>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017, brought to you by vmware and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat music) >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, here with my cohost, Keith Townsend, and you're watching theCUBE broadcast VMworld 2017 here in Las Vegas, Nevada. Happy to welcome to the program, a first time guest to theCUBE, but someone I've actually known for many years, and super excited to dig in with, Bob Madaio, vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Marketing and Hitachi, Bob, thanks for joining us. >> Stu, glad to be here. It's taken a little while but... >> Yeah, you know, it's funny. We get together at Vmworld sometimes and it's like, Bob lives a town over from me. >> We should be able to figure this out >> You know, back home, he goes to a Thai restaurant that I used to go to all the time, when I lived even closer to him, but we come out to Las Vegas and we get together. >> Finally get together. >> So, for those that haven't known you for more than a decade, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role at Hitachi. >> Sure, yeah. So at Hitachi my team drives the Infrastructure Solutions Marketing. So, fundamentally, the core idea of the Infrastructure products. Here at Vmworld, the big focus things of converge infrastructure, how our storage supports the vmware environment, and vevolve, and all that, and just in general we're really focusing in on data as part of Hitachi. How do we help the customers' data strategy, whether it's going virtualized, cloud, so that's what my team does, core product marketing in those products, work very closely with teams focused on our IOT initiatives and other solution initiatives within Hitachi. >> So, Bob, for a lot of your career you've worked on partnerships >> Yeah >> And we always say, it was interesting, what was the Michael Dell thing in the keynote, some partnerships are, "We're just talking", and some things are real. So, a lot of partners here, everybody is the best partner with vmware, but talk about the Hitachi-vmware relationship. >> Sure, of course. And as you know, we've spent some time at a prior vendor who's obviously very close to vmware, EMC, and I was there with you for many years, but it's a very different partnership, as obviously that is, but if we look at very tactically, just this hyper converge space and vsan, which is a lot of what we've been focusing on at the show, anyway, fundamentally that is our offering in that space. So we have a unified compute platform product. Our platform is, for at least the virtualized environment, based on vsan. And so from that regard, we are a very clean partner for vmware in general terms. Now, I know a lot of my vsan buddies have been on and we still see a lot of value in centralized, well-protected, modernizing those core environments, and we're going to continue to find that blend, but really we're pretty all-in with vmware. In fact, shameless plug, we were the last year's global OEM innovation partner for vmware. So there's been a lot of good work going on. >> Just one piece. In addition to vsan, my understanding, the cloud foundation suite, you're also a partner for that. >> Exactly right. So end of last week, getting ready for the event, we announced two solutions. One was an update to the hyper converge solution, what we call our unified compute platform, or UCPHC, and we introduced a brand new solution that we call unified compute platform RS, for rack scale. And that takes our building blocks of the hyper converge and brings it your, you're exactly right, all the vmware cloud foundation tools, and the SDC wrapped up, ready to go for a customer. >> So Bob, let's blow out this infrastructure a little bit. >> Sure, absolutely. >> Hitachi very well known for data, data protection, incredible Fortune 500 reference customer, mission critical data. The compute side of it, little bit not as familiar with. Help us understand the chops >> Where we are there. >> Yeah, we're you're at and >> Absolutely. >> And the story behind it. >> I think there's a couple ways to go, and frankly, right now, at Hitachi, we think of compute in terms of converge or hyper conversion infrastructure. We're not really in the compute to sell server business. We did have a history of building, well, if we go even well further back than my Hitachi tenure, well known for mainframes, computing, they've been doing those and actually manufacturing those in Japan, until now we've just had new deal with IBM to do some work with them, but that culture has always been there, and we also had, and still have in the market, Hitachi manufactured blade servers. But, what our strategy really is looking like going forward, is we see more than 2/3 the revenue in the server market is going rack mount servers, people looking to do more scale-out, more flexible, and that's really what our new solutions are focused on, especially the ones we're highlighting here. We will still do some larger-scale up-servers, focused on things like SAP HANA, large oracle data bases, to your point, from the vendors you speak with, we're not unique here, but we are going to skew to those higher-end customers, but we want to make sure, even those higher-end customers are looking for more flexible compute infrastructure. The way we're going to go to market with that is either in the context of a solution, so think of a data blending solution, a oracle, a pentaho is a Hitachi company, how can we blend that with other data, we're going to sell that solution that will include servers or we'll sell it as a converge infrastructure solution. We're not really going to go and, I don't want to take on, some of our Chinese friends and others to say, "I'm going to beat you in one new server cost." Like that's not a value ad solution for me. >> So, extending that brand of rock-solid data servers, is that core, you know I've been in plenty environments where