 Hi, welcome back to theCUBE here at IBM Edge. I'm Alex Williams of SiliconANGLE here with Steve Fawcett. Steve. Hello. I was just trying to get an idea what you do, and you said you don't have a day job, but you do have a night job. No, I don't have any kind of job. You don't even have a night job. So when you're gamefully doing something. I employ myself. You employ yourself. Yes. And what is that that you did? So basically I write and speak at events, and I also organize events. So basically the sum of it is that I'm doing a lot of writing of technical articles. I also do a lot of blogging and just sort of whatever I feel like. I speak at events like this. I'll be having, I have a session tomorrow here at Edge talking about server virtualization integration. I also have a seminar series that I'm doing with about 30 cities this year. Doing an all day seminar on infrastructure for server virtualization. So storage servers and networks for virtual servers. And then I also organized the Tech Field Day event series which is kind of, you know, in a way it's a way to sort of give back to the community that supports me because it allows me to bring in a whole bunch of really great people. You know, it does in different independent bloggers and put them in front of different companies, you know, and talk about whatever the companies are doing. So we've done Wi-Fi. We've done data center networks. We've done storage. And we've got a security event coming up pretty soon. So a lot of different stuff. When is the next event? Oh, hey John, where'd you come from? Can you knock up on me? Yeah, I slid back from lunch. Good to see you, buddy. Good to see you. Here we are. So the next event coming up is... Yeah, so my next event is Wireless Field Day Free which is in September. And so it's all Wi-Fi companies. And let me tell you, as an enterprise guy learning about Wi-Fi has been super cool. Because first, the Wi-Fi people are actually really cool people. I mean, and they work on totally different challenges than we see in the enterprise, but there's such a parallel there. And so if you're excited about software-defined networking and separating the control plane from the data plane, well, Wireless did that. They didn't do it in exactly the same way that OpenFlow is doing it, but they've got their own twist on technology. And I think it really would be great if more enterprise people kind of saw what's going on in the wireless space. And it would certainly be great if some of the wireless people saw what's going on in the enterprise, because I think we could probably learn from each other. Yeah, I'd like to see some enterprise-class service on wireless. There's some really cool things. So I organized blogger events for the Ruba Airheads conference. And we did this great roundtable discussion. And it was really eye-opening to me. For example, I see an iPad on the other side of the camera. One of the things that they were talking about is how things like AirPlay and AirPrint work in the enterprise. I had never considered the implications of AirPlay on enterprise Wi-Fi networks, but wow, well, the thing is, a lot of enterprises are now bringing in like an Apple TV and connecting it to their projector. Well, in order for AirPlay to work, the iPad needs to be able to talk directly to that Apple TV. Well, Enterprise Wi-Fi is not designed to allow endpoint devices to talk to each other or to see each other. So they basically have to create special rules for Bonjour that allow these devices to see each other. And then they're kind of thinking, well, what about like, do we want your iPad to be able to see the projector on the floor below you? Well, no. So we have to figure out a way to filter that out. And like, have you only seen the printers? And it's totally weird stuff. And when you hear about it, you're like, oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. But you might not have thought about it. Yeah, you really start to see that when you talk to the customers out there about what really are their challenges. I was in a discussion yesterday at HP's event, and they were talking to just about security issues and authentication issues. Oh, yeah. Just very, very basic issues that they're struggling with every day. And there's some really cool stuff coming down the pike. I mean, I don't want to have this all be about Wi-Fi, but honestly, there's some really cool Wi-Fi technology. 802.11u is this whole new hotspot technology and authentication technology. And it's going to change the way your iPad and your notebook and your iPhone and Android, it's going to change the way all that stuff works with hotspots. And that's next year. So when you look at those events that you go to and the ones you organize, and then you look at an event like this as a contextual point, what are the connections that you're seeing? Well, it's interesting because so many of the independent events, I mean, I've spoken at Interop for years. I love Interop. I'm sure you've been there a few times. Oh yeah, a few times. And yet, so many of these independent events like that are gone and now events like this have so much more presence in the industry. Yeah, would you come to an event like this