>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Well, good afternoon, or good evening if you're watching back in the Eastern Time Zone. Good to have you here live as theCUBE continues our coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm John Walls, along with Stu Miniman and we now welcome Jeff Boudreau, who's the president and GM of storage at Dell EMC. >> Thank you! >> John: Jeff, good to see you. >> Good to see you guys, thank you for having me. >> Alright, it's been like a solid six hours since you launched your new product. >> That's right. >> The PowerMax. >> What's been, I'm curious, what's been the reaction and what do people want to know from you when they get a little face time? >> Well, the big things I have is one, the reaction's been fantastic since we launched this morning. Obviously Jeff Clarke on stage with my good friend Bob Decrescenzo, PowerMax Bob, now known and understood, and Bob did a great job today announcing the product. The feedback has been phenomenal. People really want to understand, I kind of frame it as, we talk about the future of enterprise storage, and I kind of put some bold statements out there saying it's the fastest storage array, it's the most intelligent storage array, and it's the most resilient storage array in the market today. And I kind of go through that, and a lot of people want to understand a lot around what we've done around NVME as an interface. NVME in the protocol stack and also with the media itself and understand that and truly unleashing the power of doing what I would call NVME right. As you kind of think about where we are and where we want to go with storage class memory, and making sure you unleash the whole value, so that's a big one customers talk to me about. The other big one is around a lot of the ML in the AI. So, we've done a lot of great work. The team's done an amazing job with the OS and the PowerMax operating system, and we do a lot of work with the application hinting, if you will. So we have some technology that we built that actually understands the applications, almost like putting a fingerprint on it, if you will. And then we have algorithms and heuristics within the array that understands the pattern recognition across that and that really understands that. So last year I talked a lot about autonomous storage, this is the realest first step of actually trying to be truly autonomous storage. >> Yeah, Jeff, it's really interesting. The people that have watched the storage industry, there's certain things that have kind of, this is where we are. SCSI has been with us for-- >> Ever. >> Longer than my career. >> Jeff: Mine too. >> You look at NVME and storage class memory and we're starting to get beyond that. I talked with Adnan earlier and saying intelligent storage is something that I've seen lots of product announcements over the other top two intelligent storage! >> Yeah. >> But when you talk about billions of decisions being made by arrays underneath, bring us inside the product team a little bit and how much effort goes into this and the effort. >> The team, number one, is a phenomenal team. I think they're world-class in everything they do and all the products they build, it's been phenomenal. And they've done a ton of work underneath around the algorithms and heuristics. I mean, we've been doing, if you think of our install base and how much data that we store, protect, and secure, at the end of the day we do more than anybody else. So the team's done a lot of work around our data scientists and our engineers have done a lot of work to understand the I/O patterns, heuristics off the drives, the telemetry streams, and then actually build the algorithms to really make sense of that data and provide useful insights. So, it's not easy, to your point, it's a lot of great work by a great team. So, Adnan, I'm glad you had him, because he's one of the key guys to make sure that it all works and comes together. And then, understand the use case of that application tied back to the system is where the magic happens, really connecting that and really putting that forward. >> You know, we talk about faster, and you probably can, maybe you can hear the music, it's got louder. >> It's loud. >> If not faster. How so, and what was your measurement for success there? How did you say, okay, this is the goal, this is what we're shooting for, or did you take technology and say, what can we squeeze out of this? >> Well, it's kind of funny, when we built the architecture, we actually do a lot of prototyping and we do a, actually we do a lot of paperwork up front as we understand the customer requirements, the use cases we're trying to drive, we actually write a lot of that down on paper and say okay, what do we need to do to hit that market need? And then we look at what we need to do from a hardware and software standpoint as we architect the system. And that's what the team really did here. So, what we're looking at is what the customers are looking at, not only for today, but into the future, so as you think about where we are today, and you heard Michael talk about 2020, I've actually been talking a lot about 2030. If you think about IoT, you think about AI, and machine learning and all the sensa data, structured and unstructured, data's exploding. And at the end of the day is, how is our customers going to, it's one thing to store and protect and secure that data, we got to do a lot more than that. And this goes back to how do we make, get in real-time, make it accessible, but also extract the value of that data to provide useful insights back to our customers. They can provide them to their customers, either for better business decisions or more value, or what have you. And that's really where the power comes from. So I've been focusing a lot on the data, and to me it's really about the data, the data explosion that's coming. The customers really understand how big that's going to be, and the period of time, and so what we worked on today, focused on what we're trying to do tomorrow, we want to make sure that we have a clear path to help our customers on that journey. So, going back to some of the performance characteristics that we looked at is not only what we model for today, making sure that we're the best in the industry, best in the market, we also want to look forward saying okay, as data explodes over the next few years, can this technology evolve and support that growth and that data? And a lot of it's going to go back to the machine learning and AI because there's going to be a lot of compute required to actually do a lot of that and provide that intelligence going back. So some big claims I think probably the team talked to you about today, we're 2x anybody in the industry bar-none on this base, so it's ten million IOPS on an 8,000, you're talking 150 gigabytes per second for bandwidth. I mean just the latency and the performance is just phenomenal in its box and it's got so much horsepower behind it. And we also did some creative things around efficiency, as hopefully Adnan and them talked to you guys about it, but we did inline denuke, inline compression, we offload that engine so that way we could have no impact on the data services and really offload on the card, so we don't impact performance for our customers. >> Yeah, Jeff, loved that discussion of data, I think there's been a great trend the last few years talking, it's not just about storing, whether it's structured, unstructured, block, file, object, it's about how businesses can leverage that data, get it in the business. Big in the themes, the keynotes, IT and business, we really really bring it together, maybe look at your storage portfolio, how is that transforming businesses? How is the, not just storage, but data impacting what's going on? >> I mean, to me data is the precious metal, it's the crucial asset, right? You can debate if it's the most important asset for our customers, between their people and their data, you can debate. For me, if you step back, data's the most crucial asset they have, so you've got to treat it as such. To me, it's about what can we do to unleash the power of that data to enable them to be more successful? And so, I think you're dead on, it's not just about infrastructure. Infrastructure's interesting, it's cool, it's modern, we have to make sure that we enable through that way, but it's really about having a data strategy and how they want to do it. So, if you think about having the right data in the right place at the right SLA, this thing's around how you manage the mobility, the infrastructure support and all of the things that you would do to drive that, and I think that's critical. So, we want to make sure we as Dell Technologies and we as Dell EMC, and me as the storage guy, make sure that we unleash the value of that data to enable our customers to make better business decisions to add more value to their businesses, and that's what we're driving, and that's the whole strategy of what we're working on. >> All right, Jeff, talking about PowerMax, >> Jeff: Yeah. >> I've talked to the team about the X2, >> Jeff: Awesome. >> announcement, step back for a second, give us a snapshot of what's happening with the storage portfolio, and you came from what I guess we would call the legacy EMC side. >> Correct. >> Now that we've had more than a year under our belts, between the company together, give us that update on the portfolio. >> Yeah, so we still believe in the power of the portfolio and no ifs, ands, or buts, so I'm not going to shy away from that, in regards to that, brings us a lot of strengths, but it also provides some weaknesses in regards to complexity. And the big thing I think Michael talked about a year ago is we're going to leave no customer behind, and we're completely living up to that. So, you've seen launches recently on Unity, you've seen launches recently on SC, you've seen launches recently on X2 and what have you, and we're going to continue to do that because our customers, we have a large and loyal install base of legacy Dell or legacy EMC customers, which are obviously the most important people, direct and indirect sellers that have some biases or confidence in certain things, and we want to make sure we take care of them. To be clear, simplification is part of our strategy and it will be. So, going from a lot of brands to less than brands, we're absolutely going to do it, and I'm happy to share that in more detail when we have more detail. But we are working through that. But my commitment to the customer is going back to Michael's point, is really two-fold, one is on the data migration and the