Business owners now have more than their bottom lines to keep them jittery — digital disruption from out-of-the-blue startups is becoming a major concern as well. The success of disruptive applications like Uber, Inc. and Airbnb, Inc. has left a lot of companies nervous that their industry might be next. For this reason, demand is growing for technology that deals head on with the possibility of disruption, according to JP Van Steerteghem, senior director of systems engineering, worldwide data center / virtualization at Cisco Systems, Inc.

“Our customers are starting to become really concerned about digital disruption. They’re concerned about the six people in a garage that are trying to disrupt their business,” Steerteghem explained to Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman, cohosts on theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, durcing Oracle OpenWorld 2015.

Bimodal IT a growing line of defense

Customers are defending against disruption by adding mode 2 to  their traditional mode 1 IT system, according to Steerteghem.  What that means from a data center perspective, he explained, is that mode 1 runs your business in the background while mode 2 faces your customers and is able to flex and transform to keep abreast of disruption.

“I believe that this whole transition to mode 2 is only starting right now, and I think next year, we’ll be really in the thick of it,” he said.

Watch the full video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Oracle OpenWorld 2015. And join in on the conversation by CrowdChatting with theCUBE hosts.

Photo by SiliconANGLE