>>The cube presents, Dell technologies world brought to you by Dell. >>Welcome back to Dell technologies, world 2022. We're live in Vegas. Very happy to be here. Uh, this is the cubes multi-year coverage. This is year 13 for covering either, you know, EMC world or, uh, Dell world. And now of course, Dell tech world. My name is Dave Volante and I'm here with longtime Cub alum cube guest, Steve Kenon, the storage Alchemist, who's, uh, Beckett, Dell, uh, and his data protection role. And Tony Bryson is the chief information security officer of the town of Gilbert town in Arizona. Most, most towns don't have a CISO, but Tony, we're a thrilled, you're here to tell us that story. How did you become a CISO and how does the town of Gilbert have a CISO? >>Well, thank you for having me here. Uh, believe it or not. The town of Gilbert is actually the fourth largest municipality in Arizona. We serve as 281,000 citizens. So it's a fairly large enterprise. We're a billion dollar enterprise. And it got to the point where the, uh, cybersecurity concerns were at such a point that they elected to bring in their first chief information security officer. And I managed to, uh, be the lucky gentleman that got that particular position. >>That's awesome. And there's a, is there a CIO as well? Are you guys peers? Do you, how what's the reporting structure look like? >>We have a chief technology officer. Okay. I report through his office mm-hmm <affirmative> and then he reports, uh, directly to the town executive. >>So you guys talk a lot, you I'm sure you present a lot to the, to the board or wherever the governance structure is. Yeah, >>We do. I, I do quarterly report outs to the, I report through to the town council. Uh, let them know exactly what our cyber security posture is like, the type of threats that we're facing. As a matter of fact, I have to do one when I return to, uh, Gilbert from this particular conference. So really looking forward to that one, cuz this is an interesting time to be in cyber security. >>So obviously a sea. So Steve is gonna say, cyber's the number one priority, but I would say the CTO is gonna say the, say the same thing I would say the board is gonna say the same thing. I would also say Steve, that, uh, cyber and cyber resilience is probably the number one topic here at the show. When you walk around and you see the cyber demonstrations, the security demonstrations, they're packed, it's kind of your focus. Um, it's a good call. >>Yeah. <laugh> I'm the luckiest guy in storage, right? <laugh> um, yeah, there hasn't I in the last 24 months, I don't think that there's been a, a meeting that I've been to with a customer, no matter who's in the room where, uh, cyber resiliency, cybersecurity hasn't come up. I mean, it is, it is one of the hot topics in last night. I mean, Michael was just here. Uh, Michael Dell was just here last night. He came into the showroom floor, he came back, he took a look at what we were offering for cyber capabilities and was impressed. And, and so, so that's really good. >>Yeah. So I noticed, you know, when I talked to a lot of CIOs in particular, they would tell me that the pre pandemic, their cyber resiliency was very Dr. Focused, right. They really, it really wasn't an organizational resilience. It was a, if there's an oh crap moment, they could get it back in theory. And they sort of rethought that. Do you see you that amongst your peers, Tony? >>I think so. I think that people are quickly starting to understand that you just can't focus on, in, on protecting yourself from something that you think may never happen. The reality is that you're likely to see some type of cyber event, so you better be prepared for it. And you protect yourself against that. So plan for resiliency plan with making sure that you have the right people in place that can take that challenge on, because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when >>I would imagine. Well, Steve, you and I have talked about this, that, you know, the data protection business used to be, we used to call it backup in recovery and security, which is a whole different animal, but they're really starting to come together. It's kind of an Adjay. I, I know you've got this, uh, Maverick report that, that you want to talk about. What, what is that as a new Gartner research? I, I'm not familiar with it. >>Yeah. So it's some very interesting Gartner research and what I think, and I'd be curious to, Tony's take on, especially after that last question is, you know, a lot of people are, are spending a lot of money to keep the bad actors out. Right. And Gardner's philosophy on this whole, um, it's, it's, you're going to get hacked. So embrace the breach, that's their report. Right. So what they're suggesting is you're spending a lot of money, but, but we're witnessing a lot of attacks still coming in. Are you prepared to recover that when it happens? Right. And so their philosophy is it's time to start thinking about the recovery aspects of, you know, if, if they're gonna get through, how do you handle that? Right. >>Well, so you got announcements this week, big one of the big four, I guess, or big five cyber recovery vault. It's been, you're enhancing that you guys are talking things like, you know, air gaps and so forth. Give us the overview of the news there. >>Yeah. So there's, uh, cyber recovery vault for AWS for the cloud. There is, uh, a lot of stuff we're doing with, uh, cyber recovery vault for, uh, Aw, uh, Azure also, right along with the cyber sense technology, which is the technology that scans the data. Once it comes in from the backup to ensure that it clean and can be recovered and you can feel confident that your recoveries look good, right? So now, now you can do that OnPrem, or you can do it through a colo. You can do it with in the cloud, or you can, uh, ask Dell technologies with our apex business services to help provide cyber recovery services wherever for you at your co at yet OnPrem or for you from the cloud. So it's kind of giving the customer, allowing them to keep that freedom of choice of how they want to operate, but provide them those same recovery capabilities. >>So Tony, give us paint us a picture without giving away too much for the bad guys. How, how you approach this, maybe are you using some of these products? What's your sort of infrastructure look like? >>Yeah. Without giving away the state secrets, um, we are heavily invested in the cyber recovery vault and cyber sense. Uh, it plays heavily in our strategy. We wanna make sure we have a safe Harbor for our data. And that's something that, that the Dell power protect cyber recovery vault provides to us. Uh, we're exceptionally excited about the, the development that's going on, especially with apex. We're looking at that, and that has really captured our imagination. It could be a game changer for us as a town because we're, we're a small organization transitioning to a midsize organization and what apex provides and what the Dell cyber recovery vault provides to us. Putting those two together gives us the elasticity we need as a small organization to expand quickly and deal with our internal data concerns. >>So cyber recovery as a service is what you're interested in. Let me ask you a question. Are you interested in a managed service or are you interested in managing it yourself? >>That's a great question, personally. I would prefer that we went with managed services. I think that from a manager's perspective, you get a bigger bang for the buck going with managed services. You have people that work with that technology all the time. You don't have to ramp people up and develop that expertise in house. You also then have that peace of mind that you have more people that are doing the services and it acts as a force multiplier for you. So from a dollar and cents perspective, it's the way that you want to go. When I start talking to my internal people, of course, there's that, that sense of fear that comes with the unknown and especially outsourcing that type of critical infrastructure, the there's some concern there, but I think that with education, with exposure, to some of the things that we get from the managed service, it makes sense for everybody to go that >>Route and, and you can, I presume sort of POC it and then expand it and then get more comfortable with it and then say, okay, when it's hardened and ready now, this is the, the Def facto standard across the organization. >>I suspect we'll end up in a hybrid environment to begin with where we'll some assets on site, and then we'll have some assets in the cloud. And that's again, where apex will be that, that big linchpin for us and really make it all work. How >>Important are air gaps? >>Oh, they're incredibly, incredibly, uh, needed right now. You cannot have true data of security without having an air gap. A lot of the ransomware that we see moves laterally through your organization. So if you have, uh, all your data backed up in the same data center that your, your backups and your primary data sources are in odds are they're all gonna get owned at the same time. So having that air gap solution in there is critical to having the peace of mind that allows the CISO to sleep at night. >>I always tell my crypto and NFT readers, this doesn't apply to data centers. You gotta air back air, air gap, your crypto, you know, when you're NFT. So how do you guys Steve deal with, with air gap? Can you explain the solutions? >>So in the, in the cyber recovery vault itself, it is driven through, uh, you've got one, uh, power protect, uh, appliance on one, one side in your data center, and then wherever your, your, your vaulted area is, whether it be a colo, whether it be on pre wherever it might be. Uh, we create a connection between between the two that is one directional, right? So we send the data to that vault. We call it the vault and, you know, we replicate a copy of your backup data. Once it lives over there, we make a copy of that data. And then what we do is with the cyber sense technology that Tony was talking about, we scan that data and we validate it against, with a whole cyber sense is built on IML machine learning. We look at a couple hundred different kind of profiles that come through and compare it to the, to the day before as backup and the day before that and understand kind of what's changing. >>And is it changing the right way? Right? Like there might be some reasons it it's supposed to change that way. Right. But things that look anomalous, we send up a warning when we let the people know that, you know, whoever's monitoring, something's going on. You might want to take a look. And then based on that, if there's whatever's happening in the environment, we have the ability to then recover that data back to the, to the original system. You can use the vault as a, as a clean room area, if you want to send people to it, depending on kind of what's going on in, in, in your main data center. So there's a lot of things we do to protect that. Do >>You recommend, like changing the timing of when you take, you know, snapshots or you do the same time every day, it's gotta create different patterns or >>I'll tell you that's, that's one thing to keep the, keep the hackers on their tow, right? It it's tough to do operationally, right? Because you kind that's processes. But, but the reality is if you really are that, uh, concerned about attacks, that makes a lot of sense, >>Tony, what's the CISOs number one challenge today? >>Uh, I, it has to be resilience. It has to be making sure your organization that if or when they get hit, that you're able to pick the pieces back up and get the operation back up as quickly and efficiently as possible. Making sure that the, the mission critical data is immediately, uh, recoverable and be able to be put back into play. >>And, and what's the biggest challenge or best practice in terms of doing that? Obviously the technology, the people, the process >>Right now, I would probably say it's it's people, uh, we're going through the, the, um, a period of, of uncertainty in the marketplace when it comes to trying to find people. So it is difficult to find the right people to do certain things, which is why managed services is so important to an organization of our size and, and what we're trying to do, where we are, are incorporating such big ideas. We need those manager services because we just can't find the bodies that can do some of this work. >>You got an interesting background, you a PhD in psychology, you're an educator, you're a golf pro and you're a CISO. I I've never met anybody like you, Tony <laugh>. So, thanks for coming on, Steve, give you the last word. >>Well, I think I, I think one of the things that Tony said, and I wanted to parlay this a little bit, uh, from that Gartner report, I even talked about people is so critical when it comes to cyber resiliency and that sort of thing. And one of the things I talked about in that embraced the breach report is as you're looking to hire staff for your environment, right, you wanna, you know, a lot of people might shy away from hiring that CSO that got fired because they had a cyber event. Right, right. Oh, maybe they didn't do their job. But the reality is, is those folks, because this is very new. I mean, of course we've been talking about cyber for a couple of years, but, but getting that experience under your belt and understanding what happens in the event. I mean, there are a lot of companies that run things like cyber ranges, resiliency, ranges to put people through the paces of, Hey, this is what have happens when an event happens and are you prepared to respond? I think there's a big set of learning lessons that happens when you go through one of those events and it helps kind of educate the people about what's needed. >>It's a great point. Failure used to mean fire right in this industry. And, and today it's different. The adversary is very well armed and quite capable and motivated that learning even during, even when you fail, can be applied to succeed in the future or not fail, I guess there's no such thing as success in your business. Guys. Thanks so much for coming on the cube. Really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks very >>Much. >>All right. And thank you for watching the cubes coverage of Dell tech world 2022. This is Dave Valenti. We'll be back with John furrier, Lisa Martin and David Nicholson. Two days of wall to wall coverage left. Keep it with us.

(upbeat music) >> Welcome to this CUBE conversation. I'm Lisa Martin, pleased to welcome back Caitlin Gordon, vice president of product management at Dell Technologies. Caitlin is great to see you again though virtually. >> This is good to see you as well, Lisa. >> Tony Frank is here as well, global client executive at Equinix. Tony, welcome to the program. >> Thank you, Lisa. Good to be here. >> We're going to be talking about some news. Caitlin, let's go back. You and I, before we started filming, we're trying to remember when did we last see each other of course it was virtual, but just refresh the audience's memories with respect to the catalyst for Dell to go into this as a service offering. >> Yeah, I think we're all losing track of the virtual months here. (all laughs) Go back in time a little bit. Yeah, exactly right. The first actual APEX offers really came to market in the spring in May with our APEX Data Storage Services. And at that time we actually had preannounced, but we're going to talk more about here today with our partnership with Equinix. But if we take a step back, why did Dell talk about this as a project and is now really investing for the future, it really connects to a lot of the conversations you guys have here in theCUBE, right? What's happening in IT. What's happening with our customers is that they're looking for outcomes. Yes, they're predominantly, still buying products today, but they're really starting to look for outcomes. They want to be buying those outcomes. They want to have something that is an operating expense for them. Something that we can take, we as the technology, the infrastructure experts can take on, the management can take on the ownership of that equipment and really enable them to focus on their business. So really consumption-based, usage-based infrastructure, all being elastic resources that Dell owns and manages, but customers can still operate. And of course, one of the first offers was APEX Data Storage Services. >> Talk to me a little bit Caitlin about outcomes. I just want to understand what Dell actually is focusing on for its customers, where outcomes are concerned. >> Yeah, and it's interesting as a company, it's a pretty big transformation for us. We have always been a product led company, but it's not really about the product. So when I talk about APEX Data Storage Services, you're not going to hear me mention a product name or anything 'cause what it's about, it's about offering our customers what they're actually looking for, which is in the case of storage, they're looking for, I want either block or file storage. I want a certain tier. So it was at a higher performance. I want a certain capacity of it. And I want to commit for some period of time. That's it. Those are the questions we ask. There's no product names and sizing, and it's really, really simple. And that's what we're talking about. It's really the beginning of really trying to deliver customers an outcome versus a product. >> Got it. APEX Data Storage Services, this is Dell's efforts to supply managed file and block storage of services. Talk to me about that. Talk to me about some of the things, how does it enable the fast time to value as little as 14 days for your customers? >> Yeah, so there's a lot of really important things we're doing here. We're not just taking the products we had and kind of packaging it up in a new financial model. There's a lot of parts to this. It all centers around the APEX console. So the APEX console is where you start, begin really ongoing manage and experience these outcomes from Dell Technologies. And it starts with selecting the service you want. So if you select that you want APEX Data Store and Services, you've pick your type, you pick your tier, pick your time period, and you pick your size, right? And then you're off to the races. And we will be able to, what we're committing to do is delivering that in this view and as little as 14 days, time to value. And for us, one of the benefits of being able to do this as Dell, we have always really thrived in our supply chain and the ability to have that predictability and being able to deliver things as a service, including storage is really something it's just an extension of what we've been able to do there. And our partnerships with Equinix actually is going to enable us to even look at that further and see what we can do to really bring value to our customers as quickly as possible. >> That speed, that time to value is even more important as we've lived through the last tumultuous 18 months. Let's break into the news now. You guys pre-announced some the partnership with Equinix, but talk to me about with respect to APEX Data Storage Services, what's being announced? Caitlin, let's start with you and then Tony will bring you into the conversation. >> Yeah, absolutely. So again, we first released the APEX Data Storage Services in the spring, and we're already enhancing that today. Couple of exciting things. So geographic expansion, so expanding out into additional regions across Europe and Asia who are expanding our support. So we talked about the fact that it's block and it's file. Well, actually on our file capability here in our file outcome, we now will have the ability to support an S3 protocol. So you can do that app development and run your operations all off the same platform. So that's an exciting new expansion there. We're also enabling partners sell-through. Our partners are really, really important, whether they're resell partners or technology partners like Equinix. Partner sell-through is another important piece. And of course, most important for our conversation today is the exciting new announcement of the fact that we are going to offer APEX Data Storage Services available on Equinix facilities all integrated into the APEX console. The fifth question is now, where do you want your APEX Data Storage Services? You can select a Dell provided facility and you get the choice to select the different cities of Equinix locations. And we're going to provide that single bill and experience through Dell, but on the backend, we've worked with Tony and team for months to get this, to be a very streamlined experience for our customers. >> Tony talk to us about this from Equinix's perspective. >> Yeah, we're very excited. Caitlin, thank you very much and Lisa, thank you. Very excited to be part of what Dell is doing with APEX and enable enterprise customers to deliver, to get delivered to them at Equinix facilities storage as a service, in addition to additional Equinix capabilities, really enabling agile enterprises to distribute their infrastructure across the world, leveraging Dell product, Dell management, and to get access to partners, to their other footprints, to cloud service providers, et cetera, all within the footprint of Equinix. >> So Caitlin, APEX Data Storage Service in secure colo facilities in conjunction with Equinix, talk to me about what the reception has been from from Dell customers. >> Yeah, it's been really fun. I mean, first of all, when we thought about data center providers are a critical part of us being able to deliver that outcome to customers. And when we looked at the ecosystem of partners it was very clear who we were going to be partnering with. Equinix was really the best partner for us. We all already had been working together in many different ways and matters taking this partnership to the next level and what we've already seen actually all the way since earlier this year, we've had many, many customers coming to us either first step first, it was separately, but now it's actually jointly to say, I'm having a challenge and here's my challenge. And most of these conversations start in one way. I'm getting out of the data center business. And the nice thing for us is that between our two companies, we can solve that, right? We have the combination of the right infrastructure. And with our partnership with Equinix, you partner that with the data center services, you can actually give that full outcome to a customer and we were solving those separately and now we're solving those together. >> The spokes wanting to get out of the data center. If we think about in the last year and a half, how inaccessible the data centers were, Tony, I want to get your perspective on the colo market. And as we look at IT today, the acceleration of it and digital and cloud adoption and getting out of the data centers that we've seen in the last 18 months, help me understand why the colo market is really key today for the future of IT. >> Absolutely Lisa. So focusing on outcomes as Caitlin outlined earlier is a really important part of really how IT has managed this pandemic and thinking about how do we solve for this vast distributed set of employees that we used to have aggregated in a single building or multiple buildings, but really spearheaded in a couple locations. And all of a sudden everything became out in rural America, out rural Europe, out everywhere, employees were spread out and they needed a way for as an IT team to bring together the network, the security and the ability to be very agile and focus on an outcome as opposed to, how am I going to get this next piece of equipment, this next storage device, this next compute system in my data center and add the cooling and the power and all the things that they have to think about. And really it was an outcome. How do I give my employees the best experience possible, my partners that access they need to my systems and the various ways that we interact together? So the colo market as a whole has been really changed dramatically through the whole pandemic. And if you didn't know Zoom two years ago, it's your best friend now, or it's your least favorite way to do business. But the only way we have to do business in the world that we're living in today. >> A lifeline, and here we are zooming with each other right now. Let's talk about, Tony I want to stick with you. Let's talk about this partnership between Dell and Equinix. Why is this such a compelling partnership? Talk to me about that from Equinix's perspective. >> Yeah, we're so excited to be able to be partnered with the number one pro leader and provider of infrastructure and infrastructure services. We have really been a niche provider for the last 15 years. We're a 21, 22 year old company, and we focused on developing ecosystems. And those were at first the internet. We brought the telecom providers together to make the internet work. And then on top of that started enabling things like digital trading, also enabling all sorts of ad exchanges so that you see the banner ads that apply to you when you go to a website. And so we were well known within those ecosystems that we worked within, but getting out to the enterprise has been a big challenge. And Dell brings us those relationships. They bring that expertise, that trusted advisor kind of role. And so being able to extend our sales team and really leverage what Dell has done across small, medium, large, and very large enterprise is a real win for us. And it allows us to achieve a scale that we wouldn't have been able to achieve by ourselves without breaking the bank, trying to hire people and trying to get them familiar with those customers. And so Dell brings us into that. We're able to complete what I call the three legged stool, the compute, the storage, and now the networking aspects can be dealt with in a single conversation around an outcome. And APEX gives us a chance to really be agilely available as Dell's customers define that for themselves and to deploy the infrastructure where they need it and to achieve those outcomes that they're trying to get to. >> So some ostensible value that Equinix is getting by the Dell partnership, He said, pulling us into the enterprise, facilitating that scale. Caitlin, talk to me about this from Dell's lens. What makes this partnership so compelling for Dell and the future of it as a service? >> I'm laughing as Tony's talking through that 'cause it tees it up perfectly. From Dell's perspective, when we looked at data center providers, one of the challenges for us is we're a global IT provider. So we had to partner with someone who understood what it meant to operate and manage data centers at a global scale and locations all over the world. There were very short list to choose from. Once you look at it from that lens, but more importantly, and what Tony, you already hit on, the networking, the interconnects that we have in our partnership with Equinix are incredibly valuable. 'Cause ultimately, although customers start going to a colo facility because they want out of the data center business, they don't want to be managing racks and power and cooling and all of that, oftentimes what actually the value they find once they get there and why they stay and grow is those interconnects, the ability to connect to other tenants in these facilities and the ability to connect into the hyperscalers and the richness of those interconnects with Equinix was truly unmatched. And that's why it's been such an important partnership for us. >> Tony, what's been some feedback from the Equinix customer base. >> Well, it's really funny. I spent half of my time trying to figure out with my team, how we're going to solve for storage as a service, the next geography, the next product. But the other half of the time is spent who on the team is the right person to go pair up with the Dell team and get the Dell team brought into a discussion. And it's going by directionally right now, the volume is picking up. The velocity is picking up and it really seems to be like a snowball, just going down the hill, it's just picking up speed. And with every interaction we're gaining trust with each other, we're gaining competence in what the message is and how to solve for it. And we're working out the various ways, in a predictive way, what are most people asking for? But the wonderful thing is there's custom availability to figure out a solution for just about any problem that the IT or infrastructure focus teams in the enterprise are looking to solve for. >> Tony, sticking with you for a final question or two, in terms of the last few months, or have you seen any industries in particular that are really readily adopting this? We've seen so much change across industries in the last 18 months. I'm just curious if you're seeing any industries that are particularly taking advantage of this capability in this partnership. >> Yeah, I would point to highly regulated industries thinking about financial, thinking about governments, and it's not just a U.S. situation. This is a global situation and data sovereignty where that matters to a particular customer is really important that they keep that data in the geography that it needs to stay in is defined by the different governments around the world. You see the financial industry has been a first mover towards electronic trading and really disrupted thankfully prior to the pandemic, the way trading was done because in-person trading wasn't going to happen anymore. And so in the highly regulated world, the healthcare, the financials. Those folks are definitely looking for a solution that has certifications across the board to help them say to their auditors we've got this covered. That's something we're able to bring to the table for Dell. And then it also helps that the first movers sort of towards a digital infrastructure were insurance companies and others that saw the value of leveraging partnerships and bringing together things as quickly and fast as they could without deploying huge global networks to try and make it all happen. They can instead virtually meet in the same room, leveraging our software defined network called Equinix Fabric. It's been a real win for the regulated industries certainly. >> Got it, thanks for that Tony. Caitlin, last question for you. This is Dell managed so single bill from Dell, where can the viewers go to learn more information about this new partnership? >> Delltechnologies.com/apex, you'll learn more about all things, APEX, really the APEX consoles, the experience. So you can learn more about it there. And then of course, your friendly neighborhood, Dell EMC rep, and or channel partner. Now that we've got that partner enablement as well. >> Delltechnologies.com/apex. Caitlin and Tony, thank you so much for joining us today sharing the exciting news about what's new with Dell and Equinix, and what's in it for your customers and your partners. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks Lisa. >> Thank you Lisa. >> For Caitlin Gordon and Tony Frank, I'm Lisa Martin, you've been watching theCUBE conversation. (upbeat music)

(funky music) >> Live from Las Vegas, its theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019, brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome to theCUBE. Day three of our live coverage from Dell Technologies World 2019 continues. Lisa Martin with my co-host Stu Miniman and we're welcoming to theCUBE for the first time Michael St-Jean, Principal Marketing Manager for Red Hat Storage. Michael welcome. >> Thanks Lisa. Hi Stu. >> So day three this event is still pretty loud around us. This has about we're hearing upwards of fifteen thousand people. A lot of partners. Give us your perspective on Dell Technologies World 2019. >> I got to tell you this is an awesome show. I got to tell you the energy, and not just in the sessions but out on the show floor as well. It's amazing. And some of the conversations that we've been having out there around things like emerging technologies, emerging workflows around artificial intelligence, machine learning things like that. And the whole adoption around hybrid cloud, it really speaks to all of the things that we're doing, the initiatives that we're leading at Red Hat. So it's a great validation of all of the things that we've been working on for the past 10, 15, 20 years. >> And you had a long-standing relationship with Dell. >> Oh yeah, absolutely. >> 18 years or so? >> Yeah, yeah we've had not just a long relationship but very collaborative relationship with Dell over the past 18 years. It's something like If you take a look at some of the initiatives that we've been working on, we have ready architectures around open stack, around open shift. We have just, we have highlighting a few things here around Microsoft sequel server, around SAP HANA. And actually, we're really talking a lot around open shift and a ready architecture that we've developed, that we have architecture guides, deployment guides all around open shift and open shift container storage for Dell hardware. And actually, next week at our Red Hat Summit event, you should really take a look on Wednesday morning our keynote, our EVP Paul Cormier will be talking about some great, new, very interesting initiatives that we've been working with Dell on. >> Alright well Michael I'm excited we're going to have theCUBE at Red Hat Summit in Boston. It's our sixth year there. I'll be one of the hosts there. John Walls will be there with me. We're going to have Paul Cormier on the program. (laughs) Jim Whitehurst hacking the keynote. It's actually not a secret Satya Nadella and Ginni Rometty will both be up on the main stage there. And just my perspective you were talking about hybrid cloud. As you said, Red Hat Summit, I've been for many years. That hybrid cloud, that adoption. They're both open stack at the infrastructure layer and up to the application with open chip. Something we've been hearing for years and you're right. The general themes seem to echo and resonate here as to what I've been hearing at Red Hat. Can you help expand a little bit those conversations you're having here? I love you talking about some of that app modernization analytics that are going on there. How does that fit into the ready architectures that Dell's offering? >> Sure. Well I represent our storage business unit. So a lot of times, the conversations I'm having over there at the booth are kind of revolving around storage and storage growth. How data is expanding, how do we deal with the scalability of that? How do we deal with persistence of storage and containers for staple applications, things of that nature. But really, at the end of the day as I'm listening to some of the other conversations that my colleagues are having over there, it's really about how do we get work done? How do we now move into these areas where we need that cloud like experience not just in a public cloud or even in a private cloud but everywhere that we touch infrastructure. We need to have that simplified cloud-like experience. >> So just point on your subject area. Talk about the containerization and what's happening with storage pieces. Give us that layer between the infrastructure layer because let me say I believe the t shirt I saw was Linux is container, containers are Linux. So Linux has lived on Dell hardware for a long time. But anything that users should understand about the differentiation between whether they were bare metal or virtualized in the past and containerized environments today? >> Yeah well I like to say that you can't spell Red Hat without storage. (laughs) I don't know that that's particularly true but (laughing) >> It sells good. >> It sells good. Yeah so storage is near and dear to my heart but really at the end of the day, you can't have storage sitting in an island, it has to integrate and be collaborative with the rest of the portfolio that we're expanding out for our customers solving real issues, real problems. And so we've been watching industry trends and certainly these are things like that from an industry we've been looking at over the past five, 10 years so nothing new but we see the evolution of certain things like for example developers and data analysts, data scientists, these people are really charged with going out there and making dramatic differences, transforming their companies, their organizations. And as that transformational application, service development or bringing back insights on data is really integral to a company's ability to transform or differentiate in the industry. They have to be much, much more agile. And it seems that they are more and more taking over a lot of the role that we would normally see traditional I.T. managers making a lot of the purchasing decisions. A lot of the industry trends show that these folks, developers, data analysts are actually making some of those I.T. decisions now. And of course, everything is really being developed as cloud native. So we see cloud native as being more of the new norm. And if you kind of look at the expansion of data, Lisa Spellman a couple of days ago said "Hey look. "We've seen data double in the past two years "but we're only using two percent of that data." >> Two percent? >> Two percent. >> Wow, it's not very much. >> Yeah. And if you look at IDC mentioned that the data sphere has now grown to over 33 Zettabytes. A zettabyte is a billion gigabytes. So put that into perspective. Alright. 33 Zettabytes. By 2025, they project that we're going to grow to 175 Zetabytes. How can we make better use of that data? A lot of that data is coming from IOT type applications. You look at trends, traffic trends and how that might be correlated to weather activities or other events that are going on or archeological digs or all sorts of just information that is brought back. How do we make best use of that information? And so the need for scalability in a hybrid cloud environment, has become more and more of a key industry trend as the data sphere continues to grow. And I think across all three of those, that's really driving this need for hyper convergence and not just hyper convergence in the traditional sense. we've seen hyper convergence in the field for probably about five, 10 years now. But initially it was kind of a niche play and it was based on appliances. Well the past two years, you've seen the Gardner reports on hyper convergence really talking about how it is moving and evolving to more of a software defined nature. And in fact, in the past Magic Quadrant around hyper convergence, you see Red Hat show up. Something that is probably not known that Red Hat has hyper converged offerings. It's something that actually we didn't get into it just because the analysts were suggesting it. We had customers come to us and they were trying to put together Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat virtualization, storage, et cetera et cetera with varying degrees of success with that because they were doing it more or less as a project. And so we took upon ourselves to develop that, put it into a product and start to develop it with things like Ansible for deployment management. We have dedupe and compression with our virtual data optimization products, virtual GPUs, et cetera. So we're really in that space now too. >> Yeah Michael I mean it really from our standpoint it was a natural extension of what happens if you look at what hyper converged was, it was simplification and it had to be tight integration down at the OS level or the virtualization level. As a matter of fact, when we first wrote our research on it, we called it server SAN because it was the benefits of storage area network but built at the server level. So we said those OS manufacturers. Now I have to admit, I called out VMware and Microsoft are the ones that I considered the biggest ones. But as a natural fit that Red Hat would look out of that environment and if you look at the leaders in the marketplace today, we're here, VMware is here, their softwares piece. Techtonic has transitioned to be a software company. So yeah, welcome to the party. It's been a fun ride to watch that over the last five years. >> Yeah absolutely. >> So let's talk about customers and this spirit of collaboration. You just mentioned sort of the entrance into HCIs being really driven by the voice and the actions and the needs of Red Hat customers. You guys have three major pillars, themes that you have been delivering at Dell Technologies World. Talk to us a little bit about this and how your customers are helping to drive what you're delivering here and what you'll be delivering in the future. >> Yes certainly. I mean that's the whole open source model. And we don't we don't just contribute to the open source community but we develop enterprise grade infrastructure solutions for customers based on the open source way. And so essentially, as I think of it these market trends that I was talking about. It's not that we're leading them or that we're following them. It's we're tightly integrated with them because all of these industry trends are being formulated as we're in progress. It's a great opportunity for Red Hat to really express what we can do with our customers, with our partners, our developers, the folks that we have on our staff that are working directly in the community. Most products that we work on, we're the number one contributor for. So it's all very special opportunity for us. I would say from a storage perspective, what we've really focused on this year is around three main pillars. One is around data portability for those application portability projects that we see in open shift. So being able to offer an enterprise grade persistent storage for stateful applications that are running in these containerized environments. Another area is around that hybrid cloud scalable storage. And this is something that being able to scale that storage to hundreds of petabytes is kind of a big deal (laughs) and especially as we see a lot of the workloads that we've been working with customers on around data analytics and now artificial intelligence, machine learning. Those types of data lakes type projects where we're able to, by using open stack or open shift, we're able to do multi-tenant workforce workload isolation of the work that all of these people are doing while having a shared data context underneath with Red Hat storage. And then the third is around hyper convergence. I think we've touched on that already. >> Yeah so Michael before letting you go I have to touch on the hot thing that everybody needs to understand what's going. The ripple that will be felt throughout the industry. And I'm not talking about a certain 34 billion dollar pending acquisition. (laughs) Constant in the last, most of my career there has been a certain logo that I would see at every conference and that Red Hat that I got my first one, I don't know, 15, 16 years ago. So the shadow man has been deprecated. There's a new Red Hat logo. >> Oh yeah yeah. And we just brought out the new logo today. So a great segue into actually, it was last night, they pulled down the old logos, they put the new logos on the buildings, pretty much around the world. I think it's May Day in Europe. So maybe some of that will happen tomorrow or. Trying to think of what time it is, probably tonight. So yeah it's a great new logo and it's, our old logo has been over, it was around for 19 years since 2000. And it came back from a lot of feedback from customers but also from people who didn't know Red Hat, didn't know what we did. And quite honestly, some of them said that shadow man looked a little sneaky. (laughing) >> I guess on the rise of all those cyber challenges, maybe they're right. >> (laughs) so we have a new logo just launched today. Very proud of it, we're looking forward to working with everybody in the industry and go forward with all these new, wonderful opportunities that we have. >> I look forward to pointing out to all the vendors that they're now using the old Red Hat logo just like they do for every other vendor in this space when it changes. >> As of how many hours ago. (laughing) >> Well it'll be interesting to see and hear what Stu and team uncover at the summit next week in terms of the impact of this brand. We thank you so much for your time Michael, >> Absolutely. >> joining Stu and me on theCUBE. I guess it is just after day of day three. It's hard to tell right it's all blending in together. (laughs) Well we thank you for your time and your insight. >> Thank you very much and see you next week Stu. >> Exactly. For Stu Miniman, I am Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live from day three of our coverage of Dell technologies world 2019. Thanks for watching. (light music)

>> From every ISV to solve the problems. You want there to be tools in place that you can use, either open source tools or whatever it is that help you build it. And slowly over time, that building will become easier and easier. So my question to you was, where do you see you playing? Do you see yourself playing to ISVs as a set of tools, which will make their life a lot easier and provide that work? >> Absolutely. >> If they don't have, so they don't have to do it. Or you're providing this for the end users? Or both? >> So it's a progression. If you go to the ISVs first, you're doomed to starved before you have time for that other option. >> Yeah. >> Right? So it's a question of phase, the phasing of it. And also if you go directly to end users, you can demonstrate the power of it and get the attention of the ISVs. I believe that the ISVs, especially those with the biggest footprints and the most, you know, coveted estates, they have already made massive investments at trying to solve decentralization of their software stack. And I believe that they have used it as a hook to try to move to a software as a service model and rope people into leasing their infrastructure. So if you look at the clouds that have been propped up by Autodesk or by Adobe, or you name the company, they are building proprietary makeshift solutions for decentralizing or hybrid clouding. Or maybe they're not even doing that at all and all they're is saying hey, if you want to get location agnosticness, then what you should just, is just move into our cloud. >> Right. >> And then they try to solve on the background how to decentralize it between different regions so they can have decent offerings in each region. But those who are more advanced have already made larger investments and will be more averse to, you know, throwing that stuff away, all of their makeshift machinery away, and using a platform that gives them high performance parallel, low level file system access, while at the same time having metadata-driven, you know, policy-based, intent-based orchestration to manage the diffusion of data across a decentralized infrastructure. They are not going to be as open because they've made such an investment and they're going to look at how do they monetize it. So what we have found with like the movie studios who are using us already, many of the app they're using, many of those software offerings, the ISVs have their own cloud that offers that software for the cloud. But what we got when I asked about this, 'cause I was dealt specifically into this question because I'm very interested to know how we're going to make that leap from end user upstream into the ISVs where I believe we need to, and they said, look, we cannot use these software ISV-specific SAS clouds for two reasons. Number one is we lose control of the data. We're giving it to them. That's security and other issues. And here you're talking about we're doing work for Disney, we're doing work for Netflix, and they're not going to let us put our data on those software clouds, on those SAS clouds. Secondly, in any reasonable pipeline, the data is shared by many different applications. We need to be agnostic as to the application. 'Cause the inputs to one application, you know, the output for one application provides the input to the next, and it's not necessarily from the same vendor. So they need to have a data platform that lets them, you know, go from one software stack, and you know, to run it on another. Because they might do the rendering with this and yet, they do the editing with that, and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I think the further you go up the stack in the structured data and dedicated applications for specific functions in specific verticals, the further up the stack you go, the harder it is to justify a SAS offering where you're basically telling the end users you need to park all your data with us and then you can run your application in our cloud and get this. That ultimately is a dead end path versus having the data be open and available to many applications across this supercloud layer. >> Okay, so-- >> Is that making any sense? >> Yes, so if I could just ask a clarifying question. So, if I had to take Snowflake as an example, I think they're doing exactly what you're saying is a dead end, put everything into our proprietary system and then we'll figure out how to distribute it. >> Yeah. >> And and I think if you're familiar with Zhamak Dehghaniis' data mesh concept. Are you? >> A little bit, yeah. >> But in her model, Snowflake, a Snowflake warehouse is just a node on the mesh and that mesh is-- >> That's right. >> Ultimately the supercloud and you're an enabler of that is what I'm hearing. >> That's right. What they're doing up at the structured level and what they're talking about at the structured level we're doing at the underlying, unstructured level, which by the way has implications for how you implement those distributed database things. In other words, implementing a Snowflake on top of Hammerspace would have made building stuff like in the first place easier. It would allow you to easily shift and run the database engine anywhere. You still have to solve how to shard and distribute at the transaction layer above, so I'm not saying we're a substitute for what you need to do at the app layer. By the way, there is another example of that and that's Microsoft Office, right? It's one thing to share that, to have a file share where you can share all the docs. It's something else to have Word and PowerPoint, Excel know how to allow people to be simultaneously editing the same doc. That's always going to happen in the app layer. But not all applications need that level of, you know, in-app decentralization. You know, many of them, many workflows are pipelined, especially the ones that are very data intensive where you're doing drug discovery or you're doing rendering, or you're doing machine learning training. These things are human in the loop with large stages of processing across tens of thousands of cores. And I think that kind of data processing pipeline is what we're focusing on first. Not so much the Microsoft Office or the Snowflake, you know, parking a relational database because that takes a lot of application layer stuff and that's what they're good at. >> Right. >> But I think... >> Go ahead, sorry. >> Later entrance in these markets will find Hammerspace as a way to accelerate their work so they can focus more narrowly on just the stuff that's app-specific, higher level sharing in the app. >> Yes, Snowflake founders-- >> I think it might be worth mentioning also, just keep this confidential guys, but one of our customers is Blue Origin. And one of the things that we have found is kind of the point of what you're talking about with our customers. They're needing to build this and since it's not commercially available or they don't know where to look for it to be commercially available, they're all building themselves. So this layer is needed. And Blue is just one of the examples of quite a few we're now talking to. And like manufacturing, HPC, research where they're out trying to solve this problem with their own scripting tools and things like that. And I just, I don't know if there's anything you want to add, David, but you know, but there's definitely a demand here and customers are trying to figure out how to solve it beyond what Hammerspace is doing. Like the need is so great that they're just putting developers on trying to do it themselves. >> Well, and you know, Snowflake founders, they didn't have a Hammerspace to lean on. But, one of the things that's interesting about supercloud is we feel as though industry clouds will emerge, that as part of company's digital transformations, they will, you know, every company's a software company, they'll begin to build their own clouds and they will be able to use a Hammerspace to do that. >> A super pass layer. >> Yes. It's really, I don't know if David's speaking, I don't want to speak over him, but we can't hear you. May be going through a bad... >> Well, a regional, regional talks that make that possible. And so they're doing these render farms and editing farms, and it's a cloud-specific to the types of workflows in the median entertainment world. Or clouds specifically to workflows in the chip design world or in the drug and bio and life sciences exploration world. There are large organizations that are kind of a blend of end users, like the Broad, which has their own kind of cloud where they're asking collaborators to come in and work with them. So it starts to even blur who's an end user versus an ISV. >> Yes. >> Right? When you start talking about the massive data is the main gravity is to having lots of people participate. >> Yep, and that's where the value is. And that's where the value is. And this is a megatrend that we see. And so it's really important for us to get to the point of what is and what is not a supercloud and, you know, that's where we're trying to evolve. >> Let's talk about this for a second 'cause I want to, I want to challenge you on something and it's something that I got challenged on and it has led me to thinking differently than I did at first, which Molly can attest to. Okay? So, we have been looking for a way to talk about the concept of cloud of utility computing, run anything anywhere that isn't addressed in today's realization of cloud. 'Cause today's cloud is not run anything anywhere, it's quite the opposite. You park your data in AWS and that's where you run stuff. And you pretty much have to. Same with with Azure. They're using data gravity to keep you captive there, just like the old infrastructure guys did. But now it's even worse because it's coupled back with the software to some degree, as well. And you have to use their storage, networking, and compute. It's not, I mean it fell back to the mainframe era. Anyhow, so I love the concept of supercloud. By the way, I was going to suggest that a better term might be hyper cloud since hyper speaks to the multidimensionality of it and the ability to be in a, you know, be in a different dimension, a different plane of existence kind of thing like hyperspace. But super and hyper are somewhat synonyms. I mean, you have hyper cars and you have super cars and blah, blah, blah. I happen to like hyper maybe also because it ties into the whole Hammerspace notion of a hyper-dimensional, you know, reality, having your data centers connected by a wormhole that is Hammerspace. But regardless, what I got challenged on is calling it something different at all versus simply saying, this is what cloud has always meant to be. This is the true cloud, this is real cloud, this is cloud. And I think back to what happened, you'll remember, at Fusion IO we talked about IO memory and we did that because people had a conceptualization of what an SSD was. And an SSD back then was low capacity, low endurance, made to go military, aerospace where things needed to be rugged but was completely useless in the data center. And we needed people to imagine this thing as being able to displace entire SAND, with the kind of capacity density, performance density, endurance. And so we talked IO memory, we could have said enterprise SSD, and that's what the industry now refers to for that concept. What will people be saying five and 10 years from now? Will they simply say, well this is cloud as it was always meant to be where you are truly able to run anything anywhere and have not only the same APIs, but you're same data available with high performance access, all forms of access, block file and object everywhere. So yeah. And I wonder, and this is just me throwing it out there, I wonder if, well, there's trade offs, right? Giving it a new moniker, supercloud, versus simply talking about how cloud is always intended to be and what it was meant to be, you know, the real cloud or true cloud, there are trade-offs. By putting a name on it and branding it, that lets people talk about it and understand they're talking about something different. But it also is that an affront to people who thought that that's what they already had. >> What's different, what's new? Yes, and so we've given a lot of thought to this. >> Right, it's like you. >> And it's because we've been asked that why does the industry need a new term, and we've tried to address some of that. But some of the inside baseball that we haven't shared is, you remember the Web 2.0, back then? >> Yep. >> Web 2.0 was the same thing. And I remember Tim Burners Lee saying, "Why do we need Web 2.0? "This is what the Web was always supposed to be." But the truth is-- >> I know, that was another perfect-- >> But the truth is it wasn't, number one. Number two, everybody hated the Web 2.0 term. John Furrier was actually in the middle of it all. And then it created this groundswell. So one of the things we wrote about is that supercloud is an evocative term that catalyzes debate and conversation, which is what we like, of course. And maybe that's self-serving. But yeah, HyperCloud, Metacloud, super, meaning, it's funny because super came from Latin supra, above, it was never the superlative. But the superlative was a convenient byproduct that caused a lot of friction and flack, which again, in the media business is like a perfect storm brewing. >> The bad thing to have to, and I think you do need to shake people out of their, the complacency of the limitations that they're used to. And I'll tell you what, the fact that you even have the terms hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, private cloud, edge computing, those are all just referring to the different boundaries that isolate the silo that is the current limited cloud. >> Right. >> So if I heard correctly, what just, in terms of us defining what is and what isn't in supercloud, you would say traditional applications which have to run in a certain place, in a certain cloud can't run anywhere else, would be the stuff that you would not put in as being addressed by supercloud. And over time, you would want to be able to run the data where you want to and in any of those concepts. >> Or even modern apps, right? Or even modern apps that are siloed in SAS within an individual cloud, right? >> So yeah, I guess it's twofold. Number one, if you're going at the high application layers, there's lots of ways that you can give the appearance of anything running anywhere. The ISV, the SAS vendor can engineer stuff to have the ability to serve with low enough latency to different geographies, right? So if you go too high up the stack, it kind of loses its meaning because there's lots of different ways to make due and give the appearance of omni-presence of the service. Okay? As you come down more towards the platform layer, it gets harder and harder to mask the fact that supercloud is something entirely different than just a good regionally-distributed SAS service. So I don't think you, I don't think you can distinguish supercloud if you go too high up the stack because it's just SAS, it's just a good SAS service where the SAS vendor has done the hard work to give you low latency access from different geographic regions. >> Yeah, so this is one of the hardest things, David. >> Common among them. >> Yeah, this is really an important point. This is one of the things I've had the most trouble with is why is this not just SAS? >> So you dilute your message when you go up to the SAS layer. If you were to focus most of this around the super pass layer, the how can you host applications and run them anywhere and not host this, not run a service, not have a service available everywhere. So how can you take any application, even applications that are written, you know, in a traditional legacy data center fashion and be able to run them anywhere and have them have their binaries and their datasets and the runtime environment and the infrastructure to start them and stop them? You know, the jobs, the, what the Kubernetes, the job scheduler? What we're really talking about here, what I think we're really talking about here is building the operating system for a decentralized cloud. What is the operating system, the operating environment for a decentralized cloud? Where you can, and that the main two functions of an operating system or an operating environment are the process scheduler, the thing that's scheduling what is running where and when and so forth, and the file system, right? The thing that's supplying a common view and access to data. So when we talk about this, I think that the strongest argument for supercloud is made when you go down to the platform layer and talk of it, talk about it as an operating environment on which you can run all forms of applications. >> Would you exclude--? >> Not a specific application that's been engineered as a SAS. (audio distortion) >> He'll come back. >> Are you there? >> Yeah, yeah, you just cut out for a minute. >> I lost your last statement when you broke up. >> We heard you, you said that not the specific application. So would you exclude Snowflake from supercloud? >> Frankly, I would. I would. Because, well, and this is kind of hard to do because Snowflake doesn't like to, Frank doesn't like to talk about Snowflake as a SAS service. It has a negative connotation. >> But it is. >> I know, we all know it is. We all know it is and because it is, yes, I would exclude them. >> I think I actually have him on camera. >> There's nothing in common. >> I think I have him on camera or maybe Benoit as saying, "Well, we are a SAS." I think it's Slootman. I think I said to Slootman, "I know you don't like to say you're a SAS." And I think he said, "Well, we are a SAS." >> Because again, if you go to the top of the application stack, there's any number of ways you can give it location agnostic function or you know, regional, local stuff. It's like let's solve the location problem by having me be your one location. How can it be decentralized if you're centralizing on (audio distortion)? >> Well, it's more decentralized than if it's all in one cloud. So let me actually, so the spectrum. So again, in the spirit of what is and what isn't, I think it's safe to say Hammerspace is supercloud. I think there's no debate there, right? Certainly among this crowd. And I think we can all agree that Dell, Dell Storage is not supercloud. Where it gets fuzzy is this Snowflake example or even, how about a, how about a Cohesity that instantiates its stack in different cloud regions in different clouds, and synchronizes, however magic sauce it does that. Is that a supercloud? I mean, so I'm cautious about having too strict of a definition 'cause then only-- >> Fair enough, fair enough. >> But I could use your help and thoughts on that. >> So I think we're talking about two different spectrums here. One is the spectrum of platform to application-specific. As you go up the application stack and it becomes this specific thing. Or you go up to the more and more structured where it's serving a specific application function where it's more of a SAS thing. I think it's harder to call a SAS service a supercloud. And I would argue that the reason there, and what you're lacking in the definition is to talk about it as general purpose. Okay? Now, that said, a data warehouse is general purpose at the structured data level. So you could make the argument for why Snowflake is a supercloud by saying that it is a general purpose platform for doing lots of different things. It's just one at a higher level up at the structured data level. So one spectrum is the high level going from platform to, you know, unstructured data to structured data to very application-specific, right? Like a specific, you know, CAD/CAM mechanical design cloud, like an Autodesk would want to give you their cloud for running, you know, and sharing CAD/CAM designs, doing your CAD/CAM anywhere stuff. Well, the other spectrum is how well does the purported supercloud technology actually live up to allowing you to run anything anywhere with not just the same APIs but with the local presence of data with the exact same runtime environment everywhere, and to be able to correctly manage how to get that runtime environment anywhere. So a Cohesity has some means of running things in different places and some means of coordinating what's where and of serving diff, you know, things in different places. I would argue that it is a very poor approximation of what Hammerspace does in providing the exact same file system with local high performance access everywhere with metadata ability to control where the data is actually instantiated so that you don't have to wait for it to get orchestrated. But even then when you do have to wait for it, it happens automatically and so it's still only a matter of, well, how quick is it? And on the other end of the spectrum is you could look at NetApp with Flexcache and say, "Is that supercloud?" And I would argue, well kind of because it allows you to run things in different places because it's a cache. But you know, it really isn't because it presumes some central silo from which you're cacheing stuff. So, you know, is it or isn't it? Well, it's on a spectrum of exactly how fully is it decoupling a runtime environment from specific locality? And I think a cache doesn't, it stretches a specific silo and makes it have some semblance of similar access in other places. But there's still a very big difference to the central silo, right? You can't turn off that central silo, for example. >> So it comes down to how specific you make the definition. And this is where it gets kind of really interesting. It's like cloud. Does IBM have a cloud? >> Exactly. >> I would say yes. Does it have the kind of quality that you would expect from a hyper-scale cloud? No. Or see if you could say the same thing about-- >> But that's a problem with choosing a name. That's the problem with choosing a name supercloud versus talking about the concept of cloud and how true up you are to that concept. >> For sure. >> Right? Because without getting a name, you don't have to draw, yeah. >> I'd like to explore one particular or bring them together. You made a very interesting observation that from a enterprise point of view, they want to safeguard their store, their data, and they want to make sure that they can have that data running in their own workflows, as well as, as other service providers providing services to them for that data. So, and in in particular, if you go back to, you go back to Snowflake. If Snowflake could provide the ability for you to have your data where you wanted, you were in charge of that, would that make Snowflake a supercloud? >> I'll tell you, in my mind, they would be closer to my conceptualization of supercloud if you can instantiate Snowflake as software on your own infrastructure, and pump your own data to Snowflake that's instantiated on your own infrastructure. The fact that it has to be on their infrastructure or that it's on their, that it's on their account in the cloud, that you're giving them the data and they're, that fundamentally goes against it to me. If they, you know, they would be a pure, a pure plate if they were a software defined thing where you could instantiate Snowflake machinery on the infrastructure of your choice and then put your data into that machinery and get all the benefits of Snowflake. >> So did you see--? >> In other words, if they were not a SAS service, but offered all of the similar benefits of being, you know, if it were a service that you could run on your own infrastructure. >> So did you see what they announced, that--? >> I hope that's making sense. >> It does, did you see what they announced at Dell? They basically announced the ability to take non-native Snowflake data, read it in from an object store on-prem, like a Dell object store. They do the same thing with Pure, read it in, running it in the cloud, and then push it back out. And I was saying to Dell, look, that's fine. Okay, that's interesting. You're taking a materialized view or an extended table, whatever you're doing, wouldn't it be more interesting if you could actually run the query locally with your compute? That would be an extension that would actually get my attention and extend that. >> That is what I'm talking about. That's what I'm talking about. And that's why I'm saying I think Hammerspace is more progressive on that front because with our technology, anybody who can instantiate a service, can make a service. And so I, so MSPs can use Hammerspace as a way to build a super pass layer and host their clients on their infrastructure in a cloud-like fashion. And their clients can have their own private data centers and the MSP or the public clouds, and Hammerspace can be instantiated, get this, by different parties in these different pieces of infrastructure and yet linked together to make a common file system across all of it. >> But this is data mesh. If I were HPE and Dell it's exactly what I'd be doing. I'd be working with Hammerspace to create my own data. I'd work with Databricks, Snowflake, and any other-- >> Data mesh is a good way to put it. Data mesh is a good way to put it. And this is at the lowest level of, you know, the underlying file system that's mountable by the operating system, consumed as a real file system. You can't get lower level than that. That's why this is the foundation for all of the other apps and structured data systems because you need to have a data mesh that can at least mesh the binary blob. >> Okay. >> That hold the binaries and that hold the datasets that those applications are running. >> So David, in the third week of January, we're doing supercloud 2 and I'm trying to convince John Furrier to make it a data slash data mesh edition. I'm slowly getting him to the knothole. I would very much, I mean you're in the Bay Area, I'd very much like you to be one of the headlines. As Zhamak Dehghaniis going to speak, she's the creator of Data Mesh, >> Sure. >> I'd love to have you come into our studio as well, for the live session. If you can't make it, we can pre-record. But you're right there, so I'll get you the dates. >> We'd love to, yeah. No, you can count on it. No, definitely. And you know, we don't typically talk about what we do as Data Mesh. We've been, you know, using global data environment. But, you know, under the covers, that's what the thing is. And so yeah, I think we can frame the discussion like that to line up with other, you know, with the other discussions. >> Yeah, and Data Mesh, of course, is one of those evocative names, but she has come up with some very well defined principles around decentralized data, data as products, self-serve infrastructure, automated governance, and and so forth, which I think your vision plugs right into. And she's brilliant. You'll love meeting her. >> Well, you know, and I think.. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead, Peter. >> Just like to work one other interface which I think is important. How do you see yourself and the open source? You talked about having an operating system. Obviously, Linux is the operating system at one level. How are you imagining that you would interface with cost community as part of this development? >> Well, it's funny you ask 'cause my CTO is the kernel maintainer of the storage networking stack. So how the Linux operating system perceives and consumes networked data at the file system level, the network file system stack is his purview. He owns that, he wrote most of it over the last decade that he's been the maintainer, but he's the gatekeeper of what goes in. And we have leveraged his abilities to enhance Linux to be able to use this decentralized data, in particular with decoupling the control plane driven by metadata from the data access path and the many storage systems on which the data gets accessed. So this factoring, this splitting of control plane from data path, metadata from data, was absolutely necessary to create a data mesh like we're talking about. And to be able to build this supercloud concept. And the highways on which the data runs and the client which knows how to talk to it is all open source. And we have, we've driven the NFS 4.2 spec. The newest NFS spec came from my team. And it was specifically the enhancements needed to be able to build a spanning file system, a data mesh at a file system level. Now that said, our file system itself and our server, our file server, our data orchestration, our data management stuff, that's all closed source, proprietary Hammerspace tech. But the highways on which the mesh connects are actually all open source and the client that knows how to consume it. So we would, honestly, I would welcome competitors using those same highways. They would be at a major disadvantage because we kind of built them, but it would still be very validating and I think only increase the potential adoption rate by more than whatever they might take of the market. So it'd actually be good to split the market with somebody else to come in and share those now super highways for how to mesh data at the file system level, you know, in here. So yeah, hopefully that answered your question. Does that answer the question about how we embrace the open source? >> Right, and there was one other, just that my last one is how do you enable something to run in every environment? And if we take the edge, for example, as being, as an environment which is much very, very compute heavy, but having a lot less capability, how do you do a hold? >> Perfect question. Perfect question. What we do today is a software appliance. We are using a Linux RHEL 8, RHEL 8 equivalent or a CentOS 8, or it's, you know, they're all roughly equivalent. But we have bundled and a software appliance which can be instantiated on bare metal hardware on any type of VM system from VMware to all of the different hypervisors in the Linux world, to even Nutanix and such. So it can run in any virtualized environment and it can run on any cloud instance, server instance in the cloud. And we have it packaged and deployable from the marketplaces within the different clouds. So you can literally spin it up at the click of an API in the cloud on instances in the cloud. So with all of these together, you can basically instantiate a Hammerspace set of machinery that can offer up this file system mesh. like we've been using the terminology we've been using now, anywhere. So it's like being able to take and spin up Snowflake and then just be able to install and run some VMs anywhere you want and boom, now you have a Snowflake service. And by the way, it is so complete that some of our customers, I would argue many aren't even using public clouds at all, they're using this just to run their own data centers in a cloud-like fashion, you know, where they have a data service that can span it all. >> Yeah and to Molly's first point, we would consider that, you know, cloud. Let me put you on the spot. If you had to describe conceptually without a chalkboard what an architectural diagram would look like for supercloud, what would you say? >> I would say it's to have the same runtime environment within every data center and defining that runtime environment as what it takes to schedule the execution of applications, so job scheduling, runtime stuff, and here we're talking Kubernetes, Slurm, other things that do job scheduling. We're talking about having a common way to, you know, instantiate compute resources. So a global compute environment, having a common compute environment where you can instantiate things that need computing. Okay? So that's the first part. And then the second is the data platform where you can have file block and object volumes, and have them available with the same APIs in each of these distributed data centers and have the exact same data omnipresent with the ability to control where the data is from one moment to the next, local, where all the data is instantiate. So my definition would be a common runtime environment that's bifurcate-- >> Oh. (attendees chuckling) We just lost them at the money slide. >> That's part of the magic makes people listen. We keep someone on pin and needles waiting. (attendees chuckling) >> That's good. >> Are you back, David? >> I'm on the edge of my seat. Common runtime environment. It was like... >> And just wait, there's more. >> But see, I'm maybe hyper-focused on the lower level of what it takes to host and run applications. And that's the stuff to schedule what resources they need to run and to get them going and to get them connected through to their persistence, you know, and their data. And to have that data available in all forms and have it be the same data everywhere. On top of that, you could then instantiate applications of different types, including relational databases, and data warehouses and such. And then you could say, now I've got, you know, now I've got these more application-level or structured data-level things. I tend to focus less on that structured data level and the application level and am more focused on what it takes to host any of them generically on that super pass layer. And I'll admit, I'm maybe hyper-focused on the pass layer and I think it's valid to include, you know, higher levels up the stack like the structured data level. But as soon as you go all the way up to like, you know, a very specific SAS service, I don't know that you would call that supercloud. >> Well, and that's the question, is there value? And Marianna Tessel from Intuit said, you know, we looked at it, we did it, and it just, it was actually negative value for us because connecting to all these separate clouds was a real pain in the neck. Didn't bring us any additional-- >> Well that's 'cause they don't have this pass layer underneath it so they can't even shop around, which actually makes it hard to stand up your own SAS service. And ultimately they end up having to build their own infrastructure. Like, you know, I think there's been examples like Netflix moving away from the cloud to their own infrastructure. Basically, if you're going to rent it for more than a few months, it makes sense to build it yourself, if it's at any kind of scale. >> Yeah, for certain components of that cloud. But if the Goldman Sachs came to you, David, and said, "Hey, we want to collaborate and we want to build "out a cloud and essentially build our SAS system "and we want to do that with Hammerspace, "and we want to tap the physical infrastructure "of not only our data centers but all the clouds," then that essentially would be a SAS, would it not? And wouldn't that be a Super SAS or a supercloud? >> Well, you know, what they may be using to build their service is a supercloud, but their service at the end of the day is just a SAS service with global reach. Right? >> Yeah. >> You know, look at, oh shoot. What's the name of the company that does? It has a cloud for doing bookkeeping and accounting. I forget their name, net something. NetSuite. >> NetSuite. NetSuite, yeah, Oracle. >> Yeah. >> Yep. >> Oracle acquired them, right? Is NetSuite a supercloud or is it just a SAS service? You know? I think under the covers you might ask are they using supercloud under the covers so that they can run their SAS service anywhere and be able to shop the venue, get elasticity, get all the benefits of cloud in the, to the benefit of their service that they're offering? But you know, folks who consume the service, they don't care because to them they're just connecting to some endpoint somewhere and they don't have to care. So the further up the stack you go, the more location-agnostic it is inherently anyway. >> And I think it's, paths is really the critical layer. We thought about IAS Plus and we thought about SAS Minus, you know, Heroku and hence, that's why we kind of got caught up and included it. But SAS, I admit, is the hardest one to crack. And so maybe we exclude that as a deployment model. >> That's right, and maybe coming down a level to saying but you can have a structured data supercloud, so you could still include, say, Snowflake. Because what Snowflake is doing is more general purpose. So it's about how general purpose it is. Is it hosting lots of other applications or is it the end application? Right? >> Yeah. >> So I would argue general purpose nature forces you to go further towards platform down-stack. And you really need that general purpose or else there is no real distinguishing. So if you want defensible turf to say supercloud is something different, I think it's important to not try to wrap your arms around SAS in the general sense. >> Yeah, and we've kind of not really gone, leaned hard into SAS, we've just included it as a deployment model, which, given the constraints that you just described for structured data would apply if it's general purpose. So David, super helpful. >> Had it sign. Define the SAS as including the hybrid model hold SAS. >> Yep. >> Okay, so with your permission, I'm going to add you to the list of contributors to the definition. I'm going to add-- >> Absolutely. >> I'm going to add this in. I'll share with Molly. >> Absolutely. >> We'll get on the calendar for the date. >> If Molly can share some specific language that we've been putting in that kind of goes to stuff we've been talking about, so. >> Oh, great. >> I think we can, we can share some written kind of concrete recommendations around this stuff, around the general purpose, nature, the common data thing and yeah. >> Okay. >> Really look forward to it and would be glad to be part of this thing. You said it's in February? >> It's in January, I'll let Molly know. >> Oh, January. >> What the date is. >> Excellent. >> Yeah, third week of January. Third week of January on a Tuesday, whatever that is. So yeah, we would welcome you in. But like I said, if it doesn't work for your schedule, we can prerecord something. But it would be awesome to have you in studio. >> I'm sure with this much notice we'll be able to get something. Let's make sure we have the dates communicated to Molly and she'll get my admin to set it up outside so that we have it. >> I'll get those today to you, Molly. Thank you. >> By the way, I am so, so pleased with being able to work with you guys on this. I think the industry needs it very bad. They need something to break them out of the box of their own mental constraints of what the cloud is versus what it's supposed to be. And obviously, the more we get people to question their reality and what is real, what are we really capable of today that then the more business that we're going to get. So we're excited to lend the hand behind this notion of supercloud and a super pass layer in whatever way we can. >> Awesome. >> Can I ask you whether your platforms include ARM as well as X86? >> So we have not done an ARM port yet. It has been entertained and won't be much of a stretch. >> Yeah, it's just a matter of time. >> Actually, entertained doing it on behalf of NVIDIA, but it will absolutely happen because ARM in the data center I think is a foregone conclusion. Well, it's already there in some cases, but not quite at volume. So definitely will be the case. And I'll tell you where this gets really interesting, discussion for another time, is back to my old friend, the SSD, and having SSDs that have enough brains on them to be part of that fabric. Directly. >> Interesting. Interesting. >> Very interesting. >> Directly attached to ethernet and able to create a data mesh global file system, that's going to be really fascinating. Got to run now. >> All right, hey, thanks you guys. Thanks David, thanks Molly. Great to catch up. Bye-bye. >> Bye >> Talk to you soon.

(upbeat music) >> We're back with Jerome West, the Product Management Security Lead for HCI at Dell Technologies Hyper-Converged Infrastructure. Jerome, welcome. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Hey, Jerome, in this series "A Blueprint for Trusted Infrastructure," we've been digging into the different parts of the infrastructure stack, including storage servers and networking, and now we want to cover hyper-converged infrastructure. So my first question is what's unique about HCI that presents specific security challenges? What do we need to know? >> So what's unique about hyper-converged infrastructure is the breadth of the security challenge. We can't simply focus on a single type of IT system, so like a server or a storage system or a virtualization piece of software. I mean, HCI is all of those things. So luckily we have excellent partners like VMware, Microsoft and internal partners, like the Dell Power Edge Team, the Dell Storage Team, the Dell Networking Team, and on and on. These partnerships and these collaborations are what make us successful from a security standpoint. So let me give you an example to illustrate. In the recent past, we're seeing growing scope and sophistication in supply chain attacks. This means an attacker is going to attack your software supply chain upstream, so that hopefully a piece of code, malicious code that wasn't identified early in the software supply chain is distributed like a large player, like a VMware or a Microsoft or a Dell. So to confront this kind of sophisticated hard to defeat problem, we need short-term solutions and we need long-term solutions as well. So for the short-term solution, the obvious thing to do is to patch the vulnerability. The complexity is for our HCI portfolio, we build our software on VMware. So we would have to consume a patch that VMware would produce and provide it to our customers in a timely manner. Luckily, VxRail's engineering team has co engineered a release process with VMware that significantly shortens our development life cycle, so that VMware will produce a patch, and within 14 days we will integrate our own code with the VMware release. We will have tested and validated the update, and we will give an update to our customers within 14 days of that VMware release. That as a result of this kind of rapid development process, VxRail had over 40 releases of software updates last year. For a longer term solution, we're partnering with VMware and others to develop a software bill of materials. We work with VMware to consume their software manifest including their upstream vendors and their open source providers to have a comprehensive list of software components. Then we aren't caught off guard by an unforeseen vulnerability, and we're more able to easily detect where the software problem lies so that we can quickly address it. So these are the kind of relationships and solutions that we can co-engineer with effective collaborations with our partners. >> Great, thank you for that description. So if I had to define what cybersecurity resilience means to HCI or converged infrastructure, to me, my takeaway was you got to have a short-term instant patch solution and then you got to do an integration in a very short time, you know, two weeks to then have that integration done. And then longer-term, you have to have a software bill of materials so that you can ensure the provenance of all the components. Help us, is that a right way to think about cybersecurity resilience? Do you have, you know, additives to that definition? >> I do. I really think that cybersecurity and resilience for HCI, because like I said it has sort of unprecedented breadth across our portfolio. It's not a single thing. It's a bit of everything. So really the strength or the secret sauce is to combine all the solutions that our partner develops while integrating them with our own layer. So let me give you an example. So HCI, it's a basically taking a software abstraction of hardware functionality and implementing it into something called the virtualized layer. It's basically the virtualizing hardware functionality, like say a storage controller. You could implement it in the hardware, but for HCI, for example, in our VxRail portfolio, our VxRail product, we integrated it into a product called vSan which is provided by our partner VMware. So that portfolio strength is still, you know, through our partnerships. So what we do, we integrate these security functionality and features into our product. So our partnership grows through our ecosystem through products like VMware products, like NSX, Horizon, Carbon Black and vSphere. All of them integrate seamlessly with VMware. And we also leverage VMware's software partnerships on top of that. So for example, VxRail supports multifactor authentication through vSphere's integration with something called Active Directory Federation Services or ADFS. So there is a lot of providers that support ADFS, including Microsoft Azure. So now we can support a wide array of identity providers such as Auth0, or I mentioned Azure or Active Directory through that partnership. So we can leverage all of our partners' partnerships as well. So there's sort of a second layer. So being able to secure all of that, that provides a lot of options and flexibility for our customers. So basically to summarize my answer, we consume all of the security advantages of our partners, but we also expand on them to make a product that is comprehensively secured at multiple layers from the hardware layer that's provided by Dell through Power Edge to the hyper-converged software that we build ourselves to the virtualization layer that we get through our partnerships with Microsoft and VMware. >> Great, I mean, that's super helpful. You've mentioned NSX, Horizon, Carbon Black, all the you know, the VMware component, Auth0, which the developers are going to love. You got Azure Identity. So it's really an ecosystem. So you may have actually answered my next question, but I'm going to ask it anyway cause you've got this software-defined environment, and you're managing servers and networking and storage with this software-led approach. How do you ensure that the entire system is secure end to end? >> That's a really great question. So the answer is we do testing and validation as part of the engineering process. It's not just bolted on at the end. So when we do, for example VxRail is the market's only co-engineered solution with VMware. Other vendors sell VMware as a hyper-converged solution, but we actually include security as part of the co-engineering process with VMware. So it's considered when VMware builds their code, and their process dovetails with ours because we have a secure development lifecycle which other products might talk about in their discussions with you, that we integrate into our engineering lifecycle. So because we follow the same framework, all of the code should inter-operate from a security standpoint. And so when we do our final validation testing, when we do a software release, we're already halfway there in ensuring that all these features will give the customers what we promised. >> That's great. All right, let's close. Pitch me. What would you say is the strong suit, summarize the the strengths of the Dell hyper-converged infrastructure and converged infrastructure portfolio, specifically from a security perspective, Jerome? >> So I talked about how hyper-converged infrastructure simplifies security management because basically you're going to take all of these features that are abstracted in hardware. They're not abstracted in the virtualization layer. Now you can manage them from a single point of view, whether it would be say, you know, for VxRail it would be vCenter, for example. So by abstracting all this, you make it very easy to manage security and highly flexible because now you don't have limitations around a single vendor. You have a multiple array of choices and partnerships to select. So I would say that is the key to making, to HCI. Now what makes Dell the market leader in HCI is not only do we have that functionality, but we also make it exceptionally useful to you because it's co-engineered. It's not bolted on. So I gave the example of SBOM. I gave the example of how we modify our software release process with VMware to make it very responsive. A couple of other features that we have specific just to HCI are digitally signed LCM updates. This is an example of a feature that we have that's only exclusive to Dell. It's not done through a partnership. So we digitally sign our software updates. So the user can be sure that the update that they're installing into their system is an authentic and unmodified product. So we give it a Dell signature that's invalidated prior to installation. So not only do we consume the features that others develop in a seamless and fully validated way, but we also bolt on our own specific HCI security features that work with all the other partnerships and give the user an exceptional security experience. So for example, the benefit to the customer is you don't have to create a complicated security framework. That's hard for your users to use, and it's hard for your system administrators to manage. It all comes in a package, so it can be all managed through vCenter, for example. And then the specific hyper-converged functions can be managed through VxRail manager or through STDC manager. So there's very few panes of glass that the administrator or user ever has to worry about. It's all self-contained and manageable. >> That makes a lot of sense. So you've got your own infrastructure. You're applying your best practices to that like the digital signatures. You've got your ecosystem. You're doing co-engineering with the ecosystems, delivering security in a package, minimizing the complexity at the infrastructure level. The reason, Jerome, this is so important is because SecOps teams, you know, they got to deal with Cloud security. They got to deal with multiple Clouds. Now they have their shared responsibility model going across multiple. They got all this other stuff that they have to worry. They got to secure the containers and the run time and the platform and so forth. So they're being asked to do other things. If they have to worry about all the things that you just mentioned, they'll never get, you know, the security is just going to get worse. So my takeaway is you're removing that infrastructure piece and saying, okay, guys, you now can focus on those other things that is not necessarily Dell's, you know, domain, but you, you know, you can work with other partners and your own teams to really nail that. Is that a fair summary? >> I think that is a fair summary because absolutely the worst thing you can do from a security perspective is provide a feature that's so unusable that the administrator disables it or other key security features. So when I work with my partners to define and develop a new security feature, the thing I keep foremost in mind is will this be something our users want to use and our administrators want to administer? Because if it's not, if it's something that's too difficult or onerous or complex, then I try to find ways to make it more user-friendly and practical. And this is a challenge sometimes because our products operate in highly regulated environments, and sometimes they have to have certain rules and certain configurations that aren't the most user friendly or management friendly. So I put a lot of effort into thinking about how can we make this feature useful while still complying with all the regulations that we have to comply with. And by the way, we're very successful in a highly regulated space. We sell a lot of VxRail, for example, into the Department of Defense and banks and other highly regulated environments. And we're very successful there. >> Excellent, okay, Jerome, thanks. We're going to leave it there for now. I'd love to have you back to talk about the progress that you're making down the road. Things always, you know, advance in the tech industry, and so would appreciate that >> I would look forward to it. Thank you very much, Dave. >> You're really welcome. In a moment, I'll be back to summarize the program and offer some resources that can help you on your journey to secure your enterprise infrastructure. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCUBE conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and welcome to a special CUBE conversation. Going to be going through digging a little bit into the history as well as talking about the modern storage environment. Happy to welcome back to the program. One of our CUBE alumni, someone even I actually known for many years, we worked together for a number of years. Scott Delandy is the Technical Director of Dell Storage in Data Protection Division, of course with Dell Technologies. Scott, great to see you. >> Hey, Stu, is so awesome to see you guys. Thank you for the opportunity to come and chat with you. Today we've got some really exciting stuff that we want to go through and I know you and I are probably going to have a little bit of an issue because I know when we get together, we always want to reminisce about, you know, the things that we've done and you know, the stuff that we've gotten to work on and as well as the cool stuff that's happening within technology today. So everybody buckle in, 'cause this is going to be cool. >> Unfortunately, you know, we're only a few miles away from each other in person, but of course, in these time we have to do it while remote, but we'll walk side by side for a little bit of memory lane. >> Yes absolutely. >> You know, as I hinted you and I both worked at a company that many people will remember, I always worry Scott, you know, the younger people, you know, will be like, EMC, you know, who are they? Back when I started at EMC in 2000, it was, you know, you talked about prime and deck and some of the other companies here in Massachusetts that had been great and then been acquired or things that happened. So you even had a little bit, you've had a longer tenure at what is now Dell, EMC, of course, you know, the mega merger a couple of years ago. So, talk about a little bit, you know, your journey and we're going to be talking about PowerMax, which of course is the continuation of the long legacy of this Symmetrics platform. >> Yeah, it's crazy. So, I hit 30 years, with EMC and now with, Dell back in July. So it's been, you know, an amazing three now going on three plus decades of being able to work with amazing technology, incredibly talented people within the organization, as well as some of the best and brightest when it comes to users and customers that actually deploy the technology. So it's been a tremendous ride and you know, I'm not planning on slowing down any time soon. Let's just keep going, man. >> Yeah. You talk about decades, Scott, it felt like 2020 has been a decade into itself. (Scott laughs) So, but we, we talk about that history, Symmetrics really created, you know, that, that standalone storage business, you know, created a lot of technologies that help drive a lot of businesses out there, bring us up to speed, PowerMax, you know, what, where does that business fit in their portfolio? Got any good stuff for us that's adoption here in 2020. >> Yeah. I mean, you, you kind of said it. So when Symmetrics was originally introduced, and that was kind of one of the older generations architectures of what we now know today as PowerMax, a lot has changed with respect to the platform in terms of the technology, the types of environments that we support, the data services that we provide. So it's been, you know, again, three plus decades of evolution in terms of the technology, but kind of the concept of external storage buying computer deploying compute, separate from the storage infrastructure, that was a, unheard of concept back in 1990 when we first introduced Symmetrics. So this, month September is actually the 30 year anniversary from when we actually first created, that platform and, you know, lots of things have changed, right? It started as, you know, a mainframe platform and then we evolved into mainframe and open systems. And then we started looking at the adoption of things like client server, and then environments became virtualized, and, you know, throughout that entire history Symmetrics and now PowerMax has really been, one of the core tenants in terms of leveraging the storage infrastructure to make a lot of those evolutions happen in terms of the types of applications, types of operating environments and just the entire ecosystem that goes around, supporting an organization's applications and helping them run their business. Now where you know, PowerMax comes into play today, it is that it's still considered, the gold standard when it comes to high end technology, providing the reliability, the automation, the data services, the rich functionality that has made that platform, the success that still continues to be. You know, one of the things that blows my mind is if you look at just the last earnings call from, you know, last month or a couple of months ago now, PowerMax business is still growing what grew for that quarter at a triple digit rate. And, you know, you think of, you know, you look at kind of what's happening from a technology standpoint and kind of, you know, external storage has been a pretty kind of stable segment in terms of the infrastructure business, but still being able to see that type of growth, and just talking to users and, you know, hearing how much they continue to love the platform, how they continue to, you know, rely on the types of things that we're able to provide for their applications, for their businesses, just the tremendous amount of trust that's been built up, with respect to that platform. It's cool to be a part of that, and to be able to hear those types of things from the people that actually use the products. >> Yeah. One of the big changes during my time, you know, in the portfolio there, Scott was of course the real emergence of server virtualization with VMware of course. I'd actually started working, you know, when I was at EMC with VMware ahead of the acquisition. And then once the acquisition happened, there was a long maturation of storage in VMware environment. We kind of look back and say, you know, we spent a decade trying to fix and make sure that, you know, storage and networking could work well in those virtual environments. So we've got VMworld going on, understand you've got some news on the update, you know, that constant cadence of always make sure that, the storage and the virtual environment, work very well together. So, why don't you bring us up to date on the new. >> Yeah, so it's pretty exciting. So we are announcing some new software capabilities for the platform, as well as some new hardware enhancements, but basically the three focuses are a tighter integration with VMware specifically, by introducing new support for vVols and then changing the way that we've been able to deploy, and support vVols within the platform. We're also introducing, new cloud capabilities. So being able to take your primary storage, your PowerMax system, and being able to extend that to leverage cloud deployments. So being able to consume the capacity a little bit differently, being able to support some real interesting use cases in terms of why somebody might want to take their primary tier one storage and connect that, and to be able to move some of those datasets into a cloud provider. And then the third part is some really innovative things happening around security, really around being able to provide additional support for data protection, especially for things like encrypted environment, while still being able to preserve the efficiencies that we've built into these storage platforms. So those are kind of the three big things there's lot of other what we would call giblets also associated with the launch. But those are really the big ticket items that I think people are talking about in terms of this release. >> Well, let's drill in a little bit there, Scott. So if we take the cloud piece, you know, their message, of course, we understand, you know, Dell and VMware have partnered very closely together. VMware very much is driving that, you know, hybrid and multicloud deployment out there. So when I talk to some of the product teams, is you know, that consistency of deployment, you know, say you take a BX rail with VMware VCF, that that similar environment, what I could do in a Google cloud or an Azure, how does the, those cloud solutions that you talk about fit into that overall discussion? >> Well, when you look at something like vVols, right? So, vVols is a little bit of a change or a newer way of being able to connect, into an external storage platform. And one of the things that we're trying to solve with vVols is being able to provide, better granularity in terms of the storage and the capacity being consumed at the individual VM level, but also being able to plug into the VMware ecosystem so that even though you have an external storage device connected into that environment, the way it gets managed, the way it gets provisioned, the way you set up replication, the way you recover things is completely transparent because all of that is handled, through the VMware software that sits above that. So it seems like a trivial exercise to just, you know, plug in a storage system and kind of away you go, but there's heavy lifting required in order to support that because you've got that in sometimes, in some cases make changes to the things that you're doing on the back end storage side, as well as work with the ecosystem provider in this case VMware. That have changes so that they can support some of the functionality and some of the rich data services that you're able to provide under the covers. Right. I'll give you a great example. So one of the things that we have the ability to do today is when we plug into a VMware environment with a PowerMax, we can support up to 64,000 devices, right? And you just try and get your head around that 64,000 devices. What does that even mean? It sounds like a lot, is that just marketing number and nobody would ever, you know, get to that level in terms of the number of devices that you would have to support. But one of the, kind of the technical challenges that we wanted to be able to solve is that when you deploy a virtual machine, each individual virtual machine consumes minimally three vVols in order to support that. And sometimes dozens and dozens of vVols especially if you're looking at doing things like copies or making snapshots of that. So the ability to scale to that large number of vVols and being able to support that, in a single storage system is very powerful for our users, especially folks out there that are looking to do, massive levels of consolidation where they really want to collapse the infrastructure down. They want to get as few physical things that they have to manage, which means you're spreading, you know, hundreds, thousands of these virtual machines into a single piece of infrastructure. So scale really does matter, especially for the types of users that would deploy a PowerMax in their environment, because of, again, the things that they're trying to do from an IT perspective, as well as the things that they need to do in order to be able to support their businesses. >> Yeah. Well, Scott, absolutely scale is such an important piece of the overall discussion today. It means different things to different people. It could mean you're massively scaling out like the hyperscalers, there's the edge discussion of, you know, small scale, but lots of copies. Talk to me about scale when it comes to those mission critical application. So, you know, I think about the solutions and data services that you're talking about, of course, you know, EMC, the Symmetrics really helped create that allegory with things like SRDF, Timefinder back in the day. So, what are you hearing today what's most important for critical application. >> So it really, excellent point. It really comes down to automation, right? Where, you know, you think of some of these, large environments, and we have users out there today that will have tens of thousands of virtual machines running in a single system. And you know, the ability to manage those, you can't find human beings that are, enough of them, as well as, you know ability to keep up with all the changes that happen in that environment. It's just something, that cannot physically be done in a manual way. So having that environment as automated as possible is really important, but it's not just automation, it's being able to automate at scale, right? So if I have 10,000 VMs and I want to go ahead and make a change in the environment, going through and making those VM by VM by VM is incredibly impractical. So being able to plug into the environment and being able to have hooks or APIs into the interfaces that sit on top of that, that's where a lot of the value comes in, right. It's really that automation, because again, tens of thousands of VMs, 64,000 devices. cool cool stuff, but you're not going to manage those individually. So how do you take that infrastructure and how do you literally make it, invisible to everybody around it so that when you have something that you want to do, just worry about the outcome, you don't worry about the individual steps required in order to get to that outcome. >> Yeah. What you said is so important, Scott, I love when PowerMax first came out, I got to talk with some of the engineers and, you know, the comment I made is, we've been talking about automation for decades. You know, Scott, you probably know better than most, when some of the previous generations, no automation would be discussed, but it's different. And what they really said is, it's so much about, you know, machine scale and being able to, we've gone beyond human scale. Humans could not keep up with the amount of changes and how we do things, and it's not just some scripts that you build. So there really is that, kind of machine learning built into what we're talking about. The other thing we've talked about for a long time and has always been critical in your space and you'd hit it up before, security. So, you know, give us the discussion of, you know, security in PowerMax, how that fits over in company's overall security stance. >> Well, I mean, at a very high level, I can confidently say that there is a heightened level of awareness around security, especially for the types of applications and the types of data, that we would typically support within these platforms. So it is very much a top of mind discussion. And, you know, one of the things that people are looking at in terms of how do I protect that data is it needs to be encrypted, right? And you know, we've been doing encryption for many many years. Right? We first introduced that through a feature called DARE which is Data At Rest Encryption, which would allow us at the individual drive level to encrypt it. So if that drive was ever physically removed either to be serviced, or, you know, someone just lost the drive, you wouldn't have to worry about that data being kind of out in the wild and being able to be accessed by somebody, because there was an encryption key. And unless you had that key, you could not access that data. And for many many years, that became a check in the box requirement. You cannot put your gear in my data center, unless I can assure that that data that's being stored on that system is encrypted, right. What's changing now, is just being able to encrypt the data on the array is no are good enough for some environments. The data needs to be encrypted from the host, from it being written by the application all the way through the server, the memory, the networks, everything, the controllers, right to the backend storage. So it's not just encrypting the data that's at rest, but encrypting the data end to end. Right. And one of the challenges that you have is that when you are writing an encrypted data, to a storage platform, especially in all flash storage platform, one of the data services that provides a lot of value is the ability to do data reduction, through a combination of things like data deduplication, and compression, and pattern recognition. There's all this kind of cool stuff that happens under the covers. So we will typically see a three to one, four to one data reduction for a particular application. But when that data is encrypted, you no longer get that efficiency it won't dedup, it won't compress. That kind of changes the sort of economic paradigm if you would, as you look at these external storage devices. So we've been talking to customers, we had one customer in particular come to us. They were a large insurance company. And one of their biggest customers came to them and said, our new policy is that all of our employee data, has to be encrypted, encrypted end to end. And so, as they looked at, well, how are we going to address that requirement? They quickly realized that in order to do that, they're going to need to increase the amount of storage that they have three to four X, because this data that they were getting really high deduplication and compression up against, they we're no longer going to get that. So what we did is we looked at well, what are ways that we can preserve the data efficiencies, the data reduction on the storage side, while still being able to meet the requirement to encrypt that data? So one of the new features that we're introducing within PowerMax is the ability to do end-to-end encryption while still being able to preserve the efficiencies. So I can turn encryption on all the way at the host level. I can write that data into the PowerMax, the PowerMax has access to the encryption keys that are on the host. It has the ability to decrypt that data in line. So there's no bump in the wire. There's no performance impact, apply the data reduction to it, and then re-encrypt the data as we're writing it out to the back. Yeah. So it's a hugely important feature for IT organizations, that are just now kind of getting their heads around this emerging requirement, that it's just not the stuff that's at rest that needs to be encrypted, it's the data end to end that's in that process. So big challenge there, and it really is one of the innovations that we're kind of pushing, in order to basically meet that requirement for this you know, set of users out there that see this as either something that they need today, or an evolving requirement where they want to put infrastructure in place. So if they're not doing it today, but they see maybe a couple of years down the line, that's something that they're going to need to do. They have the ability to enable that feature on the storage itself. >> Well, so Scott, 30 years of innovation, driving through this, you know, first of all, I hope if you haven't planned already, you need to get one of those Symmetrics refrigerators that I saw from back in the day, you know, wheel that out to the parking lot of where our tool's used to be, you know, a sign to the times that, you know, it used to be a bar for a few times now, you know, an organic sushi place, but you know, socially distanced gathering to celebrate, but give us a little look forward, you know, 30 years, I'm not resting on your laurels, always moving forward. So what would we expect to see, from PowerMax you know, going forward? >> So, two things, number one, the person that came up with that idea of the, what we internally refer to as the V fridge was an absolute genius. Just, you know, I would say that person was a genius. Second thing is in terms of, you know, what we see going forward is, I mean, one of the top of mind discussions for a lot of users is cloud, right? How do I have a cloud strategy? I know that I have applications that I am going to continue to need to run in my, what we'll call a quote unquote traditional data center, just because of the sensitivity of the application, just the predictability that I need around that. I need to basically control that and I have the economics in place where that becomes a really cost effective way of being able to support those types of workloads. But that said, there are other ways that I can consume storage infrastructure, that doesn't require me to go ahead and buy a storage system and kind of deploy it in a data center that I own. So users want to basically be able to explore that as an option, but they want to really understand what's the right use case for that. So one of the things that we're also introducing within PowerMax, and we expect there to be a lot of interests and we expect there to be definitely a solid uptake in terms of adoption, is the ability connect a PowerMax into a cloud, right? So this could be a Dell ECS platform. It could be Amazon S3, it could be Microsoft Azure. So there's a lot of flexibility in terms of the type of cloud connectivity that I could support. But as we looked at you know, what do we want to do? We don't want to to just, you know, connect into a cloud because that's doesn't mean anything, right? So we need to understand, you know, what's, the right use case, right? So when we talk to a lot of our users, they had their storage systems and what they were doing is they were using a lot of capacity for things like snapshots, right? Creating point in time copies of their applications, for a variety of reasons, doing those for database checkpoints, doing those to support testing and development environments, doing those because they wanted to make a copy, and do some sort of offline processing up against that. But very mature, very well established concept of making copies called snapshots. And when we talk to some users, they are, we have some out there that are very heavy consumers of snapshots. And in some cases, 25-30% of the storage that they're using, is being consumed for snapshots. And what the requirement was is, Hey, if I could free up that space by taking these snapshots that I create, then may be I'll use them within the first couple of days, couple of weeks, but then I want to keep those snaps, but I don't really need to keep them, on my primary tier one storage. Maybe if I could offload those to another type of storage, that's either more cost effective, allows me to consume it on demand, gives me the ability to free up those resources so that I could use this capacity that I already own for other things that are growing within the environment, that would be something that I would be interested in. So we, we heard that requirement and, you know, from a product management standpoint, when you look at developing new products, new capabilities, there's kind of three things that you always want to do. Number one, you want to identify what is the requirement? What is the use case? What is the problem that you're trying to solve? And you want to make sure you understand that really well. And you build a technology that's designed to do that in a very good and efficient way. So that's number one. Number two is you want to make it easy to deploy, right? We don't want to create an environment where you need, you know, it's very fragile and you need, you know, specialized skills to go in there and deploy it, it's literally firing up the application, putting in the IP addresses for the S3 storage that you want to connect to, and then away you go, your setup is done, really really simple setup. But the third thing, and really, you know, one of the more important things is, what's the user experience? right. Is this something bizarre? Is this managed as a vApp? Is this something that I have to, you know, click on another application, I have to fire up another screen? So you want to take the management of that data service, and you want to build it right into the platform itself. So with the cloud snapshot capability that we're introducing, that's exactly what we're doing. Where we've identified a solid use case that we knew a lot of customers out there are going to be very interested in understanding, what they can do with this. And what type of new flexibility it can provide. Number two, making it super simple to deploy. Matter of fact, it's included with the PowerMax. You buy the PowerMax, that software functionality, that capability is included with the platform. So there's not even an additional licensing charge required to do that. It's included with the storage. And number three, an ease of perspective. I create a snapshot. I have the option. Do I want that snapshot to live on the array that I created it? Or do I want to take that snapshot, and do I want to push it off onto that provider? Whether it's an ECS in my data center or whether it's something that's sitting over an Amazon AWS, but really easy to basically deploy. And what we plan to do is to take this capability that we've narrowed down to a very specific use case in order to make sure, that we have a clear idea of what the benefits are in terms of why users would want to deploy it, look at other things, because there are other opportunities that we have to expand that to as that capability matures, and as we start to see adoption really take off, >> Oh, Scott, great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for helping us, you know, look down memory lane, as well as a look at the new pieces today and where we're going for the future >> Stu, always a pleasure. Thanks a lot. Great to talk to you again, as always. And hopefully we can get to do this again sometime soon, and maybe a real kind of physical sort of setting, where you know, we're not separated by, you know, a couple of counties and having to go to the West coast and come back here, but maybe you know, actually in a similar physical location. >> Definitely. We all hope for that in the future that we can get everybody back together. In the meantime, we have all the virtual coverage, be sure to check out thecube.net Of course all theCUBE conversations as you can see linked on the front page. Well, it shows like VMworld that we alluded to. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching. Thank you. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE covering RSA Conference 2020 San Francisco, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone, to CUBE's coverage here in San Francisco at RSA Conference 2020. I'm John Furrier, your host. You know, cybersecurity industry's changing. Enterprises are now awake to the fact that it's now a bigger picture around securing the enterprise, 'cause it's not only the data center. It's cloud, it's the edge, a lot of great stuff. We've got a great guest here from Dell EMC. Peter Gerr's a consultant, cyber resilience solutions and services marketing at Dell EMC. Great to see you. >> You too, John. >> Thanks for coming on. >> Good to see you again, thank you. >> So, you know, I was joking with Dave Volante just this morning around the three waves of cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud, multicloud. And we see obviously the progression. Hybrid cloud is where everyone spends most of their time. That's from ground to cloud, on-premises to cloud. So pretty much everyone knows-- >> Peter: On-ramp, kind of. >> That on-prem is not going away. Validated by all the big cloud players. but you got to nail the equation down for on-premises to the cloud, whether it's, I'm Amazon-Amazon, Azure-Azure, whatever, all those clouds. But the multicloud will be a next generation wave. That as an industry backdrop is very, very key. Plus AI and data are huge inputs into solving a lot of what is going to be new gaps, blind spots, whatever insecurity. So I got to, you know, Dell has a history with huge client base, traditional enterprises transforming. You're in the middle of all this, so you got the airplane at 30,000 feet and the companies have to swap out their engines and reboot their teams, and it's a huge task. What's going on with cyber and the enterprises? What are some of the key things? >> Well, so I like to keep it pretty simple. I've been in this industry over 20 years and I've really consistently talked about data as the global currency, right? So it's beautifully simple. Whatever industry you're in, whatever size company you're in, enterprise or even now small to medium businesses, their businesses are driven by data. Connectivity to that data, availability of the data, integrity of the data, and confidentiality of the data. And so sort of the area of the world that I focus upon is protecting customers' most valuable data assets, now, whether those are on-prem, in the cloud, or in a variety of modalities, and ensuring that those assets are protected and isolated from the attack surface, and then ability to recover those critical assets quickly so they can resume business operations. That's really the area that I work in. Now, that data, as you pointed out, it could start on-prem. It could live in multicloud. It can live in a hybrid environment. The key is really to understand that not all data is created equally. If you were to have a widespread cyber attack, really the key is to bring up those critical applications systems and data sets first to return to business operations. >> Yeah, it's funny-- >> Peter: It's really challenging >> You know, it's not funny, it's actually just ironic, but it's really kind of indicative of the society now is that EMC was bought by Dell Storage and the idea of disruption has always been a storage concept. We don't want a lot of disruption when we're doing things, right? >> Peter: None, we can't, yeah. >> So whether it's backup and recovery or cyber ransomware, whatever it is, the idea of non-disruptive operations-- >> Absolutely. >> Has been a core tenant. Now, that's obviously the same for cyber, as you can tell. So I got to ask you, what is your definition and view of cyber resilience? Because, well, that's what we're talking about here, cyber resilience. What's your view on that? >> So when we started developing our cyber recovery solution about five years ago, we used the NIST cybersecurity framework, which is a very well-known standard that defines really five pillars of how organizations can think about building a cyber resilience strategy. A cyber resilience strategy really encompasses everything from perimeter threat detection and response all the way through incident response after an attack and everything that happens in between, protecting the data and recovering the data, right? And critical systems. So I think of cyber resilience as that holistic strategy of protecting an organization and its data from a cyber attack. >> That's great insight. I want to get your thoughts on how that translates into the ecosystem, because this is an ecosystem around cyber resilience. >> Peter: Absolutely. >> And let's just say, and you may or may not be able to comment on this, but RSA is now being sold. >> Peter: Yeah, no, that's fair. >> So that's going out of the Dell family. But you guys have obviously VMware and Secureworks. But it's not just you guys. It's an ecosystem. >> It really is. >> How does Dell now without, with and without RSA, fit into the ecosystem? >> So as I mentioned, cyber resilience is really thought of as a holistic strategy. RSA and other Dell assets like Carbon Black fit in somewhere in that continuum, right? So RSA is really more on threat detection and response, perimeter protection. The area of the business that I work on, data protection and cyber recovery, really doesn't address the prevention of attacks. We really start with the premise that preventing a cyber attack is not 100% possible. If you believe that, then you need to look at protecting and recovering your assets, right? And so whether it's RSA, whether it's Carbon Black, whether it's Secureworks, which is about cyber incident and response, we really work across those groups. It's about technology, processes, and people. It's not any one thing. We also work outside of the Dell technologies umbrella. So we integrate, our cyber recovery solution is integrated with Unisys Stealth. So there's an example of how we're expanding and extending the cyber recovery solution to bring in other industry standards. >> You know, it's interesting. I talk to a lot of people, like, I'm on theCube here at RSA. Everyone wants better technology, but there's also a shift back to best-of-breed, 'cause you want to have the best new technology, but at the same time, you got to have proven solutions. >> Peter: That's the key. >> So what are you guys selling, what is the best-of-breed from Dell that you guys are delivering to customers? What are some of the areas? >> So I'm old EMC guy myself, right? And back from the days of disaster recovery and business continuity, right? More traditional data protection and backup. The reality is that the modern threats of cyber hackers, breaches, insider attacks, whatever you like, those traditional data protection strategies weren't built to address those types of threats. So along with transformation and modernization, we need to modernize our data protection. That's what cyber recovery is. It's a modern solution to the modern threat. And what it does is it augments your data, excuse me, your disaster recovery and your backup environment with a purpose-built isolated air gap digital vault which is built around our proven Data Domain and PowerProtect DD platforms that have been around for over a decade. But what we've done is added intelligence, analytics, we've hardened that system, and we isolate it so customers can protect really their most valuable assets in that kind of a vault. >> So one of things I've been doing some research on and digging into is cyber resilience, which you just talked about, cyber security, which is the industry trend, and you're getting at cyber recovery, okay? >> Peter: Correct. >> Can you talk about some examples of how this all threads together? What are some real recent wins or examples? >> Sure, sure. So think of cyber recovery as a purpose-built digital vault to secure your most valuable assets. Let me give you an example. One of our customers is a global paint manufacturer, okay? And when we worked with them to try to decide what of their apps and data sets should go into this cyber recovery vault, we said, "What is the most critical intellectual property "that you have?" So in their case, and, you know, some customers might say my Oracle financials or my Office 365 environment. For this customer it was their proprietary paint matching system. So they generate $80 to $100 million every day based upon this proprietary paint matching system which they've developed and which they use every day to run their business. If that application, if those algorithms were destroyed, contaminated, or posted on the public internet somewhere, that would fundamentally change that company. So that's really what we're talking about. We're working with customers to help them identify their most critical assets, data, systems, applications, and isolate those from the threat vector. >> Obviously all verticals are impacted by cyber security. >> Every vertical is data-driven, that's right. >> And so obviously the low-hanging fruit, are they the normal suspects, financial services? Is there a particular one that's hotter than, obviously financial services has got fraud and all that stuff on it, but is that still number one, or-- >> So I think there's two sides to the coin. One, if you look at the traditional enterprise environments, absolutely financial services and healthcare 'cause they're both heavily regulated, therefore that data has very high value and is a very attractive target to the would-be hackers. If you look on the other end of the spectrum, though, the small to medium businesses that all rely on the internet for their business to run, they're the ones that are most susceptible because they don't have the budgets, the infrastructure, or the expertise to protect themselves from a sophisticated hacker. So we work across all verticals. Obviously the government is also very susceptible to cyber threats. But it's every industry, any business that's data-driven. I mean, everyone's been breached so many times, no one even knows how many times. I got to ask you about some cool trends we're reporting on here. Homomorphic encryption is getting a lot of traction here because financial services and healthcare are two-- >> Peter: Homomorphic? >> Homomorphic, yeah. Did I say that right? >> It's the first time I've ever heard that term, John. >> It's encryption at in use. So you have data at rest, data in flight, and data in use. So it's encryption when you're doing all your, protecting all your transactional data. So it's full implementation with Discovery. Intel's promoting it. We discovered a startup that's doing that, as well. >> Peter: Yeah, that's new for me, yeah. >> But it allows for more use cases. But data in use, not just motion, or in-flight, whatever they call it. >> Peter: I get it, yeah, static. >> So that's opening up these other thing. But it brings up the why, why that's important, and the reason is that financial services and healthcare, because they're regulated, have systems that were built many moons ago or generations ago. >> Absolutely. >> So there was none of these problems that you were mentioning earlier, like, they weren't built for that. >> Correct. >> But now you need more data. AI needs sharing of data. Sharing is a huge deal. >> Real-time sharing, too, right? >> Real-time sharing. >> And I think that's where the homomorphic encryption comes in. >> That's exactly right. So you mentioned that. So these industries, how can they maintain their existing operations and then get more data sharing? Do you have any insight into how you see that? Because that's one of those areas that's becoming like, okay, HIPAA, we know why that was built, but it's also restrictive. How do you maintain the purity of a process-- >> If your infrastructure is old? That is a challenge, healthcare especially, because, I mean, if I'm running a health system, every dollar that I have should really go into improving patient care, not necessarily into my IT infrastructure. But the more that every industry moves towards a real-time data-driven model for how we give care, right, the more that companies need to realize that data drives their business. They need to do everything they can to protect it and also ensure that they can recover it when and if a cyber attack happens. >> Well, I really appreciate the insight, and it's going to be great to see Dell Technologies World coming up. We'll dig into a lot of that stuff. While we're here and talking us about some of these financial services, banking, I want to get your thoughts. I've been hearing this term Sheltered Harbor being kicked around. What is that about? What does that mean? >> Sheltered Harbor, you're right, I think you'll hear a lot more about it. So Sheltered Harbor is a financial industries group and it's also a set of best practices and specifications. And really, the purpose of Sheltered Harbor is to protect consumer and financial institutions' data and public confidence in the US financial system. So the use case is this. You can imagine that a bank having a cyber attack and being unable to produce transactions could cause problems for customers of that bank. But just like we were talking about, the interconnectedness of the banking system means that one financial institution failing because of a cyber attack, it could trigger a cascade and a panic and a run on the US financial banks and therefore the global financial system. Sheltered Harbor was developed to really protect public confidence in the financial system by ensuring that banks, brokerages, credit unions are protecting their customer data, their account records, their most valuable assets from cyber attack, and that they can recover them and resume banking operations quickly. >> So this is an industry group? >> It's an industry group. >> Or is it a Dell group or-- >> No, Sheltered Harbor is a US financial industry group. It's a non-profit. You can learn more about it at shelteredharbor.org. The interesting thing for Dell Technologies is we're actually the first member of the Sheltered Harbor solution provider program, and we'll be announcing that shortly, in fact, this week, and we'll have a cyber recovery for Sheltered Harbor solution in the market very shortly. >> Cyber resilience, great topic, and you know, it just goes to show storage is never going away. The basic concepts of IT, recovery, continuous operations, non-disruptive operations. Cloud scale changes the game. >> Peter: It's all about the data. >> It's all about the data. >> Still, yes, sir. >> Thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. >> Thank you, John. >> RSA coverage here, CUBE, day two of three days of coverage. I'm John Furrier here on the ground floor in Moscone in San Francisco. Thanks for watching (electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell World Technologies here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment. We have Honore LaBourdette. She is the VP, Global Market Development, Telco Business Group. Welcome, VMware, thank you, sorry. >> Thank you, yes. >> Welcome. And we have Kevin Shatzkamer, Senior VP, Networking and Solutions, Dell EMC. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Our pleasure. >> Thank you. >> So Kevin I want to start with you. There was a big announcement this morning, signing with Orange of France. Tell our viewers a little bit more about this. >> Yeah, sure. So, I think as overall Dell Technologies continues to focus on helping our service providers through what is a very complex transition, both in their business, in their operations, in their technology investments, in the operational skill set gaps, in the business models, the architecture's use cases kind of comes across the board of how their businesses are evolving. What we continue to do is focus on a core set of telecommunication service providers that we can partner with very deeply to help in that transformation and use the knowledge gained through that collaboration as a means to expand the Dell Technologies capabilities globally. So, I think that the belief is that when we help solve problems, it not only benefits the service provider we're working with, it benefits the industry as a whole with the lessons learned, so that we can then contribute back. >> And so far, there's been some enthusiasm about this? >> There certainly has. I think it's been a big day for us. Obviously, the first two days at Dell Technologies World, we're extremely focused on new product introductions across the Dell portfolio, and today, with the opportunity to expand the messaging and announce some of the great things we're doing with partners, we're doing with out customers, and we're doing within the ecosystem, I think we continue to drive a very positive message. >> Honore, the networking component is something that we know service providers have a need and is ever-changing. We've watched that expand greatly in the VMware portfolio over the years. I've done plenty of interviews with telcos talking about things like NFV, network functions virtualization, but the big thing everybody's been talking about, the last couple of years it feels like, is 5G. So, maybe we could start there, but talk a little bit about what you're hearing from service providers and how VMware and VMware plus Dell are helping to meet some of those requirements. >> Sure, well, needless to say, 5G is the topic of every conversation we have with our telecommunication customers, and I think that there's a number of areas around 5G that are most prevalent in those conversations. One is really how does the service provider get a return on investment for the huge amounts of monies that they're investing in this infrastructure, right? So, 5G is a new infrastructure, a new technology, that's going to require a refresh of the entire infrastructure. And so, while they're making all of those investments, and they are doing so very aggressively to have a first-mover advantage, in terms of the first to deliver on a 5G technology, they want to work with vendors who can, in fact, accelerate their time to a return on the investment for that infrastructure. So, many of our conversations are really focused around how can we help these service providers actually accomplish that, right? Not just build out, or take advantage of a software-defined infrastructure and all of the technologies that both Dell and WMware offer to them under the umbrella of the Dell Technology Companies, but also, how can we help them accelerate services that they want to to put on top of the 5G technology? I think one of the key differentiators of 5G over its predecessors is that the industry has recognized that it's going to require partnerships in order for the service providers to really get their return on investment. And that's where the partnership with VMware and with Dell and the work that Kevin and I are doing together to focus on service providing is really anchored, right? It's bringing together those partnerships, so that these telecommunication customers can take advantage of our technology and do it very quickly. >> So, there's a real acknowledgement of the need for partnerships? >> Yes. >> So then, how do you show customers that the VMware-Dell partnership is the right direction? >> Well, needless to say, it's anchored in our technology. Kevin and I have been working together for a number of years now, and our partnership really started out focusing on just making sure that the components of the stack worked as promised, right? That we could deliver a high degree of confidence to our customers that when they software-defined the infrastructure on Dell Technology hardware, and then layered on top of that, their virtual network functions, that it would perform our outperform their legacy, bare-metal, vertical-stack equipment. Over time, however, our partnership has progressed to where we're actually collaborating to bring new technology to market together. And one example of that is the City of Las Vegas. We recently announced a Smart City IoT use case, and that technology, that solution, was co-developed with NTT, Dell EMC, and VMware using VMware software, Dell hardware, as well as Dell Storage, Dell Data Analytics and Intelligence, and NTT's infrastructure and points of presence. >> Yeah, I think there's both a technical reality and an operational reality to the technologies that we speak of, right? The technical reality is that the transformation that the telcos are going through around NFV and the direction toward network edge, edge computing, cloud environments, is really just software-defined data center similar to what we've done on the IT side for a long time. So, the technologies that the telecommunications industry is adopting are the technologies that both Dell EMC and VMware have been working on for a very long time. The operational reality is that just taking what you've done in IT and applying it into a telco network is not sufficient. Understanding of the workloads, how those workloads layer on top of infrastructure, understanding that those workloads are in a transformation of their own, and that virtual network functions were not designed to natively consume and compute. They were designed for network appliances, and that there are still requirements that they drive down to the infrastructure was, I think, where Honore and I have been investing for the last several years, right? How do we complement the broad capabilities of both Dell EMC and VMware in IT virtualization software-defined data center, and bring in telco service provider networking expertise and domain knowledge that we can use to be able to really ramp up and accelerate the partnerships we have in the service provider industry? >> That's great stuff. We actually got to do an interview on the smarter cities earlier this week, and a fascinating discussion to see how there's, Kevin, I like what you laid out there. When I look at this space, scale gets talked about a lot, but you talk to telcos, they have a little bit of a different scale, and the management for these kind of environments is also quite a bit different than if you were talking to the enterprise. Are those some of the key items? Where would you say your focus? >> I also think that even further. That the challenges of scale that have been solved in the public cloud are a different set of challenges than the telco industry is really trying to wrestle with, right? In the public cloud, we're taking about a very small number of facilities, and we can build a homogenous architecture within there. We define a standard server. We replicate that server across a rack, replicate that rack across rows, replicate those rows across a data center. The reality is, as we get further and further towards the edge of the telco network, it looks more heterogeneous, right? I need GPUs for particular instances. I have cloud-native applications. I have virtualized applications that sit inside of VMs. I have native Linux environments. I need to handle dense networking topologies. I have east-west traffic, north-south traffic that I need to take into account. And I think that what we've figured out and what we've learned in automating and orchestrating the public cloud is how to handle hundreds of thousands of things at single-digit number of locations. And what we're talking about here is hundreds of thousands of locations with single-digit number of things. >> And that's another key area of the collaboration between the two groups, in terms of how we deliver value to our telco customers. So, rather than us working in silos and delivering yet another disparate technology for managing the edge, cloud, or all these different locations, we're working together so we can bring a cohesive technology to market for them. >> That's right, I think the infrastructure demands and openness and a willingness to be a productive member of a complex and consistently changing ecosystem, and I think that, obviously, Dell EMC does that in our way. VMware does it in their way, but there's clear recognition that the better capabilities are when we work together to really drive the platform and bring the true capabilities of the broader Dell technologies together. >> So, telcoms is a hugely competitive industry, and as you've talked about, there's a lot of challenges, and it's a real transformative moment for this sector. Can you lay out some of sort of what you're thinking about for after 5G, which as you've said, is a hugely expensive investment for these companies? But sort of post-5G, what are we looking at? What's on their minds of your customers? >> So, I don't know that there's going to be distinct, post-5G event, right? I think that 5G, in and of itself, is going to take some time to roll out and proliferate, to the extent that its predecessors is now deployed across all locations all over the world. I do think that 5G, in addition to the infrastructure technology, or the refresh of that technology, a lot of what is going to happen around 5G is, in fact, the applications and use cases that's going to take advantage of 5G. If we about what 5G is capable of enabling, it doesn't just address consumer applications. 5G also will address enterprise applications. And that opens up a whole world of innovation, and again, applications, partnerships, and vendors coming together, who can really help the service providers put those pieces together and deliver on those applications. There's already talk about 6G, although it's very limited. So, it's easy for me to say what's coming next after 5G will be 6G, but I think that there's still a lot of activity and a lot of innovation that will happen around 5G for some time to come. >> Yeah, we know that standards and the consortiums always have to be working. I was looking at terabit ethernet on the networking side. So, I wanted to help kind of bring this conversation together. If you have maybe a customer example, love if you could share who it is, but if not, give us a little bit of anonymity around what it is to help highlight this partnership. >> Sure, I think Honore shared the City of Las Vegas as a great example of where we're enabling the Smart Cities use case. We can speak to MetTel, in terms of the capabilities of Dell Technologies to be able to transform their NFV offerings and really help them bring NFV to market at scale. We can speak to at least one tier-one service provider in AMIA that is delivering a full-stack offering, in which we extended the capabilities of our Ericsson partnership that both Dell EMC, as well as VMware have, to build a complete stack offering of Ericsson, VMware, as well as Dell EMC. >> Yeah, and to Ericsson, there's some of the edge computing in there. I've talked to them quite a bit about what they're doing on their edge offering. >> Yeah, so I think we have a number of examples that we also can't share as publicly. But we continue to collaborate. I think we're driving fantastic innovation. The industry is responding extremely favorably across the board, and I think that the strategy that we have jointly to not just develop technology, but really change the way we engage with telecommunications organizations and service providers to work with them well before they're ready to deploy technology, and also, help them scale their own operations and understand this transformation is really key to the success here. Because just having the best technology at this inflection point in the industry is not enough. We really have to partner to help them understand how to operationalize and monetize that infrastructure. >> And we do have a number of innovation projects, with regards to the edge and far edge with some of the top-tier service providers, in particular, in the Americas, where we're working together for edge solutions. I've got to hear what this far-edge is in a future conversation, because I thought I was getting my arms around it, but -- >> I know, it was edge, and now it's edge and far-edge. >> That's for Dell Technologies World 2020. >> That's right. >> Honore, Kevin, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> It's a great time. >> You are watching theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World. There's more to come after this. (upbeat music)