Eric Herzog, IBM - #IBMEdge - #theCUBE
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 19/09/2016

01. Eric Herzog, IBM, Visits #theCUBE!. (00:20)
02. How Was VMworld. (01:03)
03. What Is Your Take On VMware. (01:54)
04. Would It Be A Mistake For VMware To Suboptimize It's Business To Help Dell. (04:39)
05. Where Are We With Storage In Containers. (07:15)
06. Does It Give IBM An Advantage To Be Important In The Adoption Of Containers. (09:21)
07. Give Us A Rundown On The Product Portfolio. (11:31)
08. Where Are You In The Market. (17:26)
09. How Do You See China's Role In This Global Ecomony From An IT Perspective. (20:13)
10. Has IBM Said They're Gonna Swim Upstream. (23:22)
11. Do You See A Lot Of Growth In Surfacing Those Services Through API. (26:51)
12. Tell Us Why You Should Buy From You. (28:010)

Track List created with http://www.vinjavideo.com.
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IBM’s ‘flexibility play’ with storage solutions | #IBMEdge
by Gabriel Pesek | Sep 19, 2016
As containers gain more prominence in the world of storage, their roles in and out of the cloud connectivity landscape are gaining more distinction in their utility, as well as the ways in which vendors can best work to meet customers’ container needs.

Eric Herzog, VP of Product Marketing and Management of Storage Systems and Software-Defined Infrastructure at IBM, joined Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Stu Miniman (@stu), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during IBM Edge 2016 to talk about what his team is doing to prepare for the future, how the Dell-EMC merger is shaping the market, and what the international forecast looks like.

Compatibility for customers

After some discussion of past event trends, including VMware’s VMworld conference, Herzog addressed IBM’s dedication to flexibility. “From our perspective, we’re working with any hypervisor,” he said. “However they want to put the applications … we want to make sure that our customers are always taken care of, from that perspective.”

While there was some speculation amongst the hosts and Herzog as to how the Dell-EMC events might play out, Herzog placed emphasis on that support for customers, regardless of the merger’s circumstances. “A good storage vendor wants to make sure that whatever type of virtualization layer … the customer chooses, [it’s supported]. … We wanna make sure that our customers are taken care of,” he said.

Data safety and the container stall

Another point of discussion touched on the need for securing and maintaining data integrity, as its use in management, visualization, backup and various other growing fields has no slowing in sight.

“Obviously, the storage vendors have all worked with VMware to make sure that [data is safe],” Herzog shared. “The hardware guys are going to go through the same thing. … From a storage perspective, you want to make sure that data [stays safe in transfers].”



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He continued: “We’re already working with some container vendors. You do need to be in that [container market] space, and we’re in that space in a big way as a company.”

He also gave some of his thoughts on the adoption of containers by a wide spread of businesses, though he felt that, for whatever reason, they had not yet reached their full potential. “When virtualization came out, it really did sweep the market quickly. Containers have been around for a while now, and [that hasn’t happened yet].”

Products and competitors

“This year, for us, has seen an amazing amount of product launches,” Herzog said, highlighting the Spectrum Storage line of services offering solutions in computing, storage, backup, data management and more. “There’s a lot, and there’s more coming. … A lot of the value out of our arrays [is in the Spectrum lines],” he said.

Herzog was also able to offer some IBM perspective on how China would influence future markets. Currently, Herzog sees China as “a good market,” with sales doing well consistently, but he questioned what they might end up doing with storage, with possibilities of buying an existing company or creating their own being the prime anticipations. Whichever way it goes, he said, “The Chinese always end up being a force long-term.”