(lively music) >> Welcome back to HPE Discover 2021. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's virtual coverage of Discover '21, and we're excited to welcome back Arwa Kaddoura, she's a vice president and world-wide go-to market leader for HPE's smoking hot GreenLake Cloud Services. Arwa, welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you again. >> Thank you for having me, it's good to be with you. >> So, talk about how your products and services are supporting customer transformations. I'm interested in the experience that everybody's been dreaming about. Describe how you're giving your customer that competitive advantage. And if you've got an examples, that would be awesome. >> Yeah, you got it. I think as we heard Antonio say, that cloud is an experience, not a destination, right? And what we're doing with GreenLake is bringing those cloud capabilities and the cloud experience to our customers. You know, we like to say, colocations, data center and edge of course. So this is the cloud on prem. And so rather than forcing customers to only have to go up to cloud, to get modern cloud capabilities or the benefits of things like, pay as you go for consumption, etc, cloud native capabilities, like containers, leveraging Kubernetes, we now bring all of that to GreenLake and to our customers, edge locations, and Colocation and data centers. We've been able to dramatically transform many of our customers businesses, right, and you'll probably see it discover some of those examples come to life, for example, Carestream, who is in the electronic medical imaging world, right, they have all of the X-Ray equipment that capture X-rays and different sort of diagnostics for patients. And we worked with them to not only craft a ML solution to better read and diagnose these images, but also all of the underlying infrastructure with the HPE GreenLake ML Ops platform that allows them to instantly leverage the capabilities of machine learning and the infrastructure to go with it. >> And so tell me, so how is it resonating with customers? They're talking to customers all the time? What do they tell you? >> Sure, you know I think what our customers appreciate about HP GreenLake is, it's not sort of look, it's either all on prem in my data center, and I have to fully manage it, build it, implement it, take care of it, or it's fully public cloud, I have little control and basically, I get whatever the public cloud gives me, right? HPE GreenLake gives our customers the flexibility and control that they require, right? And so you can think of many use cases where customers have a need to have the compute storage sort of processing need to happen closer to where their data and apps live. And so for that exact reason, our customers love the flexibility, right. Cloud One Dotto was public cloud, Cloud Two Dotto I think is the cloud that comes to our customers at their convenience. And to me, what I tell CIOs and CTOs and sort of other lines of business leaders when I meet with them, is you shouldn't be forced to have to take your data and apps elsewhere to get the transformation that you need. We want to be able to bring that directly to our customers. >> 'Cause a lot of the transformation is around data, we love talking about data on theCUBE. It's funny, I mean, we talked about big data last decade, we don't use that term much anymore. It was kind of overhyped, but as oftentimes is the case may be in the early days it's overhyped, but then it's underhyped. When it actually starts to kick in, and I feel like we're entering a new age of data and insights with the ascendancy of machine learning and AI. What does this mean from HPEs perspective and what are customers telling you that it means for them? >> Yeah, now, data I think, we often hear data is the new currency, right? It's the new gold. we've heard Antonio even say things like, data can even become something that maybe over time companies start to put some kind of value on their balance sheet behind, right, the same way that maybe brands represented this value on a balance sheet. Effectively, what's happened with data is, a lot of people have a lot of data. But there's not been a lot of ability to extract insights from data, right. And I think this is the new revolution that we're all undergoing is we finally have the modern analytics tools to actually turn the data into insights. And what we bring to the table from an HPE perspective is the fact that we have the best infrastructure, we obviously now have the cloud capabilities mixed in with our data fabric or container platform, or machine learning operations platform, to then be able to process that data, again, integrated with many of the great ISV partners that we have on the data side allow our customers to turn that into real insights for their business. And effectively data is becoming a huge competitive advantage, right? I think many of us are leveraging some pretty interesting tools or gadgets these days, right? Like, I wear one of those sleep rings. You can imagine a company like that in the future that's able to collect so much data from the folks that purchase their products, then being able to give us insights about, where's the best ZIP Code that people get the most amount of sleep and which ZIP Codes are the healthiest in the United States or countries, et cetera? But data really is becoming a competitive advantage. And one of the things that we care most about at HPE is also using it as a force for good and making sure that there is a sort of ethical AI capability. >> That's a great message and very important one. It's interesting what you're saying about data and the value, how we value, it's clearly being valued in terms of companies' market caps, but maybe it's not in the balance sheet yet, but it's on the income statement in terms of data products and data services that that's happening. So, maybe we'll see if Antonia is right in the next several years. But so, let's talk more about the specific data challenges that you're solving for your customers, they talk about silos, they talk about, they haven't gotten as much value out of their data initiatives