 Okay, we're back live in Orlando, Florida for IBM's Edge 2012. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com. This is a wrap-up segment for day one of day two, two-day coverage of Edge 2012, IBM Storage Technology Conference, the first step for IBM in their transformation and storage strategy. I'm joined with Dave Vellante, co-founder of Wikibon.org and John MacArthur, co-host this week with us. So guys, let's do the wrap. Dave, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, I'm definitely, I'd say Edge exceeded my expectations. I mean, I had reasonably high expectations for Edge, but I mean, the quality of the attendees looks good. I mean, a lot of familiar faces, but a lot of new faces, good, strong practitioner audience, very strong representation from IBM management, which I think is key, even though, again, Steve Mills is not here. I would have liked to see Steve Mills come here. Rod Atkins, big presentation this morning, thought he did a very good job. I'd like to look at the sort of near-term what's happening and then bring up the telescope a little bit. So, you know, tactically speaking, the big whales in the storage business, this is a storage event, when you look at IBM HP Oracle, EMC, Dell, NetApp, IBM and EMC sort of stand out as doing better than the market on average near-term. Okay, now, the market's ebbing and flowing for, you know, for a number of quarters, NetApp was really kicking butt. They've run into some bumps. Dell has had some financial issues, right? But, you know, again, still strong company, Oracle. We see bumps in the road, HP, we saw last quarter, you know, kind of hurting. EMC continues to do well. And IBM, I think, what I'm looking for, so that's the near-term, right? And quarters come, quarters go, and you've got comparisons with previous years. What I'm looking for from IBM is a continued sustained momentum in the storage business, which has been lacking at the company. And that's what I think edge is really all about. It's the coming-out party for IBM's storage business, and my expectation is, and hope is, that IBM can continue that momentum, can continue to take its organic R&D, it spends more on R&D than anybody. Now, you can argue it doesn't spend as much on storage R&D, but still, spends a lot of money on R&D, combined with its cash horde and strategic acquisitions, which I, again, I'd like to see it get more aggressive in storage. I mean, you saw a $5 billion acquisition of Cognos, you know, you're not going to necessarily see that in storage, but I'd like to see, and you have seen, you know, so I want to see that continue. So this to me is really the coming-out party of IBM, and I'm expecting and holding IBM's feet to the fire to see that progress and see if they can actually make inroads and get back their storage mojo. I think, Dave, I'm impressed by the organizational changes around the coordination of this event. This event, I mean, was talked about by Mark Peters from ESG. Literally, this is a whole new ball game for IBM's management to kind of put the step forward as a unified team company, not just storage centric, we're trying to compete with everyone else. They really are looking at the holistic big picture of what the customers want, and I'm trying to organize that where storage is central to that equation. So, you know, I think that's a good strategy for them. It plays right to their strengths and takes the whole speeds and feeds out of the game and commoditizes everybody else. Now, they're not really hurting that bad in the speeds and feeds from what we analyzed, but they're table stakes. Their solutions are going to drive it. So I'm impressed by that. I think it's a good move. I think IBM's products, their portfolios, solid. I think the issue has been one of organizations, commitment, you get a lot of turnover at the very highest levels. You just don't have that continuity, and that's something that I'm hoping Brian Traskowski can bring. I mean, obviously, Rod Atkins, Steve Mills. This team has been together for a while, and then the people underneath it. The collaboration with Tivoli, to me, is one of the most impressive things I've seen at this event. They've been talking about that for a while. You're actually starting to see it, John. Well, yeah, sorry. I mean, I think the first time, I remember speaking to Linda Sanford when she was running storage, and she's over in services now. I thought, actually, she moved out of services, but, and I said at the time, I think, you know, I think he looks like you have a tighter integration with Veritas at the time than you did with, than you do with Tivoli. And she said, yes, but I'm going to fix that. And I think we're starting to see a lot of that now. There's a much tighter integration at the product level, the solution level of the Tivoli products, Tivoli, whether it's Tivoli Performance, TPC, Total Productivity Center, or, but you're seeing much more integration in the products there. Integration between that and volume controller. But there's also moving