>>The cube presents, Dell technologies world brought to you by Dell. >>Welcome back to Las Vegas. We're here in the Venetian convention center. My name is Dave Alan. I'm here with my co-host John fur. You're watching the Cube's live coverage of Dell tech world 2022. Great crowd. I would say 7,000, maybe even 8,000 people. When you add in all the peripheral attendees, Jeff Clark is here. He's the vice chairman and co-chief operating officer of Dell technologies. Great to see you face to face, man. >>Hey guys. Good to see you again. Awesome. >>So really enjoyed your keynote this morning. You were pumped up, uh, I thought the, the presentations and the demos were crisp. So congratulations. Thank you. How you feeling? >>Doing a great job? How am I feeling? Uh, well, one relieved. If you know me well enough, I'm an engineer by heart. So trade the anxiety to do that is, uh, and build up is quite draining, but having it done, I feel pretty good now, but I feel good about what we discussed. Uh, it was a fun day to be able to talk to real customers and partners face to face like we're doing here and showcasing what we've been doing. I must admit that was a little bit of fun. Yeah. >>Well, we're chilling on the cube. Uh, we're laid back as you know. Um, what was your favorite moment? Cause you got a lot of highlights. The snowflake deal. We love been talking about it all, all show. Um, the, the, I IP of Dell with software define was pretty cool. Lot of great stuff. What's what >>Some cool laptop stuff too. That was interesting. You know, I don't have to. Where's the, where's the share button. >>We have a discord server now and all 18,000 people want to know. >>You're asking me to pick a monks, my should, which I like the most. >>How big is your monitor on your desk? >>Uh, I have a 49 on one side and a 42 on the other side. That's what both you guys need >><laugh> productivity, da >><laugh> well, in the world of zoom, it was incre incredibly productive to have that surface area in front of you. So, which of my announcements was my favorite, I think from a raw technology point of view, showcasing Dell, thinking about what we've done in a very differentiated way. It's hard not to say the power flex >>Engagement. Oh, look at that. Look, I wrote just, just wrote down power flex. Yep. Right. >><laugh> okay. Think about it. Softer defined. We, the leader and softer defined, uh, infrastructure that can be, think of it as independently, independent ability to scale compute from storage so we can linear scale and those no bounds, unlimited IO performance. The ability to put file block support, hyper hypervisors and bare metal all on a single platform. And then we made a, a bunch of other improvements around it. It's truly an area where we a leader we're differentiated in our core IP matters >>And that's Dell IP, Dell technology top >>The bottom. >>Okay, cool. >>So from a pure technical point of view, it's probably my favorite. What's not liked about PowerMax, the most mission critical, the most secure high end storage system in the world. And we made it better. We made it more secure. We put an isolated vault in it. We added some, uh, multifactor authentication. We improved the architecture for twice the performance, 50% better response time, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yes, pretty cool. <laugh> and then you gotta put a notebook in front of everybody where you think about in this modern workplace. And what we've learned is hybrid users. What software that we've embedded into that latitude 93 30 was pretty interesting. I thought. And then if I pull day one into the conversation, sort of the direction of where we're going of, multi-cloud the role of multi-cloud and our ability to be sort at the center of our customers multi-cloud world. I loved how Chuck described moving from multi-cloud by default to multi cloud, by design, and then the subsequent architecture that we put behind it. And then probably cherry on the old cake was the snowflake announcement that got a lot of people excited about bringing a really differentiated view of cloud based analytics down on our object storage. I know that was more than one, but I can't help. >>I like the cherry on top >>You've um, said a number of times, I think the 85% of your engineers are software engineers. You talked about, is that the right number, roughly? Yes, sir. And, and so, uh, you talked also about 500 new features today and, and every time you're talking about those features, I inferred anyway, it was part of the OS. A lot of it anyway, a lot of software does hardware still matter? And if so, why? >>Of course hardware still >>Matter. Explain why. >>Well, last time I checked doesn't the software stuff work on the hardware. Exactly. Doesn't the software things make hardware calls to exploit the capability we built into the software. Of course it does says it absolutely does matter, but I think what we're trying to describe or to get across today is we're moving up the stack, we're adding more value. Basically our customers are dragging us into a broader set of problems and software is increasingly the answer to that running on the best hardware, the best infrastructure, being able to build the right software abstraction to hook into either data frameworks, like a snowflake, being able to present our storage assets of software in the pub book cloud, ultimately the ability to pull them and think of it as a pool of storage for developers to make developers lives easier. Yeah. That's where we're going >>And, and is accurate in your view, you're going up to stack more software content and there's value. That's also flowing into Silicon, whether it's accelerators or Nicks and things like that, is that a right way to think about what's happening in hardware and software. We, >>You and I have had a number of conversations, David, the evolution of the architecture, where we're going from a general purpose CPU based thing to now specialty processors, whether that be a smart Nick purpose, built accelerators. If we leaped all the way out to quantum, really purpose built accelerators for a specific algorithm, there's certainly specialization going on. And as that happens, more software and software defined is necessary to knit together. And we have to be the person that does that. Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. >>Talk about how the software defined piece makes the innovation happen on the hardware. Is it, is it the relationship that it's decoupled or you guys are just building design Silicon to make the software better? Cuz that interplay is a design, uh, is designed in, right? >>Uh, I, I think it's a little bit of both clearly being able to exploit the underlying hardware features and capabilities in your software in a differentiated way is important. Something we've excelled at for many, many years, but then the ability to abstract. If you think about some of the things that we talk about as a data fabric or a data plane and a data plane working across different architectures, that's an abstracted piece of software that ultimately leads to a very different and that's where we're driving towards >>What's different now. And what's similar now from the past, I was just on a, a panel. I talking about space, Cal poly and California space symposium and this hardware and space and it's, software's driving everything you can't do break, fix and space. It's talk about the edge. You can't talk about. You can't do break hard to do break, fix and space. So you gotta rely on software in the supply chain. Big part of the design as software becomes more prevalent with open source and et cetera, that innovation equation is designed in. What's your, what's your thoughts on that? >>Help me understand John, what more of this specific of what you're looking for, where do you want to dive into >>The, as Silicon becomes more of a more efficient, what does that do for the software in things like edge, for instance, as the boxes move out and the, the devices move to the home, they gotta be faster, more intelligent, more secure. Uh, Michael says it's a, it's a compute tower now 5g for instance. >>Yeah. Uh, maybe another way to look at it. We've been in the industry a little while for the longest time hardware capabilities were always ahead of software. We built great hardware. We let software catch up. What's changed certainly in this time. And as we look going forward is the software capabilities are now ahead of those very hardware capabilities in bringing it. And to me, that's a, it's a very fundamental change. Certainly in my 35 years of doing this, that's very different. And if you believe that continues, which I do, particularly as we face increasingly more difficult challenges to continue with Moore's law, how do we continue to build out the transistor density? We've all benefited from for four, five decades now, softer innovation is going to lead, which is what we tried to hint at today. And I think that's the future. That's where you're gonna see us continue to drive and think about how we talk about, uh, technology today. I know Dave and I had this conversation not too long ago, whether it's infrastructure is code, who would've thought of that idea a decade ago. <laugh> uh, if we think about, uh, data as code we were talking about before we got on air, what data on code data's little bits, one's in zero stored in Silicon, you store >>It, <laugh> you move it >>Around now. So it, it opens the door or the door to, I think innovation done differently and perhaps even done it more scale as if we abstract it correctly. >>Yeah. And might led a good point on when he was on about all the good benefits that come from that in the customer and in society. And I guess the next question with the customer side, it take your, if the, if the flip, if the script is flipping, which I believe that it is, I agree with you. How does the customers deal with the innovation strategy? Because now they wanna take advantage of the new innovation, but what problems and opportunities are they facing? That's different now than say a decade ago, if you're in it or you're trying to create a great group within your CISO organization. I mean, there are problems now that we didn't see before. What do you, how do you see that? >>Well, I, I, I think the, the biggest change would be again, if you look and reflect on our careers, it was sort of in the business, it played a role. It was often put off to the corner, just make the place sort of work. And today, and I think the pandemic has the pandemic and global health crisis accelerated this technology is now part of people's business and you can't compete without technology. And in fact, we saw it during the early days of the pandemic, those CU customers that were further along on their digital transformation, generally weathered the storm in their sector better than those who were behind. >>Yeah, >>Absolutely. What does that tell us technology was an enabler. Technology helped them, whether the storm prepared them, made them more competitive. So now I think I don't meet many CIO and CEOs who don't have the conversation about their business model and technology being symbiotic, that they're integrated, that they can't do one without the other. That's a very different mindset than when we grew up in this industry where this stuff was. So now you take that as a basis. We got data everywhere. Most of the data's gonna come out of the data, not in the data center's gonna be created outside of the data center. The attack surface has grown disproportionately >>People, people sharing data, too, their data with other data, very much so generating >>Data in places. Sometimes they don't know where it is and hope to get it back. So the role to be able to protect that estate, if you will, to be able to protect the information, which increasingly data is companies fuel, but makes 'em go, how do you protect it? How do you ultimately analyze it? How do you provide them the insights to ultimately run and drive their business? That's the opportunity. >>So we are in the same wavelength with Powerflex and, and I'm a little concerned about confirmation bias, but, but I, I wanna say this, I really like the way your Dell's language and yours specifically has evolved. You talk about abstraction layers, hiding that underlying complexity, building value on top of the hyperscalers on prem connecting sore, we call it super cloud. You guys call it multi-cloud. We saw two examples of that today, project Alpine and the snowflake is early examples. Uh, I'm trying to gauge how real this is. We think it's real. Uh, we talked to customers who clearly say, this is what they want. Um, I wonder if you could add a little detail to that, some color on your thoughts on, on how real this is, how it will evolve over time. >>Well, from our, from our seat and the way that I, that, that I see it in driving our underlying product development, roadmaps, people want to drag into conversation about public and private and this, and what have you. And, and that's not how customers work today. Uh, customers really have got to this point where they want to use the best capabilities regardless of where they lie. And if that's keeping mission critical data on premise taking advantage of analytic tools in the cloud, doing some test dev in the public cloud, moving out to edge, they want to be able to do that reasonably quickly and not. We were talking about this before we got on the air in an easy fashion. It can't be complex. Yeah. So how do you actually knit this together in a way that is not complex and enables customers? That's what I think customers want. So you think about our multi-cloud vision. It's about building an ecosystem across all of the public clouds, which we've made announcement and announcement to do that. Well, >>You said earlier default versus by design, which referencing to the multi-cloud. But I think the design is the key word here. The design is a system architecture you're talking about. You said also technology and business models are tied together and enable or that's. If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want, they wanna leverage whatever they can. And at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do >>Well, that that's exactly right. If I take that in what, what Dave was saying. And, and, and I summarize it the following way. If we can take these cloud assets in Cape capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to delivery, distributed platform, game over, >>Tell us we gotta wrap, which bummed me out because I, we had so much, we haven't covered. We haven't talked about 5g. We really haven't hit on apex. Uh, what else is exciting? You something, you know, let's let's in the last minute or so, let's do a wrap. >>We just, >>I know we just got started. We had >>A schedule, >>Two guys, the boss, this >>Is great. We wanna go the next, >>Not when it comes to the schedule, just laid >>Out the, just laid out the checkmate move right there. You know, um, >>Look, what I get excited about, uh, >>Edge to me is a domain that we're gonna see in this part of our careers have the same level of innovation and discovery that we just saw in the early part of our careers and probably times 10 or times a hundred. And I, and I think about the world we live in and matching up what's happening in this digitization of our world and everything, having a sensor in it, collecting data everywhere on everything, and then being able to synthesize it in a way that we can derive reasonable insight from to be able to make real time decisions from whether that be in healthcare, a smart city, a factory of the transportation area, our own website of how the traffic comes in and how we present our offers more effectively to what you want, which are different than what Dave wants. The possibilities are unlimited and, or on the half of the first ending, if you like baseball, analogies, absolutely. And a long way to go and a tremendous amount of innovation that'll happen here. I get excited about that place. Now. It's not gonna happen overnight every once say, oh, we're smoking edge. Wasn't at IOT, stop putting a timeframe on it. Yeah. Know, the foundation is built to be able to develop, evolve and innovate from here. Like I've never seen. >>And the playbook to get back to your game overcome is whoever can simplify the comp and reduce the complexity and make things simpler and easier. That's, I mean, that's kind of the formula for success basically. I mean, it sounds kind of easy, right? Like >>Spot on, >>Just do it, but what, but that's hard. >>Remember it's hard and being able to build data centers and, and millions of places. So for example, what we'll leave in a little 5g, you think about all of the public cloud data centers today. I think there's roughly 600 locations. You've got 7 million cell towers. Yeah. 7 million cell towers gonna >>Be like how reach right there. >>Data center at the edge of the network. Yeah. As we just aggregate the telecom infrastructure. Sure. From a monolithic big black box into a disaggregated standards based architecture with virtualization and containerization in it. >>I mean, outta compute, I love the whole Metro operating model there, like having that data center at that edge, all that wire wireless coming in. >>I >>Agree. Pretty impressive. Powering the Teslas and all the cars out there sending telematics to, uh, people's phones. And >>Let's wait to next wearables >>Here >>To, I was gonna say next Dell technology world choose to have some fun. <laugh> >>Jeff Clark. Thanks so much for coming to the cube. You're awesome guest and, uh, congratulations on all the success and really appreciate your time. Yeah. Thanks for >>Having me. Thanks for kind words. >>All right. Thank you for watching. This is Dave for John furrier, Dell tech world 2022 live. We'll be right back. You're watching the cube. >>That was great. Mean you great riff.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of Dell Technologies. World Digital Experience Brought to You by Dell Technologies. Hello, everyone, and welcome Back to the cubes. Continuing coverage of Del Tech World 2020. This is David Dante With Me is Tom Sweet. He's the EVP and chief financial officer of Dell Technologies. Tom is great to see you. Thanks for coming on The Virtual Cube. >>Dave is always good to see you. And thanks for having me. It's always good to have a conversation with you. >>I actually don't think I've spent a lot of time talking to folks from jail, but I don't think you and I have talked since the pandemic hit. So you know, what's the macro picture? You know, you and I was usually start with the big picture. And, of course, the impact of the pandemic and kind of the big waves that you're seeing out. There may be some of the changes that you're navigating >>Well, you know, it's it's been uninterested near David's. You and I both know, right, and so we way clearly did a number of tactical actions as we worked our way through the pandemic in the early days to make sure our team members could work and we're safe and then pivoted to making sure we could, you know, help our customers and get them up in productive from a work from home perspective, you know? And so it's and then we've evolved into Then, you know, how do you think your way through? Um, you know, what's the what's the work? How do you work your way through? What do you look like on the other end? And so we've been spending a lot of time thinking about investments. Where do we put Capital Toe work to position the organization for success? Post Cobain, whenever that might be, by the way, and and so that's been the focus in, you know, really spending a lot of time on investment areas. The whole macro dynamic has been interesting is, you know, way went through this huge trough in Q two in terms of GDP and global GDP. You know, we're working our way out of that at a macro level. It's very interesting as you go across the globe and look at the various countries and regions and how they're recovering at very different paces. You know, the business has been uninterested in business in terms of what we do, and our PC business has been quite strong. And we've seen a big shift with the work from home and learn from home dynamics with strong demand from government and education. Three infrastructure business R I s G business has been a bit softer, just a zoo Companies have pivoted, but all in all, I think we're working our way through it. I e think the actions we took to preserve liquidity and protect the P and L early in the pandemic have paid off for us. And, uh, we're now focused on how do we position Post Post when we get through this whole cova dynamic? >>You know, way both seen a couple of pretty severe downturns. I think about the dot com downturn and then the financial crisis. I'm actually kind of surprised and impressed the way that that not just our industry, but all industries have worked through this. I guess in hindsight, that shouldn't be surprising given the pace of technology. But I remember those two that I just mentioned. People were flat footed. I remember Ed Zander joking when he was a son. Anybody wanna buy a server? And it was just there was business wasn't being transacted. And that's different this time around, Uh, industries have have responded and you know, technology, of course, is is at the heart of that. But were you surprised at all by the by the pace of I don't want to say recovery, but resiliency, I guess >>a little bit to be honest day. I mean I mean, it does highlight the fact that at the heart of what most companies are you know are doing these days is technology and how they evolve their business model, how how they interact with their customers. And so clearly, if you you think all the way back with our industry date back to the early two thousands and we had a with the bump with the dot com bust and people shut down, I t spending, you know. And now I don't think you can really do that if you think about where you need to be from a business model perspective. So I think there's been a maturation and a recognition that technology plays a key role. But But it has been surprising about how fast it's pivoted. To be honest with you in the sense of, you know, I think of the very distinct cycles is would come through the Coba dynamic. Big PC demand early innings. You know, we saw some recovering the I S G spend in Q two in our quarter second quarter a little bit better than Q one. You know, as companies readjusted spin eso, it's The organizations across in our customer base have have adjusted quite well. Clearly, there is vertical implications. If you're in the airline industry or some of the hospitality, you're you're being a bit more cautious, right? But all in all, it's been a It's been an interesting journey for all of us. >>Yeah, I mean, at the height of the pandemic, you saw, you know, some people taking actions. Obviously, they were freezing I t projects. They were starting to do layoffs or freezing new hires. That's moderated based on the data that we've seen. I just published the other day that we're starting to see some, you know, slow thawing of that tight grip on I t. What are you seeing? Both externally and maybe as the CFO. What are you doing internally? Well, >>if you talk to my CEO should probably give you a different answer day that I'm about to give you because you know, I'm a extraordinarily balanced guy in my point of view, right? But, you know, look, I think externally we're seeing targeted investments happening by customers that are moving projects forward. I think there's a bit of caution, and I do think this whole evolution off. How do customers want to consume? I t is evolving, you know. Is it a cat expand? Is it a Is it a financing structure? Is it a as a service and consumption model type? You know, So those three economic models around I t. Or changing and evolving. But I think overall, what we've seen is some level off, you know, cautious, you know, cautiousness. But yet, you know, targeted and investment with our customers and in an internally, Quite frankly, we're continuing to invest. We have capabilities that we need to evolve. You know, we're working. We're very focused on transformational projects that enable our customers to do business with us easier. On the other hand, we're being very tight around. What do I need to do from, You know, some of those old run the business types spend and how doe I streamline that while still supporting the business properly. So it's a bit of a balance right now. >>Yeah, and you obviously have the advantage of large portfolio parts of your portfolio exposed. Like you said, some of the on Prem stuff. But then you've got the certainly the laptop in the work from home shift. A couple of questions there. One is, first of all, you know, Della was largely a larger work from home culture than the average. The average Let's say the average is on a 15 to 20% of employees work from home. You're probably higher than that. And and But now we're seeing that people are expecting at least double that long term are gonna work from home. So you were, you know, somewhat, maybe more prepared than than most. But then again, you have that tailwind on one side of your business. Your supply chain did very well, unlike some of your competitors that we saw early in the pandemic, you know? So it seems like you've managed that pretty well. Maybe your thoughts. >>Yeah. Okay. We do have a culture that provided flexibility. We've been on this journey for roughly 10 years about having our people have some flexibility where they work. And so we had roughly 20 25,000 people working remotely, or some are in some hybrid fashion before the pandemic. You know, obviously, right now, 90% of our workforce is is remote. We think, you know, post pandemic, you know that it's gonna look like something like, you know, you know, 45 50% of the organization is probably gonna be in some sort of hybrid or remote setting. You know, that's the feedback our team members are giving us. And, uh and so you know, we have been fortunate to be able to have the culture that pivoted quite frank quite quickly, I should say, as we worked our way through this from a supply chain perspective Look our supply chain has done. Team has done a terrific job on sort of navigating the barriers and the challenges put up by a covert 19 crisis. But I'll go further back that if you and I talked about this before, think about what's happened with our supply chain and global supply chains over the last couple of years and whether it's the US China dynamic and how do you work your way through that? You know, and how do you ensure continuity of supply for our customers? And so that that teams done a great job? You know, we have long term relationships with many of our key suppliers, which has been helpful. And, you know, as you know, we have one of the largest, if not the largest, technology by in the industry. So it has helped us in terms of making sure we have capability and availability for custom. >>Let's talk a little bit about some of the strategy and the value levers that you guys talk about. You've always hit on industry consolidation, integration delivering. You've seen the 13 D with the movie you're gonna make with VM Ware. How have things changed? There has a pandemic changed your thinking at all, And how are you doing in terms of those turning those knobs? >>You know, first, it has not changed our thinking in the sense of some of those keep long term value creation activities we've been focused on and platforms we've been focused on around Hey, you know, we know that in the where we where we sell where we compete, that the industry is not a, you know, a rapidly growing industry. And so you grow organically by consolidation and share gain, and that's what we've been focused on. You couple that with the innovation engine we have with Dell Technologies. And, uh, including our, you know, way need to including that VM ware. You know, we've got a new, extraordinary patent portfolio and we've got these what we think are unique solutions and capability. So we're pushing hard on the innovation engine, and then you couple that with the capital work we've been doing around, how do you delivering the balance sheet? Getting the company reposition back towards investment grade. And we've made really good progress on that. You know will pay down $5.5 billion of debt this year, which will again position us closer to those investment grade like metrics. And so those those platforms are pillars, if you will, of our strategy, haven't changed. But in addition to that, you know, we are looking at where do you grow and how do you continue to grow at a pace, perhaps at GDP GDP plus, which is sort of where we think you know, is the long term framework we've got to be thinking about. So that's where you get into these adjacency is like, How do you How do you further driving a multi cloud hybrid cloud? How do you think about the opportunity with Telco, with five G roll out that's happening across the globe and the investment that's going to go into that the whole edge computing the edge cloud is of interest to us. And so there's a number of these emerging areas that we think are pretty interesting, and their adjacent and fit nicely into what we do is a, you know is, quite frankly, that essential infrastructure company. So that's the focus we've been driving about. How do we set up both continue on our core mission of consolidation, innovation and delivering as well as how do you set up some of these growth vectors as we move forward? >>Well, in one of the other levers you filed the 13 d, I don't know what you can share with us. Some of it gets confused. How much is fact sometimes and how much is speculation. But, I mean, I've said that it appears that one of the things that you're looking at is creating an equilibrium in terms of the balance sheets of both companies. Uh, keep getting them both that investment grade. What can you tell us about what you're thinking there? >>Yeah, I look, you know, obviously we did file a 13 D in mid July, which essentially said we were contemplating whether you know, a potential spin of our 81% ownership interest out to the Dell Technology shareholders. And so we're continuing to work with the VM Ware team on, you know, what does that look like with a couple of fundamental principles, which is Hey, you know, we have both benefited from this better together story. And so how do we keep that differentiation in some type of a long term operating agreement or operating framework? But at the same point in time, you know, you know, do the potentially look at it spend that unlocks value for both sets of shareholders of both companies, right? VM ware gets additional flexibility from a from a strategic perspective, they don't have the Dell balance sheet. Dell Technologies balance sheets sitting on top of them from the Dell Technologies perspective. You know, we presumably as part of this would be some type of a dividend stream. But by being were out to its share. What shareholders? We get the opportunity to accelerate our delivering story and get back closer to investment grade or right at investment grade, depending upon how this all works out. So we think there's a number of really interesting value levers here, right at the same point in time, wanting to protect what's been really good about the relationship in the way we've gone to market, the way we've innovated. And so that's the balance were walking right now. And you know there's work to do is we work with being where to see. If this makes sense, can we get it done? But But we're early innings and and we may end up not doing anything honestly, But I mean, that's that's sort of the thinking that we're working through right now. >>Well, it's an interesting thought exercise, if nothing else. And so e I look at it when when you combine del in the M. C when you did the acquisition. Now you became VM Ware's most important partner. Just even if it's in terms of revenue because you've got a massive distribution channel. So there's there's that inherent value in that relationship, independent of anything else. The flip side of that is VM Ware has been, you know, awesome acquire of companies. Uh, you know, inorganic r and D, if you will. And some pretty cool R and D A Z Well, so it's gonna be really interesting toe watch how that plays out. I think we wait and see. That's a comment, you know, >>we're working through it and we'll see where we end up. But, you know, you've highlighted a couple of great points. I mean, our, you know, our go to market reach, you know, it is extraordinary. And VM Ware has benefited from that. We've benefited from the VM Ware relationship with some of their technologies is we've integrated those into our combined solution. So it's been a it's been a win win, and that's the balance of how do you keep that, Aziz. Well, as you know, quite frankly, provide some value back to your shareholders. >>Well, we've seen that not just the the uplift of the market. But clearly the speculation has caused some unlocking of value and may bring some others from the sidelines. But I wanted to ask you about I've been talking about this automation mandate. I think there was one. Certainly. There was one before the pandemic, and now it's even accentuated. Um, can you talk a little bit about how you're applying automation, thio your business and maybe what you're seeing with customers? How that could affect, you know, the long term productivity of your business? Maybe new ways to work. What can you tell us there? >>Yeah, Look, I mean, we we have a pretty significant automation agenda within Dell Technologies, both from an internal perspective as well as the automation and a I am and machine learning capabilities were embedding into our solutions to help our customers Dr their automation agendas. Internally, what we've been focused on is how do I simplify? How do I take complexity out? You know, how doe I providing a richer mawr interactive experience with our customers? How doe I lean into service needs service capabilities, all those areas that are ripe for automation and my finance organization alone Right now, I think I have over 125 automation projects going right now is we? We look at how we simplify from a customer. Perspective is I go out and talk to customers. They're also doing much the same thing that we're doing, which is how did they take complexity out of their process? How do they streamline? How are they? How do they drive? Responsiveness and customer, uh, you know, customer experience at a much higher level. And so it's all you know. It's all war walking down this pathway of process simplification, automation, which includes technology, investment, obviously which is, you know, helpful from our perspective. And so there's a agenda out there is Aziz. We talked with customers in terms of in a commonality as we talked with customers. And then the other point I'd give you Dave, is that just as you think about, you know, as I talked to my peers out in the industry, I mean, many of us are driving automation agendas. Have a lot of that, you know, with focused on taking touch out, enrichment of job and capabilities, enrichment of, you know, we gotta build skill sets to drive that. So there is a big theme across the industry in this area, and I think it's gonna do nothing but accelerate. Quite frankly, Aziz, we work our way forward. >>Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of customers in this topic, and it seems to be sort of three paths. Actually, one path is there's. There's a lot of low hanging fruit and easy wins. And but the problem with that is a lot of times it's just paving the cow path with automation. You know, the other is you got to do the hard work of really digging into the process and the third that I've seen, which is kind of interesting to which is kind of what you're alluding to is your free up. You know, some of the mundane tasks, and you let the people who really understand the process rethink that process. And then you go into a deeper automation agenda, and that seems toe that will turn millions into billions. >>That's the value. Add their game. I mean, it's that third framework that you laid out, which is you have to do the work around process. But then again, how doe I then you know over time is I is. I have the experts help us on the automation capabilities. Once we've identified, what are the appropriate processes or functions to be automated? How do you then pivot resource tomb or higher value add activity across the organization and that Z when you when you do that, you unlock, I think, a terrific value creation opportunity, which we're very focused on. >>And I know there's always a big concern about jobs with automation. But the reality is, if you look at the data from the U. S. And Europe of the last couple of decades, the productivity trend is clear. It's it's gone down. And if you think about the big problems that we face in the world, whether it's climate change, your national debt or health care, you know you know hunger, you just can't throw people at that problem. You gotta have a combinations of people in machines. And so well, there may be, you know, a short term impact. I'm kind of an optimist. I know you are a swell >>No, it Zuno. Obviously, this is a tough time for a lot of businesses and customers. As we work our way through the pandemic and and including, you know, and and some have adjusted their workforce, you know, and part of its from the economic reality. But part of it is also a skill set. Dynamic is a reshaping workforce. And but I do think automation plays a key role. And how do you enable skill sets to evolve and get again re allocated Thio other value creation activity. So there is, you know, unfortunately, are probably gonna be some short term disruptions in certain areas. But on the other hand, if you think about the long term gain and the productivity gains that we all need to drive, you know you can't do it without automation and thinking your way through streamlining and taking complexity out of the organization. >>So my last question has come back the productivity We're talking about work from home. Do you feel like you've had a bump in productivity? As a result? Maybe there was some short term disruption. But you know, what's your what's your data or your gut say, in terms of the impact on your organization and then maybe on your customers as well in terms of the program. So >>I think it's been fairly similar between us and our customers. I waas concerned when we went to a work from home back in March that we were gonna lose productivity and, you know, and I thought it was gonna be a productivity drain, you know, a czar. Team members were juggling work and their family dynamics and situation is in. Obviously in the middle of that are in the early innings of this covert crisis. What we have seen, in fact, is actually, we've seen productivity improved pre Koba to where we are today. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we're giving our team members one flexibility on how they do their job. But we're giving them time back there, and they're not commuting. There's less meetings that are consuming time, you know, and the responsiveness in the capabilities of the order such that we're moving through decisions and projects. I think, at a faster pace, quite frankly. And so it's been an interesting and, I think to me a bit of a surprising result from what we've seen as I talked to customers and I'm the executive sponsor on a number of extraordinary, very large multinational customers. It's pretty much the same response. You know, the similar experience, right, that they've seen similar results that we have. So now what you don't want this to be is that you're doing it on the backs of the team members working 15 or 16 hours a day. You've got to find the right balance. But the fact that we're giving them flexibility to jump out during the middle of Daito tend to some family members or help with, you know, their Children's learning. Then they're back in maybe a little bit later during the day. I mean, I do think that we've been able to a culture that's pretty interesting that is paying dividends for us right now. >>Yeah, it's ironic that this hit at the beginning of of 2020 it's clear that it's gonna be a different decade than it was last decade, which I guess every decade is Tom Tom Sweet. It was great to have you on the Cube. Thanks so much. Always a pleasure speaking with you. >>Always, always great to see you. Thanks for having me. >>You're welcome. And thank you for watching everybody says Dave Volonte, you're watching our coverage, the cubes coverage of del Tech World 2020. But right back after this short break

>> Narrator: Live from Chicago Illinois, it's theCUBE! Covering VeammOn 2018. Brought to you by Veamm. >> Welcome back to VeammOn 2018 everybody, and you're watching theCUBE. The leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. This is day one of our coverage of VeammOn, the second year theCUBE has been here. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Stu Miniman. Zeb Ahmed is here, he's the Senior Offering Manager for VMWare, with the IBM Cloud, at IBM of course. Thanks for coming on theCUBE, good to see you Zeb. >> Thank you for having me, very excited to be here. >> Yeah so IBM, Cloud, big part of our business. Obviously VMWare, you've been there for a long time. Partnerships with Veamm. Lay it all out for us, what's going on at IBM, IBM Cloud. >> Yeah so we started the VMWare partnership a couple years ago, and our goal was really to build a practice run VMWare which was automated, take it to the next level essentially, not just be a me too player, what everybody else was doing out there, but rather, make the transition from on premises to the Cloud much easier for those VMWare customers. So we've automated a lot of things on the VMWare platform, you can deploy the inverse stack, in a matter of minutes, instead of days and months. So it's a much easier transition, we also work with a lot of partners, such as Veamm, but customers was using on premises, and we've allowed them to have those capabilities in the Cloud as well, in a very automated fashion. >> Quickly if I remember, I think you guys were first doing something with VMWare in the Cloud, you're kind of a year ahead of most. I mean-- >> Stu: It was a few months ahead, they were the first big partner out there with the VMWare Cloud basically. We got, put in Cloud air and everything. >> But in terms of shipping, actually, you guys-- >> We were the first ones, yeah. So we were the first ones to market with Cloud foundation stack right? Yeah and then the other vendors followed as well, but yeah that's been doing great, right? And again, it's fully automated, matter of minutes you can deploy the whole stack, a lot of value add there. >> Yeah Zeb, maybe help set the picture for us a little bit. 'Cause we talk about this multi-cloud world, IBM owns a lot of applications, IBM partners with a lot, where does IBM see themselves playing in this multi-cloud, multi-app world? >> Great question, I think I, so I refer to it two T's. So the first one being the transition, and then the transformation. So the transition is really where the challenge has been for those customers, the barrier to entry, how do these customers actually make that move seamless to the Cloud, especially the space that IBM is in on the enterprise side, these applications are legacy, very very complicated design, a lot of dependencies, so that was a challenge that we tried to solve for. And I think we're at a state now where we've not only solved for that, we've also, I don't know if you guys have seen HCX that we had with VMWare recently, which was a great migration tool, and helps customer on board Cloud, and adapt to Cloud much much faster. And then also build that ecosystem partner network. So all those tools, that we were using on premises like Veamm, right? Making those available in the Cloud for those customers, and it has been great, and also in the transformation side, right? So not only just move them to the Cloud, but also help them leverage, and go up the stack. So micro-services, blockchain, Watson, containers, all those things are available to our customers. >> I think that's a key point that I wanted to highlight is, people often say, how does IBM compete with some of the big Cloud players? You're not just infrastructure as a service, you've got a giant SAS portfolio, you mentioned Watson so, talk about your strategy in that regard. >> Yeah I mean so, the enterprise customer, typical customer, whether it's financial industry or whether health care or transportation et cetera, nobody is just looking for a partner where they can just move the infrastructure too. They're looking for the next state, they're looking to transform the business, they're trying to utilize all those new capabilities that exist in the Cloud today. And IBM has sought for that exactly because not only just use, move your infrastructure and workloads, but now you can consume all those additional gallywads, in the Cloud like Watson, make it for a more intelligent solution in the end. >> Right, so that's a key differentiator. There's only a couple of companies that have that, well I guess you guys, Oracle, Microsoft obviously has the applications, and IBM talks a lot about the cognitive piece, am I correct you can only get Watson in the IBM Cloud, is that still the case, or are you now have it on prem? >> No no, Watson can be consumed using an API. So it's a PAS platform, and if somebody wanted to consume Watson for the on premises workloads and wanted to bring that intelligence for that on premises environment they can do that. >> Dave: Are you seeing more demand for that? >> Oh yes. >> Or is it primarily in the Cloud? >> We've got huge traction in the healthcare space especially, there's a lot of financial customers that are onboarding that as well. So Watson's doing great in that regard. >> Sort of privacy reasons and-- >> Zeb: That's right. >> Zeb one of the things we've been watching with Veamm for the last few years is how do they penetrate deeper into the enterprise. Of course IBM has a strong position in the enterprise, help connect for us how the Veamm and IBM partnerships go together. >> So I think this was a very easy answer for a lot of our customers, because Veamm has a lot of penetration on the on premises workloads, especially on the back-up and business continuity space. So when we looked at the partners and the products that existed in the space, we really looked at the market space, what the customers were consuming. Veamm had a huge market share, and like I said previously, we wanted to solve for those problems and we wanted to keep the tools at the same tool set that they were using today on the premises, so this was very seamless for us, and it is seamless for the customers, to move to IBM Cloud and leverage those same tools exactly. >> So talk about choice because, I can imagine you're getting a call from Ed Walsh, "Hey, how about using my data protection software instead of Veamm?". How do you manage that? >> Zeb: It is tough, right? It is obviously tough, IBM also has a huge portfolio of products, right? In the end the decision was or it really came down to, what is it the customers are looking for? When it came to the back-up space, especially on the VMWare platform, The answer was there, a lot of the VMWare customers use Veamm. In addition to that, Veamm also checks a lot of other boxes for us. So, not only does VMWare stack, but also, I don't know if it's been announced yet or not, but AIX is something of beta that they're launching, at this event, so that is huge for IBM. >> Dave: Really? >> Oh yes, they're also in the bare metal space, so a consolidated view of all your back-ups, all your bare metal, for AIX, for virtualized platform. >> So the power guys will be happy. >> For those that aren't as familiar anymore, I mean remember AIX back in the day, but this is second week in a row I'm talking about AIX. It was Nutanix last week, and it's Veamm today. How much AIX is there still out in the wild? >> There's quite a bit, I mean IBM, if you guys know the background, right? When software was acquired it was a bare metal shop. So with that a lot of the power stuff came as well. So we have a huge power practice in IBM. >> Right, and well it's still, I remember the Steve Mills charts, which showed the availability of AIX versus, the only more available platform was the mainframe, and then with AIX, and then, and you had all that other stuff that everybody else buys but, it's a volume market so it kind of makes sense though. People will pay up for that. And still, a huge install base, now growing, and Nutanix has a relationship with the power guys, so maybe that's where sort of factored in, right? But Linux, of course, is the hot space, right? I mean sure you see it's powering the web. >> Well I'm a VMWare guy, so (laughs). >> There's Linux sitting on top of some of that. >> That's right, of course, of course. >> You've got Linux of mainframe, right? Okay, alright so, talk a little bit more about what you're seeing from the VMWare customer base, how it's synergistic and not just sort of a one way trip into a hotel California. >> Yeah, so a typical VMWare customer that we're seeing who's on premises today are looking to IBM Cloud, or actually take a leap into the Cloud, especially on the enterprise base, these customers want to transform. I mean, there has been a lot of questions for them, especially the customer base IBM focused on, questions around security, compliance, business continuity and data protection and such. So these customers not only want to just make the leap into the Cloud, but they also want to solve for some of these challenges, and also go up to stack like I was mentioning. So, we're seeing a huge push for containers, for those customers that are moving to VMWare, they want to build up the stack, on the PAS layer, and also want to leverage Watson and services like that. >> Yeah, could you expand on that a little more, things like are you working with PKS, the solution with VMWare and Pivotal, and the Kubernetes stuff, or? >> Yes, Kubernetes, Dockers, we also give the customers ability to do their own stuff, go up the stack. I mean, in the end, you know, they can consume us from an IS standpoint and build their PAS on top, or we can, they can use our own, so Kubernetes, Dockers, et cetera. >> What's the story, Stu, with Cloud foundry these days? There was a big push early on, and I fell like I can, I'm not as close as you are, but there seems to be a, I don't want to say a pull back, but maybe less enthusiasm, what's the lay of the land? >> Sure, I mean IBM was one of the earliest bloomix, I believe, and with IBM Cloud, IBM has a few different offerings, I didn't see as big of a push from IBM at the Cloud foundry summit I was at last month, but IBM, like most of the Cloud providers are giving customers choice. >> Zeb: That's right. >> So I guess the question is what-- >> And heavy in Open Source, I mean I'm seeing IBM heavy push, I'm wondering server-less, if you've got any commentary there. We've been looking at like Open Whisk and some of the pieces there. >> Yeah Open Whisk is there, there's, server-less is a thing that a lot of these customers, back to your own original question, a lot of these customers are looking for those types of services, and they're all available in the catalog. >> It's still pretty early, that hasn't overtaken the discussions of the (mumbles) and the (mumbles) stuff in your world has it? >> It hasn't, but I think the enterprise customers who are looking to move to Cloud, they are thinking about those things. So these are some of the check boxes that need to be checked for them for the future growth, et cetera. >> So you've got VMWare's obviously visualization strategy, you've got containers coming, I remember when we had Pat Gelsinger on theCUBE several years ago, when containers were, docker was rocketing, and everybody was like oh docker's going to kill VMWare. And Pat's response was, "Look, we've got the best containers in the world. We're going to embrace containers". They're like, oh sure. But that's exactly what happened. What's IBM's point of view on it? >> Yeah, here's the thing, we want to give them the option to do whatever they want to do. We're seeing a lot of traction on the micro-services side, on the containerization, but I think it's going hand in hand, a lot of the customers are using VMWare platform still, yet they're also leveraging some of these other micro-services and containers, so I think Pat's right on. I think originally what was people were talking about getting rid of the IS layer of VMWare and just going containers completely. Our take is, give the customers all the functionality and the ability to do whatever they want to do, we are seeing it's more of a mix at the moment. >> And we had Edouard Bugnion on recently, found of, one of the founders of VMWare, and he was talking about the challenges in the data center at scale. And in particular when you introduce virtualization and you reduce some of the hardware resources, how do you deliver predictable, high-performance, at scale, and some of the challenges there. That's even on prem. Now introduce Cloud, and you've got distance and latency and other physics so, what's the discussion like with customers around how to architect the ideal Cloud, on prem, hybrid. >> It's a great question, because that is a question I get asked all the time, because in the enterprise base like I said, these customers in a lot of cases have a hybrid or multi-cloud strategy, so network becomes a key part of that discussion. For us, the answer is very simple. We've laid down the fiber of (mumbles) across all these data centers, so when you're talking about latency, and data transfer, and those types of speeds, or having a multi-cloud strategy across the globe, it's a very simple and easy conversation because not only do we make all that information available to our customers, far as what latency they expect from which data center to another one across the globe, but also it's all private, and it's all secure, and it makes for a very good multi-cloud story. >> I don't know if you saw Jenny Remmetti's talk at IBM Think, but she used the term, a lot of people tongue in cheek, but I kind of like it, "incumbent disruptors". I mean look if you're IBM and you've got the client base that IBM has, you better come up with a term like that because that's exactly what you're trying to help your customers do. So, my question is, where does the Cloud and your offering with VMWare fit into the incumbent disruptive scenario? >> Yeah, so VMWare like I said earlier, we didn't want to be a me too player with VMWare. Not only did we want to have a good story with VMWare because obviously VMWare is a huge market share when it comes to virtualization, but on top of that, we wanted to be more futuristic, and solve for those, some of those questions and concerns that the enterprise customer had. So, tight integration on the enterprise base, on the micro-services, containerization, Watson is a huge part of the VMWare platform, you can seamlessly integrate into Watson and really have intelligent decision making on the VMWare platform. So, we wanted to ensure that we were helping our enterprise customers move to Cloud, yet also solve for the future problems. >> So the incumbent piece, both VMWare and IBM, right, incumbent customers, the disruptor would be I guess Cloud, all the new Cloud services, certainly the machine intelligence cognitive, et cetera, components is the disruptive capability, now it's up to you to figure out, okay, how do you apply all that, presumably IBM and your partners can help. >> Yeah and here's the thing, you mentioned earlier, IBM is one of the only companies in the world that can have an end-to-end, not just infrastructure, but also services wrapped around it. So if you're a customer who's not only looking to move to the Cloud but also have services wrapped around, to go end-to-end, IBM is the company to do that for you. >> Dave: Well that's interesting. Okay, I got to ask him Stu. So we had, we were at Dell Technologies World a couple weeks ago, and we had Jeff Clark on, and we asked him, we said, "Look, companies like IBM, HPE, sort of, IBM selling off its X86 division, and HPE splitting, Dell did the opposite. The mega merger". And his comment was, "Well I don't see how you can do end-to-end without both ends". Now, his definition of end is obviously different to your end definition, and I have to ask you, what do you mean by end-to-end? Is the client sort of just a commodity, we can get that anywhere, it's not really an integration challenge? >> So when I'm saying end-to-end what I'm talking about is a enterprise customer looking to move to the Cloud, solve for the future problems, essentially re-invent themselves, transform their business, leverage the new applications, micro-services that are there, but also have services wrapped around it, right? Somebody who's there to help them end-to-end, whether it's just doing migrations for example, right, from on premises to the Cloud, but also help them onboard and guide them on what is there in the Cloud, or the micro-services, or our PAS layer, and how they can transform really. >> So that to me Stu is, Zeb's talking about not a hardware view, of end-to-end, but a, maybe a systems and a software view of end-to-end, in the Cloud services. Alright, Zeb, thank you very much for, do you have one more? You good? Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Guys, thank you very much, appreciate it. >> Appreciate it. Alright, keep it right there buddy, Stu and I will be back with our next guest. This is theCUBE, we're live from VeeamOn 2018, in Chi-town, we'll be right back. (electronic music)