There is no such thing as the perfect tech infrastructure. Even the most efficient and capable system must be set up and managed by ordinary human beings. That means a business must accept certain trade-offs if they want to deploy and maintain their infrastructure on a schedule. Simplicity is as much a virtue for tech infrastructure as capability.

To gain some insight on the need for easy integration, John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, visited the HPE Discover 2016 conference in Las Vegas. There, they sat down with Manish Goel, SVP and GM, HP Storage, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE), and Joey Northcott, IT director, Infrastructure Engineering Service Delivery, at Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI).

Innovation and integration

Goel opened the discussion by explaining how HPE builds with ease of use in mind for the customer.

“There is no reason to make a trade-off between innovation and integration,” he said. He pointed out that HPE makes sure each layer of the stack delivers the best that tech can offer, but he then added that customers can’t absorb all the difficulty and complexity of integrating that tech. HPE tries to make the process as autonomic as possible.

There’s a balance, Northcott said. The company had to balance how much complexity was in its operations. Manageability is super important to REI, he added.  

A culture of data and the Internet of Things

Northcott then spoke on the issue of Big Data and the Internet of Things. “All those things REI is interested in; we’re doing various levels of research and adoptions regarding Big Data,” he said. Considering the culture of data at REI, Northcott mentioned having to support all the different ways of managing Big Data. He said they’re very receptive to ways of managing that long-term.

Goel took a moment to speak about HP Storage. “We have a dual mission for HP Storage,” he said. “We have to lead with the best technology, and we have to provide a service layer for an increasingly singular stack.”

Northcott added that this vision has torn down the silos between his infrastructure teams. He mentioned how the synergy and converged infrastructure tools can cross-provision systems. “That’s a big win for us,” he said.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Spark Summit 2016.

Photo by SiliconANGLE