data mobility, it will be native and it will be seamless to move data from point A to point B. So, I want to be clear, everything will have a next gen, it might not be the same brand or tattoo that they were used to before, it will be a system that meets the market need, the customer requirements and the architecture and the future functions to support that. We'll provide the mobility natively. In addition to that we're going to provide our Loyalty Programs, so not only on the technology side we'll make sure that they're whole, but on the Loyalty Program, so our investment protection that our customers want, need, and demand, and deserve, we're going to provide that as well. So we're going to take care of them on the technology side, but we're also going to take care of them on the business side. But, like I said, I'll share more details when we're here, probably more so next year. >> Right. (laughing) Simple, predictable, profitable, right? >> That's right. >> Keep it simple. >> It's really that simple. >> That's a good formula. Jeff, thanks for being with us. We appreciate the time. >> Awesome, thank you for having me. >> Jeff Boudreau from Storage at Dell EMC. Back with more and we are live here in the Sands at Dell Technologies World 2018. (upbeat music)

Live from Las Vegas, It's the Cube. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners (techno music) >> Welcome back to the Cube. We are live on Day 2 in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center. Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and we are welcoming to the Cube, for the first time, distinguished engineer and VMAX Product Group CTO, Adnan Sahin. Adnan, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thank you, great to be here. >> So, big announcements going on at the event this week. Talk to us about the modern data center. Saw that press release this morning. What does the modern data center, how does Dell Technologies define it? And how are you seeing and helping customers implement it? >> Again, it goes into, like when you have, are running an application you need compute, storage and network so that really had to have a modern infrastructure to cover all those bases. So, that's really during the Keynote we heard today from Jeff Clark on our compute capabilities new servers as well as new storage offering from Dell EMC, the PowerMax >> All right, Adnan, PowerMAx, let's start there. (Adnan) Yes. So one of the flagship announcements here at this show, building on the VMAX which of course builds on the Symmetrix history. Why don't you give us a little overview and then we'll dig into some questions I have? >> So, yeah, we've been really following the industry trends. So, we introduced VMAX All Flash a couple years back. And then we are also looking at the industry trends and what we realized is that the industry is transitioning in terms of media interface, from SAS connected drives into NVMe and PCIE connected drives. And the main driver for that one is two-fold. One, is reducing the latency. And with NVMe you can get much leaner, softer layers that really gives you lower latency. And the other one is the media transition that changes from a NAM based non-withheld memories technology into newer and emerging low latency, ultra low latency technology. So with NVMe we can get both at the same time. >> All right, so Adnan, you know, we remember back when it was EMC at the time. It came with the Flash Technologies. Everybody's doing Flash. Now anybody in the storage industry, NVMe, NVMe over fabric. Everyone's talking about it. PowerMax Bob, up on stage, Bob DeCrescenzo (Adnan) Correct, yes, yes. Spent many, many years working on this said, there's a big difference between just having it and really being able to utilize it. So, without going too deep, explain to us some architectural things that have to happen, from a hardware and software standpoint to take advantage of this transition. >> Sure, so VMAX and PowerMax is really a scale-out, multi-controller architecture therefore, we need to have persistent storage, accessible through multiple controllers, at least two. So, in order to really be highly resilient and highly available to system, we need multi ported, dual ported drives available to us. One of the things that we spend quite a lot of time is to really make sure that dual ported NVMe drives are ready for our highly demanding, enterprise resilient storage system. So we spend a lot of time improving drive quality as well as our software to handle all the NVMe related concerns. >> So, at the event, the theme, Make It Real, yesterday Michael Dell kicked things off and talked about these four transformative elements where customers need to transform to be successful. Digital, IT, security, workforce. With what you just talked about and the new enhancements some of the technologies, how is that helping customers make their digital transformations effective, so that they can deliver different shades of products. I know you just came from a customer meeting. Maybe an give us an example of what you're seeing applied out there. >> The important thing is the applications. The customers have been databases, many different variants. There's been some traditional databases and new and emerging databases. Main driver is, of course, available to resilience but at the same time operational simplicity because we have simplified our user interface and overall use experience significantly over years. So that with fewer people, they can manage many, many larger capacities of the systems. And then with latency is an important aspect of application experience. If you lower the latency, either through caching or lower latency media, you give better experience to end user and therefore they can do more with what they have as infrastructure. >> Adnan, are there any specific use cases or verticals where you're finding that, especially the NVMe offering is going to be most helpful at day one. >> I think, any traditional application that has like journals that will benefit. But on top of that, if you are running large queries of random IO access storage they will get lower latency out of NVMe based systems. They could be real-time analytics, for example. You can get ultra-low latency from the back hand. And also if you are using some of the database, data warehouse type of application you can get massive band width out of VMAX and PowerMax systems that helps you process more in shorter time. >> So analytics as a use case attach the storages, of course, really interesting one, heavily growing. One of the other interesting things about PowerMax, is I think it was discussed, predictive analytics inside. So, I think back to, I mean, disclosure, I worked at EMC for 10 years. We think of intelligent storage was something we've been talking about for a long time. Explain what's different about this generation of analytics and predictive compared to previous storage innovations. >> Sure, sure. So we have the infrastructure to keep track of work loads as they find address granularity. So, we keep track of access types and access sizes in as small as five megabytes a piece. So in a larger system that could be 40 million data sets for a 200 terabyte system. And once we have data we can analyze and we have some linear regression, time series analysis that we can predict whether an active address space will remain active or whether if a cold address space will remain cold. And based on that we can make decisions. Previously, we were able to make, use those decisions for queuing in hard drives and flash drives. More recently, we are using it for data reduction technologies. For compression, for example, duplication. If data set is highly active, we don't necessarily compress them because they will be updated frequently therefore the CPUs used will not be effective. So then taking to the next level the storage class memory becomes available. We will be able to use the media based on the strengths. So if for storage class memory, low latency, we can place read heavy and write heavy work loads into storage class memory. >> So giving customers, presumably, the ability to take data, use it as a catalyst in many different lines of the business to combine it, recombine it and be able to use the analytics that are built in, it sounds like, to not just get insights they can take action on but actually act on them. (Adnan) Correct. >> Give us an example of a customer that's maybe doing that to be able to deliver a differentiated product or service to their customer. >> So part of the important features that they are introducing is available both in PowerMax and VMAX systems is service levels. So that's very relevant to all or most of our customers because, for example, if you are a service provider, customer service provider, even though all the data resides on very fast NAM flash media they can still provide differentiated performance to their own tenants. For example, if the tenant is paying a certain amount they may get silver or bronze service level. They may no see the full benefit of Flash with that service level but when they upsold into a higher performance level or service level. With a simple change in Unisphere, for example, they can get Flash response time right away. So it's basic changes and simplify their business models makes it more predictable for them. Another one is also the prioritization. They can also set priorities for applications as long as high priority service level gets it is response time, expected target response time everybody will get enjoy low response time. But if the high priority group or application does not meet its targets then we start to increase response time of lower priority applications to give more resources for high priority applications. So that's really a way that customers can capitalize with this feature. >> All right, Adnan, I wonder if you can give us a little bit, dig into NVMe, NMVe over fabric and you talked about storage class memory. Specifically looking at availability, maturity and what kind of pricing considerations for these that we can expect kind of today and the next 12 months. >> So, NVMe as the interface drives themselves, this day they may be at a premium compared to SAS but the expectation when we talk to industry leaders and vendors there will be crossover expected very soon. So that really is the positioning that we just want to be in this market. Get the product out. And then really be ready when that crossover happens. In terms of storage class memory, again, it comes at a premium. But then we, using our intelligence, if we can direct most of the eyeOS to this premium source media then we can let customers enjoy benefits of that extra premium that would endure. They would help to pay but over time, just remember, early days of Flash, when the first Flash came out. It was very expensive at the time but over time it became more and more prevalent. So what our expectation is storage type class of memory, over time will follow similar path. And it will become very possible in the near future that we will see all storage class memory systems coming out of vendors. >> All right, how about the NVMe over Fabric? >> NVMe over Fabrics, we are looking, definitely we have plans for NVMe over Fabrics. Of course, standards are still evolving and also for enterprise customers there's concerns around multi pathing, support and not sure of that. We are working with standards bodies and other vendors on improving that aspect. >> Okay, so there's one thing about this transition that's a little different than most. It has an impact on the application. So where is Dell getting involved or how are you working with your customers? You talked about getting ready for that storage class memory. This is not just, we've been skuzzy for a long time. So, how do we get ready as an industry? What's Dell's positioning in that discussion of applications? >> I mean, Dell seems very so close to participating in standards bodies and with the industry thought leaders on really getting to come up with standard based solutions. I think that is one direction that we are going after with this. >> Anything on the application side, though? Or is that more on the pivotal VM? >> Application side of course, we have VM we have very deep discussions with VM and NVM over fabrics and how we can work with them more efficiently. >> So, Adnan, when we kicked off this segment we talked about it being the first Dell Technologies World. Indicator of the absorption of the EMC federation. Over your shoulder is the Dell EMC Partner Program. What are some of the feedback that you're hearing from partners, technology partners who are collaborating. You mentioned VMWare. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing at the event in terms of what you have announced and how do your partners influence design of these leading technologies? >> There's great excitement. We've been working with them, listening to them, learning from them and I think overall, everybody is excited with the new product. And we are also, as a group very excited with and been working for awhile. And we are happy to be able to release the product today. >> Adnan, one of the other product lines that, there were a bunch announced around the xtrem IO and the X2. Can you just help us make sure we understand positioning today of things like VMAX and PowerMax and the xtremIO Family. >> Each product platform has strengths. If customers are happy with what they are using, they should continue with the same product line. It think that really makes it easier for everyone. Xtreme, I believe, announced a remote application, as well. So, it's great. >> From a foundational perspective, what are these technologies going to be able to do to enable enterprises to start taking advantage and realizing the possibilities of emerging technologies machine learning, artificial intelligence, IOT? >> I think, important part is. If you look at all those things, what is really needed is ultra low latency high band width, capabilities from storage. Because you have massive compute capability sometimes customers use in memory applications as well. And we need to be close to compute as close as possible to memory. It's not always possible but we want to get to be there. We have significant value add to be clear. For example, we have local and remote reapplication capable. If you're running any of those applications in a mission critical in mind. You want to make sure that you have local application capability as well as remote application disaster recovery. Business continues models built around. And what we have with our infrastructure to really give customers that type of mission critical. You can not take in chances in this day and age with these applications. >> Adnan, I got to talk to Jeff Clark, earlier today on the Cube and he talked about the engineering culture. From the EMC side, I'm curious if working with your Dell team, you've got that whole server team. Has that changed some of the processes there? How does that impact the development and the viewpoint of the engineering team? >> There's very clear, much better communication. We're been talking to the server team very easily and very frequently actually. Just to make sure that, for example, we understand their challenges and then type of solace that they come up with on the service side and we can apply on our storage. And the same from our side. We give feedback on our experiences on the storage to them. And not only with the server side but also across different portfolio components in our storage in our business units as well. >> So last question: Customers that are here in the early stages of transformation and are looking for best practices, where do we start? Do we start with transforming IT to make it into a profit center. What are your recommendations? >> Can you repeat? I could not hear the last one. IT? >> Yeah, what are your recommendations for customers that might be at the very beginning of their transformation journey. What do you recommend? Where do they start, in terms of going, 'hey we've got our business leaders, recognize IET should become a part of our business strategy. It shouldn't be a cost center. It should be a profit center." How do you recommend they start these conversations with Dell EMC/ Dell Technologies to get... >> They just need to talk to their representative about business need and application needs. We have a large portfolio of products available to our customers. Again, on the high end there's the resilient storage with more capabilities that might be VMAX. On the mid range it could be either unity or storage center. And on the sever side, again, similar types of options available. They just need to talk about their application needs, virtualization needs, storage needs, hyper converge says traditional lock storage versus file storage connectivity. Those make all the difference and I think our field people have experience in really helping customers out. >> Well, Adnan, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing with us what's new with the technologies. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you. Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are here live Day 2 of Dell Technologies World from Vegas. Stick around. We'll be right back after a short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, it's a beautiful day here in Las Vegas and this is theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman and happy to welcome, fresh off the keynote stage and for the first time on our program Jeff Clark, who is the Vice-Chairman of Products and Operations at Dell Technologies. Jeff, great to see you Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks, Stu. Thanks for having me. >> All right, so first of all Jeff, you know, you'll be a CUBE alum when we finish this, so for our audience that's not familiar-- >> Jeff: Do I get a badge? >> I've got a sticker for you actually. >> A sticker will work. >> Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your background, you've been at Dell for a number of years. You now own really kind of the client and ISG businesses. >> Jeff: Sure. >> Which is a huge chunk of Michael's business. Give us your background. >> I'm an electrical engineer, by training. I went to the University of Texas at San Antonio. Got my double E degree. Out of school went to work for Motorola. And I joined what was PC's Limited when that was the first private name of Dell in 1987. I've been here for 31 years. And I've done a variety of things all on the engineering and product side. I've had the fortunate opportunity, I started in the factory as a process/test/quality/reliability engineer, we were Jacks of many trades at that time. Went to product development in 1989 and have been in that side ever since. I've worked in every kind of product that we had at the core design roles. I got to start a business, one of the funnest things I've ever done. I started the Precision business in 1997 from ground zero, me and a few of our top engineers and building that into the business that it is today. Expanded responsibilities, had a stint of running our enterprise business back in 2002 through 2005. Actually got to work with EMC back then. Dave Donatelli and many others back in the day. And now I lead a combined products and operations organization that has our CSG PC peripheral portfolio and ISG portfolio, our infrastructure products, as well as the fundamental supply chain that runs the company. >> Yeah, so Jeff, you've done it all and you've seen Michael through well, an amazing journey. >> We've worked together for a long time and it's been a heck of a ride. And to be honest, I think the ride's not over and the ride in front of us I think is more exciting than the past 30 years. >> Yeah, as we always say, it's a good thing, nothing's changing. There's nothing new to get those that love technology excited about, right? >> If there's any constant in our industry, and certainly in our company, it is change. And thinking about what's unfolded in my three plus decades at this is amazing to where we are today. But again, the future, as Bob DeCrescenzo said today, wicked cool. >> Wicked cool, absolutely. When you get up to Boston a little bit more, you can get a Boston accent. Yeah, exactly. Jeff, if we look at the Dell Technologies family, client side of the business is about half, the ISG is another 37%, so you know, you own major, major chunk of what's going on inside. Maybe give us a little bit of how you look at this portfolio. Are there interactions between the client side and the enterprise side? You know, we've seen most of the other big tech players that had both, either shed or split or, you know, kept the HPs and the IBMs of the world, no longer have both of those together. >> Yeah, those are interesting thoughts. You know, for us, our customers are asking us to provide a more set of comprehensive solutions. They want more end to end. And I don't see how you provide an end to end solution if you don't have one of the ends. And as trite as that may sound, I think it's the core fabric of what we're doing and certainly the role I have now leading this organization of being able to cultivate and build, I think, the world's leading and innovative PC products and peripherals around them. Same thing on the infrastructure side, where we have the privilege of being a leader in a number of categories. And then beginning to bring them together in new and unique ways. I referenced in my keynote this morning about how new entrants to the workforce are pressuring conventional definitions of how we do work and we deploy technology. So we have leadership, products, and now you capture or able to tie that together with VMware Workspace ONE or an AirWatch or RSA class of products and you begin to modernize the experience. How could you not do that if you're not integrating the pieces? Or a VDI experience where you take a thin client, or VxRail infrastructure, and some VMware Horizon software and build out a solution set. That's what our customers are asking us to do. And I think we're in a very unique position. In fact, I know we are, 'cause no one else has all of what I just described. >> Jeff, there was a main theme you talked about in your keynote, that IT can drive and change business and it resonated from what I'm hearing with customers. But if you dial back a few years ago, it was IT wasn't getting it done, IT wasn't listening to the business, we had Stealth IT. Why are things different now? What's the role of IT going forward? And how does Dell fit into that big picture? >> You know, Michael touched on it in his opening yesterday about IT and business have become much much more closely integrated to compete in this modern world. And I suspect some of this goes back to we've always thought of IT as a cost center, OPEX. Yet, over the past decade, we've seen some fundamental disruption of business that has been fundamentally IT-led. New technology-led. New business models that have been fueled by new technology. I think that modernization, whether it's modernization of applications, taking advantage of information at your disposal and turning that into useful insights to make better business decisions, is a catalyst for a reframing, if you will, of what IT does. And the role of IT in a business, and a role that IT can help companies be more competitive, or at a minimum, help them not get disrupted by someone who's doing it, as well. So I think that's what's changing and I think you're seeing companies embrace that. And as soon as you do, you begin to I think challenge what have you invested in, where are you going, how am I taking advantage of some of the new trends that I outlined maybe this morning. And it gets I think a pretty interesting time in front of us. >> Yeah, you know, you actually went through immersive and collaborative computing, IOT, multi-clouded options, offer to find anything and AI and ML. So a lot of new things. One area I'd like to touch on, we heard some great side from Allison Dew earlier this week. It's great when we have the new tools and the new technology but sometimes we wonder how does adoption go and how does that impact productivity and people's engagement? And I'm curious how we help the enterprise and help the client side, not just do something new but be more productive and move their business forward. >> Look, if start with the client side, I think it's pretty easy to think about productivity. Particularly if you believe this boundary between work and the workplace is fundamentally changed and think about where people do work. You're actually getting a much more productive workforce by allowing people to work when the want to work, where they want to work. And that traditional boundary of eight to five, whatever it might be, physically in the office. You now have access to all 168 hours in a week and people want to work when they want to work. And we find that the work more, particularly if you put technology in their hand that makes them more productive and they have access to what they need to do their job. You cast that forward into the enterprise and I think, look, at some level IT is hard and we have a huge role in making it much easier. How to simplify. How to make it more automated so IT practitioners can actually migrate to how do I configure this LAN? How do I set up this server? And interesting things and still important things, but can migrate to how do I take this data and turn it into information that helps my business unit, my company win. That's where I think, again, I think this migrates, too and we play a huge role in helping that. >> Yeah, there's a theme that, another thing came up in the keynote, data really at the center of everything and not just talking about storage, but you had McClaren up on stage talking about that. How do you see the role of data changing? How do we capture for companies? How valued data is? >> A tie back to Michael's opening, he talked about data being, if you will, the rocket fuel for this rocket change and digitization of our world, the digital transformation that's underway. And between Michael, Pat, and myself, we all talked about that happening at the edge in a decentralized manner. I tried to build upon that and say you hadn't seen nothing yet, there's a whole lot more coming. Well, if believe that, you have to start preparing today, and anticipating that. And again, I think we play a role in helping companies do that. I think it requires a modern approach. It requires an approach to understand how that information