(upbeat music) >> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's The Cube, covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to The Cube's continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. Day 2, lots of stuff going on. I'm Lisa Martin with my esteemed colleague Dave Vellante. >> Hey hey. >> Hey hey! I'm excited to welcome an old friend, Eric Herzog, the CMO of IBM, as well as Sam Warner offering management IBM software-defined storage. Welcome, guys! >> Well thanks, we always love to be on The Cube, always. >> Dave: Love the shirt. >> Thank you, I'm glad I'm wearing a Hawaiian shirt again. >> Dave: Thank you for making sure you wore that, yeah. >> I think it's like my 25th time on The Cube with a Hawaiian shirt. >> Lisa: Oh you're like the Alec Baldwin of The Cube. (laughs) >> Lisa: Alright guys, so here we are- >> Dave: If we have the record, that is the same shirt you wore last year, isn't it? >> Yes, but I did clean it, Dave. (laughs) >> He wears it once a year. >> I've never had to ask anyone about dry cleaning on The Cube but there's a first time for everything. Alright guys, so here we are at VMworld. What's new with IBM and VMware? Kind of talk to us, Eric, from a marketing perspective. What's going on there? >> Sure, well the big thing is IBM and VMware have a very strong alliance across our entire portfolio. The Cloud Division has a big agreement with VMware that was announced with Pat Gelsinger and the head of the division last year, the Storage Division has all kinds of heavy duty integration with our VersaStack product, as well as in all of our all-flash arrays, and then Sam's team brought out a new backup and recovery product, Spectrum Tech Plus, which is optimized for VMware and hypervisor and cloud environments. >> Excellent. And that's one of the things actually thematically that we heard yesterday is that, you know, backup is hot. So tell us a little bit more about that hotness and how you guys are working with VMware to dial that- >> Dial that heat. >> Yeah, dial that heat up. >> Sam: Well it's actually, it's more than backup, right, it's about data availability, and ensuring your data's safe, data's the bloodline of your company now, right? Everything's moving toward cognitive and AI, you can't do that without data. Most of your data's trapped as a backup. And what we're trying to do now is make it really easy for people to get at that data and use it for other purposes. So first of all, making sure you're safe from things like ransomware, but also making sure you can get some value out of that data. Make it very easy to recover that data. >> So, lots of topics that we could cover there, I wonder, did you have one more and I want to jump in. >> I did. Just, Eric from a, as the CMO, from a messaging perspective now we've heard backup is hot, you've just kind of articulated that a little bit more, same with storage. From a conversation perspective, and you talked about the importance of data, Michael Dell talked about that this morning, that the data conversation is a CEO agenda. How is the conversation changing, and the position of IBM changing when you guys are talking to customers that, is backup, is storage a conversation around data that you're having with the C-suite of your customers? >> So, a couple things, and I've done storage for 32 years. EMC, IBM twice, seven startups, and the C-suite hates storage, including the CIO, but they do love their data. So they all know they need storage but when you talk about data, data availability, the resiliency of the data, the data always needs to be there, you don't even use things like data resiliency 'cause the CEO doesn't know what that is, so you need to say, so how'd you like it if you were in Star Trek, and Bones wanded you with a new healthcare wand, and it came back with no answer? (laughs) That's 'cause your storage is not resilient and it's not fast enough. So the data has to be available and it has to be fast. So we're moving to this world where everything is AI and everything is immediate. If your storage goes down and you're in dark trading, you just lost ten million bucks per second. So, but it's all about the data. So basically what we're doing is getting out of the storage conversation and talking about the data conversation. How data is used to optimize their business, and then you weave the storage in underneath as, well as you know if you've got a bad foundation to your building and the earthquake hits, boom. You building falls down. So data is that building, and storage is the foundation on which your data rests. >> I love this conversation, and I think you're right on. The C-suite, they hate storage because it's to them, it's just an expense, but I want to pick up on something that was one of my favorite interviews thus far this year. Believe it or not, it was the interview that you and Burris and Ed Walsh did in our studio in Palo Alto. And I wonder if you could add some color, and then Sam I want you to chime in. What I loved about that interview is you guys talked about digital business and digital business being all about data and how you leverage data. And you said something there, and I want to unpack it a little bit. Storage should not be just a dumb target that is unintelligent. it should be an active element of your data and digital strategy. >> Eric: Right. >> So what did you mean by that and how does IBM make it, storage, an active element of a data strategy? >> So the first thing you want to do is you want to make it all automated. You want to make it transparent to the user. So, whether it's in the healthcare space, I don't care what your business, Herzog's bar and grill? My storage is transparent. Okay I'm running a bar and grill, I don't have time to fool around with the storage. I need it automated, I need it fast, I need to see who's drinking what, how many cigars I can sell, I don't have time to fart around. Right? Storage can make that happen. So you've got certain CPU that's done on the server level or in the virtual machines, and then you've got to have storage that's intelligent. So, we're working on some products we're not ready to announce yet, but we've got some products that have built-in AI into the storage themselves. So things like, you can search in the storage instead of search on the server. How do like, be able to look at metadata and have the storage actually fetch the data not the server fetch the data, so the server's crunching, crunching, crunching, and the storage is smart enough to go grab the data on its own and then bring it to the server. Versus the server having to do that work. So all that's about making data more available, more resilient, and again, having smart storage not dumb storage. >> So Sam, when we were talking about backup it's how you say, it's not just backup, it's more than that. >> Sam: Right. >> Pick up on what Eric just said. How is Spectrum Protect more than just backup and playing into what Eric just talked about? >> Well a lot of things Eric was just talking about you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily going to be able to do all this analysis reporting, analytics on your production data, you don't want to get in the way of your critical workloads, so how can we make copies off to the side where you can do things like analytics, where you can do dev test, quickly build new applications, so we give the ability to have access to that data in a way that's not going to jeopardize your core applications as well. And of course, that data, you can't lose it, right? I mean, you've got to make sure it's protected. So we also offer you a very simple way to protect it, and very rapidly restore it. >> So, let's go through an example or use case. You mentioned ransomware before. >> Yeah. >> So a lot of people think okay I'll create an air gap, but air gap, in and of itself, you know, you watch these Black Hat shows, and they go, "Air gap is a joke. It's easy for me to get through an air gap." >> Sam: Right. >> So how do you deal with that problem? Presumably, you have insights and analytics that can help you identify anomalies, but I wonder if you can address what's the conversation like with your customers and how are you solving a problem like that? >> Well I think there's a lot of stages that would solve it. First of all, there's simple things you can do like have copies that are immutable, so they can't be changed, encryption can't go and encrypt a read-only volume, there is air gapping, which like you said there are ways around that, but then there's also, Eric touched on some of the metadata analysis. If you can find anomalies and changes in the metadata that are unexpected, you can take action and alert an administrator and let them know that something doesn't seem right, so there's a lot more work we're doing to introduce cognitive capabilities that can also detect that. >> One of the things actually that Pat Gelsinger said this morning, and this may have put a smile on your face when you said there's something you can't quite talk to yet is, companies have to integrate AI into their products. And machine learning. >> Eric: So, that's the plan at IBM, and we've already done some of that, we have some products that we've hinted at, that's product code name Harmony, and we've already done a public blog on that, a statement of direction, and that is our first step in implementing AI technology directly into the storage, again it's part of what I talked about a couple weeks ago when I filmed at your Palo Alto office, storage is not dumb anymore. I may be dumb, but storage is not. Storage is smart, storage is intelligent, storage is active not passive, and in the old worlds, when I started doing storage a long time ago, storage was just passive. Just a big brick. It's no longer a brick. It's a brain, and it thinks and it acts, and it relieves the CPU, and the other areas of your IT infrastructure from having to do the work, which is part of the metadata action that Sam talked about that we're working on and also this project Harmony that we talked about, is adding AI intelligence, things like Watson for example, maybe, but I can't quote me on that yet, but maybe we might put Watson inside of our storage, since we happen to own Watson, the dominant AI platform on the planet, we could probably put that into our storage. Maybe we will. >> So there's still a... okay why not? There's still a lot of dumb storage out there though. >> Yes. >> Huge install base. You actually probably sold a lot of it back in the day, so fixing the problem that you created, that's smart marketing. (laughs) But when you talk about the technical debt that exists, how do you go from point A to point B, going from that dumb storage to that active element? What's that conversation like with customers? >> So, it's actually pretty easy. First of all, storage refreshes every three to five years anyway. So now you can say, "Well you know the storage you had only did this, how about if we could do this, this, this or this, and really raise the bar?" The other thing of course is that IBM is the number one storage software company in the world, so anything we do is going to be integrated into the software side of our business, not just embedded in the storage systems we sell. And that software works with everyone's arrays. So that, if you will, artificial intelligence that we can bring to bear in an IBM Storwize or flash systems would also work on an EMC VNX2, would also work on a Dell Compellent, would also work on an HP 3PAR, would also work on this guy, that guy, and the other guy, because we are the number one storage software company in the world, for the guys that track the numbers, and all of this is being implemented into the software layer, which means it'll work with the other guys' gear. So we can take the old stuff I used to do at the evil machine company and make that stuff smart. >> What do you mean when you say you're the number one software company, because when you worked for that company you guys would always tell me, us as analysts, "Look, we don't really have any hardware engineers any more, we spend all our time on software, so we're a software company." You're talking about something different today, you guys leaned in to software to find, you've put your chips in, you did your billion dollar Steve Mills bet, what does it mean today to be a software company in storage? >> So for us, let's take all of our storage systems for example, FlashSystem V9 comes with Spectrum virtualized software, which works with over 400 arrays that aren't IBM logo. That software comes on that system. FlashSystem A9000 comes with Spectrum Accelerate, which is a scale-out block infrastructure that works both on-premise and in the cloud. Again, not just with our own gear. So we basically decided that, do we want to sell the full system solution? Sure we do. But if we sell the software only, that's fine with us, and remember, most of the big shops in IBM is exceedingly strong, enterprise to the Global Fortune 1000, and the Global Fortune 1000 down to those sort of, you know, one billion dollar company and up, most of them are heterogeneous anyway, so you're, if you're smart, and we think we are at IBM, to this effect, we made sure our software works with everybody else's gear. Spectrum Protect and Spectrum Protect Plus will back up any storage from any vendor, old or new, will go to any tape drive, will go to any cloud, we can automatically back up to the cloud, will automatically go to an object store, not just to our own object store, but other object stores. Will automatically go to disk or flash, so we've made it completely heterogeneous and, if you will, media and technology independent. And we're doing that across the board with all the IBM storage software. >> So that compatibility matrix, if I can call it that, is very important, has always been important in the storage business, but I feel like it's insufficient in today's cloud world. And let me tell you, explain what I mean and get your reaction. I'll start with Sam. So we've been talking all week about the imperative to not try to reform your business and bring it to the cloud, but rather to shape the cloud and bring cloud services to your data. And that's the right model, and now part of that, a big part of that, a huge part of that is simplicity. So we're here at VMworld, we're talking about backup and data protection, simplicity is fundamental. What are you guys doing in that regard, generally and specifically with regard to Spectrum Protect? >> Yeah, I think what you want is a very simple way to do data protection, and a methodology to do data protection that's consistent between your applications that you're running in your own data center and what you're running in the cloud. So you don't want to find out that, yeah your traditional applications that you've been you know, running in your data center for years are all protected, but it turns out all the new applications being built out on the cloud don't have the same rigor, aren't following the same standards, you're breaking your governance models, and you're at risk. So what you want is a simple way to manage both sides, you want a simple dashboard that gives you visibility to the entire environment in one space, so you know I've got 2,000 VMs, 1,800 of them are backed up, two of them aren't backed up, oh those are in the cloud, somebody didn't set it up correctly. You want to be able to see it very easily on a simple dashboard, and that's what we're bringing with Spectrum Protect Plus. >> Speaking of simple, Eric, last question to you, as the CMO, how do you make this message simple for a C-suite to comprehend and understand and help take them to the next level for them? >> Well for us, we don't even talk storage anymore. We just talk data, applications, their workloads and their use cases. That's it, and then you bring storage up underneath it, again it's the foundation of your data infrastructure, your data is the primary building, but if you don't have a solid foundation and, being from Silicon Valley and being from the '89 earthquake, when the earthquake hits, if you have a solid foundation, the building stays up, if you don't the building falls down. So, we lead with data, data, data, ease of use, simplicity, but really focus on what's your application, what's the workload you're trying to accomplish, what's the use case you need. And when you do it that way, you take the discussion away from being, "You're a storage guy." It's, "You're the data guy. You're the business guy." And that's how you have to pitch it. >> I like that. Hashtag data data data you heard it here first. (laughs) Eric and Sam, thank you so much for joining us on The Cube, I wish you best of luck and we'll be keeping our eyes and ears open for what's coming with AI and machine learning. Thank you for watching The Cube, continuing coverage live from VMworld 2017 Day 2, I'm Lisa Martin for Dave Vellante. Stick around, we've got more great conversations coming right back up. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (electronic music) >> Chad: Thank you. >> Welcome back to VMworld 2017 here in Las Vegas. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Peter Burris. This is Day 2. Chad Sakac is here. He's the president of Dell EMC, long-time CUBE guest, CUBE alumn. Chad, we were talking about eight years >> Yeah, it's crazy, man, it's been great. >> Dave: And you were one of the first. >> It's been great. I was thinking about it. What I love is it's always a great events where there's great things happening. And you guys ask killer, right to the point questions, and I always try to give killer, right to the point answers. >> Dave: All right, well let's get into it. Your ascendancy, personally, kind of coincided with VMware's explosion. You are down and dirty with the customers. So, first of all, congratulations on-- >> Thanks, dude. >> Dave: that role and being the president at Dell EMC. Awesome. >> I have a passion for it, Dave. Passion is the key, right? >> Okay, so we're all talking about cloud, right? Cloud first is something that you hear from customers all the time. I want to be cloud first. What does that mean to you, to Dell EMC, VMware? >> I think the first thing is is that to all of us, cloud is much more about an operating model than a place. And people have started to internalize that it's about changing the way that they operate their business, both for some of their traditional apps, as well as how they build cloud-native apps. That's the first thing. Operating model, not place. The second thing is, I think I'm seeing the customers in the market get a little more, I don't how to say this without sounding pejorative, but a little more mature in their view that the answer is going to have to be a hybrid model based on data and data gravity, based on elasticity of workloads, based on governance factors, that lead to hybrid being the answer. And if you think about what we've seen just in the last two days, VMware on AWS, Google partnering with VMware and Pivotal around Pivotal Container Services. Those are all about hybridizing both traditional IT and how people build new cloud applications. So operating model, not place. Hybrid is the answer. And the third thing is that it's multi. I still occasionally encounter somebody that says, "It's all going to be one cloud." And I'm like, "Okay, just out of curiosity, "does your definition of cloud include SalesForce.com?" "Well, yeah." "Does it include Office 365?" "Well, yeah." "Does it include AWS?" "Well, yeah." "Does it include your own private cloud?" "Well, yeah." "So, what are you talking about?" >> Peter: Where's the one? (laughs) >> Where's the one, right? And I think that there's a... Things start to matter once they move out of hyperbole and into pragmatism. >> Well, and when you paid attention, let's say four or five years ago, when you listened to Andy Jassy speak, the notion of hybrid cloud, or hybrid IT, or private cloud was not in his lexicon. And then yesterday, we saw him up on stage with Pat Gelsinger. They were talking about hybrid and private cloud. >> Chad: Well, by the way, I don't want to throw the dart at Andy. I think if you talked to Vmware or Dell EMC four or five years ago, public cloud wasn't in our-- >> Dave: Absolutely. >> (laughs) in our vernacular either. >> Dave: Absolutely, so those worlds have come together with the customer reality that says, "Well there isn't just one cloud. "And I can't just bring my business, "reform my business for the cloud." So what do you make of the fact that we've evolved as an industry and as a vendor community? >> I think it's time to get on to the brass tacks of solving the problems for the customers, ma'am. And I see actually that happening in the industry more and more. People are solving problems that they can't solve in their private clouds using public clouds. They're figuring out that the best place to put a dollar is to rebuild their applications using cloud-native principles. But they're also realizing that sometimes that it's not even a legitimate choice or option. And they're trying to figure out also, at the same time, "How do I support some of those "more traditional application stacks "and make them more automated and cloud-like, "even if they're not going to be cloud-native maybe ever." >> Peter: Let me jump in here for a minute. >> Dave: So this gets to the promise that you've got to make. And please jump in. >> Yeah, because in many respects, what we're really saying, let me test this with you, Pat, is that, ultimately, it may be one cloud, but that one cloud is going to be defined by the business and not by a particular vendor. >> Chad: It's a higher-order function. >> Peter: That's right. So what we like to say is we like to say, "You're not going to take your business to the cloud. "You're going to bring the cloud to your business." And your business attributes and your business characteristics, where you operate, how you operate, how you use data, who your customers are, how are you going to reach them, all those different things, the physical realities, the legal realities, the IP realities, all that's going to shape the architectural choices that you make regarding cloud. And you have to have a strategy for that becoming consistent and coherent for your business. So a lot of piece parts, but it becomes your cloud. Does that make sense to you? >> It makes sense to me. It means that it's an answer that involves a little more sophistication and nuance for the customer, because they've got to think about what it means for them. And the answer is not the same for every single customer. However, there are common base elements in that formula. Number one, digital transformation always starts with applications that are written using cloud-native principles, often using data fabrics that are modern distributed data fabrics. That's one piece. There's a consistent piece that says, "I'm going to leverage public and private cloud models." And the definition of which workload goes to one or another, like you said, is very much driven by data gravity. Compute tends to co-locate with the data against which it's computing. Governance rules, which is not security. Public and private clouds are equivalent. In some cases, one or the other is more secure than the other. But those are common elements. There's one other common element that I've learned over the last four years of being on the journey myself with many of our customers, which is that the only way that the on-premises part of cloud stacks work is through radical simplification and deploying their on-premises infrastructure using design and automation principles that look a lot more like the public cloud than they look like their most traditional IT. >> No, you're absolutely right. And I think that's a crucial point, that ultimately the physics of all this. >> Chad: Mm-hmm. >> And I agree, cloud is not a We like to say the cloud is not a place, it's a time. >> Chad: Yeah. >> Because at the end of the day, all this is defined by the realities of your data. >> Chad: Yep. >> And if your data can't If you don't have time to move the data or it's too expensive to move the data, that's going to dictate where the process actually runs. And I like the way you've redefined, I'll say redefined data gravity. Most people think data gravity, "Oh, once you put data in place, "it's going to accrete more gravity." And you're saying, "No, that's not the way to think about it. "It's going to accrete more function." >> Chad: Right. >> 100% agreement. And I don't think a lot of people are talking about things that way. >> By the way, the linkage to physics, I don't know how many of the viewers basically were physics majors, but it's actually related to quantum physics and mechanics. Information inherently can't simultaneously be in two places at once. That's a law of physics, right? >> Data, okay, keep going, keep going. >> If any bit, any information, basically, is connected between two points at the speed of light, that's not a function of vendor technology until someone-- >> Well, let me we get into quantum entanglement, nano >> Yeah. >> But I think where you are, where you're absolutely correct is that ultimately, that there is a cost to moving data. >> Chad: Bingo. Bingo >> And we have to start When we think about digital transformation, our approach is the difference between a digital business and a business is a digital business treats data as an asset and builds strategic capabilities to treat data as an asset and apply data as an asset. And one of the beauties of what you were saying earlier with simplification, is for example, the idea that if I build around data, >> Chad: Yup. >> then I can use hyper-converged, I can use converged, I can use Flash, I can use VC, and I can use all these different things to treat my data differently. >> And do it as simple as possible. The thing that I think I'll give you an example from this morning. I was meeting with a customer that's in the finance and insurance vertical, right? And they're pretty advanced down there, use of both public and private clouds. They've got a software-defined data center. And they're trying to basically redefine how they're using mobile apps and customer intelligence. They provide a ton of services. They're a great, great customer and a partner. But again, to highlight that cloud is a place, or a time, to use your vernacular, as they build their mobile app, sets of assets are running in a public cloud, the data was born in the public cloud, the compute is running in the public cloud, it's built around a cloud-native app principle using PCF and Kubernetes. Great! When that person is using that application, there's a moment when they go in and do a transaction where literally it's hitting a mainframe running DB2 in their core data center. >> And there's nothing wrong with that. >> And there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that pattern is universal, right? And so it highlights basically that you've got to be a little practical about how you do this stuff. >> Okay, so in the limited time we have remaining, give us the the quick why Dell EMC, Dell EMC, VMware, why you guys Maybe talk a little bit about the portfolio. >> So if you look at this week, the one thing that jumps out, at least to me, I'm probably a little close to it, Dave, but I hope it jumps out to the viewers, right, is while we maintain an open ecosystem, Dell EMC has its open ecosystem, VMware has its ecosystem, Pivotal has its ecosystem, we're becoming much more opinionated, right? And that matters because customers want clarity. So I'll give you clarity. Clarity that jumped out on stage and it came out of the mouth of Pat, not me, was the easiest way to deploy VSAN is on VxRail. The easiest way to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation is on VxRack SDDC. Period, full stop. Now, why are we saying that so emphatically? It's because if you don't have a good foundation for an SDS and SDC, or SDC, SDS, and SDN, so software-defined network and compute and storage, in the case of VMware Cloud Foundation and VxRack SDDC, then your whole underpinning is just way too complex, right? So there's a very clear opinionated point of view that says hyper-converged infrastructure that's being built by the combined team is the way forward for customers who have standardized on vSphere. >> Well, and you nailed it earlier. If you're going to bring the cloud model to on-prem, to the data, it's got to be simple. >> Chad: Mm-hmm. >> Peter: That's the cloud model. >> That is the cloud model, right? And and without it, you can't fulfill that promise. With it, you can. >> I'll give you a second example. For the last four years, we've been supporting our customers with the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud. We've learned more about what does it take to lifecycle, manage, and deploy vRealize Suite on top of HCI, where we own the lifecycle, right? At the same time, VMware has been learning about, "What does it take to take vRealize and run it "in the VMware cloud on AWS, not as software, "but as a service?" And that's all about simplification and lifecycle management. What we're doing between VMware and Dell EMC is taking that knowledge and saying, "HCI is the foundation, and on top of that, "here's how you build your IaaS "for your traditional applications, "and the foundation for what's coming next." And then the last part that we saw today loud and clear is a strongly opinionated point of view that says PCF, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, is the best structured PaaS in the market, and a full embrace of Kubernetes, Pivotal Kubernetes Services, Pivotal Container Services using Kubernetes, is going to be the best way to build container as a service. How do you deploy it best? On vRealize. How do you deploy it best? On top of VxRack SDDC. It's pretty clear. >> Covered all the bases, we could go all day with you, but we're out of time. >> Yeah. >> Chad, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE yet again. Really appreciate it. >> It's my pleasure, guys, thank you. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is theCUBE. (electronic music)

. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with the cube. We're in Reno, Nevada at the Interbike show. It's a big industry gathering, talking all about bikes, but today we're at a, a little side event is put on by the Royal Dutch, a gazelle bike company, 125 year old bike company that's all in on eBikes. And when we wanted to come check it out, really learn how the bike phenomenon is impacting smart cities and last bile. And there's so much cool stuff going on with big batteries and small motors, but it's really a lot more than that. And we're excited to be here with someone who's been writing about the industry for over 25 years as Patrick Brady, the publisher of the red kite prayer. Great to see you. Thanks. Nice to be here. Yeah. So you've been doing this for a long time and I just love to get your perspective on this e-bike phenomenon because you know, used to be, it's cheating and you know, these are not real bikes and you know, we're tough and we climbed the mountain and these things, that upset bubble, but they're, they're getting a ton of adoption. We just heard from the, the teammate goes up, they're going to sell a third of the bikes they sell this year or e-bike. >>That's amazing to me. Yay. I'm glad. I mean, this thing where, yeah, it's cheating. It's like, no, a good time is never cheating. Why? This is a problem for people. I don't understand. The thing is the very first time I ever got on an E bike, I grinned so hard. My cheeks hurt. It's a good time. And you know, the thing is, it's so effective for transportation. I'm cyclophilin. Okay. I love rode bikes. I love mountain bikes, but I just like bikes. And so if I can keep my car parked and use a bike to get around, I bought an I-CAR go bike, different company. But I love these. They're stylish, you know, and it's such a great way to get around. It's easy to park, easy to lock. They've got an integrated lock on them. You know, why wouldn't you use that as a way to get around, you know, gas guzzling cars. >>This is not what our future will be. We've got to be intelligent about what the future is. Another problem that we face as cyclists is that we're getting run over. People are on the smart phones and every time somebody gets out of an SUV and starts riding a bike, what happens? It's in the brain. We recognize that which we are. And so a chance to cause someone to recognize us out on the road. Oh look, somebody on a bike like I have. Right, right. Maybe they're not going to run us over. Right. So it's a, it's a way to decrease congestion on our roads. It's a nice way to see the world. I mean I don't care what bike you're on, if you're on a bike, it's a better way to see the world. Right? >>Well, 15 miles an hour. That's going to be a my blogger 14 cause it is. It's nice to be outside. You know, you're, you're in the fresh air. What's amazing to me though is I really came into this with a hypothesis around last mile. This is not last mile at all. These things are just substituting out for people's car. I just heard about a ride that people are doing, the Googlers are doing from San Francisco to mountain view every day. That's not an insignificant ride. Yeah. So it's really a game >>changer. Oh yeah. I take my kids to school on my e-bike pick them up in the afternoon, we'll go to the grocery store, pick up a pizza. No, it's so nice and it's easy to get my boys out the door. Can we take the green bike? You know, they get excited about it. Right. So it's, it's a big difference. Let's talk a little bit about regulations. So it's pretty interesting to see kind of, you know, regulation is usually always behind the technology. You know, how do we treat these things? Are they, are they scooters? Are they like a motor vehicle, but as defined by DMV, are they, are they bikes? And, and, and obviously the danger comes on yet, disparity of speeds. So you know, we're seeing on, I see it a lot of bike paths, no heat, no motor vehicles, which I think they mean scooters and then no eBikes. >>So how do you see kind of the regulation gonna change cause to your bed, to your point, it's always better to have somebody on a bike in a car in general in terms of space and congestion and all the reasons that you went through. So what is it going to take for the legislation and kind of the laws to kinda catch up to what these really represent and transforming really cities well, things have evolved a lot already. There's been a working group within the industry that helped define the three different classifications that are being used. Uh, not being able to use them on a bike path I don't think is a really big deal. You know, as, as the infrastructure improves for cycling, uh, out on roads, you know, bike lanes, that sort of thing. I think that's gonna help. But you know, one of the great things about an e-bike is you roll up to a red light and you pop it and turbo, you know, and the moment the light turns green, you're through the intersection instantly. >>So being out on the road where I live in Santa Rosa, I don't have any problems. And because the bike's big, I've got two other people with bright helmets on, people are cheering me, you know, I get waved at people like, you know, they're not pedaling, cracking jokes. So it's, it's become a very different way to present cycling to people who aren't on bikes and they look at it and they get excited. But you know, back to the legislation, I don't see that we're really having a big problem. There've been issues in some other places where, you know, they're just flat out not legal and it's like, well, you know, they're going to, they're going to see the light on that sooner or later. Right, right. We need to provide other options to get people around and it's just too intelligent and really all it takes for anybody to see. >>The light usually is one ride. Give them a half a mile, they'll get it. Right. It's funny because right at the end of the day we all like to be like that eight year old, they got their first thing Ray and you get out on the road and there's really just nothing like that. But now we're a little older, a little heavier and don't quite have that agility that we had as an eight year old. So you can see it bring it back. Yeah, it's crazy. So I'm just curious to your perspective, even within the bike industry, how it's evolved over the years. You know, there's so much stuff going on with batteries and motors. I think they could sell bikes. Are you using a Bosch system? Obviously Bosch is a huge car components company with giant, giant scale. >>Um, so as you've seen that evolve, you know, kind of what are some of your takes in terms of the longer capacity, the longer batteries, the better. >>Oh, you know, the biggest single thing. Sure. The batteries last longer. The motors provide torque on a more even basis. So they don't just take off or do anything crazy, but the units themselves, the biggest single thing that I see, because a motor is a motor at a certain level, the reliability has gone through the roof. You know, BOSH, yet they understand what reliability is. All the companies doing this now are so much better. I remember being at a magazine in 1998 and a guy just begging me to cover his bike and his Lake. It looked like a piece of junk and I had to communicate to them, but well, our reader is it who you're trying to sell to. Our reader. We actually liked going home. We liked the whole sweaty thing. Uh, and so that was, that was an issue, but I remember what that bike was and yeah, they're just so much more reliable. There's so much easier to use. The batteries lasts so much longer. Everything is, you know, it's ready for you. >>Right, right. It's funny, a lot of, a lot of the conversations earlier today, we're, we're talking about kind of those early days and it's fascinates me, all the Kickstarter projects around all these kinds of alternative vehicles, whether they're scooters or skateboards or one wheels and all these different variations of, of personal mobility. Um, but this is an old company. These guys have been added for awhile and I cannot believe that a third of their sales this year are going to be e-bike. So when a big, the big traditional powerhouses come into the market, that changes everything. >>Yeah. Well, when you look at the population of cyclists in the world, and then you look at the population of the world, who do you want to sell to? If you want to grow your company? I don't, let's sell to all the people who aren't currently riding bikes, you know, and think about what that's gonna do for the world. Fewer emissions, happier people. Holy cow. You know, that's crazy talk. >>Right, right, right. All right, Pat. Well, thanks for, uh, for sharing your perspective. It's, it's a really exciting time. We're happy to be here and, uh, I'm sure it's a whole breath of fresh air in your coverage area to be able to get into this space. Yeah, I really welcome it. I love it. I love it. Oh, I love these, said I'm over the, I'm over the cheating. All right. Well, he's Patrick. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're at Interbike and actually a little side event here with Royal Dutch gazelle. Thanks for watching.