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

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its ecosystem partners. >> Good morning, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 19 from Las Vegas, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, Stu, this is day three of two sets of coverage for theCUBE, and this expo hall has not gotten any less busy, tons of people still here. >> Lisa, 65,000, I'm sure the throats are a little bit raw, the feet are tired, but there's so much good information, and yeah, excited to dig in with some more of our guests. >> Yep, so much good information, in fact we have Dell EMC back, yes, we had them yesterday, there's more to talk about today, please welcome a couple of guests, we've got Nick Brackney, senior consultant, cloud product marketing, welcome to theCUBE, your first time. >> Yeah, thank you, thanks for having me. >> Lisa: And Bob Ganley, I feel like it's been about 18 hours, maybe 20. Senior consultant cloud product marketing, welcome back. >> Thank you. >> So guys, lots of news. AWS news shot out of a cannon, one of the things, though, that you can't help but talk about at any event is multicloud. Organizations, CIOs tell us on theCUBE all the time, we have inherited a multicloud, sometimes Dave Vellante calls it a crime scene, right, for various reasons, it's not necessarily strategic, but it is becoming a reality. Talk to us about what Dell EMC is seeing with your customer base, with respect, sorry, that's for Nick, to multicloud, what are you seeing, how are you helping customers navigate this? >> Yeah, I think that there's a lot of diversity in needs with our customer base, and it's really challenging for any one vendor to provide all the solutions that they need, and so that's where it's really about being able to offer them choices and giving them support to be in the right cloud for their workload, and so as we talk about this idea of cloud in the state you said, if they're in one or more clouds, it's really important that they have consistency across those clouds, because otherwise, the crime scene turns into something that's a management headache for everyone. >> Nick, wonder if we could tease that out a little bit, because consistency's important, when I think about multi-vendor in the data center for years, VMWare did a pretty good job of extracting the certain layer. I'm a little worried that we're trying to recreate some of the silos of the past in giant cloud environment, so how do we make sure we learn from the past, and because skillsets are very different, the products underneath are very different, so while there might be certain point applications that I might need, the message here at Amazon is, they've got the broadest and deepest environments, they are, if you're doing multicloud, they're going to be doing one of them, so bring us inside your customers and how we make sure that we don't end up with that crime scene that they've talked about, and all the pieces. >> I think first off, you can't look at technology in a vacuum, you really have to be thinking about people and processes. What can a business actually consume? We run into a lot of talk about containers, and containers is a great path forward to go cloud-native, and that's really easy if you're starting from scratch. If you have 1000 apps, though, that currently sit on-premises, it's really challenging to make that move, and which ones do I replatform, which ones do I lift and shift, and so I think that's one of the things we're doing with our work with VMWare Cloud Foundation, is we have one platform that can handle both virtualization and containers, so you can have a orderly progression towards cloud-native. >> Talk about the people part of it, I think we talked about this a little bit yesterday, Bob, and that's actually something that has come up in a lot of our conversations, is it's not just about the technology, for many reasons. How do you help the people, 'cause part of that's cultural, and that's really a challenging change to undergo. >> You know, I think you have to meet them where they are, right, and that's, I read an article and someone said for analytics that most CEOs still are using Excel, there are all these other really advanced analytics things, but that's what they're most comfortable with. So when we're looking at the fact that all these organizations have really standardized on VMWare, that's a really easy move for them to make, because you can take your existing skillsets, the investments you've made in the software-defined data center, and now you can extend them to the cloud, and you can take the existing best practices that you have in your data center, and you can move those to the cloud, so you're not surprised when you get there with all of the configurations and all the management, all the security challenges. >> And I want to add to that, actually, because I think one of the underlooked aspects of this whole thing, is the idea that, like you said, if you have silos of operation, then you've got challenges, and so I like to say security, for example, begins with who are you, what do you have access to? So if you have different ways of doing that on-prem, than in cloud, you're by definition at a riskier state. Same thing for compliance, same thing for automation, if you've got multiple different tools to use, it's just harder to do. So I think the consistency thing is very, very important. >> Excellent, Bob, you're the straight man for my next question here, because if you listen to our hosts here of AWS, they don't use that multicloud word. Yet the biggest conversation of discussion that I've had across with AWS, with customers, and with the ecosystem here has been Outposts, and absolutely, Amazon might not even use the hybrid term, but absolutely, it is that extension between consistency, between the public cloud and in my data center, so I'd like to hear Dell's perspective, Outposts of course, hugely important. >> Sure, I think it'd be really easy or almost trite to say that "Oh, Amazon is justifying "the fact that there's on-prem infrastructure," right, I mean Andy comes out and says "97% of IT revenue is still on-prem." I think everybody understands that. I think it comes down to the following. Investment protection, trust, and choice. And investment protection is about, organizations today have a huge investment in the way they're doing business now, and clearly VMWare is the lion's share of on-prem virtualization today, so it makes sense to extend that investment toward hybrid cloud, and there's a very natural path to do that. From the perspective of trust, when you look at on-prem infrastructure, who better to work with than Dell EMC, I mean we're number one at HTI, number one in servers, number one in storage, we know how to do on-prem, and now with Dell Technologies Cloud, we're extending that to a very consistent hybrid cloud model with AWS. And the third thing is choice, which is, Outposts is interesting because it's a completely managed service. Some organizations want that managed service. What we bring to the table with Dell Technologies Cloud is either Dell Technologies Cloud Platform, which is you manage it the way you normally manage it, or, VMWare Cloud on Dell EMC, which is a completely managed service, so we have the data centers as a service offering, we have the you manage it, mister customer, which aligns with the way they're doing business, and I think last but not least is this whole idea of cloud economics, and this concept of allowing people to pay for things by the drink, which is something that we're helping organizations do with their on-prem. >> Bob, actually, just want to make sure I understand, when we talk about that managed service, the Outposts solutions with VMWare is expected in 2020, does that then roll under the Dell Technology Cloud offering on VMWare, I just want to make sure how that is expected to go. >> Yeah, so no it doesn't, because that's essentially the Amazon hardware with the VMWare stack on it, on-premises, and what we're offering for a data center as a service solution is VMWare Cloud on Dell EMC, formerly known as Project Dimension, which is the trusted Dell EMC hardware with the verified VMWare stack, very tightly integrated, so it's cloud-like operations on-prem. >> So similar consumption models, similar design points, but different hardware stacks. >> Well, multiple consumption models, which is, I think... >> Yeah, and I was going to say, one of the other things you have to look at, too, when you're thinking about, why now, why is this happening, and I think it's because people are starting to realize, something that we've been saying for a long time, which is that cloud isn't a place, it's an operating model, and so by being able to bring that into the data center, what you're doing is you're extending it to more workloads, and I think that's great for customers, that's what they want, and that's what we're trying to build, ourselves. >> What are some of the, Bob, a question for you, aligning with Stu's question, this week, since the announcement of Outposts, what Amazon is doing there, announced last year, coming to fruition now, what are some of the things that you're hearing around the event from Dell EMC customers, are they understanding what that opportunity is for them? >> Yeah, and we've been doing this for a while, right, so VMWare Cloud on Dell EMC has been general availability since VMworld of 2019, we announced it in 2018, we've got tons of customers that are very interested, thousands of customers running within VMWare Cloud on AWS, and now looking at this data center as a service solution, as an extension to that on-prem. The thing that's cool about it is, they don't have to touch the hardware, they don't have to touch the software, it all gets managed remotely, but it's used just like on-prem infrastructure, right? So it's a great solution. >> Nick, one of the things that always gets talked about here is, there's a big shift from CAPEX to OPEX at the show, one of the things that surprises me is customers get all excited, Amazon comes out with a new feature and they say, "Hey, we're going to give you Insights, "and we're going to save you 30% "over what you were paying last year, "just because you probably weren't configuring it great." In your world, if you came to a customer and said "Oh, hey, we oversold you stuff," and this there, they'd probably be walking you out the door, but Dell's been doing some interesting things, going more cloud-native with the economic model, maybe speak a little bit to that. >> I mean, I think it's something that's great, cloud economics makes it easy to get going with a small investment and scale out, and move more quickly, be more agile, and so what we wanted to do was bring that same agility and ability to kind of innovate and not have the cost be a barrier, by then extending that across our portfolio at Dell Technologies On Demand. So that's really about whether you want to do metered usage, whether you want a subscription or whether I want to purchase hardware up front, wait till I'm going to hit the switch and turn it on and then I'll start getting billed, but then I have the idea, the same thing as cloud, where it's this idea of unlimited capacity at your fingertips, right, it's not actually unlimited, we sometimes see that even some clouds run out of space, but you're able to move quicker, you don't have to wait those three, four, six weeks for the hardware to come in, because it's already sitting there. >> Legacy businesses don't have that much time, because there are invariably in every industry, there is a born in the cloud company that is moving faster, has a different mindset, and it's probably chomping at the bit right behind them, take over that business if that legacy enterprise isn't able to work fast enough. >> Absolutely, but what really makes this really interesting is that we're still offering you more choices, right, so the thing is, there are certain workloads that break cloud economics, whether it's massive storage that, I always tell people "You spin up and spin down VMs, "you never delete data because that is super valuable "to your business," or, we find certain workloads that are steady state, right, cloud is really great when you're scaling up, scaling down, when you're flipping off the switch of the lights when you leave the room. If you leave it on all the time, it can add up, and so what's really nice, not just about bringing the cloud economics into the data center, but by bringing that consistent experience across both the data center and your cloud, is now you can let the business requirements and the application requirements determine what the best place to put the workload is. >> Sorry, so Bob, one of the big themes at this show is transformation, you've got it on your hat. When we talk about the cloud-native space, we always said, "They were the cloud-native companies, "they were born in the cloud." We said, "There are many companies now "that are becoming born again in the cloud." Bring us inside a little bit, what you're seeing, the discussion point is you just can't incrementally get there, it requires executive management, involvement, and it is a radical change in the way you build your applications, and that has a ripple effect through everything that you do. >> It absolutely does. When you think about it, there is an evolution happening in application architectures, and that evolution is from physical to virtual, to now infrastructure's a service to add additional efficiency and automation, orchestration, now container as a service, as we see organizations moving toward cloud-native and containers, to platform as a service and function as a service. And when you think about that, organizations need to bring their existing investments and virtualized applications forward as they're adding on containers, as they're looking at this next generation cloud-native. So we believe the right solution is to preserve that investment and bring that forward so we've been adding cloud-native standard upstream Kubernetes distribution to our Dell Technologies Cloud Platform, and that allows organization to extend our investment, so that's one thing is that architectural evolution. The second thing is what I call the operational evolution that's happening as well. And the operational evolution is, cloud has revolutionized the way people look at IT because it's so easy to use. So what we're doing is bringing that operational evolution to the data center as well, where we're completely integrating the on-prem infrastructure so that you can life cycle manage it in a automated fashion, and we're doing that both for infrastructure as a service and now for container as a service for Kubernetes. So we're excited about both the architectural and operational evolution. >> And Nick, I'd be curious, your viewpoint of this show, it's really a interesting mix of, you've got enterprise, you've got developers, you've got everything in between and personas, so bring us inside some of the conversations you're having, how you have worked with some of those different personas. >> Well I think it's really interesting, 'cause the shift towards