>> Announcer.: From Copenhagen, Denmark, it's theCUBE. Covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon Europe 2018. Brought to you by the CloudNative Computing Foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, and welcome back. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage of KubeCon 2018 in Europe, part of the CNCF, Cloud Native Compute Foundation, part of the Linux Foundation. I'm John Furrier with my cohost Lauren Cooney. Our next guest is Dirk Hohndel, Vice President, Chief Open Source Officer for VMware. Great to see you. CUBE alumni, welcome back. >> Thank you, good to be here. >> So you had a keynote, smashing success today on stage, about open source, all five minutes of it, congratulations. (laughing) Take a minute to explain, I have some specific questions on VMWare, office of the CTO, how you guys are working on some really interesting things. But first, take a minute to explain, the VMware approach to open source that you're leading. What's the architecture of it, how is it organized, can you take a minute to explain-- >> Sure. >> The VMware? >> So we use open source components in literally every single one of our products, and we have a structure where each of the BUs is engaged in open source in the components that they're using, in projects that are related to the business, and they have a central organization that sits in the office of the CTO that I run, so the open source program office, which has much more of a focus of pure open source work. Focused on up stream, focus on the problems that the community sees much more than something that is product driven. I also own the whole compliance work that everyone needs to do to make sure that you follow the licenses and all that. But, fundamentally the balance between having the central organization that has maybe the center of expertise and has people who do open source and nothing but open source, and on the other hand bringing that expertise into the BU. Bring it closer to the products, and engaging across the company. We have more than 7,000 software engineers across the company and we want every single one of them to be mindful and understanding of how open source works, and how we are engaged in that space. >> And how many people, just some stats, can you share, by the numbers, how many people are on the teams, R&D, there's also in the CTO office. How many folks are on your team roughly speaking? >> So I have currently, I want to say, this is quick, 20 some odd people under me, but across the company it's a lot more. There are several hundred people who are, in their daily work engaged with open source all the time. >> That's great. >> So your team is centralized in the business units. Go ahead. >> No, that's great. I was going to say, what is it look like for people that want to contribute code that aren't on your team? Is there a process that's pretty easy to go through? Or can they just put it on GitHub? We would all like that but. >> Yeah so, we have an internal tool that we've developed they simply can request to contribute to an existing project and it goes through a very quick review and depending on the topic, this is typically a two day turnaround time, where they get approval from the BU VP and from me. And if you want to open source a project, so if you have something internal that you've done, that you want to bring out into the community, it's little more complicated with naming, and branding and what not. A lot more people need to nod basically, but it still takes usually a couple of weeks-- >> Yeah. >> And it goes through. But it's an automated process, it's driven by a PM out of my organization. >> That's great. >> And it tries to make it really, really easy. One of my big goals joining VMware was to remove friction out of this process, and to encourage people to engage with the projects that are out there, but also for us to bring software into the open that we've developed, for example internal tools, and make them useful for other people. >> Definitely, I think that's great. >> You mentioned open source models about people, can you elaborate on that because I think this is an important point, we were talking before we came on, about that role of people. >> Well, so open source is... People think of this as a software development methodology, and it is, but fundamentally it's a social phenomenon. It's this experiment of saying the way we do our work is based on relationships. It's based on trust. So I trust you that you've reviewed this code and I take that code that you've reviewed. I know that you are the expert in this area so if I make changes in this area I'll send them to you and ask for your review. It's all about relationships. And these relationships are between people, not between companies. So in so many ways, the role travels with the person, and not with the company. And we have seen this in many cases, where people move from company to company, but the work, their influence, the role comes with them. So it's very much empowering for the engineers. But it's also from a purely human perspective, an engagement where, it's not just about the code that you write, but it's about how you treat people. How you engage with them. This is why conferences like this are so wonderful. There are 4,000 people here, 4,500 people here, and you meet people whom, with whom you've been emailing for years. And this social aspect of this for an introvert like myself, is at the same time a little scary, but also it's super exciting because it is people who are driving this industry. >> John: The face to face connections really make a difference. >> I think it's the community. I mean the community always comes first, I think. I will say this, you build a community, you don't launch one, and I think that's absolutely critical. And I think, can you talk about some of the changes in mentality that you're working with across VMware right now with getting that community first sort of thing moving? >> Well, so, I mean, VMware is a very engineering centric organization. We are driven, we're founded by engineers and driven by engineers, I mean Pat Gelsinger our CEO was an engineer, and so the underlying ethos of contribution and of trying to fix problems and if you see something you go and fix it, that is something that has always been there at VMware, but what I've been trying to bring in to VMware is much more of an up-stream focus. An understanding of, it's not just important that you understand the technology well and you use it well, but also that you contribute back. And that you are seen as playing a big role in this industry. And if you look at the impact that VMware has had in the broader open source community, and how we have shifted our approach to being part of this over the last two years, I think it's been extremely successful. And you can see this with our footprint here, how many talks we have here, and how much presence we have here. I think there's 70 VMware employees at KubeCon this year. >> That's great. >> It's now cultural, it's a Tier One, I'll say Tier One role, not Tier Two when we were growing up in the industry, but part of the business software define, infrastructure, software is taking over the world as Mark Andress said is happening. Open source is there powering it. So I have to ask you the question, that would be on my mind if I'm thinking about going all in as a company, if I'm an enterprise. Hey, you know what, I like this approach. I'm going to go all in. Complete commitment. What's the best practice, what's your advice, because this is something people are talking about doing not just putting a toe in the water going all in and committing to an open source business model with their company. What's your advice for shepherding that process, cultural ethos. What's your take? >> It starts with language. It starts with how you talk about what you're doing. I hear a lot of people saying things like, "Oh, I consume open source," well it bugs me because you consume a commodity. You consume electricity, you don't care where it comes from it's just a plug in the wall. Whatever, right? Open source is always around, about the people. It's always about how do people work. How do they think about security, about releases, about maintenance? What's their work flow? And you can't just consume an open source component, you need to engage with them, you need to understand how their work affects your work. And so my recommendation is always, start with your own language. Start with the approach that you're taking when you're talking about all this. And then figure out, where are you using it, how are you using it, what are the changes that you've made to the components that you're using? How about contributing those changes back? It's a very simple first step to engage. And it's actually a step that makes total business sense because if you have your private branches, your private patches, the next time the upstream project goes through a new release, you need to port these changes, that costs money. So it's actually cheaper to simply contribute them back and have them maintained by the project. And you can use upstream, or you have a minimum set of small adjustments that don't make sense to return to the community. And this is really how you get your toe into the water. Because now you're not just a user of this, you're engaged, you're a contributor. >> You're operationalizing your business. >> Yes, you are, and then the next step is thinking about what of my internal tool sets that maybe are not my core product, but are the things that we build to build the product as part of our workflow. What of those could be used for the product community? So at VMware, for example, we built a software design system, it's called Clarity, and you can use it to create angular-based JavaScript UIs. So we use this for all of our products. We made this tool an open source tool and it's massively successful project, has weekly releases, has a ton of users, a very very active community. And it's one of those cases where you take something that isn't the core of your business, but you are earning your chops in the community. And take it one step at a time and broaden-- >> John: That's the trust relationship you're building? >> That is very much this trust relationship. And it's this track record that you're building of not only doing something, oh here's this old product and I'll open source it and then I walk away. So we call this dump and run right? You throw it over the wall, it's now open source and then you say, customer you're now on your own because it's now open source. >> It's abandoned no one's paying attention. >> Yeah that's a terrible model, but a very good model is one where you think about creating these relationships and creating a track record of being there every week, looking at the bug reports, looking at the issues, looking at the pull requests, and engaging with the people out there. And the value that this creates, the amount of value that you're getting from your outside contributor, very quickly outweighs the additional cost that it takes to get this IP clean and released and all that. >> And then there is documentation and documentation is a tremendous amount of heavy lifting on the inside of a company. But if you can spread it over an open source product that you have, it's great. And it's a really good way for people to start out in open source, I find. >> And you just said open source product, so this one of those things-- >> Project. >> Where, yeah. This is something that I think is where we come back to language being so important. I always talk to the folks internally about this distinction. What is the open source project? What is it, what the community does, what lives on GitHub or what lives in the public side of this? And then what is your product that is based on this project? And in your thinking always keep these two separate. Understand that everything that happens in the project is what is publicly available and what is done in conjunction with your community. >> John: With the team. >> Versus your product which focuses on how does the customer use this. Because open source projects, in and of themselves, are typically built by developers for developers. And the end user has actually different needs. And this is where the business model come in and that's kind of closing the question that you just asked, because the value that the company is providing this space is the understanding of the customer needs. And is the ability to take something that is creating enormous and impressive innovation, which is the community, and taking this to a place where then someone can use it in production. Where it's scales, where it's secure, where it has Day-One and Day-Two operationalization, where it has strong documentation. There is a support number you can call. All these things that a customer is-- >> John: Needs. >> Needs and that an open source project by themselves is unlikely to create. >> It's like putting money in the bank. You can't just take money out of the bank. You've got to deposit good will. The give-get is part of that project and you're saying make the product focus on the customer problems. >> Dirk: Absolutely. >> My question is are you talking kind of about a services wrapper that you put around it and maybe a couple of additional features? In part, or what are you actually kind of, just to get to the crux of it. >> So there are many different ways, many different business models around open source. For us, we are still an enterprise software company. So open source generally provides components of what we do. It may be the API that the customer is asking for. So today, Kubernetes is a set of APIs a lot of people want to use as their way to provide a container service for the orchestration, right? But what is the underlying infrastructure? How do you generate a persistent storage? A flexible networking infrastructure that can grow and shrink as your work loads grow and shrink? How do you manage your individual nodes? How do you deal with internal billings so that you can bill your data center time to your departments? And all these operational aspects are things that we're trying to solve with our products. But we offer to the customer an open source based API. So that's where our business value lies fundamentally. >> Lauren: Okay. >> Communities are a concept that's premised on create value before you capture it. And I think what you're saying is, if you have a project, you better bring something to the table, not just distract. It's a taker. >> Yes. >> If you're just taking all the time, it's not a good trust relationship building, that's what I hear you saying. >> And you will also not be successful because your customer needs, as your customers are coming to you and they're running into issues, you need to be able to address those issues. Which means you need to be productive part of that community. You need to have the in-depth understanding to then help them. >> I've seen people do things like they couldn't get a business model going so they say, "Oh we're just going to open source it, "and hope that a miracle happens." And it's not really that way. I mean, people do open source for the right reasons to bring code to the table, but you're saying nurturing that community project is a for all kind of thing. >> Fundamentally, I always think there are so many brilliant developers in these communities. And if you go into these communities with the assumption that you can learn something from the other developers, you can learn something from the other companies that are involved. And then you can contribute the areas where you are strong, where you have your core knowledge. And you wrap this into a product that provides value for your customers, everyone wins. Your customer wins, >> That a good way-- >> Your community wins, you win. >> So if you're out there thinking about it think about your core competency and what you want to open source, you got a good fit. Okay what's new for you? You diving, you're an avid scuba diver. We talked about that last time you were on theCUBE. What's new with you? >> I haven't been diving. Actually I drove up to Hootsbor to dive in 48 degrees Fahrenheit water, because I haven't been in the water for so long. My next trip is going to be Okinava which is a lot warmer than that. No, the work keeps me busy, so not as much scuba diving as I would want. But we've been very busy. We've been pushing a lot more contributions to a much larger set of projects. My team has been growing, so we've been actively hiring. And we're developing a second generation, internal set of processes to deal with all of these questions you asked about earlier, of how to make sure that you know where you contribute, how you contribute, which components you use. So we're revamping our internal processes around this. >> Lauren: That's great >> And it's keeping us very busy, but I have to say, especially, if you look at this conference here, the success is really very rewarding. We have so many more people actively engaged, and recognized in the community as key contributors. It's been a very very successful year since last we talked. >> It's awesome. Well thanks for your leadership at VMware. We love the KubeCon, we love the Linux Foundation, they've done amazing work. CNCF is just exploded with success and it's a result of, the trend is everyone's friend, which is cloud computing and software defined everything so, VMware. Thanks for coming out Dirk, appreciate it. Live coverage here in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Lauren Cooney co-hosting with me this week. And we'll be back with more, stay with us after this short break. (energetic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware, and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone. Welcome back to theCUBE live coverage here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2018. It's our ninth year covering VMworld. Since 2010 we've covered every VMworld. Been with the journey and the transformation of VMworld. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We've got two sets here in the middle of VM village. And we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for CMO Robin Matlock, who's on theCUBE right now. Welcome back. Great to see you. >> I'm happy to be here guys, again. >> Again, great. >> Thanks for the support, for bringing theCUBE here. The community has been responding positively to the coverage because you guys had so much content here this year. As Pat said, a lot of the fruits been blooming off the tree from all the investments in product. And business is good. >> Good, we're keeping you guys busy I hope. Yep. It's been good. >> So what's going on? Let's get the numbers. We always get it out of the way. How many people are here at the event? We're at the Mandalay Bay. What's the story? >> Yeah, it's a great audience this year. We're definitely seeing some nice growth. We're well over 21,000 here today. Covering all segments of the market. Covering Asia Pacific. The Americas. Also executives as well as our true-blue IT practitioners. >> You got CIOs and practitioners with the hands-on labs, a range of audience personas. >> Yeah, it kind of goes from the practitioner base up. Your mid-level management, VPs, IT decision makers, CIOs. We really have a very wide variety. >> And the theme this year is? >> Possible begins with you. >> (laughs) Okay. >> Yeah, I popped into the CIO event last night. >> Yeah? >> And it was pretty high quality folks. I don't recall, you know, five, six, seven years ago seeing that kind of emphasis and that kind of seniority at the event. Did I just miss it, or is that new? >> No. It's been evolving over the years. I mean, at VMworld's core it is a technical conference Right? So I would say the base of the volume of the program is still catered towards a real, hands-on, technical practitioner and middle management. But we are seeing more business executives come. They want to know what their teams are exploring. They want to understand vision. And I think VMware's value proposition to enterprises is growing and therefore, it's starting to be more of a business conversation. So that is a segment of the audience that is growing. >> And you're nurturing that. Also you're making sure the hands-on labs are the best of the best. I saw Eric Nielsen has this new VMware code thing going on. >> Yes. >> Here at a little hack-a-thons happening. >> So a lot of mix in the community. The community is still robust. The ecosystem floor probably has more energy than I've seen since probably 2012 or something like that. Last time I've seen it this massive. 