hello everyone I'm John for with the cube we are here on the ground at VMware's corporate headquarters in beautiful Palo Alto for a special presentation I'm joined with Robyn Matlock who's the chief marketing officer of VMware good to see you hi John nice to see you to our special cube on the ground getting all the data was a lot closer to get to just a little walk yeah I love this campus you guys had the most amazing facility one that voted one of the best places to work so it's good parking is always a hassle play I'll ago that garage anyway um how are you doing great so 2016's come to a close had a great vacation I heard New Zealand amazon reinvent you guys had a big presence Pat Gelsinger was up on stage with Andy Jassy on a fireside chat keynote interesting world of that we live in as they say interesting times VMware and Amazon with a strategic relationship certainly has impacted the market market attention on VMware's cloud strategy now comes into picture how's that affecting how you guys are talking to customers you know I think it's just been a tremendous you know last several weeks and frankly of course we've been preparing for this for months and months but the market has been very responsive to the news of these two great companies coming together and the you know announced in 10 of how our technologies are going to work better and the feedbacks been so positive I think at the end of the day this just opens up many avenues for customers they love VMware they love Amazon helping make their experience as they integrate those worlds together is just a win-win for them so I person very excited about it and we're getting great feedback you know you you've always lived in this world with VMware and I always compare fiemme words like Facebook where whenever there's a changed is a revolt right as always it's always naysayers and also people complaining now when you guys did the deal with Amazon people are speculating but in reality it's the culture there's no clash there there's really a geek culture on both sides what's your thoughts on that do you see it the same way and what's your observation of you know the VMware culture because you know you do a lot of digging into the data you run vmworld is reinvent is being called a cloud version of vmworld kind of coming together those two cultures your thoughts on the two I mean I think there's a couple of different dimensions to that question from a cultural standpoint the two companies actually have very similar cultures in the sense that they really value engineering innovation these are disruptive companies and they also both I think we can say focus on the customer it's all about customer value customer impact and when you keep your customer at the forefront of all the decision-making that you do it's really easy to make the right choices because you're doing on the benefit of that customer and and hey change is a constant and that's the one thing we can count on and those of us in the industry that don't change usually don't have a great outcome in the end right changes part of delivering more value to our customers yeah Jay volante s2 I wasn't there at the Dell Dell world this year once at the Grace Hopper event was awesome awesome event but the dell event they asked Michael about vmware always we always like they ask michael dell vmware and also jeremy burton talked about the messaging around dell technologies which is simply just a holding company I guess I'm structure but the people are trying to get the message out on what Dell technologies and you guys out CR as Michael said the crown jewel of Dell technologies talk about the strategic alignment with Dell technologies how does that affect your job and has it affect the positioning of how vmware is visa videl technologies delhi MC but also your growing ecosystem sure so you know first of all we had a great relationship with Dell prior to this acquisition for you know well over a decade right so the two companies knew each other very well of course we have a rich history with emc you know for us strategically VMware's being run much like it was before it's an independent company michael has been very consistent about that his behavior is consistent his you know message of the market is consistent this message of customers and partners is consistent VMware remains an independent company our ecosystem is one of our crown jewels and Michael's been very consistent in making sure that that ecosystem is protected and knows that vmware is going to operate in the best interest of their customers and that ecosystem and so for us in a lot of ways it feels really comfortable of course we're looking for opportunity right we're looking for the upside and we are seeing tremendous opportunity with Dell technologies to make sure that our joint customers have a better together experience than ever before and we look at those as incremental opportunities and we're very committed to that but at the end of the day that's a really important part of our ecosystem is Dell technologies but it's not a replacement of you always had a good eye for marketing I see the way you guys do your events and vmware's ecosystem you're always tested people always going to hold your feet to the fire you had a very active community when you look at the changes that are going on with the Amazon we heard Pat Gelson around stage again Andy Jesse both reiterating the same ethos that you listen to customers and the customers are saying that they want to have some cloud the one put VMware in the cloud how is that gonna change how you mark it in position and talk to customers yeah well we you know we've been talking about hybrid cloud computing for a long time so you know for us this is really about how its evolving and becoming more tangible and more real you're probably very familiar with the fact that we've positioned our cross cloud architecture at vmworld and our story with Amazon is very supportive of what that whole architecture was about it's about hey I'm standing up a stack in my private you know datacenter and this is my private cloud and I