>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies. Creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain, everyone. It's theCUBE live at MWC '23, day three of four days of CUBE coverage. It's like a cannon of CUBE content coming right at you. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson. We've got Dell and VMware here. Going to be talking about the ecosystem partnerships and what they're doing to further organizations in the telco industry. Please welcome Jared Woodrey, Director of Partner Engineering Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab, OTEL. Odded Solomon is here as well, Director of Product Management, VMware Service Provider and Edge Business Unit at VMware. Guys, great to have you on the program. >> Thank you for having me. >> Welcome to theCUBE. So Jared, first question for you. Talk about OTEL. I know there's a big announcement this week, but give the audience context and understanding of what OTEL is and how it works. >> Sure. So the Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab is physically located at Round Rock, Texas, it's the heart and soul of it. But this week we also just announced opening up the Cork, Ireland extension of OTEL. The reason for our existence is to to try and make it as easy as possible for both partners and customers to come together and to re-aggregate this disaggregated ecosystem. So that comes with a number of automation tools and basically just giving a known good testing environment so that tests that happen in our lab are as close to real world as they possibly can be and make it as transparent and open as possible for both partners like VMware as well as customers. >> Odded, talk about what you're doing with Dell and OTEL and give us a customer example of maybe one that you're working with or even even mentioning it by a high level descriptor if you have to. >> Yeah. So we provide a telco cloud platform, which is essentially a vertical in VMware. The telco cloud platform is serving network function vendors, such as Ericsson, Nokia, Mavenir, and so on. What we do with Dell as part of this partnership is essentially complementing the platform with some additional functionality that is not coming out of the box. We used to have a data protection in the past, but this is no longer our main business focus. So we do provide APIs that we can expose and work together with Dell PPDM solution so customer can benefit from this and leverage the partnership and have overall solution that is not coming out of the box from VMware. >> I'm curious, from a VMware perspective. VMware is associated often with the V in VMware, virtualization, and we've seen a transition over time between sort of flavors of virtualization and what is the mix currently today in the telecom space between environments that are leveraging what we would think of as more traditional virtualization with full blown Linux, Windows operating systems in a VM versus the world of containerized microservices? What does that mix look like today? Where do you see it going? >> Yeah, so the VMware telco cloud platform exists for about eight years. And the V started around that time. You might heard about open stack in addition to VMware. So this has definitely helped the network equipment providers with virtualizing their network functions. Those are typically VNF, virtualized network functions, inside the VMs. Essentially we have 4G applications, so core applications, EPC, we have IMS. Those are typically, I would say maybe 80 or 90% of the ecosystem right now. 5G is associated with cloud native network functions. So 5G is getting started now, getting deployed. There is an exponential growth on the core side. Now, when we expand towards the edge of the network we see more potential growth. This is 5G ran, we see the vRAN, we see the open RAN, we see early POCs, we see field trials that are starting. We obviously has production customer now. You just spoke to one. So this is really starting, cloud native is really starting I would say about 10 to 20% of the network functions these days are cloud native. >> Jared, question for you. You mentioned data protection, a huge topic there obviously from a security perspective. Data protection used to be the responsibility of the CSPs. You guys are changing that. Can you talk a little bit about how you're doing that and what Dell's play there is? >> Yeah, so PowerProtect Data Management is a product, but it's produced by Dell. So what this does is it enables data protection over virtual cloud as well as the physical infrastructure of specifically in this case of a telecoms ecosystem. So what this does is enables an ability to rapidly redeploy and back up existing configurations all the way up to the TCP and TCA that pulls the basis of our work here with VMware. >> So you've offloaded that responsibility from the CSPs. You freed them from that. >> So the work that we did, honestly was to make sure that we have a very clear and concise and accurate procedures for how to conduct this as well. And to put this through a realistic and real world as if it was in a telecoms own production network, what did that would actually look like, and what it would take to bring it back up as well. So our responsibility is to make sure that when we when we provide these products to the customers that not only do they work exactly as their intended to, but there is also documentation to help support them and to enable them to have their exact specifications met by as well. >> Got it. So talk about a little bit about OTEL expansion into Cork. What you guys are doing together to enable CSPs here in EMEA? >> Yeah, so the reason why we opened up a facility in Cork Island was to give, for an EMEA audience, for an EMEA CSPs and ability to look and feel and touch some of the products that we're working on. It also just facilitates and ease especially for European-based partners to have a chance to very easily come to a lab environment. The difference though, honestly, is the between Round Rock, Texas and Cork Island is that it's virtually an extension of the same thing. Like the physical locations can make it easier to provide access and obviously to showcase the products that we've developed with partners. But the reality is that it's more than just the physical location. It's more about the ability and ease by which customers and partners can access the labs. >> So we should be expecting a lot of Tito's vodka to be consumed in Cork at some point. Might change the national beverage. >> We do need to have some international exchange. >> Yeah, no, that's good to know. Odded, on the VMware side of things. There's a large group of folks who have VMware skillsets. >> Odded: Correct. >> The telecom industry is moving into this world of the kind of agility that those folks are familiar with. How do people come out of the traditional VMware virtualization world and move into that world of cloud native applications and serve the telecom space? What would your recommendation be? If you were speaking at a VMUG, a VMware Users Group meeting with all of your telecom background, what would you share with them that's critical to understand about how telecom is different, or how telecom's spot in its evolution might be different than the traditional IT space? >> So we're talking about the people with the knowledge and the background of. >> Yeah, I'm a V expert, let's say. And I'm looking into the future and I hear that there are 80,000 people in Barcelona at this event, and I hear that Dell is building optimized infrastructure specifically for telecom, and that VMware is involved. And I'm an expert in VMware and I want to be involved. What do I need to do? I know it's a little bit outside of the box question, but especially against the backdrop of economic headwinds globally, there are a lot of people facing transitions. What are your thoughts there? >> So, first of all, we understand the telco requirements, we understand the telco needs, and we make sure that what we learn from the customers, what we learn from the partners is being built into the VMware products. And simplicity is number one thing that is important for us. We want the customer experience, we want the user experience to be the same as they know even though we are transitioning into cloud native networks that require more frequent upgrades and they have more complexity to be honest. And what we do in our vertical inside VMware we are focusing on automation, telco cloud automation, telco cloud service assurance. Think of it as a wrapper around the SDDC stack that we have from VMware that really simplifies the operations for the telcos because it's really a challenge about skillset. You need to be a DevOps, SRE in order to operate these networks. And things are becoming really complex. We simplify it for them with the same VMware experience. We have a very good ability to do that. We sell products in VMware. Unlike our competition that is mostly selling professional services and support, we try to focus more on the products and delivering the value. Of course, we have services offering because telcos requires some customizations, but we do focus on automation simplicity throughout our staff. >> So just follow up. So in other words the investment in education in this VMware ecosystem absolutely can be extended and applied into the telecom world. I think it's an important thing. >> I was going to add to that. Our engagement in OTEL was also something that we created a solutions brief whether we released from Mobile World Congress this week. But in conjunction with that, we also have a white paper coming out that has a much more expansive explanation and documentation of what it was that we accomplished in the work that we've done together. And that's not something that is going to be a one-off thing. This is something that will stay evergreen that we'll continue to expand both the testing scope as well as the documentation for what this solution looks like and how it can be used as well as documentation on for the V experts for how they can then leverage and realize the the potential for what we're creating together. >> Jared, does Dell look at OTEL as having the potential to facilitate the continued evolution of the actual telco industry? And if so, how? >> Well, I mean, it would be a horrible answer if I were to say no to that. >> Right. >> I think, I honestly believe that one of the most difficult things about this idea of having desired ecosystem is not just trying to put it back together, but then also how to give yourself choice. So each time that you build one of those solution sets like that exists as an island out of all the other possibilities that comes with it. And OTEL seeks to not just be able to facilitate building that first solution set. Like that's what solutions engineering can do. And that's generally done relatively protected and internally. The Open Telecom Ecosystem seeks to build that then to also provide the ability to very easily change specific components of that whether that's a hardware component, a NIC, whether a security pass just came out or a change in either TCP or TCA or we talked a little bit about for this specific engagement that it was done on TCP 2.5. >> Odded: Correct. >> Obviously there's already a 2.7 and 3.0 is coming out. It's not like we're going to sit around and write our coattails of what 2.7 has happened. So this isn't intended to be a one and done thing. So when we talk about trying to make that easier and simpler and de-risk all of the risk that comes from trying to put all these things together, it's not just the the one single solution that you built in the lab. It's what's the next one? And how do I optimize this? And I have specific requirements as a CSP, how can I take something you built that doesn't quite match it, but how do I make that adjustment? So that's what we see to do and make it as easy and as painless as possible. >> What's the engagement model with CSPs? Is it led by Dell only, VMware partner? How does that work? >> Yeah, I can take that. So that depends on the customer, but typically customers they want to choose the cloud vendor. So they come to VMware, we want VMware. Typically, they come from the IT side. They said, "Oh, we want to manage the network side of the house the same way as we manage the IT. We don't want to have special skill sets, special teams." So they move from the IT to the network side and they want VMware there. And then obviously they have an RSP process and they have hardware choices. They can go with Dell, they can go with others. We leverage vSphere, other compatibility. So we can be flexible with the customer choice. And then depending on which customer, how large they are, they select the network equipment provider that the runs on top. We position our platform as multi-vendor. So many of them choose multiple network functions providers. So we work with Dell. So assuming that the customer is choosing Dell. We work very closely with them, offering the best solution for the customer. We work with them sometimes to even design the boxes to make sure that it fits their use cases and to make sure that it works properly. So we have a partnership validation certification end-to-end from the applications all the way down to the hardware. >> It's a fascinating place in history to be right now with 5G. Something that a lot of consumers sort of assume. It's like, "Oh, hey, yeah, we're already there. What's the 6G thing going to look like?" Well, wait a minute, we're just at the beginning stages. And so you talk about disaggregation, re-aggregation, or reintegration, the importance of that. Folks like Dell have experience in that space. Folks at VMware have a lot of experience in the virtualization space, but I heard that VMware is being acquired by Broadcom, if it all goes through, of course. You don't need to comment on it. But you mentioned something, SDDC, software-defined data center. That stack is sometimes misunderstood by the public at large and maybe the folks in the EU, I will editorialize for a moment here. It is eliminating capture in a way by larger hyperscale cloud providers. It absolutely introduces more competition into the market space. So it's interesting to hear Broadcom acknowledging that this is part of the future of VMware, no matter what else happens. These capabilities that spill into the telecom space are something that they say they're going to embrace and extend. I think that's important for anyone who's evaluating this if they're concern. Well, wait a minute. Yeah, when I reintegrate, do I want VMware as part of this mix? Is that an unknown? It's pretty clear that that's something that is part of the future of VMware moving forward. That's my personal opinion based on analysis. But you brought up SDDC, so I wanted to mention that. Again, I'm not going to ask you to get into trouble on that at all. What should we be, from a broad perspective, are there any services, outcomes that are going to come out of all of this work? The agility that's being built by you folks and folks in the open world. Are there any specific things that you personally are excited about? Or when we think about consumer devices, getting data, what are the other kinds of things that this facilitates? Anything cool, either one of you. >> So specific use cases? >> Yeah, anything. It's got to be cool though. If it's not cool we're going to ask you to leave. >> All right. I'll take that challenge. (laughs) I think one of the things that is interesting for something like OTEL as an exist, as being an Open Telecom Ecosystem, there are going to be some CSPs that it's very difficult for them to have this optionality existing for themselves. Especially when you start talking about tailoring it for specific CSPs and their needs. One of the things that becomes much more available to some of the smaller CSPs is the ability to leverage OTEL and basically act as one of their pre-production labs. So this would be something that would be very specific to a customer and we would obviously make sure that it's completely isolated but the intention there would be that it would open up the ability for what would normally take a much longer time period for them to receive some of the benefits of some of the changes that are happening within the industry. But they would have immediate benefit by leveraging specifically looking OTEL to provide them some of their solutions. And I know that you were also looking for specific use cases out of it, but like that's a huge deal for a lot of CSPs around the world that don't have the ability to lay out all the different permutations that they are most interested in and start to put each one of those through a test cycle. A specific use cases for what this looks like is honestly the most exciting that I've seen for right now is on the private 5G networks. Specifically within mining industry, we have a, sorry for the audience, but we have a demo at our booth that starts to lay out exactly how it was deployed and kind of the AB of what this looked like before the world of private 5G for this mining company and what it looks like afterwards. And the ability for both safety, as well as operational costs, as well as their ability to obviously do their job better is night and day. It completely opened up a very analog system and opened up to a very digitalized system. And I would be remiss, I didn't also mention OpenBrew, which is also an example in our booth. >> We saw it last night in action. >> We saw it. >> I hope you did. So OpenBrew is small brewery in Northeast America and we basically took a very manual process of checking temperature and pressure on multiple different tanks along the entire brewing process and digitized everything for them. All of that was enabled by a private 5G deployment that's built on Dell hardware. >> You asked for cool. I think we got it. >> Yeah, it's cool. >> Jared: I think beer. >> Cool brew, yes. >> Root beer, I think is trump card there. >> At least for folks from North America, we like our brew cool. >> Exactly. Guys, thank you so much for joining Dave and me talking about what Dell, OTEL, and VMware are doing together, what you're enabling CSPs to do and achieve. We appreciate your time and your insights. >> Absolutely. >> Thank you. >> All right, our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. You watching theCUBE live from MWC '23. Day three of our coverage continues right after a short break. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: "theCUBE's" live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Good evening, everyone. Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's "theCUBE". We are at Mobile World, MWC, excuse me, '23. New name this year. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, we have had some great conversations. This is only day one of four days of coverage from "theCUBE" but one of the things that we've been talking about is disaggregation. You've wrote about it in your breaking analysis. We've been talking about it. Today is a big thing that's happening. We're going to be talking about that next. >> Yeah, open ecosystems require integration. Integration requires certification. And so, you got to have labs. We're going to talk about that and what value that brings to the community. >> Right. Please welcome Tibor Fabry-Asztalos, senior vice president of telecom systems and product engineering at Dell. >> Hi. >> And back to "theCUBE" after a couple of hours, Gautam Bhagra, vice president of partnerships at Dell. Guys, great to have you here. >> I love to be here. Thank you. >> Great to be here. >> So, day one, I'm sure lots of conversations, lots of meetings, lots of jet lag that we're all trying to get over. Talk about, Gautam, we'll start with you. Talk about the disaggregation era. What it is intended to support? What is it intended to enable? >> Yeah, so I mean, I think to be honest with you, Lisa, we spoke about this earlier also, like the whole vision with the disaggregation is to make sure our telco providers can take the benefits of having the innovation that comes along with it, right? So currently, we all know they're tied into like lock systems, which kind of constricts them in going after this whole innovative space. So, our hope is by working with our operators and our partners, we can help make that disaggregation journey a lot easier and work on some of these challenges, and make it easier for the telcos to innovate and consolidate going forward. So, we're working very closely and we talked about the community this morning. We're working very closely with Tibor and his team from an engineering perspective to help build those solutions with our partners and we're excited about the announcements we made this morning. >> When you hear challenges from this ecosystem, can you stack rank 'em? What are you hearing? Kind of what's top of mind? And so, the top three, if you would. >> Some of the challenges are just to define moving from a closed system and open system, just to making sure that the acceptance of that to see what's the value proposition is for an open system and then for the carriers to see the path going from a closed system to an open system. Of course, at the end, people realize the value at the end and speed of innovation that you're going to get all the new technologies and new features, functionality you get in an open system. But then the challenge comes with it, how you actually integrate those and then validate them, and you are to deploy them. So in a sense, that's the opportunity and also some of the challenge along the way. And that's where, as Gautam said, that's where we are also looking at playing the key role with the OTEL lab, the Open Telecom Ecosystem Lab, where we take these pieces of the open ecosystem and have combined them, validate them, and provide the pipeline to the customer. Pre-integration and then full integration into the production network. >> Those challenges, I presume, vary whether you're talking to a greenfield network operator versus somebody who's got a 40, 50 year history, a hundred-year history in the business, right? I mean migration is a big issue for them, right? Whereas the greenfield, we heard from DISH earlier, they want to drive innovation so they might be willing to sacrifice some other areas. So, is that a fair summarization and what are you hearing? >> [Tibor and Gautam] Yeah. >> Absolutely it is. I mean, that's where you see that DISH being kind of a leader in the space, as they were deploying in greenfield, they defined what the open ecosystem should look like, defined all the components of it, how you integrate them, validate them, and they were able to, well, go through it and deploy it. To your point, for an open, closed systems, as how you actually start transforming the existing network into the open one, that's going to go to a different process, right? You need to figure out how these new open systems can interrupt and work together with existing networks. So, that's one likely some of those carriers will start in an isolated area and grow from there. Deploy an open system in a rural area, for example, and then build from there. >> So, what a bank would do is they say, "Okay, we're going to write in our own abstraction layer." >> Gautam: Yeah. >> Right? "Using microservices, we're going to connect to the cloud. And we're going to, you know, put maybe some lower risk applications in the cloud first and then we're going to create our own cloud." Is there a similar dynamic here? >> Yeah, I mean, so I think you're spot on, right? Like, I think one of the things that we are seeing with the telco operators that we've spoken to is they're very risk averse. >> Yep. >> Right, they have very strong SLA requirements. They cannot go down even for a second. So, what that basically means is the innovation aspect is constrained by the risks that they perceive on any changes that you want to make on the architecture. So, the question that comes up is how do we make it easier for them to not worry about the bare minimum requirements of making sure the network's running and working while thinking about the new innovative technologies and solutions you want to build on the start. So, back to your bank example, nine years ago, no one in a bank even was thinking about like applications that will run on the cloud. Like for them, it was like a side project. They'll try and test something, see if it works, and then they'll think about cloud in the future, right? But now, core applications on banks are actually being built on public cloud. I think we see the same happening with the telco operators as well. Right now, they're understanding the move from a closed ecosystem to an open ecosystem. They understand the value proposition. On the core side, it's already happening a lot. And I think they are slowly moving there and that's where I think Tibor and team have been doing a great job working with our customers to make the transition happen. >> But there are so many permutations. >> Right. >> And integration points. How is Dell addressing that across the ecosystem? >> So, to give you an example, we talked about OTEL, which is our brand new, kind of 13,000 square feet lab that we kind of inaugurated last year based in Round Rock, Texas. >> Dave: Open Telecom. >> Dave and Tibor: Ecosystem Lab. >> Correct, great. And so, as part of that, that's a physical lab but more importantly, that's kind of a community where partners, customers come together to actually, and collaborate and work on these solutions. And as part of this, we also develop what we call the SIP, or Solution Integration Platform, to enable exactly what you just said. Making sure that we have a platform that actually can take all these various components, validate them individually, combine them, and then provide a DevOps and GitOps model, how you actually combine them, provide the BOM or SBOM, and then push that to pre-production and deployments for our customers. So, that's part of the challenge as we talked earlier. And that's how Dell and we are looking at actually enabling this basically, the validation of this disaggregated wall. >> Oh. >> Sorry, I just wanted to- >> Go ahead. >> just going to add one more point, right? So, when we look at the partners that we are working with as well in the OTEL and there are three ways we are working with them. At the bare minimum, we want to make sure that solution will run on the Dell infrastructure and the hardware, right? So, we have the self-certification process. We had a lot of good uptake on it and we are seeing a lot more come in. In fact, I had a check-in with "theCUBE" this morning in our side and it's more than a hundred plus partners already interested in going through that. Awesome. Then we have other places where we work on with partners to build reference architectures together, right? So, we want some sort of validated solution that will work together that we can take to the market. And then we also have engineered solutions that we are building with partners like the infrastructure block offering that we have taken where it's all pre-packaged, pre-built by Dell, working very closely with our partners. So, the telcos don't have to worry about deployment, integration, and everything else that comes along. >> And I presume the security supply chain is part of that- >> Yes. >> bill of materials- >> Absolutely. >> you just described. >> Yeah. >> Exactly. >> And that would include all those levels, the engineered systems, the reference architectures as well? And how do you decide like candidates, we can't do it all, right? So, it's the big markets get the engineered system, is that right? How do you adjudicate there? >> Yeah, so I mean, I think there are a couple of angles to look at it, right? I think the first and foremost is where we see the biggest demand is coming from the customers in terms of the stack they already have and where they have the pain points. >> Dave: Okay. >> Right, so this is why we are working with Red Hat and Wind River, as an example, because they are in most of the deployments that we are aware of with the customers and where we see an opportunity for Dell to partner with these partners. I think we are seeing a lot of new players also coming up the stack. And as they come up the stack and we find opportunities to co-build and co-innovate, absolutely we'll be building joint solutions with them as well. >> Where are you on, from a partnership perspective, on the strategic vision? You mentioned a number of things that have already been accomplished, quite a few. But from your journey perspective on that strategy, where are you? >> Yeah, so it's a really good question. I think we really want to be the partner of choice for all technology and services company within the telecom space. We're looking to drive the transformation in the network area, right? So, that's the vision that we have in the telecom system business from a partnership side. We have created some really good strategic partnerships with key providers, with independent software vendors, the network equipment providers. We're having some really good, strategic conversations with them. You've heard some of the announcement come out today, the work we are doing with Nokia, with Samsung, the Red Hat announcement, the Wind River, and so on and so forth. And there's a lot more in the pipeline. But more importantly, we want to grow the impact of the ecosystem. So, that's why we are launching the partner community today as well to make that happen. >> How does the lab work? Who has access to it? Can I self-certify? If I can self-certify, how do you make sure that I'm following the rules, all of the stuff- >> Sure. >> that you would- >> Absolutely. >> expect. >> So yes, you can self-certify, that's Gautam just mentioned. We already had quite a few ISVs go through that self-certification. And then there's also, there's reference architecture that's being done and other engineered solutions that we talked about earlier. And the lab is set up in a way that when needed, test lines can be isolated. So, only certain set of partners have access to it. So, it's made up in a way that enables collaborations. At the same times, it kind of enables a certain set of customers and partners working together without having challenges of having a completely open system. >> Okay, but so, if I want to do something with you guys and let's say, I am a candidate for an engineered system, so how does it work? Somebody's got to buy the equipment, right? He's got to ship it, right? There's a lot of Dell equipment involved. >> Tibor: That's correct. >> There's other third-party CapEx software, et cetera. So, you fund that, the partners fund that, it's a hybrid funding model, how does that all get done? >> So today, for obviously, we work closely with those partners. The engineered solutions we've developed so far, we've been funding it largely and as you said, is Dell infrastructure plus the cast layers and the cloud players we work with. So, we actually put those in place. We funded them, of course, with participation from them. And that's being done through those labs. >> Okay, great. So, you guys are providing that benefit to the ecosystem. Writing checks, bringing engineering talent to the table. >> Gautam: Yeah. >> Okay. >> And at the same time, I mean, it's a partnership at the end of the day, right? So, depending on the kind of partnership we are. So, if you're an ISV, it's fairly simple. Come into our labs. You don't have to worry about the infrastructure. >> Sure. >> Run it all in our labs and you're good. If you're a hardware vendor or a NEP, network equipment provider, that's where it gets interesting where they need to send us stuff, we need to send them stuff. And usually, like Tibor mentioned, it's a joint collaboration. We all put in our chips on the table and we work together. >> So, when you're having conversations with prospective partners, obviously different types of partners, Gautam, that you just talked about, what's in it for them? What's the value proposition? What does this community- >> Gautam: Yeah. >> give them from a competitive advantage standpoint? >> Yeah, so I mean there are, so the way I think about it, right? There are three things that Dell is bringing to the table. The first one is our experience and expertise on doing this transformation within the enterprise space and the learnings we have from there that we're bringing to telco now, right? So, Dell's been working with enterprises for many, many years. We are one of the big providers there. We all know what transformation enterprise went through. >> Tibor: Telco transformation, IT transformation. >> Exactly. And that's the experience we have, which we're bringing to telco. The second one is our investment, both from a go-to market side as well as the way we are working with our sales and marketing, and so on and so forth, with the engineering side. And finally, I think, and this for me is the best one, is Dell is a very partner-centric organization. >> Lisa: Yes. >> Our strategy is built around partnerships. So, that's the other piece that we bring to the table. >> Where are the labs? Oh, go ahead. >> And what's one more note on that, and also, we are talking about the engineered solutions. There's also the supply chain then because that's a basically appliance and then that goes to Dell's supply chain, which is best in class. >> Dave: And where are the labs? How many are there? >> So Round Rock, Texas is the biggest one, the 13,000 square feet. We also have extension to it. We just announced opening one in Cork for the EME market to making sure that we can cover any regulatory challenges. But also, basically any test lines that we need to cover that have latency challenges. That's why we want to make sure that we have labs in other areas as well. >> And the go-to market, is it an overlay organization, a dedicated organization? >> Yeah, so it's a bit of both as you know. But yeah, in the telecom business unit, we have a dedicated sales organization as well as an alliance organization working very closely with product and engineering to take it to market. >> Given the strength and the breadth of the partner program in the community, based on this is only day one of MWC but is there anything that you've heard today that excites you where telecom is going and where Dell and its ecosystem is going and really burgeoning? >> Oh, I've had I don't know how many meetings since 6:00 AM this morning. So, it's been an amazing event and we're just having so many great conversations with partners, our customers. And I think a lot of today is all about figuring out what our strategy and our vision is, where is each side going and what the overlap is. I think the end result's going to be follow up conversations with a lot of these partners that we are working with or will be working with soon. And then thinking about, do we build engineered solutions together? Do we go validated route? Like we going to figure that out. But I mean, for me, this is like the perfect place to come and share your vision and strategy and understand what we are trying to solve for. >> To me, what's been interesting that all the interactions and discussions are about how to get to or render open ecosystem. That's great to see that the focus is on how to make it work versus still questioning it and I think that's pretty good. >> Well, you guys launched this business I think during the pandemic, right? >> Yes. >> Yeah, that's right. >> So I mean, you could do a lot over Zoom, but as we were talking about earlier, having the face-to-face interaction, there's no replacement for it. The 6:00 AM meetings versus the 30 minute zoom calls and your body language, I mean, you learn so much that you can take away from these events. >> Absolutely. Seeing someone in 3D is so different and it's good to build that relationship and rapport as well with the folks. >> I agree. >> It is. There's so much value in the hallway conversations that you can't have over Zoom. So, I guess last question for you as we head into to day two, what are some of the things that we can be on the lookout for from Dell and its ecosystem? >> Hmm. >> Interesting. (Tibor chuckling) >> I mean, all our announcements are out. I think what you can look at for us to really be leading in this segment, taking a leadership role, and continuously looking at how we can really enable the open ecosystem and how we can provide more value there, and how we can see how we can lead in this space. >> How you can lead in this space. >> Yeah, I mean for me, I mean, day two is like, I have a lot more meetings in day two than day one so I don't know if it's like people flying in today or what, but it's amazing to just meet the partners and customers. >> So, that theme of velocity for you is going to keep going. >> Oh, it's not stopping. (Lisa laughing) That's for sure. We are excited about it. >> Well, thank you for carving out some time to talk to with us on "theCUBE" about the partner program, the open ecosystem and the commitment to growing that and enabling partners to really differentiate their services with Dell. We appreciate it. >> We appreciate it as well. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thanks. >> Our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching "theCUBE" live in Barcelona, Spain at MWC '23. Day one of our coverage. Be right back with our final guest of the day so stick around. (upbeat music continues)

>> Announcer: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special presentation. We have a launch from Dell Technologies updates from the VxRail family. We're going to do things a little bit different here. We actually have a launch video Shannon Champion, of Dell Technologies. And the way we do things a lot of times, is, analysts get a little preview or when you're watching things. You might have questions on it. So, rather than me just wanting it, or you wanting yourself I actually brought in a couple of Dell Technologies expertS two of our Cube alumni, happy to welcome you back to the program. Jon Siegal, he is the Vice President of Product Marketing, and Chad Dunn, who's the Vice President of Product Management, both of them with Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Good to see you Stu. >> Great to be here. >> All right, and so what we're going to do is we're going to be rolling the video here. I've got a button I'm going to press, Andrew will stop it here and then we'll kind of dig in a little bit, go into some questions when we're all done. We're actually holding a crowd chat, where you will be able to ask your questions, talk to the experts and everything. And so a little bit different way to do a product announcement. Hope you enjoy it. And with that, it's VxRail. Taking HCI to the extremes is the theme. We'll see what that means and everything. But without any further ado, let's let Shannon take the video away. >> Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Champion, and I'm looking forward to taking you through what's new with VxRail. Let's get started. We have a lot to talk about. Our launch covers new announcements addressing use cases across the Core, Edge and Cloud and spans both new hardware platforms and options, as well as the latest in software innovations. So let's jump right in. Before we talk about our announcements, let's talk about where customers are adopting VxRail today. First of all, on behalf of the entire Dell Technologies and VxRail teams, I want to thank each of our over 8000 customers, big and small in virtually every industry, who've chosen VxRail to address a broad range of workloads, deploying nearly 100,000 nodes today. Thank you. Our promise to you is that we will add new functionality, improve serviceability, and support new use cases, so that we deliver the most value to you, whether in the Core, at the Edge or for the Cloud. In the Core, VxRail from day one has been a catalyst to accelerate IT transformation. Many of our customers started here and many will continue to leverage VxRail to simply extend and enhance your VMware environment. Now we can support even more demanding applications such as In-Memory databases, like SAP HANA, and more AI and ML applications, with support for more and more powerful GPUs. At the Edge, video surveillance, which also uses GPUs, by the way, is an example of a popular use case leveraging VxRail alongside external storage. And right now we all know the enhanced role that IT is playing. And as it relates to VDI, VxRail has always been a great option for that. In the Cloud, it's all about Kubernetes, and how Dell Technologies Cloud platform, which is VCF on VxRail can deliver consistent infrastructure for both traditional and Cloud native applications. And we're doing that together with VMware. VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system built with VMware for VMware environments, designed to enhance the native VMware experience. This joint engineering with VMware and investments in software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. >> Alright, so Shannon talked a bit about, the important role of IT Of course right now, with the global pandemic going on. It's really, calling in, essential things, putting, platforms to the test. So, I really love to hear what both of you are hearing from customers. Also, VDI, of course, in the early days, it was, HCI-only-does-VDI. Now, we know there are many solutions, but remote work is putting that back front and center. So, Jon, why don't we start with you as the what is (muffled speaking) >> Absolutely. So first of all, Stu, thank you, I want to do a shout out to our VxRail customers around the world. It's really been humbling, inspiring, and just amazing to see The impact of our VxRail customers around the world and what they're having on on human progress here. Just for a few examples, there are genomics companies that we have running VxRail that have rolled out testing at scale. We also have research universities out in the Netherlands, doing the antibody detection. The US Navy has stood up a floating hospital to of course care for those in need. So we are here to help that's been our message to our customers, but it's amazing to see how much they're helping society during this. So just just a pleasure there. But as you mentioned, just to hit on the VDI comments, so to your points too, HCI, VxRail, VDI, that was an initial use case years ago. And it's been great to see how many of our existing VxRail customers have been able to pivot very quickly leveraging VxRail to add and to help bring their remote workforce online and support them with their existing VxRail. Because VxRail is flexible, it is agile, to be able to support those multiple workloads. And in addition to that, we've also rolled out some new VDI bundles to make it simpler for customers more cost effective cater to everything from knowlEdge workers to multimedia workers. You name it, you know from 250, desktops up to 1000. But again, back to your point VxRail, HCI, is well beyond VDI, it crossed the chasm a couple years ago actually. And VDI now is less than a third of the typical workloads, any of our customers out there, it supports now a range of workloads that you heard from Shannon, whether it's video surveillance, whether it's general purpose, all the way to mission critical applications now with SAP HAN. So, this has changed the game for sure. But the range of work loads and the flexibility of the actual rules which really helping our existing customers during this pandemic. >> Yeah, I agree with you, Jon, we've seen customers really embrace HCI for a number of workloads in their environments, from the ones that we sure all knew and loved back in the initial days of HCI. Now, the mission critical things now to Cloud native workloads as well, and the sort of the efficiencies that customers are able to get from HCI. And specifically, VxRail gives them that ability to pivot. When these, shall we say unexpected circumstances arise? And I think that that's informing their their decisions and their opinions on what their IP strategies look like as they move forward. They want that same level of agility, and ability to react quickly with their overall infrastructure. >> Excellent. Now I want to get into the announcements. What I want my team actually, your team gave me access to the CIO from the city of Amarillo, so maybe they can dig up that footage, talk about how fast they pivoted, using VxRail to really spin up things fast. So let's hear from the announcement first and then definitely want to share that that customer story a little bit later. So let's get to the actual news that Shannon's going to share. >> Okay, now what's new? I am pleased to announce a number of exciting updates and new platforms, to further enable IT modernization across Core, Edge and Cloud. I will cover each of these announcements in more detail, demonstrating how only VxRail can offer the breadth of platform configurations, automation, orchestration and Lifecycle Management, across a fully integrated hardware and software full stack with consistent, simplified operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications. I'll start with hybrid Cloud and recap what you may have seen in the Dell Technologies Cloud announcements just a few weeks ago, related to VMware Cloud foundation on VxRail. Then I'll cover two brand new VxRail hardware platforms and additional options. And finally circle back to talk about the latest enhancements to our VxRail HCI system software capabilities for Lifecycle Management. Let's get started with our new Cloud offerings based on VxRail. VxRail is the HCI foundation for Dell Technologies, Cloud Platform, bringing automation and financial models, similar to public Cloud to On-premises environments. VMware recently introduced Cloud foundation for Delta, which is based on vSphere 7.0. As you likely know by now, vSphere 7.0 was definitely an exciting and highly anticipated release. In keeping with our synchronous release commitment, we introduced VxRail 7.0 based on vSphere 7.0 in late April, which was within 30 days of VMware's release. Two key areas that VMware focused on we're embedding containers and Kubernetes into vSphere, unifying them with virtual machines. And the second is improving the work experience for vSphere administrators with vSphere Lifecycle Manager or VLCM. I'll address the second point a bit in terms of how VxRail fits in in a moment for VCF 4 with Tom Xu, based on vSphere 7.0 customers now have access to a hybrid Cloud platform that supports native Kubernetes workloads and management, as well as your traditional VM-based workloads. So containers are now first class citizens of your private Cloud alongside traditional VMs and this is now available with VCF 4.0, on VxRail 7.0. VxRail's tight integration with VMware Cloud foundation delivers a simple and direct path not only to the hybrid Cloud, but also to deliver Kubernetes at Cloud scale with one complete automated platform. The second Cloud announcement is also exciting. Recent VCF for networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid Cloud, because we're now able to offer a more accessible consolidated architecture. And with that Dell Technologies Cloud platform can now be deployed with a four-node configuration, lowering the cost of an entry level hybrid Cloud. This enables customers to start smaller and grow their Cloud deployment over time. VCF and VxRail can now be deployed in two different ways. For small environments, customers can utilize a consolidated architecture which starts with just four nodes. Since the management and workload domains share resources in this architecture, it's ideal for getting started with an entry level Cloud to run general purpose virtualized workloads with a smaller entry point. Both in terms of required infrastructure footprint as well as cost, but still with a Consistent Cloud operating model. For larger environments where dedicated resources and role-based access control to separate different sets of workloads is usually preferred. You can choose to deploy a standard architecture which starts at eight nodes for independent management and workload domains. A standard implementation is ideal for customers running applications that require dedicated workload domains that includes Horizon, VDI, and vSphere with Kubernetes. >> Alright, Jon, there's definitely been a lot of interest in our community around everything that VMware is doing with vSphere 7.0. understand if you wanted to use the Kubernetes piece, it's VCF as that so we've seen the announcements, Dell, partnering in there it helps us connect that story between, really the VMware strategy and how they talk about Cloud and where does VxRail fit in that overall, Delta Cloud story? >> Absolutely. So first of all Stu, the VxRail course is integral to the Delta Cloud strategy. it's been VCF on VxRail equals the Delta Cloud platform. And this is our flagship on prem Cloud offering, that we've been able to enable operational consistency across any Cloud, whether it's On-prem, in the Edge or in the public Cloud. And we've seen the Dell tech Cloud Platform embraced by customers for a couple key reasons. One is it offers the fastest hybrid Cloud deployment in the market. And this is really, thanks to a new subscription offer that we're now offering out there where in less than 14 days, it can be still up and running. And really, the Dell tech Cloud does bring a lot of flexibility in terms of consumption models, overall when it comes to VxRail. Secondly, I would say is fast and easy upgrades. This is what VxRail brings to the table for all workloads, if you will, into especially critical in the Cloud. So the full automation of Lifecycle Management across the hardware and software stack across the VMware software stack, and in the Dell software and hardware supporting that, together, this enables essentially the third thing, which is customers can just relax. They can be rest assured that their infrastructure will be continuously validated, and always be in a continuously validated state. And this is the kind of thing that those three value propositions together really fit well, with any on-prem Cloud. Now you take what Shannon just mentioned, and the fact that now you can build and run modern applications on the same VxRail infrastructure alongside traditional applications. This is a game changer. >> Yeah, I love it. I remember in the early days talking with Dunn about CI, how does that fit in with Cloud discussion and the line I've used the last couple years is, modernize the platform, then you can modernize the application. So as companies are doing their full modernization, then this plays into what you're talking about. All right, we can let Shannon continue, we can get some more before we dig into some more analysis. >> That's good. >> Let's talk about new hardware platforms and updates. that result in literally thousands of potential new configuration options. covering a wide breadth of modern and traditional application needs across a range of the actual use cases. First up, I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new Dell EMC VxRail series, the D series. This is a ruggedized durable platform that delivers the full power of VxRail for workloads at the Edge in challenging environments or for space constrained areas. VxRail D series offers the same compelling benefits as the rest of the VxRail portfolio with simplicity, agility and lifecycle management. But in a lightweight short depth at only 20 inches, it's adorable form factor that's extremely temperature-resilient, shock resistant, and easily portable. It even meets milspec standards. That means you have the full power of lifecycle automation with VxRail HCI system software and 24 by seven single point of support, enabling you to rapidly react to business needs, no matter the location or how harsh the conditions. So whether you're deploying a data center at a mobile command base, running real-time GPS mapping on the go, or implementing video surveillance in remote areas, you can ensure availability, integrity and confidence for every workload with the new VxRail ruggedized D series. >> All right, Chad we would love for you to bring us in a little bit that what customer requirement for bringing this to market. I remember seeing, Dell servers ruggedized, of course, Edge, really important growth to build on what Jon was talking about, Cloud. So, Chad, bring us inside, what was driving this piece of the offering? >> Sure Stu. Yeah, yeah, having been at the hardware platforms that can go out into some of these remote locations is really important. And that's being driven by the fact that customers are looking for compute performance and storage out at some of these Edges or some of the more exotic locations. whether that's manufacturing plants, oil rigs, submarine ships, military applications, places that we've never heard of. But it's also about extending that operational simplicity of the the sort of way that you're managing your data center that has VxRails you're managing your Edges the same way using the same set of tools. You don't need to learn anything else. So operational simplicity is absolutely key here. But in those locations, you can take a product that's designed for a data center where definitely controlling power cooling space and take it some of these places where you get sand blowing or seven to zero temperatures, could be Baghdad or it could be Ketchikan, Alaska. So we built this D series that was able to go to those extreme locations with extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme altitude, but still offer that operational simplicity. Now military is one of those applications for the rugged platform. If you look at the resistance that it has to heat, it operates at a 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit range, but it can do an excursion up to 55 C or 131 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours. It's also resistant to heat sand, dust, vibration, it's very lightweight, short depth, in fact, it's only 20 inches deep. This is a smallest form factor, obviously that we have in the VxRail family. And it's also built to be able to withstand sudden shocks certified to withstand 40 G's of shock and operation of the 15,000 feet of elevation. Pretty high. And this is sort of like wherever skydivers go to when they want the real thrill of skydiving where you actually need oxygen to, to be for that that altitude. They're milspec-certified. So, MIL-STD-810G, which I keep right beside my bed and read every night. And it comes with a VxRail stick hardening package is packaging scripts so that you can auto lock down the rail environment. And we've got a few other certifications that are on the roadmap now for naval shock requirements. EMI and radiation immunity often. >> Yeah, it's funny, I remember when we first launched it was like, "Oh, well everything's going to white boxes. "And it's going to be massive, "no differentiation between everything out there." If you look at what you're offering, if you look at how public Clouds build their things, but I called it a few years or is there's a pure optimization. So you need to scale, you need similarities but you know you need to fit some, very specific requirements, lots of places, so, interesting stuff. Yeah, certifications, always keep your teams busy. Alright, let's get back to Shannon to view on the report. >> We are also introducing three other hardware-based additions. First, a new VxRail E Series model based on where the first time AMD EPYC processors. These single socket 1U nodes, offer dual socket performance with CPU options that scale from eight to 64 Cores, up to a terabyte of memory and multiple storage options making it an ideal platform for desktop VDI analytics and computer aided design. Next, the addition of the latest Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs brings the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional work flows. Designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what's possible, working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering, deep learning and visual computing workloads. And Intel Optane DC persistent memory is here, and it offers high performance and significantly increased memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price. Data persistence is a critical feature that maintains data integrity, even when power is lost, enabling quicker recovery and less downtime. With support for Intel obtain DC persistent memory customers can expand in memory intensive workloads and use cases like SAP HANA. Alright, let's finally dig into our HCI system software, which is the Core differentiation for VxRail regardless of your workload or platform choice. Our joining engineering with VMware and investments in VxRail HCI system software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. Under the covers, VxRail offers best in class hardware, married with VMware HCI software, either vSAN or VCF. But what makes us different stems from our investments to integrate the two. Dell Technologies has a dedicated VxRail team of about 400 people to build market sell and support a fully integrated hyper converged system. That team has also developed our unique VxRail HCI system software, which is a suite of integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver seamless, automated operational experience that customers cannot find elsewhere. The key components of VxRail HCI system software shown around the arc here that include the extra manager, full stack lifecycle management, ecosystem connectors, and support. I don't have time to get into all the details of these elements today, but if you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to meet our experts. And I will tell you how to do that in a moment. I touched on the LCM being a key feature to the vSphere 7.0 earlier and I'd like to take the opportunity to expand on that a bit in the context of VxRail Lifecycle Management. The LCM adds valuable automation to the execution of updates for customers, but it doesn't eliminate the manual work still needed to define and package the updates and validate all of the components prior to applying them. With VxRail customers have all of these areas addressed automatically on their behalf, freeing them to put their time into other important functions for their business. Customers tell us that Lifecycle management continues to be a major source of the maintenance effort they put into their infrastructure, and then it tends to lead to overburden IT staff, that it can cause disruptions to the business if not managed effectively, and that it isn't the most efficient economically. Automation of Lifecycle Management and VxRail results in the utmost simplicity from a customer experience perspective, and offers operational freedom from maintaining infrastructure. But as shown here, our customers not only realize greater IT team efficiencies, they have also reduced downtime with fewer unplanned outages, and reduced overall cost of operations. With VxRail HCI system software, intelligent Lifecycle Management upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack are automated, keeping clusters and continuously validated states while minimizing risks and operational costs. How do we ensure Continuously validated states for VxRail. VxRail labs execute an extensive, automated, repeatable process on every firmware and software upgrade and patch to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states of the customers choosing across their VxRail environment. The VxRail labs are constantly testing, analyzing, optimizing, and sequencing all of the components in the upgrade to execute in a single package for the full stack. All the while VxRail is backed by Dell EMC's world class services and support with a single point of contact for both hardware and software. IT productivity skyrockets with single click non disruptive upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack without the need to do extensive research and testing. taking you to the next VxRail version of your choice, while always in a continuously validated state. You can also confidently execute automated VxRail upgrades. No matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster. They don't have to all be the same. And upgrades with VxRail are faster and more efficient with leapfrogging simply choose any VxRail version you desire. And be assured you will get there in a validated state while seamlessly bypassing any other release in between. Only VxRail can do that. >> All right, so Chad, the lifecycle management piece that Shannon was just talking about is, not the sexiest, it's often underappreciated. There's not only the years of experience, but the continuous work you're doing, reminds me back the early vSAN deployments versus VxRail jointly developed, jointly tested between Dell and VMware. So bring us inside why, 2020 Lifecycle Management still, a very important piece, especially in the VM family line. >> Yes, Stu, I think it's sexy, but, I'm pretty big nerd. (all laughing) Yeah, this is really always been our bread and butter. And in fact, it gets even more important, the larger the deployments come, when you start to look at data centers full of VxRails and all the different hardware software, firmware combinations that could exist out there. It's really the value that you get out of