 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Edge 2015, brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to Las Vegas. Stu Minim and I are here to wrap up. It's been a good show, Stu. Two days, nonstop. I think, I don't know if we broke any records, but boy, we came close. Yeah, I mean, Dave, IBM's been around a long time and they've kept us here slogging through, I mean, not slogging, but it's been great guests. We had, I mean, all the topics, I always love, you look at the keynote and you look at theCUBE and we get to dig in with those guys, get them past the scripts that they're doing on stage, had a lot of great business partners on, and the customers. I mean, I always love, Dave, when you founded Wikibon, it was allowing IT practitioners to share with their peers. So when we can come out here and talk to, I mean, we had Walmart on. We had Centerpoint Energy talked about how they're doing a terabyte of data per day and had a genomics company talking about how they have a terabyte of data per patient. I mean, massive amounts of data, middleware, power, Z. It was a cool show. I mean, fellow, all the GMs, a ton of customers. The line of the week that I heard was, gentlemen from Walmart quoting Sam Walton, we turned inventory into information. Very powerful, and you go back to the late 1980s, early 1990s, it was Walmart talking about putting beer next to diapers, right? Data-driven, way back then. Yeah, so it's funny, Dave. I've been having this debate with friends of mine lately and said, okay, which one's more open? VMware or Microsoft? And after it came out of this week, it's like, wow, what's more open? IBM. The mainframe, or x86, I mean. Yeah, it's so true. You know, it's kind of hilarious. Docker, right? Linux, quarter of the workloads are Linux on Z. If John Furrier was here, he's down the road, his quote from yesterday, we talked about it in the wrap-up, was that IBM's doing Linux like it's never been done before. So it's like, Linux on Z, Linux on power, we've got open power, so there's so much going on there with the Linux space that it really is transformed the industry. So let's talk about the different lines of business that were represented here. Edge has been historically a storage show. This year it's clearly broadened. Z, power, middleware, we heard from Marie Week, and of course, storage, at Jamie Thomas on, she's driving the software-defined agenda. And essentially what they've done is they've taken the piece parts, you know, Tivoli's in there and they've extracted XIV, they're driving a software-led infrastructure agenda. The parts are coming together, right? There's still a lot of work that has to be done to integrate those piece parts and deliver on that full software-defined vision, but that's where the investments are going. Very clearly combined that with Flash, IBM's talking about how they're number one in units and terabytes, not number one in revenue, okay? They didn't say it, Gartner said it, but that says to me, Stu, there's a lot of upside there because if you're leading in volume and you know IBM is pricing profitably, so that says to me that that's a good business model for IBM. Dave, absolutely. Talk to some of the analysts that are here for the sessions and you know, Jamie Thomas getting good reception from what's happening there. I like what I'm seeing with IBM is how they're tying these businesses together. Some of the consolidation of shows, it was like straight scratching on our head, I don't understand how some pieces, but it was real clear today, you know, how power, you know, Z storage and the middleware all fit together and talk about like how analytics is driving storage. I mean, one of the biggest workloads that we've looked at the last couple of years and IBM has a great story on the analytics side and is to pulling more and more storage into that. You know, we dug in a little bit with the converged space, things like, you know, the whole pure systems family and pure app, they've now got, you know, pure power added to the mix. So, you know, wow, Dave, so much power being pushed into what they're doing in the soft layer, what they're doing in their converged and what they're doing in their moving up the steps. So power was interesting and I mean, I was, I have to say, I was a skeptic when IBM jettisoned its x86 business. Floor in particular was concerned. Power, I thought was going to struggle to attract people but what I missed was the desire to have an alternative to Intel. Number one, number two, the potential for innovation with an open ecosystem. I don't know how I missed that. But yeah, I mean Dave, you know, we've been saying for years, it was always AMD is the natural alternative but in, you know, IBM's a big partner with IBM. So, I guess what I missed was IBM's track record and open source and they're using the playbook. I mean, IBM's got cash, they've got experience, they got a customer base, they'll plunk down a billion dollars for, you know, initiative du jour. I mean, it works. Their web sphere playbook applied to Bluemix, the soft layer acquisition with regard to what's happening in cloud. You know, the wake up call that was the Amazon, you know, CIO deal. So, Jenny's making some big bets, IBM's making some big bets, they've reorganized, aligning Watson, didn't hear a ton about Watson this week but it's another secret. So Dave, I got a question for you. So we've spent a lot of time talking about kind of the marginal economics and the shift of services to software. When I think back to when IBM first got into Linux, it was open source and, you know, Linux and everything is going to drive more services. The question I have is, is IBM doing enough to pivot to be able to handle, you know, put together the solutions, have it be baked in the software rather than just driving more services? I think that's a great question and I think it's an open question. I think IBM, I think about this a lot and I say I go back and forth because in the one hand I'm saying, okay, IBM's such a huge services led organization. Complexity of product has never slowed IBM down because you got to integrate it with services. I think the answer is to the extent that IBM can develop products, whether it's software defined or other, you know, products like Watson, analytics, Watson as a service, analytics as a service, to the extent that they can develop those solutions that will scale, I think services remains a strategic advantage for IBM. Here's why. I think