containers means a shift towards DevOps, and when you're looking at that, I think what's lost on the way is, when I talk to my friends who've spent a lot of time as ITOps folks, they think very differently than developers. When something goes wrong, their immediate reaction is, "Please roll it back." Whereas a developer thinks "Hold on, let me add some more "code to this, and we'll fix it that way." And so I think the challenge right now is, the burden is shifting, and it's shifting towards developers and one of the things, I think, with our solution and hopefully project-specific with VMWare, what's coming down the path, where they're injecting containers into vSphere, all of that, hopefully what's going to come out of that is, you're going to make the job a little bit easier for developers, 'cause when you start doing DevOps, or god forbid DevSecOps, and you're burdening these people with all these responsibilities, how are they still going to innovate? That's really a big challenge, and I think, when I'm at a show like this, I hear it from both sides, so it's really fascinating to hear the different perspectives, they're not necessarily aligned. >> Yeah, it just, the quick note on that, in Warner's keynote, he puts out the giant thing on the board, "Everything fails all the time." That's not what the enterprise was used to in the old world, and that's what that transformation is, a little bit uncomfortable for many of 'em. >> And speaking of being uncomfortable, Bob, you talked about cloud, especially next-gen cloud, brings up opportunity, a lot of opportunity, but with it comes architectural change, as you mentioned, operational change, but cultural change. Final questions and thoughts, Nick, from you, what are in the respect of the opportunity but those changes, what are some of the biggest mistakes that you're seeing enterprises make, and how can they avoid those? >> Yeah, so I mean the first thing is, I think that people having sweeping mandates. When people say cloud first as a mandate, I think what they're missing in that is, there's so much exuberance, they're not thinking through, what does the workload need, what does the business need, and cloud should absolutely be a big part of anyone's strategy moving forward, but you need to be thoughtful about what you do, and Pat Gelsinger talks about, there's three laws, the laws of physics, the laws of economics, and the laws of the land. I always joke around, we still haven't managed to find a way to travel faster than the speed of light, so latency is always an issue. And then the second thing is, around the shared responsibility model. When you move to infrastructure as a service, people think, "Wow, they're taking care of everything, "this is super easy." And what they haven't always figured out is that they're still on the hook for a lot of things from a security perspective, from a manageability perspective, from a data protection perspective, and if you fail to actually address those, then you might run into some problems down the line. >> Guys, good stuff, always so much to talk about, thank you both for joining Stu and me on the program today, Bob, I'll probably see you again at the airport tonight. >> No doubt. >> We appreciate you joining Stu and me. And, stick around on theCUBE, 'cause later today, Andy Jassy, AWS CEO is going to be on. But for now, I'm Lisa Martin for Stu Miniman, thanks for watching theCUBE. (techno music)

>> Narrator: From the SiliconANGLE Media Office, in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here are your hosts, Dave Vellante, and Stu Miniman. >> For several years now, the analysts at WikiBound have been talking about taking the cloud, the public cloud, operating model, and bringing it to your data, wherever that data lives. Hey everybody, this is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Welcome to HCI: A Foundation For IT Transformation. We're here with Chad Dunn, who's the Vice President of Product Management and Marketing, at Dell EMC. Chad, good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, glad to be here, good to spend time with you guys. >> So, we talk a lot about, you know, VxRail, speaking of foundations. Give us a quick update. What is it, and what's new with VxRail? >> Okay, well big news in VxRail land, right, we just completed our transition under the 14th generation of Dell Power Edge servers, so this gives us a substantially more powerful platform, a substantially more predictable performance, and a lot more configuration options that make it fit a lot of different workloads that our customers have, so it really makes it prime time for HCI. >> So, where is the power and performance come from? Is that predominantly, kind of, new compute? >> That's a big piece of it. Some of that is software as well, right? vSAN underlies VxRail as a software defined storage layer, and we've seen pretty amazing increases in performance, just from software, from our 13G, to our 14G transition, but when we look at that performance now, on 14G servers, with the Intel Skylake chipset, we're seeing 2x performance over the last generation, and we're seeing latencies that are very, very low. And that has to do with, more and faster memory channels, more threads, overall faster processors, so really off the hook, in terms of the performance that we're seeing. >> Chad, when we look at HCI, it's really about the software layer, often, it gets overlooked, you know, what actually has to happen between the software and that underlying hardware? Are there optimizations, does it matter if I'm using the software, you know, what's optimized for that next generation Intel chip? >> Yeah, it's all about the software, or so our software vendor would say, but we know that when you're treating something as a system, you need that hardware and that software to work together, in perfect unison, as a system, and, you know, we've done a lot in this generation, working with the PowerEdge team to make sure that we have the right hardware, hooks, and design points that are focused on HCI. That goes from things like the devices that we use to boot up, and where we would execute the hypervisor kernel, to network connectivity, and really importantly, to the inband channels that we use to update all of the little pieces of firmware that operate the hardware inside the system, right? You need to be able to treat those as a system, update, lifecycle manage those, all in context of one another, so having direct and deep, meaningful access into that hardware is critically important when you're operating a system like this. >> When we've looked at, kind of, our cloud strategy, in general, it's about the data. We talk about data, it's things like predictability and latency, it's about, kind of, the power of the underlying thing, maybe, give us a little bit more specifics, as to what you're getting in this generation. >> So, the big difference here, above and beyond the performance, which is about 2x what we saw from the last generation, if we look at the same hardware, the same software, running on the two different pieces of hardware, about 100% better. But that's really just part of the story. It's the predictability of latency that's critically important. If you're going to migrate Tier 1 workloads under this infrastructure, you need to ensure that other workloads are not going to disturb that performance. So when we look at this, we look at how the IOs per second increases, and we look at the overall latency. How long does that latency line stay flat, right? So when we look at this generation, we see over 2x the IOPS, but the horizontal line where we look at the response time in latency, it stays flat nine times longer in this generation than in the last. So if you've got that sub-millisecond response time, even at very high IOPS, you can put a lot of different workloads on that same infrastructure, and still get predictable performance. >> I think, the other thing that people don't understand, is that, oh, HCI, it's just like, it's that little LEGO block you build, but it's not just one LEGO block, what have you seen from customers, what's kind of, the portfolio, what are the decisions that they have to make, to kind of, pick the right configuration? >> Sure, so yeah, when you're a kid and you get your first LEGO set, you get a lot of pretty generalized blocks, they're all, you know, square and some are rectangle, but not a lot of variability. When you get up into the big leagues of the LEGO Star Wars set, right, you've got a lot of specialized parts, and you can do really advanced, really cool things. That's really where we're at with HCI right now. If you want to really tune the infrastructure for the workloads that you have, you need a lot of variability in the processors you choose, the amount of memory, the speed of memory, and even the storage. It could be hybrid, some people still choose hybrid HDDs, but even within flash, people will choose SAS or SATA drives depending on the performance and cost benefits that they want to realize. So being able to scale up and down the processors, the memory, different types of storage, is critically important, so you can fit it into those different workloads. Also, a lot more people use this for VDI, and for high end imaging. So the ability to pack these things full of graphical processing units, and still be able to power and cool the things, is critically important. We have a lot of applications in those verticals where there's video processing and these are required. So, we don't just have one model of VxRail, we've got a number of different VxRail models, all of which can scale up, and then of course, HCI can intrinsically scale out. So that lets you really fine-tune it and get to that expert level, in terms of your LEGO building blocks. >> So Chad, a minute ago, you mentioned workloads. So as you're bringing this sort of 14th generation server technology to VxRail, how has it affected workloads, what are you seeing is the sweet spot for workloads? >> So if I were to think back a year, the question that every customer would ask, is how do I know which workload is right for HCI? And a lot of times they even lack the vocabulary and taxonomy to say, okay, that fits, that doesn't fit. What's happened in the meantime though, are the software's gotten so much better, the hardware's gotten so much faster and more predictable, that the question is, well, what workloads are not right for HCI yet? And there are very few that aren't. So, we've seen people generally start off with one workload, right? Maybe it's VDI, maybe it's a database, and then they start to move other, as they get comfortable with it, they move other workloads over to it. Obviously, we've got a big install block, or install base of VxBlock, and Vblock. We see a lot of those customers start to migrate workloads from there onto a layer of HCI. And more and more, those are becoming Tier One workloads. Crate & Barrel is a great example, a great customer of ours. They're moving their point of sale systems onto VxRail. Now for a retailer, your point of sale system, that's about as mission critical as you can possibly get, so they and others now have the confidence to start to move these things over. The only outliers that we see are some of these very big data applications that are hugely write intensive, and we actually usually end up selling a layer of hyper-converge with our Isilon arrays, to store that data, and then put a layer of hyper-converge compute around it, because in some ways, hyper-converged is just a better way to server, if you know what I mean. >> Wondering if you can talk about the business impact, what a customer's seeing, how are they quantifying the value of these systems, share some stories, or color there. >> Sure, it's all about operational expense savings, right? How much more efficiently am I going to be able to operate this infrastructure? It's not so much about capital acquisition costs. So when you look at the typical operational expense savings, and that comes from us doing all the lifecycle management of the hardware, of the software, of the cluster as a system, you see those costs go down. Really good example, is First Credit of British Columbia. Another one of our good customers. Now, they've deployed this, they've seen 30% OPEX savings and they've seen 50% power and space savings. You get a smaller package because you don't have separate storage array, separate servers, but, you also have really, one function that needs to operate your environment and that's the virtual administrator. He or she is the one that really operates everything, you don't have separate storage, separate compute, separate virtualization teams that have to look after the infrastructure. So, that first run is very easy, very fast to deploy, but it's day two through 700 and day 900 where you see that recurring operational expense saving where it really pays off for customers, all the updates and updates and life cycle management. >> Yeah, so Chad you talk about the success and all the customers. What about the customers that haven't looked at kind of the HCI space yet? What are they missing? You know, what do you say to those customers that maybe, you know, aren't sure if the waters right to jump in yet? >> So there's really three ways that you're going to encounter a customer who's going to consider HCI. You're either going to refresh a server, you know, your servers are up for maintenance and you're going to take a look at HCI as the next step in your evolution of your compute strategy. Or you're going to refresh your storage, and you're going to look at hyperconvergence as the next step in the evolution of your storage strategy. Or you've got that one workload that's probably net new and it's going to be, sort of, an isolated case and they need an infrastructure and they need to stand if up fast. That third case is really the one that drove the initial adoption of HCI, I can't tell you how many of our customers started with VDI. I mean, it's so cliched now to talk about VDI as killer app for HCI, but that's how so many people started. Because it's, you know, a very bound, isolated infrastructure and from there they get comfortable with it and they start to bring other workloads onto it. So, if you're thinking about refreshing your servers and if you're thinking about refreshing storage, it's time to kick the tires onto HCI. If you've got a workload that you need to stand up quickly and you don't know how big it's going to be, you know, one, two, three years down the road. It's another opportunity to look at HCI. Because you can start with a very small infrastructure, but you can grow it to a very very large one. >> What if we could talk a little bit about digital transformation, I mean, everybody's talking about digital transformation, and to us, digital transformation is all about how you leverage data and the edges exploding. We've envisioned sort of a three tier data model. You've got the edge, you've got maybe an aggregation point and you bring it back to the cloud. And that cloud can be a public cloud or it can be on-prem. So you've got to have some kind of cloud infrastructure to manage all this data. So where does this fit in the context of transformations and why does hardware matter? >> Yep, well let's go from the end and work back to the beginning. Hardware matters because of form factor, for one. As you start to push compute out to the edge, right, you want form factors that are small, don't consume a lot of power but, you know, still have a lot of processing power and can manipulate that data. Right, the whole internet of things phenomenon that is, creating all this data out at the edge, you know, presents us with a conundrum right? The data itself is not that valuable, the insights that we get from the data are immensely valuable. Bringing all that data back to the core to do something with is not cost effective. So, it's how do we turn the data at the edge into information and then how do we funnel that valuable information back to the core and leave the unvaluable data out where it is. hyper-converge fits really well there because you can have, you know, devices of very small form factors that are very quick to deploy, very easy to manage remotely. At the aggregation point you can have, simply, larger versions of the same thing or more of the same thing. And then finally at the core you can have very large clusters of hyperconverged appliances, like VxRail, to do your processing. Now the key is from an operational perspective you've still got a single pane of glass that manages everything. Right, it's still the same set of tools, it's still the same hardware and software lifecycle management process that happens out at the edge, at the aggregation point and at the core. So again, it comes back to the operational expense of making decisions closer to the data and then managing everything with a consistent set of tools. >> So I wondered if we could also talk about the competition and when Stu and I think about competition in this sphere we look at, first of all this all sort of software defined, everything can moved into software defined. So we see two vectors, one is head to head competition with other software defined suppliers, and the second big competitor is, hey, I'm just going to roll on my own. >> Chad Dunn: Right >> So let's start with the former, why Delium C vs vendor A, B, C or D? >> Sure, sure it really gets down to what your goal is as a customer and we obviously have multiple options within our own portfolio and those perfectly, you know, find solutions for a lot of people. But, you know, number one if you're a VMware user and you want to optimize around the VMware user experience, then VxRail is the way to go. Because we do co-engineer this with Vmware, it's not just a regular partnership, we have engineers and marketing people and product managers at Vmware that functionally role up to our team and so we do behave as one engineering and one product management organization to really optimize the user experience for VMware. Secondly, architecturally from a VCM perspective, this is a service that's baked into the kernal of vSphere. So, in terms of performance and the overhead that it creates on CPU, memory, et cetera. This is the best game in town. We can do more IO more predictably with flatter latency than really any other solution that's on the market in the HCI space. Every other one takes a virtual storage appliance approach where they have something running on top of the hypervisor. >> Dave Vellante: Right. >> The very long and circuitous data path, we'll performance test against solutions like that all day long, every day, that doesn't worry us at all. So, if you're a vSphere customer, VMware customer it's the most obvious choice and from a performance perspective you're not giving up anything right? We don't want users to have to sacrifice the storage functionality, the performance, the compute functionality. Just because it's hyper-converge and you scale out doesn't mean you can compromise on any to those axis. >> Okay, what about the guys who like to change their own oil in the car and the spark plugs and tune it up and they want to roll on their own. >> (laughs) It's been a long time since I've been able to work on my own car. So I encounter these kind of customers all the time. It's the build your own crowd and it's what they've been doing for a long time. And it's great, alright, I build my own computers at home and I have my own ESX server that I put together. I can't afford a VxRail. (laughing) There's no employee discount. So I'll tell you a story that will hopefully make sense, my first job when I got into this business, I went to Boston College, my first job and work study was to keep a spreadsheet that had all the MAC addresses and all the IP addresses for every host on the BC network and keep those in sync. >> You're really good at that I bet. >> I was excellent at that. That is not a skill set that is in demand right now. Or really even at that time. But when you think about what it means to take a software defined storage product like VMware vSAN and take an x86 server and put those together. Yes, you're getting to the same destination of running vSphere on a host with software defined storage. You're missing the systemness, right? We go to a lot of trouble to make sure we're managing all of things things in the context of the cluster level. All of the little pieces of firmware, and they're roughly 12 or so pieces of firmware that we have to take care of. From the BIOS to the drive controller firmware, the drives, the boss card, which is our boot media, the iDRAC firmware, the backplane, power supplies. In legacy EMC we spent 30 years building arrays. We had all those same challenges with all the different pieces of firmware and software that all had to function as a system, we did that. And we guaranteed that it would live up to 5/9ths of availability for the customer. That's exactly what we do when we deliver VxRail's hyperconverge. If you want to choose to build those things yourself that's fine if you have the skills and that's how you want to operate your business. The 5/9ths is now on you though. Right, because you're the one responsible for bringing all those parts together. So, yeah it's certainly a valid path for others but, the market is shifting and we see more often than not, people are moving towards a buy approach rather than build. >> You bring up a great point. I remember back in the early days before we even called it HCI, you think about vSAN, oh well is the storage admin going to buy it? Is the virtualization admin going to take that over? What's excited me about this wave is the oh, heres the cool stuff that companies are doing now that they're not spending their time keeping spreadsheets of MAC addresses. >> Chad Dunn: Yeah, yeah exactly. >> What is the kind of, you know, owner of this, look like in your environment? And any cool stories you're hearing from customers transforming their organization. >> By and large the operator is your virtual admin. The person who is at home in vCenter and vROps, you know, maybe even vRA if they're going full infrastructure as a service. That's really the user of this, and the dynamic you mention is similar to what we had with Vblock, right. Customers who went Vblock, who said, I'm going to change my operating model to a virtual administrator versus compute, storage, network. You know, customers who didn't change the operating model were not happy Vblock customers. Ones that did change the model did. And, I'll tell ya a real off script anecdote, recently I was traveling in Europe, and I started playing a game with the sales guy we were traveling with. Because in Europe, very often, they have more of an affinity to putting their logos on the sides of buildings in a lot of European cities. So, as we would go to these different cities and we went from Stockholm all the way down to Rome, to Switzerland, to Amsterdam. You know, we're just spotting VxRail customers, right, whose going to spot the most. And the one really interesting one is we checked into a hotel, you know, late night in Switzerland. Next morning we meet for breakfast and he goes, "Did you spot the rail customer?" I said "Who was it?" We went into the bathroom and they have these, you know, squeeze bottles that have the soap in the shower and it's a cosmetics company and they're located in Germany. And they do, obviously, a ton of business all over Europe, and they had outsourced a lot of their IT because, you know, their core competency is not IT, it's cosmetics. And they now have one guy that looks after all of IT for this company rather than outsource it to two different companies to manage all this and he runs it all on VxRail. So, transformative yes, to that company very transformative. But, at a very small scale, but that pattern sort of repeats itself the higher that you scale. >> Alright we're out of time but where can people go to get more information on this and other products your HTI strategy. >> If I were them I'd go to dellemc.com/hci. >> Excellent, Chad, thanks very much, Stu appreciate you co-hosting with me and check out videos on thecube.net, this and other videos will be up there. Thanks for watching everybody, Dave Vellante for Stu Miniman we'll see you next time! (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for Dell EMC World 2017. This is theCUBE's eighth year of covering, since the inception of theCUBE. EMC World, which is now called Dell EMC, with the first year of the combination coming together. Exciting, a lot of storylines here. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE, and my co-host with SiliconANGLE, Paul Gillin. Our next guest, Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell EMC Storage Division. It sounds weird to say that because EMC used to be a storage company. Now, they're a part of Dell Technologies with a zillion brands. Jeff, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> So first, explain quickly what the storage division is, because Chad Sakac does converge infrastructure, but, you own all the storage. >> Jeff: Correct. >> So just quickly, just. >> Yeah, real quick, keeping it simple, if you think about the components and the building blocks, you have Ashley running compute, you have Tom Burns running network, you have myself running storage, and you have Beth Phalen running data protection, and then Chad's the converge platform, so when we integrate the solution, Chad has that piece. So yes, all storage, and that would be Legacy or Heritage Dell storage, but also Heritage and Legacy EMC storage. All that came together so, just massive revenue, massive amounts of customers, and then obviously tons of engineers around the world. >> You got a lot of work to do. Obviously storage is not going away. It's changing radically and in different ways. Certainly cloud is accelerating it. The data center world is changing. They call it data center. They don't call it server center. They call it the data center 'cause there's more data coming. So I got to ask you, one of my favorite quotes in your keynote this morning was, "We have self-driving cars. "Why don't we have self-driving storage "or autonomous storage?" Which is provocative, but also very relevant. Can you explain what you meant by that, and let's dig deeper into that. >> Yeah. I mean, actually, it's one of my favorite topics, actually. So I have these notions of the pillars of innovation, right? And I want to start looking at, to your point, things are changing in the markets and in the way customers are using our products, and I want to embrace that change and innovate around that change. The notion of the day in the life of the storage admin, or the day in the life of the data center admin, and the day in the life of just about anybody using the product. We got to make it simpler, right? It goes back to consumer simplicity, a lot of this stuff. What we're trying to do there is actually make the storage be smart enough to actually just take care of itself. It's kind of the set it and forget it notion. So, as part of autonomous storage, we look at four attributes simplistically, in regards to how you would have a self-driving system. The first one is about being application-centric, 'cause, at the end of the day, it's all about the app and the workload. We all know that, right, and that's what the users care about. So the way I kind of looked at that this morning is, the example is, that's like telling your car where you want to go, or is it a turn-by-turn decision, right, that you would give it? The second thing is about being policy driven. I'm not going to say, hey listen, do I want to take the fastest route or do I want to take the scenic route? >> John: Yep. >> Right, simplistically. And then, I'm going to be honest, that stuff's relatively easy and we do a bunch of that stuff today. Really when it starts to get the next level is when this stuff becomes self-aware, right? Understanding its resources, and then understanding if you're in or out of those boundaries. So, am I, you know, swerving out of my lane? Do I have enough gas? Dot, dot, dot, right, as an example. And then where it gets really powerful is the fourth component for me, is self-optimization. That's being able to understanding what, you're self-aware and then making a better outcome for your customer. At the end of the day, that could be, hey, there's not enough charging stations to get to your destination, or you don't have enough charge, or better yet, the storage will actually or the system would tell you, hey take this path. There's enough charging stations. I'll get you there on time and safely, right? >> So you'd be very happy if you had the brand bumper sticker of the Tesla of storage. >> Absolutely. >> To your point about the stations, you know, people love Teslas. It's very sexy and it's relevant. I got to ask you about machine learning. It's obviously AIs hyped-up. We call it, not artificial intelligence, more augmented intelligence. That's a better definition because artificial intelligence is this weak, weak word. (laughing) It doesn't really exist, it's kind of out there. But, augmentation of value is about machine learning and deep learning. These are the learning systems you mentioned. Self-optimization, that's basically learning machines. >> That's right. >> What are you guys doing around big data, I meant big data machine learning and some of these things? >> So we're doing a handful of things. So along the keynote, I mentioned builtin analytics. That's two things, you know. Dell EMC, we store, protect and secure more data than anybody else in the world, par or not. So, you know and I used to joke, EMC used to be known for where information lives. Dell Technologies and Dell EMC has to be known for where information comes alive, right? And actually providing value or generating value for our customers. So, what we're going to do is, we're going to have builtin capabilities into the array, but also we're going to plug into the broader ecosystem, you know, with analytics and service providers to really help drive that value and that creation. So, you'll see a lot more around the storage itself around that self-learning and understanding. That kind of, the core components of an array. What makes it run healthy or unhealthy enables the customer to better utilize and add more value to their