 Tech and joining me is Mark Farley blogger extraordinaire social media from HP mark. Thanks for joining us. Say what hey now mark I know I was supposed to say hey now It's your tagline mark. So so so so mark We were just talking about innovation with prith and HP labs and you've worked for a couple of the you know Innovative startups here in the storage industry I was wondering if we can start this off a little discussion about what you see is Innovation in the storage industry of the startups and the big companies and how those things play together Well, I think the I think the big area we're in a where innovation comes along is in areas of integration You know, I think most of the technology that comes to storage has been invented somewhere else already Right and then storage just figures out how to apply it. It's true for for many different things, but So I think where a lot of the innovations going in small companies today is trying to figure out cloud interfaces And those types of things at HP the innovation is about taking bits of servers and networking and integrating it together with storage So the innovation we've got there is taking existing pieces and trying to fold it together And I think that's what you know, you're seeing that across the board with virtualization for instance, you know integration of VMWare of Citrix, you know all these different things and The that's that is the wheel that drives this industry. I think yeah, so so when I look I think back You know ice cuz he was really driven by some of the small companies like one you used to work for thin provisioning was done by 3 par which brought you into HP and Really helping that the big companies either either buy or follow that that that technology and then integrate it into their solutions Can you maybe give us a little colors? You know, what have you seen from it from a technology integration standpoint as 3 par has moved into HP? Well, you know, it's interesting the I can't pre announce things But you know the question came up today. Are we integrating ProLiant server technology? You know the the words we're using the words we're using we're taking ProLiant DNA for converged storage And so the question comes up. Well, how much of that ProLiant DNA is getting into 3 par systems? And the answer is we haven't announced anything there yet, right? Yeah, so so I mean, you know chipsets are very common and kind of shared components When you look at what you know matrix and cloud systems and virtual systems and app systems The I think you know HP is really blurring that line between the compute and the storage and even the network so yeah, that's that's what I see going on and They're they're really looking at combining different components and trying to figure out What is the what is the right amount of this and the right amount of that to make a solution? But beyond that because because there's so much that's steeped in blade server technology You've got a little more granular approach than what I think you have if you've got, you know rack servers box servers that kind of thing You know so so the idea is that if somebody buys a solution they don't they don't buy a box as a solution They may buy some blades of this some blades of that some amount of this other stuff that goes in a rack So it's it's not this it's not on a pallet. It's not converged solution on a pallet It's converged it's a converged solution with with parts that you put together But they all assemble into something that would fit on a pallet and to me that's really intriguing and it's it's It's a little bit different approach. I think it I like it It gives it it presents a flexibility That I think is is unique so that I mean that's the innovation here, but yeah, it's a question. You know, what about other companies? I Think the thing that's really interesting about being in a big company or a small company is sort of The pace of innovation and the craziness that that happens There's nothing that compares with being in a small company that is struggling for existence, you know And and where everybody has to pull their weight or their or their Noticable drag on the organization, right? And so and so you've got this You know, you're we're surviving by the skin of our teeth and in a small company Everybody's aware of the financials of the company most of the time, you know, and and there's that there's that struggle To you know to give birth to this technology. There's nothing like that. Yeah, right I mean the struggle, you know when you have, you know, you know billions of dollars of budgets and hundreds of thousands employees There's not necessarily the same hunger that you would have in a startup or the urgency It's tough to do and you know it listened to prith talking about, you know, how you continue to innovate inside a big company It can be done There's innovations once coming out of HP labs and how all the pieces come together the university research So, you know, I think as we said there's innovations of all kind Not just the next cool new feature that some startup needs to go Yeah, you know at a company like 3-par or Equalogic the innovation was about getting one thing done You know again at HP when you know when the group in Bristol for instance, you know invent store ones, right? They're working on this new technology. It came from outside of storage They figured out that they could apply it to storage They have to start integrating with everybody else and it's a different type of process and And I've met some of the guys in Bristol wonderful guys love them I mean, they're talking about blurring the lines between different technologies if we look at social media and marketing I think we've seen a real shift You know, there's a big group of bloggers here at HP discover Video is everywhere multi-media. So, you know, where do you see things today? And what's going on for media and messaging and in social? Well, it's crazy because traditional Traditional public relations is is slowing down you can see it You can see it having less impact all the time as consumers and the people within the industry You know reading a press release is less interesting today than it was two years ago. It was interesting then well four years ago Okay, a lot of people do read press releases, but they used to be the sort of thing that someone would rely on You know the announcement paper years ago and I work for IBM is like this is this is the stuff, right? This is where you go as your source of information now people go to the internet right away and they want to see stuff on blogs They want to you know, they Yeah, the tweets are interesting, but to get a larger amount of stuff Where do you go to get that and and to have it validated by someone that's a third party for instance is really important So whatever a company produces anymore, and I don't care if it's if it's HP or IBM or EMC or network appliance or whatever anything that comes out of the company is suspected It's just a piece of shill right and you know, I'm a shiller. I'm a shiller for HP now So anything that I write has you know, anybody should look at it or anything that I produce should look at it and say Okay, this guy's an HP employee and they do you know and and and so they want to see the other people It's interesting Nigel Poulton was saying yesterday. Why does HP bring us here? Why do they even have us here? What's you know? It's people really pay attention to me and the answer is Nigel. Yes, they do You know right so so so this is Stu Miniman with Mark Farley Mark I have final question for you is you know multimedia video You know how much do we need it and how much is that is is that a portion of communicating to people? Well, we've all got Sesame Street Mentalities and psychologies right so we need that infotainment. I think it's very important You can communicate things so much faster in a piece of video and it's something. That's interesting. Otherwise, it's just All right, Mark. Thank you so much for joining us. We always appreciate you know sharing with the communities and talking about new ways to reach information Appreciate you being one of our smart nodes coming on here to extract information and share it on the queue. It's been cool Stu. Thanks. All right