IBM technology out into the broader community. So, you know, licensing IBM technology. So not just being an OEM of other people's technology, but actually licensing that technology and creating tighter partnerships outside, so. So IBM's relevant in the discussion with CIOs, and it's always been relevant in the discussion with CIOs. So just as I think, you know, we talk about EMC doing a great job with cloud, meets big data and whole IT transformation. They've really, you know, the marketing is terrific. IBM's, you know, corporate branding around smarter planet. The storage group is able to draft on that. It gets brought into situations where, you know, other companies, you know, cannot compete. So that's a big advantage. What IBM has to do is, like I say, get that innovation mojo back. And that's really key. And I think that, again, IBM, I said de-invested, one of the guests today said, well, not really de-invested, just put on ice. Well, that to me is de-investing. So that, and you can't just turn that on. We're seeing that at HP, how hard it is to say, okay, now I just want to turn on the R&D spigot. It takes years, and it's been now, let's see, probably five years, since IBM's really said, okay, somebody at the top said, all right, we're going after storage. It's a big market, we fell behind. Let's amp it up. And so now we're starting to see the fruits. Now we have to see that continued momentum. That's to me the key. And, you know, IBM structurally, so a GM within IBM storage, typically in the GM role for four years or so, right? I mean, you don't see GMs of IBM storage for 10 years. Right? I mean, how many GMs of IBM storage have you had? So this commitment to storage, if you want to be, if you want to be a leader in the storage space, thought of independently as storage, then you're going to have to have the commitment that it sustains across multiple GMs. If they stay with that sort of management. Yeah, well, that's, you know, that's, I think, a challenge for IBM because they don't typically have that GM stay in there. Not only is it, it's a challenge if you think of it from a product perspective. It's an advantage if you think of it from how well do you understand the customer? Well, the culture. Like Brian, for example, was CIO. But the culture of IBM is to, you know, they can think of different roles and that's how you climb the ladder. But my point is this, that now that the portfolio has been filled in and more completed, it's not 100% complete, but maybe now the subsequent GM, first, personally, I'd like to see Brian stay out for a while. First of all, I think that would be advantageous for the division. You look at, like, Tucci and his tenure. It's like Pat Gelsinger said, John, the Beatles are staying together longer. Tucci's, you know, refusing to retire. I'm just tongue in cheek. But still, that kind of continuity, and Tucci made a lot of mistakes early on, you know? Let's face it. I mean, you know, the whole documentum thing. He's made a lot of good moves too, but that continuity, he's learned from those mistakes and I think that is really valuable. So, I'd like to see more continuity. Now, in lieu of that continuity, if, let's say, Brian moves on, I'd like to see a process whereby, you know, somehow that knowledge transfer occurs in an orderly fashion, almost like it occurs from Palmasama to Ginny Romney. Right, I think that is a really orderly transition. That kind of a transition is the model for the divisions. So IBM has to prove that it can trickle that down into the divisions and that's, you know, I think key. Or, maybe Brian just stays in the job longer because he's really got, you know, finally got that portfolio to where it needs to be. Yeah. What do you guys think about the conversation that we've had today? Cause we've got some tweets coming in saying, wow, I'm really surprised how much they're talking about big data. Dave, we obviously, all we do is talk about big data and cloud mobile. How much we're talking about? No, no, no, I'm on theCUBE and here. Or at this event, yeah. Well, kind of both. We did talk a lot about big data, but we normally do, but for IBM to be that engaged, it wasn't like they were darting their eyes looking for answers. They're actually, yeah. I think you're making a really good observation and the reason why people, I think, are impressed is because IBM's got substance. You know, they got a lot of assets there. You know, it's not big data washing. I mean, they have made some tremendous investments. I mean, you heard from, you know, Jeff Jonas and a number of others at this event. So there's some real resources there. And IBM, you know, is a gamer. Yeah, there are clearly problems that are entrusted to IBM to work on the analytics side. It wouldn't necessarily be entrusted to some other companies, right? So they create a body of knowledge within those relationships, I think, that is just extremely powerful. And then being able to leverage that outside of, military, defense, government, kind of work that they might be