(upbeat techno) [Announcer] Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering NetApp Insight 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of NetApp Insight 2018 There's over 5000 customers, partners, Netappians, analysts, press here. TheCUBE is here as well, I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman back for our second year of covering. We're joined by two guests, one an alumni and one a new guest to theCUBE, Henri Richard EVP a worldwide field and customer operations from NetApp, welcome. >> Good morning. >> Morning. And Kamran Amini, the VP and GM of data center infrastructure from Lenovo, welcome back! >> Glad to be here. >> So guys, Lenovo, NetApp, just about a month ago announced some exciting news, Henri let's start with you, kind of give our viewers who may not be that familiar with the news announcement what this new technology partnership is all about. >> Well, it's a multi-faceted partnership. I think it's important to understand that for us there is a component that has to do with a worldwide engagement of Lenovo around storage solutions that will be infused with NetApp technology. There's a second element, which is the opportunity for us to pull or go to market organization in certain countries, and get to critical mass to cover the needs of customers. And then the last part, the one that's probably the most talked about, is a joint venture in China where we will combine our forces to serve the needs of the very fast-growing Chinese market. >> Alright, yeah. Henri, I was at the Lenovo event where this was announced, want you to give us a little bit about the field engagement, because it really does seem a place where NetApp and Lenovo, there's good synergies there, but there's not a ton of overlap. Maybe explain a little bit from the field engagement. >> That is really one of the reasons we were excited, I think, on both sides to do this agreement. You know, we feel that Lenovo is a fantastic server company, that's demonstrated incredible momentum in the last 12 months. We have ourselves, you know, modestly a pretty nice momentum in the storage business, and in coming together I think we can be stronger in serving the needs of customers that have both compute and storage needs. When we did the analysis of our market coverage, it so happens that there's a lot of places where we're strong and Lenovo can benefit from that, and other places where they're strong, and we can benefit from it, so you're correct in stating that there was not that much overlap. And then lastly, we've put in place a process where our go-to-market organizations are going to combine their strength and help each other in some of accounts where both a strong compute story and a strong storage - needs to be integrated to serve the needs of the customer. >> Let's talk a little bit more, guys, about the impetus from the customers. The keynote this morning, as I was mentioning was jam packed, and we heard a lot, Stu, about the customer experience, and how NetApp is an enabler of customers to harness their data to become data-driven. Kamran, from your perspective, what was some of the customer input that really sort of brought this partnership - and this multi-faceted partnership - together? >> I think as we see customers looking their applications, not only current applications, but emerging applications, data's becoming very critical. And be able to accelerate data and the availability of data is going to be key for them, alright? As you heard earlier this morning, data's gold, right? It's the next oil, as we think about it. So we looked at our customers and at their transforming moving toward machine learning and AI, big data analytics, and it's driving massive amount of data that you have to be able to accelerate and be able to give results back. The partnership was the best of breed here. Looking at a leader partner around all flash and growing massively with their data-management solutions, and us leveraging our server technology and the capability we bring as a data center group, bring the both of best breeds to deliver an end solution for customers is really what we're focused on. And it's all being driven, really, by data, really where we see the acceleration happening in the workload aspect of it. >> You know, I was listening to the keynote this morning it talked about how customers today, it's a hybrid, multi-cloud world, is what NetApp positioned, and what I actually like is both NetApp and Lenovo are really aware and work with, really, the hyper scalers out there. There's a bunch of years that we kind of - there was this fighting from certain vendors out there, it was like, "Don't go that, that's not the future," you know, "We know what we're telling." Maybe talk a little bit about how that plays into philosophy, how you deal with customers, and how that leads to co engineered solutions that you'll work with together. >> Well, I think that both companies have a history of being good partners in the industry. Let's start there. Secondly, you're right, that some vendors in what we call traditional IT, are still fighting the reality of the hybrid multi-cloud, and I think that that's the path to death. Lenovo doesn't have that position, we certainly don't have that position, and we believe that combining our strength, when we're serving the customer to help them go to the public cloud, to help them leverage both great compute capabilities on prem and the extraordinary innovation that happens in the cloud is the right way to serve the customers. >> No, absolutely. I think that customers are looking to be more agile, all right? As their business evolves, and they're seeing competitive nature in their line of business, agility is becoming more and more important. Everybody also has to fit within a budget, so the hybrid-cloud story is really the path. And today, again, Lenovo is serving six of the top 10 hyper-scalers today from a technology, and we believe the hybrid-cloud story for on prem is the path of the future, where the customer adopt and deploy, to be more agile and reactive to their markets. >> George Kurian talked about, in his keynote this morning, that we seemed to kind of initially address, stand up has a massive install base, a lot of enterprises that were not born in the digital age, so he kind of talked about something that reminded me of what you said, Henri, is, "If customers don't adapt, transform rapidly at scale, they're out of business." So NetApp itself has undergone a very significant transformation, I'd love to understand from both of your perspectives, Henri, we'll start with you. How does the NetApp Lenovo multi-faceted partnership deliver differentiators? Presumably Lenovo has a lot of choices to do a partnership with a cloud storage data management company. What are some of those unique things from NetApp's field? >> So, one of the salient points that George made this morning is that for legacy companies, you know, they have to understand that the fact that they already have data is a huge asset that they need to leverage, right? That's using that data is how they're not going to become disrupted by a new company. Startups have agility, but they don't have the data. So jumping on that opportunity was certainly something we did at NetApp, and we have an application called Active IQ that actually takes a massive data lake of information we get from our systems, and is helping our customers make better usage of our technology. So just an example of our digital transformation. To the point of the relationship with Lenovo, the nice thing about our data fabric strategy is that it is not related to NetApp hardware, it's really all encompassing, it's there to serve the needs of the customer to be able to leverage the value of their data. And so it makes it very easy to partner with us, because really we're not parochial about, how we go about leveraging the technology. >> Yeah, I think what we see is, you know this digital transformation is driving many new use cases. IOT's becoming a big thing, putting edge to the cloud. So, data and our understanding data, and what you can do with data, is going to become more relevant across all lines of business. And that's where we're really focused on, and our transformation as Lenovo it's all around, "How do we address that shift that's happening in the market, where customers are moving away from data being just there to actually leveraging data and being able to create an outcome out of that data so it's going to be effective?" >> Alright, so this was announced about a month ago. Give us a little insight, how's the rollout been going? What's the reaction been from customers, channel partners, and the like? >> So I think channel partners, analysts, and press have been very positive, right? I think as we talked about being frictionless, it's been there, right? I think people see that what we said is actually out there. We're seeing good success in parts of geography worldwide already for the parts that have been shipping as of 09/14. We have our DE series shipping shortly, in early November, and we're going to continue acceleration in our channel partners and our customers. So we're very excited, I think as we saw prior to announcement we were growing triple digits in all flash as Lenovo. I think that with the expanded TAM going from 15% to averaging above 90% on market with the storage portfolio, we're excited here. We're anxious to keep going. >> Yeah, I'll go a little further, I would tell you that I think many channel partners felt hostage to some of the other choices in the industry. And the overwhelming feedback to the announcement of this relationship is, "Thank God, I now have an alternative that is powerful, with great focus on the compute side, great momentum on the storage side, bringing together best of great portfolio, and now I've got choice that I didn't have before." So I think there's a very high level of expectation, excitement, and I expect the momentum with channel partners and distributors to be very high. >> Let's unpack that joint go-to-market GTM strategy a little bit more. Let's talk about it first from the NetApp side. How are you going to market with an image and your partners? The selling motion, how do customers engage? Help us understand that. >> So NetApp is really coming from a very high-touch sales model, you know the beauty of our partnership with Lenovo is they have a velocity model. So for the part of the markets that are really about having velocity, I think it's a perfect marriage. The second thing is, they have a much larger world-wide presence than we do, I mean they've got physical location in many countries where we are not present. So that's expanding the footprint of potential close in service to NetApp customers. And then lastly, you know, the world is evolving very quickly, it's all about the apps, and I am excited about the fact that my go-to-market team rubbing shoulders with the Lenovo team is going to get more intelligent about compute, which is important for us to understand the real needs of the customers. >> Lisa: And Kamran, from your view? >> I mean I think we - And Lenovo serves over 160 countries, as you know, Henri, so we have a very expanded. We serve customers all the way from SMB all the way to very large enterprise like cloud service providers and MSBs. I think the momentum we have based on the park announcement is really provides an alternative solution to the HPE 3PAR and Delhi AMC, right? As Henri stated I think a lot of our channel partners, our disties, our value-added resellers are looking for an alternative route of a solution between the two leading platform solution providers here. And I think we're seeing that momentum, right? I think as of 09/13 when we made the announcement at Transform, we're seeing the excitement and the pull coming from the field and driving it, and of course we of course have a direct sales model, right? Having that high touch with a customer, selling the value prop of this storage solution and entire portfolio we can bring in, and the partnership value that brings in with NetApp here. >> Alright, so what should we expect to see from this partnership in the near future? >> Well, I think, you know, expansion of the product portfolio, particularly in the case of the China JV. One of the mission of that JV will be to design products specifically for the Chinese market, which we all know is very big and growing extremely fast, so that's one aspect that is yet to be seen. And then the second thing is as we collaborate on solving real customer problems, I expect to see a higher level of innovation, as we understand both sides of the equation and how we can bring our technologies together to solve real customer problems. >> The last question for both of you. You both talked about this joint partnership gives both NetApp and Lenovo and your respective install bases choice. What is the one differentiator? Why would a customer choose to go this route versus, as you mentioned, Delhi MC, HPE...? >> So I think you look at where NetApp has had leadership performance in all flash, and Ontap's amazing software, data management software solution. And look at Lenovo, we've been the fastest-growing server provider in the world. We see where we're bleeding in HPC environments, and really driving software to find. So I think customers are looking for, "How do I take the best of breed of things and bring it together? And making sure when you bring it together it is working together." So part of having the relationship of leveraging the NetApp technology is that Lenovo storage portfolio also provides that ability that says, it's a proven technology, the server technologies and the storage are proven. So it doesn't matter if a customer wants to leverage a NetApp technology with a Lenovo server, it is a proven solution for them, and they can depend on the value it's going to deliver. >> From my standpoint, you've got two credible, long term, solid people in the industry, partnering to get best-of-breed solutions with an eye towards being leaning into the cloud, and I think that in two days, IT business with a new wave of IT, if you don't embrace the cloud, the cloud will kill you. And so I think that's our unique differentiation, is that we have two companies that can serve our customers on prem needs, but have a very comprehensive private cloud, public cloud, and on prem strategy. And I think that nobody else can claim that differentiation. >> Henri, Kamran, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE and chatting and sharing a little bit more about this exciting partnership. We look forward to hearing news next year! >> It's been a pleasure. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, and we are live from NetApp Insight 2018, we'll be back after a short break. (upbeat techno)

>> Live from New York City, It's theCUBE! Covering Levnovo Transform 2.0. Brought to you by Lenovo. (techno music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Lenovo Transform here in New York City. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host Stu Miniman. We're joined by Rod Lappin. He is the senior vice president in marketing here at Lenovo. And Roger Cox, the research vice president at Gartner. Thank you much, gentlemen for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having us! Excited. >> So the big news for the day, NetApp, Lenvovo Two global powerhouses joining forces I want to hear Rod, the Lenovo speil, and then I want to hear your analysis of the deal and what you make of it. So why don't you go ahead. >> Yes, so obviously we're really really excited, Rebecca. It's a great day for us. I think it's something that we've been really planning with NetApp for obviously a long time, and to actually have it come to fruition is really exciting for all of us, right. So as you would have known, probably, our storage offering in market has been quite small up until now. We're addressing about 15% of the market. With this new deal with NetApp we're sort of in the TAM the target market. We can after up to about 92%. We've been quite good at storage. We've been growing about 2X the market average in Flash, over 100% year on year, but we haven't really had the full product range that we've needed to really address out customers' needs, and so, now having this, having this deal now with NetApp means we can go after our customers and really