their messaging is right on. Customers are trying to transform into the digital economy. Every retail company has an Amazon war room. Every healthcare company is spending like crazy to try to, you know, improve the mess that is the healthcare industry. Government, you know, we know has mandates and are driving financial services has always been on the forefront of technology change and this is no different. And so IBM is the right messages. It's complicated stuff and IBM can come, still come in with services with products that are more suited for that digital world. And so that's where I think they've got a winning formula with that regard. I was really concerned about what you're talking about. The marginal economics of services are, you know, negative at scale. But it's still a very sticky business. Customers are trying to digitize their business and IBM's, you know, right there like Accenture, like Ernie Young, like PWC, like Deloitte, the big guys, IBM's are right there with those big five. And I think has unique capabilities globally and by industry. Yeah, and I mean Dave, like all the companies we're talking about, it's a shift of where the focus is. So IBM Global Services doesn't need to spend as much time kind of, you know, racking, stacking, kind of traditional, you know, integration type pieces. They're moving up the stack, they're in the analytics, they're helping with, you know, they build an open ecosystem to kind of be the foundation and they can move their services up to do line of business things and, you know, helping more strategic areas. Yeah, like I said, I think IBM is competitive with those companies that I just mentioned who are world-class, you know, innovators and leaders in their particular spaces and their, you know, Accenture's not going away. They're adjusting to the market shifts. I like IBM services business better than, I like it better than CSCs, I like it better than HPs. I mean, CSCs may be an unfair comparison but I still like IBM's better. I like it better than HP's, you know, EMC really not a services company. And so, nor is, you know, Microsoft or even Cisco for that matter, Intel, no. So for the big whales, IBM's got a competitive service business that is a, I think it remains an advantage to the extent that they can show customers that they can lead them on the journey. Kind of circling back to Edge, mainframe cycle, good news for IBM. You know, mainframe R&D cycles take a long time. It's not, you know, a 12 month cycle, the Z13 announcement in January. People will buy this stuff site on scene that just kicking into that cycle. I would predict that IBM is going to have a very, very strong end to 2015. I think that momentum carries into 2016. Question is, do the other parts of the business, sort of have they bottomed, you know, IBM's talking about 2% growth in storage in constant currency terms. It's hard to get excited about 2% growth in constant currency when, you know, Amazon's growing and how much, what's the Amazon's numbers looking like? Oh, it's, you know, over 40%. 40% growth, you're talking about potentially a $6 billion business and a 17% operating profit. That's pretty good. And so that's what's exciting me from an industry growth standpoint. I think that what, whether it's IBM, you know, HP, EMC, I put Cisco in this category. You know, Oracle. Oracle, you know, same thing. They've got to, you know, stabilize the managed decline business and get the new stuff pumping, invest in that enough so that it can be a growth engine. Now, here's the thing about these companies. They're very large and they know a 2%, why is IBM excited about 2% growth? The reason they're excited about 2% growth is because if they move the top line a little bit, it trickles right down to the bottom line and throws off free cash flow and allows them to invest and grow and acquire companies and, you know, invest in organic R&D. And you're seeing, it's interesting. You're seeing, at edge, you're seeing some interesting ecosystem partners. Talk to Mike Kuhn, you know, off camera. He's loving these little ecosystem partners. Guys like CataLogic, you know, participating, guys like Permabit, you know, participating in the ecosystem. Small little technology companies could be tuck-ins for IBM. Yeah, and Dave, you bring up a great point. I mean, IBM is, you know, I mentioned it earlier this week. When I first heard the word co-opetition, you know, IBM was the one that was super glued to that. And IBM really knows how to build ecosystems and I really love the transformation on the open side. You know, IBM has great credibility and open source. You know, we all go back to that kind of billion dollars in Linux, but as, you know, we have the CUBE tour. I kind of talk about the open source, you know, tour that we're doing as part of this. Next week, I'm going to be at OpenStack. IBM's going to have a huge presence there. Going to be, you and I are going to be at Red Hat Summit back in Boston in about a month. And of course, another, you know, big IBM partner there. There's so much, you know, growth in the open source piece. And, you know, everywhere you go, IBM's part of that. Cloud Foundry Summit was going on in San Francisco. Angel Diaz and his team have a huge presence. Big piece of what BlueMix is doing, tied to Cloud Foundry. So, you know, really impressive to see IBM showing, you know, industry leadership in that space. All right, Stu, I think we're a wrap. Good job. This is a hedge 2015. Matthew, thanks a lot. Andrew, great job. Sam, Mick, ingested back in Dallas. Dave, Sam had his first live segment on theCUBE. Sam, live segment of theCUBE, did a great job. John, Kristen, Bert, really appreciate the help and social media. Yeah, Floyer. John Furrier yesterday. Furrier, I mean, Floyer was on as well today. We had another crew over at Informatica World. Jeff Frick, George Gilbert was there. So, pick your channel. We love Edge, you know, fourth year. Great show. That's a wrap. Thanks for watching, everybody. Next week, we're at another two-show week. IBM Vision down in Orlando, former, you know, the BI show, analytics, compliance, GRC, financial management, sales management, sales compensation management, kind of an interesting small little group down in Orlando. And of course, you're in Vancouver, OpenStack Summit. Yeah, Furrier and I will be there, exciting stuff. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. This is theCUBE. This is a wrap from IBM Edge 2015. We'll see you next time.