 Okay, we're back live here in Orlando for IBM Edge 2012. We're here with Joseph King with C.A.S. Sabrin, your Solutions Architect with John MacArthur by co-host this morning. We're going to hear the perspective of what's going on in the real deal, what's happening in the trenches. So first tell us one, what do you think about the event here with IBM and this kind of new face for storage? What do you think about it? Well I think you know it's really important in my role as I run our entire pre-sales consulting group and so this was able to get together not only my architects and solution providers but also all of our sellers and we're able to get into one event along with our customers instead of them being parted out which is really how it was before. There'd be sales training, there'd be separate technical training, separate customer events and really bringing that all together was very important for us. If you take on another step, it's really taking the storage-centric software, the TPC and TSM for us which is very important to our business and bringing that into the event also on top of just the hardware and you put that all together and Edge has been a tremendously successful event. It's something we've been asking for as a partner for many years and we're just glad that IBM took that direction. It seems to be aligned more with how you guys are working. Absolutely. You're not like in a silo just storage. Storage is a component of a completely new use cases for your customer base. Can you talk about your environments as you talk to customers? What's the new expectations for customers these days? Well if you take a look at the expectations for customers are you know it's really it's quaint because we know we call it solution selling but I mean honestly that's really what we've done and it's been CS7's DNA and so you take a look at pulling together storages in bot in a silo. It's not bot in a vacuum and what we're seeing is bringing in that integration so folks can understand things like their data analytics, their performance of that has been very important and you take a look at an organization like us and then wrapping in the innovations and storage. How does that affect software? How does that affect the performance and maintaining that performance profile that's really important to our customers and it helps them do their business and so in the end that's really what the solution sells that customers are looking for right now. Obviously storage is not going away. It's changing storage. We just heard backup and recovery and data protection is just booming still. Never is going to go away. What is the number one thing you're hearing from customers right now? What are they asking for? Is it cloud? Is it big data? Is it consumers that consumerization? Data protection? Well I think the really the main thing that you know I've been talking about with folks and customers have really been demanding and this has really been going on for about two years is honestly drastic simplification. You know they've really built up an overly complex environment of a little bit of this and a little bit of that and really breaking down that complexity and bringing in some mass simplification has been very very important for you know for our customers. How far does that go? So you know in large organizations you've got a storage administrator and medium-sized organizations you may not have someone specifically with that title. You may have an application or network administrator. Are we getting to the point where an application administrator is actually managing storage in large organizations? Are you still good? Well I think that what we're seeing is that storage is at a lot more top of mind within the upper IT management and and really that culture of having a sustainable you know storage architecture is really pushed down to the entire organization and so when we're out with you know with customers for you know for instance you know database administrators that you know maybe you're running say a PeopleSoft ERP system you know you know basically are going to demand that they're be able to maintain their performance profile. They're going to do that anyway they can and so what we've worked with a lot of our customers is to make sure that they all don't go off in their separate directions that we don't have you know the application team attempting to design their own you know their own solution and you don't have the hardware team off doing their thing and that's really the role of what we've been doing at CS7 instead to bring all the people together to be able to set a sustainable strategy up over you know maybe it's immediate maybe it's an immediate benefit maybe it's something that is going to come into play over multiple years and that's really what we've been you know working towards doing with our customers. So you brought some of your customers down here with you this week? Absolutely. Any surprises for them? Any like aha moments for them after I mean the Solutions Center was open last night. Absolutely. They heard a lot of talks. What did they take away? So it's interesting then the number one I would say that that what they're most excited about which you know we've been waiting for for a very long time was you know active data compression on the V7000 and SVC you know this is something you take a look at you know and into Sarah Hospital you know customers. That dramatic storage savings is going to allow them to really shift their spend and be able to you know to be able to innovate across a larger amount of the of their of their solutions that they need to be able to provide and and so compression has really been the big thing. I think the other one is is you know IBM's commitment to you know to continue to innovate in their software and and so we have a number of folks here that are very interested in things like TPC and they're really glad that from you know from a storage performance management that they're able to get you know something that showed very well you know TPC's already been able to get the job done but it but it never looked good and now okay so is that was different because I mean TPC's been around for a very long time. Absolutely. Is it that we've gone from which we've substantially improved the user interface? Absolutely. Well a couple things so if you take a look at its usability and user interface design or key so if something is difficult to use you're going to get that that culture of almost standoffishness if they're not going to want to embrace it even though it might get the job done and so you take a look what IBM has done in interface design through things like the XIB the v7000 the SVC now you know TPC is if we can break down that complexity of something simple which seems so quaint to us with interface design you