 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering InterConnect 2017, brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to InterConnect 2017 from Las Vegas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Beena Hallman is here. She's a CUBE alum and the vice president of offering management for storage and software defined at IBM. And she's joined by Tahir Ali, who's the director of enterprise architecture at the City of Hope Medical Center. Folks, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having us. So, Beena, we'll start with you. Been to theCUBE a number of times. Give us the update on what's happening with IBM and InterConnect. Yeah, no, it's a great show. Lots of exciting announcements and such. From an IBM perspective, storage, we've been very busy filling out our holes, flash portfolio, adding a complete set of hybrid cloud capabilities to our software defined storage. It's been a great 2016 and we're off to a great start in 2017 as well. Yeah, Ginny's going to be here tomorrow, so everybody's looking forward to that. So Tahir, let's get into City of Hope. Tell us about the organization and your role. Sure, sure. So, City of Hope is one of the 47 comprehensive cancer centers in the nation. We deal with cancer, of course, HIV, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases. We're maybe 15 to 17 miles east of Los Angeles. So, my role in particular, I'm a director of enterprise architecture, so all new technologies, all new applications that lend on City of Hope, we go through all the background, see how the security is going to be, how it's going to implement in our environment if it's even possible to implement it, making sure we talk to our business owners, figure out if there's disaster recovery requirements, if they have an HA requirement, if it's a clinical versus non-clinical application. So, we look at a whole stack and see how a new application fits into the infrastructure of City of Hope. So, you guys do a lot of research there as well? Absolutely. So, we are a research, we are the small EDU and we are the medical center. So, a lot of data? A whole lot of data. Just data just keeps coming and keeps coming and it's almost like never-ending stream of data. Now, with the data, it's not only just data, individual data is also growing. So, a lot of imaging that happens for cancer research or a cancer medical center gets bigger and bigger per patient as the three-dimensional imaging is here. We look at resolution that is so much more today than it used to be five years. So, every single image itself is so much bigger today than it used to be five years ago. Just a sheer difference in the resolution and the dimensions of the data. So, what are the big drivers in your industry and how is it affecting the architecture that you put forward? So, I think a couple of huge things that are maybe two or three huge convergence points or the pivot points that we see today. One of them is just the data stream as I mentioned earlier. The second is because a lot of the PHI and HIPAA data that we have today, security is a huge concern in a lot of the healthcare environment. So, those two things and it's almost like a Cache 22. More data is coming in, you have to figure out where you're going to put that data, but at the same time you've got to make sure every single bit is secured enough. So, there's a Cache 22 where it's going where you have to make sure that data keeps coming and you keep securing the same data, right? So, those two things that we see pivoting the way we strategize around our infrastructure. It's hard, they're in conflict in a way. You've got to lock the data up, but then you want to provide accessibility. Absolutely. As well, so paint a picture of your infrastructure and the applications that it's supporting. Right, so our infrastructure is mainly in-house and our EMR is currently off-prem. A lot of clinical and non-clinical also stay in-house with us in our data center on-prem. Now, we are kind of starting to migrate to cloud technologies more and more as just things are ballooning. So, we are in that middle piece where some of our infrastructure is in-house. Slowly, we are migrating to the cloud. So, we are at like a hybrid currently and as things progress, I think more and more is going to go to the cloud, but for a medical center, security is everything. So, we have to be very careful where our data sits. So, Meena, when you hear that from a client, how do you respond and what do you propose and how does it all... Yeah, well, as we see clients like to hear and some of the requirements in these spaces, security is definitely a key factor. So, as we develop our products, we develop capabilities, we ensure that security is a number one focus area for us. So, whether it's for the on-prem storage, whether it's for the data that's in motion from moving from the on-prem into the cloud and secure completely all the way through where the client has the control on the security, the keys, et cetera. So, a lot goes into making sure as we architect these solutions for our clients that we focus on security and of course some of the other requirements industry specific requirements are also very important and we focus in on those as well, whether it's regulatory or compliance requirements, right? So, from a sort of portfolio standpoint, what are you guys doing is all kinds of innovations over the last four or five years coming in with Flash. We heard about object stores this morning. We got cloud, you got block, you got file. What are you guys doing? So, we do a lot of different things. So, from having filers in-house to doing block storage from, and the worst thing now these days with big data is as the data is growing, the security needs are growing, but the end result with the researchers and our physicians, the data availability needs to be fast. So, now comes a bigger Cache 22 where the data is so huge but at the same time they want all of that very quickly on their fingertips. So, now what do you do? That's where we bring in a lot of the Flash to upfront it. 10 to 12% of our infrastructure has Flash in the front, this way all the rendering or all the writes that happen are first land on the Flash. So, everybody who writes feels like it's a very quick write but there's a petabytes and petabytes behind the scene that could be on-prem, it could be on the cloud but they don't need to know that. It's everything lands so fast that it looks like it's just local and fast. So, there's a lot of crisscross that is happening and started maybe four or five years ago with the speed of data is not going to be slow. The size of data increasing like crazy and then the security is becoming bigger and bigger concern as you know. Maybe every month or month and a half there's a breach somewhere that people have to deal with. So, we have to handle all of that in one shot. So, it's more than just infrastructure itself. There's policies, there's procedures, there's a lot that goes around. And so, when you think about architecting, obviously you think about workloads and what the workload requirement is. It's not a one size fits all. Right, right. So, where do you start? You start with sort of a conversation with the business. How much money do you got? So, we don't really deal with the money at all. We provide the best possible solution for that business requirement. So, the conversation happens, tell us what you're looking for. We are looking for a very fast X, Y, Z. Okay, tell us what exactly you need. Here's the application we want it available all the time and this is how it's going to look like. It can be down because our patients are depending on it, so on and so forth. We take that, we talk to our vendors. We look at exactly how it's architected. If it's, let's just say three tier. There's a web, there's an app and then there's a database. You already know by default that if it's a database, it's going to go on a high transactional IO where either it's a flash or very fast spinning disk with a lot of spindles. From there, you get the application. Could be a virtual machine, could not be a virtual machine. From there, you get to a web tier. Web tiers are usually always on a virtual infrastructure. Then you realize if you want to put it on a DMZ so people from outside can get to it or it's only for internal use. Then you draw the entire architecture diagram out. Then you price it out. You said, okay, if you want this to be always on, maybe you need a database that is always on, right? Or you need a database that replicates 24-7. That has a cost associated to that. If you have an application, if you want a two application, maybe it's a cluster application. It could be HA, it could not be HA. So there's a cost to that. Web servers are kind of a cheaper tier of virtual machines. And then there's an architecture diagram. All the requirements are met in there and there's a cost associated to that, saying business unit, here is how much it's going to cost and this is what you will have. Okay, so that's where the economics comes into play. Okay, this is what your requirements are. This is based on that, what we would advise, and then essentially it's can you afford it? Right, right. If you want to buy a house that is three bedrooms and three bathrooms in Palo Alto versus six bedrooms and then seven bathrooms in Palo Alto, there's going to be a financial impact that you might not like. So it's one of those, right? So what you want, it has a financial impact on your end solution. And that's what we provide. We don't force somebody to get something. We just give them, hey, if you want, how many kids do you have? Four kids, then maybe you need a five bedroom house, right? So we kind of do that. Is it common discussion? Yeah, it is, it is. And that's some of the things we do focus on, right? As we, in addition to the security aspect of it, of course, is around the automation, around driving in the efficiencies, because at the end of the day, whether it's capital expense or operational expense, you want to have optimized for both of those. And that's where, as we architect the solutions, develop the offerings, we ensure that we build in capabilities, whether it's storage efficiency capabilities like virtualization or D-dup or compression, but as well as this automated tiering, tiering off from flash to lower tier, whether it's on-prem or, you know, lower, slower speed disk, or tape, or even off to the cloud, right? And being able to do that, provide that, I think addresses many of our clients' needs. That's a common requirement that we do here. And as I mentioned, 10 to 12% is flash, the rest, you know, 90% or so is something else. That's economics, correct? And how do you see that changing? So I think the percentage won't really change. I think the data size will change. So, and you have to just think about things just in generality, just what you do today. You know, when you take a picture, maybe you look at it the first three days, even if you have a phone. After three days, maybe you look at it maybe once every two months. After three months, guess what? You will always never look at them. They're kind of moved away from even your memory banks in your head and you say, oh, I was looking through it and then maybe once in a while you look at it. So you have to look at the behavior. A lot of the applications have the same behavior where the new data is required right away. The older the data gets, the more archival state it gets. It gets warmer and then it gets colder. Now, as a healthcare institute, we have to devise something that is great financially. Also has the security and put away in a way where we can pull it without having pain to pull it back. So that's where the tiering comes to play. Doesn't matter how we do it. And your planning assumption is that the cost disparity between flash and other forms of storage will remain. That other forms will remain cheaper. So we are hoping, but I think the hybrid model of flash. So once you do a hybrid with flash and disk, then it becomes a little more economically suitable for a lot of the people. They do the same thing. They do tiering, but they make it look like a bigger platform. So they say, ah, we can give you a petabyte but it's going to look like flash. It doesn't work like that. They might have a 300 terabyte of flash, 700, but it's so integrated quickly that they can pull it and push it. Then there's a read ahead, right ahead that takes that advantage to make it look like it. That will drop your pricing, the special source that transfer the data between slower and flash disks. So two questions for you. What do you look for in a supplier? And what drives you nuts about a supplier that you don't want a supplier to do? Sure, so personally speaking, this is just my personal opinion, a stable environment, a tried and true vendor is important. Somebody who has a core competency of doing this for a longer term is what I personally look at. There's a lot of new players who come in, they stay for a couple of years, they explode, somebody takes them over or they just kind of vanish. Or certain people go outside of their core competency. So if Toyota started to make because they wanted to save money, they said, hey, Toyota from now on will make the tires that are called Toyota. But Toyota is not a tire company. Other companies, Bridgestone and Michelins have been making tires for a very long time. So the core competency of Toyota is building the cars and not the tires. So when I see these people or the vendor saying, okay, I can give you this, this, this, this and this and that and the security and that, maybe three out of those five things are not their core competency. So you, I start to wonder if the whole stack is worth it because there's going to be some weakness because they don't have the core competency. That's what I look at. What drives me crazy is every single time somebody comes to meet with me, they want to sell me everything in a kitchen sink under one umbrella. And the answer is one single pane of glass to manage everything. Life is not that easy. I wish it was, but it really is not. So those two things are- Selling the fantasy, right. Hi, Pina, we'll give you the last word, Interconnect. Give us your final thoughts. What should we know about what's going on in software defined and IBM storage? Yeah, lots of announcements said Interconnect. You heard, as you talked about cloud object storage, we've got great new pricing models and capabilities and overall software defined storage. We're continuing to innovate, continue to add capabilities like analytics and you'll see us doing more and more on cognitive, cognitive storage management to get more out of the data, help clients get more information and value out of their data. What's the gist of the new pricing models? Just- Flexible pricing model depending on how the, both hybrid as well as a three tiered on-prem and in between, but really cold as well as a flexible pricing model where depending on how you use the data, you get consistent pricing. So between on-prem and- So more cloud-like pricing. Yeah, exactly. Great, easier consumption, excellent. Well, Pina Terrier, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having us. All right, keep it right there. We'll be back with our next guest in a wrap right after this short break. Right back.