>>Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell the cube privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges and there's a little doubt. We're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery. Specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. Well, security in the public clouds is certainly world class. The result of multi-cloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. >>And at the end of the day, more, not less complexity, but there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but it's becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection, people, technologies, and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello and welcome to the future of Multi-Cloud Data Protection Made Possible by Dell in collaboration with the Cube. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into the cube, two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. >>Jeff Boudreau is the president and general manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, isg, and he's gonna share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're gonna ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now, Jeff is gonna be joined by Travis Vhi. Travis is the senior Vice President of product management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's gonna give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also gonna challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. We're here with Jeff Padre and Travis Behill. We're gonna dig into the details about Dell's big data protection announcement. Guys, good to see you. Thanks >>For coming in. Good to see you. Thank you for having us. >>You're very welcome. Right. Let's start off, Jeff, with the high level, you know, I'd like to talk about the customer, what challenges they're facing. You're talking to customers all the time, What are they telling you? >>Sure. As you know, we do, we spend a lot of time with our customers, specifically listening, learning, understanding their use cases, their pain points within their specific environments. They tell us a lot. Notice no surprise to any of us, that data is a key theme that they talk about. It's one of their most important, important assets. They need to extract more value from that data to fuel their business models, their innovation engines, their competitive edge. So they need to make sure that that data is accessible, it's secure in its recoverable, especially in today's world with the increased cyber attacks. >>Okay. So maybe we could get into some of those, those challenges. I mean, when, when you talk about things like data sprawl, what do you mean by that? What should people know? Sure. >>So for those big three themes, I'd say, you know, you have data sprawl, which is the big one, which is all about the massive amounts of data. It's the growth of that data, which is growing at an unprecedented rates. It's the gravity of that data and the reality of the multi-cloud sprawl. So stuff is just everywhere, right? Which increases that service a tax base for cyber criminals. >>And by gravity you mean the data's there and people don't wanna move it. >>It's everywhere, right? And so when it lands someplace, I think edge, core or cloud, it's there and that's, it's something we have to help our customers with. >>Okay, so just it's nuanced cuz complexity has other layers. What are those >>Layers? Sure. When we talk to our customers, they tell us complexity is one of their big themes. And specifically it's around data complexity. We talked about that growth and gravity of the data. We talk about multi-cloud complexity and we talk about multi-cloud sprawl. So multiple vendors, multiple contracts, multiple tool chains, and none of those work together in this, you know, multi-cloud world. Then that drives their security complexity. So we talk about that increased attack surface, but this really drives a lot of operational complexity for their teams. Think about we're lack consistency through everything. So people, process, tools, all that stuff, which is really wasting time and money for our customers. >>So how does that affect the cyber strategies and the, I mean, I've often said the ciso now they have this shared responsibility model, they have to do that across multiple clouds. Every cloud has its own security policies and, and frameworks and syntax. So maybe you could double click on your perspective on that. >>Sure. I'd say the big, you know, the big challenge customers have seen, it's really inadequate cyber resiliency. And specifically they're feeling, feeling very exposed. And today as the world with cyber tax being more and more sophisticated, if something goes wrong, it is a real challenge for them to get back up and running quickly. And that's why this is such a, a big topic for CEOs and businesses around the world. >>You know, it's funny, I said this in my open, I, I think that prior to the pandemic businesses were optimized for efficiency and now they're like, wow, we have to actually put some headroom into the system to be more resilient. You know, I you hearing >>That? Yeah, we absolutely are. I mean, the customers really, they're asking us for help, right? It's one of the big things we're learning and hearing from them. And it's really about three things, one's about simplifying it, two, it is really helping them to extract more value from their data. And then the third big, big piece is ensuring their data is protected and recoverable regardless of where it is going back to that data gravity and that very, you know, the multi-cloud world just recently, I don't know if you've seen it, but the global data protected, excuse me, the global data protection index gdp. >>I, Yes. Jesus. Not to be confused with gdpr, >>Actually that was released today and confirms everything we just talked about around customer challenges, but also it highlights an importance of having a very cyber, a robust cyber resilient data protection strategy. >>Yeah, I haven't seen the latest, but I, I want to dig into it. I think this, you've done this many, many years in a row. I like to look at the, the, the time series and see how things have changed. All right. At, at a high level, Jeff, can you kind of address why Dell and from your point of view is best suited? >>Sure. So we believe there's a better way or a better approach on how to handle this. We think Dell is uniquely positioned to help our customers as a one stop shop, if you will, for that cyber resilient multi-cloud data protection solution and needs. We take a modern, a simple and resilient approach. >>What does that mean? What, what do you mean by modern? >>Sure. So modern, we talk about our software defined architecture, right? It's really designed to meet the needs not only of today, but really into the future. And we protect data across any cloud and any workload. So we have a proven track record doing this today. We have more than 1700 customers that trust us to protect them more than 14 exabytes of their data in the cloud today. >>Okay, so you said modern, simple and resilient. What, what do you mean by simple? Sure. >>We wanna provide simplicity everywhere, going back to helping with the complexity challenge, and that's from deployment to consumption to management and support. So our offers will deploy in minutes. They are easy to operate and use, and we support flexible consumption models for whatever customer may desire. So traditional subscription or as a service. >>And when you, when you talk about resilient, I mean, I, I put forth that premise, but it's hard because people say, Well, that's gonna gonna cost us more. Well, it may, but you're gonna also reduce your, your risk. So what's your point of view on resilience? >>Yeah, I think it's, it's something all customers need. So we're gonna be providing a comprehensive and resilient portfolio of cyber solutions that are secured by design. We have some ver some unique capabilities and a combination of things like built in amenability, physical and logical isolation. We have intelligence built in with AI par recovery. And just one, I guess fun fact for everybody is we have our cyber vault is the only solution in the industry that is endorsed by Sheltered Harbor that meets all the needs of the financial sector. >>So it's interesting when you think about the, the NIST framework for cybersecurity, it's all about about layers. You're sort of bringing that now to, to data protection, correct? Yeah. All right. In a minute we're gonna come back with Travis and dig into the news. We're gonna take a short break. Keep it right there. Okay. We're back with Jeff and Travis Vhi to dig deeper into the news. Guys, again, good to see you. Travis, if you could, maybe you, before we get into the news, can you set the business context for us? What's going on out there? >>Yeah, thanks for that question, Dave. To set a little bit of the context, when you look at the data protection market, Dell has been a leader in providing solutions to customers for going on nearly two decades now. We have tens of thousands of people using our appliances. We have multiple thousands of people using our latest modern simple power protect data managers software. And as Jeff mentioned, we have, you know, 1700 customers protecting 14 exabytes of data in the public clouds today. And that foundation gives us a unique vantage point. We talked to a lot of customers and they're really telling us three things. They want simple solutions, they want us to help them modernize and they want us to add as the highest priority, maintain that high degree of resiliency that they expect from our data protection solutions. So tho that's the backdrop to the news today. And, and as we go through the news, I think you'll, you'll agree that each of these announcements deliver on those pillars. And in particular today we're announcing the Power Protect data manager appliance. We are announcing power protect cyber recovery enhancements, and we are announcing enhancements to our Apex data storage >>Services. Okay, so three pieces. Let's, let's dig to that. It's interesting appliance, everybody wants software, but then you talk to customers and they're like, Well, we actually want appliances because we just wanna put it in and it works, right? It performs great. So, so what do we need to know about the appliance? What's the news there? Well, >>You know, part of the reason I gave you some of those stats to begin with is that we have this strong foundation of, of experience, but also intellectual property components that we've taken that have been battle tested in the market. And we've put them together in a new simple integrated appliance that really combines the best of the target appliance capabilities we have with that modern simple software. And we've integrated it from the, you know, sort of taking all of those pieces, putting them together in a simple, easy to use and easy to scale interface for customers. >>So the premise that I've been putting forth for, you know, months now, probably well, well over a year, is that, that that data protection is becoming an extension of your, your cybersecurity strategies. So I'm interested in your perspective on cyber recovery, you specific news that you have there. >>Yeah, you know, we, we are, in addition to simplifying things via the, the appliance, we are providing solutions for customers no matter where they're deploying. And cyber recovery, especially when it comes to cloud deployments, is an increasing area of interest and deployment that we see with our customers. So what we're announcing today is that we're expanding our cyber recovery services to be available in Google Cloud with this announcement. It means we're available in all three of the major clouds and it really provides customers the flexibility to secure their data no matter if they're running, you know, on premises in a colo at the edge in the public cloud. And the other nice thing about this, this announcement is that you have the ability to use Google Cloud as a cyber recovery vault that really allows customers to isolate critical data and they can recover that critical data from the vault back to on premises or from that vault back to running their cyber cyber protection or their data protection solutions in the public cloud. >>I always invoke my, my favorite Matt Baker here. It's not a zero sum game, but this is a perfect example where there's opportunities for a company like Dell to partner with the public cloud provider. You've got capabilities that don't exist there. You've got the on-prem capabilities. We can talk about edge all day, but that's a different topic. Okay, so my, my other question Travis, is how does this all fit into Apex? We hear a lot about Apex as a service, it's sort of the new hot thing. What's happening there? What's the news around Apex? >>Yeah, we, we've seen incredible momentum with our Apex solutions since we introduced data protection options into them earlier this year. And we're really building on that momentum with this announcement being, you know, providing solutions that allow customers to consume flexibly. And so what we're announcing specifically is that we're expanding Apex data storage services to include a data protection option. And it's like with all Apex offers, it's a pay as you go solution really streamlines the process of customers purchasing, deploying, maintaining and managing their backup software. All a customer really needs to do is, you know, specify their base capacity, they specify their performance tier, they tell us do they want a a one year term or a three year term and we take it from there. We, we get them up and running so they can start deploying and consuming flexibly. And it's, as with many of our Apex solutions, it's a simple user experience all exposed through a unified Apex console. >>Okay. So it's you keeping it simple, like I think large, medium, small, you know, we hear a lot about t-shirt sizes. I I'm a big fan of that cuz you guys should be smart enough to figure out, you know, based on my workload, what I, what I need, how different is this? I wonder if you guys could, could, could address this. Jeff, maybe you can, >>You can start. Sure. I'll start and then pitch me, you know, Travis, you you jump in when I screw up here. So, awesome. So first I'd say we offer innovative multi-cloud data protection solutions. We provide that deliver performance, efficiency and scale that our customers demand and require. We support as Travis and all the major public clouds. We have a broad ecosystem of workload support and I guess the, the great news is we're up to 80% more cost effective than any of the competition. >>80%. 80%, That's a big number, right? Travis, what's your point of view on this? Yeah, >>I, I think number one, end to end data protection. We, we are that one stop shop that I talked about. Whether it's a simplified appliance, whether it's deployed in the cloud, whether it's at the edge, whether it's integrated appliances, target appliances, software, we have solutions that span the gamut as a service. I mentioned the Apex solution as well. So really we can, we can provide solutions that help support customers and protect them, any workload, any cloud, anywhere that data lives edge core to cloud. The other thing that we hear as a, as a, a big differentiator for Dell and, and Jeff touched on on this a little bit earlier, is our intelligent cyber resiliency. We have a unique combination in, in the market where we can offer immutability or protection against deletion as, as sort of that first line of defense. But we can also offer a second level of defense, which is isolation, talking, talking about data vaults or cyber vaults and cyber recovery. And the, at more importantly, the intelligence that goes around that vault. It can look at detecting cyber attacks, it can help customers speed time to recovery and really provides AI and ML to help early diagnosis of a cyber attack and fast recovery should a cyber attack occur. And, and you know, if you look at customer adoption of that solution specifically in the clouds, we have over 1300 customers utilizing power protect cyber recovery. >>So I think it's fair to say that your, I mean your portfolio has obvious been a big differentiator whenever I talk to, you know, your finance team, Michael Dell, et cetera, that end to end capability that that, that your ability to manage throughout the supply chain. We actually just did a a, an event recently with you guys where you went into what you're doing to make infrastructure trusted. And so my take on that is you, in a lot of respects, you're shifting, you know, the client's burden to your r and d now they have a lot of work to do, so it's, it's not like they can go home and just relax, but, but that's a key part of the partnership that I see. Jeff, I wonder if you could give us the, the, the final thoughts. >>Sure. Dell has a long history of being a trusted partner with it, right? So we have unmatched capabilities. Going back to your point, we have the broadest portfolio, we have, you know, we're a leader in every category that we participate in. We have a broad deep breadth of portfolio. We have scale, we have innovation that is just unmatched within data protection itself. We have the trusted market leader, no, if and or buts, we're number one for both data protection software in appliances per idc and we would just name for the 17th consecutive time the leader in the, the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So bottom line is customers can count on Dell. >>Yeah, and I think again, we're seeing the evolution of, of data protection. It's not like the last 10 years, it's really becoming an adjacency and really a key component of your cyber strategy. I think those two parts of the organization are coming together. So guys, really appreciate your time. Thanks for Thank you sir. Thanks Travis. Good to see you. All right, in a moment I'm gonna come right back and summarize what we learned today, what actions you can take for your business. You're watching the future of multi-cloud data protection made possible by Dell and collaboration with the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage right back >>In our data driven world. Protecting data has never been more critical to guard against everything from cyber incidents to unplanned outages. You need a cyber resilient, multi-cloud data protection strategy. >>It's not a matter of if you're gonna get hacked, it's a matter of when. And I wanna know that I can recover and continue to recover each day. >>It is important to have a cyber security and a cyber resiliency plan in place because the threat of cyber attack are imminent. >>Power protects. Data manager from Dell Technologies helps deliver the data protection and security confidence you would expect from a trusted partner and market leader. >>We chose Power Protect Data Manager because we've been a strategic partner with Dell Technologies for roughly 20 years now. Our partnership with Dell Technologies has provided us with the ability to scale and grow as we've transitioned from 10 billion in assets to 20 billion. >>With Power Protect Data Manager, you can enjoy exceptional ease of use to increase your efficiency and reduce costs. >>Got installed it by myself, learned it by myself with very intuitive >>While restoring a machine with Power Protect Data Manager is fast. We can fully manage Power Protect through the center. We can recover a whole machine in seconds. >>Data Manager offers innovation such as Transparent snapshots to simplify virtual machine backups and it goes beyond backup and restore to provide valuable insights and to protected data workloads and VMs. >>In our previous environment, it would take anywhere from three to six hours at night to do a single backup of each vm. Now we're backing up hourly and it takes two to three seconds with the transparent snapshots. >>With Power Protects Data Manager, you get the peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and available whenever you need it. >>Data is extremely important. We can't afford to lose any data. We need things just to work. >>Start your journey to modern data protection with Dell Power Protect Data manager. Visit dell.com/power Protect Data Manager. >>We put forth the premise in our introduction that the worlds of data protection in cybersecurity must be more integrated. We said that data recovery strategies have to be built into security practices and procedures and by default this should include modern hardware and software. Now in addition to reviewing some of the challenges that customers face, which have been pretty well documented, we heard about new products that Dell Technologies is bringing to the marketplace that specifically address these customer concerns. There were three that we talked about today. First, the Power Protect Data Manager Appliance, which is an integrated system taking advantage of Dell's history in data protection, but adding new capabilities. And I want to come back to that in the moment. Second is Dell's Power Protect cyber recovery for Google Cloud platform. This rounds out the big three public cloud providers for Dell, which joins AWS and and Azure support. >>Now finally, Dell has made its target backup appliances available in Apex. You might recall earlier this year we saw the introduction from Dell of Apex backup services and then in May at Dell Technologies world, we heard about the introduction of Apex Cyber Recovery Services. And today Dell is making its most popular backup appliances available and Apex. Now I wanna come back to the Power Protect data manager appliance because it's a new integrated appliance. And I asked Dell off camera really what is so special about these new systems and what's really different from the competition because look, everyone offers some kind of integrated appliance. So I heard a number of items, Dell talked about simplicity and efficiency and containers and Kubernetes. So I kind of kept pushing and got to what I think is the heart of the matter in two really important areas. One is simplicity. >>Dell claims that customers can deploy the system in half the time relative to the competition. So we're talking minutes to deploy and of course that's gonna lead to much simpler management. And the second real difference I heard was backup and restore performance for VMware workloads. In particular, Dell has developed transparent snapshot capabilities to fundamentally change the way VMs are protected, which leads to faster backup and restores with less impact on virtual infrastructure. Dell believes this new development is unique in the market and claims that in its benchmarks the new appliance was able to back up 500 virtual machines in 47% less time compared to a leading competitor. Now this is based on Dell benchmarks, so hopefully these are things that you can explore in more detail with Dell to see if and how they apply to your business. So if you want more information, go to the data protectionPage@dell.com. You can find that at dell.com/data protection. And all the content here and other videos are available on demand@thecube.net. Check out our series on the blueprint for trusted infrastructure, it's related and has some additional information. And go to silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis related to these and other announcements. This is Dave Valante. Thanks for watching the future of multi-cloud protection made possible by Dell in collaboration with the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell the cube privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges and there's a little doubt. We're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery. Specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. Well, security in the public clouds is certainly world class. The result of multi-cloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. >>And at the end of the day, more, not less complexity, but there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but it's becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection, people, technologies, and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello and welcome to the future of Multi-Cloud Data Protection Made Possible by Dell in collaboration with the Cube. My name is Dave Ante, and I'll be your host today In this segment, we welcome into the Cube, two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. >>Jeff Boudreau is the president and general manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, isg, and he's gonna share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're gonna ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now, Jeff is gonna be joined by Travis Vhi. Travis is the Senior Vice President of product management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's gonna give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also gonna challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it.

>>Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell the cube privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges and there's a little doubt. We're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery. Specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cyber crime. Well, security in the public clouds is certainly world class. The result of multi-cloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. >>And at the end of the day, more, not less complexity, but there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but it's becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection, people, technologies, and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello and welcome to the future of Multi-Cloud Data Protection Made Possible by Dell in collaboration with the Cube. My name is Dave Valante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into the Cube, two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. >>Jeff Boudreaux is the president and general manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, isg, and he's gonna share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're gonna ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now Jeff is gonna be joined by Travis Vhi. Travis is the senior Vice President of product management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's gonna give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also gonna challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. We're here with Jeff Padro and Travis Behill. We're gonna dig into the details about Dell's big data protection announcement. Guys, good to see you. Thanks >>For coming in. Good to see you. Thank you for having us. >>You're very welcome. Right. Let's start off, Jeff, with a high level, you know, I'd like to talk about the customer, what challenges they're facing. You're talking to customers all the time, What are they telling you? >>Sure. As you know, we do, we spend a lot of time with our customers, specifically listening, learning, understanding their use cases, their pain points within their specific environments. They tell us a lot. Notice no surprise to any of us, that data is a key theme that they talk about. It's one of their most important, important assets. They need to extract more value from that data to fuel their business models, their innovation engines, their competitive edge. So they need to make sure that that data is accessible, it's secure in its recoverable, especially in today's world with the increased cyber attacks. >>Okay. So maybe we could get into some of those, those challenges. I mean, when, when you talk about things like data sprawl, what do you mean by that? What should people know? Sure. >>So for those big three themes, I'd say, you know, you have data sprawl, which is the big one, which is all about the massive amounts of data. It's the growth of that data, which is growing at an unprecedented rates. It's the gravity of that data and the reality of the multi-cloud sprawl. So stuff is just everywhere, right? Which increases that service a tax base for cyber criminals. >>And and by gravity you mean the data's there and people don't wanna move it. >>It's everywhere, right? And so when it lands someplace, I think edge, core or cloud, it's there and that's, it's something we have to help our customers with. >>Okay, so just it's nuanced cuz complexity has other layers. What, what are those >>Layers? Sure. When we talk to our customers, they tell us complexity is one of their big themes. And specifically it's around data complexity. We talked about that growth and gravity of the data. We talk about multi-cloud complexity and we talk about multi-cloud sprawl. So multiple vendors, multiple contracts, multiple tool chains, and none of those work together in this, you know, multi-cloud world. Then that drives their security complexity. So we talk about that increased attack surface, but this really drives a lot of operational complexity for their teams. Think about we're a lack consistency through everything. So people, process, tools, all that stuff, which is really wasting time and money for our customers. >>So how does that affect the cyber strategies and the, I mean, I've often said the ciso now they have this shared responsibility model, they have to do that across multiple clouds. Every cloud has its own security policies and, and frameworks and syntax. So maybe you could double click on your perspective on that. >>Sure. I'd say the big, you know, the big challenge customers have seen, it's really inadequate cyber resiliency. And specifically they're feeling, feeling very exposed. And today as the world with cyber tax being more and more sophisticated, if something goes wrong, it is a real challenge for them to get back up and running quickly. And that's why this is such a, a big topic for CEOs and businesses around the world. >>You know, it's funny, I said this in my open, I, I think that prior to the pandemic businesses were optimized for efficiency and now they're like, Wow, we have to actually put some headroom into the system to be more resilient. You know, I you hearing >>That? Yeah, we absolutely are. I mean, the customers really, they're asking us for help, right? It's one of the big things we're learning and hearing from them. And it's really about three things, one's about simplifying it, two, it's really helping them to extract more value from their data. And then the third big, big piece is ensuring their data is protected and recoverable regardless of where it is going back to that data gravity and that very, you know, the multicloud world just recently, I don't know if you've seen it, but the global data protected, excuse me, the global data protection index gdp. >>I, Yes. Jesus. Not to be confused with gdpr, >>Actually that was released today and confirms everything we just talked about around customer challenges, but also it highlights an importance of having a very cyber, a robust cyber resilient data protection strategy. >>Yeah, I haven't seen the latest, but I, I want to dig into it. I think this is, you've done this many, many years in a row. I like to look at the, the, the time series and see how things have changed. All right. At, at a high level, Jeff, can you kind of address why Dell and from your point of view is best suited? >>Sure. So we believe there's a better way or a better approach on how to handle this. We think Dell is uniquely positioned to help our customers as a one stop shop, if you will, for that cyber resilient multi-cloud data protection solution in needs. We take a modern, a simple and resilient approach, >>But what does that mean? What, what do you mean by modern? >>Sure. So modern, we talk about our software defined architecture, right? It's really designed to meet the needs not only of today, but really into the future. And we protect data across any cloud in any workload. So we have a proven track record doing this today. We have more than 1700 customers that trust us to protect them more than 14 exabytes of their data in the cloud today. >>Okay, so you said modern, simple and resilient. What, what do you mean by simple? Sure. >>We wanna provide simplicity everywhere, going back to helping with the complexity challenge, and that's from deployment to consumption to management and support. So our offers will deploy in minutes. They are easy to operate and use, and we support flexible consumption models for whatever the customer may desire. So traditional subscription or as a service. >>And when you, when you talk about resilient, I mean, I, I put forth that premise, but it's hard because people say, Well, that's gonna gonna cost us more. Well, it may, but you're gonna also reduce your, your risk. So how, what's your point of view on resilience? >>Yeah, I think it's, it's something all customers need. So we're gonna be providing a comprehensive and resilient portfolio of cyber solutions that are secured by design. We have some ver some unique capabilities in a combination of things like built in amenability, physical and logical isolation. We have intelligence built in with AI par recovery and just one, I guess fun fact for everybody is we have our cyber vault is the only solution in the industry that is endorsed by Sheltered Harbor that meets all the needs of the financial sector. >>So it's interesting when you think about the, the NIST framework for cyber security, it's all about about layers. You're sort of bringing that now to, to data protection, correct? Yeah. All right. In a minute we're gonna come back with Travis and dig into the news. We're gonna take a short break. Keep it right there. Okay. We're back with Jeff and Travis Vehill to dig deeper into the news. Guys, again, good to see you. Travis, if you could, maybe you, before we get into the news, can you set the business context for us? What's going on out there? >>Yeah, thanks for that question, Dave. To set a little bit of the context, when you look at the data protection market, Dell has been a leader in providing solutions to customers for going on nearly two decades now. We have tens of thousands of people using our appliances. We have multiple thousands of people using our latest modern simple power protect data managers software. And as Jeff mentioned, we have, you know, 1700 customers protecting 14 exabytes of data in the public clouds today. And that foundation gives us a unique vantage point. We talked to a lot of customers and they're really telling us three things. They want simple solutions, they want us to help them modernize and they want us to add as the highest priority, maintain that high degree of resiliency that they expect from our data protection solutions. So tho that's the backdrop to the news today. And, and as we go through the news, I think you'll, you'll agree that each of these announcements deliver on those pillars. And in particular today we're announcing the Power Protect data manager appliance. We are announcing power protect cyber recovery enhancements, and we are announcing enhancements to our Apex data storage >>Services. Okay, so three pieces. Let's, let's dig to that. It's interesting appliance, everybody wants software, but then you talk to customers and they're like, Well, we actually want appliances because we just wanna put it in and it works, right? Performs great. So, so what do we need to know about the appliance? What's the news there? Well, >>You know, part of the reason I gave you some of those stats to begin with is that we have at this strong foundation of, of experience, but also intellectual property components that we've taken that have been battle tested in the market. And we've put them together in a new simple integrated appliance that really combines the best of the target appliance capabilities we have with that modern simple software. And we've integrated it from the, you know, sort of taking all of those pieces, putting them together in a simple, easy to use and easy to scale interface for customers. >>So the premise that I've been putting forth for, you know, months now, probably well, well over a year, is that, that that data protection is becoming an extension of your, your cybersecurity strategies. So I'm interested in your perspective on cyber recovery. You, you have specific news that you have there? >>Yeah, you know, we, we are, in addition to simplifying things via the, the appliance, we are providing solutions for customers no matter where they're deploying. And cyber recovery, especially when it comes to cloud deployments, is an increasing area of interest and deployment that we see with our customers. So what we're announcing today is that we're expanding our cyber recovery services to be available in Google Cloud with this announcement. It means we're available in all three of the major clouds and it really provides customers the flexibility to secure their data no matter if they're running, you know, on premises in a colo at the edge in the public cloud. And the other nice thing about this, this announcement is that you have the ability to use Google Cloud as a cyber recovery vault that really allows customers to isolate critical data and they can recover that critical data from the vault back to on-premises or from that vault back to running their cyber cyber protection or their data protection solutions in the public cloud. >>I always invoke my, my favorite Matt Baker here. It's not a zero sum game, but this is a perfect example where there's opportunities for a company like Dell to partner with the public cloud provider. You've got capabilities that don't exist there. You've got the on-prem capabilities. We could talk about edge all day, but that's a different topic. Okay, so Mike, my other question Travis, is how does this all fit into Apex? We hear a lot about Apex as a service, it's sort of the new hot thing. What's happening there? What's the news around Apex? >>Yeah, we, we've seen incredible momentum with our Apex solutions since we introduced data protection options into them earlier this year. And we're really building on that momentum with this announcement being, you know, providing solutions that allow customers to consume flexibly. And so what we're announcing specifically is that we're expanding Apex data storage services to include a data protection option. And it's like with all Apex offers, it's a pay as you go solution really streamlines the process of customers purchasing, deploying, maintaining and managing their backup software. All a customer really needs to do is, you know, specify their base capacity, they specify their performance tier, they tell us do they want a a one year term or a three year term and we take it from there. We, we get them up and running so they can start deploying and consuming flexibly. And it's, as with many of our Apex solutions, it's a simple user experience all exposed through a unified Apex console. >>Okay. So it's you keeping it simple, like I think large, medium, small, you know, we hear a lot about t-shirt sizes. I I'm a big fan of that cuz you guys should be smart enough to figure out, you know, based on my workload, what I, what I need, how different is this? I wonder if you guys could, could, could address this. Jeff, maybe you can, >>You can start. Sure. I'll start and then pitch me, you know, Travis, you you jump in when I screw up here. So, awesome. So first I'd say we offer innovative multi-cloud data protection solutions. We provide that deliver performance, efficiency and scale that our customers demand and require. We support as Travis at all the major public clouds. We have a broad ecosystem of workload support and I guess the, the great news is we're up to 80% more cost effective than any of the competition. >>80%. 80%, That's a big number, right. Travis, what's your point of view on this? Yeah, >>I, I think number one, end to end data protection. We, we are that one stop shop that I talked about. Whether it's a simplified appliance, whether it's deployed in the cloud, whether it's at the edge, whether it's integrated appliances, target appliances, software, we have solutions that span the gamut as a service. I mentioned the Apex solution as well. So really we can, we can provide solutions that help support customers and protect them, any workload, any cloud, anywhere that data lives edge core to cloud. The other thing that we hear as a, as a, a big differentiator for Dell and, and Jeff touched on on this a little bit earlier, is our intelligent cyber resiliency. We have a unique combination in, in the market where we can offer immutability or protection against deletion as, as sort of that first line of defense. But we can also offer a second level of defense, which is isolation, talking, talking about data vaults or cyber vaults and cyber recovery. And the, at more importantly, the intelligence that goes around that vault. It can look at detecting cyber attacks, it can help customers speed time to recovery and really provides AI and ML to help early diagnosis of a cyber re attack and fast recovery should a cyber attack occur. And, and you know, if you look at customer adoption of that solution specifically in the clouds, we have over 1300 customers utilizing power protect cyber recovery. >>So I think it's fair to say that your, I mean your portfolio has obvious been a big differentiator whenever I talk to, you know, your finance team, Michael Dell, et cetera, that end to end capability that that, that your ability to manage throughout the supply chain. We actually just did a a, an event recently with you guys where you went into what you're doing to make infrastructure trusted. And so my take on that is you, in a lot of respects, you're shifting, you know, the client's burden to your r and d now they have a lot of work to do, so it's, it's not like they can go home and just relax, but, but that's a key part of the partnership that I see. Jeff, I wonder if you could give us the, the, the final thoughts. >>Sure. Dell has a long history of being a trusted partner with it, right? So we have unmatched capabilities. Going back to your point, we have the broadest portfolio, we have, you know, we're a leader in every category that we participate in. We have a broad deep breadth of portfolio. We have scale, we have innovation that is just unmatched within data protection itself. We are the trusted market leader, no if and or bots, we're number one for both data protection software in appliances per idc. And we would just name for the 17th consecutive time the leader in the, the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So bottom line is customers can count on Dell. >>Yeah, and I think again, we're seeing the evolution of, of data protection. It's not like the last 10 years, it's really becoming an adjacency and really a key component of your cyber strategy. I think those two parts of the organization are coming together. So guys, really appreciate your time. Thanks for Thank you sir. Thanks Dave. Travis, good to see you. All right, in a moment I'm gonna come right back and summarize what we learned today, what actions you can take for your business. You're watching the future of multi-cloud data protection made possible by Dell and collaboration with the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage right back >>In our data driven world. Protecting data has never been more critical to guard against everything from cyber incidents to unplanned outages. You need a cyber resilient, multi-cloud data protection strategy. >>It's not a matter of if you're gonna get hacked, it's a matter of when. And I wanna know that I can recover and continue to recover each day. >>It is important to have a cyber security and a cyber resiliency plan in place because the threat of cyber attack are imminent. >>Power protects. Data manager from Dell Technologies helps deliver the data protection and security confidence you would expect from a trusted partner and market leader. >>We chose Power Protect Data Manager because we've been a strategic partner with Dell Technologies for roughly 20 years now. Our partnership with Dell Technologists has provided us with the ability to scale and grow as we've transitioned from 10 billion in assets to 20 billion. >>With Power Protect Data Manager, you can enjoy exceptional ease of use to increase your efficiency and reduce costs. >>Got installed it by myself, learned it by myself with very intuitive >>While restoring a machine with Power Protect Data Manager is fast. We can fully manage Power Protect through the center. We can recover a whole machine in seconds. >>Data Manager offers innovation such as Transparent snapshots to simplify virtual machine backups and it goes beyond backup and restore to provide valuable insights and to protected data workloads and VMs. >>In our previous environment, it would take anywhere from three to six hours at night to do a single backup of each vm. Now we're backing up hourly and it takes two to three seconds with the transparent snapshots. >>With Power Protects Data Manager, you get the peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and available whenever you need it. >>Data is extremely important. We can't afford to lose any data. We need things just to work. >>Start your journey to modern data protection with Dell Power Protect Data manager. Visit dell.com/power Protect Data Manager. >>We put forth the premise in our introduction that the world's of data protection in cybersecurity must be more integrated. We said that data recovery strategies have to be built into security practices and procedures and by default this should include modern hardware and software. Now in addition to reviewing some of the challenges that customers face, which have been pretty well documented, we heard about new products that Dell Technologies is bringing to the marketplace that specifically address these customer concerns. There were three that we talked about today. First, the Power Protect Data Manager Appliance, which is an integrated system taking advantage of Dell's history in data protection, but adding new capabilities. And I want to come back to that in the moment. Second is Dell's Power Protect cyber recovery for Google Cloud platform. This rounds out the big three public cloud providers for Dell, which joins AWS and and Azure support. >>Now finally, Dell has made its target backup appliances available in Apex. You might recall earlier this year we saw the introduction from Dell of Apex backup services and then in May at Dell Technologies world, we heard about the introduction of Apex Cyber Recovery Services. And today Dell is making its most popular backup appliances available and Apex. Now I wanna come back to the Power Protect data manager appliance because it's a new integrated appliance. And I asked Dell off camera really what is so special about these new systems and what's really different from the competition because look, everyone offers some kind of integrated appliance. So I heard a number of items, Dell talked about simplicity and efficiency and containers and Kubernetes. So I kind of kept pushing and got to what I think is the heart of the matter in two really important areas. One is simplicity. >>Dell claims that customers can deploy the system in half the time relative to the competition. So we're talking minutes to deploy and of course that's gonna lead to much simpler management. And the second real difference I heard was backup and restore performance for VMware workloads. In particular, Dell has developed transparent snapshot capabilities to fundamentally change the way VMs are protected, which leads to faster backup and restores with less impact on virtual infrastructure. Dell believes this new development is unique in the market and claims that in its benchmarks the new appliance was able to back up 500 virtual machines in 47% less time compared to a leading competitor. Now this is based on Dell benchmarks, so hopefully these are things that you can explore in more detail with Dell to see if and how they apply to your business. So if you want more information, go to the data protectionPage@dell.com. You can find that at dell.com/data protection. And all the content here and other videos are available on demand@thecube.net. Check out our series on the blueprint for trusted infrastructure, it's related and has some additional information. And go to silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis related to these and other announcements. This is Dave Valante. Thanks for watching the future of multi-cloud protection made possible by Dell in collaboration with the Cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell theCUBE privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly, we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges. And there's a little doubt we're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. While security in the public cloud is certainly world class, the result of multicloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. And at the end of the day, more, not less, . But there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy, industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today, there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but is becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection people, technologies and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello, and welcome to "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into theCUBE two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. Jeff Boudreau is the President and General Manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG, and he's going to share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're going to ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now, Jeff is going to be joined by Travis Vigil. Travis is the Senior Vice-President of Product Management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's going to give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also going to challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. (upbeat music) We're here with Jeff Boudreau and Travis Vigil, and we're going to dig into the details about Dell's big data protection announcement. Guys, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Good to see you. Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. Alright, let's start off Jeff, with the high level. You know, I'd like to talk about the customer, what challenges they're facing? You're talking to customers all the time. What are they telling you? >> Sure, as you know, we spend a lot of time with our customers, specifically listening, learning, understanding their use cases, their pain points within their specific environments. They tell us a lot. No surprise to any of us that data is a key theme that they talk about. It's one of their most important assets. They need to extract more value from that data to fuel their business models, their innovation engines, their competitive edge. So, they need to make sure that that data is accessible, it's secure and its recoverable, especially in today's world with the increased cyber attacks. >> Okay, so maybe we could get into some of those challenges. I mean, when you talk about things like data sprawl, what do you mean by that? What should people know? >> Sure, so for those big three themes, I'd say, you have data sprawl, which is the big one, which is all about the massive amounts of data. It's the growth of that data, which is growing at unprecedented rates. It's the gravity of that data and the reality of the multicloud sprawl. So stuff is just everywhere, right? Which increases that surface as attack space for cyber criminals. >> And by gravity, you mean the data's there and people don't want to move it. >> It's everywhere, right? And so when it lands someplace, think Edge, Core or Cloud, it's there. And it's something we have to help our customers with. >> Okay, so it's nuanced 'cause complexity has other layers. What are those layers? >> Sure. When we talk to our customers, they tell us complexity is one of their big themes. And specifically it's around data complexity. We talked about that growth and gravity of the data. We talk about multicloud complexity and we talk about multicloud sprawl. So multiple vendors, multiple contracts, multiple tool chains, and none of those work together in this multicloud world. Then that drives their security complexity. So, we talk about that increased attack surface. But this really drives a lot of operational complexity for their teams. Think about we're lacking consistency through everything. So people, process, tools, all that stuff, which is really wasting time and money for our customers. >> So, how does that affect the cyber strategies and the, I mean, I've often said the Cisco, now they have this shared responsibility model. They have to do that across multiple clouds. Every cloud has its own security policies and frameworks and syntax. So, maybe you could double click on your perspective on that. >> Sure. I'd say the big challenge customers have seen, it's really inadequate cyber resiliency and specifically, they're feeling very exposed. And today as the world with cyber attacks being more and more sophisticated, if something goes wrong, it is a real challenge for them to get back up and running quickly. And that's why this is such a big topic for CEOs and businesses around the world. You know, it's funny. I said this in my open. I think that prior to the pandemic businesses were optimized for efficiency, and now they're like, "Wow, we have to actually put some headroom into the system to be more resilient." You know, are you hearing that? >> Yeah, we absolutely are. I mean, the customers really, they're asking us for help, right? It's one of the big things we're learning and hearing from them. And it's really about three things. One's about simplifying IT. Two, it's really helping them to extract more value from their data. And then the third big piece is ensuring their data is protected and recoverable regardless of where it is going back to that data gravity and that very, you know, the multicloud world. Just recently, I don't know if you've seen it, but the Global Data Protected, excuse me, the Global Data Protection Index. >> GDPI. >> Yes. Jesus. >> Not to be confused with GDPR. >> Actually, that was released today and confirms everything we just talked about around customer challenges. But also it highlights at an importance of having a very cyber, a robust cyber resilient data protection strategy. >> Yeah, I haven't seen the latest, but I want to dig into it. I think this, I've done this many, many years in a row. I'd like to look at the time series and see how things have changed. All right. At a high level, Jeff, can you kind of address why Dell, from your point of view is best suited? >> Sure. So, we believe there's a better way or a better approach on how to handle this. We think Dell is uniquely positioned to help our customers as a one stop shop, if you will, for that cyber resilient multicloud data protection solution and needs. We take a modern, a simple and resilient approach. >> What does that mean? What do you mean by modern? >> Sure. So modern, we talk about our software defined architecture. Right? It's really designed to meet the needs not only of today, but really into the future. And we protect data across any cloud and any workload. So, we have a proven track record doing this today. We have more than 1,700 customers that trust us to protect more than 14 exabytes of their data in the cloud today. >> Okay, so you said modern, simple and resilient. What do you mean by simple? >> Sure. We want to provide simplicity everywhere, going back to helping with the complexity challenge. And that's from deployment to consumption, to management and support. So, our offers will deploy in minutes. They are easy to operate and use, and we support flexible consumption models for whatever the customer may desire. So, traditional subscription or as a service. >> And when you talk about resilient, I mean, I put forth that premise, but it's hard because people say, "Well, that's going to cost us more. Well, it may, but you're going to also reduce your risk." So, what's your point of view on resilience? >> Yeah, I think it's something all customers need. So, we're going to be providing a comprehensive and resilient portfolio of cyber solutions that are secure by design. And we have some unique capabilities and a combination of things like built in immutability, physical and logical isolation. We have intelligence built in with AI part recovery. And just one, I guess fun fact for everybody is we have, our cyber vault is the only solution in the industry that is endorsed by Sheltered Harbor that meets all the needs of the financial sector. >> So it's interesting when you think about the NIST framework for cybersecurity. It's all about about layers. You're sort of bringing that now to data protection. >> Jeff: Correct. Yeah. >> All right. In a minute, we're going to come back with Travis and dig into the news. We're going to take a short break. Keep it right there. (upbeat music) (upbeat adventurous music) Okay, we're back with Jeff and Travis Vigil to dig deeper into the news. Guys, again, good to see you. Travis, if you could, maybe you, before we get into the news, can you set the business context for us? What's going on out there? >> Yeah. Thanks for that question, Dave. To set a little bit of the context, when you look at the data protection market, Dell has been a leader in providing solutions to customers for going on nearly two decades now. We have tens of thousands of people using our appliances. We have multiple thousands of people using our latest modern, simple PowerProtect Data Manager Software. And as Jeff mentioned, we have, 1,700 customers protecting 14 exabytes of data in the public clouds today. And that foundation gives us a unique vantage point. We talked to a lot of customers and they're really telling us three things. They want simple solutions. They want us to help them modernize. And they want us to add as the highest priority, maintain that high degree of resiliency that they expect from our data protection solutions. So, that's the backdrop to the news today. And as we go through the news, I think you'll agree that each of these announcements deliver on those pillars. And in particular, today we're announcing the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance. We are announcing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery Enhancements, and we are announcing enhancements to our APEX Data Storage Services. >> Okay, so three pieces. Let's dig to that. It's interesting, appliance, everybody wants software, but then you talk to customers and they're like, "Well, we actually want appliances because we just want to put it in and it works." >> Travis: (laughs) Right. >> It performs great. So, what do we need to know about the appliance? What's the news there? >> Well, you know, part of the reason I gave you some of those stats to begin with is that we have this strong foundation of experience, but also intellectual property components that we've taken that have been battle tested in the market. And we've put them together in a new simple, integrated appliance that really combines the best of the target appliance capabilities we have with that modern, simple software. And we've integrated it from the, you know, sort of taking all of those pieces, putting them together in a simple, easy to use and easy to scale interface for customers. >> So, the premise that I've been putting forth for months now, probably well over a year, is that data protection is becoming an extension of your cybersecurity strategies. So, I'm interested in your perspective on cyber recovery. Your specific news that you have there. >> Yeah, you know, we are in addition to simplifying things via the appliance, we are providing solutions for customers no matter where they're deploying. And cyber recovery, especially when it comes to cloud deployments, is an increasing area of interest and deployment that we see with our customers. So, what we're announcing today is that we're expanding our cyber recovery services to be available in Google Cloud. With this announcement, it means we're available in all three of the major clouds and it really provides customers the flexibility to secure their data no matter if they're running on-premises, in Acolo, at the Edge, in the public cloud. And the other nice thing about this announcement is that you have the ability to use Google Cloud as a cyber recovery vault that really allows customers to isolate critical data and they can recover that critical data from the vault back to on-premises or from that vault back to running their cyber protection or their data protection solutions in the public cloud. >> I always invoke my favorite Matt Baker here. "It's not a zero sum game", but this is a perfect example where there's opportunities for a company like Dell to partner with the public cloud provider. You've got capabilities that don't exist there. You've got the on-prem capabilities. We could talk about Edge all day, but that's a different topic. Okay, so my other question Travis, is how does this all fit into APEX? We hear a lot about APEX as a service. It's sort of the new hot thing. What's happening there? What's the news around APEX? >> Yeah, we've seen incredible momentum with our APEX solutions since we introduced data protection options into them earlier this year. And we're really building on that momentum with this announcement being providing solutions that allow customers to consume flexibly. And so, what we're announcing specifically is that we're expanding APEX Data Storage Services to include a data protection option. And it's like with all APEX offers, it's a pay-as-you-go solution. Really streamlines the process of customers purchasing, deploying, maintaining and managing their backup software. All a customer really needs to do is specify their base capacity. They specify their performance tier. They tell us do they want a one year term or a three year term and we take it from there. We get them up and running so they can start deploying and consuming flexibly. And as with many of our APEX solutions, it's a simple user experience all exposed through a unified APEX Console. >> Okay, so it's, you're keeping it simple, like I think large, medium, small. You know, we hear a lot about T-shirt sizes. I'm a big fan of that 'cause you guys should be smart enough to figure out, you know, based on my workload, what I need. How different is this? I wonder if you guys could address this. Jeff, maybe you can start. >> Sure, I'll start and then- >> Pitch me. >> You know, Travis, you jump in when I screw up here. >> Awesome. >> So, first I'd say we offer innovative multicloud data protection solutions. We provide that deliver performance, efficiency and scale that our customers demand and require. We support as Travis said, all the major public clouds. We have a broad ecosystem of workload support and I guess the great news is we're up to 80% more cost effective than any of the competition. >> Dave: 80%? >> 80% >> Hey, that's a big number. All right, Travis, what's your point of view on this? >> Yeah, I think number one, end-to-end data protection. We are that one stop shop that I talked about, whether it's a simplified appliance, whether it's deployed in the cloud, whether it's at the Edge, whether it's integrated appliances, target appliances, software. We have solutions that span the gamut as a service. I mentioned the APEX Solution as well. So really, we can provide solutions that help support customers and protect them, any workload, any cloud, anywhere that data lives. Edge, Core to Cloud. The other thing that we hear as a big differentiator for Dell, and Jeff touched on on this a little bit earlier, is our Intelligent Cyber Resiliency. We have a unique combination in the market where we can offer immutability or protection against deletion as sort of that first line of defense. But we can also offer a second level of defense, which is isolation, talking about data vaults or cyber vaults and cyber recovery. And more importantly, the intelligence that goes around that vault. It can look at detecting cyber attacks. It can help customers speed time to recovery. And really provides AI and ML to help early diagnosis of a cyber attack and fast recovery should a cyber attack occur. And if you look at customer adoption of that solution, specifically in the cloud, we have over 1300 customers utilizing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. >> So, I think it's fair to say that your portfolio has obviously been a big differentiator. Whenever I talk to your finance team, Michael Dell, et cetera, that end-to-end capability, that your ability to manage throughout the supply chain. We actually just did an event recently with you guys where you went into what you're doing to make infrastructure trusted. And so my take on that is you, in a lot of respects, you're shifting the client's burden to your R&D. now they have a lot of work to do, so it's not like they can go home and just relax. But that's a key part of the partnership that I see. Jeff, I wonder if you could give us the final thoughts. >> Sure. Dell has a long history of being a trusted partner within IT, right? So, we have unmatched capabilities. Going back to your point, we have the broadest portfolio. We're a leader in every category that we participate in. We have a broad deep breadth of portfolio. We have scale. We have innovation that is just unmatched. Within data protection itself, we are the trusted market leader. No if, ands or buts. We're number one for both data protection software in appliances per IDC and we were just named for the 17th consecutive time the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So, bottom line is customers can count on Dell. >> Yeah, and I think again, we're seeing the evolution of data protection. It's not like the last 10 years. It's really becoming an adjacency and really, a key component of your cyber strategy. I think those two parts of the organization are coming together. So guys, really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming. >> Thank you, sir. >> Dave. >> Travis, good to see you. All right, in a moment I'm going to come right back and summarize what we learned today, what actions you can take for your business. You're watching "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Right back. >> Advertiser: In our data-driven world, protecting data has never been more critical. To guard against everything from cyber incidents to unplanned outages, you need a cyber resilient multicloud data protection strategy. >> It's not a matter of if you're going to get hacked, it's a matter of when. And I want to know that I can recover and continue to recover each day. >> It is important to have a cyber security and a cyber resiliency plan in place because the threat of cyber attack are imminent. >> Advertiser: PowerProtect Data Manager from Dell Technologies helps deliver the data protection and security confidence you would expect from a trusted partner and market leader. >> We chose PowerProtect Data Manager because we've been a strategic partner with Dell Technologies for roughly 20 years now. Our partnership with Dell Technologies has provided us with the ability to scale and grow as we've transitioned from 10 billion in assets to 20 billion. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect Data Manager, you can enjoy exceptional ease of use to increase your efficiency and reduce costs. >> I'd installed it by myself, learn it by myself. It was very intuitive. >> While restoring your machine with PowerProtect Data Manager is fast, we can fully manage PowerProtect through the center. We can recover a whole machine in seconds. >> Instructor: Data Manager offers innovation such as transparent snapshots to simplify virtual machine backups, and it goes beyond backup and restore to provide valuable insights into protected data, workloads and VMs. >> In our previous environment, it would take anywhere from three to six hours a night to do a single backup of each VM. Now, we're backing up hourly and it takes two to three seconds with the transparent snapshots. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect's Data Manager, you get the peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and available whenever you need it. >> Data is extremely important. We can't afford to lose any data. We need things just to work. >> Advertiser: Start your journey to modern data protection with Dell PowerProtect's Data Manager. Visit dell.com/powerprotectdatamanager >> We put forth the premise in our introduction that the worlds of data protection in cybersecurity must be more integrated. We said that data recovery strategies have to be built into security practices and procedures and by default, this should include modern hardware and software. Now, in addition to reviewing some of the challenges that customers face, which have been pretty well documented, we heard about new products that Dell Technologies is bringing to the marketplace that specifically address these customer concerns. And there were three that we talked about today. First, the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance, which is an integrated system taking advantage of Dell's history in data protection, but adding new capabilities. And I want to come back to that in a moment. Second is Dell's PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Google Cloud platform. This rounds out the big three public cloud providers for Dell, which joins AWS and Azure support. Now finally, Dell has made its target backup appliances available in APEX. You might recall, earlier this year we saw the introduction from Dell of APEX Backup Services and then in May at Dell Technologies World, we heard about the introduction of APEX Cyber Recovery Services. And today, Dell is making its most popular backup appliances available in APEX. Now, I want to come back to the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance because it's a new integrated appliance and I asked Dell off camera, "Really what is so special about these new systems and what's really different from the competition?" Because look, everyone offers some kind of integrated appliance. So, I heard a number of items. Dell talked about simplicity and efficiency and containers and Kubernetes. So, I kind of kept pushing and got to what I think is the heart of the matter in two really important areas. One is simplicity. Dell claims that customers can deploy the system in half the time relative to the competition. So, we're talking minutes to deploy, and of course that's going to lead to much simpler management. And the second real difference I heard was backup and restore performance for VMware workloads. In particular, Dell has developed transparent snapshot capabilities to fundamentally change the way VMs are protected, which leads to faster backup and restores with less impact on virtual infrastructure. Dell believes this new development is unique in the market and claims that in its benchmarks, the new appliance was able to back up 500 virtual machines in 47% less time compared to a leading competitor. Now, this is based on Dell benchmarks, so hopefully these are things that you can explore in more detail with Dell to see if and how they apply to your business. So if you want more information, go to the Data Protection Page at dell.com. You can find that at dell.com/dataprotection. And all the content here and other videos are available on demand at theCUBE.net. Check out our series on the blueprint for trusted infrastructure, it's related and has some additional information. And go to siliconangle.com for all the news and analysis related to these and other announcements. This is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching "The Future of Multicloud Protection" made possible by Dell, in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat music)

(light upbeat music) >> Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency, as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell theCUBE privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. Certainly we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges. And there's a little doubt we're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers, and building business resilience, had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. While security in the public clouds is certainly world class, the result of multi-cloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds, and on-prem. At the end of the day, more, not less, complexity. But there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy, industry collaboration, and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to but it's becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection, people, technologies, and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello and welcome to the future of multi-cloud data protection made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into theCUBE two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. Jeff Boudreau is the president and general manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group ISG, and he's going to share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're going to ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now Jeff is going to be joined by Travis Vigil. Travis is the senior vice president of product management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's going to give us details on the the products that are being announced today, and go into the hard news. Now, we're also going to challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. (light upbeat music)

>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you. And thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah, >>It's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation, They're top of mind, everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we want to get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data. So no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's OnPrem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multicloud by design. If you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. >>You think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The mediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell, that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today. Just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience will go back to that complexity. And it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big new knowing little Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near and data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA patron fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we've talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this >>Year, right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well. Connecting to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places. And customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announced us back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on there as a service transitions by modernize the con consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it in a, unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would assert no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges that customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourage this interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We Dell, I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first investment alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data in their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very longstanding and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy data, the sa right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the Edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discuss, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching Exclusive Inside Insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell. Technologies's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit, who's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam GrowCo is the senior vice President of marketing. He's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the >>David, It's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me. >>Yeah, you bet. So Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin. Pinky as kidding. And, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then in the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly, shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies, Let me put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, $50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from, from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, But we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, you, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting current local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I, I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation in infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will, We're continuing to invest. And you Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think, value creation opportunity in a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the gr the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client and in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share, gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in, in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well, Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cube's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there.

(upbeat music) >> The transformation of Dell into Dell EMC, and now Dell Technologies, has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocketship PC company, to a middling enterprise player, forced to go private, to a debt-laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech, i.e., VMware. And now is a $100 billion dollar giant with a low-margin business, a strong balance sheet, and the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry. The financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book "Play Nice But Win," in a captivating chapter called "Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue." Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number-one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin-out of VMware from Dell, and a massive wealth-creation milestone, pending, of course, the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell, and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Now, today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're going to hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's going to answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the President of Dell's ISG business. That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's going to talk about the product angle, and specifically, how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott, who's the Senior Vice President of Marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on APEX, which is Dell's as-a-Service offering, and then the new edge platform called Project Frontier. Now, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, that we're going to see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jenn Saavedra, who's Dell's Chief Human Resource Officer, about hybrid work, and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I want to share our independent perspectives on the company, and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. Now, as you know, we love data here at theCUBE, and one of our partners, ETR, has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ETR's proprietary Net Score methodology on the vertical axis, that's a measure of spending velocity, and on the x-axis is overlap or pervasiveness in the data sample. This is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell's CSG products, laptops in particular, are dominant on both the x and the y dimensions. CSG is the Client Solutions Group, and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue, and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot that represents Dell's ISG business, that we're going to talk to Jeff Boudreau about. That's the Infrastructure Solutions Group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is its, as I said, its most profitable from a margin standpoint. It comprises the EMC storage business, as well as the Dell server business, and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut. Had we done so, Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers, and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server, and its storage sectors. But the nuance is, look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis. That represents a highly elevated Net Score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now, we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin. Storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business, in addition to the server space. The last point on this graphic is, we put a box around VMware, and it's prominently present on both the x and y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software-defined high-margin offerings in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been, had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives for Michael Dell were just too attractive, and it's unlikely that a spin-in would've unlocked the value in the way a spin-out did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials, to give you a sense of where the company stands today. Dell is a company with over $100 billion dollars in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue, and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate, for a company that size. But because it's a hardware company, primarily, its margins are low, with operating income 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin. With VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins were in the low 30s. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on R&D, but because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash-flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12-month revenue. Dell's APEX, and of course its hardware maintenance business, is recurring revenue, and that is only about 5 billion in revenue, and it's growing at 8% annually. Now, having said that, it's the equivalent of ServiceNow's total revenue. Of course, ServiceNow has 23% operating margin and 16% free cash-flow margin, and more than $5 billion in cash on the balance sheet, and an $85 billion market cap. That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment, with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story. And hence it's conservative, and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing, thanks to VMware's cash flow. Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake et al., they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction, to the tune of $46 billion it added to the balance sheet debt. Now, Dell's debt, the core debt, net of its financing operation, is now down to 16 billion, and it has $7 billion in cash on the balance sheet. So a dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So, pretty good picture. But Dell, a $100 billion company, is still only valued at 28 billion, or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar. HPE's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc., Dell's laptop and PC competitor, is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than $50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple that's over 3x, about 3.3x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes, and no. Dell's performance, relative to its peers in the market, is very strong. It's winning, and has an extremely adept go-to-market machine, but its lack of software content and its margin profile leads one to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. So what are some of those levers, and what might that look like, going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware, and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market. And it can provide infrastructure for pretty much any application in any use case, in pretty much any industry, in pretty much any geography in the world. And it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware-heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely HP, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. and HPE, and IBM, which has had an abysmal decade from a performance standpoint, and has had to shrink to grow again, and obviously do a massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder-led company, which makes a cultural difference, in our view. And it's actually comfortable with a low-margin software-light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that, and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, has a much better chance of doing well at 100 billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. APEX is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now, remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're going to try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as-a-Service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers, and generate recurring revenue. And that's a good thing, because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as-a-Service and reduce risk for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead. Specifically, Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board. As Matt Baker, Dell's Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. What he means by that is, just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds. What we call supercloud. And that's Dell's strategy, to take advantage of public cloud capex, and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds, and out to the edge. That's ambitious, and technically it's nontrivial. But listen to Dell's Vice Chairman and Co-COO, Jeff Clarke, explain this vision. Please play the clip. >> You said also, technology and business models are tied together, and an enabler. >> That's right. >> If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want. They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do. >> Well, that's exactly right. If I take that and what Dave was saying, and I summarize it the following way: if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to deliver a distributed platform, game over. >> Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Furrier called it a "business operating system." Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system, or cloud operating environment, to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale capex. Now, is it really game over, as Jeff Clarke said, if Dell can do that? Uh, (sucks in breath) I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course, it's got to be funded. And that's going to take time, and in this industry, it tends to move, companies tend to move in lockstep. So, as often is the case, it's going to come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin. Data management, extending data protection into cybersecurity as an adjacency, and of course, edge and telco/5G opportunities. All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher-margin software content, it can thrive with a lower-margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers, and maybe through tuck-in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here, "Ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem," because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if APEX is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges at the same time, in my view. It's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And its ecosystem today is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. The Snowflake deal is an example of up-the-stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that Snowflake relationship, and more relationships like that. Specifically, I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live in a data-heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, I'd like to see that inside of APEX. I'd like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today, in its early days. The point is, with Dell's go-to-market advantage, which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem, hybrid, edge, supercloud player that I want to partner with to drive more business? You'd be crazy not to. But Dell has a lot on its plate, and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable Infrastructure-as-a-Service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly evolve. And of course, we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante, we hope you enjoy the rest of the program. (upbeat music)

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now is friend of the Cube, Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the key. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation. They're top of mind in everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions. Both turn and future offerings really ensured that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those is driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's on-prem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multicloud by default versus multicloud by design. Really think about customers, I I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. You think about the data complexity, that's the growth in the graph. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity, shifting from central to decentralized it, you think of a multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data, my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for realtime insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a pare fan like I am Dave, they truly are meeting us where we are in, in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. But bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security models, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce us back in, in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds, really delivering the best of both world, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. >>But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Cru in Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multicloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own. Not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of each of our teams. We del I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. >>We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud. Specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? >>As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility, take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the I isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we mo modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we've discussed, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multicloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be hosting the program. Today, in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question why is Dell a good long term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's going to talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Groccot is the senior vice President of marketing. He's going to come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as-a-service offering. And a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month and we're going to see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jen Saavedra who's Dell's Chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're going to geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and Edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet, CFO, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to "theCUBE." >> Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you, so thanks for having me today. >> Yeah, you bet. Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin. You had to give up your gross margin pinky, just kidding, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro. But putting that aside for a moment what's really remarkable is that for a company of your size, you've had some success at the top line which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >> Well Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey if you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there. But stepping into the last 18 months, it's, I think I remember talking with you and saying, "Hey, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did," which was a pretty incredible growth story. As we think about how we helped customers, drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment that was the pandemic created. And couple that with the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the pandemic coupled with the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade, which then unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Let me put it that way. >> Well, I was impressed with you Tom before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns but I've never seen anything quite like this with Fed tightening, and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming. There's a bear market. You got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But IT spending is, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >> Yeah look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, we should start there as a grounding. The total market, the core market that we think about is roughly $750 billion or so, if you think about our core IT services capability. If you couple that with some of the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity total addressable market. And so from that perspective we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. We have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, number one share in some of these, our highest share position may be low 30s and maybe in the high end of storage or at the upper end of 30s or 40%. But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So if you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been really great performance through the pandemic as you highlighted. We actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year '23 with revenue up 12% operating income, up 12% for the first half. What we talked about if you might recall in our second quarter earnings was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our total revenue stream. But we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was holding quite frankly. And so we gave a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. The macro environment as you highlighted continues to be challenging. If you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe through interest rate rise to press down and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. But I'm confident, I'm confident in the long term. But I do think that there is, there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters. Who knows quite how long. To make sure the business is properly positioned and we've got a great portfolio and you're going to talk to some of the team later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving, what we're seeing around technology trends. So the opportunity is there. There's some short term navigation that we're going to need to do just to make sure that we address some of the environmental things that we're seeing right now. >> Yeah, and as a global company of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but the best companies not only weather their storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to come out the other side stronger. So I want to talk about that longer term opportunity the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the TAM. I mean, even as a lower margin business, if you can penetrate that big of a TAM, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. But so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >> Yeah look, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term. Digital transformation continues. I am on numerous customer and CIO conference calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation, in infrastructure, to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's going to slow or pause, or maybe they're not going to invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their what previous been closed ecosystems to open architecture. You think about, what we're doing around the EDGE and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data, gravity, and latency matters. And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us. Yes, we will, and we're continuing to invest. And you hear Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, we are in in normal times a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. We've got a negative CCC in terms of how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our capital allocation strategy which has now returned somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity in a over the long term. That the long term trends are with us and I expect them to continue to be so. >> Yeah, and you guys, you do what you say you're going to do. I mean, I said in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put $46 billion on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >> Hey Dave, yeah look, I just think if you look at the grid, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we can, if you look at say we're a hundred billion dollar revenue company which we were last year as we reported. Roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client in PC space, roughly 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space. Those markets are going to continue. The opportunity to grow share, grow at a premium to the market, drive cash flow, drive share gain is clearly there. And couple that with what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the EDGE, what we're thinking around data services, data management, we, and you put that together with the long term trends around data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain. Our services footprint. Well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >> Well Tom I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >> Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >> All right, you're watching theCUBE's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So, where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell a good long term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit, who's going to talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott is the Senior Vice President of Marketing is going to come in the program and give us the update on APEX which is Dell's as-a-service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're going to see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jen Saavedra, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're going to geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet CFO, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to The Cube. >> Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So, thanks for having me today. >> Yeah, you bet. Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness but the VMware spin. You had to give up your gross margin binky just kidding, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size you've had some success at the top line which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >> Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey you know, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment, that was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the rise then in the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade, we still unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's never dull at Dell Technologies Let me put it that way. >> Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got but you got zero unemployment you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But IT spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >> Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, $50 billion or so if you think about our core IT services capability. You couple that with some of the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity total addressable market. And so from, from that perspective we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan but yet when you look at that, you know number one share in some of these, you know our highest share position may be, you know low 30s and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of 30 or 40%. But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, if you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted. We actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about is you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream. But we started to see commercial PC soften, and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. And so, we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters who knows quite how long, you know, to make sure the business is properly positioned then. You know we've got a great portfolio and you're going to talk to some of the team later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're going to need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right now. >> Yeah and as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know the best companies not only weather their storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out come out the other side stronger. So, I want to talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the business growth. You mentioned the TAM, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if you can penetrate that big of a TAM, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >> Yeah, look, I think it comes down to, we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term, digital transformation continues. I am on numerous customer and CIO conference calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation in infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's going to slow or, or pause or maybe they're not going to invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our the telecom providers across the globe open up their what previous been closed ecosystems, you know to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us. You know, yes, we will, we're continuing to invest. And you'll hear Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So, I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in normal times a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. You know, we've got a negative, you know CCC in terms of, you know how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know our capital allocation strategy which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity in a over the long term that the long term trends are with us and I expect them to continue to be so. >> Yeah, and you guys, you do what you say you're going to do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion dollars on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >> Hey, Dave yeah look, I just think if you look at the grin, the market opportunity the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we come you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion dollar revenue company which we were year, you know, last year that as we reported, roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are going to continue. The opportunity to grow share, grow at a premium to the market, drive cash flow, drive share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management you know, we, and you've cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >> Well, Tom really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >> Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >> All right. You're watching The Cube's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell and we're excited to get his thoughts. Keep it right there. (upbeat jingle)

(upbeat music) >> Hello and welcome to theCUBE. I'm Dave Nicholson, Chief Technology Officer at theCUBE and we are here for a very special Cube Conversation with Andy Brown from Broadcom. Andy, welcome to theCUBE, tell us a little about yourself. >> Well, a little bit about myself, my name is Andy Brown, I'm currently the Senior Director of Software Architecture and Performance Analysis here within the Data Center Solutions Group at Broadcom. I've been doing that for about seven years prior to that, I held various positions within the system architecture, systems engineering, and IC development organization, but ultimately as well as spent some time in our support organization and managing our support team. But ultimately have landed in the architecture organization as well as performance analysis. >> Great, so a lot of what you do is around improving storage performance, tell us more about that. >> So let me give you a brief history of storage from my perspective. As I mentioned, I go back about 30 years in my career and that would've started back in the NCR Microelectronics days. And originally with Parallel SCSI, so that would be, if anyone would remember the the 5380 Controller, which was one of the original Parallel SCSI controllers that existed in built by NCR Microelectronics at the time, I've seen the advent of Parallel SCSI, a stint of fiber channel, ultimately leading into the serialization of the SCSI standard into SaaS, as well as SATA, and then ultimately leading to NVMe protocols and the advent of flash moving from hard drives into a flash based media and as well on that's on the storage side on the host side, moving from parallel interfaces, ISA if everybody could remember that, moving to PCI, PCI Express and that's where we land today. >> So Andy, we are square in the middle of the era of both NVMe and SaaS. What kinds of challenges does that overlap represent? >> Well, I think obviously we've seen SaaS around for a while, it was the conversion from parallel into a serial attached SCSI and that really SaaS brings with it, the ability to connect really a high number of devices and was kind of the original scaling of devices. And really also enabled was one of the things that enabled flash based media, given the the speed and performance that came to the table. Of course NVMe came in as well with the promise of even higher speeds. And as we saw flash media really, really take a strong role in storage. NVMe came around and really was focused on trying to address that, whereas SaaS originated with hard drive technology. NVMe was really born out of how do we most efficiently deal with flash based media, SaaS with its. But SaaS still carries a benefit on scalability and NVMe maybe has, I don't want to say challenges there, but it's definitely was not designed as much to be broadly scale across many, many, say high hundreds or thousands of devices. But definitely addressed some of the performance issues that were coming up as flash media was becoming. So it was increasing the overall storage performance that we could experience if you will. >> Let's talk about host interfaces, PCIe. What's the significance there? >> Really all the storage in the world, all the performance in the world on the storage side, is not of much use to you unless you can really feed it into the beast, if you will, into the CPU and into the the rest of the service subsystem. And that's really where PCI comes into play. PCI originally was in parallel form and then moved to serial with the PCI Express as we know it today, and really has created a pathway to enable not only storage performance but any other adapter or any other networking or other types of technologies to just open up that pathway and feed the processor. And as we've moved through from PCI to PCI Express PCI 2.0 3.0 4.0, and just opening up those pipes has really enabled just a tremendous amount of flow of data into the compute engine, allowing it to be analyzed, sorted used to analyze data, big data, AI type applications. Just those pipes are critical in those types of applications. >> We know we've seen dramatic increases in performance, going from one generation of PCIe to the next. But how does that translate into the worlds of SaaS, SATA and NVMe? >> So from a performance perspective when we look at these different types of media whether it be SATA, SaaS or NVMe, of course, there are performance difference inherent in that media, SATA being probably the lowest performing with NVMe topping out at higher performing although SaaS can perform quite well as a flash based as protocol connected to flash based media. And of course, NVMe from an individual device scaling, from a by one to a by four interface, really that is where NVMe kind of has enabled a bigger pipe directly to the storage media, being able to scale up to by four whereas SaaS can limit it to by one, maybe by two in some cases, although most servers only connect the SaaS device of by one. So from a different perspective then you're really wanting to create a solution or enable the infrastructure to be able to consume that performance at NVMe is going to give you. And I think that is something where our solutions have really in the recent generation shined, at their ability to really now keep up with storage performance and NVMe, as well as provide that connectivity back down into the SaaS and SATA world as well. >> Let's talk about your perspective on RAID today. >> So there've been a lot of views and opinions on RAID over the years, it's been and those have been changing over time. RAID has been around for a very, very long time, probably about as long as again, going back over my 30 year career, it's been around for almost the entire time. Obviously RAID originally was viewed as some thing that was very, very necessary devices fail. They don't last forever, but the data that's on them is very, very important and people care about that. So RAID was brought about knowing that individual devices that are storing that data are going to fail, and really took cold as a primary mechanism of protection. But as time went on and as performance moved up both in the server and both in the media itself if we start talking about flash. RAID really took on, people started to look at traditional server storage RAID, well, maybe a more of a negative connotation. I think that because to be quite honest, it fell behind a little bit. If you look at things like parity RAID 5 and RAID 6, very, very effective efficient means of protecting your data, very storage efficient, but ultimately had some penalty a primarily around right performance, random rights in RAID 5 volumes was not keeping up with what really needed to be there. And I think that really shifted opinions of RAID that, "Hey it's just not, it's not going to keep up and we need to move on to other avenues." And we've seen that, we've seen disaggregated storage and other solutions pop up and protect your data obviously in cloud environments and things like that have shown up and they have been successful, but. >> So one of the drawbacks with RAID is always the performance tax associated with generating parody for parody RAID. What has Broadcom done to address those potential bottlenecks? >> We've really solved the RAID performance issue the right performance issue. We're in our latest generation of controllers we're exceeding a million RAID 5 right IOPS which is enough to satisfy many, many, many applications as a matter of fact, even in virtual environments aggregated solutions, we have multiple applications. And then as well in the rebuild arena, we really have through our architecture, through our hardware automation have been able to move the bar on that to where the rebuild not only the rebuild times have been brought down dramatically in SaaS based or in I'm sorry in flash based solutions. But the performance that you can observe while those rebuilds are going on is almost immeasurable. So in most applications you would almost observe no performance deficiencies during a rebuild operation which is really night and day compared to where things were just few short years ago. >> So the fact that you've been able to, dramatically decrease the time necessary for a RAID rebuild is obviously extremely important. But give us your overall performance philosophy from Broadcom's point of view. >> Over the years we have recognized that performance is obviously a critically important for our products, and the ability to analyze performance from many many angles is critically important. There are literally infinite ways you can look at performance in a storage subsystem. What we have done in our labs and in our solutions through not only hardware scaling in our labs, but also through automation scripts and things like that, have allowed us to collect a substantial amount of data to look at the performance of our solutions from every angle. IOPS, bandwidth application level performance, small topologies, large topologies, just many, many aspects. It still honestly only scratches the surface of all the possible performance points that you could gather, but we have moved them bar dramatically in that regard. And it's something that our customers really demanded of us. Storage technology has gotten more complex, and you have to look at it from a lot different angles, especially on the performance front to make sure that there are no holes there that somebody's going to run into. >> So based on specific customer needs and requests, you look at performance from a variety of different angles. What are some of the trends that you're seeing specifically in storage per performance today and moving into the future? >> Yeah, emerging trends within the storage industry. I think that to look at the emerging trends, you really need to go back and look at where we started. We started in compute where people were you would have basically your server that would be under the desk in a small business operation and individual businesses would have their own set of servers, and the storage would really be localized to those. Obviously the industry has recognized that to some extent, disaggregation of that, we see that obviously in what's happening in cloud, in hyper-converged storage and things like that. Those afford a tremendous amount of flexibility and are obviously great players in the storage world today. But with that flexibility has come some sacrifice and performance and actually quite substantial sacrifice. And what we're observing is almost, it comes back full circle. The need for inbox high performing server storage that is well protected. And with people with confidence that people have confidence that their data is protected and that they can extract the performance that they need for the demanding database applications, that still exists today, and that still operate in the offices around the country and around the world, that really need to protect their data on a local basis in the server. And I think that from a trend perspective that's what we're seeing. We also, from the standpoint of NVMe itself is really started out with, "Hey, we'll just software rate that. We'll just wrap software around that, we can protect the data." We had so many customers come back to us saying, you know what? We really need hardware RAID on NVMe. And when they came to us, we were ready. We had a solution ready to go, and we're able to provide that, and now we're seeing ongoing on demand. We are complimentary to other storage solutions out there. Server storage is not going to necessarily rule a world but it is surely has a place in the broader storage spectrum. And we think we have the right solution for that. >> Speaking of servers and server-based storage. Why would, for example, a Dell customer care about the Broadcom components in that Dell server. >> So let's say you're configuring a Dell server and you're going, why does hardware where RAID matter? What's important about that? Well, I think when you look at today's hardware RAID, first of all, you're going to see a dramatically better performance. You're going to see dramatically better performance it's going to enable you to put RAID 5 volumes a very effective and efficient mechanism for protecting your data, a storage efficient mechanism. You're going to use RAID 5 volumes where you weren't able to do that before, because when you're in the millions of IOPS range you really can satisfy a lot of application needs out there. And then you're going to also going to have rebuilt times that are lightning fast. Your performance is not going to degrade, when you're running those application, especially database applications, but not only database, but streaming applications, bandwidth to protected RAID volumes is almost imperceptively different from just raw bandwidth to the media. So the RAID configurations in today's Dell servers really afford you the opportunity to make use of that storage where you may not have already written it off as well RAID just doesn't, is not going to get me there. Quite frankly, into this in the storage servers that Dell is providing with RAID technology, there are huge windows open in what you can do today with applications. >> Well, all of this is obviously good news for Dell and Dell customers, thanks again, Andy for joining us, for this Cube Conversation, I'm Dave Nicholson for theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>>from >>around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >>Welcome back to the cubes. Virtual coverage of a dips reinvent 2020. I'm John for your host of the Cube great segment here with Presidio. Two great guests Chris Keg, Nazi senior vice president, general manager of the Cloud and Managed Services Group of Presidio, and Sam Fattah Gado, VP of Cloud Solutions Group with Presidio both been here in the Cube talking with us many times before. Great to have you guys on. Thanks for coming on Chris and Sam. >>Great. Thank you, John. Thanks for having us. >>We've had many great cloud conversations with your company and engineers. Architects going back, I think 2016 2017, really as cloud hit, that inflection point. Certainly, scaling Public Cloud and on premise is cloud operations. Certainly that has happened as continue to accelerate. Chris, I would like you to explain your relationship with AWS and you're focused at this. Reinvent what's going on with Presidio? What's new in your world? What's changed for you and the customers, >>right? So thank you, John. So Presidio's focus really is, um you know, around developing the right strategies, helping companies realize the full potential of the AWS cloud. Think of it as ah vory strategic approach that aligns technology with business outcomes really on a global scale. Um, this past year, um, if I look back a year ago, it reinvent when Presidio was there. Um, code a global was also there, which was an acquisition that we did. And we closed out, uh, in August and Sam Farr Gado was the CEO of Code Global. So what's really changed for us is taking our legacy business around infrastructure around security around Matic services on bond, combining that with really combining that with what Coda had around the professional services side of cloud engagement and really building out a company that I believe can deliver a very unique offering to clients because we can cover the full spectrum. So for us Ah, lots happened in a year since we were at reinvent attend day. It's really about, you know, business and technical leaders that we have that are really dedicated thio, you know, focusing on customers, their client experience, and really delivering the best business outcome that weekend >>you know, one of the things that we chat in the past, you just mentioned manage services. This is a huge deal because one of the trends that we've been reporting on here in the Cube and on Silicon angle is, you know, a lot of the transformational goals or accelerated Cove it. We see that projects that are doubling down are mostly cloud related, large scale automation, machine learning. But from an executive standpoint, the mandate is everything is a service. So there's a big executive push. See XO, CSOs, whatever for everything as a service. And when you put that out there and put that ball in play, so to speak, it's not easy, right? So when you go when you say hey, make everything is a service, it's not trivial, and then you get okay, How does that work? That's where the hard part happens. I want to get your take on that. Is that something that you're seeing with your customers? They put that ball in play, let's get the manage services and then you got to put it together. Not that easy. What's your take on that? >>I think you know when you think about clients today and what CEOs are looking for, it's really it is a pay by the drink or a consumption based model, right? But at the end of the day, they don't they want to manage their business. They don't want a Mac manage huge I t groups on DSO software developers within within their own business. They wanna pass that responsibility onto experts like Presidio. So I think it za fact. What's what's simple for them? How does how do they move kind of accountability and how did they get to their business outcomes without owning? And I t business within their existing business? So those are some of the changes that we've certainly seen from a mindset perspective, but but we're fully prepared. Thio offer that city >>that's great for your business is certainly a tail when Sam, I want to get to you. Because when you get to that conversation, okay, put his a service a lot in their unpack. I mean, depending on who you're talking to, you know, certainly accelerating it with Presidio. I see that you're now part of Presidio. Take us through what's going on in your world because when you get to the customer. You gotta work backwards from what they're trying to dio not trying to retrofit of technology into their environment. You've got to kind of work with what they got. But actually get them to the cloud. Can you share what you're doing with customers? >>Yeah. Thanks, John. I appreciate that. And one thing I want to say about joining Presidio is that, uh, you know, we, uh, had worked together for a couple of years and really found that we had a great cultural fit and that we had the same goal. And that's to become a W s number one partner globally, providing these kinds of mission critical solutions for clients. We've been told often times that we are Amazonian in terms of our customer obsession are bias for action. And what you just said there is helping them get the benefits of cloud quickly, no matter where they're coming from. Because, you know, they wanna have the availability security scalability, But they also have to integrate in with their existing systems. So what we're finding with clients is they want to transform the way they do business. They want to transform their industry oftentimes, and that's what they're looking for, you know, when they partner with us and they look for leveraging the AWS platform. >>So let me ask you a question then, because certainly we've seen I've interviewed a ton of Amazon customers and executives, and it's some >>of the >>things that's going on with Cove. It has just been amazing what they've enabled people to move so fast and put riel game changing impact, whether it's societal impact or some other transformative thing. And if you look at Amazon traditionally they started as a transactional thing. You get some easy to you by by the drink. Everything's going on. But every reinvent is more announcement. Andy Jassy said one hour keynote turns into a two hour keynote three, our keynote. And now you're looking at more transform inal transformational solutions. You still got some transactions in there. But when you gotta put the holistic, cohesive plan together, that has to be transformative. How do you guys talk to customers when you say it's not just transactional? Transformative? >>Yeah, well, we look, you know, we're doing it, you know, internally ourselves as well. You know, with Presidio now we've gone from transactions. Transactions are important but we really want to transform the way our customers are able to do business. And with co vid, it's been even more important to be ableto get things done without having to be physically present in one location. And so whether it's telehealth or remote learning, remote sales activities making sure that systems are integrated with commerce engines are again are very secure. The cloud and A W S is really bringing a big difference to the marketplace, and we're very immersed in that we have clients. Uh, I'll give you an example. Wheel pros. One of the leading tire after market tire and wheel manufacturers and designers we've talked with with their CEO, Randy White. He said. What we're doing with Presidio and on AWS platform is building the wheel. Pros of the future. What does that look like? He says he wants his systems to be just like his products for his customers. They've got to be high performing. They gotta be high quality, and they've got to deliver a great customer experience. Uh, well, you know, we want to be able to leverage a lot of the services that AWS has to be able to deliver those kinds of things quickly and with high quality. So it's really exciting to be able to see the impact we're having wheel pros, business and other clients like that. >>So when you talk about your solution to take him in to explain what you guys offer a client because you have a Presidio cloud solution, you get a lot of services can just take a minute to explain what people are buying and what they're getting from Presidio. Because, um, that sounds like a great customer success story. What are they? >>What >>are they getting? >>Okay, so what? They're getting really again following kind of the Amazonian way, working backwards, right? So let's start with an idea. Let's let's let's look at something we really want to do that's going to change dramatically. Change and improve the way they delight their customers. So start with that idea. Will help them design it. Welcome. Build it. Welcome. Deploy it. We could help support it. Fully managed service support eso from from the idea through to production and then ongoing support enhancements. They can count on Presidio to deliver all of those capabilities on Dakota Couldn't do all of that on our own. We were really grated application development, data and analytics. Uh, dev Ops and Automation. But with Presidio, we bring everything to the table Onda geun fully supported. Help them from, you know, even managing. You know, they're they're resell, being able to manage the environment, making sure that they're getting the most value out of these critical investments. >>Chris, I want to get your thoughts on this. Um, Sam mentioned you wanna be the number one solution provider for on AWS? Um, great mission, by the way, I wanna unpack that now. Last year, I reported at reinvent one of the feedback items was Amazon's gonna think more about solutions. Certainly Microsoft does that. We've seen that, um, Amazon doesn't really flout a plant. Those solutions very much. I mean, even though they have them there there you guys are a nice fit there. So if you're gonna be the number one solution provider, what do you guys need to do to do that? What a customers expect from you guys? Can you take a minute? Explain your plan? >>Sure. Yeah, absolutely, John. So I think you know, when you think about clients that air transforming their business right. They need to be competitive in their own market. So when they think about business outcomes in what Presidio does, we look at it in really a full life bull approach. If you think about the applications that Sam spoke about creating things that Air Cloud native, perhaps it's a mobile ordering app that's going to make them more competitive, especially in this covert environment. Um, think about their their just their normal consumption of services on the AWS platform. How do we optimize it for them? How do we ensure that they have the right services in a very agile, secure environment? So managing and owning it the full life cycle is really kind of what we deliver from a solution set. But every client is a little bit different, depending on really what their their needs are and what what their business outcomes are. So we can take it everywhere, anywhere from, uh, full development toe Full deployment Onda managing it in a very secure way, um, to adding in their consumption side of it, adding in their licensing component where perhaps they're buying under marketplace or a or a c p p o offering. So what's really unique about Presidio is that we offer that full solution to clients from end to end, and we can manage the entire process, deliver performance, cost savings and very predictable models >>from I love the, you know, a big fan of the entire and people who watch the Cubano. All I do is talk about and to end is really a critical way to look at things holistically if you're looking at something cohesive as a solution with transactional transformative capabilities. But I want to get your thoughts on some of the market demand challenges. And if you guys could react to it, um, Sam and Chris, there's two spectrums we're seeing with this pandemic clients, customers who were, like, have a tailwind. Oh, my God. This is accelerating my value proposition. I need more help. I gotta get to the cloud I gotta transformed quickly. And then the other end of the spectrum is the worst screwed. So we're gonna reset and retool while we're kind of in this bunker down mode and they want to come out of the pandemic with a growth plan. So kind of to spectrums, right? Did you guys see that as well what's the range of psychology or buyer behavior for your customers? Because there seems to be like the airline. They're not really getting a lot of business, but they're redoing their systems. They're being classified. Or, you know, this is an app for zoom or school educational. It's needed. It's in more demand. So you kind of everything in between those Do you guys see that? And if so, or if not >>way, certainly see a component with our client base around saving costs, right? What are they going to do in this environment? Toe save costs. But at the same time, we are seeing a lot of creativity around. What does their future model look like? And how did and what do they need to build? And that's what they're spending money on. Eso. We've seen it across kind of all verticals within the business, but certainly it it's a it's a dual approach. I think customers that go about doing that properly really prepare themselves for when we all do come out of this. That the business was will be set to capitalize on the change in market. That's what I've seen. I'm sure Sam has some additional comments >>Your thoughts? >>Yeah, absolutely. I would say necessity is the mother of invention. Invention. Right. So you know, we're seeing customers that we're thinking about cloud or, you know, considering maybe a new application cloud native application. But, you know, maybe you felt like they had time to do it where, you know, with covert ITT's bold are gonna be the ones that survive and thrive on DSO. Just like we saw when people came out of the 2000 and eight financial crisis. Those that invested in their systems, invested in their people, people skills is another big area right way at Presidio have I think we're upto like 600 AWS certifications across the board from sales through all different technologies. Because, you know, we wanna retain our people. We want to help them develop their skills and make sure that we're bringing the best talent to our clients. Eso yet z you know, it's a it's a difficult time, but it's a time for opportunity. >>Necessity could be business opportunity to capture opportunity, recognition, capture or survival. I mean, it is the mother of invention, you know it is it is a forcing function, guys. Thanks for the >>one of our clients. If I if I could, just mentioned Dunkin Brands, you know, they they couldn't have traffic in their stores. So, you know, mobile ordering became even more important. Um, you know, driving with Dr Drive up pick up and we helped them move from a multi tenant SAS application that was, you know, wasn't performing wasn't a reliable enough to an AWS Cloud native application, and they tripled the traffic while also improving performance and reliability. That's the kind of power that you can have with AWS and Presidio. >>That's a great eggs. And that's a great example looking relate to that. First of all, Dunkin Donuts makes great coffee and from the East Coast originally. So I love Dunkin Donuts. DND um, but great, great brand that mobile app. Good call, because people want to get in the curbside pickup or delivered. I mean, this is the new the new normal guys. Thanks so much for the insight. Final word. If you both can weigh in, um, share with the audience. The focus for this reinvent if you could share the Presidio message for reinvent virtual 2020. What do you think, >>Sam Why don't you go first? >>Well, from my perspective, it's all about, you know, taking it to another level. That's what we feel like we're doing was part of the video now again becoming the number one AWS partner. But it's also helping customers take their most important applications, uh, to the cloud so that they can improve the way they deliver for their customers. That's really what it's all about for me. >>Yeah, I would. I would have to concur with Sam. I mean, you know, our goal. Really like Sam said a few times to be be the number one aws partner. But with that comes, you know, a huge undertaking in a huge responsibility for us, you know, with our teams and and with our customers. At the end of the day, we want all of our clients to think of us first. Um, you know, when we're delivering these solutions and how impactful Presidio has been to their business for their growth onder for their future success. So for us, the customer obsession side of it all is really we want to continue that, and that's what we're gonna get out of this conference is how do we continue that? >>Well, congratulations. Like Chris and Sam. Thanks for coming on. I always say I enjoyed my conversations with your team. Uh, they get the technical chops, um, and having a service offering that accelerates mawr cloud goodness for customers on my, um, Amazon's got a great ecosystem clouds growing like crazy. So congratulations. Thank you. >>Thank you. Thank >>you. >>Thanks for coming on the Cuban John for your watching the Cube coverage of aws reinvent 2020. It's virtual this year. We're not impersonal, but the cube virtualization It's hit the market. More cube interviews remotely. And I'm John for Thanks for watching.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the Q. Come to you from our Palo Alto studio with our ongoing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. The digital experience Let's jump into a really excited to have our next guest CIA Sam Bird, the president of the Client Solutions Group for Dell. Sam, where you joining us from today? >>Hey, I am joining you live from Austin, Texas. Jeff looks beautiful. All weather? Yeah, its's turning really nice. Uh, nice time to be here in Austin, right? So, >>Sam, let's jump into it. I mean, you, you cover, you know, kind of the heart of what Dell started with which was which was PCs. And, you know, it's funny. A couple days ago, Michael tweeted because he likes to tweet, which is fun. An article that said that the PC officially died today. It's a reference back to an article I had to look at the January 26 2010. Officially, the PC officially died today. >>That >>is so bizarre, and that is not in fact, not true, you guys. We're seeing unprecedented demand, so I wonder if it is You Look back at that. And I'm sure you saw Michaels tweet. What kind of goes through your head? Because we're in a very different space than we were 10 years ago. >>Yeah, I think the world's changed a lot, Jeff from 10 years ago. I got to say, uh, the PC died 10 years ago. It feels pretty good being being dead for 10 years. So I think we actually saw a, you know, still alive and very vibrant. PC. So you think about everything that's happened with Cove it We have seen the PC and people using technology to stay connected, whether it's, you know, working in their business, learning from home, staying connected with other family members. So we'd like to talk about it Is the renaissance of the PC. It kind of this rebirth reemergence of this really good friend that you had has become really core toe how we're getting stuff done in the world today, and we've stayed bullish about the opportunity around the PC. Michaels had that view from, you know, when he started this company, and we've since expanded to many other areas beyond selling PCs. But we continue to be really committed to the value of that technology in people's hands, >>right? So just in defense of the of the article, it was written on the launch of the iPad right, which was a new a new form factor. And, you know, we've seen this proliferation of form factors both within PCs and mobile phones, and you know, the sizes of screens getting bigger and the size of green getting smaller and surface all kinds of different things. So I wonder if you could share, you know, kind of your perspective in, you know, kind of the opportunity that opens up when people are looking for different types of form factors. And then, more importantly, I think now it's horses for courses. So when I'm sitting at my desk, you know, I haven't a big giant XPS with all the ram and GPU and stuff Aiken stuff into it. If I'm going to the airport with a long flight, I want something small and light and easy to carry and what's interesting, I think, with cloud it enables you now to basically have the form factor that you need where you need it for the types of work that you're trying to get done. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, if you if you take that 10 years ago, article to today we have had an enormous amount of innovation in the industry that's made the device is exciting and appealing for how people wanna want to operate. So, you know, we've seen Jeff a shift towards more mobile form factors with cove in. So, um, a commercial space that used to be maybe half desktops, half notebooks is now in the 70% range. More mobile form factors which reflects how people want to use them. You know, they're sitting at home, they need that device to be portable. They wanna go between rooms and home. That's the other thing that we found in some of our, you know, research and work on the spaces. You know, people might want to sit at the kitchen table in the morning in the afternoon. Maybe they're outside. They might have their kids do in school from home and have to be around them part of the day, so they still need a mobile kind of form factor, but it's plugged in. I want full power to run my applications. And, like you said, we will get back to a world with travel and people being mobile. And then you need to dial in the right form factor that has maybe a smaller screen, more portable device. So one of the things that's kept this business vibrant, you know, for the past 10 years and right now is a bigger screen experience is really, really valuable. A keyboard and multiple ways of in putting into devices are valuable, so there's core. Things are great. And then we've got systems that are set up for how people want to use them. You know, we still have designers sitting at home using big desktop workstations because the most powerful thing there times really valuable. There's a right system for how you want to use technology, and I think that that's attendant, you know, an approach we take in our business, and that's what we see in the industry. I think that's what's helped keep it very vibrant and alive. >>I love it, I love it. It is truly that work from anywhere and anywhere as you just defined, could be a whole bunch of things, and it doesn't even mean just at home or just at the coffee shop. That's really interesting. Is you even change locations where you're working within within the home. That really supports that. So, >>you >>know, Cove, it hits light switch moment. Everybody's gotta work from home. So huge, huge pressure there. And now, as you said, you know, we're seven months into it. Still gonna be going on for a little bit while a little while before people go back. Huge, huge boost to your guys business. I'm curious if you can share some thoughts in terms of, you know, now, I I need to kind of project a little bit of that office back to the work from anywhere situation. And, you know, you guys are that you're kind of that edge device that ultimately connects back to the mother ship. >>Yeah, I think it's and that's where we've seen people realized. It's a really valuable device that helps keep them, you know, productive and connected. Um, we have seen it's very interesting of it used to be, you know, pre co vid for Most people work with the location, you know, Post Cove. It it's something you do, and suddenly it's very location agnostic, and we see the world operating that way in the future Jeff of these devices at the edge or need gonna be working in a world where sometimes it makes sense to be in an office. Maybe there's collaboration, other things you need to dio. But we're going to see people working from home working from a coffee shop, working from, you know, anywhere in the world, and we're gonna need to stay connected. In that way, it's enabling a great set of talent. It's enabling people to be where they want, you know, get done what they need to do in their personal lives and then be contributing in a great way, thio to a business. So I think technology plays a huge role in going and getting that done. And to me, the world doesn't just return back to a you know, pre cove in space. But we're now in this. We've learned we can operate in this kind of multi modality world where technology can help keep us connected, collaborating, getting stuff done in some cases more productive than ever before, and it's kind of unleashed this new wave of thinking. I think we will continue to see great creativity on stuff we're putting in our devices to enable that, you know, software applications approaches that are gonna enable that that will really take us forward as we look at the future. >>You know, I'm just curious if you could share, uh, you know, kind of Ah, general breakdown by kind of form factor. What do you see between kind of, you know, I don't know if you split high end desktops and low on desktops and then, you know, kind of laptops and Chromebooks, what's kind of the high level kind of breakdown, and how's that? Is it change significantly over the last several years? And you you just mentioned a boost. You know, during the time of Cove in >>Yeah, we've seen a shift towards notebooks. Now you know much Is the article you you pulled up from 10 years ago? I think the death, the death of the desktop has also been much exaggerated. So we're Maurin, a mode of 70% of the systems that were selling our notebooks 70 to 80% range. It's a little higher, and consumer Andi, that's, you know, 20 points up in the commercial space. So we're seeing, you know, people have valued that kind of portability of systems. You know that, said is we talk through some of the ways people use it. There are great uses for desktops, for people are in the same place where I need ultimate ultimate power and then a z your home. We've seen a little more shift Teoh a suddenly you know, portability. That was really valuable because you had Salesforce's engineers on the road all the time. And I really wanted something that, you know, lasted had great battery life and was really easy to carry around. Suddenly we're in a world plugged in at home like we look at our devices, we've gone. Now more than half of our laptops are basically on is we have intelligence built into our systems. That tunes how battery management is done. Empower Management's done. More than half those systems are now in a mode of all, basically, always on a C. So people are, you know, plugged in all the time. They would like a little more powerful system. So whether they're running, zoom or teams or some other app. Multitasking. It's like there's a, you know, different requirements there. I think that changes Azzawi go forward and we get back to, you know, the notebook. It's like the ultimate design people want is a great big screen. That's super light, and the battery lasts forever. And I'm like that keeps our engineers and designers working every day because that's a really hard, complex thing to solve. And, you know, we're we continue to work and and and push that next forward. Now it's a little more biased to power. Sitting on a desk. We will be back in a world where it's gonna be, Yeah, I want power to sit on the desk, be on a video conference, get work done. But I also need to be able to take that on the road with >>Yeah, I just think, you know, because of the proliferation of online applications, right? And you know so much of our work day no pun intended, you know, is done in all these different cloud based applications, whether its sales force or slack or asana or whether we're, you know, working in in, uh, social media applications or even are you know kind of cloud enabled local applications. You know, a lot of times I find you don't have to carry your device right. E can lead the one device of one location, one of the other. I know it's almost like you pick up exactly where you were when you log back into chrome or you log back into whatever your browser is. If you've got it all configured, you know you don't even need to carry. A lot of times I find it's it's it's really nice. And if I have to check a message on the phone, No, it's a very different way of working, and, uh, I think it's really pretty slick. I do want to get into productivity, which you've talked about a lot. You know, I've always said the best productivity investment anybody could make is a second screen on the desktop. I mean, it's so much more productive to have a second screen the third screen. You go to places like Wall Street and the NASDAQ floor, where time matters and productivity matters, their screens all over the place and you guys are doing a ton of fun stuff with screens. Big giant curve things, and you made an interesting observation in other interviews that now people are consuming their entertainment content via those screens, whether it's an over the top service with Netflix or or whatever. So this this kind of shift to, you know, kind of mawr content consumption as this blend between kind of what you do in your personal life and what you do in your work life, both in terms of time and content, you know, continue to mix so lot of exciting stuff happening in big, beautiful screens. >>Yeah, totally agree, Jeff. And we see you know we've looked at productivity and see boosts with a bigger screen around your system. Same thing with exactly as you describe putting two screens around the system or go to a trading floor and their screens everywhere because it's about the you know, it's about the content that you can consume and the, um, you know, the work that you go get done, and it's a lot more efficient to be able to have multiple screens. Whether it's looking at a presentation and doing a call, you know, a video call for work on on one screen or either side of Ah, screen. And we're seeing people build out that, you know, their home office, their work office. I think that's to me. The, you know, the exciting piece of you think about how technology is arming people to get their job done. Like you can't imagine if you had all the technology taken away from you. You're like, Okay, what am I gonna What am I go do? Like if the internet goes down, I don't quite know how to get go. Be productive here. You know, I go try to find someone who has a landline phone on the block and call someone up. Andi have actually have a discussion, but, like, I'm not gonna build out a work, you know, a workspace. I've gotta build out a home space companies that are pretty progressive, the ones that are investing Maurin technology for their employees. We're seeing them be ah, lot more successful in this covert air, which equals go get on the right tools the screen around the system, You know, the extra devices. So it's like, Hey, my postures. Great. I can actually go get work done. And I'm in a nice space. Same thing back in the office. We've built stuff. We're building low blue light technology into our commercial PCs. We put that on our high end consumer PC. So you know, now you can walk into your home office early in the morning. You can goto late at night. It will have you all tune so your body is ready to go to sleep. You know, you don't even have toe. I don't have to talk to your family at all during the day. You could just work all the time from your home office. But I think little pieces like that are going. How do we put technology in this world where it's, like, very easy toe walk in and out of your you know, your office and being tuned on. But, hey, I need to go to sleep or I need to be chilling out after that and get the right technology and capabilities that let people be successful. So I think it's pretty exciting. Everything we've been able to dio, >>right? So I want to shift gears a little bit. Um, talk about user interface. What? One of the reason of this article that we keep referencing 10 years ago was the launch of the iPad, right? And in the launch pad or the iPad didn't have, Ah, traditional keyboard. Um, but I think people found out that not having a traditional keyboard, depending on the type of your work you're doing is a little bit of an inhibitor to your productivity. But it really begs the question as we enter this new world of different types of interaction with these devices and the increased use of voice, whether it's with Siri or or Okay, Google, um, >>we've >>had, you know, regulations on the A d a. In terms of access to websites and this and that. Aziz, you kind of look into the future of of human interaction with these devices as you get more and more horsepower toe work with on the GPU and the CPU and you know, can free up more. Resource is to this type of activity. I know you can't share anything too far down the road. But what? How do you see kind of the future evolving to get beyond this quality keyboard that was designed to slow people down because types were, too. I'm still waiting for the more efficient keyboard option to be to be available. But what's the future of human interaction with these things? To take the the degree of efficiency up another level? >>Hey, Jeff, we will do a custom keyboard for you. So you get me your you get me your high speed layout, we'll get you get you one of those. Um, you know, we do see it is pretty remarkable how long the keyboards been around and we still see it's It's also remarkable to me how powerful that is as a input device for, you know, for some tasks in the world. So what we see is it's not gonna be what replaces the keyboard. And there's one way of going and doing things. But all this compute the sensors that capability on the systems are just gonna allow people to operate the way that they want to operate. So you look at a PC today. It still has this great keyboard. It still has a laptop form factor that has, you know, been there for It's probably 25 years or so. It's actually pretty nice because it fits on your lap. It balances really well on the coffee table. Um, it's, you know, We've looked at so many different form factors, and it actually is a stayed around for a good reason because it it's pretty pretty functional. You know, you take on top of that, though we've built touch in tow, all our systems and screen. So a capability that's available to many of our customers and I go people are just starting. In the beginning, it was like Okay, Hey, how do I take this PC with touch on the screen and then you go? I don't want to do everything with touch, but gosh, it's like how maney you now touch it. If it's something's not touch, you know you have little marks on the screen. I went thio, I went. Thio was looking and working with someone here in a design, a design firm, and, uh, they had a product that was non touch, and it's like I reached in touch the screen to try to make it bigger because my eyes were not quite as good and they were like, Oh yeah, that's not a touch that's not a touch system and everyone touches the screen so it's like that becomes normal voice is going to become normal we have capability on the PC. Like you said, there's a bunch of voice ecosystems. Not everything is easiest to go do invoice. There are some things where you go ahead. I just want to go touch that, you know, gesture in the same way we look at intelligence on the system of also going There are things I wanna have just happen because I always I always do that and I shouldn't have to do voice. I shouldn't have to do gesture, touch everything else like, Hey, maybe I start the morning and I always pull up my calendar. Why doesn't that happen? Or I like to listen to her, You know, a song in the evening as I'm typing away on email on getting things buttoned up for the day. It's like your system can anticipate some of those things and it will just do that for you. So I think I think you're exactly right. We're going to see multiple ways of interacting with technology, and it needs to be natural and easy for us and then let the user pick pick the way that they want to go and do things right. >>Well, you just touched on a whole, you jumped ahead to questions on my list of things I want to talk about. And really, that's the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence, not in a generic way. That's an app that sits inside of the PC, but but in terms of using that intelligence as you just described based on my work flow based on my habit based on the applications I use based on you know what, you can observe and learn about me. Or maybe it SSM dictate down from from the corporate set up. You know how that PC operates for me? Because I think that's it is a really interesting thing, right? Everyone uses their machine differently, and whether they use, you know, shortcuts or not, How many tabs do they have open? You know, the the variability. You must have crazy studies on this in terms of the way people actually operate. These things is so, so high, so huge opportunity to, you know, again kind of remove the the get the signal from the noise and help people decide what they should do. Prioritize what they should do and add a layer of of simplicity to you. know it is a complex amount of notifications firing at me all day long. >>Yeah, I think that's a huge. You know, you talked about the potential you have in a world where more APS that we use our cloud cloud based of going How do I augment the capability in this client device at the edge To be intelligent and helped me go do mawr versus just being, you know, really dumb and serving up this other other content. And I think everything you describe is opportunity that we see We started Jeff about five years ago and have been very aggressive and putting intelligence and machine learning into the systems we started on our work stations, where there is an obvious application of, like, how do I tune a system to get the most performance out of an application? And we saw settings configurations making them different helped tune these very specific, you know, cad engineering programs that developers were running their times really valuable. They want the most performance. We used to have to have people sit down and we go. Okay, let's go run this application. Under this workload, we can put a table together. Here's a bunch of recommendations. We started going well, Hey, how do we have that happened? Automat like, let's try different settings. Figure out what works. The machines should should self tune itself then and figure out what's right and get based on exactly what I'm running. And people can be running different combinations so suddenly got a lot smarter than our great engineer sitting in the lab and figuring out those tables. And then, you know, from that time then we brought it to I think, what's just tip of the iceberg Now, where we start looking at, uh, performance across all our systems? What applications of my running go set things up so that it works? We talked a little bit about batteries and power management. Hey, how am I using this system if I am a really mobile person? Always, you know, taking my battery down to really low levels, hopping on a plane, I need to be quickly charged, like the system can figure out. Hey, I really need to tune things. Not for when, when you go through all the mechanics of a battery, it's like I am willing to sacrifice some on the longevity of the battery to enable really fast charging of that system because Jeffs always on the go Jeff runs his battery down. I need to make sure when he plugs in, he has maximum juice. Hey, here's Sam who's in a work from home mode, always plugged in. It's not great on any battery in the world to always be at, you know, maximum maximum charge every single minute of the day. And Sam has not unplugged his system in the past. You know, five days. Hey, we can run that at 95% and he will have a long life to that battery and be really happy with the system. And he's never gonna run out of power. You can start doing in that space. You can start doing it around sound and the environment that people are in, how we get smart. And I think there's an enormous amount you could do on top of that, like you described just how people have used the systems and it can sound a little eerie, but like it's what we you know, the machine suddenly knows how I'm going to go do stuff, but I'm like I would like that it to be anticipating what I'm doing, and then it starts taking that mundane stuff that we have to do that just eats up time and, you know, goes and gets that done for us. So we could be focused on the creative and the really pushing the boundaries, thinking >>I love it because it always goes back to kind of what do you optimizing for right? And there isn't necessarily one answer to that question, and there's a lot of factors that go into that in terms of the timing. As you said, the person their behavior you know happen to GPS is I'm at an airport. Probably need to plug in for you in the airplane. It's a good stuff. I want to. I want to shift gears a little bit, Sam, to talk about operating systems, Um, and and you know, chromebooks air out now. And you know, it was kind of this breakthrough to go beyond kind of Windows based systems. I think there's a lot of people that you know hope at >>some point >>will be, you know, have the option to run Lennox based systems. But it's just, you know, with a cloud based world and a multi, you know, kind of device interaction with all those different applications, whether it's it's my phone or my my desktop or my laptop or my my chromebook or my whatever. Um, Aziz, you start to think about kind of operating systems and opening up, you know, kind of a new level of innovation with because the expectation now for for like, a chromebook is that it's almost 100% Web based APS, right? That there's really not a lot of need for anything local. Maybe a quick download, a picture too attached to to an email or something. How do you kind of look at the future and kind of operating systems for PC? Specifically? >>Yeah. Well, I think is You describe Jeff, the applications and what you're doing on the system has become increasingly important over time, and it will only become more important as we go go forward. So, you know, from that point of view window, we dio work with windows. We do work with Google and chrome. I mean, Windows 10 is a really good based operating system. Chrome has a lot of nice capability in that operating system, you know, Obviously Apple, a competitor, has a different approach in that space. But I think we have a really good set of offerings that we can put on our our systems. And then we're focused on tuning that experience on top of the operating system. I I think it's still too complicated to go and put a, you know, get a new PC into a work or home environment, retire the old PC and manage that system. And what we look at is independent of that operating system. People want to go get their stuff done. We need to make that great. They wanna get their device, they want to turn it on and they want to go use it. And we want to build a world where, like, as I'm getting a new device, my device should know me well enough to go. Hey, Sam, this is this is the right time to get a device. This is the right kind of device that you should get based on what you're going and doing. Hey, I'm going to just keep you up to date. I am going to you think about any issues with the system. We still have too many things that flow through a traditional Hey, there's an I T. Help desk and then they figure that out and then I go toe level two or level three if they can't sort that out. Hey, how do we put that stuff to your point, Jeff before around intelligence, How do we automate those processes? So we're thinking through You know what needs to happen on that system, keeping it up to date and fixing and remediating that system. So I think there's a huge potential regardless of what operating system is beneath it, and we have very good choices there to go. We've got to make that experience the one that's great for the users and that that's where we're really focusing our, you know, our time and our energy, Right? >>So let me shift gears again a little bit and full disclosure I've bought, and I don't know how many XPS towers in a row. I think I'm on my third or fourth in a row. I love >>it. I >>mean, I'm a desktop. I like to just pack those things full of as much horsepower and GPU and CPU and memory as I possibly can because to me again, Back to an investment and productivity. I don't wanna be waiting for slow machines. I just to me it's a couple 100 bucks for this upgrade. That upgrade, it seems brain dead to me that people don't do that. But in terms of when you get these things now and it comes in the mail, it's basically a >>box and a machine, and >>you think back to the old days right when there was books and warranty cards and, you know, a whole plethora of stuff that kind of fell out of that box. I know you know. That's That's probably a leading indicator on the consumer side, about some of your efforts around sustainability and and being efficient and obviously taking advantage of things like the cloud in terms of activating these machines in this and that. But I wonder if you can share a little bit on what you guys have been doing about sustainability, because I know it's important. You know, there's a big focus around, you know, kind of environmental trash on old electron ICS, which is a riel, a real problem that people are dressing. So I wonder if you can. You know. Take a minute, Thio, to share your guys efforts in this area. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Jeff. It is. It is really important. And we see, you know, arming the world with technology so people can do better. Things really matters, but I love doing stuff outside, like I want the environment to be great. And we need to do that in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. So a couple of places we, you know, pushed really aggressively. You touched on the packaging. So whether that's taking, um, content out of boxes, that doesn't that doesn't need to be there. We've made very aggressive commitments with a series of 2030 goals that we're marching towards is a company where we said, you know, 100% of our packaging will be from sustainable or recyclable sources. So we've already moved aggressively in that space. When you look at what ocean bound plastic we're putting in our boxes, how we think about the materials that were picking, you know, cardboard, and using that in ways that go through the you know, the mail and can be shipped effectively. So we have maximum content there that can be recycled. We've we've committed that we will take back a system for every system that we ship. So getting and building this circular economy for electron ICS, we think is is very important. So we take the stuff that we've got out there and we put that back into a recycle process where you know your old PC can become part of your new cutting edge technology PC and we've led the industry and doing that in plastics were taking plastics from cases and plastics from systems, getting that back into new systems. We've done that with precious metals from the from the, uh, PCB lay board designs inside the systems. We've done that with rare earth metals and magnets, and we think there's opportunity to go farther in that space and then the 3rd 3rd kind of thing that we've committed Jeff is by by 2030 to have half the content of our new systems, be from recycled or renewable content. And we do a good job today of having the content in the systems be recyclable. It's almost over 90% by weight, but what we want to do and the work we need to go do is go get that recycled content going into a cutting edge technology that we're putting out there, and it's not. That's not a simple problem of going. People want things a structurally strong as possible, a super thin as performance as possible. And then we need to you, you know, we gotta use, um, basically waste that comes through and gets turned into new products. So we have our engineers are material science people working on how we make that riel. And we set some aggressive goals with, you know, Michael and the company that will be leadership and that we don't quite exactly know how to get there, but put us on the right kind of edge of pushing and doing the things that we need. Thio. We can have great technology and, you know, be responsible in the way that, as you said, is very important. >>It's great, and it's good to write it down, right? If you don't write it down, then it's just it just disappears into the into the ether. So, Sam, I really enjoyed getting to catch up. I want to give you the final word with a little bit. Look to the path and a little bit look to the future, right? A lot of conversation about Moore's law, and we got to the end of Moore's law and blah, blah, blah. And and I think that, you know, there's obviously technology behind that, and there's some real conversations. But to me, the more interesting topic around Moore's law is really the idea of Moore's law and this continual advancement of technology that's better, faster, cheaper. You've been doing this for 20 years at Del. You've seen tons of, you know, kind of Moore's law impacts and operating in this world where, you know, compute, compute storage and networking just is on this exponential scale on whether you want to talk about GP use or whatever again to me, it's not about the number, of course, and the transistor. It's about the transition in the core. It's about really the concept of this working in a world where you know you're gonna have a lot more. Where is power work with How do you How do you kind of reflect on, you know, the stuff that you're shipping today versus what you were shipping five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and then, more importantly, is you look forward. Um, you know what is what are you excited about? What gets you up in the morning? What puts a big smile on your face? Still come to work after 20 years of Dell? >>Yeah. You know, Jeff, it's a great question because the industry has changed so much over the last 10 20 years. So it's sometimes a fun thing. Toe. Look back at some of the products that we put out before. That seemed amazing at that point in time and you stack them against what we're doing now and then it could bring you down to Earth a little bit. So you see, the, uh, you see just the exponential improvements that we're able to make around the design of the product, the capability of the products. And I see that continuing the thing that gives me, you know, huge thought around this the device and the PC and the role is gonna play at the edge. We just did some research and we were looking at Millennials and Gen Z and looking around the world, and that is a huge and growing part of the population. It will be the the users of technology in the future with the world we're in today, 45% of them. So almost half of them said they would take their dollars and they want a premium, high end PC experience, and they would prioritize that versus other things they spend money on to go and have a great PC as a personal tool. Do you think about that translating to in a work environment they're gonna expect those same kind of great tools? And then to the question you asked, You know, I see a huge opportunity to continue to push forward the value and the way people use these devices, whether it's the intelligence we talked about. That to me is really exciting around building a machine that knows me and does things for me and how I want to use it, our ability to build immersive experiences so that you know, whether I'm gaming after work, collaborating with co workers like how do I put it so that we're together and it's a good Aziz that in person experience, we're gonna be able to do that with technology. You talked in a great questions around. Hey, the ways people interact with the systems, it will become natural. It will become whatever way they want to go and do that. And I think we can do that in a world where, yes, you can walk between all kinds of different devices. There will not be one device to end all. You'll be in a small screen device. You're gonna use a monitor. You're going to use a PC device. There will be technology across the home. But toe have that have that link together in the role that PC is gonna play in. That to me, is exciting. And we continue to, you know, invest aggressively. Michael saw that when he started the company. We continue to believe in the power of technology, and we're gonna figure out and drive those breakthroughs that will make the, you know, products exciting. And I love doing that every day of seeing the innovation we can put together and how that makes a difference for people. To me, that's really an exciting thing. >>Well, Sam, thank you. Thank you for the update. Again, the rumors of the PCs demise were greatly overstated. 10 years and glad to see that you're just kicking tail and doing exciting things. So thanks for for sharing your insight and your experience with us. >>Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Jeff. Great to talk to you. >>Absolutely. All right. He's Sam. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cubes. Continuing coverage of Dell Technology World 2020 The Digital Experience. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

>> Male Voice: From around the globe, it's theCUBE covering HPE Discover Virtual Experience brought to you by HPE. >> Hi everybody, you're watching theCUBE. And this is Dave Vellante in our continuous coverage of the Discover 2020 Virtual Experience, HPE's virtual event, theCUBE is here, theCUBE virtual. We're really excited, we got a great session here. We're going to dig deep into machine intelligence and artificial intelligence. Dr. Arti Garg is here. She's the Head of Advanced AI Solutions and Technologies at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And she's joined by Dr. Sorin Cheran, who is the Vice President of AI Strategy and Solutions Group at HPE. Folks, great to see you. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi. >> Hi, nice to meet you, hello! >> Dr. Cheran, let's start with you. Maybe talk a little bit about your role. You've had a variety of roles and maybe what's your current situation at HPE? >> Hello! Hi, so currently at HPE, I'm driving the Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Solution group who is currently looking at how do we bring solutions across the HPE portfolio, looking at every business unit, but also on the various geos. At the same time, the team is responsible for building the strategy around the AI for the entire company. We're working closely with the field, we're working closely with the things that are facing the customers every day. And we're also working very closely with the various groups in order to make sure that whatever we build holds water for the entire company. >> Dr. Garg, maybe you could share with us your focus these days? >> Yeah, sure, so I'm also part of the AI Strategy and Solutions team under Sorin as our new vice president in that role, and what I'm focused on is really trying to understand, what are some of the emerging technologies, whether those be things like new processor architectures, or advanced software technologies that could really enhance what we can offer to our customers in terms of AI and exploring what makes sense and how do we bring them to our customers? What are the right ways to package them into solutions? >> So everybody's talking about how digital transformation has been accelerated. If you're not digital, you can't transact business. AI infused into every application. And now people are realizing, "Hey, we can't solve all the world's problems with labor." What are you seeing just in terms of AI being accelerated throughout the portfolio and your customers? >> So that's a very good idea, because we've been talking about digital transformation for some time now. And I believe most of our customers believed initially that the one thing they have is time thinking that, "Oh yes I'm going to somehow at one point apply AI "and somehow at one point "I'm going to figure out how to build the data strategy, "or how to use AI in my different line of businesses." What happened with COVID-19 and in this area is that we lost one thing: time. So I think discussed what they see in our customers is the idea of accelerating their data strategy accelerating, moving from let's say an environment where they would compute center models per data center models trying to understand how do they capture data, how they accelerate the adoption of AI within the various business units, why? Because they understand that currently the way they are actually going to the business changed completely, they need to understand how to adapt a new business model, they need to understand how to look for value pools where there are none as well. So most of our customers today, while initially they spend a lot of time in an never ending POC trying to investigate where do they want to go. Currently they do want to accelerate the application of AI models, the build of data strategies, how then they use all of this data? How do they capture the data to make sure that they look at new business models, new value pools, new customer experience and so on and so forth. So I think what they've seen in the past, let's say three to six months is that we lost time. But the shift towards an adoption of analytics, AI and data strategy is accelerated a lot, simply because customers realize that they need to get ahead of the game. >> So Dr. Garg, what if you could talk about how HPE is utilizing machine intelligence during this pandemic, maybe helping some of your customers, get ahead of it, or at least trying to track it. How are you applying AI in this context? >> So I think that Sorin sort of spoke to one of the things with adopting AI is, it's very transformational for a business so it changes how you do things. You need to actually adopt new processes to take advantage of it. So what I would say is right now we're hearing from customers who recognize that the context in which they are doing their work is completely different. And they're exploring how AI can help them really meet the challenges of those context. So one example might be how can AI and computer vision be coupled together in a way that makes it easier to reopen stores, or ensures that people are distancing appropriately in factories. So I would say that it's the beginning of these conversations as customers as businesses try to figure out how do we operate in the new reality that we have? And I think it's a pretty exciting time. And I think just to the point that Sorin just made, there's a lot of openness to new technologies that there wasn't before, because there's this willingness to change the business processes to really take advantage of any technologies. >> So Dr. Cheran, I probably should have started here but help us understand HPE's overall strategy with regard to AI. I would certainly know that you're using AI to improve IT, the InfoSite product and capability via the Nimble acquisition, et cetera, and bringing that across the portfolio. But what's the strategy for HPE? >> So, yeah, thank you. That's (laughs) a good question. So obviously you started with a couple of our acquisition in the past because obviously Nimble and then we talked a lot about our efforts to bring InfoSite across the portfolio. But currently, in the past couple of months, let's say close to a year, we've been announcing a lot of other acquisitions and we've been talking about Tuteybens, we've been talking about Scytale we've been talking about Cray, and so on, so forth, and now what we're doing at HPE is to bring all of this IP together into one place and try to help our customers within their region out. If you're looking at what, for example, what did they actually get when Cray play was not only the receiver, but we also acquire and they also have a lot of software and a lot of IP around optimization and so on and so forth. Also within our own labs, we've been investigating AI around like, for example, some learning or accelerators or a lot of other activity. So right now what we're trying to help our customers with is to understand how do they lead from the production stage, from the POC stage to the production stage. So (mumbles) what we are trying to do is we are trying to accelerate their adoption of AI. So simply starting from an optimized platform infrastructure up to the solution they are actually going to apply or to use to solve their business problems and wrapping all of that around with services either consumed on-prem as a service and so on. So practically what we want to do is we want to help our customers optimize, orchestrate and operationalize AI. Because the problem of our customers is not to start in our PLC, the problem is how do I then take everything that I've been developing or working on and then put it in production at the edge, right? And then keep it, maintaining production in order to get insights and then actually take actions that are helping the enterprise. So basically, we want to be data driven assets in cloud enable, and we want to help our customers move from POC into production. >> Or do you work with obviously a lot of data folks, companies or data driven data scientists, you are hands on practitioners in this regard. One of the challenges that I hear a lot from customers is they're trying to operationalize AI put AI into production, they have data in silos, they spend all their time, munging data, you guys have made a number of acquisitions. Not a list of which is prey, obviously map of, data specialist, my friend Kumar's company Blue Data. So what do you see as HPE's role in terms of helping companies operationalize AI. >> So I think that a big part of operationalizing AI moving away from the PLC to really integrate AI into the business processes you have and also the sort of pre existing IT infrastructure you talked about, you might already have siloed data. That's sort of something we know very well at HPE, we understand a lot of the IT that enterprises already have the incumbent IT and those systems. We also understand how to put together systems and integrated systems that include a lot of different types of computing infrastructure. So whether that being different types of servers and different types of storage, we have the ability to bring all of that together. And then we also have the software that allows you to talk to all of these different components and build applications that can be deployed in the real world in a way that's easy to maintain, and scale and grow as your AI applications will almost invariably get more complex involved, more outputs involved and more input. So one of the important things as customers try to operationalize AI is think is knowing that it's not just solving the problem you're currently solving. It's not just operationalizing the solution you have today, it's ensuring that you can continue to operationalize new things or additional capabilities in the future. >> I want to talk a little bit about AI for good. We talked about AI taking away jobs, but the reality is, when you look at the productivity data, for instance, in the United States, in Europe, it's declining and it has for the last several decades and so I guess my point is that we're not going to be able to solve some of the world problems in the coming decades without machine intelligence. I mean you think about health care, you think about feeding populations, you think about obviously paying things like pandemics, climate change, energy alternatives, et cetera, productivity is coming down. Machines are potential opportunity. So there's an automation imperative. And you feel, Dr. Cheran, the people who are sort of beyond that machines replacing human's issue? Is that's still an item or has the pandemic sort of changed that? >> So I believe it is, so it used to be a very big item, you're right. And every time we were speaking at a conference and every time you're actually looking at the features of AI, right? Two scenarios are coming to plays, right? The first one where machines are here, actually take a walk, and then the second one as you know even a darker version where terminator is coming, yes and so forth, right? So basically these are the two, is the lesser evil in the greater evil and so on and so forth. And we still see that regular thing coming over and over again. And I believe that 2019 was the year of reckoning, where people are trying to realize that not only we can actually take responsible AI, but we can actually create