Over the last few years, companies such as IBM have begun focusing on faster storage solutions, including the cloud. With the introduction of flash technology, the storage game changed drastically. Now, not only can companies store more data, they can access it faster than ever before.

At IBM Edge 2014, John Furrier and Dave Vellante of theCUBE sat down with Michael Kuhn, VP and BLE of FlashSystems at IBM, to ask him about the company’s efforts to bring flash to its customers.

Making the impossible possible, with flash

Flash has changed the way companies do business, but what are some practical applications of flash? According to Kuhn, flash makes what was impossible before possible. One example is seen in the retail sector. When a customer compares items prior to making a purchase, they want to know why should they buy a certain model. The information they use to arrive at their final decision is great at the moment of impact, when they are making a choice, but not at any other time. “It’s got to be in the moment real time,” Kuhn said. “That’s what flash allows you to do.”

One of the biggest problems facing flash developers today is getting all of the different technologies to work with flash. Most often companies want to get the most out of the software and equipment they do have in an effort to cut costs. But for those wanting to utilize flash as a part of their storage strategy, they do have to make changes to their software to exploit the capabilities that flash offers.

Kuhn went on to explain: “The software a decade ago was for disk, and now it must be modernized and rewritten to truly exploit the characteristics of flash. It’s about getting all together. And it’s about having you know the fastest tier of storage, but also having a software defined storage strategy to keep it all knitted together.”

Getting flash technology out to customers

When asked how the company was going to get the flash technology out to its customers, Kuhn explained how IBM has focused on building its dedicated flash team. This initiative includes integrating the channel and selling a lot of its flash technology through various business partners.

By using this strategy, IBM hopes to have in place storage sellers to help them sell their product. That was the reasoning behind the acquisition of Texas Memory Systems in 2012. Initially, after the takeover, Texas Memory only had 100 employees. By the end of this year, the number should increase to closer to 500.

Kuhn explained, “It’s about all of our storage sellers now. We have all of them enabled. I’m talking about the dedicated people out there. We have everything aligning right now.”