>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering SAP Sapphire Now 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin, we are with Keith Townsend, we are in Orlando, in the NetApp booth, at SAP Sapphire 2018, joined by the CIO of NetApp, Bill Miller, Bill welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, great to be here, I really appreciate it. >> So, NetApp, 26-year-old company, you guys have been on a big transformation journey, give us some nuggets of NetApp's transformation story. >> Yeah, it's really a fascinating story, and it all centered around the customer. In going back a couple of years when we realized this story was evolving from a storage story and a storage history, to a data-centric story going forward. We spent a lot of time listening to our customers. We listened to them in briefing center meetings, we listened to them through strategic customer account sessions, and we really were drawn to this notion of providing outcomes for our customers rather than providing storage long-term. Storage, like all other appliances, ironically in the name of the company, a very well-established respected company, Network Appliance. It was not going to be about appliances in the future, it was going to be about data management and leveraging the value of the data for our customers. So our transformation was about bringing that journey to life and giving our customers choice. Choice around where their data resides and how they utilize that data and how they leverage that data for their customers. So as we listened and we, we kind of absorbed the impact of this, it became clear that for the foreseeable future we were going to live in a hybrid-cloud world. And really what I mean by that is our large established customers were going to have very consequential private cloud data centers for a long time to come. We did very large complex applications that served their customer communities. They weren't going to be able to pick up those large applications and move them quickly to the cloud so they were going to run in high-intensity private cloud very efficient data centers. But at the same time, they were looking to transform digitally, to go on this digital transformation journey, and the vast majority of them wanted to lean in to the hyperscale or clouds, the cloud suppliers, and build their future strategic applications in the cloud. And it became clear to us that their data was now going to be bifurcated, it was going to reside in their own prim facilities but critical, mission critical, and advantageous data was also going to sit out there in the hyperscaler cloud and a company like NetApp could build this data fabric to connect them seamlessly so that the customers had choice. I mean, that's really what was behind the initiative to transform NetApp. >> So as we talk about that transformation, NetApp identified the opportunity. >> Yes. >> Looked at the product portfolio, looked at the gaps. Identified where they needed to go. >> Right. >> NetApp the company needed to go through a digital transformation itself. >> Yeah. >> So as an SAP customer, as a NetApp customer, as the person responsible for enabling developers, application teams, product teams, to execute on that digital transformation, what were some of the challenges, lessons learned as the CIO of NetApp that you experienced. >> It's an awesome question. You kind of went from we're going to transform for our customers to what I did to, or my teams and myself did, to enable that. There's a middle step which is all of our business partners in the company. You know, whether that's finance or sales or marketing, having to realign their business processes to this new need. So let me give you an example on the sales, the go-to-market function, you know. We call this a go-to-market motion, you know, how you sell. Well if you're selling an appliance, you know a piece of hardware with some software with it, that's one very well-defined and familiar motion. If you're going to sell software solutions, if you're going to sell advanced professional services that advise our customers on how to leverage data, those are very different motions that you have to enable to be successful. So what that means is taking that set of business processes that are unfamiliar to us. You know, when a customer wants to buy our products on a pay-as-you-go, a consumption model, rather than a capitalization acquisition, that's a whole different set of processes we have to put in place behind the scenes. Financial processes, legal processes, and of course IT systems. So it started with the business functions, figuring out how they were going to transform their work flows, and then IT had to come in underneath and say do we have the systems, the tools, the platforms, like SAP and other partner-provided platforms to enable that and make those work flows come to life. So it was really a partnership across the whole enterprise and if you really listen to our CEO, George Kurian, George will tell you, this transformation affected every single employee and every single leader in the corporation. It was a major change for us to figure out how you're going to take a business steaming in this direction and turn them 45 degrees on a dime and quickly embrace those new processes and mobilize them through new systems, tools, and platforms. So this was a wholesale change to the corporation, I mean it was a burn-the-ship's model, we're never going back, (Keith laughs) this is the new way of doing business for NetApp. Very