IBM Corp.’s recent announcement of Spectrum Protect Plus, protection software for cloud, data center or virtualized platforms, is more about data than it is about simplifying storage management. And the company is not shy about making sure its customers know that.

“The C-suite hates storage, including the CIO [chief information officer], but they do love their data. We’re getting out of the storage conversation and into the data conversation,” said Eric Herzog (pictured, right), chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing, storage channels, at IBM.

But that conversation may soon take a different approach, as the IBM executive hinted that the company was preparing to give future storage products cognitive abilities through artificial intelligence. “We’re working on some products we’re not ready to announce yet, but we’ve got some products that have built-in AI into the storage,” said Herzog, who indicated that IBM Watson “might” be integrated.

“It’s about having smart storage, not dumb storage,” Herzog said.

Herzog paid a visit to theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, and spoke with co-hosts Lisa Martin (@LisaDaliMartin) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante) at the VMworld conference in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was joined by Sam Werner (pictured, left), offering executive for software-defined storage at IBM. They discussed the potential integration of AI into tech and the simplicity and compatibility of IBM Spectrum storage product offerings. (* Disclosure below.)

Smarter storage for data transfer

Code-named “Harmony,” the AI project for IBM storage offers the potential for a storage product to grab data on its own and then transfer it to the server. AI could also assist in system protection by performing metadata analysis to spot anomalies.

“There’s a lot more work that we’re doing to introduce cognitive capabilities that can detect that,” Werner said.

The latest announcements for the IBM Spectrum product line are designed to address a dilemma for customers who have applications that run perfectly in a data center environment but don’t have the same protections in the cloud.

“What you want is a simple way to manage both sides,” Werner explained.

Storage software compatibility is also a key element of IBM’s strategy. With enterprise storage refreshing every three to five years, it’s important that the software work with other arrays, such as EMC VNX2, Dell Compellent, and HPE 3PAR.

“We are the number one storage software company in the world. We made sure that our software works with everybody else’s gear,” Herzog concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of VMworld 2017. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for VMworld 2017. Neither VMware Inc. nor IBM have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE