>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018, the inaugural Dell Technologies World event. Have two sets side by side, three days of broadcast. I'm Stu Miniman, joined with my cohost for this segment by John Troyer. >> Happy to welcome back to the program John Byrne, who since the last time we caught up with has a new title now, the North American Commercial Sales at Dell EMC. John thank you for joining us. >> Pleasure. Good to see John, John and Stu thank you. >> All right John, what are you doing here? Isn't it almost like the end of like financials? On the road, everything like that. But, yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of the change in role and what that meant for you. >> Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of amazing. I was only here a year ago and here I was talking about bringing together Dell EMC's brand new channel. And we're very proud that we're talking about then it was a $35 billion organization. Here we are 12 months later, $35 billion to $43 billion channel organization, which is spectacular. And it's all thanks to our wonderful partner community and what they did. They were the ones that helped us with our vision, our strategy. The wonderful program that the team has developed, and we're seeing it unfold. That's been an incredible journey. And now one of the good things is obviously when we were building this initiative there was a power of and. We want both motions to continue to go, direct and channel. And you saw the results, both are growing. So obviously my new role and I've been asked to run North America Commercial Sales under Marius Haas, by Michael and Marius. >> I'd like to dig into it a little bit. I spoke to Marius on Monday, actually in our kick off this morning, talking about kind of EMC channel and sales and Dell channel and sales, a little bit different. I mean, EMC had a great channel, has a great channel continuing, but very much considered belly to belly as how they do that. Dell has been a little bit more partner and channel focused for longer. So I'm wondering, give us a little bit of insight. So you had the channel piece, you've had the sales piece. We hear things like, oh there's turning a direct rep into now he's more of an overlay. Through a little bit of those dynamics, what's happening from the sales standpoint and the impact on the channel. >> I think we got to remember the channel is an important wheel to everything we're doing here. With Dell Technologies we have 40,000 sales makers. Within our channel ecosystem we have 140,000 people. That is a sales army. They've gone after the market with the portfolio that we have, with the capability that we have, frankly done properly is unstoppable. And actually educating how both rose to market, how we want to play with one another. We look at, it is the power of and, and especially as we go through these transformational journeys and we're talking about digital and IT and workforce security, but we need everyone to play here. The wonderful news is, you saw, and I'm sure you have from Michael, a year ago we're a $73 billion organization. Within a year we're $80 billion organization. Phenomenal growth. However, the exciting thing for me, that's in a $3 trillion market. So 2.66%, that is so much upside for us, for all of us, that look, done properly, we're going to win is the general feeling. >> It's a pretty remarkable transformation. I mean transformation has been a theme of the whole show here, right? Digital transformation, make it real. You've been involved with both channels and Dell EMC sales. The role of the technology trusted advisor has changed over the last few decades. How are you approaching both your field force and the channel and your partners there, about this new role of how do we make digital transformation real in the field? What kind of upscaling do you need to be doing? And competencies do we need to be working on for folks that are listening that might be out in the field working directly with customers? >> We've all been in the industry for a long time. You think, rewind 10 years ago, you talk about technology, you talk about IT it was a call center. You fast forward to now it's a business imperative. You know when we're talking to our customers they clearly they want to get ahead of this transformational journey. However, we know then that less than half of them have already begun the journey. Here's the good news, those that have begun the journey, here's what we know. They're moving faster, their customer satisfactions are up. They're driving incremental revenue. The costs are going down. They're driving their incremental operating income. And I think what you're seeing here, right here right now, it is no longer this discussion around the transformational journeys. Making it real is here. You're seeing like AeroFarms. You're seeing McLaren onstage talking about bringing Formula One all the way through to medical. You're seeing TGen and a wonderful, wonderful company with the capability using technology to identify cancer earlier in children. I mean, that is what our purpose is all about. Now with that of course you have to evolve your own sales organization as well as your partner ecosystem. And we're treating our partners and their sales teams as exactly one in the same. So the way they're training and all the competencies that we'd expect of our own sales team is exactly what I'm expecting from our partner community. Like, it's an evolution we're going through here. Our sales team, we're training them on these transformations. We're showing them a purpose, how we're going to do it, but the other thing was more exciting for myself. We're also targeting the next generation of sales leaders. You know, working with universities. We want these top graduates to come here, to enjoy this wonderful company and what we're doing here. So now we're investing in people. We actually set up sales universities here in the US. It can be a three month program, it can be a two year program, spending anywhere between, up to almost $400,000 on a graduate coming through so that they understand exactly that the transformations are just natural in their DNA. That's what we're looking for right now. >> I love that, and Stu I love, I mean we both have a history with the Dell Technologies organizations over the years, and I'm impressed by how many people that I have met that are either long-term employees or have left and come back, right? And that investment in the people has got to be critical for your growth, especially at this size. >> Yeah, I think, John, we've gone beyond the, hey, what do you do and how do you do it, right? And now it's like what is your purpose? Our purpose is to impact human lives each and every single day. And I gave you some examples. But look, our ability using technology to connect more people around the world. Our ability to actually use technology to live longer, for us to identify, again, cancer earlier in people. That purpose is inspiring. And then you learn we're spending four and a half billion dollars in R and D to bring world class products and capabilities to the market. Done properly and with that true transformational mindset, as well as not forgetting that there's a massive market on IT infrastructure and the consolidation and winning in that space. Like I think we're, we as a collective community along with our customers we're praying to do wonderful things. >> All right, so, I want you to bring us inside your customers. So you've got North American Commercial Sales. Big market. Probably one of the most dynamic changing markets in the globe these days. what are some of the biggest challenges you're hearing from your customers who talk about digital transformation, make it real. What is your organization hearing while they're out there. >> Well also, actually you talk about North American Commercial Sales. I didn't frame it, where I work $19, $20 billion of the organization. >> Stu: Just a small piece. >> Just a small piece, but of course within we have state and local, we have education, we have federal government, we have the media and business space. Each of them all realize this digital transformation is here. And the conversation they're having with us is how do we get ahead of this, right? What experiences have you enjoyed yourself as an organization or with your partner ecosystem to make it real to them. So we're spending a lot of time with them in our executive briefing centers with our solution architects, showing well how to we enable the AeroFarms that we just talked about? It's really making a real (mumbles) conversation that we're having with them. Now there's the other edge spectrum of our customers, which is look, we want to continue to sell an unbelievable amount of PCs, and unbelievable amount of servers and storage and hyper-converge, and backup. So we have the wide spectrum. The good news is the conversation normally goes to let me tell you about Dell Technologies Advantage. Why did Michael spend $24 billion taking us private? $67 billion giving us all this wonderful array of assets. And as you walk them through these transformational journeys the normal response is oh my goodness, I did not know you did all of that. And then, okay, I'm not ready yet to go all the way there. But the comfort that you have it, okay let's begin a discussion. And that's what we're finding with a lot of our customers right now. >> All right one of the things, look you mentioned so many of the verticals there, and the commonality amongst most of them is change. Talk a little bit about the training, competencies, you know, your organization, how do you keep up? How do you help your customers keep up? >> Yeah, like, what is, change your dye it's kind of the mantra right now. We are spending an unbelievable amount of time on training. But with training also you acquire a lot of consistency. It's interesting we were here only two months ago for our field ready seminar, our sales kickoff. The feedback from our sales team was wow this seems very similar to last year. (mumbles) good. You got to learn these transformational journeys. Gone are the days of just going in and selling a single unit of product. You have to become the trusted advisor. So with that all of our training, all of our competencies are around understanding each of the transformations, how do you layer in Pivotal and Virtustream, and VMWare, and RSA, and SecureWare, and of obviously Dell EMC. How do you bring all of this together? And then also making it very clear to our sales team, This is my expectation of your role. This is what I expect you both to do. And here's the specialty teams that are around here, around you, to make you successful. So we have the training. It goes on every, actually it's consistent training, but two big ones per year. And with (mumbles) partners they've got to do exactly the same thing, that's what we're saying. >> John, as you and your sales leaders go out and talk to IT and you know, you're not, again in the field, you're way beyond oh check the box to order a new round of laptops or a new round of servers, right? Or server refresh. As you talk to the CIOs out there and the senior IT leaders, where are we in this transition? Are they getting it? I guess it's quite a range of responses. >> It really is, look some are already there. But are we there? Absolutely not. I think we're in single, we're more or less single digit. But again, when those CIOs, when they see, are you telling me look I can not only modern infrastructure, I can actually save money by getting to the modern infrastructure and I can layer in insights into my business using your technology, be it big data, be it AI, and I can yield more profitability at the end of it? You find them all in. But they're all in different levels obviously of expectation. >> Are there any characteristics of an organization that is either, is going or is ready to go that you see? >> I wouldn't say, here's what I will say. If you look across all of our transformations, VMWare is always consistent. I will tell you security remains a big theme. The other thing we've found is, again, as we get through these transformational discussions, the starting point still tends to be client. The client still seems to be the gateway to the data center for us. And I think you're also seeing, a lot of times we're also seeing, now everyone recognizing the workforce, the workforce has changed forever. Gone are the days when we remember sitting at a desk from nine til five. Look people are working remotely, people want to be reductive. They want to always be on. And I think that's why you're seeing this resurgence in the PC market. If you look now we've got 21 quarters of consecutive share gain, number one in the world on units, on revenue. Number one on profitability. Number one on server, number one on storage. Obviously number one with VMWare. That's consistent is they want to be dealing with Dell Technologies. >> John I want to give you the final word on key takeaways from the show. But I have to take away a couple things. Yes it does rain in Vegas, and you know, people, you know, playing at events, so other than those two things, what do you hope that people come away from from Dell Technologies World 2018? >> I hope people, well a few things. One, I hope they understand our purpose. We are and we have a desire to impact human life each and every day, by being the essential infrastructure. There is no longer buzz words around these transformational journeys. It's here. You can feel it, you can see it, there's real proof points. I think it's also clear these two motions that are happening. Mass consolidation of IT infrastructure, we want our customers and our partners to leave with Dell Technologies. And as you go through this transformational journey there is only one company who has all of the portfolio to satisfy all the needs, and it's Dell Technologies with the support of our customers and partners, and I'd be remiss if I don't always end by just saying, thank you. None of this is possible without wonderful customers supporting us on this journey. So that's (mumbles). >> All right, John Byrne really appreciate catching up with you. Look forward to catching up with you in the future. Hope you keep this job a little more than a year this time. >> I need to. John, thank you as well, thank you. >> I'm Stu Miniman with John Troyer. We'll be back with lots more coverage. Thanks for watching theCUBE.