involved in with governments around the world. They then leverage that into more commercial applications. That may be one of the things that they wrestle with. I mean, you know, so it's not only about the product anymore, right? I mean, it's certainly, you take a company like 3PAR. It was all obviously about the product, the compelence about the product. Once they get subsumed into a larger organization, there's so many other factors. So a lot of people criticize EMC and IBM and even HP. Look at the EVA for, you know, the products, they're old, they're deficient, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of the customers don't care. They want a problem solved. So what organizations like IBM do, the big whales, is when they have a hole in the product line, they go buy. Now, IBM, we think we've heard consistently, IBM's model is to buy in advance of the bubble. Right, and that, you know, I mean, sometimes it's going to be hard, you know, to pick the right winners, or you might miss some things. You know, we'll see what happens with Flash. I think the Extreme I.O. acquisition by EMC was an attempt to maybe inject a little IBM. Yeah, get a little earlier. People got to ask, well, okay, great. I mean, I think Isilon was a good move at $2 billion. I think Data Domain was a good move, that's fine. 3PAR at 2.4 billion, but board members have to start asking, well, can't we pick these companies up for less? Right, and I know what you're going to do is better earlier. We're not buying their customer base. We're buying their technology to put into our customer base. So I think IBM's got that right. And to have some real strength around the, how do you bring the technology into a systems company and deliver to the customers, you know, as a solution. With all of the overhead of blue washing, it took nine months to blue wash XIV, right? So, and that's actually record time for them, I think. I didn't know they could actually... Yeah, I think XIV was actually much faster. I think store-wise, for example, that took a lot longer. Yeah, the blue wash, that one? Yeah. Right, I mean, that technology's coming out basically this week embedded, which we had predicted would be the trend in that real-time compression. What do you guys expect next? From when we're going to have all day tomorrow, we're going to talk to partners and customers tomorrow. Today was the exact day the management told them to us. What do you think is the going forward plan as you see it? And what do you guys think we need to look for? Kind of a, I guess, scorecard, check boxes. What do you think IBM needs to do going forward from this point? To me, IBM's got to prove to the channel that it is an attractive partner to do business with, and I think it's got to demonstrate that it can, in storage, that it can really change the game outside of the true blue accounts. That, to me, is the key. And it's made some progress there with XIV. A lot of that is accounts that used to do business with IBM, where IBM had a really strong relationship but they haven't bought storage in a couple years and now they're back. So I want to see more of that across the portfolio. That's, I think, the key, and I think that's what the channel is looking for. And to me, it's all about the channel right now. The IBM channel's been one of the most loyal channels out there, let's be clear. You invest heavily in IBM, IBM invest heavily in you. So they support, and they've not been sort of unclear about their channel strategy, right? They allow partners to deliver global services. They allow them to sign it and have IBM global services deliver it. They've got, I think, a very good relationship with their select partner. That said, when they get into having to compete in deals that are very much price-driven kinds of deals, they haven't been able to be as competitive sometimes, right? And particularly when it's around a specific acquisition. I'm doing a storage acquisition, right? I think the relationship with NetApp helped them some with the N-Series that enabled them to sell into a different set of customers with a different set of applications because, frankly, their NAS strategy was, failed how many times. It was going to be a Windows-based NAS. It was going to be a Unix-based NAS. So I think that some of those relationships helped. I think going, I always do. I'm not hearing a lot about SonS this week. You're not hearing a lot about SonS at Strong. I think, I'm excited about it. I think the big data angle is interesting. I do too. I think that they're finally going on some trends that take them out of their narrow vertical focus of storage and the broadened focus is interesting. What I think I'm going to look for and what I'm going to benchmark them besides some of the product, you guys go in the weeds on the product success and we'll talk about that. I'm looking for the marketing to continue. This is, if they let this event die the way it is, then they have not done their job because they have a chance right now to rewrite their narrative around