exciting, and at the beginning a daunting journey. >> We had Dave Hitz on theCUBE doing a NetApp insight last year and one of the things that he said, he had to come in and tell the on-tap engineers, on-tapping the cloud is okay, we're NetApp and we can burn down what we've done before and do it again, and we'll make that journey. So, it's enlightening to hear that NetApp was willing to burn down the old stuff to build the new. So as we talk about that new, what are the major drivers, as you're talking to other CIOs, you know, I'm sure the sales team wants more of your time than you can give. >> Very perceptive, very perceptive Keith. (laughs) >> As you're talking to CIOs, what is that conversation, what jewels are they trying to get out of you? >> So, we spent a lot of time with our customers. One of the enjoyable parts of my job is my customers are my peers, our customers are my peers, so I did spend a lot of time looking at what's on their agenda. They're driven by two passions almost globally and consistently across the industry. They're driven by a desire to move to the cloud, to move to the cloud aggressively for flexibility, to take advantage of these new marketplaces that the hyperscalers are offering. Hyperscalers and their partners. But if you come out to our home base in Silicon Valley, what you see, all the start-up companies are being designed in the cloud functionality, so that's where a lot of the new R&D and the new IP is being created. So, my peers want to invest more heavily in the cloud. And the second thing they want to do is enable digital transformation, real digital transformation, how do they monetize the wealth of the data that they've acquired through their relationships with their customers, and then how do they leverage that for their customer benefit. That's what digital transformation really means to CIOs, and how do I engage in the cloud to do that. So when we looked at that we said, okay the story's about data, it's digital transformation around data, and it's enabling that cloud journey for our customers at a rate of consumption that is acceptable and digestable to them, right? Because every customer has a different rate of motion to the cloud and depending on their industry type and their degree of risk and enthusiasm to embrace change, they're in different places. So, we had to be very flexible in guiding different customers in different industries to that cloud database journey and so that's why we have to spend an awful lot of time listening to our customers to help them do that. >> Did you find during this time where, not only are you having to burn some ships down and transform yourself, while still transacting business in a competitive way. >> That's exactly right. >> Did you find yourselves going, alright so NetApp's talking about data is key, data fabric, are you going away from storage, did you find that was a question that was commonly asked and if so, how are they responding now to NetApp's transformation? >> That's a great question. Let me get back to that as you know, NetApp going away from storage, and hit something both of you said. This journey of transformation, you can do transformation a number of ways, but the two common ways are I do it and I'm gone. In other words, I get through the fiery pit and I'm on the other side, I'm like, wow I'm glad that's over, okay? That's not the nature of our company. It is, what George would call it, a culture of transformation, right? It's about being willing to change directions if you need to change direction and go, in this dynamic world. >> Based on the customers, what they think, not what as a company, NetApp would like. >> And we're in one of the most dynamic areas of high-tech, when you look at data and you look at the cloud and the solutions. So we realize, it's not over, we haven't transformed and we're done. We're in transformation 2.0, which is the whole next generation, and most of our leadership team is very comfortable with the discomfort associated with continually transforming. >> Comfortably uncomfortable. >> Yeah and I think it takes a certain kind of person to lead in our company and you have to be bold. You have to be bold and want to do that, okay? >> So George gave some emotional examples last year of data-driven capability. In order to make these transformations, NetApp itself has to be driven by data. >> That's right. >> What are some of the key capabilities as a CIO that you've given the business to be data-driven? George can't make these decisions unless he has data. What new capability has NetApp provided George? >> Well, I'll give you an example sitting here at this wonderful SAP conference, you know? We rolled out SAP C4C Hybris this past year. A big journey for us, we were on a separate platform, we knew we needed to build these new work flows into our day-to-day processes and as we thought about what potential solutions would be to kind of break the mold from where we were and move forward, we really liked the SAP HANA platform. We think the HANA platform, very dynamic you know in memory, a high-performance computing platform that's built on the NetApp framework, right? It's a NetApp high-performance infrastructure with an in-memory processing capability that's second to none in my opinion. So we looked at data availability, reporting, insights that we could get, and the commitment from our partners to continue to evolve in insights. So you know, you hear about Leonardo here, and some of the AI and machine learning platforms that are being developed, we felt like that HANA platform would give us a lot of flexibility in the future to be data-driven, to pull data and to do it fast and dynamically to help our business make the right decisions going forward. >> I'm curious, as we finish up here, how influential is NetApp's transformation? And you're right, it's a journey, right? You're going to get a destination, oh and now we're an intelligent enterprise, if only. How impactful and influential has NetApp's transformation been on really continuing to establish NetApp's relevance and your customer base, have you seen that like make deals happen because look what they've done. >> Yeah, a couple things I'll say to that. First of all, customers admire companies that are bold and that really want to lean into technology and make change, so our journey of transformation is absolutely a fascinating one for our customers. They feel like, if you're willing to do that, if you're willing to change dynamically on the behalf of your customers, we got a lot more confidence that you're serious about what you're doing and you're committed to the future. So number one, they love it. Number two, they just want to know how to transform themselves, so any nuggets they can take away from our journey, and reuse and position in their business for future success is much appreciated. And then the third thing I would say, and it gets back to an earlier question you asked. You know, as we give them more choice, as we give them a choice to either advance their current data center with high-performing flash or build a really cost-effective high-performing private cloud with converged infrastructure or really venture out into that digital transformative space of the hyperscalers, we're giving them choice every day. So, we're not afraid to offer them data management solutions in all three of those environments and not only choice by going out to a hyperscaler, an AWS or an Azure or a Google Cloud platform, but to be able to choose multiple cloud supplier platforms so they can put some workloads in Azure, some workloads in GPC, and get a confident feeling that NetApp's going to be there for them in any of those platforms in any of those configurations. They really feel more confident when they hear that story, and I would argue, to some degree, they're more likely to buy our traditional storage if they feel confident of our future vision in the enablement to allow them to succeed with that future vision, so it's been well received at that level. >> NetApp, bold. I love it Bill. >> I think we are. >> Thanks so much for stopping by, and now you're Cube Alumni, so congratulations. >> Well thank you and I hope to come back some time. >> Absolutely, we'd love to have you back. Thank you for watching theCube, I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and the NetApp booth at SAP Sapphire 2018. Thanks for watching.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018 brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Cube's continuing coverage of Dell Technologies World from Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, and we're joined by two Cube alumni. We've got Paul Galjan, Senior Director of Microsoft Hybrid Cloud for Dell EMC, and Claude Lorenson, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Cloud and Enterprise Platform, from Microsoft. Hi Guys. >> Combined Voices: Hi, how are you? >> Welcome back. >> Voice 1: Thank you. It's really great to be here. >> So, we've had almost two full days of talking with customers, partners ... We want to talk to you guys about what's next, what is next, well, we'll get there ... What's new? How about that? With Dell EMC and Microsoft? >> Yeah, so we shipped toward the end of last year, fourth quarter of last year. We went GA, and what's happening is there's an amazing amount of momentum in the enterprise now. We're seeing a lot of interest from the financial sector, from manufacturing, oil and gas. People are really interested in exploring use cases for Azure Stack and also government. Government is also spending up. And we're spending the week here with a ton of great customers and exploring how we can extend their IT business. >> Yeah, we've been very happy with the number of new customers that have joined this platform with Dell EMC. As Paul mentioned, we're seeing some focus on a few verticals in manufacturing, financial services, and, for Microsoft, working with Dell EMC has been a natural because we've worked on a solution like this for quite a few years so it makes the making the sausage part easier when work we work with Dell EMC because we're a trusted partner for quite a while in these solutions. >> We've been making sausage with Microsoft for a long time. (laughter) >> That is a Cube meme for sure. (laughter) So, it's been nine months, there's the ideal of what a product is, and then customers get it, and they start to use it. What have been some of the surprises? Has it been exactly what you guys thought it would be? Or have the customers kind of stretched the imagination to using Azure Stack instead. >> So the thing that surprised me the most is how much our portfolio, at least from a Dell EMC perspective, is how much our portfolio really plays into the decision. And, I'll give you an example, our ISO LAN attach rate with Dell EMC Azure Stack is tremendous, and it's because the inherent the storage density of a hyper-converged infrastructure is what it is, and when you have a multi-petabyte data set that you want to process using cloud types