The Six Five team discusses the Lenovo storage and data management announcements.
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Transcript:
Pat Moorhead: Lenovo storage and data management announcements.
Daniel Newman: AI announcements, Pat.
Pat Moorhead: Well, I think I’m reading data management announcements. So I just read what the script people give me, Dan. No, I’m just kidding. Everybody wants to be the AI play. I get it, I get it. By the way, so Lenovo brought out a bunch of cool announcements. They brought out two storage arrays, they brought out two hyper-converged servers, and they updated their Unified Complete Software. So first off, they brought out what’s called the DG Series Enterprise Storage Array, uses QLC, which is less expensive than DLC, but doesn’t necessarily have the right capability, which by the way makes it really good from a cost standpoint and a performance to replace hard drives. It could be used in AI workloads, particularly when you look at the read capabilities.
So there you go, Dan. AI, I said it, it’s in there. It was in the headline, I saw it in the press release. So then there was a new thick system array targeted at median business, the DM 3010H scaled-out model, a wider array of workloads, more balanced reads and writes. Third thing that was announced, new HCI systems. It’s all about Azure Stack Hub, so therefore it’s a hybrid cloud solution that you can load applications on top of. And one of the benefits of Azure Stack and Azure Stack Hub is you can leverage the connectivity between Azure Stack Hub and the big Azure up in the public cloud. So it’s a hybrid cloud solution.
Third thing they brought out was, it’s called Unified Complete Software. Don’t know if I love that name. I don’t hate that name, but it’s kind of a double entendre, like it’s unified and it’s complete. Okay. So, Dan, you and I cover data protection and things like ransomware and there’s a lot of companies out there right now. It is a frothy place given all the risk of the bad guys coming in and stealing your data, locking it down. And what this is this software comes with DG and DM arrays to provide data protection, replication, snapshots, S3 replication, but also like I said, ransomware protection that you would normally pay extra for.
I want to end with two things. I’ve been talking a lot, Dan, I’m taking a lot of the oxygen here, but I’m not talking 10 minutes. When I think of data management, so when I think of data management, I think of things that companies like Cloudera does, like CDP, where you have consistent metadata security, encryption, control, and governance. It’s hard for me to think of, I’ve been programmed, Dan, and I might need to be deprogrammed, but here’s the reality. Storage companies are moving up the stack to data management. Heck, you see vast data in what they’re doing. They’re combining multiple stacks too. So everybody wants to get in everybody’s business here. Last point, I want to make-
Daniel Newman: You sure?
Pat Moorhead: Yeah, I can go longer.
Daniel Newman: Just keep going, dude.
Pat Moorhead: Hey, no, I mean, you picked this topic, Dan.
Daniel Newman: I want you to find that 10-minute segment where I talked for 10 minutes. We’re going to pull that out because I think it was like two, but you’re so eager to talk that it felt like 10.
Pat Moorhead: Probably, Dan. You know me well, so big market share gain. I mean, listen, up until a few years ago, and I’m a little embarrassed, I didn’t even know that that Lenovo was really a player in storage, but they are. In 2015 they started off at number 11 and they’re now number four in worldwide market share. They’re number one in that less than $25,000 storage range. So huge growth. I mean, very similar to the run in servers where they’re now the number four server provider, really close to getting to number three. And they were back at like number eight after the IBM acquisition and sales tanked. And props to Kirk and his team. Okay, that’s it. That’s all I have.
Daniel Newman: Well, you covered it pretty well and pretty in depth. Didn’t leave a lot for me. I guess I’ll speak a little bit more broadly though about some thoughts. One is Lenovo is doing a very good job of picking its spots and positioning here. There’s going to be needs for what I would call some of these next level, bring the data to the compute storage capabilities like what you’re seeing with VAST, high-frequency trading applications. That’s not as much what I see going on here. What I see going on is there are a massive number of enterprises that have very traditional data storage needs.
And what Lenovo has done so well is just kind of saying, “This is what we are. We are efficient, we are cost-effective, we are power efficient, we can handle your mass storage, we can integrate with your public cloud. We don’t care which one, we’re not going to try to have a service sprawl that is going to match what AWS does. We’re going to have a handful of services that make your prem work the way you need it to and you’re going to be able to connect up whether it’s through VMware, whether it’s through Red Hat, whether it’s going to be through an AWS or Azure.”
And I like that about them because there’s a lot of storage market to be had, and this is kind of how they’ve done it in servers, Pat. It’s kind of how Kirk and his team have just grown is like it’s not too confusing what they are. “We’re going to be aggressive on price, we’re going to be able to manage the supply chain, we’re going to get you the hardware you need, we’ve got the right connectivity and partnerships, and we’ve got enough software that you are able to do what you need to do as a business.”
I think that’s a lot of what we’re seeing here is that the company’s really understanding what it is, it’s how it’s gotten from 11th to top five. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see the company continue to climb because in every area of its ISG business, it’s been able to do that. So the AI play is an underpinning of this, the AI play is storage. Nobody wants to make storage cool and sexy, but you got to have storage and data to have AI running in your enterprise, period.
So the way that storage sits, the way data sits in memory, the way data sits, hot, cold, or somewhere in between can vary depending on the kind of workload, the speed in which you need to be able to get data back. But we’re not necessarily talking about overclocked super microprocessors that are being used for high frequency here, we’re talking about lots of businesses, industry capabilities that need storage, need data, need some AI capabilities. And Lenovo’s saying, “We can do it, we can deliver it, we can hit price, and we’ve got the integrations that you need. “So that’s what I see here. It’s progress, it’s solid. Congratulations, Kirk and team.
Pat Moorhead: More growth from Lenovo ISG.
Author Information
Daniel is the CEO of The Futurum Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise.
From the leading edge of AI to global technology policy, Daniel makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology investments. Daniel is a top 5 globally ranked industry analyst and his ideas are regularly cited or shared in television appearances by CNBC, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal and hundreds of other sites around the world.
A 7x Best-Selling Author including his most recent book “Human/Machine.” Daniel is also a Forbes and MarketWatch (Dow Jones) contributor.
An MBA and Former Graduate Adjunct Faculty, Daniel is an Austin Texas transplant after 40 years in Chicago. His speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.
