>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and its ecosystem partners. (techno music) >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, day three of our coverage of Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin joined by John Troyer, and we're excited to welcome back to theCUBE, distinguished alumni Bask Iyer, the CIO of Dell Technologies and VMware. Bask it's great to have you here. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> So we were joking before we went on that we're right next to the therapy dog area, so always nice to have a technology conversation populated with dogs barking. >> No I like the dogs better if you want to talk about dogs or guitar, I would rather prefer that over >> Oh I could talk about that all day. So talk to us about, you are the CIO of Dell Technologies and VMware, first Dell Technologies World, 14,000 attendees >> Right. >> In person. >> Yep. >> 6,500 technology and solutions partners here, another expected 30,000+ people engaging with the livestream, the on-demand videos. Big, big focus this week. Love to get your perspective on the role of the CIO, the role that you have now, you know you a few years ago, it was truly all about technology, now it's really about your involvement in the corporate strategy. Talk to us about the vision that you're setting, with Michael Dell, with your peers in IT and other stakeholders at Dell Technologies. >> Okay. No it's a great event I love this. A lot of these are colleagues, other CIOs. So they know, they want to know really do you use it inside Dell. A lot more credibility when you talk real stories about how you use it in Dell. The first thing is when I started this career there was no such title as CIO. That itself is pretty new. We were just the geeks who kind of ran everything. And then you became head of IT. So it was very strongly technical, and then they said you needed leadership and business skills, the pendulum swung one way to all business and leadership skills and no technology, and then came back to we should need both of that. And then you have business and general management, so every year the job changes. What I'm finding though, which is good and bad, is nothing goes away. You still need to know the technology, you still need to know the business skills, soft skills, still need to be a general manager. What is now is a lot more on the strategy. So the importance of strategy though is you never talk strategy if your operations is not good. Right nobody cares. But if your operations is somewhat good, you better not talk about operations. So I tell people don't keep on saying your trains are running on time. It has to run on time, if it doesn't, if it runs recently on time, talk about strategy. So now it's an important job to do that, and your question about in a technology company, I am the customer. I'm probably one of the very few people who actually signed a purchase order within Dell Tech to buy Dell or EMC or VMware. So they're interested in the customer's perspective. So you're the internal voice of the customer. We are also using all the tech that we make, and we need to give feedback to the developers and the R&D folks. So we call it drink our own champagne, but not our own Kool-Aid, you know what I mean. >> I like that. >> So sometimes you get carried away by the marketing things that we do. The challenge though is you working with Michael Dell, you're working with Pat Gelsinger and everybody else, and thousands of engineering fellows and so on, who know IT, who've invented a lot of things in IT. So you cannot really keep up with them. You know you need to know enough to hold your own, but if you try to compete with them, that is not a good thing. So luckily for me I was a good B student, I'm comfortable with A students around me. So you have you to be comfortable that you're not the smartest one in the room, but you're still contributing. That's the change you have. It is surreal to go in front of a Pat or Michael or other people and talk about digital transformation. And they're making eye contact they want to know how, what do you mean by digital transformation? How do you do it internally? What's your plan? So every once in a while you pinch yourself and say I can't believe this is happening. But it does happen. >> So Bask, I mean digital transformation is a theme of the show, right? >> Yeah. >> Make it real. As you talk with other CIOS, do they feel like they have a seat at that table? Are they the driver, are they the implementer? You start to hear more about a Chief Digital Officer, is that, does the CIO became the CDO, are they different? Do you have any thoughts on that? >> Yeah I'm very strong on the fact there's a again if the CIO focus only on operations and cost, then people say your trains are running on time lets get somebody clever to do the innovation and digital. You don't want to leave that, that is the cream of the crop. So I think if you're a good CIO, you want to be the Chief Digital Officer for the company. You don't want to have two CFOs, one for Wall Street and one for doing the real work. You don't want to have two salesperson, one for putting the numbers and one actually selling. So you need to have one technology person. Some companies may be so complex that you may consider that. I started as a chief Digital Officer in Hunnewell, ended up as the CIO for Hunnewell for example, but you need to have people who are very collaborative, those two have to work very closely together. It's very difficult to find one person who's collaborative and nonpolitical to be a leader of an IT organization. To find two and working as a team is complicated. So that's what I want. So I'm not a big supporter of that although I could see why it would happen, if you will. Okay. >> Lisa: So drinking your own champagne I like that by the way, you are in this role, it's interesting that you say you still kind of feel like you're pinching yourself when you're talking to a Michael Dell or a Pat Gelsinger, but you're up there having to implement digital transformation within Dell Technologies and all the companies underneath. >> Sure. >> That's a pretty big seat at the table. How are you sort of embodying the theme of this event and making digital transformation real for Dell Technologies? >> So I go very practical and I give, yesterday I talked to my fellow CIOs on the mistakes I've made. Right I came as the VMware CIO, we've already done this journey in a couple of years ahead of time. So wouldn't it be a cut and paste? Given the hybrid cloud, given the best end user environment possible and you're done. You already have that start. But I made the same mistake every CIO makes, we preach this but we don't follow it. It's not just the technology, it's people, process, culture, and technology, and I jumped on the technology, and I'm kicking myself to say, first three months didn't make a whole lot of progress. I was just yelling like a madman to say why is it not getting done. And then you have to go back into I have to hire the right people. So lets talk a few things. I made changes to the leadership team. Certain people were not comfortable in the pace of change. We did it respectfully but we had to have people who can actually lead the change. That was first. Then we called something about putting T back in IT. Which a long time in IT what we have done is we've outsourced, off shored, treated IT as a commodity and then we have program managers and leaders. Every magazine asked us to do that. Well, guess what we've been wrong. I think I've been wrong, doing that. You do need technologies right now. You cannot do digital transformation without understanding the technology. So we have to staff internally, we have to get good folks. Still manage the cost right, that doesn't go away, but you have to do the right thing. So IT, first get the right people, the process for it, what it dawned on me is we are talking about Agile and DevOps and continuous development. Those are all IT, geeky terMs. Those are not business terms. Those are not business terms even in Dell technology. Because there are manufacturing folks and HR folks and finance folks and so on. So I looked at fast experience of somebody like Hunnewell or GE. Remember they adopted Lean Six Sigma some kind of process to transform their company. And even me who's an IT geek had to go through a green-belt certification or a black-belt certification. And I revolted I said why would I do that, I'm an engineer why would I go through this stupid course, but it was required otherwise you don't get promoted. So now you need a prescriptive process to change the culture. So digital transformation needed that. Luckily for us we took the pivotal way, which we have within our company. We made it the Dell Digital way, since you still have to write it in your own language if you will. That is the process we use, we train our folks and our customers, our clients as I call them, customer is the person who buys the products from us, client is all the colleagues. So finance folks have to know what Dell Digital way is. You cannot do requirements the old way, and throw it over the wall and expect me to develop. You have to get into the room, With me and draw it on the wall and be able to design it together. So that's been a good change. And the culture changes with us because initially people are thinking, this guy's coming from Silicon Valley, he's not going to stay here, he's going to do all these things, he's going to get either fired or leave. So people try to run out the clock a little bit. So it takes a little bit of time to work on the culture and say innovation is not only demanded from you, but you have to keep the trains running on time. You have to chew gum and walk at the same time. So that's the process we go through. >> I love what you just described Bask because both in terms of culture and in technology, that actually makes for an interesting set of IT careers, right. That turns IT into a very interesting career again. >> Right. >> Many of my colleagues are IT pros, do you have any advice for somebody who is maybe in the start, the middle of their career, maybe specializing in something but they have I think this dream at the end of the tunnel, maybe the CIO is where they want to be. What do you see, how do I prep to be a CIO now, to be a CIO in say ten years? >> I'd tell him are you crazy? (laughs) Do you know what you're getting into? But here's what there's some truth to it. Getting a job is really easy I think. Doing the job is very difficult. So I tell 'em, get prepared for the job. Also, you should have some passion for technology. If you're a sportswriter, I mean I'm into sports, so you can give me all the magazines you want, I can see all the videos, I can watch 'em all day long. I can retire just watching sports all day long, or playing occasionally. You have to have the passion in technology because things keep coming at you. So we think Blockchain is cool by the time it get off the seed it's going to be something else. You have to be interested and passionate to keep up with that, right. So first thing is can you keep up with the change. Are you actually interested in it? Michael Dell sends you a text in the middle of the night, I don't think he expects me to react but I do. Because he's reading something and he's hearing something from the customers. You need to be interested in learning. So I said you have to be a lifelong learner, passionate on technology, and also learn the ropes because I always felt when I was younger I wasn't given the opportunities at the right time. I felt like am I going to die before I become a vice president or a CIO or whatever? It felt to me that it took a little longer than I wanted it to but thank god because once you got the job you were prepared for it. So that's one of the things I tell people is get prepared. Get into learning. Also the job changes all the time so I can't really write a book on it. You have to almost be like a chameleon in a sense. You got to learn so the last few years was technology, then it was business, then it was soft skills, transformation, ERP implementation, now it's business strategy, it's not going to stop. Technology is going to keep coming as a wave. So be ready for adapting and adopting to the changes if you will, right. >> I'm glad that you brought up people because it's not just systems and processes, none of this comes to fruition, companies don't transform IT, transform digitally, deliver more differentiated products without the people. We had some folks on earlier I think day one with Dell EMC Education Services, we've talked to the Channel folks about the things that they're enabling and one of the things that I think is really important that you brought up is all the things you said, I made all these mistakes. But those are opportunities not just for you to learn and grow, but also for you to share with the people that look at you and say I want to be Bask Iyer on stage. >> Yeah. >> You know in a few years because it's really all about being brave enough to say you know what I didn't know this, or I made a mistake, actually maybe it wasn't a mistake, maybe if I didn't go this path I wouldn't have learned and gotten more solidification under my feet to be able to be up there and get a text from a Michael Dell [Bask] That's right. >> In the middle of the night. >> That's right. >> So your advice to the next generation I think is key but I also really respect identification of hey all the things that maybe I did them wrong and encouraging more people as they want to grow their careers to not be afraid to go I don't know this. This this is an opportunity for me to learn. >> Yeah you cannot be the I wish I was the smartest room in Dell Technology, you know that is not possible. You're not even talking about the senior managers you have to talk to the fellows and engineers we have who I just nod and pretend like I know what they're talking about, it's just amazing. So you need a little bit of the humility I think to learn what you want to learn. But have the confidence right. You cannot have nothing and come and work here because I always tell people working in a tech company versus being a CIO of a regular company and I've done both, it's like getting to a batting cage and all of a sudden the balls are coming at 150 miles an hour. You better be prepared to face it. So you have to figure out can I face a ball at 40 miles or 60 miles or 150 miles. So you need to prepare yourself to get there. But having said that though, we are all learning. We are all growing, we all make mistakes. In fact I learn a lot from my millennial kids. They seem to know more about this than I do. I learn a lot and I do something called reverse mentoring in Silicon Valley, which is all the people from LinkedIn, Google, they want to learn from me because they think I'm the greatest CIO whatever, and I want to learn from them. I ended up at the end of the session learning a lot more from them and I feel actually guilty that the mentoring session has gone the other way but, that's what keeps it's interesting is the minute you feel like you know everything or you've done it, very risky in a technology profession, especially in a CIO profession. >> Lisa: So wrapping up the show here, talk to us about some of the things, and in the spirit of learning, what are some of the things that you've heard from customers about, whether it's the new product announcements or new partnerships or just the new areas that Dell Technologies is going in, what has the feedback been like? >> People love the fact that they saw Pat onstage and talk about VMware and Dell working together. People want to see the independence of VMware as well, and they want Dell and VMware working together. They want to see both. They want to make sure that there is the fierce independence that VMware is known for, and the fact that they're working together. That was good to hear because if you do one or the other people get freaked out. The fact that the best private cloud in the world is getting hooked up to the best public clouds in the world, that's a good message for people because they don't want to be locked into a cloud discussion or other kind of stuff. So you want to have the freedom to do that. A lot of people are now expressing interest in IOT and other kind of places and why the edge is important again. What tends to happen in my profession is we talk about IOT last year, this year we talk about AI and ML, guarantee next year's going to be something else. The technology sweet spot takes three, four, five years to hit. So if you just chasing the next wave because you want to be cool and fun you're missing out on opportunity to leverage this. So lot of buzz around the whole world is going to be wired, everything's going to have sensors, the amount of data that comes in and how to manage it and secure it. A lot of CIOs are saying we should get on top of that. Before it's done to us. Lot of buzz on that. I freaked out. I, like any other geek, went to the show to see the cool techs that everybody has. I went to the Dell booths to see the latest laptops because sometimes they don't show us the latest things >> (laughs) >> they keep it for the show. And then Michael Dell is in the booth. He didn't think it was funny but I thought Michael Dell in a Dell booth in Dell World, that's like you want to go buy a Mustang and you find Mr. Ford in the dealership. So I thought it was hilarious and I was shocked and he was just amused to say why do you think that is so funny. But it's nice to have a founder who's like an icon in the industry. Is he listening? Let me stop. (laughs) >> (laughs) He is a big fan of theCUBE. >> Thank you, then I'm not going to say anything nice about him. >> So, last question You talked about last year was IOT, now it's AI and ML, next year's going to be something else, are the people that are chasing those trends the ones that need the therapy dogs the most? (laughs) >> Yeah I think so because you know we have no time for anything these days, we are chasing the next shiny object. When AI and IOT come together, this is going to be fascinating for me. I worked on industry controls and so on, but if every wall could talk, and every object could talk to you what it would be telling you? And humans cannot comprehend it, because the wall is going to tell you so many things. So and so walked by, so and so sat here, whatever. You need artificial intelligence to filter it and say, you know Eric Clapton was here because that's the only thing maybe you want to know. I don't want to know about anything else. That requires AI to process and say this is what Bask would be interested in. And the rest of it doesn't really matter. So this combination I think is very powerful and I'm pretty excited about what if everything, what if dogs could talk, what if walls could talk, What if thermostat could talk >> Oh I'm waiting for that. >> So it's going to happen in our lifetime, pretty soon. >> Lisa: Well Bask thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE and sharing your insights of how you're leading the charge as the CIO, right up there with Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger and all those big cheeses, but also how you're bringing the technology to the people and really like you said drinking the champagne. >> Thank you, appreciate it. >> We want to thank you for your time. >> Thank you for the time. >> And we thank you for watching theCUBE, we are live day three of Dell Technologies World, right next to the dog therapy center if you need a little break, come say hi and stop by and see some dogs. I'm Lisa Martin for John Troyer, stick around we'll be right back after a short break. (techno music)