Microsoft Ignite 2024 Unpacked | Rollen Roberson, Hitachi Vantara

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Rollen Roberson

VP, Hyperscalers

Hitachi Vantara

Microsoft and Hitachi Vantara team up for full stack hybrid cloud solution

Hitachi Vantara LLC is building on a collaboration with Microsoft Corp. announced last year to create an AI-ready full stack platform leveraging Azure for delivering a hybrid cloud solution.The agreement between the two companies launched Hitachi Unified Compute Platform for Azure Stack HCI, delivering enhanced cloud management across multiple environments encompassing data centers and the edge

play_circle_outline Hitachi and Microsoft Collaborate on Accelerating Market Entry with UCP for Azure Stack HCI

play_circle_outline Empowering Customers Through AI Adoption and Software-Defined Storage on Azure

play_circle_outline Exploring Hitachi Solutions: Digital Infrastructure and Data Migration in Hybrid Cloud Solutions

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Rollen Roberson, Hitachi Vantara

Rollen Roberson

VP, Hyperscalers Hitachi Vantara

Rob Strechay, managing director at theCUBE Research, discusses the partnership between Hitachi Vantara and Microsoft with Rollen Roberson, VP of Hyperscalers and Cloud at Hitachi Vantara. The global strategic agreement allows Hitachi to offer its UCP platform integrated with Azure Stack. Hitachi Vantara assists customers with cloud migration and provides AI capabilities at the edge. Introducing software-defined storage on Azure for data security and performance in regulated industries. Customized solutions cater to specific business needs, enhancing accelerat... Read more

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What has the partnership between Hitachi and Microsoft evolved into? add

What is the target customer base for Hitachi Vantara and what new solution are they introducing for those customers? add

What company has Hitachi Vantara teamed up with to help customers with their AI adoption journey? add

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Rollen Roberson, Hitachi Vantara

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Rob Strechay

>> Hello and welcome to Microsoft Ignite 2024 unpacked. I'm Rob Strechay, a managing director with theCUBE Research. One of the things we're unpacking is the technology ecosystem and how organizations are looking to span on-premise and Azure. To help me unpack this and dig a little bit deeper live from Ignite is Rollen Roberson, who's the VP of Hyperscalers and Cloud at Hitachi Vantara. Hey, welcome on board Rollen. This is really exciting for you to join us from there. I think again, Hitachi Vantara and Microsoft have had quite a long-standing relationship, so welcome on board.

Rollen Roberson

>> Yeah, thank you. A pleasure to be here, and it's an exciting time here to be here in Chicago at Ignite.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah. Again, it's one of these that I didn't get to be there this week. It's been a busy week for us here at theCUBE, but I think you guys have got some exciting stuff going. Help us unpack this a little bit. How does the partnership between Hitachi and Microsoft, particularly through the Hitachi Unified Compute platform or UCP for Azure Stack HCI really drive innovation, enhance hybrid cloud solutions and really serve as a launch point for future collaborations with Microsoft?

Rollen Roberson

>> You're right, the partnership between Hitachi and Microsoft has, wow, historically, it's been very sound for the last decade, but more recently we've advanced that partnership significantly with a global strategic agreement. What that does is it provides us the capabilities for the full breadth and weight of the entire Hitachi organization, which you're right, with our UCP platform integrated with Azure Stack, it's now allowing us to accelerate more quickly into the market in partnership with Microsoft. And what once started as a reference architecture has now evolved into a full compute full stack platform AI already almost for our customers. So we're extending Azure all the way out to the edge.

Rob Strechay

>> And which is huge because I think when you look at companies and what they're trying to do, maybe they're trying to replatform from a virtualization and a virtual machine perspective, but they also want to be able to take that forward and look forward into using things that may have been born in the cloud, but on premise where a lot of their data is. That has to be part of this experience that you're seeing customers are really digging into.

Rollen Roberson

>> Exactly. Yeah. We've seen a lot of movement with our customers. They're still migrating to the cloud, but they've also become more experienced in their usage of cloud platforms like Azure. And in many cases, they're starting to move some of that back on premises. And actually with the advent of gen AI, they're actually looking at how do I take advantage of that massive amount of data at the edge as well. And we've been helping our customers in all of those areas from edge to core, up to cloud, UCP, Azure Stack, the abilities that we've been incorporating with Kubernetes and Hyper-V. That's been a very large focus recently with our customers extending that capability because it's all about the data. And that's where Hitachi Vantara plays very nicely is that data fabric, and we've provided that connectivity across the entire ecosystem.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, no, I think it makes sense. And I know we were talking beforehand and you guys are really aiming for even more innovation with Microsoft and really right around your software-defined storage solution that you're introducing by Hitachi Vantara on Microsoft's platform. As you look into the future, how do you see this playing out from an availability impact to help potential adoption and use cases going forward with your customers, joint customers?

Rollen Roberson

>> Our customer base with Hitachi Vantara is mission-critical applications. And when it comes to an unbreakable system that has a legal guarantee for data availability, we have a very trusted user base that looks at our platform predominantly on premises for these highly regulated industries, and they now want to extend it into the cloud, but they're looking for the same performance, the same characteristics that they've come to expect on premises and move it into the cloud. So we are. We are introducing our software-defined storage on Azure, which should be GA, generally available, come mid-summer, and with that comes all of the performance and characteristics and comfort for data security that our customers have today, but now they can use it in the cloud interchangeably, move to the cloud and back.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, no, I think that makes sense and I like to look into the future and getting a little peek in there because I think again, it helps people understand as they plan out and look at their current platforms where they may want to take it in the future. So let's kind of dig into something else here because I think this is something that I'm very interested in that I, know, again, trying to understand how it really plays, what the customer base is of Hitachi Vantara and a Hitachi solutions at Microsoft Ignite, really, when you've unveiled your joint digital infrastructure offering. Really help us understand that's how that's empowering customers while accelerating their journey toward effective AI adoption. Because I think there's a lot of people on the floor that are trying to figure out where do they get started, how to get to production, how to get out of POC hell with their AI adoption.

