'Smarter Planet is a paradigm and Pure System is an element of the paradigm'

How does the Pure System fit with the overall smarter planet initiative of IBM?

Smarter Planet is a paradigm and Pure System is an element of the paradigm. Smart computing says you deploy a certain set of methods which includes technology that's much more driven by the economic outcome. So the infrastructure matters. For a long time, companies made decisions based on price, trends, new technologies with the assumption that it sort of didn't matter. That it was all the same.

Turns out it's not the same. So you can buy inexpensive systems that have expensive streams, or you can buy the next version which has a long tail of cost associated. Just because its new does not mean the best.

But smarter computing is a much better way to acquire and leverage technology. And what I mean by that is can you optimize your environment and can you do it quickly.

If you can't, it's not smart computing. Can you do radical and extreme consolidation? Dense form factors that take up a lot of space, 35:1 compressions, if you can't do that it's not smarter computing.What Pure flex does is - it fits into the smart computing by doing all these things. So we say to customers, you want to do cloud. Cloud is about extreme, compact and dense consolidation, extreme virtualization and automation all built in. Thats what Pure flex does and Pure data uses that infrastructure inside.

What is the IBM's cloud strategy?

Customers are moving to cloud as a business model. This is not a technology. The old model was where you acquire physical assets, you customize them, it takes you years to tune them to be optimal and then you deploy workloads on top of that. When you run out of capacity, you get more capacity, you tune again.

This is sort of the old factory model. Where cloud computing comes in is when customer says the old model does not work. My business has volatility, I need a consumption model where I pay for what I use. So that links itself to a public cloud, where they buy software and platform as a service. So we have announced a partnership with AT&T.

They have capacity, we have  services capability, so we are going to offer platform and service to telco market. So customers can now tap into a public cloud and get service. That's part of the IBM strategy.

Industry based with partners we bring capability, they bring capacity. In some cases we are going to lead and in others they are going to lead. It is industry based - this is telco, one example.

The other way the customer is going to acquire clould capacity is private cloud. So inside of their own company, they are going to build a cloud platform. With Pure Systems, we said we are going to make that easier for you to do. So everything that I talked about, consolidation, virtulaizaiton, automation in a box. You dont have to call up somebody and say, give me a license. You dont have to call some one else and say give me some storage. Its all in the box. The cloud is enabled when you get the platform.

 

So IBM has two strategies around the cloud, public, and private. So in the public cloud the infrastructure I am describing about Pure, is in that. AT&T is deploying Pure Flex and Pure Data as part of the public cloud offering with IBM. We are also in partnership with many other managed service providers. Any industry that needs infrastructure that can scale quickly, what Pure Flex does is it gives you scale, the ability to manage the capacity to help different industry business models.

How will the Pure Systems disrupt the enterprise business?

Most of the IT dept are facing an issue of speed. Deployment of capacity so you can deploy workloads. How fast can I get it deployed? The scenario is that when an application gets deployed and the enterprise CEO finds out competition has it and questions the CIO, he says to deploy it would take months. Months for what? To deploy capacity, to pilot test it and that's not good enough.

What Pure Flex does is it deploys applications that are available in the market optimized for pure, like an app store. Enterprises can go in and find out the workload which is already optimized. Get that ISV deployed in days, not weeks not months. That's what is disruptive. How quick can you get it working. Application is ready, how quickly can you get this enterprise ready and deploy it. Here is where Pure Data and Pure Flex help.

 

 

What kind of security is available on Pure?

Today customer are challenged on integrated systems. IT is on so many platforms, UNIX, LINUX, MAINFRAME. They all exist in fiefdoms. When integrated system comes, who does this belong to? Our security division has solutions based on industries. For instance, banking sector has things that are based on standards and protocols which are working in a regulatory environment. All of them has to work within those standards. So, the same thing in retail, automotive, travel.

So we have approached this from an industry angle. As customers struggle with what are my arguments to keep up with my market. And these differ in geographies around the world. We advise customers on doing the right thing on compliance and finding solutions that work.

What is the future of mainframes?

Future of mainframes is in 3 dimensions. One is that it has enormous capacity. The one we announced recently is 50% bigger than the last one. Other dimension is cloud. Mainframe really is a cloud. It has virtualization, consolidation built in, Mainframe has ability to bring workloads, java, unix on the frame. It's a consolidation platform, it's a cloud. The third dimension is data. We are making big investments here.

What is the current server sales on Intel platform for IBM?

When you count up servers in the market place today about 60% is Intel based. It's a big market and growing. The overall pie is getting bigger. Pure system, Pure Flex gives an advantage in this market. It's the next generation of blade, it's modular, fits on the chasis, also beside it has storage blade, network blades, if customers say I have a mission critical workload that runs my core app.

And my database is not an IBM database. But the web serving is done by Intel service. Guess what we can do now, we can bring all that together. In today's world, you may have a database server which might be Oracle, and you've got Intel servers, which puts all the workload and a big application like SAP working through the database and that's different servers on different architecture. That's what we can now exploit.

For customers: if business is exploding, even if they have to figure out demand in month in advance, they can buy extra; have them ready, when ready deploy them. It's spare capacity. Use them when you are ready to.

 

When business shrinks the life cycle is 18 months. And their capital lies 36 months. CIOs get killed. The current system is obselete there is no ROI. Here we gaurentee that for the next 10 years any version of intel or unix server and work load will run on this platform.

 What is IBM's Growth potential in India compared to other geographies?

India is Comparable with china. Its faster growth on a smaller base. And similar to Russia and Brazil. IBM has a strong presense. We are No. 1 in intel servers in India beating Dell in the latest IDC report. we are leading in Unix.

How are you leveraging your partnerships with customers in India

We have deep partnerships with many customers. Bharti Airtel. for example on services. Bharti has a set of workloads that go beyond telcom. They came to IBM, they were having to build infrastructure, ideas about new work. Together we created a process to keep up with them. This combined cost is transated into price per min of service. In Africa, every country has its own telco. 17 countries mostly owned by Govt. Bharti has a relation with telco there and presents a combined opportunity.IBM has worked with Bharti for the telco solution which is used with the telco's in Africa. Also for IBM this presents an opportunity in expanding into other sectors in Africa like Banking, telecom, retail. IBM built So as Airtel opens branches, we open branches, this model is exploding.

 What are the key business concerns you have come across with customer in India

Problems are not unique. There are issues of scale and growth. For example in other markets concerns are with efficiency. In New York, I am generalizing here, talking about efficiency, there is huge infrastructure, its unique, but inefficient. The concern there is "How do I optimize? Should I go to cloud ?

In India for large Banks and Telco's - its how do i grow fast and not miss the opportunity. When competing for internatino work - what is everybody else doign? other challenge and concern is skills, for example india is not a Mainframe market. Competitive player have Mainframes. As India has opened FDI in retail, Wall Mart, Cosco and similar competitors has enormous capacity will be able to handle volume of capacity. India has come from PC to Unix, level of corp computing is limited. SBI big unix environment, players coming into the market have different corporate computing model.

The market is going to open. Whos going to be the best player in the world. No maket stays closed today. Ultimately all of them open. Its because you want to go to other markets. For that you need to ensure your markets are open.