they've run SAP on Hitachi systems, and they'll buy two of them, because hey, why not? But, let's talk about that strategy when talking to those customers and expanding beyond that core theme. Do you lead with services, what's the ideal, what's the wrapper around? >> Yeah that's a great question and it's changing, and I'll even admit it's more advanced in certain geographies than others and what we've found is our American counterparts, they were so well known for storage and with such large forms they've taken a different path, they've begun to introduce converge as sort of an upgrade path, and a solution. If you look at what we're doing in Europe, we actually are very advanced in as a service. So, we've even brought companies in like Oxya, who was out of the French region, they run SAP as a service. A lot more of our conversation are actually buy by the drink, buy as a service, and it depends on where the customer is. Oftentimes, it'll just be, "How can we help you run SAP?", in that example, others, you know, we still do the occasional, "Alright, you need an upgrade," and "Hey, did you think of moving to converge?" So it kind of depends, but we are definitely moving to some large customers "Why don't we just run it all "for you, and then you just pay by the drink?" So it's a whole mix, but it's definitely moving more toward an outcome-based conversation, we're really trying to have the conversation of, "Great, we can sell you whatever system we want, "we have hyper converge, converge storage, "what are you trying to do with your data, "and can we help you with that?" So that's where we're getting closer to, anyway. It's a growth path, certainly. >> Bob, what again, your view on what you're hearing from customers. >> Okay. >> So traditionally, I think Hitachi, you know, large enterprise, very reliable, trusted brand, you bought out service providers, very different, how they think of it, they're, you know, if you can save them pennies, that makes their services, you know, >> Yeah, yeah. >> You do, the impact of cloud, the vmware and Amazon is something that's been discussed here, what are they key challenges you're hearing from customers, what's changed over the last couple of years? >> You know, it's clearly confidence in their data. We're seeing big impacts from GDPR, and other type concerns, and just speed of IT services. I mean, those are the two biggest things, it's interesting, you mention the Amazon-vmware relationship and everything, and we're seeing this sort of weird dichotomy, lots of interest in that, and we're seeing some cloud services migrate back to the data center. So we're seeing this funny thing where the customers, I think have trialed a lot, and they're now beginning to get a better of sense of what data types, and what applications really can be in the cloud, and certainly a lot of them are going there, far be it from me to argue that, but we are seeing some of them, they go, "You know what? This doesn't belong there, "we're bringing it back in," and then we're seeing new applications that we want to get to that hybrid model, that's one of the reasons we think this rack-scale solution is going to be so interesting for customers. >> You bring up an interesting point when you look at data, you mention GDPR, and customers, and how do I leverage my data, how do I manage the government interest compliance, and now new regulations, which are a little bit fuzzy, >> They are very. >> even today, how are you helping customers through that all, you know, data is the new loyal, how do I tap it? >> Yeah, absolutely, and I think one of the things is customers want to leverage multiple types of infrastructure, be it in their data center or elsewhere, that's going to only continue and probably we'll see multi-cloud, like we saw multi-vendor, storage vendors, you know, 10 years ago. But if we can help, and one of the things that we do with what we call our concept platform, is have that object storage where regardless of where that data is sitting, the policy can be maintained in your site, that meta-data that really runs where everything is, and how you get to that data, we can help them keep control of, regardless of if some of it's sitting in whatever S3 compatible or an Azure. We can give them that centralized control of disparate cloud sources. >> I love to say, conferences like Vmworld moves at the speed of the CIO. >> Okay. >> The speed of the CIO is not necessarily the speed of the business >> Fair. >> So there's a opportunity for Hitachi to vendor, to not only talk to the CIO, but talk to the business, talk to me about the nuance of that balancing that relationship and needing to, you know what, we need to service our traditional customer, but there's this other customer that's really needing our capabilities. >> I think you've hit a little bit on our corporate strategy, to some degree, in the sense that we kind of have a bifurcated focus. We need to be a value added IT solutions vendor, and it has to be solutions, right. I think the world of saying, "I'm going to win because my VSP is better," which of course it is, but that's beside the point, we'll come back to that with all my EMC friends, but that day is passing us by, we all know that. So we need to be relevant in, like I said, data blending, and SAP, how are we going to integrate that, that's our IT side, but this whole other side of the business, and we are reasonably unique, so my part at Hitachi, this IT business that we're in, is a relatively small piece of a nearly hundred billion dollar global conglomerate technology company. And one of the things a global technology company does is very deep vertical market industrial solutions. And I don't know if you've noticed, but vmware mentioned IOT a lot more than we've heard them mention in the past, and I think there's a play where the business is looking for how to use technology to modernize, I don't know if I want to use the phrase digital transformation, I think someone comes out and slaps someone now if you use it too much, >> Yeah, there's someone right behind you. >> Yeah, I'm a little nervous. But if you think about that, how can we leverage technology if I have maintenance on trucks and I have 16 thousand trucks as one of our customers does, how do I do predictive maintenance to save me a couple million dollars a year, or just as a starting point. We can bring expertise to that that maybe some others can't. One of the things that we're trying to do is have the business conversation about how technology can help operations, be them within a factory, within some sort of vertical market, and then develop that core, general purpose IT solution that is, you know, we can put different applications on it, but understand the data flow within the enterprise. We're trying to do both of those. What I am seeing, though, is more and more CIOs are being linked with the business, because they know there's no other way. And increasingly some of the customers I see, the CIO came out of the business, and that's a really interesting trend. >> Alright, Bob, we've got to dig into this IOT stuff. IOT's a big, big, big discussion. Last interview you were talking about from a security standpoint, it's the biggest challenge we have, they're just orders of magnitude more service area, Hitachi, as a global company, I think about the devices and sensors, you live there where many of the legacy infrastructure companies there, and then architecturally, if I put my storage and infrastructure hat on, it's like, "Well, I want containers, or server-lists," or something like that. >> Yeah. >> Do you play everywhere? Where are the pieces that Hitachi has set up to win, and has strength? >> Good question. I think there's two key things that we're focused on. One is, first, Hitachi builds lots of machines. I mean, I still, I've been there almost five years, in a week or so, and I still learn, you know, Clarion car stereos, so that's actually OEM in lots of vehicles out there, is that play for us? The medical field, all the devices and scanners, the obviously, the big earth-moving equipment, all of those things. We have a pretty good understanding of, cause I think one of your thoughts here is going to lead us to, a lot of that data is going to be dealt with locally. And we have a pretty good sense of what data might we get value out of. Cause one of the biggest problems, I, as someone who still cares very deeply about storage, I'd like to save every bit that ever came out of a machine, but that's just not going to make sense for anyone. So, if we can deal with figuring out what data to keep local to that edge, we are developing a core platform we can send the relevant data back, if you haven't heard it's called Lumada, and I'm under, I think I have a shock collar on, we'll have some big announcements coming out in the near future about that, so I'll pick, but it's out in market and it is something that's been >> Nobody's listening, you can. >> I don't know, we're not live on the internet or anything. So, but, point being, we have this central platform that's really going to scale and ingest all that machine data, but we know we need to deal with it at the edge, and you're right, that's a different type device than we're known for historically. But we build so many devices in the other parts of the business, how do we leverage and combine? But we're not going to only focus on Hitachi, because that's a very difficult path. You need to understand, in every IOT solution, there's lots of partners, and one of the things that we've learned from our Japanese counterparts, and our global counterparts, is the idea of co-creation. And so what we really want to do is learn from some of our lighthouse, like I mentioned that transportation company, that's going to be a unique solution to them, but there has to be core that's reusable. I think the challenge that IOT has had to a certain degree, really getting traction in the market, is if every IOT deployment is a snowflake it's really hard to make a business for anyone, and really get customers on quicker. So, we're also going to look at that core data center level. Can we use the components, think of a converge infrastructure stack, if you're going to run core ingestion components of IOT, could we do some prepackaging to help customers, can we make it easier for IT to make happen what the business wants on the IOT side. That's one place where I think we can add real value. >> So, talking about frictionless business, and frictionless IT, the real challenges are, when you have a Hitachi, huge manufacturing organization, manufacturing operations is very different from IT operations, and a lot of times, IT, or IT providers find themselves at kind of a marriage counselor. What are some of the lessons learned from looking at Hitachi's business from an organizational perspective and then looking at tradition IT that you can give insights to the audience. >> Well, I'll answer in kind of two ways. So the first is, we need to change as much as our customers need to change to take advantage of this opportunity, and we're doing a lot of that change. I'll give one example that I know our CEO's talked about in a bunch of public forms is within all the, what we would call a front-facing business, those vertical businesses, we've put what we call cheap fomata officers, or IOT technology experts, in each of those businesses, to be part of the conversation of the overall manufacturing, or whatever that vertical business may be, so that we can insert thoughts of, "Hey, well what have you done to make it easier "for us to pull information out of those systems? "How can we leverage that?" What are you thinking maybe as a service offering, you're not just selling a system, or a bulldozer, or I'm not going to get the right, I'm closer to converge and storage, I got to tell you. We don't just want to sell that big piece of machinery, how are you going to sell a solution for the customer that either improves the maintenance, makes it easier. So that's what we're doing internally. I will say, what I've seen with customers, and we can explain to them, and I think really that's having the CIO at the seat of the business more frequently, we're embedding a technologist in the business, I was actually down, I had the luck of going down to Sydney and some of our other cities that we're doing really wonderful stuff in, in Australia a few weeks back, and I was in a room, it was tremendous. We thought the meeting was going to go one way, and it went completely down an IOT path, which was a surprise, but the person was talking, and I didn't realize fully who was in the room, they were talking so much about business relevant data they're trying to do to change their operations, it wasn't until after the meeting I realized, when we were really talking about our roles better, she was a technology architect. And so, that distinction, that wall between business and technology for the companies, we're actually going to pull it off as a power generation company, they're dissolving those walls. And I think the only way to really implement a solution that uses data to improve the business, is to dissolve the walls as quickly as possible. >> Last thing I wanted to ask you, Bob. We've come into Vmworld this year, so some people have commented, "You think vmware, they're the "server virtualization company." Now, it's a lot of conversations, right? The cloud, is it, they're doing SaaS, we're going through this, Hitachi's a conglomerate. There's a lot of different things, you're on the infrastructure side there, what do we think of when we think of Hitachi in the next? >> Well it's good that you mentioned next. We'll have an event we're calling next in this very building in a few weeks. And you'll hear a lot more about what we're thinking of ourselves. I would say this, I think what we're hoping, especially on the technology, that digital side of Hitachi, if you will, you think of us as a data solutions company a certain way, I think one of the big learnings for us is, we're one of the top software companies, on a revenue basis in the world, no one thinks of us that way. But all of those machines that we talked about, all of those things, guess what's running them? And if you aggregate, I think it's top 15, I don't want to be, I might be slightly off, apologies, but we're up in that. So I think one of the things we want to help people understand is we can be an outcome-based partner for you. Whether that's on the industrial side to data, whether that's, you have a unique data problem and you need someone to come in with a custom solution, I mean, yes, if you just like to run a bunch of workloads on a virtualized infrastructure, we can sell you hyper converge solutions with vmware, awesome. But if you're trying to figure out something more complex, and you're really concerned about how your data's going to be used in leverage, and how you're going to analyze it and blend it, we can be your partner for that. That's what I'm hoping people are going to start to see about Hitachi. >> Alright, well, Bob, the tagline of Hitachi now, is Inspire the Next, really appreciate you coming on, helping us inspire our audience to dig in to what is next for key talents. I'm Stu Miniman, you're watching theCUBE at Vmworld 2017.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube, covering Dell EMC world 2017 Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Welcome back to Dell E, Dell EMC world, I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Keith Townsend. We are joined by Fernando Thompson. He is the CIO of University of the Americas, Puebla, Mexico. Thanks so much for joining us, Fernando. >> Thanks Rebecca, to you. >> So I want you to just set the scene a little bit for our viewers and talk a little bit about some of the biggest technology problems you were facing on your campus. >> Well, Universidad de las Américas Puebla is in the state of Puebla. We have around, less than 10,000 students. We have 1,000 employees. And we are full dedicated to research and development. And also bachelor's degrees. I used to work for the federal government and also for the private sector in television and entertainment. But I have never been in such a huge challenge, like, in a university because, you know, it is, it is so difficult to implement the governance but at the same time the freedom and, if you think, well for instance, when, when is a period of time where, where more appears in the world, it's on vacations where the students of the universities have enough time to build that kind of thing. Not very creative people, so in, in the sense that, well we live in an environment where you have to deal, to deliver technology, to protect to millennials that doesn't want to be protected and also, you know, they always ask for more services, no? And now is coming the generation C, so, it's going to be real tough for the next years. >> So, so, so set the scene and talk to us about the kinds of things that you are trying to deliver. Better products, better speed, better services to both students, perspective students, faculty and staff. Talk about what some of the needs were. >> Well, we have to think that, actually, technology is very important in the university because we have to prepare our students to give them the tools to face the future. The world is changing. And, in Mexico right now, we have a huge challenge because we're competing against China, Brazil, and India. We used to have an advantage with, with the price, and people that is very well prepared and with their salaries, but not any longer. So, we have to give this advantage to our students. So, nine years ago, when I arrived to university, for instance, we have the subscription system, and it was awful, no? Because it was very slow with the performance and not