Host Steven Dickens chats with FalconStor‘s VP of Engineering, Ron Morita and VP of Customer Success, Abdul Hashmi for Six Five Media In the Booth at IBM TechXchange. They discuss solutions for modernizing and optimizing IBM Power environments using FalconStor’s StorSafe for data protection and cloud migration, and secure backup storage. Check out the full interview to learn more about the following: 👇
- Modernizing and optimizing IBM Power environments with StorSafe’s capabilities including workload migration, disaster recovery, and ransomware protection
- Key use cases for StorSafe across IBM Power Systems, PowerVS, IBM Cloud, and COS, and their specific benefits
- A deep dive into the use case for SAP HANA backup utilizing StorSafe and detailing its unique advantages
- Availability of StorSafe in the IBM Cloud Catalog for streamlined deployments both on-premises and in the cloud
- An overview of benefits including maximizing PowerVS for superior data protection, streamlined workload migration, and effective ransomware recovery
Learn more at FalconStor.
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Transcript:
Steven Dickens: Hello and welcome. I’m Steven Dickens, your host, and you’re joining us here coming to you live from IBM TechXchange. I’m joined by the guys from FalconStor, Ron and Abdul. Welcome to the show.
Ron Morita: Thank you very much.
Steven Dickens: Tell us a little bit about your roles.
Ron Morita: I’m the VP of engineering at FalconStor.
Steven Dickens: Fantastic.
Abdul Hashmi: Abdul Hashmi, VP of Customer Success at FalconStor.
Steven Dickens: Let’s dive in. First, tell us a little bit if you don’t mind, Ron, about FalconStor. Let’s get the listeners and viewers orientated and then we’ll get into the meat of it.
Ron Morita: Sure, sure, FalconStor has been a partner with IBM for over 20 years and we’ve really been evolving that partnership. In particular, we’ve been focusing over the last three years with the Power VS cloud.
Steven Dickens: We’re here at the Power Community booth. That feels appropriate.
Ron Morita: Yes.
Steven Dickens: Abdul, you presented earlier on today. Tell the listeners and viewers what some of the key takeaways, maybe those who weren’t able to be here, about the collaboration with what you are doing with the Power VS and ultimately the broader Power community.
Abdul Hashmi: Sure, we had a great session, very engaging session. Basically, the main points are we went over the five use cases that we have. That is installing and configuring StorSafe VTL on-prem to be able to replace data domain or any other VTL-like solution and then also the hybrid cloud. Then, build that up by installing another VTL in PowerVS. That’s our use case number two. Then, now you can use your PowerVS as your DR, active DR or passive DR, and then DR-resident and as well as Power VS-resident and Power VS DR. In addition to that, we concentrate and there’s a lot of engagement from customers and partners on the data domain takeout. Our friendly nature would tape export and import how we use our solution to help customers and partners to both import tapes from a physical tape library and as well as export to a physical tape library.
Steven Dickens: Are you seeing that hybrid story resonate with the clients? That’s what I’m hearing. We’re in a mode of hybrid adoption. Is that what you are seeing?
Abdul Hashmi: Absolutely, I think it resonates for a lot of reasons and our StorSafe VTL gives them that ability to be able to embrace the cloud at their own pace. Cloud is not for everybody and not right from the get-go. People want to embrace it slowly. By having a solution like StorSafe VTL, we give you the ability to test, make sure everything is good based on your business requirements, and then move on and move 100% to the cloud.
Steven Dickens: I think that the optionality there is really interesting for me. One of the key workloads that comes up in that context is SAP HANA.
Abdul Hashmi: Absolutely.
Steven Dickens: You guys have been doing some stuff with StorSafe with SAP HANA.
Ron Morita: Yes.
Steven Dickens: Tell me a little bit more.
Ron Morita: We’re doing some really exciting things with SAP HANA. In particular, we have three value propositions. In the past, we’ve always really focused on business continuity, data protection, disaster recovery.
Steven Dickens: That’s been you guys at the core for a while.
Ron Morita: Core capability, absolutely, and what we’ve been expanding on, which the two of you have been talking about, is really this aspect of frictionless hybrid cloud, being able to run your workloads either on-prem or in the cloud or both. That’s where SAP HANA is really an opportunity to be able to run your SAP HANA on-prem or up in the cloud and how FalconStor StorSafe can really be the enabler for that frictionless movement.
Steven Dickens: I mean it’s interesting you mentioned the word frictionless there. We are talking about the optionality of hybrid cloud. I think people are looking for this type of flexibility. Core workloads like SAP they’re looking for. Maybe I’ve got some of that on-prem. Maybe I need to back some of it up to the cloud. Maybe I’ve got a global deployment of SAP and I don’t have stuff in particular regions. There’s a lot of optionality there.
Ron Morita: Yes.
Steven Dickens: You mentioned frictionless. How easily is it to adopt StorSafe and the FalconStor product set with IBM?
Ron Morita: Very easy, and that’s one of the things that I’m really highlighting in my session, which is really the ability to go directly from SAP HANA using the administrative console or SAP HANA studio and back up directly to StorSafe and then replicate that information up into the cloud either for test dev or actually for migration into the cloud.
Steven Dickens: Guys, it’s 2024. It’s the year of AI and I’ve not asked you an AI question. Ron, tell me, we were talking a bit off-camera, what the AI strategy is. You guys are doing a lot in that space.
Ron Morita: Absolutely.
Steven Dickens: Tell me what you’re doing in AI and really what enterprises should be thinking about when they’re looking at FalconStor.
Ron Morita: Great question. Great question and it’s something that we’ve really been putting a lot of focus on in partnership with IBM. We have a number of initiatives around watsonx, first of all, being able to bring in the historical data that’s in your backups and archives. It’s no longer just your production data, but you really want to look back in history over the past 10 years, 20 years even, and being able to do intelligent analysis based on watsonx and natural language processing.
Steven Dickens: That’s going to be the private use case I think, the private AI use case.
Ron Morita: Absolutely, absolutely.
Steven Dickens: I think what you’re doing is fascinating there.
Ron Morita: Yes.
Steven Dickens: I cut in, but carry on.
Ron Morita: Data governance is critical because it is private. Being able to have a separate instance and ensure the privacy of that data, that’s one area, being able to bring in the historical angle to your AI analyses. The other part is actually on the front end, being able to make intelligent queries, natural language processing, and being able to span multiple databases. I think some of the most interesting things about AI and the most interesting insights that you can get is when you’re combining information across multiple sources. That’s when you get real insights.
Steven Dickens: You want to be able to pull from those various data sources, pull that together, fire in a large language model, and get that insight?
Ron Morita: Exactly, it’s not just a matter of translating natural language into SQL query. It’s really being able to integrate that information.
Steven Dickens: Pulling it from those data sources so you get an amalgamated answer?
Ron Morita: Yes, and the third area that we’re focusing on, which I’ll be talking about in my breakout session, is how we’re providing frictionless hybrid cloud, being able to take SAP HANA from on-prem into the cloud, into Power VS, and then protect it, business continuity in the cloud. Then, we’ve been partnering with the watsonx team and we have a demo, which shows an AI assistant being able to query that SAP HANA database. It is that three step process of business continuity, of frictionless hybrid cloud, and then extending and modernizing your application with AI.
Steven Dickens: I think that’s going to be crucial, pulling that SAP system of record data and being able to present it to AI.
Ron Morita: Yes.
Steven Dickens: That’s fascinating. If we had to boil it down as we wrap up here, Abdul, I’ll go to you first. Couple of key takeaways and then I’ll come to you next, Ron. What would the two key takeaways be from you as people start to think about what they’re doing with their hybrid cloud strategy and where FalconStor can play in that?
Abdul Hashmi: I think people love the fact that we are agnostic when it comes to the hardware, when it comes to the cloud, when it comes to the application. Our agnostic nature they love. With respect to our StorSafe VTL, they love the cost reduction that we bring to the table because of our global deduplication from multiple workloads and as well as multiple types like maybe NAS and INTAPE. Those are the ones that-
Steven Dickens: Fantastic points, and you, Ron, what would your key takeaways be?
Ron Morita: I think it really is about optionality. Being able to choose your workloads, choose your cloud or on-prem, choose your backup application, it’s that flexibility because enterprise data centers are very complicated and for different reasons people have business requirements that demand that flexibility.
Steven Dickens: I think that’s a fantastic way to wrap. We’ve heard about flexibility. We’ve heard about people’s hybrid cloud strategy. You’ve been watching us here on the Six Five coming to you live from IBM TechXchange. Please check out our other videos and content that’s coming to you live from the show and we’ll see you next time. Thank you very much for watching.
Author Information
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