bring value to them the way that we have wanted and definitely the way our customers are asking us to. >> And so that's my question. Was it customer driven? Was it them saying: We just need you to able to do more or what? >> I think if you look at our core business last quarter, Gartner, obviously, ranked us as the fastest growing server business globally. We grew 68% year on year on our revenue last quarter. And so, with the momentum we've got now as a business, we're seeing our customers want us to do more. We're number one in customer satisfaction, number one in reliability, so they see value in us generally but we had sort of what I would classify as a subsegment of the storage market that we want to address. And of course our customers are saying to us: Hey, we want you to do more for us because we like the way you've performed. So it's been good for us. We're excited >> Yeah. >> So, Rodger you know a thing or two about the storage industry and NetApp specifically. So give us the customer viewpoint. You talked to a lot of them. >> Well, first of all let's say this is one of the better kept secrets because it never leaked out. So really haven't been getting customer calls on this event yet but I'm sure we will starting today be getting a lot >> Yeah, they brought a few analysts down to RTP in July and I remember, Rodger you said: What do I do when the customers call? and they're like, shh, shh. Customers aren't going to call. We're going to keep it under wraps. >> And they did a good job of it. But anyways, what it means, I think, to Lenovo is it really elevates Lenovo's standing as a provider of IT technology for the data center. So they now have, not only a very competitive server offering, which Rod's talked about quite a bit, they have what many believe to be one of the best storage offerings in the business. And now they can go compete head to head against Dell EMC, as well as with HPE, which would be the two larger competitors that they have to deal with. So it's going to be very good in terms of providing an alternative to clients for data center technology-involved storage. Good thing. We like competition. >> Absolutely, and we want to be part of it. I think up until now we probably haven't been able to. So when you look at how we're going to market, my field sales team has been planning with the NetApp field's also. We've been basically coordinating how we go to market where do we attack together, where do we have conflict, where do we not. So we actually go in and really focus in on those core competitors that Roger's just described which is where we want to go. >> In the keynote this morning it said from a channel standpoint, there's not a lot of overlap which, on the one hand, I'm saying: Well, sounds like we'll need a lot of training then. But how do you hit the ground running fast? >> So we are already ready to go. We start shipping tomorrow, so that's the good thing about this announcement. Like Roger said, we kept it under wraps, but we are ready to manufacture and go. So, I think it's a really exciting spot for us. From a go-to-market perspective in the channel, NetApp has traditionally been very much about engaging end users, fulfilling through the channel, but engaging end users. Where Lenovo's got a much stronger forte around mid-market and SMB. And we've got a much stronger forte in emerging market, so if you actually start to split geographically the world up a little bit and then you can start to split how we got to market a little you can actually find some really big parts of the market that we don't conflict at all that we can go after. >> But you see, from my point of view, the bigger challenge they have is to go to market. Now they could say there's not much overlap, but you know there's always overlap. There's going to be certain accounts where Lenovo already has a position, and maybe NetApp has a position, too. Then, who's going to do what given a time? So, the biggest challenge that Lenovo has here is also a challenge for NetApp is how they manage together the go to market motion, as well as the service and support because Lenovo's going to have level one, level two support responsibility. They're going to have that revenue to go for support. We'll see how that works out over time. >> I want to ask you what your advice would be to Lenovo leadership in terms of, this deal enables it to go after bigger players and to take over more of the market. But when it's now going head to head with Dell EMC , what do you think it should focus on? >> I think it should focus more on marketing. The products speak for themselves. The competency of these products are well-known. Besides this, it gives Lenovo the opportunity to become more cloud-friendly, too. Because they also have access to all of the software out of NetApp's cloud data services organization. So my main advice would be to Rod, because he's responsible for this, (Rod and Rebecca laugh) is put more wood behind arrow. Get Huawei to put up more money to accentuates the marketing of the product. Create more enthusiasm about the fact that you're now up at another level in terms of being an IT provider to the data center. >> It's a well kept secret as you started out by saying >> Yeah! >> That's right so we've got a business case that we've put together that's starting today obviously. Which involves us getting out and starting to hit the ground running with a lot of media. There's a lot of social media noise today on it obviously. Thanks very much to people like yourselves which is great. And I think we're going to see a lot more marketing-based initiative that run both through the channel as well as to the end users across our, what I classify as our T-1 countries to start with. To Roger's point, though, when we look at the go-to-market, we basically categorize in all the accounts into four boxes. Those accounts where NetApp's very strong and Lenovo's very strong which means Lenovo's strong from the server perspective. NetApp's very strong from the storage perspective. >> FAP would be one of those. >> That's right. That's a very good example. And in that environment, we're going to collaborate and show them we're communicating with each other and ultimately, not fight with each other. We're going to recognize that we want to continue to protect our server business. They're protecting their storage business. We don't want to touch that. In a place where Lenovo, for example, may be weak and NetApp very strong, so they're got a very good storage relationship, we want them to bring our servers into that space. Because obviously if they don't bring us in, then one of our key competitors that is also competitive in NetApp is going to have a foot in the door there somewhere. So, we're going to drive a little bit of a different strategy in that environment. Then, we've got obviously the third environment where Lenovo's very strong from a server perspective and NetApp's nowhere. In that environment, it's free fields for Lenovo to go after that with our new storage array. And then obviously, where we're both neither engaging those customers, it's in acquisition for both. We're going to play and ultimately go after them. There's some really great things that we've been able to put together with this relationship. Like for example, comp neutrality. So, the NetApp teams when we go into that third and fourth box I was just talking about, the NetApp sales force is going to paid the same whether it goes on a Lenovo hardware or goes on the NetApp hardware. So, we've got some pieces that sort of ensure that we don't have conflicts and we're all aligned to ultimately grow and compete with Dell EMC and HPE. >> So, Roger There have been some interesting server and storage partnerships. I think back a decade ago, Dell and EMC did billions of dollars together. It eventually broke up, and then what do you know, it went back together. I think five years ago, NetApp had pretty strong server partnership there. The storage market has changed a lot in the five to ten years. Tell our audience a little bit how NetApp's different, how the storage market's different, and how customers should be thinking about an arrangement like this. >> Well, the storage