2012, remember Dave, was pounding. And then this year, it's just, the lift is big. Where's that coming from. >> Yeah. You know I think it's coming from a lot of things and there's no one silver bullet. First of all, VMware is just doing really well. Right? The company is very performing. It's success for our customers that've really come to buy into our strategy and our vision. And they have a veracious appetite to learn. And this is the place. You want to understand where the industry is going. You are technical and you want to be on the edge of the latest and greatest. VMworld is the place to come. So I think we're hitting on many different categories of technology. And it's all pulled together here. So it's one week where you can go from networking, to storage, to management, automation, cloud, mobility. It's all right here. >> And you guys always kind of keep a low profile in the market. You don't over amplify, over play your hand and grandstand too much on the marketing side. Which as always been the DNA of VMware. But this year, you've got Amazon coming on stage again. Andy Jassy returns to do a major announcement that Amazon, really for the first time, is building a product for VMware, on VMware, on premises. Pat's on stage. So you see the commitment from the two companies, the biggest public cloud provider, and the biggest operator of virtualized infrastructure and private cloud, partnering and performing. So I think that really kind of put a lot of wind in your sails. I mean, a lot of people are talking about it. It's been pretty much the top news story, the impact of that relationship. How has that affected VMworld? The announcements are, it seems like more announcements than ever before. How has that relationship changed you guys? >> Well I definitely think, we're several years into it now, and we are seeing the fruits of that effort. A couple of thoughts. First of all, the AWS relationship is not our sole element of our cloud strategy, but it's a big pillar of our cloud strategy. And I think, at the end of the day, by understanding our vision for how we can help deliver a bridge to the public cloud, the hybrid cloud, it is giving our customers the license and the comfort and the confidence to continue to invest. Whether it's in their data center or is in their public cloud. So there's something about just having that clarity of vision and strategy that unleashes potential, even in the data center. I think the second thing, to me, what was so significant with this Amazon announcement with VMware. Is you are now talking about public cloud services running on Primm. The line between public and private. The line between on premise and off premise is fading. It's blurring. We're going to get to a point where we're just going to talk about what's the workload, and what's a service I need to deliver the workload. Okay, and then I can consume those services in different ways, and what's the right way to consume those services. But it's not a monopoly on an off premise, or a monopoly on an on premise. It's a blur. And I think that's going to be in the best interest of customers, because I think it's going to really boil down to what is the workload, what are the services I need, and I have a lot of options on how to consume that. And I'm all for that. I think it's going to be great. >> Well, I got to say, John and I have watched this evolution for for now, as he said, this is our ninth year. You guys have done a great job of really being calm about all the things that were supposedly going to kill you. (laughter) Open stack, open source, cloud, Kubernetes, containers. You've embraced them all. I mean, I know cloud for a while was a little bit confusing. But now it's a real tailwind for you guys. I mean, great job there. And I think a lot of that is sort of how you've dealt with it internally, messaged it externally. I wonder if you could just address that for a minute. >> Yeah. You know, I love that observation about VMware, because that speaks to two big concepts: resiliency and innovation. In this industry you have to be constantly innovating. And if you get too protective of the market that you're in, you start to get into a cocoon. And then people are innovating around you and they're making you obsolete, and you're not even seeing it happen. I think VMware has a veracious appetite for innovation. And we are pushing, and pushing, and pushing. And we're never relaxed. We are always, you know, often pleased but not satisfied. Right? It's like you're never, ever done. And that keeps us being open to innovating, where once we might have been protective. It's like don't worry, things will change. We'll innovate on top of that. It's alright, a new environment. We'll innovate in that context. And I think we're very good about that. And then the other thing I think is resiliency. In this industry, there's not that many that can go from decade to decade and still be highly relevant. But you have to have the grit, and you have to have the kind of gorilla appetite that you will continue to reinvent yourself, listen to your customers, bring your ecosystem along, and partner like nobody else. And in the end you'll deliver more value. >> You know, that's a great point. I love that comment. That's going to be a highlight on our highlight reel for sure. I'll add, and love to get your reaction to, how you guys have maintained the community vibe and the ecosystem vibe. Again, to Dave's point, this is core. Pat said on earlier today, you know, "we're always going to have an open ecosystem." That's been the core DNA of VMware. So, and you also have a really strong community, hence the technical focus. These tech oriented folks, they love the tech. And they speak up a lot, you know that. They speak well. >> Oh yeah. They're vocal. >> They let you know when it's not right. But you guys embrace it. That hasn't changed. That's been a positive. How do you do it? >> Yeah, that's exactly right. I think we have, over the years, just built ecosystem into our core DNA. It's now defined by who we are and how we do things. And, you know, going back to your Amazon comment, I think that is simply an example, we know how to partner. We've been at it for 20 years. And it's just been part of how we perceived the requirements to be successful. And because of that it's now, we're just good at it. We get it. And the reason we're good at it is because we very much understand it's bi-directional. You can only win when you win together. >> You know, one other thing I want to point out, and at least give you guys some props while you're here and get your reaction to it is, we've done a little bit more cube with you guys, outside of the scope of the event. We did a lot of women in tech leadership events. We were invited to the first radio event where they opened it up to some press. So we got a glimpse inside >> Internal engineering kind of conference, yup. >> It's a total R&D, it's with all the technologies being incubated, it's a really great thing. Also being on campus, you guys are always consistently voted the best place to work, you got the innovation in the R&D, and you've just got a great workforce. So, that is also a cultural thing within VMware, right? 'Cause Pat said, we're going to continue to drive technology products, and sales and marketing for customers. Your reaction? >> Yeah, I think people are at the heart of great businesses. Right? And we have to create an environment where people can do their best work. Radio is a wonderful example. So that's an internal conference for our engineering teams. But what it is about building community within our engineering community. How do they explore new things? How do they take risks? And explore and innovate and try new things. And then how do they share that with their colleagues from all over the world. And I think that's just part of our value system is creating these kind of communities internally and externally. >> You opened it up to press, talk about taking a risk. >> That was a first time, yeah. >> That was the first time you've ever opened it up to some press outlets. We were one of three. But it was a peek. That's a risk. >> It is a risk. And I think the idea there is that being protective is not really helpful. That what you need to do is to really be open. That there's so much to deliver value and innovate. There's not reason to be so secretive. It's more about how can we feed of each others ideas. How can we plant seeds and see if these things are going to resonate. We don't know for sure these new emerging things are going to work or not. So the more we get feedback early, I think the faster we'll innovate. It'll accelerate innovation. It won't hold it back. >> Well, and your point about the ecosystem is right on. Sanjay made the point about ROI today. I thought that was really interesting data. About 10x was a conservative return number in the 100s of billions if not trillion of dollars that you've sort of paid forward through the ecosystem to the end customers. It's powerful. >> Very powerful. And at the end of the day, we need to just continue to focus on delivering more and more economic value, right? Whether it's cost savings, whether it's being able to fuel new innovation, whether it's consolidation. At the end of the day we all have to get more done with less and have more value and more impact. >> Well it's interesting to see you being in Amazon into this ecosystem, because you said you guys partnering is part of your DNA. You know, generally Amazon's partnerships have been come on into the marketplace, right? And now, they're diving into this world. Bringing their technology on prem. Which was heresy five years ago. You never would've seen Amazon do that. So, do you think you can teach Amazon something about partnering, humbly? >> Well, I'll let Amazon comment on that as opposed to me. >> Amazon's got a lot of partners, Dave. They've got thousands of partners. >> But, you know, I'm going to go back, I can't speak for Amazon on what their learning journey has been. I do feel confident that VMware, we are good at partnering, and I think we build good partnerships. >> My final question for you is community. Obviously, as people grow there's a demand for more cloud advocates, more cloud engineers, cloud architects. You guys always had a nice lock on that constituent. But we're seeing a lot of competition hire away people from communities. How do you maintain that community fabric when potentially they might be migrating to other communities. Is it through open source? Dirk Hohndel is leading the efforts with open source. Saw him last night. How are you thinking about maintaining an open, but yet inviting community when people potentially are being migrating around different communities. >> Yeah, I think you have to look at communities as personalities, and kind of the DNA of a community. And it's not a one-size-fits-all. When you're in the dev ops world, you need to act and behave and engage a certain way. You need to bring a certain type of content to that. Trust me, they don't want a lot of marketing in those conversations, right? When in enterprise class, you might be dealing with a different type of DNA. It's about proven, stability, security, resiliency. So there's a little different nature of the community and the dialogue there. I think our philosophy is you got to bring the right content to the people. And it's different, but make sure you understand the needs of the community. And we don't own these communities, right? These are volunteer, people do this because they care, and they want to and they're passionate about it. Our job is to foster that passion. Help make them effective, let them share amongst themselves. They are going to move around communities, we just want to be a part of it. We're not trying to own it, we're trying to be a part of it. >> That's the key, you try to get a land grab ownership, that's when they run. >> I don't think that's what it's about. I think it's really just about, what is the sense of community? What does the word mean? It means coming together, it means sharing, it means helping each other, it means people with like-minded needs and wants and interests. >> Robin, thanks for coming on Cube. I know you're super busy. Thanks for sharing. >> Always. >> Final word, just overall impressions so far. Are you happy the way things are going? The conference is phenomenal. Everything going smooth? >> You know, I couldn't be more excited about what's happened here so far. We're only into day two. For me, a couple of the highlights is how now the industry is starting to talk about tech as a force for good. So now we're starting to move out of the conversation of just the technologies, and the products, and the impact. But what are we collectively doing to make this world a better place. That's a new dialog. And I got so much positive response from Malala today. From, you know, some of the things that we're talking about impact on the world. And I think these just nothing but upside and opportunity for us. >> And that speaks to the culture, you guys are very inspirational. Love the tech for good. People want to work for a company that's doing tech for good, as well as making a profit. >> So do I. >> Thanks for coming on, appreciate it. >> You bet, you guys. >> Thanks, Robin. >> We're doing our best for good here on theCUBE by bringing the great voices in the community and also the executives bringing the content to you here. Two stages, ninth year covering VMworld. We're here with Robin Matlock the CMO. Stay tuned. I'm John Furrier, and Dave Vellante. We'll be back with more coverage. Stay with us.

