LAS VEGAS — With nearly 5000 attendees, IBM had the largest turnout yet in June for IBM Edge, Big Blue’s annual user conference for its hardware systems group. And from new flash storage offerings to sending Watson to medical school, it was a busy week at IBM Edge 2013.
“Today’s data centres were not designed or built for this world,” said Stephen Leonard, general manager for global markets of IBM’s systems and technology group, noting a shift from making more productive use of structured data from predictable back-office processes to a world that’s unpredictable and unstructured fueling ever increasing data centre complexity.
Launched at the conference was the IBM FlashSystem family of all-flash storage appliances. It’s part of what IBM sees as a new emerging data centre architecture that’s able to handle the demands modern IT is facing around unstructured data and continual demands for performance improvement.
Read more: IBM has $1B for flash storage development and a channel-first strategy
The economics around flash have changed said Ambuj Goyal, general manager of IBM’s system storage and networking group. When people shift from thinking about dollar per gigabyte to dollar per workload, the economics change dramatically,and flash allows for much more capacity in a smaller footprint.
According to IBM’s latest CEO survey, Tom Rosamilia, senior vice-president, IBM systems and technology group, said a significant shift has taken place in the market. No longer is reducing cost the top priority for CEOs; now, it’s using technology to grow their businesses. “They see the opportunity and they want to embrace it. Two years ago it was all about cost.”
Read more: Six key partner take-aways from IBM Edge
Samuel R. Nussbaum, the chief medical officer of WellPoint, a U.S. managed health care provider, was on hand at IBM’s Edge conference to discuss how the company is working with IBM and Watson to improve patient outcomes
Read more: Dr. Watson, I presume? How IBM Watson may transform healthcare
Pre and post-keynote musical entertainment at IBM Edge 2013 was provided by Delta Rae, an American folk rock band formed in Durham, North Carolina.
The trade show floor at IBM Edge 2013 was a busy place. A large IBM area emphasized Big Blue’s theme of Smarter Computing and showcased a number of the vendor’s hardware offerings, including its new flash storage systems. A range of vendor, ISV and reseller partners also participated.