is coming in to be able to do something with it. That's where we're focusing, as I mentioned. In fact, I think I specifically said it's sort of the heart of our vision for IT transformation. The data's the gold. In fact, Pat may have said that yesterday. Now, the challenge will be how do you take all of that data sort through it, figure out which pieces are most valuable and then get them to where they're supposed to go to make decisions. That's yet to be seen how we do that but I'm encouraged, given our track record in this industry. We'll find ways to do that. Engines like AI and machine or capabilities like artificial intelligence and machine learning are certainly a vast step forward of making sense of all that stuff. >> Yeah. Jeff, I wonder if you could bring us inside some of your customers. You know, where do you find some of the strategic discussions happening? I think back to early PC or server days, you know, who bought boxes versus now, it seems like more of a C level discussion for some of these large trends that you're seeing. What are some of the big changes that you're seeing in the customers and what are some of the biggest challenges that they're having today? >> I think you mentioned it. One of the things that I've seen in the customer interactions I've had in this new role and getting to see more and more each and every month. The conversations I have, or participate in, are seldom, if ever, about the speeds and feeds of this, the performance of that. It's about here's my business problem, how do you help me? How do you help me get this done? How do you provide me a set of solutions to get to where I want to go? By the way, if you have advice, recommendation to help us, they want to hear that. So they want to access our technical knowledge base across our organization. But again, I think this theme that I tried to say a couple of times this morning around outcomes, so it's an outcome-driven discussion. It's solutions. It's end to end. And how can you help me? Probably, I guess, I could generalize them to fit those four attributes. >> Great. Last thing, you talked about the modern data center. What's that mean for your customers? >> To me, it's all about putting at the disposal of our customers a set of technologies and infrastructure solutions and services that allows 'em to take advantage of that data. Allow them to have the data services they need and the underlying horsepower to do it in a fairly intelligent way. Hopefully automating a few of those tasks and giving them the agility and flexibility they need. >> Yeah. Jeff, wonder if you could speak to really, the engineering culture inside of Dell. Think back to before Dell made a lot of exhibitions, it's like, oh well Dell was a supply chain company, people would say. And then a number of acquisitions came through, you know, you lived with a lot of the engineers, you've got more engineers through the EMC merger. Sometimes people that don't understand, they're like oh, it's just all going to commodity stuff, software defined anything means that infrastructure doesn't matter. You know, where does the Dell engineering culture differentiate and position you in the market? >> You know, it might not surprise you, given my background, that certainly we are a supply chain company. We were doing hardcore engineering for a long time. I look at some of the advancements we made back in the day in leading the industry. I think we have a long distinguished track record of doing that. And now with the combination of the two companies, I look at this organization and the engineering capability we have, I like my hand, we like our hand. The trick is, is to getting our teams to innovate where we can differentiate, where we can help customers solve problems. And part of what I've been doing across this community of engineers, is doing that. Pivoting resources to the most important things. Pivoting resources to where we can differentiate. Pivoting resources where our innovation can actually distinguish, or shine against the competitive set. We've seen this in every category, PC, server, storage. And many of these cases, we start from the privileged position of being the leader. So think about when we get everything aligned to be able to innovate and differentiate, I like my hand. >> All right. Jeff, I want to give you the final word, coming away from Dell Technologies World this year. There's a lot of product announcements, people are going to learn a lot in the sessions, but what do you want people to come away with? Understanding the Dell portfolio and Dell as a company, as a partner? >> Well, if I could leave any parting statement, and make it very specific to the ISG portfolio, I talked about power, our power brand now being the brand of our future state ISG products, walk away with a commitment to build a power branded portfolio that is going to be innovative, differentiated in the marketplace, and something that helps our customers with. That's our commitment and that's what we'll deliver going forward. >> All right. Jeff Clark, thank you for sharing with us all the information, your update. Your first time on theCUBE, but I'm sure we'll have you on many times in the future. >> My pleasure, thanks for having me. >> All right. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching theCUBE.