stack. Then also, going into that broader ecosystem, making sure that they can really drop that value to their customers and to their business. >> What pieces will you be delivering first? >> On the storage side itself, specifically, we'll be, we already have a lot of products that have probably two or three of the capabilities. So between app-centric, policy driven, and self-awareness, those are the ones we're on right now, big time. And I have a team focused on the machine learning, so we can really start self-optimizing. We actually just, we mentioned, I don't know if the guys that were on, where all the folks we've had on the show talked about a thing called cloud IQ? >> Paul: Yes, they did. >> That was something that we built a SAS model in the cloud, which is all about machine learning. >> So, that's part of this whole rollout, is moving to the cloud eventually. >> Oh, absolutely. It's critical. >> So another quote that I have off from your keynote, because it had some great soundbites, Isilon, one of the products in your portfolio, "Isilon is known to be the gold standard "for storage in the genome sequencing." Obviously, with the massive amounts of computers available, certainly cloud computing has now made it possible to do amazing things with the data, and make that literally come alive, and hopefully people could live longer. But, genome sequencing is actually doable, and price points at. >> It's crazy, probably the last two years alone, it's dramatically and drastically just reduced. >> But why is Isilon the gold standard for sequence? What specifically is it that's great about it? >> Well, it basically, in regards to the data structure and how we can process that big data, and make sense of it quickly as we analyze it, there's nothing faster in the market. And it'd be interesting, and now that we've brought out the Isilon All-Flash array with the new infinity platform, we've taken something that, two years ago took weeks, down to days, down to hours, and with the All-Flash array we've taken it down to minutes, 22 minutes to be exact. >> So I got to to ask you, I'll let you think about the portfolio question and I'm going to ask in about a minute how you're going to rectify all that, where the overlap is or isn't, so you can work on that, but the next question is, the industry, you're not seeing a lot of start-ups trying to do what Isilon did. You heard Isilon guys leaving, starting companies, and everyone's kind of pivoting, but you are seeing startups in the white spaces, data protection, so question, how hard is it to do a startup right now and get venture funding, because it seems to be scale is the issue, and it's hard to be a, quote, pure storage company, pun intended. Pure Storage was the last company to challenge you guys. (laughing) >> You know, I've also thrown that app in there as well, it's standing on their own, regardless of that. But, let's be clear, this market is consolidating. That's good for us, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So, with our size and scale, Dell and EMC, and Dell Technologies together, our size, our scale, our buying power, unmatched by anybody. It's going to be hard, for you know, there's a lot of companies. >> Hard nut to crack, for a start up to come in and it could be the table stakes are too high. >> So in regards, the innovation, spending R&D, value chain that we get, efficiency, buying power, intel, I mean think about all the stuff around the whole ecosystem, it's just really hard to do, so this market is consolidating. We're good with that. What I want to do is consolidate this market faster, and I want to drive more share of this market in regards to that, and I think it's really tough. So, you've seen small guys be bought recently. Some guys that aren't doing well. Some people, >> Acquihires. >> Maybe some of these orange people are really in the red, going back to your pun. So, they're struggling, right, some of these guys are struggling, so I really think this is an opportunity, as we force this market as it consolidates, for us, I think it's a real big thing. >> Alright, so the question on the consolidation, sorry Paul to interrupt, but okay. I get the consolidation. Now the growth, we're going to put the pedal to the medal. It's going to come from where? You got a mature market, you're consolidating. You lock that in, so that's big dollars by the way. It's not like small numbers, and the table stakes are high so, storage going to crack that nut. Then you got to have the growth strategy where there's a hockey stick opportunity. >> Yeah, so, from a storage perspective, let's be clear, they're going to have the growth. It's going to come through things like HTI. It's going to come through things like software-defined, in regards to how we do that, right? That's obviously part of, software-defined is part of my portfolio as well, so, it will be a journey in regards to where we grow. The traditional space is huge, let's be very clear. It's massive, right. We have to do that and do that extremely well, and protect that, and make sure our customers are taken care of, but as they go on their journey, if it's software-defined, or cloud, or what have you, we want to make sure we're relevant can help with that. So, one will be taking share in that space, there'll be opportunities as the consumption models, the technology, and the deployment models change, we'll be front and center in all of those. >> Speaking of software-defined, essentially that can deposition some of the storage elements below it. Cisco is wrestling with that right now. Where they sort of held off for a couple of years on software-defined network, and they're finally embracing it. What are you doing to balance the need for your, the elements of your portfolio to shine, with also the need to get customers to software definition? >> Absolutely, so, right now, I mean, it's a journey. Let's be clear, right, so, I have a, actually, a large customer that was on stage with me. I'll leave their name out, if anyone wants to watch who I talked to on day one, they'll know who I'm talking about. They're on a journey. Right now, today, they're probably one of the, I would say, leaders in software-defined storage and driving software-defined storage is part of their IT transformation and their data centers. They're 20% software-defined, 80% still traditional physical infrastructure. They have a big stake in the ground. In three or four short years, 2020, they're going to be 50/50. Right, and these the guys that are leading and driving. So just give the folks a little bit of balance in regards to yes, that's where their growth will come from, this is where the appeal is, but it will be a journey in how we get through that, but also for me, going back to scale and Dell Technologies, I have products like Scale IO. I have virtual Isilon, I have virtual Unity. In regards to what we do with ECS, that's an object store, so file blocker object, we have it. And then I have wonderful 14G servers from my friend Ashley in the compute team. Go well together. >> So, Pat Gelsinger's talking about a developer-ready infrastructure. You've mentioned on your keynote, I thought was clever, the cloud-ready storage. Talk about that dynamic because, love this soundbite, "Storage has to be cloud ready, cloud connected, "build out on off prim, and live in a multi-cloud world." Don't comment on the multi-cloud. We think that's going to happen. Not ready for primetime right now. I'm pretty certainly it is happening. Their is some latency issues on multi-cloud. >> Sure >> We don't want to digress. But hybrid is definitely happening, but multi-cloud is the gateway, hybrid cloud is the gateway to multi-cloud. Dealing with legacy to cloud native, that gap with hybrid. How do you look at that, cause that's truly going to be a great opportunity for you, and being cloud storage ready, I'm sorry, cloud ready. >> Cloud ready. >> Ready storage, how do you make that happen? >> Yeah, so, cloud connections is one of the big ones for me. So, the ability to connect to the cloud and allow people to move, seamlessly move data in and out of the cloud. So depending if it's a traditional on prim or off prim, so we have great technologies for file, we have CTA, which is a cloud tiering appliance, all file based, gets rave reviews from our customers and we're able to help them not only on our products but actually on some competitor file products to move it off to the cloud if need be, which has actually been a pretty big win for us. In addition to that, Isilon has a notion of cloud pools that people haven't seen, but again it's a transparent seamless data mobility from Isilon, from core to the cloud, if you will. Then, lastly we have a cloud array, which is a block device that allows us to move block data from a traditional asset into the cloud as well, so, we have a handful of products or features that are natively in certain products today. We'll be evolving that over time. >> You got everything! >> Well we'll be evolving that over time too, so we want to have a more coherent simple storage for our customers, right? It doesn't matter what the data type is, we want to be able to present it to the cloud. >> But you, by that I mean EMC, were late to the Flash market, but have caught up, are now the leaders in the Flash market. Phenomenal growth year over year. What did you do to pull that off? That's kind of counter-intuitive. >> Focus and energy, and a lot of great engineers. I'll be honest with you, alright. And then a great sales team behind it as well. So, we were late to the game. We made some decisions to lead with certain products and drive certain products where if we, you know if you took a step back, I think we'd said, "Hey, listen, we all agreed Flash was critical. Flash will be everywhere, compute, storage, network." And then you could debate on the consumption model, if it would be all Flash systems versus hybrid systems, or what have you. At the end of the day, Flash was pretty critical, and I think we're all on the same page there, in regards to how you want to attack the problem, if it's a hybrid or all Flash, that's maybe where we got a little stuck in our own way. But then focus from all the teams, if it was Bemax or Midrange or Xtreme IO, Isilon now. Teams have done an amazing job catching up, and then working with Billy and Marius, and the go-to-market teams, they've been phenomenal. It's been a huge shape with our. >> Well that's a good point to my portfolio question, is you guys really worked that problem hard. I think it was a two year window, we saw all kinds of architecture, but that was good timing on that, because you were early on the trend architecturally was happening in a real sense, although late to the game. Things kind of played out and you kind of shaped your portfolio up during that time. Kind of a forcing function. One, is that what happened, and two, what is the current view of the portfolio right now? Do you feel comfortable about the overlap, gaps, things that you think about? >> Yeah absolutely, so let me take the media one first, and go back to Flash specifically. We learned a lot, and yes that did help us shape our portfolios and go forward and actually try to focus specific architectures to specific-use cases to make our customers successful. We also learned is we didn't ever want to be late again. That's why, with NVME specifically, that we actually were major contributors and actually a codeveloper on NVME. Which others can talk about NVME in their marketing material. They weren't actually at the table codeveloping. >> You get the scar tissue, saying if we don't get out in this, we're going to. (laughing) >> That's right, so we've learned and I don't want it to happen again. I want to be a learning organization. I don't want it to happen again, so we're going to be driving that, and we'll be a leader in NVME, and as more media transitions happen in Flash, there'll be more, trust me, a few years down the road beyond that, we're already looking at, we'll continue to make sure that we're a leader in that space. Now on the portfolio, I talk to customers all the time. They love the portfolio in the sense of, that they understand, they believe in the fact that there's no, one size does not fit all. They have said, though, "Hey you got a lot of products "and you have to simplify." In full transparency that's something we've been working through and we'll continue to work through that. We will have overlap, and we want overlap, it's good. >> John: Better to have overlaps than gaps. >> And Joe Tucci was a huge person and I couldn't support more but we want it to be planned overlap versus unplanned overlap, because we want to be making sure we want to make our customers successful, and we say hey, and that we can articulate clearly to our customers why they'd use a product and the value its going to drive for their use-case, for their application. Same thing our sales guys, same thing for our service guys, same thing for our own engineers. We want to keep people aligned and focused on what we're trying to do. So that way, we can provide a better outcome on the other side. >> Are you looking at, when you're looking out at the future, do you see anything disruptive on the horizon? Is there anything that could change this industry fundamentally? >> Obviously, I always keep cloud in the back of mind. It's still something, you know. Depending on how people want to portray it or look at it. People call it a destination, some people call it a media, what have you. I call it a virtual infrastructure. Depending on how you want to define it, there's different ways. >> A mainframe in the sky. >> You know, I say that one always keeps me up at night, depending on how things go, but there's a lot of cool things going on in storage actually where I think, first, let's be clear, storage in general maybe hesitant. It's lost some of the sex appeal, if you will, the attractiveness of it. I think that's starting to come back with some of the things like NVME and cloud-ready and multi-dimensional scaling. There's a whole bunch of things going around there that actually is going to kind of drive that back. Now in addition to that, though, we all know internet of things, machine learning, you know, video, it's exploding. So let's be very clear there'll be a lot, >> Storage is not going away, but the machine learning certainly is going to be a nice jolt in the arm for optimization and automation. >> There's a huge opportunity there, in regards to that. Cloud is one of the big ones, but I think there's a lot of things, I guess the had-wins stay at wins, there's a lot of things in favor to really kind of push us forward. >> Jeff Boudreau, thank you for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate the insight, and candid commentary and analysis and insight into your business. Appreciate it. You got the storage, it's not going away. It's called the data center and the cloud for a reason. It's all about the data and the value of business will be data driven. This is theCUBE bringing data to you here live from Las Vegas at Dell EMC World 2017. I'm John Furrier with Paul Gillin. Back with more, stay with us after the short break. (lively music)