No one can really compete with IBM when it comes to business transformation.
Transforming businesses with Spectrum Storage Suite to the tune of 80 customers a month
I have had a long career in the data storage industry. A very lucky career at that. I will tell you it is with great happiness that I have chosen to go back to IBM. I also have to say, IBM is changing, a lot. The hiring process, the on-boarding process, the HR presences and the IT processes have come a long way since my last stint at IBM – this time it was very simple and smooth and impressive. IBM is an impressive company. Of all the jobs, I have had in my career, IBM is the only one who actually does care a lot about its employees from career growth to personal growth. This is a refreshing change.
At the end of my last tour at IBM I was the Business Line Executive for the Data Protection portfolio in the Systems group. So why did I leave? Back in 2012, at IBM Edge, IBM demo’ed an “alpha” product called ADDM or Analytic Driven Data Management for a select set of IBM Customers. This was going to IBM’s Copy Data Management (CDM) solution at the time. The customers we showed the product to loved the solution.
What is interesting about this is that even back in 2012, IBM knew that “data” was the lifeblood of business and the ability to take advantage of there data, was going to be imperative to companies looking to transform themselves. In 2012 – the notion of “copy data management” was becoming an important data management, data protection, and I would even say modernization conversation, and IBM wanted to be a part of that conversation with customers.
If we fast forward to fall plan that year, the decision was made to not invest in ADDM. I was going to be responsible for this product and since we weren’t going to bring it to market, and I believed in this next step for data management so I went to take a job with Catalogic Software to continue the mission. Catalogic has the ONLY software only CDM solution available on the market, and this is how clients want to consume storage technology these days – software defined and take advantage of their existing infrastructure they have already bought and paid for.
I will tell you, during the last 3 years, I have met with over 200 customers having conversations about their various businesses and the technology that can enable their businesses to be more competitive. I have talked to them all about their software defined strategy, their journey to the cloud, IoT, DevOps, their modernization efforts and their plans around big data / analytics. As I was listening to these conversations, it became crystal clear that not only is data the lifeblood of business, the ability to have access to this data, quickly, where and when you need it is becoming more and more imperative.
I also looked at the portfolio of products I was helping to evangelize and market and figured out, while these are good products, they are only point solutions. Selling yet another disk array, no matter how good it may be, wasn’t going to help these customers in their business transformation. It’s no longer about the hardware. It’s about the business and what applications help to enable the business to be more competitive. While it is 100% true the data you create needs to end up being stored somewhere, and even if it’s the cloud, there is a disk back there somewhere. The real solution is the one that can enable that data to work for you in the most effective way possible.
I realized that the only company around today that can help customers with their business transformation, end to end, is IBM. So, in my new role as Business Development Executive for the Spectrum Storage Software Suite, I will be helping businesses to transform and become more competitive by providing the right access and availability to their data, at the right cost for cognitive solutions, IoT, Blockchain, and much more. Data is the lifeblood of business, how do you manage your data