Lenovo Group Ltd. is facing a “once-in-a-lifetime market opportunity” for storage as the competition consolidates into partners. Stuart McRae, director of Product Planning Storage and Networking at Lenovo, predicted that “customers will move off to something different” than their current solution. He continued, saying some will stay with traditional storage while others will use software-defined.

McRae talked with Stu Miniman (@stu) and John Walls, cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, at Lenovo Tech World 2016 in San Francisco. Above all other aspects of storage, McRae emphasized the impact of flash on the market.

Flash eliminates the transmission

McRae gave an automobile oriented analogy to describe the difference flash makes. He determined that traditional storage is represented by cars with an internal combustion engine and manual transmission. On the other hand, all flash is an electric car with no transmission. With a stick shift (traditional storage), a driver has to pay attention at all times to keep the vehicle moving, but with flash everything is intuitive.

McRae stated the biggest complaint he hears from customers is that storage is “way too damn complex.” He looks to the future to “strip out some of the complexity.”

Additionally, McRae expects “some of the layers” to be consolidated through converging storage, which will in turn lower costs. He does not expect to see an “all-flash world in 12 months” but hopes for one great mid-range option that will provide a solution to a broad range of issues.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Lenovo Tech World 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE