live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering Dell technologies world 2019 brought to you by Dell technologies and it's ecosystem partners welcome back everyone to day one of the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world here in Sin City Las Vegas 15,000 attendees I'm your host Rebecca night along with my co-host Dave Volante we're joined by a Charlie Haney he is the senior vice president Dell technologies consulting services thanks so much for coming on the queue absolutely thanks for having me again so we were talking a little before the cameras rolling you have spent nearly your entire career at this company at first EMC then Daley MC now Dell technologies how how have you seen the landscape change and transform over the course of your career yeah it's it's crazy I mean think about just even as consumers what we've seen in the last 10 years I mean us thinking about my flight out you know I booked everything online Amex all my calendar and everything is managed by TripIt I check in with my United app I get here I take an uber I mean the entire experience is digital and we see that in our everyday lives and today with technology I mean all of our customers are looking to figure out how do they apply these emerging technologies to their business so that they can open up new revenue streams or create new business opportunities to really win inside their industry and so I think it's just an exciting time and I couldn't be happier to be here at Dell technologies because I feel like we're at the center of all of itself so you mentioned all these exciting new technologies AI IOT this in the end this is all part of this digital transformation how would you describe how your clients are thinking about all of this but sort of what what are their pain points what is keeping them up at night you know I mean not all customers are the same as you could imagine we have some that are just starting and some that feel like they're well on their way but it seems like as as they go down their path they learn that there is still a lot to go I would say many of them are excited about the emerging technologies but they're still puzzled with how to actually apply it in their business and things like multi-cloud you know while it has a great promise they're also you know a little bit betwixt with how to actually manage and run this multi cloud environment so the new solutions like dell technologies cloud and the promise to actually manage that and provide a single cloud playing across hybrid environments on prem off prem you know these are ways that as a technology company we're able to help customers start to stitch these technologies together in a more seamless way to help enable what they're trying to do inside their business so certainly the narrative you hear in the press and no question comes from a lot of the technology companies is you've gotta transform digitally your gut your if not you're gonna get disrupted most organizations you talk to have some kind of digital transformation strategy going on but the reality is there are a number of industries that really haven't encountered disruption Financial Services is a good example the defense industry health care it's probably ripe for destructive disruption but but hasn't yet but we certainly all believe it's coming and we all believe it underlying that trend is data yet I wonder what that discussion is like with customers is there a keen sense that they've got to do something or is it really mixed is there a complacency in some industries and what role do you guys play and sort of helping them squint through that yeah I mean we certainly find that customers that are trying to transform are looking at how do they take the data that oftentimes they already have and figure out how to actually consolidate it and get it into a well-run data platform first so that then they can do analytics and they can actually get the business insights out of it to actually go do something on the Digital side and so oftentimes you know as an infrastructure company right we're helping them build the digital infrastructure for their data platform to enable their digital transformation initiatives at the same time we're helping on the IT side to actually drive out the cost of their IT to go capture the dollars to go enable and fund a lot of those digital transformation initiatives - so there's kind of the data play and then there's obviously the infrastructure play that enables in Hansa when we first started doing the Cubist is our tenth year and and back then if you talked about eliminating you know mundane infrastructure management tasks a lot of people would tighten up ago that's my job you're talking about today people are sort of embracing that because they realize this is the there's there's a brighter future ahead so maybe talk about that skills gap what role you guys play in closing that gap is it just purely sort of they outsource that and you teaching them how to fish yeah it really varies and I would agree with you I mean years ago people were afraid of what might happen to them and today right with the stats most of our organizations that we talked to already leveraged five or more clouds right whether it's an on-prem or an off Prem cloud or a SAS based application and so it's no longer afraid it's like it's reality it's happening and so for us we're helping them figure out how to stitch those things together now our consulting services we can either help them build the upfront strategy to actually build a roadmap and a plan of where they should go and how they should get there