>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by AWS Global Partner Network Welcome to the Cubes. Live coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm Lisa Martin. I've got two guests joining me. Next. Chris Gru's director of Business development, AWS Marketplace Service catalog and Control Tower at AWS. Chris, welcome. >>Thank you. Welcome. Good to see you. >>Likewise. And Matthew Polly is an alumni of the Cube. He is back VP of worldwide business development alliances and channels at Crowdstrike Matthew, Welcome toe. Welcome back. >>Great to be here. Lisa, Thanks for having me. >>And I see you're in your garage, your f one car in the background. Very jealous. So we're gonna be talking a little bit about not f one today, but about what's going on. Some of the the news that's coming from the partner Keynote. So, Chris, let's start with you. What's going on? The AWS marketplace news and also give our audience a real good understanding of what the marketplace is. >>Yeah, sure. So So AWS marketplace is actually an eight year old service within the AWS family, and and our charter is really providing a fine by deploy and manage experience for third party software. And so what our organization does. We work with my issues like Crowdstrike, and we really try to get them to package up their software in that same consumption format that other customers are buying AWS services. It's already the best service already. Those customers are used to buying services like Red Shift, and that's three and a consumption format, and they want to be able to buy third party software in that same manner. And so that's really been our charter since we were launched eight years ago. We've had a lot of great mo mentum since our launch. We now have over 8000 listings available in the catalog, and we have over 1.5 million subscriptions going through the catalog. One of things that we announced earlier today is that we are up to 300,000 active customers. That's actually up from 260,000, which is our previous numbers. So we continue to see really good momentum in terms of adoption, from both our eyes, community publishing listings and then from our customers that are actually buying out of the catalog. We work on all types of formats of software, so we provide machine images in an Amazon machine image format. But we also published and make available SAS products, container products and algorithms and models to run in things like our sage maker environment. And then, as of this morning in the Global Partner Summit, we announced the ability to sell professional services through eight of this marketplace as well. >>So lots of expansion, lots of growth. I'd love to get Chris your take on this expansion into offering professional services. What does that mean? And how have your 300,000 plus customers been influential in that? >>Yeah. And so what we've seen is marketplaces evolved is the transaction sizes have actually gone up dramatically. A couple years ago we launched a feature called Private Offers, which allows eyes views to do a negotiated subscription, submit that to an AWS customer and that they accept that goes right on their bill. We've seen very good adoption that we've got thousands of private offers now going through the system and what we found when the transaction sizes started to grow. Both our eyes V s that we're using the platform, as well as the consulting partners that are partners with US through Amazon Partner Network. They typically attached services to those transactions So pure and eyes V you might wanna package on something like an installation service training services. Or it could just be a bespoke statement of work that goes along with your technology and then on the consulting partner side. Resellers want to attach those same type of services to the software that they re sell, and up until this morning we weren't able to do that. And so it provided a lot of friction to our customers or buyers because what they had to do is they actually had to bottom line those transactions, or they had to do those transactions outside of marketplace. And And that wasn't a good experience for either RSV community or restore community or customers. So now, with this launch, we could actually allow customers to buy those services from those Eyes v partners and those resellers. By virtue of doing that to marketplace and basically how it works. It's similar to our private offer experience. They just submit a private offer to that customer. They could upload a statement of work. And if that customer accept, it goes directly on their AWS bill and they did. This marketplace takes care of all the collection, and the building that goes goes along with that transaction. And so we're really excited about this. We had over 100 launch partners that we're ready to go as of this morning, and we think this is gonna be a great feature, is gonna get a lot of adoption. Crowdstrike, which is a company that Matthews with is one of our launch partners for that feature. And so we just think this is gonna be a game changer for us on a number of levels. It's really gonna open up the type of transactions that we can now do to market place. >>Well, you mentioned Ah, good f word frictionless. That's something that every business really aims to do to make that experience just as seamless as possible. So Matthew talk to us about crowdstrike being part of its professional services, launched the opportunities that that opens up for the marketplace, customers and your customers? >>Sure. So just a quick background on crowdstrike were an endpoint protection cybersecurity company that has historically been protecting laptops desktops on premise, uh, devices from from breaches, basically identifying indications of attack or indications of compromise that that may surface on those end points. We do that by having agents run on those devices and point back to our massive body of data that runs in the cloud A W s. In fact, and so collecting tons and tons of data petabytes upon petabytes of data, literally trillions of events per week were able to easily identify and apply machine learning and artificial intelligence, Um, to that corpus of data to be able to identify when there is adversary activity on those devices. Now we've gone through a bit of a digital transformation ourselves, and we're looking at now. Not only, or we have launched products here recently, that not only protect those on premise devices like the desktops, laptops and on premise servers, but also protect workloads that are running in the cloud E C. Two instances, or RDS instances. What have you in in AWS? Or we've also launched what crowdstrike calls are Falcon Horizon product, which is a cloud security posture management product to be able to give people visibility into configurations that may create risk for their cloud environments. And we've been leveraging marketplace for about two years now. Um, it's been a fantastic opportunity for us to really leverage that frictionless sales motion that Chris talked about reducing sale cycles for us and for our channel partners. We have a number of our channel partners that leverage the CPP Oh capability within within the AWS marketplace toe actually transact business with their customers. It's been a It's been a fantastic, um you know, mechanism for for crowdstrike, for our partners and for our customers. Um, you know, we've been part of the enterprise contract scenarios where we don't have to go through that process of negotiating an end user license contract. We've signed up for the enterprise