what storage means in context. I heard that on the Q. I think the marketing has to move out of the smarter planet mindset. Keep that going from the brand marketing, IBM, smarter planet, great messaging, entertaining, good brand, but as marketers in the business units need to expand into social. So we know from social media, there's a variety of different channels and target audiences that need to be addressed. So one, I'm really happy that theCUBE is here. I'm looking forward to more cubes, but I think they have a chance to actually put new marketing tactics in place to create credibility and expand on that credibility that they have now. And if they don't do that, they'll miss an opportunity. Take a little more risk as it relates to, well, take advantage of more channels than what they think. Well, I wouldn't say it's a risk. I just think there's an unserved market out there of people who want to know what IBM is and relative to storage and solutions. And you got Tivoli, they got cloud, they got everything. IBM has the packages. They have the total package of you to put a team together and say compete in this cloud mobile social world. They have all the assets. Questions, can they assemble that, look like they're going to? And just a matter of telling people. Right. Yeah, I think one of the big issues is how do you take away some of the negative perceptions of IBM when you think of them narrowly in the context of storage? Historically, historically for the last 10, 15 years or so. And how do you sustain and grow the positive messages going forward? I think you're right. Well, IBM's ace in the hole. Continues to be the brand, right? And the services, they have client relationships solid. And their knowledge of verticals. Like nobody does the deep kind of vertical segmentation that IBM does to give knowledge of applications and business processes within verticals. So the point is that that fundamental has allowed the storage group to make some missteps and be somewhat complacent. And then finally, there was the wake up call, let's say five years ago. And again, I expect steady, slow, steady progress. Because IBM's got the right model. The economic model inside IBM obviously works. The M&A model obviously works. And so, I mean, IBM has got a great position right now. They have some things to work on. We've talked about that. But on the positive note is, Dave, to your point, they have incredible customer focus. They do have a strong channel that they've invested in. They could be broader on the channel side. I think they're, but they have great focus on the customer and they know the verticals and they have the relationship. So it's a supplier question as a brand. So they have that as a ace in the hole. And I think storage is smart not to draft on other events. Dave, you pointed that out earlier today. And I think that is absolutely a great thing. Control their own destiny, have this kind of event, put programs in place that are storage centric, but not just storage product. Good point, yeah, right. And I think that their ability to do data analytics specific to business problems that they see their customers facing, I think that's... Yeah, and I think, you know, the marketing side, one thing that I will say has been great is the Watson campaign has been fantastic. They've gotten great press, great flexing their muscles around big data. But yeah, that's a storage problem. Big data is about storage, right? But yet analytics, they're in this weird zone where storage is the king of the market right now in terms of what people want to talk about and build on. Yet, it's solutions around storage, so. Yeah, yeah. Analytics is an example, right? So, interesting. Well, and I think as things move to more real-time analytics, you know, that's an area where they understand real-time. Okay, so that's a wrap on IBM guys. Great day today. Also, news around, big news happening around the web, Dave. Xbox signed deals with ESPN, a lot of stuff going on with E3, Microsoft, this amazing living room takeover opportunity for cord cutters for the web. So, I mean, Xbox has got a huge platform expanding on that gaming platform to bring TV to that platform, it's amazing. And just general news, you know, the war games, we've been covering the cyber war between the U.S. and the Stuck-Nix virus, so. A lot of stuff, go to SiliconANGLE.com. SiliconANGLE.com is where all that coverage will be. Wikibon.org is where all the researches go there and check out the free content on both sites, and obviously SiliconANGLE.tv is where the videos are. And if you're on YouTube, you can go to YouTube.com slash SiliconANGLE, and all the videos from theCUBE are up there. So, hope you enjoy that content. I want to say thanks to IBM for letting us be here, be this independent media, watch their commercials. They support us, and so support them by watching their commercials. Dave, thank you very much. Thanks for having me, John. Okay, guys, that's a wrap from day one here at Edge, 2012, live in Orlando. We'll see you tomorrow.