Eric Herzog, the Vice President of Storage Marketing at IBM, says “IBM is the understated member of the storage world” and therefore is uniquely positioned to dominate the storage space. In a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante during this weeks IBM InterConnect event, Herzog explained that IBM achieved this goal because they have “incredible tech, incredible customers, [and] incredible partners across the world.” Significant investments in the storage market, “a billion invested in flash, a billion invested in storage defined,” said Herzog, are precursors to a “much more aggressive policy” from IBM when it comes to storage.

Flash is a “White, Hot Market”

For Herzog, “Flash is critical,” especially in “a traditional enterprise.” Merged infrastructure, huge search engines “can all sit on Flash.” Flash also helps lower latency — and in a rapid, agile marketplace, Herzog commented, “the last thing you want is latency inhibiting these new world data structures.”

Herzog: “IBM Storage Is All About Solutions”

IBM, said Herzog, offers “enterprise-class data services” in the form of an “integrated stack.” The “V9000 family offers a better performance metric.” As IBM is now “on Flash with an integrated solution: A fully virtualized integrated stack.” according to Herzog.

In terms of an all-flash array, Herzog said, “there’s no competitor” with IBM. If customers were to choose IBM’s closest competitor, he pointed out, “customers would need to buy three different pieces to compete with the V9000.” Furthermore, Herzog called out that “everything in the V9000 is available as software.” This feature means that IBM customers can plug their software into legacy technology. When it comes to software-defined storage, Herzog quipped: “Don’t fight the wave, ride the wave.”

In the future, Herzog said that IBM plans to leverage their infrastructure in social, mobile, and cloud to achieve “more application integration” and become “very solution and application-centric.” Looking ahead, he said “we’re going to be more aggressive in positioning this incredible technology portfolio.” Above all, “it all sits on storage — you’ve gotta have that integration level,” Herzog concluded.

Watch the full interview with Herzog below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect.