live from Las Vegas it's the queue covering del technology's world 2019 brought to you by Dell technologies and it's ecosystem partners welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world here live in Las Vegas I'm your host Rebecca night along with my co-host Stu minimun we have Jay Crone he is the senior consultant portfolio marketing at Dell EMC and Allison Langham consultant product marketing Dell EMC thank you so much for coming on the cube thanks for returning on so ricktum are we gonna talk today about cloud storage and data protection but I want to start with cloud and I'm gonna start with you Jay talk a little bit about what your customers what they want to do with the cloud well and so what one of the things we found is as cloud has been out there for a while and people have learned about what they can do with it it's not not the panacea that people thought there are about it about four or five use cases the big one is disaster recovery so a lot of people who can't won't don't care two don't have the money to set up a second data center will rent the cloud you know rent rent both capacity and computer in the cloud so disaster recovery is the big one we'll talk about that more in terms of some specific announcements the other ones make make sense it's really sort of the rent instead of buy test and development you know you want you want to spit up a test environment and run it for three hours find out what it what it tells you and then tear it down and not have to pay for it back up an archive is kind of a related to the disaster recovery but it's a little bit different use case because often people want to put the clout you two put the data some place to store it regular regulatory requirements that's an example which is different than disaster recovery analytics a big again it's this like what we used to call high performance computing where you need a lot of compute and a lot of storage for a short period of time and you don't want to you have a data center full of stuff that you're paying for or not using and then the last one there's lots of words for this the polite marketing term is workload migration also known as lift and shift which is these are the people that actually do want to take a workload from on-premises and pick it up and move it to the cloud wholesale so those are those are the ones disaster recovery is still far and away the most popular so Allison you know our observation coming in this week is there's a lot of discussion about that hybrid and multi cloud a lot of that focus gets put on you know the public clouds I mean you bring Satya Nadella to the show we're gonna talk a lot about Microsoft Azure and even when we get into the data center you know we we've seen the ascendancy of VX rail and that's an underlying component for many of the solutions that were all doubt but I know you're gonna help bring to us is help fill out some of the rest of the portfolio is you know from the EMC side and as Dell EMC comes in there's a large storage portfolio does that get left behind when we talk about cloud or pulled into the entire discussion yeah and a great question so you know when we think about our you know cloud strategy as a whole for Dell Dell technologies you know there's really there's two there's two pieces to that and so a lot of what you heard about yesterday and the big announcements around the Dell technologies cloud that's really helping customers really just completely transform to a cloud operating model and a lot of like the people processes technology implications of doing so the other piece of that is around our cloud enabled infrastructure which is really complementary to a lot of what we talked about yesterday and our cloud enabled infrastructure you know that's more of what we heard about today and what we're doing across both our storage and data protection portfolios to help customers modernize their existing infrastructure to be able to extend their data centers to the cloud so and it's you know these are there's our complementary pieces it's not really um it's not an aura conversation it's really an an conversation both pieces are really important when thinking about your cloud strategy just depending on you know workload and transformational readiness and where you're at to be able to do that so that's where a lot of our storage cloud capabilities come come into play all right okay maybe we could bring us down a little a little bit of level as to you know how I explain how cloud cloud enabled isn't cloud watching you know something like power Mac's you know well and that is that's interesting in fact I had that we just walked out of the booth was talking one of the product managers who had presiding to a customer that had one of some gear from a distinguished competitor shall we say was interested in PowerMax partly because of the cloud story so and PowerMax is is is just joining the cloud family and one of the things that we are have announced here that was talked about in the keynote is cloud storage services which is an offering that we have through a cloud service provider that allows you for example is an existing PowerMax customer to use s rdf to use native replication to replicate into the cloud and then in a VMware environment here's that disaster recovery use case coming in a VMware environment use Site Recovery Manager to perform a failover and then this service provider well you will read will spin up those VMs and VM works out on AWS so what you basically get is an automatic failover for VMware environments with power max so it's an extreme and unity by the way so both are a nice launch so we get we get that disaster recovery use case enabling you know our bread-and-butter our industry-leading storage platform so that's that's that's a big piece of the news and that wasn't that was announced here the other thing I do want to point out with that announcement is there's a multi cloud capability the the one I just discussed is that the automatic VMware use case but there's also the ability through our service provider to connect to regular AWS in addition to vm worked on an AWS Google and Azure which we might have heard a little about yesterday and we're excited about that as well Alison this is a very competitive market and customers really expect a lot they want new capabilities they want the latest and greatest what is the strategy and the messaging behind why Dell is the is the choice right so no I talked a little bit about they are speaking specifically around our cloud enable the infrastructure you know we had a lot of great announcements today but really we've been having we've been incorporating these cloud capabilities and functionality with on our storage and data protection portfolio for a long time and it's been around and we just we haven't really been talking about it but we have a lot of you know comprehensive cloud features and you know we sort of look at that in you know there's three specific areas where we really look for it to innovate with the cloud in our in our storage and data protection portfolio so that's areas like our cloud connected system so that's like data mobility our ability to tear data from on-prem to the cloud then we also have as Jay was just talking about Platte Lake we have our Cloud Data Services which includes our new cloud storage services offerings but it's also things like being able to deploy in the cloud and as opposed to extending to the cloud so things like cloud edition or data domain virtualization where you're deploying a software-defined version in the cloud and then spanning across the top of that from on-prem in the core to the cloud we have our cloud data insights so that's things like cloud IQ or clarity now that really enable you to proactively monitor and manage not just your infrastructure but also your data and really use that the artificial intelligence built into those to you know get you know good insights to manage manage and monitor your data from on-prem to the cloud so really that but those three areas we really bring together you know a comprehensive set of features to cloud enable your your infrastructure ok wondering if you can bring us inside some of the conversations you're having with customers you're wearing the shirt I see around a lot of the booths yeah you know you know what what are some of the you know top kind of business challenges and you know how are things different now than they might have been back when we called this EMC world well so the there's the disaster recovery use case which is which as I said is new the other thing that's happening is there's that five years of learning that people have had around the public cloud I was talking with a reseller yesterday and one of the value propositions that we have for this particular offering especially the cloud storage services is because the storage is at a service provider that is not the cloud provider shall we say they can offer a different economic model so what we're finding is people are finding new ways to go to the cloud for less money so and that's and that works out really really well because it makes the cloud more affordable for everybody it makes it gives them it gives us some additional business opportunity and most importantly it gives customers the ability to use the cloud consumption model the effects model and the outsourcing of the resources that they couldn't do before so that's the big thing is we were basically enabling the public cloud in ways that we couldn't have done to your point five years ago in addition to the cost benefits of that just building on the multi cloud piece with our cloud storage service is offering it's also about you know some concerns that like big concerns around public clouds like security and having control of your data their cloud storage services offering your data is actually sitting on external storage so it's directly connected to the cloud you have like a high-speed connection into the public cloud to be able to run your applications but and you can connect to multiple clouds move data between clouds you know as as it suits the business needs there's different workloads but at the same time you're still maintaining control of that data on you know durable persistent Dell EMC storage right it's on the gear you know and love and as I said all of our native replication this is this is wonderful because if you're a customer with gear on site you don't perceive any change your your s RDF pipe if you will it leaves the building like it used to it just goes to a cloud provider instead of a data center across the Hudson River so to speak well data protection and data security are it's a big theme this year for good and for good reason where do you think cuz the customer mindset is right now our customers appropriately concerned about the the threats that they face and the requirements that are that are bearing down or are they are they head in the sand I mean how would you describe where customers are right now in terms of thinking through these things everybody is concerned about security so the answer is it's right up there you know and we look at you know the the security is some of it is off site but it's it's things like Allison said we offer a model where your data is it it's in the lockbox that you know of as a unity or a nice loan or a Max and it's not in some amorphous place you know up there in the in the cloud as it were and that that gives people a lot of a lot of a warm warm fuzzy feeling and things like data at rest encryption at work on the storage arrays still work on the storage arrays when it's in the cloud so those features are still available to customers that they already know and love all right Alison one of the other things we've been talking a lot about this week is the VMware and Dell EMC pieces have come together more than ever before you know I think back you know when we used to rank how does EMC storage do with VMware well how many integrations does it have now many of the solutions you know VX rail it's got VCF sitting on it can you talk about how they did the VMware and the LMC storage pieces have been coming together even more yeah absolutely so specifically what one of the solutions that Jay was talking about earlier that automated disaster recovery feature from for our cloud storage services that's all about that's all about VMs it's all about VMware integration and it it really offers that if you get this disaster recovery as a service model for VMware environments who are running VMware cloud on AWS and they get you get that complete operational consistency so it's that's a huge benefit to our customers so there's that where it's you're leveraging for the automated disaster recovery it's either power max or unity including the new unity XT which was recently announced being able to completely have operational consistency within your VMware environment from on-prem to the cloud addition to that in addition to that we talked a lot about yesterday about the Dell tech cloud which VX rail is a key component of that we also have our storage our key storage platforms are also validated with VMware Cloud foundation for you know some more like high-performance workloads so we really have so things like power max and unity are also validated with VMware Cloud foundation to be able to get that Best of Breed storage as part of that stack as well it's something that you asked what's changed something that's kind of interesting so we're in the storage division we're in the storage business unit and we have weekly meetings bi-weekly meetings with the VMware cloud folks so that just tells you what's important there's VMware and cloud you know in that word and here we are as you know some of your prime your primary and unstructured storage people working on a regular basis with it with the VMware folks and that is an example of how the companies are coming together and doing doing things differently than we did before how are you finding this show this is the 10th year that the cube has been at at Dell Dell technologies world but back then Dell EMC world what are you how are you finding the vibe this year what's what is the tone of things very cloud focused on which has been a huge huge tip this year that's everything that we're hearing about is very cloud centered which is well it's nice to see you I wouldn't that wouldn't say it's so much of a victory lap bike but there's a lot of excitement certainly in our area on the floor there's a lot of work that has been done over the last couple of years to to get things aligned and put some new processes in place and get some new products out so you let you listen to the you know the Jeff Clark portions of the keynote in particularly yesterday and today he just goes this this this this and this and that's where customers want to see you know we have folks coming up they want to see the new power max they what they want to see the new unity XT of course you know that was it was fun last night it was just kind of sitting there on a pedestal and nobody pointed it out today people want to pull a cult that covers off and say show me the nvme slots so so there's that kind of vibe and excitement the partner vibe is there as well we've we have VMware and some other partners that we're working with so is there it's it's very exciting this year yeah that's great well Allison and Jay thank you both so much for coming on the cube it was great how are you I'm Rebecca night force 2 minimun and we will have so much more of the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world live from Las Vegas coming up in just a little bit [Music]

(upbeat techno music) >> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by the VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, here in VMworld 2018. Joining me is my guest host John Troyer, and I am Stu Miniman. And coming to the program, it's hard to believe, for our first time, Jay Krone, who's a senior consultant, Storage Portfolio with Dell EMC. And I say that just to give our audience some context. Jay works for Dell EMC, but we both worked for a company called EMC back in the day. And Jay's has had a number of roles where he's brought lots of people on the program, has known theCUBE since its inception. >> Inception, yeah. >> Yeah,ninth year doing it, and now you've made it. >> Right, I'm finally here. >> All right, so Jay, give our audience a little bit of your background, what you're working on these days. >> So, I'm a longterm storage veteran, as Stu said. I worked for the old EMC back when the only product we had was a scuzzy connected symmetrix and have been though the fiber channel wars. I've been through the SAS wars, the SATA wars, the SSD wars. I'm now working on a couple of cross-portfolio programs. The one we're here to talk about today is the Future-Proof Loyalty Program. >> Yeah, and for the audience that doesn't know what a scuzzy connector is. (Jay laughing) It was this really fat plug that plugged in, It had actual pins-- >> And lots of wires. >> That were designed for-- >> Lots of wires. >> On and off, so those kind of protocols have kind of changed and everything. But when I interviewed at EMC in 2000, it was like, oh, that connection, that I would take two computers and connect them. That was a scuzzy cable. >> Right. >> And it was relatively short-length, so wow. We can go down our memory lane later. But Jay, you're talking about something specific. We talk about the future, and it's tough to predict it. But Dell's going to make sure that everything's future proof, right? >> Of course. >> All right, what's that mean? >> What that means, what's interesting, back in the day we were competing and innovating primarily just in a technology dimension. And a lot of us technologists. We've had fun time doing that. But as people have gotten more sophisticated about the way they buy technology, they're looking for other assurances that vendors are going to be there for them when something goes wrong. So, there are nine different, what we call offers or pillars in the Future-Proof Program that are really intended to give customers peace of mind, probably most importantly, protect their investment, the money that they spend on IT, and to your point, give them a path forward. So, what we've done is looked across the inventory of things that Dell EMC already offered. Many of these were business practices that we already had in place. And what we've done is turned up the volume and made them more, basically, more visible to customers and to our selling forces, and the response has been really good. And the financial ones, of course, are the ones that people, shall we say, gravitate to at the beginning because when they're making a purchase, whether its effectively an extended warranty or a trade-in credit on their old stuff. Think of it, when you go buy a car, you get a trade-in, so you're protecting the investment you