contract. Many of our customers have signed up for that enterprise contracts with reduces the legal iterations to get a transaction done. So that's been fantastic. And what we're doing now with the you know, the professional services offering is we're standing up a few of our professional services, Um, you know, offerings on the AWS marketplace so that our customers and our channel partners can actually transact business through the AWS marketplace toe, acquire those particular professional services offerings. And the one that I think is most interesting is a kind of cloud security assessment where our professional services team will go in and actually evaluate our their configurations. Are there unmanaged, um, you know, accounts running in AWS or what have you that could represent a security risk and make recommendations about how to improve the overall security posture of that cloud environment, leveraging something like crowd strikes Falcon Horizon, as I mentioned earlier, or our cloud workload protection offering. So it >>really >>is about streamlining the procurement, offering them. You know, the ability to thio, offering customers the ability to acquire through the AWS marketplace, whether that's the crowdstrike product or the Crowdstrike service offerings. >>So, Matthew, I imagine given this year that we're all not sitting together face to face in Las Vegas. The events of this year have also brought a lot of challenges from a security perspective. We've seen Ransomware going up dramatically, but also in this massive pitot to work working remotely. I can imagine your customers big opportunity for Crowdstrike to help them when endpoints just scattered. So in terms of that, as well as the impact with what you're doing with AWS marketplace seems like a great opportunity to provide your customers with faster access to ensuring that they can guarantee the security off their all of their data, which is business critical. >>Yeah, 100%. So the kind of global pandemic and work from anywhere has driven demand for crowd strikes capabilities in two ways. Number one people leaving the office and going home. There's a proliferation of physical devices, laptops for people to actually work from home, which obviously need to be protected. And a lot of times these were people that were working from home for the first time. You know, no longer within the protection of the, you know, the corporate network. Maybe they're using a VPN or what have you? But they needed the added protection of an endpoint protection capability like crowd strikes. And the second is a lot of this digital transformation has been accelerated. We've had a few customers tell us they had a three year plan for for their their digital transformation, and a lot of that is moving on. Premise service involves moving on premise servers to the cloud, and they've had to accelerate that two months or even even weeks in cases. And that's driving. You know, huge demand for understanding how to ensure there maintaining the proper security posture for those cloud environments. So speed is key right now, making sure that you're protected and transacting those those you know, those those sale cycles quickly leveraging native US marketplace all is accelerating. >>Yes, speaking of that acceleration and we've talked about that a lot. Matthew. This acceleration of digital transformation years now crammed into months. Chris, let's wrap with you in light of that acceleration, how has that affected positively? The AWS marketplace Bringing in professional services, allowing your customers to have much more available to them, to transact directly and and in a frictionless way, when speed is so critical? >>Yeah, I mean what it really leads to. It just gives us more selection, right? So if you take a step back and you think about the you know, the infamous Amazon fire, well, one of the key components of what makes a fine we'll go a selection. And there was a lot of solutions that we had. We just couldn't sell through marketplace without having some kind of services attach. While there's a lot of products that you could just point, click and go. There are a lot of technology. Do you need to? Some have some kind of hand holding And so, you know, by virtue launching services, this actually opens up the amateur in terms of selection that we could bring into the catalog. One of things that we've been focused on as a late is bringing in business applications as an example. And a lot of times a business application might need services to go on, actually wrap around that solution cell and, you know, be part of that implementation. And so that's the other great thing about this is it's going to give us more selection, and that's just gonna let our customers buy more and more products out of this market place. But do that in this very easy format, where it literally just lets them put these transactions directly on the AWS bill. So we think it's gonna be a great you know, not only for movie deals faster but also providing more solutions to our customers and just giving a better selection experience of AWS customer >>and being able to do that all remotely, which is these days is table stakes. Chris. Matthew, Thank you so much for joining me today. Talking about what's new with the Amazon marketplace. What you guys are doing with professional services and crowdstrike. We appreciate your time. >>Yep. Thank you. Thanks. Lisa. Yep. >>From my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes. Live coverage of aws reinvent 2020.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube covering HP Discover. Virtual experience Brought to you by HP >>Everybody welcome back to the Cube's continuous coverage of Discover 2020. That virtual experience. The Cube has been been virtualized really excited to have Marissa Freeman here. She's the chief brand officer, Hewlett Packard Enterprise. And, of course, he joined by Jim Jackson. Who's the CMO of HP? Guys, Great to see you Wish we were face to face. But thanks so much for coming on the Cube. >>Great to be here. Hope that you and your family and your friends are safe and well, >>and we're back at you both. Jim, let me start with you. So, uh, this kind of got dumped on you with this pandemic. Different mindset. You have to do a bit flip to goto virtual you talk about some of the things that you focused in on some of the things you want to keep. And some of the things you knew you couldn't. And you had to do things differently. >>Yeah, You know, we pretty much had to rethink everything about this event platforms, how we thought about messaging, how we thought about content. Um audience acquisition demos, really everything. And for us, it really all boiled down to having a vision. And our vision was to bring the Discover experience, all that energy, the excitement that you get the in person event. We wanted to bring that to all of our customers and our partners and our team members around the world. So for us, it wasn't about virtualized discover. It was about bringing the Discover experience to a 12 inch screen. In many cases for our customers and our partners and our team members, I think another thing that was really eye opening for us. Waas thinking of opening up the aperture and thinking, Hey, we can now take this and drive. This is the true global events and we can reach people all over the world, reach customers and partners that can't come to discover because they can't physically come to the event. That was a couple of things that really we had to put a lot of thought into, and it was really exciting for us. I think one other thing is now customers, and how we think about their experience at the event became very, very important for us because you know, at an in person event, it's three days, and we can you know, there's a lot of things people can do, but you have three days of content, and then people move on for us. Now. Our customers might go through three weeks or three months, and we really needed to think about that experience in a very simple, seamless, easy way for them so that they could to consume the content digitally in a way that made the most sense for them. So a lot of new thinking for us. But we're really excited about the opportunities that virtual brings in that digital brings >>now immerse. So I gotta ask you so No, no meter boards at least know for a physical meter boards, you know, How did you think about continuing that branding in a virtual event? >>Well, it's, uh, it's really a beautiful experience when you look at the the intro of the platform that we're on. It's beautifully branded all the way throughout. The branding is really coming through, though, in the content, um, and in the people, So we always say, Jim and I always say every year, Gosh, if we could just have every estimate on every prospect come to discover they would see our brand come to life they would feel are our purpose. They would understand, just with a new and different energized and fully charged a company, we are they would get to meet Antonio and Security. And Liz and Jennifer Income are honored and Jim and feel for themselves, uh, the power of the company. And now everyone can So the brand really is coming to life through the people. I appreciate that you love the the beautiful graphics, and we work really hard. Um, I'm all of that stuff, Sure, but the real branding is in the content itself. So >>now, Jim asses. Well, you were kind of lucky in the sense that, you know, this show wasn't in March or April. You had some time. So to see what others were doing. And you saw early on when this thing first hit, there were some the missteps there, There's there, still are even. But So what do you What do you tell people that is really unique about the Discover virtual experience? >>Yeah, I think a couple things and you're right. We did have a little more runway, and that was to our advantage. But we feel like we've taken full advantage of it. I think the first is coming back to that global experience that I talked about. So we're delivering this on 10 different with translating into 10 different languages, and that makes it easy for people to consume our key content around the world. We're truly delivering our content on time zones that are very appropriate, or our customers and our partners again, all around the world, in different Geos, we're bringing in our geo MVS where they are now having geo lounges, um, specific addresses and other things locally that really enables us to have that local experience. But derive it is making it part of a global event. I think another thing, Dave and you've been Teoh Discover. But you've seen that amazing Discover Expo Hall that we have out there with, you know, literally thousands of people and lots of demos. We had to figure out How do we bring that to a a ah, digital or a virtual experience? And I think the teams have done just an amazing job here. So what we did is we have 61 demos, and this is part of really 150 sessions. But if you just think of demos, we're going to deliver these live over 1717 100 times the first week. That's really, really powerful. This is >>live, meaning >>somebody from HP, a subject matter expert, talking to our customers, answering questions in real time. So that's unique. I think another thing that we're doing is we're not stopping after the first week. The first week is going to be extremely powerful and we can't wait for it. And but, you know, we're gonna extend, if you will, the value we're gonna double click and follow on Wave focused on SMB. Focus on software and containers for more of a developer, audience, Cloud services and other things like that, as well as data and storage. And then finally, I'll say, You know, we're really excited about the great speakers that we have Marissa >>talks >>about. You know, Antonio Qwerty, Irv etcetera. But we've got some great outside speakers as well. Lewis Hamilton from Mercedes Formula 16 time Formula One champion Simone Biles, uh, who's Olympian and world champion, 25 medals. We've got Steve Kerr and they're going to be part of a panel talking about performing under pressure, and we're all doing that. But it's gonna be again a great story we've got, um, John Chambers is going to be joining Antonio and talking about what great companies do during a crisis and how they prepare to come out of this kind of a situation to deliver better solutions to their customers. Soledad O Brien, who is moderating, are women leaders in I t session, and this is one of our most powerful sessions. In fact, Marissa is part of that as well. So we're really excited about this, the amount of things that we were able to bring together. And of course, we also have our CEO Summit and our Global Partner Summit happening at the same time. So we've got a lot of things that we've been able to coordinate all of this and really think about the experience from a digital in a virtual expect perspective to make it great for our customers and our partners and our attendees. A >>lot of rich content layers. Yeah. So what if you could talk about that here here to help Sort of the cultural aspects of that. What it means to your customers, your clients, your employees and your just broader community. >>Well, you know, Dave one when covert first hit the United States, we We had a lot of social media out there, a lot of digital media out there. And even before it came to the United States, when Italy and China were really suffering, we gathered as a team and audited every piece of content that we had pulled all back in. I met daily Jim and I and Jennifer temples. Teams met daily to talk about what is our tone of voice? What are we saying? How are we helping our customers get through? This time we knew how difficult it was for us with business continuity, remote workforce, we needed to help our customers and let them know that we were at the ready right now to help. So we chose to speak through the voices of our leaders. Antonio did several blocks and videos, and we rallied and redid the website completely to be all about over response and how we had many solutions for our cost. Most implement immediately from $2 billion financing Teoh setting up remote workforces, too, doing WiFi in parking lots and turning ships into hospitals. It ran the gamut, Um, and so it was really important to us that we conveyed a message of here to help. Ultimately, we ended up doing a television commercial. Antonio's voice. It was a personal letter from Antonio to his fellows, business leaders and engineers and said, Look, we know what you're going through. We're going through it ourselves. We're here to help. Here's how and it's been really motivating and successful and joy and driving people to find out more about what HP could do to help. So >>I would just add >>to what >>Murtha said. She outlined it really well. But we have some great customer examples and great customer stories as well. They're very emotional talking about how customers really needed our help and our combination of technology. People really came together to enable them to get their businesses up and running, or to address a pain point or problem for their