very reliable, so the people was really complaining, no? Because we're a private, private university. You always suspect, you know, good performance for a private university. And especially in subscription where your main customer, that is a student. So, we start to work to fix the main system and it take us years, years, no? So, we passed through availability and relability but bad performance. Now, performance, but since we implement XtremIO and we changed our data center with Dell products, this very year, in, in, in the spring, in the spring semester, we make a huge change cause the subscription system now became, you know, one of the biggest transformation tools in the service for the students. What happened was that, during the subscription, we announced on a special day, and a special hour, 8:30, and if you are okay with your administrative stuff and qualifications, you can get into the system and subscribe. Four years ago, that takes, like, one hour or 45 minutes. But with the change that we made, now it is a matter of two minutes. So-- >> Wow. It was a change of 100 degrees, no? What happened was that, yes, we changed the application, but also, you know, with this Flash technology, we use it because at the end, what we want to make was, you know, to impact to the student, in order that they can receive the schedule. He can take faster decisions. They move very fast with their computers and with their devices, so they needed the applications, so, we build it, we test it, and it worked fantastic. And let me tell you something, no? How I measure, I don't have a business analytic tool or a business intelligence tool. What I have was, you know, access to Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. And, man, they gave us such a compliment, no? Like, hey TI finally did something well for us also and it was thousands of comments, no? >> Members was waiting. >> A lot of thumbs up. >> Yeah, yeah. Members was waiting, you know, to attack us, like, you shall not pass, and stuff like that. Like past years. But not this year. So, it was, it was, it was a successful story and now we are thinking to implement all these changes that we made in an ordered space itself, of the university. >> So let's talk about that a little bit. So that's, I think, is a great example of digital transformation. I don't need to ask you if you believe in digital transformation. That was a digital transformation to your business. Specifically, I'm interested in research. What type of research does the university do and how does your group play a role in enabling that? >> Yeah, basically, for instance, we have four programs of PSD with specialization in technology and also in environment, no? One of the top challenge that we are facing in Latin America. So we have to supply the technology that our researchers need. And it has to be at the same level of the United States. We belong to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools in the United States. So, it's not United States soil, but we belong to that association. >> Reporter: So you have the same SLEs? >> Yeah, basically, basically, you know? And we have to supply, you know, all the bandwidth and performance because they're discussing, at the same time, with people in Texas or Wisconsin or Alaska or Brazil and they need, you know, for instance, high-performance computing, storage, cloud tools, and for them, have to be, you know, pretty clear and transparent. What I mean is that they don't care, and they don't have to care about where it's working, of it is expensive or not, no? Do you have, do you have to supply what they need? Let me give you an example. For instance, a fractal. If you send the information of a fractal, we don't have a super-computer in our university, but we have a deal with another university and they have this super-computer. So, what we do is to supply the connection of the computer to send information and to receive information immediately, in order than the graphic can have information in real time. And people are taking decision in different parts of the, of the country with that information that we're sending. Sometimes, could be, you know, if we're facing a hurricane or we're going to have a problem with water or if we want to avoid, you know, you know, something that can happen with an earthquake or something like that. And with that kind of information, now, our researchers certainly can know what is happening. So, we give the info, we give the technology for them. We make a mixture between cloud-computing services and also our data center. Then that a wonderful tool because with XtremIO and with our new servers, if you can go to our new data center, you will realize that it's only Dell and EMC right there, no? And something funny is that we have a wonderful data center, but to be honest with you, we only use, right now, only three racks. So, the space that we are using right now with this new disk is, the space that we are saving is amazing, no? Because if you can, if you can see our racks, you will see that we have, for instance, Clarion, and DMX and another technology. Right now, we shut down all those racks. And right now, we are using just like, 40 inches of disk. And, man, you know, I have more performance, I have savings on air, savings on electricity. The people think then, right, we are having, you know, more space with more racks and more this. But not any longer. So, I think what is going to happen with Dell and EMC in the future, I think that they are going to deliver, for instance, 100 terabytes in just in a USB or something like that, it's the future. So, there's not going to be need over that, that's good, no? >> Hit it on the head of a, on the head of a pin. >> Yeah. >> Fernando, thank you so much for joining us. >> No, thank you to you. Thank you Rebecca, thank you. >> I'm Rebecca Knight for Keith Townsen. We will have more from Dell EMC world after this. (progressive music)