market's different because there's more alternatives for storage. There's the Cloud: AWS, Azure, even Google Cloud. You get over to Asia, Alibaba over in Asia and so forth. So that's had a very large impact on on-premises storage. The other one is hyper converged. Lenovo's very much a hyper converged business. They have relationships with Nutanix. They've got them with VMware. They have them with Pivot3 and some others. And so, all of these things come together to create a different alternative to the classical three-tier infrastructure: server, networking, and storage. So, all those things are going to exist. And, the upright storage market, while it may be a declining market from a revenue perspective, has a long payoff. It's going to be like mainframe, so it'll be here forever. Like Tate, here forever. It's like me. I'll be here forever. (Rod and Rebecca laugh) So right now, Stu, we're seeing a little bit of a bubble. So we are getting a bubble interns of, this is a good time by the way for Lenovo to have this partnership because there is more likelihood of increase spending for IT. Good economy in the States, good economy over in Europe. Good economy around the world for that matter. I think it's going to last another couple years. 2018, 2019, maybe in the 20's before it starts tailing off again. So the way people are talking to me now, it's kind of like a flush. Hey, we got all this money. We're going to go spend it. Refresh everything. Get more over into Flash. I think they will sell a lot of Flash, even with the entry product, what they call a DE. I think they'll sell a lot of Flash there. And of course up in the DM series, which is the equivalent of NetApp's A200, A300 which are top tier products. They'll sell a lot of Flash there, too. >> I would say as what you just mentioned, the traditional storage market is reducing, but Flash is obviously growing. NetApp last quarter was the number one Flash company in the world. 27.6% market share-- >> Where do I check that out? (Rebecca laughs) That comes from another source >> That comes from another source, yeah sorry. But they hit number one last quarter according to an unknown source. But I think that's really encouraging, right? And at that part of the market Flash is about 30-40% of the overall storage market right now and easily the fastest growing. So this product range really drives an all-Flash array type solution that we can actually take advantage of. >> Rod, we want to get your perspective China, too. That's a big piece of this announcement. Maybe you an talk a little bit about that. I think Roger's got some comments on it. >> Well, think this is a good deal for NetApp. This is the reason why I think maybe the channel conflict won't be as bad as it was for the Dell EMC guys. This is the way for NetApp. NetApp wants to go more and more towards the Cloud. You look at their strategy. It's going more and more towards the Cloud with all of the Cloud data services software that they're developing. And so they're putting more and more emphasis on that. At the same time, the relationship they have with Lenovo gives them the opportunity to get really a creative revenue that otherwise would not get. Allows them maybe to reduce the burden that they would have under manufacturing SGNE expenses and stuff like that. But the big benefit is China. They JB in China is going to give NetApp a entry into China that otherwise would not be able to get because of the laws that the People's Republic of China have. It's a big deal. >> I think we're really excited about China. Obviously that's one of the cornerstones of the deal. So it's an independent organization that's going to be set up. Lenovo will have 51% ownership. NetApp will have 49. Seven board members. Four of them will be Lenovo. Three of them will be NetApp. And ultimately we are going to have that organization just purely specializing on the Lenovo product that is designed by NetApp originally. And it's going to be doing joint IP. We'll have joint developers in there. We'll be able to leverage my existing sales force in China, that's our traditional sales force, to go and drive for everything from a tier one city all the way down to a tier six, tier seven city in PRC. But, that joint venture itself will just be a specialist organization specifically on storage. It's really exciting. >> The thing about the JB it's very very important. Whatever is developed by the JB has to stay in China. That software cannot be taken outside of China because of all the geopolitical issues that you have around the world. Big point. >> Yeah, and a challenge. >> Absolutely It's a challenge that both NetApp and Lenovo have to manage with respect to each other. >> Just for the record, I'm not totally sure. If we develop something in the joint venture, I'm not totally sure that we have to keep that in China. >> I'm not saying that legally you have to. I'm saying emotionally you should. >> Emotional we should. >> Ahhh... >> I was going to say... >> There might be some government concerns on some of that. >> I think it's always going to depend on the government. And we don't want to get into a geopolitical conversation. I think Europe for example will be a lot more liberally open to that sort of stuff >> Speak a little bit about the cultures coming together. NetApp. You've been working on this deal together. sometimes that can be the strength or the challenge. >> I think company cultures are always challenging. And when you get two companies that are, especially right now, as we've heard this morning in some of the sessions, turning the corner. They're both growing. They're both doing very well at the moment. So, there's always a level of confidence, shall we say, in both those situations that you've just got to break down. And I think what we've done very successfully this time is Wei Wei, and George and Kirk, and George and Henri Ricard and myself and Brad Anderson, you saw today who was actually up on stage with us today as well working with us as the executive sponsor on that side. We're lining up our executives globally. All of the field team for Henri Ricard's team and my field team globally have all been interlocking with each other. They're account planning. They're territory planning. We're really trying to break down any of the walls the way may have from a cultural perspective. And really drive a much more open conversation, so we don't get caught out early in the deal. There's a escalation process in the deal. So it goes to a geo level up and then ends up with Henri and myself to actually manage worldwide if something was to get really out of control. But, at the moment, day one, don't see any issues. Seems to be going okay, touch wood. >> They both, Brad and Kirk, said they're complementary companies. Is that your perspective, too? Would you agree with that? >> Well, I think they gave complementary purposes. The interesting thing here is this thing's coming together when both companies are on the uptick. It's not because, go back three years ago and look at where NetApp was three years ago versus where they are today. So it's coming together when both companies, and matter of fact, go back to look at Lenovo two years ago as well >> Absolutely. >> So it's been an uptick that happened here over the last three years, so this thing's coming together when both companies are doing quite well in that respect. >> So-- >> By the way I want to mention Gartner will be publishing a report in September on this transaction from NetApp's point of view. And we'll be publishing a report on in November on this transaction from Lenovo's point of view. >> Great, so one of the things people like Roger and I have to do is, we look at how we would say whether something's successful or not. So I want to get your point first too and then when you look out six, 12, 18 months from now, whether it is successful and the thing I have to say is Kirk and Brad said, well, our goal is to number three in China, and I said isn't that a low bar? Aren't you practically on day one? I mean you're two joint companies. It's going to be there? >> I can't count on my boss to be honest with you. >> You've got the sales team. I know you can do that. >> I would love to. I think at the moment let's just talk about the joint venture for a second. I think the point is at the moment we are only 15% addressable market with our existing range. And so at the moment, we're saying, hey we can address 15% of the market. That puts us way outside of the number 10 slot in PRC. So, to say we want to be number three, is quite ambitious. Especially because we want to try to do it in the next couple of years. So, I actually feel like he's being quite aggressive from a growth perspective, so I think that's quite balanced. Outside of that, I really want to measure us on profitable growth. We really want to diversify our share of wallet and our customer base. We've got a great customer base now from a server perspective. We need to really expand that to ensure that we're taking advantage of the customer feedback we've had. So, I think that's a pretty good spot. >> At the end of the day, the success of non-success of this program is in Rod's hands. (laughing) On the one hand, >> I love the pressure you're putting me under >> And then Laura, on the services support side. People will support this program if they get good quality service and support. So, you have to keep that up for this program. >> Absolutely, and at the moment, the services model is level one and level two is run by Lenovo internally and then level three escalation runs into the NetApp program. We believe we've got a model that runs well. >> A good note to end on. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE Rod and Roger. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for having us I appreciate it very much. It's my inaugural time here. >> First of many. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more from theCUBE at Lenovo Transform just in a little bit. (techno music)

>> From Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE, covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Hey, welcome to theCUBE. I am Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend, and we are live in the NetApp booth at SAP SAPPHIRE 2018. We are joined by Robert Stumpf, Senior Director of IT, Enterprise Solutions Delivery. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you, thank you. >> So we're here in the NetApp booth at SAPPHIRE NOW. As they said in the keynote this morning, they're expecting a million people to engage with SAP SAPPHIRE this week. >> Yes. >> Think, I've heard rumblings there's about 20+ thousand people here in attendance. >> Yeah. >> Huge event, huge show, lots of announcements. Let's talk about NetApp and SAP as partners. Specifically in the context of the Next-Gen Data Center, bringing cloud-ready solutions to business application. What are you guys doing there with SAP? >> Sure, I can talk a little bit about that. The NetApp solutions fit into the Next-Generation Data Center in a variety of different ways. We have the All FAS Flash that really is the core of our product base and is really the workhorse of all the hardcore applications, gives you really a strong performance in the storage area. Then we have the Cloud Volumes with when you want to scale out to hyper scaler, and you can use the Cloud Volumes abilities there. And then when you look at our HCI components, it is capable of giving you a lot more of the container-based compute power, so we fit into a variety of different components there. >> So, Robert, we're at SAP. And SAP hasn't been traditionally known as a cloud-aware application. Tell us, from the NetApp perspective, what's changed with SAP over the years that now, you can comfortably talk about SAP as a cloud-aware application? >> So SAP's moving a long way in that direction. You saw it this morning in the keynote that they were talking about the C4, their customer-focused applications. That's really kind of putting a framework on top of all of the customer engagements, and making the customer the center of everything. So they're moving a lot in that direction. We at NetApp have implemented their Hybris platform, their cloud for customer application. We just went live with that last year, so we're on that journey with SAP as well. >> So, as we talk about that, what makes the application, or what make applications in general cloud-aware? >> Okay, when you look at making something cloud-aware, you want to really look at the architecture that you have underneath it. So you'll build something that has a lot more automation in it, a lot more scalable, where you don't have to, the scalability's built into the framework, like you're leveraging. In the case of our NetApp support site, which we just completely re-architected and went live last month, we have built that on what's called a MEAN stack, so that's where the Mongo database and the back-end that's a NoSQL database, and then on top of an Angular node.js, which gives you much more robust framework for you to be able to scale-out your application. So with it being a website, and your volume can go up and down, so you want to be able to scale the application without needing people to get involved in that scaling, so they will just fire up new containers as needed as the volume increases, and it's a lot more robust in architecture. >> So if we look at Hybris and we look at NetApp products and solutions, that framework and architecture. Can you paint a picture for us what NetApp solutions and products are cloud-aware? >> Sure, the cloud-aware applications, really you need to look at the complete stack of the Next-Generation Data Center, which is really embodying the on-prem data center, your hyperscaler cloud data centers, and then a private cloud if you so wish to build one. So the Next-Generation Data Center takes advantage of the All FAS Flash on your on-prem solution, so you've got your performance, high-performance scalability. Then your Cloud Volumes allows you to move your data between your on-prem out to the hyperscaler as you need to, and the HCI component gives you that container-based compute array that allows the applications to scale. Also, you can leverage StorageGRID, which is much more of an object-based data base, which is something that you'll use extensively on cloud-aware applications. >> So, thanks Keith. So one of the things that was announced this morning, you mentioned C/4HANA where Bill McDermott was sort-of expected to announce what SAP was going to be doing that's gonna help differentiate them. They want more share from Salesforce and Oracle. He made kind of some aloof references to that, but one of the things that he talked about was: companies need, in this day and age, speed obviously, but to move away from a 360-degree view of sales automation to an actual 360-degree view of the customer. I'd love to get your insight on NetApp and SAP as partners together. Are you seeing any particular industries leading here? We think of manufacturing, maybe automotive oil and gas, but I'm just wondering from NetApp's perspective, are you seeing any industries that are really leading-edge here in evolving to a Next-Gen Data Center that enables this 360-degree view? >> There's a variety of different industries that are doing that. If you take a look at applications like Netflix and Amazon Prime, those applications are architectured to be scalable and to be much more robust, and they are much more focused on the customer. And because you don't have outages, right? They don't take the system offline when they're doing an upgrade to their capabilities. When was the last time you heard of Netflix going offline for twelve hours to do an upgrade? So, these applications are built much more robustly around that, and that's what one thing that we are looking to do at NetApp with the Hybris implementation that we did with SAP, and we're also upgrading our back office CRM system to their CRM on HANA on-prem, and we're gonna be taking advantage of the Hybris capabilities there to give that full picture of the customer. We'll be heavily engaged with SAP on their C4 journey and making sure that we are a part of that as well. >> So it's great that you brought up Netflix as an example that continues to be operating an environment that has this huge back-end automated with technology. SAP traditionally hasn't been considered a technology that you could upgrade on the fly. I've managed an SAP environment where we can only take twelve hours of downtime a year because mission critical, it's very difficult to get that time. >> Yes. >> How has the NetApp data fabric story played into making that a possibility in your own environment and customers' environments? >> Okay, we leverage a lot of the NetApp storage on our on-prem system. I'm in the exact place, same situation as you were talking about. We have a lot of mission critical customers that are on our support application. I have to give 90-days notice to take the system down for any longer than four hours at a time, so I'm in that very similar situation. So we leverage a lot of the NetApp technologies to make sure that the applications are available when I'm doing the upgrades, and we can do rapid copies of the data that's in there, make sure it's all robust. Our data, failover database, failover systems, are set up that way so that they take advantage of the snapshots that we got from the application, and we're working with SAP. The SAP Hybris application is actually built on top of NetApp storage, and we're working very closely with SAP to re-architect our applications, to take advantage of the capabilities that NetApp storage brings to the equation. >> So none of this coming into its own in this hybrid cloud model that's been around 26 years, right, long time. But now, it's everything you see. You mentioned Netflix, and I don't know anybody on the planet that would survive if Netflix went down for an hour, let alone twelve. So speed, access to data, but this evolution of NetApp, I'm interested, and you know now again in this hybrid cloud model, you guys made your name from building network attached to storage on-prem data centers, the announcement with Google Platform just last week. Talk to us about some of the evolution from NetApp, from your perspective, from the storage perspective, into really facilitating this hybrid cloud model. >> Sure, we are really at the forefront of that because at the end of the day, it's all about the data. Right, your application can run wherever you want, but wherever your data is is really the key. And that's the framework that we're putting in place is to make your data a lot more mobile. So if you want to keep the data on-premise, then you can keep it on-premise. If you want to move it out next to the hyperscaler, you can burst it out, you can use the Cloud Volumes and migrate the data. So the NetApp picture, the story is really in making your data much more mobile and moving it to the location of choice for any particular workload that you're looking for. >> So, we can't have a discussion in 2018 about data without talking about privacy and security. What's the relationship in ensuring that NetApp and SAP is one, media requirements in GDPR, we have to talk about GDPR, we have to talk about security. How is NetApp securing data and ensuring that in-users' and organizations' data stay private? >> That's a very good question, right? It's definitely a challenge that a lot of companies are struggling with, and the tools that NetApp provides with our storage systems are paramount, security is paramount, and that's something that we're very much focused on in making sure that your data is your data, and the specific components of the data that you want to keep on-premise, which you want to keep as much more secure, then you can keep that on the NetApp All FAS Flash storage systems, and then you protect it as if it's in your own kingdom. But then the data that's a little bit more lax on the security sites, then you can push that out onto the hyperscalers and use the NetApp Cloud Volumes to have it outside of your on-premise. You know, it's like your own firewall. >> So one of the basic things as a ONTAP customer that ONTAP customers depend on and the private data centers, this ability to encrypt data on the fly. Now that we look at, you know we see ONTAP in the cloud, do we get that same basic capability to encrypt data on the fly or encrypt data while it's in transit? How do I know my data is protected from an encryption perspective? >> You get the same capabilities when you're using the on-cloud tools that we provide, so there's no real difference in that, and that's the beauty behind that. You're using the same storage management tools for your Cloud Volumes as you would be for your on-premise systems. >> I want to ask a question on competition. There's a lot of co-opetition that's going on just at SAPPHIRE alone. With what you talked about about how NetApp is leveraging Hybris, you mentioned, to really kind of get towards that model of connecting supply chain with demand, getting that full view of customers, SAP partners with probably all of your competitors. So how is what NetApp is doing internally to digitally transform, how do you see it as giving NetApp that competitive edge against the other guys? >> Okay, the way that we look at our competitive edge at NetApp from an application standpoint is really focusing on keeping our core capabilities very, very vanilla. So in the implementation with Hybris, we were very much focused on not customizing the application. But because at the end of the day, you sell stuff, you build stuff, you manufacture it, and you support it. So those are the core capabilities, and we've kept that very vanilla as much as possible within the implementation. Where we differentiate, that's where we customize. So our application landscape is much more focused on customizing for the differentiating capabilities, and that's the component that's specific to NetApp and how we do business. And that's the way that we go about differentiating ourselves from our competitors. So we use the core capabilities of all the enterprise applications that we have, that we purchase such as Hybris, and then we go build our custom solutions that are differentiated, that really searches our ASUP, AutoSupport system, that gets what's embedded right from day one, that's a custom-built application, it's very proprietary, it's really the keys to the kingdom for our organization. And that's something that's very, very integral as part of the NetApp culture. >> So, let's talk about some lessons learned from that. One of the pain points for many SAP customers is they look at capability like ECC on HANA, really want it, but they've customized their environment too much, so making that switch is extremely difficult for them. What have you learned as a team that says, you know what, the best way to stay in line with SAP and follow that roadmap for mission critical applications that are both stable and differentiating, you should follow these basic policies from a hygiene perspective. >> Sure, we actually went through that last year with our project where we replaced our Sales Force Automation system, and we implemented C4, C4C Hybris. So the key to that is really getting the executive sponsorship bought-in to making sure that you're adhering to the vanilla applications and not customizing it. So we were very fortunate where we had Henri Richard and Bill Miller, our CIO. They were the executive sponsors of the project, and they were adamant that we would not customize the application, and we went through, it took us six months to replace our CRM system for an office CRM system. Very proud of that project. It was an incredible painful journey to go through, but the benefits that we got out of the end of it are phenomenal because we were in that situation where we had an overly-custom SAS application that was running our sales organization that really wasn't meeting the needs of the business. Now we have a much more agile implementation that's on top of SAP's Hybris platform, and we're taking advantage of the new capabilities they introduce, rather than focusing on our own customizations. >> That's a great summary. I think you articulated very well what, one of the themes was from Bill McDermott's keynote this morning, is making things simple, is not an easy thing to do, but it's critical. There are so many-- >> It's totally critical. >> business outcomes that come out of that, not just stream-learning processes, improving sales and marketing and connecting them together, but really affecting revenue, profit, share, et cetera. So Robert, thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and chatting with Keith and me today about what you guys are doing with SAP. >> Great, thank you, thank you for your time. >> We want to thank you. You're watching theCUBE: Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAP SAPPHIRE 2018, thanks for watching! (light percussive music)

>> Announcer: Live from Chicago, Illinois, it's theCUBE. Covering VeeamOn 2018 brought to you by Veeam. >> We're back at VeeamOn 2018, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my cohost Stu Miniman. Stu, always great working with you. Bruce Shaw is here, he's the Senior Director of Global Alliances and Industry Solutions at NetApp. Great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, I got to start out with NetApp, I mean, we've followed NetApp for decades, ya know, from the very beginning back when I was at IDC, Stu, you were probably still in your mother's womb. (laughing) But you guys are back in a big way, I mean, for a while there it looked vulnerable. You took advantage of the Dell EMC merger. You're gaining share again, you're growing, stock price is up, there's a spring in your step, what's going on? >> Well, a lot of things are going on. I think we've had a lot of leadership additions to the company, Henri Richard joined and took over as the CSO with the company. We've got a new CMO in Jean English. But more importantly, a lot of the areas that we were late to the market, and candidly we've admitted we were late. We didn't have a good Flash story a couple years ago. We've been very aggressive with Flash over the last 24 to 18 months. We're now the fastest growing Flash storage provider out in the market, and we think we'll exit this year as number one. In fact, we think that's the current course and trajectory. We're very happy with where that's going. The FlexPod partnership with Cisco was great this past year. We had a record year in Converged infrastructure, which was a down market, we picked up about 13 points a share according to IDC, so a lot of the cylinders are starting to fire, but the one that is probably the biggest and the most shocking for folks is three, four years ago, the belief was that cloud was going to kill on-prem storage for companies like NetApp. I think the one thing that they did right ahead of the curve was they embraced the cloud. They've got great partnerships with Google, Amazon, the hyperscalers, and cloud strategy and the business that drives the company there is the fastest part of the company, and Anthony Lye runs that team, and it's doing an amazing job. >> Explain how, and you're absolutely right, many, most, frankly myself at times, felt that way. Explain how cloud is a tailwind and not just a one-way street into the roach motel. >> Oh well, there isn't an enterprise today that isn't thinking about cloud in some way, shape, or form, right? Now, ya have prognosticators on either side saying it's all going to the cloud or something less than that, but the truth is when you look at a strategy like ONTAP and the ability to move your data, whether it's on-prem or to the cloud and manage it through our data fabric story, that's where NetApp really starts coming into their own. I think, again, that's where we've been able to take advantage, and it's not just having it one way or the other or being good just with the hyperscalers or good with the guys that want to be secure because most companies do a hybrid story, and they want to bit of both. >> Well, I think the one thing that I would observe about NetApp, having followed the company for many, many years, which I think gives you an advantage, is NetApp really has always had storage services in software that were largely decoupled from the hardware, and that allowed you to get into cloud early, don't ya think, Stu? >> Yeah, absolutely, and Bruce, we're here at VeeamOn, and their message sounds a lot like that to me, so maybe help explain, we were just talking to Veeam's CMO, when you hear some of the descriptions of storage services, software, multicloud, and everything, NetApp and Veeam sound alike. How are they complementary in, ya know, maybe where do they bump up against each other, yeah? >> Yeah, well, we both compete in the same market, which is storage, so of course, there's areas where we're going to compete with each other, but we are very complementary in terms of the story and the markets that we serve, right? NetApp is incredible strong in the enterprise. Veeam has great commercial channel presence, so from a route to market there's a lot of complementary stuff we do with each other. Price point, in terms of where we hit the market and the things that we go after, we have a lot of opportunity where there's not overlap to help each out to the point they're now, the relationship's evolved over the last four years where we're actually doing OEM of each other's products. We've got our E-Series we just announced yesterday that we're OEMing with these guys, which again is targeted at exactly those markets. The story between the two that we're both at our core not hardware companies, not storage companies, but data management companies really is where this starts to come together and play well. The fact that they're mutually supportive of each other makes for a really strong value proposition for the customer and the channel, especially the guys like the service providers or ya know, hybrid cloud providers, it's a big time story for them. >> So you're growing with, the partnership with Veeam is growing. >> Right. >> Ya got a combination of trends that become tailwinds, but then you've got execution. Can you explain what are those tailwinds, and what's the execution ethos with the partnership? >> We are a channel-only company for all intents and purposes. >> Dave: Oh yeah, I don't know what the number is now, but you've always been very, very high performing. >> Yeah, I know, so we look at businesses that we drive, and channel is at the core of what we do, so when you have a tailwind like, ya know, where we are with Flash and the growth there, the channel partners are making more money, the programs that are coming for them, we're not taking business that they're doing today and pushing it towards the cloud. Again, we're talking about the story that's transitory between the two, so for a lot of the channel providers that are out there getting in the market, that's a very powerful story for them. That it's not a competitive business, we're not going to try to create our own cloud service to take away from them. We want to help them as they migrate between the two. >> All right, Bruce, one of the other areas we're hearing a lot about at this show that I think lines up with NetApp is the analytics and AI, can you maybe talk about how that ties into the products? >> Yeah, I mean, you look at a lot of these markets like AI, like analytics in terms of what companies are doing, it sheds off a tremendous amount of data, right? And that data is at the heart of what they want to analyze and go through, and when they bring those things to market, the goal is how I quickly move it from where I'm capturing it to where I need it, and ONTAP does a really good job of doing that in terms of being able to take the data to where they need it, whether it's at the edge or whether it's back at the core of the company, so that you can actually do the real work with it and gain the insights that drive the business. >> Bruce, what's the resale agreement that you have with Veeam, can you explain that? >> We have Veeam on our price list. Our sales reps can sell Veeam, can be compensated for it, vice versa, they can absolutely hook in and drive away with NetApp, and now that we're getting products like E-Series where their product is embedded in ours, that only strengthens that kind of motion. So for a NetApp sales rep today, if they have an opportunity where Veeam is needed on it as part of the offering, it's absolutely in their wheelhouse to go sell it, and they get the sale level of love and attention from quote and comp standpoint that they would if it was NetApp