Enterprise IT is stuck and needs a lever, according to Mark Lewis, CEO of Formation Data Systems. In a compelling segment with John Furrier and Dave Vellante of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during VMworld 2015, Lewis made the case for how his company is best poised to revolutionize the way enterprise connects with the cloud.

The trend

Lewis sees the megatrend as being the “data as a service” model rather than the network storage and legacy models of the past. However, he acknowledged the tendency for legacy to seemingly last forever. His company was built explicitly with the notion of helping enterprise IT adopt API-based storage solutions, DevOps, and ultimately adopt the data as a service model while providing a way to integrate the legacy infrastructure of the past.

Lewis identified Amazon Web Services as the clear winner of one of the cloud “games” due to its ease of use and user friendliness for cloud-native applications, but he pointed out how it has failed to provide enterprise IT with the solutions they require, such as on-premise functionality and more control over their own data.

The integration problem

Lewis went on to point out the additional struggles of enterprise IT and adopting the cloud. The private cloud was simply a newly branded version of the public cloud being sold to users and not the same dynamic user-driven environment that a true hybrid cloud would provide. He explained that this is where his company comes in. By bridging legacy infrastructure to the modern cloud experience, it provides a truly hybridized cloud infrastructure to enterprise IT.

In Lewis’ words, his company is “playing the national anthem” for enterprise IT, all while addressing the critical problems for companies like knowing when to invest, how much to invest, and in exactly what. Formation Data cleverly solves this by providing the new infrastructure – a true private cloud solution like OpenStack – and bridging that with the existing network storage solutions of the past.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2015.

Photo by SiliconANGLE