as well as those iterations of actually executing and implementing whether that is an IT transformation or a digital transformation plan oftentimes by us helping them build we're actually enabling and helping them establish also an operating model of what is the people and process now that I need within the organization to actually start to deliver something like IT as a service it's extremely different and so then you know obviously there's projects that we do jointly with organizations and customers and they learn as we go and then obviously we have educational services if they want something that's more formal on that side so here's talking about people process technology and and practitioners to tell you people and to in process of the hardest technologies the easiest part you'll always hear that yeah having said that technology catalyzes these change whether it's AI 5g you know IOT so what are some of the catalysts that you're seeing today and what kind of services are you guys providing I mean think again just think about the cloud platform that was announced earlier today I mean for years to be honest we've been building on-premise private clouds and doing manual integration with public all right we've been creating a vision of a service catalog that actually spans multiple on-prem off Prem but not fully integrated now we have an entire cloud plane that actually enables what you just said so the technology is starting to catch up to what we want to consume which is I see as a service on Prem or off Prem but again that will change those roles with NIT you're not going to have silo-based roles around server storage networking you're going to have cloud operators that are stretching not just on Prem but off Prem technologies could be as your Google AWS whatever right and so those roles are drastically different and how do we enable technology across those and so as a consulting organization we're helping define those roles as well as enable them and then build the platforms that ultimately deliver that service so I want to ask you about innovation because we learned that Dell is turning 35 next week that's sort of the start of middle age where's that you get a little slower and get a little creepier how do you stay on the cutting edge and how do you make sure that you are thinking four steps ahead of your customers and and what they will need next you know it's amazing I mean obviously as an organization we're investing 12 billion dollars or more of R&D over the course of the last three years I mean the innovation and the funding for innovation is just continuing to pour the synergies of bringing organizations like VMware and L EMC infrastructure together or pivotal or secure works I mean it's the right blend and mixture of software and infrastructure that allows us to integrate and by integrating we can then innovate and so I honestly think many times our customers are telling us what they need and as long as we continue to be good listeners and we are delivering on what our customers are needing with the technology investments we're making we'll continue to innovate so you guys announced some had some announcements today around multi-cloud the VMware cloud on gel EMC I want to ask you a question Charlie and then tie into that announcement is multi cloud sort of a symptom of multi vendor and line of business and shadow IT or is it increasingly becoming a strategy and if so how do you see that strategy evolving well you know I would say for the organization that hasn't built the right plan and strategy and is getting reactive you know it's really a reactive kind of plan they're seeing all these clouds just kind of pop up and they're not integrated so they're isolation of technologies in different locations for those organizations that are building a strategy to figure out how to best leverage those technologies it's completely different right and by doing that we're able to go look at applications and do proactive cloud suitability studies and make sure that they're putting applications in the right locations to get the right benefits and cost advantage that they need and that's a very different thing than IT waiting for the business to go invest in some SAS model so there's a hut there have to be a top-down edict for the latter vision to be realized in other words if the corner office isn't saying hey without pay attention to IT when they say this is our multi cloud strategy or can it actually happen from a grassroots level you know I don't want to say it can't happen perhaps it could I can tell you the customers that we've engaged with that are having the most success absolutely it's starting at the board level right I mean it's it is a top-down support and focus for the organization I mean there's going to be people challenges as we've talked about technology challenges financial challenges it's gonna take senior level people to actually knock those things down when we do advisory services like this broken saw advisory where we help customers build a strategy one of the number-one barriers that we're knocking down is internal conflict we bring people within the organization together with our subject matter expertise who have done this before and oftentimes we can't get the organization itself to agree on what is the vision and the guiding principles of this multi-cloud strategy and so that is oftentimes the challenged and can't be done ground up oftentimes it does require a strong leadership team to actually support it fund it and then help remove those roles typical starting point for you guys you'll go get an executive sponsor and then you'll organize the team and then you know that's always the cleanest but again as we just talked about customers are you know in various places along that journey so for us it's important to figure out where they are meet them where they are if they're halfway down that maybe it's just a course correction maybe it's something where they're struggling with and we just need to help them with a particular area of it so you know we have customers all along that journey and our goal is just to help them get to the end of that regardless of where we start well Charlie thank you so much for coming on the cube this was a great conversation absolutely thanks for having me I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Volante we will have much more from day one of the cubes live coverage from Dell technologies world here in Las Vegas coming up in just a little bit [Music]

(ubeat techno music) >> Presenter: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Dell Technologies World. We're here at the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host, John Troyer. John, good to be working with you. >> John: Ah, great to be here. >> Charlie Haney is here, he's the Senior Vice President of Dell EMC Consulting. Charlie, welcome to theCUBE. >> Yeah, thanks for having me, appreciate it. >> So let's see, Michael Dell the other day on theCUBE just yesterday said, look, let me make it clear, we're not trying to replace Accenture. >> Charlie: Right, that's right. >> So what are you trying to do? >> Well, look. We talk a lot about these four transformation pillars throughout the entire week around digital, IT, workforce and security transformation. And our customers are struggling with how to go through that process. And I think we have a unique opportunity to bring the technologies, whether it be hardware, software solutions across Dell Technologies together to go help them through that. And so I think it's important for Dell Technologies to have a set of consulting capabilities that has experience around those technologies and the integration of those technologies and help customers through that transformation journey while consuming our technology. And so that's where we're kind of focused. >> And is it the right inference that your real expertise is on that sort of architectural infrastructure, architectural layer, or do you seep into sort of more nitty-gritty business process type of stuff? >> No, it really probably is closer to the technology. I mean, we partner with many of the larger SIs as well to bring in a lot of their deep business expertise. We are absolutely strongest in our Dell Technologies, no one would hire us to go be an expert on someone else's technology. But if they're going to go do an Azure stack solution built on our hyper-converged platform, who better to go do it? If they're going to go do an SDDC solution with our VxRack kind of solution, embedding VMware and doing automation and orchestration, who better to go do that because those are technologies across Dell Technologies, and we have deep expertise and capabilities to go help them with that. >> So how does that generally work? I mean, you say you've partnered with some of the big guys. A lot of those times, those big guys are at the board level doing some huge transformation. And then what, do you get brought in to do that architecture layer, or does the reverse happen where you're sort of knocking on their door? How does that all shake out? >> I mean, it always depends on the customer, right? I mean, it's not uncommon for us to have a large customer who's investing substantially in an SI and/or within Dell EMC or Dell Technologies products and technologies. And so those large investments from those customers, they expect us to partner and work together to solve their problem. So oftentimes the customer expects us to partner, expects us to work and leverage the capabilities. There's a very large project that we have around data center modernization that actually Deloitte is leading the PMO and we're leading a series of technology work streams within that, and so we're working together to go solve that customer problem. >> Yeah, and they're integrating a lot of different vendors' technology as well. >> Well, Charlie, I'd love to kind of drill down on those work streams, boots on the ground kind of competencies. 10, 20 years ago, we were there and there was a lot more of people who were just shifting boxes in the channel and let's move equipment. It's much richer now, our theme this week, right, was digital transformation, making it real. It's a much heavier load, a much deeper conversation. Can you talk a little bit about those work streams and kind of the competencies that you expect your people to bring to the table and how you're working with the client organization? >> Yeah absolutely. So you've already talked to Howard, I think, right? >> John: Yeah. >> So within Howard's organization, he has a very large services organization that focuses on specific product implementation and support services, right? So 60,000 members strong with partners. And then there's the consulting team that actually augments and extends that. So the consulting team that I represent, we complement that. So when we talk digital transformation, we're talking about helping customers understand what is it to go build a cloud native application? What are the 12 factors of a cloud native application? How am I going to switch my processes to a DevOps agile process? How am I going to leverage a Dell technology platform such as PCF and Pivotal Cloud Foundry from our sister company, to go transform how I build cloud native applications? And so we have a set of capabilities in that space that would go help customers through that journey, partnering with Pivotal. >> How big is your organization right now? >> Several thousand. >> I'm kind of curious, what kind of folks are you looking for to join it? Like yeah, that's a wide range of expertise. You're looking for senior IT leaders, folks that have been doing it before? >> Yeah, usually they're practitioners that have been doing it for a number of years, although something like digital and cloud foundry, those are brand new technologies, right? So you're going to get a mixture of people that have been doing software development for a number of years, and make sure to have people that have maybe born up just recently, really growing with the industry around these new technologies. When you get into IT transformation, you're going to get some of the more hardcore data center, data center consolidation expertise mixed in with business resiliency. And then we're extending that with our private cloud and public cloud or multi cloud sort of services to federate, integrate and then move workloads across those. So as you go from digital into the data center and IT transformation, that mindset usually is a little bit different in the type of individual. >> Are you finding initiatives within your customers, you saw a couple of digital IT workforce and security. Are you finding that they're generally bespoke projects, or is a big mega project, and these are somewhat interrelated or kind of a hybrid? >> Usually, I mean, it is a hybrid. I mean, like workforce transformations sometimes is something that's unique, I would say. So someone's looking at, you know, what is my workforce, how am I going to enable my workforce, how am I going to make them more productive? You usually start out with personas and understanding their workforce, trying to align the right technologies whether it be physical or virtual with the right tools like communication and collaboration to enable them. You start to talk about digital, and it is a hybrid because it's hard to do digital transformation without having the right infrastructure underneath it and going through some level of IT transformation. And so for that, it actually starts to meld together. In fact, a lot of customers, when we talk to them around IT transformation, we talk about, thinking about your application model and helping transform that, your infrastructure transformation, as well as your people and process transformation. And those are things that you shouldn't do sequentially one after another, because you're not going to get business benefit and value until you've actually achieved that. So we actually recommend doing three of those things in sequence with one another, but then maybe chunking it up through MVP so you do it in an iterative fashion but you're hitting your people and process, your application and your infrastructure. And so that starts to then to support things like your digital transformation as you enable the technology that then is going to go right in the cloud native application. >> Let's go through a simple example, take IT transformation, something we've all sort of discussed and somewhat familiar with. You really can't do that and modernize your IT infrastructure without understanding your application portfolio. You can't really understand your application portfolio without understanding the impact on the business and the business process, right? So how far into that do you go? Where do you sort of leave off and some of your partners come in? Or could you do, maybe it's a lightweight business process touch point. How do you handle that? >> Yeah, so we're not redesigning the business process but what we're doing is, if we're looking at say application transformation within the context of IT transformation where many customers don't even know what applications they have, let's be honest. They talk about as CMDB, and oftentimes we look at their CMDB and we go inventory their environment and they're night and day different. >> They have 10 CMDBs. >> Right! So we start out usually with an application portfolio discussion around what are your key applications, what do you have, what are the dependencies around those, and then what is the right disposition as we think about those applications? Are we going to archive it, are we going to retire it? Can we consolidate it, move it? If we're going to move it, sometimes it gets into a cloud suitability study, because where should it get moved to? Are we going to modernize it? Would it benefit from being modernized with a PCF kind of platform? And that will drive those application portfolio decisions. When you get into the cloud suitability, then you're getting into the infrastructure. And am I going to do an on-prem off-prem and things of that nature as well. >> And then that example, you obviously want to understand what business processes get affected, but that's where you stop. If they have to do a business retransformation, then that's something that got to, that's a bigger fish to fry, right? >> That's correct, or we're usually partnering with someone else that's focusing on that level. >> How about security? Who are you working with there? Is it largely the CSO? Or is it still the CSOs and an IT problem, or is the scope wider these days? >> It is wider. I mean, obviously you're working with those individuals but it's so embedded in everything that you have to do today. It's not an afterthought. I mean, if you're building a private cloud within a data