Information technology: Reshaping enterprise companies – Business

From bustling metropolises to cultural epicenters around the globe, information technology is helping to transform and reshape enterprise companies.

As organizations grapple with the dual imperatives of innovation and fiscal prudence, storage solutions are playing a pivotal role in navigating the complexities of modern IT landscapes.

“Generative AI has hit us as an industry,” said Denis Kennelly (pictured, center), general manager of IBM Storage at IBM Corp. “How can I rapidly evolve to take advantage of these wonderful innovations? That is the crux of the problem facing many clients today … what we’re doing here in IBM storage is helping address what I call a dilemma within the storage industry.”

Kennelly spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier (left) and Dave Vellante (right) at IBM’s “Future-Ready Storage Redefining Data Center Boundaries” event, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how IT is leading the charge in guiding organizations toward a future defined by resilience, agility and boundless innovation. (* Disclosure below.)

The John Furrier and Dave Vellante get ready for discussions and analysis at today’s “Future-Ready Storage” event.

Navigating the information technology landscape: Trends and challenges

The current information technology landscape includes three pivotal trends: modernization, cyber resilience and the burgeoning demand for artificial intelligence integration. While digital transformation and cloud app development does have some importance, the omnipresent challenge of cybersecurity — a perpetual concern in today’s digital age, must also be addressed, according to Kennelly.

“The cyber trap is continuous. It doesn’t go away, unfortunately, and is something that we have to plan for and manage every day in this business,” he said.

Amid the fervor of technological advancements, a fundamental dilemma emerges: how to harness these innovations while navigating budget constraints and legacy information technology investments. Taking a look at the intricacies of this conundrum, the dichotomy between the imperative to modernize and the reality of stagnant IT budgets is a real problem. As organizations strive to embrace cloud-native architectures and AI-driven solutions, the specter of security looms large, necessitating a delicate balancing act to allocate resources judiciously, according to Kennelly.

“That is the fundamental challenge, because as you said, budgets are not growing overall,” he said. “There’s a shift going on to actually drive these new innovations. We’ve stepped back and looked at storage over many years … we tend to look at it as an industry over the lifetime of that asset in financial terms. It’s a very constrained and a very static view of the world.”

Redefining storage solutions: A paradigm shift

Central to the discussion is the shift underway in storage solutions — a departure from traditional, box-centric approaches toward a more agile and data-driven structure. To this end, there needs to be a more holistic reimagining of storage infrastructure, emphasizing flexibility and scalability to meet the evolving needs of modern enterprises.

“You have AI, you have applications, big cloud-native data moving and being transformed right across the environment,” Kennelly said. “What we are doing in IBM Storage is really challenging that status quo. At the end of the day, you have to deploy physical hardware. How can you realistically be able to forecast what it’s going to  look like over the next five years? This is where our customers have huge challenges.”

By guaranteeing storage assurance over extended lifecycles and embracing innovations, such as IBM’s Flash Grid technology, organizations can transcend the constraints of conventional procurement models, unlocking unprecedented agility and cost-effectiveness, according to Kennelly.

“You cannot afford a risk [of] not being at the forefront of innovation and losing ground to your competitors,” he said. “Some of the flexibility we’ve built into our storage portfolio that you’re going to hear about from the team, hopefully you can see how we’re mitigating some of that risk for our client.”

Stay tuned for the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s of IBM’s “Future-Ready Storage Redefining Data Center Boundaries” event.

(* Disclosure: IBM’s “Future-Ready Storage Redefining Data Center Boundaries” event. Neither IBM Corp..)