Inhi Cho Suh, IBM | IBM Edge 2013 - Highlights
Inhi Cho Suh,at IBM Edge 2013 with Dave Vellante BM Edge 2013 has come and gone, so now we take collection of the annual event highlights and see what they tells us of IBM's strategy moving forward. First off, IBM made a slew of additions and announcements to its flash storage portfolio. Additionally, IBM focused a lot on "smarter" at IBM Edge 2013: smarter computing and smarter storage. Here was an interesting message from IBM at IBM Edge: in the Big Data + Storage conundrum, storage isn't used simply as a repository, but more as an innovation mechanism. IBM believes the word 'storage' is soon becoming obsolete under the weight of Big Data and what we can do with it. IBM's Storage Strategy Flash, Dibs! (Well, sorta) IBM made no bones about jumping into the Flash storage market, and seemed adamant it had a game plan for success. What IBM failed to mention is that EMC and others have been investing in flash since 2008. IBM's messaging at IBM Edge was that flash is going to have a major impact on system architectures. Wikibon Senior Analyst Stu Miniman recently gave some additional context to that message on our morning NewsDesk, "...that is one of the criticisms of IBM, is they do come out sometimes and say 'We have this great idea', I actually went to a session of theirs in 2010 where they said 'flash is going to radically change whats going on in storage'...we're sitting there saying 'well EMC has been putting flash in their array since 2008′, here we are 2013 still talking about flash. We think its a good message though. Flash is radically changing the entire software. IBM now has a pretty solid portfolio. Everything from what they're doing in extending their Easy Tier into the sever, through the flash systems which was the TMS acquisition. Flash is the hot button topic for storage." Though late to market, Miniman is glad to see that IBM is at least on point with its messaging. At IBM Edge, another announcement was FlashSystem family of all-flash appliances — delivering less than 1/10 the cost per transaction while using four percent less energy and two percent less space compared to hybrid disk and flash systems. IBM also added support for 4TB drives to its Storwize V7000 and XIV advanced systems for 33 percent more capacity. XIV's new capabilities let clients send large volumes of data between systems through the cloud. As discussed in the video, IBM also upgraded its Easy Tier technology, an automation tool that moves data to the most effective storage tier in a storage system improving efficiency and speed. Cloud Opportunities, With a Focus on the Public Cloud Another big announcement was IBM's new solutions for PureFlex Systems: Cloud + Mobile + Social + Analytics. As part of our coverage of IBM Edge, we had Andy Monshaw, GM PureFlex Systems, on #theCUBE. IBM is hedging its bet on a trend that the industry is driving levels of requirements for infrastructure and applications we haven't see in a long time. Big Data is driving complexity points at a rate so quickly, service providers can't keep up — in essence, the old way of working is acting as an anchor. Monshaw gave a great quote on where he and his team believe Big Data is moving the industry: The movement to cloud is happening at a rate and pace that even the analyst aren't recognizing...an example is clients using Salesforce.com, and that is a cloud service. They don't think that way. I believe what we're going to see in the marketplace is the second wave in the VM effect...SMB are moving their business to a highly virtualized servers...Second virtualization effect...IBM has a massive cloud offerings...There are thousands and thousands mid-sized managed server providers...The opportunity extends well well well beyond a few big players. #theCUBE #IBM #SiliconANGLE @IBM #IBMEdge