 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering IBM Edge 2015. Brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to Las Vegas everybody. This is theCUBE, we're here at Edge 2015. We have our flash pins on, cause we're talking flash. Mike Cune is here as the VP of Flash Systems at IBM and Janine Graham Bellamy, Director of Technology at Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. Folks, welcome to theCUBE. It's great to see you. It's great to be here. Mike, it's all the rage. Flash, I said flash, it's hot, you said no. Flash is cool. That's very cool. What's happening? Lots happening. We talked about everything happening in the flash from a momentum standpoint, but the story is evolving and it's playing at very nicely. So at Edge, we're talking about all about business outcomes and the value of all the technologies from IBM in terms of a transformational technology. So flash is at the forefront of that. Flash is delivering transformational technology. Janine from Royal Caribbean will talk about how it's changing her industry, changing her business and all the things that they do in Royal Caribbean is the second largest cruise line in the world. They have five million clients a year. So it's all about how they're using art technology or flash or virtualization management to really work on how they change the client experience. So it's all about before the client, before the customers come on board, while they're on board, after how they've changed the client experience. So the big story about flash is, continuous uptake, it is at the center of this transformational discussion that's happening and really driving businesses. So Janine, I mean after the economic downturn, the Royal Caribbean really seemed to come back very, very strong, the industry as a whole picked up. You guys are a leader in that space. Talk first about your business and what's driving your business. What's driving our business? Actually innovation is actually driving our business. So we're a company of six brands. So not many people realize that Royal Caribbean has a lot of our ships that are actually around the world. So one of our leaders is actually we're global and that's what helped us come from the market turn is that our ships are not just here, they're around the world. We're providing destinations, we're providing cruises to everyone to be seeing dream locations. Very competitive, obviously. So the more you can service clients, the more you can make that experience rewarding, the more they come back, sticky business potentially. So talk about your IT, what's going on in your infrastructure, how is it transforming and what about flash? All right, so part of what Mike was bringing in, so let me tell you we had a challenge. So we do have a lot of data that we had to capture. So back to what Mike was saying, before the cruise, during the cruise and after the cruise. So we collect data from when you're trying to do some short excursions, what you do on the ship, what was your likes, what's your dislikes. So all that data was a challenge for us. So we actually had to find a solution to help us pretty much campaign, understand our customers, what they really wanted. So part of our solution was to pick up flash. We actually did a pilot to see what can help us because our customers, our marketing department needed the data. They did not know how to reach out to our customers. So that was one of the things that putting flash to technology, the data is now faster for them to actually do more with that data. So specifically, what did you do to put the data in the hands of the marketing? Well, one of the things that we, part of the technology we used that IBM Spectrum Virtualized was the SVC along with the flash system technology. Putting that together, we migrated the databases that was poorly performing on its original home into the new flash system without business impact. So that's what the SVC actually helped us with. And then from there, the business started doing a lot of campaigns to see if they were actually able to do their traditional SLAs. But now they can actually run a lot more campaigns than they had before. So you were an SVC customer prior to? Prior to flash, yes. We would run the leaders in starting out with SVC. So what were you doing with SVC? You had a collection of different devices that you were connecting in? Well, we tear our storage because we have all of our applications behind the SVC. So we have from the lower dense storage devices to the high performing, from the DS8000 to the store-wise to the XIV. We have the whole gamut. So we put the storage behind and make it the best fit to the application it's performing on. So that flexibility that the SVC gives us is that we can move applications, tear the storage, put lower log files on the lower dense disks, and then high performing on the higher disks. How do you deal with, if I'm a business owner, Gina got this app. And I need fast storage, trust me. I need to be on the fat of gold standard. What do you- You know what, that is the funny thing. Everybody wants that until they give you the sticker price. That's a fun part. So you say, okay, Dave, it's going to cost X. And then we will give them X. But however, what we have noticed that we do give them X and they're hardly utilizing the storage or the infrastructure that we give them. They're maybe at 30% capacity. So the SVC has helped us move things around to really provide the right performance that the system and application really needs. And you do chargebacks to those folks? We are in the showback model right now. We haven't really gone to that chargeback model. So we've been moving the storage around so where there are some systems that may have bought the poor storage. They've now been able, just because SVC, I give them some of the fastest storage because I already have it on the floor. So I'm utilizing everything I have. I don't have anything just sitting there not wanting to be used. All right, Mike, let's talk about the market space. What's going on? How are you competing? What's the, what's the, what are the numbers saying? We'll just amplify the point that Jeanine just said. We talked about it's expensive but it's not as expensive as they realize, right? This is what David Floyer has been talking about for a long time, right? We've reached the tipping point. Flash is not the expensive tier of storage as it used to be in the past, right? It's becoming cheaper and cheaper. It's more highly optimized. We're working with clients in terms of understanding that TCO, understanding and having the software layer to deliver value to that. And as more and more clients figure out ways to monetize the data, they're moving to Flash. So that's the storyline. And we talked about Flash. We talked about speeds and fees. We talked about our Flash technology is really taken off. We talked about why it's a better optimized design than others who are optimized around SSDs. We talked about the startups don't have the software stack. We talked about all the piece parts that need to come together to get to this point. We've got to that point. So we've reached the tipping point. It's taken off. We've reached these transformational type discussions with Royal Caribbean and others where people understand, can monetize the data and they need to have fast storage to store access, analyze data in real time and at the moment of impact, right? So it's all about doing it in the moment of impact because when you're interacting with somebody on the cruise or whatever, it doesn't matter if you have the data five minutes from now, 10 minutes from now, you have to have it right now, right? In the moment. So it's all about monetizing data and doing things in the moment. So let's talk more about the economics, Jean. I mean, a couple of years ago, it was all about, well, you shouldn't be looking at cost per bit. Think about cost per IO. You don't hear that so much anymore with technologies like compression and duplication, costs are coming down. Certainly flash cost seem to be coming down faster than spinning disk. And data center size too. Not just only cost, the data center's footprint and space, we've actually been able to lower footprint and the amount of power and utilization. It's actually lowering the cost, not just by the storage itself, but the overall full package. So five, seven years ago, CIOs didn't care because they didn't pay for the, for instance, the power bill, for example. No, they cared about space. I guess depends. We care about the power bill too. Somebody had a line here. They said, nobody cares about space until you run out of it. Then it matters. So you guys look at those factors overall, and that goes into your economic justification. You pay those bills? You pay the power bill? We pay the power. The data center we have on the shore side is our data center. So we pay the power bill, we pay the cooling, we pay for everything that's in that data center. So the space. So we did have a challenge with space at one point in time. So we did have significant larger footprint since we've been an IBM customer for a very long time that we do have the larger frames that are out there. So changing the technology and as technology's been growing it's been a large, less footprint so we can fit more into the data center. So clearly, I say clearly, but it's our assumption that you can do a lot more work with a lot less storage with flash. You're clearly seeing that. So there's a consolidation play there. And so how do you look at the economics? Do you look at the full TCO? Do you sort of look at the capex? I think we look at both. We actually look at what the need of the customer first. So we have to look at exactly what their performance they're looking at before saying, this is what your cost is going to be. Because that ultimate goal is I had to provide a service to my customers. So the business kind of determines the value that they're willing to pay. As long as I'm giving them exactly what they're looking for and even more, that's the goal, that the cost, we'll try to make sure the cost will work. How about this notion, like you mentioned, David Fleurer's work. So he did what I thought was some groundbreaking work where he talked about how, I mean, we all with spinning disks have copy creep, you know, I'll call it, where you're spinning copies left and right for data warehouses, test and dev, et cetera. And you can service, share more virtual copies out of flash than you could with spinning disks. So there's an efficiency play there. But there's also a productivity for developers. Have you seen that type of activity from the developer community? We're starting, I don't think we're there yet. We still have the multiple copies. And that has been a challenge of ours. So part of it is we're trying to make sure that we can actually virtualize more of our storage and our data so we can actually spin up a copy as fast as we can and utilize just that one copy. And you can be multiple users using it for dev or test reasons. So Mike, when you guys acquired the assets from Texas Memory System, it was stack light. And so you had the SVC. It was really, you know, pretty genius actually. We got this, put them together, go. No delay to market. And that was a great entry strategy. Exactly, right. I mean, that was our strategy all along. I mean, we looked at over two dozen companies out there. We looked at acquiring some type of technology to give us a head start in this space. We knew the space was going to take off. What we wanted was, we wanted someone that gave us a highly optimized, hardware optimized platform, which we had from our acquisition, that we could put our stack on it. So our stack is a battle tested proven stack. It's not a start up flash. Stack, it's a proven battle tested flash, which by the way has been changed over the years and highly optimized to take advantage of flash. So it hasn't stayed still either. So it's a proven, highly optimized stack. And when you have that software layer in between there, it actually is helping clients deploy it very, very fast. And so that's the message here. You talked about David Floyder's work. I mean, people understand that now. They may not all be doing all the things that you just asked Gina about, but they understand it now. We're in the past, when we talked about this, when we launched our flash system initiative and we announced the billion dollar investment around flash, we were still explaining to people with your help and others about, you know, understanding the TCO and all the costs involved. People now understand that much, much better. And there are different ways of adoption, but it's well understood now in the industry. But now you've evolved that strategy, the sort of SVC, you know, put it behind the SVZ. It's now an integrated product. You've incorporated real-time compression and it really is a solution. Talk about that a little bit. Yeah, so, you know, with our recently announced the V9000, which is our third generation product since we announced our billion dollar initiative, you know, two years ago. So, very quickly, over a two-year period, now we're on gen three. This is how fast the technology's moving. This is how fast IBM is moving. What you have is a highly optimized stack. It has all the capabilities of external virtualization, real-time compression, all the snapshots, synchronous, asynchronous, auto-tearing. Guess what? Some of the biggest competitors out there still don't have what we have, unless you want to go buy their recover point appliance or, you know, their other solution to marry with that. Certainly, all the software startups and flash startups out there don't have anything close to external virtualization or any kind of robust, you know, synchronization. They might have synchronous rep, but not asynchronous rep. So, certainly, they're not moving as fast as IBM is and that's the value of being able to deliver a proven stack and optimize it for flash. And it's hitting at the perfect time as this transformation is occurring in the industry. So, is that where a lot of the billion dollars is going, is integration? Is that? Piece of it. And you're also going to see our flash technology. So, a lot of it is in flash optimizing some of the stack, but you're also going to see the flash technology start to come up in our other enterprise storage offerings, right? So, no surprise, you would take a really, you know, you take your flagship product and you innovate first. You drive the most value first on your lead product, but you're going to see flash optimization across all of our product lines, right? XIV today still has a lot of life left. DSAK has a lot of life left. We announced over 11 product announcements at edge around a lot of technologies and guess what? A lot of them are on our more mature, robust platforms like XIV and StoreWise and DSAK. Those platforms aren't dead. They got a lot of life left in them. We're going to flash optimize them. We're going to integrate them all with their software-defined storage message. And it's really evolving to where we're at right now. Yeah, so flash extends the life of those things, presumably. Jeanine, when you think about, they joke about integration. I talked to a lot of practitioners that sometimes they tell me the only time it's integrated is in the PO. So from a customer standpoint, how important is that to you? I mean, it's on the one hand, it's good to have products that fill gaps. On the other hand, it's got to be hard to manage all the stovepipes. So what's your take on that? I mean the different products, I mean the different layers, like the XIV and how many? Yeah, I mean, just IT products in general. Well, the IT, well, on the storage level, we have standardized and all the IBM storage. So manageability is one of the biggest things that we have. I only have five storage admins. And we manage all shore side and the fleet. So with those five, I need a platform that is easy, flexible for them to be able to manage and standard, so that means they move from one area to another and make sure they can manage it. So from XIV to a DS8000 to a flash system. So five storage admins, how much storage we talking about? 3.6 petabytes. 3.6 petabytes. And how many servers you guys have roughly, do you know? Oh wow. Hundreds, thousands. Thousands. Thousands, at least over 5,000. If you counted all the ones from board the ships and everything. Five storage admins. So now, what, every year, the CIO, whomever, the CFO gives us, it's okay Janine, budget's flat, do more. I do more or less. And that's the reason why we standardize and a lot of the products. So along with it, we do have a monitoring tools that come along with IBM, which is our the Tivoli Productivity Center, TPC. Yep. I'm not too sure, that was renamed, right? It was renamed, but that's I wasn't making sure the new name. It was passed the reports with that way, it's fine. Right, so that's part of the ones. So monitoring our environment, so we leverage a lot of the tools to help us maintain the environment. So that's five storage administrators to deploy and manage all their storage on the land, in the data centers, in the air, in the cloud, and on the high seas because they have 50 rolling data centers that roll on the ocean. And of course, you know this, it's a data ocean out there, right? You liked that term, data ocean. You know, a lot of people talk about data lakes. No, that's like yesterday's news. It's a data ocean. You guys are on the ocean. We're on the ocean. There's a lot of data on the ocean, isn't there? Absolutely. You're building a data ocean along with the virtual cloud? You know, on their newest cruise ship called Quantum of the Sea, you can actually go surfing right on the deck, on the top deck. You know that? You can actually go, you can do skydiving. You can go skydiving as well, on the deck of the cruise ship, right? It's a data ocean out there and you can surf the waves on Quantum of the Sea with Royal Caribbean and IBM Storage. And if you don't stay ahead of the waves, you're going to be driftwood. You won up this one more time. Mike and Janine, what a great story. Mike, a lot of momentum. I can just see the spring in your step. You're really excited. Congratulations. It's been a lot of hard work to bring it together and it looks like it's paying off. And Janine, thanks for sharing your story. All right, great. All right, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest right after this. This is theCUBE. We're live from IBM Edge 2015. We'll be right back.