made in the car. These are all things that customers are interested in getting and we get from Dell EMC. >> OK, and just in case, people didn't catch that. I think the umbrella for the program is the Dell EMC Future-Proof Loyalty Program? >> Correct! Is that it? OK. >> OK, and one of the things that's important for folks that have been watching, it was started originally as the Future-Proof Storage Loyalty Program because it was generated out of our storage business. And what happened is the customers and sales people were so excited about it, they said, "Can you add more?" And we said, "Yes, we can." And so in July, for example, we added data protection, the IDPA DP4400 product, along with a guarantee specifically tailored for that product. We're here, one of the reasons that I'm here, and we are here at VMware is we added VXRail on Monday. That one's extremely exciting because even before it was officially in the program, we helped a customer with a six-figure purchase through one of the Future-Proof benefits. And then, we have another, we have an eight-figure deal in the wind right now, on VXRail based on some of the pillars of the Future-Proof Program. >> And so, Jay, when you talk about some of the, you're talking about some of the pillars, some of the motivators for the customer then. I mean, some of it's just the transparent financial, some of it's kind of dedupe and storage guarantees. >> Correct. >> All those, you're including all these. >> Correct, correct. And then, yeah, 'cause part of it is to make... Bring Dell and EMC together was complex. >> Gotcha. >> Or created some complexity and some confusion, shall we say. Part of the reason we created this program was to make it simpler to consume and to make some of the things easier to find. >> Yeah, right, right, I mean, much, I mean, like buying a car, right? Enterprise hardware has always been a little bit mysterious. Like, what does cost? Well, how much money do you have? And then I tell you how much it cost. >> Exactly. >> And shady. I mean, not shady, but discounts, and it's not very, it's very opaque. But a lot of these things are real clear, out in the open. Actually, I just went through the website. >> Exactly. >> We guarantee you're going to get this, you can do this. >> Right, right. >> And in three years or five years, we guarantee this, and it's pretty upfront. >> Exactly, and I mean, what you mentioned is the Clear Price Maintenance Program. I mean, again, as we all know, there were some pricing practices with customers that were neither clear nor predictable on maintenance renewals. And so that's been something that's been extremely exciting. That is, in fact, one of the things VXRail folks are excited about, where what ends up happening from a customer perspective is when they get the quote, the quoting system automatically generates your prepaid maintenance price and your renewal price, either three year or five years from now, depending upon the contract you pick, and it's right there on the paper. And I can't get clearer and I can't get more predictable. Here's what you going to pay now, and here is what you going to pay later. >> As a cultural shift, was there any kind of discussion internally about, well, wait a minute, sometimes I hold these, I hold a couple points for a partner. I hold a couple points to make sure I get a deal. Was there a discussion about the changing culture of being so open? >> Well, yes, is the short answer. I'll say it was a culture change. But what's happened is the industry is shift. We don't use scuzzy cables any more, and that maintenance pricing practice has pretty much been voted down by the customer. So, its innovate or die. And so, and part of what I want to say is the innovation is not only in the products. We're doing some innovation on the business side as well. >> Yeah, Jay, I'm curious. We've said on theCUBE many times, the bar the customers will measure everything against is how they do things in the cloud. So, how I consume it, how I think about it. >> Right. >> But one of the challenges with the cloud is sometimes there's uncertainty as to what that bill's going to be next month. >> Right. >> So, maybe you can give us a compare-contrast as of what you've learned. And is there a comparison between this program and what you're talking about? >> Well, so this program is targeted at the infrastructure products. So, it's not so much to compare against the cloud pricing itself; however, what we've done here, also announced this week as part of the larger Dell EMC Cloud Marketplace is what we call the Cloud Consumption Models. And this is a couple of the cloud financing programs. Again, they were already in place from Dell Financial Services. They give customers the ability, if they really want to buy infrastructure that they put in their data centers in an Opex model, you can do that. And it's called Flex on Demand. There's a couple of really exciting high-velocity, they call it Flex on Demand Velocity for Unity and X2 where again, there's a rate card. So you are not coming in and having the sales person sharpen the pencil and say, here's what the price is. So they'll come in with the rate card on how to consume that. And when we take a look at that, that pricing model versus both some of our system vendor competitors, as well as some of your, shall we say, more prominent cloud competitors, as Michael said, the cloud is an operating model, not a place. If you want to have that operating model for the way you pay for the infrastructure, buying an XtremIO capacity from us with the cloud model is cheaper than buying SSD capacity from one of the cloud providers. >> All right, Jay, want to give you the final word. Believe there's a website if people want to find out more. What is the final takeaway you'd want people to have about this program? >> Well, basically, investment protection is number one. Peace of mind is really important. There are a number of guarantees about product performance. And as we've said, the future is bright. We're giving you a way to go there. >> All right, Jay Krone. Pleasure to catch up with you on camera. >> Likewise, thank you. >> As it is always off camera. For John Troyer I am Stu Miniman. Back with more coverage here, theCUBE, VMworld 2018, thanks for watching. (electronic musical flourish)