>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas. It's The Cube. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> And the band played on. You might be able to hear the guitar player off in the distance. It's that time of day here at Dell EMC World 2017, along with John Furrier. I'm John Walls. Glad to have you here on The Cube. We are officially, John and I now, Node-O-Ramas. (laughing) We have joined the blue button club. We'll explain that in just a little bit. Tell you what it's all about. Here with me to do that is Armughan Ahmad, who is the SVP of Blueprint Solutions and Alliances of Dell EMC. Just had a launch. >> Yeah. Had to be one of the two. And Brian Payne who is the VP of Product Management in the server division at Dell EMC. Brian, thank you for being with us. >> Absolutely. Thanks for having me >> All right, so first off, let's talk 14G. Big server news, you guys make. I'm sure that's really had a lot of your attention this week. A lot of people want to know, Brian, what's up? Tell me about the excitement you generate with that announcement. >> Absolutely, it's generated a ton of excitement and it's not just been this week. It's been a lot of build up for driving a new generation of servers into the market. We start with what our customers are telling us that they're interested in, and with this generation we focused on the typical things you would expect, like how can we run workloads more effectively than the current generation of technology. However, as we look into the landscape as people drive digital transformation, the workloads are changing, right? There are a lot of new workloads. There's a lot of new technology that our customers need to sort out and figure out, where do I apply where in order to run things more effectively? And so we're focused on that in terms of delivering portfolio breadth so that our customers will have the capability when they need it to run their applications well. So that's one thing that is exciting and new. But aside from that, which is running our customers' applications, we're also focused on how can we make our customers more agile and effective through the automation tools that we've designed into this generation of servers? And then, lastly, security has been a big focus. And it's not bolted on security; it's integrated security built into the server throughout the supply chain and throughout the life cycle of the server. Those are the big things that have resonated with our customers as we've announced the next generation of servers. >> I was kind of kidding on the top there talking about the Node-O-Rama buttons. Both of you are wearing yours. So tell us what is that all about? What's Node-O-Rama going on there? >> So Janet Moore, who's actually in our product marketing group, came up with Node-O-Rama because as we were getting ready to launch 14G, awesome servers, Poweredge 14 Generation, we wanted to be ready for VSAN ready nodes 'cause customers really wanted to take storage and take that software-defined storage and ensuring when you take software-defined storage you want to really run it on a server platform to drive the next generation of IT transformation and digital transformation eventually. But we also wanted to the same thing with Microsoft Spaces Direct. We also wanted to do the same thing with our ScaleIO, software-defined scale out storage capability. But then not just stop there. We also have SAP HANA ready node, which is our SAP HANA for commercial and midsize customers. So that's where Node-O-Rama really came in. We've got a lot of nodes. So right now we're launching our Microsoft Spaces Direct ready node that got launched on Monday. So we're totally excited. We have the most ready nodes in the industry right now. >> So we were talking in our intro this morning on our other set, David Floyer, analyst at Wikibon, and Keith Townsend, another analyst. We were kind of looking at this announcement here. The big takeaways were really, really strong hyper-converged ACI message. Seeing that across the board. VMware is the glue layer between all this. And then finally, reality of hybrid cloud. So we were just talking about the ready systems. How does this all work? Because now, those are three nice areas developing. How does Node-O-Rama fit in that? How should they think about ready nodes, the context of that scene? >> Well, one thing that I mentioned a moment ago is just this idea of complexity that customers are dealing with. We still have, through our ready systems, we're able to offer simplicity for customers that want to buy a full system-level solution, but not everyone is, for a variety of reason, is ready to do that. However, they're left with saying, "Okay, I can buy servers from Dell, Poweredge Servers "and go run my workload, "but what do I pick? "I want to move to a software-defined storage. "I want to run something like SAP HANA. "Can somebody simplify that process for me?" And that's where ready nodes come in. It really streamlines the selection of technology where we've done the testing. We've done the validation to figure out what's going to run well and then we can point customers in that direction. And we can also streamline the services, the service offering around that. So it's really about making it simpler for out customers throughout the lifecycle of picking the technology and then deploying and managing. >> What about operational support? Efficiency, ease of use there? What's your position on that? >> Absolutely, operational support is streamlined and then if you have an issue with a ready node and you call up Dell services, they're going to immediately recognize what you have and be able to get you back up and running and working more effectively, more quickly. >> So where's the Nexus here, alliances and then what you're doing there? How's that coming together? >> Yes, so I lead our solutions business unit that is powered by our technology alliance partners, so VMware VSAN ready node, Microsoft Spaces Direct ready node. ScaleIO happens to be our own IP, so that's a ready node, and then SAP. So those are the alliance partnerships. And then what my group does is we work very close with Brian Payne and Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, whose at GM, for our server division, and Robbie Penaganti. That server division, it's all about the server right in the center of it so if you are going to drive a software-defined data center, you have to get a server right in the middle and make sure that server's not only scalable, it's intelligent, but it's also secure. So what we do is we actually take that server that's ready from their side and they certify it. We then take that in my group. We validate it, we make sure that the firmware that needs to be changed, the buyout that needs to be changed. The service capability, the sales enablement that we have to put out there. So it becomes a ready node, right? >> So tell me about the old days. I'm just kind of going, "Wow! "That sounds really easy" but it's not. They, in essence, have to build a server that's going to be ready for whatever composed solution you put together, whether it's VMware, Edge, or whatever. >> Armughan: Yeah. >> They have to then make the enablement happen. >> Armughan: Yeah. >> So in the old days, what was it like? Compare and contrast what it was in the old days. Go to the server guy and say, "I need these servers to support this, this and this" and then they go do it. >> Brian: Yeah. >> And months later. Take us through why is this different for the customer? >> It actually starts very early in the process as we look at the technology landscape, working with Armughan's team to figure out what technologies are going to change and transform the efficiency of how we run applications. It starts with defining the servers arm-in-arm with the team that's responsible for delivering those applications, figuring out what's going to work, develop it, and then bring it to market. And then it's really about streamlining that selection process for our customers. How can we make it easy for them to pick the right things and then quickly procure that and deploy that in their environment and start getting the business results that they're after? >> So time to market for the solution is optimized in that scenario? >> Brian: Oh yeah. >> You call in for the server, 14G. (finger snap) You have it all prepared, ready for you to go. >> So John, in the past, let's go back a few years, right? Our 13G servers at that time, or any other servers in the industry, were really developed for multi-workloads. They weren't developed for specific workloads. What we have now done at Dell EMC, and this is the synergy that Marius was talking about earlier that you were mentioning, which is we take our server group, we work hand-in-hand in our server group right up front, so that's 14G, as our 14th generation of Poweredge servers were being designed, Brian Payne and I, and our teams work very close together to say, "Okay, what are the top workload orientations "that we want to go after?" So software-defined storage, definitely top priority. Now, who should we be working with? VMware VSAN, of course. Microsoft Hyper-v Spaces Direct. Our ScaleIO business, because we know a lot of the customers want to do that. But then, in addition to that, we said, "Okay, ready nodes is good. "That's fantastic." But we know customers go from build to buy continue. So they'll be customers who would want SAP workload orientation, they would want Oracle workload orientation. They want Sequel workload orientation. But then those are your traditional apps. But now you're moving into the next generation apps of machine learning, AI, which is starting with high-due clusters and analytics clusters. So our partnership between server product group and our solutions product group. My product group does not exist without server product group. We have to ensure, and by the way, same thing goes for storage product group, our data protection product group, and our networking product group, as well as our CI and ACI product group. What we do is we, essentially, work right up front and make sure that that workload orientation is start through right in the beginning. >> John: What's the customer reaction? >> You want to take that. >> Yeah, sure, I was just going to add one piece and I'll address that. Conversely, the server isn't going to do anything without the application running on top of it. So that's where we go hand-in-glove here. Customers are very pleased with it. The adoption rates have been very strong of what's been in the market and then as we're bringing a breath of fresh air with the next generation technology, customers are very eager to begin adopting. >> John: What's the reaction to this announcement because the 14G had the fanfare yesterday when it was talked about, but what is the reaction to the 14G and the ready server nodes now? >> I'll give you an example, first of all, on our revenue growth. So we actually picked some major workload so VSAN ready node. We'd announced that about six months ago and our VSAN ready node business is through the roof right now on 13G. 14G launches as soon as the summer. Ashley Gorakhpurwalla mentioned on stage sometime this summer. As soon as that launches, we will be ready with 14G. But right now we have ready nodes already in the market on our 13th generation platforms. And as soon as we started launching these solutions we're finding that our customers, more importantly our channel partners as well, because they find that it's much easier, John, for them to deploy that. We're also seeing that same 13G to now 14G migration related to high-performance computing. A lot of customers are taking that on and the growth has been really fabulous. >> Yeah, I think if you rewind the clock before ready nodes and say, "What was the world like?" We had customers that were deploying and trying to deploy things like VSAN or other software-defined storage, and they were running into problems and us, VMware, we're trying to help customers navigate that, but what we found was there were dependencies in that stack in the underlying infrastructure, and so the ready nodes really came out of that how can we improve that customer experience and make sure that what we deliver is going to be trusted and reliable. >> And shipping around the summer, which is right around the corner. >> That is 14G is going to ship but right at the same time, our ready nodes for VSAN ready node and Microsoft Spaces Direct ready node and ScaleIO ready node will ship at the exact same time 14G Poweredge servers ship, right? But keep in mind, we're already selling all of the 13G-based platforms for ready nodes, ready bundles, and ready systems. >> John: I tell you, just knowing the channel partners, they're going to love this. >> Oh yeah. >> Because it's so peaked and not a lot of training involved and they can pick up the training and services (finger snap) right out of the gate, target workloads, good engagement of customers. Makes a lot of sense. Hangs together in my mind. Congratulations. >> Brian: Thank you. >> All right, so Node-O-Rama, this is the button here. >> Armughan: It's right here. >> Check out the ready nodes. It just sounds great. Ready, alert, fire jets go. (laughter) Take off in the aircraft carrier. >> There is nothing like being an honorary Node-O-Rama. So thank you very much for the pleasure. >> Getting ready to Rama. >> Always good seeing you guys. >> Thanks for being with us. >> Armughan: Thank you. >> Back with more coming up here. Dell EMC World 2017 Live from Las Vegas. You're watching The Cube. (techno music)