 Orlando, Florida for IBM Edge 2012. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE.TV's extensive coverage. Wall to wall, IBM for two days talking about converging infrastructure, storage technology, innovation. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE.com, and I'm joined by co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org, and we're here with Laura Gio, who is the Vice President of Business Line Executive in charge of the storage portfolio. Laura used to run sales for the storage group. Laura, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Good to see you, and Edge, it's the coming out party for IBM Storage. You must be excited. This is so exciting, and to really hear from our customers directly about how we're helping them solve their problems, what we're doing to really advance their businesses forward is really inspiring to all of us here at IBM. So, okay, so Vice President of Business Line Executive, we were talking off camera that you're essentially in charge of the portfolio. That's correct. What does that mean? That means that I look across the portfolio where we're making our investments in technology. What are we going to do going forward from a strategic standpoint? So not only keeping the health of the existing product line that we have today, but where do we reach out to in the future? And you know, one of the things that IBM has beyond the competition is a large patent portfolio, a huge research and development organization. So we have all that to draw on as we look at it, and my job is to pull that all together in one cohesive view. So it's to pull it together from both a product standpoint, working with the product groups, M&A, R&D, new invention, all of the above. That's correct, that's correct. We pull it all together, we get a view of where are we going to go in the future? Along with, and most importantly, what do our clients need to help solve their problems? So the interesting thing is you came out of a sales role, right? So you got the voice of the customer. Now do you also have a technology background? Yes, I do. I ran development for IBM for many years. I ran a software storage development, which was our backup archive product and some of our storage management products. So I have a very background all around storage. So you're like IBM's secret weapon. Well, we were just talking on their intro package, Laura, about the IBM's opportunity to kind of get the strategic position with storage and expand on that with all the assets IBM has, hence the portfolio. So the question I have for you is, how do you balance the legacy customer environment that you have to deliver P&L responsibility for, yet add new technologies around innovation, around flash, software? Because we've been talking about big data and cloud and these new kind of converged infrastructures where the architectures are changing. So the new architectures are involving a little bit of different tweaks to how data is managed and stored and storage and real-time analytics and big data or one of those value propositions. So what is your angle on the innovation around the portfolio opportunity that you're leading? Looking forward, as you guys move forward from this edge and going forward, what are you guys talking about here and then in the future around those innovations? Yeah, so first of all, when you talk about legacy and where we're going, it's all about integration. It's about taking what our foundations are from a corporate perspective and then adding to that the new things that are coming out the door. But that doesn't mean it's a rip and replace type strategy. It is building on what's been our foundation. We take that, we add the new innovations and it's a stepped approach. So clients can insert themselves at any point along this process, whether they've been a legacy client of ours. You know, we invented storage in IBM in 1956 and we've been adding to that portfolio ever since then. So as clients look to this, they can step it up any time they want. They can add more feature function richness. But along with that is the ability to do it in a less complex way. So I think your job is uniquely difficult because you have the short-term allure of being able to integrate with IBM. And so from an ROI standpoint, if you do some kind of need integration with DB2 or some kind of mainframe integration, you're going to do very well because IBM really knows how to sell that. At the same time, you have to serve an audience that has a huge appetite for these hot new features and these startups coming out. How do you manage all that? So there's a couple ways we do that. First of all, if you look at IBM, we've had a premise all along the way that we want to be the voice of the customer. We want to help them solve their problems. And that doesn't mean it's all IBM. So if you take our storage virtualization product, that integrates both IBM hardware, non-IBM hardware in a heterogeneous type environment. If you take feature function richness that's out in the environment out there, ISVs are key to that to us in IBM. Leveraging those partners of ours in the industry that have very specific knowledge that fits niches for different clients in different industries and then integrating that into the IBM portfolio. So how do you work, Laura, with other groups within IBM? Because obviously when you form a software person in development, you've got these rich assets in Tivoli, they sit in, I guess it's sort of now the same division under Mills, but they're still, it's a big organization. How do you pick and choose