The world of data storage used to be a dull place of black boxes and slow spinning disks. Not anymore. Now companies want to put their data to work, and they want a vendor who makes it easy to get that business value. In response, the data storage business is evolving, as tech is simplified for the user experience, according to Keegan Riley (pictured), vice president and general manager of North America storage at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

“At [VMworld], everyone cares if it’s software-defined, whether it’s hybrid, converged. … But, in the real world, what clients tend to care about is their experience,” Riley said during the VMworld 2017 conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

During the event, Riley spoke with John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts  of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, to discuss the state of data storage, changes withint HPE and the customer experience. (* Disclosure below.)

Customer experience defines the next step in IT

As a division, HPE data storage has changed over the years. Instead of just making boxes, HPE is now searching for ways to make hybrid information technology simple, to power the intelligent edge and to deliver services to organizations to help make these things real, according to Riley. This marks a strong shift in how customers interact with IT in general. It’s all about the customer experience now, he added.

HPE seeks to make that customer experience simple by delivering a predictive cloud platform. By this, the company means more than just storage. The idea is that in a cloud-connected world, the client should never know more about what’s happening on the network than the cloud provider does, Riley explained. Because of this, HPE views every system as being at the edge of its own network.

To build on such a vision, HPE has collected a massive amount of data that outlines how client infrastructure works. “We’ve been collecting all this data in the same way that Uber or Tesla has been collecting sensor data from cars,” Riley said. The goal is to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to this data and to create a self-managing data center.

“Historically, the storage market has always been, do you want Granny Smith apples or Red Delicious apples? It’s always sort of looked the same,” Riley said. Now, companies have so many ways to solve storage challenges that the conversation has moved to a higher level. It has to be about delivering value to the business, Riley concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE