>> Prior to the pandemic, organizations were largely optimized for efficiency as the best path to bottom line profits. Many CIOs tell theCUBE privately that they were caught off guard by the degree to which their businesses required greater resiliency beyond their somewhat cumbersome disaster recovery processes. And the lack of that business resilience has actually cost firms because they were unable to respond to changing market forces. And certainly, we've seen this dynamic with supply chain challenges. And there's a little doubt we're also seeing it in the area of cybersecurity generally, and data recovery specifically. Over the past 30 plus months, the rapid adoption of cloud to support remote workers and build in business resilience had the unintended consequences of expanding attack vectors, which brought an escalation of risk from cybercrime. While security in the public cloud is certainly world class, the result of multicloud has brought with it multiple shared responsibility models, multiple ways of implementing security policies across clouds and on-prem. And at the end of the day, more, not less, . But there's a positive side to this story. The good news is that public policy, industry collaboration and technology innovation is moving fast to accelerate data protection and cybersecurity strategies with a focus on modernizing infrastructure, securing the digital supply chain, and very importantly, simplifying the integration of data protection and cybersecurity. Today, there's heightened awareness that the world of data protection is not only an adjacency to, but is becoming a fundamental component of cybersecurity strategies. In particular, in order to build more resilience into a business, data protection people, technologies and processes must be more tightly coordinated with security operations. Hello, and welcome to "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be your host today. In this segment, we welcome into theCUBE two senior executives from Dell who will share details on new technology announcements that directly address these challenges. Jeff Boudreau is the President and General Manager of Dell's Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG, and he's going to share his perspectives on the market and the challenges he's hearing from customers. And we're going to ask Jeff to double click on the messages that Dell is putting into the marketplace and give us his detailed point of view on what it means for customers. Now, Jeff is going to be joined by Travis Vigil. Travis is the Senior Vice-President of Product Management for ISG at Dell Technologies, and he's going to give us details on the products that are being announced today and go into the hard news. Now, we're also going to challenge our guests to explain why Dell's approach is unique and different in the marketplace. Thanks for being with us. Let's get right into it. (upbeat music) We're here with Jeff Boudreau and Travis Vigil, and we're going to dig into the details about Dell's big data protection announcement. Guys, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. >> Good to see you. Thank you for having us. >> You're very welcome. Alright, let's start off Jeff, with the high level. You know, I'd like to talk about the customer, what challenges they're facing? You're talking to customers all the time. What are they telling you? >> Sure, as you know, we spend a lot of time with our customers, specifically listening, learning, understanding their use cases, their pain points within their specific environments. They tell us a lot. No surprise to any of us that data is a key theme that they talk about. It's one of their most important assets. They need to extract more value from that data to fuel their business models, their innovation engines, their competitive edge. So, they need to make sure that that data is accessible, it's secure and its recoverable, especially in today's world with the increased cyber attacks. >> Okay, so maybe we could get into some of those challenges. I mean, when you talk about things like data sprawl, what do you mean by that? What should people know? >> Sure, so for those big three themes, I'd say, you have data sprawl, which is the big one, which is all about the massive amounts of data. It's the growth of that data, which is growing at unprecedented rates. It's the gravity of that data and the reality of the multicloud sprawl. So stuff is just everywhere, right? Which increases that surface as attack space for cyber criminals. >> And by gravity, you mean the data's there and people don't want to move it. >> It's everywhere, right? And so when it lands someplace, think Edge, Core or Cloud, it's there. And it's something we have to help our customers with. >> Okay, so it's nuanced 'cause complexity has other layers. What are those layers? >> Sure. When we talk to our customers, they tell us complexity is one of their big themes. And specifically it's around data complexity. We talked about that growth and gravity of the data. We talk about multicloud complexity and we talk about multicloud sprawl. So multiple vendors, multiple contracts, multiple tool chains, and none of those work together in this multicloud world. Then that drives their security complexity. So, we talk about that increased attack surface. But this really drives a lot of operational complexity for their teams. Think about we're lacking consistency through everything. So people, process, tools, all that stuff, which is really wasting time and money for our customers. >> So, how does that affect the cyber strategies and the, I mean, I've often said the Cisco, now they have this shared responsibility model. They have to do that across multiple clouds. Every cloud has its own security policies and frameworks and syntax. So, maybe you could double click on your perspective on that. >> Sure. I'd say the big challenge customers have seen, it's really inadequate cyber resiliency and specifically, they're feeling very exposed. And today as the world with cyber attacks being more and more sophisticated, if something goes wrong, it is a real challenge for them to get back up and running quickly. And that's why this is such a big topic for CEOs and businesses around the world. You know, it's funny. I said this in my open. I think that prior to the pandemic businesses were optimized for efficiency, and now they're like, "Wow, we have to actually put some headroom into the system to be more resilient." You know, are you hearing that? >> Yeah, we absolutely are. I mean, the customers really, they're asking us for help, right? It's one of the big things we're learning and hearing from them. And it's really about three things. One's about simplifying IT. Two, it's really helping them to extract more value from their data. And then the third big piece is ensuring their data is protected and recoverable regardless of where it is going back to that data gravity and that very, you know, the multicloud world. Just recently, I don't know if you've seen it, but the Global Data Protected, excuse me, the Global Data Protection Index. >> GDPI. >> Yes. Jesus. >> Not to be confused with GDPR. >> Actually, that was released today and confirms everything we just talked about around customer challenges. But also it highlights at an importance of having a very cyber, a robust cyber resilient data protection strategy. >> Yeah, I haven't seen the latest, but I want to dig into it. I think this, I've done this many, many years in a row. I'd like to look at the time series and see how things have changed. All right. At a high level, Jeff, can you kind of address why Dell, from your point of view is best suited? >> Sure. So, we believe there's a better way or a better approach on how to handle this. We think Dell is uniquely positioned to help our customers as a one stop shop, if you will, for that cyber resilient multicloud data protection solution and needs. We take a modern, a simple and resilient approach. >> What does that mean? What do you mean by modern? >> Sure. So modern, we talk about our software defined architecture. Right? It's really designed to meet the needs not only of today, but really into the future. And we protect data across any cloud and any workload. So, we have a proven track record doing this today. We have more than 1,700 customers that trust us to protect more than 14 exabytes of their data in the cloud today. >> Okay, so you said modern, simple and resilient. What do you mean by simple? >> Sure. We want to provide simplicity everywhere, going back to helping with the complexity challenge. And that's from deployment to consumption, to management and support. So, our offers will deploy in minutes. They are easy to operate and use, and we support flexible consumption models for whatever the customer may desire. So, traditional subscription or as a service. >> And when you talk about resilient, I mean, I put forth that premise, but it's hard because people say, "Well, that's going to cost us more. Well, it may, but you're going to also reduce your risk." So, what's your point of view on resilience? >> Yeah, I think it's something all customers need. So, we're going to be providing a comprehensive and resilient portfolio of cyber solutions that are secure by design. And we have some unique capabilities and a combination of things like built in immutability, physical and logical isolation. We have intelligence built in with AI part recovery. And just one, I guess fun fact for everybody is we have, our cyber vault is the only solution in the industry that is endorsed by Sheltered Harbor that meets all the needs of the financial sector. >> So it's interesting when you think about the NIST framework for cybersecurity. It's all about about layers. You're sort of bringing that now to data protection. >> Jeff: Correct. Yeah. >> All right. In a minute, we're going to come back with Travis and dig into the news. We're going to take a short break. Keep it right there. (upbeat music) (upbeat adventurous music) Okay, we're back with Jeff and Travis Vigil to dig deeper into the news. Guys, again, good to see you. Travis, if you could, maybe you, before we get into the news, can you set the business context for us? What's going on out there? >> Yeah. Thanks for that question, Dave. To set a little bit of the context, when you look at the data protection market, Dell has been a leader in providing solutions to customers for going on nearly two decades now. We have tens of thousands of people using our appliances. We have multiple thousands of people using our latest modern, simple PowerProtect Data Manager Software. And as Jeff mentioned, we have, 1,700 customers protecting 14 exabytes of data in the public clouds today. And that foundation gives us a unique vantage point. We talked to a lot of customers and they're really telling us three things. They want simple solutions. They want us to help them modernize. And they want us to add as the highest priority, maintain that high degree of resiliency that they expect from our data protection solutions. So, that's the backdrop to the news today. And as we go through the news, I think you'll agree that each of these announcements deliver on those pillars. And in particular, today we're announcing the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance. We are announcing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery Enhancements, and we are announcing enhancements to our APEX Data Storage Services. >> Okay, so three pieces. Let's dig to that. It's interesting, appliance, everybody wants software, but then you talk to customers and they're like, "Well, we actually want appliances because we just want to put it in and it works." >> Travis: (laughs) Right. >> It performs great. So, what do we need to know about the appliance? What's the news there? >> Well, you know, part of the reason I gave you some of those stats to begin with is that we have this strong foundation of experience, but also intellectual property components that we've taken that have been battle tested in the market. And we've put them together in a new simple, integrated appliance that really combines the best of the target appliance capabilities we have with that modern, simple software. And we've integrated it from the, you know, sort of taking all of those pieces, putting them together in a simple, easy to use and easy to scale interface for customers. >> So, the premise that I've been putting forth for months now, probably well over a year, is that data protection is becoming an extension of your cybersecurity strategies. So, I'm interested in your perspective on cyber recovery. Your specific news that you have there. >> Yeah, you know, we are in addition to simplifying things via the appliance, we are providing solutions for customers no matter where they're deploying. And cyber recovery, especially when it comes to cloud deployments, is an increasing area of interest and deployment that we see with our customers. So, what we're announcing today is that we're expanding our cyber recovery services to be available in Google Cloud. With this announcement, it means we're available in all three of the major clouds and it really provides customers the flexibility to secure their data no matter if they're running on-premises, in Acolo, at the Edge, in the public cloud. And the other nice thing about this announcement is that you have the ability to use Google Cloud as a cyber recovery vault that really allows customers to isolate critical data and they can recover that critical data from the vault back to on-premises or from that vault back to running their cyber protection or their data protection solutions in the public cloud. >> I always invoke my favorite Matt Baker here. "It's not a zero sum game", but this is a perfect example where there's opportunities for a company like Dell to partner with the public cloud provider. You've got capabilities that don't exist there. You've got the on-prem capabilities. We could talk about Edge all day, but that's a different topic. Okay, so my other question Travis, is how does this all fit into APEX? We hear a lot about APEX as a service. It's sort of the new hot thing. What's happening there? What's the news around APEX? >> Yeah, we've seen incredible momentum with our APEX solutions since we introduced data protection options into them earlier this year. And we're really building on that momentum with this announcement being providing solutions that allow customers to consume flexibly. And so, what we're announcing specifically is that we're expanding APEX Data Storage Services to include a data protection option. And it's like with all APEX offers, it's a pay-as-you-go solution. Really streamlines the process of customers purchasing, deploying, maintaining and managing their backup software. All a customer really needs to do is specify their base capacity. They specify their performance tier. They tell us do they want a one year term or a three year term and we take it from there. We get them up and running so they can start deploying and consuming flexibly. And as with many of our APEX solutions, it's a simple user experience all exposed through a unified APEX Console. >> Okay, so it's, you're keeping it simple, like I think large, medium, small. You know, we hear a lot about T-shirt sizes. I'm a big fan of that 'cause you guys should be smart enough to figure out, you know, based on my workload, what I need. How different is this? I wonder if you guys could address this. Jeff, maybe you can start. >> Sure, I'll start and then- >> Pitch me. >> You know, Travis, you jump in when I screw up here. >> Awesome. >> So, first I'd say we offer innovative multicloud data protection solutions. We provide that deliver performance, efficiency and scale that our customers demand and require. We support as Travis said, all the major public clouds. We have a broad ecosystem of workload support and I guess the great news is we're up to 80% more cost effective than any of the competition. >> Dave: 80%? >> 80% >> Hey, that's a big number. All right, Travis, what's your point of view on this? >> Yeah, I think number one, end-to-end data protection. We are that one stop shop that I talked about, whether it's a simplified appliance, whether it's deployed in the cloud, whether it's at the Edge, whether it's integrated appliances, target appliances, software. We have solutions that span the gamut as a service. I mentioned the APEX Solution as well. So really, we can provide solutions that help support customers and protect them, any workload, any cloud, anywhere that data lives. Edge, Core to Cloud. The other thing that we hear as a big differentiator for Dell, and Jeff touched on on this a little bit earlier, is our Intelligent Cyber Resiliency. We have a unique combination in the market where we can offer immutability or protection against deletion as sort of that first line of defense. But we can also offer a second level of defense, which is isolation, talking about data vaults or cyber vaults and cyber recovery. And more importantly, the intelligence that goes around that vault. It can look at detecting cyber attacks. It can help customers speed time to recovery. And really provides AI and ML to help early diagnosis of a cyber attack and fast recovery should a cyber attack occur. And if you look at customer adoption of that solution, specifically in the cloud, we have over 1300 customers utilizing PowerProtect Cyber Recovery. >> So, I think it's fair to say that your portfolio has obviously been a big differentiator. Whenever I talk to your finance team, Michael Dell, et cetera, that end-to-end capability, that your ability to manage throughout the supply chain. We actually just did an event recently with you guys where you went into what you're doing to make infrastructure trusted. And so my take on that is you, in a lot of respects, you're shifting the client's burden to your R&D. now they have a lot of work to do, so it's not like they can go home and just relax. But that's a key part of the partnership that I see. Jeff, I wonder if you could give us the final thoughts. >> Sure. Dell has a long history of being a trusted partner within IT, right? So, we have unmatched capabilities. Going back to your point, we have the broadest portfolio. We're a leader in every category that we participate in. We have a broad deep breadth of portfolio. We have scale. We have innovation that is just unmatched. Within data protection itself, we are the trusted market leader. No if, ands or buts. We're number one for both data protection software in appliances per IDC and we were just named for the 17th consecutive time the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant. So, bottom line is customers can count on Dell. >> Yeah, and I think again, we're seeing the evolution of data protection. It's not like the last 10 years. It's really becoming an adjacency and really, a key component of your cyber strategy. I think those two parts of the organization are coming together. So guys, really appreciate your time. Thanks for coming. >> Thank you, sir. >> Dave. >> Travis, good to see you. All right, in a moment I'm going to come right back and summarize what we learned today, what actions you can take for your business. You're watching "The Future of Multicloud Data Protection" made possible by Dell in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. Right back. >> Advertiser: In our data-driven world, protecting data has never been more critical. To guard against everything from cyber incidents to unplanned outages, you need a cyber resilient multicloud data protection strategy. >> It's not a matter of if you're going to get hacked, it's a matter of when. And I want to know that I can recover and continue to recover each day. >> It is important to have a cyber security and a cyber resiliency plan in place because the threat of cyber attack are imminent. >> Advertiser: PowerProtect Data Manager from Dell Technologies helps deliver the data protection and security confidence you would expect from a trusted partner and market leader. >> We chose PowerProtect Data Manager because we've been a strategic partner with Dell Technologies for roughly 20 years now. Our partnership with Dell Technologies has provided us with the ability to scale and grow as we've transitioned from 10 billion in assets to 20 billion. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect Data Manager, you can enjoy exceptional ease of use to increase your efficiency and reduce costs. >> I'd installed it by myself, learn it by myself. It was very intuitive. >> While restoring your machine with PowerProtect Data Manager is fast, we can fully manage PowerProtect through the center. We can recover a whole machine in seconds. >> Instructor: Data Manager offers innovation such as transparent snapshots to simplify virtual machine backups, and it goes beyond backup and restore to provide valuable insights into protected data, workloads and VMs. >> In our previous environment, it would take anywhere from three to six hours a night to do a single backup of each VM. Now, we're backing up hourly and it takes two to three seconds with the transparent snapshots. >> Advertiser: With PowerProtect's Data Manager, you get the peace of mind knowing that your data is safe and available whenever you need it. >> Data is extremely important. We can't afford to lose any data. We need things just to work. >> Advertiser: Start your journey to modern data protection with Dell PowerProtect's Data Manager. Visit dell.com/powerprotectdatamanager >> We put forth the premise in our introduction that the worlds of data protection in cybersecurity must be more integrated. We said that data recovery strategies have to be built into security practices and procedures and by default, this should include modern hardware and software. Now, in addition to reviewing some of the challenges that customers face, which have been pretty well documented, we heard about new products that Dell Technologies is bringing to the marketplace that specifically address these customer concerns. And there were three that we talked about today. First, the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance, which is an integrated system taking advantage of Dell's history in data protection, but adding new capabilities. And I want to come back to that in a moment. Second is Dell's PowerProtect Cyber Recovery for Google Cloud platform. This rounds out the big three public cloud providers for Dell, which joins AWS and Azure support. Now finally, Dell has made its target backup appliances available in APEX. You might recall, earlier this year we saw the introduction from Dell of APEX Backup Services and then in May at Dell Technologies World, we heard about the introduction of APEX Cyber Recovery Services. And today, Dell is making its most popular backup appliances available in APEX. Now, I want to come back to the PowerProtect Data Manager Appliance because it's a new integrated appliance and I asked Dell off camera, "Really what is so special about these new systems and what's really different from the competition?" Because look, everyone offers some kind of integrated appliance. So, I heard a number of items. Dell talked about simplicity and efficiency and containers and Kubernetes. So, I kind of kept pushing and got to what I think is the heart of the matter in two really important areas. One is simplicity. Dell claims that customers can deploy the system in half the time relative to the competition. So, we're talking minutes to deploy, and of course that's going to lead to much simpler management. And the second real difference I heard was backup and restore performance for VMware workloads. In particular, Dell has developed transparent snapshot capabilities to fundamentally change the way VMs are protected, which leads to faster backup and restores with less impact on virtual infrastructure. Dell believes this new development is unique in the market and claims that in its benchmarks, the new appliance was able to back up 500 virtual machines in 47% less time compared to a leading competitor. Now, this is based on Dell benchmarks, so hopefully these are things that you can explore in more detail with Dell to see if and how they apply to your business. So if you want more information, go to the Data Protection Page at dell.com. You can find that at dell.com/dataprotection. And all the content here and other videos are available on demand at theCUBE.net. Check out our series on the blueprint for trusted infrastructure, it's related and has some additional information. And go to siliconangle.com for all the news and analysis related to these and other announcements. This is Dave Vellante. Thanks for watching "The Future of Multicloud Protection" made possible by Dell, in collaboration with theCUBE, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. (upbeat music)

>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you. And thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. Yeah, >>It's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation, They're top of mind, everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we want to get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data. So no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's OnPrem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multicloud by design. If you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. >>You think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The mediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell, that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today. Just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience will go back to that complexity. And it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big new knowing little Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near and data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA patron fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we've talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this >>Year, right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well. Connecting to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places. And customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announced us back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on there as a service transitions by modernize the con consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it in a, unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would assert no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges that customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourage this interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We Dell, I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first investment alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data in their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very longstanding and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy data, the sa right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the Edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discuss, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching Exclusive Inside Insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell. Technologies's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit, who's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam GrowCo is the senior vice President of marketing. He's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the >>David, It's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me. >>Yeah, you bet. So Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin. Pinky as kidding. And, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then in the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly, shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies, Let me put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, $50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from, from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, But we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, you, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting current local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I, I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation in infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will, We're continuing to invest. And you Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think, value creation opportunity in a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the gr the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client and in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share, gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in, in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well, Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cube's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there.

(upbeat music) >> The transformation of Dell into Dell EMC, and now Dell Technologies, has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the enterprise technology industry. The company has gone from a Wall Street darling rocketship PC company, to a middling enterprise player, forced to go private, to a debt-laden powerhouse that controlled one of the most valuable assets in enterprise tech, i.e., VMware. And now is a $100 billion dollar giant with a low-margin business, a strong balance sheet, and the broadest hardware portfolio in the industry. The financial magic that Dell went through would make anyone's head spin. The last lever of the Dell EMC deal was detailed in Michael Dell's book "Play Nice But Win," in a captivating chapter called "Harry You and the Bolt from the Blue." Michael Dell described how he and his colleagues came up with the final straw of how to finance the deal. If you haven't read it, you should. And of course, after years of successfully integrating EMC and becoming VMware's number-one distribution channel, all of this culminated in the spin-out of VMware from Dell, and a massive wealth-creation milestone, pending, of course, the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell, and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Now, today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we're going to hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet, who's the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views on the company's position and opportunities going forward. He's going to answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the President of Dell's ISG business. That unit is the largest profit driver of Dell. He's going to talk about the product angle, and specifically, how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott, who's the Senior Vice President of Marketing, will come on the program and give us the update on APEX, which is Dell's as-a-Service offering, and then the new edge platform called Project Frontier. Now, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, that we're going to see if Sam has, you know, anything to say about that. Then finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell actually has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jenn Saavedra, who's Dell's Chief Human Resource Officer, about hybrid work, and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. However, before we get into all this, I want to share our independent perspectives on the company, and some research that we'll introduce to frame the program. Now, as you know, we love data here at theCUBE, and one of our partners, ETR, has what we believe is the best spending intentions data for enterprise tech. So here's a graphic that shows ETR's proprietary Net Score methodology on the vertical axis, that's a measure of spending velocity, and on the x-axis is overlap or pervasiveness in the data sample. This is a cut for just the server, the storage, and the client sectors within the ETR taxonomy. So you can see Dell's CSG products, laptops in particular, are dominant on both the x and the y dimensions. CSG is the Client Solutions Group, and accounts for nearly 60% of Dell's revenue, and about half of its operating income. And then the arrow signifies that dot that represents Dell's ISG business, that we're going to talk to Jeff Boudreau about. That's the Infrastructure Solutions Group. Now, ISG accounts for the bulk of the remainder of Dell's business, and it is its, as I said, its most profitable from a margin standpoint. It comprises the EMC storage business, as well as the Dell server business, and Dell's networking portfolio. And as a note, we didn't include networking in that cut. Had we done so, Cisco would've dominated the graphic. And frankly, Dell's networking business isn't industry leading in the same way that PCs, servers, and storage are. And as you can see, the data confirms the leadership position Dell has in its client side, its server, and its storage sectors. But the nuance is, look at that red dotted line at 40% on the vertical axis. That represents a highly elevated Net Score, and every company in the sector is below that line. Now, we should mention that we also filtered the data for those companies with more than a hundred mentions in the survey, but the point remains the same. This is a mature business that generally is lower margin. Storage is the exception, but cloud has put pressure on margins even in that business, in addition to the server space. The last point on this graphic is, we put a box around VMware, and it's prominently present on both the x and y dimensions. VMware participates with purely software-defined high-margin offerings in these spaces, and it gives you a sense of what might have been, had Dell chosen to hold onto that asset or spin it into the company. But let's face it, the alternatives for Michael Dell were just too attractive, and it's unlikely that a spin-in would've unlocked the value in the way a spin-out did, at least not in the near future. So let's take a look at the snapshot of Dell's financials, to give you a sense of where the company stands today. Dell is a company with over $100 billion dollars in revenue. Last quarter, it did more than 26 billion in revenue, and grew at a quite amazing 9% rate, for a company that size. But because it's a hardware company, primarily, its margins are low, with operating income 10% of revenue, and at 21% gross margin. With VMware on Dell's income statement before the spin, its gross margins were in the low 30s. Now, Dell only spends about 2% of revenue on R&D, but because it's so big, it's still a lot of money. And you can see it is cash-flow positive. Dell's free cash flow over the trailing 12-month period is 3.7 billion, but that's only 3.5% of trailing 12-month revenue. Dell's APEX, and of course its hardware maintenance business, is recurring revenue, and that is only about 5 billion in revenue, and it's growing at 8% annually. Now, having said that, it's the equivalent of ServiceNow's total revenue. Of course, ServiceNow has 23% operating margin and 16% free cash-flow margin, and more than $5 billion in cash on the balance sheet, and an $85 billion market cap. That's what software will do for you. Now Dell, like most companies, is staring at a challenging macro environment, with FX headwinds, inflation, et cetera. You've heard the story. And hence it's conservative, and contracting revenue guidance. But the balance sheet transformation has been quite amazing, thanks to VMware's cash flow. Michael Dell and his partners from Silver Lake et al., they put up around $4 billion of their own cash to buy EMC for 67 billion, and of course got VMware in the process. Most of that financing was debt that Dell put on its balance sheet to do the transaction, to the tune of $46 billion it added to the balance sheet debt. Now, Dell's debt, the core debt, net of its financing operation, is now down to 16 billion, and it has $7 billion in cash on the balance sheet. So a dramatic delta from just a few years ago. So, pretty good picture. But Dell, a $100 billion company, is still only valued at 28 billion, or around 26 cents on the revenue dollar. HPE's revenue multiple is around 60 cents on the revenue dollar. HP Inc., Dell's laptop and PC competitor, is around 45 cents. IBM's revenue multiple is almost two times. By the way, IBM has more than $50 billion in debt thanks to the Red Hat acquisition. And Cisco has a revenue multiple that's over 3x, about 3.3x currently. So is Dell undervalued? Well, based on these comparisons with its peers, I'd say yes, and no. Dell's performance, relative to its peers in the market, is very strong. It's winning, and has an extremely adept go-to-market machine, but its lack of software content and its margin profile leads one to believe that if it can continue to pull some valuation levers while entering new markets, it can get its valuation well above where it is today. So what are some of those levers, and what might that look like, going forward? Despite the fact that Dell doesn't have a huge software revenue component since spinning out VMware, and it doesn't own a cloud, it plays in virtually every part of the hardware market. And it can provide infrastructure for pretty much any application in any use case, in pretty much any industry, in pretty much any geography in the world. And it can serve those customers. So its size is an advantage. However, the history for hardware-heavy companies that try to get bigger has some notable failures, namely HP, which had to split into two businesses, HP Inc. and HPE, and IBM, which has had an abysmal decade from a performance standpoint, and has had to shrink to grow again, and obviously do a massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. So why will Dell do any better than these two? Well, it has a fantastic supply chain. It's a founder-led company, which makes a cultural difference, in our view. And it's actually comfortable with a low-margin software-light business model. Most certainly, IBM wasn't comfortable with that, and didn't have these characteristics, and HP was kind of just incomprehensible at the end. So Dell in my opinion, has a much better chance of doing well at 100 billion or over, but we'll see how it navigates through the current headwinds as it's guiding down. APEX is essentially Dell's version of the cloud. Now, remember, Dell got started late. HPE is further along from a model standpoint with GreenLake, but Dell has a larger portfolio, so they're going to try to play on that advantage. But at the end of the day, these as-a-Service offerings are simply ways to bring a utility model to existing customers, and generate recurring revenue. And that's a good thing, because customers will be loyal to an incumbent if it can deliver as-a-Service and reduce risk for customers. But the real opportunity lies ahead. Specifically, Dell is embracing the cloud model. It took a while, but they're on board. As Matt Baker, Dell's Senior Vice President of Corporate Strategy, likes to say, it's not a zero-sum game. What he means by that is, just because Dell doesn't own its own cloud, it doesn't mean Dell can't build value on top of hyperscale clouds. What we call supercloud. And that's Dell's strategy, to take advantage of public cloud capex, and connect on-prem to the cloud, create a unified experience across clouds, and out to the edge. That's ambitious, and technically it's nontrivial. But listen to Dell's Vice Chairman and Co-COO, Jeff Clarke, explain this vision. Please play the clip. >> You said also, technology and business models are tied together, and an enabler. >> That's right. >> If you believe that, then you have to believe that it's a business operating system that they want. They want to leverage whatever they can, and at the end of the day, they have to differentiate what they do. >> Well, that's exactly right. If I take that and what Dave was saying, and I summarize it the following way: if we can take these cloud assets and capabilities, combine them in an orchestrated way to deliver a distributed platform, game over. >> Eh, pretty interesting, right? John Furrier called it a "business operating system." Essentially, I think of it sometimes as a cloud operating system, or cloud operating environment, to drive new business value on top of the hyperscale capex. Now, is it really game over, as Jeff Clarke said, if Dell can do that? Uh, (sucks in breath) I'd say if it had that today, it might be game over for the competition, but this vision will take years to play out. And of course, it's got to be funded. And that's going to take time, and in this industry, it tends to move, companies tend to move in lockstep. So, as often is the case, it's going to come down to execution and Dell's ability to enter new markets that are ideally, at least from my perspective, higher margin. Data management, extending data protection into cybersecurity as an adjacency, and of course, edge and telco/5G opportunities. All there for the taking. I mean, look, even if Dell doesn't go after more higher-margin software content, it can thrive with a lower-margin model just by penetrating new markets and throwing off cash from those markets. But by keeping close to customers, and maybe through tuck-in acquisitions, it might be able to find the next nugget beyond today's cloud and on-prem models. And the last thing I'll call out is ecosystem. I say here, "Ecosystem, ecosystem, ecosystem," because a defining characteristic of a cloud player is ecosystem, and if APEX is Dell's cloud, it has the opportunity to expand that ecosystem dramatically. This is one of the company's biggest opportunities and challenges at the same time, in my view. It's just scratching the surface on its partner ecosystem. And its ecosystem today is both reseller heavy and tech partner heavy. And that's not a bad thing, but it's starting to evolve more rapidly. The Snowflake deal is an example of up-the-stack evolution, but I'd like to see much more out of that Snowflake relationship, and more relationships like that. Specifically, I'd like to see more momentum with data and database. And if we live in a data-heavy world, which we do, where the data and the database and data management offerings, you know, coexist and are super important to customers, I'd like to see that inside of APEX. I'd like to see that data play beyond storage, which is really where it is today, in its early days. The point is, with Dell's go-to-market advantage, which company wouldn't treat Dell like the on-prem, hybrid, edge, supercloud player that I want to partner with to drive more business? You'd be crazy not to. But Dell has a lot on its plate, and we'd like to see some serious acceleration on the ecosystem front. In other words, Dell as both a selling partner and a business enabler with its platform, its programmable Infrastructure-as-a-Service. And that is a moving target that will rapidly evolve. And of course, we'll be here watching and reporting. So thanks for watching this preview of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante, we hope you enjoy the rest of the program. (upbeat music)

>>As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell emc and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell com culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending, of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. My name is Dave Ante and I'll be hosting the program today In conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's gonna share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell good long term investment? >>Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau was the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's gonna talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grow Cot is the senior vice president of marketing's gonna come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're gonna see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're gonna speak with Jen Savira, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're gonna geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet cfo, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to the cube, >>Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Jay. >>Yeah, you bet. Tom. It's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky as kidding, and, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size, you've had some success at the top line, which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >>Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know, stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey, you know, this scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know, 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know, drive workforce productivity, enabled their business model during the all remote work environment. That was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the, the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know, as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade within unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Lemme put it that way. >>Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is, is, is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But it spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >>Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, 50 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the, the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that, that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position may be, you know, low thirties and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of thirties or 40%. >>But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and, and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, so you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted, we actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about