and how do you integrate all those assets into your portfolio? I think the best way that we look at it is from a use case perspective. I mean, you're right, it is complex in IBM. We have different organizations across the business unit. But if you look at it from the problems you're solving for our clients, that's how you approach it. You do it in use case and then you fold in those parts of the assets in the IBM corporation to come up with a good solution. So my observation at the top of the show was that IBM, 10 years ago, decided to de-invest in storage in a way and it sort of, and I've talked to Bill Zeitler, you know Bill Zeitler about it, I said Bill, you were an awesome leader but the one mistake you made is you de-invested in storage and IBM had to really retool and go out and make some acquisitions and we're now, I don't know, I'm guessing five years into that transformation, maybe it's a little bit more. So we really should start to see a big impact from that. You can't just turn it on overnight. We're at edge, a lot of energy here. Is that premise about right that we should really start to see that portfolio begin to explode? Yeah, and you're starting to see it now. You are right that I wouldn't necessarily call it disinvestment, I'd say, putting things on ice for a while. And if you look back to 2008, we were starting to catch up on market share. Since 2008 to present, we've been holding market share with how fast the market's been growing. And as you look forward from this point on, you're seeing IBM takeover market share. For example, Growth Markets Unit, where I just ran the sales organization, we increased market share by three points on the competition. We are close to taking over that number one position in the Growth Markets Unit. So you're seeing this change. So Growth Markets Unit's being like. It's Asia Pacific, Latin America, Central Eastern Europe, Africa, Middle East. Yeah, we were talking about at the top of the show about the investments IBM made in China, which were enormous. You guys were right on in that call. And now you're seeing IBM uniquely talk about Africa. No other company is talking about Africa the way IBM is. So how do you guys do that? You just sort of figure it out and then put a lot of resources behind it? Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I mean, we look at a market where there is a lot of opportunity for growth. There is a lot of investment in that area. There's money in that area. And these countries, which we call them Growth Markets, are those that are emerging countries that need the technology and don't necessarily have the legacy systems to leverage on. So they're coming in and a unique opportunity to start building on a brand new system. What do you think, you know, you've observed some of the mega deals that we've seen. You saw, you know, the three-par acquisition. You saw the Isilon acquisition, the Component, I mean, multi-billion data domain, multi-billion dollar acquisitions. IBM tends not to chase auctions, per se. What do you make of all the M&A that's going on in storage? And, you know, how do you make sense of all that? Well, you know, you look at the competition. First of all, I'd say, you know, IBM is very fortunate in the fact that we don't have to make some of these acquisitions because we have such a large R&D organization. We have the assets within this corporation to organically build a lot of things that some companies rely on doing an acquisition to get. You know, what do you make out of it? You know, there's a lot of consolidation going on in the industry right now and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. You know, I would argue some of these mega acquisitions that competition are making right now yet to see how successful it'll be in integrating that into their portfolio. Laura, what about the flash trend? Now, see, Ed Walsh was on theCUBE with Dave a couple weeks ago, but obviously at Fusion IO in public, we see violin memory systems as here working with you guys. How does flash change or enhance your portfolio strategy? So flash is very important. You know, we've got a lot of things in the hopper right now, some of which I can't talk about at the moment, but you know, as you look at flash going on. It's secured, you can talk right away. Yeah, yeah, get fired. No one ever got fired for coming into theCUBE. I think I've heard that before. Oh, good, good. Oh, that was IBM. They never got fired for buying IBM. That's right, that's right. You didn't get fired for being in the team. So as far as flash, I mean it's extremely important for clients. It allows them to get faster utilization out of their IO rates. And as flash comes down in cost, it'll become even more and more relevant. But flash in itself isn't going to solve that problem. You've got to add software that integrates in with this flash technology that really gets the additional advantages out of it that a customer needs. Yeah, working across tiers is something that's challenging that some people look at flash as, oh, it's a server enhancement or cash. Do you guys see it that way kind of narrowly or do you guys look at it more like, hey, flash can sit anywhere? I think we look at it more broadly. Flash can sit anywhere. It can sit on the server, it can sit on the storage. It can be manipulated in a way that advantages a client's ability to manage that data. And what we try to do is look at all the ways that you can incorporate that into a system and get that edge. What is the number one thing you hear from customers around as they plan for the future building on the technologies you guys have? Good, I do agree. It's not sorry I've never been replaced. It is an extension. Yeah, some stuff may go away over time, but it's really an extension. What do you hear from customers around? The kinds of questions they're asking, are they looking for navigation around what to buy and they have their use cases set up? What are some of this, what's the sentiment in the customer base around flash? So there's a couple of things. How does flash help me manage this overwhelming amount of data? How do I implement that into my system? And then other things you're starting to hear about is how does flash integrate into a cloud tech technology? Cloud is a big thing that we're talking about this week here at Edge, and what does that mean to a customer? And CIOs feel like flash is on the mandate, on their agenda, and is it changing some of their architectures? Have you heard any of those conversations around architectural changes? You hear a little bit about that. I mean, really they're looking to see when is the technology going to come more price-effective, cost-effective, and then what do they do with that going forward? You know, so we had some interesting discussions around this and that is obviously the fact that flash is way more expensive than spinning disk. At the same time, you're starting to see applications emerge in virtually all industries where the productivity impact of these applications running at near memory speeds is enormous. It's like when we all went to PCs, we had this huge productivity hit. And the CIOs I talked to, you're right, are focused more on that cost. Are you seeing use cases where that productivity impact is enormous? And how long do you think it's going to take for the world to catch up to that? You've seen a similar thing with big data, for example, where big data productivity impacts could be huge, but the mainstream IT organization, from my sense, isn't there yet. What's your take? I think it depends on the industry. I mean, if you look at one particular industry, gas and oil, they are really starting to leverage flash technology. When they are doing explorations on where to drill for oil, they have a lot of data coming at them fast that has to be analyzed and then brought back in as to what's the next step that they're going to take. They are very much utilizing flash technology. Yeah, a lot of the social guys as well, you know, you hear a lot about Facebook and Zynga and guys like that. What about big data? You know, that's another big buzzword. It seems to hold a lot of promise, a lot of interesting stuff going on with a dupe. You guys, IBM has your fingers in all those pies. What does it mean for the storage portfolio? Well, big data, you know, is one of the key areas that we've focused on. You've seen some of the sessions potentially that we've had here at Edge. You've listened to some of these clients and what they've talked about. And just the overwhelming amount of data, how do I manage it? And not just managing it by storing it, what tier do I put it on, but how do I get analytical data out of this? How do I look at that and really make key business decisions going forward with this overwhelming amount of data coming at them? Yeah, so we've talked for years about the data problem, data management, software expert. Do you feel like data is actually going to become an opportunity more so than a problem? I think data is currency for a business nowadays. That is their lifeline. That's how they make key decisions in their business and what are they going to do differently going forward? And our job is to help them understand that quickly and make those decisions. I love that's a great quote. We're data fanatics. We love data. We've been following big data for years with SiliconANGLE, Wikibon, and we see it as a critical role now in development. So the question I have for you, given that you have a development background, what are you seeing around the development with data, specifically software development? We're seeing DevOps being one of the hottest trends in the cloud where you've got to develop a operational kind of integration mindset. How do customers program with data? I mean, in the old days it was store it, bring it back, put it away, take it out. Now you have such a different use cases. Real-time applications, consumer applications, these kinds of new use cases. So data and not only the currency, it's a critical asset in the development process. Are you seeing any trends there that you could share? Absolutely. I mean, you're seeing when we talked just a minute ago about flash technology and the integration of software. The key is to be able to access that data quickly, do analysis on it, and then make real-time short-term decisions on that business based on that. No longer does a customer have the luxury to put it out, store it, run some tests later on it, glean off the information that they need. They want it now and they want it immediate. And so you have to have that integration there of storage and software to really allow them to do that. Awesome. Laura Guille, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. We're going to have Brian on later. Great. So we must be very excited about working for him in your new role, so congratulations on that. Thanks very much for coming inside theCUBE and sharing your knowledge. Thank you. We'll be right back. And remember, no one ever got fired that we know of for being on theCUBE. So thanks for sharing your perspective with us. We'll be right back with our next guest after this break.