want to run that stack as is in other cloud environments I want compatibility between the different cloud providers that I leverage and what I'm doing here within my firewall and that's all very consistent under our vision and strategy about this cross cloud architecture I mean for customers it shouldn't feel like very siloed separate experiences environments different tools different experiences different skill sets they should be able to leverage their resources to be able to deliver these workloads in whatever cloud environment they choose and that's really cornerstone to our cloud strategy and Amazon's a major option for customers to extend into the Amazon Cloud but we also have the IBM cloud that's available to them we have over 4,000 service providers that provide specialty cloud services that are available to our customers the whole idea is that we unify this and make this a seamless experience and that's what that crossed out architecture is all about that's a great point Sanjay poonen brought that up q But reinvent around connecting the digital Islands so how is that changing if anything or is it the game still the same on the digital transformation on those solutions is the unification cross cloud the fundamental piece of it is there more to the story what's the essence of this digital transformation yeah I mean I think first of all at the heart of digital transformation is software right that is enabling this kind of unified approach and so that's kind of one point the second point is really the value for customers in the end user is about applications and then the question is how do you deliver those apps in all types of apps right we need the new modern apps the stuff that works on our cell phones and our iPads we also need the ERP systems and the mission critical systems and all that needs to be delivered in a seamless experience what I T and enterprise need is more options about where to put those workloads what's the right place for those workloads based on whatever their requirements are geography service levels back up discovery you know disaster recovery whatever their requirements are they need flexibility but they also need control and governance and management in a really efficient way and so I think at the heart of it is how you deliver apps to users in a much more expedient fashion as we come down to the end of 2016 we're looking at 2017 what's the vibe internally at VMware and what's your outlook for 2017 now CVM world will be again a the big tent event not sure what your thoughts are that was probably working on right now but is there any thoughts can you share any color around how you guys see 2017 or what's the conversations between you jeremy burden the folks within the core teams around the outlook for 27 you know I think people are feeling really bullish on VMware we're exiting the year in a position of great strength it's been a great year from a revenue standpoint it's been a great year from a emerging technology standpoint we're getting critical mass in some of the you know smaller businesses like network virtualization and you know software-defined storage with virtual san and hyper converged infrastructure you're seeing a lot of great traction our customers are speaking that you know they're out on stage with us they're really advocating and evangelized and the value that they're getting from their VMware invest and you know the bottom line is is we're executing across the world we have really strong you know footprint across all the regions and everybody's performing so I feel like the momentum is really theme for theme emerging for 2017 that's sauteing around in your marketing brain in terms of what you might feel happening yeah you know John I'm not gonna debut that right here watching things up our sleeves but you know at the heart of it this notion of unifying clouds is gonna be centerpiece to our strategy in 2017 and we are working on some new interesting ways of packaging it that but the whole cross cloud architecture truly is a driving force for us in 2017 and how we keep delivering that to customers and new and fresh ways and our ecosystem as well making sure they can deliver that has anything about the Amazon of announcements on web service announcement because you had Pat Gallagher and Andy Jassy and that was really kind of a big shocker for everyone I think I mean you can get it now you look back but they both onstage and II Jesse never comes down to San Francisco to do a press event pretty big announcement for Amazon to stand on the stain stage as vmware and same for you guys this opens up a whole nother dimension any surprises anything that's changed in your world that you can share that's been positive or concerns or comments from customers that that this relationship has changed with you well I think you know what our Amazon relationship does is kind of solidify that our position in the cloud is you know very viable because at the end of the day these are the leader and private cloud and the leader in public cloud coming together to deliver more hybrid cloud value to our customers now remember we also had announcement with IBM earlier in the year and I think this is just kind of reiterating this notion that what we've done in the private cloud is very special adds a lot of value to customers but they want this in public cloud environments and the more that we can make that seamless and easy and consumable for our customers the more we can take the complexity out of it the easier it is for them to govern it you know the more value this is for customers obviously Amazon's the brand in public cloud and I think that relationship has just made everybody more relevant both VMware & M's I'm very customer centric to it turns out you guys operates not like a magical Doremi worked on it yeah what Sanjay and the team exactly well Robin thanks so much for come on our special on the ground here we are on the ground here the VMware head coach Robin Matlock the CMO of VMware here telling us her thoughts on 2017 looking back the momentum of 2016 I'm John furrier thanks for watching