as you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings, was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream, but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. >>And so we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a, of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and, and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the, and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know, that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters, who knows quite how long, you know, to, to make sure the business is properly positioned and, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're gonna talk to some of the team LA later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. >>So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're gonna need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right >>Now. Yeah. And as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know, the best companies not only weather the storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out, come out the other side stronger. So I wanna talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the tam, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if, if you can penetrate that big of a tam, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. And, but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >>Yeah, look, I, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term digital transformation continues. I I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's gonna slow or, or pause or maybe they're not gonna invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the, the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what a cl previous been closed ecosystems, you know, to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. >>And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us, you know, yes, we will and we're continuing to invest and you know, Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in, in, in normal times a, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so, You know, we've got a negative, you know, CCC in terms of, you know, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know, our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and a over the long term that the long term trends are with us, and I expect them to continue to be so, >>Yeah, and you guys, you, you, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion on the, on the, on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarking and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >>Hey, Dave. Yeah, look, I, I just think if you look at the good, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we com you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion revenue company, which we were a year, you know, last year, that as we reported roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client, in in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue the opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive, cash flow, drive, share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know, what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management, you know, we, and you cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know, data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >>Well Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >>Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >>All right. You're watching the Cubes exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts, keep it right there. >>Welcome back to the cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante and we're going inside with Dell execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now as friend of the cube, Jeff Boudreau, he's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the cube. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. There are motivation, they're top of mind, everything we do, my leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions, both turn and future offerings, really ensure that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those are driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in it's everywhere, right? And so as it as the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations that's on-prem and off-prem, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multi-cloud is actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed. It's been a lot more of multi-cloud by default versus multi-cloud by design. And if you really think about our customers, I mean, I, I, I've talking to 'EM all the time, you think about the data complexity, that's the growth and the gravity. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity shifting from central to decentralized it, you think about multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about security complexity that that dries with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from us, and what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and aligned versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT and a more agile it. And they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries and hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data to my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all the businesses that create more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for real time insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a PA fan like I am, did they truly are meeting us where we are in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. The bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security model, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software to define common storage layer, that common storage layer. You can think about this Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types and locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you just to be, just to be clear, we've made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce this back in in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds. >>Really delivering the best of both worlds, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Project Frontier here with Sam Gro Crop, the very near future. So I won't give up too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, oh, well, shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multi-cloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your is. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own, not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of our, of each of our teams. We del I guess have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. >>I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at, we announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multi-cloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multicloud space. >>Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics and data management. Using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our Sasa, we've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like eex and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility to take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the IS isg. And so you had to dig in and, and it was obviously a strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first, You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we discussed we're working in a very fast paced, ever-changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multicloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multi-cloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insight insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage. >>Hello everyone, this is Dave Lanta and you're watching the Cubes coverage of the Dell Technology Summit 2022 with exclusive behind the scenes interviews featuring Dell executive perspectives. And right now we're gonna explore Apex, which is Dell's as a service offering Dell's multi-cloud and edge strategies and the momentum around those. And we have news around Project Frontier, which is Dell's vision for its edge platform. And there's so much happening here. And don't forget it's cyber security Awareness month. Sam Grot is here, he's the senior vice president of marketing at Dell Technologies. Sam, always great to see you. How you doing? >>Always great to be here, Dave. >>All right, let's look at cloud. Everybody's talking about cloud Apex, multi-cloud, what's the update? How's it going? Where's the innovation and focal points of the strategy? >>Yeah, yeah. Look Dave, if you think back over the course of this year, you've really heard, heard us pivot as a company and discussing more and more about how multi-cloud is becoming a reality for our customers today. And when we listen and talk with our customers, they really describe multi-cloud challenges and a few key threads. One, the complexity is growing very, very quickly. Two, they're having a harder time controlling how their users are accessing the various different clouds. And then of course, finally the cloud costs are growing unchecked as well. So we, we like to describe this phenomenon as multi-cloud by design. We're essentially, organizations are waking up and seeing cloud sprawl around their organization every day. And this is creating more and more of those challenges. So of course at Dell we've got a strong point of view that you don't need to build multicloud by by default, rather it's multicloud by design where you're very intentional in how you do multicloud. >>And how we deliver multicloud by design is through apex. Apex is our modern cloud and our modern consumption experience. So when you think about the innovation as well, Dave, like we've been on a pretty quick track record here in that, you know, the beginning of this year we introduced brand new Apex backup services that provides that SAS based backup service. We've introduced or announced project outline, which is bringing our storage software, intellectual property from on-prem and putting it and running it natively in the public cloud. We've also introduced new Apex cyber recovery services that is simplifying how customers protect against cyber attacks. They can run an Amazon Azure, aw, I'm sorry, Amazon, aws, Azure or Google. And then, you know, we are really focused on this multi-cloud ecosystem. We announce key partnerships with SaaS providers such as Snowflake, where you can now access our information or our data from on-prem through the Snow Snowflake cloud. >>Or if needed, we can actually move the data to the Snowflake cloud if required. So we're continuing to build out that ecosystem SaaS providers. And then finally I would say, you know, we made a big strategic announcement just recently with Red Hat, where we're not only delivering new Apex container services, but we announce the strategic partnership to build jointly engineered solutions to address hybrid and multi-cloud solutions going forward. You know, VMware is gonna always continue to be a key partner of ours at the la at the recent VMware explorer we announced new Tansu integration. So, So Dave, I, I think in a nutshell we've been innovating at a very, very fast pace. We think there is a better way to do multi-cloud and that's multi-cloud by design. >>Yeah, we heard that at Dell Technologies world. First time I had heard that multi-cloud by design versus sort of default, which is great Alpine, which is sort of our, what we called super cloud in the making. And then of course the ecosystem is critical for any cloud company. VMware of course, you know, top partner, but the Snowflake announcement was very interesting Red Hat. So seeing that expand, now let's go out to the edge. How's it going with the edge expansion? There's gotta be new speaking of ecosystem, the edge is like a whole different, you know, OT type, that's right, ecosystem, that's telcos what and what's this new frontier platform all about? >>Yeah, yeah. So we've talked a lot about cloud and multi clouds, we've talked about private and hybrid cloud, we've talked about public clouds, clouds and cos, telcos, et cetera. There's really been one key piece of our multi-cloud and technology strategy that we haven't spent a lot of time on. And that's the edge. And we do see that as that next frontier for our customers to really gain that competitive advantage that is created from their data and get closer to the point of creation where the data lives. And that's at the edge. We see the edge infrastructure space growing very, very quickly. We see upwards of 300% year of year growth in terms of amount of data being created at the edge. That's almost 3000 exabytes of data by 2026. So just incredible growth. And the edge is not really new for Dell. We've been at it for over 20 years of delivering edge solutions. >>81% of the Fortune 100 companies in the US use Dell solutions today at the Edge. And we are the number one OEM provider of Edge solutions with over 44,000 customers across over 40 industries and things like manufacturing, retail, edge healthcare, and more. So Dave, while we've been at it for a long time, we have such a, a deep understanding of how our customers are using Edge solutions. Say the bottom line is the game has gotta change. With that growth that we talked about, the new use cases that are emerging, we've got to un unlock this new frontier for customers to take advantage of the edge. And that's why we are announcing and revealing Project Frontier. And Project Frontier in its most simplest form, is a software platform that's gonna help customers and organizations really radically simplify their edge deployments by automating their edge operations. You know, with Project Frontier organizations are really gonna be able to manage, OP, and operate their edge infrastructure and applications securely, efficiently and at scale. >>Okay, so it is, first of all, I like the name, it is software, it's a software architecture. So presumably a lot of API capabilities. That's right. Integration's. Is there hardware involved? >>Yeah, so of course you'll run it on Dell infrastructure. We'll be able to do both infrastructure orchestration, orchestration through the platform, but as well as application orchestration. And you know, really there's, there's a handful of key drivers that have been really pushing our customers to take on and look at building a better way to do the edge with Project Frontier. And I think I would just highlight a handful of 'em, you know, freedom of choice. We definitely see this as an open ecosystem out there, even more so at the Edge than any other part of the IT stack. You know, being able to provide that freedom of choice for software applications or I O T frameworks, operational technology or OT for any of their edge use cases, that's really, really important. Another key area that we're helping to solve with Project Frontier is, you know, being able to expect zero trust security across all their edge applications from design to deployment, you know, and of course backed by an end and secure supply chain is really, really important to customers. >>And then getting that greater efficiency and reliability of operations with the centralized management through Project Frontier and Zero Touch deployments. You know, one of the biggest challenges, especially when you get out to the far, far reach of the frontier is really IT resources and being able to have the IT expertise and we built in an enormous amount of automation helps streamline the edge deployments where you might be deploying a single edge solution, which is highly unlikely or hundreds or thousands, which is becoming more and more likely. So Dave, we do think Project Frontier is the right edge platform for customers to build their edge applications on now and certain, excuse me, certainly, and into the future. >>Yeah. Sam, no truck rolls. I like it. And you, you mentioned, you mentioned Zero trust. So we have Mother's Day, we have Father's Day. The kids always ask When's kids' day? And we of course we say every day is kids' day and every day should be cybersecurity awareness day. So, but we have cybersecurity awareness month. What does it mean for Dell? What are you hearing from customers and, and how are you responding? >>Yeah, yeah. No, there isn't a more prevalent pop of mind conversation, whether it's the boardroom or the IT departments or every company is really have been forced to reckon with the cybersecurity and ransom secure issues out there. You know, every decision in IT department makes impacts your security profile. Those decisions can certainly, positively, hopefully impact it, but also can negatively impact it as well. So data security is, is really not a new area of focus for Dell. It's been an area that we've been focused on for a long time, but there are really three core elements to cyber security and data security as we go forward. The first is really setting the foundation of trust is really, really important across any IT system. And having the right supply chain and the right partner to partner with to deliver that is kind of the foundation in step one. >>Second, you need to of course go with technology that is trustworthy. It doesn't mean you are putting it together correctly. It means that you're essentially assembling the right piece parts together. That, that coexist together in the right way. You know, to truly change that landscape of the attackers out there that are gonna potentially create risk for your environment. We are definitely pushing and helping to embrace the zero trust principles and architectures that are out there. So finally, while when you think about security, it certainly is not absolute all correct. Security architectures assume that, you know, there are going to be challenges, there are going to be pain points, but you've gotta be able to plan for recovery. And I think that's the holistic approach that we're taking with Dell. >>Well, and I think too, it's obviously security is a complicated situation now with cloud you've got, you know, shared responsibility models, you've got that a multi-cloud, you've got that across clouds, you're asking developers to do more. So I think the, the key takeaway is as a security pro, I'm looking for my technology partner through their r and d and their, you mentioned supply chain processes to take that off my plate so I can go plug holes elsewhere. Okay, Sam, put a bow on Dell Technology Summit for us and give us your closing thoughts. >>Yeah, look, I I think we're at a transformative point in it. You know, customers are moving more and more quickly to multi-cloud environments. They're looking to consume it in different ways, such as as a service, a lot of customers edge is new and an untapped opportunity for them to get closer to their customers and to their data. And of course there's more and more cyber threats out there every day. You know, our customers when we talk with them, they really want simple, consistent infrastructure options that are built on an open ecosystem that allows them to accomplish their goals quickly and successfully. And look, I think at Dell we've got the right strategy, we've got the right portfolio, we are the trusted partner of choice, help them lead, lead their, their future transformations into the future. So Dave, look, I think it's, it's absolutely one of the most exciting times in it and I can't wait to see where it goes from here. >>Sam, always fun catching up with you. Appreciate your time. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right. A Dell tech world in Vegas this past year, one of the most interesting conversations I personally had was around hybrid work and the future of work and the protocols associated with that and the mindset of, you know, the younger generation. And that conversation was with Jen Savira and we're gonna speak to Jen about this and other people and culture topics. Keep it right there. You're watching the cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. Okay, we're back with Jen Vera, who's the chief human resource officer of Dell, and we're gonna discuss people, culture and hybrid work and leadership in the post isolation economy. Jen, the conversations that we had at Dell Tech World this past May around the new work environment were some of the most interesting and engaging that I had personally. So I'm really eager to, to get the update. It's great to see you again. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thanks for having me Dave. There's been a lot of change in just a short amount of time, so I'm excited to, to share some of our learnings >>With you. I, I mean, I bet there has, I mean, post pandemic companies, they're trying, everybody's trying to figure out the return to work and, and what it looks like. You know, last May there was really a theme of flexibility, but depending, we talked about, well, millennial or not young old, and it's just really was mixed, but, so how have you approached the topic? What, what are your policies? What's changed since we last talked? You know, what's working, you know, what's still being worked? What would you recommend to other companies to over to you? >>Yeah, well, you know, this isn't a topic that's necessarily new to Dell technology. So we've been doing hybrid before. Hybrid was a thing. So for over a decade we've been doing what we called connected workplace. So we have kind of a, a history and we have some great learnings from that. Although things did change for the entire world. You know, March of 2020, we went from kind of this hybrid to everybody being remote for a while. But what we wanted to do is, we're such a data driven company, there's so many headlines out there, you know, about all these things that people think could happen will happen, but there wasn't a lot of data behind it. So we took a step back and we asked our team members, How do you think we're doing? And we asked very kind of strong language because we've been doing this for a while. >>We asked them, Do you think we're leading in the world of hybrid in 86% of our team members said that we were, which is great, but we always know there's nuance right behind that macro level. So we, we asked 'em a lot of different questions and we just went on this kind of myth busting journey and we decided to test some of those things. We're hearing about Culture Willow Road or new team members will have trouble being connected or millennials will be different. And we really just collected a lot of data, asked our team members what their experience is. And what we have found is really, you don't have to be together in the office all the time to have a strong culture, a sense of connection, to be productive and to have it really healthy business. >>Well, I like that you were data driven around it in the data business here. So, but, but there is a lot of debate around your culture and how it suffers in a hybrid environment, how remote workers won't get, you know, promoted. And so I'm curious, you know, and I've, and I've seen some like-minded companies like Dell say, Hey, we, we want you guys to work the way you wanna work. But then they've, I've seen them adjust and say, Well yeah, but we also want you to know in the office be so we can collaborate a little bit more. So what are you seeing at Dell and, and, and how do you maintain that cultural advantage that you're alluding to in this kind of strange, new ever changing world? >>Yeah, well I think, look, one approach doesn't fit all. So I don't think that the approach that works for Dell Technologies isn't necessarily the approach that works for every company. It works with our strategy and culture. It is really important that we listen to our team members and that we support them through this journey. You know, they tell us time and time again, one of the most special things about our culture is that we provide flexibility and choice. So we're not a mandate culture. We really want to make sure that our team members know that we want them to be their best and do their best. And not every individual role has the same requirements. Not every individual person has the same needs. And so we really wanna meet them where they are so that they can be productive. They feel connected to the team and to the company and engaged and inspired. >>So, you know, for, for us, it really does make sense to go forward with this. And so we haven't, we haven't taken a step back. We've been doing hybrid, we'll continue to do hybrid, but just like if you, you know, we talk about not being a mandate. I think the companies that say nobody will come in or you have to come in three days a week, all of that feels more limiting. And so what we really say is, work out with your team, work out with your role, workout with your leader, what really makes the most sense to drive things forward. >>I >>You were, so >>That's what we, you were talking before about myths and you know, I wanna talk about team member performance cuz there's a lot of people believe that if, if you're not in the office, you have disadvantages, people in the office have the advantage cuz they get FaceTime. Is is that a myth? You know, is there some truth to that? What, what do you think about that? >>Well, for us, you know, we look, again, we just looked at the data. So we said we don't wanna create a have and have not culture that you're talking about. We really wanna have an inclusive culture. We wanna be outcome driven, we're meritocracy. But we went and we looked at the data. So pre pandemic, we looked at things like performance, we looked at rewards and recognition, we looked at attrition rates, we looked at sentiment, Do you feel like your leader is inspiring? And we found no meaningful differences in any of that or in engagement between those who worked fully remote, fully in the office or some combination between. So our data would bust that myth and say, it doesn't, you don't have to be in an office and be seen to get ahead. We have equitable opportunity. Now, having said that, you always have to be watching that data. And that's something that we'll continue to do and make sure that we are creating equal opportunity regardless of where you work. >>And it's personal too, I think, I think some people can be really productive at home. I happen to be one that I'm way more productive in the office cause the dogs aren't barking. I have less distractions. And so I think we think, and, and I think the takeaway that in just in talking to, to, to you Jen and, and folks at Dell is, you know, whatever works for you, we're we're gonna, we're gonna support. So I I wanted to switch gears a little bit, talk about leadership and, and very specifically empathic leadership has been said to be, have a big impact on attracting talent, retaining talent, but, but it's hard to have empathy sometimes. And I know I saw some stats in a recent Dell study. It was like two thirds the people felt like their organization underestimates the people requirements. And I, I ask myself, I'm like, what am I missing? I hope, you know, with our folks, so especially as it relates to, to transformation programs. So how can human resource practitioners support business leaders generally, specifically as it relates to leading with empathy? >>I think empathy's always been important. You have to develop trust. You can have the best strategy in the world, right? But if you don't feel like your leader understands who you are, appreciates the the value that you bring to the company, then you're not gonna get very far. So I think empathetic leadership has always been part of the foundation of a trusting, strong relationship between a leader and a team member. But if I think we look back on the last two years, and I imagine it'll be even more so as we go forward, empathetic leadership will be even more important. There's so much going on in the world, politically, socially, economically, that taking that time to say you want your team members to see you as credible, that you and confident that you can take us forward, but also that, you know, and understand me as a human being. >>And that to me is really what it's about. And I think with regard to transformation that you brought up, I think one of the things we forget about is leaders. We've probably been thinking about a decision or transformation for months or weeks and we're ready to go execute, we're ready to go operationalize that thing. And so sometimes when we get to that point, because we've been talking about it for so long, we send out the email, we have the all hands and we just say we're ready to go. But our team members haven't always been on that journey for those months that we have. And so I think that empathetic moment to say, Okay, not everybody is on a change curve where I am. Let's take a pause, let me put myself in their shoes and really think about how we bring everybody along. >>You know, Jen, in the spirit of myth busting, I mean I'm one of those people who felt like that a business is gonna have a hard time, harder time fostering this culture of collaboration and innovation post isolation economy as they, they could pre covid. But you know, I noticed there's a, there's an announcement today that came across my desk, I think it's from Newsweek. Yes. And, and it's the list of top hundred companies recognized for employee motivation satisfaction. And it was really interesting because you, you always see, oh, we're the top 10 or the top hundred, But this says as a survey of 1.4 million employees from companies ranging from 50 to 10,000 employees. And it recognizes the companies that put respect, caring, and appreciation for their employees at the center of their business model. And they doing so have earned the loyalty and respect of the people who work for them. >>Number one on the list is Dell sap. So congratulations SAP was number two. I mean, there really isn't any other tech company on there, certainly no large tech companies on there. So I always see these lists, they go, Yeah, okay, that's cool, top a hundred, whatever. But top one in, in, in an industry where there's only two in the top is, is pretty impressive. And how does that relate to fostering my earlier skepticism of a culture of collaboration? So first of all, congratulations, you know, how'd you do it? And how are you succeeding in, in this new world? >>Well thanks. It does feel great to be number one, but you know, it doesn't happen by accident. And I think while most companies have a, a culture and a spouse values, we have ours called the culture code. But it's really been very important to us that it's not just a poster on the wall or or words on paper. And so we embed our culture code into all of our HR practices, that whole ecosystem from recognition of rewards to performance evaluation, to interviewing, to development. We build it into everything. So it really reflects who we are and you experience it every day. And then to make sure that we're not, you know, fooling ourselves, we ask all of our employees, do you feel like the behaviors you see and the experience you have every day reflects the culture code? And 94% of our team members say that, in fact it does. So I think that that's really been kind of the secret to our success. If you, if you listen to Michael Dell, he'll always say, you know, the most special thing about Dell is our culture and our people. And that comes through being very thoughtful and deliberate to preserve and protect and continue to focus on our culture. >>Don't you think too that repetition and, well first of all, belief in that cultural philosophy is, is important. And then kind of repeating, like you said, Yeah, it's not just a poster in the wall, but I remember like, you know, when we're kids, your parents tell you, okay, power positive thinking, do one to others as others, you know, you have others do it to you. Don't make the say you're gonna do some dumb things but don't do the same dumb things twice and you sort of fluff it up. But then as you mature you say, Wow, actually those were, >>They might have had a >>Were instilled in me and now I'm bringing them forward and, you know, paying it forward. But, but so i, it, it, my, I guess my, my point is, and it's kind of a point observation, but I'll turn it into a question, is isn't isn't consistency and belief in your values really, really important? >>I couldn't agree with you more, right? I think that's one of those things that we talk about it all the time and as an HR professional, you know, it's not the HR people just talking about our culture, it's our business leaders, it's our ceo, it's our COOs ev, it's our partners. We share our culture code with our partners and our vendors and our suppliers and, and everybody, this is important. We say when you interact with anybody at Dell Technologies, you should expect that this is the experience that you're gonna get. And so it is something that we talk about that we embed in, into everything that we do. And I think it's, it's really important that you don't just think it's a one and done cuz that's not how things really, really work >>Well. And it's a culture of respect, you know, high performance, high expectations, accountability at having followed the company and worked with the company for many, many years. You always respect the dignity of your partners and your people. So really appreciate your time Jen. Again, congratulations on being number one. >>Thank you so much. >>You're very welcome. Okay. You've been watching a special presentation of the cube inside Dell Technology Summit 2022. Remember, these episodes are all available on demand@thecube.net and you can check out s silicon angle.com for all the news and analysis. And don't forget to check out wikibon.com each week for a new episode of breaking analysis. This is Dave Valante, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.

>>Welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of the Dell Technology Summit. I'm Dave Ante. We're going inside with Dell Execs to extract the signal from the noise. And right now we're gonna dig into customer requirements in a data intensive world and how cross cloud complexities get resolved from a product development perspective and how the ecosystem fits in to that mosaic to close the gaps and accelerate innovation. And with me now is friend of the Cube, Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of the Infrastructure Solutions Group, ISG at Dell Technologies. Jeff, always good to see you. Welcome. >>You too. Thank you for having me. It's great to see you and thanks for having me back on the key. I'm thrilled to be here. >>Yeah, it's our pleasure. Okay, so let's talk about what you're observing from customers today. You know, we talk all the time about operating in a data driven multi-cloud world, blah, blah, blah, blah. But what does that all mean to you when you have to translate that noise into products that solve specific customer problems, Jeff? >>Sure. Hey, great question. And everything always starts with our customers. They're our motivation. They're top of mind in everything we do. My leadership team and I spend a lot of time with our customers. We're listening, we're learning, we're really understanding their pain points, and we wanna get their feedback in regards to our solutions. Both turn and future offerings really ensured that we're aligned to meeting their business objectives. I would say from these conversations, I'd say customers are telling us several things. First, it's all about data for no surprise going back to your opening. And second, it's about the multi-cloud world. And I'd say the big thing coming from all of this is that both of those is driving a ton of complexity for our customers. And I'll unpack that just a bit, which is first the data. As we all know, data is growing at unprecedented rates with more than 90% of the world's data being produced in the last two years alone. >>And you can just think of that in its everywhere, right? And so as it is, the IT world shifts towards distributed compute to support that data growth and that data gravity to really extract more value from that data in real time environments become inherently more and more hybrid and more and more multi-cloud. Which leads me to the second key point that I've been hearing from our customers, which it's a multi-cloud world, not new news. Customers by default have multiple clouds running across multiple locations. That's on-prem and off, it's running at the edge and it's serving a variety of different needs. Unfortunately, for most of our CU customers, multicloud actually added to their complexity. As we've discussed, it's been a lot more of multicloud by default versus multicloud by design. Really think about customers, I I, I'm talking to 'EM all the time. You think about the data complexity, that's the growth in the graph. >>You think about their infrastructure complexity, shifting from central to decentralized it, you think of a multi-cloud complexity. So you have these walled gardens, if you will. So you have multiple vendors and you have these multiple contracts that all creates operational complexity for their teams around their processes of their tools. And then you think about the security complexity that that drives with the, just the increased tax service and the list goes on. So what are we seeing for our customers? They, what they really want from, also what they're asking us for is simplicity, not complexity. The immediacy, not latency. They're asking for open and align versus I'd say siloed and closed. And they're looking for a lot more agility and not rigidity in what we do. So they really wanna simplify everything. They're looking for a simpler IT in a more agile it, and they want more control of their data, right? >>And so, and they want to extract more of the value to enrich their business or their customer engagements, which all sounds pretty obvious and we've probably all heard it a bunch, but it's really hard to achieve. And that's where I believe, and we believe as Dell that we, it creates a big opportunity for us to really help our customers as that great simplifier of it. We're already doing this today on just a couple quick examples. First is Salesforce. We've supported recently, we've supported their global expansion with a multi-cloud solution to help them drive their business growth. Our solution delivered a reliable and consistent IT experience. We go back to that complexity and it was across a very distributed environment, including more than 60 data centers, 230 countries in hundreds of thousands of customers. It really provided Salesforce with the flexibility of placing workloads and data in an environment based on the right service level. >>Objective things like cost complexity or even security compliance considerations. The second customer A is a big New England Patriot fan. And Dan, Dave, I know you are as well. Oh yeah, this one's near, near data, my heart, it's the craft group. We just created a platform to span all their businesses that created more, I'd say data driven, immersive, secure experience, which is allowing them to capture data at the edge and use it for realtime insights for things like cyber resiliency, but also like safety of the facilities. And as being a pare fan like I am Dave, they truly are meeting us where we are in, in our seats on their mobile devices and also in the parking lot. So just keep that in mind next time you're there. But bottom line, everything we're doing is really to make it simpler for our customers and to help them get the most of their data. I'd say we're gonna do this, is it through a multi-cloud by design approach, which we talked a lot about with you and and others at Dell Tech world earlier this year, >>Right? And we had Salesforce on, actually at Dell Tech Group. The craft group is interesting because, you know, when you get to the stadium, you know, everybody's trying to get, get, get out to the internet and, and, but then the experience is so much better if you can actually, you know, deal with that edge. So I wanna talk about complexity though. You got data, you got, you know, the, the edge, you got multiple clouds, you got a different operating model across security models, different. So a lot of times in this industry we solve complexity with more complexity and it's like a bandaid. So I wanna, I wanna talk to, to how you're innovating around simplicity in ISG to address this complexity and what this means for Dell's long term strategy. >>Sure, I'd love to. So first I, I'd like to state the obvious, which are our investments in our innovations really focused on advancing, you know, our, our our customers needs, right? So we are really, our investments are gonna be targeted. We, we believe customers can have the most value. And some of that's gonna be around how we create strategic partnerships as well connected to what we just spoke about. Much of the complexity of customers have or experiencing is in the orchestration and management of all the data in all these different places and customers, you know, they must be able to quickly deploy and operate across cloud environments. They need to increase their developer productivity, really enabling those developers that do what they do best, which is creating more value for their customers than for their businesses. Our innovation efforts are really focused on addressing this by delivering an open and modern IT architecture that allows customers to run and manage any workload in any cloud anywhere. >>Data lives we're focused on, also focused on consumption based solutions, which allow for a greater degree of simplicity and flexibility, which they're really asking for as well. The foundation for this is our software defined common storage layer. That common storage layer, You can think about this, Dave, as our ias if you will. It underpins our data access in mobility across all data types of locations. So you can think private, public, telecom, colo, edge, and it's delivered in a secure, holistic, and consistent cloud experience through Apex. We are making a ton of progress to let you, just to be, just to be clear, we made headway in things like Project Alpine, which you're very well aware of. This is our storage as a service. We announce us back in, in January, which brings our unique software IP from our flagship storage platform to all the major public clouds, really delivering the best of both world, allowing our customers to take advantage of Dell's enterprise class data services and storage software, such as performance at scale, resiliency, efficiency and security. >>But in addition to that, we're leveraging the breadth of the public cloud services, right? They're on demand scaling capabilities and access to analytical services. So in addition, we're really, we're on our way to win at the edge as well with Project Frontier, which reduces complexity at the edge by creating an open and secure software platform to help our customers simplify their edge operations, optimize their edge environments and investments, secure that edge environment as well. I believe you're gonna be discussing Cru in Frontier here with Sam Broco in the very near future. So I won't give up more, too many more details there. And lastly, we're also scaling Apex, which, you know, well shifting from our vision, really shifting from vision to reality and introducing several new Apex service offerings, which are coming to market over the next month or so. And the intent is really supporting our customers on their as a service transitions by modernize the consumption experience and providing that flexible as a service model. Ultimately, we're trying to help our customers achieve that multicloud by design to really simplify it and unlock the power of their data. >>So some good examples there. I I like to talk about the super Cloud as you, you know, you're building on top of the, you know, hyperscale infrastructure and you got Apex is your cloud, the common storage layer, you call it your ISAs. And that's, that's a ingredient in what we call the super cloud out to the edge. You have to have a common platform there and one of the hallmarks of a cloud company. And as you become a cloud company, everybody's a cloud company ecosystem becomes really, really important in terms of product development and, and innovation. Matt Baker always loves to stress it's not a zero sum game. And, and I think Super Cloud recognizes that, that there's value to be built on top of other clouds and, and, and of course on top of your infrastructure so that your ecosystem can add value. So what role does the ecosystem play there? >>For me, it's, it's pretty clear. It's, it's, it's critical. I can't say that enough above the having an open ecosystem. Think about everything we just discussed, and I agree with your super cloud analogy. I agree with what Matt Baker had said to you, I would certain no one company can actually address all the pain points and all the issues and challenges our customers are having on their own. Not one. I think customers really want and deserve an open technology ecosystem, one that works together. So not these close stacks that discourages interoperability or stifles innovation and productivity of each of our teams. We del I guess, have a long history of supporting open ecosystems that really put customers first. And to be clear, we're gonna be at the center of the multi-cloud ecosystem and we're working with partners today to make that a reality. I mean, just think of what we're doing with VMware. >>We continue to build on our first and best alliances with them in August at their VMware explorer, which I know you were at. We announced several joint engineering initiatives to really help customers more easily manage and gain value from their data and their infrastructure. For multi-cloud. Specifically, we strength our relationship with VMware and know with Tansu as part of that. In addition, just a few weeks ago we announced our partnership with Red Hat to simplify our multicloud deployments for managing containerized workloads. I'd say, and using your analogy, I could think of that as our multicloud platform. So that's kind of our PAs layer, if you will. And as you're aware, we have a very long standing and strategic partnership with Microsoft and I'd say stay tuned. There's a lot more to come with them and also others in this multi-cloud space. Shifting a bit to some of the growth engines that my team's responsible for the edge, right? >>As you think about data being everywhere, we've established partnerships for the Edge as well with folks like PTC and Litmus for the manufacturing edge, but also folks like Deep North for the retail edge analytics in data management, using your Supercloud analogy, Dave the sa, right? This is our SAS layer. We've announced that we're collaborating, partnering with folks like Snowflake and, and there's other data management companies as well to really simplify data access and accelerate those data insights. And then given customers choice of where they'd like to have their IT and their infrastructure, we've we're expanding our colo partnerships as well with folks like Equinox and, and they're allowing us to broaden our availability of Apex, providing customers the flexibility, take advantage of those as a service offerings wherever it's delivered and where they can get the most value. So those are just some you can hear from me. I think it's critical not only for, for us, I think it's critical for our customers. I think it's been critical, critical for the entire, you know, industry as a whole to really have that open technology ecosystem as we work with our customers on our multi-cloud solutions really to meet their needs. We'll continue to collaborate with whoever customers choose and you know, and who they want us to do business with. So I'd say a lot more coming in that space. >>So it's been an interesting three years for you, just, just over three years now since you've been made the president of the I isg. And so you had to dig in and it was obviously strange time around the world, but, but you really had to look at, okay, how do we mo modernize the platform? How do we make it, you know, cloud first? You've mentioned the edge, we're expanding. So what are the big takeaways? What do you want customers and our audience to understand? Just some closing thoughts and if you could summarize. >>Sure. So I'd say first, you know, we've discussed, we're working in a very fast paced, ever changing market with massive amounts of data that needs to be managed. It's very complex and our customers need help with that complexity. I believe that Dell Technologies is uniquely positioned to help as their multi-cloud champion. No one else can solve the breadth and depth of the challenges like we can. And we're gonna help our customers move forward when they basically moving from a multicloud by default, as we've discussed before, to multicloud by design. And I'm really excited for the opportunity to work with our customers to help them expand that ecosystem as they truly realize the future of it and, and what they're trying to accomplish. >>Jeff, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time. Always a pleasure. Go pats and we'll see you on the blog. >>Thanks Dave. >>All right, you're watching exclusive insights from Dell Technology Summit on the cube, your leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

(upbeat music) >> As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello, and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be hosting the program. Today, in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit, we'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question why is Dell a good long term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's going to talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Groccot is the senior vice President of marketing. He's going to come in the program and give us the update on Apex, which is Dell's as-a-service offering. And a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month and we're going to see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jen Saavedra who's Dell's Chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're going to geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and Edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet, CFO, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to "theCUBE." >> Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you, so thanks for having me today. >> Yeah, you bet. Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin. You had to give up your gross margin pinky, just kidding, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro. But putting that aside for a moment what's really remarkable is that for a company of your size, you've had some success at the top line which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >> Well Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey if you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there. But stepping into the last 18 months, it's, I think I remember talking with you and saying, "Hey, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did," which was a pretty incredible growth story. As we think about how we helped customers, drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment that was the pandemic created. And couple that with the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the pandemic coupled with the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade, which then unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable 18, 24 months. It's, it's never dull at Dell Technologies. Let me put it that way. >> Well, I was impressed with you Tom before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns but I've never seen anything quite like this with Fed tightening, and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming. There's a bear market. You got, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But IT spending is, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >> Yeah look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave, we should start there as a grounding. The total market, the core market that we think about is roughly $750 billion or so, if you think about our core IT services capability. If you couple that with some of the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity total addressable market. And so from that perspective we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. We have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan, but yet when you look at that, number one share in some of these, our highest share position may be low 30s and maybe in the high end of storage or at the upper end of 30s or 40%. But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So if you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been really great performance through the pandemic as you highlighted. We actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year '23 with revenue up 12% operating income, up 12% for the first half. What we talked about if you might recall in our second quarter earnings was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space, which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our total revenue stream. But we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was holding quite frankly. And so we gave a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. The macro environment as you highlighted continues to be challenging. If you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe through interest rate rise to press down and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe, it's a pretty dynamic environment. But I'm confident, I'm confident in the long term. But I do think that there is, there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters. Who knows quite how long. To make sure the business is properly positioned and we've got a great portfolio and you're going to talk to some of the team later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving, what we're seeing around technology trends. So the opportunity is there. There's some short term navigation that we're going to need to do just to make sure that we address some of the environmental things that we're seeing right now. >> Yeah, and as a global company of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but the best companies not only weather their storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to come out the other side stronger. So I want to talk about that longer term opportunity the relationship between the core, the the business growth. You mentioned the TAM. I mean, even as a lower margin business, if you can penetrate that big of a TAM, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. But so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >> Yeah look, I think it comes down to we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term. Digital transformation continues. I am on numerous customer and CIO conference calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation, in infrastructure, to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's going to slow or pause, or maybe they're not going to invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest, but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our, the telecom providers across the globe open up their what previous been closed ecosystems to open architecture. You think about, what we're doing around the EDGE and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data, gravity, and latency matters. And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us. Yes, we will, and we're continuing to invest. And you hear Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, we are in in normal times a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. We've got a negative CCC in terms of how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our capital allocation strategy which has now returned somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity in a over the long term. That the long term trends are with us and I expect them to continue to be so. >> Yeah, and you guys, you do what you say you're going to do. I mean, I said in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put $46 billion on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >> Hey Dave, yeah look, I just think if you look at the grid, the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we can, if you look at say we're a hundred billion dollar revenue company which we were last year as we reported. Roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client in PC space, roughly 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space. Those markets are going to continue. The opportunity to grow share, grow at a premium to the market, drive cash flow, drive share gain is clearly there. And couple that with what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the EDGE, what we're thinking around data services, data management, we, and you put that together with the long term trends around data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain. Our services footprint. Well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >> Well Tom I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >> Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >> All right, you're watching theCUBE's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell, and we're excited to get his thoughts. Keep it right there. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell culminated in the spin out of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So, where's that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'll be hosting the program. Today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell a good long term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit, who's going to talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multi-cloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott is the Senior Vice President of Marketing is going to come in the program and give us the update on APEX which is Dell's as-a-service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we're going to see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. And we're going to speak with Jen Saavedra, who's Dell's chief Human Resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're going to geek out all day and talk multi-cloud and edge and latency, but first, let's talk wallet. Tom Sweet CFO, and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to The Cube. >> Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So, thanks for having me today. >> Yeah, you bet. Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months. Not only the pandemic and all that craziness but the VMware spin. You had to give up your gross margin binky just kidding, and of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company at your size you've had some success at the top line which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? >> Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months but the whole transformation journey. If you think all the way back maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but, you know stepping into the last 18 months, it's, you know, I think I remember talking with you and saying, Hey you know, the scenario planning we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was, you know 30 different scenarios roughly, and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we helped customers, you know drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment, that was the pandemic created. And couple that with the, you know, the rise then in the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the, of the pandemic coupled with, you know, the spin out of VMware, which culminated last November, as you know as we completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade, we still unlocked, quite frankly shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable, you know, 18, 24 months. It's never dull at Dell Technologies Let me put it that way. >> Well, well, I was impressed with you, Tom before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns, but I've never seen anything quite like this with fed tightening and you combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market you got but you got zero unemployment you're rising wages, strong dollar, and it's very confusing. But IT spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer, but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? >> Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in Dave and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly 700 and, you know, $50 billion or so if you think about our core IT services capability. You couple that with some of the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that brings in, you're roughly talking a 1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity total addressable market. And so from, from that perspective we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand. You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan but yet when you look at that, you know number one share in some of these, you know our highest share position may be, you know low 30s and maybe in the high end of storage you're at the upper end of 30 or 40%. But the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and continue to take share and outperform the market is truly extraordinary. So, if you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as, as you highlighted. We actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about is you, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our, our total revenue stream. But we started to see commercial PC soften, and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was, was holding quite frankly. And so, we gave a a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlight it continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that that's created. And particularly in Europe it's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the long term, but I do think that there is, you know that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters who knows quite how long, you know, to make sure the business is properly positioned then. You know we've got a great portfolio and you're going to talk to some of the team later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving what we're seeing around technology trends. So the opportunities there, there's some short term navigation that we're going to need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right now. >> Yeah and as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's, that's, that's another headwind. But as you say, I mean that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns, but you know the best companies not only weather their storm, but they invest in ways they that allow them to cut out come out the other side stronger. So, I want to talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the business growth. You mentioned the TAM, I mean, even as a lower margin business, if you can penetrate that big of a TAM, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software but so ultimately what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? >> Yeah, look, I think it comes down to, we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long term, digital transformation continues. I am on numerous customer and CIO conference calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation in infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's going to slow or, or pause or maybe they're not going to invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters but over the long term the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as our the telecom providers across the globe open up their what previous been closed ecosystems, you know to open architecture. You think about, you know, what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data gravity and latency matters. And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us. You know, yes, we will, we're continuing to invest. And you'll hear Jeff Boudreau talk about that I think later on in the program. So, I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability, you know, we are in normal times a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. You know, we've got a negative, you know CCC in terms of, you know how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our, you know our capital allocation strategy which has now returned, you know, somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so, you know, there's lots to, lots of reasons to think about why this, you know, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity in a over the long term that the long term trends are with us and I expect them to continue to be so. >> Yeah, and you guys, you do what you say you're going to do. I mean, I said in my, in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put 46 billion dollars on the balance sheet in terms of debt. That's down to I think 16 billion in the core which that's quite remarking. That gives you some other opportunities. Give us your, your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long term play but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. >> Hey, Dave yeah look, I just think if you look at the grin, the market opportunity the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we come you know, if you look at, say we're a hundred billion dollar revenue company which we were year, you know, last year that as we reported, roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client in PC space, roughly, you know, 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are going to continue. The opportunity to grow share, grow at a premium to the market, drive cash flow, drive share gain is clearly there. You couple that with, you know what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the edge, what we're thinking around data services, data management you know, we, and you've cut, you put that together with the long term trends around, you know data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint you know, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. >> Well, Tom really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. >> Nice seeing you. Thanks Dave. >> All right. You're watching The Cube's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell and we're excited to get his thoughts. Keep it right there. (upbeat jingle)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. Day two of Dell Technologies World. Loads of people here, 14,000 in attendance. 65 hundred partners, analysts, press, you name it. It's here talking about all things transformation. We're very excited to welcome back to theCUBE, Sam Grocott, senior vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Group Marketing. Welcome back! >> I'm psyched to be here, thanks for having me again. >> Lots of news, lots of buzz. >> Mhm. >> Break it down. >> We're powering up the modern data center. I think that was a big theme of this morning's keynote. We're very much focused on taking the, what we refer to as the pillars of the modern data center, to the next level, and being able to introduce a handful of new products this week. Very, very excited about them, and I think we're getting the feedback and response we expected. >> Stu: Yeah Sam, I heard Jeff actually said powers that brand that I want to hear. You know. >> Sam: Yeah. >> We got the PowerMax and the PowerEdge, and you know. >> Sam: You might want to get used to it a little bit. >> Yeah. >> Sam: You might be able to connect a couple trends here. We're powering up the modern data center, but we're not done yet. Obviously today and this week was a big push there, with the introduction of of PowerMax, the new PowerEdge servers. As well as the VX rail, VX rack XDC enhancements. But this is a journey we're on, as we power up the portfolio, and we're just getting started. >> Stu: Alright. Sam, give us the update on the portfolio. You basically have marketing for all the Dell EMC >> That's right. >> Which is the data centerpiece there. EMC you know, Joe Tucci always used to say, overlap's good, I never want to let a wedge in there. But the critique would always be, it was like oh my gosh, I can't figure out, you know, what that portfolio is. >> Sam: Right. >> It's kind of sprawling. So, how do you balance the breadth and meeting what the customers need. And how should we be looking at, both from a product and a market standpoint? >> Yeah, so, you're right. Our history is no creases, no gaps, choice for everyone. Options for everyone. The alternative, one product for everything. We've always chosen not to go that path. However, there is a balance here that I think we all strive for. And that's something that I'm working very closely with the rest of the ISG team and Jeff's team to really understand as we move forward and power up this portfolio. How do we walk that fine balance of choice and flexibility for customers and partners. As well as simplification and simplicity for end users that want to make sure that they're deploying the best upreach solution for their needs. And not confuse them at any time. So, it's a fine line. I think we're making good progress there, we're going to continue to do that as we move forward. >> When you're talking with customers, the users, what is it that they're looking to power up? What, how is it actually applied within an organization? >> Sam: The big shift going on is this world of traditional enterprise applications that are certainly considered mission critical, tier one. Those aren't going anywhere. Those are needed to require the highest levels of resiliency and data services, and everything you would expect from an enterprise grade ray. What is new is the next generation applications that have historically been run in a sandbox, off the beaten path, a line-up business, an architect. Built their own thing, and then guess what, it became important. In fact, now mission critical. This is where you find things like AI, ML, deep learning, IOT. When it becomes mainstream and important, guess whose problem it becomes. It moves to IT. Because that's where they run their end to end data services, their resiliency plans, their data replication plans, business contingency. The expectations of those use cases now, are at the enterprise level. So the bar is being raised there because they don't want sprawl of use cases and applications, especially for their mission critical use cases. So that's what we're focused on. As those apps become mission critical, providing them solutions that give them the enterprise-grade capability, but the performance and capabilities they expect for that other segment of the market. >> Sam, when I look at the portfolio, I wonder if you could speak to really who you're targeting with the messaging. Think back ten years ago, well, EMC was a storage company, Dell was primarily server and PCs and the like. Now we're talking digital transformation. Powering the future. Jeff and Michael and Allison went through all of these trends >> Transformations, yeah. >> How do you position where the products fit and who you're hitting, who some of the chief constituents that you will add to with. >> Yeah, it's gotten more complex. There's no doubt about it. Especially as the next generation work loads emerge in various spots of the organization. As well as some more, as you talk about digital transformation, you're really moving up the stack so to speak in terms of type of people you're selling to. So we've got the world's greatest sales force in the industry, but we've had to modernize them as well. So we've gone through this product modernization. How do we modernize a sales force that of course can have the storage admin conversation. The backup admin conversation. That's what we've been having for 20 years. But that's no longer good enough. You've got to be able to pivot, and go up into the CXO level in terms of the leadership of the IT department. The line of business leaders, which a lot of times are architects or specialists within a given field. And frankly even some cases, in my role, the CMO you're selling into because it's a business data analytics engine, or something that's providing new insights, new markets, and new businesses. So it has gotten more complex there, and the skills required to sell at the byte level all the way up to the boardroom level, is of paramount importance as we go forward. So we spend a lot of time on that now. >> We were talking with a gentleman from TGen earlier today, Stu and I were. It's such an exciting topic, biomedical research. Sequencing the human genome, and how much faster they can do it now, and how much more data they're generating. But they have such potential there, you mentioned Stavros for example, to be able to use that data, combine it, recombine it, to people always say, oh, actionable insights. It's one thing to be able to get actionable insights. It's another thing to be able to have an infrastructure and agility to be able to capitalize on them and deliver differentiated products to market. Revolutionize the customer experience. From a digital transformation perspective, are you finding any industries in particular, you mentioned biomedical research, where they're kind of really leading the charge here and helping you guys develop the product strategy? Or is it more horizontal? >> Sam: Yeah, I think genomics and medical and the health industry are great examples of traditional, large businesses that also play very aggressively in early adopters. I was kind of born and raised in a small company called Isilon, that is now part of the Dell EMC portfolio. And what we are able to do with a breakthrough, leading edge technology ten years ago was we went right after a vertical, go to market strategy, so genomics research, media and entertainment, manufacturing. These are areas that are large businesses but they make big bets on emerging technology, because it's the only place you can go to get those next generation capabilities as those applications mature over time. The great thing about within Dell EMC and the ISG portfolios, we have solutions that can now meet both of those roles needs. More so as they start to mature and become mission critical. I think we're even more well-positioned to help them lead through that transformation that we're seeing going on in all those different verticals today. >> Sam, one of the the things we heard in the keynotes, is are some of the emerging trends. Give us a little look forward, your ISG group, what kind of things are hot on your plate? Especially if you kind of look at the enterprise customers. What's kind of near term and give us a little bit of a roadmap. >> Sam: Yeah. Couple things. I would certainly say cloud, and moving to a cloud, first cloud enabled world. That is really driving a lot of our roadmap innovation as we go forward. So it includes everything from mobility of information, from an on-ram hybrid, to exclusively cloud native off-ram. We're innovating in all of those vectors. You really can't just pick one anymore. So that's a key area. As well as cloud-based analytics and telemetry information. Leveraging the cloud to understand how your infrastructure is operating over time. I would say that's definitely a major area of investment. The other major areas, we have a vision of autonomous infrastructure, within the storage world. Autonomous storage. Really eliminating the need for the day to day management of storage, because the system is so smart, it really takes care of all those typical tasks that consume a storage administrator's, system administrator's day to day. We are in the business of creating outcomes and helping our customers create outcomes. The more we can get them out of the managing and migrating and protecting data and into the application there, where they're adding a lot more value to the organization. I think that's a win-win for both organizations. So machine learning AI as the technology, that's going to allow us to enable an autonomous infrastructure, really make the infrastructure invisible so you can focus on your applications and your outcomes. >> What are some the things that you're hearing from channel partners in terms of, they're on the front lines, often dealing with customers that are at some stage, of a digital, of a transformation journey, we'll say. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing from the channel, we know that there's a number of announcements, we spoke with Cheryl Cook this morning. >> Sam: Yes, good, good. >> How are they being enabled to deliver these solutions, to help drive autonomy for example? >> We've got, in parallel to Dell Tech World, we've got the Global Partners Summit, we've got just an enormous amount of the channel community here for this event. We did make some key announcements, including the Dell MC Ready Bundle. I think it's a great, Ready Stack I should say. Its a great example, which reflects the feedback that they've given us, is give us all the pieces to be successful, to stand up a IT transformation, in their customer's environment. Train them, enable them, package it for them, to make it easy and seamless for them to go in and be that trusted partner for those organizations. So that's one example of the direct feedback from the channel partners. They asked for that offer. We responded very, very quickly. And now we've provided them that kind of end-to-end, kind of reference architecture to build your own Dell EMC end-to-end CI infrastructure. So, very excited about that, and that's direct feedback from the partner community. >> Alright, so that's partner. How about the customer feedback you've gotten so far? Went through a lot of announcements. I can't even imagine how many customer sessions are going on here. >> Sam: Oh yeah. >> What's the consensus so far? >> The excitement is around MVME, and look, we're not first to market. I'm totally okay with that. I'm fine admitting it here in theCUBE. But we are the first to get to market the right way. And that's really what I measure ourselves on. We didn't just build our own custom MVME modules. We didn't build something that would be difficult to add on to, in terms of MVME over-fabrics, or storage class media. We built something architected via software defined architecture, with an end-to-end MVME implementation. Our customers love that because it gives you the right away benefits of performance, but it also in the future, in that they'll be able to easily add in storage class memory, MVME over-fabrics when it becomes available into that system. So its not a forklift upgrade. It's built for today as well as tomorrow. They love that aspect. >> So if customers, their pent-up demand for the MVME solution, can you give us any guidance as to is this going to be 10%, what kind of, how fast will adoption be of something like this? >> Sam: Yeah, so, the reality is, its still fairly early days there as well. We expect this to be an offering that's going to start small and grow over time. That's why, in the high end space where PowerMax is complementing our BMax line, the Bmax 950 and 250 are not going anywhere any time soon. For our organizations that need to bring those next generation applications together, and need that real-time response, PowerMax is the way to go. We expect 60 to 70% of all organizations by 2020 to have at least one real time application running in a mission critical environment. That's one. 60 to 70%. So I would say its still early days. You're going to have a specific need for that level of performance to go to MVME. But it's going to start accelerating here over this year. Particularly with MVME over-fabrics coming to market later. As well as storage class memory. That's going to accelerate it even more. >> Stu: Alright Sam, just want to give you the final word. >> Yep. >> Take aways you want people to have understanding Dell and the Dell EMC portfolio when they leave DELL EMC Dell Technologies World 2018 this year. >> Yeah, certainly I hope they see the investments we're making to power up the portfolio. I think the announcements we made this week have been fantastic in terms of responding to market needs, customer needs. And frankly, I want them to learn more. I want them to watch more and more of theCUBE, to learn deeply how things are rolling out. What was the mind behind the madness of building these products. I know we've got a large amount of the team speaking in theCUBE, but whether its in theCUBE, or through the sessions, learn, adjust. Because everybody's modernizing, everybody needs to transform, this is a great opportunity for them to do that with their skill set and their knowledge in the industry. >> Lisa: Everybody does need to transform. Sam, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: For sharing what's new, and what you're doing, leading marketing for all of Dell EMC. >> Sam: Thank you, thank you. >> Lisa: You've been watching theCUBE, we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin, for Stu Miniman, we are live day two of Dell Technologies World in Vegas. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (pop music)