>>Mhm Yes. >>Hello and welcome back to the cubes coverage of Del Tech World Virtual. I'm john for a host of the cube. We've got a great two guests here talking about a new apex brand and products Allison Langdon, Senior Manager, product marketing at Dell and David Reed senior Director of Product Management. Dell all around the apex to CUBA alumni's great to see you remotely. Soon to be in person. It's right around the corner but great to see you. >>Hey, thanks for having me and us. >>So I wish >>we were in person. >>We missed the Deltek Worlds amazing event. Um we're virtual this year but all great goodness is here but great big announcement still go on. The Apex Brandon portfolio is coming together the cloud and as a service, everything is happening. You got the new apex data storage service take us through what what is the new service? Why? >>Sure. So I can start um you know, we've been seeing this this shift towards an as a service model, you know I. T. Has always struggled with complexities associated with under and over provisioning capital budget constraints, lengthy and complex to refresh cycles. So you know the events over this past year and our new normal is really accelerated these you know challenges and it made them even more manageable. You know organizations need to become really agile and um they don't want to invest make big upfront investments in infrastructure when they're having such a hard time forecasting there needs you know the new levels of unpredictability that's been accelerating this you know adoption of as of service. So this is why we're introducing apex data storage services essentially were radically simplifying how customers can acquire and manage their storage resources. So data storage services is going to be the first as a service offering in our apex portfolio. So it's going to provide an on crown portfolio of scalable and elastic storage resources that are designed for affects treatment. It's all going to be anchored in our apex console. So it's gonna be a seamless self service experience where you just have a few key inputs, your data service, your performance tier, you're looking for your commitment term, your base capacity, for example and then all the infrastructure is owned and maintained by us built on our Industry leading Technology. So really delivering a super simple self service as a service experience, >>You know, when Jeff Clark was first talking about this as a service as it should be, you know, introducing the project, Apex Devon, I was kind of okay, this is kind of what we heard when we were last in person in 2019. The end to end l cloud, hybrid, cloud operating model, this is kind of what we're talking about here. What's something that covers? What's what's what is this data services? How does that vector into that? Because you know data control planes are being talked about a lot. The use of data in A I. And A II. Operations impacts I. T. And cloud scale. So hybrids now the operating model for the enterprise. >>Yeah. Yeah definitely. And it's this is really only where we're starting and we're going to be starting on a set of apex data storage services. Um so if I step back a little bit and talk a little bit about what apex data storage services are, I'd like to draw a little bit of a contrast to how customers procure their equipment today. So a customer typically today says I need some storage I need some mid range storage. I need for example a power store 5000 and then they work with the sales representative and says I need 24 1.92 terabyte drives. They need certain connectivity and then we present a quote to them with a whole bunch of line items with a lot of different prices and then the customer needs purchased that year, purchased that upfront and then uh, the only asset and then they managed the asset. So they're taking the risk. They need to plan for that capacity. And what we're doing is we're radically flipping that model. Uh, and what we're, what we're doing here is we're just driving to an outcome. So customers, they don't want to take that risk. They just want to drive to their business outcomes and they want to manage their applications. So what they have to do in this model is just pick, hey, I want storage services, I want some block services, I want a certain performance level and I learned a certain capacity and I want a commitment level. And what we do is we basically create a rate for them And we've optimized a lot of our processes on the back end to be able to, once that order has booked, we target a very rapid time of 14 days from the time the order is dropped until the customer can actually start operating on that here. From the, the time is dropped to the time that they can produce in their first volume Is 14 days. And really all they have to do is operate the year and we manage everything everything for them that you know, from capacity management to change management to software, life cycles, patching and you and things like that. And now jOHN I want to address your question about the hybrid world. It's absolutely designed for a hybrid world. So in our first release will be offering this on customer premises. And we're also introducing announcing a relationship we have with the data center provider of Equinox, which is the largest co location provider in the world. And what will be able to do is provide the subscription service of this as a service, not only customer on customer premises but in near cloud environments, in a co location facility. And we also have software assets that will extend into this environment, all driven by a central pain of unified experience. >>That's awesome. The hybrid cloud, It's gotta have that table stakes now. So, good, good plug there. Thanks Call out Allison, I gotta ask you on the customer side, what's the drivers for the apex data storage service? What was the key things that there you're hearing, why this is important to them? Uh, and what is the value proposition? >>Right, Great question. So I touched on a little bit of that upfront, but it's, you know, essentially what we what we do with this offering is take it out of the infrastructure business so that they can focus on more value added activities, focusing on customer satisfaction. Um You know, because we're maintaining we're managing and maintaining all the infrastructure for them. You know, some of the key pain points are just, you know, the overhead associated with maintaining and managing that infrastructure. But there's also the financial aspect as well. These services are designed for affects treatment, so you're not having to make that big initial Capex expense, um you're really able to align your expenses with actual usage versus anticipated usage. So it eliminates that, you know, cycle of over and under provisioning, which either results in, you know, over provisions waste or under provisions risk. We essentially, you know, streamlined all of those processes. So the customer just has to worry about operating the, operating their storage and it takes a lot of that worry off of them and they're able to just pay for what they use, elastically scale of resources up and down. So it's essentially really simplified and more predictable. >>Page has always been one of those things where hey, I'll pay when I need it. I gotta ask you on the differentiation side. This is comes up all the time. How do you guys different from alternatives? How do you differentiate going forward? How do you guys be successful? What's the, what's the strategy? What's the, what's the focus? >>Yeah. So I'll take the, I'll take a couple of points and then I'll pass it over to you Alison if you don't >>mind. Um, >>so first and foremost, I'm asked this a lot. So what does Dell bring to the table in this whole little apex? And as a service? First and foremost, Del is the leading infrastructure provider for all of I. T. On premise. We have the enterprise infrastructure re leading across just about every major category of infrastructure. So first and foremost we have that. We also have the scale of the reach, not only in our enterprise relationships through our partner community. So that is one that is one huge advantage that we have. One thing that we're and we talked about this model. Um the level of management that we provide for our customers is second to none with this solution. So we provide um we provide all of the the difficult management tasks from end end that a customer that we repeatedly hear from our customers that they don't want to be dealing with anymore. And we're going to be able to do that at scale for our customers. And I know there's a couple more points, so I'd like to I'll pass it on to Alison and she can she can address a couple more points there. >>Yeah, sure. I mean obviously Devin makes a great point as being an industry leader and just the breadth of our portfolio in general, beyond just storage that we can essentially deliver as a service, but no, with our initial flagship storage as a service offering. Um, so with apex data storage services, you know, I talked a little bit about, you know, the pay as you go, pay as you know, pay for what you use. You know, essentially the way this works is, you know, there's an initial based commitment of capacity that the customer commits to and then they're able to elastically scale up and down above that base and only pay for what they use. One of the differentiators were bringing to the table is that, you know, in addition to that base and that, you know, the on demand space if you will, that that goes above that we're charging a single rate. So it's really a simplified and transparent billing process. So you're not getting any over ridge penalties or fees for going into that on demand. It's essentially a single rate based on your commitment and you know, as much as you scale up and down, you're gonna you're gonna stay within one single rate. So no surprise average penalties. So that's definitely something that that differentiates us. And the customers also have the ability to raise that based commitment at any point. Co terminus lee in their contract. So if they're seeing like a strong growth trajectory or anticipating a more, you know, a big burst in usage for some data intensive type workloads. You know, we can add that can raise that floor commitment resulting in a lower rate but still a single rate for both based on demand. >>Well certainly data storage and moving data around, having it in the edge to the core to whatever is critical. And I think I think that's a great service. The question I want to ask you guys next to addresses. Give us an update on the apex brand and portfolio overall. How does this fit in? How is it shaping out? Can just take a minute to explain kind of where it is right now and what's available, how it was the strategy and what's coming? >>Sure. So I can talk a little bit about what's available when we're talking about today and then maybe devon if you can touch a little bit on the on the strategy and going forward. Um But what we've announced today is you at Del Tech World is the apex brand, the apex portfolio, which as I mentioned, it's our strategy for as a service and cloud. So in addition to our data storage services offering that we've been focused on today, um which is part of our infrastructure services, we're also introducing our cloud services as well as some more customizable services. So from a cloud services perspective, we're also going to be talking about our apex private cloud and apex hybrid cloud offerings. And then of course the apex console is really what brings all of these pieces together. It's that single self service experience to manage all of your as a service resources from a single place, David, I don't know if you want to take it. >>So what I would, what I would like to add is a little bit more color on the customized services. So if you look at apex at a high level um it's really how we're transforming the way we do business with our partners and customers and the way we deliver products and offers to our our partners and customers. And within the apex umbrella there's really two segments of customers that we see. One, there is still a segment of customers that want some technology control. They want to build their they want to build their clouds, they want to build their infrastructure and that's where really the apex custom comes into it. And we have a very large business in our custom business today with Dell technologies on demand with flex on demand and data center utility and those will be represented to be apex flex on demand, apex data center utility, um you know, that's what we're announcing here. And then the second portion is really this apex turnkey offer where customers don't care to manage it, they want to just consume, they want to operate their gear. And that's where a lot of the innovation, a lot of the a lot of the strategy that we're talking about here with the hybrid cloud service, the product cloud service, apex data storage services. So we're building out a set of world class infrastructure services that will then be able to wrap our leading infrastructure utilities around data protection, security, migration, compliance etcetera. And then build a set of horizontal and vertical solutions on top of this infrastructure to provide uh paramount uh value to our >>awesome Alice. I gotta ask you because this is always the case right. There's always one or two features that jump out the product, everything as a service clearly aligns with the market macro conditions in the marketplace and the evolution of the architecture in all businesses. That's clear, there's no debate on that. You guys got that nailed. What's the, what's the key thing if you had to kind of boil out the one thing that people are gravitating towards on the data storage service because um, everyone kinda is going here, right? So what if you get people that are watching it are learning what's popping out as the key product feature here or a few things that jump out. >>Sure. So, I mean really at the core, it's all about simplicity. Um, it's in terms of the console itself, which we've talked about it, you know, you have your infrastructure resources, your storage, your cloud services and it's all, it's just so simple. It's just, it's a matter of a few simple clicks and inputs that are pretty intuitive to meet your needs. It's the fact that its outcome based, you know, we're not focused on delivering a product, it's really truly delivering an outcome and a service to meet the customer's needs. So it's a whole new way of you know approaching the market and talking to our customers and making it intuitive and simple and seamless and really, you know, taking so much of the complexity off of the table for them. Um So it's the simplicity of the console, it's the being able to transition to more op ex model um from a financial aspect is huge and then you know aligning your expenses, you know with your actual versus and you know anticipated usage, so being able to manage that unpredictability, so that's necessary talking about a specific feature but really how we're driving towards really focusing on the customer needs. >>Now the business values right there, it's all about the outcome and you know, we're about getting charged on this variable, you know, over age on some service David. How about under the hood? If I look at the engine of this, how it fits into the kind of product architecture, you look at the product management, you're building the product and the engineers are cranking away what's the, what's the gear, what gears look like? What's the machinery look like under the hood? What's the cool tech, if any, um, you would share, if you can share. >>Yeah, it's interesting that you asked that, john and it's, it's really interesting that we got probably what, 12 minutes into this interview and we didn't even talk about a product, not one single product and that is really by design here. We're really, we're really selling the service. We're selling an offer. The product is the service, the service is the product and it's really about selling those outcomes. But then at the end of the day since we're talking talking shop here um we are introducing block services and that's powered by our new award winning power store mid range product and our file services are going to be powered by our um our award winning power scale and Ice alone systems as well. So we'll be interested you know introducing block and file services and we'll be extending that to object object services and data storage services. Uh >>huh, awesome. You know Alison and Devon I was talking to a friend we're running weren't on camera with the camera was turned on but we're just riffing about all the coolness around devops to have sex cops, how I. T. S go into large scale cloud apps and we're talking about all that and we were both kind of coming to the same conclusion that the next generation on top of all this automation is the excess of service, everything is a service. Because if you go that next level, that's where it is. Because the outcomes, the outcome is the services and that's underpinned by automation ai ops all the other stuff that's kind of hardened underneath still enables it. And you guys are already there. So congratulations. That's really cool reaction to that. That concept of automation powers X as a service. >>Yeah, I'll take that one, john. So, um while I talked only about playing storage technologies that power this there is a phenomenal amount of investment in um uh work and thought going into building out the underlying infrastructure and operations behind this because we need to provide um the operations and management of this infrastructure services, not only for storage but for compute and solutions and develops environment at scale. And it's crucial that we, we build out that infrastructure, that automation, that machine learning AI offers to really support this. So yeah, you're absolutely right. That is fundamental to getting this model. Uh nailed >>Alison. You're feeling pretty good about the product and the service. Now everything is a service that's your wheelhouse. It's happening. >>Yeah, here we are. We've got, we've got apex portfolio has arrived. So yeah, feeling good. Um, definitely excited. >>He was bright. Congratulations Allison David, thanks for coming on the Cuban, sharing the updates on the apex new data storage services, the new portfolio, the directionally correct action of everything as a service and all the automation that goes on the, that's really kind of a game changer. Thanks so much for sharing on the CUBA. Really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks a lot, john, >>thank you. Okay. >>Del Tech world cube coverage continues. I'm john Kerry, the host. Thanks for watching. Yeah. Mhm.