of technologies having an ISO LAN sitting right next to it makes sense. That has surprised me how quickly people have jumped to that with production use cases. >> Keith: It is an interesting concept. >> For Microsoft, the thing that surprised us a lot is the customer that actually get the platform as an enabler of digital transformation the amount of things that they want to do on it is just like mind boggling, so we are constantly asked to add different things to the base services. And, of course, we're doing our best to triage this and prioritize what makes the most sense, but there are the people who gets it, they have tremendous use case very specific for them that Azure Stack enables, so we're on our toes to keep improving the different services that we can offer for Azure Stack. >> Lisa: And you mentioned a number of verticals that seemed to be kind of early adopters here. Are there common use cases among government, financial services, or are you seeing specific use cases to those industries? >> I can talk to that. Gas and mining industry, we see a lot of interest in the disconnected scenarios because of poor latency with the internet. They want to run some of their application that they usually run on Azure, but they want to run it in the mine shaft, for example, or they want to run it in a drilling platform in the ocean. So Azure Stack is an extension of Azure for this so in these kind of industries, the disconnected scenario is very, very big. If you can think of Defense also, if they want to use something in moving vehicle Azure Stack is a great platform for that. >> And it's not just latency, it's just simple data gravity. You know if you have, if you're generating pentabytes of data on a daily basis out on an oil rig, you're not going to be able to get that into W Azure, GPC, or Azure. So you can process it, upload results, filtered results back to Azure for further processing. It's a really common use case. And the federal space is quite big for defense actually. >> So what are the most common services on Azure Stack taking advantage of the petabytes of ISO LAN right next to it as opposed to shipping it back to ... on a truck back to the Azure data center? >> So you want to talk about some of the recent developments for all that? >> You go ahead with all that. >> So what we're seeing a lot of initiatives around is IoT, and those are, that's that very typical data gravity type issue, and it also has it also has compliance implications particularly in the EU. Being able to control where the data is and being able- >> Staying within the border of the country so you don't move it in a data center that is not in your country so Azure become Azure in your country if you don't have your own Azure data centers. And the banking industry in Europe is pretty particular about this, so that's a big vertical for us in Europe. >> Yeah, a lot of finance. >> What about? >> I'm sorry go ahead. >> Oh thank you, sir. I wanted to talk, Claude, to you about what differentiates Dell EMC as an OEM for Microsoft with Azure Stack. >> Well, one thing that differentiates Dell EMC is the fact that they have a broad portfolio of server storage, they have great backup solution, for example, and that's needed in Azure Stack, And, also, let's face it, familiarity. We have been building these integrated systems together for a long, long time. So we know their engineering team, we have a well-oiled machine in terms of testing, so it's easier in some ways there. There's a familiarity in how we work that's quite well-known, and we can take advantage of their portfolio. Like I said, backup is a huge thing for Azure Stack. I mean it's hard to find a better partner for backup than Dell EMC, for example. So, we have a long experience in selling product together. And the client side, the laptop side, we have a long experience of selling Windows Server together, I mean, for years, they've been one of our biggest reseller of Windows Server. So, all this knowledge about Microsoft and how Microsoft works makes Azure Stack simpler to develop with a partner like Dell EMC. >> Okay, can you guys expand upon the advantages of the relationship when it comes to support? Nine months in, there's going to be stumbling blocks, there's going to be challenges, there's just going to be a lot to learn. What has been been a typical customer support experience with two companies? >> So, this really speaks to the learnings that we've had over the years working together. We have jointly, we have worked together on what we call 'Case Exchange API' which allows for ... it goes well above and beyond kind of the typical TSA net case exchange, with that sites, logs. This is API level access into mutual case management systems where we can get visibility into Microsoft's status with a given case and Microsoft can give visibility into Dell EMC's status with the case. And so it makes it so that the customer experience is completely seamless, and they can call, it doesn't matter which number you call for support, it ends up, you end up with a completely seamless experience. It's great. >> And we had years to improve that process and now we have an electronic, automatic ticket exchange and Dell EMC was one of the first partners to really implement this with us, and it's helped tremendously for the customer experience, and, luckily, so far, support hasn't been a big issue on Azure Stack. (laughter) As numbers grow and grow, I'm sure it'll change. >> So, you've been partners for a long time, we've talked about this well-oiled sausage factory (laughter) partners, collaborative ... (laughter) >> That can tweet. You will get tags. >> It is a tweetable moment. So collaboration, visibility, talk to us about the two cloud strategies, Dell EMC's cloud strategy, Microsoft's cloud strategy, how do they align? >> Okay, well, from a Dell EMC perspective, it's a no-brainer, of the big public clouds, Microsoft is really unique in their hybrid cloud approach. There's the Mware approach with AWS and bringing the workload to the cloud. Microsoft is the only major cloud vendor right now bringing the cloud to the work. And it's just a no-brainer from that perspective amongst most cases. >> And for Microsoft? >> Well, our cloud strategy is pretty clear- it's Azure, (laughter) but that part you said. Azure Stack is an extension of Azure. It brings Azure in different scenarios that would not be possible before, and we rely on our trusted, secure and hybrid, hybrid across the board not only with Azure, but with SQL Server, with identity, with security are pillars on these key functions our hybrids across, on premises, and in the cloud. Azure Stack brings this all up for different workloads. So, Azure, we're all in, and it's going well. And Azure Stack as an extension of that bringing in to the customer data center. >> Keith: So, let's talk about this Azure inside of a customer's data center. This is public cloud inside of a customer's data center, expectations change, operations change, technical capability changes, what have been some of the key learnings as customers start to to assume public cloud in their private data center? Like you said, this is a unique approach, this is hybrid cloud like no other model, instead of going inside out, you guys are going outside in. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I think the biggest the biggest perception change that needs, that customers, it helps that customers learn it early, is that Azure Stack is cloud. Simply because it's residing on your data center floor doesn't mean that it's virtualization and all those concepts go along with it. I'll give you a perfect example, if you have a workload that has some sort of unbalanced, you know, you need a lot of RAM but a little CPU, a lot of IOPs but not a whole lot of capacity, those are things that you capture as part of the re-platforming, the refactoring process, if you're going into public Azure or AWS. That same process needs to be followed for going into Azure Stack because from an operating model perspective it's an identical process. >> So let's talk about what's next. I talked to Jeff Snover again about nine months ago and one of the things he said, one of the advantages of Azure Stack is that it is new, and in being new, you can bring in new services, so customers are there to talk, looking at the cloud, they're going to look at things such as containers, functions as a service, et cetera. What's next for Azure Stack and Dell EMC? >> Claude: I'll talk a little about ... Well, we have a roadmap. It's a public roadmap. You can find it on Azure dot com. So what's next is extending the platform with more and more services. So one thing we have to tell customers is that not all services in Azure run in Azure Stack today. There's a subset. We're expanding that subset. We take input from our partner and customer and prioritizing what we are going to do, but also what's next is things like increased scalability, for example, increased efficiency in terms of virtual density, virtual machine density. Increase the number of regions that you can support, so making it from a one off to a true scale product is one of the things we're focusing on. We're making, we're putting a lot of emphasis on making sure that our customers are happy, so when they deploy Azure Stack, we want to make sure that their experience is good, so we're expending effort on making sure that there's a good way for them to reach out to us, but basically expanding the number of services on the platform is is what's new and what's next. >> So, Claude, last question for you, from Microsoft, we're at the first Dell Technologies World, right, last year with Dell EMC, 14 thousand people here, That's a huge, loads of partners, what are some things that you're looking forward to hearing tomorrow in your session from the Dell Technologies customers? >> I'm interested in learning about their use case, how does it fit their data centers? Because every customer is a little bit different, I had some customer meeting today, Dell EMC has invited me to quite a few customers and hearing what they want to do is really interesting because it can guide which next services, for example, we should implement, so hearing the specific is a very important thing. My experience I've talked at Dell, Dell EMC World for quite a few years, very often, the people who come in these session, they are kind of like rookie. They want to know, they want to learn. The experienced folks, we get to talk to them in the booth, but in the session, we get a lot of rookies, like what is thing, what it is, you got to be conscious of that too. >> Well, thanks, guys, for stopping back by the Cube and sharing what's new with Microsoft Hybrid Cloud and Dell EMC, we appreciate that. >> Thank you. We appreciate the time, look forward to it next year. >> Absolutely! >> Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. We are live on Day Two of Dell Technologies World. I am Lisa Martin for Keith Townsend. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (music)