(technology music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to VMworld, we are live on theCUBE, day two of our continuing coverage here. We've had a great day and half so far. I'm Lisa Martin, with my cohost Keith Townsend. We're excited to be joined by two guests from HPE, who are new to theCUBE. We have Leslie Maher, the VP of North American Enterprise Servers and Converged Systems. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> And Satya Vardharajan, Senior Director of Strategic Alliances, from HPE. Welcome to you as well. >> Oh thank you, Lisa. Thanks for inviting us here. >> Absolutely. So guys, let's talk to each of you, Leslie we'll start with you. Tell us about your role, especially in the converged side for HPE, and what you're doing with VMware. >> Great. So, my role at HPE is I'm responsible for enterprise servers and converged systems. What that means is, really our value products. A couple of my key responsibility, one is our HPE Synergy Composable Infrastructure, I'm you've probably heard, people talk about here at the event. We also have converged products around offerings like SAP Hana, and some of the more mission critical servers. So here a lot of the focus has been on Synergy, and our relationship once with VMware, but also solutions around vSan and vCloud Foundation, where Synergy provides some really unique capabilities. >> Yes. And Satya tell us about your role in alliances, and your GTM strategy with VMware. >> Sure, so I manage the VMware Alliance globally, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and this is a very strategic relationship for each HPE. We have a long history with VMware, over 15 years. We've had a great run with VMware. And we continue to innovate everyday. My role at HPE is to make sure that we keep the customer trends in our radar as we copartner and innovate together, with VMware. At VMworld 2017, we've got lots of great and exciting announcements. And we're more than happy to share with them as we get to the discussion today. >> Fantastic >> A big question around converged systems, you guys will have the hyper-converged guys on shortly, but converged systems have kind of gotten a bad rap over the past couple of years. Like, "Oh, that's the legacy." But as you mentioned, SAP Hana systems, what's the relationship between converged systems and Vmware? >> To your point, about seven years ago the industry tried to simplify IT operations by doing converged systems. And that was putting together servers, storage, and networking fabric; and putting it all together for our customers. Where the industry has moved to now, is more software defined capabilities, where not just putting those hardware pieces together but enabling them through software. So hyper-converged as one flavor of that, and we're hearing a lot about that here in the conference, and then at HPE, what we did is we innovated around the best of converged and hyper-converged. Put them together into a new category of infrastructure, called composable. Fully software defined, it does compute, storage, and fabric. And the essential idea here is that you can have any combinations of these elements, through a software defined capability. So it really extends the ability of hyper-converge to multiple workloads. We use this term Composable Infrastructure, in addition to supporting through other products we have hyper-converged. That's where we're seeing the market trend. >> So Leslie, that's a unique concept. This composable concept. It sounds a lot like virtualization. How does the two relate? Can I run virtualization on top of these Synergy systems? >> Great questions. Absolutely. In fact one of the key things with hyper-converged or composable, is the ability to really have virtualized workloads. In addition to that, with our composable infrastructure, we let you also run bare metal, as well as containerized workload. So you have a real range of workloads you can run in one set of infrastructure. And so we can support lots of workloads, different kinds of storage in the environment in fabric. So you have a real range of opportunity. >> Let's talk a little bit about composable and your target market. What is the key message? A lot of, sounds like, flexibility and agility within the technology. What's the key message to your VMware customers that are using the VMware software? >> Sue, with customers who are using VMware software, it's the flexibility. For example, with vSan, we've talked a lot about here at the conference, our relationship with VMware. And vSan is the ability to have software defined storage. And what our HP offerings allow you to do, is to have the ability to scale, compute, and storage independently. So giving you this very flexible environment, to grow your capacity. And then you manage it with this virtualized vSan, software defined storage from VMware. Very simple for our customers to really have a simple operations, and really flexible scale; is what these new applications are requiring. >> As you guys have been talking from a VMware and HPE perspective to customers. How are they receiving this message? >> From a customer standpoint it's very clear. They need to move to the hybrid IT model. And that's kind of the mandate that's coming. They see it on the horizon. But they also want to do it in a very cost effective manner. They want to do it in a very scalable, efficient, and automated manner. And that's when customers look to HPE and VMware to solve the problem for them. And that's where our flagship composable platform Synergy comes in to play. Marrying the benefits of Synergy with VMware's Cloud Foundation Software, which is a very seamless and automated way of consuming a software-defined stack. You bring those two together, what you get is industry's first composable platform, that lets you set up your private cloud, in less than minutes. There also gives you the ability to allocate and reallocate. Again, compute, storage, and networking resources independent of each other, at will. Creating this very flexible platform for traditional workloads, cloud native workloads, private cloud workloads. That's what we're hearing from the customers, they want us to step in, solve this problem. But also give them the visibility on top. We were at a partner panel earlier today, and one of the partners got up and said, "Look. This is all fantastic. You're making the right moves, "You're building the right solutions for us, "But help us understand how you're going to build "That uber layer of visibility, "and more detailed predicative analytics. "To help us get the whole picture. "Because I don't want to use third party tools." And those are the frontiers that HPE and VMworld will continue to work on together, and create new solutions for our customers. >> One of the things this morning that Michael Dell mentioned when he was onstage with Pat Gelsinger, was that Dell EMC and VMware where like peanut butter and chocolate. (Satya laughs) Such a good combination. (Leslie laughs) So one year post combination, has that strengthened the HP VMware partnership with this now umbrella under Dell Technologies? In the last minute or so, talk to us about how that's helped you maybe differentiate. >> Yeah, absolutely. Look, right from the beginning, as soon as the acquisition was announced, there was a lot of skepticism. And that was industry wide. Everybody said, "Hey. How is this going to impact "The rest of the ecosystem?" VMware made it a point, and Michael as well, made it a point to come outright and say, "Look. We don't want to mess with the ecosystem. "The neutrality is very important to us." To make VMware not only thrive, survive, all of the above. So we've seen that in the market. We don't see any material change in the relationship with VMware. Just a few proof points I want to throw out there, we are still the largest OEM for VMware from a product perspective. We have over 500,000 customers together, who make demands on running workloads. Our channel overlap is over 80%. All of this continues to be recognized. We won a lot of awards in the past, the last two years, we won the OEM Innovation Award of the Year. Partner of the Year Award. >> I saw it. I think I may have a photo with you. >> Yeah >> To talk about synergy, pun intended. (group laughs) >> No it is. >> It sounds like it's only a strengthening. >> It is strengthening. 'Cause we took it upon ourselves at HPE, as a challenge to say, "Hey, look. "I know there's a new owner. "But this shouldn't materially change your business, "Because there's so much business at stake." And we cannot ignore the customers. The demand for our joint products is stronger than ever. >> Absolutely. Great, you guys. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing what's new, what's going on, and the commitment to customers. Outstanding Leslie and Satya. Thank you so much. You're now in the category of CUBE alumni. >> Alright, thank you so much. >> That's great. >> We look forward to having you back. >> Thank you. >> And for my cohost, Keith Townsend, I am Lisa Martin. You've been watching live continuing coverage by theCUBE of VMworld 2017, day two. Stick around, we'll be right back. (technology music)