>>Welcome back everyone to Dell Technologies World 2021 the virtual version. You're watching the cubes continuing coverage of the event and we're gonna talk about the Edge, the transformation of telco in the future of our expanding tech universe. With me is Aaron Jason, who's the vice president? Edge and Telkom marketing at Dell Technologies erin great to see you. I love this topic. >>Absolutely. It's it's pretty popular these days. I'm glad to be here with you. Thanks. >>It is popular, you know, cloud was kind of the shiny new toy last decade and it's still growing at double digits but it's kind of mainstream and now the Edge is all the rage. What's the best way to think about? What is the Edge? How do you define that? >>Yeah, you know, that's probably one of the most common questions I get is we start really doubling down on what we're doing it in the Edge world today. Um you know, I tried to basically not overcomplicated too much, you know, last year we really tried to to talk about it as being where you're the physical world, in the virtual world, connect. Um but you know, really it's more about what customers are looking to do with that technology. And so what we're really thinking about it today is the edges really where customers data is being used near point of generation to really define and build the essential value for that customer and that essential value is gonna be different in each vertical in each industry. Right? So in manufacturing, that essential value is created in the factory and retail, it's going to be, you know, at point of sale, whether that's in a store or on your device, in a virtual interaction, um in health care, it's going to be the point of care, Right? So it's gonna be the ambulance or the emergency room or the radiology lab. and of course in farming that essential values created in the field itself. So um, you know, for for many customers, it's really trying to figure out, you know, how do they take technology closer to the point of that value creation to be able to drive new new capabilities for the business, whether it's for what they're trying to accomplish or what they're trying to do in helping their customers. So really that's how we're thinking about the edge today. It's where that value generation occurs for a company. And how do we take technology to that point of generation to deliver value for them? >>Yeah, I like that. I mean to me the edge, I know what it's not, I know the edges, not a mega data center, but but everything else could be the edge. I mean, it's it's to me it's the place that's the most logical, the most logical place to process the data. So as you say, it could be a factory, it could be a hospital, it could be a retail store, it could be, could be a race track, it could be a farm, I mean virtually anything. So the edges, it's always been here, but it's changing. I mean most of the edge data has historically been analog. Everything now is getting instrumented. What are the factors that you think will make this, this industry's vision of the edge real in your opinion? >>Yeah. You know, it's it's really bringing together a handful of technologies that have really started to mature after over the last decade or so. Um the ones that have been around for a little bit, things like IOT have been emerging in the last several years. Um even Ai and machine learning many of those algorithms have been around for decades, but we've only recently been able to bring the compute power required to do that in edge environments in the last decade or so. Um it's so really the two key sort of killer technologies that have matured in the last couple of years is really the mic realization of computing. So being able to put compute almost anywhere on the planet and then the emergence of five G networking, giving us the ability to provide very high performance, low latency and high bandwidth environments to connect all those things together and get the data to those analytics environments. From that computer perspective. I mean, I still like to talk about moore's law as an example of that that ever marched that's been going on for, you know, half a century or more now is continuing to push forward um at a rate that is that that that that just really hasn't slowed down for the most part, you know, the example that I use with people, as, you know, you know, I still remember when I got my first calculator watch as a kid, you know, that Casio calculator watch that so many of us had, And my dad told me the story when he gave it to me, he's like, Hey, look, this has the same amount of compute power as the landing module on the moon, and I didn't know it at the time, but that was my first sort of entry and education around what Moore's law provided. And it's not so much speed. I mean, people think about that as it doubles in speed every 18 months, but it's really more about the density of compute that happens that moore's law drought, pushes along, so I can now squish more and more compute power into a smudge smaller location and I can now take that performance out to the edge in a way that I haven't been able to do before. I mean I think about my history, I joined E M C, that was acquired by Dell Technologies a couple years back. I joined that back in the late nineties when the biggest baddest storage array on the planet was one whole terabyte in size. And now I can fit that in the palm of my hand. In fact, when I walk around, you know, when I used to walk around with my, with my back, my laptop and go into offices, um you know, if I had my laptop and my tablet and my my my smartwatch, I had 12 to 16 cores on me and a couple of terabytes of capacity all connected with the equivalent of tens of T ones. Right? So what was once a small or or a mid sized data center just in the last decade or so? We now all walk around a small data centers and the power that that compute now brings to the edge allows us to take analytics that was really once done in data centers. I may have captured it at the edge, but I had to move it into a data lake. I had to stage it and analyze it. It was more of a historical way of looking at data. Now I can put compute right next to the point of data generation and give insight instantaneously as data is being generated. And that's opening up whole new ways that industries can drive new value for them and for their customers. And that's really what's exciting about it is this combination of these technologies that are all sort of maturing and coming together at the same time. Um, and there's just so much doing, it happened that space and devils really, really excited to be part of bringing that into these environments for our customers. >>I'm gonna give you a stat that a lot of people, I don't, I don't think realize, uh, you talked about moore's law and you're absolutely right. It's really, you know, technically moore's law is about the density, right? But the outcome of being able to do that is performance. And if you do the math, you know, moore's law doubling performance every two years, roughly, The math on that is that means 44 improvement per year in performance. Everybody talks about how moore's laws is dead. It's not, it's just changing. Here's the, here's the stat. If you take a system on a chip, take like for instance apples a 14 and go back five years from 2015 to 2021. If you add up the performance of the CPU the combinatorial factors of the CPU gpu and in the N. P. U. The neural processing unit, just those three, The growth rate has been 118 a year vs 44%. So it's actually accelerating and that doesn't include the accelerators and the DSPS and all the other alternative processors. So, and to your point and by the way that a 14 shipping cost Apple 50 bucks. So and and that fits in the palm of your hand to the point that you were just making So imagine that processing power at the edge most of of of of of ai today is modeling, let's say in the cloud, the vast majority is going to be a i influencing at the edge. So you are right on on that point. >>Yeah, there's no question about it. So, to your point, I mean, moore's law is just of course CPU itself. All right. And it comes out to roughly, on average, it's about 10 x every five years. 100 X every 10 years, 1000 X every 15 years. I mean, it's incredible how much power you can put in a small footprint today. And then if you factor in the accelerators and everything else um, it's actually if anything that innovation is going faster and faster and to your point, um you know, the while the modeling is still going to typically happen in data centers as you pull together lots of different data sets to be able to analyze and create new models. But those models are getting pushed right out to the edge on these compute devices literally feet away at times from the point of data generation to be able to give us really real time analytics and influencing. The other cool thing about this too is you know we're going from sort of more looking backwards and making business analytics based on what has already happened in the past to being able to do that in the very near past. And of course now with modern analytics and models that are being created for ai we're able to do more predictive analytics so we can actually identify errors, identify challenges before they even occur based on pattern matching that they're saying. Um So it's really opening up new doors and new areas that we've never been able to see before that's really all powered by by these capabilities. >>It's insane the amount of data that is coming. We think data is overwhelming today. You ain't seen nothing yet. Um Now erin you cover the edge and the telecom business up. I was beside it when I when I when I found that out because the telecom businesses is ripe for transformation. Um So what do you how is Dell thinking about that? Why are you sort of putting those together? What are the synergies that you see in in the commonalities in those 22 sectors? >>Yeah. I mean at the end of the day it's really all about serving the enterprise customers in the in the organizations of all kinds um that the industry is trying to bring these edge technologies too and that's no different with the telecommunications industry. Right? So you know when when the when the four G world changed about 10 years ago um you know the telecom industry was able to bring the plumbing the network piping out to all the endpoints but they really didn't capture the over the top revenue opportunities that Four G technologies opened up right. That really went to the hyper scholars. It went to you know, a lot of the companies that we all know and love like uh you know, Uber and Airbnb and netflix and others um and that really when the four Gr that was really more about opening up consumer opportunities as we move to five G. And as we move these ultra low latency and high bandwidth capabilities out to the enterprise edge, it's really the B two B opportunities that are opening up and so on the telecom side we're partnering with the telecommunication companies to modernize their network, enroll five G. L. Quickly. But one of the more important things is that we're partnering with them to be able to build services over the top of that that they can then sell into their customer base and their business customer base. So whether that's mech, whether that's private mobility, um delivering data services over the top of those networks, there's a tremendous opportunity for the telecoms to be able to go and capture um Ed revenue opportunities and we're here to help them to partner with them to be able to do that. Now if you put yourself in the shoes of the customer, the enterprise business, a manufacturer or retail, who's looking to be able to leverage these technologies, there's a variety of ways in which they're going to be able to to to consume these technologies. In some cases they'll be getting it direct from vendors direct from Dell Technologies and others. They might be using solutions integrators to be able to combine these technologies together for a particular solution. They may get some of those technologies from their telecom provider and even others, they might get it from the cloud provider. So um Dell wants to make sure that we're being able to help our customers across a variety of ways in which they want to consume those technologies and we have to businesses focused on that. We've got one business focused on edge solutions where we partner with oT vendors closely as well as cloud providers to be able to provide a technology and infrastructure based on which we can consolidate edge workloads To be able to allow customers that want to be able to run those um those services on prem and by those from a direct vendor. Um there's other customers that want to get those through the telecoms. And so we work closely with the telecommunication providers to provide them that modern cloud native disaggregated network that they're looking to build to support 5G. And then help them build those services on the top that they can sell either way whether the customer wants to get that from a vendor like Dell or from a service provider like like uh like an A T and T and Verizon or others. Um Dell looks to partner with them and be a way to provide that underlying infrastructure that connects all of that together for them. >>Well, I mean the beauty of the telco networks is their hardened. But the problem for the telco networks is they're they're hardened and so you've got the over over the top vendors bow guarding their network. The cost per bit is coming down, data is going through the roof and the telcos can't, they can't participate in that over the top and get to those subscribers. But with Five G. And the technologies that you're talking about bringing to the telecoms world, they're they're gonna transform and many are going to start competing directly and this is just a whole new world out there. I wonder Aaron if you could talk about um what you're specifically talking about at Del Tech World this year as it relates to Edge. >>Sure. So the both of the businesses hedge in telecom have a couple announcements this year. This this year, Deltek World, um starting with Edge um as you may recall back in uh in in the fall of last year when we had our last technologies world, we announced our intent to launch an edge business. Um so that that was formulated and stood up over the last couple of months and and we're really focusing on a couple of different areas. How do we look at our overall Dell technologies portfolio and be able to bring particular products and solutions that exist already and be able to apply those uh to edge use cases. We're looking at building a platform which would allow us to be able to consolidate a variety of workloads. And of course we're working on partnerships specifically in the ot space to be able to vertical eyes these offers to help particular uh particular industries. Right now we're focusing on manufacturing and retail but we'll expand that over time. So at Del Tech World this year we're launching our first set of of solutions family which is going to be the Dell Technologies manufacturing edge solutions, the first one that's gonna be launching as a reference architecture with PTC um thing works on top of what we're also proud to be announcing this week, which is our apex private cloud offering. So this is the first example of of of a partnership with an O. T. Provider on top of apex private cloud so that we can bring in as a service platform offering to the Enterprise edge uh for manufacturers. And combined with one of the industry's leading oT software vendors of thing works. So that's one of the solutions were doing um we're also looking to launch a product which is we're taking our existing um streaming data platform from our unified storage team and taking that, which was once running in the data center out to edge these cases as well. And that allows us to be able to capture click stream data in manufacturing and other environments, buffer and cash that in a in an appliance and then be able to move that off to a data like for longer term analytics. While it's in that buffered state though we open provide a P. I. S. So that you can actually do real time influencing against those click stream data as it's flowing through the appliance on its way to the data lake for longer term analytics. So those are two key areas that we're gonna be focusing on from an edge perspective on the telecom side. Um we're really this is going to be a big year from us as we move towards creating a common end end five G platform from quarter Iran and then also start focusing on partnerships and ecosystems on top of that platform. Uh last week at Red hat summit we actually announced a reference architecture for red hat. Open shift on top of Dell technologies infrastructure servers and networking. And here at Dell technologies world. This week we're announcing a reference architecture with VM ware. So running VM ware telecom cloud platform. Also on top of Dell technologies. Power edge servers and power such as um so this allows us to create that foundation that open cloud native. These are container and virtual layers on top of our hard work to give that that cloud native disaggregated uh, network claim to be able to now run and build core edge and ran solutions on top of and you'll be hearing more about what we're doing in this space in the coming months. >>Nice. That's great. The open ran stuff is really exciting now, last question. So mobile world Congress, the biggest telco show is coming up in late june Yeah, still on. According to the G S M, a lot of people have tapped out um, and but the cube is planning to be there with a hybrid presence, both virtual and physical. We'll see um I wonder if there's anything you want to talk about just in terms of what's happening in telco telco transformation, you guys got any get any events coming up, what can you tell us? >>Yeah, so we took a close look at mobile world congress and and uh this has been a challenging year for everybody. Um you know, Dell as well as many other vendors made the decision this year that we would actually not participate, but we look forward to participating uh with full gusto next year when it's back in a physical environment. Um So what we've decided to do is we are going to be having our own virtual launch event on june 9th. Um And in that event, the theme of that is going to be the modern ecosystem in the neighboring leveraging the power of open. Um So we'll be talking a little bit more about what we're doing from that open cloud, native network infrastructure and then also talk a little bit more about what Dell technologies looking to do to bring a broad ecosystem of technology vendors together and deliver that ecosystem platform for the telecom industry. So registration actually opens this week at Dell Technologies World. So if you go to Dell technologies dot com can register for the event. Um we're really excited to be talking to the telecom providers and also other hardware and software vendors that are in that space to see how we can work together to really drive this next generation of five G. >>That's awesome. I'll be looking for that and and look forward to collaborating with you on that, bringing your thought leadership and the cube community we would really love to to partner on that. Aaron, thanks so much for coming to the cube. Really exciting area and best of luck to you. >>Right. Thank you. I appreciate the time. >>All right. And thank you for watching everybody says Dave Volonte for the Cubes, continuous coverage of Del Tech World 2021. The virtual version will be right back right after this short break.

>>Welcome back to Dell Technology World. 2021. Del Tech World. The virtual edition. My name is Dave Volonte. We're gonna talk about the Edge. Very excited to invite Pierluigi Deli, who's the Vice President, Product management for the Edge portfolio. Adele and Gil Schwarzman, who is the Senior Vice President. Edge portfolio, also with Dell Technologies Gentlemen. Great to see you. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank >>you. You see you, >>Yeah, great to see you guys to which we were face to face, but maybe maybe in 22 Gil, let's start with you. The edge is very exciting. Uh, it's, you know, not really defined, it's very fragmented, but it's there, you know, it's kind of, you know, it when you see it, what do you get excited about when you think about the edge? >>Yeah, I think uh there's two elements. The first one is that we all live at the edge. In other words, the areas we deal with our around us every day will show up um when we uh, you know, when we consume when we drive. So it's a, it's a very physical type of activity. We know it's there. What's really exciting motive to me is that you started with talking about fragmentation right on the bet. Um, it is a great opportunity for the technology is to add value um because it's so fragmented because it's so new because it has developed and evolved the way it is. We see an amazing opportunity for us to add much more value than we do today and solve problems that have yet to be solved in the industry. >>And it's an exciting, it's almost like an infinite playground for a technologist. You >>dave, I think that's exactly what we find out. The Edge is very exciting. There is a lot of motion, especially due to the pandemic and other things. Big factor that accelerate innovation at the edge but this is an inorganic acceleration and what it kills for one of the most of our customer is also confusion, right? They need to apply multiple solution but not very organized. So you try to solve the outcome like having the right production on the, on your line because demand is surging but you don't have an organic things to do that and solve the problem. So you see a lot of silence coming in for each one of the solution and that's what Gil was referring. That's a great opportunity for us as dealt with the breath of the portfolio we have and what our team that is a new team is focusing doing is to bring that idea to be able to consolidate multiple things at the edge and process things at the edge. >>We did a an event cube, had an event called the Cuban cloud and Q one and we had john Rosen and the title of segment was something like gaining the technology edge And we were kind of freaking out on, on the tech at the edge. Uh it might take away there was trying to like what is the edge? It's like, well it's the place where it makes most sense to process the data and so that brings up a lot of challenges. There are technical challenges and there are business challenges. I wonder if we could sort of dig into those a little bit. How do you guys look at that? Maybe gil you want to start maybe on the business side and then we can dig a short, right >>the way things evolved if you think about it, um, at the edge of very vertical lesson because of that they're very use case driven And so in every industry possible you start with some business person making a decision whether they have a need or they want to grow their business. And so for example they would buy an applying to do fraud protection in retail or detection retail or they will apply an application to medical robotics in the factory. And it would come with its own gateway in plant compute in a cloud portal and then you do it again and again and again every time you have a business opportunity all of the sudden you have this proliferation of I. T. Type equipment at the end where it's it's the worst place to have it really because you don't have the right I. T. Resources and you are um in the need to protect it in a much more um in a different way than you do in a data center. And so all of that brings to bring us to a point that you know we see an opportunity to simplify. Um And so not only simplification and this is you know simplification or simplicity is the most important driver for any I. T. Purchase. Um Things that are simple are the easiest that the most economical to operate the next demand that we see from a customary security because things are at the they have a much more um you know extended attack surface um they need to be connected to networks, they need to be connected without I. T. Staff. So if you can simplify insecure you can really unlock amazing value by processing data where closely to where it's created without it. You know we were seeing this opportunity as businesses but we can we get to it because there are so those two hurdles in front of us. >>So when you say thank you for that bill, when you think about, when you hear you hear a lot about AI influencing at the edge and and if you think about AI today much of the work is modeling, it's done in the cloud, but you're not going to be doing A i influencing in real time in the cloud, you know, take the autonomous vehicle example, so that brings some some technical challenges. Um, there's obviously data challenges. I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean we always talk about how much data is going to be persisted, I think Tesla persists like five minutes of data, right? But some of it is gonna go back, that's true, but a lot of it is going to be processed real time and that's just really different than the way we typically think about. Yeah, >>absolutely. So at the Edge, especially in manufacturing, we see right now or in a uh, another use case, it's very important to get the outcome very quickly. Now. You don't use that a deep learning model for that. You need to just understand, for example, in a computer vision use case where you take the image of your production line, you actually to your point dave you not keep those image when you keep the image where you have the defect. But you need to process that. Ai Ml needs to be intelligent enough to understand that you have a defect and send that image them to the club. So the search of the data at the edge is a very important factor and why you need to process data, the Edge because your point, you can't wait to send to the cloud and I'm waiting right? Um, Tesla is a clear example of that all the autonomous car where you need to react instantaneously to change. But in manufacturing for example that is our focus for now is for example the robots that if you need to optimize the robot, you need to have a immediate understanding of where the pieces are and when they need to put in the tolerance need to be act immediately. Otherwise you come out with the thousands of pieces that they are not in the right tolerance. So at the end of the day, what we see is not only the search of the need of processing ai ml to the edge but also the need of a new type of compute at the edge. So in the past was just Gateway and you get the gate when you send the data to the cloud. Now it's a form of a new computer that come as also GPU capability and other things to process the data. So very important. And I think the Dell especially we are very focused on that because is uh is really where the customer need to extract the value. >>Thank you. And Gil I want to get into the unique value proposition to tell what makes you distinct. And it's uh I infer from your comments, your strategy you said is to simplify and so I see two vectors. There. One is to simplify at the edge. The other is to where we're needed, connect that edge, whether it's on prem public cloud across cloud, that kind of simplification layer that abstracts the complex, the underlying complexity. Uh Maybe you could talk about your strategy and what makes you guys different. >>Sure. Um We've been talking to a, well we always talk to our customers and we've been doing business at the edge for many many years. Um You know let's call it coincidental were very large company we have reached, we serve our customers so when they decide to buy something for their you know environment, they come to us as well as other vendors and we win a percentage of the time based on our market share. Um But when we decided to take another look at how can we be even more relevant? We started talking to a lot of them great depth. And what would we do we discovered was the problem I talked about before, the problem of complexity, the problem of security and the problem of you know choice. And so our focus is to do what we do best. We at the end of the day we're an I. T. Company. Um and our our customers for the most part our I. T. People and we see them dragged more and more into edge projects because customers need to connect edge to the network and they need to security and that's how it starts. And so those worlds of I. T. And OTR coming together and their coming together applying best practices which is exactly what we know how to do. And so because of that we think that they need to think about architecture versus unique silent solutions architecture can support multiple use cases that can grow with time, consolidate more and more use cases as they grow. Simplify what they do by applying you know tried and true or tried and true best practices in a secure manner. So the deal approach would be doing that taking a more architectural approach to the adverse as a use case and then just like you predicted um meet the customers where they are from an application stand book. And so we we know that a lot of applications are growing and development on a hyper scale or public clouds. We would like to connect to those. We would like to allow them to keep working as they have except when they run into the edge. Think about environments that could consolidate multiple workloads and not solve it for each one at the same time. And so that would be our overall approach. That's what we're working on. >>Yeah. Okay. So that horizontal layer, if you will uh to to to serve many many use cases, not just you're not gonna go a mile deep into one and be the expert at some narrow use case. You want to be that horizontal platform. But at the same time, look, I wonder does does that call for more program ability as we over time of the of the products to to really allow people to kind of design in that flexibility if you will build my own. Uh is that something that we can expect? >>Yeah, absolutely. So uh we spoke a little bit about this before the interview and the things that is very important is compose ability starting from a very small from factor to the cluster and then expand to the cloud is a fundamental things and a trend that we see. The fact that you can compose the infrastructure um starting from a small gateway that is changing in this market, right up to the cloud and be able to use the same layer that allow you to run the same application is the fundamental things and we are working on that. Um we are working on this vision and our strategy is really to be able to be transparent but provide the right building block to do all the use case that they are required where the data are. So we again, not only meeting the customer but meeting where the data are, what the customer wants out of those data. So that's a fundamental things. And you know, we we have project Apex. So obviously we are plugging into the project apex from an edge point of view, will allow the customer to have this unique experience to go in Apex and also deploy the edge infrastructure that is needed. So that's that's we started right now with that. So we will touch later, but that's the first building block of that journey. >>Actually, let's touch now you've got some news around Apex and and and and talking what are you announcing? So >>we are very exciting because as I said, our team is, it's pretty new and um, it's a very important investment that Dell makes uh not only in us as a team but as a motion. Um, so we are announcing a reference architecture with PTC. PTC is the one of the biggest company for actually based here in boston uh for manufacturing and reference architecture will be run on based on apex private cloud so the customer can go to the portal, order, order apex private cloud and deploy deploy PTC on top of that. So, very important things is that the first step in this journey and but it's an important, very, very important steps. So we want to thank you also PTC to allow us to work with them. Um, we have other stuff as well that we are announcing. Um, I don't know if you are familiar but we have a very unique streaming data platform, um, streaming data platform that can stream multiple data collected from Gateway from every place. And uh it's a need obviously when you need to process data in real time, very important to have a streaming, what we're doing with the new streaming data platform approach is the ability to deploy single note. So it can be very appealing for the edge and up to free notes and last but not least gil if you want to speak about our other partnership is very important. >>Sure. Um once we started looking more in depth into manufacturing, we discover that this market is today served by combinations of um oT vendors, people who make equipment? S eyes, people who consult on integration and um and you know, a lot of SVS that make up this ecosystem and people like ourselves. And so one of the things that we decided to do is partner with accenture, accenture Industry X practice to bring our joint value to customers. We started by investing in in a five G lab. They have four industry act. So you know the usage of five G. Manufacturing industry and we will still we will expand that and work on that as a as a joint offer for our joint customers going forward. So we're really excited about this because we feel that consolidation needs to happen not only technology but also in the partnerships, we need to partner if you want to bring true value to our customers and that's the first step, >>awesome. That's great. So a couple of comments on that. So it's funny, we did the live work show in the cube a couple years ago. PTC is a big, big event and it was like it was the edge and I remember looking around saying where's all the vendors? So that's great to see you guys leaning in like that parallel to the streaming platform. Tell me more about that. What's the tech behind it? >>Uh So the streaming data platform is a project that we start a couple of years ago is actually uh start from open source Provida. Um it's uh it's a very interesting technology where you can stream multiple data, it is not a traditional storage, ah use a technology that can ah really collect thousands of different streams and that's very important when you need to mind the data, bring the data um in the structure data in a inefficient that you, you can process them at the real time. It's very important. So um there are very cool use case of that. But now that we look at the edge, this is make more and more tangible sense because we have a lot of partners that they're working with us, especially to extend when you have all this sensor, you bring the data to the gateways and from the gateways then you can use data streaming platform to collect all these dreams and then you can easily process them. So it's a very fundamental technology, we are very proud of that. Um as I said, our enterprise version uh is getting more and more and now we can land this on different architecture, so it is, it can be backed up by an Iceland. Uh it can be also on different storage type now and as I said, we're looking now to bring from a what was a data center kind of structure down to the edge because now we can put a single node up to three notes, >>it makes a lot of sense. Is this like a Kafka based thing or open source or is it something you guys built or a combination? >>It's a combination. We actually project. The project is an open source project, but we did that, we start this many years ago and um he works with Kafka, but he's not Kafka. So it's, it's a he has plugging that can work with Kafka and all the other things and, and it's very easy to deploy. So it's a very, very, very important. And the other things is the scalability of this platform. >>I mean, it sounds like the kind of thing you had in the labs and you said, OK, this is going to be important. That boom all of a sudden the market comes to you as if you pop it right in. And then of course, the accenture of relationship deep, deep industry expertise, so that makes a lot of sense. 55 Gs happening a different world the next 10 years in the last 10 years isn't it? What is it about manufacturing? Why why did you start there? >>I can take this. Um We looked at where the opportunity was from two perspectives. One is where the opportunity, what the opportunities to sell, even the other one obviously comes with it because there is an opportunity to have and manufacturing today at the edges about 30 of the opportunity in sales according to NBC but more so it's been around for the longer time and so they it's very it's maturing um it's the most demanding. Um and you know, it's got very long horizons of investment and what we did was we figured that if we can solve problems for industry we can then extend that and solving for everyone years. Because this would be the toughest one to solve and we like challenge. And so we decided to focus and go deep. You said it before? Well, our approach is definitely horizontal approach. We cannot take a horizontal approach without vertical izing and understand specific needs. So nobody can avoid doing both at the same time. You need to understand. But you also want to solve it in a way that doesn't proliferate the silos. So that's our role. We will understand what we will make it more generic so other people can never get later on >>and David, if I cannot. Uh I think the manufacturing is also very exciting for us as a technologist, right? Uh and uh Dell technology as in the name the technology. So it's very exciting because if I look at manufacturing, we we are really in the middle of a industrial transformation. I mean it's a new era. Um If you think about um nobody care in the past to connect their machinery with that the F. P. L. C. To the network. All of this is changing because the life that where we live right now with the pandemic with the remote working with the fact that you need to have a much more control and be able to have predictive matters. So you're not stopping your manufacturing is pushing the entire manufacturing instrument industry to connect this machine and with the connectivity of this machinery you get a lot of data. You get also a lot of challenge. For example security. So now that's the place where connectivity brings the I. T. Aspect in and U. T. Guys now they're starting to speak with because now it's a more complex things right? It's not any more computerized competitor eyes only to one machinery specific is the entire floor. So it's a very interesting dynamics >>is the connection between that programmable logic controller and the Dell solution is you mentioned to secure better security and I presume it's also to connect back to whatever the core or the cloud etcetera. Is it also to do you know, something locally? Does it improve? Is their value add that you can provide locally? And what is that value add? >>Absolutely. So the value, as I said, um if you think right in the past right, you have a machine that uh, probably stay in the manufacturing for 2025 years, then you have an artwork attached to that machine that it is the P. L. C. About 11 years. The guy that he knows better about that machine is actually not the software component on. But he's the guy that has been working on that machine for 15 years now. How you translate that knowledge To a learning algorithm that actually can do that 4000 of machine. And and that's really the key right. You need to centralize information, process those information but not in the cloud, not in the central data center, but on the manufacturing floor. And you need to have a way to represent these things in a very simple way. So the plant manager can take action or the or the guy that is responsible for the entire line can take action immediately. And that's where the changes is not anymore to is trying to extend that knowledge to multiple machine multiple floor and try to get this change immediately. So that's really >>so the PLC doesn't become a general purpose computer or even necessarily the Uber computer. It connects to that capability because that enables data sharing across clouds and that's >>enabled the entire things. You know, you you can't do a model just with one source. You need to have multiple sources. Um, and also think about the manufacturing is changing not only for the machinery, but people that they build new manufacturing right? They need to be smart building. They need to have a technology for being more green solar energy consumption. So the manufacturing itself is mean five or six different things that you need to solve. It's not just the machine. So this idea of the silence environment is started to collapse in one and that's why it's important for us to start from a vertical, but also in the manufacturing, you already see this will expand to multiple things. Also like smart building another thing because they need it. >>Yeah. The red guilt to your point manufacturers like the Big Apple. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere and you've got adjacent seas, you can, you know, you can take the learnings from manufacturing and apply them to those adjacent industries. Uh, give us the last word. >>Um, look, usually when we talk at the technologies world, we talked to an I. D. Audience and we were, we're thinking this year that the way to talk about edge, at least with the people who traditionally buy from us is exposed them to the fact that they are more and more are going to be responsible for projects. And so our advice would be our hope that they would partner with us to think ahead. Just like they do with data center with their cloud strategy, think ahead as they think about their edge and try to set up some architectural guidelines. So when they do get the request, they're ready for it and think about what they think about the best practices that they applied, all of that is coming to them. They need to be prepared as well. And so we would like to partner with all of our customers to make them ready and obviously help them simplify secure, consolidate as they grow. >>Well guys, thank you, I learned a lot today. I you made a lot of progress. You know, this is the hallmark of Dell, right? It's a very high, let me make sure I get this right, very high due to say ratio right. You guys talked about doing this, you know, a couple a couple of years ago, uh, and you've made a lot of progress and I really appreciate you coming in the cube to explain the strategy. It makes a lot of sense. And so congratulations and uh, good luck in the future. >>Thank you. >>All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the cubes, ongoing coverage of Del Tech World 2021. The virtual edition. Keep it right there, right back, >>mm.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban Cloud brought to you by Silicon Angle. Welcome back to the live segment of the Cuban cloud. I'm Dave, along with my co host, John Ferrier. John Rose is here. He's the global C T o Dell Technologies. John, great to see you as always, Really appreciate >>it. Absolutely good to know. >>Hey, so we're gonna talk edge, you know, the the edge, it's it's estimated. It's a multi multi trillion dollar opportunity, but it's a highly fragmented, very complex. I mean, it comprises from autonomous vehicles and windmills, even retail stores outer space. And it's so it brings in a lot of really gnarly technical issues that we want to pick your brain on. Let me start with just what to you is edge. How do you think about >>it? Yeah, I think I mean, I've been saying for a while that edges the when you reconstitute Ike back out in the real world. You know, for 10 years we've been sucking it out of the real world, taking it out of factories, you know, nobody has an email server under their desk anymore. On that was because we could put it in data centers and cloud public clouds, and you know that that's been a a good journey. And then we realized, Wait a minute, all the data actually was being created out in the real world. And a lot of the actions that have to come from that data have to happen in real time in the real world. And so we realized we actually had toe reconstitute a nightie capacity out near where the data is created, consumed and utilized. And, you know, that turns out to be smart cities, smart factories. You know, uh, we're dealing with military apparatus. What you're saying, how do you put, you know, edges in tow, warfighting theaters or first responder environments? It's really anywhere that data exists that needs to be processed and understood and acted on. That isn't in a data center. So it's kind of one of these things. Defining edge is easier to find. What it isn't. It's anywhere that you're going to have. I t capacity that isn't aggregated into a public or private cloud data center. That seems to be the answer. So >>follow. Follow that. Follow the data. And so you've got these big issue, of course, is late and see people saying, Well, some applications or some use cases like autonomous vehicles. You have to make the decision locally. Others you can you can send back. And you, Kamal, is there some kind of magic algorithm the technical people used to figure out? You know what, the right approaches? Yeah, >>the good news is math still works and way spent a lot of time thinking about why you build on edge. You know, not all things belong at the edge. Let's just get that out of the way. And so we started thinking about what does belong at the edge, and it turns out there's four things you need. You know, if you have a real time responsiveness in the full closed loop of processing data, you might want to put it in an edge. But then you have to define real time, and real time varies. You know, real time might be one millisecond. It might be 30 milliseconds. It might be 50 milliseconds. It turns out that it's 50 milliseconds. You probably could do that in a co located data center pretty far away from those devices. One millisecond you better be doing it on the device itself. And so so the Leighton see around real time processing matters. And, you know, the other reasons interesting enough to do edge actually don't have to do with real time crossing they have to do with. There's so much data being created at the edge that if you just blow it all the way across the Internet, you'll overwhelm the Internets. We have need toe pre process and post process data and control the flow across the world. The third one is the I T. O T boundary that we all know. That was the I O t. Thing that we were dealing with for a long time. And the fourth, which is the fascinating one, is it's actually a place where you might want to inject your security boundaries, because security tends to be a huge problem and connected things because they're kind of dumb and kind of simple and kind of exposed. And if you protect them on the other end of the Internet, the surface area of protecting is enormous, so there's a big shift basically move security functions to the average. I think Gardner made up a term for called Sassy. You know, it's a pretty enabled edge, but these are the four big ones. We've actually tested that for probably about a year with customers. And it turns out that, you know, seems to hold If it's one of those four things you might want to think about an edge of it isn't it probably doesn't belong in >>it. John. I want to get your thoughts on that point. The security things huge. We talked about that last time at Del Tech World when we did an interview with the Cube. But now look at what's happened. Over the past few months, we've been having a lot of investigative reporting here at Silicon angle on the notion of misinformation, not just fake news. Everyone talks about that with the election, but misinformation as a vulnerability because you have now edge devices that need to be secured. But I can send misinformation to devices. So, you know, faking news could be fake data say, Hey, Tesla, drive off the road or, you know, do this on the other thing. So you gotta have the vulnerabilities looked at and it could be everything. Data is one of them. Leighton. See secure. Is there a chip on the device? Could you share your vision on how you see that being handled? Cause it's a huge >>problem. Yeah, this is this is a big deal because, you know, what you're describing is the fact that if data is everything, the flow of data ultimately turns into the flow of information that knowledge and wisdom and action. And if you pollute the data, if you could compromise it the most rudimentary levels by I don't know, putting bad data into a sensor or tricking the sensor which lots of people can dio or simulating a sensor, you can actually distort things like a I algorithms. You can introduce bias into them and then that's a That's a real problem. The solution to it isn't making the sensors smarter. There's this weird Catch 22 when you sense arise the world, you know you have ah, you know, finite amount of power and budget and the making sensors fatter and more complex is actually the wrong direction. So edges have materialized from that security dimension is an interesting augment to those connected things. And so imagine a world where you know your sensor is creating data and maybe have hundreds or thousands of sensors that air flowing into an edge compute layer and the edge compute layer isn't just aggregating it. It's putting context on it. It's metadata that it's adding to the system saying, Hey, that particular stream of telemetry came from this device, and I'm watching that device and Aiken score it and understand whether it's been compromised or whether it's trustworthy or whether it's a risky device and is that all flows into the metadata world the the overall understanding of not just the data itself, but where did it come from? Is it likely to be trustworthy? Should you score it higher or lower in your neural net to basically manipulate your algorithm? These kind of things were really sophisticated and powerful tools to protect against this kind of injection of false information at the sensor, but you could never do that at a sensor. You have to do it in a place that has more compute capacity and is more able to kind of enriched the data and enhance it. So that's why we think edges are important in that fourth characteristic of they aren't the security system of the sensor itself. But they're the way to make sure that there's integrity in the sense arised world before it reaches the Internet before it reaches the cloud data centers. >>So access to that metadata is access to the metadata is critical, and it's gonna be it's gonna be near real time, if not real time, right? >>Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the important thing is, Well, I'll tell you this. You know, if you haven't figured this out by looking at cybersecurity issues, you know, compromising from the authoritative metadata is a really good compromise. If you could get that, you can manipulate things that a scale you've never imagined. Well, in this case, if the metadata is actually authoritatively controlled by the edge note the edge note is processing is determining whether or not this is trustworthy or not. Those edge nodes are not $5 parts, their servers, their higher end systems. And you can inject a lot more sophisticated security technology and you can have hardware root of trust. You can have, you know, mawr advanced. PK I in it, you can have a I engines watching the behavior of it, and again, you'd never do that in a sensor. But if you do it at the first step into the overall data pipeline, which is really where the edges materializing, you can do much more sophisticated things to the data. But you can also protect that thing at a level that you'd never be able to do to protect a smart lightbulb. A thermostat in your house? >>Uh, yes. So give us the playbook on how you see the evolution of the this mark. I'll see these air key foundational things, a distributed network and it's a you know I o t trends into industrial i o t vice versa. As a software becomes critical, what is the programming model to build the modern applications is something that I know. You guys talk to Michael Dell about this in the Cuban, everyone, your companies as well as everyone else. Its software define everything these days, right? So what is the software framework? How did people code on this? What's the application aware viewpoint on this? >>Yeah, this is, uh, that's unfortunately it's a very complex area that's got a lot of dimensions to it. Let me let me walk you through a couple of them in terms of what is the software framework for for For the edge. The first is that we have to separate edge platforms from the actual edge workload today too many of the edge dialogues or this amorphous blob of code running on an appliance. We call that an edge, and the reality is that thing is actually doing two things. It's, ah, platform of compute out in the real world and it's some kind of extension of the cloud data pipeline of the cloud Operating model. Instance, he added, A software probably is containerized code sitting on that edge platform. Our first principle about the software world is we have to separate those two things. You do not build your cloud your edge platform co mingled with the thing that runs on it. That's like building your app into the OS. That's just dumb user space. Colonel, you keep those two things separate. We have Thio start to enforce that discipline in the software model at the edges. The first principle, the second is we have to recognize that the edges are are probably best implemented in ways that don't require a lot of human intervention. You know, humans air bad when it comes to really complex distributed systems. And so what we're finding is that most of the code being pushed into production benefits from using things like kubernetes or container orchestration or even functional frameworks like, you know, the server list fast type models because those low code architectures generally our interface with via AP, eyes through CCD pipelines without a lot of human touch on it. And it turns out that, you know, those actually worked reasonably well because the edges, when you look at them in production, the code actually doesn't change very often, they kind of do singular things relatively well over a period of time. And if you can make that a fully automated function by basically taking all of the human intervention away from it, and if you can program it through low code interfaces or through automated interfaces, you take a lot of the risk out of the human intervention piece of this type environment. We all know that you know most of the errors and conditions that break things are not because the technology fails it because it's because of human being touches it. So in the software paradigm, we're big fans of more modern software paradigms that have a lot less touch from human beings and a lot more automation being applied to the edge. The last thing I'll leave you with, though, is we do have a problem with some of the edge software architectures today because what happened early in the i o t world is people invented kind of new edge software platforms. And we were involved in these, you know, edge X foundry, mobile edge acts, a crane. Oh, and those were very important because they gave you a set of functions and capabilities of the edge that you kind of needed in the early days. Our long term vision, though for edge software, is that it really needs to be the same code base that we're using in data centers and public clouds. It needs to be the same cloud stack the same orchestration level, the same automation level, because what you're really doing at the edge is not something that spoke. You're taking a piece of your data pipeline and you're pushing it to the edge and the other pieces are living in private data centers and public clouds, and you like they all operate under the same framework. So we're big believers in, like pushing kubernetes orchestration all the way to the edge, pushing the same fast layer all the way to the edge. And don't create a bespoke world of the edge making an extension of the multi cloud software framework >>even though the underlying the underlying hardware might change the microprocessor, GPU might change GP or whatever it is. Uh, >>by the way, that that's a really good reason to use these modern framework because the energies compute where it's not always next 86 underneath it, programming down at the OS level and traditional languages has an awful lot of hardware dependencies. We need to separate that because we're gonna have a lot of arm. We're gonna have a lot of accelerators a lot of deep. Use a lot of other stuff out there. And so the software has to be modern and able to support header genius computer, which a lot of these new frameworks do quite well, John. >>Thanks. Thanks so much for for coming on, Really? Spending some time with us and you always a great guest to really appreciate it. >>Going to be a great stuff >>of a technical edge. Ongoing room. Dave, this is gonna be a great topic. It's a clubhouse room for us. Well, technical edge section every time. Really. Thanks >>again, Jon. Jon Rose. Okay, so now we're gonna We're gonna move to the second part of our of our technical edge discussion. Chris Wolf is here. He leads the advanced architecture group at VM Ware. And that really means So Chris's looks >>at I >>think it's three years out is kind of his time. Arise. And so, you know, advanced architecture, Er and yeah. So really excited to have you here. Chris, can you hear us? >>Okay. Uh, >>can Great. Right. Great to see you again. >>Great >>to see you. Thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it. >>So >>we're talking about the edge you're talking about the things that you see way set it up is a multi trillion dollar opportunity. It's It's defined all over the place. Uh, Joey joke. It's Could be a windmill. You know, it could be a retail store. It could be something in outer space. Its's It's it's, you know, whatever is defined A factory, a military installation, etcetera. How do you look at the edge. And And how do you think about the technical evolution? >>Yeah, I think it is. It was interesting listening to John, and I would say we're very well aligned there. You know, we also would see the edge is really the place where data is created, processed and are consumed. And I think what's interesting here is that you have a number off challenges in that edges are different. So, like John was talking about kubernetes. And there's there's multiple different kubernetes open source projects that are trying to address thes different edge use cases, whether it's K three s or Cubbage or open your it or super edge. And I mean the list goes on and on, and the reason that you see this conflict of projects is multiple reasons. You have a platform that's not really designed to supported computing, which kubernetes is designed for data center infrastructure. Uh, first on then you have these different environments where you have some edge sites that have connectivity to the cloud, and you have some websites that just simply don't write whether it's an oil rig or a cruise ship. You have all these different use cases, so What we're seeing is you can't just say this is our edge platform and, you know, go consume it because it won't work. You actually have to have multiple flavors of your edge platform and decide. You know what? You should time first. From a market perspective, I >>was gonna ask you great to have you on. We've had many chest on the Cube during when we actually would go to events and be on the credit. But we appreciate you coming into our virtual editorial event will be doing more of these things is our software will be put in the work to do kind of a clubhouse model. We get these talks going and make them really valuable. But this one is important because one of the things that's come up all day and we kind of introduced earlier to come back every time is the standardization openness of how open source is going to extend out this this interoperability kind of vibe. And then the second theme is and we were kind of like the U S side stack come throwback to the old days. Uh, talk about Cooper days is that next layer, but then also what is going to be the programming model for modern applications? Okay, with the edge being obviously a key part of it. What's your take on that vision? Because that's a complex area certain a lot of a lot of software to be written, still to come, some stuff that need to be written today as well. So what's your view on How do you programs on the edge? >>Yeah, it's a It's a great question, John and I would say, with Cove it We have seen some examples of organizations that have been successful when they had already built an edge for the expectation of change. So when you have a truly software to find edge, you can make some of these rapid pivots quite quickly, you know. Example was Vanderbilt University had to put 1000 hospital beds in a parking garage, and they needed dynamic network and security to be able to accommodate that. You know, we had a lab testing company that had to roll out 400 testing sites in a matter of weeks. So when you can start tohave first and foremost, think about the edge as being our edge. Agility is being defined as you know, what is the speed of software? How quickly can I push updates? How quickly can I transform my application posture or my security posture in lieu of these types of events is super important. Now, if then if we walk that back, you know, to your point on open source, you know, we see open source is really, uh you know, the key enabler for driving edge innovation and driving in I S V ecosystem around that edge Innovation. You know, we mentioned kubernetes, but there's other really important projects that we're already seeing strong traction in the edge. You know, projects such as edge X foundry is seeing significant growth in China. That is, the core ejects foundry was about giving you ah, pass for some of your I o T aps and services. Another one that's quite interesting is the open source faith project in the Linux Foundation. And fate is really addressing a melody edge through a Federated M L model, which we think is the going to be the long term dominant model for localized machine learning training as we continue to see massive scale out to these edge sites, >>right? So I wonder if you could You could pick up on that. I mean, in in thinking about ai influencing at the edge. Um, how do you see that? That evolving? Uh, maybe You know what, Z? Maybe you could We could double click on the architecture that you guys see. Uh, progressing. >>Yeah, Yeah. Right now we're doing some really good work. A zai mentioned with the Fate project. We're one of the key contributors to the project. Today. We see that you need to expand the breath of contributors to these types of projects. For starters, uh, some of these, what we've seen is sometimes the early momentum starts in China because there is a lot of innovation associated with the edge there, and now it starts to be pulled a bit further West. So when you look at Federated Learning, we do believe that the emergence of five g I's not doesn't really help you to centralized data. It really creates the more opportunity to create, put more data and more places. So that's, you know, that's the first challenge that you have. But then when you look at Federated learning in general, I'd say there's two challenges that we still have to overcome organizations that have very sophisticated data. Science practices are really well versed here, and I'd say they're at the forefront of some of these innovations. But that's 1% of enterprises today. We have to start looking at about solutions for the 99% of enterprises. And I'd say even VM Ware partners such as Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services as an example. They've been addressing ML for the 99%. I say That's a That's a positive development. When you look in the open source community, it's one thing to build a platform, right? Look, we love to talk about platforms. That's the easy part. But it's the APS that run on that platform in the services that run on that platform that drive adoption. So the work that we're incubating in the VM, or CTO office is not just about building platforms, but it's about building the applications that are needed by say that 99% of enterprises to drive that adoption. >>So if you if you carry that through that, I infer from that Chris that the developers are ultimately gonna kind of win the edge or define the edge Um, How do you see that From their >>perspective? Yeah, >>I think its way. I like to look at this. I like to call a pragmatic Dev ops where the winning formula is actually giving the developer the core services that they need using the native tools and the native AP eyes that they prefer and that is predominantly open source. It would some cloud services as they start to come to the edge as well. But then, beyond that, there's no reason that I t operations can't have the tools that they prefer to use. A swell. So we see this coming together of two worlds where I t operations has to think even for differently about edge computing, where it's not enough to assume that I t has full control of all of these different devices and sensors and things that exists at the edge. It doesn't happen. Often times it's the lines of business that air directly. Deploying these types of infrastructure solutions or application services is a better phrase and connecting them to the networks at the edge. So what does this mean From a nightie operations perspective? We need tohave, dynamic discovery capabilities and more policy and automation that can allow the developers to have the velocity they want but still have that consistency of security, agility, networking and all of the other hard stuff that somebody has to solve. And you can have the best of both worlds here. >>So if Amazon turned the data center into an A P I and then the traditional, you know, vendors sort of caught up or catching up and trying to do in the same premise is the edge one big happy I Is it coming from the cloud? Is it coming from the on Prem World? How do you see that evolving? >>Yes, that's the question and races on. Yeah, but it doesn't. It doesn't have to be exclusive in one way or another. The VM Ware perspective is that, you know, we can have a consistent platform for open source, a consistent platform for cloud services. And I think the key here is this. If you look at the partnerships we've been driving, you know, we've on boarded Amazon rds onto our platform. We announced the tech preview of Azure Arc sequel database as a service on our platform as well. In addition, toe everything we're doing with open source. So the way that we're looking at this is you don't wanna make a bet on an edge appliance with one cloud provider. Because what happens if you have a business partner that says I am a line to Google or on the line to AWS? So I want to use this open source. Our philosophy is to virtualized the edge so that software can dictate, you know, organizations velocity at the end of the day. >>Yeah. So, Chris, you come on, you're you're an analyst at Gartner. You know us. Everything is a zero sum game, but it's but But life is not like that, right? I mean, there's so much of an incremental opportunity, especially at the edge. I mean, the numbers are mind boggling when when you look at it, >>I I agree wholeheartedly. And I think you're seeing a maturity in the vendor landscape to where we know we can't solve all the problems ourselves and nobody can. So we have to partner, and we have to to your earlier point on a P. I s. We have to build external interfaces in tow, our platforms to make it very easy for customers have choice around ice vendors, partners and so on. >>So, Chris, I gotta ask you since you run the advanced technology group in charge of what's going on there, will there be a ship and focus on mawr ships at the edge with that girl singer going over to intel? Um, good to see Oh, shit, so to speak. Um, all kidding aside, but, you know, patch leaving big news around bm where I saw some of your tweets and you laid out there was a nice tribute, pat, but that's gonna be cool. That's gonna be a didn't tell. Maybe it's more more advanced stuff there. >>Yeah, I think >>for people pats staying on the VMRO board and to me it's it's really think about it. I mean, Pat was part of the team that brought us the X 86 right and to come back to Intel as the CEO. It's really the perfect book end to his career. So we're really sad to see him go. Can't blame him. Of course it's it's a It's a nice chapter for Pat, so totally understand that. And we prior to pack going to Intel, we announced major partnerships within video last year, where we've been doing a lot of work with >>arm. So >>thio us again. We see all of this is opportunity, and a lot of the advanced development projects were running right now in the CTO office is about expanding that ecosystem in terms of how vendors can participate, whether you're running an application on arm, whether it's running on X 86 or whatever, it's running on what comes next, including a variety of hardware accelerators. >>So is it really? Is that really irrelevant to you? I mean, you heard John Rose talk about that because it's all containerized is it is. It is a technologies. Is it truly irrelevant? What processor is underneath? And what underlying hardware architectures there are? >>No, it's not. You know it's funny, right? Because we always want to say these things like, Well, it's just a commodity, but it's not. You didn't then be asking the hardware vendors Thio pack up their balls and go home because there's just nothing nothing left to do, and we're seeing actually quite the opposite where there's this emergence and variety of so many hardware accelerators. So even from an innovation perspective, for us. We're looking at ways to increase the velocity by which organizations can take advantage of these different specialized hardware components, because that's that's going to continue to be a race. But the real key is to make it seamless that an application could take advantage of these benefits without having to go out and buy all of this different hardware on a per application basis. >>But if you do make bets, you can optimize for that architecture, true or not, I mean, our estimate is that the you know the number of wafer is coming out of arm based, you know, platforms is 10 x x 86. And so it appears that, you know, from a cost standpoint, that's that's got some real hard decisions to make. Or maybe maybe they're easy decisions, I don't know. But so you have to make bets, Do you not as a technologist and try to optimize for one of those architectures, even though you have to hedge those bets? >>Yeah, >>we do. It really boils down to use cases and seeing, you know, what do you need for a particular use case like, you know, you mentioned arm, you know, There's a lot of arm out at the edge and on smaller form factor devices. Not so much in the traditional enterprise data center today. So our bets and a lot of the focus there has been on those types of devices. And again, it's it's really the It's about timing, right? The customer demand versus when we need to make a particular move from an innovation >>perspective. It's my final question for you as we wrap up our day here with Great Cuban Cloud Day. What is the most important stories in in the cloud tech world, edge and or cloud? And you think people should be paying attention to that will matter most of them over the next few years. >>Wow, that's a huge question. How much time do we have? Not not enough. A >>architect. Architectural things. They gotta focus on a lot of people looking at this cove it saying I got to come out with a growth strategy obvious and clear, obvious things to see Cloud >>Yeah, yeah, let me let me break it down this way. I think the most important thing that people have to focus on >>is deciding How >>do they when they build architectures. What does the reliance on cloud services Native Cloud Services so far more proprietary services versus open source technologies such as kubernetes and the SV ecosystem around kubernetes. You know, one is an investment in flexibility and control, lots of management and for your intellectual property, right where Maybe I'm building this application in the cloud today. But tomorrow I have to run it out at the edge. Or I do an acquisition that I just wasn't expecting, or I just simply don't know. Sure way. Sure hope that cova doesn't come around again or something like it, right as we get past this and navigate this today. But architect ng for the expectation of change is really important and having flexibility of round your intellectual property, including flexibility to be able to deploy and run on different clouds, especially as you build up your different partnerships. That's really key. So building a discipline to say you know what >>this is >>database as a service, it's never going to define who I am is a business. It's something I have to do is an I T organization. I'm consuming that from the cloud This part of the application sacked that defines who I am is a business. My active team is building this with kubernetes. And I'm gonna maintain more flexibility around that intellectual property. The strategic discipline to operate this way among many of >>enterprise customers >>just hasn't gotten there yet. But I think that's going to be a key inflection point as we start to see. You know, these hybrid architectures continue to mature. >>Hey, Chris. Great stuff, man. Really appreciate you coming on the cube and participate in the Cuban cloud. Thank you for your perspectives. >>Great. Thank you very much. Always a pleasure >>to see you. >>Thank you, everybody for watching this ends the Cuban Cloud Day. Volonte and John Furry. All these sessions gonna be available on demand. All the write ups will hit silicon angle calm. So check that out. We'll have links to this site up there and really appreciate you know, you attending our our first virtual editorial >>event again? >>There's day Volonte for John Ferrier in the entire Cube and Cuba and Cloud Team >>Q 3 65. Thanks >>for watching. Mhm

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience Brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the cubes. Continuing coverage of del Tech World 2020. This is David Want, and I'm here with Sam. Grow Kat. Who's the senior vice president of product marketing? Adele Technology. Sam. Great to see you. Welcome. >>Great to be here, Dave. >>All right, we're gonna talk generally about Cloud in the coming decade, but in really how the cloud models evolving. But I want to specifically ask them about the as a service news that Dell's making at DT W You know what those solutions look like? How they're gonna evolve. Maybe maybe Sam, we can hit on some of the customer uptake and the feedback as well. Is that sound good? >>Yeah, Sounds great. Let's dive right in. >>All right, let's do that. So, look, you've come from the world of disruptor. You know, when you joined Isil on that got acquired by M. C. And then Del So you've you've been on both sides of the competitive table and cloud is obviously a major force. Actually, you know, I'd say, the major disruptive force in our industry. So let's talk about how Dell's responding to the cloud trend generally. Then we'll get into the announcements. >>Yeah, certainly. And you're right. I've been on both sides of this, and there is no doubt if you look at just over the last decade or so, how customers are partners. We're really looking at evaluating how they can take advantage of the the value of moving workloads to the cloud. And we've seen it happen over the last decade or so, and it's happening at a more frequent pace. And there's no doubt that is really what planted the seed of this new operating experience. You know, kind of a new lifestyle, so to speak around as a service, because when you go to the cloud, that's the only way they roll is you get in as a service experience. Eso that really has started to come into the data centers organizations or moving specific workloads and applications to the cloud of Hey, how do I get that in a non premise experience? And I think throwing gasoline on that is certainly the pandemic, and Kobe, 19 has really made organizations evaluate how to move much quicker room or gradually by moving some applications to the cloud. Because, frankly, on Prem just wasn't able to move as fast as they like to see. So we're seeing that macro trend accelerate. And, you know, I think we're in good shape to take advantage of that as we go forward. >>Well, that brings us to the hard news of what you're calling Project Apex year as a service initiative. What specifically are you announcing this week? >>Yes. So Project Apex is one of our big announcements. And that's really where we're targeting how we're bringing together and unifying our product development or sales go to market, our marketing, go to market Everything coming together underneath Project Apex, which is our as a service and cloud like experience. Look, we know in that world where customers were constantly evaluating which applications stay on Prem, which applications and workloads should go to the cloud. I think the market has certainly voted clearly that it's gonna be both. It's gonna be a hybrid, multi cloud world, but what they absolutely or clear that they want is a simple, easy to use as a service experience, regardless of if their on primer off from. And that's where. Really, the traditional on premise solutions fall down because it's just too darn complex. Still, they've got many different tools managing many different applications that oversee their cloud operations, their various infrastructure, whether it's server or compute or networking. They all run different tools, so it's very, very complex. It also is very rigid to scale. You can't move as fast because they can't deploy as fast. It requires manual intervention toe by more you to think I got a get a sales rep in house to come in and, uh, extend your environment and grow your environment. And then, of course, the traditional method is very cap ex heavy. In a world where organizations air really trying thio preserve cash. Cash is king. It doesn't really give them the flexibility. Traditionally, um, are going forward that they'd like to see on that front. So what they want to see is a consistent operating experience for their on and off from, uh, environments. They want to see a single tool that can manage and report to grow and do commerce across that environment, regardless of its on or off friend. Uh, they want something that can scale quickly. Now look, when you're moving equipment on Prem, it's not gonna be a click of a button, but you should be able to buy and procure that with the click of a button and then very quickly, within less than a handful of days, that equipment should be stood up, deployed and running in their environment. And then, finally, it's got to deliver this more flexible finance model, whether it's leveraging flexible subscription models or optics friendly models. Customers were really looking for that more off X friendly approach, which we're gonna be providing with Project Apex so very, very excited about kind of the goals and the aspirations of Project Apex. We're going to see a lot of it come come to market early next year, but we're I think we're well situated, as I said, to take advantage of this opportunity. >>So when I was looking through the announcement in sort of squinting through it, the three things jumped out and you definitely hit on. Those. One is choice, but sometimes you don't wanna give customers too much choice, so it's gotta be simple, and it's got to be consistent. So It feels like you're putting this abstraction layer over your entire portfolio and trying to hit on those three items. Uh, which is somewhat of a balancing act. But is that right? >>Yeah. No, you're You're exactly right. The kind of the pillars of the project Apex value proposition, So to speak is simplicity, choice and consistency. So we've got to deliver that simple kind of end end journey view of their entire cloud and as his for his experience, that need span our entire portfolio. So whether it's servers or stores are networking or PCs or cloud, all of that needs to be integrated into essentially a large single Web interface that gives you visibility across all of that. And, of course, the ease of scale up and, frankly, scaled down. You should be able to do that in real time through the system, you know, choices a big, big factor for us. You know, we've got the broadest portfolio in the industry. We want to provide customers the ability to consume infrastructure anyway. They want clearly they consume consume it the traditional way. But this more as a service flexible consumption approach is fundamental to making sure people customers on Lee pay for what they use So highly metered environment pay for pay as they go. Leverage subscriptions essentially give them that op X flexibility that they've been looking for. And then finally, I think the rial key differentiator is that consistent operating experience. So whether you move workloads on or off, Prem, it's got to be in a single environment that doesn't require you to jump around between different application and management experiences. >>Right? So I gotta ask you the tough question. I want to hear your answer to it. I mean, we've seen the cloud model. Everybody knows it very well, But But why now? People going to say Okay, you're just responding to HP. What's what's different between what you're doing and what some of your competitors are doing? >>Yeah, so I think it really comes down Thio the choice and breadth of what we're bringing to the table. So, you know, we're not going to force our customers to go down one of these routes. We're gonna provide that ultimate flexibility. And I think what we're what will really define ourselves against them in China, ourselves against them is that consistent operating experience we've got that opportunity to provide both an on prem edge and cloud experience that doesn't require them to move out of that operating experience to jump between different tools. So whether you're running a storage as a service environment, which will have in the first after next year, um, looking through our new cloud console that is coming out early next year is Well, you're gonna be able to have that single view of everything that's going on across your environment. It also be able to move workloads from on Prem and off Prem without breaking that consistent experience. I think that is probably the biggest differentiator we're going to have when you when you ladder that onto just the General Dell Technologies value of being able to meet and deliver our solutions anywhere in the world at any point of the data center at the edge or even cloud native. We've got the broadest portfolio to meet our customer needs wherever we need to go. >>So my understanding is the offering is designed to encompass the entire Dell Technologies portfolio from applying solutions I s G etcetera, not VM where specifically But that Zraly, that whole Dell Technologies portfolio correct. >>Yeah. And look, over time we totally expectable transacted VM ware through this so way. Do expect that to be part of the solution eventually. Eso Yeah, it is across. You know, PCs. A service storage is a service infrastructure. As a service, our cloud offers all of our services traditional services, um that are helping to deliver this as a service experience. And even our traditional financial flexible consumption models will be included in this. Because again, we want to offer ultimate choice and flexibility. We're not gonna force our customers to go down any of these pads, but we want to do is present thes pads and go wherever they want to go. We've got the breath of the portfolio in the offers. Thio, Get them there. >>Okay, so it's it's really a journey. You mentioned storage as a service coming out first, and then Aziz. Well, if I understand it, the idea is that I'm gonna have visibility and control over my entire state on Prem Cloud edge. Kind of the whole enchilada. Maybe not right out of the chute. But that's the vision. >>Absolutely. You've got to be able to see all of that and we'll continue thio iterating over time and bring mawr environments more applications, more cloud environments into this. But that is absolutely the vision of Project Apex is to deliver that fully integrated core edge cloud. Uh, partner experienced thio all of the environments, our customers to be running it. >>I wanna put my my customer had on my CFO CEO had Okay, What's the fine print? You know, one of the minimum bars to get in. What's the minimum commitment I need to make? What are the some of those? Those nuances? >>Yeah. So you know both the storage is a service which will be our first offer of many in our portfolio and the cloud console, which will give you that single web interface to kind of manage report and kind of thrive in this as a service experience. All that will be released in the first half of the next year. So we're still frankly defining what that will look like. But we wanna make sure that we deliver a solution that can span all segments from small business, the media business to the biggest enterprises out there globally. Goal expansion through our channel partners, we're gonna have gos and Channel Partners fully integrated as well service providers as well as a fundamental important piece of our delivery model and delivering this experience for our customers. So the fine print day will be out early next year. Is we G A. These releases and bring in the market. But ultimate flexibility and choice up and down the stack and geographically wide is the goal of the intent. We plan to deliver that. >>Can you add any color to the sort of the sort of product journey, if you will, I even hesitate Sam to use the word product because you're really sort of transferring your mindset into a platform mindset in the services mindset as opposed to bolting services. On top of a product you sell a product is okay, service guys, you take it from here. It's really you have to sort of re think you know your how you deliver on DSO You say you start with storage on then So what can we expect over the next midterm? Long term? >>Yeah. I'll give you an example. Look, we sell a ton of as a service and flexible consumption today. We've been at it for 10 years. In fact, in Q two, we sold Our annual recurring revenue rate is 1.3 billion growing at 30% Very, very pleased. So this is not new to us. But how you described Dave is right. We adopt products customers in pick their product. They pick their service that they want a bolt on. Then they pick their financial payment model. They bolted on, so it's a very good, customized way to build it. That's great, and customers are going to continue to want that will continue to deliver that. But there is an emerging segment that wants more just kind of think of the big easy button they want to focus on an outcome. Storage is a service is a great, great example where they're less concerned about what individual product element is. Part of that, um, they want it fully managed by Dell Technologies or one of our partners. They don't want to manage it themselves. And of course, they want it to be paid for use on an op X plan that works for, works their business and gives them the flexibility. So when customers going forward want to go down this as a service outcome driven path. They're simply going to say, Hey, what data service do I want? I want file or block unified object. They pick their data service based on their workloads. They pick their performance and capacity tear. There is a term limit. You know, right now, we're playing 1125 years, depending on the amount of terms you want Dio. And then that's it. It's managed by Dell Technologies. It's on our books from Dell Technologies on bits, of course. Leveraging our great technology portfolio to bring that service and that experience to our customers. So the service is the product now it really is making that shift that we are. We're moving into a services driven, services outcome driven set of portfolio on solutions for our customers. >>So you actually have a lot of data on this? I mean, you talk about a billion dollar business, uh, maybe talk a little bit about customer uptake. Uh, you know, I don't know what you can share in terms of numbers and a number of subscription customers, but what I'm really interested in the learnings and the feedback and how that's informed your strategy? >>Yeah. I mean, you're right again. We've been at this for, you know, many, many years. We have over 2000 customers today that have chosen to take advantage of our flexible consumption and as a service offers that we have today never mind, kind of as we move into these kind of turn key easy button as a service offers that air to come that early next year. So we've leveraged all of that learnings, and we've heard all of that feedback. And it's why it's really important that choice and flexibility is fundamental to the project. APEC strategy. There are some of those customers that they want to build their own. They want to make sure they're running the latest power max or the latest power store. They want to choose their network. They wanna choose how they protect it. They want to choose what type of service they they want to cover some of the services. They may want very little from us or vice versa. And then they wanna maybe leverage additional, more traditional means to acquire that based on their business goals. That feedback has been loud and clear, but there is that segment that is a no No, no. I need to focus more on my business and not my infrastructure. And that's where you're going to see these more turnkey as a service. Solutions fit that need where they want to just define s l. A's outcomes. They want us to take on the burden of managing it for them so they can really thick focus on their applications in their business, not their infrastructure. So things like metering tons of feedback and how well wanna meter this, uh, tons of feedback on the types of configurations and scale they're looking for? The applications and workloads that they're targeting for this world is very different than the more traditional world. So we're leveraging all of that information to make sure we deliver our infrastructure as a service and then eventually solutions as a service you think about S A P is a service vb isa service ai machine learning as a service will be moving up the stack as well to meet more of a application integrated as a service experience as well. >>So I wanna ask you so I mean, you've given us a couple of data points, their billion dollar plus business couple 1000 customers is this? I mean, you've got decent average contract values. If if I do my math right s so it's not just the little guys. I mean, I'm sorry. It's not just the big guys, but there's some fat middle is, well, that they're taking this up. Is that fair to say >>totally? I mean, I would say frankly, you know, in the enterprise space, it's the mid the larger sides have historically and we expect they'll continue to want to kind of choose their best a breed apart. Best debris to products, best of breed services. Best to breed financial consumption. Great. And we're in great shape. There were very competitive, very, very confident or competitive and competing in that space. Today, I think going into the turkey as a service space that will play up market. But it will really play downmarket mid market, smaller businesses. It gives us the opportunity to really drive a solution there where they don't have. The resource is to maybe manage a large storage infrastructure or backup infrastructure, compute infrastructure. They're gonna frankly look to us to provide that experience for them. I think are as a service offers will really play stronger in that mid and kind of lower end of the market. >>So tell us again the sort of availability of the actual, like the console, for example, when when can I actually get? I mean, I can get I could do as a service today. I could buy subscriptions from you. This is where it all comes together. What's the availability and roll out details? >>Sure. So as we look to move, move to our integrated kind of turn key as a service offers the console or announcing at Dell Technologies World as it's in public preview now. So for organizations of customers that want to start using it, they can start using it. Now, Uh, the storage, as a service offers gonna be available in the first half of next year. So we're rapidly kind of working on that now, looking to early next year to bring that to market so you'll see the console and the first as a service offered with storage, is a service available in the first half of next year, readily available to any and everyone that wants to deploy it. So we're We're not that far off right now, but we felt it was really, really important to make sure our customers, our partners and the industry really understands how important this transformation to as a service and cloud is for Dell Technologies. That's why you know, frankly, externally and internally, Project Apex will be that North Star to bring our end end value together across the business, across our customers across our our teams. And that's why we're really making sure that everybody understands Project Apex and as a services is the future for Dell. And we're very much focused on that. >>So I mean, is the head of product marketing. This is really a mindset of cultural change, really. You're really becoming the head of service marketing. In a way, How are you guys thinking about you know, that mindset shift? >>What? Really, it's it's How am I thinking about it? How is the broader marketing organization thinking about it? How is engineering Clearly thinking about it? How is finance thinking about it? How its sale like this is transformative across every single function within Dell Technologies has a role to play to do things very differently. Now it's going to take time. It's not gonna happen overnight. You know, various estimates have. This is a fairly small percentage of business today in our segments. But we do expect that to start to and it has started to accelerate. Ramp. You know, we're preparing for a large percentage of our business to be consumed this way very, very soon. That requires some changes in how we sell changes in how we mark. It clearly changes in how we build products and so forth, and then ultimately, have you know how we account for this has to change. So we're approaching it, I think the right way, Dave, where we're looking at this truly end. And this isn't a a tweak and how we do things or in evolution, this is a revolution for us to kind of move faster to this model again building on the learnings that we have today with our strong customer base on experience. We built up over the years. But this is a This is a big shift. This isn't an incremental turn of the crank. We know that. I think you expect that our customers expect that, and that's that's the mission we're on with Project date. >>Well, I mean with 30% growth. I mean that za clear indicator and people like growth. We're going. I've no doubt that clients are. That's a clear indicator that customers are glomming onto this. And and I think many folks wanna buy this way. And I think increasingly, that's how they buy SAS. That's how they buy Cloud. You know, why not buy infrastructure the same way? Give us your closing thoughts, Sam. What are the big takeaways? >>Yeah, Big takeaways is from a Dell Technologies perspective. Project Apex is that strategic vision of bringing together or as a service and cloud capabilities into a easy to consume, simple, flexible offer that provides ultimate choice to our customers. Look, the market has spoken. We're gonna be living in a hybrid, multi cloud world. I think the market is also starting to speak, that they want that to be in as a service experience, regardless of its on or off ground. It's our job. It's our responsibility to bring that he's that simplicity and elegance to the on Prem world. It's not certainly not going anywhere. Eso That's the mission that we're on with Project Apex and I like the hand we've been dealt. I like the infrastructure and the solutions that we have across our portfolio. And we're gonna We're gonna be after this for the next couple of years to refine this and build this out for our customers. This is just the beginning. >>Well, it's awesome. Thank you so much for coming to the Cuban. We were seeing the cloud model. I mean, it's extending on Prem Cloud, multi clouds going to the edge. And the way in which customers want to transact business is moving at the same same direction. So, Sam, good luck with this. And thanks so much. Appreciate your time. >>Yeah. Thanks, Dave. Thanks, Everyone. Take care. >>All right. Thank you for watching. This is Dave Volonte for the Cuban. Our continuing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. The Virtual Cube will be right back right after this short break

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience Brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the cubes Coverage of Del Tech World 2020. With me is Jeff Boudreau, the president general manager of Infrastructure Solutions group Deltek. Jeff, always good to see you, my friend. How you doing? >>Good. Good to see you. >>I wish we were hanging out a Sox game or a pat's game, but, uh, I guess this will dio But, you know, it was about a year ago when you took over leadership of I s G. I actually had way had that sort of brief conversation. You were in the room with Jeff Clark. I thought it was a great, great choice. How you doing? How you feeling Any sort of key moments the past 12 months that you you feel like sharing? >>Sure. So I first I want to say, I do remember that about a year ago. So thank you for reminding me. Yeah, it's, uh it's been a very interesting year, right? It's been it's been one year. It was in September was one year since I took over I s G. But I'm feeling great. So thank you for asking. I hope you're doing the same. And I'm really optimistic about where we are and where we're heading. Aziz, you know, it's been an extremely challenging year in a very unpredictable year, as we've all experienced. And I'd say for the, you know, the first part of the year, especially starting in March on I've been really focused on the health and safety of our, you know, the families, our customers and our team members of the team on a lot of it's been shifting, you know, in regards to helping our customers around, you know, work from home or education and learn from home. And, you know, during all this time, though, I'll tell you, as a team, we've accomplished a lot. There's a handful of things that I'm very proud of, you know, first and foremost, that states around the customer experience we have delivered on our best quality in our product. NPS scores in our entire history. So something I'm extremely proud of during this time around our innovation and innovation engine, we part of the entire portfolio which you're well aware of. We had nine launches in nine weeks back in that May in June. Timeframe. So something I'm really proud of the team on, uh, on. Then last, I'd say it's around the team and right, we shifted about 90% of our workforce from the office tow home, you know, from an engineering team. That could be, you know, 85% of my team is engineers and writing code. And so, you know, people were concerned about that. But we didn't skip a beat, so, you know, pretty impressed by the team and what they've done there. So, you know, the strategy remains unchanged. Uh, you know, we're focused on our customers integrating across the entire portfolio and the businesses like VM ware and really focused on getting share. So despite all the uncertainty in the market, I'm pretty pleased with the team and everything that's been going on. So uh, yeah, it's it's been it's been an interesting year, but it's really great. I'm really optimistic about what we have in front of us. >>Yeah, I mean, there's not much you could do a control about the macro condition on it, you know it. Z dealt to us and we have to deal with it. I mean, in your space. It's the sort of countervailing things here one is. Look, you're not selling laptops and endpoint security. That's not your business right in the data center. Eso. But the flip side of that is you mentioned your portfolio refresh. You know, things like Power Store. You got product cycles now kicking in. So that could be, you know, a buffer. What are you seeing with Power Store and what's the uptake look like? They're >>sure. Well, specifically, let me take a step back and the regards the portfolio. So first, you know, the portfolio itself is a direct reflection in the feedback from all our partners and our customers over the last couple of years on Day two, ramp up that innovation. I spent a lot of time in the last few years simplifying under the power brands, which you're well aware of, right? So we had a lot of for a legacy EMC and Legacy dollars. Really? How do we simplify under a set of brands really over delivering innovation on a fewer set of products that really accelerating in exceeding customer needs? And we did that across the board. So from power edge servers, you know, power Max, the high end storage, the Powerball, all that we didn't hear one. And just most recently. And, you know, it's part of the big launches. We had power scale. We have power flex for software to find. And, of course, the new flagship offer for the mid range, which is power store. Um, Specifically, the policy of the momentum has been building since our launch back in May. And the feedback from our partners and our customers has been fantastic. And we've had a lot of big wins against, you know, a lot of a lot of our core competitors. A couple examples one is Arrow Electronics SAA, Fortune 500 Global Elektronik supplier. They leverage power Store to provide, you know, basically both, you know, enterprise computing and storage needs for their for their broader bases around the world on there, really taking advantage of the 41 data reduction, really helping them simplify their capacity planning and really improve operational efficiencies specifically without impacting performance. So it's it's one. We're given the data reductions, but there's no impact on performance, which is a huge value proffer for arrow another big customers tickets and write a global law firm on their reporting to us that over 90 they've had a 90% reduction in their rack space, and they've had over five times two performance over a core competitors storage systems azi. They've deployed power store around the world, really, and it's really been helping them. Thio easily migrate workloads across, so the feedback from the customers and partners has been extremely positive. Um, there really citing benefits around the architecture, the flexibility architecture around the micro services, the containers they're loving, the D M or integration. They're loving the height of the predictable data reduction capabilities in line with in line performance or no performance penalties with data efficiencies, the workload support, I'd say the other big things around the anytime upgrades is another big thing that customers we're really talking about so very excited and optimistic in regards as we continue to re empower store the second half of the year into next year really is the full full year for power store. >>So can I ask you about that? That in line data reduction with no performance hit is that new ipe? I mean, you're not doing some kind of batch data reduction, right? >>No, it's It's new, I p. It's all patented. We've actually done a lot of work in regards to our technologies. There's some of the things we talk about GPS and deep use and smart Knicks and things like that. We've used some offload engines to help with that. So between the software and the hardware, we've had leverage new I. P. So we can actually provide that predictable data reduction. But right with the performance customers need, So we're not gonna have a trade off in regards. You get more efficiencies and less performance or more performance and less efficiency. >>That's interesting. Yeah, when I talked to the chip guys, they talk about this sort of the storage offloads and other offloads we're seeing. These alternative processors really start to hit the market videos. The obvious one. But you're seeing others. Aziz. Well, you're really it sounds like you're taking advantage of that. >>Yeah, it's a huge benefit. I mean, we should, you know, with our partners, if it's Intel's and in videos and folks like that broad comes, it's really leveraging the great innovation that they do, plus our innovation. So if you know the sum of the parts, can you know equal Mauritz a benefit to our customers in the other day? That's what it's all about. >>So it sounds like Cove. It hasn't changed your strategy. I was talking toe Dennis Hoffman and he was saying, Look, you know, fundamentally, we're executing on the same strategy. You know, tactically, there's things that we do differently. But what's your summarize your strategy coming in tow 2021. You know, we're still early in this decade. What are you seeing is the trends that you're trying to take advantage of? What do you excited about? Maybe some things that keep you up at night? >>Yeah, so I'd say, you know, I'll stay with what Dennis said. You know, it's our strategy is not changing its a company. You probably got that from Michael and from job, obviously, Dennis just recently. But for me, it's a two pronged approach. One's all about winning the consolidation in the core infrastructure markets that we could just paid in today. So I think Service Storage Network, we're already clear leader across all those segments that we serve in our you know, we'll continue to innovate within our existing product categories. And you saw that with the nine launches in the nine weeks in my point on that one is we're gonna always make sure that we have best debris offers. If it's a three tier, two tier or converge or hyper converged offer, we wanna make sure that we serve that and have the best innovation possible. In addition to that, though, the secondary piece of the strategy really is around. How do we differentiate value across or innovating across I S G? You know, Dell Technologies and even the broader ecosystems and some of the examples I'll give you right now that we're doing is if you think about innovating across icy, that's all about providing improved customer experience, a set of solutions and offers that really helped simplify customer operations, right? And really give them better T CEOs or better. S L. A. An example of something like that's cloud like it's a SAS based off of that we have. That really helps provide great insights and telemetry to our customers. That helps them simplify their I T operations, and it's a major step forward towards, you know, autonomous infrastructure which is really what they're asking for. Customers of a very happy with the work we've done around Day one, you know, faster, time to value. But now it's like Day two and beyond. How do you really helped me Kinda accelerate the operations and really take that away from a three other big pieces innovating across all technologies. And you know, we do this with VM Ware now live today, and that's just writing. So things like VX rail is an example where we work together and where the clear leader in H C I. Things like Delta Cloud Uh, when we built in V M V C F A, B, M or cloud foundation in Tan Xue delivering an industry leading hybrid cloud platform just recently a VM world. I'm sure you heard about it, but Project Monterey was just announced, and that's an effort we're doing with VM Ware and some other partners. They're really about the next generation of infrastructure. Um, you know, I guess taking it up a notch out of the infrastructure and I've g phase, you know, some of the areas that we're gonna be looking at the end to end solutions to help our customers around six key areas. I'm sure John Rose talking about the past, but things like cloud Edge five g A i m l data management security. So those will be the big things. You'll see us lean into a Z strategies consistent. Some big themes that you'll see us lean into going into next year. >>Yeah, I mean, it is consistent, right? You guys have always tried to ride the waves, vector your portfolio into those waves and add value. I'm particularly impressed with your focus on customer experience, and I think that's a huge deal. You know, in the past, a lot of companies yours included your predecessor. You see, Hey, throwing so many products at me, I can't I don't understand the portfolio. So I mean, focusing on that I think is huge right now because people want that experience, you know, to be mawr cloudlike. And that's that's what you got to deliver. What about any news from from Dell Tech world? Any any announcements that you you wanna highlight that we could talk about? >>Sure. And actually, just touching back on the point you had no about the simplification that is a major 10 of my in regards the organization. So there's three key components that I drive once around customer focus, and that's keeping customers first and foremost. And everything we do to is around axillary that innovation. Engine three is really bringing everything together as one team. So we provide a better outcome to our customers. You know, in that simplification after that you talk about is court toe what we're driving. So I want to do less things, I guess better in the notion of how we do that. What that means to me is, as I make decisions that want to move away from other technologies and really leverage our best of breed type shared type, that's technology. I p people I p I can, you know, e can exceed customer needs in those markets that were serving. So it's actually allows me to x Sorry, my innovation engine, because I shift more and more resource is onto the newer stock now for Del Tech world. Yes, We got some cool stuff coming. You probably heard about a few of them. Uh, we're gonna be announcing a project project Apex. Hopefully you've been briefed on that already. This isn't new news or I'll be in trouble. But that's really around. Our strategy about delivering, simple, consistent as a service experiences for our customers bringing together are dealt technology as a service offering and our cloud strategy together. Onda also our technology offerings in our go to market all under a single unified effort, which Ellison do would be leading. Um, you know, on behalf of our executive leadership team s, that's one big area. And there is also another big one that I'll talk about a sui expand our as a service offers. And we think there's a big power to that in regards to our Dell Technologies. Cloud console solving will be launching a new cloud console that will provide uniformed experience across all the resources and give users and ability toe instantly managed every aspect of their cloud journey with just a few clicks. So going back to your broader point, it's all about simplicity. >>Yeah, we definitely all over Apex. That's something I wanted to ask you about this notion of as a service, really requiring it could have a new mindset, certainly from a pricing and how you talk about the customer experience that it's a whole new customer experience. Your you're basically giving them access. Thio What I would consider more of a platform on giving them some greater flexibility. Yeah, there's some constraints in there, but of course, you know the physical only put so much capacity and before him. But the idea of being ableto dial up, dial down within certain commitments is, I think, a powerful one. How does it change the way in which you you think about how you go about developing products just in terms of you know, this AP economy Infrastructure is code. How how you converse about those products internally and externally. How would you see that shaking >>out Dave? That's an awesome question. And it's actually for its front center. For everything we do, obviously, customers one choice and flexibility what they do. And to your point as we evolved warm or as a service, no specific product and product brands and logos on probably the way of the future. It's the services. It's the experience that you provide in regards to how we do that. So if you think about me, you know, in in infrastructure making infrastructure as a service, you really want to define what that customer experiences. That s L. A. That they're trying toe realize. And then how do we make sure that we build the right solutions? Products feature functions to enable that a law that goes back to the core engineering stuff that we need to dio right now, a lot of that stuff is about making sure that we have the right things around. If it's around developer community. If it's around AP rich, it's around. SdK is it's all about how do we leverage if it's internal source or external open source, if you will. It's regards to How do we do that? No. A thing that I think we all you know what you're well aware but we ought to keep in mind is that the cloud native applications are really relevant. Toe both the on premises, wealthy off premise. So think about things around portability reusability. You know, those are some great examples of just kind of how we think about this as we go forward. But those modern applications were required modern infrastructure, and regardless of how that infrastructure is abstracted now, just think about things like this. Aggregation or compose ability or Internet based computing. It's just it's a huge trend that we have to make sure we're thinking of. So is we. We just aggregate between the physical layers to the software layers and how we provide that to a service that could be think of a modern container based asset that could be repurposed. Either could be on a purpose built thing. It could be deployed in a converge or hyper converged. Or it could be two points a software feature in a cloud. Now, that's really how we're thinking about that, regards that we go forward. So we're talking about building modern assets or components That could be you right once we used many type model, and we can deploy that wherever you want because of some of the abstraction of desegregation that we're gonna do. >>E could see customers in the in the near term saying, I don't care so much about the product. I want the fast one all right with the cheaper one e. >>It's kind of what you talking about, that I talked about the ways. If you think about that regards, you know, maybe it's on a specific brand or portfolio. You look into and you say, Hey, what's the service level that I'd wanted to your point like Hey, for compute or for storage, it's really gonna end up being the specific S l A. And that's around performance or Leighton see, or cost or resiliency they want. They want that experience in that that you know, And that's why they're gonna be looking for the end of the end state. That's what we have to deliver is an engineering. >>So there's an opportunity here for you guys that I wonder if you could comment on. And that's the storage admin E. M. C essentially created. You know, you get this army of people that you know pretty good of provisioning lungs, although that's not really that's a great career path for folks. But program ability is, and this notion of infrastructure is code as you as you make your systems more programmable. Is there a skill set opportunity to take that army of constituents that you guys helped train and grow and over their careers and bring them along into sort of the next decade? This new era? >>I think the the easy answer is yes, I obviously that's a hard thing to do and you go forward. But I think embracing the change in the evolution of change, I think is a great opportunity. And I think there is e mean if you look step back and you think about data management, right? And you think about all the you know all data is not created equal and you know, and it has a life cycle, if you will. And so if it's on edge to Korda, Cloward, depending think about data vaults and data mobility and all that stuff. There's gonna be a bunch of different personas and people touching data along the way. I think the I T advance and the storage admin. They're just one of those personas that we have to help serve and way talk about How do we make them heroes, if you will, in regards to their broader environment. So if they're providing, if they evolve and really helped provide a modern infrastructure that really enables, you know infrastructure is a code or infrastructure as a service, they become a nightie hero, if you will for the rest of team. So I think there's a huge opportunity for them to evolve as the technology evolves. >>Yeah, you talked about you know, your families, your employees, your team s o. You obviously focused on them. You got your products going hitting all the marks. How are you spending your time these days? >>Thes days right now? Well, we're in. We're in our cycle for fiscal 22 planning. Right? And right now, a lot of that's above the specific markets were serving. It's gonna be about the strategy and making sure that we have people focused on those things. So it really comes back to some of the strategy tents were driving for next year. Now, as I said, our focus big time. Well, I guess for the for this year is one is consolidation of the core markets. Major focus for May 2 is going to be around winning in storage, and I want to be very specific. It's winning midrange storage. And that was one of the big reasons why Power Store came. That's gonna be a big focus on Bennett's really making sure that we're delivering on the as a service stuff that we just talked about in regards to all the technology innovation that's required to really provide the customer experience. And then, lastly, it's making sure that we take advantage of some of these growth factors. So you're going to see a dentist. Probably talked a lot about Telco, but telco on edge and as a service and cloud those things, they're just gonna be key to everything I do. So if you think about from poor infrastructure to some of these emerging opportunities Z, I'm spending all my time. >>Well, it's a It's a big business and a really important one for Fidel. Jeff Boudreau. Thanks so much for coming back in the Cube. Really a pleasure seeing you. I hope we can see each other face to face soon. >>You too. Thank you for having me. >>You're very welcome. And thank you for watching everybody keep it right there. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Our continuing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the cubes coverage of Del Tech World 2020 the virtual del tech world. Of course, the virtual queue with me is Alison Do. She's the CMO and a member of the executive leadership team at Dell Technologies. Hey there, Alison. Good to see you. >>Hi, David. Good to see you too. I'm gonna see you alive, but it's so good to see on the feed. >>Yeah, I miss you, too. You know, it's been it's been tough, but we're getting through it and, you know, it's a least with technology. We're able to meet this way and, you know, for us continue the cube for you to continue del Tech world, reaching out to your to your customers. But, you know, maybe we could start there. It's like I said the other day else into somebody. I feel like everybody I know in the technology industry has also become a covert expert in the last six months. But but, you know, it changed so much. But I'm interested in well, first of all, you're a great communicator. I have met many, many members of your team. They're really motivated group. How did you handle the pandemic? Your communications. Uh, did you increase that? Did you? Did you have to change anything? Or maybe not. Because like I say, you've always been a great communicator with a strong team. What was your first move? >>Eso There's obviously there's many audiences that we serve through communications, but in this instance, the two most important our customers and our team members. So I'll take the customers first. You have likely seen the spoof Real's Going Around the Internet of Here's How Not to Talk to Customers, Right? So you saw early in February and March in April, all of these communications that started with in these troubled times We are here to help you and, you know, we're already in a crisis every single day, all day long. I don't think people needed to be reminded that there was a crisis happening. So you've got this one end where it's over crisis mongering and the other side where it was just ignoring the crisis. And so what we did was we really looked at all of our communications a new So, for example, in our small business space, we were just about I mean days away from launching a campaign that was about celebrating the success of small businesses. It's a beautiful piece of creative. I love it, and we made the very tough decision to put that work on the shelf and not launch it. Why? Because it would have been incredibly tone deaf in a moment where small businesses were going out of business and under incredible struggle to have a campaign that was celebrating their success. It just wouldn't have worked. And what we did very quickly was a new piece of creative that had our own small business advisers, lower production values, them working from home and talking about how they were helping customers. But frankly, even that then has a shelf life, because ultimately you have to get back to your original story. So as we thought about our own communications, my own leadership team and I went through every single piece of creative toe. Look for what's appropriate now what's tone deaf, and that was a very heavy lift and something that we had to continue to do and I'm really proud of the work. We did pivot quickly, then on the employee side. If you'd asked me in January, was Team member Communications the most important thing I was doing? I would have said It's an important thing I'm doing and I care deeply about it, But it's not the most important thing I'm doing. Where there was a period from probably February to June where I would have said it became the most important thing that I was doing because we had 120,000 people pivot over a weekend toe. Working from home, you had all of the demands of home schooling, the chaos that stress whilst also were obviously trying to keep a business running. So this engagement with our employees and connecting the connecting with them through more informal means, like zoom meetings with Michael and his leadership team, where once upon a time we would have had a more high value production became a key piece of what we did. So it sounds so easy, but this increase of the frequency with our own employees, while also being really honest with ourselves about the tone of those communications, so that's what we did and continue to dio >>Well, you've done a good job and you struck a nice balance. I mean, you weren't did see some folks ambulance chasing and it was a real turn off. Or like you said, sometimes tone deaf. And we can all look back over history and see, you know, so many communications disasters like you say, people being tone deaf or ignoring something. It was sloughing it off, and then it really comes back to bite them. Sometimes security breaches air like that. So it seems like Dell has I don't know, there's a methodology. I don't know if you use data or it's just a lot of good good experience. How have you been able to sort of nail it? I guess I would say is it is. >>But there's some secret method that I'm cautiously optimistic. And the superstitious part of me is like, Don't say that, Okay, I'm not gonna would alright eso so that it's it's both it z experience, obviously. And then what? I What I talk a lot about is this intersection of data versus did data and creativity, and you spend a lot of time in marketing circles. Those two things can be sometimes pitched is competing with each other. Oh, it's all about the creativity, or it's all about the data. And I think that's a silly non argument. And it should be both things And this this time like this. This point that I make about ambulance chasing and not re traumatizing people every single day by talking about in these troubled times is actually from a piece of research that we did, if you believe it or not. In 2008 during the middle of the global financial crisis, when we started to research some of our creative, we found that some of the people who have seen our creative were actually less inclined to buy Dell and less positive about Dell. Why? Because we started with those really hackneyed lines of in these troubled times. And then we went on to talk about how we could take out I t costs and were targeted at I T makers, who basically we first played to their fear function and they said, and now we're going to put you out of a job, right? So there's this years of learning around where you get this sweet spot from a messaging perspective to talk about customer outcomes while also talking about what you do is a company, and keeping the institutional knowledge is knowledge of those lessons and building and refining over time. And so that's why I think we've been able to pivot as quickly as we have is because we've been data driven and had a creative voice for a very long time. The other piece that has helped us be fast is that we've spent the last 2.5 3 years working on bringing our own data, our own customer data internally after many, many years of having that with the third party agency. So all the work we had to do to retarget to re pivot based on which verticals were being successful in this time and which were not we were able to now due in a matter of hours, something that would have taken us weeks before. So there's places where it's about the voice of who we are as a brand, and that's a lot of that is creative judgment. And then there's places about institutional knowledge of the data, and then riel getting too real time data analysis where we're on the cusp of doing that. >>Yeah, so I like the way you phrase that it's not just looking at the data and going with some robotic fashion. It reminds me of, you know the book. Michael Lewis, Moneyball, the famous movie, You know, it's like for a while it was it was in baseball, like whoever had the best nerds they thought we were gonna win. But it really is a balance of art and science, and it seems like you're on this journey with your customers together. I mean, how much how much? I mean, I know there's a lot of interaction, but but it seems like you guys are all learning together and evolving together in that regard. >>Absolutely. David, One of the things that has been really interesting to watch is we have had a connected workplace program for 10 years, so we've had flexible work arrangements for a very long time, and one of the things that we have learned from that is a combination of three key factors. The technology, obviously, can you do it? The three culture, and then the process is right. So when you have a the ability to work from home doesn't mean you should work from home 22 out of 24 hours. And that's where culture comes in. And I frankly, that's where this moment of cumulative global stress is so important to realize as a leader and to bring out to the Open and to talk about it. I mean, Michael's talked a lot about this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. We've done a lot of things to support our employees. And so if you think about those three factors and what we've learned, one of the things that we found as we got into the pipe pandemic was on the technology side. Even customers who thought they had business continuity plans in place or thought that they had worked from home infrastructure in place found that they didn't really so there was actually a very quick move to help our customers get the technology that would enable them to keep their businesses running and then on the other two fronts around processes and culture and leadership. We've been ableto have smaller, more intimate conversations with our customers than we would have historically, because frankly, we can bring Michael, Jeff. Other parts of the leadership team me together to have a conversation and one of the benefits of the fact that those of us who've been road warriors for many, many, many years as I know you have a swell suddenly found yourself actually staying in one place. You have time to have that conversation so that we continue to obviously help our customers on the technology front, but also have been able to lean in in a different way on what we've learned over 10 years and what we've learned over this incredibly dramatic eight months, >>you know, and you guys actually have some work from Home Street cred? I think, Del, you're the percentage of folks that were working from home Pre Koven was higher than the norm, significantly higher than normal. Wasn't that long ago that there were a couple of really high profile companies that were mandating come into the office and clear that they were on the wrong side of history? I mean, that surprised me actually on. Do you know what also surprised me? I don't know. I'm just gonna say it is There were two companies run by women, and I would have thought there was more empathy there. Uh, but Dal has always had this culture of Yeah, we were, You know, we could work. We could be productive no matter where. Maybe that's because of the the heritage or your founders. Still still chairman and CEO. I don't know. >>You know those companies and obviously we know who they are. Even at the time, what I thought about them was You don't have a location problem. You have a culture problem and you have a productivity problem and you a trust problem with your employees. And so, yes, I think they are going to be proven to be on the wrong side of history. And I think in those instances they've been on the wrong side of history on many things, sadly, and I hope that will never be us. I don't wanna be mean about that, but but the truth of the matter is one of the other benefits of being more flexible about where and how you work is. It opens up access to different talent pools who may or may not want to live in Austin, Texas, as an example, and that gives you a different way to get a more diverse workforce to get a younger workforce. And I think lots of companies are starting to have that really ization. And, you know, as I said, we've been doing this for 10 years. Even with that context, this is a quantum leap in. Now we're all basically not 100% but mainly all working from home, and we're still learning. So there's an interesting, ongoing lifelong learning that I think is very, very court of the Dell culture. >>I want to ask you about the virtual events you had you had a choice to make. You could have done what many did and said, Okay, we're going to run the event as scheduled, and you would have got a covert Mulligan. I mean, we saw Cem some pretty bad productions, frankly, but that was okay because they had to move fast and they got it done. So in a way, you kind of put more pressure on your yourselves. Andi, I guess you know, we saw this with VM Ware. I guess Was, you know, just recently last >>few >>weeks. Yeah, and so but they kind of raise the bar had great, you know, action with John Legend. So that was really kind of interesting, but, you know, kind of what went into that decision? A Zeiss A. You put more pressure on yourself because now you But you also had compares what? Your thoughts on >>that. So there was a moment in about March where I felt like I was making a multimillion dollar decision every single day. And that was on a personal note, somewhat stressful to kind of wake up and think, What? What? Not just on the events front. But as I said on the creative front, What work that my team has been working on for the last two years? I am I going to destroy today was sort of. I mean, I'm kind of joking, but not entirely how that felt for me personally at the moment. And we had about we made the decision early on to cancel events. We also made the decision quite early on that when we call that, we said we're not going to do any in person events until the end of this calendar year. So I felt good about the definitiveness there. We had about a week where we were still planning to do the virtual world in May and what I did together with my head of communications and head of event is we really sat and looked at the trajectory in the United States, and we thought, this is not gonna be a great moment for the U. S. The week we were supposed to run in May, if you looked at the trajectory of diseases, you would have news be dominated by the fact that we had an increasing spike in number of cases and subsequent deaths. And we just thought that don't just gonna care about our launches. So we had to really, very quickly re pivot that and what I was trying to do was not turn my own organization. So make the decisions start to plan and move on. And at the same time, though, what that then meant is we still have to get product launches out the door. So we did nine virtual launches in nine weeks. That was a big learning learning her for my team. I feel really good about that, and hopefully it helps us. And what I think will be a hybrid future going forward. >>Yeah, so not to generalize, but I've been generalizing about the following. So I've been saying for a while now that a lot >>of the >>marketing people have always wanted to have a greater component of virtual. But, you know, sales guys love the belly. The belly closed the deals, you know? But so where do you land on that? How do you see? You know, the future of events we do, you expect to continue to have ah, strong virtual component. >>I think it's gonna be a hybrid. I think we will never go back to what we did before. I think the same time people do need that human connection. Honestly, I miss seeing the people that I work with face to face. I said at the beginning of this conversation, I would like to be having this discussion with you live and I hate Las Vegas. So I never thought I'd be that interested in, like, let's go to Las Vegas, you know, who knew? But but so I think you'll see a hybrid future going forward. And then we will figure out what those smaller, more direct personal relationship moments are that over the next couple of years you could do more safely and then also frankly give you the opportunity to have those conversations that are more meaningful. So I'm not entirely sure what that looks like. Obviously, we're gonna learn a lot this year with this event, and we're going to continue to build on it. But there's places in the world if you look at what we've done in China for many, many, many years, we have held on over abundance of digital events because of frankly, just the size of the population and the the geographic complexity. And so there are places that even early into this, we could say, Well, we've already done this in China. How do we take that and apply it to the rest of the world? So that's what we're working through now. That's actually really exciting, >>You know, when you look at startups, it's like two things matter the engineering and sales and that's all anything else is a waste of money in their minds when you and and all they talk about is Legion Legion Legion. You don't hear that from a company like Dell because you have so many other channels on ways Thio communicate with your customers and engage with your customers. But of course, legions important demand. Gen. Is important. Do you feel like virtual events can be a Z effective? Maybe it's a longer tail, but can they be as productive as the physical events? >>So one thing that I've always been a little bit cantankerous on within marketing circles is I refuse to talk about it in terms of Brand versus Li Jen, because I think that's a false argument. And the way I've talked about it with my own team is there are things that we do that yield short term business results, maybe even in corridor in half for a year. And there are things that we do that lead to long term business results. First one is demand, and the second one is more traditional brand. But we have to do both. We have to think about our legacy as a known primarily for many, many years as a PC maker. In order for us to be successful in the business businesses that we are in now, we love our PC heritage. I grew up in that business, but we also want to embrace the other parts of their business and educate people about the things that we do that they may not even know, right? So that's a little bit of context in terms of you got to do both. You got to tell your story. You've got to change perceptions and you got to drive demand in quarter. So the interesting things about digital events is we can actually reach more people than we ever could in an in person world. So I think that expands the pie for both the perceptions and long term and short term. And I hope what we are more able to do effectively because of that point that I made about our own internal marketing digital transformation is connect those opportunities to lead and pass them off to sales more effectively. We've done a lot of work on the plumbing on the back end of that for the last couple of years, and I feel really fortunate that we did that because I don't think we'd be able to do what we're doing now. If we hadn't invested there, >>Well, it's interesting. You're right. I mean, Del of course, renowned during the PC era and rode that wave. And then, of course, the AMC acquisition one of the most amazing transformations, if not the most amazing transformation in the history of the computer industry. But when you when you look to the future and of course, we're hearing this week about as a service and you new pricing models, just new mindsets I look at and I wonder if you could comment, I look at Dell's futures, you know, not really a product company. You're becoming a platform. Essentially, for for digital transformation is how I look atyou. Well, how do you see the brand message going forward? >>Absolutely. I think that one of the things that's really interesting about Dell is that we have proven our ability to constantly and consistently reinvent ourselves, and I won't go through the whole thing. But if you look at started as a direct to consumer company, then went into servers then and started to go into small business meeting business a little bit about when private acquired e. M. C. I mean, we are a company who is always moving forward and always thinking about what's next. Oftentimes, people don't even realize the breadth and depth of what we do and who we are now so as even with all of that context in place, the horizon that we're facing into now is, I believe, the most important transformation that we've done, which is, as you see, historical, I t models change and it becomes, yes, about customer choice. We know that many of our customers will continue to want to buy hardware the way they always have. But we also know that we're going to see a very significant change in consumption models. And the way we stay on top of our game going forward is we lean into that huge transformation. And that's what we're announcing this week with Project Apex, which is that commitment to the entire company's transformation around as a service. And that's super exciting for us. >>Well, I was saying Before, you're sort of in lockstep with your customers. Or maybe you could we could. We could close by talking a little bit about Dell's digital transformation and what you guys have going on internally, and maybe some of the cultural impacts that you've seen. >>So you, you you touched on it. It's so easy to make it about just the I t. Work, and in fact, you actually have to make it about the i t. The business process. Change in the culture change. So if you look at what we did with the AMC acquisition and the fact that you know that there's a lot of skepticism about that at the time, they're not gonna be able to absorb that. Keep the business running. And in fact, we have really shown huge strides forward in the business. One of the reasons we've been able to do that is because we've been so thoughtful about all of those things. The technology, the culture and the business process change, and you'll see us continue to do that. As I said in my own organization, just to use the data driven transformation of marketing. Historically, we would have hired a certain type of person who was more of a creative Brett bent. Well, now, increasingly, we're hiring quants who are going to come into a career in marketing, and they never would have seen themselves doing that a couple of years ago. And so my team has to think about okay, these don't look like our historical marketing profile. How do we hire them? How do we do performance evaluations for them. And how do we make sure that we're not putting the parameters of old on a very new type of talent? And so when we talk about diversity, it's not just age, gender, etcetera. It's also of skills. And that's where I think the future of digital transformation is so interesting. There has been so much hype on this topic, and I think now is when we're really starting to see those big leaps forward and peoples in companies. Riel transformation. That's the benefit of this cookie year we got here, Dave. >>Well, I think I do think the culture comes through, especially in conversations like this. I mean, you're obviously a very clear thinker and good communicator, but I think your executive team is in lockstep. It gets down, toe the middle management into the into the field and and, you know, congratulations on how far you've come. And, uh, and and also I'm really impressed that you guys have such a huge ambitions in so many ways. Changing society obviously focused on customers and building great companies. So, Alison, thanks so much for >>thank you, Dave. You virtually I'm very >>great to see it. Hopefully hopefully see Assumes. Hopefully next year we could be together. Until then, virtually you'll >>see virtual, >>huh? Thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the Cube. Keep it right there. Our coverage of Del Tech World 2020. We'll be right back right after this short break.