audiences. The first point you know, there's the concept of here to help with the recovery and then here to help with the transformation as well as they look to the future. >>So how are you guys thinking about just sort of growth marketing strategies, branding strategies not only for HP but in the spirit of helping customers in this post isolation economy. Merson. Maybe you could start start us off. >>Well, we we've been talking about how this crisis has brought the future forward, nor our doorsteps. So where our customers may have been on a digital transformation path and they were accelerating it. Now there's there's an impetus to do it right now. So whether you're in recovery, um, or whether you're one of the customers for whom this crisis created a surge of demand and you needed to scale way up, these are the moments of transformation that our company is. Is there to help you with Jim? Do you want to build on that? >>Now? I think you hit the highlights there, Marissa, you know, again for us, I think we wanted to just be authentic and true to who we are as a company. And, you know, our purpose is to advance the way people live and work. And I think we live that during this time and will continue to live that as we go forward. It it's really core to who we are. And what we saw is that many of our customers really valued the fact that when they needed us the most, we were there for them and we were there for them all around the world. And, um, you know, and our goal is to continue to do that and continue to delight them and to be the best transformation partner for the future. >>I mean, culturally, we obviously re observe all this stuff, but culturally, you kind of be kind of had a heads down approach to all of this. I mean, there was there was not a hint of ambulance chasing in what you got. How you guys approach this. So I mean, I think I think culturally that here to help message it seemed like a very strong roots in citizenship. Um, you know, And then, of course, with social uprising, respect for individuals that seemed to shine through. I don't know. I know versus deliberate or that's just again cultural. Maybe >>it's it's all of the above. You can't change who you are and we need at Hewlett Packard Enterprise are people who care about other people our purpose. As Jim said, Our purpose is to advance the way people live in or every one of us every day gets up and goes to work or goes to work at home at HP to do just that. That is who we are. And so it would be an authentic for I think, true to this crisis in any other way. >>I think I wanna make an observation and see if you guys to respond. So we always talk about technology disruptions. Mercy you mentioned about, you know, the future was put forward. I'm sure you've seen the wrecking ball. You know, the folks in the building, the executives very complacent. A digital transformation not in my day. And in the 19 wrecking bald covert 19 survey, you probably saw that Who's who's leading your digital transformation CEO CTO or Covert 19. But it's really now. I mean, if you're not digital, you're not doing business. So but my observation is that it seems like despite all this technology that global disruptions are going to probably have a bigger impact in this coming decade, whether it's pandemics of social upheaval, of natural disasters, etcetera. But technology can play a huge role in supporting us through those things. Jim, I wonder if you have any thoughts on that comment. >>I mean, I think it's it's a great question, you know, if you think about it, What what happened with the macro economy Cove? It It's been a catalyst for, I think, everybody to understand that they needed to really accelerate their digital transformation. And, more importantly, they need a partner who can help them on that journey as well. I mean, if you just look at what we're talking about here >>with >>this event, right, most of h p e. And, um, you know, our >>competitors to >>cancel their virtual events >>are canceled their physical >>events rather, and they're moving now to a digital event in any way. This is going to be the new normal for us, right? So I think as we go >>forward, we're gonna >>see this only continue to accelerate. And for us, you know, our edge to cloud platform as a service strategy plays really well to helping customers accelerate that digital transformation. And, you know, it just kind of comes back to what Marissa said. You know, here to help is very very HP in terms of it's authentic and it's here. We want to be here to help our customers in their biggest hour of need. And we're doing everything we can and will continue to do that for the future as well. >>Versus, you know, having done many, many discovers we've noticed over the last several years you guys made a much bigger emphasis on the sort of post discover which a lot of organizations don't have a big physical event, and it's sort of on to the next thing. And how do you see the post from a branding standpoint? Messaging, etcetera. How do you see taking advantage of that from a virtual standpoint? And what have you learned? >>Well, we've been on our own digital transformation journey, and, you know, through Jim's leadership, we have built a pretty serious digital engine, which allows us to have a personal relationship with the customer, meet them where they are on their terms. For example, with this platform, it's even using your now because we we actually will know what content would see what sessions, what demos someone interested in. Maybe they put it, you know, on their schedule, and then didn't get to do it. So we'll go back to them later and say, Hey, we saw that you wanted to do this. It's still here. Why don't you come and have a look and then watch to that We do sort of the Netflix engine, the been newsworthy playlist of If you like that, you like this. And if you like this, you like that and we bring them through the breadcrumbs all the way through. And it's a self directed journey, but we're there to help. And that is really the true power of digital is to have that interaction, that conversation with the customer and where they want to be and with what they want to learn and read about. We'll see. >>Yeah, And everything, of course, is instrumented gym. We'll give you the last word and you were involved, as was Marissa in sort of the new HP. The new branding and the whole purpose of that was really to get Hewlett Packard enterprise focus and really back to sort of the roots of innovation. And I wonder if you could comment on from a strategy standpoint, innovation and from a competitive standpoint, you know where you're at over the last several years, we've obviously transformed as a company and where you see your competitive posture going forward. >>Yeah, you know, for us, um, we're so excited about this event because this is a great opportunity for us to showcase progress against our edge to cloud platform as a service strategy, and we roll this out last year. It's differentiated. It's unique in the marketplace. It demonstrates the transformation happening across as a service and software at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. So we are a company in transition, aligned to what we feel, our companies, our customers, biggest pain points. And when you look at some of the acquisitions that we've made some of the organic investments that we've done, we're just very well positioned to deliver against, you know, some very unique pain points that our customers have. Plus, I think another thing is, at the end of the day, really, what our customers are saying is, help me take all this data and translate that data into insight and that insight into action. You're going to hear us talk about the age of insight and how we're really again unifying across edge the cloud to deliver that for our customers. Stone. We're excited for this event because you're going to hear a significant industry revealed, focused around cloud services around software and really a lot of the things that we've been talking about. And we're going to show a lot of progress as we continue on that journey. And then, you know, Murtha mentioned digital. I'm really excited about digital because that enables us to understand and learn and help our customers and deliver a better experience for them. And then finally, you know, huge opportunity for us. Two. Take this message out globally, you know? Ah, great opportunity for people all around the world who maybe haven't heard from HP for a while to see our message, to feel the new energy to see who we are to see. Uh, you know that we're doing some very interesting things that we can help them. So we're excited. There's a lot of energy right now inside the company, and, uh, we're ready to kick it off and get rolling here. >>Well, it's quite amazing. I mean, we started off 2020 with the gut punch, but the reality is, is that 20 twenties? A lot different than 20 pens. If it weren't for technology and companies like HP here to help center, you know, we would not be in such such good shape and good in quotes. But think about it. The technology is really helping his power through this. So Jim Morrison, Thanks so much for coming on the Cube. Thank you, HB. Everything you're doing for customers in the community. Really? Thank >>you for having us. Thank you for having me. Good to see you. >>Great to see you guys to and keep it right there. Everybody, this is Dave Volante for the Cube. Our continuous coverage of hpe discover virtual experience in 2020. We're right back right after this short break. >>Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

>> Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with John Furrier covering Dell Technologies World 2019. This is our first day of coverage, two sides or, as John likes to say, it's theCUBE cannon, a cannon of CUBE content. We're very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni, Joyce Mullen, the President, Global Channel, OEM and IoT from Dell Technologies. Joyce, welcome to theCUBE cannon. >> Thank you so much. Happy to be in the cannon, it's a great place to be! >> The cannon is off the a great start! So, before we get started into all of the nitty gritty, I just want to acknowledge, you are one of CRN's Women of the Channel on Power 100 last year. Congratulations on that. >> Thank you. Thank you, thank you. >> It's always great to have strong females on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Talk to us a little bit about the Global Channel. There's about 4,000 partners here? >> 5,000 actually, over 5,000. >> 5,000? You've got a channel of over 150,000. Global Partner Summit kicking off today, what are some of the exciting things, news? >> Well, I'm sure you've talked about the news from this morning. I mean that obviously was dominating a lot of the discussions in terms of the solutions that we're offering and things like that. Really exciting stuff and very cool to see the collaboration between VMware and Microsoft and Dell, I mean, that's pretty powerful stuff. But also, our partners are really excited because they've been asking us for more and more highly integrated solutions. We heard about two new ones today that really span the Dell Technologies family of brands and they... You know, we have a bunch of things that we've talked about with the partners today. But we set it up last year with three strategic imperatives, and one of them is about making it easier to do more business with us. That's really, operationally, how do we improve the partner experience? The second one is around helping them enable and transform customer's environments across Dell Technologies families of brands and that one, you know, is tough to do. And so, we made some progress on that this morning, which was really exciting to hear about and then we also announced a change in our branding to our program. So we were the Dell EMC Partner Program, now we're the Dell Technologies Partner Program, which obviously carries broader significance. And then the third imperative is all around helping our partners embrace and monetize these new, emerging technologies, like IoT and AI. You heard a lot about that from Michael today, too. So we are working very hard to figure out how to help our partners do just that. >> Talk about the economics on the channel, because the channel's great leverage sales, indirect, great business models, proven over the years to be great. As new technology comes in, if it's complicated, it's hard to sell. If it's complicated, you need training. And if it doesn't throw off more profit for the partner, it tends to not work out well. You guys have really been working on this. Talk about the partner reaction to their opportunity to serve their customers, who are your customers. You're essentially going to be doing that. This has been an opportunity, because we're seeing that, with some of the services teams out there, there's more technology required in their... Skills gaps to architects. That's an opportunity for the channel partners to actually add value. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that value piece that the partners now can add on top of it, because if it's an easy, consistent end-to-end environment that's turn-key from Dell, the partners take that and they can wrap value around that. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that dynamic specifically. >> Well, so, when we think about these new technologies, and we think about the environments our customers are facing, or if you think about IoT, which is generally quite vertically specific, it requires new sets of skills, no doubt about it. But this complexity that we're basically facing right now in IT around more servers, more processors, more accelerators. I mean, we've gotten pretty used to a world where x86 is kind of king. But five years from now, it's going to be much different. Artificial intelligence will drive a whole bunch of specialized servers, for example. Anyway, that's an illustration of the complexity that our customers are facing, which is great news for our partners, to your point, John. So, when we spend time with our partners, we're talking about the importance of, of course you need to know the technology. Of course you need to know what AI means. You need to understand augmented reality. You need to understand IoT. But probably even more importantly, you got to get a deeper understanding of the businesses that your customer's in. The verticals, the industries. Because it's not a uniform, horizontal environment that we're deploying this stuff into now. It's a much, much more highly varied, highly complex environment, which is great news because customers need our help. That does mean that the partners have to have the certifications. We're trying to make that easier so that if they have gotten certified with VMware on VCF, they can apply that to Dell Technologies. Vice versa. >> Joyce, that's a great point. That kind of connects what Michael Dell said on stage, because the vertical specialism is where the data adds value. So where you actually bring data into the equation, which is the lifeblood of, or the heartbeat of digital transformation, to quote Michael Dell on that one. That's where the specialism is important. In the verticals. >> Yes. >> So knowing how to make data work is a partner opportunity. >> Absolutely. And that means you got to understand the business, the outcomes that your customers are looking for, and what that data looks like in those environments. So it's way different if you're in a plant or a hospital. I mean, those are pretty different environments. You got to know what you're talking about. I think it's a great opportunity for partners, but it does mean, maybe a reorientation, or a consideration of vertical expertise. >> I want to get your thoughts on IoT. So two verticals that are smoking hot right now are health care and manufacturing, machine, you know... >> Industrial Automation. >> Industrial Automation, yeah, thank you. I know RPA is high. I see people using RPA, it's really hot. In those areas, okay, OT, operational technologies, and IT have been kind of at war. Not at war, but they're different cultures. IT is about connecting internet protocol devices that have data to it. OT's, some cases, HVAC system or something else. All are getting computers on them now. So for say, for security... So the realization that it's an IT mindset, coming together with operational technology folks, are two culturally different markets but the products are blending, it's kind of becoming blurred. What is your view on this? How do you guys see that? How do you posture to that marketplace? What's the value proposition? >> Yeah, so I think it's fascinating, because we've been in cases where we're talking to customers on the operating technology side, and on the IT side, of course, given our heritage. But through our OEM group, we have a lot of experience with industrial automation, for example. And we've actually introduced people at the same company to each other. On the OT side and the IT side. >> Wow. >> Because they just you're... I don't know if I would say that they were at war, John, but they were definitely... It was parallel play going on. You know what I mean? They were not necessarily helping one another. And I would say, still, when we are in these environments, I would say roughly a third of the time, the operating technology guys say, I got this. I don't need the IT guys to tell me what to do. I'm running my plant. They do not understand. I am all about throughput, I'm all about yields, I'm all about output, I'm all about safety, I'm all about quality, whatever. The IT guy is saying, Um, well, yeah but you got to be all about security. If you're going to put this stuff on my network it's got to meet these criteria, right? So the Operating Technology guys a third of the time will say, Don't talk to the IT guys, I got this. On the IT side, a third of the time they'll say, Those OT guys really don't understand what I'm up against here. I've got to make sure this is a completely secure environment and I've got to think about all sorts of terrible data issues and things like that, privacy, all that sorts of stuff. Let me... I got this. And then, about a third of the time, we have a very productive relationship where they're working together. I expect that those... That third will become half, will become 75 percent, because it has to. >> Which half becomes 75 percent? >> I think we're going to >> The collaboration. >> see a collaboration and we will not have people taking sides because you just can't. You can't afford it. You can't afford these parallel universes. From a security point of view, or an economic point of view. >> You can't be warring, that's what you're saying. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You've got to come together and get a solution. >> Exactly, exactly. >> How can you facilitate your partners becoming that enabler of that collaboration? In terms of educating them on, a third does this, a third does that, this is my sandbox, that's yours, and then there's the third that's like, Oh, we kind of get it. How do you see yourselves as enabling your channel to be that mediator, that facilitator? >> So there's a couple of different ways. One is through Competency Development, and we have things like an IoT Competency. We have a Dell Technology Cloud Competency, as of this morning. And we will see more and more solutions-based competencies, versus product-based competencies. So, clearly, that's a trend. And that means we're helping our partners develop a level of expertise around deployment of those solutions. So that's step one. The other thing is, we're trying to figure out how to facilitate that with product offerings. So Integrated Product Offerings. You heard a couple of those today. We also have things like our award-winning, actually, IoT Connected Bundles, which are trying to facilitate that. And then the third way we're trying to do that is, we're trying to encourage our partners to take advantage of the power of this massive ecosystem we have. If you think about all of the OEMs who are building their solutions on Dell Technology, and you think about all of the partners who are trying to figure out how to offer a broader solution set to their customers on the OT side. Video Surveillance is a great example. Digital City Solutions is another one. That combination could be really, really powerful. So we have, I would say it's a very rudimentary capability right now, we call it Partner Finder. We also have something called Cloud Partner Connect, in case a partner needs service provider capability. We're going to build that out this year and include our OEM, so our partners can actually find like-minded partners who have the same kind of focus on Dell Technologies as a core component of the solutions. That means it's just going to be easier to integrate these things. >> Channels love bundles, they love turn-key because, again, that reduces their, cuts cost. >> Yeah, of course. >> They can wrap margin around that with services. >> Of course. >> Always a great playbook. >> Exactly. >> Simplicity wins. On the business side, I want to get your thoughts on the integration stuff. I love the simplicity, bundling, love that, but when you start dealing with channels within channels within channels, you get the embedded relationships. I got VMware on Azure, I got Dell Technologies with VxRail, going through this Microsoft guy. The joint sales, I mean, my mind kind of explodes. It must be really hard. How do you guys handle that complexity? Is that something you're used to? Is it not a problem? Computation programs and things of that nature? >> I mean, for sure, we got to figure out how to weed through all that, and then simplify it to a point that a partner understands what they get. If you do X, this is what you get. If you do Y, this is what, I mean, cause they have to make their own economic decisions about that. And so, yes, we have to weed through that. I think that one of the things, though, that we're very, very clear on now is, through our track system in our partner program, we've tried to ask partners to designate themselves. I am a service provider. I am a systems integrator. I am an OEM partner. The truth is, those lines are blurring, and are increasingly meaningless, and we have to meet partners where they are. So, we're working very hard this year on trying to get rid of a bunch of those tracks, simplifying the program. It doesn't really depend on what you call yourself, you want to deliver the solution how the customer wants to buy it, and we need to facilitate that. >> And be profitable, make some money. >> Of course. >> There's always that. Well Joyce, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE cannon! >> Hey, theCUBE cannon! I love it! >> ...this afternoon, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live, from Dell Technologies World 2019. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> Narrator: Live from Los Vegas it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018 (relaxed music) brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (relaxed music) >> Welcome to theCUBE. We are live on day two at Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with my cohost the one and only @Stu, Stu Miniman. We are here in Vegas with about 14,000 attendees, the biggest event ever. Not just 14,000 people here but about 35,000 also engaging with the video experiences, live streaming, and the on-demand. Also going on here is a big event with partners. We're excited to welcome back to theCUBE Cheryl Cook, Senior Vice President of Global Channel Marketing from Dell EMC. Hi, Cheryl! >> Hi, thanks for havin' me! Welcome back! >> Yeah. So 6,500 partners. >> Absolutely. >> Wow, that's up from last year! >> We have record attendants. We just are really, really excited about the engagement and how we're resonating with our partners, so we just had a fantastic kick-off to our Global Partner Summit yesterday. >> So some big news regarding the Channel. One of the things I'd like to start with is the name of the event this year. The first time it's Dell Technologies World. Last year was Dell EMC World. >> Absolutely. Kind of indicative of the EMC Federation companies being absorbed into Dell, companies with their own channel programs. Talk to us about what you announce regarding the Dell Technologies Advantage framework. What is the framework, and how does it make it easier for channel partners to sell Dell products of- >> Well, thank you. You know, as you said, we've really elevated this event to the Dell Technologies World, and many of our partners today already participate in VMware's program or in Dell EMC's program, and really what we're doing with the Advantage is we're taking a lot of the messaging, the story, a lot of the marketing collateral that we candidly educated our internal employees on so that we can best differentiate and articulate to our customers the value and the power of all these strategically aligned businesses. So for the Partner community, we're bringing IT transformational campaigns to them, we're bringing a lot of the messaging and the story on how to enable and share with their team members and their customers, and we're also working on enablement and really driving more cross-functional, inclusive competencies and trainings to really enable them and their team members to be more effective. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Cheryl, maybe you could explain to us some of those, the training and the cross-competencies and things like that. You know, I'm sure there's people on the Dell Channel side that need to be educated on other products and vice versa, and there's new products all the time, new changing. You know, Jeff Clark walk-through, you know interesting things with like AI and IoT that are coming in the future. So maybe bring us inside some of that training. >> Yeah, absolutely. So we're very mindful of trying to develop either reference architectures or some of our curriculum around training that would include, you know, vSphere from VMware for example along with the Dell EMC infrastructure or even on our client initiatives a Windows 10 refresh effort that includes AirWatch from VMware. So really looking at the outcome-based opportunity that we know we have to engage in those conversations with our customers so that we can stitch together the training and the availability, and we want to on a future state develop these training so our partners wouldn't have to take them multiple times. It would be credited and eligible in both, VMware's program as well as Dell EMC. So we're really striving to give commonality and be efficient with speed, time to market, and really leveraging all the capabilities across the strategic landline businesses. >> What about some of the feedback that you've gotten from, you know, legacy EMC partners, Dell partners, in terms of how to make this complimentary. Was that, being that the partners are on the front lines talking with customers about all their transformation needs, how have the partners really helped to create this new framework? >> Well, you know, we're always listening, and we host a number of advisory boards, and we listen to our partners, and we've heard very, very common: "We love the product marketing, "but we want you to give us solution marketing. "Can you help enable us "in the outcome-based conversation and dialogue?" One of the things we announced this week is an IT transformation marketing campaign which we're going to put in market with Dell EMC. It's available simultaneously for the partners that essentially really does map together all the technologies and componentry across the strategic landline businesses to the business outcomes that they're talkin' to their customers about. We also launched an IoT Competency for the first time this week which again is really driving at some of those emerging technologies you heard Jeff talk about like AI and getting to machine learning and analytics to really help them engage and be more competent and effective in those technologies. >> Yeah. Cheryl, how's the Channel doing? You know, there's been (Cheryl laughs) so much change going on. I remember back when, you know, converged infrastructure first launched. It was like, "Oh, we need to create data center practices "because they were server or storage people." When Cloud rolled out, it was like, "Well, we're workin' with Microsoft. "How do we figure this out?" How is the Channel transforming? How do they look at their business? How do they look at where they add value? >> Absolutely, and I'll tell ya, Stu, I've been in this business a long time, and I don't know a more exciting time when it's moving faster, and that's also true in the partner ecosystem, in the partner community. So we're still going to transact a lot of business the traditional way that we do now, but increasingly I'm hearin' from the partners they're looking at forming new alliances, they're looking at acquisitions, they're buying new skills and capabilities. We really want to help chart that map for them on kind of where the vision is heading and how we can help align with them. So if it's possible, we want to try and help align new alliances and introductions for them with other partners, or as I said continue to bring solutions, reference architectures, to market that can help them enable around it. >> Can you tell us a little bit about what was announced regarding the Dell EMC Ready Stack for Channel Partners and reference architectures? >> So that's a great example of where we're going to always continue to work to bring engineered systems together like a VxRail or a VxBlock. But the Dell EMC Ready Stack is really a certified and tested reference architecture for those partners in those instances where they want to go build it. So we'll tell them, "Here's all the buildin' materials and all the capabilities. "It'll be a completely inclusive Dell Technology stack," but it's a way to give them confidence, mitigate risk, and they can build it and integrate it rather than buying a system that's been pre engineered. >> Cheryl, how has the Dell Technologies World experience different for the Channel