>> [Narrator] From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Radio 2018. Brought to you by VMware. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome back everyone. We're here with theCUBE in San Francisco for exclusive coverage for VMware's Radio 2018. I'm John Furrier, your host. This is the event where everyone comes together in the R&D and the organic engineering organization of VMware to flex their technical muscles, stretch their minds, compete for the papers, and also get to know each other. And the key person behind this is the chief research officer David Tennenhouse. Thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you John. Really glad to be here. >> So you're the chief research officer. You got to look at the company-wide agenda. But this event is more of a special event, organically. Talk about for the folks out there watching what's different about this event that goes outside the scope of kind of the top-down research. >> Yeah this is really, you know, for the developers by the developers. So when you said I'm in charge, I'm definitely not in charge. And you know, we have a program committee. There's a programming committee chair. It's much like the way an academic conference might be organized, where you know, there's kind of a group of academics that sort of watch over the content. In this case, we have many hundreds of folks that submit proposals into radio. They can't all get selected. It's very competitive because in addition, if you get accepted, you get a ticket to radio. You get to attend. So everybody really wants to do that. >> Talk about the organic nature. 'Cause this is one of the things that I've seen that's been part of a world-class organization. Like Amazon has their own process for it called the big idea. They have certain working documents that process to foster any idea across the organization. How important is that as part of Radio? I mean literally it's anyone right? >> Well it's not just Radio. It's important to the whole company. So I think of this as when you're working on innovation, you're gonna have sort of a breadth component. You want everybody doing a little. And some of that's gonna be incremental. One thing I learned in a prior role at a different company is you know if you add up a lot of two percenters, that's how you can double things and keep on Moore's law every year. So you're gonna get some of that. And you're gonna get some really disruptive ideas. So you know, from a top-down point of view, we try to drive some disruptions. Some disruptions show up organically from the troops. And a ton of that breadth stuff shows up. >> I'm honored to be here. It's the 14th year, and some T-shirts commemorating the key milestones from way back in the day. This is the first year press was allowed in. I noticed a handful of folks came in to kind of document this. A lot of the brightest minds in VMware here. Again, great to have us. We're super excited. But share with us. Like, what's happened over the years. Give some examples of where people were coming together, where there's a collision of ideas, and just that combustion that happens. Can you share some stories around key notable, or potentially as Raghu pointed out, there's been some misses too. (laughing) >> Yeah, you're gonna get some of that. I mean you've gotta take risks. Not everything's gonna work. You know and just to speak to misses. What I've learned in the innovation and research space is as much as anything, it's about timing. It's pretty rare that you completely technically miss. Usually engineers have an idea. They'll figure out a way to make it happen. Then the question is, is it the right time? Are the customers ready? Is the market ready to go in that direction? So, that's just to talk to that. >> Timing's everything. >> Timing is a big deal. >> Well there's never a miss too in R&D because if you, like Pat Yelson said, understand when it's gotta be re-casted. Know if it works or not. >> Yeah just understanding. So those are the ones actually you know I feel, what I really hate is if for some reason we have to end a project and we haven't actually gotten to the bottom of it. And so you don't know yes or no. And sometimes that can be the kind of time's run out, right. You've decided well, even if it works, it's too late. But you know, getting back to some of the examples, I'll focus on some more recent ones. We had some really interesting work come together on containers. And there were some folks that, and this is going back like four years ago. Containers aren't a new story, and certainly not for VMware. But around four years ago, there was a proposal at Radio that had to do with hey let's make containers a first class citizen on VMware's platform. Okay, so top level that makes great sense. Let's go do it. Containers are great for developers. The IT folks still want the isolation they get form VMs. Let's put these together really effectively. So that was top level. There was a next level, the idea that said gee at Radio, a couple years before, there'd been this idea of being able to do something called VM fork, or being able to clone a VM. And saying you know... And this came out of our end user computing group, the VDI folks. And if you think about it, if you've got a virtualized PC, you want to be able to clone that so you can start these up really fast. And the container folks said hey, we've got the same problem. Could we actually try to make use of that technology and use that as part of our bigger container push? So you know, those are examples of things that came together at Radio. And there are also examples of things where the market timing may not have quite been there. So we went out with the container work. That was actually post-Radio. It was funded. We incubated it. You've got vSphere Integrated Containers hit the market exactly the right time. >> Timing right there. >> Right, timing right there. But what we learned as we actually started doing trials with customers was that they didn't actually need the instant clone on the containers. What they needed is throughput. They wanted to know that they could do large numbers per second as opposed to you'll get that container really quickly. So as the team went along, they actually shifted away from that fork idea. We'll probably come back to it when the time's right for it. >> Well you have a nice little positioning there. I like the timing. 'Cause by the way, entrepreneurial timing is the same way. You go outside... >> I was a VC. (laughing) >> Okay, so you know okay. Timing's everything. How many times you seen that entrepreneur wicked early on it going... And they keep scratching that itch and finally they get it. The art of the timing. But also the art of knowing when to, what to keep in inventory. Pat mentioned vCloud Air as an interesting example. Recognizing abandonment there. Okay hey, let's just stop, take pause. Let's use what we have. >> Do something else. >> Do something else. >> Gotta do something else. And by the way along the way, in parallel with vCloud Air, we had built up these vCloud partners. And that's phenomenal right. So we have you know, people think in terms of a couple of very large public clouds. But we've got literally thousands of people running public clouds in either specialized markets, or particular countries, that are running on our platform. And you know that whole vCloud Air effort helped push that forward. >> So where were you a VC? Just curious. >> I was actually in a company that fits with sort of my role in research and innovation. I was in a specialized firm, boutique firm, new venture partners, that specialized in spin outs from large companies. This goes to the timing, right. I'd previously been at another large company. You know, and whenever you have a research portfolio, you're gonna have some projects that you started. They were technically successful. That's your first notch. Then you go look and say hey, can I find a business model for it. Some of these are both technically successful. You find a business model, but you had anticipated that the company strategically was gonna zig. The company zagged. Now this is a great opportunity that doesn't quite fit. So you know, we did those as spin outs. >> Well I love the perspective too of you said earlier, David, around not getting to the bottom of it. And that's the most frustrating part. Because you just gotta get some closure you know. Like okay, this thing, we took it to the end, completion, this is not gonna... Good try guys. >> And we know why. >> And you know why. Now let's take it to the next level. Now the market we're living in now I heard with Ray O'Farrell, I was talking with earlier. We talked about the confluence of these big markets coming together. Infrastructure market, which is kinda declining on paper. But cloud is filling the void. Big data's becoming AI, and blockchain over the top. These are four major markets. And at the center of them, intersecting all these nuances, security, data, IoT. >> Governance. >> Governance. So there's some sticky areas that are evolving based upon these moving markets. Opportunity recognition's another one. So this is what you're kind of doing now with the research. Talk about opportunity recognition. >> We definitely do that. And I do want to say on the infrastructure side, you know something to recall is that as people, you know they've got their private clouds. Those are individually getting actually bigger as they consolidate. But now with IoT, you're seeing edge computing pop up. Right, so the private infrastructure doesn't go away, it moves around. It's like a liquid. And you pour it from place to place in some sense. >> Moving computer around. Sound like what Ray O'Farrell was talking about in his keynote, early days of VMware. Again, Compute's the center of this. >> Right, Compute, but you know I'm a networking guy so you know, we've grown that. And I think that in fact, you know more and more as we make progress with software defined network, and network virtualization. And if you think about that, so you know let's look at that. So Compute's definitely at the center of what happens in the data center, in the cloud, right. You're gonna want to be able to string those piece together. So today we've got AirWatch. I think that's strategically really key. Because it gives us a little bit of presence on the edge devices that touch people. That's one of the ways information gets from the physical world to the virtual world is through people. >> It's an edge device. People are things too. >> IoT, right. So we're you know, working hard. And that's one of the projects that we incubated, and researched, and is now become a business at Vmware. It's to get that presence right at the edge of the gateways that bridge between the things that are connected to the physical world, and bringing it into the virtual world. Now if we can put our software defined network between all that, so you got it between the public cloud, the private cloud, the mobile devices in people's hands. >> And on premise, data center. >> Exactly, all of 'em. >> All right, so here's a question for you. This is one of those trick questions. Is the cell phone an edge device or an IoT device? >> Well I think it's in many ways both. And what I think of it is is more of a gateway. If you think about the IoT world, you have the things. >> IoT is a strict definition though in your mind, right. People refer to IoT as more of a sensor thing to a physical device. >> I tend to think of it as it's got some connection to some physical device. It's able to bring information in from the physical world. Okay, so now you look at your cell phone. It can bring information. It's got that microphone. It's got that camera, right. It can bring information in. >> [John] Connect it to a physical person. >> It can put information back out. Yeah, through a physical person. I've been in the space for a long time. Going back to my time at DARPA, we set out to create the IoT world. This wasn't an accident, right. We looked at this and said, okay the main way information gets between these two worlds today is through human beings. The way I used to explain this to the generals is you know, we can't keep putting human beings in the direct line of fire of information technology. So we've gotta get these devices, gotta get all these sensors. It's taken a long time. This is you know again, timing. But if you look at the research world. >> By the way, incredible work you've done by the way from there to here, it's been amazing. >> You know pull this along. But you know so when you look at that cell phone, it's got some of those sensors. It's got actually a whole pile of sensors in the phones today. It's got actuation, the ability to put the information back out. It's also a gateway. Because typically you know, particularly through its Bluetooth functionality, and as we get Bluetooth low power now. So it's also acting as a gateway to connect up other devices around your body, network etc. >> Personal networking, whatever comes on your physical presence. >> So you know, turn that around and it says in the IoT world, we've gotta manage gateways. We've gotta make sure gateways stay secure. Because they're really gonna be the sort of main perimeter, the line of defense. If you think about all these things that are gonna be out there, as an industry, we're gonna collectively try very hard to secure all those things. But let's be realistic. They're gonna be supplied from a wide variety of companies, and they're gonna last longer than people might think. >> How much of those devices are operationally, operation technology is non IP, versus not IP. Internet Protocol. >> Non Internet Protocol. Yeah, yeah. >> Internet Protocol now. >> [David] Non Internet, you had it right. >> Got the VC in the brain there. The VC, IP, I'm like get that IP right. So internet protocol devices, which has some challenges but that's getting fixed, versus OT just sensors proprietary. >> Yeah well either proprietary or let's say, you know it may be an industry standard, but an industrial standard. So today, a very large fraction, particularly you asked about how we focused at Vmware. Well one of our foci is we're about what are our enterprise customers gonna need. So when we think IoT, we're not really thinking that much about the consumer devices. We're thinking about those enterprise devices. So a lot of those will use... >> That's where AirWatch might come in. So employees still have phones though. >> Employees still have phones. So that's why I said, so there's the human interface. We want to be there. And there's the other enterprise interfaces to all these sensors. That could be in a factory. It could be in a smart city, any number of places. So as we pull information in from those, we're gonna find that they come from a lot of different suppliers and they're gonna last a long time. You know, even if you buy a device that's got a three to four year lifetime, probably 10 to 20% of those still gonna be around 10 years later, right. You're smiling because you know that in your home you have some wifi connected devices that are a little older than they probably should be. >> And they have full processing capability threaded processes on it, which could be running malware as we speak. >> So as I said, as an industry, we'll try to secure those really edge things. But the reality is we're gonna have to draw the line at the gateway. >> It's a lot more security work. I totally hear you. I mean the light bulb could have a full thread on there. The surface area is so huge now. >> And there have been attacks on light bulbs. >> Yeah I know. So I gotta ask you a question. 'Cause you bring up this networking edge, which by the way I love anything that's network. 'Cause I think this is the future of work. How is the future of work impacting some of the R&D you're doing. Because you talked about AirWatch them having more mobility. The human impact, society, whether it's mission driven and or just human collaboration going digital. You're gonna need to have policies. You need to have a networked society. This is super relevant. But it brings back that future work. >> It does. And so couple different aspects. You know, one you know, which just relates to a point you raised is if you look at something like our Workspace ONE product, if you've had a chance to do that. It's kind of a win win, because you get one portal. So you know, an employee for an enterprise, they've got one portal. They get access, it doesn't matter whether they're getting to a web app, they're getting to a you know, a DVI supported application. They're getting to something that's on a server, something on a SAS player, right. They get through that portal. So for them it's convenient. I mean for me as a manager, I love this, right. Because whether I'm on my cell phone, I'm on a laptop, doesn't matter, I can get to the same expense app. I can approve things. >> You don't need to carry two phones. My work phone and my... >> And I can do all these approvals really easily, right. So I also don't worry. I don't see the difference between which device I'm on. At the same time that you're delivering that convenience to the user, you're delivering governance because the IT team can be deciding how that portal's populated, how things are connected, right, and how the wiring works. All the authorization, you've got a common identification system and all of that. So that's kind of very specific to you know, let's say near term changing the user interface. In terms of the broader future of work, clearly machine learning is the big story here, right. And I think that what we're gonna see is, particularly again in enterprise, more and more need for data analysts to be able to look at the big data. We're gonna see sort of more and more use of machine-learning technologies. It's gonna you know basically creep in everywhere. And we're getting this at just the right time. So if you want to think about future work in the big national and international scale, what you really sort of stop to look at is say, gee, okay, these machines are gonna do all this work. What about the people? And you know a lot of people therefore get concerned. Gee, the computers are gonna take away all the jobs. Right, you get these sound bytes. >> I think right now we're worried about fake news and real content. (laughing) >> Well let's come back to that one later. But there is a sense of gee, you know, the computers will take on all the jobs. And you know what I think people are not doing carefully is looking at the demographics. Because if you look at basically all the developed economies for practical purposes, we actually have a demographic problem. Our problem is actually not a surplus of workers. It's gonna be a shortage of workers. In fact, actually in the US right now, you're starting to feel this. Now that's at the peak of the economic cycle. So of course you feel it, you know, a bit. >> They need trained workers too. Also people who qualify. >> Right. So I think the thing we really need to look at is how do we do a much better job at matching, you know, sort of workers, both folks coming into the workplace, people with existing skills, to available opportunities. Because actually we're gonna have a shortage of workers. And it's not just sort of the US and Europe. I mean China, Japan. Well Japan for a long time. China, headed to a shortage of workers. I was out in Singapore not too long ago and was surprised to find out not just that they're concerned. But they went and looked at the Southeast Asian countries around them that are their markets. They're looking at a shortage of workers. So you know, if we didn't have something like machine-learning and AI coming along, we'd be sitting there saying, how are we gonna keep our economies growing? >> We need augmentation for sure. >> We need this augmentation. And it's coming at just, you know, you talked about timing. You know, it's coming at just the right time. Now, there definitely are gonna be some tough transitions along the way, right. So we definitely, you know, for example, as autonomous vehicles come along, we've gotta figure out, okay, all those people that are driving vehicles, what are they gonna do going forward? But let's not kid ourselves too, you know. If you've got trucks moving around with high-value cargoes, you're not gonna leave those unattended, right. We're gonna have to figure all this out. So there's gonna be a lot of interesting opportunities. >> What's your take on blockchain? Well first of all, GDPR, real quick. Train wreck, useful? >> I think it's you know, if you backed up and asked me four or five years ago, I'd have said train wreck. And largely because we still don't have the sort of kind of international consensus on what the rules should be. >> But you mentioned governance earlier. That certainly needs to be at the center of the action. >> Right, but you know, if we take a look now, it seems like it's showing up at just the right time, right. You know, in that sense. I think part of what's happened is over the intervening years, a lot of countries outside of Europe, because they realize these regulations would apply to them, they've worked with European regulators to help the regulators understand the technology, you know, help the companies understand. >> That's a good politically correct answer. I'll just say I think it's a shit-show personally. But you know. I mean it's gonna force people... It's like Y2K in money making, but Y2 never happened. It's forcing people to really, I think the value of GDPR is the big companies are gonna get hit hard on some suits. Just the trolling thing bothers me. Just the trolls that come out of the woodwork. But I think the positive that puts the center of the value proposition, making data, not a one off, like backup and recovery. It has to be core to technical operations. >> And making privacy something that's really in that first class category. You know, as I said. >> Great first step, but... There's a big but. >> There is more to be done. >> Hopefully they don't go after us little guys. All right, final question, blockchain. We are super excited about blockchain. You have teams working on this. >> [David] I am super excited about blockchain. >> Talk about your view on blockchain. Why are you excited about it? Obviously we feel it's very efficient, makes inefficiencies efficient across all industries. Your thoughts. >> Okay so again, we look at things through this prism. What are enterprise customers gonna be looking at? What do they want? And you know, so we're not you know... I think you're in the same place. We're not looking at the crypto currencies, right. That's not the thing. And in fact, we're not even looking at cohabiting on the Bitcoin blockchain. Because do you really want to run your business in the same place that a whole bunch of other people are running illegal businesses and the whole thing. >> And by the way, there's some technical issues. (laughing) >> We'll get to that. We're gonna get there. But just even as a starting point. So we pretty quickly looking even you know, three, four years ago said, okay enterprise is not gonna want to go that way. But this idea of a federated ledger, right. So if you can make federated ledgers and we can have reusable technology, that means now, if I want to federate with other companies or other organizations, or you know, or you need companies federating with governments, or governments federating with each other. Anywhere you want to pull together essentially a club for the exchange of data, with a persistent record of what happened, you've now got a common way of doing it, right. Or we can drive towards that. You know there'll be a standardization process to get there. But so it's not to me, federated ledgers means lowering the barrier to federation. And I think that's pretty exciting. Whole bunch of places. You know, supply chain, clearly one. Financial technology, but... >> David, we gotta spend some time, have you come in the studio. I'd love to explore some of these great topics with you. But I gotta ask you one final question. You know, with your history going back to ARPA, D-ARPA days, and looking at really the beginning of the information super highway, IP, connecting some universities together, to today, the waves that have gone through. We've talked about standards. The OSI stack, you had all these grandiose standard plans. Not all of them have happened exactly as planned. But defacto standards play a really important role. It galvanizes community, gives people guiding principles, a north star, whatever metaphor you want to use. The key is the enabling disrupting technologies, a defacto standard. What's happening now in your mind that you see out there that's starting to emerge as defacto? 'Cause certainly there's a lot of standard things going, open sources for tier one citizen growing, rapidly, which is greatness. Cloud is booming, unlimited resources, Compute, fingertip compute... All this is good. >> Yeah. >> All these new standards, I got Kubernetes, I got this going on, what's emerging? >> Well again, they're defacto, right. Kubernetes is an interesting example of basically open source meets defacto. And that's pretty exciting right. I mean, we're excited about it. I think people are often surprised we're a fan of open source. And I guess really, I just like to sort of back up a notch. Because you know what you touched on is defacto standards, whether it's open source or not, have suddenly become a lot easier. When I say suddenly, over like a 10 year period. And I think what's going on there is this is part of the change to software. So you know, if you're talking about hardware, and you got screws, you know, and you got threads, these physical things have to match, and they have to match exactly, right. Say when you travel overseas, you need to carry converters, physical converters to convert from one thing to another. So if you want to interoperate, if you and I want to have stuff that interoperates, we needed to build like either, do the same thing, or have a physical adapter. There was a cost to not having a standard. If you think about in the software world, we can build software converters, right. So if I've got you know, say we've got two, or three, or four, or even 50 defacto standards in the software world. You know, blockchain. So there's 50 new things. Everybody launches their own. Pretty quickly, the market will drive that down to a small number. And then you can put software converters in place. So we no longer actually have to get to one. >> [John] That's the software economic model. >> It's a big change. >> And that is huge. So by the way, we had Dirk Hohndel on at CubeCon. Love his open source mission, just a shout out to you guys, doing a great job. You guys at VMware certainly that we know, love you over on the East Coast. Final prediction. Final question. Give us a prediction. >> Give you a prediction. >> 2018, second half of the year, what's gonna happen? What's gonna be a notable thing that you see out on the horizon that might happen in the marketplace that might be notable for people to stand up and pay attention to? >> I think we're gonna see some significant developments in the blockchain space. And it's gonna be in the category of people starting to announce real deployments. And you know, if you're sort of looking at that time frame, you know you've had a lot of different enterprises try things. We've had people kind of dabble at things. I think you're gonna start seeing some people really move significantly in that space. >> And do you think like, just to follow up on that, do you think like in the database world now, where by the way, it's okay to have a zillion databases now. 'Cause you talk about databases. >> But it consolidated down to a few players. >> You get some extraction layers. It's okay to have a few variety of blockchains. I mean, there's no one blockchain. >> Correct, so that's where I think as I said, you're gonna see actually a bunch of these deployments. They'll be using different technologies. And then the fun really starts right. As people consolidate, especially with open source, they swap ideas. We boil it down to what's the best of the best. We've got you know, stuff we're doing certainly to knock the throughput down, sorry throughput up, latency down. (John laughing) And you know, we think we've got a very scalable approach. And most important, you know something that's really... I don't know if you talked to people about our sustainability. You know, it's a key value for VMware. >> [John] Yeah, lot of great standards there, yeah. >> So you can imagine we looked at blockchain. We looked at proof of work. And we said that's proof of energy wasted. We're not going there. >> Gotta make it more efficient. >> I think you're gonna see more and more folks focusing on things like Byzantine fault tolerant. Ours is scalable. You know SBFT. >> Yeah performance is key. And the energy's a huge problem. >> But performance and at acceptable energy. You can't you know, just waste. It's immoral to just waste energy. And it really goes against what a lot of the whole IT industry's built up. You know, I think we've, over the decades, we've done a lot of things for the good of society. And we gotta stay the mission. >> I think as the more, I won't say mature, but big world-class organizations join in, I think that'll straighten itself out. And certainly, as any evolution would see, the web. I remember dial-up and AOL. It can't go as fast as this minicomputer. Well you don't get it, it's the web okay. David, thanks so much for coming on, appreciate it. Great conversation here at Radio 2018. I'm John Furrier, Cube coverage of VMware's annual 14th year conference, at Radio 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it's theCube, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Now, here are your hosts, John Furrier and Stu Miniman. >> Hello, welcome back everyone. We're live here at VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas, the Mandalay Bay Convention Center. We're actually in the hang space, broadcast booth It's theCube's SilliconANGLE's flagship program, we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier and my co-host Stu Meneman, our next guest, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware. Great to see you again. Every VMworld, every year that we've done the VMworld, you've been on theCube. >> Well, it's always a pleasure. You guys are fun. You do your homework. I enjoy our time together, and I can't imagine VMworld without theCube. Look, we are really impressed with the vision you've laid out, because the number one question we get asked on theCube and in backchannels like CrowdChat and Twitter, is VMware ecosystem is looking for the straight and narrow, they want that, they want to see the path, the 90-mile stair if you will, so they can actually accelerate their business. >> Pat: Yeah. >> Can you laid that out, and just quickly review what your key points were for the folks that didn't capture the full keynote. >> Well, clearly we said, boy, we gave clear data with regard to what the cloud market looks like, what it's going to look like today, 2021, 2030, crossover points, and really the key summary of that is it's a complex world. It's going to be a multi-cloud environment for our customers, and they want to know, how do I not only build hybrid clouds, private clouds, and how do I take advantage of public clouds? And we gave a comprehensive view of what that looks like, the cross-cloud architecture. Here's a way that we can bring all cloud embodiments into a common framework. Cross-cloud architecture, two big components are part of it, build your private cloud, enable that as a service, that's a cloud foundation, bring it together, vSAN, vSphere, NSX, along with new lifecycle management capabilities, making that easy, do it as a service with IBM and our partnership that we announced there, but we expect many more of those with other vCloud Air Network partners, and then the cool new Cross-Cloud Services. Make those available, embrace any cloud, and then give our enterprise customers the tools to manage in this cross-cloud or multi-cloud environment. >> John: What's the catalyst for this announcement? Was it an epiphany, was it more that the market was ready for it? Because now, multi-cloud, but how you talk about it, any device anywhere, that's been the previous message. But now it catalyzes around this positioning. What was the moment of truth where you said okay, this is, we're going with this. It doesn't seem like you're betting the ranch on this, but it is betting the ranch on this in a way, because this is, as you said, the future, and it's going to be mostly your journey. So why did it come together? >> A couple of things happened. If you remember last year's VMworld, we did this little NSX demo where it says, we can connect NSX onto the cloud, you remember that? >> Yeah. >> Literally, Guido comes into Raghu and I, about two weeks before VMworld last night, and he says "we've got to work it. And can I demo it in my session?" Right, at the thing. Raghu looked at each other and he says, "Okay, let's do it. Let's see how people respond to it." So that was one catalyst. The second catalyst, we had a couple of customer meetings where the customer said to us, and he says, "This is my best. I'm doing this on Amazon, I'm exploring Azure over here, I've got a boatload of VMware, I'm doing this many- help me solve these problems. So it was clearly customer feedback, and there's a vibrant response we had from this little last-minute demo that we did at last year's VMworld, and sort of out of that, we said, "Let's really take this seriously. Let's go dive deeply into it." And as Guido said in the keynote, we've now talked to about a couple hundred customers and a huge response, and some, you know, usually when you do a cool new product, people say let me try that. In this case, the response we've gotten is, I need that now. I mean, it's a very definitive response. These are the kind of things I need to manage today's problems, so I guess Guido's already late in getting it done, so I've got to crack the whip harder and get this in the market. >> So it's not so much retooling, though we did talk about yesterday at the things, you're kind of mid-flight but you're adjusting to the market. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And clearly our cloud journey's been one where, you know, if you go back and I gave some of the data 2011, no one expected the public cloud to be where it was, where it is today. I mean, it clearly accelerated faster, some of the ease of use, efficiency characteristics, hey, this is a capability that nobody quite expected to grow this rapidly. And it's now permeated Enterprise customers who are starting to take advantage of it. But they don't have the tools to really take advantage of it. >> So some key leads we were reading yesterday in your keynote, you know we always like to read between the lines, kind of like the messaging inside of it. >> Sometimes you get it right, sometimes, you know. >> We get it right most of the time. Your comment, your sit-down with Michael Dell was really interesting, okay. Because this is an open ecosystem play. His first point was about open ecosystem. You've been banging on this from day one since you've been CEO of VMware, since the throw of the first pitch of the NetApp event that got viral with that jersey on. >> I went to the NetApp customer partner event last night, every year I'm there as well. Just like theCube, I go to the NetApp event. >> He could say that you have been hardcore about open ecosystem from day one, and with the merger now set for the 7th, the merger that you can transact on the 7th, you still want to be independent. The open ecosystem is super important to you, and Michael, I heard it right from his mouth. Share some color on why and how that's going to evolve. Will everyone have untempered access to VMware, will all partners have the same level of access and visibility? >> The simple answer is yes. We're going to continue exactly on that strategy as we go forward. And clearly I'm going to do more with Michael and the Dell team, you know, as we see that going forward. But it's incumbent upon us, even as we do more with Dell, that we lean in more aggressively to our HP, to our Lenovo, to our Fujitsu, and our other partners as well. So we see that as a critical part. And I say the VMware ecosystem is evolving. Five years ago, would you have had the cadre of security and networking vendors? No. Would you have expected to have all the system integrators? No. I mean, we're clearly expanding. Service provider partners, our ecosystem has broadened our product portfolio, it's becoming a broader statement as well. So that's a commitment. We're going to remain a platform play, an ecosystem play, and obviously, with Michael's comments onstage, he's cheering us on. He's saying, I'm going to grow my business with VMware faster, and I hope all of the other ecosystem partners grow faster than I do. >> Is this going to be a persona change? Because now, if you look at VMware's ecosystem, which has been robust, there's some good salivation going on, there's a change-up as the ecosystem shifts. vCenter was once the big thing, now you've got NSX and all this other stuff in the cloud. Is there a persona changeover in who the target customers are in the ecosystem? >> Well, clearly, I mean, the customer's the same. It remains sort of that IT buyer, which increasingly, as I talked about in the keynote, is becoming a business buyer, but it's that core IT Enterprise customer. We're not a consumer company, we're not an app company, we're an infrastructure company and we're going to satisfy that broadly across the industry. >> John: Yeah. >> But in that context, I mean, look at it. You know, over here we have the Internet of Things. Wow, you know, we have the NFV zone. We're having a broader and broader set of who is our ecosystem, and that's absolutely going to continue as we go forward because solutions to things that we do are permeating more and more of the entire business landscape as we go forward. It's a really fun time. You know, even though I like to joke with Michael that he was younger when I first met him. And against that, you know, he and I have both been at this for over three decades. But in many regards, it feels like we're just getting started. It really is a fun period. >> So Pat, the management suite has been a challenge for the industry in general. VMware has, as John said, strong presence with vCenter. As you start reaching out to some of these environments, why does VMware kind of have the right to think that it's going to be at the center of this discussion for some of your customers, especially as they talk about like Microsoft, they've got strong pieces there. Big partners like Intel, Amazon in the play, so why VMware? >> Well, I think there's a couple of aspects to it. And, who is better to be a neutral player, to enable people to have cloud freedom? Right? If you just start with that question, and we'd say hey, we enable people to have hardware freedom. It's in our ethos to have this platform play, to have a broader ecosystem, open APIs, it's what we do. And in the cloud world, hmm, Amazon, okay, they have a legitimate role. But are they going to be the best ones to do private and public, or enable Azure or AliCloud? I think we have a very legitimate position there to say, hey, we're a neutral player, we can be cross-player, cross-industry. Secondly, the technology assets that we have, what we demonstrated on stage yesterday with Guido, think if you didn't have NSX and vRealize and some of the storage assets? That was many, many years of engineering and we pulled all of those pieces together for a comprehensive demonstration of all of those pieces in nine months. That's because we have a rich set of technologies that we can bring to this Cross-Cloud Services. >> So VMware's got a pretty sophisticated stack there, lots of customer options. When we look at the cloud native states, things change a lot. You've got a lot of open source in there, most customers don't buy shrink-wrapped software, they take a lot of components, they tend to put some things together. There's been a little open source, but we've talked for many years about, open source isn't one of the primary revenue drivers for VMware. It's not kind of core to the business. Is that changing? How do you keep making money in the open source world? How do you compete? >> I think there's two different aspects to that that I'd like to, you know, one is, essentially our strategy is, enable these new environments on the VMware franchise. So what's my revenue model? I'm going to keep selling vSphere, I'm going to sell NSX, I'm going to sell vSAN, our management tools, et cetera, even as I add more open source components into those environments. And hey, I'm pretty happy. What's the price point of it going to be? It's free, if you're an Enterprise Plus customer. We're just adding it as another set of capabilities on top of it. It's all open source bits, you've, you know, Stu, have you downloaded it yet off GitHub? >> I have not. >> Pat: You have not? I'm disappointed to hear that. Get on it, right? Get back to work. >> You've got to code tonight, Stu. No party. >> Right? You know. Too much partying for you, Stu. But it's going to be available. We're engaging this open source community, in an open source way, but we're adding our industry rock-hard components, and that's important. Because enterprises are going to start deploying containerized applications. And then you're going to start asking questions. Are they secured? Are they managed? Do you have, like it said onstage, are they monitored? How are you going to network them? And all of the sudden, it's not going to be some lightweight stateless application, you're going to start saying, this is a better way to do stateful applications. What about resilience for that? Get back to the rock-hard questions that infrastructure guys know how to handle. So this is a way to saying yes to those problems but also saying yes to these cool new developer things as well. And in our sense, you know, we think we're well-positioned to go do it, but hey, some of it may be open source projects, and hey, we're showing that we're going to support those, we're going to deliver those, we're going to embrace those as well. So I'm sure that we hired Dirk Hohndel, a longtime friend. I hired him before at Intel, so now we brought him over here to VMware. Because we clearly see, we have to enhance our position overall in the open source community. Not a strong point for VMware in the past, and we're quite committed to changing that perception going forward. >> A lot