(upbeat techno music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS re:Invent 2019. Brought to you buy Amazon Web Services and Intel, along with its equal system partners. >> Welcome back everyone. CUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for AWS, re:Invent 2019. I'm John Furrier and my cohost Dave Vellante. We're here extracting the signal from the noise with theCube covers for three days. Our next two guests, Mark Lohmeyer, Senior Vice President, General Manager, Cloud platform, business unit for VMWare. Ben Tanner, Director of Cloud Enable for IHS Market. Guys, thank you for coming on theCube. Good to see you again. >> Yeah, great to be here again. >> You got a customer here, customer at Momentum Store, but before we get into that I just want to get your quick take on the key note from Andy Jassy. Clearly, the VMWare relationship with AWS, really paying off well. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Right. >> Dave's going to dig into some customer spending data in the marketplace. Great momentum, I mean, looking back a few years when you guys launched this, I mean, come on. You got to be happy. (gentlemen laughing) >> Yeah, we're pleased. I mean, I think, as you said the partnership has never been stronger and I think the foundation of that is really the tremendous customer demand we're seeing for the service. And this initial idea that Pat and Andy had together of how do we create the best of both worlds here, right? The enterprise class capabilities of VMWare are combined with everything customers love about the AWS Cloud. I think that's really come to fruition and, you know, what's been great to sort of see over the last two years is, really the customer momentum and the use cases and the way they're able to take advantage of that service to really solve some really big challenges for their business, right? And for it to become a platform for them for innovation. So really pleased to see that momentum. >> John Furrier: Ben, talk about your use case. You obviously, the story here to reinvent is don't tire kick the Cloud, you got to kind of go all in as Chastity would say, but you've got to leverage the transformational aspects of the scale, but when you get in the reality, which you live, talk about what's real about the Cloud. >> Ben Tanner: We're an information company. Data is king to us so, you know, it's real hard for us to be part in on the Cloud. You know, we have a data gravity problem, so how do we get our workload to there without necessarily having to refactor them. How do we do it with a way that we can minimize the risks? So for me, you know, getting all in on the Cloud means getting the data to the Cloud and enabling the developers to work in a way that's going to deliver business value quicker to our customers. So, that's really where VMC kind of helps bridge that gap for us, I think. Originally, we were looking at it as like a short-term capacity first venue, but then we look under the covers. Actually, you know, we can go build a brace to VMC and really get to the Cloud quicker. >> John Furrier: VMC, VMWare Cloud? >> VMWare Cloud, sorry. >> I want to make sure I get it out there. >> I want to dive in on some of the spending data that we have access to from ETR, Enterprise Technology Research. And essentially, they do these these quarterly surveys. And a survey, the most recent one, there was 1,300 people who responded. 708 of U.S. customers, of which 150 said we are spending heavily on VMWare Cloud on AWS. So my first question is, to what do you attribute, sort of the momentum, maybe you can give us the update there. And then I want to follow up on the customer point of view. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, absolutely not. I'll sort of build on some of Ben's comments, because I think what he articulated is one of the killer use cases of VMWare Cloud on AWS that I think is driving that momentum, right, which is we think it's one of the best uses in the marketplace and customers have told us this, to enable them to migrate and modernize, right? So let's talk about the migrate piece first, right? I mean, you have customers that have these tremendous enterprise-class applications, running on vSphere in their data centers. They're built on top of that platform. They depend upon it for performance availability, everything else. With VMWare Cloud in AWS, we can migrate those applications with zero downtime, no refactoring, no additional costs, in a matter of weeks or months, as opposed to if you had to refactor everything, could take years and millions of dollars, right? So that Cloud migration use case I would say is the killer for us and that's, you know, exactly what Ben was referring to. >> John Furrier: We've got a special report on siliconangle.com called The Great Migration and it's about Cloud. Talk about this particular issue because this is like top of mind of everybody. How do you do it right if you're a VMWare customer, what do you pay attention to? What are some of the things that you learned and what are the things to watch out for? >> Ben Tanner: That's a great question. I think ultimately you have to listen to your customers. So for me, that sort of element community and then within IHS Market and then ultimately, their customers. So we cover like three broad sectors. Oil and gas, the energy division, we have transportation division and then we have our financial services division. So each one of those division's got a different risk appetite. So depending on that appetite, we'll very much govern how we take the approach of moving to the Cloud. We've done the classic lift and shift using tools like VMWare's HCX. We actually, as a kick the tires, we moved a thousand workloads in six weeks into VMC, which was kind of exciting. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, pretty impressive. >> We enjoyed that. And then in other areas we're looking at, well we don't want to take all that tentacle debt that lives in our data center with us, so can we do what we call a lift and fix approach, where we'll leverage sort of private Cloud ultimation tool and build over VMC to rapidly spin up new workloads there but without changing our operating model. And then that's one of the big things I call out about VMC, it allows you to get into that public Cloud space without having to drastically change how IT operates. And then you can start to shift to more of a public Cloud focus. So there's really that lift and shift, lift and fix, and then where we're developing new capabilities, or where there is definite business value, and that's the key thing, refactor of a Cloud native. So it's a spectrum. >> So you ultimately want to change your operating model- >> Ben Tanner: Absolutely. >> Just not today. >> Ben Tanner: Well no, I don't want to do it in a big bang. You know, that's very disruptive while we're doing that we're, you know, it takes our focus off away from delivering business value. So we're trying to find a way to do it in a more incremental manner. VMC's, VMWare Cloud Native is one of the things that's going to help us do that. >> John Furrier: Are you guys looking at Amazon's other services because you now, in AWS- >> Ben Tanner: Well we're heavy Amazon customers as it stands so we have a lot of Cloud Native Apps going out there. It was really interesting today, seeing where they're going with the HPC workloads, particularly where we're starting to look at ML and AI. We have a data late program that's at an AWS. So for our new developments, we're definitely embracing Cloud Native, but very much in the sort of hybrid Cloud methodology with the MC. >> John Furrier: Well Ben, I want to get your take on a meme that we've been kicking around all week around Cloud Native. The T, if we take the T out, which stands for trust, it's Cloud Naive. (laughter) So a lot of customers, they're trying, I think they're doing Cloud, they've got to factor into all these operational disruptions. >> Ben Tanner: Yep. >> You have staff issues, you have cost and inefficiencies that kick in. Disruption. Development choices. So where's the naivety, where's the native, savvy, where should people start thinking about when they start moving in the Cloud? >> Ben Tanner: It's a maturity conversation ultimately. I think if we look at, certainly within IHS Market, we've very much grown by acquisition. We have different sort of cultures within the firm. We have 650, 700 products, 700 different ways of doing things sometimes and they've all gone to the public Cloud at different rates and in different ways. So for us, it was assuming that we could do that in a manageable, controlled-cost, safely-governed way. And really understanding that, you know, you can't go out there as individual Dev teams and expect it all to be perfect. We need to start building almost a collabed community within the company and then starting to layer in governance. But again, that's if you say take the T out, trust. We within IT, we have to build up trust with our products teams because I think why they go to the Cloud is sometimes because IT hasn't been able to deliver on it. You know, it's customer's expectations. >> John Furrier: You can't move fast enough. >> Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you know, we're never going to be able to compete with the likes of Amazon or VMWare in security and functionality and scalability. Why would we try to compete? Let's embrace that. Extend, enable it, and really try to give our customers a consistent, delightful experience. >> So Ben, where are you placing your bets? Obviously Cloud, Hybrid, those are two things. Any other places where you're really trying to focus? >> Ben Tanner: So I think that's interesting. Again, my job is to make life easy for my developers. So what do they need? And this is something that we're going through, again, internal transformation, starting to run IT more like a product management organization and actively listening and soliciting feedback and really delivering what they need. You know, we're getting a lot of talk around containers, what are our plays going to be in that space. Some of the development teams are on that. Some of them want to go and embrace the new stuff like Fargate and EKS and that's great as well, but ultimately, I want to get out of tickets and weight states and get out of the way of the developers. >> John Furrier: I want to ask you a question around developers, cause one of the trends we're seeing and we're kind of picking out of the announcements is when you look at the DevOps movement that started roughly around 2007-2008, '09 timeframe, that early wave of pioneers created infrastructure as code. >> Ben Tanner: Yeah. >> That essentially became, "I don't want to configure the software. Operating models like VMWare, make it easy." Things are just running under the covers. Now with the data modeling you're seeing, if you've got large scale infrastructure, you're seeing now all these data toolings. So there's almost a data as code kind of theme going on here where developers just want to access the data, they don't to have to get into the wrangling. >> Ben Tanner: I think that's where we're sort of seeing things like data late coming to the forefront. You know, again, IHS Market Information Company. How do we pool all that information together in a way that, you know, creates new business value, creates new ideas. You know, broad ease of access for our developers and our customers, but at the same time, how do we protect things like data sovereignty. If we've got PII data out there, you know, we have to think about that. Whether they're alter motive customers. You know, you've got different state legislation so again, it's how do we as the IT and sort of the develop community facilitate broad safe access to data. Data is a service. Yeah. >> John Furrier: Yeah. 100%. >> Absolutely. >> So Mark, as customers move to the Cloud and they want to change their operating model, what role is VMWare playing in terms of facilitating that? >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, you know, I think essentially you said you wanted to make life as easy as possible for the developers, right? And I think we want to make life as easy as possible for Ben and IT so he can make it easy for developers. And I think we know one of the ways that we love to do that is, and the way I think about is, we want to provide him and customers like him the broadest, most powerful tool kit that they can choose from, right, as they're enabling their developers. If you think about VMWare Cloud and AWS, it can actually enable that, right? Because you have access to all of the VMWare tools and capabilities, not just your existing workloads, but also for modernized applications with things like Kubernetes and some of the capabilities we're bringing to bear there. So we provide all of those services in the VMWare environment, but then we also allow their IT teams and their development teams to also have access to all the Native AWS services and some of the data tools that they might want to leverage from AWS- >> So is it- >> All in a single environment. >> So you've got core VMWare, now you have pivotal- >> Mark Lohmeyer: That's right. >> For the developer angle and you've got all the security acquisitions you've made, not the least which is carbon black so that's the package that you're delivering to your customers. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Absolutely. Right. And we want to do all of that, obviously, as a service on top of AWS, right, bringing that same sort of simplicity of operations for all of those capabilities. >> John Furrier: Mark, talk about what's coming next for you guys at VMWare and the Cloud platform. Obviously, we saw that Outpost, Native Outpost, which is Amazon shipping, available now. >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah. >> 2020 we're going to see VMWare on AWS, VMWare Cloud and AWS roughly shipping behind it. So that's looking like good news too. Architectural shifts are happening, can you share any insight into what's next for you and your team? >> Mark Lohmeyer: Yeah, I mean, it's a really exciting time. I think, look at this point, I think the customer's have spoken, its a hybrid Cloud world, right? They want to have the flexibility to run apps across their own data centers, across public Clouds, across edge environments. It's a hybrid Cloud world. >> John Furrier: AWS agrees. >> Yeah, I mean, even AWS agrees. You know, as VMWare as a company, we're looking to really enable the most seamless, most consistent hybrid Cloud experience. Obviously, we're the standard in most enterprise customer's data centers today. With VMWare Cloud and AWS, we're bringing that capability to AWS. And then we're really excited, of course, about VMWare Cloud and AWS Outpost because we can now bring that same Cloud delivered model back, you know, on-prem and into edge environments, right? And so we think that full set of services, right, what you have in your data center today, what you can do on AWS with VMC and now back on-prem, it opens up a lot of possibilities for customers like IHS. >> John Furrier: And Chastity kind of hinted at it, well he talked specifically about networking- >> Mark Lohmeyer: Right. >> In context of 5G latency, different use cases around latency. So networking is going to be a big thing. >> Mark Lohmeyer: I mean networking, if you think about a hybrid Cloud world, right? I mean, networking is kind of at the heart of it, right? And if you look at technologies like NSX, right, that gives you a consistent software networking layer that can work across any hardware on-prem. Obviously, it's the heart of VMWare Cloud and AWS, also in Outpost, it's a really important construct that fundamentally enables things like the seamless migration of workloads between these different environments. >> John Furrier: On Open Source as well. Guys, thanks for coming on. Final word, your thoughts on the keynote, the presence here at AWS. What's your takeaway from the day one. >> Ben Tanner: I think for me for day one, it's really exciting to see the development in things like the HPCP's. How that's going to enable us as a customer to do more with things like AI and ML. I think, for me, Outpost is really fascinating. We were talking about this earlier, where we've got regulatory requirements, performance requirements. We can still deliver that consistent experience in the Cloud, in the data center. So those for me are going to be, potentially, really transformative. >> John Furrier: And this really highlights what we've been debating. I challenged Gelsinger, Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMWare in 2013 about hybrid being a halfway house to the public Cloud. He's like, "What are you talking about? It is the model." Pat if you're watching, you were right, I was wrong. I admit it. (laughter) But hybrid Cloud is certainly a visibility, but the Cloud as an operating model and what Chastity's saying and what Microsoft and other's are saying is, "Hey, the Cloud is the operating model, not the old way." So center of gravity is Cloud, but the on-premise for these specific things like governance, compliance, use cases. This is the new normal. This is very clear, no one debates this. >> John Furrier: Congratulations. Congratulations on your success, so say hello to Ragu and the team. >> Will do. >> John Furrier: Thanks for coming on. VMWare and custom momentum. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. AWS re:Invent. Be back with more coverage after the short break. (upbeat techno music)