IBM takes a unified approach to storage, servers, software, and service, IBM General Manager for Storage and Networking Brian Truskowski said in an interview in the SiliconAngle Cube at IBM’s first formal storage conference, IBM Edge (see full video below). “We’re focused on innovation and integration at the same time…. Our ability to integrate our broad software portfolio, our broad services portfolio, is a unique value-add we can bring to our clients and … our business partners. That’s where the real value is delivered to our clients.”

The recent IBM PureSystems, announcement, IBM’s Expert Integrated Systems reference design, is designed to deliver that integration to clients without requiring forklift upgrades and to save them money by simplifying the infrastructure and unifying its management.

Users are experiencing 30% annual data growth on budgets that are not increasing. “I think it was Wikibon that said that by 2013, 70% of spend will be on the management of IT,” Truskowski said. “We fully understand that if we don’t help clients solve the challenges around efficiency and being able to optimize these environments so they are not having to spend at the same rate as capacity growth, we and our clients won’t be successful.”

One unique aspect of the PureSystems architecture is that it allows users to integrate third-party storage into the centralized management system. No other vendor can support that. IBM decided to support heterogeneous storage because it recognizes that its clients have large investments in existing storage systems. “So our ability to allow clients to integrate existing infrastructure investments into those systems is an important differentiator that allows customers to protect that investment and yet get the advantages of the integrated capabilities we deliver with PureSystems.”

As to how IBM succeeded, says Truskowski, it took a different, cutting-edge approach to the problem.

“First, it’s not just about management,” he says. “At the core is our ability to virtualize everybody’s storage. That allows us to leverage a common user interface…. and then naturally you get the management capability with that.”

IBM’s strategy is based in large part on its own experience. “We run some of the largest data centers in the world on behalf of our customers,” he said. And those data centers are heterogeneous environments because IBM takes in whatever infrastructure the client has and then has to run it more efficiently than the user to achieve the savings promised in the contract and realize a profit. It also works very closely with its systems and services clients on the business as well as the IT level.

These informed the Smarter Storage and other announcements IBM was making at Edge 2012, he said. “It’s about efficiency to help with those problems, efficiency that’s built in and automatic without needing as many resources thinking about it. It’s also about self-optimization – understanding workloads and performance needs and using our deep analytics and math skills to deploy those things.”

Ultimately, he says, “it’s about delivering value to the client.”