partners? You know, one of the feedbacks I always get is, I was like aw, well, I mean everybody from Dell is really busy, and there's certain things you can tell the customers, but the Channel people it's like, "Well, tell us more about the future. "Give us some of that NDA stuff." How do you manage that and, you know, maybe give us a little bit of flavor of what the week is like for them that are attending. >> Well, you've certainly seen the scale of this event, so we call our Global Partner Summit an event inside an event, but we have everything from technical training, where the partners are able to take their exams and certifications. We certainly have Heroes exposition and Heroes going for the Pre-Sales technical community, and we also have an Executive Briefing Center where we're hosting. Right behind me, we have our partner lounge. We're hosting over 800 one-on-one meetings in that partner lounge where the partners get to meet either with customers. They've certainly brought a lot of customers here. They get to meet with Dell EMC executives or the partner executives, and it's really around collaborating, networking. In many ways it accelerates sales opportunities here, so it's a combination of technical training, networking, executive meetings, obviously product launches and announcements that we're bringing to market, the opportunity to really cultivate and work globally in our Global Partner Summit. So it's a pretty active week, but we have everybody rather busy. >> Talk to us about some of the ways that you are incentivizing and rewarding partners for their loyalty. >> Yeah, well thanks for asking. One of the things we announced this week actually is a My Rewards program, and think of this as a way to accelerate incentives to our partners, sales reps and their Pre-Sale SE community. So it's a platform that's going to allow them to redeem points, so you earn these points. You can either get cash cards, gifts, trips, and it really does go directly to their sales reps and their SEs. So we've launched a really comprehensive loyalty program around our storage offerings. This is an excellent sales tool that our partners can leverage with their customers, but it comes with it a host of incentives and rewards for competitive take-out and displacement, growth of new business and new logos. I mean, our partner community in the last year brought 54,000 new customers to Dell EMC, many of those if they're targeting these competitive takeouts, they're eligible for those incentives, and it's a win-win. >> Cheryl, how is the competitive landscape out there? You know, it's always a balance between, "Well, I want to incent you for loyalty, "but it's a diverse market, "and there's a partner you might grow with "that might end up being more competitive "somewhere down the road." How do ya balance that? How do you work through some of those issues in the field? >> Well, you know, we're very focused on tryin' to earn their business and earn the opportunity in the marketplace. We're incredibly fortunate right now that we've been experiencing double-digit growth. Many of our partners would tell us that they're growing faster with us than others, and to be completely honest, when you look at the categories we compete in, we enjoy market leadership positions whether it's in our servers or in storage or all-flash or hyper-converged. So when you really bring that together, it's an opportunity, candidly, for our partners. We're going to have to earn it every day. We recognize and know that they're business people and they work with other companies, but we're just trying to make sure that we bring simple, predictable, and profitable opportunities in both technology and platforms but also in our program and engagement. >> So the transformation theme has been really predominately woven throughout yesterday and today as well, digital transformation, IT transformation, security and workforce transformation. And in fact, Jeff talked about that during his keynote this morning. What are some of the expectations as the partners being on the front lines with customers, and customers are now looking at leaders like Dell Technologies to say, "How do we start utilizing emerging new technologies?" You mentioned IoT, campaign. How are you, what are your expectations for the Channel to be able to help customers build infrastructures that allow them to take advantage of artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, to really be able to then transform their businesses to be competitive? >> You know, I am impressed every day when I meet with our partner community. In many ways they're leading the charge. So the natural engagement of some of these leading edge and emerging new technologies, our partners are doing amazingly innovative work on embedding their intellectual property around these. But for our part, what we want to do is certainly make sure that they're aware of use cases. Here's business outcomes, many of which were kind of shown in the keynote, in the big stage earlier this morning, and we'll just drive competencies, we'll give them demo gear, we'll put them in labs in our Executive Briefing Centers. We actively encourage our partners to take advantage of our Solution Centers and our Executive Briefing Centers. It's a fantastic way for them to come into a sandbox and really immerse themselves in the technology and do proof-of-concepts with their customers. So we're going to continue to be focused on doing market research for them. Must of the marketing material that we're bringing out on these transformational campaigns, the partners can benefit and leverage the research that we've done with companies like ESG and IDC and Forbes to really substantiate and build assessments and use cases for business outcomes with their customers. >> Yeah. Cheryl, we've watched since the acquisition, Dell has been very, you know, focused on, "How do we merge these companies? "How do we put this Channel program together?" Would you say are we at kind of a 1.5 version of that now? How when you would talk to the channel, how much more change did they expect kind of throughout the year? And there's always feedback and learning, of course, but (mumbles). >> Well, we're moving fast, but we're also genuinely committed to predictability and consistency with our partners. So one piece of pretty honest feedback we receive is don't change it all the time, right? Don't change it frequently. And we couldn't be more delighted with the success we've had in our inaugural year. I mean, when you just look at the fact that we unified and brought the program together, the success we're both enjoying, it's not completely broken. So we want to make sure that we can make refinements, we can adapt and be responsive to some of these new technologies and new transformations without really being disruptive and have wholesale change. So you'll see us really listen and continue to take feedback from our partners, but frankly, we feel like we're winning right now, and we want to continue to just try and earn it and keep goin' fast. >> The word that comes to mind in summary is symbiosis. >> Yes, yes. >> Thank you, Cheryl, so much for comin' by, >> Absolutely. and congratulations on growing the partner community this year and having over 800 meetings. Wow, that's a lot! >> I know. >> We're busy. Thank you! >> You are busy, thanks so much. We want to thank you for watchin' theCUBE. We are live in Los Vegas, day two of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman! We'll be right back after a short break. (upbeat music)