With the maturation of cloud adaptation, organizations have come to understand that cloud computing is not a cure-all for dealing with data. Rather than thinking of cloud as a one-way street, where data is first uploaded en masse to the cloud and then dealt with, companies are asking what sort of data works best in which kinds of clouds, and what data will function better by not being in the cloud at all.

Lenovo Group Ltd believes that customers view cloud strategy as a method of working rather than calculating how many petabytes of storage they think they need. The company’s task is one of providing advice and council around the type of cloud that best suits an organization, according to Peter Hortensius (pictured), senior vice president, chief technology officer, and head of strategy at Lenovo. “While everybody has a strategy of what do they get to the cloud, eight out of 10 customers are trying to think about the things they need to bring back [from the cloud],” Hortensius said.

Hortensius spoke with Stu Miniman (@stu) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Lenovo Transform 2.0 event in NYC. In addition to discussing the latest cloud strategies, they talked about business opportunities around the internet of things. (* Disclosure below.)

Moving data processing to the edge

The challenge for many organizations is that they want to run their businesses effectively, and they want good advice on how best to get there. “So, for me, it’s really around, how do we provide them simple ways to get there?” Hortensius stated.

Because Lenovo has a legacy-free heritage, it doesn’t have its business tied up in the old way of doing things, and so the company is more flexible and better able to provide customers with what they need for their particular businesses, according to Hortensius. And that includes IoT solutions.

“There’s multiple ways to look at IoT. Most importantly is having that insight into what’s happening at the edge with all those devices,” Hortensius added.

One of the big opportunities in IoT for Lenovo is the recent movement of some of the data center to the edge of the computing network. The computation and the servers are moving out to be closer to where the data is generated. As it’s not a workload that can easily move to cloud, it is a continued area for a strong data center presence, and thus for Lenovo’s business, Hortensius concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Lenovo Transform 2.0 event.  (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Lenovo Transform 2.0. Neither Lenovo Group Ltd, the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE