(upbeat electronic music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Boomi World 2018, brought to you by Dell Boomi. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we've been live all day at Boomi World 2018 in Las Vegas. I am Lisa Martin with John Furrier. John, this is the second annual Boomi World, the first time theCUBE is here. We've had a great day. Started things off with Michael Dell, who I really found it very telling that Boomi, as a business unit of Dell Technologies, that the CEO of Dell Technologies comes here to kick things off this morning. What is your impression after talking with Michael and some of the folks from Boomi, what is your impression of Boomi? >> Well I think Michael Dell has talked about, he always talks the same talking points, 'cause we've done them so many times, he's got the traditional Dell business, Dell Technologies business foundation, you've got EMC merger of equals, but he's quietly been incubating some key flagship directions. One is VMware, which hasn't been incubated, it is quite a market leader in virtualization, the relationship with Amazon, so VMware is kind of its own, the main flagship. Pivotal has been really core. So he talks about VMware, Pivotal, and the portfolio of Dell Technologies. So I think for me the big takeaway from this event is that Dell Boomi is the third flagship of the kind of armada of Dell's future. So having Michael be here, he could be at VMware in Europe, in Barcelona, he's here. He sees Boomi as a core linchpin to connect into the growth of Pivotal, which has been growing off VMware, and now you've got Boomi coming up the rear, saying, hey, we could actually tie stuff together. And they solve a problem that the average productivity developer or IT person, who doesn't want to write a lot of code, they call it low code, to deliver kind of the assembly and integration of the next generation applications. So net new applications while improving existing. And this is under a category called Integrated Platform as a Service at an enterprise level. So I think Boomi is becoming a strategic part of the Dell playbook. I think that's a big surprise to me because Boomi is known, but their growth has been phenomenal, 80% numbers he said. So this has been kind of a coming out party for Boomi in the sense that this is real. >> I'm curious, though, why do you think, so the Dell Technologies companies Pivotal, RSA, VMware you mentioned, Dell EMC, Virtustream. Why is it that you think that Dell Boomi is a business unit of Dell Technologies and not one of those, part of the seven-eight standalone companies. >> Well they bought them eight years ago and it's evolving, so it's organically grown and it's on a relevant weight. The relevant weight is cloud native, cloud scale with data as a value proposition that's the scale horizontally. So from different database you want to pull that data into realtime. That's a key integration point whether it's APIs for stateless applications or having statuses with data. This is the battleground you're seeing with Kubernetes, you're seeing it with network services at the micro services level, so they solve a big problem. The rest of Dell is just a massively huge portfolio of products that solve the enterprise other problems. So why have 26 vendors, he said, when you can go to Dell and get all the basic things you need but have an enabler for the future. And that is really about having that bridge to the future and that's what Michael wants and that's what Dell's doing is just saying, look it, VMware runs your stuff and a lot of stuff around it Pivotal's going to integrate you in with cloud, cloud-native, cloud-foundry, and do all these things, and Boomi's going to help tie it all together. That's a nice value proposition, that gives customers comfort in my opinion. I think that's a good story and I think Boomi could be a big part of that piece of the puzzle. >> We heard a lot about trust today, we hear a lot about trust, John, at every event, talking about data needs to be trusted, but Dell Technologies, and Dell Boomi as well, as a trusted advisor, you mentioned the growth numbers, I think 80% last quarter that Michael Dell shared this morning. Chris McNabb, the Boomi CEO, also talked about that. But they've also grown this, it's doubled in its second year. It's gotten too big for San Francisco. They have 7,500 plus customers and counting globally. They're adding five new customers a day. One of the things that I heard pervasively throughout the day is how symbiotic Dell Boomi is with their customers, with their employees, and with their partner ecosystem. So they now come and say, with the iPaaS market, fifth year in a row as a leader in the partner MQ, but now they've come out and said today, we want to redefine the I in iPaaS. iPaaS is a well established market, they're now saying, we're going to use intelligence, and I think it was north of almost 30 terabytes of anonymous metadata, and as Michael has said a number of times, companies need to be using their data as a way to identify their competitive advantage, and they're doing that. >> That's a core value proposition and I think Boomi is undervalued in my opinion the way the market sees them because no one has yet valued how important the insights are out of it. Because people are just now starting to operationalize this notion of, well, I can get insights out of a legacy, value critical mission system in a cloud native environment. So these new value propositions that are emerging and Boomi, it's easy to say, hey, on the face of the numbers, okay, the purchase price per customer is low, but the value's high, the value of the data's high, so I think the only thing Boomi's got working against it is its own success could be a problem on the ticket. So there's a lot more revenue around Dell than what Boomi's doing on a straight product basis. They've got a great product market fit, check the box there, that's a great thing. Question is, if I'm a competitor, I could say, oh, I'm going to put them in a box, but they do more. There's so much going on around Boomi that I think Dell's smart in saying, okay, the purchase price that they're going to get in bookings revenue is x, but the value's high enough, that's why the growth is there on the sales side, but the actual contribution to overall Dell is much higher. So I think Boomi could be a very strategic piece of the puzzle for Dell. >> It really sounded like that today from Michael Dell on down. And they came out today and said boldly, Dell Boomi is your transformation partner really carrying on the theme of Dell Technologies World which theCUBE was at just about six months ago which was all about digital transformation, IT transformation, security transformation, workforce transformation. That theme at Dell Technologies World of the platform of the possible extended here with Boomi, unlimited possibilities. >> Yeah, I think people look at the cloud and then they try to figure it out and I think it's pretty clear that the SaaS business model shows the scale. But there also used to be an analogy in business where it's kind of like McDonald's or fast food and people always move from station to station. In IT people are now wearing multiple hats so you're going to see that the trend move towards multiple hats, people wearing multiple hats and managing multiple things. Boomi allows that to happen because when they do integration they don't have to go back and fix it. So you can ship it and move on to the next thing which could be another task. So I think the people management side of the culture of DevOps is a big thing. >> And Michael talked about that, the people culture, the change management. That's really challenging. And we asked him to share, well, Dell Technologies now, 34 years after he started his business in his dorm room with $1,000, probably couldn't have imagined it is becoming what it is. But this is an organization that has transformed itself dramatically, and had to transform its people and culture to, I would argue, be the fuel for that digital IT security transformation. >> It's the fuel for the rocket ship, and that's what Dell was talking about. It's very interesting to see how they play it out but I think Boomi's got some upside big time for Dell and I think that the customer traction shows that the data value in integrating fast and having that low code automation is a winning formula. It's in line with where VMware's going, it's in line with what Pivotal's doing, and it's in line with this digital transformation trend. I think that's what they're talking about. >> Well I enjoyed hosting with you today, John. I think it was a really interesting event and I love unpacking things like integration. It's so much more than that, and they did a great job of articulating that. >> We talked about Kubernetes too, when Kubernetes came out on theCUBE too. Always good to get those Kubernetes soundbites. >> We talked about blockchain as well, and how Boomi and partners are enabling customers to really take advantage of a blockchain. They're announcing some support with that. IoT, as Michael said, speaking of boom in Boomi, there's going to be a boom at the edge. Again, that was a theme from Dell Technologies World that came here today, and some of the customers, the last customer we just had on-- >> Yeah, I mean, the thing that I'd say too is Boomi's got this cool vibe going on, but remember Boomi was born in the cloud that means they're cloud native. All their stuff is cloud, so they understand the culture that they're selling into. And I think that gives Dell a cool factor here and very cool and relevant with the trend lines. So I think they've got a good opportunity. Great to host with you, great time. >> Excellent. Well, thanks John. >> Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin for John Furrier from Boomi World 18. Thanks for watching, we'll catch you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to day three of Dell Technologies World, the inaugural Dell Technologies World. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. This is our kickoff of day three, we got a little analyst roundtable, Keith Townsend is with me, Stu Miniman, Peter Burris, the co-host, tri-hosts, quad-hosts of this show, long-time Dell EMC watchers and guys, let's unpack what's going on here. We're a couple years in now, the merger between Dell and EMC. I've said all along this was inevitable because of the pressures of cloud. It's very clear that Michael Dell is taking control of this company, it's the Dell brand, Dell Technologies, Dell Technologies World, EMC is sort of fading into the past, we'll talk about that Stu, we'll talk about the culture and the implications there, but I want to start with you Keith, let's talk about the customer perspective. What are you hearing from customers? What are the challenges that they're facing? Some of the concerns they may have with Dell and some of the positives? >> So one of the challenges, customers were worried that Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, would just be another HPE too big to solve their challenges, just how do you find solutions in the company with such a large portfolio? In reality, customers are pleasantly surprised that Dell Technologies has been able to surface up solutions, and not just focus on solutions, and also partner with their existing ecosystem of vendors, which is a surprise. One of the things I challenged Michael on as a customer, was hey you know what, this deal with Nutanix, this deal with XE, what are you leaning with from a hyperconverged solution perspective? Dell has been able to walk that line extremely well, We had a Datrium customer on day one, couldn't be happier with the relationship, then we talked to a couple of folks from the product team, 62% of the client meetings this week has been about VxRail, VxRack. Talked to another Fortune 500 customer that's all in on VxRail VxRack, not just for standard workloads, for SAP HANA which is not even certified for VxRail VxRack, so customers really happy with the overall ability of Dell to bring solutions to the table. I've seen, though we still have some time to tell if they'll be able to keep that momentum as they grow, as they continue to partner, and if they can continue to find solutions to challenges. >> Keith, if I can actually just follow up on one thing there, it's very clear that Dell will streamline the portfolio. Had Michael Dell, Jeff Clark, people from the marketing organization said absolutely, and we're telegraphing to customers as soon as we've sorted everything out we're gonna communicate it. Is there any concern from the customers? Michael said, we won't leave any customer behind, but absolutely the past of what EMC had with so many storage products they couldn't figure it out, there will be a lot less of them by the time we get to next year. >> So I think one of the things that you hit on when you talk about culture, I think customers still are very happy with the EMC brand, I think Dell did a really great job of not just getting rid of the EMC brand, customers still very much trust EMC. EMC had an extremely capable support organization, there's question about whether that support, that white glove support that we've gotten in the past from EMC will exist going forward. You know, Dell got rid of EMC cold, they brought Scale IO to a hardware-only solution versus the open ecosystem, so there's questions around where the cost-cutting will impact customer operations and support, but overall customers are happy with the progression. >> Peter Burris, one of the questions that Stu asked both Michael Dell and Clark yesterday is look you've got some of your bigger hardware competitors like IBM, like HP and HPE running away from head-to-head and I think Jeff Clark said "well I don't know how you can do end-to-end without both heads." So from your standpoint, from a customer perspective, is there an advantage to that head-to-head? We certainly heard it over the years, we used to hear it from HP a lot, we used to hear it from IBM a lot, they've retreated from that, Dell's sort of banging that end-to-end drum, does it matter from a customer perspective? >> Well of course, but it matters not just for what the customer wants but also the applications required. So, look, the biggest challenge, the most obvious, best end-to-end solution, if you take a very narrow view, it's gonna be AWS, Azure, some of these others. But the question is, is all of your data going to be in that public cloud? So the fundamental engineering challenge that every enterprise is gonna have is where am I gonna put my data? Some of the data is naturally gonna go to the public cloud, some of the data is not. What Dell needs to do over the course of the next couple of years is pick up on that as aggressively as they possibly can, try to not just convince people, but to show them that their organization of their digital business increasingly is going to be defined in terms of where their data assets are located, the practical realities of what that means, and therefore what types of fundamental support are they going to have to bring to bear on it? Keith, you said something interesting about HPE. The reason why Dell was not HPE, a little bit less so on IBM, is that Dell, Dell EMC have over the past 10, 15 years have made good bets, HP did not make good bets. You want to understand the history of HP over the last 10 years and why they're not the same, it's because HP gyrated all over the place to try to buy companies that were kind of at that moment a good price, let's just go for scale as best as we can, and Dell hasn't done that. Well Michael and his team have stayed relatively close to a simple vision of what types of engagement model they want, they've delivered on that vision, and they've got the assets that they can put into play now, but they just have to convince the enterprise that the play is where do you put your data, because you're gonna put your processing close to your data, and you're not gonna put it all in one place, right customer? And that's not going to be an easy, that's going to be a very challenging set of conversations over the next few years. We think how it's gonna play out is that Dell EMC is gonna be just fine because the enterprises are not gonna want to give all of their data up, and they can't give all their data up, so we'll see what happens. >> Well Stu let's talk about that, I mean Dell's cloud strategy is pretty clear, they want to be an arms dealer to the cloud. HPE, that's really their only choice, obviously IBM owns a cloud so it's a little different there, Oracle owns its own cloud, and they have software, that's a whole different ballgame. Dell clearly is comfortable being a high-volume, lower margin supplier, throwing off cashflow, throwing off profits. What's your take on the lack of a public cloud and are there issues there? >> Yeah, well you know Peter talked a little bit end-to-end and you see what Azure and AWS are doing. One of the surprising things for me is to see pieces of the public cloud and how the Dell Technologies portfolio are fitting into it. So being we're a native US, we absolutely understood. There's actually an isilon with Google cloud, a solution that I had an interesting discussion with Manuvir Das on day one here, really explained that you know scale out architecture, really get into the cloud. IBM cloud, there's a booth for them, they're here on the expo floor, so we've seen that maturation as hybrid cloud is not that transferring state that people thought but as that pits out we know data and applications are going to live lots of places and a company like Dell needs to be able to live in many of those environments. Edge of course, IOT, a hot issue that they're talking about, but they have portfolio products that will live in many of those places, so good maturation, public cloud is not enemy number one but of course they are a little bit more toward the private cloud, they highlight a bunch that if you go all in your prices are gonna be bad, we're gonna pull it back, Keith mentioned the EMC code team kind of got killed. A bunch of them are actually over at VMware now with an enhanced team, so it's still, we're not at the steady state of where the shift from my data center to public cloud is but it is definitely matured and nuanced and Dell has a lot of good partnerships that are growing. >> Well and selling servers to tier one cloud guys is not a great business, HP exited the business, Dell's in the business but it can't be a high market, it's not a great business I mean we know that. But, you know, nonetheless there's a lot of non-tier one clouds up there. You had a point to make, Pete? >> Yeah really quickly, the thing I was gonna say is, and we've talked about this in the past, and if we think about two things about Dell's portfolio, first off if we look back at what happened with the minicomputer business, and everybody says "oh the microprocessor killed it" well that probably contributed, but what really killed the minicomputer business was TCPIP and CISCO, that's what killed the minicomputer business because before a Dell or a Deck executive or a DG executive would walk into a shop with stuff all over the shop floor and the customer would say "I want to integrate this, you know, bridge it" and CISCO said, flatten the whole thing, bring TCPIP, and all those minicomputer companies went away. There is a gem in this portfolio which is NSX, and the degree to which Vmware, NSX can in fact become that technology for flattening the cloud network, cause that, to me, that's what the next big play in this industry is gonna be. AWS is gonna have its approach, Azure is gonna have its approach, you're gonna have bunch of on-premise stuff, the question is are you gonna be able to flatten those networks and really achieve that end-to-end? And if there's one good option on the table right now in the industry, it's VMware NSX for doing that. The second thing that I would say is, and I had a couple conversations with some folks about this this morning, we're talking about end-to-end, we're talking about greater conversions, hyperconversions, etc, yet Dell is still organized by server, storage, network, and it's going to be interesting to see how that evolves over the course of the next few years as customers increasingly do want a leverage that's end-to-end, diminish the distinctions and take advantage of convergence and whether or not we see Dell have a series of inter-nexian warfares about where that ends up. Because we know Dell does not wanna be RCA, right? >> Well that's really interesting because some of near-term moves that they've made are basically to take some of that converged stuff and put it in- >> That's right. So I love that now the TCPIP and NSX completely agree with you, the one thing that Dell is definitely missing from a customer perspective is the control plane glue they want to lead with the VMware story, you know any workload any cloud, I'm not gonna take my VMware approach to Google, I'm not gonna take that to Azure. So this any workload, any cloud thing, I'm not buying. I don't think customers are buying that. HPE is leading I think with a pretty good message on offering cloud services. It's a really, really difficult problem. >> The Oncenter story, you're talking about. >> The Onecenter story. It's a very difficult problem, enterprise customers want a single solution to consume all files, they want that TCPIP set of protocols, standards- >> They want the cloud to be flat. >> They want the cloud to be flat. NSX flattens it from a networking perspective but from a controlled plane API perspective the industry is a long way before that and I don't think Dell even has any plans for it. >> So, Stu, you know well when people were talking about you know, Michael's gonna sell VMware, you were very vocal about it, "no he's not, only an idiot would think that, I mean there's no way that's gonna happen." I mean, what a gem, in the portfolio, talk about end-to-end. The other thing I wanted to bring up is if you look at Dell's business, about half is the client business, it's doing better than expected so it's throwing off more cash than expected, especially with the storage business being soft, Dell's been pretty transparent about that, well I guess it has to be, but nonetheless there's upside there, but VMware is about 10% of the revenues, it throws off half of the operating cash, so why would you get rid of that, right? It's such a strategic asset 500,000 customers, a key part of the end-to-end, and it just makes this such a more interesting business. >> Yeah I mean Dave, I know you love teasing apart this complex, the tracking stock, all the things there, one of the interesting nuggets out of the Michael Dell interview was oh he said "the tax changes really had no impact, you know that's not it." You know, people really misunderstand, they understand these finances, it's not that they're hurting for cash, they can't make cash positions. >> So with my senses it's probably a slight negative but with the tax legislation, you're right, it's basically a net neutral for these guys. It's way overblown. >> Yeah, but you know, what's changed, we knew, when Dell went private, there were a bunch of changes in-company, I knew a lot of people that left the company for different things. The EMC acquisition, it's been a lot of change in the last 18 to 24 months, it'll still be rolling out there, you know, I live right in the heart of the old EMC country and there's some changes there, who's running it, you see a lot of former Dell executives, legacy Dell executives, there's still some strong people from the EMC side but Jeff Clark, very strong engineering culture, actually the more I've gotten to know him the more he reminds me of what EMC was 10 or 15 years ago in a good way, sharp, technical, getting on it. So I think the EMC brand, by the time we come here next year will be gone, but it doesn't mean the EMC people or products like the powermac are gonna be going anywhere. >> Well let me push at that a little bit, cause one of the things that Jeff Clark is doing is he's simplifying the portfolio, and Joe did the opposite, he complexified the portfolio because he said overlaps are better than gaps. And Jeff Clark's taking a different approach, is there a concern for customers? Wow, I might be left behind. They've got to be a little bit careful with that message, don't they? >> Yeah, but I mean we've touched on it a little bit, Dave, there's still some of the core product, you know powermac comes out there, this is the legacy of b macs, still supports the mainframe, you know, there's a business for this, and they're not gonna leave their customers behind. But what we said, Dave, when they put this portfolio together they need to turn the crank a little bit to get the operating margins where they need to be, not be overlapping so much with marketing and some of these other places. So, they're going to be very smart in how they do this, they say they're going to overcommunicate to not only their customers but their partner. I've talked to a bunch of (inaudible) partners, pretty happy. You know, there were a little bit of bumps over the last 18 to 24 months as to "oh wait I had this account rep and now they brought in this overlay and then they flopped who owned it." So it's been interesting to watch some of those and- >> Well look. >> It's a people business, and some of that changed- >> At the end of the day, Dell's portfolio can all be placed in service to the customer with relevance and competency today. That's a much better problem to have than a company that has either been building a bunch of stuff that's not gonna matter or has bought a bunch of stuff that's not gonna matter. It means if they can sustain a degree of focus that allows them to pay down their debt and do the financial engineering and Tom Sweet's a stud, the CFO's a stud, it means that they can listen to customers and continue to service what the customer needs because their portfolio is easily applied to customer problems unlike a lot of other companies. That's a pretty decent position. They can pursue all of these things because the portfolio is relevant. Now, are there gonna be some challenges? Well, one of the reasons why EMC complexified the portfolio was because they had salespeople who were deeply engaged in their accounts and they used that as an advantage, and so the salespeople said "I need something" and so Dell EMC, like CISCO did for years, went off, or EMC, went off and found it. Dell still has a different channel organization and a different channel approach, much more partnership-oriented, if there's tension in the model, I don't know what you think about this, Keith If there's tension in the model it's we're going through a major transformation in the industry right now. How close do you have to be to the customer, is this going to be a partner-led transformation or are you gonna want your people handling the transformation? EMC's approach was your people led the complex portfolio. Dell's approach, simplify the portfolio, are you making the relationships more complex as a result? >> That's a great point, we touched on this with Marius, because essentially, in Marius' organization you have an overlay EMC salesforce which is used to belly-to-belly, and he said "look we're working it out" and it requires great leadership. >> It's gotta be somewhere, is it gonna be in the portfolio or the engagement model? >> And from the engagement model, just look at the Dell Technologies family themselves. When I was a EMC VMware customer, I didn't have combined meetings with EMC and VMware, two belly-to-belly relationships. When that Dell EMC merger took place, Dell came in and flexed the muscle, you know desktops, laptops, end-to-end vision, VMware became, you know, you could sense the tension in the room. I just talked to another big Dell EMC VMware customer and they'll say you know what at VMworld, Dell Technologies World, the messaging here has been incredible. You get in the real world, you talk to your Dell Technologies or Dell EMC rep, one set of products, you talk to the VMware rep, a completely different set of products. >> And then you talk to partners, and what are they saying? So where's the complexity gonna be? EMC said the complexity's gonna be in the portfolio, the engagement model is gonna be simple. Dell's saying the portfolio is gonna be more simple, but what's gonna happen to the engagement model? Because customers, this transformation stuff we're talking about is hard. >> Let's break down, we've got a couple minutes left, let's break down the competitive landscape, the horses in the track as we like to say. We obviously got AWS, you know the megatrend factor sucking up a lot of demand. Everybody says that people are coming back on prem, more people are going to the cloud. 49% growth. So that's clear, but you got traditional server competitors which really is I guess HPE and Lenovo, right? We're gonna focus on the enterprise stuff because that's kind of our wheelhouse. You've got the storage guys, you know that app seems to be back, Pure is continuing to do its thing, small in the grand scheme of 80 billion dollars. >> Their best friend will be Nutanix. >> Right, yeah right, and you got that funky relationship, you got an interesting CISCO relationship going on, so how do you describe the competitive landscape? Start with you, Stu. >> Yeah, it's a little bit complicated. Listen to what Peter was saying there, EMC was pretty cut and dry, you know. Storage, that's where we're gonna live, and everything else, we're gonna partner, even all the server companies that need to sell storage, they have great partnerships with IBM and HP and everything like that with the first one you had to partner with EMC because they were dominant in that space. Dell at the core of it, server company still so it was interesting, one of the interviews I did, it was, you know, VxRail, if you're not in hyperconverted space, if you don't own the server, you're not in the right thing. And I'm like, we got Datrium and Nutanix and all these other partners that are here in the ecosystem that are living on top of the Dell platform, so there's a little bit of that give and take, it's more coopatition than I used to see, you used to go to Dell World, they'd have that rack of OEMs with all those different vessels out there, so you know, where does Dell want to go? How do they maximize, you know, the investment that they made in the biggest merger in tech history? So it's still playing out, I hear relatively good things from the partners, and the customers at least aren't getting stuck in the middle. You know, with CISCO sometimes it was really a punch in the face and if we're not 100% on board we're not gonna let you have it and then the channel would just sort it out themselves. >> I mean AWS and the cloud, it is what it is. The VMware partnership, you know good move, gives them some near-term maybe even mid-term runway, we'll see what happens long-term. In the server business it's HBE, right? Is the main competitor. What do you guys think? >> We got IBM. >> Yeah, IBM for sure, yeah. >> The powermacs that just got announced, when that comes out the second half of this year, that goes right after CISCO UCS. Not a lot of talk about CISCO, the VxBlock business is a three to four billion dollar business between the Dell family and the CISCO family and this is gonna put them at loggerheads really soon. >> Yeah I talked to customers, they love the Dell EMC certainly, powermacs has been one of the top conversations, they can't wait to connect their powermacs to their HPE blades, that's gonna be awesome. Which is good. The other piece of that is the NetApp story. NetApp did a great job of talking about data fabric and being a data copy, I don't know if they're there yet, did a great job talking about it. Dell EMC- >> Good investments, they hired great people, so they're on that path. >> Two men in my peer community, a man and woman said NetApp's cloud story is legit, they're good. >> They're a software company. >> They're a software company. Dell EMC's cloud story, specifically around storage, you know, the isilon announcement was a partnership but you know I think customers are really looking at that again, that API is about the data and how do I move my data on-prem, off-prem, I don't know if Dell EMC has their story yet and they have the product portfolio to back it. >> So, here's what I'd say Dave. At the end of the day, there's a whole bunch of transformations and I'll try to be as succinct as I can. First off, data has to be acknowledged as an asset. Number one. That's a transition in itself. Number two. Investment in technology has to be regarded as an investment in improving the value of that data asset which means that ultimately the money in this industry is gonna follow the value of the data, that's the simplest most straightforward way of thinking about this. So, when we think about, for example, the server business, we're saying "you're not gonna put all your data up in a public cloud because the data's not gonna allow you to do that." Well, what's the difference between saying you're not going to put all your data in a public cloud and saying oh you're going to move all of your data to some server somewhere? There's, yeah it's a little bit more approximate, but it's still not, you're gonna move your data closer to more intelligent storage, more intelligent networks, and they'll go find the compute that they need. And that's not how Dell is set up today. That's just not how they're set up today. So if we think about five to ten years, we're talking about a whole bunch of processing power being moved closer and closer and closer to the data in the form of, you know, routines that are being run right there at the storage machine. We're talking about much more programmable control planes, data-driven data-first control planes, that are being in the network and defined by what the network can do, and the compute is increasingly gonna be regarded as important, not unimportant, but it's gonna be an increasingly distributed world where you can't have your cake and eat it too, you can't say don't go up to the public cloud but go up to our big honking server. There's something that doesn't quite watch there. >> Well, great analysis Peter, and to your point organizational structures really matter and I think today Dell's organization is really optimized for the continued integration, streamlining that piece, getting that right, making sure the processes are there, and then we'll see how it goes over time. Alright, thanks you guys. That was awesome. Good kickoff for day three. Okay, this is day three, you're watching theCUBE, keep it right there we'll be back with our next guest right after this short break.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, its The Cube, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and it's ecosystem partners. (soft electronic music) >> Welcome to The Cube's live coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman And this is the second of three days of wall to wall coverage we have here at The Sands convention center and I am thrilled to welcome to the program, back to the program, Michael Dell, who is the CEO of Dell Technologies. Michael thank you so much for having us here and thanks for joining us on The Cube. >> Oh, great to be here. Thank you guys for all the great coverage. You always do a wonderful job getting into the technical details and kind of exploring everything in depth and we appreciate you and your team being here. >> Well thanks so much. You started off the keynote talking about the platform for the possible, said it was 34 years in the making. Now this is my 15th year at the show formally known as EMC World. I'd attended the Dell Show for a number of years, so tell us, start with what's really different now about the company's all together, it's renamed now, Dell Technologies World. Why is this the platform for the possible? >> I'm kind of amazed and inspired when I step back and look at what our customers are doing with our technology and we have hundreds of technical sessions here where we get in depth as we've always done at, historically, EMC World, but we're also taking a broader view and saying, "Hey, what's this really all about?" What's the impact on the world? This was one of the motivations for bringing together Dell and EMC and VMWare, and Pivotal and the whole family and it's working. So we're telling the story through the eyes of our customers and it is really an amazing time when you think about what's going on in the world. We have this incredible platform that's been built over the last 30 years, but now there are all these new enabling technologies that are going to take it much further and the domain of information technology is not the IT department anymore and we're seeing that in a big way, so it's a super exciting time and obviously we think we're a unique company across digital transformation, IT, workforce security and it's working. So it's all good, Stu. >> Michael, one of the great lines we liked in the keynote was today we'll have the most change that you've ever had in your life, but compared to what we'll see tomorrow, it's going to keep changing faster. When I look at the Dell Technologies family, I know a lot has changed. Pivotal just went through an IPO. I have to imagine the tax laws changing in the recent administration has impact. What's changed since the day one decision to purchase EMC, the largest merger in technology history to today, maybe give us a little bit of insight as to what's happening inside the family that's different. >> You know, there've been a lot of reports about the tax law. That actually was not much of a change. Kind of inconsequential change. It's very good for the broader industry growth and kind of broader economic growth and we're quite excited about that and so I see it as a net positive. You know, when we step back and go back a little bit in time here to 2009 when Joe and I first talked about this idea, 2008-2009. Wasn't the right time, financial crisis. We re-started it in 2014, announced it in 2015. Here we are four years after we had the last set of initial discussions and it's all come together very well. Look, I mean, the revenues are much stronger that we thought. Business is excellent. The demand is very strong. There's a portfolio effect. I think you're seeing increasing integration of the family of businesses, particularly with VMware and Dell EMC and Pivotal. And the relevance of what we are doing has never been greater and so we're able to have conversations with companies that are very different that we had before. At the same time this is occurring, the business leaders and the chief executives of companies are waking up to the power of technology, whether it's because of some new disruptor showing up or because they realize that they have to change and evolve. Used to be it was just us folks in the tech world that were in this fast changing world where everything was moving very quickly and we used to, when people wanted to come work for us, we'd say, "Hey, how do you like it when things change? "How are you dealing with ambiguity?" If they didn't like it, we'd say, "Yeah, you probably shouldn't come work here "because you won't be happy "if things are changing all the time." It's like that in every business now and, like you said, it's only going to get faster. >> Right. So, wondering if, you look at the portfolio, Michael. One of the things since the EMC acquisition and it's a pretty broad portfolio. There's some streamlining that I understand's happening. How do you balance the streamlining with the breadth of portfolio, make sure you're reaching the customers? >> There's absolutely some kind of simplification and optimization of the expansive set of capabilities we have. We also have some incredible platforms and so what you want to do is rally around the platforms and that's exactly what we're doing, so you'll see us not only create a very seamless and logical path for every customer, but rally around the winning platforms and you already detect that as a theme here at Dell Technologies World and it's going well. >> When you look at your overall portfolio, wonder if you could talk to some of the macroeconomic things happening, on margins that are happening. If Dave Alonte was here, are we talking a half of your business is client. You've got the ISG portfolio. That transformation of when Dell went private and now bringing EMC in, which allows you to change things. How do you look at that and what does Dell look like when you get to, say, the 2020, 2030? >> You know, right now it looks great and I think it'll look even better in 2020. What I see is we have positioned ourself as the essential infrastructure company and there's a massive infrastructure build-out and it's on the edge, it's a distributed core, and it's the cloud, and cloud is not just the public cloud and everybody's kind of figured that out now. We were saying it before it was cool, So if I think about the different businesses, you know Pivotal's doing great and we don't need to say too much about that because it just went public and we're in a bit of a quiet period, but the Pivotal business is a great business. VMware is doing fabulously well. Pat did a great job yesterday with the keynote and I think if you watch the keynote, you see, wow, Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, VMware, really, really working together at a very deep level. And then you go into our client business. Client business is growing really fast, but not as fast as our data center business. The data center business is growing even faster, so we're gaining share. You'll see it in the first quarter. We'll gain share in storage, we'll gain share in servers, we'll gain share in clients, and there's a portfolio effect where customers look across everything that we're doing and they say, "Yeah, I don't really want "to deal with 25 little companies. "I want to have a bigger relationship "with Dell Technologies." So bringing everything together, putting real effort behind these big platforms that we have, and look, we've got some big new initiatives. NSX, network virtualization. You know I'm a big believer in that and I think this is ultimately bigger than server virtualization and we're in an ideal position with our open networking and VMware NSX to drive that forward. >> Michael, both Allison and Jeff brought some great customer stories up on stage. One of the things sometimes you hear out there it's like, well, Dell, they're just an infrastructure company, and infrastructure, you know, I care about my data, I care about my applications. What's the role of infrastructure and maybe give us, what does infrastructure mean to you when we talk about those digital transformations that you're helping your customers through? >> Well you sort of go back to what's the plot here? And the plot is better outcomes, results, and success for a business. Well how do you do that? Well you do that with data, right? And people talk about clouds. Well what are clouds? The clouds are built on infrastructure. It's a bit like the internet. 20 years ago we'd say, hey we have the internet, we have the internet product strategy, Vice President of the internet, internet product division. Where's all that now? It's just everywhere. Cloud, AI, very, very similar. At the core of all this is the data and the computer science. You want to have artificial intelligence machine learning? Got to have data, so that's infrastructure. AI is eating software and software is eating hardware, but AI doesn't run on software. Software doesn't run on software. Software runs on hardware, so you got to put it all together, right? And that's exactly what we do. >> Alright, Michael what learnings have you had going through this? I know there was a lot of planning. We talked to Howard yesterday, talking about some of the cultures coming together, the big survey they did that like the top five things across everybody. It was like, not only were the top five things in agreement, but even the order was in agreement, but have to imagine that there were some things, bringing these large companies together. I might notice that in the keynote so far it's been all people that came from the Dell side that are up on stage. PowerMax Bob I know is from the EMC side, but mostly from the Dell side. What have you learned so far? How have some of those cultural pieces come together and how do you keep a quite large organization rallying and focused around what's an ever-changing and broad portfolio? >> You know, it's been a lot of fun, first of all to have so many unbelievably talented people join our company and that was a real delight because there's just a wealth of enormously talented people now in our company. Over-communicating, listening, getting to know them, understanding their point of view, and ultimately creating a shared vision and an aspiring vision for what we want to do in the future. And then, of course, when you're winning, everybody sees it and everybody's excited and they want to be part of it and they're engaged and it's working. So, certainly during the period before the integration and still today, we're in the business of technology and we've got products and services, but ultimately it's a people business right? And the talent comes in and walks out every single day, so you got to keep them engaged, excited, and fortunately we're doing that. And we're adding a lot more, so we need a few more thousand sales people, so if you're really talented and you know how to sell stuff, come join us at Dell Technologies, because we're hiring more sales people. >> Well Michael, I think you're going to get calls there. On a personal note, I've been watching on social media. Everybody's really, you give your time back. You spend time. I know something you really enjoy is speaking to people, understanding what's going on, getting into it, and for someone, Michael you created all of this and you've been there, just giving your time and getting involved is impressive. I've read like every book that Walter Isaacson's done. We're going to see a biography from him about you some time in the future or? >> Well look, I think if you're honored enough to have a biography by Walter Isaacson, that's pretty good. I'll leave that to him. He's a great one for sure. Look, I mean, I just think this is my job right? (laughs) Our job is to be with our customers, be with our people, learn, listen. That's how we become a better company and I wouldn't know what else to do if I wasn't doing that. >> Yeah. One of the things in your keynote you spoke about is helping customers, making it real. Like in Jeff's keynote, it was that the business and the IT are becoming one and the same. Maybe if you, do you have any good customer stories or how are you helping customers making it real? >> Yeah I think this topic of change management is really important because let's say you're a customer and you come to Dell Technologies World and you see this amazing, dizzying array of new things and you're like, "Wow, that sounds great but how do I do it?" And so, I'll give you one story. We met with a large, rather large company, and they had a situation where for any number of reasons, the IT environment was sort of put on hold for a couple of years. There were things going on around them that were beyond their control. They just really couldn't do anything, so the environment very quickly atrophied and they wanted very quickly to get up to speed and needed a lot of help and so we pulled in our professional services team. Make no mistake, we're not trying to replace Accenture or TCS or something, but a thin layer of architecture consulting to very quickly help them map out what the new architecture should look like and then go make it happen. And of course, we have lots of partners all over the world that also are engaged in helping that happen. But we're very aware that change management is a big topic for a lot of our customers and we're spending a lot of time on how do we make it easier, so make these more ready-made solutions for the fast track to the modern data center, like the VX Rack, VX Rail, V Block Solution. >> Yeah, we touched on it briefly, but that concept of change, when I talk to customers, one of the challenges they have is they learn about something, they get ramped on it. By the time they've rolled it out, there's something else that it's like, oh wait, maybe I should have waited. It used to be, oh geez, I should have started that project two years ago and now it feels like, wait, maybe I should wait another year because things are changing so fast, economics are changing. How do you work with customers and, internally, how does the team manage this just unprecedented rate of change? >> I think there's a pretty massive movement going on across organizations to be more agile and it kind of started in software development, some technical organizations, but now you're seeing it spread. We're certainly working as a company to do more and more of that and I think we're living in a very dynamic world. First we had the internet and all the things that that brought. Now we have the 5G and the block chain and autonomous computing and all kinds of new things that are being explored out there and so we have to be highly adaptable and flexible. I think companies that aren't able to do that are going to have a problem. We are in a way blessed that we grew up in a world where if we didn't do that, we'd have been out of business a long time ago. >> Michael, you mentioned crypto. We've talked to the VMware and Dell EMC teams that are starting to look at those technologies, do some of the underlying things, but you're a big investor. You've made some big things, everything from, I think about the radio frequencies in the sports arena. What do you think of this whole crypto, Bitcoin, all that. What's your take on that from a personal side? >> Well look, as a personal investor, I have almost none of my money in cryptocurrency, so I'll be clear about that. I'm a massive believer in distributed computing and block chain, but I don't have a lot of my money, or really, in anything to speak of in cryptocurrency, so maybe I'm missing out on the next great investment opportunity. Don't really know. I guess we'll find out, but big believer in distributed computing and block chain. >> Yeah I think you'll be doing okay either way, Michael. Want to give you the-- >> It's worked out pretty well so far, so I'm... >> (laughs) Want to give you the final world. There's so much here, over 14,000 people, lots of tracks. I've been talking to all my friends. It's a great nerd fest as I think some people have said, so always geeking out. Give us a final takeaway, what you hope people walk away, and what maybe they understand Dell Technologies a little better about than they might not have in the past? >> Well first, very grateful for our customers, for the trust they place in us. It's really gratifying to see how the Dell Technologies capabilities have resonated, and look, I think a lot of people are a bit surprised at all the capability we have across the company. That's really the purpose of this event is to bring it all together, explain the capabilities we have. We want them to engage in the hundreds of technical sessions that we have, but still come away with, I wish I could have gone to some more, right? And so we have all those online and for us this is also big ears. We're listening and we're learning. We're hearing from our customers and we're going to go take that back and bring the next set of innovations and we want to be the trusted partner for our customers. We think there's never been a better time to be doing what we're doing and there's a business investment cycle that's technology-led that's very powerful and there's no company on the planet that has the capabilities Dell Technologies has across all the four transformations. >> All right, well Michael Dell, thank you so much for joining us here. Really appreciate getting to talk with you and getting to cover this event. We have two more days full of live coverage here from Las Vegas. I'm Stu Miniman And you're watching The Cube. Thanks Michael. >> Michael: Great, thanks Stu. (soft electronic music)