know we can you know make a product much more usable and when it's much more usable they're going to be they're going to use it and and and that's really for us is what we see is a major benefit of the really the dramatic spend that IBM's done and and doing innovation and something which you know you know for us in the field just it seems like a natural progression and we're really happy to see it and it's something we've been very excited about and it's really changed you know that culture of it you know IBM out there in the storage community for our customers where you know they know that they're going to get something that's very usable and that's going to have a very high performance profile and and for them that that's very important you've you've been in the application development space how important is that in your business in your overall sort of relationship with your customers oh it's critical you know if you take a look at the the application development work that CS Severin does is really what you know helps drive our data center innovation that you know that we do one really comes with the other and so you take a look at whether you know large federal projects that you know that we work on where we're you know integrating you know 10 15 different Tivoli products together to be able to you know to be able to provide dashboards of business operations to you know to the end users you know that has to run on something and so the end you take a look at that innovation that we're able to provide on the software side and something that could be a simple software integration you know really helps drive what we're doing in the data center and and so they really play off each other and so from you know from a CS Severin standpoint one doesn't exist without the other and and that's really for you know through our 35 years that's been you know very very important and and it continues to you know to drive our growth and it's good it's something that we're going to absolutely going to continue to focus on so you want IBM to do this again next year oh absolutely it's you know if you take a look at you know at an event like this you know we could see that you know IBM can take this event and grow its scope and stature you know you take a look at this is the first year I know that I'm going to go back you know get with my customers that weren't able to make it and and quite honestly you know get up and do a little cheerleading yeah because I think there's a you know the density of education is phenomenal yeah do you um so emc world was last week and that was a huge event did you go no no we I know you're not an emc partner right now no but you are an asp partner yeah we are and I think that you know you take a look at you know IBM is where our bread and butter is where our bread and butter is at and and so you take a look at events like you know like emc world and you take a look at events like edge now what happens if you took edge and you put it together with pulse and you put it together with iod you know and whatnot you'd have a massive right you know event I think what's nice here is if you take a look at the at our customers that have um a storage you know focus and this could be storage focus from an integrated system standpoint on moving towards pure systems or it could be just a you know just a straight um you know storage focus you know they're able to come into event like edge they're very able to get some very targeted in some cases very advanced and very deep education and you know for them they're able to then to go back to their shops be able to implement some changes to transform you know their organization so I know that uh you know we're having dinner with a few folks last night I know that they're going to uh you know go back to their uh to their uh facilities on on on Monday and really you know start putting a pen to paper on how are they going to transform you know their organization with some of the information that they learned this week and Joseph final question we have to break for our next guest but I wanted to ask you us in complexity is a big problem you guys are solving that around around with the customer too but also for the vendor themselves IBM has to address that and and so does everyone else so the question is what does a vendor like IBM or even HP or anyone who's trying to sell cloud into the cloud mobile social new infrastructure big date all that all the stuff that the customers want to move to what do they have to do to be successful to work with partners in the channel so in terms of if solution selling is the way to go knowing that the landscape is changing what do they have to do to be successful what are the critical success factors I think there's a number of them but let's talk about a couple so one could be just you know consistent messaging you know the fact that when they're talking to the you know to the partner you know community that it's not a very disjointed message and so you know you take a look at what you know IBM has been able to do across you know the social media and their you know Lotus innovation that they've done things like connections and you know moving towards you know how they're communicating us to partners you know IBM has been wonderful at using the technologies that they develop to help you know drive change of communications with us in the partner community and and that's been very successful I think the other you know the other one is is is you know customers have to go on a journey they're not going to be able to eat this all you know day one and so the is providing a you know roadmap of how are they going to be able to grow into you know this and it works to it from us as in the you know in the channel to you know to make sure that you know we have to grow into this also we can't you know ingest every technology day one and so that education that we get at events like like this was it's going to be easy to sell to and throw off some gross profit right there's no doubt there's no doubt in and I think that IBM can take a look at from a program standpoint and and the storage specialty elite program that you know that we're in now you know helps maintain that profitability profile that we need you know to provide that deep level of consulting services that my group provides and and and I think IBM's really done a good job of you know helping maintain really that that that profit that we need in order to and to provide that deep level of service that we do and it's that service that's before implementation that is a critical fact of a project success okay joseph king with CAS ever in there out the solutions architect solutions selling as big part of it IBM has made one up with the storage and their portfolio this is the cube we are he live in Orlando we'll be right back with