Futurum Research Senior Analyst and VP of Sales Steven Dickens is joined by Eddy Ciliendo, VP of Strategy and Technology at Model9 to talk about what the company is doing to give the power of the cloud to the mainframe and bring those two worlds together for their clients.
During their conversation, Eddy also shared how Model9 very recently started working with Microsoft Azure to enable any organization to backup their mainframe data to an Azure cloud region outside of their geopolitical region. You can read more about it here.
You can watch the video of their conversation here (and subscribe to our YouTube channel while you’re there):
Or listen to the interview on your favorite streaming platform here:
Don’t Miss An Episode – Subscribe Below:
Disclaimer: The Futurum Tech Webcast is for information and entertainment purposes only. Over the course of this webcast, we may talk about companies that are publicly traded and we may even reference that fact and their equity share price, but please do not take anything that we say as a recommendation about what you should do with your investment dollars. We are not investment advisors and we do not ask that you treat us as such.
Transcript:
Steven Dickens: Hello, and welcome. My name is Steven Dickens. And we’re coming to you live from the show floor here at SHARE in Dallas. I’m joined by Eddie Ciliendo from model line. Welcome to the show.
Eddy Ciliendo: Hey Steven. Thank you very much. Good to be back in person.
Steven Dickens: It’s just fantastic. You can feel the buzz down there. Everybody’s really glad to be back in person. You can feel the energy.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, totally. And look, I mean SHARE in many ways is like a family, right? So it’s just great to be back seeing people again. And honestly, it’s also just so much more efficient than doing all those silly WebEx and what have you calls these days?
Steven Dickens: It’s be actually able to film in person rather than down the camera. So I know you obviously Eddie from a few years now to allow listeners and our Watchers a little bit about what you do for Model 9 and then maybe just give us an intro into Model 9.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, sure. So glad to do that. So again, Eddie Ciliendo, the Vice President Strategy and Technology at Model 9, responsible pretty much for, for anything about the market, go to market strategy, where should we take our product, what customer segments should we focus on, where should we again, take our product strategically. And then also, and this is one of my favorite parts of the job. Also working very closely was with partners, analysts like yourself and then certainly also customers.
Steven Dickens: So tell us a little bit about what Model 9 is doing as an organization, still a relatively new name in this space. Get us orientated. Tell us a little more.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, sure. Appreciate that. So we’re not that young anymore. We’re now five years in the market, but we are a main frame modernization Cloud company, right? So where a lot of other, when you hear the main word mainframe modernization, a lot of companies are obviously talking about moving applications off the mainframe refactoring. That is really not what we’re here to do, right? We want to give the power of the Cloud to the mainframe and bring those two world together, right?
Steven Dickens: I think that’s a key distinction. We hear a lot about mainframe modernization. And as you say, there’s these two camps, there’s the renovate what you’ve got, and then there’s the move off, I think Model 9 from the briefings and the interactions that I’ve had with your team really see themselves as being able to position for your clients, and ability to bring that modernization and that move to the Cloud and really add some value. But so maybe just expand on that a little for us.
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no. You’re spot on, right? I mean, everybody’s talking about Hybrid Cloud. I think Model 9, we’re really, we’re really getting Hybrid Cloud down, right? So there is in our belief, there’s a lot of value of having, an on-premise platform and having on-prem mainframe for all this stuff that the audience, a chair knows best, right? That the security, the reliability, resiliency, et cetera, right? But there’s also really good use cases for Cloud out there, right? Whether it’s Cloud object storage, that Model 9 uses in our model line manager to modernize tape infrastructure, right? The hyperscalers, they’re investing so much research technology, intellectual property in the data technology. So we’ll just be silly not to jump on that and use that investment, right? So again, we’re using that in a tape modernization space, but we’re also using it now in the cyber resiliency space.
Probably if not the hottest product that we currently have is Model 9 shield that takes your data, moves it into the Cloud so that you have a third copy, sometimes cold gold, and copy or cyber vault or safe harbor, and stores it securely air gap out or into Cloud. So that’s kind of the second thing we’re doing. The third thing that we’re doing is as we move to data into Cloud, we now transform it into formats that are Cloud native, right? Like CSV or JSUN or what have you. So that data scientists in the Cloud can use AI and machine learning in the Cloud just the way to use any other data on mainframe data.
Steven Dickens: And what are you seeing, obviously a lot of customers at the event, what’s the reaction to some of those, particularly in the security space that’s come through as a consistent theme throughout the rest of the conference. What are you seeing? What are you hearing from those customers?
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah, no, you’re spot on it. We’ve seen it here at SHARE, right? I mean, there is, I don’t know, there’s at least five sessions that I’m attending here on cyber resiliency and ransomware protection. So it is a very hot topic, and I hear it pretty much from every customer interaction I have that is something they have to find out and find a solution to. So yeah, a lot of great customer feedback and that space, a lot of interest, a lot of interesting projects. And the use cases are just so broad. I mean, we just announced the partnership with Microsoft yesterday and Monday, where we’re now offering our product model line shield for free to companies in Eastern Europe, because they’re concerned about their data sovereignty, their data security. So they want to move their data out of their country, into NATO member country. And again, where we’re providing our software for free and Microsoft, is kind of doing the same thing with some of their Cloud object storage capability.
Steven Dickens: I saw that announcement and obviously in the world we live in, that’s a fantastic thing for you to be doing as a corporation. I think we can all empathize with that situation. So really appreciate what you’re doing for the community there. What would be those three, maybe three key takeaways from, we’ve got a lot of people watching these videos, we’ve got a lot of people here at the show, people watching the online content, what would be those three key takeaways that you’d want them to take away thinking about Model 9?
Eddy Ciliendo: Yeah. I appreciate the question. I mean, SHARE is not a sales event is not a trade, right? It’s an exchange of minds. It’s around technology, but what I would tell people to really look into is leverage model line to optimize your existing tap infrastructure. That’s really a no brainer use case, right? As I said, Cloud object storage has become so great, real look into the performance is awesome, the TCO of Cloud object storage is great as opposed to on-prem. So look into that. And then once you have your data in the Cloud, right? Leverage the capability and turn it into search copy, right? Use the hyperscalers, use them as an air gaped copy of your data, on-prem. If the worst case really happened and there was a cyber incident, or just the module logical error, right? That you have the data out there in the Cloud and you have that data copy of last resort.
And then last, but not least, and this is really use case. And I’m personally super excited about, right? I mean, we’ve seen all of those statistics, it’s say whatever it is, 55, all the way up to 75% of the meaningful corporate data is residing on IBMZ mainframes, right? And a lot of that data hasn’t been tapped into for artificial intelligence and machine learning. So I think using model line for that, get it into your Cloud and then into your data lake and then use your AI and ML routines on it to find that date and nugget of insight. I think that’s just something really cool. And I’m looking forward to see how our customers going forward are going to use their capability.
Steven Dickens: Eddie, great discussion. Really enjoying being here in person with you. Some fantastic things coming from Model 9. Thanks for joining us on this episode of the future and research live from the show of floor. We’ll see you next time. Thank you very much.
Author Information
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