center, you've got to be thinking about the security inherent within that. If you're doing business resiliency, one of our biggest business resiliency offers and capabilities is around cyber recovery, which is an air-gap solution to actually have an off-premise copy with an air gap in between it because of cyber recovery issues. So everything we do has a slice of security embedded within it. >> Another question on digital. Oh sorry, John, go ahead please. >> Oh, I was just thinking about, a lot of this is discovery. There's an element of discovery to all this, right, as you go through transformation. What's going to work, what's not, unexpected problems, oh not anticipated problems. How much does this need to be driven from the c-suite from a predetermined conclusion, and how much is their discovery in the ground with the people below the c-suite and then reporting back up for support in the direction of the business? >> Yeah, we have found that it's difficult to undergo any transformation without a ton of executive and senior executive support to go through that. Anything that starts up really from the bottoms up at some point doesn't get the right level of governance and financial support to actually go through it, especially if you're thinking about doing, as I mentioned, around people, process and organizational change, as well as application and infrastructure, you could do any one of those maybe individually, but to do all of those sequentially you need a lot of strong support. And so that's really what we're trying to educate, based on our experience. >> So let's unpack that a little bit because my similar question is who's leading the digital charge? Obviously you're saying it's going to have top-down leadership, but that's a lot of Cs. (chuckles) >> Charlie: Yeah. >> Do you start with the chief digital officer? Where's the chief data officer, if one exists? Where does the CIO fit? Who's leading this? >> I mean, usually if you're focused on a digital transformation, usually it's coming to IT through the business, right? We're working with a large insurance company who's actually building a series of online banking applications using cloud native application development processes. We're teaching them DevOps, we're doing PCF, but all of that came through the business. The business says, this is what we're going to go do to actually go change how we deliver insurance in their case. >> So it's a general manager or a P&L manager or the COO? >> In this case, it was the business owner of that business unit within this insurance company driving into IT, and IT is obviously enabling them to go do that. We are working with a large gold mining company who's focused on IT transformation. They've grown through the years but they haven't actually modernized their infrastructure and they're starting to think about well, what should I be thinking in terms of cloud on-prem and off-prem? And so we went through an entire advisory set of services to help them understand, based on what your needs and requirements are, based on what you have, where you should go, what is the right multi-cloud kind of strategy for you and what is the roadmap to go do that in a realistic sense of terms? And then what would be the financial and investment to go through that process? And that was required because they had to go to their actual board to go get the investment dollars to justify that. >> So when you guys engage with customers, how does it start? What's the catalyst? I mean, as you said off-camera, you guys are talking way more about problems than you are about products. So what are some of the problems that you're hearing? We talked about at a high level digital, IT transformation, et cetera, but how does that conversation start and where does it lead? >> There's two ways that it starts, one is a customer has invested a ton in Dell products, Dell EMC products or technologies, and we find that while they're investing in all this infrastructure because they're modernizing their data center and they're going to go through some level of transformation; and then we actually strap on consulting and work our way up into well, what is the problem, why are you acquiring all this and have you thought about the following things around automation and people and process to wrap around the product installation that you're going through to actually get that value. The other is, like in the mining example, that customer actually was not a Dell EMC consumer, believe it or not. They were an underpinned account and they're like okay, we know we need to go do something, we know that Dell EMC and Dell Technologies has a suite of technologies that we should be considering. Help us understand what you've done for other customers. And it's because of that conversation that now it's leading into a complete set of product and technology opportunities. So those are the two ways, they work hand-in-hand. >> Interesting, so you're either tip of the spear where you're competing with somebody else, or you're basically brought in as part of a big deal where you're really not competing with anybody in that case, right? >> That's right, and we're just expanding and helping them hopefully realize their vision or their value sooner. >> Dave: All right, all right. Charlie, hey, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Really appreciate your time. John, thanks for hanging out with us. All right, keep it right there. But we'll be back with our next guest. We're live from Dell Technologies World, the inaugural Dell Technologies World, you're watching theCUBE. (upbeat techno music)