as they wanted to. What are they telling you are their challenges and how are you approaching it? >> Yeah, I think data is everywhere, right? The ability for customers to store the right amount of data is a huge challenge. Because obviously, there's a huge cost associated with collecting, keeping, cleansing, processing, all the way to sort of analyzing your data. There tends to be a ton of data silos, right. So customers are looking for a common data fabric that they can then process their data sources across, and then be able to sort of tap into that data from an analytics perspective. So much of the technology, again, that we're focused on is be able to store the data, right, our Data Fabric layer with Ezmeral, right, being able to process that data, capture that data, and then allow the analytics tools to then harness the power of that data and turn that into real business insights for our customers. Every customer that I spoken to whether their financial services, you can imagine the big financial services, I mean, they've got just bazillions of pockets of data everywhere. And the real sort of challenge for them is how do I build a common data platform that allows me to tap into that data in effective ways for my business users? >> Can you talk a little bit about how you're changing the way you're providing solutions, maybe you could contrast it with the way HPE has done in the past? Because I think that's important when you think about, you talk a lot about GreenLake and as a service. But if the products are still kind of boxes and lands and gigahertz and ports, then that's a discontinuity. So, what's changed from the past and how are you feeding into the way customers are transforming their business and supporting their outcomes? >> That's exactly right. At some point in time, right, if you think maybe 10 or 20 years back, it used to be very much about the infrastructure for HPE. What's exciting about what we're doing differently for our customers, is, look, we have the best infrastructure in the business, right? HPE has been doing this longer than anyone has probably almost 60 years now. But being able to vertically integrate right, move up in that value chain so that our customers can get more complete solutions, is the more interesting part for our customers. Our customers love our technology yes, the gigahertz and the speeds and feeds, all of that do matter because they make for some very powerful infrastructure. However, what makes it easier is the fact that we are building platform stacks on top of that hardware, that help abstract away the complexity of that infrastructure and the ability to use it far more seamlessly. And then, if you think about it we of course have also one of the most advanced services organizations. So being able to leverage our services capabilities, our platform capabilities, on top of that hardware, again, deliver it back to our customers in a consumption model, which they've come to expect from a cloud model. And then surrounded by a very rich ecosystem of partners, and we're talking about system integrators that now have capabilities on helping our customers run their GreenLake environments. We're talking about ISVs, right, so software stacks and platforms that fully integrate with the GreenLake platform for completely seamless solutions, as well as channel partners and global distributors. So I think that's where we can truly deliver the ultimate end-to-end solution. It's not just the hardware, right? But it's being complemented with the right services, being complemented with the right platform capabilities, the software integrations to deliver that workload that the customer expects. >> So customers and partners, they got to place bets, they've got to put resources, time, money, and align their resources with their partners and their suppliers like HPE. So when they ask you, hey, okay, "HPE, tell me what's your overall strategy? "Why is it compelling? "And why do you give me competitive advantage relative to some of your peers in the industry?" >> Yeah, I think what partners are going to be most excited about is the openness of the platform, right? Being able to allow our partners to leverage GreenLake Central with open API, so that they can integrate some of their own technologies into our platform, the ability to allow them to also layer in their own managed services on top of the platform is key. And, of course, being able to build sort of these win-win solutions with the system integrators, right? The system integrators have some fantastic capabilities all the way from an application development, all the way down to the infrastructure management, and data center delivery centers that they have. And so leveraging HPE GreenLake really helps them have access to the core technologies that they need to deliver these solutions. >> I wonder if I could take a little sort of side road here and ask you because so many changes going on, HPE itself is transforming, your customers are transforming, the pandemic has accelerated all these transformations. Can you talk a little bit about how you've transformed go-to-market specifically in the context of as a service? I mean, that had to be quite a change for you guys. >> Yeah, now go-to-market transformations in support of sort of moving from traditional go-to-markets, right, to cloud go-to-markets are significant. They required us to really think through what does delivering as a service solutions mean for our direct Salesforce? What does it mean for our partners and their transformations and being able to support as a service solutions? For HPE specifically, it also means thinking about our customer outcomes, not just our ability to ship the requisite hardware and say, look, once it's left our dock, our job is done, right. It really takes our obligation all the way to the customer using the technology on a day by day basis, as well as supporting them in making sure that everything from implementation to set up to the ongoing monitoring operations of the technology is working for them in the way that they'd expect in an as a service way, right? We don't expect them to operate it, we don't expect them to do anything more than pick up the phone and call us if something doesn't go as planned. >> Then how about your sellers and your partners? How did they respond? I mean, you wake up one day is Okay guys, here we go. New compensation scheme, new way to sell, new way to market. That took some thought and some time and where are you in that journey? >> That's right. And I always say, if you expect people to wake up one day and be transformed, right, you're kidding yourself. So everything from sort of the way that we think about our customers use cases, right, and empowering our sellers to understand the outcomes that our customers expect and demand from us to things like compensation to the partner rebate program that we leverage through the channel partners in order to give them the right incentives to also allow them to make the right investments to support GreenLake. HPE has a fairly significant field, sales and solution team. And so not thinking about this only as a single person that represents GreenLake, but looking at our capabilities across the board, right, we have fantastic advisory consultants on the ground with PhDs and data science, we have folks that understand high performance computing. So making sure that we're embedding the expertise in all of the right personas that support our customers, not just from a comp perspective, but also from an understanding of the end-to-end solutions that we're bringing to those markets. >> So what gets you stoked in the morning, you get out of bed, you're like, "Okay, I'm going to go attack the world." What are you most excited about for HPE and its future? >> There's so much happening right now in this sort of cloud world, right? To me, the most exciting portion is the fact that given that we've now introduced on prem cloud to the world, our ability to ship new services and new capabilities, but also do that via a very rich partner ecosystem, honestly is what probably has me most excited. This is no longer the age of go-at-it-alone, right. So not only are our engineering and product teams hard at work in the engine room producing capabilities at sort of lightning fast speeds, but it's also our ability to partner, whether it's with platform providers, software providers, or system integrators and services providers. That ecosystem is starting to come together to deliver highly meaningful solutions to our customers and all in a very open way. The number one thing that I personally care about is that our customers never feel like they are being locked in, or that they are sort of being forced, have to give up certain levels of capabilities, we want to give them the best of what's out there and allow them to then have that flexibility in their solution. >> And one of the challenges, of course, with virtual events is you don't have the hallway track, somebody can say, "Hey, have you seen that IoT zone? It's amazing, they got all these robots going around." So what would you say that people should be focused on at discover maybe things that you want to call out specific highlights or segments that you think are relevant? >> Yeah, there's going to be a ton of fantastic stuff. I think, really looking for that edge to cloud strategy, that we're going to be spending a lot of time talking about looking at some of our vertical workload solutions, right? We're going to be talking about quite a few from electronic healthcare records, to payment solutions and many more. I think, depending on what folks are interested in there's going to be something for everyone. Project Aurora, which now starts to announce our new security capabilities, the zero trust capabilities that we're delivering is probably interesting to a lot of our customers. So lots of exciting things coming and I'm excited for our customers to check those out. >> No doubt, that's a hot topic, especially given what's been happening in the news these past several months. Arwa, thanks so much for coming back in theCUBE. It's great to see you hopefully face-to-face next time. >> Thank you, I sure hope so. Thanks so much for having me. >> It was our pleasure. And thank you for watching and thank you for being with us in our ongoing coverage of HPE Discover 2021. This is Dave Vellante. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in digital tech coverage. >> Thank you. (soft music)

from the cube Studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world this is a cute conversation hi I'm Stu minimun and welcome to this special presentation we have a launch from Dell technologies updates to the BX rail family we're gonna do things a little bit different here we actually have a launch video from Janet champion of Dell technologies and the way we do things a lot of times is analysts get a little preview or when you're watching things you might have questions on it though rather than me just walking it are you watching herself I actually brought in a couple of Dell technologies expert two of our cube alumni happy to welcome back to the program Jonathan Segal he is the vice president of product marketing and Chad Dunn who's the vice president at price today of product management both of them with Dell technologies gentlemen thanks so much for joining us it was too great to be here all right and so what we're gonna do is we're gonna be rolling the video here I've got a button I'm gonna press Andrew will stop it here and then we'll kind of dig in a little bit go into some questions when we're all done we're actually holding a crowd chat where you will be able to ask your questions talk to the expert and everything and so a little bit different way to do a product announcement hope you enjoy it and with that it's VX rail taking API to the extremes is is the theme we'll see you know how what that means and everything but without any further ado it but let's look fanon take the video away hello and welcome my name is Shannon champion and I'm looking forward to taking you through what's new with the ex rail let's get started we have a lot to talk about our launch covers new announcements addressing use cases across the core edge and cloud and spans both