>> theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies: "Creating technologies that drive human progress." >> Good late afternoon from Barcelona, Spain at the Theater of Barcelona. It's Lisa Martin and Dave Nicholson of "theCUBE" covering MWC23. This is our third day of continuous wall-to-wall coverage on theCUBE. And you know we're going to be here tomorrow as well. We've been having some amazing conversations about the ecosystem. And we're going to continue those conversations next. Honore Labourdette is here, the VP global partner, Ecosystem Success Team, Telco Media and Entertainment at Red Hat. And Tony Jeffries joins us as well, a Senior Director of Product Management, Telecom Systems Business at Dell. Welcome to the theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Great to have both of you here. So we're going to be talking about the evolution of the telecom stack. We've been talking a lot about disaggregation the last couple of days. Honore, starting with you, talk about the evolution of the telecom stock. You were saying before we went live this is your 15th at least MWC. So you've seen a lot of evolution, but what are some of the things you're seeing right now? >> Well, I think the interesting thing about disaggregation, which is a key topic, right? 'Cause it's so relative to 5G and the 5G core and the benefits and the features of 5G core around disaggregation. But one thing we have to remember, when you disaggregate, you separate things. You have to bring those things back together again in a different way. And that's predominantly what we're doing in our partnership with Dell, is we're bringing those disaggregated components back together in a cohesive way that takes advantage of the new technology, at the same time taking out the complexity and making it easier for our Telco customers to deploy and to scale and to get much more, accelerate the time to revenue. So the trend now is, what we're seeing is two things I would say. One is how do we solve for the complexity with the disaggregation? And how do we leverage the ecosystem as a partner in order to help solve for some of those challenges? >> Tony, jump on in, talk about what you guys announced last week, Dell and Red Hat, and how it's addressing the complexities that Honore was saying, "Hey, they're there." >> Yeah. You know, our customers, our operators are saying, "Hey, I want disaggregation." "I want competition in the market." But at the same time who's going to support all this disaggregation, right? And so at the end of the day, there's going to be an operator that's going to have to figure this out. They're going to have an SLA that they're going to have to meet. And so they're going to want to go with a best-in-class partner with Red Hat and Dell, in terms of our infrastructure and their software together as one combined engineered system. And that's what we call a Dell Telecom infrastructure block for Red Hat. And so at the end of the day, things may go wrong, and if they do, who are they going to call for that support? And that's also really a key element of an engineered system, is this experience that they get both with Red Hat and with Dell together supporting the customer as one. Which is really important to solve this disaggregated problem that can arise from a disaggregated open network situation, yeah. >> So what is the market, the go to market motion look like? People have loyalties in the IT space to technologies that they've embraced and been successful with for years and years. So you have folks in the marketplace who are diehard, you know, dyed red, Red Hat folks. Is it primarily a pull from them? How does that work? How do you approach that to your, what are your end user joint customers? What does that look like from your perspective? >> Sure, well, interestingly enough both Red Hat and Dell have been in the marketplace for a very long time, right? So we do have the brand with those Telco customers for these solutions. What we're seeing with this solution is, it's an emerging market. It's an emerging market for a new technology. So there's an opportunity for both Red Hat and Dell together to leverage our brands with those customers with no friction in the marketplace as we go to market together. So our field sales teams will be motivated to, you know, take advantage of the solution for their customers, as will the Dell team. And I'll let Tony speak to the Dell, go to market. >> Yeah. You know, so we really co-sell together, right? We're the key partners. Dell will end up fulfilling that order, right? We send these engineered systems through our factories and we send that out either directly to a customer or to a OTEL lab, like an intermediate lab where we can further refine and customize that offer for that particular customer. And so we got a lot of options there, but we're essentially co-selling. And Dell is fulfilling that from an infrastructure perspective, putting Red Hat software on top and the licensing for that support. So it's a really good mix. >> And I think, if I may, one of the key differentiators is the actual capabilities that we're bringing together inside of this pre-integrated solution. So it includes the Red Hat OpenShift which is the container software, but we also add our advanced cluster management as well as our Ansible automation. And then Dell adds their orchestration capability along with the features and functionalities of the platform. And we put that together and we offer capability, remote automation orchestration and management capabilities that again reduces the operating expense, reduces the complexity, allows for easy scale. So it's, you know, certainly it's all about the partnership but it's also the capabilities of the combined technology. >> I was just going to ask about some of the numbers, and you mentioned some of them. Reduction of TCO I imagine is also a big capability that this solution enables besides reducing OpEx. Talk about the TCO reduction. 'Cause I know there's some numbers there that Dell and Red Hat have already delivered to the market. >> Yeah. You know, so these infrastructure blocks are designed specifically for Core, or for RAN, or for the Edge. We're starting out initially in the Core, but we've done some market research with a company called ACG. And ACG has looked at day zero, day one and day two TCO, FTE hours saved. And we're looking at over 40 to 50% TCO savings over you know, five year period, which is quite significant in terms of cost savings at a TCO level. But also we have a lot of numbers around power consumption and savings around power consumption. But also just that experience for our operator that says, hey, I'm going to go to one company to get the best in class from Red Hat and Dell together. That saves a lot of time in procurement and that entire ordering process as well. So you get a lot of savings that aren't exactly seen in the FTE hours around TCO, but just in that overall experience by talking to one company to get the best of both from both Red Hat and Dell together. >> I think the comic book character Charlie Brown once said, "The most discouraging thing in the world is having a lot of potential." (laughing) >> Right. >> And so when we talk about disaggregating and then reaggregating or reintegrating, that means choice. >> Tony: Yeah. >> How does an operator approach making that choice? Because, yeah, it sounds great. We have this integration lab and you have all these choices. Well, how do I decide, how does a person decide? This is a question for Honore from a Red Hat perspective, what's the secret sauce that you believe differentiates the Red Hat-infused stack versus some other assemblage of gear? >> Well, there's a couple of key characteristics, and the one that I think is most prevalent is that we're open, right? So "open" is in Red Hat's DNA because we're an open source technology company, and with that open source technology and that open platform, our customers can now add workloads. They have options to choose the workloads that they want to run on that open source platform. As they choose those workloads, they can be confident that those workloads have been certified and validated on our platform because we have a very robust ecosystem of ISVs that have already completed that process with open source, with Red Hat OpenShift. So then we take the Red Hat OpenShift and we put it on the Dell platform, which is market leader platform, right? Combine those two things, the customers can be confident that they can put those workloads on the combined platform that we're offering and that those workloads would run. So again, it goes back to making it simpler, making it easy to procure, easy to run workloads, easy to deploy, easy to operate. And all of that of course equates to saving time always equates to saving money. >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> Oh, I thought you wanted to continue. >> No, I think Honore sort of, she nailed it. You know, Red Hat is so dominant in 5G, and what they're doing in the market, especially in the Core and where we're going into the RAN, you know, next steps are to validate those workloads, those workload vendors on top of a stack. And the Red Hat leader in the Core is key, right? It's instant credibility in the core market. And so that's one of the reasons why we, Dell, want to partner with with Red Hat for the core market and beyond. We're going to be looking at not only Core but moving into RAN very soon. But then we do, we take that validated workload on top of that to optimize that workload and then be able to instantiate that in the core and the RAN. It's just a really streamlined, good experience for our operators. At the end of the day, we want happy customers in between our mutual customer base. And that's what you get whenever you do that combined stack together. >> Were operators, any operators, and you don't have to mention them by name, involved in the evolution of the infra blocks? I'm just curious how involved they were in helping to co-develop this. I imagine they were to some degree. >> Yeah, I could take that one. So, in doing so, yeah, we can't be myopic and just assume that we nailed it the first time, right? So yeah, we do work with partners all the way up and down the stack. A lot of our engineering work with Red Hat also brings in customer experience that is key to ensure that you're building and designing the right architecture for the Core. I would like to use the names, I don't know if I should, but a lot of those names are big names that are leaders in our industry. But yeah, their footprints, their fingerprints are all over those design best practices, those architectural designs that we build together. And then we further that by doing those validated workloads on top of that. So just to really prove the point that it's optimized for the Core, RAN, Edge kind of workload. >> And it's a huge added value for Red Hat to have a partner like Dell who can take all of those components, take the workload, take the Red Hat software, put it on the platform, and deliver that out to the customers. That's really, you know, a key part of the partnership and the value of the partnership because nobody really does that better than Dell. That center of excellence around delivery and support. >> Can you share any feedback from any of those nameless operators in terms of... I'm even kind of wondering what the catalyst was for the infra block. Was it operators saying, "Ah, we have these challenges here"? Was it the evolution of the Telco stack and Dell said, "We can come in with Red Hat and solve this problem"? And what's been some of their feedback? >> Yeah, it really comes down to what Honore said about, okay, you know, when we are looking at day zero, which is primarily your design, how much time savings can we do by creating that stack for them, right? We have industry experts designing that Core stack that's optimized for different levels of spectrum. When we do that we save a lot of time in terms of FTE hours for our architects, our operators, and then it goes into day one, right? Which is the deployment aspect for saving tons of hours for our operators by being able to deploy this. Speed to market is key. That ultimately ends up