t cht lk
a storage environment to enable smart
data management.
We have a piece of software called HPE
Infosight which looks at where data’s
being pulled from, how it’s being used,
what the best way of managing that data
is in a much more automated fashion. My
expectation is that intelligence will continue
to transform data management from the
Edge to the cloud.
How important is operating at
the Edge?
I’d say it’s vital. I’d say it’s non-negotiable.
Right now, a lot of the data sets we work
with or that other companies work with
are getting bigger, however, they are still
nowhere near the size they’re going to be in
even three years’ time.
“
WE’VE GOT
VERY PEAKY
WORKLOADS
WHERE THE
DEMAND IS
UNSURE, YET
THERE IS HUGE
VALUE TO BE
DERIVED FROM
THAT.
At the moment, there’s a lot of fibre and a
lot of connectivity so it quite often makes
sense to move your data to your compute.
As data sets get bigger, as data gravity takes
hold, the cost maths equation completely
changes and you start to move your
compute to your data – that is operating
at the Edge. And then we get to things like
autonomous driving for example – if you’re
in a car that’s being autonomously driven,
where do you want the decisions to be made
by that car and by that AI? You’d want it to
be made right at the car’s location.
I’ve seen a lot of organisations fail to do that
because it’s quite complex and it doesn’t
make sense for everything to go in one
direction and then you don’t end up shutting
your data centre. The way I think about it
is by using the example of the screwdriver
– just because somebody invented the
screwdriver – an incredible tool – it doesn’t
mean you no longer need a hammer.
Do you think businesses are
aware of the implications of
using Smart Technologies?
I think people are maturing to it now. There
was certainly a period where it was cool to
say you were going ‘cloud-first’ and then
you ask what they mean by that and what
they’re solving from that, and people find it
quite hard to answer.
I’ve seen two approaches, I’ve seen
scenarios where companies will ask what a
public cloud would offer them, what’s good
about it and where the value lies. They ask
what’s good about their environment, what
workloads they can put there to extract value
from their business.
We’ve got very peaky workloads where the
demand is unsure, yet there is huge value to
be derived from that. I think very down grid
68
INTELLIGENTCIO
Marc Waters, Managing Director UK,
Ireland, Middle East and Africa, HPE
where you just need lots and lots of scale-up
compute capacity – these workloads sit
particularly nicely.
So, organisations that understand their
environment mix and their applications and
make smart choices are the ones that have
been very successful at locking in the value.
Some other organisations have said they’re
going to move everything they do to the
public cloud and they believe they could
probably get by on the fact that they can
shut their data centre.
You need to start thinking about the
right mix of your environment to take full
advantage of the technologies.
An overwhelming point I would make is that
the value is in the data. As you think about
data management and about the cloud,
public clouds can do some really fantastic
compute processing on demand when you
need it with some nice microservices – this
is a really important part of your hybrid mix
and everyone should have that within there.
My own personal recommendation to any
CIO reading this would be to think very
carefully about where you are putting your
data and keep in control of it because once
you pay to entrust your data into somebody
else’s cloud where you’re renting space,
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