new hardware platforms and options as well as the latest in software innovations so let's jump right in before we talk about our announcements let's talk about where customers are adopting the ex rail today first of all on behalf of the entire Dell technologies and BX Rail teams I want to thank each of our over 8,000 customers big and small in virtually every industry who have chosen the x rail to address a broad range of workloads deploying nearly a hundred thousand nodes to date thank you our promise to you is that we will add new functionality improve serviceability and support new use cases so that we deliver the most value to you whether in the core at the edge or for the cloud in the core the X rail from day one has been a catalyst to accelerate IT transformation many of our customers started here and many will continue to leverage VX rail to simply extend and enhance your VMware environment now we can support even more demanding applications such as in-memory databases like s AP HANA and more AI and ML applications with support for more and more powerful GPUs at the edge video surveillance which also uses GPUs by the way is an example of a popular use case leveraging the X rail alongside external storage and right now we all know the enhanced role that IT is playing and as it relates to VDI the X Rail has always been a great option for that in the cloud it's all about kubernetes and how dell technologies cloud platform which is VCF on the x rail can deliver consistent infrastructure for both traditional and cloud native applications and we're doing that together with VMware the X ray o is the only jointly engineered HCI system built with VMware for VMware environments designed to enhance the native VMware experience this joint engineering with VMware and investments in software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers all right so Shannon talked a bit about you know the important role of IP of course right now with the global pandemic going on it's really you know calling in you know essential things you know putting you know platforms to the test so I'd really love to hear what both of you are hearing from customers also you know VDI of course you know in the early days it was HDI only does VDI now we know there are many solutions but remote work is you know putting that back front and center so John why don't we start with you is you know what you're absolutely so first of all us - thank you I want to do a shout out to our BX real customers around the world it's really been humbling inspiring and just amazing to see the impact of our bx real customers around the world and what they're having on on human progress here you know just for a few examples there are genomics companies that we have running the X rail that have a row about testing at scale we also have research universities out in the Netherlands on doing the antibody detection the US Navy has stood up a hosta floating Hospital >> of course care for those in need so look we are here to help that's been our message to our customers but it's amazing to see how much they're helping society during this so just just a pleasure there but as you mentioned just to hit on the the VDI comments so it's your points do you know HCI and vxr8 EDI that was initially use case years ago and it's been great to see how many of our existing VX real customers have been able to inhibit very quickly leveraging via trail to add and to help bring their remote workforce you know online and support them with your existing VX rail because V it really is flexible it is agile to be able to support those multiple workloads and in addition to that we've also rolled out some new VDI bundles to make it simpler for customers more cost-effective catered to everything from knowledge workers to multimedia workers you name it you know from 250 desktops up to a thousand but again back to your point BX rail ci is well beyond video it had crossed the chasm a couple years ago actually and you know where VDI now is less than a third of the typical workloads any of our customers out there it supports now a range of workloads as you heard from Shannon whether it's video surveillance whether it's general purpose only to mission-critical applications now with SAV ha so you know this is this has changed the game for sure but the range of workloads and the flexibility of yet rail is what's really helping our existing customers from this pandemic we've seen customers really embrace HCI for a number of workloads in their environments from the ones that we serve all knew and loved back in the the initial days of of HCI now the mission-critical things now to cloud native workloads as well and you know sort of the efficiencies that customers are able to get from HCI and specifically VX rail gives them that ability to pivot when these you know shall we say unexpected circumstances arise and I think if that's informing their their decisions and their opinions on what their IT strategies look like as they move forward they want that same level of agility and the ability to react quickly with our overall infrastructure excellent want to get into the announcements what I want my team actually your team gave me access to the CIO from the city of Amarillo so maybe they can dig up that footage talk about how fast they pivoted you know using VX rail to really spin up things fast so let's hear from the announcements first and then definitely want to share that that customer story a little bit later so let's get to the actual news that and it's gonna share okay now what's new I am pleased to announce a number of exciting updates and new platforms to further enable IT modernization across core edge and cloud I will cover each of these announcements in more detail demonstrating how only the X rail can offer the breadth of platform configurations automation orchestration and lifecycle management across a fully integrated hardware and software full stack with consistent simple side operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications I'll start with hybrid cloud and recap what you may have seen in the Dell technologies cloud announcements just