Data storage used to be boring. There was just a box, and data went in, and that was it. Not anymore. Few landscapes in the technology world have changed as much as storage, with price drops, the increased value of data and new ways to bring data into the right hands. The future of storage is about much more than a bigger box, according to Jeff Boudreau (pictured), president of the Storage Division at Dell EMC.

“We have self-driving cars. Why don’t we have self-driving storage?” he asked.

Boudreau spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile live-streaming studio, during Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, Nevada, to talk about how Dell EMC is dealing with the changing world of storage and machine learning. (* Disclosure below.)

A stepping-stone for storage automation

Things are changing in the storage market, especially how customers use data storage products, Boudreau stated. For vendors, this means making their products easier to use. Part of that is automation, making storage smart enough to take care of itself.

For its part, Dell EMC is investigating how to make a self-driving storage system. “Really, when it starts to get next level is when the stuff becomes self-aware,” Boudreau said.

Machine learning is a part of this effort. Customers are interested not just in data, but insights from the data. Helping them do that with machine learning is a step toward the future. Built-in analytics, capabilities and services from the storage side are a part of this. Dell EMC wants to be known as the place where information comes alive, according to Boudreau.

These trends hold true when it comes to growth in the storage market. Software-defined storage is at the center of this movement. However, traditional storage is still a huge percent of the market. Still, customers are moving from traditional to cloud and software-defined options, and vendors must be there to help with that, he added.

Cloud-ready storage, along with the ability to move data to and from the cloud, is also a priority. Dell EMC offers a handful of products with natives features in this area today, but the company plans to evolve those offerings over time, Boudreau concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of Dell EMC World 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Dell EMC World. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial influence on content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE