 and find the signal from the noise and extract that and share that with you. We're here at the IBM event, storage technology event called Edge 2012 where IBM is putting forth their vision for how they're going to integrate and enable storage to expand to solution sets and I'm joined by co-host Dave Vellante from wikibond.org and our new host, co-host, John MacArthur who's been in theCUBE hosting with Dell Storage Forum in the past. Welcome back. John MacArthur. So you guys are analysts so I want to get your take on what the news is here. I mean, what is the story? John MacArthur, we'll start with you. We've heard of all the interviews across the board from technical deep dives to kind of a high-level market overview. What's the story that's happening at Edge? Share with the folks up there from your minds either of the story today. All right, so I'm seeing a couple of things. The first thing is a reinvestment in storage. So back, accelerating the amount of investment that IBM's putting into the storage space but not ignoring the fact that one of the primary areas of differentiation is the ability to take storage and integrate at the application level and at the system level and with management capability. So it's not an either or it's a both and I think we anticipated that answer from IBM but I think there's real focus on increasing the investment. And then the second thing is sort of confirmed one of the things that they've said is that we've seen which is that they will acquire relatively early. They identify spots where maybe it's better to acquire technology than try to develop internally. And so they will then follow those companies in the early days and acquire early as opposed to wait for the companies to necessarily mature into full-blown expensive assets and get into bidding wars with some of the big systems companies. I just want to break in here for a minute and share with the folks out there some breaking news coming on siliconangle.com. Mark Hopkins just gave me a note that Xbox is announcing, Microsoft with Xbox is announcing an E3 in LA, the live TV to the Xbox with partners like MBA, NHL, MLB and ESPN, 24-7 ESPN coverage and soon hope to have the cube on Xbox with our 24-7 coverage. But big news Dave about Microsoft with Xbox which essentially is a platform and media platform. So folks out there, big news if you're a big Xbox fan, again just another success point for Xbox and Microsoft. And I think that franchise is going to soon dwarf Windows in terms of relevance. It's one of the most relevant parts of Microsoft wouldn't you say? Yeah, I mean you look at Windows 8 trying to reboot and get that franchise going on the ground and I actually own the URL WTunes I'm waiting for the buyout for that one. But Windows is just not that relevant brand anymore Dave. It's Xbox is really the key and Mark Hopkins has always been editor at SiliconANGLE, always been saying that Xbox should be the platform for the phone, for Microsoft. So just interesting news, so break into the action here at IBM, obviously IBM enables companies like Xbox to do all this kind of stuff. It enables media companies in general with NAB, we heard about Big Data Dave. So back to IBM, what do you think is the big story? Well I think to me it's the realization within the IBM storage group that it has to be more assertive with regard to pulling in these other assets and we heard from folks from Tivoli, we're going to hear later on people from Systems X and the service side of the business. So my sense is IBM, how aggressively it leverages these other assets. This event is all about storage but IBM is, the storage group is the lightning rod for all these other parts of IBM that the storage group is bringing together. Appealing to storage admins, this is largely a storage admin group and a partner group, reseller partners and systems integrators. That's a community and IBM I think is being smart about how it treats that community and how it's marketing to, messaging to and selling to that community. And what I would expect is this is the first of a long line of events in this regard because this is just great belly to belly marketing that IBM's doing and groups like storage, as you pointed out earlier John, have to reach around essentially the whole smarter planet messaging. Now we're seeing them align with that messaging, that's important but at the end of the day they've got to provide real substantive value to storage admins that are consuming their products and that really to me is what this event is all about. Yeah, I think that's a good point. There are decisions that are made by storage administrators and there are decisions that are made at the application owner by delivering the integrated solutions but by delivering integrated solutions they can capture some portion of the storage opportunity but they can't capture all of it. They have to sell to the storage practitioner as well. They've got to be relevant. I mean I think that's why EMC does so well. They make themselves relevant and I think that IBM Storage Group has had to sort of fight for that attention inside the customer base. So this to me is an attempt and I think a good one to really make storage relevant at IBM. Now if it's a one shot deal then it's sort of a wasted effort. It's got to be a continuous focus and to me they've set the bar. They've got to keep this event growing. Yeah, well they already beat their first estimate so that's good. Yeah, absolutely. One of the quick questions that I have for you is like you were in the discussion regarding a sand volume controller and that is the hypervisor for storage and trying to drive that. What's your take on, what's your opinion on IBM's ability to sort of capture a storage hypervisor, create and capture a storage hypervisor market? Yeah, well I think that, and you and I have talked about this, I mean I think IBM and Hitachi uniquely have that capability to virtualize other people's assets and I think they've both done very well with it. I think the reality is the primary use case is one of data migration. Now data migration is a big problem for a lot of customers. But it's a way to put in infrastructure that hedges your bets. If you do an M&A, if you've got a lot of sprawl or if you've got different groups within the organization that are buying from different vendors, it's a nice way to hedge those bets and use a platform to get data in and out of what you want. Yeah, and one of the biggest use cases for that kind of technology has been from services companies who are doing data center consolidation initiatives as an example or big data migration sort of projects and let's not forget that IBM is a services company so it wouldn't make sense that they're going to be one of the primary users as well of seeing volume controlling technology. Yeah, so, and I think that the fact that Rod Atkins came to this event. That's good. I would have liked to see Steve Mills here because I think Mills is a big presence. I mean, I've obviously had other commitments. I mean, the guy's very busy. But it was in a strong message that this is really important. Yeah, it would have. I think I would have liked to see him on theCUBE, John. Yeah. So, Mills is a really big personality. Paul, our social came if we could get him. As is Rod. They actually make a really, really good team. We saw him at the Pureflex integrated systems. And maybe that's the bigger message for them at their level is Pureflex. I mean, you were at that event. What's your... It was a good event. It was really well done. I mean, it was extremely well coordinated. IBM made a lot of investments in the marketing so they had basically what they did is they had the big day long dealio, right? And you had the analysts. They started off with the analysts. They had Mills come in. And a lot of the senior executives in the systems business, Rod Atkins was, I believe in parallel, double teaming with the customers. And then they brought everybody together in this mega customer event at this bank down in the Bowery. Like, big, you know, huge bank, right? I mean, very rich atmosphere. Really, really, really well done. And, you know, amazing production, great food. Everybody's in a lot of suits and a lot of fanfare. And I think legitimized, again, legitimized that whole converged infrastructure business. You know, prior to that, you had kind of EMC and DCE fighting it out and knocking each other in the block and so it's good. So the companies that want to acquire that converged infrastructure, when you talk to companies that are looking to do converged infrastructure, what's the workload, what's the use case? Well, so here's the thing. It's all about simplifying, it's all about reducing risk, it's all about supporting applications across the portfolio. The reason they don't want to do it is lock-in. And that's the bottom line, is they're afraid that the vendor is going to get the pricing power. So does IBM give more and less flexibility than, let's say, VCE or? More, I would say. More flexibility in terms of configuration. What about in terms of partnerships and things like that? Less in terms of branding. Less in terms of branding. All right, we got a wrap. Our next guest is here, Jeff Jonas is here. So keep it right there, we'll be right back.