>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and its ecosystem partners. (techno music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, day three of our coverage of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin joined by John Troyer, and we're excited to welcome back to theCUBE, distinguished alumni Bask Iyer, the CIO of Dell Technologies and VMware. Bask it's great to have you here. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> So we were joking before we went on that we're right next to the therapy dog area, so always nice to have a technology conversation populated with dogs barking. >> No I like the dogs better if you want to talk about dogs or guitar, I would rather prefer that over >> Oh I could talk about that all day. So talk to us about, you are the CIO of Dell Technologies and VMware, first Dell Technologies World, 14,000 attendees >> Right. >> In person. >> Yep. >> 6,500 technology and solutions partners here, another expected 30,000+ people engaging with the livestream, the on-demand videos. Big, big focus this week. Love to get your perspective on the role of the CIO, the role that you have now, you know you a few years ago, it was truly all about technology, now it's really about your involvement in the corporate strategy. Talk to us about the vision that you're setting, with Michael Dell, with your peers in IT and other stakeholders at Dell Technologies. >> Okay. No it's a great event I love this. A lot of these are colleagues, other CIOs. So they know, they want to know really do you use it inside Dell. A lot more credibility when you talk real stories about how you use it in Dell. The first thing is when I started this career there was no such title as CIO. That itself is pretty new. We were just the geeks who kind of ran everything. And then you became head of IT. So it was very strongly technical, and then they said you needed leadership and business skills, the pendulum swung one way to all business and leadership skills and no technology, and then came back to we should need both of that. And then you have business and general management, so every year the job changes. What I'm finding though, which is good and bad, is nothing goes away. You still need to know the technology, you still need to know the business skills, soft skills, still need to be a general manager. What is now is a lot more on the strategy. So the importance of strategy though is you never talk strategy if your operations is not good. Right nobody cares. But if your operations is somewhat good, you better not talk about operations. So I tell people don't keep on saying your trains are running on time. It has to run on time, if it doesn't, if it runs recently on time, talk about strategy. So now it's an important job to do that, and your question about in a technology company, I am the customer. I'm probably one of the very few people who actually signed a purchase order within Dell Tech to buy Dell or EMC or VMware. So they're interested in the customer's perspective. So you're the internal voice of the customer. We are also using all the tech that we make, and we need to give feedback to the developers and the R&D folks. So we call it drink our own champagne, but not our own Kool-Aid, you know what I mean. >> I like that. >> So sometimes you get carried away by the marketing things that we do. The challenge though is you working with Michael Dell, you're working with Pat Gelsinger and everybody else, and thousands of engineering fellows and so on, who know IT, who've invented a lot of things in IT. So you cannot really keep up with them. You know you need to know enough to hold your own, but if you try to compete with them, that is not a good thing. So luckily for me I was a good B student, I'm comfortable with A students around me. So you have you to be comfortable that you're not the smartest one in the room, but you're still contributing. That's the change you have. It is surreal to go in front of a Pat or Michael or other people and talk about digital transformation. And they're making eye contact they want to know how, what do you mean by digital transformation? How do you do it internally? What's your plan? So every once in a while you pinch yourself and say I can't believe this is happening. But it does happen. >> So Bask, I mean digital transformation is a theme of the show, right? >> Yeah. >> Make it real. As you talk with other CIOS, do they feel like they have a seat at that table? Are they the driver, are they the implementer? You start to hear more about a Chief Digital Officer, is that, does the CIO became the CDO, are they different? Do you have any thoughts on that? >> Yeah I'm very strong on the fact there's a again if the CIO focus only on operations and cost, then people say your trains are running on time lets get somebody clever to do the innovation and digital. You don't want to leave that, that is the cream of the crop. So I think if you're a good CIO, you want to be the Chief Digital Officer for the company. You don't want to have two CFOs, one for Wall Street and one for doing the real work. You don't want to have two salesperson, one for putting the numbers and one actually selling. So you need to have one technology person. Some companies may be so complex that you may consider that. I started as a chief Digital Officer in Hunnewell, ended up as the CIO for Hunnewell for example, but you need to have people who are very collaborative, those two have to work very closely together. It's very difficult to find one person who's collaborative and nonpolitical to be a leader of an IT organization. To find two and working as a team is complicated. So that's what I want. So I'm not a big supporter of that although I could see why it would happen, if you will. Okay. >> Lisa: So drinking your own champagne I like that by the way, you are in this role, it's interesting that you say you still kind of feel like you're pinching yourself when you're talking to a Michael Dell or a Pat Gelsinger, but you're up there having to implement digital transformation within Dell Technologies and all the companies underneath. >> Sure. >> That's a pretty big seat at the table. How are you sort of embodying the theme of this event and making digital transformation real for Dell Technologies? >> So I go very practical and I give, yesterday I talked to my fellow CIOs on the mistakes I've made. Right I came as the VMware CIO, we've already done this journey in a couple of years ahead of time. So wouldn't it be a cut and paste? Given the hybrid cloud, given the best end user environment possible and you're done. You already have that start. But I made the same mistake every CIO makes, we preach this but we don't follow it. It's not just the technology, it's people, process, culture, and technology, and I jumped on the technology, and I'm kicking myself to say, first three months didn't make a whole lot of progress. I was just yelling like a madman to say why is it not getting done. And then you have to go back into I have to hire the right people. So lets talk a few things. I made changes to the leadership team. Certain people were not comfortable in the pace of change. We did it respectfully but we had to have people who can actually lead the change. That was first. Then we called something about putting T back in IT. Which a long time in IT what we have done is we've outsourced, off shored, treated IT as a commodity and then we have program managers and leaders. Every magazine asked us to do that. Well, guess what we've been wrong. I think I've been wrong, doing that. You do need technologies right now. You cannot do digital transformation without understanding the technology. So we have to staff internally, we have to get good folks. Still manage the cost right, that doesn't go away, but you have to do the right thing. So IT, first get the right people, the process for it, what it dawned on me is we are talking about Agile and DevOps and continuous development. Those are all IT, geeky terMs. Those are not business terms. Those are not business terms even in Dell technology. Because there are manufacturing folks and HR folks and finance folks and so on. So I looked at fast experience of somebody like Hunnewell or GE. Remember they adopted Lean Six Sigma some kind of process to transform their company. And even me who's an IT geek had to go through a green-belt certification or a black-belt certification. And I revolted I said why would I do that, I'm an engineer why would I go through this stupid course, but it was required otherwise you don't get promoted. So now you need a prescriptive process to change the culture. So digital transformation needed that. Luckily for us we took the pivotal way, which we have within our company. We made it the Dell Digital way, since you still have to write it in your own language if you will. That is the process we use, we train our folks and our customers, our clients as I call them, customer is the person who buys the products from us, client is all the colleagues. So finance folks have to know what Dell Digital way is. You cannot do requirements the old way, and throw it over the wall and expect me to develop. You have to get into the room, With me and draw it on the wall and be able to design it together. So that's been a good change. And the culture changes with us because initially people are thinking, this guy's coming from Silicon Valley, he's not going to stay here, he's going to do all these things, he's going to get either fired or leave. So people try to run out the clock a little bit. So it takes a little bit of time to work on the culture and say innovation is not only demanded from you, but you have to keep the trains running on time. You have to chew gum and walk at the same time. So that's the process we go through. >> I love what you just described Bask because both in terms of culture and in technology, that actually makes for an interesting set of IT careers, right. That turns IT into a very interesting career again. >> Right. >> Many of my colleagues are IT pros, do you have any advice for somebody who is maybe in the start, the middle of their career, maybe specializing in something but they have I think this dream at the end of the tunnel, maybe the CIO is where they want to be. What do you see, how do I prep to be a CIO now, to be a CIO in say ten years? >> I'd tell him are you crazy? (laughs) Do you know what you're getting into? But here's what there's some truth to it. Getting a job is really easy I think. Doing the job is very difficult. So I tell 'em, get prepared for the job. Also, you should have some passion for technology. If you're a sportswriter, I mean I'm into sports, so you can give me all the magazines you want, I can see all the videos, I can watch 'em all day long. I can retire just watching sports all day long, or playing occasionally. You have to have the passion in technology because things keep coming at you. So we think Blockchain is cool by the time it get off the seed it's going to be something else. You have to be interested and passionate to keep up with that, right. So first thing is can you keep up with the change. Are you actually interested in it? Michael Dell sends you a text in the middle of the night, I don't think he expects me to react but I do. Because he's reading something and he's hearing something from the customers. You need to be interested in learning. So I said you have to be a lifelong learner, passionate on technology, and also learn the ropes because I always felt when I was younger I wasn't given the opportunities at the right time. I felt like am I going to die before I become a vice president or a CIO or whatever? It felt to me that it took a little longer than I wanted it to but thank god because once you got the job you were prepared for it. So that's one of the things I tell people is get prepared. Get into learning. Also the job changes all the time so I can't really write a book on it. You have to almost be like a chameleon in a sense. You got to learn so the last few years was technology, then it was business, then it was soft skills, transformation, ERP implementation, now it's business strategy, it's not going to stop. Technology is going to keep coming as a wave. So be ready for adapting and adopting to the changes if you will, right. >> I'm glad that you brought up people because it's not just systems and processes, none of this comes to fruition, companies don't transform IT, transform digitally, deliver more differentiated products without the people. We had some folks on earlier I think day one with Dell EMC Education Services, we've talked to the Channel folks about the things that they're enabling and one of the things that I think is really important that you brought up is all the things you said, I made all these mistakes. But those are opportunities not just for you to learn and grow, but also for you to share with the people that look at you and say I want to be Bask Iyer on stage. >> Yeah. >> You know in a few years because it's really all about being brave enough to say you know what I didn't know this, or I made a mistake, actually maybe it wasn't a mistake, maybe if I didn't go this path I wouldn't have learned and gotten more solidification under my feet to be able to be up there and get a text from a Michael Dell [Bask] That's right. >> In the middle of the night. >> That's right. >> So your advice to the next generation I think is key but I also really respect identification of hey all the things that maybe I did them wrong and encouraging more people as they want to grow their careers to not be afraid to go I don't know this. This this is an opportunity for me to learn. >> Yeah you cannot be the I wish I was the smartest room in Dell Technology, you know that is not possible. You're not even talking about the senior managers you have to talk to the fellows and engineers we have who I just nod and pretend like I know what they're talking about, it's just amazing. So you need a little bit of the humility I think to learn what you want to learn. But have the confidence right. You cannot have nothing and come and work here because I always tell people working in a tech company versus being a CIO of a regular company and I've done both, it's like getting to a batting cage and all of a sudden the balls are coming at 150 miles an hour. You better be prepared to face it. So you have to figure out can I face a ball at 40 miles or 60 miles or 150 miles. So you need to prepare yourself to get there. But having said that though, we are all learning. We are all growing, we all make mistakes. In fact I learn a lot from my millennial kids. They seem to know more about this than I do. I learn a lot and I do something called reverse mentoring in Silicon Valley, which is all the people from LinkedIn, Google, they want to learn from me because they think I'm the greatest CIO whatever, and I want to learn from them. I ended up at the end of the session learning a lot more from them and I feel actually guilty that the mentoring session has gone the other way but, that's what keeps it's interesting is the minute you feel like you know everything or you've done it, very risky in a technology profession, especially in a CIO profession. >> Lisa: So wrapping up the show here, talk to us about some of the things, and in the spirit of learning, what are some of the things that you've heard from customers about, whether it's the new product announcements or new partnerships or just the new areas that Dell Technologies is going in, what has the feedback been like? >> People love the fact that they saw Pat onstage and talk about VMware and Dell working together. People want to see the independence of VMware as well, and they want Dell and VMware working together. They want to see both. They want to make sure that there is the fierce independence that VMware is known for, and the fact that they're working together. That was good to hear because if you do one or the other people get freaked out. The fact that the best private cloud in the world is getting hooked up to the best public clouds in the world, that's a good message for people because they don't want to be locked into a cloud discussion or other kind of stuff. So you want to have the freedom to do that. A lot of people are now expressing interest in IOT and other kind of places and why the edge is important again. What tends to happen in my profession is we talk about IOT last year, this year we talk about AI and ML, guarantee next year's going to be something else. The technology sweet spot takes three, four, five years to hit. So if you just chasing the next wave because you want to be cool and fun you're missing out on opportunity to leverage this. So lot of buzz around the whole world is going to be wired, everything's going to have sensors, the amount of data that comes in and how to manage it and secure it. A lot of CIOs are saying we should get on top of that. Before it's done to us. Lot of buzz on that. I freaked out. I, like any other geek, went to the show to see the cool techs that everybody has. I went to the Dell booths to see the latest laptops because sometimes they don't show us the latest things >> (laughs) >> they keep it for the show. And then Michael Dell is in the booth. He didn't think it was funny but I thought Michael Dell in a Dell booth in Dell World, that's like you want to go buy a Mustang and you find Mr. Ford in the dealership. So I thought it was hilarious and I was shocked and he was just amused to say why do you think that is so funny. But it's nice to have a founder who's like an icon in the industry. Is he listening? Let me stop. (laughs) >> (laughs) He is a big fan of theCUBE. >> Thank you, then I'm not going to say anything nice about him. >> So, last question You talked about last year was IOT, now it's AI and ML, next year's going to be something else, are the people that are chasing those trends the ones that need the therapy dogs the most? (laughs) >> Yeah I think so because you know we have no time for anything these days, we are chasing the next shiny object. When AI and IOT come together, this is going to be fascinating for me. I worked on industry controls and so on, but if every wall could talk, and every object could talk to you what it would be telling you? And humans cannot comprehend it, because the wall is going to tell you so many things. So and so walked by, so and so sat here, whatever. You need artificial intelligence to filter it and say, you know Eric Clapton was here because that's the only thing maybe you want to know. I don't want to know about anything else. That requires AI to process and say this is what Bask would be interested in. And the rest of it doesn't really matter. So this combination I think is very powerful and I'm pretty excited about what if everything, what if dogs could talk, what if walls could talk, What if thermostat could talk >> Oh I'm waiting for that. >> So it's going to happen in our lifetime, pretty soon. >> Lisa: Well Bask thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights of how you're leading the charge as the CIO, right up there with Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger and all those big cheeses, but also how you're bringing the technology to the people and really like you said drinking the champagne. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> We want to thank you for your time. >> Thank you for the time. >> And we thank you for watching theCUBE, we are live day three of Dell Technologies World, right next to the dog therapy center if you need a little break, come say hi and stop by and see some dogs. I'm Lisa Martin for John Troyer, stick around we'll be right back after a short break. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE, we are live on day one of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend. This is a huge event, the biggest they've ever had, 14,000 live attendees expected, and an additional 35,000 expected to engage with the live streaming in the on demand video experiences, amazing. We're excited to welcome, from Dell Education Services, Sophie Barratt, Senior Director, and Charles Atkins, VP of Education Services. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Good to be here. >> Thank you for having us. >> Lisa: Absolutely, our pleasure. So this morning in Michael Dell's keynote, he talked about, and we're going to hear a lot over the three days, of digital transformation, IT transformation, security transformation. There's a fourth transformative element that companies need to apply to be successful, and that's workforce transformation. Chuck, Charles, sorry, I'm giving you a new name, Chuck. We already have a Chuck. You're Chuck for the day. >> We're all friends already. >> We're already old friends. >> Exactly, we go way back. Charles, talk to us about workforce transformation, from a thought leadership perspective, what does it mean? >> Well it's key when you think about digital transformation, that large, at the end of the day it's all about people. I mean you can have a common digital vision for your company, for your infrastructure, but at the end of the day you got to have the workforce to make that real. So, us in Education Services, I mean we talk to our customers on a daily basis, we look at, you know, a nauseating level of research, and there's a huge skillset gap, that continues to grow, expodentiously. And when you look at the level of automation that's been introduced, in all across the workforce, the gap is continuing to grow. So in education, we're taking a long hard look at, okay, what are the skillsets of the future that are needed today? When you think about machine learning, you know, artificial intelligence, data data data, you know, years ago big data was, you know, all the rage. Now we have all of that data. Now that data's becoming more intelligent. Now we need to educate our workforce, to live and work in a digital age, right along with robotics and everything else. So pretty exciting time. >> Well Charles, I would love to hear both you guys are veterans of education, veterans of the IT industry, it has changed tremendously over the past five years, versus when I cut my teeth 20 years ago in IT. It was very step ladder, you know, I got a vendor certification, I learn the product, I was able to get into the industry, how has machine learning, digital transformation, how has that changed your jobs, and your approach to how you educate your customers? >> So great question, and I too come up in that age, right? So back in the day when you needed a Microsoft certification or a storage level certification, having that kind of siloed view, all of that has changed. And when we think about skillsets needed today, it's across multi-Cloud environments, security infrastructure, the in-user devices are as smart as the data center solutions that are driving the Clouds on the backend. So now you have to have a broad range of skillset, so obviously, times have changed, skillset development has changed, and that's a big reason why we in Education Services are hyper focused on that fourth tower, workforce transformation, to enable that digital realization. >> You wrote a blog recently on skills transformation, can you kind of break it down, some of the transformation certifications that Dell EMC's enabling? >> Absolutely, so we just launched four net new transformational certifications, super excited about this, and when you think about, again, the history, you think about product level certifications. You know, individuals go out, and they get trained and educated on how to use that specific product. But as those silos start to go away, and the technology starts to become across multiple platforms, we had to take a step back and say, "Okay, education today needs to change". Both in how learners learn, how they have need personalized education services, 365, 24 by seven across the globe, but also, they need to be less product centric. So we launched four new certifications in the security realm, converged infrastructure, multi-Cloud, enterprise architecture, big one. So think along the line of an enterprise architect, building an end to end, company to company solution, that is a multi-Cloud environment, security architecture on the backend, product level, that's a completely different skillset than we had 10, 15 years ago. So, you know, that is the workforce of the future, is having those individuals, really multi-facet, multi-skilled, all across not only Dell EMC products and technology, but also all the strategic aligned businesses. So we have you know, co-skilled, co-badged, certifications available today, with VMWare and Dell EMC, starts to broaden that range of the true skillset that's needed for today and definitely for the future. >> So I would love to hear from you Sophie, about the CI0, CTO story, what is the ask? Because, there's a combination of University, there's the combination of vendor training, What's the ask from the CIO, (mumbles), on the services that they're expecting from Dell when it comes to education? >> So they're expecting us, just as Charles had articulated, to go well beyond product level training, right? They want their people to understand the context to that they're operating in, and they want them to be able to see themselves as service providers, right? They're managing now a portfolio of IT services, and they need to think about how they deliver that portfolio to their customers. That could be other departments within IT, or onto the end customer, which is a very different way of thinking about IT, right? That when you're just sort of operating, you know, a product, or a suite of products. So that's something we hear from CIOs pretty often. And the other thing I would say is, you know, sort of in return, we have an ask for CIOs, right? Which is to understand that, it's really not just about, sort of training, and making sure that people are trained on, you know, particular solutions, whatever the flavor of the day happens to be, but making sure that as they're thinking about digital transformation, IT transformation, that they're underpinning it with a focus on continuous learning. Because the technology has morphed incredibly quickly, the expectations of IT are morphing incredibly quickly, and if learning doesn't happen continuously, you know, individuals and COs themselves are not going to be able to keep up. So we're trying to enable them with a suite of, you know, sort of point solutions, as well as that continuous learning environment, and sort of cultural affinity, that can help them be successful and make IT really a competitive differentiator. >> In the spirit of continuous development, talk to us about some of the research that you've done recently to understand, and really kind of shape the direction of the new Education Services, that Dell EMC is delivering. >> Sure, well actually you know, one of the really fascinating findings, and I sort of started to elude to it just then, was the importance of sort of the commitment from the CIO level down, as well as the individuals up. And that sort of reciprocity between a person, like an IT professional's commitment to learning, and their own development, as well as the management team creating that environment, where it's okay to learn, right? And it's okay to admit that, you know, you don't know something, or that you have an appetite to develop yourself. So we just did some research that showed that where individuals are the most transformation ready, themselves, is actually in IT departments that have a very strong commitment to learning. And that inverse is also true. >> When we look at IT transformation, as Michael Dell even said this morning, as the opportunity for IT to become a profit center, IT transformation has so much potential to enable every part of the business, to use data and apply it multiple times, to combine it, re-combine it, identify how customers are using that, how can IT, as you were saying, seems like it's much more of a cultural propensity to learn, how can IT help influence other parts of the business, to have this appetite to continuously learn? >> Sure, let me start with that, and then Charles you can add your perspective, but, you know, interestingly we have a customer advisory panel, here at Dell Technologies World every year, and we'll probably talk about it when we have this year's event tomorrow, but last year this was actually a topic that came up, and IT professionals struggle with that, frankly, right. How they can better partner with the business, to talk the same language as the business is talking, and translate the business requirements back into a technology solution, and architecture that makes sense for that digital future. And actually that was one of the main drivers behind our new multi-enterprise architect certification that Charles eluded to a minute ago, so there's a lot there in that, you know, there's a big journey for IT departments to travel, but we're doing our best between helping with those continuous learning environments, the training and certifications that can really sort of bridge the gap right between the business and IT. >> I think most IT organizations are in that transformation, or at the cusp of it, and it really goes back to having that digital vision, and really that digital thought of saying, "Okay, where do we want to go? And how do we get there?". Workforce transformation's a big piece of it, obviously all of the IT architecture software development aspect on the backend is huge. But you got to come up with that vision first, and you really need to think about the future of the IT organization, as really expected customer outcomes. So the customers that they service whether they're internal or external customers, they're expecting an outcome, so really truly becoming an IT customer service organization. And you know, some are struggling, some are at the onset, some are deep into that transformation, and I would like to echo one of the things that Sophie said, when I looked at all of the research, 61% employees surveyed said they're not digitally ready. 61% of companies said, "We don't have a clear digital strategy". So, you know, the emphasis really is upfront, now's a good, opportunistic time for companies to take a step back, and say, "Okay, what does that digital future really look like?". >> Keith: 'Cause we're not-- >> If you look over, sorry, when I look over the next five years or so, look at the advancement in machine learning, artificial intelligence, get too far behind that digital evolution, some companies might not be here. >> So I had a really engaging conversation with one of the leaders in open source, serverless, and he was, he debated that enterprises are absolutely ready for this transformation. Me, maybe not so much. How do you help to do that heavy lifting? We talked about enterprise IT inspiring other organizations, but Sophie, you eluded to that this is a two way conversation. This is not just about Dell EMC Education going out and producing materials, IT professionals have to feel motivated to actually consume that data, and move forward, so that they can embrace the digital transformation, and help educate. Help talk to me about the boots on the ground. How are you guys hoping to inspire regular enterprise IT folks, the legacy DNS administrator who's sitting at his desk. I've been doing DNS for 10 years, I know how to do DNS, now we're asking him to engage and maybe not do machine learning, but embrace DevOps for example. >> Sophie: So there's a few tools that we have at our disposal, actually, speaking of AI and ML and sort of, you know, advanced ways of doing business, we're also trying to incorporate some of those technologies in the way that we create learning experiences. So we're also trying to make the learning experiences themselves more compelling to the people. But that aside, in terms of the content itself, we actually recently did a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course, around DevOps, so there are a ton of resources for IT professionals who want to get started, and just kind of immerse themselves in this space, and learn, sort of incrementally, like sort of be exposed to it, and then once they decide that they want to take that step and get certified, or whatever it is, we have those more formal tracks for them as well. >> I'm wondering to even how much, in our personal lives, we have everything in our pockets, we expect that, and how many people have our home assistants and are actually using or part of the machine learning user experience at home, and not really thinking about that. How much do you think culturally that's actually going to help the IT folks become more able to make workforce transformation real, at the spirit of the event, by what's happening in their personal lives? Do you think that's going to be a big influence? >> Charles: I think it's going to be huge. I mean, look at the automobile industry, and the transformation that's gone throughout, just the last decade alone. And apply that to our everyday life. I mean, again, if you look at it as a core edge solution, the edge solution, I mean, the amount of data that is transacted on a daily basis just from me driving my vehicle, everything from health and vehicle reports, when it's time to change the oil, et cetera, I mean it's going to be a consumer driven motivator. And it's going to force companies to really kind of think through, okay how do we get more intelligent with our data, because the customer expectations have now increased 10X. And it's going to create smarter devices. I mean, whether it's our mobile phones and, I'm old enough to remember when that got introduced, I don't know if that's a positive or negative, but in looking how much that one device has changed my life, and now the level of intelligence that I see just in the software apps that are on the phones. I mean, it's going to be a key motivator. One of the things I would like to touch on, that Sophie briefly touched on, you said, "Boots on the ground". So we have something called skillset analysis, Learning Needs Assessment's what we're going to name it, but really it's an opportunity for individuals to go out and really go through and define what their level of technical expertise is. I think it's something that, you know, when I look at learning and development worldwide, even for myself, I need an area I can go out and, kind of test my skills, to your point about the DNS person, right? And I talk to these individuals on a daily basis, being an old engineer myself, already know all of that. But getting those individuals to go out there and really do an assessment of what is their true skillset, in this net new world of technology and digitalization, helps create at least a profile that tells Charles, "Hey I'm not really that good in this this and this". So maybe there is an opportunity to improve my skillset development in those areas. I think having that personalized level of learning interaction, and it allows the individual to be honest with where their skillset is, and take a step back and say, "Okay maybe I do need to go learn X Y and Z". And that'll help propel it. >> Lisa: And I'm wondering too, with Imposter Syndrome being something that is so publicized, I didn't even know what it was and I had it, until I saw it being talked about and I thought, I know, it made me feel a little bit better, but I'm wondering, on the personalization front, you know, we expect our lives and all of the digital assistance that we have, in our cars or our home or whatnot, to give us a personally, help us through life. How are you encouraging participants to take this assessment and go, you know what, maybe I've been in this for 20 years but there are things that I don't know. Maybe that's more of a psychological thing, but how do you encourage people to kind of identify, I have Imposter Syndrome, but I want to actually get better. What's the cultural education component to that? >> Charles: Alright, you have to take a a personalized social approach. How many surveys have you done that have randomly popped up in one of your apps on your phone? Or whatever the case may be. Now, obviously we're starting as a little bit more internal, really looking on our internal skillset and capability but, as this, you know, user interface goes live around the world, I expect both customers and employees internally to go out there and just be curious. Where do you fall? And whether you've done an IQ test online, or hey what are your 10 favorite movies, getting that social action, our interaction I think will be a key enabler in driving that. And that's really going to create the stickiness 'cause I would much rather not have a conversation between individuals saying, "Well Charles, you're really not that good at X". I would like to go out and do an assessment so, wow, I was right, I'm really not that good at X. Okay now what do I need to do to drive my own career advancement, my own education advancement, and that really puts, you know, learning in the hands of the end user, because I want to be responsible for my career, yes I want to do great things for the company, but I'm also trying to figure out, okay where does my career go from here? And this allows that user to be in control of that. >> I think it comes back also that reciprocity right, between sort of the environment in which you're working and creating that safe space or learning culture where you are empowered to take ownership of your own development in your own career, and that you have the toolkit, such as this Learning Needs Assessment, you know, that we can provide, as well as many other things, to be proactive and to take those first steps, and then to have sort of air cover if you will, from your organization to do that. >> Last question, how many people are you expecting to go through certification trainings, initiated at Dell Technologies World? >> Several hundred for sure. We have many people who pre-registered to take exams, and there's a continuous flow down through the professional center, you all should come on down and check it out, downstairs, Casanova 501, so we are running exam prep sessions, exams sort of continuously from morning till night, all three and a half days of the show, so we expect probably several hundred new certifications to come out of it. >> It's a tremendous opportunity, I'm afraid if I go down there and take, I'm going to fail all the assessments. I might need your help. >> It's okay 'cause the first failure's free, at least you get an assessment of how (mumbles) you are or not. >> Oh it's my lucky day, I'm going to go gamble. >> I at least understand the questions on there. >> Maybe you could help me cheat? Okay, so Sophie and Charles, or Chuck, as we're now calling you, thank you guys so much for stopping by, and sharing with us the continued learning opportunities that Dell EMC has provided us with. >> Thanks for having us. >> Absolutely, thanks for having us. >> And for my co host, Keith Townsend, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from day one of Dell Technologies World, in Las Vegas. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (electronic music)