>>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. >>Welcome to the Cubes Coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020. The digital coverage Find Lisa Martin And then we started to be talking with one of Dell Technologies customers. Earth Camp. Joining Me is built sharp, the senior VP of product development and strategy from Earth Camp Phil, Welcome to the Cube. >>Thank you so much. >>So talk to me a little bit. About what Earth Cam does this very interesting Web can technology? You guys have tens of thousands of cameras and sensors all over the globe give her audience and understanding of what you guys are all about. >>Sure thing. The world's leading provider of Webcam technologies and mentioned content services were leaders and live streaming time lapse imaging primary focus in the vertical construction. So a lot of these, the most ambitious, largest construction projects around the world, you see, these amazing time lapse movies were capturing all of that imagery. You know, basically, around the clock of these cameras are are sending all of that image content to us when we're generating these time lapse movies from it. >>You guys, you're headquartered in New Jersey and I was commenting before we went live about your great background. So you're actually getting to be on site today? >>Yes, Yes, that's where lives from our headquarters in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. >>Excellent. So in terms of the types of information that you're capturing. So I was looking at the website and see from a construction perspective or some of the big projects you guys have done the Hudson Yards, the Panama Canal expansion, the 9 11 Museum. But you talked about one of the biggest focus is that you have is in the construction industry in terms of what type of data you're capturing from all of these thousands of edge devices give us a little bit of insight into how much data you're capturing high per day, how it gets from the edge, presumably back to your court data center for editing. >>Sure, and it's not just construction were also in travel, hospitality, tourism, security, architectural engineering, basically, any any industry that that need high resolution visualization of their their projects or their their performance or of their, you know, product flow. So it's it's high resolution documentation is basically our business. There are billions of files in the isil on system right now. We are ingesting millions of images a month. We are also creating very high resolution panoramic imagery where we're taking hundreds and sometimes multiple hundreds of images, very high resolution images and stitching these together to make panoramas that air up to 30 giga pixel, sometimes typically around 1 to 2 giga pixel. But that composite imagery Eyes represents millions of images per per month coming into the storage system and then being, uh, stitched together to those those composites >>the millions of images coming in every month. You mentioned Isil on talk to me a little bit about before you were working with Delhi, EMC and Power Scale. How are you managing this massive volume of data? >>Sure we had. We've used a number of other enterprise storage systems. It was really nothing was as easy to manage Azazel on really is there was there was a lot of a lot of problems with overhead, the amount of time necessary from a systems administrator resource standpoint, you to manage that, uh, and and it's interesting with the amount of data that we handle. This is being billions of relatively small files there there, you know, half a megabyte to a couple of megabytes each. It's an interesting data profile, which, which isil on really is well suited for. >>So if we think about some of the massive changes that we've all been through the last in 2020 what are some of the changes that that Earth Kemp has seen with respect to the needs for organizations? Or you mentioned other industries, like travel hospitality? Since none of us could get to these great travel destinations, Have you seen a big drive up in the demand and the need to process data more data faster? >>Yeah, that's an injury interesting point with with the Pandemic. Obviously we had to pivot and move a lot of people toe working from home, which we were able to do pretty quickly. But there's also an interesting opportunity that arose from this, where so many of our customers and other people also have to do the same. And there is an increased demand for our our technology so people can remotely collaborate. They can. They can work at a distance. They can stay at home and see what's going on in these projects sites. So we really so kind of an uptick in the in the need for our products and services. And we've also created Cem basically virtual travel applications. We have an application on the Amazon Fire TV, which is the number one app in the travel platform of people can kind of virtually travel when they can't really get out there. So it's, uh, we've been doing kind of giving back Thio to people that are having having some issues with being able to travel around. We've done the fireworks of the Washington Mall around the Statue of Liberty for the July 4th, and this year will be Webcasting and New Year's in Times Square for our 25th year, actually. So again, helping people travel virtually and be, uh, maintain can be collectivity with with each other and with their projects, >>which is so essential during these times, where for the last 67 months everyone is trying to get a sense of community, and most of us just have the Internet. So I also heard you guys were available on Apple TV, someone to fire that up later and maybe virtually travel. Um, but tell me a little bit about how working in conjunction with Delta Technologies and Power Cell How is that enabled you to manage this massive volume change you've experienced this year? Because, as you said, it's also about facilitating collaboration, which is largely online these days. >>Yeah, I mean, the the great things they're working with Dell has been just our confidence in this infrastructure. Like I said, the other systems we worked with in the past we've always found ourselves kind of second guessing. Obviously, resolutions are increasing. The camera performance is increasing. Streaming video is everything is is constantly getting bigger and better, faster. Maurits And we're always innovating. We found ourselves on previous storage platforms having to really kind of go back and look at the second guess we're at with it With with this, this did L infrastructure. That's been it's been fantastic. We don't really have to think about that as much. We just continue innovating everything scales as we needed to dio. It's it's much easier to work with, >>so you've got power scale at your core data center in New Jersey. Tell me a little bit about how data gets from thes tens of thousands of devices at the edge, back to your editors for editing and how power scale facilitates faster editing, for example. >>Basically, you imagine every one of these cameras on It's not just camera. We have mobile applications. We have fixed position of robotic cameras. There's all these different data acquisition systems were integrating with weather sensors and different types of telemetry. All of that data is coming back to us over the Internet, so these are all endpoints in our network. Eso that's that's constantly being ingested into our network and say WTO. I salon the big the big thing that's really been a timesaver Working with the video editors is, instead of having to take that content, move it into an editing environment where we have we have a whole team of award winning video editors. Creating these time lapse is we don't need to keep moving that around. We're working natively on Iselin clusters. They're doing their editing, their subsequent edits. Anytime we have to update or change these movies as a project evolves, that's all it happened right there on that live environment on the retention. Is there if we have to go back later on all of our customers, data is really kept within that 11 area. It's consolidated, its secure. >>I was looking at the Del Tech website. There's a case study that you guys did earth campaign with Deltek saying that the video processing time has been reduced 20%. So that's a pretty significant increase. I could imagine what the volumes changing so much now but on Li not only is huge for your business, but to the demands that your customers have as well, depending on where there's demands are coming from >>absolutely and and just being able to do that a lot faster and be more nimble allows us to scale. We've added actually against speaking on this pandemic, we've actually added person who we've been hiring people. A lot of those people are working remotely, as as we've stated before on it's just with the increase in business. We have to continue to keep building on that on this storage environments been been great. >>Tell me about what you guys really kind of think about with respect to power scale in terms of data management, not storage management and what that difference means to your business. >>Well, again, I mean number number one was was really eliminating the amount of resource is amount of time we have to spend managing it. We've almost eliminated any downtime of any of any kind. We have greater storage density, were able to have better visualization on how our data is being used, how it's being access so as thes as thes things, a revolving. We really have good visibility on how the how the storage system is being used in both our production and our and also in our backup environments. It's really, really easy for us Thio to make our business decisions as we innovate and change processes, having that continual visibility and really knowing where we stand. >>And you mentioned hiring folks during the pandemic, which is fantastic but also being able to do things much in a much more streamlined way with respect to managing all of this data. But I am curious in terms of of innovation and new product development. What have you been able to achieve because you've got more resource is presumably to focus on being more innovative rather than managing storage >>well again? It's were always really pushing the envelope of what the technology can do. As I mentioned before, we're getting things into, you know, 20 and 30 Giga pixel. You know, people are talking about megapixel images were stitching hundreds of these together. We've we're just really changing the way imagery is used, uh, both in the time lapse and also just in archival process. Ah, lot of these things we've done with the interior. You know, we have this virtual reality product where you can you can walk through and see in the 3 60 bubble. We're taking that imagery, and we're combining it with with these been models who are actually taking the three D models of the construction site and combining it with the imagery. And we can start doing things to visualize progress and different things that are happening on the site. Look for clashes or things that aren't built like they're supposed to be built, things that maybe aren't done on the proper schedule or things that are maybe ahead of schedule, doing a lot of things to save people, time and money on these construction sites. We've also introduced a I machine learning applications into directly into the workflow in this in the storage environment. So we're detecting equipment and people and activities in the site where a lot of that would have been difficult with our previous infrastructure, it really is seamless and working with YSL on now. >>Imagine, by being able to infuse AI and machine learning, you're able to get insight faster to be ableto either respond faster to those construction customers, for example, or alert them. If perhaps something isn't going according to plan. >>A lot of it's about schedule. It's about saving money about saving time and again, with not as many people traveling to the sites, they really just have have constant visualization of what's going on. Day to day, we're detecting things like different types of construction equipment and things that are happening on the side. We're partnering with people that are doing safety analytics and things of that nature. So these these are all things that are very important to construction sites. >>What are some of the things as we are rounding out the calendar year 2020? What are some of the things that you're excited about going forward in 2021? That Earth cam is going to be able to get into and to deliver >>it, just MAWR and more people really, finally seeing the value. I mean, I've been doing this for 20 years, and it's just it's it's It's amazing how we're constantly seeing new applications and more people understanding how valuable these visual tools are. That's just a fantastic thing for us because we're really trying to create better lives through visual information. We're really helping people with things they can do with this imagery. That's what we're all about that's really exciting to us in a very challenging environment right now is that people are are recognizing the need for this technology and really starting to put it on a lot more projects. >>Well, it's You can kind of consider an essential service, whether or not it's a construction company that needs to manage and oversee their projects, making sure they're on budget on schedule, as you said, Or maybe even just the essential nous of helping folks from any country in the world connect with a favorite favorite travel location or sending the right to help. From an emotional perspective, I think the essential nous of what you guys are delivering is probably even more impactful now, don't you think? >>Absolutely and again about connecting people and when they're at home. And recently we we webcast the president's speech from the Flight 93 9 11 observation from the memorial. There was something where the only the immediate families were allowed to travel there. We webcast that so people could see that around the world we have documented again some of the biggest construction projects out there. The new rate years greater stadium was one of the recent ones, uh, is delivering this kind of flagship content. Wall Street Journal is to use some of our content recently to really show the things that have happened during the pandemic in Times Square's. We have these cameras around the world. So again, it's really bringing awareness of letting people virtually travel and share and really remain connected during this this challenging time on and again, we're seeing a really increase demand in the traffic in those areas as well. >>I can imagine some of these things that you're doing that you're achieving now are going to become permanent, not necessarily artifacts of Cove in 19 as you now have the opportunity to reach so many more people and probably the opportunity to help industries that might not have seen the value off this type of video to be able to reach consumers that they probably could never reach before. >>Yeah, I think the whole nature of business and communication and travel on everything is really going to be changed from this point forward. It's really people are looking at things very, very differently and again, seeing the technology really can help with so many different areas that, uh, that it's just it's gonna be a different kind of landscape out there we feel on that's really, you know, continuing to be seen on the uptick in our business and how many people are adopting this technology. We're developing a lot more. Partnerships with other companies were expanding into new industries on again. You know, we're confident that the current platform is going to keep up with us and help us, you know, really scale and evolved as thes needs air growing. >>It sounds to me like you have the foundation with Dell Technologies with power scale to be able to facilitate the massive growth that you're saying and the skill in the future like you've got that foundation. You're ready to go? >>Yeah, we've been We've been We've been using the system for five years already. We've already added capacity. We can add capacity on the fly, Really haven't hit any limits. And what we can do, It's It's almost infinitely scalable, highly redundant. Gives everyone a real sense of security on our side. And, you know, we could just keep innovating, which is what we do without hitting any any technological limits with with our partnership. >>Excellent. Well, Bill, I'm gonna let you get back to innovating for Earth camp. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Thank you so much for your time today. >>Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure >>for Bill Sharp and Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Digital coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020. Thanks for watching. Yeah,

>>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. Continuing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. This is David Dante With Me is Tom Sweet. He's the EVP and chief financial officer of Dell Technologies. Tom is great to see you. Thanks for coming on The Virtual Cube. >>Dave is always good to see you. And thanks for having me. It's always good to have a conversation with you. >>I actually don't think I've spent a lot of time talking to folks from jail, but I don't think you and I have talked since the pandemic hit. So you know, what's the macro picture? You know, you and I was usually start with the big picture. And, of course, the impact of the pandemic and kind of the big waves that you're seeing out. There may be some of the changes that you're navigating >>Well, you know, it's it's been uninterested near David's. You and I both know, right, and so we way clearly did a number of tactical actions as we worked our way through the pandemic in the early days to make sure our team members could work and we're safe and then pivoted to making sure we could, you know, help our customers and get them up in productive from a work from home perspective, you know? And so it's and then we've evolved into Then, you know, how do you think your way through? Um, you know, what's the what's the work? How do you work your way through? What do you look like on the other end? And so we've been spending a lot of time thinking about investments. Where do we put Capital Toe work to position the organization for success? Post Cobain, whenever that might be, by the way, and and so that's been the focus in, you know, really spending a lot of time on investment areas. The whole macro dynamic has been interesting is, you know, way went through this huge trough in Q two in terms of GDP and global GDP. You know, we're working our way out of that at a macro level. It's very interesting as you go across the globe and look at the various countries and regions and how they're recovering at very different paces. You know, the business has been uninterested in business in terms of what we do, and our PC business has been quite strong. And we've seen a big shift with the work from home and learn from home dynamics with strong demand from government and education. Three infrastructure business R I s G business has been a bit softer, just a zoo Companies have pivoted, but all in all, I think we're working our way through it. I e think the actions we took to preserve liquidity and protect the P and L early in the pandemic have paid off for us. And, uh, we're now focused on how do we position Post Post when we get through this whole cova dynamic? >>You know, way both seen a couple of pretty severe downturns. I think about the dot com downturn and then the financial crisis. I'm actually kind of surprised and impressed the way that that not just our industry, but all industries have worked through this. I guess in hindsight, that shouldn't be surprising given the pace of technology. But I remember those two that I just mentioned. People were flat footed. I remember Ed Zander joking when he was a son. Anybody wanna buy a server? And it was just there was business wasn't being transacted. And that's different this time around, Uh, industries have have responded and you know, technology, of course, is is at the heart of that. But were you surprised at all by the by the pace of I don't want to say recovery, but resiliency, I guess >>a little bit to be honest day. I mean I mean, it does highlight the fact that at the heart of what most companies are you know are doing these days is technology and how they evolve their business model, how how they interact with their customers. And so clearly, if you you think all the way back with our industry date back to the early two thousands and we had a with the bump with the dot com bust and people shut down, I t spending, you know. And now I don't think you can really do that if you think about where you need to be from a business model perspective. So I think there's been a maturation and a recognition that technology plays a key role. But But it has been surprising about how fast it's pivoted. To be honest with you in the sense of, you know, I think of the very distinct cycles is would come through the Coba dynamic. Big PC demand early innings. You know, we saw some recovering the I S G spend in Q two in our quarter second quarter a little bit better than Q one. You know, as companies readjusted spin eso, it's The organizations across in our customer base have have adjusted quite well. Clearly, there is vertical implications. If you're in the airline industry or some of the hospitality, you're you're being a bit more cautious, right? But all in all, it's been a It's been an interesting journey for all of us. >>Yeah, I mean, at the height of the pandemic, you saw, you know, some people taking actions. Obviously, they were freezing I t projects. They were starting to do layoffs or freezing new hires. That's moderated based on the data that we've seen. I just published the other day that we're starting to see some, you know, slow thawing of that tight grip on I t. What are you seeing? Both externally and maybe as the CFO. What are you doing internally? Well, >>if you talk to my CEO should probably give you a different answer day that I'm about to give you because you know, I'm a extraordinarily balanced guy in my point of view, right? But, you know, look, I think externally we're seeing targeted investments happening by customers that are moving projects forward. I think there's a bit of caution, and I do think this whole evolution off. How do customers want to consume? I t is evolving, you know. Is it a cat expand? Is it a Is it a financing structure? Is it a as a service and consumption model type? You know, So those three economic models around I t. Or changing and evolving. But I think overall, what we've seen is some level off, you know, cautious, you know, cautiousness. But yet, you know, targeted and investment with our customers and in an internally, Quite frankly, we're continuing to invest. We have capabilities that we need to evolve. You know, we're working. We're very focused on transformational projects that enable our customers to do business with us easier. On the other hand, we're being very tight around. What do I need to do from, You know, some of those old run the business types spend and how doe I streamline that while still supporting the business properly. So it's a bit of a balance right now. >>Yeah, and you obviously have the advantage of large portfolio parts of your portfolio exposed. Like you said, some of the on Prem stuff. But then you've got the certainly the laptop in the work from home shift. A couple of questions there. One is, first of all, you know, Della was largely a larger work from home culture than the average. The average Let's say the average is on a 15 to 20% of employees work from home. You're probably higher than that. And and But now we're seeing that people are expecting at least double that long term are gonna work from home. So you were, you know, somewhat, maybe more prepared than than most. But then again, you have that tailwind on one side of your business. Your supply chain did very well, unlike some of your competitors that we saw early in the pandemic, you know? So it seems like you've managed that pretty well. Maybe your thoughts. >>Yeah. Okay. We do have a culture that provided flexibility. We've been on this journey for roughly 10 years about having our people have some flexibility where they work. And so we had roughly 20 25,000 people working remotely, or some are in some hybrid fashion before the pandemic. You know, obviously, right now, 90% of our workforce is is remote. We think, you know, post pandemic, you know that it's gonna look like something like, you know, you know, 45 50% of the organization is probably gonna be in some sort of hybrid or remote setting. You know, that's the feedback our team members are giving us. And, uh and so you know, we have been fortunate to be able to have the culture that pivoted quite frank quite quickly, I should say, as we worked our way through this from a supply chain perspective Look our supply chain has done. Team has done a terrific job on sort of navigating the barriers and the challenges put up by a covert 19 crisis. But I'll go further back that if you and I talked about this before, think about what's happened with our supply chain and global supply chains over the last couple of years and whether it's the US China dynamic and how do you work your way through that? You know, and how do you ensure continuity of supply for our customers? And so that that teams done a great job? You know, we have long term relationships with many of our key suppliers, which has been helpful. And, you know, as you know, we have one of the largest, if not the largest, technology by in the industry. So it has helped us in terms of making sure we have capability and availability for custom. >>Let's talk a little bit about some of the strategy and the value levers that you guys talk about. You've always hit on industry consolidation, integration delivering. You've seen the 13 D with the movie you're gonna make with VM Ware. How have things changed? There has a pandemic changed your thinking at all, And how are you doing in terms of those turning those knobs? >>You know, first, it has not changed our thinking in the sense of some of those keep long term value creation activities we've been focused on and platforms we've been focused on around Hey, you know, we know that in the where we where we sell where we compete, that the industry is not a, you know, a rapidly growing industry. And so you grow organically by consolidation and share gain, and that's what we've been focused on. You couple that with the innovation engine we have with Dell Technologies. And, uh, including our, you know, way need to including that VM ware. You know, we've got a new, extraordinary patent portfolio and we've got these what we think are unique solutions and capability. So we're pushing hard on the innovation engine, and then you couple that with the capital work we've been doing around, how do you delivering the balance sheet? Getting the company reposition back towards investment grade. And we've made really good progress on that. You know will pay down $5.5 billion of debt this year, which will again position us closer to those investment grade like metrics. And so those those platforms are pillars, if you will, of our strategy, haven't changed. But in addition to that, you know, we are looking at where do you grow and how do you continue to grow at a pace, perhaps at GDP GDP plus, which is sort of where we think you know, is the long term framework we've got to be thinking about. So that's where you get into these adjacency is like, How do you How do you further driving a multi cloud hybrid cloud? How do you think about the opportunity with Telco, with five G roll out that's happening across the globe and the investment that's going to go into that the whole edge computing the edge cloud is of interest to us. And so there's a number of these emerging areas that we think are pretty interesting, and their adjacent and fit nicely into what we do is a, you know is, quite frankly, that essential infrastructure company. So that's the focus we've been driving about. How do we set up both continue on our core mission of consolidation, innovation and delivering as well as how do you set up some of these growth vectors as we move forward? >>Well, in one of the other levers you filed the 13 d, I don't know what you can share with us. Some of it gets confused. How much is fact sometimes and how much is speculation. But, I mean, I've said that it appears that one of the things that you're looking at is creating an equilibrium in terms of the balance sheets of both companies. Uh, keep getting them both that investment grade. What can you tell us about what you're thinking there? >>Yeah, I look, you know, obviously we did file a 13 D in mid July, which essentially said we were contemplating whether you know, a potential spin of our 81% ownership interest out to the Dell Technology shareholders. And so we're continuing to work with the VM Ware team on, you know, what does that look like with a couple of fundamental principles, which is Hey, you know, we have both benefited from this better together story. And so how do we keep that differentiation in some type of a long term operating agreement or operating framework? But at the same point in time, you know, you know, do the potentially look at it spend that unlocks value for both sets of shareholders of both companies, right? VM ware gets additional flexibility from a from a strategic perspective, they don't have the Dell balance sheet. Dell Technologies balance sheets sitting on top of them from the Dell Technologies perspective. You know, we presumably as part of this would be some type of a dividend stream. But by being were out to its share. What shareholders? We get the opportunity to accelerate our delivering story and get back closer to investment grade or right at investment grade, depending upon how this all works out. So we think there's a number of really interesting value levers here, right at the same point in time, wanting to protect what's been really good about the relationship in the way we've gone to market, the way we've innovated. And so that's the balance were walking right now. And you know there's work to do is we work with being where to see. If this makes sense, can we get it done? But But we're early innings and and we may end up not doing anything honestly, But I mean, that's that's sort of the thinking that we're working through right now. >>Well, it's an interesting thought exercise, if nothing else. And so e I look at it when when you combine del in the M. C when you did the acquisition. Now you became VM Ware's most important partner. Just even if it's in terms of revenue because you've got a massive distribution channel. So there's there's that inherent value in that relationship, independent of anything else. The flip side of that is VM Ware has been, you know, awesome acquire of companies. Uh, you know, inorganic r and D, if you will. And some pretty cool R and D A Z Well, so it's gonna be really interesting toe watch how that plays out. I think we wait and see. That's a comment, you know, >>we're working through it and we'll see where we end up. But, you know, you've highlighted a couple of great points. I mean, our, you know, our go to market reach, you know, it is extraordinary. And VM Ware has benefited from that. We've benefited from the VM Ware relationship with some of their technologies is we've integrated those into our combined solution. So it's been a it's been a win win, and that's the balance of how do you keep that, Aziz. Well, as you know, quite frankly, provide some value back to your shareholders. >>Well, we've seen that not just the the uplift of the market. But clearly the speculation has caused some unlocking of value and may bring some others from the sidelines. But I wanted to ask you about I've been talking about this automation mandate. I think there was one. Certainly. There was one before the pandemic, and now it's even accentuated. Um, can you talk a little bit about how you're applying automation, thio your business and maybe what you're seeing with customers? How that could affect, you know, the long term productivity of your business? Maybe new ways to work. What can you tell us there? >>Yeah, Look, I mean, we we have a pretty significant automation agenda within Dell Technologies, both from an internal perspective as well as the automation and a I am and machine learning capabilities were embedding into our solutions to help our customers Dr their automation agendas. Internally, what we've been focused on is how do I simplify? How do I take complexity out? You know, how doe I providing a richer mawr interactive experience with our customers? How doe I lean into service needs service capabilities, all those areas that are ripe for automation and my finance organization alone Right now, I think I have over 125 automation projects going right now is we? We look at how we simplify from a customer. Perspective is I go out and talk to customers. They're also doing much the same thing that we're doing, which is how did they take complexity out of their process? How do they streamline? How are they? How do they drive? Responsiveness and customer, uh, you know, customer experience at a much higher level. And so it's all you know. It's all war walking down this pathway of process simplification, automation, which includes technology, investment, obviously which is, you know, helpful from our perspective. And so there's a agenda out there is Aziz. We talked with customers in terms of in a commonality as we talked with customers. And then the other point I'd give you Dave, is that just as you think about, you know, as I talked to my peers out in the industry, I mean, many of us are driving automation agendas. Have a lot of that, you know, with focused on taking touch out, enrichment of job and capabilities, enrichment of, you know, we gotta build skill sets to drive that. So there is a big theme across the industry in this area, and I think it's gonna do nothing but accelerate. Quite frankly, Aziz, we work our way forward. >>Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of customers in this topic, and it seems to be sort of three paths. Actually, one path is there's. There's a lot of low hanging fruit and easy wins. And but the problem with that is a lot of times it's just paving the cow path with automation. You know, the other is you got to do the hard work of really digging into the process and the third that I've seen, which is kind of interesting to which is kind of what you're alluding to is your free up. You know, some of the mundane tasks, and you let the people who really understand the process rethink that process. And then you go into a deeper automation agenda, and that seems toe that will turn millions into billions. >>That's the value. Add their game. I mean, it's that third framework that you laid out, which is you have to do the work around process. But then again, how doe I then you know over time is I is. I have the experts help us on the automation capabilities. Once we've identified, what are the appropriate processes or functions to be automated? How do you then pivot resource tomb or higher value add activity across the organization and that Z when you when you do that, you unlock, I think, a terrific value creation opportunity, which we're very focused on. >>And I know there's always a big concern about jobs with automation. But the reality is, if you look at the data from the U. S. And Europe of the last couple of decades, the productivity trend is clear. It's it's gone down. And if you think about the big problems that we face in the world, whether it's climate change, your national debt or health care, you know you know hunger, you just can't throw people at that problem. You gotta have a combinations of people in machines. And so well, there may be, you know, a short term impact. I'm kind of an optimist. I know you are a swell >>No, it Zuno. Obviously, this is a tough time for a lot of businesses and customers. As we work our way through the pandemic and and including, you know, and and some have adjusted their workforce, you know, and part of its from the economic reality. But part of it is also a skill set. Dynamic is a reshaping workforce. And but I do think automation plays a key role. And how do you enable skill sets to evolve and get again re allocated Thio other value creation activity. So there is, you know, unfortunately, are probably gonna be some short term disruptions in certain areas. But on the other hand, if you think about the long term gain and the productivity gains that we all need to drive, you know you can't do it without automation and thinking your way through streamlining and taking complexity out of the organization. >>So my last question has come back the productivity We're talking about work from home. Do you feel like you've had a bump in productivity? As a result? Maybe there was some short term disruption. But you know, what's your what's your data or your gut say, in terms of the impact on your organization and then maybe on your customers as well in terms of the program. So >>I think it's been fairly similar between us and our customers. I waas concerned when we went to a work from home back in March that we were gonna lose productivity and, you know, and I thought it was gonna be a productivity drain, you know, a czar. Team members were juggling work and their family dynamics and situation is in. Obviously in the middle of that are in the early innings of this covert crisis. What we have seen, in fact, is actually, we've seen productivity improved pre Koba to where we are today. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're giving our team members one flexibility on how they do their job. But we're giving them time back there, and they're not commuting. There's less meetings that are consuming time, you know, and the responsiveness in the capabilities of the order such that we're moving through decisions and projects. I think, at a faster pace, quite frankly. And so it's been an interesting and, I think to me a bit of a surprising result from what we've seen as I talked to customers and I'm the executive sponsor on a number of extraordinary, very large multinational customers. It's pretty much the same response. You know, the similar experience, right, that they've seen similar results that we have. So now what you don't want this to be is that you're doing it on the backs of the team members working 15 or 16 hours a day. You've got to find the right balance. But the fact that we're giving them flexibility to jump out during the middle of Daito tend to some family members or help with, you know, their Children's learning. Then they're back in maybe a little bit later during the day. I mean, I do think that we've been able to a culture that's pretty interesting that is paying dividends for us right now. >>Yeah, it's ironic that this hit at the beginning of of 2020 it's clear that it's gonna be a different decade than it was last decade, which I guess every decade is Tom Tom Sweet. It was great to have you on the Cube. Thanks so much. Always a pleasure speaking with you. >>Always, always great to see you. Thanks for having me. >>You're welcome. And thank you for watching everybody says Dave Volonte, you're watching our coverage, the cubes coverage of del Tech World 2020. But right back 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. Hey, welcome back already, Jeffrey. Here with the Q. Come to you from our Palo Alto studio with our ongoing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. The digital experience Let's jump into a really excited to have our next guest CIA Sam Bird, the president of the Client Solutions Group for Dell. Sam, where you joining us from today? >>Hey, I am joining you live from Austin, Texas. Jeff looks beautiful. All weather? Yeah, its's turning really nice. Uh, nice time to be here in Austin, right? So, >>Sam, let's jump into it. I mean, you, you cover, you know, kind of the heart of what Dell started with which was which was PCs. And, you know, it's funny. A couple days ago, Michael tweeted because he likes to tweet, which is fun. An article that said that the PC officially died today. It's a reference back to an article I had to look at the January 26 2010. Officially, the PC officially died today. >>That >>is so bizarre, and that is not in fact, not true, you guys. We're seeing unprecedented demand, so I wonder if it is You Look back at that. And I'm sure you saw Michaels tweet. What kind of goes through your head? Because we're in a very different space than we were 10 years ago. >>Yeah, I think the world's changed a lot, Jeff from 10 years ago. I got to say, uh, the PC died 10 years ago. It feels pretty good being being dead for 10 years. So I think we actually saw a, you know, still alive and very vibrant. PC. So you think about everything that's happened with Cove it We have seen the PC and people using technology to stay connected, whether it's, you know, working in their business, learning from home, staying connected with other family members. So we'd like to talk about it Is the renaissance of the PC. It kind of this rebirth reemergence of this really good friend that you had has become really core toe how we're getting stuff done in the world today, and we've stayed bullish about the opportunity around the PC. Michaels had that view from, you know, when he started this company, and we've since expanded to many other areas beyond selling PCs. But we continue to be really committed to the value of that technology in people's hands, >>right? So just in defense of the of the article, it was written on the launch of the iPad right, which was a new a new form factor. And, you know, we've seen this proliferation of form factors both within PCs and mobile phones, and you know, the sizes of screens getting bigger and the size of green getting smaller and surface all kinds of different things. So I wonder if you could share, you know, kind of your perspective in, you know, kind of the opportunity that opens up when people are looking for different types of form factors. And then, more importantly, I think now it's horses for courses. So when I'm sitting at my desk, you know, I haven't a big giant XPS with all the ram and GPU and stuff Aiken stuff into it. If I'm going to the airport with a long flight, I want something small and light and easy to carry and what's interesting, I think, with cloud it enables you now to basically have the form factor that you need where you need it for the types of work that you're trying to get done. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. You know, if you if you take that 10 years ago, article to today we have had an enormous amount of innovation in the industry that's made the device is exciting and appealing for how people wanna want to operate. So, you know, we've seen Jeff a shift towards more mobile form factors with cove in. So, um, a commercial space that used to be maybe half desktops, half notebooks is now in the 70% range. More mobile form factors which reflects how people want to use them. You know, they're sitting at home, they need that device to be portable. They wanna go between rooms and home. That's the other thing that we found in some of our, you know, research and work on the spaces. You know, people might want to sit at the kitchen table in the morning in the afternoon. Maybe they're outside. They might have their kids do in school from home and have to be around them part of the day, so they still need a mobile kind of form factor, but it's plugged in. I want full power to run my applications. And, like you said, we will get back to a world with travel and people being mobile. And then you need to dial in the right form factor that has maybe a smaller screen, more portable device. So one of the things that's kept this business vibrant, you know, for the past 10 years and right now is a bigger screen experience is really, really valuable. A keyboard and multiple ways of in putting into devices are valuable, so there's core. Things are great. And then we've got systems that are set up for how people want to use them. You know, we still have designers sitting at home using big desktop workstations because the most powerful thing there times really valuable. There's a right system for how you want to use technology, and I think that that's attendant, you know, an approach we take in our business, and that's what we see in the industry. I think that's what's helped keep it very vibrant and alive. >>I love it, I love it. It is truly that work from anywhere and anywhere as you just defined, could be a whole bunch of things, and it doesn't even mean just at home or just at the coffee shop. That's really interesting. Is you even change locations where you're working within within the home. That really supports that. So, >>you >>know, Cove, it hits light switch moment. Everybody's gotta work from home. So huge, huge pressure there. And now, as you said, you know, we're seven months into it. Still gonna be going on for a little bit while a little while before people go back. Huge, huge boost to your guys business. I'm curious if you can share some thoughts in terms of, you know, now, I I need to kind of project a little bit of that office back to the work from anywhere situation. And, you know, you guys are that you're kind of that edge device that ultimately connects back to the mother ship. >>Yeah, I think it's and that's where we've seen people realized. It's a really valuable device that helps keep them, you know, productive and connected. Um, we have seen it's very interesting of it used to be, you know, pre co vid for Most people work with the location, you know, Post Cove. It it's something you do, and suddenly it's very location agnostic, and we see the world operating that way in the future Jeff of these devices at the edge or need gonna be working in a world where sometimes it makes sense to be in an office. Maybe there's collaboration, other things you need to dio. But we're going to see people working from home working from a coffee shop, working from, you know, anywhere in the world, and we're gonna need to stay connected. In that way, it's enabling a great set of talent. It's enabling people to be where they want, you know, get done what they need to do in their personal lives and then be contributing in a great way, thio to a business. So I think technology plays a huge role in going and getting that done. And to me, the world doesn't just return back to a you know, pre cove in space. But we're now in this. We've learned we can operate in this kind of multi modality world where technology can help keep us connected, collaborating, getting stuff done in some cases more productive than ever before, and it's kind of unleashed this new wave of thinking. I think we will continue to see great creativity on stuff we're putting in our devices to enable that, you know, software applications approaches that are gonna enable that that will really take us forward as we look at the future. >>You know, I'm just curious if you could share, uh, you know, kind of Ah, general breakdown by kind of form factor. What do you see between kind of, you know, I don't know if you split high end desktops and low on desktops and then, you know, kind of laptops and Chromebooks, what's kind of the high level kind of breakdown, and how's that? Is it change significantly over the last several years? And you you just mentioned a boost. You know, during the time of Cove in >>Yeah, we've seen a shift towards notebooks. Now you know much Is the article you you pulled up from 10 years ago? I think the death, the death of the desktop has also been much exaggerated. So we're Maurin, a mode of 70% of the systems that were selling our notebooks 70 to 80% range. It's a little higher, and consumer Andi, that's, you know, 20 points up in the commercial space. So we're seeing, you know, people have valued that kind of portability of systems. You know that, said is we talk through some of the ways people use it. There are great uses for desktops, for people are in the same place where I need ultimate ultimate power and then a z your home. We've seen a little more shift Teoh a suddenly you know, portability. That was really valuable because you had Salesforce's engineers on the road all the time. And I really wanted something that, you know, lasted had great battery life and was really easy to carry around. Suddenly we're in a world plugged in at home like we look at our devices, we've gone. Now more than half of our laptops are basically on is we have intelligence built into our systems. That tunes how battery management is done. Empower Management's done. More than half those systems are now in a mode of all, basically, always on a C. So people are, you know, plugged in all the time. They would like a little more powerful system. So whether they're running, zoom or teams or some other app. Multitasking. It's like there's a, you know, different requirements there. I think that changes Azzawi go forward and we get back to, you know, the notebook. It's like the ultimate design people want is a great big screen. That's super light, and the battery lasts forever. And I'm like that keeps our engineers and designers working every day because that's a really hard, complex thing to solve. And, you know, we're we continue to work and and and push that next forward. Now it's a little more biased to power. Sitting on a desk. We will be back in a world where it's gonna be, Yeah, I want power to sit on the desk, be on a video conference, get work done. But I also need to be able to take that on the road with >>Yeah, I just think, you know, because of the proliferation of online applications, right? And you know so much of our work day no pun intended, you know, is done in all these different cloud based applications, whether its sales force or slack or asana or whether we're, you know, working in in, uh, social media applications or even are you know kind of cloud enabled local applications. You know, a lot of times I find you don't have to carry your device right. E can lead the one device of one location, one of the other. I know it's almost like you pick up exactly where you were when you log back into chrome or you log back into whatever your browser is. If you've got it all configured, you know you don't even need to carry. A lot of times I find it's it's it's really nice. And if I have to check a message on the phone, No, it's a very different way of working, and, uh, I think it's really pretty slick. I do want to get into productivity, which you've talked about a lot. You know, I've always said the best productivity investment anybody could make is a second screen on the desktop. I mean, it's so much more productive to have a second screen the third screen. You go to places like Wall Street and the NASDAQ floor, where time matters and productivity matters, their screens all over the place and you guys are doing a ton of fun stuff with screens. Big giant curve things, and you made an interesting observation in other interviews that now people are consuming their entertainment content via those screens, whether it's an over the top service with Netflix or or whatever. So this this kind of shift to, you know, kind of mawr content consumption as this blend between kind of what you do in your personal life and what you do in your work life, both in terms of time and content, you know, continue to mix so lot of exciting stuff happening in big, beautiful screens. >>Yeah, totally agree, Jeff. And we see you know we've looked at productivity and see boosts with a bigger screen around your system. Same thing with exactly as you describe putting two screens around the system or go to a trading floor and their screens everywhere because it's about the you know, it's about the content that you can consume and the, um, you know, the work that you go get done, and it's a lot more efficient to be able to have multiple screens. Whether it's looking at a presentation and doing a call, you know, a video call for work on on one screen or either side of Ah, screen. And we're seeing people build out that, you know, their home office, their work office. I think that's to me. The, you know, the exciting piece of you think about how technology is arming people to get their job done. Like you can't imagine if you had all the technology taken away from you. You're like, Okay, what am I gonna What am I go do? Like if the internet goes down, I don't quite know how to get go. Be productive here. You know, I go try to find someone who has a landline phone on the block and call someone up. Andi have actually have a discussion, but, like, I'm not gonna build out a work, you know, a workspace. I've gotta build out a home space companies that are pretty progressive, the ones that are investing Maurin technology for their employees. We're seeing them be ah, lot more successful in this covert air, which equals go get on the right tools the screen around the system, You know, the extra devices. So it's like, Hey, my postures. Great. I can actually go get work done. And I'm in a nice space. Same thing back in the office. We've built stuff. We're building low blue light technology into our commercial PCs. We put that on our high end consumer PC. So you know, now you can walk into your home office early in the morning. You can goto late at night. It will have you all tune so your body is ready to go to sleep. You know, you don't even have toe. I don't have to talk to your family at all during the day. You could just work all the time from your home office. But I think little pieces like that are going. How do we put technology in this world where it's, like, very easy toe walk in and out of your you know, your office and being tuned on. But, hey, I need to go to sleep or I need to be chilling out after that and get the right technology and capabilities that let people be successful. So I think it's pretty exciting. Everything we've been able to dio, >>right? So I want to shift gears a little bit. Um, talk about user interface. What? One of the reason of this article that we keep referencing 10 years ago was the launch of the iPad, right? And in the launch pad or the iPad didn't have, Ah, traditional keyboard. Um, but I think people found out that not having a traditional keyboard, depending on the type of your work you're doing is a little bit of an inhibitor to your productivity. But it really begs the question as we enter this new world of different types of interaction with these devices and the increased use of voice, whether it's with Siri or or Okay, Google, um, >>we've >>had, you know, regulations on the A d a. In terms of access to websites and this and that. Aziz, you kind of look into the future of of human interaction with these devices as you get more and more horsepower toe work with on the GPU and the CPU and you know, can free up more. Resource is to this type of activity. I know you can't share anything too far down the road. But what? How do you see kind of the future evolving to get beyond this quality keyboard that was designed to slow people down because types were, too. I'm still waiting for the more efficient keyboard option to be to be available. But what's the future of human interaction with these things? To take the the degree of efficiency up another level? >>Hey, Jeff, we will do a custom keyboard for you. So you get me your you get me your high speed layout, we'll get you get you one of those. Um, you know, we do see it is pretty remarkable how long the keyboards been around and we still see it's It's also remarkable to me how powerful that is as a input device for, you know, for some tasks in the world. So what we see is it's not gonna be what replaces the keyboard. And there's one way of going and doing things. But all this compute the sensors that capability on the systems are just gonna allow people to operate the way that they want to operate. So you look at a PC today. It still has this great keyboard. It still has a laptop form factor that has, you know, been there for It's probably 25 years or so. It's actually pretty nice because it fits on your lap. It balances really well on the coffee table. Um, it's, you know, We've looked at so many different form factors, and it actually is a stayed around for a good reason because it it's pretty pretty functional. You know, you take on top of that, though we've built touch in tow, all our systems and screen. So a capability that's available to many of our customers and I go people are just starting. In the beginning, it was like Okay, Hey, how do I take this PC with touch on the screen and then you go? I don't want to do everything with touch, but gosh, it's like how maney you now touch it. If it's something's not touch, you know you have little marks on the screen. I went thio, I went. Thio was looking and working with someone here in a design, a design firm, and, uh, they had a product that was non touch, and it's like I reached in touch the screen to try to make it bigger because my eyes were not quite as good and they were like, Oh yeah, that's not a touch that's not a touch system and everyone touches the screen so it's like that becomes normal voice is going to become normal we have capability on the PC. Like you said, there's a bunch of voice ecosystems. Not everything is easiest to go do invoice. There are some things where you go ahead. I just want to go touch that, you know, gesture in the same way we look at intelligence on the system of also going There are things I wanna have just happen because I always I always do that and I shouldn't have to do voice. I shouldn't have to do gesture, touch everything else like, Hey, maybe I start the morning and I always pull up my calendar. Why doesn't that happen? Or I like to listen to her, You know, a song in the evening as I'm typing away on email on getting things buttoned up for the day. It's like your system can anticipate some of those things and it will just do that for you. So I think I think you're exactly right. We're going to see multiple ways of interacting with technology, and it needs to be natural and easy for us and then let the user pick pick the way that they want to go and do things right. >>Well, you just touched on a whole, you jumped ahead to questions on my list of things I want to talk about. And really, that's the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence, not in a generic way. That's an app that sits inside of the PC, but but in terms of using that intelligence as you just described based on my work flow based on my habit based on the applications I use based on you know what, you can observe and learn about me. Or maybe it SSM dictate down from from the corporate set up. You know how that PC operates for me? Because I think that's it is a really interesting thing, right? Everyone uses their machine differently, and whether they use, you know, shortcuts or not, How many tabs do they have open? You know, the the variability. You must have crazy studies on this in terms of the way people actually operate. These things is so, so high, so huge opportunity to, you know, again kind of remove the the get the signal from the noise and help people decide what they should do. Prioritize what they should do and add a layer of of simplicity to you. know it is a complex amount of notifications firing at me all day long. >>Yeah, I think that's a huge. You know, you talked about the potential you have in a world where more APS that we use our cloud cloud based of going How do I augment the capability in this client device at the edge To be intelligent and helped me go do mawr versus just being, you know, really dumb and serving up this other other content. And I think everything you describe is opportunity that we see We started Jeff about five years ago and have been very aggressive and putting intelligence and machine learning into the systems we started on our work stations, where there is an obvious application of, like, how do I tune a system to get the most performance out of an application? And we saw settings configurations making them different helped tune these very specific, you know, cad engineering programs that developers were running their times really valuable. They want the most performance. We used to have to have people sit down and we go. Okay, let's go run this application. Under this workload, we can put a table together. Here's a bunch of recommendations. We started going well, Hey, how do we have that happened? Automat like, let's try different settings. Figure out what works. The machines should should self tune itself then and figure out what's right and get based on exactly what I'm running. And people can be running different combinations so suddenly got a lot smarter than our great engineer sitting in the lab and figuring out those tables. And then, you know, from that time then we brought it to I think, what's just tip of the iceberg Now, where we start looking at, uh, performance across all our systems? What applications of my running go set things up so that it works? We talked a little bit about batteries and power management. Hey, how am I using this system if I am a really mobile person? Always, you know, taking my battery down to really low levels, hopping on a plane, I need to be quickly charged, like the system can figure out. Hey, I really need to tune things. Not for when, when you go through all the mechanics of a battery, it's like I am willing to sacrifice some on the longevity of the battery to enable really fast charging of that system because Jeffs always on the go Jeff runs his battery down. I need to make sure when he plugs in, he has maximum juice. Hey, here's Sam who's in a work from home mode, always plugged in. It's not great on any battery in the world to always be at, you know, maximum maximum charge every single minute of the day. And Sam has not unplugged his system in the past. You know, five days. Hey, we can run that at 95% and he will have a long life to that battery and be really happy with the system. And he's never gonna run out of power. You can start doing in that space. You can start doing it around sound and the environment that people are in, how we get smart. And I think there's an enormous amount you could do on top of that, like you described just how people have used the systems and it can sound a little eerie, but like it's what we you know, the machine suddenly knows how I'm going to go do stuff, but I'm like I would like that it to be anticipating what I'm doing, and then it starts taking that mundane stuff that we have to do that just eats up time and, you know, goes and gets that done for us. So we could be focused on the creative and the really pushing the boundaries, thinking >>I love it because it always goes back to kind of what do you optimizing for right? And there isn't necessarily one answer to that question, and there's a lot of factors that go into that in terms of the timing. As you said, the person their behavior you know happen to GPS is I'm at an airport. Probably need to plug in for you in the airplane. It's a good stuff. I want to. I want to shift gears a little bit, Sam, to talk about operating systems, Um, and and you know, chromebooks air out now. And you know, it was kind of this breakthrough to go beyond kind of Windows based systems. I think there's a lot of people that you know hope at >>some point >>will be, you know, have the option to run Lennox based systems. But it's just, you know, with a cloud based world and a multi, you know, kind of device interaction with all those different applications, whether it's it's my phone or my my desktop or my laptop or my my chromebook or my whatever. Um, Aziz, you start to think about kind of operating systems and opening up, you know, kind of a new level of innovation with because the expectation now for for like, a chromebook is that it's almost 100% Web based APS, right? That there's really not a lot of need for anything local. Maybe a quick download, a picture too attached to to an email or something. How do you kind of look at the future and kind of operating systems for PC? Specifically? >>Yeah. Well, I think is You describe Jeff, the applications and what you're doing on the system has become increasingly important over time, and it will only become more important as we go go forward. So, you know, from that point of view window, we dio work with windows. We do work with Google and chrome. I mean, Windows 10 is a really good based operating system. Chrome has a lot of nice capability in that operating system, you know, Obviously Apple, a competitor, has a different approach in that space. But I think we have a really good set of offerings that we can put on our our systems. And then we're focused on tuning that experience on top of the operating system. I I think it's still too complicated to go and put a, you know, get a new PC into a work or home environment, retire the old PC and manage that system. And what we look at is independent of that operating system. People want to go get their stuff done. We need to make that great. They wanna get their device, they want to turn it on and they want to go use it. And we want to build a world where, like, as I'm getting a new device, my device should know me well enough to go. Hey, Sam, this is this is the right time to get a device. This is the right kind of device that you should get based on what you're going and doing. Hey, I'm going to just keep you up to date. I am going to you think about any issues with the system. We still have too many things that flow through a traditional Hey, there's an I T. Help desk and then they figure that out and then I go toe level two or level three if they can't sort that out. Hey, how do we put that stuff to your point, Jeff before around intelligence, How do we automate those processes? So we're thinking through You know what needs to happen on that system, keeping it up to date and fixing and remediating that system. So I think there's a huge potential regardless of what operating system is beneath it, and we have very good choices there to go. We've got to make that experience the one that's great for the users and that that's where we're really focusing our, you know, our time and our energy, Right? >>So let me shift gears again a little bit and full disclosure I've bought, and I don't know how many XPS towers in a row. I think I'm on my third or fourth in a row. I love >>it. I >>mean, I'm a desktop. I like to just pack those things full of as much horsepower and GPU and CPU and memory as I possibly can because to me again, Back to an investment and productivity. I don't wanna be waiting for slow machines. I just to me it's a couple 100 bucks for this upgrade. That upgrade, it seems brain dead to me that people don't do that. But in terms of when you get these things now and it comes in the mail, it's basically a >>box and a machine, and >>you think back to the old days right when there was books and warranty cards and, you know, a whole plethora of stuff that kind of fell out of that box. I know you know. That's That's probably a leading indicator on the consumer side, about some of your efforts around sustainability and and being efficient and obviously taking advantage of things like the cloud in terms of activating these machines in this and that. But I wonder if you can share a little bit on what you guys have been doing about sustainability, because I know it's important. You know, there's a big focus around, you know, kind of environmental trash on old electron ICS, which is a riel, a real problem that people are dressing. So I wonder if you can. You know. Take a minute, Thio, to share your guys efforts in this area. >>Yeah, I think you're absolutely right, Jeff. It is. It is really important. And we see, you know, arming the world with technology so people can do better. Things really matters, but I love doing stuff outside, like I want the environment to be great. And we need to do that in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. So a couple of places we, you know, pushed really aggressively. You touched on the packaging. So whether that's taking, um, content out of boxes, that doesn't that doesn't need to be there. We've made very aggressive commitments with a series of 2030 goals that we're marching towards is a company where we said, you know, 100% of our packaging will be from sustainable or recyclable sources. So we've already moved aggressively in that space. When you look at what ocean bound plastic we're putting in our boxes, how we think about the materials that were picking, you know, cardboard, and using that in ways that go through the you know, the mail and can be shipped effectively. So we have maximum content there that can be recycled. We've we've committed that we will take back a system for every system that we ship. So getting and building this circular economy for electron ICS, we think is is very important. So we take the stuff that we've got out there and we put that back into a recycle process where you know your old PC can become part of your new cutting edge technology PC and we've led the industry and doing that in plastics were taking plastics from cases and plastics from systems, getting that back into new systems. We've done that with precious metals from the from the, uh, PCB lay board designs inside the systems. We've done that with rare earth metals and magnets, and we think there's opportunity to go farther in that space and then the 3rd 3rd kind of thing that we've committed Jeff is by by 2030 to have half the content of our new systems, be from recycled or renewable content. And we do a good job today of having the content in the systems be recyclable. It's almost over 90% by weight, but what we want to do and the work we need to go do is go get that recycled content going into a cutting edge technology that we're putting out there, and it's not. That's not a simple problem of going. People want things a structurally strong as possible, a super thin as performance as possible. And then we need to you, you know, we gotta use, um, basically waste that comes through and gets turned into new products. So we have our engineers are material science people working on how we make that riel. And we set some aggressive goals with, you know, Michael and the company that will be leadership and that we don't quite exactly know how to get there, but put us on the right kind of edge of pushing and doing the things that we need. Thio. We can have great technology and, you know, be responsible in the way that, as you said, is very important. >>It's great, and it's good to write it down, right? If you don't write it down, then it's just it just disappears into the into the ether. So, Sam, I really enjoyed getting to catch up. I want to give you the final word with a little bit. Look to the path and a little bit look to the future, right? A lot of conversation about Moore's law, and we got to the end of Moore's law and blah, blah, blah. And and I think that, you know, there's obviously technology behind that, and there's some real conversations. But to me, the more interesting topic around Moore's law is really the idea of Moore's law and this continual advancement of technology that's better, faster, cheaper. You've been doing this for 20 years at Del. You've seen tons of, you know, kind of Moore's law impacts and operating in this world where, you know, compute, compute storage and networking just is on this exponential scale on whether you want to talk about GP use or whatever again to me, it's not about the number, of course, and the transistor. It's about the transition in the core. It's about really the concept of this working in a world where you know you're gonna have a lot more. Where is power work with How do you How do you kind of reflect on, you know, the stuff that you're shipping today versus what you were shipping five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago and then, more importantly, is you look forward. Um, you know what is what are you excited about? What gets you up in the morning? What puts a big smile on your face? Still come to work after 20 years of Dell? >>Yeah. You know, Jeff, it's a great question because the industry has changed so much over the last 10 20 years. So it's sometimes a fun thing. Toe. Look back at some of the products that we put out before. That seemed amazing at that point in time and you stack them against what we're doing now and then it could bring you down to Earth a little bit. So you see, the, uh, you see just the exponential improvements that we're able to make around the design of the product, the capability of the products. And I see that continuing the thing that gives me, you know, huge thought around this the device and the PC and the role is gonna play at the edge. We just did some research and we were looking at Millennials and Gen Z and looking around the world, and that is a huge and growing part of the population. It will be the the users of technology in the future with the world we're in today, 45% of them. So almost half of them said they would take their dollars and they want a premium, high end PC experience, and they would prioritize that versus other things they spend money on to go and have a great PC as a personal tool. Do you think about that translating to in a work environment they're gonna expect those same kind of great tools? And then to the question you asked, You know, I see a huge opportunity to continue to push forward the value and the way people use these devices, whether it's the intelligence we talked about. That to me is really exciting around building a machine that knows me and does things for me and how I want to use it, our ability to build immersive experiences so that you know, whether I'm gaming after work, collaborating with co workers like how do I put it so that we're together and it's a good Aziz that in person experience, we're gonna be able to do that with technology. You talked in a great questions around. Hey, the ways people interact with the systems, it will become natural. It will become whatever way they want to go and do that. And I think we can do that in a world where, yes, you can walk between all kinds of different devices. There will not be one device to end all. You'll be in a small screen device. You're gonna use a monitor. You're going to use a PC device. There will be technology across the home. But toe have that have that link together in the role that PC is gonna play in. That to me, is exciting. And we continue to, you know, invest aggressively. Michael saw that when he started the company. We continue to believe in the power of technology, and we're gonna figure out and drive those breakthroughs that will make the, you know, products exciting. And I love doing that every day of seeing the innovation we can put together and how that makes a difference for people. To me, that's really an exciting thing. >>Well, Sam, thank you. Thank you for the update. Again, the rumors of the PCs demise were greatly overstated. 10 years and glad to see that you're just kicking tail and doing exciting things. So thanks for for sharing your insight and your experience with us. >>Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Jeff. Great to talk to you. >>Absolutely. All right. He's Sam. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cubes. Continuing coverage of Dell Technology World 2020 The Digital Experience. Thanks for watching. See you next time.

>>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.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to you by Dell Technologies. Welcome back to the cubes. Continuing coverage of Dell Technology World del Tech, World 2020. Jeff Clark is here. He is the chief operating officer and vice chairman of Dell Technologies. Jeff, awesome to see you. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having me today. Appreciate it. >>Yeah, you're very welcome. When my first question is, when do you have time to be vice chairman? Well, >>you know, in today's world, it's pretty hectic. We're all working around the clock. If there's anything about the new norm, there are no boundaries. And unless you establish some boundaries so I've been able to find a rhythm that works for me personally, but also allows me to look after the company and, uh, kind of keep things moving and making progress of Dell. So pretty exciting times. It's certainly been a challenge finding new ways to break through new ways to get things done. But our team has done a great job rising to the occasion. >>Well, you know, a Z. You know, I didn't know you that well prior to you taking over the whole enchilada and do it going back into the enterprise. I mean, I knew you were obviously, but you have been able to see you know, how you operate in the decision making on how you rally the troops. Your several years now into the new Dell, you had to do a lot of tactical things, you know, including product portfolio rationalizations. But I wanted to start with the macro picture in a particular Can you share some of the acceleration points and the levers that you're really pulling in the operation? >>Well, clearly, if you look back at the company's strategy and I'll start there and then kind of build on from that platform if you think about the first tenet of our strategy is to win in the consolidation in our court marketplaces. So the core commercial PC market, the course server market in the course storage market, and clearly what we've been able to do and certainly been at this now for Gosh, I think it's three years now that we've been turning over the portfolio and modernizing the portfolio on the I s g side and to the point you referenced earlier. We've now modernized that portfolio. It is now under all the power brand and now represents new, fresh modern architecture er modern products that allows us to be competitive going forward across the entire eyes. T portfolio. We've had continued success on the commercial PC side. Then if you think about the next tenant of our strategy, which is to really build deeply integrated solutions across the Dell Technologies portfolio, we've made a lot of progress in the last handful of years, particularly integrating this new competitiveness of our I S G portfolio with the M R. And we're now beginning to see the fruits of that labor PC side will quickly. You've seen that with unified workspace work workspace one are leading services and are leading PC products to be able to bring a different change experience for end users on the PC side on the side. This all started with getting again this competitive portfolio. It started with Dell Technology Cloud a little over a year ago. It now is in joint collaboration around the edge. You've heard from my comments during the keynote around five g going forward. So as we think about this new modern world playing out. We now have the infrastructure competitive. We have a great asset and capability with VM, are now have figured out how to tightly integrate those and innovate on top of those platforms. And we think that's sort of the success for the future as we move forward. >>So it sounds like I mean, covitz change so many things, but it doesn't sound like it's materially changed your thinking on these leverage points or your strategy is gonna pre cove in Post Cove. It you kind of sort of approaching the same playbook, if you will. >>Well, a covert in many levels. While it's had a huge impact on many lives around the world, which we shouldn't, that should not be lost on any of us and the impact that it's had across many businesses and many parts of the world. If you step back and what I try to mention the keynote, what cove it has done is really accelerate digital transformation. I've heard many characterizations, but the way I tend to look at it is if you think of what's happened around us and the forcing of working remote learning remote the world as we look at it going forward, data driven. It's accelerated 10 years of what I thought would take us to get done into the first half of this decade. In many cases the first three years, Uh, this nomenclature that I've talk about is the future is now, and what it's really done is actually reinforced. The points that we thought were going toe happen brought them sooner and has made us believe mawr double down, if you will, that the path we're on is the right path, and we see our customers migrating that way rapidly. In fact, what's interesting? If you look at customers who embrace digital transformation earlier, we call them digital leaders. They're actually breaking away from the pack, sort of speak from their peer set and driving differentiated performance in their sector. We think that's a great, obviously proof point of digital transformation. But what all companies will have to go through to compete >>Well, it's interesting we saw early on in the US locked down worldwide, locked down you have you have such a broad portfolio that yeah, maybe some parts of the portfolio or, you know, directly negatively affected. Certainly. For instance, your you know your airline customers or your hospitality customers, etcetera. But the work from home was was a tailwind for you guys. So the fact that you have that broad portfolio somewhat, you know, one part of the business that cushioned you, maybe the other part of the business, You felt that. But on balance, you're able to get through that, and part of that was your supply chain. And some of your competitors struggled, you know, for instance, with laptop supplies. But you guys really have done a good job, sort of navigating through that, almost like you've been through it before. But nobody's been through this before. >>No, you know, David, thanks for recognizing it. One of the benefits of the Indian portfolio we have, which no one else has. The Indian portfolio that we do. We're able to weather the storm of different impacts to whether it's sectors, whether it's different parts of the business. And we've been able to do that on our our supply chain has performed well. It's been unbelievably resilient. We think it's appointed differentiation over us against anyone else in the marketplace. You couple that with our global service footprint, the two of them working together we designated those capabilities is essential. Very early in the pandemic, we protected our team members and we were able to serve our customers and a pretty non disruptive way. Now, behind the scenes are teams were doing all sorts of things to bring, uh, that continuity supply and those expectations we sent to our customers to the forefront. But I couldn't be more pleased at how we responded, and it set us up to where things were going to go. When we think about the future and migrating tomb or integrated solutions, I suspect we may talk about as a service and the capabilities needed with that services in the supply chain play a key role. >>I guess so much to talk to you about. What? I wanna come back to digital transformation For a minute. I was talking to the C i o the other day and I asked him what was the digital transformation mean to you? He said, David, I got a 15 year old s a P system. Digital transformation means to me I My business has changed in the last 15 years, but my s a P system Hasn't I gotta bring it up to speed. I have to modernize. So there's a spectrum. On the other hand, if if you're not digital today and you're, say, a restaurant, you can't do business. So what does that spectrum look like of digital transformation to you and your customers? >>Well, I think your examples were very good. I mean, our industries as a long reputation of overhyping, different constructs. The fact is, the world is rapidly digitizing. It's undeniable. If you look at the cost of a sensor and how those sensors air now being placed in everything, all of the data that's being collected as a result, That's certainly the forefront of what's happening. And every business has to deal with that. You mean you can't We talked about hospitality. You got hotel rooms that have sensors in them for lights, for water, for a temperature. You think about what's happening in the finance sector in the amount of data that's being created on the edge of that has to be processed on the edge. You think about smart factory smart hospitals in the amount of technology that's going in to bring those new areas to the forefront. So in my mind. Digital transformation is catching up with where the world's going. We know the world is going from an analog world to a digital world, and as that acceleration, mhm goes faster and faster and faster, which I absolutely we absolutely believe this happening. Companies have to change the business. They have to change their models. They have to figure out how to take all of this data and turn data into information to drive better business outcomes. We tend to get into this digital transformation and everyone to talk about this piece of gear, this piece of gear, this piece of gear. I actually don't spend any time on that. It's where customers are going. What are they doing to really instrument, if you will, the digital world they're going to participate in and have to figure out how to overcome the obstacles and barriers with that to compete in their particular sectors. That's where we come in. We help them help them with certainly the gear part of it, but more importantly, the solution orientation to bring better business outcomes to them, to help them get to where they want to go. Does that help? >>Yes, and it does, and it sort of leads me to the hybrid cloud multi cloud. To me, it's edges all part of that and it's critical for your customers. Digital transformations. I mean, what I mean by that is creating a trusted operating environment across whatever platform you're on, whether you're on Prem when you're in a public cloud, whether you're at the edge, so multi cloud is part of that. You know, I used to think a lot of this stuff was aspirational. It seems to becoming more and more really. Where do you see your customers in that maturity cycle? >>Well, I love the way you described it. What we see is the notion of Cloud is much broader than perhaps we would have talked about earlier on when I got this job was the public cloud. No, there's Public Cloud. There's private clouds, and clearly the edge is going to be a cloud operating a model. In fact, we see the world of five G edge and cloud, those three circles intersecting toe high degree. So we're gonna bring a cloud operating model to the edge. We're gonna bring new advanced connectivity data driven connective ity to this edge where all of this instrumentation and all of this data is going to be created that will have toe have real time analytics done, uh, at the edge we think, is this opportunity to really step back and go well. Those cloud things can't be separate. They have to be a set of systems. In fact, it has to become an integrated system. And we think that integrated system has to be able to move data, be able to consistently manage, consistently orchestrate and consistently Dr Operations across those three cloud environments, I think we have gone. Probably the best characterization is early innings. We're certainly not in the first inning. We're not in the ninth inning, but we're certainly into the ballgame here of helping customers orchestrate a multi cloud hybrid cloud environment. If you think about what we've done with VM wars enablement or interaction with the public domains, the work that we've done from our private area, we have accomplished a lot in a short period of time, I'd also tell you there's a fair amount of work in front of us as this spends very quickly and the edge of balls we have to connect those worlds and not leave the edge out on an island by itself. We have to bring it together. We're bringing into the public and private cloud domains that we have today, >>and I definitely wanna hit on as a service. But since we're on this topic, I wanna I wanna talk about five G and Telco a little bit. Let me just spiel for a bit and then you can respond. So I mean, this seems to be a lot of confusion around five G. There's very high expectations. There's there's a there's a lot of talk, but if it's hard toe sort of identify the true impact, that's that's tangible today, anyway. And then you got the telecom telco transformation going on. We've been We've been hearing this for a long, long time. Meanwhile, you got the over over the top providers. They're living off the infrastructure. The telcos price per bit is declining, but the usage is exploding. And so what do you make of all this? You know, the telcos air reinventing themselves. Five g is a part of that consumers Airway waiting for that. There's a lot of, you know, mixed marketing messages going on. What's your take on this and what's tells role? >>Well, look, I I tend to try to break it down into things. At least I can understand. If I look at five G is the next generation Cellular, which I believe it's far more than that. I mean, I think it's the next data fabric for the data era. I think it's going to be this intersection, as I mentioned moments ago of five g Cloud and Edge, all coming together. But I think about it from the infrastructure side that you describe. What we have is the first opportunity to bring a cloud environment to the telco space that hasn't happened before. And I think a cloud environment needs to be implemented because I think there are cost pressures in that sector, and this is going to be a way to become more competitive and to bring out new technologies and services much faster. So now if you bring a cloud operating model to this which I believe five g enables, there is now the opportunity to bring, I think, um, or standard based infrastructure rather than the proprietary ones. In the past, we now can bring a industry standard set of architectures was softer to find layers in the stack. And for the first time in the telcos space, you have the ran going through significant transformation. And on my mind, Iran is one of the significant control points in the telco or five g stack, and that is going to be more open. And then we have to think of five. G is just more than a cellular network. I mean, we're gonna have private private five G. So to the degree that it displaces why, if I will be interesting to see and unfold. But there's a huge opportunity now. Is those sensors that I talked about in the digitization of hospitals and factories and cities, all interconnected by a bunch of private five G networks, all working in an interactive combined system way. I think it just lends itself to a solutions orientation, a standardization orientation, a cloud model, and that's sort of what we do. So I get excited. All of what I just said or alluded to is not solved to your point. You've been hearing this discussion for some time, but the opportunity is large for us. It's one of the single biggest largest opportune, single biggest opportunity that we see for Delon View more and we're going to pursue it together. And we think we can take our at scale technologies that we brought to the Enterprise Data Center and bring those to the telco providers in the private five g build out. >>It's amazing, Jeff, when you think about the when you and I started in this business and how far we've come, it's It's just just mind boggling, isn't it? It >>really is. We've been at this a while and things have changed. But again, it's been on this consistent technology curve, this consistent standardization curve, and it's now applying to new sectors >>I want to end with as a service. You mentioned that before and and so you've got actually really growing business in subscriptions? Uh, you got a lot of options for customers, which is good, but sometimes it's confusing. What's the strategy around as a service? What can we expect there? >>Well, one of the things that we've done and you're right, we've made a lot of progress. We launched L Technology on demand last year. We have 2000 plus customers of $1.3 billion revenue run rate, it's growing at 30% so we're pleased. But at the same time, all the data suggest customers we're gonna want to deploy even at a greater rate. So I think I made reference during our keynote. Today, about 75% of the world's data is gonna be created outside of the data center, 75% off the edge. Build out is going to be done as a service, as is half of the infrastructure. So we think we need to take this to the proverbial next level. We announced Project Apex, Project Apex for us to take all of the properties that we have across the company, all of the different activities and to unify them a single effort for as a service model for the Dell company going forward for our entire portfolio. We think the timing is right. We think we have to be able to, if you will project APEC should be translated as the easy button for our customers. It's a way to make things simpler. It's a way to give them the choice they need to drive consistency in the operating model, and that's the path Ron, we're pretty excited about this unification, if you will. Galvanizing across the entire organization with Project Apex. >>Awesome. Listen, I know you're super busy. Appreciate all the time you've given us your You're a fun executive toe. Hang around with a mission, man. I wish we were together, but hopefully, hopefully sometime soon we can We could see each other face to face. >>I would like that very much. I missed the interactions themselves. I appreciate the time today. Thank you, Dave. >>All right, We'll see you, Jeff. Thanks again. All right. Thank you for watching everybody. Keep it right there. We're back with our next guest. It del Technology World 2020. You're watching the Cube.

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering del Technologies. World twenty nineteen. Brought to you by Del Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the party The Cube Live Day two of our coverage of Del Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with one of the best men in TV Dressed man Dave Alon Today that Ty is awfully dapper today. Always a pleasure to be with you. And we're pleased to welcome back to the Cube tight Schmidt, VP and fellow of extreme skill infrastructure from Delhi and see, we're all kind of color coordinator here. Somebody sent us a memo Happy to be back. Thank you. Great to have you here. So we've We've been having great conversations the last day and a half. Lots of energy, lots of excitement. This is the first doll Technologies World sensed all returned to the stock market a few months ago. Talk on all things. Lots of buzzwords. Hybrid multi cloud partnerships edge One of the things that Jeff Clarke said this morning in his key Now that I think needs to be said in a game of thrones Voice is the edges coming? Just coming. What is the edge meat isn't like digital transformation, where it means five things to two different people. >> Yes, so the edges coming. Some would say the edge has been here, but now it's being at least, uh called something that we could try to get her head's wrapped around. Right? So, uh, the edges has been here. It's here. It's It's continuing to manifest itself. I'm gonna give you a couple of examples what we're hearing from customers. You know, human nature is I want this thing to be defined. I want it to be something stable, bounded that I can then go and create a work force or a product line. And I know exactly what we're doing. Well, I've got news for those folks. It's not that it's, Ah, it's chaotic. It's dynamic. It's disruptive. Um, I'll bucket ties it into a few big level buckets that we're seeing, but the thing I'm trying to get people to get their heads wrapped around is that the edges not defining usage models the edges, not defining products. The usage model is defining the edge, and so there's thousands and thousands of different usage models, But I'll talk about a few of them right. Um, I think most people would be in their minds. They're thinking about a distributed network and distributed data set or something outside of my traditional data center space. And I need compute storage, Something to facilitate my business. I'm calling that the private edge still a little bit from the private cloud, calling it the private edge. And basically it is, um, it's a It's a direct ingest or usage of compute that I'm buying storage that I need. It's at a location typically follows the data. So where I'm collecting data, my my array of sensors and cameras and you name it I ot type devices where that data is that I need to have on prem Data center capacity to collect that data, do something with that data, and then action. Do something actionable at that facility. And, you know, uh, minds and construction centres and retail stores. People talk about autonomous vehicles. Reality is is leading up to the autonomous vehicle. There's a need for data collected off of these cars as they're experimenting >> with different terrain and weather conditions and driving conditions, and we are providing those types of edge data center capabilities for those automotive companies to drive their cars around, stop into these depots, download their data, get updates, and off they go to collect more data. And that's an example of the private edge. So we've seen everybody been data centers, face floor, pristine, beautiful. You know, physical security. The edge could be a truck, a police car, doc. But it could be anything. So how are you seeing customers deal with the physical security aspects of the edge? That's a great question. So there and there's a physical in logical component to it, right, So they're all over the place. So these first, these first examples of where we're seeing EJ being actually adopted outside of a traditional data center space, tremendous sensitivity, toe physical security. Some of them are taking care of it themselves. So they have, uh, courtyard or a building that they're wanting to simply put a device in. And they're handling security, physical security at that location, others are Listen, I'm trying to understand the cost trade offs of building this fortress, which kind of his counter counter productive to what I'm trying to accomplish here. Can you provide that as part of your data center? solution. And so, looking at things like ballistic protection, overall theft protection, these things air smaller. They can be hold off, so we have to anchor them to the ground. We have to have wave to think differently about how these things are connected so that somebody can come up and cut through a wall or cut through a pipe and get access to this critical data. So how we approach that physically eyes is a tremendous, tremendous concern to customers. And we're addressing that through the solutions were providing ballistics bombproof flameproof intrusion proof different types of biometric sensors. In some cases, we hide them in plain sight, painted with graffiti, puts a bullet holes on him, make it look like they're not worth anything. You're it. So you do have some serious stress testing as well. Which was what? Your favorite stress test. >> There's a lot of shock and vibe testing, so we have a way to protect against seismic. We have to >> protect against wind loads. You we may have a thousand pounds of snow on top of, and we have to test these things against those type of environmental conditions. Way haven't, uh, we have it yet back. You try to drive over one with a bulldozer or some type of a vehicle, but we do do impact testing, ballistic test sting. And there's there's a lot of fun testing, and I don't mean to minimize the logical security. A lot of this is critical infrastructure, right? So, you know, if it talks about the threat matrix and so, uh, what do you see in there? What's what's Del bringing to the table? I mean, are are, you know, wonderful array of security elements with our company right now are implying that I think we're having to do with customers. This is an early part of the journey is how is this data being protected? And the logical component, at least what we're seeing today doesn't necessarily differ as much from the traditional data center. But things like, um, you can automatically detect whether an intrusion of physical deters has been made and decide to do something actionable, like lock hard drives where even if somebody was to steal a server or the hard drive, they can't do anything with it. GPS type sensors and devices that can track the valuable components in the solution and not allow them to be turned back on unless they are connected into that network. A za proofpoint. So there are a number of things that are that are being driven that somewhat looks like the traditional data center, by essence of where they're located and how these things are remote way have to. We have to think about that >> when you're talking >> with customers who are on everybody's on a journey of many different types. Digital transformation. I t. Security Workforce We've talked about all of those things last year's Del Tech world and, of course, this week as well. How do you advise them of Where do I start if I have Like, for example, when dehl was talking about the latitude devices this morning and all of this really cool tech built and even with train protection, for example, were all, and John Reese even talked about the edge of people the end, the edge of Io ti and centers, which makes sense. But where does a company like Adele stirred these conversations with customers who have a tonne? Probably People edges and io ti edges are yeah, so with where do we start? Kind of raining this all ends, we get the data out on it in real time, process it as close to where it's being generated as possible in a way that we can we can actually understand. >> This's the world I live in, right? So fundamentally, it helps us understand that that most companies, >> um, >> you know, lots of different organizations. But when it comes to a data center type of solution, you have the group who are trying to do something transformational the software writers, the applications and workload developers who are trying to take advantage of next generation it to do something transformational, you have the also you have the facility side. So this is the data center, the real estate, and the two don't necessarily, you know, talk about strategy in a line on how they're going to facilitate transformation. It's ultimately it starts with having deep discussions with both of those organisations. What are you trying to do to transform your business? How does that translate to the types of gear storage networking that you're going to require? What if you weren't constrained by your facility? What could you do and paint that picture for them? It also in parallel involves deep discussions with the facility and corporal estate side of of a company. What do you have? What are your challenges many companies do have on I .'LL speak for the telco space. They have a landscape of what you could consider edge data centers. There, the central office's, uh, extend out to the cell tower. These are pieces of real estate that they're trying to monetize, and but what comes with that are the constraints and the variability from site to site regulation requirements, cost of construction, labor flavor rates. You know, whether it's union or not. >> There's just a tremendous amount of variability. The end of the >> day where Dell comes in and helps is one week. We are a great thickener of things because we can. We can I would say force. But really, it's enable the discussion between the and the facility teams. We do have that understanding, and we are looking at it objectively through both of those lenses at the end of the day, creating a cost model, something that customers can use to look att, tradeoffs, locations, types of technology. Looking at those trade offs to help them make decisions is we're spending a lot of our time doing. It's a real cultural dichotomy. You've got the, you know, technology team, trying to move fast and break things. You got the facilities and let's keep it stable and safe, and they're both critical. They were absolutely both critical on They have deep ownership and governance on those respective sides of the business. And so these edge data centers the part of the world that I own. It really forces that discussion happen. It's the collision between it and facilities where those decisions have to be made in a real estate level, a ten infrastructure facility level and at a ninety networking security level on all those things have to be understood and accomplished, solved at the same time >> and quickly. They don't have the luxury of time to really sit and battled this, you know, swan it back and forth like a tennis match. >> They don't I will say that >> majority the industry right now, this is a big play for them. You can't push all of your chips in without having a lot of this information. So what we're seeing is a lot of I would call crawl, walk, run where they are starting with modeling techniques. Then they're going with proof of concepts to test out. What does this mean from a non pecked standpoint? What does this mean from a Catholics? How much I'm going have to spend visit scale, you know, from one to a thousand or ten thousand? And so getting this data and helping them build the models to help them understand that allows him to plan big and understand what they need to do at a higher level? >> Wow. So much to dig into it, just like the edge dot dot dot to be continued. Ty, Thank you so much for joining David Lee on the queue next year. Can't wait to hear all the more stories should be more stories. Awesome. Ty, Thank you very much for Dave Volonte. I Lisa Martin. You're watching us on the Cube Live in Las Vegas. Day two of the Cubes coverage. Abd el Technology, World twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching

>> live from Las Vegas. It's the queue covering del Technologies. World twenty nineteen, brought to you by Del Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, everyone to the cubes. Live coverage of Del Technologies World here at the Venetian fifteen thousand attendees. One of the biggest, most important tech conferences all year long. I'm Rebecca, not your host. Along with my co host, stew Minutemen. We're joined by Caitlin Gordon. She is the VP product marketing at Delhi Emcee. Thanks so much for coming back on the cute Kate. I >> know This is so nice. Maybe we'LL have to make it three days in a row. >> I would we would love that. All right, so the last year at this very comforted you lunch power, Max, what's Tet Walker viewers through Sort of. The new capability is the latest and greatest. What's going on with power Max this year? >> Yeah, My favorite thing to talk about his power, Max. So we couldn't miss that today. Yeah, So a couple of updates in the Power Mac's front couple on the software side and then on more on the hardware side as well. S o from ah software side. We've got a couple pieces, which is a lot of our customers, really starting with the largest of our customers, are looking to add more automation into their data centers, and storage is no exception. And how do I automate some of those storage work clothes? Teo, make things run more seamlessly, get into more of a cloud operating model. So we had a couple of announcements on that front. We have a new V R. Oh, plug in, um, to automate work clothes through the r o A. CZ. Well, as ants will play books coming this summer, a couple important automation hand spins and obviously a lot more to come there in the future. The other one in a similar vein, is that containers, right. We've seen the increase adoption of container. So, um, and that the container is being used in production applications means that external storage is actually become a reality in that world, and the support for a C. S. I plug in on power Max, is something that we're seeing more interest from. So we have announced that's coming this summer as well. >> So, Caitlyn, I remember a year ago when Power Mask got announced. I heard things like intelligence and automation. And I went to add non, you know who's been working on this kind of technology for decades? Is that non how we've been talking about this for decades? Tell me why it's different and he lit up like I hadn't seen him in awhile, told me, What's going on for I want you to connect now a year later is what's this mean for customers? What does that automation? You know, an intelligence mean, is there a certain KP eyes or hero metrics who have is two customers using this today that they couldn't have done? And with you, no last generation intelligence storage? >> Yeah. Hey, think about it. It's really about moving to this concept of the Autonomous Data center. And how does this become an autonomous storage system? So both the intelligence within the system that we talked about last year and the decisions that the system is making itself every single day all by itself, that's that has really changed. And it's a completely new evolution of its making billions of decisions a day for customers so they don't have to do that means you're gonna have fewer people managing storage and they can invest in other things. Then when you move that up the stack, some of that the bureau, the answer will play books really enables you to then automate more of the work flows within that so again gets you more into that operating model, and you can automate not just the storage infrastructure, but then get to this autonomous data center >> So way talk to Travis briefly about Dev ops and you're mentioning answerable playbooks. You know, for years we've been talking to customers and saying, Okay, we we need to get two more agile environments, you know, Dev ops there, but enterprise storage specifically, there's a little bit slowed up, so it sounds like we're starting to get to greater adoption. What? What, what what got us over that you know, Hurdle, and where our customers with it today? >> Yeah, and I think it's really the maturity of our largest global customers that have gotten to a place where, for the workloads that will continue to remain on these thes on from infrastructure on our purpose built storage on our high end arrays, they need to run that as efficiently as possible. Um, and a lot of the work we've done to build in a. I does part of that, but really, ultimately they're looking at in there. Three. Terek protector. How do they run things more smoothly? Um, and it's really our customers that have brought that us is a requirement, and we've been able to to support that. >> So how do you work with customers? Mean innovation is, of course, an underlying theme of this of this conference. Talk about how you collaborate with customers to to solve their problems and how you help them. Think ahead what their future needs are. >> Yeah, and certainly Travis, I myself, might our teams, as well as the engineering team, spend a lot of time with our customers in the briefing centre. A lot of in the field, um, really talking about their challenges and the privilege that we have, especially with something like a Power Max platform, is the customers we have. There are the ones that are constantly pushing the boundaries of what we can do for them today, so they always need the best performance. The best efficiency and what has changed is they also now we need that simplicity. They need that operational simplicity, even on their high resiliency. High performance systems. Um, and we spend a lot of time understanding those requirements on DH, the problems that they're trying to solve and how we can help them get there and that that could be automation that could be containers. But it could also be cloud right, And that's the other piece that we've we made a lot of investments across our portfolio is how do we support that cloud consumption cloud operating model, leveraging public cloud? Um, and and a lot of it really just comes from how do we help our oppressors continue to solve their problems? >> It's a competitive marketplace, and, as you said, customers, they want everything. They want efficiency. They want simplicity. They wanted to not cost them too much money. What what's your unique selling point? How do you message this is This is why our solution is >> that I mean, our overall strategy delancy from a storage perspective is that we're way. We'LL have a single product in each segment with which we've compete and each one will be architected for very specific requirements so that we can meet the combination of a price points and it features and capabilities across all these different perspectives and that each one of our platforms is designed to be industry leading in that category. Which is why we have power Max on the high end, the resiliency, that performance, the availability that you know, banks, hospitals, governments around the world expect. But the same time we have mid range pot for us. We have an entry platform that could be sold for under twenty five thousand dollars, right and has a different set of requirements. We have the unstructured business, which is supporting the data. Aaron. That data explosion in a file data, Um, so the The fact is the matter is this. That is all about having the right actor architecture's so customers can have the data in the right place at the right time with the right service level. Um, and that's why we have this portfolio and within each portfolio that were leading in each one of those categories, That's kind of the bigger perspective we have on it. We do not just have a hammer. Not everything is a nail for us. Um, and that's an important part of how we can partner with with our customers to help themselves. Not one challenge, but all the challenges they have >> killing one of the interesting shifts we saw the show is clouds being talked at more than ever at this show. One of the earlier segments we had on we talked about the cloud enabled infrastructure. So things like power, Max, you know, I asked J. Crone, you know, tell me why this is cloud watching, and he gave me a good answer. What I want to ask you your angle on is when you talk to customers, you know how to storage fit into the overall discussion of their cloud strategy. You know what, some of the key business drivers and you know how how's Del technology? >> And I'm glad you said that because Jay and I have had this cloud washing conversation as well as I think that's the unfortunate thing in the reality in the market in the past, probably ten years is a lot of cloud washing, and where we're really focused today is, and we talked a little about this yesterday as well as they say. There's one piece of the how do we fit into overall Del technologies cloud strategy with the Del Tech Cloud. I'm in the VCF integration. We kind of covered that the other pieces that when we look at cloud enabled infrastructure, we're focused on solving really specific use cases that we hear our customers trying to solve today of connecting that data center into a public cloud. So that could be what we call cloud connected systems. The tearing of data from your own promises, infrastructure into the public cloud. Really, that's more of an archiving. This case, a kind of a tape replacement use case that could be dead, remain cloud tear, cloud tearing cloud pools. All the different pieces we have there could be CLO Data Services, right. Offering storage Data services is in a public cloud. Unity Cloud Edition will be one or the New Delhi emcee. Cloud storage services could be another one or even that cloud data insights piece of it. So it's really about solving that solving real challenges about disaster recovery Analytics in the cloud. How do you do that? In a really impactful way? That's simple and easy for customers. >> Yeah, the other Claude related thing wanted to get your take on is many of solutions. I heard on there is, you know, it's VX rail underneath. It's VX rail underneath. It's VX rail under >> you. Notice that >> I did, and you know a way. We had a number of people. V X ray. Lt's doing great, but, you know, if you talk about cloud and the infrastructure that I have in my data center, you know, we've talked Teo, talk to Dell for years. You know, the new power Max last year is underneath some of those admire. Where does that fit in? Kind of CIA and cloud, you know, infrastructure piece. >> Yeah, in a lot of different places. And for Roddy, for reasons, right? Some of us just the high value workloads you need. The scalability, the resiliency, the performance you need the ability to scale your computing your capacity separately. You want to be able to consolidate not just your applications, but actually all your file and sew something like unity or even power. Max, you can have your block workloads and your file workloads there. So we have a lot of customers looking to use traditional three tier architecture, but leverage that in a true cloud operating model from an automation standpoint, cloud consumption model, but also leveraging public cloud computing, right, leveraging the public cloud and really impactful ways, for example, for disaster recovery, eh? So it's really that combining what people love about our industry leading best of reed storage. Um, with that agility of the public cloud is a combination that we certainly hear a lot from our customers of How can I make the best use of clouds? Everyone walks in and say that club first strategy, but it's really about well, how do you actually think about data first and then how do you have a cloud strategy that supports that? >> So So let's talk about the future. I mean, ahs, You said This is what the customer is thinking about right now, but it's your job to think ahead and make sure that you are giving them solutions that fit their future need. So what are you thinking about the solutions that are available today that were really unimaginable five years ago. I think about ahead to twenty twenty five when there is enough data to fill the Empire State Building thirteen times over. How are you helping companies manage the tsunami of data? >> Yeah, and I think part of that is really about again the operations we talked about. Part of that really just comes back to having the right architecture for that type of workload. So this is where I salon actually well before the data era actually was designed for this specifically. So Iceland, created in the early two thousand's, was designed of one file system from terabytes and two petabytes. A single administrator can manage now up to fifty eight petabytes in a single file system. That's game changing when you think about the scale that we're seeing today. So the reason we went to that capacity isn't certainly just cause we thought we could. It was cause our customers were asking for it. Is these workloads in that data that we're talking about autonomous driving center that are just driving the scale? Ability limits, And they're asking for more and more in the most efficient floor print possible. And if you think about that, especially even in the cloud context, there's a There's a combination of How do you leverage that in the in the data center right? And physics means you can't get it up into the cloud necessarily. Um, but then also, there are use cases. They're like analytics of How do you leverage public cloud computing? But then you have that industry leading scale out now, as on the from the storage side so you can combine that. So you talk about something that we talked about here last year, and now we're talking about it a little bit more as well as our integration with Google Cloud platforms. So a lot of our customers are looking to use G. C p for compute for analytics workloads on DH. It's really almost rent your compute for analytics, but you have to have the right storage platform with the right architecture on the back end of that. So what we've done is fully integrated. Iceland, uh, platform and file system through G C P portal. So you could actually combine that public hug, compute and that file system that can support that type of scale. So it's a really unique combination that can help support not only the scale of that data, but also that some of the unique use cases and work loads that are coming out of that >> So Caitlin lot of products here that that would be talking about. Last thing I want to ask is customer customer conversation you have, you know, is data the center of the challenge and opportunity. They have something else that kind of bubbling up. As you look across the conversations you're having that you could have your audience. >> I think at the center of what I hear from customers, Data's in there, but they don't come in saying its data, right? They'll come in thinking about, you know, just trying to figure out how to use cloud properly there. Think about how Doe I simplify things. How do I, um, operate in a way to meet the service levels with a budget that's definitely not getting bigger? Um, and really be as efficient as possible. And it's not, um, some people are looking to go public. Cloud thinking. It's an easy button are there, but it's it's really about How do we change things? Teo run more efficiently and customers inherently to understand, right that the data is at the center of it, and that's increasingly the most valuable asset in the organization. And then they need to optimize their infrastructure to support that, so it really does come down to what? What can we help them to simplify? Optimize. Secure that so that they can truly unlock that. David Capital. >> Well, thank you so much, Caitlin, for coming back on the Cube. That's thanks for having me. Rebecca Knight for stew Minutemen. There is so much more coming up of the cubes. Live coverage of Del Technologies World in just a little bit.