that VxRail HCI system software that Shannon was talking about and how it's optimized around the VMware use case. Very tightly integrated with each VMware component, of course, and the intelligence of being able to do all the firmware, all of the drivers, all the software all together in tremendous value to our customers. But to deliver that we really need to make a fairly large investment. So as Shannon mentioned, we run about 25,000 hours of testing across Each major release for patches, express patches, that's about 7000 hours for each of those. So, obviously, there's a lot of parallelism. And we're always developing new test scenarios for each release that we need to build in as we as we introduce new functionality. And one of the key things that we're able to do, as Shannon mentioned, is to be able to leapfrog releases and get you to that next validated state. We've got about 100 engineers just working on creating and executing those test cases on a continuous basis and obviously, a huge amount of automation. And we've talked about that investment to execute those tests. That's one worth of $60 million of investment in our lab. In fact, we've got just over 2000 VxRail units in our testbed across the US, Shanghai, China and Cork, Ireland. So a massive amount of testing of each of those components to make sure that they operate together in a validated state. >> Yeah, well, absolutely, it's super important not only for the day one, but the day two deployments. But I think this actually a great place for us to bring in that customer that Dell gave me access to. So we've got the CIO of Amarillo, Texas, he was an existing VxRail customer. And he's going to explain what happened as to how he needed to react really fast to support the work-from-home initiative, as well as we get to hear in his words the value of what Lifecycle Management means. So Andrew, if we could queue up that customer segment, please? >> It's been massive and it's been interesting to see the IT team absorb it. As we mature, I think they embrace the ability to be innovative and to work with our departments. But this instance, really justified why I was driving progress. So fervently why it was so urgent today. Three years ago, the answer would have been no. We wouldn't have been in a place where we could adapt With VxRail in place, in a week we spun up hundreds of instant balls. We spun up a 75-person call center in a day and a half, for our public health. We rolled out multiple applications for public health so they could do remote clinics. It's given us the flexibility to be able to roll out new solutions very quickly and be very adaptive. And it's not only been apparent to my team, but it's really made an impact on the business. And now what I'm seeing is those of my customers that work, a little lagging or a little conservative, or understanding the impact of modernizing the way they do business because it makes them adaptable as well. >> Alright, so great, Richard, you talked a bunch about the the efficiencies that that the IT put in place, how about that, that overall just managed, you talked about how fast you spun up these new VDI instances. need to be able to do things much simpler? So how does the overall Lifecycle Management fit into this discussion? >> It makes it so much easier. And in the old environment, one, It took a lot of man hours to make change. It was very disruptive, when we did make change, it overburdened, I guess that's the word I'm looking for. It really overburdened our staff to cause disruption to business. That wasn't cost efficient. And then simple things like, I've worked for multi billion dollar companies where we had massive QA environments that replicated production, simply can't afford that at local government. Having this sort of environment lets me do a scaled down QA environment and still get the benefit of rolling out non disruptive change. As I said earlier, it's allowed us to take all of those cycles that we were spending on Lifecycle Management because it's greatly simplified, and move those resources and rescale them in other areas where we can actually have more impact on the business. It's hard to be innovative when 100% of your cycles are just keeping the ship afloat. >> All right, well, nothing better than hearing it straight from the end user, public sector reacting very fast to the COVID-19. And, if you heard him he said, if this is his, before he had run this project, he would not have been able to respond. So I think everybody out there understands, if I didn't actually have access to the latest technology, it would be much harder. All right, I'm looking forward to doing the CrowdChat letting everybody else dig in with questions and get follow up but a little bit more, I believe one more announcement he can and got for us though. Let's roll the final video clip. >> In our latest software release VxRail 4.7.510, We continue to add new automation and self service features. New functionality enables you to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades, to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch. This is extremely valuable for customers that have stringent upgrade windows, as they can be assured the clusters will seamlessly upgrade within that window. Of course, running health checks on a regular basis also helps ensure that your clusters are always ready for unscheduled patches and security updates. We are also offering more flexibility and getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level with the ability to reimage nodes or clusters to a specific VxRail version, or down rev one or more nodes that may be shipped at a higher rate than the existing cluster. This enables you to easily choose your validated state when adding new nodes or repurposing nodes in a cluster. To sum up all of our announcements, whether you are accelerating data sets modernization extending HCI to harsh Edge environments, deploying an on-premises Dell Technologies Cloud platform to create a developer ready Kubernetes infrastructure. VxRail is there delivering a turn-key experience that enables you to continuously innovate, realize operational freedom and predictably evolve. VxRail provides an extensive breadth of platform configurations, automation and Lifecycle Management across the integrated hardware and software full stack and consistent hybrid Cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications across Core, Edge and Cloud. I now invite you to engage with us. First, the virtual passport program is an opportunity to have some fun while learning about VxRail new features and functionality and sCore some sweet digital swag while you're at it. Delivered via an augmented reality app. All you need is your device. So go to vxrail.is/passport to get started. And secondly, if you have any questions about anything I talked about or want a deeper conversation, we encourage you to join one of our exclusive VxRail Meet The Experts sessions available for a limited time. First come first served, just go to vxrail.is/expertsession to learn more. >> All right, well, obviously, with everyone being remote, there's different ways we're looking to engage. So we've got the CrowdChat right after this. But Jon, give us a little bit more as to how Dell's making sure to stay in close contact with customers and what you've got for options for them. >> Yeah, absolutely. So as Shannon said, so in lieu of not having done Tech World this year in person, where we could have those great in-person interactions and answer questions, whether it's in the booth or in meeting rooms, we are going to have these Meet The Experts sessions over the next couple weeks, and we're going to put our best and brightest from our technical community and make them accessible to everyone out there. So again, definitely encourage you. We're trying new things here in this virtual environment to ensure that we can still stay in touch, answer questions, be responsive, and really looking forward to, having these conversations over the next couple of weeks. >> All right, well, Jon and Chad, thank you so much. We definitely look forward to the conversation here and continued. If you're here live, definitely go down below and do it if you're watching this on demand. You can see the full transcript of it at crowdchat.net/vxrailrocks. For myself, Shannon on the video, Jon, Chad, Andrew, man in the booth there, thank you so much for watching, and go ahead and join the CrowdChat.

>> Announcer: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special presentation. We have a launch from Dell Technologies updates from the VxRail family. We're going to do things a little bit different here. We actually have a launch video Shannon Champion, of Dell Technologies. And the way we do things a lot of times, is, analysts get a little preview or when you're watching things. You might have questions on it. So, rather than me just wanting it, or you wanting yourself I actually brought in a couple of Dell Technologies expertS two of our Cube alumni, happy to welcome you back to the program. Jon Siegal, he is the Vice President of Product Marketing, and Chad Dunn, who's the Vice President of Product Management, both of them with Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Good to see you Stu. >> Great to be here. >> All right, and so what we're going to do is we're going to be rolling the video here. I've got a button I'm going to press, Andrew will stop it here and then we'll kind of dig in a little bit, go into some questions when we're all done. We're actually holding a crowd chat, where you will be able to ask your questions, talk to the experts and everything. And so a little bit different way to do a product announcement. Hope you enjoy it. And with that, it's VxRail. Taking HCI to the extremes is the theme. We'll see what that means and everything. But without any further ado, let's let Shannon take the video away. >> Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Champion, and I'm looking forward to taking you through what's new with VxRail. Let's get started. We have a lot to talk about. Our launch covers new announcements addressing use cases across the Core, Edge and Cloud and spans both new hardware platforms and options, as well as the latest in software innovations. So let's jump right in. Before we talk about our announcements, let's talk about where customers are adopting VxRail today. First of all, on behalf of the entire Dell Technologies and VxRail teams, I want to thank each of our over 8000 customers, big and small in virtually every industry, who've chosen VxRail to address a broad range of workloads, deploying nearly 100,000 nodes today. Thank you. Our promise to you is that we will add new functionality, improve serviceability, and support new use cases, so that we deliver the most value to you, whether in the Core, at the Edge or for the Cloud. In the Core, VxRail from day one has been a catalyst to accelerate IT transformation. Many of our customers started here and many will continue to leverage VxRail to simply extend and enhance your VMware environment. Now we can support even more demanding applications such as In-Memory databases, like SAP HANA, and more AI and ML applications, with support for more and more powerful GPUs. At the Edge, video surveillance, which also uses GPUs, by the way, is an example of a popular use case leveraging VxRail alongside external storage. And right now we all know the enhanced role that IT is playing. And as it relates to VDI, VxRail has always been a great option for that. In the Cloud, it's all about Kubernetes, and how Dell Technologies Cloud platform, which is VCF on VxRail can deliver consistent infrastructure for both traditional and Cloud native applications. And we're doing that together with VMware. VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system built with VMware for VMware environments, designed to enhance the native VMware experience. This joint engineering with VMware and investments in software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. >> Alright, so Shannon talked a bit about, the important role of IT Of course right now, with the global pandemic going on. It's really, calling in, essential things, putting, platforms to the test. So, I really love to hear what both of you are hearing from customers. Also, VDI, of course, in the early days, it was, HCI-only-does-VDI. Now, we know there are many solutions, but remote work is putting that back front and center. So, Jon, why don't we start with you as the what is (muffled speaking) >> Absolutely. So first of all, Stu, thank you, I want to do a shout out to our VxRail customers around the world. It's really been humbling, inspiring, and just amazing to see The impact of our VxRail customers around the world and what they're having on on human progress here. Just for a few examples, there are genomics companies that we have running VxRail that have rolled out testing at scale. We also have research universities out in the Netherlands, doing the antibody detection. The US Navy has stood up a floating hospital to of course care for those in need. So we are here to help that's been our message to our customers, but it's amazing to see how much they're helping society during this. So just just a pleasure there. But as you mentioned, just to hit on the VDI comments, so to your points too, HCI, VxRail, VDI, that was an initial use case years ago. And it's been great to see how many of our existing VxRail customers have been able to pivot very quickly leveraging VxRail to add and to help bring their remote workforce online and support them with their existing VxRail. Because VxRail is flexible, it is agile, to be able to support those multiple workloads. And in addition to that, we've also rolled out some new VDI bundles to make it simpler for customers more cost effective cater to everything from knowlEdge workers to multimedia workers. You name it, you know from 250, desktops up to 1000. But again, back to your point VxRail, HCI, is well beyond VDI, it crossed the chasm a couple years ago actually. And VDI now is less than a third of the typical workloads, any of our customers out there, it supports now a range of workloads that you heard from Shannon, whether it's video surveillance, whether it's general purpose, all the way to mission critical applications now with SAP HAN. So, this has changed the game for sure. But the range of work loads and the flexibility of the actual rules which really helping our existing customers during this pandemic. >> Yeah, I agree with you, Jon, we've seen customers really embrace HCI for a number of workloads in their environments, from the ones that we sure all knew and loved back in the initial days of HCI. Now, the mission critical things now to Cloud native workloads as well, and the sort of the efficiencies that customers are able to get from HCI. And specifically, VxRail gives them that ability to pivot. When these, shall we say unexpected circumstances arise? And I think that that's informing their their decisions and their opinions on what their IP strategies look like as they move forward. They want that same level of agility, and ability to react quickly with their overall infrastructure. >> Excellent. Now I want to get into the announcements. What I want my team actually, your team gave me access to the CIO from the city of Amarillo, so maybe they can dig up that footage, talk about how fast they pivoted, using VxRail to really spin up things fast. So let's hear from the announcement first and then definitely want to share that that customer story a little bit later. So let's get to the actual news that Shannon's going to share. >> Okay, now what's new? I am pleased to announce a number of exciting updates and new platforms, to further enable IT modernization across Core, Edge and Cloud. I will cover each of these announcements in more detail, demonstrating how only VxRail can offer the breadth of platform configurations, automation, orchestration and Lifecycle Management, across a fully integrated hardware and software full stack with consistent, simplified operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications. I'll start with hybrid Cloud and recap what you may have seen in the Dell Technologies Cloud announcements just a few weeks ago, related to VMware Cloud foundation on VxRail. Then I'll cover two brand new VxRail hardware platforms and additional options. And finally circle back to talk about the latest enhancements to our VxRail HCI system software capabilities for Lifecycle Management. Let's get started with our new Cloud offerings based on VxRail. VxRail is the HCI foundation for Dell Technologies, Cloud Platform, bringing automation and financial models, similar to public Cloud to On-premises environments. VMware recently introduced Cloud foundation for Delta, which is based on vSphere 7.0. As you likely know by now, vSphere 7.0 was definitely an exciting and highly anticipated release. In keeping with our synchronous release commitment, we introduced VxRail 7.0 based on vSphere 7.0 in late April, which was within 30 days of VMware's release. Two key areas that VMware focused on we're embedding containers and Kubernetes into vSphere, unifying them with virtual machines. And the second is improving the work experience for vSphere administrators with vSphere Lifecycle Manager or VLCM. I'll address the second point a bit in terms of how VxRail fits in in a moment for VCF 4 with Tom Xu, based on vSphere 7.0 customers now have access to a hybrid Cloud platform that supports native Kubernetes workloads and management, as well as your traditional VM-based workloads. So containers are now first class citizens of your private Cloud alongside traditional VMs and this is now available with VCF 4.0, on VxRail 7.0. VxRail's tight integration with VMware Cloud foundation delivers a simple and direct path not only to the hybrid Cloud, but also to deliver Kubernetes at Cloud scale with one complete automated platform. The second Cloud announcement is also exciting. Recent VCF for networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid Cloud, because we're now able to offer a more accessible consolidated architecture. And with that Dell Technologies Cloud platform can now be deployed with a four-node configuration, lowering the cost of an entry level hybrid Cloud. This enables customers to start smaller and grow their Cloud deployment over time. VCF and VxRail can now be deployed in two different ways. For small environments, customers can utilize a consolidated architecture which starts with just four nodes. Since the management and workload domains share resources in this architecture, it's ideal for getting started with an entry level Cloud to run general purpose virtualized workloads with a smaller entry point. Both in terms of required infrastructure footprint as well as cost, but still with a Consistent Cloud operating model. For larger environments where dedicated resources and role-based access control to separate different sets of workloads is usually preferred. You can choose to deploy a standard architecture which starts at eight nodes for independent management and workload domains. A standard implementation is ideal for customers running applications that require dedicated workload domains that includes Horizon, VDI, and vSphere with Kubernetes. >> Alright, Jon, there's definitely been a lot of interest in our community around everything that VMware is doing with vSphere 7.0. understand if you wanted to use the Kubernetes piece, it's VCF as that so we've seen the announcements, Dell, partnering in there it helps us connect that story between, really the VMware strategy and how they talk about Cloud and where does VxRail fit in that overall, Delta Cloud story? >> Absolutely. So first of all Stu, the VxRail course is integral to the Delta Cloud strategy. it's been VCF on VxRail equals the Delta Cloud platform. And this is our flagship on prem Cloud offering, that we've been able to enable operational consistency across any Cloud, whether it's On-prem, in the Edge or in the public Cloud. And we've seen the Dell tech Cloud Platform embraced by customers for a couple key reasons. One is it offers the fastest hybrid Cloud deployment in the market. And this is really, thanks to a new subscription offer that we're now offering out there where in less than 14 days, it can be still up and running. And really, the Dell tech Cloud does bring a lot of flexibility in terms of consumption models, overall when it comes to VxRail. Secondly, I would say is fast and easy upgrades. This is what VxRail brings to the table for all workloads, if you will, into especially critical in the Cloud. So the full automation of Lifecycle Management across the hardware and software stack across the VMware software stack, and in the Dell software and hardware supporting that, together, this enables essentially the third thing, which is customers can just relax. They can be rest assured that their infrastructure will be continuously validated, and always be in a continuously validated state. And this is the kind of thing that those three value propositions together really fit well, with any on-prem Cloud. Now you take what Shannon just mentioned, and the fact that now you can build and run modern applications on the same VxRail infrastructure alongside traditional applications. This is a game changer. >> Yeah, I love it. I remember in the early days talking with Dunn about CI, how does that fit in with Cloud discussion and the line I've used the last couple years is, modernize the platform, then you can modernize the application. So as companies are doing their full modernization, then this plays into what you're talking about. All right, we can let Shannon continue, we can get some more before we dig into some more analysis. >> That's good. >> Let's talk about new hardware platforms and updates. that result in literally thousands of potential new configuration options. covering a wide breadth of modern and traditional application needs across a range of the actual use cases. First up, I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new Dell EMC VxRail series, the D series. This is a ruggedized durable platform that delivers the full power of VxRail for workloads at the Edge in challenging environments or for space constrained areas. VxRail D series offers the same compelling benefits as the rest of the VxRail portfolio with simplicity, agility and lifecycle management. But in a lightweight short depth at only 20 inches, it's adorable form factor that's extremely temperature-resilient, shock resistant, and easily portable. It even meets milspec standards. That means you have the full power of lifecycle automation with VxRail HCI system software and 24 by seven single point of support, enabling you to rapidly react to business needs, no matter the location or how harsh the conditions. So whether you're deploying a data center at a mobile command base, running real-time GPS mapping on the go, or implementing video surveillance in remote areas, you can ensure availability, integrity and confidence for every workload with the new VxRail ruggedized D series. >> All right, Chad we would love for you to bring us in a little bit that what customer requirement for bringing this to market. I remember seeing, Dell servers ruggedized, of course, Edge, really important growth to build on what Jon was talking about, Cloud. So, Chad, bring us inside, what was driving this piece of the offering? >> Sure Stu. Yeah, yeah, having been at the hardware platforms that can go out into some of these remote locations is really important. And that's being driven by the fact that customers are looking for compute performance and storage out at some of these Edges or some of the more exotic locations. whether that's manufacturing plants, oil rigs, submarine ships, military applications, places that we've never heard of. But it's also about extending that operational simplicity of the the sort of way that you're managing your data center that has VxRails you're managing your Edges the same way using the same set of tools. You don't need to learn anything else. So operational simplicity is absolutely key here. But in those locations, you can take a product that's designed for a data center where definitely controlling power cooling space and take it some of these places where you get sand blowing or seven to zero temperatures, could be Baghdad or it could be Ketchikan, Alaska. So we built this D series that was able to go to those extreme locations with extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme altitude, but still offer that operational simplicity. Now military is one of those applications for the rugged platform. If you look at the resistance that it has to heat, it operates at a 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit range, but it can do an excursion up to 55 C or 131 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours. It's also resistant to heat sand, dust, vibration, it's very lightweight, short depth, in fact, it's only 20 inches deep. This is a smallest form factor, obviously that we have in the VxRail family. And it's also built to be able to withstand sudden shocks certified to withstand 40 G's of shock and operation of the 15,000 feet of elevation. Pretty high. And this is sort of like wherever skydivers go to when they want the real thrill of skydiving where you actually need oxygen to, to be for that that altitude. They're milspec-certified. So, MIL-STD-810G, which I keep right beside my bed and read every night. And it comes with a VxRail stick hardening package is packaging scripts so that you can auto lock down the rail environment. And we've got a few other certifications that are on the roadmap now for naval shock requirements. EMI and radiation immunity often. >> Yeah, it's funny, I remember when we first launched it was like, "Oh, well everything's going to white boxes. "And it's going to be massive, "no differentiation between everything out there." If you look at what you're offering, if you look at how public Clouds build their things, but I called it a few years or is there's a pure optimization. So you need to scale, you need similarities but you know you need to fit some, very specific requirements, lots of places, so, interesting stuff. Yeah, certifications, always keep your teams busy. Alright, let's get back to Shannon to view on the report. >> We are also introducing three other hardware-based additions. First, a new VxRail E Series model based on where the first time AMD EPYC processors. These single socket 1U nodes, offer dual socket performance with CPU options that scale from eight to 64 Cores, up to a terabyte of memory and multiple storage options making it an ideal platform for desktop VDI analytics and computer aided design. Next, the addition of the latest Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs brings the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional work flows. Designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what's possible, working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering, deep learning and visual computing workloads. And Intel Optane DC persistent memory is here, and it offers high performance and significantly increased memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price. Data persistence is a critical feature that maintains data integrity, even when power is lost, enabling quicker recovery and less downtime. With support for Intel obtain DC persistent memory customers can expand in memory intensive workloads and use cases like SAP HANA. Alright, let's finally dig into our HCI system software, which is the Core differentiation for VxRail regardless of your workload or platform choice. Our joining engineering with VMware and investments in VxRail HCI system software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. Under the covers, VxRail offers best in class hardware, married with VMware HCI software, either vSAN or VCF. But what makes us different stems from our investments to integrate the two. Dell Technologies has a dedicated VxRail team of about 400 people to build market sell and support a fully integrated hyper converged system. That team has also developed our unique VxRail HCI system software, which is a suite of integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver seamless, automated operational experience that customers cannot find elsewhere. The key components of VxRail HCI system software shown around the arc here that include the extra manager, full stack lifecycle management, ecosystem connectors, and support. I don't have time to get into all the details of these elements today, but if you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to meet our experts. And I will tell you how to do that in a moment. I touched on the LCM being a key feature to the vSphere 7.0 earlier and I'd like to take the opportunity to expand on that a bit in the context of VxRail Lifecycle Management. The LCM adds valuable automation to the execution of updates for customers, but it doesn't eliminate the manual work still needed to define and package the updates and validate all of the components prior to applying them. With VxRail customers have all of these areas addressed automatically on their behalf, freeing them to put their time into other important functions for their business. Customers tell us that Lifecycle management continues to be a major source of the maintenance effort they put into their infrastructure, and then it tends to lead to overburden IT staff, that it can cause disruptions to the business if not managed effectively, and that it isn't the most efficient economically. Automation of Lifecycle Management and VxRail results in the utmost simplicity from a customer experience perspective, and offers operational freedom from maintaining infrastructure. But as shown here, our customers not only realize greater IT team efficiencies, they have also reduced downtime with fewer unplanned outages, and reduced overall cost of operations. With VxRail HCI system software, intelligent Lifecycle Management upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack are automated, keeping clusters and continuously validated states while minimizing risks and operational costs. How do we ensure Continuously validated states for VxRail. VxRail labs execute an extensive, automated, repeatable process on every firmware and software upgrade and patch to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states of the customers choosing across their VxRail environment. The VxRail labs are constantly testing, analyzing, optimizing, and sequencing all of the components in the upgrade to execute in a single package for the full stack. All the while VxRail is backed by Dell EMC's world class services and support with a single point of contact for both hardware and software. IT productivity skyrockets with single click non disruptive upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack without the need to do extensive research and testing. taking you to the next VxRail version of your choice, while always in a continuously validated state. You can also confidently execute automated VxRail upgrades. No matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster. They don't have to all be the same. And upgrades with VxRail are faster and more efficient with leapfrogging simply choose any VxRail version you desire. And be assured you will get there in a validated state while seamlessly bypassing any other release in between. Only VxRail can do that. >> All right, so Chad, the lifecycle management piece that Shannon was just talking about is, not the sexiest, it's often underappreciated. There's not only the years of experience, but the continuous work you're doing, reminds me back the early vSAN deployments versus VxRail jointly developed, jointly tested between Dell and VMware. So bring us inside why, 2020 Lifecycle Management still, a very important piece, especially in the VM family line. >> Yes, Stu, I think it's sexy, but, I'm pretty big nerd. (all laughing) Yeah, this is really always been our bread and butter. And in fact, it gets even more important, the larger the deployments come, when you start to look at data centers full of VxRails and all the different hardware software, firmware combinations that could exist out there. It's really the value that you get out of that VxRail HCI system software that Shannon was talking about and how it's optimized around the VMware use case. Very tightly integrated with each VMware component, of course, and the intelligence of being able to do all the firmware, all of the drivers, all the software all together in tremendous value to our customers. But to deliver that we really need to make a fairly large investment. So as Shannon mentioned, we run about 25,000 hours of testing across Each major release for patches, express patches, that's about 7000 hours for each of those. So, obviously, there's a lot of parallelism. And we're always developing new test scenarios for each release that we need to build in as we as we introduce new functionality. And one of the key things that we're able to do, as Shannon mentioned, is to be able to leapfrog releases and get you to that next validated state. We've got about 100 engineers just working on creating and executing those test cases on a continuous basis and obviously, a huge amount of automation. And we've talked about that investment to execute those tests. That's one worth of $60 million of investment in our lab. In fact, we've got just over 2000 VxRail units in our testbed across the US, Shanghai, China and Cork, Ireland. So a massive amount of testing of each of those components to make sure that they operate together in a validated state. >> Yeah, well, absolutely, it's super important not only for the day one, but the day two deployments. But I think this actually a great place for us to bring in that customer that Dell gave me access to. So we've got the CIO of Amarillo, Texas, he was an existing VxRail customer. And he's going to explain what happened as to how he needed to react really fast to support the work-from-home initiative, as well as we get to hear in his words the value of what Lifecycle Management means. So Andrew, if we could queue up that customer segment, please? >> It's been massive and it's been interesting to see the IT team absorb it. As we mature, I think they embrace the ability to be innovative and to work with our departments. But this instance, really justified why I was driving progress. So fervently why it was so urgent today. Three years ago, the answer would have been no. We wouldn't have been in a place where we could adapt With VxRail in place, in a week we spun up hundreds of instant balls. We spun up a 75-person call center in a day and a half, for our public health. We rolled out multiple applications for public health so they could do remote clinics. It's given us the flexibility to be able to roll out new solutions very quickly and be very adaptive. And it's not only been apparent to my team, but it's really made an impact on the business. And now what I'm seeing is those of my customers that work, a little lagging or a little conservative, or understanding the impact of modernizing the way they do business because it makes them adaptable as well. >> Alright, so great, Richard, you talked a bunch about the the efficiencies that that the IT put in place, how about that, that overall just managed, you talked about how fast you spun up these new VDI instances. need to be able to do things much simpler? So how does the overall Lifecycle Management fit into this discussion? >> It makes it so much easier. And in the old environment, one, It took a lot of man hours to make change. It was very disruptive, when we did make change, it overburdened, I guess that's the word I'm looking for. It really overburdened our staff to cause disruption to business. That wasn't cost efficient. And then simple things like, I've worked for multi billion dollar companies where we had massive QA environments that replicated production, simply can't afford that at local government. Having this sort of environment lets me do a scaled down QA environment and still get the benefit of rolling out non disruptive change. As I said earlier, it's allowed us to take all of those cycles that we were spending on Lifecycle Management because it's greatly simplified, and move those resources and rescale them in other areas where we can actually have more impact on the business. It's hard to be innovative when 100% of your cycles are just keeping the ship afloat. >> All right, well, nothing better than hearing it straight from the end user, public sector reacting very fast to the COVID-19. And, if you heard him he said, if this is his, before he had run this project, he would not have been able to respond. So I think everybody out there understands, if I didn't actually have access to the latest technology, it would be much harder. All right, I'm looking forward to doing the CrowdChat letting everybody else dig in with questions and get follow up but a little bit more, I believe one more announcement he can and got for us though. Let's roll the final video clip. >> In our latest software release VxRail 4.7.510, We continue to add new automation and self service features. New functionality enables you to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades, to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch. This is extremely valuable for customers that have stringent upgrade windows, as they can be assured the clusters will seamlessly upgrade within that window. Of course, running health checks on a regular basis also helps ensure that your clusters are always ready for unscheduled patches and security updates. We are also offering more flexibility and getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level with the ability to reimage nodes or clusters to a specific VxRail version, or down rev one or more nodes that may be shipped at a higher rate than the existing cluster. This enables you to easily choose your validated state when adding new nodes or repurposing nodes in a cluster. To sum up all of our announcements, whether you are accelerating data sets modernization extending HCI to harsh Edge environments, deploying an on-premises Dell Technologies Cloud platform to create a developer ready Kubernetes infrastructure. VxRail is there delivering a turn-key experience that enables you to continuously innovate, realize operational freedom and predictably evolve. VxRail provides an extensive breadth of platform configurations, automation and Lifecycle Management across the integrated hardware and software full stack and consistent hybrid Cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications across Core, Edge and Cloud. I now invite you to engage with us. First, the virtual passport program is an opportunity to have some fun while learning about VxRail new features and functionality and sCore some sweet digital swag while you're at it. Delivered via an augmented reality app. All you need is your device. So go to vxrail.is/passport to get started. And secondly, if you have any questions about anything I talked about or want a deeper conversation, we encourage you to join one of our exclusive VxRail Meet The Experts sessions available for a limited time. First come first served, just go to vxrail.is/expertsession to learn more. >> All right, well, obviously, with everyone being remote, there's different ways we're looking to engage. So we've got the CrowdChat right after this. But Jon, give us a little bit more as to how Dell's making sure to stay in close contact with customers and what you've got for options for them. >> Yeah, absolutely. So as Shannon said, so in lieu of not having done Tech World this year in person, where we could have those great in-person interactions and answer questions, whether it's in the booth or in meeting rooms, we are going to have these Meet The Experts sessions over the next couple weeks, and we're going to put our best and brightest from our technical community and make them accessible to everyone out there. So again, definitely encourage you. We're trying new things here in this virtual environment to ensure that we can still stay in touch, answer questions, be responsive, and really looking forward to, having these conversations over the next couple of weeks. >> All right, well, Jon and Chad, thank you so much. We definitely look forward to the conversation here and continued. If you're here live, definitely go down below and do it if you're watching this on demand. You can see the full transcript of it at crowdchat.net/vxrailrocks. For myself, Shannon on the video, Jon, Chad, Andrew, man in the booth there, thank you so much for watching, and go ahead and join the CrowdChat.