Rollen Roberson

>> Yeah, you're right. Many of our customers are starting to dip their toes in the water with AI and they're having their own challenges. And AI is a very customized type of workload that is specific to the business that our customers are in. To help with that journey, we've teamed up with our sister company, Hitachi Solutions, who is one of Microsoft's premier services companies who helps build many of the applications and products that you see today on Azure. And as a sister company, we have a special relationship with them, so we're providing the underlying data fabric, storage capability, compute, a lot of the weight that the data brings. Data's like gravity in this situation. So as we look at how that's applied across on premises and in the cloud, our customers need help with that journey. And so our sister company, Hitachi Solutions is a natural selection to help them through that journey using the capabilities that Hitachi Vantara and Azure provides for that AI functionality.

Rob Strechay

>> So this is helping them really get the platform set up. Hitachi Vantara is the platform underneath, and then Hitachi Solutions is providing all the layers on top of that. Is that how that works there?

Rollen Roberson

>> Yeah, that's correct. Yeah. Hitachi Solutions is providing the orchestration, the governance. They are providing the roadmap for AI journey for that customer, and we're providing all the back end services along with Azure. So whether it's working at the edge, on premises, they're taking advantage of Hitachi Vantara products in order to leverage that data to attack their disposal. Now, when they're moving into the cloud, they can take advantage of Azure natively or they may need the bigger data sovereignty type of characteristics and protection that come with Hitachi Vantara, and that's where our software defined storage starts to play a role as well as our UCP platform on Azure Stack.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I could see that. Because again, when you start to look at AI, gen AI in particular, and you look at RAG and other implementations of it, really the lifeblood of AI is data. And if you're going to feed AI, it's really feeding it with data. Kind of staying on that vein, what are some of the significant enhancements that have been made in Hitachi's content file share platform, including the integration with NVIDIA HGX, I believe you have, and some optimizations for Hitachi IQ solutions, and really how are these upgrades really going to further that journey to AI for the organizations using it?

Rollen Roberson

>> Well, I'm glad you actually mentioned RAG, retrieval-augmented generation. That's one of the characteristics that I think starts to cause issues with some of our customers who are in that AI journey. And part of the product set that we've developed to help along with that is called Hitachi IQ. Now, this is a broad platform, met to integrate a number of solutions. It's a suite of products available to our customers, and it includes HCSF for our file system. Now, with that, we've installed a turbocharger for that using the NVIDIA components with it, and also released recently you've seen that we have a much stronger presence with Hammerspace, as an example, one of our partners with this who's bringing an additional accelerator to that component of the file system. So all together with NVIDIA, our third party partners with this, we're bringing more and more acceleration capability to the AI story.

Rob Strechay

>> And I think that better together and making it easy is really what organizations are looking for is, Hey, how do I do certain things in the cloud that the cloud is natively better at? But really I want to control and govern the data, especially I think it's 1% of corporate data is actually in the cloud or has trained LLMs at this point, and there's a reason... I don't know whose 1% that is, they probably got fired, but when you start to look at it, you want to keep that guardrails and governance on there. And it would seem like the Hitachi IQ, plus, again, like you said, the CFS, the content file share, file system helping out there as well, and really NVIDIA powering underneath that would help organizations get to realization in ROI faster.

Rollen Roberson

>> You're right, yeah, it can be a tongue twister sometimes with Hitachi content file systems, but as we look at it, I mean, one of the things that you just said kind of struck me and it's customers are looking for that ability to customize for their particular business needs. And the cloud for all the greatness that it provides is still somewhat structured to them. And as they pull some of this back internally, in particular for the use of AI, it needs to be customized to their particular business to achieve the type of success and results they're looking for. So we're providing that type of ecosystem for our customers so they can migrate to the cloud back and actually operate across the entire ecosystem effectively. And at their level for what they're trying to achieve, it's that level of customization and the guardrails are a lot of the regulatory requirements that they have to follow, but we can make it right for them. So rather than taking something generic that may up in the native cloud, we can bring it back on premises to them and make it just right fit for purpose for them.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, definitely. And again, as people move away from just generic chatbots and things like that, more towards agentic technology, that's going to be key to them as well, because that's going to be parts of applications, not the whole application, which I think is great and ties in with a lot of what the folks at Azure are trying to be part of the ecosystem in some of their announcements as well. So I want to thank you, Rollen. -

Rollen Roberson

>> It is. That's why it's so exciting, right? It's so exciting being here. We've had so much announcements, so many exciting things happen. I've been having so many great conversations with customers and partners. It's going to be an exciting week.

Rob Strechay

>> And I'm glad you still have some voice left to get on with us today. So thank you for joining us. Really appreciate it, and I hope to see you in person at one of the next conferences, I'm sure.

Rollen Roberson

>> Me too. Thank you, Rob.

Rob Strechay

>> And thank you for watching Microsoft Ignite 2024 unpacked, and stay tuned for more on theCUBE, the leader in tech news and analysis.