in, you know, faster time to revenue for our customers, right? So it's, when they see that we've already done the pre-work that they don't have to, that's what really resonates for them in terms of that, yeah. >> Honore, Lisa and I happen to be veterans of the Cloud native space, and what we heard from a lot of the folks in that ecosystem is that there is a massive hunger for developers to be able to deploy and manage and orchestrate environments that consist of Cloud native application infrastructure, microservices. >> Right. >> What we've heard here is that 5G equals Cloud native application stacks. Is that a fair assessment of the environment? And what are you seeing from a supply and demand for that kind of labor perspective? Is there still a hunger for those folks who develop in that space? >> Well, there is, because the very nature of an open source, Kubernetes-based container platform, which is what OpenShift is, the very nature of it is to open up that code so that developers can have access to the code to develop the workloads to the platform, right? And so, again, the combination of bringing together the Dell infrastructure with the Red Hat software, it doesn't change anything. The developer, the development community still has access to that same container platform to develop to, you know, Cloud native types of application. And you know, OpenShift is Red Hat's hybrid Cloud platform. So it runs on-prem, it runs in the public Cloud, it runs at the edge, it runs at the far edge. So any of the development community that's trying to develop Cloud native applications can develop it on this platform as they would if they were developing on an OpenShift platform in the public Cloud. >> So in "The Graduate", the advice to the graduate was, "Plastics." Plastics. As someone who has more children than I can remember, I forget how many kids I have. >> Four. >> That's right, I have four. That's right. (laughing) Three in college and grad school already at this point. Cloud native, I don't know. Kubernetes definitely a field that's going to, it's got some legs? >> Yes. >> Okay. So I can get 'em off my payroll quickly. >> Honore: Yes, yes. (laughing) >> Okay, good to know. Good to know. Any thoughts on that open Cloud native world? >> You know, there's so many changes that's going to happen in Kubernetes and services that you got to be able to update quickly. CICD, obviously the topic is huge. How quickly can we keep these systems up to date with new releases, changes? That's a great thing about an engineered system is that we do provide that lifecycle management for three to five years through this engagement with our customers. So we're constantly keeping them up with the latest and the greatest. >> David: Well do those customers have that expertise in-house, though? Do they have that now? Or is this a seismic cultural shift in those environments? >> Well, you know, they do have a lot of that experience, but it takes a lot of that time, and we're taking that off of their plate and putting that within us on our system, within our engineered system, and doing that automatically for them. And so they don't have to check in and try to understand what the release certification matrix is. Every quarter we're providing that to them. We're communicating out to the operator, telling them what's coming up latest and greatest, not only in terms of the software but the hardware and how to optimize it all together. That's the beauty of these systems. These are five year relationships with our operators that we're providing that lifecycle management end to end, for years to come. >> Lisa: So last question. You talked about joint GTM availability. When can operators get their hands on this? >> Yes. Yes. It's currently slated for early September release. >> Lisa: Awesome. So sometime this year? >> Yes. >> Well guys, thank you so much for talking with us today about Dell, Red Hat, what you're doing to really help evolve the telecom stack. We appreciate it. Next time come back with a customer, we can dig into it. That'd be fun. >> We sure will, absolutely. That may happen today actually, a little bit later. Not to let the cat out the bag, but good news. >> All right, well, geez, you're going to want to stick around. Thank you so much for your time. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson. This is Lisa Martin of theCUBE at MWC23 from Barcelona, Spain. We'll be back after a short break. (calm music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Okay, welcome back everyone live CUBE coverage here in San Francisco at VMworld 2019 I'm Jon Furrier, my co-host this segment, Stu Miniman. 10 years Stu it's been a long run. A lot of CUBE alumnis around, we got two here. Honore LaBourdette Vice President go-to-market Telco Edge Cloud at VMware. And Lakshmi Mandyam, Vice President Product Manager, go-to-market Edge IoT at VMware. Great to see you, thanks for coming back. >> Thank you for having us. >> So, I think IoT's going to be a pretty big deal. 5G, jury's still out on 5G but it's looking good. Look, if Pat Gelsinger said it's going to be great, it's probably going to be great. What's new? Give us the update. >> Well, just a commentary on 5G, when you say you think it's going to be great, there is some skepticism in the marketplace because if you go back and look at all the different generations of cellular technologies, it's the odd numbers that have never been successful and the even numbers that have, from a monetary perspective for the telcos. Interesting thing about 5G is because it's such a system-oriented technology, that we do believe that it's going to enable a lot of the capabilities associated with IoT, right? So there's an interdependency between 5G and IoT and IoT and 5G that I think is going to make 5G more successful than any of its predecessors. >> All of us are nerds that geek out on RF and physics. I mean 5G has a lot of skeptics but they're deploying 5G, it's not like it's a vaporware. There are deployments going on in the United States, certainly outside of the United States. So it is real, it's actually happening. The question is what will be the impact to the network effect and what's it going to enable, which will certainly impact the industrial IoT and IoT markets. >> Well so one of the things that's happening with the deployments of 5G isn't just the innovation associated with the spectrum technology of five generations of mobile technology, right? There is an entire transformation happening with the core infrastructure of the telco network. And there's an interdependency there as well, right? So as the telco's software define the infrastructure on which they run all of their services, that then extends all the way through from the cloud to the core to the edge for all of the radio access and everything associated with 5G. >> And we're also seeing on the IoT side that there's a similar transformation going on, 'cause right now when you look at kind of example manufacturing, right? There's a real siloed infrastructure, siloed use cases and people are not able to scale and especially when you start to see the business impact that IoT's actually going to have, because most of the data that's being generated is actually being generated from the devices at the edge. And there's a viewpoint that a lot of the workloads that are actually being generated for the enterprise are actually going to be executed at the edge and when you take those things into consideration, it's really important to have an infrastructure that scales. And just like we've seen in other areas where a sprawl of infrastructure is really not going to be be effective in terms of delivering business value. That's the same problem that we see here. >> That brings up a good point. You mention systems view. I think this is interesting 'cause I think this business model innovation, as well as the architecture. I mean, you become what you're known for in the old infrastructure. You don't want that legacy to be dictating the new things, you mentioned backhaul. That's a topic that people talk about in the cellular business. You got the radios, you backhaul through a network, go to the core. But now you're getting at something different where if you're going to be backhauling, which implies moving packets around, moving data has become a really big problem or concern because the cost to move data, the physics involved, latency is a requirement. Processing at the edge becomes the new architecture. >> Yeah, I think the old paradigm was around moving data to the compute but the new paradigm is going to be moving compute to the data, especially on the edge and the IoT. And this is where managing that whole compute infrastructure is going to be really, really important. And that's what, you know, the VMware Telco Edge-- >> Well, we're going to ask Pat Gelsinger a question that riffs off what Dave asked years ago. Stu, I don't remember what year it was, 2012 or 2013, Dave Vellante asked Pat Gelsinger, "Is security a do-over?" You know Pat's very opinionated, he's like, "Absolutely a do-over." Really risky, bold take to say at that time, turns out he was right. The question I want to preview with you guys is, is the architecture a do-over? Because if you think about it, there's new capabilities, you mentioned the systems view. Is there an opportunity, not to throw it away, but like, just rethink it, get a second chance at deploying large scale edge, cloud, versus backhauling through the data center, maybe backhaul through the cloud. So, to me it's just kind of feels like a do-over. >> Well, there's very much an opportunity to, I'll say evolve rather than to do it over, right? 'Cause do-over kind of implies everybody's going to throw out everything that they have. But when you think about the beauty of software is that now we can have inherent security in all of the aspects of the software defined network all the way through the edge. So if you happened to hear Pat's keynote this morning, you know, he put up a slide of all the different security vendors across all of the different types of, the different areas of the clouds, the different cloud technologies and basically said that there is an opportunity now for us to do for security basically what we did for compute and networking and storage, by software defining that. And so that's the opportunity for security is to leverage all of what you can do with a software defined approach and have security be intrinsic to everything from the cloud to the core to the edge. And specifically for IoT. If you think about Lakshmi's comment about pushing the compute to the apps, and pushing the compute where the applications are going to be, or the user is going to be, I think there's going to be a greater requirement for security actually at the edge than even what we see in the cloud today. >> Lakshmi, you know, one of the comments we made is if you looked at the keynote this morning, the virtual machine is not the center of the the discussion. There's, you know, VMware, now plays a lot of places where that VM is not at the center. If you can bring us up to speed, when VMware looks at the edge architectures and how they're going to work with enterprises there, you know, what are the solutions that you're going to bring to bare out of the portfolio? >> Yeah so we have a, you know, when you think about IoT and there's all these things that are out there, oftentimes when someone installed it in the factory they didn't even update the factory settings, the threat surface of that is just expansive. And so, what we're doing with the product that I'm going to talk about, Pulse, we actually life cycle manage these devices, software updating, making sure that they're compliant with IT kind of security and other requirements. And so, what we see is the architecture, is we see kind of this managed infrastructure at the device level, that then feeds into kind of the thin edge, and you heard Pat talk about it this morning, right? Pulse and NSX and VeloCloud for the thin edge and that kind of, it's a continuum really. You can't define-- >> It's difficult to do. >> It's a continuum of compute ranging from very small footprint all the way up to our Dell EMC announcement. BMC on Dell EMC, sorry. >> We actually did some original research back when, you know, GE was putting together their industrial internet and one of the biggest stumbling blocks we saw is that huge gap between the IT and OT, they don't talk. You talk about the telco, that telco role doesn't tie in to the traditional data center world. It's at the edge and some expert comes in and does their piece but, you know, smashing these worlds together is a real challenge. >> What's interest-- >> Oh, I'm sorry. >> I was going to say 5G is the technology that I think is going to create the catalyst for those technologies to come together, right? So you have the enterprise edge, you have the industrial edge, and you have the telco edge. And over time, the more the telcos start pushing compute out to their edge, enterprise push compute out to their edge. And then you have all of these industrial IoT devices. The definition of the edge is going to begin to blur. >> I think this is, I think the IoT, industrial IoT, is probably the most important tech story this generation. It doesn't get as much play as AI, 'cause AI kind of sounds cooler, attracts young kids to be coders, but IoT is really the most important thing because think about the industrial IoT, the threats, cyber threats, cyber security. One hole, one hole and the attacker is in. Just to speak security and critical. >> I actually think it's beyond that because I don't know if you heard Pat talk about his definition of the edge, which is actually that merging of the digital and physical worlds. When you think about that, most of human problems can be solved by great technology, technology for good. And so you think about industries being pushed to produce more, 70% more food with just 5% extra land, or you know, carbon emissions, all of these problems which with good visibility control and management can be solved and that's really what we're trying to do-- >> Yeah, but good intentions, I understand where Pat's coming from. It's good, it's good marketing on the stage but the reality is, is when you roll out the tech to make that happen, if you don't have that security intrinsically pulled in, this means that you got to have the zero trust. But IoT is a different animal on a thin edge, than it is, say a data center. So like, it's just one of those things where we're watching 'cause it's just, there's so many, the service area is so large. >> Yeah, and in fact, one of the things that we're doing in terms of incorporating security in the management is looking at hardware Root of Trust right down to every device that's managed and being able to, you know, to attest whether something is legitimate or not. So we're rolling all of those things into our technologies. >> So, Pat brought up the telco. Earlier on, we were asking some of our guests about the business model on telco, because, you know, telcos have been struggling, they had owned infrastructure. So when you own infrastructure, it's hard to go out of business unless you actually run out of cash, but they had plenty of working capital, but they got to get their business model. You guys have any thoughts on as telco starts to modernize, whether they migrate and modernize or modernize and migrate with cloud, what's hopeful things that you can share that's showing business models for telco? Because 5G, someone's got to pay for it. It's not inexpensive to roll out 5G. >> So, what we're seeing with our telco customers is that they're finally beginning to realize that they can actually accelerate their time of revenue with new services, with a software defined infrastructure. So, I think when first we met, you know, we were in the early stages of developing the market for telco with software defined. But we've crossed the chasm now to where we have over a hundred discreet telcos that are in production on our platform. And so we have proof points that says, "Okay, now they can accelerate time to new revenue". What we're focused on now is helping them extend that out to the edge. And as you know, partners with Lakshmi, we see the telcos as a route to the enterprise market for our edge an IoT solutions. Right, so there's an opportunity for telcos to participate not just in the cloud economy but the edge economy. In terms of the business models, the change is driving the business model transformation. You know, the technology is driving business model transformation. But it's an excellent point. Its operating models are transforming, business models are transforming, and interestingly enough, commercial models are transforming as well. >> Lakshmi, you know the app side's going to be where the growth is now. Getting back to the good thing, once that infrastructure is stable, the apps can come out. So the application development, the microservices, that kind of to me connects that Kubernetes piece to it. That is an opportunity to telco providers, right? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean again, it's all about deploying and managing applications right at the edge and so the infrastructure that we're building, with all of the announcements that you heard and the features that we're adding into the product profile is really about how do you deploy and manage these applications right down at the device level and that's really where I think it's going to transform. >> A lot of action. >> A study came out just yesterday that the edge market is targeted to be a $4.1 trillion market. >> Yeah, it's going to be huge. >> That's trillion with a T. >> Yeah, it's going to be huge. >> So, wondering what you can say about the ecosystem. Because, you know we've looked, VMware has always had ecosystems but it's many ecosystems, and you've got a cloud marketplace, and there's lots of different customers so will some of your existing partners go along with this, is it building out a new suite, you know, when you look at the edge and IoT? >> I think there will be a group of partners that come along, for sure, but, you know, IoT, especially when you think about industrial IoT, it is a new space of players and we're building that ecosystem and trying to figure out what customers want, right? Because, it's an ocean, you could boil it but that may not be the right approach. >> Yeah, I mean, it's like you said, there's a T on the TAM. It's a huge, huge TAM. It's going to be a huge application boom and IT culture's got to evolve from that perimeter-based security to a surface area that's out there, that's one light bulb on a factory, that IP enabled, could be a malware entry point. It could be something for a worm to get in there. >> Well, it's really like any device. What's that, any-- >> Any device, any application, any device, any Cloud. >> Any cloud, I think in IoT, it's anywhere. >> Anywhere, exactly. >> Totally, totally. >> And to your very accurate point about the security associated with that, right? In the telcos, actually owning that last mile. Right, so when we talk about $4.1 trillion of opportunity, and the need to develop an ecosystem that can support those edge and IoT solutions, the telcos really are in the cat seat to take advantage of that because they own that last mile of customer access, customer influence, they own the cell towers. Right, so as we push compute out to the radio access, telcos have an opportunity to participate. >> Honore, I want to get your thoughts while you're here and Lakshmi, if you can chime in, that's cool too. I'm doing a big editorial on industrial IoT national security. This all kind of leads into policy, potential regulation. You know, I mentioned tech for good, tech for bad is neutral how it's shaped. I'm assuming you guys are going to take a shape in some of those conversations. Any thoughts on regulatory things happening because with cyber security, cyber war that's happening on our digital turf, the telcos are in a prime position to assist and help shape that, you guys can do that. Any thoughts on how you see that, that conversation? Anything you'd like to add? >> So VMware is participating in consortiums associate with those very topics. And of course we are developing technology with an appreciation and understanding respect for the governing agencies across every country as it relates to privacy and security. And so I'm sure, you know and it varies from country to country. In terms of what data you have access to and how you deliver that data and what you do with that data, that's a really hot topic in Washington these days, right? >> And software helps too. >> Software does help, right? You have so much flexibility with software but at the same time you have so much risk that you have to prevent. What we've learned is, it's really about the individual's information. Whether that is a device or an industrial device or an end user or a potentially, a point of presence. It really does depend on what you do with that data, who touches the data, and where is that data going to be housed. And so each of the different countries, each of the different telcos, depending on their location are adhering to the governmental requirements for who does what with the data. >> Yeah, it's interesting, we just did a power panel in our studio, we had experts come in talking about called the "Cybergeddon" scenario, which is a hacker taking over not just malware and getting penetrated with worms and getting access to data, but actually taking over physical devices to harm people. So, this is kind of a nation threat thing. It's not so much a corporate thing, but you know, there is a shaping opportunity here when we're trying to identify where, you know, good governance, at least from a policy stand point, tech are coming together. More and more, it's happening. >> And of course, we participate very actively here in the U.S., right? Because we are a U.S. headquartered company. We try to participate where we can in some of the other countries for the regulatory agencies. And we're a part of the world economic forum. So through that vehicle, you know, through that consortium we're also trying to influence, for good, of course. We just recently, we announced this morning that we acquired Uhana and Uhana is an artificial intelligence machine learning and specific to telco, it will observe, analyze and report back on data all the way to the consumer level across a radio access network. And the one question we get asked from every telco that we do business with is, "What do you do with the data?" And of course, we don't do anything with the data. In that particular technology, we're observing it but we don't necessarily touch it. But you're exactly right, I think it's something that's going to be a hot topic for a time, awhile to come. >> It's an opportunity for tech for good. Guys, thanks for coming on, sharing your insights. Great to see you again, thanks for coming on. Great insights, a lot changing and certainly very relevant, the IoT Edge, telco, IoT's all happening, AI is a part of it. It's theCUBE, live coverage. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Be right back after this short break. (light techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell World Technologies here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment. We have Honore LaBourdette. She is the VP, Global Market Development, Telco Business Group. Welcome, VMware, thank you, sorry. >> Thank you, yes. >> Welcome. And we have Kevin Shatzkamer, Senior VP, Networking and Solutions, Dell EMC. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Our pleasure. >> Thank you. >> So Kevin I want to start with you. There was a big announcement this morning, signing with Orange of France. Tell our viewers a little bit more about this. >> Yeah, sure. So, I think as overall Dell Technologies continues to focus on helping our service providers through what is a very complex transition, both in their business, in their operations, in their technology investments, in the operational skill set gaps, in the business models, the architecture's use cases kind of comes across the board of how their businesses are evolving. What we continue to do is focus on a core set of telecommunication service providers that we can partner with very deeply to help in that transformation and use the knowledge gained through that collaboration as a means to expand the Dell Technologies capabilities globally. So, I think that the belief is that when we help solve problems, it not only benefits the service provider we're working with, it benefits the industry as a whole with the lessons learned, so that we can then contribute back. >> And so far, there's been some enthusiasm about this? >> There certainly has. I think it's been a big day for us. Obviously, the first two days at Dell Technologies World, we're extremely focused on new product introductions across the Dell portfolio, and today, with the opportunity to expand the messaging and announce some of the great things we're doing with partners, we're doing with out customers, and we're doing within the ecosystem, I think we continue to drive a very positive message. >> Honore, the networking component is something that we know service providers have a need and is ever-changing. We've watched that expand greatly in the VMware portfolio over the years. I've done plenty of interviews with telcos talking about things like NFV, network functions virtualization, but the big thing everybody's been talking about, the last couple of years it feels like, is 5G. So, maybe we could start there, but talk a little bit about what you're hearing from service providers and how VMware and VMware plus Dell are helping to meet some of those requirements. >> Sure, well, needless to say, 5G is the topic of every conversation we have with our telecommunication customers, and I think that there's a number of areas around 5G that are most prevalent in those conversations. One is really how does the service provider get a return on investment for the huge amounts of monies that they're investing in this infrastructure, right? So, 5G is a new infrastructure, a new technology, that's going to require a refresh of the entire infrastructure. And so, while they're making all of those investments, and they are doing so very aggressively to have a first-mover advantage, in terms of the first to deliver on a 5G technology, they want to work with vendors who can, in fact, accelerate their time to a return on the investment for that infrastructure. So, many of our conversations are really focused around how can we help these service providers actually accomplish that, right? Not just build out, or take advantage of a software-defined infrastructure and all of the technologies that both Dell and WMware offer to them under the umbrella of the Dell Technology Companies, but also, how can we help them accelerate services that they want to to put on top of the 5G technology? I think one of the key differentiators of 5G over its predecessors is that the industry has recognized that it's going to require partnerships in order for the service providers to really get their return on investment. And that's where the partnership with VMware and with Dell and the work that Kevin and I are doing together to focus on service providing is really anchored, right? It's bringing together those partnerships, so that these telecommunication customers can take advantage of our technology and do it very quickly. >> So, there's a real acknowledgement of the need for partnerships? >> Yes. >> So then, how do you show customers that the VMware-Dell partnership is the right direction? >> Well, needless to say, it's anchored in our technology. Kevin and I have been working together for a number of years now, and our partnership really started out focusing on just making sure that the components of the stack worked as promised, right? That we could deliver a high degree of confidence to our customers that when they software-defined the infrastructure on Dell Technology hardware, and then layered on top of that, their virtual network functions, that it would perform our outperform their legacy, bare-metal, vertical-stack equipment. Over time, however, our partnership has progressed to where we're actually collaborating to bring new technology to market together. And one example of that is the City of Las Vegas. We recently announced a Smart City IoT use case, and that technology, that solution, was co-developed with NTT, Dell EMC, and VMware using VMware software, Dell hardware, as well as Dell Storage, Dell Data Analytics and Intelligence, and NTT's infrastructure and points of presence. >> Yeah, I think there's both a technical reality and an operational reality to the technologies that we speak of, right? The technical reality is that the transformation that the telcos are going through around NFV and the direction toward network edge, edge computing, cloud environments, is really just software-defined data center similar to what we've done on the IT side for a long time. So, the technologies that the telecommunications industry is adopting are the technologies that both Dell EMC and VMware have been working on for a very long time. The operational reality is that just taking what you've done in IT and applying it into a telco network is not sufficient. Understanding of the workloads, how those workloads layer on top of infrastructure, understanding that those workloads are in a transformation of their own, and that virtual network functions were not designed to natively consume and compute. They were designed for network appliances, and that there are still requirements that they drive down to the infrastructure was, I think, where Honore and I have been investing for the last several years, right? How do we complement the broad capabilities of both Dell EMC and VMware in IT virtualization software-defined data center, and bring in telco service provider networking expertise and domain knowledge that we can use to be able to really ramp up and accelerate the partnerships we have in the service provider industry? >> That's great stuff. We actually got to do an interview on the smarter cities earlier this week, and a fascinating discussion to see how there's, Kevin, I like what you laid out there. When I look at this space, scale gets talked about a lot, but you talk to telcos, they have a little bit of a different scale, and the management for these kind of environments is also quite a bit different than if you were talking to the enterprise. Are those some of the key items? Where would you say your focus? >> I also think that even further. That the challenges of scale that have been solved in the public cloud are a different set of challenges than the telco industry is really trying to wrestle with, right? In the public cloud, we're taking about a very small number of facilities, and we can build a homogenous architecture within there. We define a standard server. We replicate that server across a rack, replicate that rack across rows, replicate those rows across a data center. The reality is, as we get further and further towards the edge of the telco network, it looks more heterogeneous, right? I need GPUs for particular instances. I have cloud-native applications. I have virtualized applications that sit inside of VMs. I have native Linux environments. I need to handle dense networking topologies. I have east-west traffic, north-south traffic that I need to take into account. And I think that what we've figured out and what we've learned in automating and orchestrating the public cloud is how to handle hundreds of thousands of things at single-digit number of locations. And what we're talking about here is hundreds of thousands of locations with single-digit number of things. >> And that's another key area of the collaboration between the two groups, in terms of how we deliver value to our telco customers. So, rather than us working in silos and delivering yet another disparate technology for managing the edge, cloud, or all these different locations, we're working together so we can bring a cohesive technology to market for them. >> That's right, I think the infrastructure demands and openness and a willingness to be a productive member of a complex and consistently changing ecosystem, and I think that, obviously, Dell EMC does that in our way. VMware does it in their way, but there's clear recognition that the better capabilities are when we work together to really drive the platform and bring the true capabilities of the broader Dell technologies together. >> So, telcoms is a hugely competitive industry, and as you've talked about, there's a lot of challenges, and it's a real transformative moment for this sector. Can you lay out some of sort of what you're thinking about for after 5G, which as you've said, is a hugely expensive investment for these companies? But sort of post-5G, what are we looking at? What's on their minds of your customers? >> So, I don't know that there's going to be distinct, post-5G event, right? I think that 5G, in and of itself, is going to take some time to roll out and proliferate, to the extent that its predecessors is now deployed across all locations all over the world. I do think that 5G, in addition to the infrastructure technology, or the refresh of that technology, a lot of what is going to happen around 5G is, in fact, the applications and use cases that's going to take advantage of 5G. If we about what 5G is capable of enabling, it doesn't just address consumer applications. 5G also will address enterprise applications. And that opens up a whole world of innovation, and again, applications, partnerships, and vendors coming together, who can really help the service providers put those pieces together and deliver on those applications. There's already talk about 6G, although it's very limited. So, it's easy for me to say what's coming next after 5G will be 6G, but I think that there's still a lot of activity and a lot of innovation that will happen around 5G for some time to come. >> Yeah, we know that standards and the consortiums always have to be working. I was looking at terabit ethernet on the networking side. So, I wanted to help kind of bring this conversation together. If you have maybe a customer example, love if you could share who it is, but if not, give us a little bit of anonymity around what it is to help highlight this partnership. >> Sure, I think Honore shared the City of Las Vegas as a great example of where we're enabling the Smart Cities use case. We can speak to MetTel, in terms of the capabilities of Dell Technologies to be able to transform their NFV offerings and really help them bring NFV to market at scale. We can speak to at least one tier-one service provider in AMIA that is delivering a full-stack offering, in which we extended the capabilities of our Ericsson partnership that both Dell EMC, as well as VMware have, to build a complete stack offering of Ericsson, VMware, as well as Dell EMC. >> Yeah, and to Ericsson, there's some of the edge computing in there. I've talked to them quite a bit about what they're doing on their edge offering. >> Yeah, so I think we have a number of examples that we also can't share as publicly. But we continue to collaborate. I think we're driving fantastic innovation. The industry is responding extremely favorably across the board, and I think that the strategy that we have jointly to not just develop technology, but really change the way we engage with telecommunications organizations and service providers to work with them well before they're ready to deploy technology, and also, help them scale their own operations and understand this transformation is really key to the success here. Because just having the best technology at this inflection point in the industry is not enough. We really have to partner to help them understand how to operationalize and monetize that infrastructure. >> And we do have a number of innovation projects, with regards to the edge and far edge with some of the top-tier service providers, in particular, in the Americas, where we're working together for edge solutions. I've got to hear what this far-edge is in a future conversation, because I thought I was getting my arms around it, but -- >> I know, it was edge, and now it's edge and far-edge. >> That's for Dell Technologies World 2020. >> That's right. >> Honore, Kevin, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> It's a great time. >> You are watching theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World. There's more to come after this. (upbeat music)