(upbeat techno music)
>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, California
it's theCUBE, covering Innovating to Fuel
the Next Decade of Big Data,
brought to you by Western Digital.
>> Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here at theCUBE.
We're at the Western Digital Headquarters
off Almaden down in San Jose,
a really important place.
Western Digital's been here for a while,
their headquarters.
A lot of innovation's been going on here forever.
So we're excited to be here
really for the next generation.
The event's called Innovating
to Fuel the Next Generation of big data,
and we're joined by many time Cuber, Dave Tang.
He is the SVP in corporate marketing
from Western Digital.
Dave, always great to see you. >> Yeah.
Always great to be here, Jeff.
Thanks. >> Absolutely.
So you got to MC the announcement today.
>> Yes.
>> So for the people that weren't there,
let's give them a quick overview
on what the announcement was
and then we can dive in a little deeper.
>> Great, so what we were announcing
was a major breakthrough in technology
that's going to allow us to drive the increase
in capacity in density to support big data
for the next decade and beyond, right?
So capacities and densities had been starting
to level off in terms of hard drive
technology capability.
So what we announced was
microwave-assisted magnetic recording technology
that will allow us to keep growing
that areal density up
and reducing the cost per terabyte.
>> You know, it's fascinating
cause everyone loves to talk about Moore's Law
and have these silly architectural debates,
whether Moore's Law is alive or dead,
but, as anyone who's lived here knows,
Moore's Law is really an attitude
much more it is than the specific physics
of microprocessor density growth.
And it's interesting to see.
As we know the growth of data
is growing in giant and the types of data,
and not only regular big data,
but now streaming data are bigger
and bigger and bigger.
I think you talked about stuff coming off of people
and machines compared to business data
is way bigger.
>> Right.
>> But you guys continue to push limits
and break through, and even though we expect
everything to be cheaper, faster, and better,
you guys actually have to execute it--
>> Dave: Right.
>> Back at the factory.
>> Right, well it's interesting.
There's this healthy tension, right,
a push and pull in the environment.
So you're right, it's not just Moore's Law
that's enabling a technology push,
but we have this virtuous cycle, right?
We've realized what the value is of data
and how to extract the possibilities
and value of data,
so that means that we want to store more
of that data and access more of that data,
which drives the need for innovation
to be able to support all of that
in a cost effective way.
But then that triggers another wave
of new applications, new ways to tap into
the possibilities of data.
So it just feeds on itself,
and fortunately we have great technologists,
great means of innovation,
and a great attitude and spirit of innovation
to help drive that.
>> Yeah, so for people that want more,
they can go to the press releases
and get the data.
We won't dive deep into the weeds here
on the technology,
but I thought you had Janet George speak,
and she's chief data scientist.
Phenomenal, phenomenal big brain.
>> Dave: Yes.
>> A smart lady.
But she talked about, from her perspective
we're still just barely even
getting onto this data opportunity
in terms of automation,
and we see over and over at theCUBE events,
innovation's really not that complicated.
Give more people access to the data,
give them more access to the tools,
and let them try things easier and faster
and feel quick,
there's actually a ton of innovation
that companies can unlock within their own four walls.
But the data is such an important piece of it,
and there's more and more and more of this.
>> Dave: Right, right.
>> What used to be digital exhaust
now is, I think maybe you said,
or maybe it was Dave,
that there's a whole economy now
built on data like we used to do with petroleum.
I thought that was really insightful.
>> Yeah, right.
It's like a gold mine.
So not only are the sources of data increasing,
which is driving increased volume,
but, as Janet was alluding to,
we're starting to come up with the tools
and the sophistication with machine learning
and artificial intelligence to be able
to put that data to new use as well as to find
the pieces of data to interconnect,
to drive these new capabilities and new insights.
>> Yeah, but unlike petroleum it doesn't get used up.
I mean that's the beauty of data.
(laughing) >> Yeah, that's right.
>> It's a digital process that can be used
over and over and over again.
>> And a self-renewing, renewing resource.
And you're right, in that sense that
it's being used over and over again
that the longevity of that data,
the use for life is growing exponentially
along with the volume.
>> Right, and Western Digital's in a unique position
cause you have systems and you have big systems
that could be used in data centers,
but you also have the media
that powers a whole bunch of other people's systems.
So I thought one of the real important
announcements today was, yes it's an interesting
new breakthrough technology
that uses energy assist to get more density
on the drives, but it's done in such a way
that the stuff's all backward compatible.
It's plug and play.
You've got production scheduled in a couple years
I think with test out the customers--
>> Dave: That's right.
>> Next year.
So, you know, that is such an important piece
beyond the technology.
What's the commercial acceptance?
What are the commercial barriers?
And this sounds like a pretty interesting way
to skin that cow.
>> Right, often times the best answers
aren't the most complex answers.
They're the more elegant and simplistic answers.
So it goes from the standpoint of a user
being able to plug and play with older systems,
older technologies.
That's beautiful, and for us, to be able to,
the ability to manufacture it in high volume
reliably and cost effectively
is equally as important.
>> And you also talked, which I think was interesting,
is kind of the relationship between hard drives
and flash, because, obviously,
flash is a, I want to say the sexy new toy,
but it's not a sexy new toy anymore.
>> Right.
>> It's been around for a while,
but, with that pressure on flash performance,
you're still seeing the massive amounts
of big data, which is growing faster than that.
And there is a rule for the high density hard drives
in that environment,
and, based on the forecast you shared,
which I'm presuming came from IDC
or people that do numbers for a living,
still a significant portion of a whole lot
of data is not going to be on flash.
>> Yeah, that's right.
I think we have a tendency, especially in technology,
to think either or, right?
Something is going to take over from something else,
but in this case it's definitely an and, right.
And a lot of that is driven by this notion
that there's fast data and big data,
and, while our attention seems to shift
over to maybe some fast data applications
like autonomous vehicles and realtime applications,
surveillance applications,
there's still a need for big data
because the algorithms that drive
those realtime applications have to come
from analysis of vast amounts of data.
So big data is here to stay.
It's not going away or shifting over.
>> I think it's a really interesting
kind of cross over, which Janet talked about too,
where you need the algorithms to continue sharing
the system that are feeding, continuing,
and reacting to the real data,
but then that just adds more vocabulary
to their learning set
so they can continue to evolve overtime.
>> Yeah, what really helps us
out in the market place is that
because we have technologies and products
across that full spectrum of flash
and rotating magnetic recording,
and we sell to customers who buy devices
as well as platforms and systems,
we see a lot of applications,
a lot of uses of data, and we're able to then
anticipate what those needs are going to be
in the near future and in the distant future.
>> Right, so we're getting towards the end
of 2017, which I find hard to say,
but as you look forward kind of to 2018
and this insatiable desire for more storage,
cause this insatiable creation of more data,
what are some of your priorities for 2018
and what are you kind of looking at
as, like I said, I can't believe
we're going to actually flip the calendar here--
>> Dave: Right, right.
>> In just a few short months. (laughing)
>> Well, I think for us, it's the realization
that all these applications that are coming at us
are more and more diverse,
and their needs are very specialized.
So it's not just the storage,
although we're thought of as a storage company,
it's not just about the storage of that data,
but you have contrive complete environments
to capture and preserve and access and transform
that data, which means we have to go well beyond
storage and think about how that data
is accessed,
technical interfaces to our memory products
as well as storage products,
and then where compute sits.
Does it still sit in a centralized place
or do you move compute to out
closer to where the data sits.
So, all this innovation and changing
the way that we think about how we can mine that data
is top of the mind for us for the next year
and beyond.
>> It's only job security for you, Dave.
(laughing)
>> Dave: Funny to think about.
>> Alright. He's Dave Tang.
Thanks for inviting us
and again congratulations on the
presentation. >> Always a pleasure.
>> Alright, Dave Tang, I'm Jeff Frick.
You're watching theCUBE
from Western Digital headquarters
in San Jose, California.
Thanks for watching.
(upbeat techno music)