Originally posted by: Th. Mühge
Christian Henke, Program Director, EMEA Storage Competence Center IBM Systems
Serge Monney, European Storage Competence Center, Member of IBM Technical Expert Council / Academy of Technology #AOT
The Storageneer team could interview Christian Henke Program Director, EMEA Storage Competence Center to collect his impression about THINK 2018.
Serge:
Christian, this interview is intended to get feedback on your personal impression on the IBM THINK2018 Conference that took place from March 19 till March 22 in Las Vegas. To start with could you please shortly outline what is THINK2018 for you?
Christian:
For me the main purpose of the conference is networking! Altogether 30000+ people from all over the world attend this conference - Clients, Business Partners and IBMers.
Many client I am dealing with were somehow represented on the conference. It's a unique chance to meet with clients in an informal atmosphere. In addition it is also a great opportunity to meet our international IBM team.
THINK is as well numerous of great presentation, that cover our entire IBM portfolio from infrastructure to IOT and analytics not to forget security.
Serge:
What was your impression about the way IBM did present its capabilities on THINK2018?
Christian:
On THINK2018 IBM presented its capability to holistically help clients disruptively transforming their businesses and markets with the use of IBM's technology. Certainly it's about deep learning, data and cloud (for example how Hertz leverages IBM Cloud Private to deploy their app in a third party cloud to keep it secure). IBMs focus is no more on individual products, instead it is on leveraging data for business solutions with the use of technology. Technology is an enabler like with Mercedes-Benz Stadium: One of the World's Most Technologically Advanced Stadiums.
This interview of Ed Walsh General Manager - Storage & Software Defined Infrastructure does mention this as well:
Serge:
Christian, you are leading the EMEA storage support in IBM Systems. What was your specific take-away for this mission?
Christian:
IBM Systems and in particular IBM storage was not often explicit part of the conference discussions. However I always see the following analogy: You need to drink every day but usually you do not talk too much about water.
Laughing....
So this means that there is no higher level of technology without the underlying infrastructure.
IBM Systems and IBM Storage in particular is the foundation, no doubt about it.
Eric Herzog Vice President Marketing - IBM Storage Systems, IBM also mention “ the world most valuable resource is no longer oil but data”
Serge:
From your networking with clients: What is the most discussed topic and why:
Christian:
OK, you know I am part of storage support. My introduction usually triggers the direction of the discussion....
Clients provided a lot of positive feedback about our support to me, but also some critical things.
One client told me the following: "I understand that technology can fail. However, in case it fails I want that IBM takes this very serious, but I'm not always getting this impression."
Our clients business is very often to a large extend absolutely dependent on our infrastructure. So this expectation is very understandable!
The good thing is that we are on the way to seriously transform our support for the better of our clients. That’s also the reason why we at present performing the large transformation of the IBM storage support many of us are involved with.
Serge:
Thank you very much Christian and see you at Think 2019 February 12 – 15 San Francisco, CA
Pictures and Video link from https://www.ibm.com/events/think