or EMC World or Stories Networking World, as an example? Yeah, exactly. Because people go to, and there's people all around us at the IBM event. And so, I mean, IBM, I think it was really smart for them to put together their three disparate events into one storage event. I mean, this is very like EMC World or VM World or any of these, I mean, it's honestly a lot like Aruba Airheads, even though obviously it's a totally different market because this is what people go to now. And there's a lot of crossover between what used to happen at the independent events and what now happens here. Do you see a role for an independent event? I do, but it's a little more challenging because, I mean, remember, back in the days of like Computer Shopper and Comdex and Interop and stuff, it was really different. People were going to those events to shop. People don't come to events to shop so much anymore. People come to events now to explore and to get connections. And I don't know how it's gonna work in the future. Interesting, one of the things that's been interesting for me is that I've talked to a number of people who came and said they brought their teams down to get educated. So the education component of this is, I think, substantially more than what you might have seen at some other sessions. The education's there, but it's kind of lightweight, you know. I'm also seeing how, you know, with a lot of what we're talking here about is like IT everywhere. I mean, IT can be anywhere. Oh, absolutely. I mean, that's the Wi-Fi lesson is IT everywhere. And it's like, you know, and any, you know, a cell phone as a node, this laptop as a node, right? So IT will be anywhere. And that means then, increasingly, there's communities that are kind of establishing around data points, right? There's starting to, you know, there's connection points. That to me seems like opportunity for events, right? It's like, because now we're starting to move into this whole new world where we're kind of developing new communities every day, you know, and they build and build and build and those actually can become, you know, have enough critical mass for events. Well, so in your perspective on this, one of the things I hope to see out of this is make this a sustained event. So we could do the comparison in the EMC world. Absolutely. So we're at 1600 or so today, I don't know, at this event, you know, is it going to be a 5,000 person event in two years time? Are they going to continue the investment across, yeah. And I actually, I think that my biggest piece of advice to IBM in building this event and also in doing the other things, like, I mean, what we're doing right here, you know, we're on, you know, on the air with live streaming video. IBM needs to not have this be a self-serving event. And I'm not saying that it is, but I'm saying that they need to be careful not to make it that way. The reason that people love VMworld, for example, is because it's all about serving the needs of the attendees. And if IBM can do that, if IBM can serve the needs of people who use IBM storage, then I don't see that this event can't grow and grow. And that goes down to the education. It goes down to everything. I mean, if their metrics are organized around what do people want to see and what value are people getting from the event, then I think they're going to have a successful event on their hands. So give me two minutes on what was best for you? Well, actually we need about one minute because we're going to have to move on. Okay, so give me one minute of what's the best thing that you've taken away from this. Oh, the best thing that I've taken away from this? Okay, I really enjoyed this morning there was some sessions on the future of storage. I really enjoyed what they said about solid-state storage and the long-term evolution of storage architecture. That stuff is cool. I think it's really valuable for people to come and hear technology vision for the future of that. I also really enjoyed the Watson session just because it was really cool to see all these Watson work. But there you go, there you go. Yeah, I also, I mean, what I really like about this event is how forward-looking it is. Those keynotes with Jeff Jonas, with distinguished fellows, that's really the, that's the thing that I think would, for me at least, bring me here. And remember, IBM invented everything. And that's the truth. And that's not just a flippant remark. IBM is basically a research monster, at least has been in the past. And I think it's important for them to demonstrate that they still are and that they're at the forefront. And that was, I think, one of my big takeaways is, is I, because they've acquired some small early-stage companies and they've incorporated them into some of the solutions. But the investment that they've been making internally, and Jeff Jonas was a good example of that, I think it's just great. Well, he's just a great speaker, so. Well, he is just a great speaker. Well, we're going to have to get going. Steve, thank you very much for taking some time to be on the air with us. We're live here at IBM Edge. Now we're going to go live to HP Discover in Las Vegas with Dave Vellante. Dave, take it from here.