a few weeks ago related to VMware cloud foundation on the X rail then I'll cover two brand new VX rail hardware platforms and additional options and finally circle back to talk about the latest enhancements to our VX rail HCI system software capabilities for lifecycle management let's get started with our new cloud offerings based on the ex rail you xrail is the HCI foundation for dell technologies cloud platform bringing automation and financial models similar to public cloud to on-premises environments VMware recently introduced cloud foundation for dotto which is based on vSphere 7 as you likely know by now vSphere 7 was definitely an exciting and highly anticipated release in keeping with our synchronous release commitment we introduced the XR l 7 based on vSphere 7 in late April which was within 30 days of VMware's release two key areas that VMware focused on were embedding containers and kubernetes into vSphere unifying them with virtual machines and the second is improving the work experience for vSphere administrators with vSphere lifecycle manager or VL CM I'll address the second point a bit in terms of how the X rail fits in in a moment for V cf4 with tansu based on vSphere 7 customers now have access to a hybrid cloud platform that supports native kubernetes workloads and management as well as your traditional vm based workloads and this is now available with VCF 4 on the ex rel 7 the X rails tight integration with VMware cloud foundation delivers a simple and direct path not only to the hybrid cloud but also to deliver kubernetes a cloud scale with one complete automated platform the second cloud announcement is also exciting recent VCF for networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid cloud because we're now able to offer a more accessible consolidated architecture and with that Dell technologies cloud platform can now be deployed with a four node configuration lowering the cost of an entry-level hybrid cloud this enables customers to start smaller and grow their cloud deployment over time VCF on the x rail can now be deployed in two different ways for small environments customers can utilize a consolidated architecture which starts with just four nodes since the management and workload domains share resources in this architecture it's ideal for getting started with an entry-level cloud to run general-purpose virtualized workloads with a smaller entry point both in terms of required infrastructure footprint as well as cost but still with a consistent cloud operating model for larger environments we're dedicated resources and role based access control to separate different sets of workloads is usually preferred you can choose to deploy a standard architecture which starts at 8 nodes for independent management and workload domains a standard implementation is ideal for customers running applications that require dedicated workload domains that includes horizon VDI and vSphere with kubernetes all right John there's definitely been a lot of interest in our community around everything that VMware's doing with vSphere 7 understand if you wanted to use the kubernetes piece you know it's it's VCF as that so we you know we've seen the announcements delt partnering there helped us connect that story between you know really the the VMware strategy and how they've talked about cloud and how you know where does the X rail fit in that overall Delta cloud story absolutely so so first of all is through the x-ray of course is integral to the Delta cloud strategy you know it's been VCF on bx r l equals the delta cloud platform and this is our flagship on-prem cloud offering that we've been able to enable operational consistency across any cloud right whether it's on prem in the edge or in a public cloud and we've seen the delta cloud platform embraced by customers for a couple key reasons one is it offers the fastest hybrid cloud deployment in the market and this is really you know thanks to a new subscription on offer that we're now offering out there we're at less than 14 days it can be set up and running and really the deltek cloud does bring a lot of flexibility in terms of consumption models overall comes to the extra secondly I would say is fast and easy upgrades I mean this is this is really this is what VX real brings to the table for all our clothes if you will and it's especially critical in the cloud so the full automation of lifecycle management across the hardware and software stack boss the VMware software stack and in the Dell software however we're supporting that together this enables essentially the third thing which is customers can just relax right they can be rest assured that their infrastructure will be continuously validated and always be in a continuously validated state and this this is the kind of thing that you know those three value propositions together really fit well with with any on print cloud now you take what Shannon just mentioned and the fact that now you can build and run modern applications on the same the x-ray link structure alongside traditional applications this is a game changer yeah it I love you know I remember in the early days that about CI how does that fit in with cloud discussion and align I've used the last couple years this you know modernize the platform then you can modernize the application though as companies are doing their full modernization this plays into what you're talking about all right let's get you know can't let ran and continue get some more before we dig into some more analysis that's good let's talk about new hardware platforms and updates that result in literally thousands of potential new configuration options covering a wide breadth of modern and traditional application needs across a range of the actual use cases first up I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new delhi MCB x rail series the DS series this is a ruggedized durable platform that delivers the full power of the x rail for workloads at the edge in challenging environments or for space constrained areas the X ray LD series offers the same compelling benefits as the rest of the BX rail portfolio with simplicity agility and lifecycle management but in a lightweight short depth at only 20 inches it's a durable form factor that's extremely temperature resilient shock resistant and easily portable it even meets mil spec standards that means you have the full power of lifecycle automation with VX rail HCI system software and 24 by 7 single point of support enabling you to rapidly react to business needs no matter the location or how harsh the conditions so whether you're deploying a data center at a mobile command base running real-time GPS mapping on-the-go or implementing video surveillance in remote areas you can ensure availability integrity and confidence for every workload with the new VX Rail ruggedized D series had would love for you to bring us in a little bit you know that what customer requirement bringing bringing this to market I I remember seeing you know Dell servers ruggedized of course edge you know really important growth to build on what John was talking about clouds so yeah Chad bring us inside what was driving this piece of the offering sure Stu yeah you know having the the hardware platforms that can go out into some of these remote locations is really important and that's being driven by the fact that customers are looking for compute performance and storage out at some of these edges or some of the more exotic locations you know whether that's manufacturing plants oil rigs submarine ships military applications in places that we've never heard of but it's also been extending that operational simplicity of the the sort of way that you're managing your data center that has VX rails you're managing your edges the same way using the same set of tools so you don't need to learn anything else so operational simplicity is is absolutely key here but in those locations you can take a product that's designed for a data center where you're definitely controlling power cooling space and take it to some of these places where you get sand blowing or sub-zero temperatures so we built this D series that was able to go to those extreme locations with extreme heat extreme cold extreme altitude but still offer that operational simplicity if you look at the the resistance that it has to heat it can go from around operates at a 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit range but it can do an excursion up to 55 °c or 131 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours it's also resisted the heats and dust vibration it's very lightweight short depth in fact it's only 20 inches deep this is a smallest form factor obviously that we have in the BX rail family and it's also built to to be able to withstand sudden shocks it's certified it was stand 40 G's of shock and operation of the 15,000 feet of elevation it's pretty high and you know this is this is sort of like where were skydivers go to when they weren't the real real thrill of skydiving where you actually the oxygen to to be a put that out to their milspec certified so mil-std 810g which i keep right beside my bed and read every night and it comes with a VX rail stick hardening package is packaging scripts so that you can auto lock down the rail environment and we've got a few other certifications that are on the roadmap now for for naval chakra quirements EMI and radiation immunity of all that yeah you know it's funny I remember when weights the I first launched it was like oh well everything's going to white boxes and it's going to be you know massive you know no differentiation between everything out there if you look at what you're offering if you look at how public clouds build their things what I call it a few years poor is there's a pure optimization so you need scale you need similarities but you know you need to fit some you know very specific requirements lots of places so interesting stuff yeah certifications you know always keep your teams busy alright let's get back to Shannon we are also introducing three other hardware based editions first a new VX rail eseries model based on were the first time AMD epic processors these single socket 1u nodes offered dual socket performance with CPU options that scale from 8 to 64 cores up to a terabyte of memory and multiple storage options making it an ideal platform for desktop VDI analytics and computer-aided design next the addition of the latest NVIDIA Quadro RT X GPUs brings the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional workflows designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what's possible working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering deep learning and visual computing workloads and Intel obtain DC persistent memory is here and it offers high performance and significantly increase memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price persistence is a critical feature that maintains data integrity even when power is lost enabling quicker recovery and less downtime with support for Intel obtain DC persistent memory customers can expand in memory intensive workloads and use cases like sa P Hana alright let's finally dig into our HCI system software which is the core differentiation for the xrail regardless of your workload or platform choice our joint engineering with VMware and investments in the x-ray HCI system software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers under the covers the xrail offers best-in-class Hardware married with VMware HCI software either vcn or VCF but what makes us different stems from our investments to integrate the two Dell technologies has a dedicated VX rail team of about 400 people to build market sell and support a fully integrated hyper-converged system that team has also developed our unique the X rail HDI system software which is a suite of integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver a seamless automated operational experience that customers cannot find elsewhere the key components of the x rail HDI system software are shown around the arc here that include the X rail manager full stack lifecycle management ecosystem connectors and support I don't have time to get into all the details of these elements today but if you're interested in learning more I encourage you to meet our experts and I will tell you how to do that in a moment I touched on VLC M being a key feature to vSphere seven earlier and I'd like to take the opportunity to expand on that a bit in the context of the xrail lifecycle management the LCM adds valuable automation to the execution of updates for customers but it doesn't eliminate the manual work still needed to define and package the updates and validate all of the components prior to applying them with the X ray all customers have all of these areas addressed automatically on their behalf freeing them to put their time into other important functions for their business customers tell us that lifecycle management continues to be a major source of the maintenance effort they put into their infrastructure and then it tends to lead to overburden IT staff that it can cause disruptions to the business if not managed effectively and that it isn't the most efficient economically Automation of lifecycle management in VX Rail results in the utmost simplicity from a customer experience perspective and offers operational freedom from maintaining infrastructure but as shown here our customers not only realize greater IT team efficiencies they have also reduced downtime with fewer unplanned outages and reduced overall cost of operations with the xrail HCI system software intelligent lifecycle management upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack are automated keeping clusters in continuously validated States while minimizing risks and operational costs how do we ensure continuously validated States Furby xrail the x-ray labs execute an extensive automated repeatable process on every firmware and software upgrade and patch to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states of the customer's choosing across their VX rail environment the VX rail labs are constantly testing analyzing optimising and sequencing all of the components in the upgrade to execute in a single package for the full stack all the while the x rail is backed by Delhi MCS world-class services and support with a single point of contact for both hardware and software IT productivity skyrockets with single-click non-disruptive upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack without the need to do extensive research and testing taking you to the next VX rail version of your choice while always in a continuously validated state you can also confidently execute automated VX rail upgrades no matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster they don't have to all be the same and upgrades with VX rail are faster and more efficient with leap frogging simply choose any VX rail version you desire and be assured you will get there in a validated state while seamlessly bypassing any other release in between only the ex rail can do that all right so Chad you know the the lifecycle management piece that Jana was just talking about is you know not the sexiest it's often underappreciated you know there's not only the years of experience but the continuous work you're doing you know reminds me back you know the early V sand deployments versus VX rail jointly develop you know jointly tested between Dell and VMware so you know bring us inside why you know 2020 lifecycle management still you know a very important piece especially in the VL family yeah let's do I think it's sexy but I'm pretty big nerd yes even more the larger the deployments come when you start to look at data centers full of VX rails and all the different hardware software firmware combinations that could exist out there it's really the value that you get out of that VX r l HTI system software that Shannon was talking about and how its optimized around the VMware use case very tightly integrated with each VMware component of course and the intelligence of being able to do all the firmware all of the drivers all of the software altogether tremendous value to our customers but to deliver that we really need to make a fairly large investment so she Anna mentioned we've run about twenty five thousand hours of testing across each major release four patches Express patches that's about seven thousand hours for each of those so obviously there's a lot of parallelism and and we're always developing new test scenarios for each release that we need to build in as we as we introduce new functionality one of the key things that were able to do as Shannon mentioned is to be able to leapfrog releases and get you to that next validated state we've got about 100 engineers just working on creating and executing those test cases on a continuous basis and obviously a huge amount of automation and then when we talk about that investment to execute those tests that's well north of sixty million dollars of investment in our lab in fact we've got just over two thousand VH rail units in our testbed across the u.s. Shanghai China and corn island so a massive amount of testing of each of those those components to make sure that they operate together in a validated state yeah well you know absolutely it's super important not only for the day one but the day two deployments but I think this actually be a great place for us to bring in that customer that Dell gave me access to so we've got the CIO of Amarillo Texas he was an existing VX rail customer and he's going to explain what happened as to how he needed to react really fast to support the work from home initiative as well as you know we get to hear in his words the value of what lifecycle management means though Andrew if we could queue up that that customer segment please it was it's been massive and it's been interesting to see the IT team absorb it you know as we mature and they I think they embrace the ability to be innovative and to work with our departments but this instance really justified why I was driving progress so so fervently why it was so urgent today three years ago we the answer would have been no there would have been we wouldn't have been in a place where we could adapt with it with the x-ray all in place you know in a week we spun up hundreds of instant phones we spawned us a seventy five person call center in a day and a half for our public health we will allow multiple applications for Public Health so they could do remote clinics it's given us the flexibility to be able to to roll out new solutions very quickly and be very adaptive and it's not only been apparent to my team but it's really made an impact on the business and now what I'm seeing is those those are my customers that were a little lagging or a little conservative or understanding the impact of modernizing the way they do business because it makes them adaptable as well all right so rich you talked to a bunch about the the efficiencies that they tie put place how about that that overall just managed you know you talked about how fast you spun up these new VDI instances you need to be able to do things much simpler so you know how does the overall lifecycle management fit into this discussion it makes it so much easier and you know in the in the old environment one it took a lot of man-hours to make change it was it was very disruptive when we did make change this it overburdened I guess that's the word I'm looking for it really over overburdened our staff it cost disruption to business it was it cost-efficient and then you simple things like you know I've worked for multi billion-dollar companies where we had massive QA environments that replicated production simply can't afford that at local government you know having the sort of environment lets me do a scaled-down QA environment and still get the benefit of rolling out non disruptive change as I said earlier it's allow us to take all of those cycles that we were spending on lifecycle management because it's greatly simplified and move those resources and rescale them in in other areas where we can actually have more impact on the business it's hard to be innovated when a hundred percent of your cycles are just keeping the ship afloat all right well you know nothing better than hearing straight from the end-user you know public sector reacting very fast to the Cova 19 and you know you heard him he said if this had hit his before he had run this project he would not have been able to respond so I think everybody out there understands if I didn't actually have access to the latest technology you know it would be much harder all right I'm looking forward to doing the crowd chat and everybody else digging with questions and get follow-up but a little bit more I believe one more announcement he came and got for us though let's roll the final video clip in our latest software release the x-ray of 4.7 dot 510 we continue to add new automation and self-service features new functionality enables you to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch this is extremely valuable for customers that have stringent upgrade windows as they can be assured the clusters will seamlessly upgrade within that window of course running health checks on a regular basis also helps ensure that your clusters are always ready for unscheduled patches and security updates we are also offering more flexibility and getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level with the ability to reimage nodes or clusters to a specific the xrail version or down Rev one or more more nodes that may be shipped at a higher Rev than the existing cluster this enables you to easily choose your validated state when adding new nodes or repurposing nodes in cluster to sum up all of our announcements whether you are accelerating data center modernization extending HCI to harsh edge environments deploying an on-premises Dell technologies cloud platform to create a developer ready kubernetes infrastructure BX Rail is there delivering a turnkey experience that enables you to continuously innovate realize operational freedom and predictably evolve the x rail provides an extensive breadth of platform configurations automation and lifecycle management across the integrated hardware and software full stack and consistent hybrid cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications across core edge and cloud I now invite you to engage with us first the virtual passport program is an opportunity to have some fun while learning about the ex rails new features and functionality and score some sweet digital swag while you're at it it delivered via an automated via an augmented reality app all you need is your device so go to the x-ray is slash passport to get started and secondly if you have any questions about anything I talked about or want a deeper conversation we encourage you to join one of our exclusive VX rail meet the experts sessions available for a limited time first-come first-served just go to the x-ray dot is slash expert session to learn more you all right well obviously with everyone being remote there's different ways we're looking to engage so we've got the crowd chat right after this but John gives a little bit more is that how Del's making sure to stay in close contact with customers and what you've got firfer options for them yeah absolutely so as Shannon said so in lieu of not having Dell tech world this year in person where we could have those great in-person interactions and answer questions whether it's in the booth or you know in in meeting rooms you know we are going to have these meet the experts sessions over the next couple of weeks and look we're gonna put our best and brightest from our technical community and make them accessible to to everyone out there so again definitely encourage you we're trying new things here in this virtual environment to ensure that we could still stay in touch answer questions be responsive and really looking forward to you know having these conversations over the next couple weeks all right well John and Chad thank you so much we definitely look forward to the conversation here in int in you'd if you're here live definitely go down below do it if you're watching this on demand you can see the full transcript of it at crowd chat /vx rocks sorry V xrail rocks for myself Shannon on the video John and Chad Andrew man in the booth there thank you so much for watching and go ahead and join the crowd chat