an AI that is trustworthy, an AI that is fair and so on and so forth. And that we also understood in 2019 it was highly debated everywhere, which part of our jobs are going to be replaced like the parts that are mundane, or that can actually be easily automated and so on and so forth. With the COVID-19 what happened is that people are starting to look at AI differently, why? Because people are starting to look at data differently. And looking at data differently, how do I actually create this core of data which is trusted, secure and so on and so forth, and they are trying to understand that if the data is trusted and secure somehow, AI will be trusted and secure as well. Now, if I actually shifted forward, as you said, and then I try to understand, for example on the manufacturing floor, how do I add more machines? Or how do I replace humans with machines simply because, I need to make sure that I am able to stay in production and so on and so forth. From their perspective, I don't believe that the view of all people are actually looking at AI from the job marketplace perspective changed a lot. The view that actually changes how AI is helping us better certain prices, how AI is helping us, for example, in health care, but the idea of AI actually taking part of the jobs or automating parts of the jobs, we are not actually past yet, even if 2018 and even more so in 2019, it was the year also where actually AI through automation replaced the number of jobs but at the same time because as I was saying the first year where AI created more jobs it's because once you're displacing in one place, they're actually creating more work more opportunities in other places as well. But still, I don't believe the feeling changed. But we realize that AI is a lot more valuable and it can actually help us through some of our darkest hours, but also allow us to get better and faster insights as well. >> Well, machines have always replaced humans and now for the first time in history doing so in a really cognitive functions in a big way. But I want to ask you guys, I'll start with Dr. Arti, a series of questions that I think underscore the impact of AI and the central role that it plays in companies digital transformations, we talk about that a lot. But the questions that I'm going to ask you, I think will hit home just in terms of some hardcore examples, and if you have others I'd love to hear them but I'm going to start with Arti. So when do you think Dr. or machines will be able to make better diagnoses than doctors? We're actually there today already? >> So I think it depends a little bit on how you define that. And I'm just going to preface this by saying both of my parents are physicians. So I have a little bit of bias in this space. But I think that humans can bring creativity in a certain type of intelligence that it's not clear to me. We even know how to model with the computer. And so diagnoses have sometimes two components. One is recognizing patterns and being able to say, "I'm going to diagnose this disease that I've seen before." I think that we are getting to the place where there are certain examples. It's just starting to happen where you might be able to take the data that you need to make a diagnosis as well understood. A machine may be able to sort of recognize those subtle patterns better. But there's another component of doing diagnosis is when it's not obvious what you're looking for. You're trying to figure out what is the actual sort of setup diseases I might be looking at. And I think that's where we don't really know how to model that type of inspiration and creativity that humans still bring to things that they do, including medical diagnoses. >> So Dr. Cheran my next question is, when do you think that owning and driving your own vehicle will become largely obsolete? >> (laughs) Well, I believe my son is six year old now. And I believe, I'm working with a lot of companies to make sure that he will not get his driving license with his ID, right? So depending who you're asking and depending the level of autonomy that you're looking at, but you just mentioned the level five most likely. So there are a lot of dates out there so some people actually say 2030. I believe that my son in most of the cities in US but also most of the cities in Europe, by the time he's 18 in let's say 2035, I'll try to make sure that I'm working with the right companies not to allow them to get the driving license. >> I'll let my next question is from maybe both of you can answer. Do you take the traditional banks will lose control of payment system? >> So that's an interesting question, because I think it's broader than an AI question, right? I think that it goes into some other emerging technologies, including distributed ledgers and sort of the more secure forms of blockchain. I think that's a challenging question to my mind, because it's bigger than the technology. It's got Economic and Policy implications that I'm not sure I can answer. >> Well, that's a great answer, 'cause I agree with you already. I think that governments and banks have a partnership. It's important partnership for social stability. But similar we've seen now, Dr. Cheran in retail, obviously the COVID-19 has affected retail in a major way, especially physical retail, do you think that large retail stores are going to go away? I mean, we've seen many in chapter 11. At this point, how much of that is machine intelligence versus just social change versus digital transformation? It's an interesting question, isn't it? >> So I think most of the... Right now the retailers are here to stay I guess for the next couple of years. But moving forward, I think their capacity of adapting to stores like to walk in stores or to stores where basically we just go in and there are no shop assistants and just you don't even need the credit card to pay you're actually being able to pay either with your face or with your phone or with your small chips and so on and so forth. So I believe currently in the next couple of years, obviously they are here to stay. Moving forward then we'll get artificial intelligence, or robotics applied everywhere in the store and so on and so forth. Most likely their capacity of adapting to the new normal, which is placing AI everywhere and optimizing the walk in through predicting when and how to guide the customers to the shop, and so on and so forth, would allow them to actually survive. I don't believe that everything is actually going to be done online, especially from the retailer perspective. Most of the... We've seen a big shift at COVID-19. But what I was reading the other day, especially in France that the counter has opened again, we've seen a very quick pickup in the retailers of people that actually visiting the stores as well. So it's going to be some very interesting five to 10 years, and then most of the companies that have adapted to the digital transformation and to the new normal I think they are here to stay. Some of them obviously are going to take sometime. >> I mean, I think it's an interesting question too that you really sort of triggering in my mind is when you think about the framework for how companies are going to come back and come out of this, it's not just digital, that's a big piece of it, like how digital businesses, can they physically distance? I mean, I don't know how sports arenas are going to be able to physically distance that's going to be interesting to see how essential is the business and if you think about the different industries that it really is quite different across those industries. And obviously, digital plays a big factor there, but maybe we could end on that your final thoughts and maybe any other other things you'd like to share with our audience? >> So I think one of the things that's interesting anytime you talk about adopting a new technology, and right now we're happening to see this sort of huge uptick in AI adoption happening right at the same time but this sort of massive shift in how we live our lives is happening and sort of an acceptance, I think that can't just go back to the way things work as you mentioned, they'll probably be continued sort of desire to maintain social distancing. I think that it's going to force us to sort of rethink why we do things the way we do now, a lot, the retail, environments that we have the transportation solutions that we have, they were adapted in many cases in a very different context, in terms of what people need to do on a day-to-day basis within their life. And then what were the sort of state of technologies available. We're sort of being thrust and forced to reckon with like, what is it I really need to do to live my life and then what are the technologies I have available to meet to answer that and I think, it's really difficult to predict right now what people will think is important about a retail experience, I wouldn't be surprised if you start to find in person retail actually be much less, technologically aided, and much more about having the ability to talk to a human being and get their opinion and maybe the tactile sense of being able to like touch new clothes, or whatever it is. And so it's really difficult I think right now to predict what things are going to look like maybe even a year or two from now from that perspective. I think that what I feel fairly confident is that people are really starting to understand and engage with new technologies, and they're going to be really open to thinking about what those new technologies enable them to do in this sort of new way of living that we're going to probably be entering pretty soon. >> Excellent! All right, Sorin, bring us home. We'll give you the last word on this topic. >> Now, so I wanted to... I agree with Arti because what these three months of staying at home and of busy shutting down allowed us to do was to actually have a very big reset. So let's say a great reset but basically we realize that all the things we've taken from granted like our freedom of movement, our technology, our interactions with each other, and also for suddenly we realize that everything needs to change. And the only one thing that we actually kept doing is interacting with each other remotely, interacting with each other with our peers in the house, and so on and so forth. But the one thing that stayed was generating data, and data was here to stay because we actually leave traces of data everywhere we go, we leave traces of data when we put our watch on where we are actually playing with our phone, or to consume digital and so on and so forth. So what these three months reinforced for me personally, but also for some of our customers was that the data is here to stay. And even if the world shut down for three months, we did not generate less data. Data was there on the contrary, in some cases, more data. So the data is the main enabler for the new normal, which is going to pick up and the data will actually allow us to understand how to increase customer experience in the new normal, most likely using AI. As I was saying at the beginning, how do I actually operate new business model? How do I find, who do I partner with? How do I actually go to market together? How do I make collaborations more secure, and so on and so forth. And finally, where do I actually find new value pools? For example, how do I actually still enjoy for having a beer in a pub, right? Because suddenly during the COVID-19, that wasn't possible. I have a very nice place around the corner, but it's actually cheaply stuff. I'm not talking about beer but in general, I mean, so the finance is different the pools of data, the pools (mumbles) actually, getting values are different as well. So data is here to stay, and the AI definitely is going to be accelerated because it needs to use data to allow us to adopt the new normal in the digital transformation. >> A lot of unknowns but certainly machines and data are going to play a big role in the coming decade. I want to thank Dr. Arti Garg and Dr. Sorin Cheran for coming on theCUBE. It's great to have you. Thank you for a wonderful conversation. Really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks so much. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and the HPE 2020 Virtual Experience. We'll be right back right after this short break. (upbeat music)

(upbeat jazz music) >> Woman: From our studio's, in the heart of Silicon Valley Palo Alto California this is a CUBE conversation. >> John: Hello and welcome to this CUBE conversation here, exclusive coverage of Google Next 2019. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Big Google Cisco news, we're here with KD who's the vice president of the data center for compute for Cisco and Kip Compton, senior vice president of Cloud Platform and Solutions Group. Guys, welcome to this exclusive CUBE conversation. Thanks for spending the time. >> KD: Great to be here. >> So Google Next, obviously, showing the way that enterprises are now quickly moving to the cloud. Not just moving to the cloud, the cloud is part of the plan for the enterprise. Google Cloud clearly coming out with a whole new set of systems, set of software, set of relationships. Google Anthos is the big story, the platform. You guys have had a relationship previously announced with Google, your role in joint an engineering integrations. Talk about the relationship with Cisco and Google. What's the news? What's the big deal here? >> Kip: Yeah, no we're really excited. I mean as you mentioned, we've been working with Google Cloud since 2017 on hybrid and Multicloud Kubernetes technologies. We're really excited about what we're able to announce today, with Google Cloud, around Google Cloud's new Anthos system. And we're gonna be doing a lot of different integrations that really bring a lot of what we've learned through our joint work with them over the last few years, and we think that the degree of integration across our Data Center Portfolio and also our Networking and Security Portfolios, ultimately give customers one of the most secure and flexible Multicloud and hybrid architectures. >> One of the things we're seeing in the market place, I want to get your reactions to this Kip because I think this speaks to what's going on here at Google Next and the industry, is that the company's that actually get on the Cloud wave truly, not just say they're doing Cloud, but ride the wave of the enterprise Cloud, which is here. Multicloud is big conversation. Hybrids and implementation of that. Cloud is big part of it, the data center certainly isn't going away. Seeing a whole new huge wave. You guys have been big behind this at Cisco. You saw what the results are with Microsoft. Their stock has gone from where it was really low to really high because they were committed to the Cloud. How committed is Cisco to this Cloud Wave, what specifically are you guys bringing to the table for Enterprises? >> Oh we're very committed. We see it as the seminal IT transformation of our time, and clearly on of the most important topics in our discussions with CIO's across our customer base. And what we're seeing is, really not as much enterprises moving to the Cloud as much as enterprises extending or expanding into the Cloud. And their on-prem infrastructures, including our data centers as you mentioned, certainly aren't going away, and their really looking to incorporate Cloud into a complete system that enables them to run their business and their looking for agility and speed to deliver new experiences to their employees and to their customers. So we're really excited about that and we think sorta this Multicloud approaches is absolutely critical and its one of the things that Google Cloud and Cisco are aligned on. >> I'd like to get this couple talk tracks. One is the application area of Multicloud and Hybrid but first lets unpack the news of what's going on with Cisco and Google. Obviously Anthos is the new system, essentially its just the Cloud platform but that's what they're calling it, Googles anthem. How is Cisco integrating into this? Cause you guys had great integration points before Containers was a big bet that you guys had made. >> Kip: That's right. >> You certainly have, under the covers we learned at Cisco Live in Barcelona around what's going on with HyperFlex and ACI program ability, DevNet developer program going on. So good stuff going on at Cisco. What does this connect in with Google because ya got containers, you guys have been very full throttle on Kubernetes. Containers, Kubernetes, where does this all fit? How should your customers understand the relationship of how Cisco fits with Google Cloud? What's the integration? >> So let me start with, and backing it with the higher level, right? Philosophically we've been talking about Multicloud for a long time. And Google has a very different and unique view of how Cloud should be architected. They've gone 'round the open source Kubernetes Path. They've embraced Multicloud much more so then we would've expected. That's the underpinning of the relationship. Now you bring to that our deep expertise with serving Enterprise IT and our knowledge of what Enterprise IT really needs to productize some of these innovations that are born elsewhere. You get those two ingredients together and you have a powerful solution that democratizes some of the innovations that's born in the Cloud or born elsewhere. So what we've done here with Anthos, with Google HyperFlex, oh with Cisco's HyperFlex, with our Security Portfolio, our Networking Portfolio is created a mechanism for Enterprise ID to serve their constituent developers who are wanting to embrace Containers, readily packaged and easily consumable solution that they can deploy really easily. >> One of the things we're hearing is that this, the difference between moving to the Cloud versus expanding to and with the Cloud, and two kind of areas pop up. Operational's, operations, and developers. >> Kip: Yep. >> People that operate IT mention IT Democratizing IT, certainly with automation scale Cloud's a great win there. But you gotta operate it at that level at the same time serve developers, so it seems that we're hearing from customers its complicated, you got open source, you got developers who are pushing code everyday, and then you gotta run it over and over networks which have security challenges that you need to be managing everyday. Its a hardcore op's problem meets frictionalist development. >> Yeah so lets talk about both of these pieces. What do developers want? They want the latest framework. They want to embrace some of the new, the latest and greatest libraries out there. They want to get on the cutting edge of the stuff. Its great to experiment with open source, its really really hard to productize it. That's what we're bringing to the table here. With Anthos delivering a manage service with Cisco's deep expertise and taking complex technologies, packaging it, creating validated architectures that can work in an enterprise, it takes that complexity out of it. Secondly when you have a enterprise ID operator, lets talk about the complexities there, right? You've gotta tame this wild wild west of open source. You can't have drops every day. You can't have things changing every, you need a certain level of predictability. You need the infrastructure to slot in to a management framework that exists in the dollar center. It needs to slot into a sparing mechanism, to a workflow that exists. On top of that, you've got security and networking on multiple levels right? You've got physical networking, you've got container networking, you've got software define networking, you've got application level networking. Each layer has complexity around policy and intent that needs to marry across those layers. Well, you could try to stitch it together with products from different vendors but its gonna be a hot stinking mess pretty soon. Driving consistency dry across those layers from a vendor who can work in the data center, who can work across the layers of networking, who can work with security, we've got that product set. Between ACI Stealthwatch Cloud providing the security and networking pieces, our container networking expertise, HyperFlex as a hyper converge infrastructure appliance that can be delivered to IT, stood up, its scale out, its easy to deploy. Provides the underpinning for running Anthos and then, now you've got a smooth simple solution that IT can take to its developer and say Hey you know what? You wanna do containers? I've got a solution for you. >> And I think one of the things that's great about that is, you know just as enterprise's are extending into the Cloud so is Cisco. So a lot of the capabilities that KD was just talking about are things that we can deliver for our customers in our data centers but then also in the Cloud. With things like ACI Anywhere. Bringing that ACI Policy framework that they have on-prem into the Cloud, and across multiple Clouds that they get that consistency. The same with Stealthwatch Cloud. We can give them a common security model across their on-prem workloads and multiple public Cloud workload areas. So, we think its a great compliment to what Google's doing with Anthos and that's one of the reasons that we're partners. >> Kip I want to get your thoughts on this, because one of the things we've seen over the past years is that Public Cloud was a great green field, people, you know born in the Cloud no problem. (Kip laughs) And Enterprise would want to put workloads in the Cloud and kind of eliminate some of the compute pieces and some benefits that they could put in the cloud have been great. But the data center never went away, and they're a large enterprise. It's never going away. >> Kip: Yep. >> As we're seeing. But its changing. How should your customers be thinking about the evolution of the data center? Because certainly computes become commodity, okay need some Cloud from compute. Google's got some stuff there, but the network still needs to move packets around. You still got to store stuff, you still need security. They may not be a perimeter, but you still have the nuts and bolts of networking, software, these roles need to be taking place, how should these customers be thinking about Cloud, compute, integration on data primus? >> That is a great point and what we've seen is actually Cloud makes the network even more important, right? So when you have workloads and staff services in the Cloud that you rely on for your business suddenly the reliability and the performance and latency of your networks more important in many ways than it was before, and so that's something any of our customers have seen, its driving a lot of interest and offerings like SD-WAN from Cisco. But to your point on the data center side, we're seeing people modernize their data centers, and their looking to take a lot of the simplicity and agility that they see in a Public Cloud and bring it home, if you will, into the data center. Cause there are lots of reasons why data centers aren't going away. And I think that's one of the reasons we're seeing HyperFlex take off so much is it really simplifies multiple different layers and actually multiple different types of technology, storage, compute, and networking together into a sort of a very simple solution that gives them that agility, and that's why its the center piece of many of our partnerships with the Public Cloud players including Anthos. Because it really provides a Cloud like workload hosting capability on-prem. >> So the news here is that you guys are expanding your relationship with Google. What does it mean? Can you guys summarize the impact to your customers and the industry? >> Well I think that, I mean the impact for our customers is that you've two leaders working together, and in fact they're two leaders who believe in open technology and in a Multicloud approach. And we believe that both of those are fundamentally more aligned with our customers and the market than other approaches and so we're really excited about that and what it means for our customers in the future. You know and we are expanding the relationship, I mean there's not only what we're doing with Google Cloud's Anthos but also associated advances we've made about expanding our collaboration actually in the collaboration area with our Webex capabilities as well as Google Swed. So we're really excited about all of this and what we can enable together for our customers. >> You guys have a great opportunity, I always say latency is important and with low latency, moving stuff around and that's your wheelhouse. KD, talk about the relationship expanding with Google, what specifically is going on? Lets get down and dirty, is it tighter integration? Is it policy? Is it extending HyperFlex into Google? Google coming in? What's actually happening in the relationship that's expanding? >> So let me describe it in three ways. And we've talked a little bit about this already. The first is, how do we drive Cloud like simplicity on-prem? So what we've taken is HyperFlex, which is a scale out appliance, dead simple, easy to manage. We've integrated that with Anthos. Which means that now you've got not only a hyper conversion appliance that you can run workloads on, you can deliver to your developers Kubernetes eco system and tool set that is best in class, comes from Google, its managed from the Cloud and its not only the Kubernetes piece of it you can deliver the silver smash pieces of it, lot of the other pieces that come as part of that Anthos relationship. Then we've taken that and said well to be Enterprise grade, you've gotta makes sure the networking is Enterprise grade at every single layer, whether that is at the physical layer, container layers, fortune machine layer, at the software define networking layer, or in the service layer. We've been working with the teams on both sides, we've been working together to develop that solution and bring back the market for our customers. The third piece of this is to integrate security, right? So Stealthwatch Cloud was mentioned, we're working with the other pieces of our portfolio to integrate security across these offerings to make sure those flows are as secure as can be possible and if we detect anomalies, we flag them. The second big theme is driving this from the Cloud, right? So between Anthos, which is driving the Kubernetes and RAM from the Cloud our SD-WAN technology, Cisco's SD-WAN technology driven from the Cloud being able to terminate those VPN's at the end location. Whether that be a data center, whether that be an edge location and being able to do that seamlessly driven from the Cloud. Innerside, which takes the management of that infrastructure, drives it from the Cloud. Again a Cisco innovation, first in the industry. All of these marry together with driving this infrastructure from the Cloud, and what did it do for our eventual customers? Well it gave them, now a data center environment that has no boundaries. You've got an on-prem data center that's expanding into the Cloud. You can build an application in one place, deploy it in another, have it communicate with another application in the Cloud and suddenly you've kinda demolished those boundaries between data center and the Cloud, between the data center and the edge, and it all becomes a continuum and no other company other than Cisco can do something like that. >> So if I hear you saying, what you're saying is you're bringing the software and security capabilities of Cisco in the data center and around campus et cetera, and SD-WAN to Google Cloud. So the customer experience would be Cisco customer can deploy Google Cloud and Google Cloud runs best on Cisco. That's kinda, is that kind of the guiding principles here to this deal? Is that you're integrating in a deep meaningful way where its plug and play? Google Cloud meets Cisco infrastructure? >> Well we certainly think that with the work that we've done and the integrations that we're doing, that Cisco infrastructure including software capabilities like Stealthwatch Cloud will absolutely be the best way for any customer who wants to adopt Google Cloud's Anthos, to consume it, and to have really the best experience in terms of some of the integration simplicity that KD talked about but also frankly security's very important and being able to bring that consistent security model across Google Cloud, the workloads running there, as well as on-prem through things like Stealthwatch Cloud we think will be very compelling for our customers, and somewhat unique in the marketplace. >> You know one of the things that interesting, TK the new CEO of Google, and I had this question to Diane Green she had enterprise try ops of VM wear, Google's been hiring a lot of strong enterprise people lately and you can see the transformation and we've interviewed a lot of them, I have personally. They're good people, they're smart, and they know what they're doing. But Google still gets dinged for not having those enterprise chops because you just can't have a trajectory of those economy of scales over night, you can't just buy your way into the enterprise. You got to earn it, there's a certain track record, it seems like Google's getting a lot with you guys here. They're bringing Cloud to the table for sure for your customer base but you're bringing, Cisco complete customer footprint to Google Cloud. That seems to be a great opportunity for Google. >> Well I mean I think its a great opportunity for both of us. I mean because we're also bringing a fantastic open Multicloud hybrid solution to our customer base. So I think there's a great opportunity for our customers and we really focus on at the end of the day our customers and what do we do to make them more successful and we think that what we're doing with Google will contribute to that. >> KD talk about, real quickly summarize what's the benefits to the customers? Customers watching the announcements, seeing all the hype and all the buzz on this Google Next, this relationship with Cisco and Google, what's the bottom line for the customer? They're dealing with complexity. What are you guys solving, what the big take away for your customers? >> So its three things. First of all, we've taken the complexity out of the equation, right? We've taken all the complexity around networking, around security, around bridging to multiple Clouds, packaged it in a scale out appliance delivered in an enterprise consistent way. And for them, that's what they want. They want that simplicity of deployment of these next gen technologies, and the second thing is as IT serves their customers, the developers in house, they're able to serve those customers much better with these latest generation technologies and frameworks, whether its Containers, Kubernetes, HDL, some of these pieces that are part of the Anthos solution. They're able to develop that, deliver it back to their internal stakeholders and do it in a way that they control, they feel comfortable with, they feel their secure, and the networking works and they can stand behind it without having to choose or have doubts on whether they should embrace this or not. At the end of the day, customers want to do the right things to develop fast. To be nimble, to act, and to do the latest and greatest and we're taking all those hurtles out of the equations. >> Its about developers. >> It is. >> Running software on secure environments for the enterprise. Guys that's awesome news. Google Next obviously gonna be great conversations. While I have you here I wanna get to a couple talk tracks that are I important around the theme's recovering around Google Next and certainly challenges and opportunities for enterprises that is the application area, Multicloud, and Hybrid Cloud. So lets start with application. You guys are enabling this application revolution, that's the sound bites we hear at your events and certainly that's been something that you guys been publicly talking about. What does that mean for the marketplace? Because certain everyone's developing applications now, (Kip laughs) you got mobile apps, you got block chain apps, we got all kinds of new apps coming out all the time. Software's not going away its a renaissance, its happening. (Kip laughs) How is the application revolution taking shape? How is and what's Cisco's roll in it? >> Sure, I mean our role is to enable that. And that really comes from the fact that we understand that the only reason anyone builds any kind of infrastructure is ultimately to deliver applications and the experiences that applications enable. And so that's why, you know, we pioneered ACI is Application Centric Infrastructure. We pioneered that and start focusing on the implications of applications in the infrastructure any years ago. You know, we think about that and the experience that we can deliver at each layer in the infrastructure and KD talked a little bit about how important it is to integrate those layers but then we also bring tools like AppDynamics. Which really gives our customers the ability to measure the performance of their applications, understand the experience that they're delivering with customers and then actually understand how each piece of the infrastructure is contributing to and affecting that performance and that's a great example of something that customers really wanna be able to do across on-prem and multiple Clouds. They really need to understand that entire thing and so I think something like App D exemplifies our focus on the application. >> Its interesting storage and compute used to be the bottle necks in developers having to stand that up. Cloud solved that problem. >> Kip: That's right. >> Stu Miniman and I always talk about on theCUBE networking's the bottle neck. Now with ACI, you guys are solving that problem, you're making it much more robust and programmable. >> It is. >> This is a key part for application developers because all that policy work can be now automated away. Is that kinda part of that enablement? >> It sure is. I mean if you look at what's happening to applications, they're becoming more consumerized, they're becoming more connected. Whether its micro services, its not just one monolithic application anymore, its all of these applications talking to each other. And they need to become more secure. You need to know what happens, who can talk to whom. Which part of the application can be accessed from where. To deliver that, when my customer tell me listen you deliver the data center, you deliver security, you deliver networking, you deliver multicloud, you've got AppDynamics. Who else can bring this together? And that's what we do. Whether its ACI that specifies policy and does that programmable, delivers that programmable framework for networking, whether its our technologies like titration, like AppDynamics as Kip mentioned. All of these integrate together to deliver the end experience that customers want which is if my application's slow, tell me where, what's happening and help me deliver this application that is not a monolith anymore its all of these bits and pieces that talk to each other. Some of these bits and pieces will reside in the Cloud, a lot of them will be on-prem, some of them will be on the edge. But it all needs to work together-- >> And developers don't care about that they just care about do I get the resources do I need, And you guys kinda take care of all the heavy lifting underneath the covers. >> Yeah and we do that in a modern programmable way. Which is the big change. We do it in intent based way. Which means we let the developers describe the intent and we control that via policy. At multiple levels. >> And that's good for the enterprises, they want to invest more in developing, building applications. Okay track number two, talk track number two Multicloud. its interesting, during the hype cycle of Hybrid Cloud which was a while, I think now people realize Hybrid Cloud is an implementation thing and so its beyond hype now getting into reality. Multicloud never had a hype cycle because people generally woke up one day and said yeah I got multiple Clouds. I'm using this over here, so it wasn't like a, there was no real socialization around the concept of Multicloud they got it right away. They can see it, >> Yep. >> They know what they're paying for. So Multicloud has been a big part of your strategy at Cisco and certainly plays well into what's happening at Google Next. What's going on with Multicloud? Why's the relation with Google important? And where do you guys see Multicloud going from a Cisco perspective? >> Sure enough, I think you're right. The latest data we saw, or have, is 94 percent of enterprises are using or expect to use multiple Clouds and I think those surveys have probably more than six points of potential error so I think for all intensive purposes its 100 percent. (John and KD laughing) I've not met a customer who's unique Cloud, if that's a thing. And so you're right, its an incredibly authentic trend compared with some of these things that seem to be hype. I think what's happening though is the definition of what a Multicloud solution is is shifting. So I think we start out as you said, with a realization, oh wait a second we're all Multicloud this really is a thing and there's a set of problems to solve. I think you're seeing players get more and more sophisticated in how they solve those problems. And what we're seeing is its solving those problems is not about homogenizing all the Clouds and making them all the same because one of the reasons people are using multiple Clouds is to get to the unique capabilities that's in each Cloud. So I think early on there were some approaches where they said okay well we're gonna put down like a layer across all these Clouds and try to make them all look the same. That doesn't really achieve the point. The point is Google has unique capabilities in Google Cloud, certainly the tenser flow capabilities are one that people point to. AWS has unique capabilities as well and so does Dajour. And so customers wanna access all of that innovation. So that kind of answers your question of why is this relationship important to us, its for us to meet our customers needs, we need to have great relationships, partnerships, and integrations with the Clouds that are important to our customers. >> Which is all the Clouds. >> And we know that Google Cloud is important. >> Well not just Google Cloud, which I think in this relationship's got my attention because you're creating a deep relationship with them on a development side. Providing your expertise on the network and other area's you're experts at but you also have to work with other Clouds because, >> That's right we do. >> You're connecting Clouds, that's the-- >> And in fact we do. I mean we have, solutions for Hybrid with AWS and Dejour already launched in the marketplace. So we work with all of them, and what our roll, we see really is to make this simpler for our customers. So there are things like networking and security, application performance management with things like AppDynamics as well as some aspects of management that our customers consistently tell us can you just make this the same? Like these are not the area's of differentiation or unique capabilities. These are area's of friction and complexity and if you can give me a networking framework, whether its SD-WAN or ACI Anywhere that helps me connect those Clouds and manage policy in a consistent way or you can give me application performance the same over these things or security the same over these things, that's gonna make my life easier its gonna be lower friction and I'm expecting it, since your Cisco, you'll be able to integrate with my own Prime environment. >> Yeah, so then we went from hard to simple and easy, is a good business model. >> Kip: Absolutely. >> You guys have done that in the past and you certainly have the, from routing, everything up to switches and storage. KD, but talk about the complexity, because this is where it sounds complex on paper but when you actually unpack the technologies involved, you know in different Cloud suppliers, different technologies and tools. Throw in open sources into the mix is even more complex. So Multicloud, although sounds like a simple reality, the complexities pretty significant. Can you just share your thoughts on that? >> It is, and that's what we excel. We excel, I think complexity and distilling it down and making it simple. One other thing that we've done is, because each Cloud is unique and brings some unique capabilities, we've worked with those vendors along those dimension's that they're really really passionate about and strong end. So for example, with Google we've worked on the container front. They are, maybe one of the pioneers in that space, they've certainly delivered a lot of technologies into that domain. We've worked with them on the Kubeflow front on the AI front, in fact we are one of the biggest contributors to the open source projects on Kubeflow. And we've taken those technologies and then created a simple way for enterprise IT to consume them. So what we've done with Anthos, with Google, takes those technologies, takes our networking constructs, whether its ACI Anywhere, whether its other networking pieces on different parts of it, whether its SD-WAN and so forth. And it creates that environment which makes an enterprise IT feel comfortable with embracing these technologies. >> You said you're contributing to Kubeflow. A lot of people don't look at Cisco and would instantly come to the reaction that you guys are heavily contributing into open source. Can you just share, you know, the level of commitment you guys are making to open source? Just get that out there, and why? Why are you doing it? >> Yeah. For us, some of these technologies are really in need for incubation and nurturing, right? So Kubeflow is early, its really promising technology. People, in fact there's a lot of buzz about AI-- >> In your contributing to Kubeflow, significantly? >> Yes, yeah. >> Cisco? >> We're number three contributor actually. Behind Google. >> Okay so you're up there? You're up at the top of the list? >> Yeah one of the top three. >> Top of the list. >> And why? Is this getting more collaborative? More Multicloud fabric-- >> Well I mean, again it comes back to our customers. We think Kubeflow is a really interesting framework for AI and ML and we've seen our customers that workload type is becoming more and more important to them. So we're supporting that because its something we think will help our customers. In fact, Kubeflow figures into how we think about Hybrid and Multicloud with Google and the Anthos system in terms of giving customers the ability to run those workloads in Google Cloud with TPU's or on-prem with some of the incredible appliances that we've delivered in the data centers using GPU's to accelerate these workings. >> And it also certainly is compatible with the whole Multicloud mission as well-- >> Exactly, yeah. >> That's right. >> So you'll see us, we're committed to open source but that commitment comes through the lens of what we think our customers need and want. So it really again it comes back to the customer for us, and so you'll see us very active in open source areas. Sometimes, I think to your point, we should be louder about that. Talk more about that but we're really there to help our customers. DevNet, DevNet Create that Susie Wee's been working on has been a great success. I mean we've witnessed it first hand, seeing it at the Cisco Live packed house. >> In Barcelona. >> You've got developers developing on the network its a really big shift. >> Yeah absolutely. >> That's a positive shift. >> Well its a huge shift, I think its natural as you see Cisco shifting more and more towards software you see much much more developer engagement and we're thrilled with the way DevNet has grown. >> Yeah, and networking guys in your target audience gravitates easily to software it seems to be a nice fit. So good stuff there. Third talk track, Hybrid. You guys have deep bench of tech and people on network security, networking security, data center, and all the things involved in the years and years of enterprise evolution. Whether its infrastructure and all the way through the facilities, lot of expertise. Now Hybrid comes onto the scene. Went through the little hype cycle, people now get it, you gotta operate across Clouds on-prem to the Cloud and now multiple Clouds so what's the current state of Cisco-Google relationship with Hybrid? How is that fitting in, Google Next and beyond? >> So let me tease that in the context of some history, right? So if we go back, say 10 years, virtualization was the bad word of the day. Things were getting virtualized. We created the best data center infrastructure for virtualization in our UCS platforms. Completely programmable infrastructure's code, a very programmable environment that can back a lot of density of virtual machines, right? Roll forward three or four years, storage and compute were getting unwieldily. There was complexity there to be solved. We created the category of converge infrastructure, became the leader of that category whether we work with DMC and other players. Roll forward another four or five years we got into the hyper conversion infrastructure space with the most performant ACI appliance on the market anywhere. And most performant, most consistent, deeply engineered across all the stacks. Can took that complexity, took our learnings and DNA networking and married it together to create something unique for the industry. Now you think, do other domains come together? Now its the Cloud and on-prem. And if that comes together we see similar kinds of complexity. Complexity in security, complexity in networking, complexity in policy and enforcement across layers. Complexity, frankly in management, and how do you make that management much more simple and consumerized? We're taking that complexity and distilling it down into developing a very simple appliance. So what we're trying to deliver to the customer is a simple appliance that they can stand and procure and set up much in the way that they're used to but now the appliance is scale out. Its much more Cloud like. Its managed from the Cloud. So its got that consumer modern feel to it. Now you can deliver on this a container environment, a container development environment, for your developer stakeholders. You can deliver security that's plumed through and across multiple layers, networking that's plumed through and across multiple layers, at the end of the day we've taken those boundaries between Cloud and data center and blown them away. >> And you've merged operational constructs of the old data center operations to Cloud like operations, >> Yeah. >> Everything's just a service, you got Microservices coming, so you didn't really lose anything, you'd mentioned democratizing IT earlier, you guys are bringing the HyperFlex to ACI to the table so you now can let customers run, is that right? Am I getting it right? >> That's right. Its all about how do you take new interesting technologies that are developed somewhere, that may have complexity because its open source and exchanging all the time or it may have complexity because it was not been for a different environment, not for the on-prem environment. How do you take that innovation and democratize it so that everybody, all of the 100's of thousands and millions of enterprise customers can use it and feel comfortable using it and feel comfortable actually embracing it in a way that gives them the security, gives them the networking that's needed and gives them a way that they can serve their internal stakeholders very easily. >> Guys thanks for taking the time for this awesome conversation. One final question, gettin you both to weigh in on, here at Google Next 2019, we're in 2019. Cloud's going a whole other level here. What's the most important story that customers should pay attention to with respect to expanding into the Cloud, taking advantage of the growing developer ecosystem as open source continues to go to the next level. What's the most important thing happening around Google Next and the industry with respect to Cloud and for the enterprise? >> Well I think certainly here at Google Next the Google Cloud's Anthos announcement is going to be of tremendous interest to enterprises cause as you said they are extending into the Cloud and this is another great option for enterprises who are looking to do that. >> Yeah and as I look at it suddenly IT has a set of new options. They used to be able to pick networking and compute and storage, now they can pick Kubeflow for AI or they can pick Kubernetes for container development, Anthos for an on-prem version. They're shopping list has suddenly gone up. We're trying to keep that simple and organized for them so that they can pick the best ingredients they can and build the best infrastructure they can, they can do it. >> Guys thanks so much. Kip Compton senior vice president Cloud Platform and Solutions Group and KD vice president of the Data Center compute group for Cisco. Its been exclusive CUBE conversation around the Google-Cisco big news at Google Next 2019 and I'm John Furrier thanks for watching. (upbeat jazz music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo Live Europe, brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Barcelona. This is Cisco Live. I'm Dave a lot with stew Mina, man. And you're watching the Cube. The leader >> in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Dr. Thomas Shearer's here is the chief architect of tle Indus looks onboard and David Cope is back. He's a senior director of marketing development for the Cisco Cloud Platform and Solutions Group. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. Thank you. Thanks. So you're very welcome. So tell Indus. Tell us about Delinda. >> So Telindus, we are actually an integrator, a cloud operator, and a tech company. And we're partnering over the years with Cisco, with all the products that they have notably, and lately we are moving also into the public cloud. We have private cloud offering, but we see our first appetite coming up with our customers in the public cloud, which are heavily regulated industries. And there we are working notably with the team off Dave to have an offering there that enables them to move into the clouds. >> So these guys are a customer or a partner? >> Well, you know, what's special about them. They're actually both. So they're a big customer of Cisco offerings, Cloud Center and other offerings. The Cisco Container Platform. But they also use those to provide services to their customers. Expect so there are a great sounding board about what the market needs and how our products are working. >> So Thomas telling has been around since. If I saw right. Nineteen seventy nine. So you know, we weren't talking multi cloud back then, but it is a big discussion point here at the show. You said private public, you're using Cloud Center, maybe explain to us what multi cloud means to you and your customers today. >> I would say most customers that we have a large organizations we manage the IT infrastructure. We're also doing integration projects, but those customers they are normally not really technology companies, you know, they are searching to work with us because we deal with the good part off their IT operations. So at these companies they come from a private infrastructure, they have there these days. They're VMWare installation their private clouds and I think also, it will stay like this for for a good amount of time. So there's no good reason to just go into the cloud because it's fancy or because there is something that you cannot have certainly there is. But that's stable progress that they are following. So what we need is actually to catch the low hanging fruits that exist in a public cloud for our customers. But in such a way that it satisfies their day today IT operations and sometimes it's our IT operations who is doing that since we are managing this. So for us, actually, hyper cloud, to say short, is actually the standard, or multicloud. >> So I wonder we're almost two years into GDP, are one year into the owner's finds. How has GDP are affected? You and your customers and What's it like out there these days? >> GDPR is for me not the main reason for public, private, multicloud installations for us and that involves GDPR is the regulation that we are in, so our customers are notably from the financial sector, and they're very strict on conservative security. rules for good because their main business is they're selling trust. There is not much more business where you trust that much than a bank. They know everything about you, and that's something they cannot sacrifice. Now, in Europe, we have the advantage. Data is that strict regulation which puts kind of standards. And that involves obviously also the GDPR thing. But if I look into that standards, that regulation imposes its very technical, they say. For example, please make sure if you move into the clouds then avoid a lock-in, be confident on what will be your exit cost. What will be your transition cost, and don't get married to anyone. And that's where Dave's team comes into the game because that they provide that solution, actually. >> I mean, that's music to your ears, I would think. I mean, I have to be honest. If I were a public cloud provider, I'd say no, don't do multi cloud. We have one cloud, does it all, But no customer speaks like that. >> You're right. And I think to me what I love about Linda's in the way they use the product is they work in such a highly regulated environment, where policies managing common policies across very different environments becomes critical. So how do I manage access control and security profiles and placement policies all across very different multiplied environments? That's hard, and that's been one of the cornerstones that we've focused on in Cloud Centre. >> Yeah, so look, double click on that. We're talking Teo, a guest earlier, and I was asking them, sort of poking it. There's >> a lot of people who want that business because it's a huge >> business opportunity. It's, um, some big, well established companies. Cisco's coming at it from a position of strength, which course? Network, But I'll ask you the same question. What gives you confidence that Cisco is in the best position for customers? Two urn, right? Tio manage their multi cloud data environment? >> I think it's I think it's a great question. I mean, for my perspective and I love our customers perspective. But if you think about Cisco's heritage around the network and security, I think most people would agree. They're very strong there. It's a very natural extension to have Cisco be a leader and multicloud because after all, it's how do I securely connect very diverse environments together. And now a little further. Now, how do I help customers manage workloads, whether they be existing or new cloud native workloads, So we find it's a very natural extension to our core strength and through both development and acquisition Cisco's got a very, very broad and deep portfolio to do that. >>So your thoughts on that? >> Yes, Cisco is coming from a network in history. But if your now look into the components there is, actually, yeah, the Networking Foundation, there is CUCS, which we have, for example, in our infrastructure, there is hyperflex there are then solutions like CCP that you can run a DevOps organization can combine it with Cloud Center to make it hybrid. And just today I learned a new thing, which is Kubeflow. I just recognized Cisco is the first one that is coming up with a platform as a service enabled Private Cloud. So if you go private Cloud usually talk about running VM's. But now with With With a CCP and it's open source projects Kubeflow which I think will be very interesting to see in conjunction with CCPN I heard that it's going to happen. You're actually Cisco is the first one delivering such a solution to the markets. So it's growth that just have >> a thing for the cnc es eso que >> bernetti slow way Don't have to send a cease and desist letter, right? >> CCP that Francisco Container platform Ryan out sad Some while ago on Prim Cooper. Nettie Stack. Right. >> So, Thomas, you know, with the update on Cloud Center suite now containerized, You got micro services. It's built with communities underneath and using cube flow. I'm guessing that's meaningful to you. There's a lot of things in this announcement that it's like, Okay, it sounds good, but in the real world, you know what? What do you super excited for? The container ization? You know, I would think things like the action orchestrator and the cost Optimizer would have value, but, you know, police tell us yourself >> The CloudCenter was already valuable before, you know, we a did investigation about what kind of cloud brokering and cloud orchestrations solutions exist back in those days when it was called CliQr CloudCenter and me and my colleagues know that CliQr team back then as well as now at Cisco we appreciated that they they became one family now. For me, CloudCenter fulfills certain requirements that I simply have to fulfill for our customer. And it's a mandatory effect that I have to feel for them, like being able to ensure and guarantee portability. Implementing policies, segregation of duties were necessary, things like that. I have to say now that it becomes containerized. That's a lot of ease in managing CloudCenter as a solution by itself, and also you have the flexibility to have it better. Also, migratable. It's an important key point that CloudCloud eyes a non cloud centric product that you can run it on-prem that your orchestration that you don't have to log in on the orchestration there and have it on-prem but now can easily move it on things such a GKE because it's it's a container based solution. But I think also there's a SaaS option available so you can just subscribe to it. So you have full range of flexibilities so that a day to day management work flow engine doesn't become a day to day management thing by itself. >> So I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of your environment around since nineteen seventy nine. So you must have a lot of a lot of stuff, a lot of it that you've developed over the years. But you mentioned that you're starting to look a public clouds. You just mentioned your customer base, largely financial services. So they're highly regulated and maybe a little nervous about the cloud. But so paint a picture of your Maybe not for certain workloads. Paint a picture of your environment tunnel where you want to go from. From an architecture and an infrastructure perspective. >> We have our own what we call private managed cloud. That's a product we call U-flex which is  FlexPod reference architecture that's Cisco was networking NetApp storage. Cisco UCS in conjunction with the ember, as a compute. This we use since many years and as I already have said, the regulated market started opening up towards public cloud. So what does it mean? European Banking Authority. So EBA, who's the umbrella organization on European level. They send out a recommendation. Dear countries, please, your financial institution. If they go into the cloud that have to do ABC. The countries I have put in place those regulations they have put in place those controls and for them, they are mostly now in that let's investigate what its influence in the public they come from their private infrastructure. They are in our infrastructure, which is like private infrastructure virtualized and managed by us, mainly VM based. And now the news things on top that they investigate are things like big data, artificial intelligence and things like that which you mostly don't have in private infrastructure. So in that combination is what we have to provide to our customers but their mostly in and investigative mode. >> and okay. And and Cisco is your policy engine management engine across all those clouds, is that right? >> Yes we are able to manage those workloards with CloudCenter. Sometimes it depends also on the operating model. The customer himself is the one using CloudCenter, you know, so it depends, since we are in integrator, cloud operator and also offer our services in the public cloud. It's always the question about who has to manage what. >> One of the things, if I could just add on that we see people providing our products as a service. We're just talking about Kubernetes. Customers today are starting to move Kubernetes just from being like development now into production. And what we're seeing is that these new Kubernetes based applications have non containerized dependencies reach out to another traditional app, reach out to PaaS, a database. And what we try to do is to say, how do you give your customers the ability to get the new and the old working together? Because it'll be that way for quite some time. And that's a part of sort of the new cloud center capabilities also. >> That's that's a valid reason. So you have those legacy services and you don't want just to You cannot just replace them now. Now let's go all in. Let's be cloud native. So you have always thes interoperability things to handle and yeah, that's true. Actually, you can build quite some migration path using containerization. >> Yeah, I mean, you can't customer can't just over rotate to all the new fun buzz words. They got a business to run. Yeah, so this >> And how do I apply security policies and access control and to this very mixed environment now, common policies and that becomes challenging. >> But it's also part of our business. Yes, there have there, for example, financial institution than not a nineteen company. That's where we come in as a for Vita Toe. It's such an industry daddy, via highly value the partnership with Cisco Heavy Cat build new services together. We had that early adopters program, for example, regarding CCP. So Cisco is bringing a service provider into the loop to build what's just right for the customer for them on their behalf. Yes, you describe that is very challenging, is it's In some cases, it's chaos. But that's the opportunity I heard this morning that you guys are going after pretty hard. >> No, it's right. And you've got one set of desires for developers, but now we move into production. Now I t cops gets involved, the sea so gets involved. And how do we have then well thought out integrations into security and network management? Those air all of the things that we're trying to really focus on. >> Well, anywhere the definite zone. So you you were surrounded by infrastructures code. Is there a fits and club? Guys, Thanks so much for coming to Cuba and telling your story. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Enjoyed. Thank you. Alright, Keep it right there, buddy. Stupid him and Dave. Alon. Today we're live from Cisco Live Barcelona. You watching the cube right back?