 Okay, we're back here at IBM Edge in Las Vegas. This is ground zero for the transformation of infrastructure. Storage is a platform. Storage is the center of the value purposes and the transformation of the marketplace, where data is the new competitive advantage. This is SiliconANGLE and Wikibon's coverage of theCUBE, our flagship program. We'll go out to the events. Thanks for coming from the North. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm Joe, I'm the co-host. Hi, everybody. I'm Dave Vellante of wikibon.org. Sebastian Krauss is here. He's the vice president of global sales for IBM Storage Group. Sebastian, welcome back. What has transpired since April 11th in the client base in terms of the uptake and the enthusiasm around flash? Well, Dave, as you said, on April 11th, we made the big flesh forward initiative, which we have announced in New York after we have done all the bluewashing on the products of Texas Memory System, a company we acquired in August. Since then, we have seen a tremendous dynamic in the marketplace on this initiative. We've been working on it for a long time. There is a tremendous dynamic in the marketplace on this initiative. I believe there is not a single customer in an industry that currently is not thinking about how to replace mechanical drives with flash drives. For many reasons. A, companies are running out of space. They want to be more energy efficient. Certainly also the performance on the application side is something which is extremely important to them. And since we've talked last time here in theCUBE, I think it has become an even more compelling reason to think about flash initiatives and leveraging flash as a technology. Sebastian, what's your strategy for storage or data? How do you respond? Well, I think there are, first of all, we are taking it from an angle of client needs and clients' requirements. I think which is the wise thing to do when you are forming your strategy. So first thing, customers have different needs and even the same customer can have different needs. So if you think about what Ambusch mentioned this morning about business critical needs and the economic impact of not complying to that, that you would have your system down, you would lose millions or hundreds of millions of dollars in your business, that is something that customers cannot afford. And for every industry, for every customer, it means something different. But it's on us to ensure that we provide these high mission critical application systems supporting or being supported by storage systems, making sure that they can stay online. That's the piece where Ambusch talked about it needs to be open. It needs to be industry specific and basically partners should be able to basically plug on their application and their programmable solutions on top of it. And then there is really the third piece which is the data intensity, which is more like a solution orientation which could be data protection and retention which could be something in the high-end scale or file systems for certain industry. Think about, for example, in the university area in the medical area, that's the third leg of the stool. And then last but certainly not least, that's flesh. And flesh is basically almost everywhere. And then there is really the third piece which is the data intensity, which is more like a solution orientation which could be data protection and retention which could be something in the high-end scale or file systems for certain industry. Think about, for example, in the university area in the medical area, that's the third leg of the stool. And then last but certainly not least, that's flesh. And flesh is basically almost everywhere right now. Flesh place is a market segment by itself when it comes to application performance, database acceleration, but it also plays in the other three areas. So can you talk about the open pieces? People are very interested by that open angle. I think it's, I mean, if you think about how our industry went along, it's all about creating a platform enabling the industry participants, whether these are ISVs, whether these are partners, whether these are clients by itself to basically plug on that platform to basically satisfy their needs and to ensure that they can harmonize within their infrastructure what they would like to do. Do you guys agree with that? I mean, obviously, this still may be certainly faster, more or less expensive, but flesh is not going to overtake some say that quickly. Do you have a perspective on that? John, I would take a look at that from two angles. First of all, I don't think that anytime soon the data explosion is going to stop with all the different medias that we are having at this point in time, with the social media, with the different devices that are coming in both on the consumer side but more importantly now also on the business side. Where customers really have to cope with this majority of the data, with the vast explosion that is happening, that is clearly something which they have to take care of. So data volumes will increase significantly between 50, maybe even up to 70% a year. But the way to handle this, I think, has become definitely different. First of all, we talked about tiering for a long period of time. So tiering is a technology that will enable customers to use flesh almost immediately as a plug-in, but then also to reduce the total cost of ownership of the entire infrastructure. So where flesh basically improves the performance of the application of the entire infrastructure and gives you that edge that you need, basically a fast IOPS, and give it an edge towards your customer experience and your client experience on the web. It also provides you with a tier that you can seamlessly integrate into your tiered infrastructure. So you're seeing the accelerated phase and we're talking about the kind of dynamic you're seeing because those kinds of customers are bringing improved concepts and enrolling them out fast. Are they highly accelerated now? And let's add some color to these proof of concepts as they dig in and invest. They are. Proof of concepts more than I think any time that I have seen it in the past are currently providing the proof points to the customer, the value to the customer to go down the path of the strategy we just discussed and to implement it fast. So basically, get it fixed for now but also have the strategic angle. So customers are requiring those proof of concepts in most of those cases that I'm aware of customers stay with that proof of concept gear that they have and they basically implement that solution immediately. Okay, Sebastian Kruss here at IBM obviously talking to customers, there's a huge demand for the quick fix deal of the tsunami of data and new technology as well as build the road map. Congratulations, thanks for your time. This is the cue of our flagship program about the events. Extract the ceiling from the noise. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with our next guest after this short break.