only products. >> So this is kind of interesting innovation that Veeam, I think, has been out in front of, they, and I dunno how they do it, Stu, but I think Veeam understands the lifetime value of a customer and is willing to make, put sweat equity into a deal as part of a partnership to make it transparent to a partner sales force. >> Yeah absolutely. >> That's innovation in business model. >> Absolutely, we're very proud of our sales force and the work that they're able to do. We view ourselves as kind of the last big enterprise standalone storage company that's out there doing this, and I run strategic alliances, and some partners integrate really well with our sales guys. Others, it's more of a, ya know, it requires more work. To your point, Veeam has done a superb job at identifying how and where they play with our folks and getting together where we go to market together. >> It's interesting, we used to, ya know, several years ago now, ask the question can NetApp remain independent. We've seen all these independent storage companies kind of go away. Used to have this conversation with David Scott at 3PAR all the time, EMC itself wasn't able to maintain it, and then NetApp got to the point where it was almost too big for an acquisition, and although stock price was down, everybody, NetApp was the rumor of MNA more than any company I can think of in the storage business, but now you're seeing sort of antithetical to what most people expected, it's kind of like the cloud we were talking about before, storage companies emerged. Pure was the first one over a billion since NetApp. What are your thoughts, and what's that, I wonder what, you guys must talk in the hallways about that whole, the dynamics of the industry. It seems like it's still a viable business model to be best of breed. >> It's very viable, so I took over running the strategic alliances at the beginning of January, and my dance card's full. I can't believe the number of folks that are calling up wanting to partner. I think we've gotten much more mature in terms of how we view the market and our ability to get strategically with other companies to be successful, and there absolutely is always going to be a place out there for a best of breed story. Customers want the best technology that they can get to handle their business needs, and if we partner with great partners, whether it's Veeam or others to provide that for them, I think the viability of NetApp only gets stronger not weaker. >> It's interesting because now ya got NetApp, Pure, Nutanix, soon to be Veeam, as billion dollar independent pure play companies in the storage business. Isilon couldn't get there, Data Domain couldn't get there, Compellent couldn't get there, 3PAR couldn't get there, Lefthand couldn't get, EqualLogic, I can go down the list. They were never able to reach that escape velocity, and maybe it is cloud, maybe cloud is that weird tailwind for people who can figure out how to take advantage of cloud and hybrid cloud, your thoughts? >> Yeah, I think it is, number one. I think also the companies that you mentioned at various times, and I'm a hardware industry dinosaur, I've been around forever. A lot of those companies you talk about the difficult moment from them was hey, we're a storage company, now we want to add compute or now we want to go into this part of the market that put them at odds with the guys they were partnering with. George, our CEO, has been absolutely maniacal with his vision of our path forward is managing data, period. Whatever that form takes, we don't need to be a compute company, we don't need to be a networking company, we want to be a data company. I think how that then drives the decisions, whether it's partnering with cloud, whether it's going into new markets with HCI, even if it's things about transforming the legacy data center from traditional data center and how it's managed on-prem to something that's all Flash driven and much more efficient and much more programmable than it was in the past, so it's easier to administer, those are the areas that we can go innovate, and as long as we're partnering with the right partners out in the industry, that makes us a very good viable destination for the customer without worrying about well, do we have a compute node, are we in the server business now, are we suddenly in the switch business? Those are things that are not even on our radar. >> Yeah, I mean, you guys are in a unique position from that standpoint. You're very large now, you're the largest independent storage company, so everybody wants to work with you. You don't bump up into these adjacencies, and you can make bets, you can place your chips in areas whereas some of the startups, there's tons of innovation, but it's really hard to hit that escape. The amount of resources that you need, the money you need for promotion, the talent war that's going on out there, the go-to-market challenges, the partner challenges, so you guys are in a pretty good position right now. >> We really are, and I think we've actually done a lot of the restructuring internally to continue that and capitalize on it. Probably the biggest change, which outside the company, most folks wouldn't notice immediately, is that we moved at the beginning of this year to a three distinct business unit structure where we're focusing on three parts of the business to go forward. We've got our cloud business unit, which is driving into, as I said, the hyperscalers under Anthony Lye. We've got cloud data center, which is more of the new technologies like HCI and Converge and object storage technology like StorageGRID, and that's, right now that's an incredibly fast growing business for us. Then, of course, we've got our traditional storage software infrastructure business where we have products like E-Series and modernizing the data center, which is primarily driven with this transition to Flash. You've got three BUs now that are maniacally focused on the different areas of the market where we see here's an immediate opportunity in Flash. Here's a slightly longer opportunity in things like hybrid cloud and HCI and Converge infrastructure and a much longer term bet was how does the cloud really become a piece where we're managing between all of those. It lets us be a lot nimble between it. It's almost like three subbusinesses where we're going to market. >> Yeah, Dave, and actually that aligns perfectly with the research we've been doing for over five years from server stand and true private cloud, you've got the hyperscale, you've got the transformation locally in spanning those two, and then you've got that transition from the traditional. >> Oh, I think it's a sound strategy, and it'll serve us well in the years to come. >> There's obviously a lot of noise about artificial intelligence in the marketplace. You've got some companies trying to position to be the platform for machine intelligence or artificial intelligence, what's NetApp's point of view on that? >> Well certainly, we share some of that, but again, I think at the end of the day for us, it's much more important about fine, wherever I'm capturing that artificial intelligence is not likely the place where I'm going to do a lot of the analytics and work on it, so it really does come down to, ya know, am I moving it up to the cloud to do that work, where am I making my big insights, where am I mining through it, and then how am I relating that back, whether it's at the edge or whether it's at the core data center, and again, we think with ONTAP, with the partners that we're going to market with for AI, for ML, IoT, that's the difference maker for us at the end of the day. It's not that we're just another storage company storing the telemetry data off of a car for AI, we're putting it into a format and a form that's usable quickly, efficiently, real time, where Tesla can go make a decision on the car right now, not days, weeks, months from now. >> All right, Bruce, well hey, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time and good luck. >> Enjoyed having me, thank you. >> All right, great. >> Good to see you guys. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching VeeamOn 2018, this is theCUBE.