of great code in the open source, but you mentioned those things about the infrastructure. I want to get back to that point. Those complex things. Automations now playing a big role, we saw the demo today with vSAN,Yanbing was just, one push of a button, a lot of policy, automatic policy automation, that's a great direction. >> Pat: Oh, yeah. >> So, I like that direction. But now I want to bring that back to Cross-Cloud. NSX with security and automation, and protection with the vSphere and then Cross-Cloud. How do you look at this? Because I know you're a strategist, so I think we'll get the strategist angle here. It's like the inter-networking data, I was riffing with Stu earlier about inter-networking has spawned because of all these networks needed to be connected together. And that became >> A whole industry. >> A huge industry. A lot of wealth created, a lot of innovation. Inter-clouding, or Cross-Cloud as you call it, is that dynamic. How do you play well? IBM's onstage, there's no Amazon onstage. I didn't see Microsoft. Are we going to see the other clouds come in to the fold, or are you going to go to them and partner with them? >> So let's, you know, one of the architectural principles of Cross-Cloud is public APIs. So I'm not requiring any unique support from Amazon and Azure, and that's an important statement as well, because now I go to a customer who's taken advantage of Amazon, and they can look at some of those Cross-Cloud Services and then says, well, what if Amazon doesn't support you in the future? And we say, these are standard APIs. They're supporting hundreds of customers on those APIs. It's important, right, that we're engaging with, I'll say, the way that the cloud is being presented to customers and giving them better tools to manage. Now that does not mean I'm not going to do more work in integrating more deeply and partnering with them. >> So does that support like the Amazon S3 API then? >> Pat: Of course. >> Okay. >> John: Well, Sling API's a little bit different. >> Management APIs is actually more appropriate to look at it in that respect as well. How do you spawn, how do you stop, how do you manage VMs, how do you do availability cells, those are the things more appropriate to a management tool in that regard. But those are public API, public interfaces, we're taking advantage of all of those. And we are going to work more closely with the Azures and the Amazons as well, we're going to invest in those partnerships. And there may be areas that we compete with them, but we're going to go do as much as we can, because that's what our customers are asking us to do. Give me better support for those environments, which workloads can I put there? Can I network? Can I secure? Maybe in some cases I don't want my groups using nonpub, or non, you know, multi-cloud APIs. Another case is, hey, I am fully comfortable saying, >> Pick the right cloud for the job kind of thing. >> Absolutely. Right >> Is your philosophy. So slinging APIs is pretty trivial relative to interfacing with the cloud, but the customer might want to go deeper, and, because that might create a complexity issue around, and also functionality might not be as robust as, say, deeper stack integration for data management and whatnot. Are you worried, or we're watching, certainly, like Microsoft, if they feel the proprietary aspect of their stack around data for instance, that's the holy grail, it can get sticky, but still be quote 'open' but not proprietary. >> Yeah. >> So the lock inspect is the lack of openness, per se, to say with data. >> And by the way, you know, I mean, in that respect, what we want to do is present to customers the tools that they can manage those decisions. For instance, a customer may say, hey, I love that machine learning API that Google offers. It's giving me a great competitive advantage, it's not available on any other cloud, and we're going to say, hey, it's proprietary API, if you use it and your data's there, you've picked that service, but we're still going to help you manage and secure it. Another workload, the customer might say, Hey, this workload, I want to make sure has multi-cloud landing zones associated with it. So we're going to help him manage those decisions as well, because if you stay in this domain, I can make it run anywhere, I'll be able to do cross-optimize it, maybe geo-optimize it, et cetera. So it's giving them the tools to manage those decisions. Because I think, hey, you know, Microsoft, they're going to do really well with things related to collaboration of 365. I think Google, I think they're going to do really well around data machine learning. IBM Enterprise, great cloud. Amazon, hey, they've won this round of the developer cloud. Each of them has sort of staked turfs that are very clear, they're going to present value to customers, and our view is, we're going to make those all more readily consumer, suitable for enterprises to run, manage, secure, and connect their workloads into those environments. And build the connectivity into their private clouds, their vCloud Air Networks, their manage clouds as well, that's what we can uniquely do. >> Amazon is going strong in the enterprise. I agree they've won the developer cloud, but they're aggressively going after the enterprise. Mainly Oracle for now, but I'm sure they might think about speech ed that you have. >> Oh, sure. Sure, absolutely. But, you know, in that space, moving a lightweight application, okay, done. Right, you do an OEF conversion, you're done, man, you sell it like that. Oh, you've got to move the full network configuration, IP address ability, right? I've got to deal with different- oh my gosh. Those are hard things to do. The easy stuff moves pretty easy. The hard stuff, okay, that's where we're at now as we address Enterprise customers, and you just don't pick those up and relocate those onto Amazon, Azure, or anyplace else. You know, that's really where the strength of VMware lies. >> So Pat, Dave Vellante is, you know, just at this point, he can't be here for the interview, so I'm a surrogate for him. >> I refuse this interview, not having Dave here. >> John: He says, Pat, I love you forever. That's what he says. >> He asked me to have your commentary on the new era of IT. Officially announced today, the Dell EMC deal, September 7th it will go down, you know, of course that has ramifications on VMware. HP split recently. Lots of, I mean, major signal changes to the industry. What's your take? >> Yeah, you know, as I described before, this is a very disruptive period of the IT industry. Consolidation of portions of it, we think as the hardware industry has matured, stabilized, you know, not growing, still cashflow rich but not growing, we think consolidation is a very natural phase of that industry's maturation. And against that, the Dell move, it's a very bold move given the size of it, but if you look at the cashflows of the companies, as Michael says, it's pretty easy math. It wasn't that hard to, you know, this is how much the cashflow is, this is how much the debt payment is, the math works. Do the deal. >> And Michael said, if you don't understand that VMware is hugely important to that, you don't understand the math. >> Right. For that, you know, clearly, having a controlling interest there, he gets it. We have a lot of growth potential as well, evaluation increase, potential strategic role, but he also realizes that the independence of VMware is critical as well. A software company is very different than a hardware company and our position in the industry, the ecosystem, he respects that greatly. We also think that we're far from done with disruptions elsewhere. We just saw Rackspace go private. Wow, you know, that's another structured shift. Changes in the structure of Citrix as a company, at Five, as they go through their transitions in this next phase of growth, Palo Alto, a good friend Mark McLaughlin, they're driving their software and service revenue growth from hardware. Lots of changes in the industry. Collectively, we look at those and we say, boy, this period of change, disruption, radical growth, consolidation of different places, VMware sits now at a very stable and comfortable place. I've got a great battle sheet, I've got a clear path in front of me, going back to the beginning of the interview, and, right, behind my battle sheet, is this huge turbo-charged engines that is cheering for our growth, distributing us, and even a bigger battle sheet behind us. So we sit in a very uniquely wonderful position. >> I have a final question for what a great, I know you've got another point, and thanks for, first of all, thanks for your time again. What's the biggest disruption that you're watching that's motivating you, whether it's lighting a fire under your feet, or just something that you see that's so epic, and get out for that next week, as you said, if you're not out for that next week, you're driftwood. >> Can I give you two? >> John: Yeah. >> So the one that I think is clearly the biggest is the shift to the public cloud. And I'll just say, that's why the Cross-Cloud announcement was so critical. Also, I wanted to demystify some of the numbers in the keynote. So we went out there and said, very specifically, this is where it's going to be, SaaS, and IaaS, and where it's going to be at different points in time, because I think there's been all sorts of numbers floating around the industry of what it's going to look like over time. But clearly, this public cloud's becoming a big deal. If we have to present ourselves as relevant and critical to our customers in that transition, so I'll say that's the one that we have to navigate through to really position VMware for the next couple decades. The other one that I point out is really, as we talked about, the IoT and the device picture. Wow, we're going to have more machine-connected devices in 2019, >> Love that stat, by the way. >> Than human-connected devices. And that presents enormous business opportunity, right, security threats and opportunities, data infrastructure to go with it, IT, as I would say, IT has left the nest. It's now permeated, >> And software's, a primary function of all the new software that has to be written to handle those situations. >> And in that sense, you want to say, even though I'm three and a half decades in the industry, it sort of feels like we're just getting started. >> You had a spring in your step until you had a cast on it, so you still, you've got to be careful you don't break down. As you get older, your bones get a bit more hard to recover. >> That's right. >> Pat, thanks so much for spending the time, great to see you again. >> Always a pleasure. >> Pat Gelsinger, inside theCube, here in VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas. >> Mr. Vellante must be here next year. >> Dave, man date. Stu Miniman and I, Stu, you did good. You held your own. Pat, as usual, great. This is theCube, you're watching theCube at VMworld, I'm John Furrier and Stu Miniman. (techno beat)