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello, and welcome to theCUBE Studios here in Palo Alto, California. We have a special Around theCUBE segment, Unpacking AI. This is a Get Smart Series. We have three great guests. Rajen Sheth, VP of AI and Product Management at Google. He knows well the AI development for Google Cloud. Dr. Kate Darling, research specialist at MIT media lab. And Professor Barry O'Sullivan, Director SFI Centre for Training AI, University of College Cork in Ireland. Thanks for coming on, everyone. Let's get right to it. Ethics in AI as AI becomes mainstream, moves out to the labs and computer science world to mainstream impact. The conversations are about ethics. And this is a huge conversation, but first thing people want to know is, what is AI? What is the definition of AI? How should people look at AI? What is the definition? We'll start there, Rajen. >> So I think the way I would define AI is any way that you can make a computer intelligent, to be able to do tasks that typically people used to do. And what's interesting is that AI is something, of course, that's been around for a very long time in many different forms. Everything from expert systems in the '90s, all the way through to neural networks now. And things like machine learning, for example. People often get confused between AI and machine learning. I would think of it almost the way you would think of physics and calculus. Machine learning is the current best way to use AI in the industry. >> Kate, your definition of AI, do you have one? >> Well, I find it interesting that there's no really good universal definition. And also, I would agree with Rajen that right now, we're using kind of a narrow definition when we talk about AI, but the proper definition is probably much more broad than that. So probably something like a computer system that can make decisions independent of human input. >> Professor Barry, your take on the definition of AI, is there one? What's a good definition? >> Well, you know, so I think AI has been around for 70 years, and we still haven't agreed the definition for it, as Kate said. I think that's one of those very interesting things. I suppose it's really about making machines act and behave rationally in the world, ideally autonomously, so without human intervention. But I suppose these days, AI is really focused on achieving human level performance in very narrowly defined tasks, you know, so game playing, recommender systems, planning. So we do those in isolation. We don't tend to put them together to create the fabled artificial general intelligence. I think that's something that we don't tend to focus on at all, actually if that made sense. >> Okay the question is that AI is kind of elusive, it's changing, it's evolving. It's been around for awhile, as you guys pointed out, but now that it's on everyone's mind, we see it in the news every day from Facebook being a technology program with billions of people. AI was supposed to solve the problem there. We see new workloads being developed with cloud computing where AI is a critical software component of all this. But that's a geeky world. But the real world, as an ethical conversation, is not a lot of computer scientists have taken ethics classes. So who decides what's ethical with AI? Professor Barry, let's start with you. Where do we start with ethics? >> Yeah, sure, so one of the things I do is I'm the Vice-Chair of the European Commission's High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, and this year we published the Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI in Europe, which is all about, you know, setting an ethical standard for what AI is. You're right, computer scientists don't take ethical standards, but I suppose what we are faced with here is a technology that's so pervasive in our lives that we really do need to think carefully about the impact of that technology on, you know, human agency, and human well-being, on societal well-being. So I think it's right and proper that we're talking about ethics at this moment in time. But, of course, we do need to realize that ethics is not a panacea, right? So it's certainly something we need to talk about, but it's not going to solve, it's not going to rid us of all of the detrimental applications or usages of AI that we might see today. >> Kate, your take on ethics. Start all over, throw out everything, build on it, what do we do? >> Well, what we do is we get more interdisciplinary, right? I mean, because you asked, "Who decides?". Until now it has been the people building the technology who have had to make some calls on ethics. And it's not, you know, it's not necessarily the way of thinking that they are trained in, and so it makes a lot of sense to have projects like the one that Barry is involved in, where you bring together people from different areas of expert... >> I think we lost Kate there. Rajen, why don't you jump in, talk about-- >> (muffled speaking) you decide issues of responsibility for harm. We have to look at algorithmic bias. We have to look at supplementing versus replacing human labor, we have to look at privacy and data security. We have look at the things that I'm interested in like the ways that people anthropomorphize the technology and use it in a way that's perhaps different than intended. So, depending on what issue we're looking at, we need to draw from a variety of disciplines. And fortunately we're seeing more support for this within companies and within universities as well. >> Rajen, your take on this. >> So, I think one thing that's interesting is to step back and understand why this moment is so compelling and why it's so important for us to understand this right now. And the reason for that is that this is the moment where AI is starting to have an impact on the everyday person. Anytime I present, I put up a slide of the Mosaic browser from 1994 and my point is that, that's where AI is today. It's at the very beginning stages of how we can impact people, even though it's been around for 70 years. And what's interesting about ethics, is we have an opportunity to do that right from the beginning right now. I think that there's a lot that you can bring in from the way that we think about ethics overall. For example, in our company, can you all hear me? >> Yep. >> Mm-hmm. >> Okay, we've hired an ethicist within our company, from a university, to actually bring in the general principles of ethics and bring that into AI. But I also do think that things are different so for example, bias is an ethical problem. However, bias can be encoded and actually given more legitimacy when it could be encoded in an algorithm. So, those are things that we really need to watch out for where I think it is a little bit different and a little bit more interesting. >> This is a great point-- >> Let me just-- >> Oh, go ahead. >> Yeah, just one interesting thing to bear in mind, and I think Kate said this, and I just want to echo it, is that AI is becoming extremely multidisciplinary. And I think it's no longer a technical issue. Obviously there are massive technical challenges, but it's now become as much an opportunity for people in the social sciences, the humanities, ethics people. Legal people, I think need to understand AI. And in fact, I gave a talk recently at a legal symposium, and the idea of this on a parallel track of people who have legal expertise and AI expertise, I think that's a really fantastic opportunity that we need to bear in mind. So, unfortunately us nerds, we don't own AI anymore. You know, it's something we need to interact with the real world on a significant basis. >> You know, I want to ask a question, because you know, the algorithms, everyone talks about the algorithms and the bias and all that stuff. It's totally relevant, great points on interdisciplinary, but there's a human component here. As AI starts to infiltrate the culture and hit everyday life, the reaction to AI sometimes can be, "Whoa, my job's going to get automated away." So, I got to ask you guys, as we deal with AI, is that a reflection on how we deal with it to our own humanity? Because how we deal with AI from an ethics standpoint ultimately is a reflection on our own humanity. Your thoughts on this. Rajen, we'll start with you. >> I mean it is, oh, sorry, Rajen? >> So, I think it is. And I think that there are three big issues that I see that I think are reflective of ethics in general, but then also really are particular to AI. So, there's bias. And bias is an overall ethical issue that I think this is particular here. There's what you mentioned, future of work, you know, what does the workforce look like 10 years from now. And that changes quite a bit over time. If you look at the workforce now versus 30 years ago, it's quite a bit different. And AI will change that radically over the next 10 years. The other thing is what is good use of AI, and what's bad use of AI? And I think one thing we've discovered is that there's probably 10% of things that are clearly bad, and 10% of things that are clearly good, and 80% of things that are in that gray area in between where it's up to kind of your personal view. And that's the really really tough part about all this. >> Kate, you were going to weigh in. >> Well, I think that, I'm actually going to push back a little, not on Rajen, but on the question. Because I think that one of the fallacies that we are constantly engaging in is we are comparing artificial intelligence to human intelligence, and robots to people, and we're failing to acknowledge sufficiently that AI has a very different skillset than a person. So, I think it makes more sense to look at different analogies. For example, how have we used and integrated animals in the past to help us with work? And that lets us see that the answer to questions like, "Will AI disrupt the labor market?" "Will it change infrastructures and efficiencies?" The answer to that is yes. But will it be a one-to-one replacement of people? No. That said, I do think that AI is a really interesting mirror that we're holding up to ourselves to answer certain questions like, "What is our definition of fairness?" for example. We want algorithms to be fair. We want to program ethics into machines. And what it's really showing us is that we don't have good definitions of what these things are even though we thought we did. >> All right, Professor Barry, your thoughts? >> Yeah, I think there's many points one could make here. I suppose the first thing is that we should be seeing AI, not as a replacement technology, but as an assistive technology. It's here to help us in all sorts of ways to make us more productive, and to make us more accurate in how we carry out certain tasks. I think, absolutely the labor force will be transformed in the future, but there isn't going to be massive job loss. You know, the technology has always changed how we work and play and interact with each other. You know, look at the smart phone. The smart phone is 12 years old. We never imagined in 2007 that our world would be the way it is today. So technology transforms very subtly over long periods of time, and that's how it should be. I think we shouldn't fear AI. I think the thing we should fear most, in fact, is not Artificial Intelligence, but is actual stupidity. So I think we need to, I would encourage people not to think, it's very easy to talk negatively and think negatively about AI because it is such a impactful and promising technology, but I think we need to keep it real a little bit, right? So there's a lot of hype around AI that we need to sort of see through and understand what's real and what's not. And that's really some of the challenges we have to face. And also, one of the big challenges we have, is how do we educate the ordinary person on the street to understand what AI is, what it's capable of, when it can be trusted, and when it cannot be trusted. And ethics gets of some of the way there, but it doesn't have to get us all of the way there. We need good old-fashioned good engineering to make people trust in the system. >> That was a great point. Ethics is kind of a reflection of that mirror, I love that. Kate, I want to get to that animal comment about domesticating technology, but I want to stay in this culture question for a minute. If you look at some of the major tech companies like Microsoft and others, the employees are revolting around their use of AI in certain use cases. It's a knee-jerk reaction around, "Oh my God, "We're using AI, we're harming the world." So, we live in a culture now where it's becoming more mission driven. There's a cultural impact, and to your point about not fearing AI, are people having a certain knee-jerk reaction to AI because you're seeing cultures inside tech companies and society taking an opinion on AI. "Oh my God, it's definitely bad, our company's doing it. "We should not service those contracts. "Or, maybe I shouldn't buy that product "because it's listening to me." So, there's a general fear. Does this impact the ethical conversation? How do you guys see this? Because this is an interplay that we see that's a personal, it's a human reaction. >> Yeah, so if I may start, I suppose, absolutely there are, you know, the ethics debates is a critical one, and people are certainly fearful. There is this polarization in debate about good AI and bad AI, but you know, AI is good technology. It's one of these dual-use technologies. It can be applied to bad situation in ways that we would prefer it wasn't. And it can also, it's a force for tremendous good. So, we need to think about the regulation of AI, what we want it to do from a legal point of view, who is responsible, where does liability lie? We also think about what our ethical framework is, and of course, there is no international agreement on what is, there is no universal code of ethics, you know? So this is something that's very very heavily contextualized. But I think we certainly, I think we generally agree that we want to promote human well-being. We want to compute, we want to have a prosperous society. We want to protect the well-being of society. We don't want technology to impact society in any negative way. It's actually very funny. If you look back about 25-30 years ago, there was a technology where people were concerned that privacy was going to be a thing of the past. That computer systems were going to be tremendously biased because data was going to be incomplete and not representative. And there was a huge concern that good old-fashioned databases were going to be the technology that will destroy the fabric of society. That didn't happen. And I don't think we're going to have AI do that either. >> Kate? >> Yeah, we've seen a lot of technology panic, that may or may not be warranted, in the past. I think that AI and robotics suffers from a specific problem that people are influenced by science fiction and pop culture when they're thinking about the technology. And I feel like that can cause people to be worried about some things that maybe perhaps aren't the thing we should be worrying about currently. Like robots and jobs, or artificial super-intelligence taking over and killing us all, aren't maybe the main concerns we should have right now. But, algorithmic bias, for example, is a real thing, right? We see systems using data sets that disadvantage women, or people of color, and yet the use of AI is seen as neutral even though it's impinging existing biases. Or privacy and data security, right? You have technologies that are collecting massive amounts of data because the way learning works is you use lots of data. And so there's a lot of incentive to collect data. As a consumer, there's not a lot of incentive for me to want to curb that, because I want the device to listen to me and to be able to perform better. And so the question is, who is thinking about consumer protection in this space if all the incentives are toward collecting and using as much data as possible. And so I do think there is a certain amount of concern that is warranted, and where there are problems, I endorse people revolting, right? But I do think that we are sometimes a little bit skewed in our, you know, understanding where we currently are at with the technology, and what the actual problems are right now. >> Rajen, I want your thoughts on this. Education is key. As you guys were talking about, there's some things to pay attention to. How do you educate people about how to shape AI for good, and at the same time calm the fears of people at the same time, from revolting around misinformation or bad data around what could be? >> Well I think that the key thing here is to organize kind of how you evaluate this. And back to that one thing I was saying a little bit earlier, it's very tough to judge kind of what is good and what is bad. It's really up to personal perception. But then the more that you organize how to evaluate this, and then figure out ways to govern this, the easier it gets to evaluate what's in or out . So one thing that we did, was that we created a set of AI principles, and we kind of codified what we think AI should do, and then we codified areas that we would not go into as a company. The thing is, it's very high level. It's kind of like the constitution, and when you have something like the constitution, you have to get down to actual laws of what you would and wouldn't do. It's very hard to bucket and say, these are good use cases, these are bad use cases. But what we now have is a process around how do we actually take things that are coming in and figure out how do we evaluate them? A last thing that I'll mention, is that I think it's very important to have many many different viewpoints on it. Have viewpoints of people that are taking it from a business perspective, have people that are taking it from kind of a research and an ethics perspective, and all evaluate that together. And that's really what we've tried to create to be able to evaluate things as they come up. >> Well, I love that constitution angle. We'll have that as our last final question in a minute, that do we do a reset or not, but I want to get to that point that Kate mentioned. Kate, you're doing research around robotics. And I think robotics is, you've seen robotics surge in popularity from high schools have varsity teams now. You're seeing robotics with software advances and technology advances really become kind of a playful illustration of computer technology and software where AI is playing a role, and you're doing a lot of work there. But as intelligence comes into, say robotics, or software, or AI, there's a human reaction to all of this. So there's a psychology interaction to either AI and robotics. Can you guys share your thoughts on the humanization interaction between technology, as people stare at their phones today, that could be relationships in the future. And I think robotics might be a signal. You mentioned domesticating animals as an example back in the early days of when we were (laughing) as a society, that happened. Now we all have pets. Are we going to have robots as pets? Are we going to have AI pets? >> Yes, we are. (laughing) >> Is this kind of the human relationship? Okay, go ahead, share your thoughts. >> So, okay, the thing that I love about robots, and you know, in some applications to AI as well, is that people will treat these technologies like they're alive. Even though they know that they're just machine. And part of that is, again, the influence of science fiction and pop culture, that kind of primes us to do this. Part of it is the novelty of the technology moving into shared spaces, but then there's this actual biological element to it, where we have this inherent tendency to anthropomorphize, project human-like traits, behaviors, qualities, onto non-humans. And robots lend themselves really well to that because our brains are constantly scanning our environments and trying to separate things into objects and agents. And robots move like agents. We are evolutionarily hardwired to project intent onto the autonomous movement in our physical space. And this is why I love robots in particular as an AI use case, because people end up treating robots totally differently. Like people will name their Roomba vacuum cleaner and feel bad for it when it gets stuck, which they would never do with their normal vacuum cleaner, right? So, this anthropomorphization, I think, makes a huge difference when you're trying to integrate the technology, because it can have negative effects. It can lead to inefficiencies or even dangerous situations. For example, if you're using robots in the military as tools, and they're treating them like pets instead of devices. But then there are also some really fantastic use cases in health and education that rely specifically on this socialization of the robot. You can use a robot as a replacement for animal therapy where you can't use real animals. We're seeing great results in therapy with autistic children, engaging them in ways that we haven't seen previously. So there are a lot of really cool ways that we can make this work for us as well. >> Barry, your thoughts, have you ever thought that we'd be adopting AI as pets some day? >> Oh yeah, absolutely. Like Kate, I'm very excited about all of this too, and I think there's a few, I agree with everything Kate has said. Of course, you know, coming back to the remark you made at the beginning about people putting their faces in their smartphones all the time, you know, we can't crowdsource our sense of dignity, or that we can't have social media as the currency for how we value our lives or how we compare ourselves with others. So, you know, we do have to be careful here. Like, one of the really nice things about, one of the really nice examples of an AI system that was given some significant personality was, quite recently, Tuomas Sandholm and others at Carnegie Mellon produced this Liberatus poker playing bot, and this AI system was playing against these top-class Texas hold' em players. And all of these Texas hold 'em players were attributing a level of cunning and sophistication and mischief on this AI system that clearly it didn't have because it was essentially trying to just behave rationally. But we do like to project human characteristics onto AI systems. And I think what would be very very nice, and something we need to be very very careful of, is that when AI systems are around us, and particularly robots, you know, we do need to treat them with respect. And what I mean is, we do make sure that we treat those things that are serving society in as positive and nice a way as possible. You know, I do judge people on how they interact with, you know, sort of the least advantaged people in society. And you know, by golly, I will judge you on how you interact with a robot. >> Rajen-- >> We've actually done some research on that, where-- >> Oh, really-- >> We've shown that if you're low empathy, you're more willing to hit a robot, especially if it has a name. (panel laughing) >> I love all my equipment here, >> Oh, yeah? >> I got to tell ya, it's all beautiful. Rajen, computer science, and now AIs having this kind of humanization impact, this is an interesting shift. I mean, this is not what we studied in computer science. We were writin' code. We were going to automate things. Now there's notions of math, and not just math cognition, human relations, your thoughts on this? >> Yeah, you know what's interesting is that I think ultimately it boils down to the user experience. And I think there is this part of this which is around humanization, but then ultimately it boils down to what are you trying to do? And how well are you doing it with this technology? And I think that example around the Roomba is very interesting, where I think people kind of feel like this is more, almost like a person. But, also I think we should focus as well on what the technology is doing, and what impact it's having. My best example of this is Google Photos. And so, my whole family uses Google Photos, and they don't know that underlying it is some of the most powerful AI in the world. All they know is that they can find pictures of our kids and their grandkids on the beach anytime that they want. And so ultimately, I think it boils down to what is the AI doing for the people? And how is it? >> Yeah, expectations become the new user experience. I love that. Okay, guys, final question, and also humanization, we talked about the robotics, but also the ethics here. Ethics reminds me of the old security debate, and security in the old days. Do you increase the security, or do you throw it all away and start over? So with this idea of how do you figure out ethics in today's modern society with it being a mirror? Do we throw it all away and do a do-over, can we recast this? Can we start over? Do we augment? What's the approach that you guys see that we might need to go through right now to really, not hold back AI, but let it continue to grow and accelerate, educate people, bring value and user experience to the table? What is the path? We'll start with Barry, and then Kate, and then Rajen. >> Yeah, I can kick off. I think ethics gets us some of the way there, right? So, obviously we need to have a set of principles that we sign up to and agree upon. And there are literally hundreds of documents on AI ethics. I think in Europe, for example, there are 128 different documents around AI ethics, I mean policy documents. But, you know, we have to think about how are we actually going to make this happen in the real world? And I think, you know, if you take the aviation industry, that we trust in airplanes, because we understand that they're built to the highest standards, that they're tested rigorously, and that the organizations that are building these things are held account when things go wrong. And I think we need to do something similar in AI. We need good strong engineering, and you know, ethics is fantastic, and I'm a strong believer in ethical codes, but we do need to make it practical. And we do need to figure out a way of having the public trust in AI systems, and that comes back to education. So, I think we need the general public, and indeed ourselves, to be a little more cynical and questioning when we hear stories in the media about AI, because a lot of it is hyped. You know, and that's because researchers want to describe their research in an exciting way, but also, newspaper people and media people want to have a sticky subject. But I think we do need to have a society that can look at these technologies and really critique them and understand what's been said. And I think a healthy dose of cynicism is not going to do us any harm. >> So, modernization, do you change the ethical definition? Kate, what's your thoughts on all this? >> Well, I love that Barry brought up the aviation industry because I think that right now we're kind of an industry in its infancy, but if we look at how other industries have evolved to deal with some thorny ethical issues, like for example, medicine. You know, medicine had to develop a whole code of ethics, and develop a bunch of standards. If you look at aviation or other transportation industries, they've had to deal with a lot of things like public perception of what the technology can and can't do, and so you look at the growing pains that those industries have gone through, and then you add in some modern insight about interdisciplinary, about diversity, and tech development generally. Getting people together who have different experiences, different life experiences, when you're developing the technology, and I think we don't have to rebuild the wheel here. >> Yep. >> Rajen, your thoughts on the path forward, throw it all away, rebuild, what do we do? >> Yeah, so I think this is a really interesting one because of all the technologies I've worked in within my career, everything from the internet, to mobile, to virtualization, this is probably the most powerful potential for human good out there. And AI, the potential of what it can do is greater than almost anything else that's out there. However, I do think that people's perception of what it's going to do is a little bit skewed. So when people think of AI, they think of self-driving cars and robots and things like that. And that's not the reality of what AI is today. And so I think two things are important. One is to actually look at the reality of what AI is doing today and where it impacts people lives. Like, how does it personalize customer interactions? How does it make things more efficient? How do we spot things that we never were able to spot before? And start there, and then apply the ethics that we've already known for years and years and years, but adapt it to a way that actually makes sense for this. >> Okay, like that's it for the Around theCUBE. Looks like we've tallied up. Looks like Professor Barry 11, third place, Kate in second place with 13. Rajen with 16 points, you're the winner, so you get the last word on the segment here. Share your final thoughts on this panel. >> Well, I think it's really important that we're having this conversation right now. I think about back to 1994 when the internet first started. People did not have that conversation nearly as much at that point, and the internet has done some amazing things, and there have been some bad side effects. I think with this, if we have this conversation now, we have this opportunity to shape this technology in a very very positive way as we go forward. >> Thank you so much, and thanks everyone for taking the time to come in. All the way form Cork, Ireland, Professor Barry O'Sullivan. Dr. Kate Darling doing some amazing research at MIT on robotics and human psychology and like a new book coming out. Kate, thanks for coming out. And Rajen, thanks for winning and sharing your thoughts. Thanks everyone for coming. This is Around theCUBE here, Unpacking AI segment around ethics and human interaction and societal impact. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> from Palo Alto, California It's the Cube covering the EM Where women transforming technology twenty nineteen. Brought to you by V. M. Where. >> Hi Lisa Martin with the Cube on the ground at the end. Where. Palo Alto, California For the fourth Annual Women Transforming Technology Even W squared. Excited to welcome back to the Cube. Kathy Chou, VP of R and D. Operations and central services at work. Cappy. It's a pleasure to have you back. It's one of you will be back. So you and I saw each other this morning. Big hug. This is one of my favorite events to be at, and I'm proud to be here with the cute because this this authentic community of women is unlike anything that I've really seen or felt in a long time. Fourth annual. I know it's grown over the last year. What do you What are some of your thoughts, even just walking in the doors this morning? Well, it's funny. It is the fourth annual and I I've been toe all four. The very first time I came, I was not a B M or employee, and I fell in love with the company. The campus because it was the very first time. And every single time I come to one of these events, I either meet someone or multiple people better fantastics or learn multiple things that will help me do what I need to do and I will tell you, and I'm not just saying cause you're here. But last year when I met you, I just felt like there was an instant spark. And like you say at these conferences, don't you feel it's safe? You can. You could be authentic. You could be who you want to be. You could be vulnerable, right? And as we can learn with each other, we can share what we need to work on. You move on and we can also Peter chests a little bit right for stuff that we've done well that sharing is so critical. Eye all the women that I've spoken to today we look at even our own career. Trajectories are looking at a lot of the statistics of the loan numbers that women technology where where is the attrition happening? What's happening in and grade school in middle school when girls, you know between seven and twelve years old, way have to help each other build up cos it's just and I think there's no better >> way than sharing stories and cheer point that means being vulnerable. I think vulnerability is one of the best price you can exhibit, period. But it used truly conceit and feel the impact Hearing. >> As you've said, you've seen that over the last four years that this is really an authentic community in every >> sense of the word. Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned quite a few things that I'd like to talk about. So first, is these >> young. Let's start first with diversity. Okay, I know a lot of people do talk aboutthe. They think of gender diversity or ethnic diversity. Diversity of the capital. >> Dia's much broader, right? It's okay. Diversity of experience, education, you know, geography, seniority, right. There's all different types of diversity. But if we do hope, focus in a little bit on young girls. Right? Because you think about that. I was just in the I wish conference in Cork, Ireland. Stop back. Yeah. And what was amazing about that was so this is all of Court County. They had all of the what they called secondary school girls every single one of them for two days at this conference. But they got to listen to speakers from all over the world to give them that confidence to stay in, because statistics are when they're in primary school or middle school. Right? Girls say I want to be a computer scientist. I wantto do this techie thing. I'm gonna do Sam with them when they go to high school there, given all these messages like, you can't do it and you don't look like a computer scientist, right? And then all of a sudden it gets It becomes because in her head and it really does affect our confidence. And then, sad to say, years and years ago, when I graduated from college, there was only nine percent of the women were mechanical engineers. Sad to say today, that number is not challenged much. Do something just conferences like these that give us the courage to be better mentors and sponsors of those that will come after us. >> I agree. I think that it's and in some cases it seems like it's so simple where we make I don't think we're making this so hard, but I think that having the opportunity of a community to just have okay like minded people in terms of experiences that they shared well, how did you get through this barrier of, for example, you know, really kind of dissecting to your point diversity with a capital B. There's so many layers to that. What does that mean? How do we achieve it? I mean, if you look at a lot of the statistics companies that have you say females, uh, on the executive staff are like twenty seven percent more profitable. Yes, the amount of oven of reinvesting of income that women do back into the community. Their family's one of the things, Joy said this morning in her keynote joyful Fulham. We need him saying that, >> right? So is it looking at women and people of color as the underrepresented majority that that was absolutely spot on? I absolutely >> thought it was spot on this well, and you know, if you think about it, think about these experiences. You know again about diversity. There's a new dawn. It's a new phrase. But intersectionality is the word, which means, you know Okay, you're a woman. I'm a woman. I'm an Asian woman, But I'm also a woman that lived on the East Coast. I went to these sorts of schools. I had these types of experiences. So what it means is everyone bring something to the table. So if you really think about diversity now, we'LL hear this talk about inclusion. That's kind of the big word. And I've I've actually witnessed this myself on my own team because if you look at my direct staff on paper, when you look at them, they look very diverse. But actually diversity. That's like the tip of the iceberg. What you see is only the little piece when you bring down, get to those deeper layers. You realize, >> really how diverse team Miss Wright of spiritual >> diversity, experiential all of that and by including and created a inclusive environment were able to get the most out of diversity. And I think that's how you do it, because I thought about this. When you single out groups, you're not being inclusive, right? That's a good point. So I think the goal is to get what we can call the model. What we think is the majority, which is the minority to embrace the underrepresented majority and >> your perspective? How do you think V m? Where is doing on that? I was talking with Betsy said earlier, and some other folks and learned that the eggs I don't know how far down this goes, but at least execs are actually their bonuses are related to our tied to diversity and inclusion. That's a huge kind of bold statement that a company like the Mars making, not just to the tech industry, but every industry. Where do you think the emperor is on this journey of really identifying diversity and inclusion and actually starting to realise the positive impact? >> Yes. So first of all, I think you said something earlier. This is a It's an epidemic situation. OK, in that I do tell me, almost in every industry, there isthe right entertainment manufacturing, high tech, legal, professional, whatever way, there's an issue with diversity, and you're absolutely right. The peace and above our bonuses air tied to diversity, inclusion the awareness of the, um, where is second of them. The interesting thing is, there's no silver bullet. If it were that easy, we would've solved it. So what? It iss. It's one of those things where I say it takes a village and it's little things like talk about inclusion earlier, right? Hey, when you have a meeting, make sure everyone's voices voices are heard. Doesn't matter who it is. I don't care if it's a woman and under represent minority or white male. It doesn't matter. You shouldn't it? It shouldn't right. Everyone should be heard. And I was just giving a breakout talk about when you increase. Inclusion will drive more innovation. And that's my job as a leader of six hundred folks in an RD organization is to create that culture that allows people to have confidence, to take risks, to be vulnerable, authentic and to innovate right and to do new things. And if I can create that culture of inclusion, it will drive those business results. >> I couldn't agree more Tell me about like since we spoke last year. I love that driving inclusion to drive innovation. What are some of the things that you've actually seen as outcomes? Maybe just for your team as well as your own expertise as a manager? >> Yes. So I've been with him where for two and a half years, and when I first came Basically my team was a compilation of three separate teams, so each of them traditional silo new themselves in their own style but did not understand the power of the team across. So at that time, no one team was greater than one hundred people. Okay, let's say now imagine a mighty force of six hundred strong marching in the same direction, trying to do things together. One of the things that we're trying to do is start to build platforms across our organization. And what are the commonalities? That that's the difference is what commonalities across our teams so that we can drive that innovation much more effectively and efficiently. And so those are some of the things that we're doing have another fun story to tell me. Everything that I do to try to create an inclusive environment, just have opportunities for team members to meet each other. It's a simple assed. Hey, I don't know. Lisa. Lisa, what do you do? Oh, my gosh. I have a project that might need your help. I don't know how many times when we were working in the silos would enter calling someone outside our team to get the expert advice when it was on her own. And so we had one event when we had two people that sat next to each other. They didn't know each other at all. One needed some machine learning expertise. The other one was in machine learning enthusiast Fast. They came together. They have now built a patent pending piece of micro service called instead ML. That's so, uh, that's what happens when people when you're included >> and you think, Why is it so difficult? In some cases, technology is sort of sort of fuels that right because we get so used to being I could do everything from here >> on the phone from an airplane from the hotel from home, from or ever so we get more >> used to being less communicative. Absolutely right, Tio. Let's actually let's let's go back to the olden days where there were, You know, there was no device and phoniness and actually have a conversation because to your point, suddenly are uncovering. Oh my gosh. All of these skill sets are here. What if we did nothing for years? >> You're speaking my language. Eso You're absolutely right. But there's this. They used to be this rule that's a new one you wanted to communicate to someone. You have to tell them something seven times, >> right, because they're busy doing other times on the age of social media, they say. Now it's eleven times. Oh, great. And how I got exactly. So how often have you seen people who are sitting like this and they're >> communicating with each other? Be attacks and they're sitting right here. Why, it's >> important to go back old school. By the way, I think I'm old school. >> Whenever I want to pick up the phone, talk to my kids. It's on the phone. I don't care if they're, uh, ready for me to talk >> to her, and I just called them. It's because when you're innovating, it's not just the mind, it's the heart. >> And when you catch those human relationships, right is what makes the innovation stick. It makes you want to do more. It makes you want to achieve greater heights. Then you would have cause you're invested. You see, when it's an academic exercise, it's like check the box. But when you're invested in your hearts and you I feel like I can't let Lisa down, believe me, you're going to get more in depth and more advanced innovation. >> So with that and kind of the empathy approach in love to get your perspectives on a I, we talk about it all the time at every event that we go to on the Cube globally. And there's different schools of thought. Aye, aye is fantastic. It's phenomenal. It's it's becoming new standard, even a baby boomers known to some degree what it is. Yes, then there's the It's taking jobs away yet, But he's going to create new jobs. Yes, and there's the whole ethics behind this morning. Joy really kind of showed us a lot of the models and facial recognition at big companies that are better being built with bias. But one of the things I think that I hear resoundingly at events is it's going to be a combination of humans and machines. Yes, because machines can learn a lot. But it's that heart that you just mentioned in that empathy that comes from the human. So do you see those two as essential forces coming together is a. I continues to grow and take over the world. >> It's essential. Like you say. Technology is very How do we sit? Neutral. Okay, If you put it in front of a bad actor, it becomes bad. If you put it in front of a good actor, it becomes good. Okay, so technology is neutral, right? So now the goal is how do >> we ensure that we Khun tamp down the bad actors, people who want to use it for bad? And >> by the way, I am a fundamental believer that there are some jobs that should be automated. >> I mean, come on, some of the And by the way, things >> in the health industry. When you have big data and you've got a lot of things, you have to process a lot of information so we could be more accurate on things. Um, there other examples of if it's not in check, it can go right, right. Where will Over reliance on machines. Unfortunately, the seven. Thirty seven max eight is an example of it being too smart, right, and that >> you needed the human to actually adjust. So now I think also kind of combining a lot of the topics that we talked about. We need to train our children to understand that this technology is here to stay and with each and every one of them, how can they take that wonderful technology and use it for good? And I think that's the whole that's peace around inclusion. That's the peace around, building confidence in these young people and being examples. And so we need more people like joy out there so that she can. She has now raised this flag up saying, Hey, did you realize this >> happen? We need more young people. By the way, she's very young person. I'm >> totally impressed with what she's been able to do in here great for years, very, very inspiring. But if we all did a >> little bit of what joy did, we could change the world. >> Absolutely. The accountability factor and the social responsibility is so important. I was impressed with her on many levels, but one of them was the impact that she's already making with with Microsoft, IBM, uh, and actually starting to impact facial recognition a. I based on the research that she's done and show them Hey, you've got some problems here. So she's She's kind of at that intersection of your point neutral technology, good actors, bad actors. Maybe it's not good or bad. It's just Well, this is the data that we have. And it's training the models to do this. Oh, the but the accountability in the responsibility that it appears that a Microsoft and IBM face plus plus and even Amazon that she said, Hey, guys, look at how far off your models are. It sounds like these companies are actually starting to take some accountability. Civility for >> that? Yes, well, I think she proved it in our talk because last year, right, the numbers were in the eighty eighty percent tiles, and now they're up to ninety five. So you know, she's saying, by kind >> of being that lightning rod on this issue, one person could make this amount of change. Imagine if all was just a fraction of what she did, right? I mean, I think, and again, I feel very because I'm older and I have my own children just inspiring this generation, too. We could build up more joys in this world. >> So you have four boys. Yes. How are you inspiring them to finally become good humans, but also to look at the technology, the opportunities that it creates to be inclusive why it's important that some of the lessons that even parted on your boys >> Yes, first of all, I've one thing that's really >> important to me is I want them to accept whoever their partner will be for whatever they want to do. So if their partner wants to stay home and then you support them, if they want to work and go, do you support them? But just be supportive, be that partner, whatever that is, that's really important. >> The other thing is, I think just >> my husband and I are excellent examples of how that isthe, because he's an orthodontist and I've got a busy high tech job. I'm traveling a lot. My husband does more than his fair share of the household duties, and we split things pretty evenly. So I hope they've seen witness. It's not just talk, it's action and that this can actually work. And fortunately, I'm >> boys are a little older now because if you begin in the beginning, I thought, Oh, working. I don't >> know how these boys are going to turn out right, but three of them are college age and older, and they really turned into some fantastic children. The youngest is on his path as well as a junior in high school. And, you know, and I also see the type of friends that they make and how they treat women and other people that are different from them, and it just makes me very proud. >> Think the world needs more? Kathy Chow's I really dio Are you going off to see Ashley Judd? Her? What? Some of the things that you're looking >> forward to hearing her talking. Well, it's funny. I just came from a VP session. She is I again. You see someone right on the screen and you see him as an actor and you heard about Time's up and her speech and that sort of thing. But way had, but how were we just answered? Questions. She is so thoughtful, so connected, so well spoken communicates in a way that really touches you. She's another one of those lightning rides. I think w t, too, didn't excellent job of getting English speakers this year. Uh, and it's very different from joy. It's much more from a from her view, in her mind went in arts, and Joyce was much more from a technical aspect. But messages are the same, right? It's to be inclusive, understanding, embrace diversity and be authentic. You >> inclusive animators. Kathy is so great to have you back on the Cube. And Charlie, I know we could keep chatting, but we thank you so much of your time. We can't wait for next year. Wait. Excellent. Thank you for the Cuban Lisa Martin. You're >> watching the show from women Transforming Technology, fourth annual somewhere. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube. Covering IBM Think 2018, brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to IBM Think 2018. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching The Cube, the leader in live tech coverage. This is IBM's inaugural Think event. Companies consolidated about six major events into one We're trying to figure it out, 30-40,000 people there's too many people to count, it's just unbelievable. Mary O'Brien is here, she is the vice president of research and development at IBM in from Cork, Ireland. Mary, great to see you, thanks for coming on The Cube. >> Thank you, Dave. >> So tell us a little bit more about your role at IBM as head of research and development. >> Okay so I'm head of research and development for IBM Security explicitly so in that capacity I manage a worldwide team of researchers and developers and we take products from, you know, incubation, initial ideas all the way through to products in the field. Products that help defend businesses against cyber crime. >> So, Jenny was talking today about, you know, security is one of the tenants of your offerings at the core. >> Mary: Yes. >> So, everybody talks about security. >> You can't bolt it on, you know, there's a lot of sort of conversations around that. What does that mean, security at the core from a design and R & D perspective? >> That actually means that the developers of applications are actually aware of security best practices as they design, as they architect and design their applications. So that they don't deliver applications to the field that have vulnerabilities that can be exploited. So, instead of trying to secure a perimeter of an application or a product or, you know, a perimeter full stop they actually design security into the application. It makes it a much more efficient, much cheaper way to deliver security and also, you know, much stronger security base there. >> So, I wonder if you could relate, sort of, what you guys are doing in security with what's happened in the market over the last 10 or 15 years. So, it used to be security was, you know, hacktivists and you know throw some malware in and maybe do some disruption has become cyber criminals, you know, big business now and then of course you've got nation states. >> Mm-hmm How have you had to respond specifically within the R & D organization to deal with those threats? >> So, you know, you have described the evolution of cyber crime over the last years and for sure it's no longer kids in a basement you know, hacking to, for the fun of it. Cyber crime is big business and, you know, there's money to be made for cyber criminals. So, as a result they are looking to hack in and get high value assets out of enterprises, and of course, we as an organization and as a security business unit have had to respond to that. By really understanding, you know, what constitutes a very mature set of security competencies and practices and you know how we break down this massive problem into you know, bite sized consumable pieces that any business can consume and work into their enterprise in order to protect them. So, we have developed a portfolio of products that look at protecting all parts of your enterprise. You know, by infusing security everywhere, you know, on your devices, on the, you know, the perimeter of your business. Protecting your data, protecting all sorts, and we also have developed a huge practice of security professionals who actually will go out and do it for you or will, you know, assess your security posture and tell you where you've got problems and how to fix them. >> I remember a piece that our head of research, >> Peter Burris, wrote years ago and it was entitled something like "Bad User Behavior will Trump Good Security Every Time" and so my understanding is phishing is obviously one of the big problems today. How do you combat that, can you use machine intelligence to help people, you know, users that aren't security conscious sort of avoid the mistakes that they've been making? >> So, before I get into the, the complicated, advanced, you know, machine learning and artificial intelligence practices that we are bringing to bear now, you know, it's important to be clear that you know, a vast number of breaches come from the inside. So, they come from either the sloppy employee who doesn't change their password often or uses the same password for work and play and the same password everywhere. Or, you know, the unfortunate employee who clicks on a malicious link and you know, takes in some malware into their devices and malware that can actually you know, move horizontally through the business. Or it can come from you know, the end user or the insider with malicious intent. Okay, so, it's pretty clear to all of us that basic security hygiene is the fundamental so actually making sure that your laptop, your devices are patched. They have the latest security patches on board. Security practices are understood. Basic password hygiene and et cetera, that's kind of the start. >> Uh oh. >> Okay keep going. >> Okay, so-- >> I'm starting to sweat. >> So, you know, and of course, you know, in this era of cyber crime as we've seen it evolve in the last few years, the security industry has reached a perfect storm because it's well known that by 2020 there will be 1.2 million unfilled security professional roles, okay? Now, couple that with the fact that there are in the region, in the same time frame, in the region of 50 billion connected devices in the internet of things. So what's happening is the attack landscape and you know, the attack surface is increasing. The opportunity for the cyber criminalist to attack is increasing and the number of professionals available to fight that crime is not increasing because of this huge shortage. So, you know, you heard Jenny this morning talking about the era of man assisted by machine so infusing artificial intelligence and machine learning into security products and practices is another instantiation of man being assisted by machine and that is our, our tool and our new practice in the fight against cyber crime. >> So when I talk to security professionals consistently they tell us that they have more demand for their services than supply to chase down, you know, threats. They have, they struggle to prioritize. They struggle with just too many false positives and they need help. They're not as productive as they'd like to be. Can machine intelligence assist there? >> Absolutely, so computers, let's face it, computers are ideally placed to pour over vast quantities of data looking for trends, anomalies, and really finding the needle in the haystack. They have such a vast capacity to do this that's way out, you know, that really surpasses what a human can do and so you know, with, in this era of machine learning you can actually you know, equip a computer with a set of basic rules and you know, set it loose on vast quantities of data and let it test and iterate those rules with this data and become increasingly knowledgeable you know, about the data. The trends in the data, what the data, what good data looks like, what anomalous data looks like and at speed point out the anomalies and find that needle in the haystack. >> So, there's a stat, depending on which, you know, firm you look at or which organization you believe, but it's scary none the less. That the average penetration is only detected 250 or 350 days after the infiltration, and that is a scary stat, it would take a year to find out that somebody has infiltrated my organization or whatever it is, 200 days. Is that number shrinking, is the industry as a whole, not just IBM, attacking that figure? First of all, is it a valid figure, and are you able to attack that? >> Well, the figure is definitely scary. I don't know whether your figure is exactly >> Yeah, well the latest figure but it's a scary figure >> Yeah. and it's well known that attackers will get in. So, of course, there's, uh there's the various phases of, you know, protecting yourself. So, you're going to try to avoid the attackers getting in in the first place. Using the various hygienic means of you know, keeping your devices, you know, clean and free from vulnerabilities and so on. But you've also got to be aware that the attacker does get in so now you've got to make sure that you limit the damage that they can cause when they're in. So, of course, you know security is a, you know you can take a layered approach to security. So you've got to firstly understand what is your most valuable data, where are your most valuable assets and layer up the levels of security around those first. So you make sure that if the attacker gets in, they don't get there and you limit the damage they can do and then of course you limit their ability to exfiltrate data and get anything out of your organization. Because I mean if they are just in there, of course they can do some damage. But, the real damage happens when they can manage to exfiltrate data and do something with that. >> So again Mary, it make sense that artificial intelligence or machine intelligence could help with this but specifically what do you see as the future role of Watson as it relates to cyber security? >> So, I mentioned the shortage of security professionals and that growing problem, okay so Watson in our cyber security space acts as an assistant to the security analyst. So, we have taught Watson the language of cyber security, and Watson manages to ingest vast troves of unstructured security data, that means blogs and you know, written text of security data from, that's available on the internet and out there all day, everyday. It just ingests this and fills a corpus of knowledge with this, with these jewels of information. And, basically that information and that corpus of knowledge is now available to a security analyst who, you know, a junior security analyst could take years to become very efficient and to really be able to recognize the needle in the haystack themselves. But with the Watson assistant they can embellish their understanding and what they see and all of the, all of the relationships and the data that augments the detail about a cyber incident you know, fairly instantaneous. And it, you know, really augment their own knowledge with the knowledge that would take years to generate, you know. >> So, I wonder if we could talk about collaboration a little bit because this is good versus evil. You guys are like one of the super heroes and your competitors are also sort of super heroes. >> Of course. >> You got Batman, you got Superman, Catwoman, and Spiderman, et cetera. How do you guys collaborate and share in a, highly competitive industry? Well, they're vary as far as you know, appearing for sharing okay, so firstly you absolutely nailed the importance for sharing because you know, the cyber criminals share on the dark web. They actually share, they sell their wares, they trade, you know so very important for us to share as well. So, you know, there are various industry forum for sharing and also organizations like IBM have created collaborative capabilities like we have our X-force Exchange which is basically a sharing portal. So, any of our competitors or other security organizations or interested parties can create you know, a piece of work describing a particular incident that they are investigating or a particular event that's happening and others can add to it and they can share information. Now, historically people have not been keen to share in this space so it is an evolving event. >> So speaking of super heroes I got to ask ya, a lot of security professionals that I talk to say well when I was a kid I read comic books. You know, I envisioned saving the world. So, how did you, how did you get into this, and was that you as a kid? Did you like-- >> No, it wasn't. I'm not a long term security professional. But, I've been in technology and evolving products for, you know, in the telecommunication business and now security over many years. So, I got into this to bring that capability of delivering quality software and hardware products to the field back in 2013 when a part of our IBM security business needed some leadership. So, I had the opportunity to take my family to Atlanta, Georgia to lead a part of the IBM security business then. >> Well, it's a very challenging field. It's one of those, you know, never ending, you know, missions so thank you for your hard work and congratulations on all the success. >> Thank you David. >> Alright, appreciate you coming on The Cube, Mary. >> Thank you. >> Keep it right there everybody, we will be back with our next guest, you're watching The Cube. We're live from IBM Think 2018 in Las Vegas, be right back. (pleasant music)