It’s safe to say you can expect a lot of companies to make big announcements at this year’s VMworld conference in Las Vegas, starting on August 28. While the Dell-EMC merger is the overarching theme on everyone’s minds, there are many other questions that will be explored at the show. One of them is the ascent of all-flash storage and whether hybrid is still in the game.

Randy Arsenau, CMO at Infinidat, Inc., said that while all-flash is undoubtedly a buzz term these days, companies should be less concerned about form and more about function of their storage solution. He told Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, “Media is becoming less differentiated and more commodotized.”

He went on to explain, “What that does is put more of an emphasis on architecture and software and the services associated with storing and managing data on that media.”

Hybrid vigor

Even on the issue of bare media, Steve Kenniston, VP of product marketing at Infinidat, said that hybrid is still on top from an economic viewpoint. “If you’re a CIO responsible for the economics of your business and the budgets of your business, you can’t achieve stability around your storage environment not showing through your entire IT budget if you’re not doing the smart things that relate to lower cost media,” he said.

Arsenau said that if all-flash were suddenly to become the better economic choice, than Infinidat would switch, but right now hybrid allows them to deliver the best all-around performance and cost to customers. Aptly, Infinidat’s tag at the VMworld conference will be: “Faster than flash and easy on cash.”

Watch the complete video interview with Arsenau and Kenniston below.

Photo by SiliconANGLE