To survive in an industry that makes continuous advances, companies need a strong foundation. For most tech companies, that foundation is storage. IBM and Catalogic Software, Inc. have partnered for several years and are currently working to make storage solutions simple.

Ken Barth, CEO of Catalogic Software, Inc., and Eric Herzog, VP of product marketing at IBM, talked with John Walls (@johnwalls21) and Peter Burris (@plburris), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during this week’s VMworld conference about the IBM and Catalogic partnership.

Speed and efficiency

Flash storage provides an architecture that’s much faster — “often 10 times faster” — than traditional or hybrid arrays, said Herzog. IBM has been a market leader using flash storage for years, but with Catalogic as a partner, IBM plans on soaring to new heights.

Not only is flash faster, but it also can be used for workloads across a multitude of platforms. Working with Catalogic gives IBM the capability to better track and manage the datastreams that businesses handle, improving efficiency and accelerating value, Herzog explained. Flash proves its value when an organization goes from “80 servers to 10,” he added.

Cutting out the copies

The copy data management experience that Catalogic brings to the table is not to be underplayed. It is a leader in data management and excels at “automating the process” for clients, said Barth.

Companies use several storage options for their infrastructure, and as a result end up with dozens and often hundreds of copies of the same data. Catalogic helps companies take 150 copies down to 50 or less and helps preserve the most important data.

It’s all about reliability

When accessing data, companies have to think about more than just speed. The data has to be “reliable, available and serviceable,” said Herzog. Catalogic and IBM want to make sure customers are looking at data that is tailored to their specific workloads and can be accessed from anywhere.

By focusing on storage, these two powerhouses hope to give customers the rock solid foundation they need to tackle any programming or infrastructure issues they may come across.

Data centers are changing, and flash storage is the “evolution to the revolution of data centers,” Barth said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the VMworld 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE