Storage Becomes Frontline Defense as Resilience Takes Center Stage

Reshma Moorthy, President and CEO of Frontier Technologies Inc. (FTI), has been leading the company for nearly two decades. She joined FTI in her early twenties after being encouraged by her mother to take over the family business instead of pursuing a career in medicine.

Moorthy's journey to becoming a successful CEO is marked by a willingness to learn from her mistakes, including a costly error she made when quoting a client for a deal. Rather than trying to hide or downplay the mistake, Moorthy owned up to it and lost the deal anyway.

This approach has served her well in her career, as FTI has developed a strong partnership with IBM over the past 15 years. The two companies have worked together on various projects, including the use of IBM FlashSystem, which has become a key part of FTI's infrastructure strategy.

Moorthy emphasizes that resilience is now an essential aspect of any architecture requirement, and that storage should no longer be seen as just a platform decision but also as a security control. She notes that the old boundaries between 'infrastructure team' and 'security team' are no longer relevant, and that early detection at the storage layer can buy precious time before an incident becomes a business disruption.

The ROI conversation has also changed, with infrastructure decisions now being evaluated on business value over time rather than just sticker price. Reduced complexity, better performance, lower power draw, and fewer costly outages all contribute to this value, freeing up technology teams to focus on innovation instead of maintenance.