In a recently released video interview with insideHPC, from the exhibition floor at SC14 in New Orleans, Seagate VP/GM, ClusterStor at Seagate Cloud Systems and Solutions, Ken Claffey reaffirmed the company’s commitment to the high performance computing community.
When Irish Proverbs Meet Supercomputing
The sometimes blunt questions from insideHPC’s Rich Brueckner were met with pleasant but equally direct replies from Ken. The exchanges below (especially via the video interview) not only reveal Ken’s Irish roots but perhaps also a connection between Seagate’s HPC strategy and a famous Irish proverb: “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”
insideHPC: “… you’ve been part of this Seagate company now from that Xyratex acquisition for a while now. But I’ve got one question for you: Is Seagate serious about HPC?”
Ken Claffey: “So it was interesting. I just came from our first ever Seagate-HPC user forum. As I said at the opening, that not only was it our first Seagate-HPC user forum, it was actually one of the first user forums that Seagate has ever done.”
“One of the things that Seagate’s really focused on, is we want to work with those customers who are really the pioneers of our industry – those who are track leading, taking on the most challenging problems, and really jointly innovating defined solutions. Because we believe those solutions that we jointly innovate with those partners will really help define the next generation data center, the next generation storage infrastructure. And it’s something that you’re very well aware of, really, this convergence, and I think you see it all around the show.”
insideHPC: “So it wasn’t a stunt?…Okay. So just share with us, what were your goals coming into this show?”
Ken Claffey: “Actually, you hit the nail on the head. Whenever a company is acquired, there’s always questions of: Are they going to continue to invest? …People will just think of Seagate as a disk drive company, right? And part of what we’re getting across here in the Seagate user forum is, absolutely, do we deal with disk drives? Of course we do.”
“Seagate is very committed to the HPC space…You think about the technologies that Seagate has – core technology and flash, core technology and high performance disc drives, core technology and high capacity, low power, energy-efficient disc drives – and of course what we do in the systems group is, we take that core technology, marry it with open source file systems such as Lustre, and really bring it together as a full solution.”
Towards the end of the interview, Ken draws upon the groups within Seagate, that collectively make-up that ‘proof in the pudding’; in doing so he makes clear that “HPC matters…to Seagate.”
The interview is part of a larger body of media coverage from SC14, which were highlighted in a previously published blog.
