 Live from San Jose, California. It's theCUBE, covering innovating to fuel the next decade of big data. Brought to you by Western Digital. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Western Digital headquarters off Almedin down in San Jose, a really important place that Western Digital's been here for a while as their headquarters. A lot of innovation's been going on here forever. So we're excited to be here really for the next generation. The event's called innovating to fuel the next generation of big data and we're joined by many time people on Dave Tang. He is the SVP in corporate marketing comms Western Digital Dave. Always great to see you. Always great to be here, Jeff. Absolutely, so you got to emcee the announcement today. Yes. So for the people that weren't there, let's give them a quick overview on what the announcement was and then we can dive in a little deeper. Great, so what we're announcing was a major breakthrough in technology that's going to allow us to drive the increase in capacity and density to support big data for the next decade and beyond, right? So capacities and densities had been starting to level off in terms of hard drive technology capability. So what we announced was microwave assisted magnetic recording technology that will allow us to keep growing that aerial density up and reducing the cost per terabyte. You know, it's fascinating because everyone loves to talk about Moore's Law and have these silly architectural debates whether Moore's Law is alive or dead. But as anyone who lives here knows, Moore's Law is really an attitude much more it is than the specific physics of microprocessor density growth. And it's interesting to see, you know, as we know the growth of data is growing in giant, the types of data, and we're going to go big data, but now streaming data are bigger and bigger and bigger. And we talked about, you know, stuff coming up of people and machines compared to business data is way bigger. But you guys continue to push limits and breakthrough and even though we expect everything to be cheaper, faster and better, you guys actually have to execute it back at the factory. All right, well, it's interesting. There's this healthy tension, right? A push and pull in the environment. So you're right, it's not just Moore's Law that's enabling a technology push, but we have this virtuous cycle, right? We've realized what the value is of data and how to extract the possibilities and value of data. So that means that we want to store more of that data and access more of that data, which drives the need for innovation to be able to support all that in a cost-effective way. But then that triggers another wave of new applications, new ways to tap into the possibilities of data. So it just feeds on itself and fortunately, we have great technologists, great means of innovation and a great attitude and spirit of innovation to help drive that. Yeah, so for people that want more, they can go to the press releases and get the data. We won't dive deep into the weeds here on the technology, but you know, I thought you had Janet George speak and she's data scientist, phenomenal, phenomenal big brain smart lady. But she talked about, you know, from her perspective, we're still just barely even getting onto this data opportunity in terms of automation, and we see over and over at CubeEvents, innovation's not really not that complicated. You have more people access to the data, you have more access to the tools and let them try things easier and faster and feel quick. There's actually a ton of innovation that companies can unlock within their own four walls. But the data is such an important piece of it and there's more and more of this. What used to be digital exhaust now is I think maybe you said or maybe Dave said that there's a whole economy now built on data like we used to do with petroleum. I thought that was really incredible. Yeah, right, right, it's like a gold mine. So not only are the sources of data increasing, which is driving an increased volume, but as Janet was alluding to, we're starting to come up with the tools and the sophistication with machine learning and artificial intelligence to be able to put that data to new use as well as to find the pieces of data to interconnect, to drive these new capabilities and new insights. Yeah, but unlike petroleum, it doesn't get used up. I mean, that's the beauty of data, right? It's a digital asset. It can be used over and over and over again. And to sell for a new resource. And you're right, in that sense that it's being used over and over again is that the longevity of that data, the useful life is growing exponentially along with the volume. Right, and Western Digital's in a unique position because you have systems and you have, you know, big systems that can be used in data centers, but you also have the media that powers a whole bunch of other people's systems. So I thought one of the real important announcements today was, yes, it's an interesting new breakthrough technology that uses energy assist to get more density on the drives, but it's done in such a way that the stuff's all backward compatible. It's plug and play. You've got production scheduled in a couple of years, I think with tests out to customers next year. So, you know, that is such an important piece beyond the technology, you know, what's the commercial acceptance? What are the commercial barriers? And this sounds like a pretty interesting way to skin that cat. Right, oftentimes the best answers aren't the most complex answers. They're the more elegant and simplistic answers. So both from the standpoint of a user being able to plug and play with older systems, older technologies, that's beautiful. And for us to be able to, the ability to manufacture it in high volume, reliably, it cost effectively is equally as important. And you also talked, which I think was interesting, it's kind of the relationship between hard drives and flash, because obviously flash is, I don't want to say the sexy new toy, but it's not a sexy new toy anymore. It's been around for a while. But, you know, with that pressure on flash performance, you're still seeing the massive amounts of big data, which is growing faster than that. And, you know, there is a role for the high density hard drives in that environment. And based on the forecast you shared, which I'm presuming came from IDC or people that do numbers for a living, still a significant portion of a whole lot of data is not going to be on flash. That's right. I think we have a tendency, especially in technology, to think either or, right? Something is going to take over from something else. But in this case, it's definitely an and, right? And a lot of that is driven by this notion that there's fast data and big data. And while our attention seems to shift over to maybe some fast aid applications, like autonomous vehicles and real time applications, surveillance applications, there's still a need for big data because the algorithms that drive those real time applications have to come from analysis of vast amounts of data. So, you know, big data is here to stay. It's not going away or shifting over. And I think it's a really interesting kind of crossover which Shiana talked about too, where you need the algorithms to continue to chain the systems that are feeding, continuing and reacting to the real data. And then that just adds more vocabulary to their learning set so they can continue to evolve over time. Right. Yeah, and what really helps us out in the marketplace is that because we have technologies and products across that full spectrum of flash and in rotating magnetic recording, and we sell to customers who buy devices as well as platforms and systems, we see a lot of applications, a lot of uses of data, and we're able to then anticipate what those needs are going to be in the near future and in the distant future. Right. So we're getting towards the end of 2017, which I find hard to say, but as you look for it kind of in the 2018, and there's just insatiable desire for more storage because it's insatiable creation of more data. What are some of your priorities for 2018? What are you kind of looking at as like I said, I can't believe we're going to actually flip the calendar here in just a few short months. Well, I think for us it's the realization that all these applications that are coming at us are more and more diverse and their needs are very specialized. So it's not just the storage, although we're thought of as a storage company, it's not just about the storage of that data, but you have to provide complete environments to capture and preserve and access and transform that data, which means we have to go well beyond storage and think about how that data is accessed, technical interfaces to our memory products as well as storage products, and then where compute sits. Does it still sit in a centralized place or do you move compute out closer to where the data sits? So all this innovation and changing the way that we think about how we can mine that data is top of mind for us for the next year and beyond. It's plenty of job security for you, Dave. Let me think about it. All right, he's Dave Tank. Thanks for inviting us and again, congratulations on the trip. Always a pleasure to be here. All right, Dave Tank, I'm Jeff Rick. You're watching theCUBE from Western Digital Headquarters in San Jose, California. Thanks for watching.