From data applications, to data engineering, to data analytics, there are all kinds of data to consider these days. The role of data has taken on crucial significance in the era of AI.

All told, it’s likely that the world will rewrite the story of data over the next two years, according to Sanjeev Mohan (pictured, right), principal at SanjMo. While technology-wise moving the data may not be such a big deal, there are other factors that stop companies from moving data around, such as security and compliance, he explained.

Sanjeev Mohan, principal at SanjMo, and theCUBE’s John Furrier discuss hyperscalers the evolving role of IBM in AI.

“What I am seeing is that the modern data stack has pretty much collapsed. I see there the pendulum is once again shifting towards unification and a little bit of hybrid model with centralizing the infrastructure,” Mohan said. “Unifying the storage for structured, unstructured, for batch, for streaming and then putting a common layer of metadata and a semantic layer so that we can disaggregate compute.”

Mohan spoke with theCUBE Research executive analyst John Furrier (pictured, left) at IBM Think, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the evolving role of IBM in AI and the significant shifts in data. (* Disclosure below.) 

IBM’s strategic role in supercloud

In looking ahead to the coming years, the world is going multi-engine compute for sure, according to Mohan. The entire compute is disaggregated based on one’s needs.

“How you get to compute is also under massive change, because it used to be SQL and Python ruling the game,” Mohan said. “But, now, with natural language, even that is changing. So a lot of changes are coming.”

When it comes to IBM Corp., the question remains how to play the next move, with IBM Think 2024 underway. That’s important to consider, given the fact that the company is not a hyperscaler, Furrier noted.

“They’re almost like a glue layer between all the hyperscalers. They’re doing a deal with AWS; they’re selling their software, watsonx, in the marketplace,” Furrier said. “They’ve got a deal with Azure. So, why do they need to build a cloud? They just become a partner for the cloud providers.”

Power is concentrating in hyperscalers, but there’s a cost to that, according to Mohan. The cost is that one is now locked into one’s own stack or one’s own ecosystem.

“IBM actually has a huge advantage, because IBM can be that cross-cloud, like what you call supercloud and hybrid, because of Red Hat OpenShift, and all these others, like HashiCorp Terraform now, and Ansible,” Mohan said. “I think IBM has a very key role to play as a glue between all these different islands.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of IBM Think:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE