloud hybrids were one aspect of the push to simplify and increase accessibility of customized solutions and feature integration, contextualized to app platforms and the goals of the companies producing each part. Weber spotlighted IBM’s ability to augmenting services with baked-in enhancements, its so-called “secret sauce,” as one of its most visible ways of providing distinct value to customers, while also providing assurance of future support as the customer’s needs change to remain engaged in the marketplace.

Learning from customers, charging forward

On more technical footing, the trio also discussed IBM’s initiative to improve data accessibility and versatility, recognizing the need to be able to serve the same data, shaped into appropriate forms, for each of the many types of data-leveragers looking to use the business.

Speaking of Spark as a “turbo-charger,” enabling customers to finding ways of doing things that Hadoop “really wasn’t engineered to do,” Weber noted: “What [IBM] learned from Hadoop was really watching what our customers were doing with it.”

As the conversation drew to a close, Weber expressed excitement about the event’s theme of “Open For Data,” emphasizing that by liberating data and opening it up to transparency, it would be even easier to build the next generation of apps and go even further from there.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect 2016. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE