>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018, the inaugural Dell Technologies World event. Have two sets side by side, three days of broadcast. I'm Stu Miniman, joined with my cohost for this segment by John Troyer. >> Happy to welcome back to the program John Byrne, who since the last time we caught up with has a new title now, the North American Commercial Sales at Dell EMC. John thank you for joining us. >> Pleasure. Good to see John, John and Stu thank you. >> All right John, what are you doing here? Isn't it almost like the end of like financials? On the road, everything like that. But, yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of the change in role and what that meant for you. >> Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of amazing. I was only here a year ago and here I was talking about bringing together Dell EMC's brand new channel. And we're very proud that we're talking about then it was a $35 billion organization. Here we are 12 months later, $35 billion to $43 billion channel organization, which is spectacular. And it's all thanks to our wonderful partner community and what they did. They were the ones that helped us with our vision, our strategy. The wonderful program that the team has developed, and we're seeing it unfold. That's been an incredible journey. And now one of the good things is obviously when we were building this initiative there was a power of and. We want both motions to continue to go, direct and channel. And you saw the results, both are growing. So obviously my new role and I've been asked to run North America Commercial Sales under Marius Haas, by Michael and Marius. >> I'd like to dig into it a little bit. I spoke to Marius on Monday, actually in our kick off this morning, talking about kind of EMC channel and sales and Dell channel and sales, a little bit different. I mean, EMC had a great channel, has a great channel continuing, but very much considered belly to belly as how they do that. Dell has been a little bit more partner and channel focused for longer. So I'm wondering, give us a little bit of insight. So you had the channel piece, you've had the sales piece. We hear things like, oh there's turning a direct rep into now he's more of an overlay. Through a little bit of those dynamics, what's happening from the sales standpoint and the impact on the channel. >> I think we got to remember the channel is an important wheel to everything we're doing here. With Dell Technologies we have 40,000 sales makers. Within our channel ecosystem we have 140,000 people. That is a sales army. They've gone after the market with the portfolio that we have, with the capability that we have, frankly done properly is unstoppable. And actually educating how both rose to market, how we want to play with one another. We look at, it is the power of and, and especially as we go through these transformational journeys and we're talking about digital and IT and workforce security, but we need everyone to play here. The wonderful news is, you saw, and I'm sure you have from Michael, a year ago we're a $73 billion organization. Within a year we're $80 billion organization. Phenomenal growth. However, the exciting thing for me, that's in a $3 trillion market. So 2.66%, that is so much upside for us, for all of us, that look, done properly, we're going to win is the general feeling. >> It's a pretty remarkable transformation. I mean transformation has been a theme of the whole show here, right? Digital transformation, make it real. You've been involved with both channels and Dell EMC sales. The role of the technology trusted advisor has changed over the last few decades. How are you approaching both your field force and the channel and your partners there, about this new role of how do we make digital transformation real in the field? What kind of upscaling do you need to be doing? And competencies do we need to be working on for folks that are listening that might be out in the field working directly with customers? >> We've all been in the industry for a long time. You think, rewind 10 years ago, you talk about technology, you talk about IT it was a call center. You fast forward to now it's a business imperative. You know when we're talking to our customers they clearly they want to get ahead of this transformational journey. However, we know then that less than half of them have already begun the journey. Here's the good news, those that have begun the journey, here's what we know. They're moving faster, their customer satisfactions are up. They're driving incremental revenue. The costs are going down. They're driving their incremental operating income. And I think what you're seeing here, right here right now, it is no longer this discussion around the transformational journeys. Making it real is here. You're seeing like AeroFarms. You're seeing McLaren onstage talking about bringing Formula One all the way through to medical. You're seeing TGen and a wonderful, wonderful company with the capability using technology to identify cancer earlier in children. I mean, that is what our purpose is all about. Now with that of course you have to evolve your own sales organization as well as your partner ecosystem. And we're treating our partners and their sales teams as exactly one in the same. So the way they're training and all the competencies that we'd expect of our own sales team is exactly what I'm expecting from our partner community. Like, it's an evolution we're going through here. Our sales team, we're training them on these transformations. We're showing them a purpose, how we're going to do it, but the other thing was more exciting for myself. We're also targeting the next generation of sales leaders. You know, working with universities. We want these top graduates to come here, to enjoy this wonderful company and what we're doing here. So now we're investing in people. We actually set up sales universities here in the US. It can be a three month program, it can be a two year program, spending anywhere between, up to almost $400,000 on a graduate coming through so that they understand exactly that the transformations are just natural in their DNA. That's what we're looking for right now. >> I love that, and Stu I love, I mean we both have a history with the Dell Technologies organizations over the years, and I'm impressed by how many people that I have met that are either long-term employees or have left and come back, right? And that investment in the people has got to be critical for your growth, especially at this size. >> Yeah, I think, John, we've gone beyond the, hey, what do you do and how do you do it, right? And now it's like what is your purpose? Our purpose is to impact human lives each and every single day. And I gave you some examples. But look, our ability using technology to connect more people around the world. Our ability to actually use technology to live longer, for us to identify, again, cancer earlier in people. That purpose is inspiring. And then you learn we're spending four and a half billion dollars in R and D to bring world class products and capabilities to the market. Done properly and with that true transformational mindset, as well as not forgetting that there's a massive market on IT infrastructure and the consolidation and winning in that space. Like I think we're, we as a collective community along with our customers we're praying to do wonderful things. >> All right, so, I want you to bring us inside your customers. So you've got North American Commercial Sales. Big market. Probably one of the most dynamic changing markets in the globe these days. what are some of the biggest challenges you're hearing from your customers who talk about digital transformation, make it real. What is your organization hearing while they're out there. >> Well also, actually you talk about North American Commercial Sales. I didn't frame it, where I work $19, $20 billion of the organization. >> Stu: Just a small piece. >> Just a small piece, but of course within we have state and local, we have education, we have federal government, we have the media and business space. Each of them all realize this digital transformation is here. And the conversation they're having with us is how do we get ahead of this, right? What experiences have you enjoyed yourself as an organization or with your partner ecosystem to make it real to them. So we're spending a lot of time with them in our executive briefing centers with our solution architects, showing well how to we enable the AeroFarms that we just talked about? It's really making a real (mumbles) conversation that we're having with them. Now there's the other edge spectrum of our customers, which is look, we want to continue to sell an unbelievable amount of PCs, and unbelievable amount of servers and storage and hyper-converge, and backup. So we have the wide spectrum. The good news is the conversation normally goes to let me tell you about Dell Technologies Advantage. Why did Michael spend $24 billion taking us private? $67 billion giving us all this wonderful array of assets. And as you walk them through these transformational journeys the normal response is oh my goodness, I did not know you did all of that. And then, okay, I'm not ready yet to go all the way there. But the comfort that you have it, okay let's begin a discussion. And that's what we're finding with a lot of our customers right now. >> All right one of the things, look you mentioned so many of the verticals there, and the commonality amongst most of them is change. Talk a little bit about the training, competencies, you know, your organization, how do you keep up? How do you help your customers keep up? >> Yeah, like, what is, change your dye it's kind of the mantra right now. We are spending an unbelievable amount of time on training. But with training also you acquire a lot of consistency. It's interesting we were here only two months ago for our field ready seminar, our sales kickoff. The feedback from our sales team was wow this seems very similar to last year. (mumbles) good. You got to learn these transformational journeys. Gone are the days of just going in and selling a single unit of product. You have to become the trusted advisor. So with that all of our training, all of our competencies are around understanding each of the transformations, how do you layer in Pivotal and Virtustream, and VMWare, and RSA, and SecureWare, and of obviously Dell EMC. How do you bring all of this together? And then also making it very clear to our sales team, This is my expectation of your role. This is what I expect you both to do. And here's the specialty teams that are around here, around you, to make you successful. So we have the training. It goes on every, actually it's consistent training, but two big ones per year. And with (mumbles) partners they've got to do exactly the same thing, that's what we're saying. >> John, as you and your sales leaders go out and talk to IT and you know, you're not, again in the field, you're way beyond oh check the box to order a new round of laptops or a new round of servers, right? Or server refresh. As you talk to the CIOs out there and the senior IT leaders, where are we in this transition? Are they getting it? I guess it's quite a range of responses. >> It really is, look some are already there. But are we there? Absolutely not. I think we're in single, we're more or less single digit. But again, when those CIOs, when they see, are you telling me look I can not only modern infrastructure, I can actually save money by getting to the modern infrastructure and I can layer in insights into my business using your technology, be it big data, be it AI, and I can yield more profitability at the end of it? You find them all in. But they're all in different levels obviously of expectation. >> Are there any characteristics of an organization that is either, is going or is ready to go that you see? >> I wouldn't say, here's what I will say. If you look across all of our transformations, VMWare is always consistent. I will tell you security remains a big theme. The other thing we've found is, again, as we get through these transformational discussions, the starting point still tends to be client. The client still seems to be the gateway to the data center for us. And I think you're also seeing, a lot of times we're also seeing, now everyone recognizing the workforce, the workforce has changed forever. Gone are the days when we remember sitting at a desk from nine til five. Look people are working remotely, people want to be reductive. They want to always be on. And I think that's why you're seeing this resurgence in the PC market. If you look now we've got 21 quarters of consecutive share gain, number one in the world on units, on revenue. Number one on profitability. Number one on server, number one on storage. Obviously number one with VMWare. That's consistent is they want to be dealing with Dell Technologies. >> John I want to give you the final word on key takeaways from the show. But I have to take away a couple things. Yes it does rain in Vegas, and you know, people, you know, playing at events, so other than those two things, what do you hope that people come away from from Dell Technologies World 2018? >> I hope people, well a few things. One, I hope they understand our purpose. We are and we have a desire to impact human life each and every day, by being the essential infrastructure. There is no longer buzz words around these transformational journeys. It's here. You can feel it, you can see it, there's real proof points. I think it's also clear these two motions that are happening. Mass consolidation of IT infrastructure, we want our customers and our partners to leave with Dell Technologies. And as you go through this transformational journey there is only one company who has all of the portfolio to satisfy all the needs, and it's Dell Technologies with the support of our customers and partners, and I'd be remiss if I don't always end by just saying, thank you. None of this is possible without wonderful customers supporting us on this journey. So that's (mumbles). >> All right, John Byrne really appreciate catching up with you. Look forward to catching up with you in the future. Hope you keep this job a little more than a year this time. >> I need to. John, thank you as well, thank you. >> I'm Stu Miniman with John Troyer. We'll be back with lots more coverage. Thanks for watching theCUBE.

>> Announcer: Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. (techno music) >> And welcome here on theCUBE to Dell EMC World 2017 live from the Sands Expo, along with Keith Townsend, I'm John Walls, and good to have you with us here on day three of what has been a fantastic show here for Dell EMC, mega show. 13,000 plus attendees, a lot of great announcements, and a lot of great guests we've had here on theCUBE. One of them joining us now, John Byrne who is the president of Dell EMC Global Channels, and a cover boy, I might add. This month's edition of CRN. John, you should have been in pictures, man. You look great on the cover, so congratulations on that big news. >> Thank you very much. >> Good to have you with us here on theCUBE. Tell us about your journey here, in the past couple of months. You watch the partners program, you bring Dell on one hand, you bring EMC on the other, bring it all together, how's it going so far? >> Well, like I said, the reaction has been spectacular. You know, almost extraordinary. When you think of our channel business now. Our channel business is some $35 billion. When you frame that, it's bigger than Facebook, bigger than Starbucks, bigger than Nike, growing faster than the market, the broadest portfolio in everything. You hear us talking about, we want to be number one of everything all in one place, and we have this wonderful partner ecosystem that is primed and ready to take advantage of this opportunity. So we set up a brand new team, and new strategy, new program, and our partners couldn't be more excited. The program is launched, based on three tenets, being simple, predictable, profitable, and you know, we're very, very pleased and very humbled with the momentum we've had. And look here, this has been built for our partner, but actually it's been built with the partner community in mind, and they can feel this and we're on a tremendous journey. Super exciting. >> Yeah, I like the fact, too, that, I mean you made no bones about it, profitable is not a dirty word, right? It's a very good word and a very real word. But back up a minute, you said new strategy. So you've been a channel guy basically your whole professional life. What experiences did you bring from 6that into this endeavor that you think have given it its own stamp, or its own unique distinction? Yeah, look, I remember running my own channel companies as if it was yesterday, and I remember I always had choices. And I wanted to work with people who were going to win, and people who you wanted to work with. So when we traveled the world to find what are partners like about heritage Dell, heritage EMC, what did they not like, more importantly,6 what was the best of breed in the planet? They were very consistent on three things. They wanted the program to be very simple. An annual program, take advantage of EMC's world class training capability. Take cost and friction out of my selling motion, i.e., one portal, one deal registration, automation of rebate, so I can see every week what have I sold, what are my earnings?6 'Cause I remember when I ran my own comp6any, I wanted to continually invest in the skill sets and the certification, but more importantly on the people. So having that consistency was something that came through loud and clear. Predictability of engagement. Ultimately, where do we want our channel partners to play, and how will we protect their investment, knowing that they have choices. And we spend a lot of time on our dealer registration. The third thing is, you're talking to a Scotsman, and profit is important. >> Scotsman? I thought it was a Texas accent. I wasn't sure-- >> Honestly, you sound like my father talking about my accent, John. But you know, we invested significantly in marketing development funds. We invested significantly in the rebate program, and our partners now can make anywhere between 1.5x to eight times what they made historically, based on the right behavior. So bringing my background and knowledge,6 those three things are critical, what we're doing. And of course, like our differentiation is going to be in execution, and the team is making great progress. >> So John, a lot of the angst and excitement, rather, between the merger of Dell EMC was with the channel. What was going to happen with the channel? What was going to happen with the channel? You guys have seemingly executed, seamlessly, rather, but a question around the relationship with the channel. One throat to choke versus the competition. The competition is shrinking, getting smaller, getting less complex, is the marketing term. How is the channel reacted to the new size of Dell EMC versus the competition shrinking? >> Yeah, that's a great question to ask there. That's the biggest endorsement that we could possibly have. Of course it was concern at the very beginning. They didn't know what was going to be the strategy. Both companies had done phenomenally well, and the channel, well the strategies look similar, but actually very different in detail. When you think Dell had many thousands of partners. EMC had hundreds of partners. The criteria on EMC's program from a revenue perspective was significantly more than it was in Dell. So a lot of concern. But the first thing we did, Keith, is l6ook, I pride the salesmen, we pride the sales6 on having big ears, and we travel the world. We travel the world and we listened. And then we came together very quickly. I think we only were born in September '16. Four weeks later, we announced, here's our vision, here's our strategy. Here's the team, here's the program. We're going to be implementing in February and we over-communicated with our partners. And as we were building this, or tweaking this and tweaking this, and it's amazing, you think we came together as one go-to-market motion in February. Within 90 days under our belt, like when I look at the leading indicators, how's the numbers? How's pay plane? How's the training? How's the self-indications? How's our services capability? How's our acquisition? And when I started to see those scoreboards light out green, the partners can see line-of-sight to it. the feedback from the partners is, like, they cannot believe that a 35-billion channel business moving at this speed together and executing the way we are as one team, is taking a lot of the noise out of the system, and they can see line-of-sight to money. >> So wait, I wanted to drill down on that a bit. $35 billion channel business. Next biggest competitor is, I think, a company called HPE. Their market cap is only $30 billion compared to your revenues. What's the significance of that from a customer and channel perspective? >> Look, it's not for me to talk about the competition. You know, I think when I look at the hand that we have, I think taking us private, allowing us to invest significantly in the future has helped us greatly. I think expanding $4.5 million in R and D, which is double the competitor you just mentioned, to allow us to have a product portfolio that dominates Gartner's magic quadrants, to allow us to invest in the business. Look, this is only going to go one way, however, I want to be very clear, we're the dark horse. Don't let $35 billion scare people. Like we only have low double digit share, but with a portfolio, with the partner community, with the program, look this is going to be like a skyrocket and the partners can feel it. >> So on that, yeah, I mean, you bring dark horse, we all know that the conventional definition of dark horse, right? Long shot, no shot, but $35 billion, it's pretty hard to fly under the radar, honestly, right John? >> Yes it is, it is. But I also want to include, that we have big visions. We have big dreams. We want to be the number one channel put in the industry. We want to be the number one, the biggest, and the best. Not the best, not the biggest, not the biggest, not the best. We want to be the biggest and the best. When we're talking to our partners right now, look, we've had them here, would you believe, it's been four and a half thousand partners here this week? We had a Global Partners Summit. It was standing room only, with the four and a half thousand. Actually, we had to go overflow rooms to get our partners coming in here. And those partners are feeding back to us, I'm almost scared to mention the number, how big this could be, but a discussion we're having with partners is not how do we grow up market? Or how do we grown a little bit above market. The discussion with the partners is how do we double? >> So with that said, Michael has talked an awful lot about the small overlap between Dell, Dell EMC, 20%, only 20% overlap, has the channel realized a new opportunity because of that limited overlap? >> Again, the leading indicator is look, we asked the partners for four things, as we build this program, and it's a rich program, and intentionally done so. We asked them for four things, we want you to grow your top line. We want to be aggressive and attack the market, however, I also wanted to make a lot of money. Profit is important. From our company to the partner community to the distributors. The second thing is, we want them to sell much more of our portfolio. You heard I'm sure, the past couple of days the four transformations. Building the modern data center. Our partners have the capability to sell much more lines of business than they are today. The third thing is, we want to be aggressive and acquire new customers, acquire new lines of business, and also attach services. Like if we spend a lot of time talking about hardware, but you're also hearing us talk about our services capability. That is a pot of gold for our partners if they do this, it's going to light up. So does our partner see this opportunity? Are they leaning in at getting more training, more certifications, oh, absolutely. >> So, let's talk about training because that's the critical part. Dell EMC is mind-mindbogglingly huge. So when I'm a channel, if I'm a channel engineer and I look at the portfolio, and I go onto a customer's site, how do I wrap my arms around just the size of it? I'm not in the mothership of Dellenium, see I don't have all of the, well, in theory, I don't have all of the back channels to the solutions. How do keep, how do you keep the channel up to speed? >> Yeah, great question. Actually, I'll give you some data points. Would you believe that at Dell Technologies, we have 40,000 sales makers who are trained and certified to sell our portfolio. That's quite a startling number, right? However, when you look at our partner community, who also do the same training and certification, we have 129,000 people trained in our partner community. That is a sales army of 169,000 people, trained and certified to go on attack, not only today but attack the future transformations. So what we've done, is we basically led a training that our own team does, our partners do it. We've also centralized all of our training. It's all on one portal. Clearly articulating, if you want to go by product, here's a by product, if you want to go by transformation, here's a by transformation. You want to do it by services, here's the services. And look, I think the other thing they're finding is it has real equity to the person doing the training. It's developing their career. You go to the LinkedIn, the explanation, we are Dell EMC certified trainers. That is exciting, to sell the products portfolio on the planet. >> So this is the program you launched early February, right? So, as you said, 90 days in. With any new program, though, you're going to hit speed bumps along the way, right? You're going to find some wrinkles, you're going to find some things you need to, what would that be in your mind? You said, okay, this is something, it's all going well in one respect, and it sounds great, but there is some polish that we still need. Where would that be right now? >> Oh, no question. Are you kidding me, 90 days in? >> All right. >> What the team and the partner community have done in 90 days is extraordinary, I mean, truly, truly extraordinary, however, they recognize we're going at tectonic speeds. But we have to. The channel is nimble, it's agile, it's got a different pulse, it's got a different heartbeat, but we're being very authentic on the journey. So when we brought the four and a half thousand, we talk about, look at some of the wins that are already on the board. And I'm telling you, we could have spent a full 90 minutes just talking about the wins that we found the first 90 days. The program has launched fantastically well, but with the bums in the road. But our partners understand that because we're being very authentic, and you know, they're part of the team, they're part of the family. What will define us is not that we're going to make mistakes, we will make mistakes, in life you make mistakes, in business you make mistakes. What will define us is how we react to those mistakes. Are we always there? Are we being true to our commitment? Are we staying very consistent. And the feedback from the partner community has been, yes. And the progress we're making, and look we are definitely not done. I mean, you think 90 days in, then fast forward, we are now full strength coming into the program. We spoke about consumption models coming in, flex on demand, cloud flex, PCs and service, VDI complete. They also asked us to simplify our MDF gate lanes. Done. So, you know, we're moving at the speed of light, and it is a lot of fun. >> Well, it makes sense. I mean, easier, simple, predictable, profitable, and I think you certainly hit a home run with that mantra, and obviously with the program, as well. So, congratulations on that. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for being with us here on theCUBE. >> My pleasure, John. >> It's always nice to add a different accent, don't you think, Keith? >> Thank you Keith, thank you very much. >> Yes, sir, thank you. >> John Byrne from Global Channels and Dell EMC, and we'll be back with more from Dell EMC World 2017, live in Las Vegas, right after this. (techno music)

from Boston Massachusetts it's the cube covering wtg transform 2018 brought to you by Winslow technology group hi I'm Stu minimun and this is the second year of the cube at what is now wtg transform 2018 and happy to welcome to the program Scott Winslow who is the president and founder of winslet Technology Group Scott always great to see you good afternoon still happy to be with you hey and Scott thank you so much you you not only brought us back a second year we've got a nice table here but I'm not tripping over myself saying that it's the you know 14th anniversary Winslow technology group Dell EMC user conference and lovely Boston Massachusetts in the background it was like ha it's literally wtg transform rolls off the tongue so thank you you were the inspiration for us to you your comments last year precipitated to change our name III know your team just looked at it and felt sorry for me because it didn't roll off the tongue quite as easily as as the new it was a mouthful yeah so Scott you and I did we bump into each other a bunch we'd say we tend to go to many of the shows the Dell show the Nutanix show let's talk about your show first here you said it is the 14th year its users one of the reasons Idol of coming here besides getting to talk to you and Rick and some of your partner's is users I will speak to more users in one day here than I do it some of the big shows I go to yeah I mean it's it's a great opportunity to thank our existing customer base you know we have a fourfold purpose for this event we like to educate our customers we hope that they can pick up some knowledge and maybe an aha moment that they have with they're looking at a hyper-converged solutions or all-flash solutions we've got a new Dell client display here this year that we've never had in the past so we're looking to educate we love to give them an opportunity to collaborate with other practitioners to compare notes the feedback I get from them is they really enjoy that piece of it we want to have some fun and you know it's a tradition that we want to keep rolling and they're helping you know to make it very successful so it's been a great it's been a great venue for us and a great event for so over 14 years now and Scott you couldn't have ordered a better day I mean New England you know it might change in an hour but right now temperatures in the low 70s it's mostly clear you know gorgeous backdrop here as you mentioned in the you open you know Sox have their ace pitching tonight and there are still in first place so yeah it doesn't doesn't hurt well you know we're in the customer service business right so you have to think of everything temperature starting pitcher and you know we try to make sure we've got a good agenda and there's a lot of good information for them here there to get customers to come out and spend a day with you like this is why there's a great event has going to be so biggest because year after year after year I feel like we've delivered and then we have kind of a continuous improvement process and we try to improve it every year here we are Scott one talk about your business you know first time we met you know winslet technology was one of the it was it was the Dell Partner of the year so you know been a long time dell partner the dell you know acquisition merger with emc it's been interesting to watch i know you've got some viewpoints but before we get into kind of the dell piece of it talk about your business as you know because we call you a channel partner and they're you know what's driving your business how's growth going how are things up here in new england and Beyond because yeah you're much more than New England yeah I mean well we've certainly evolved our business over the years with acquisitions being a big part of that initially we started out as a compelling partner then Compellent was acquired by Dell and then you know five or six years later after that we've the Delhi you see consolidation so I think we've had to learn to be flexible and and one of the things we've seen with that is we just each time there was an acquisition it allowed us to increase the size of our portfolio with more solutions that we can offer our end-users more services that we can provide you know along the way we've added a lot of other solutions too like the Nutanix solution and the hyper-converged space so our business is going great we're you know the highest employee count we've ever had our revenues were as high as they've ever been last year we had a record q3 record q4 in q1 we grew our Dell business by over 30% that makes Dell very happy and makes us very happy as well so you know as as this whole industry evolves and you know the digital economy progresses there continue to be the need for the services that we provide all right so let's talk about Dallas you said you've come from the compelling piece the the delicacy which the Nutanix OEM is something that I know your team is you know very involved with you know how is Dell and LEM see how they do and for the channel these days I think they're doing very well I think they you know tell likes to save they big ears and they listen well I think that they have proven that they put together a very good channel a partner program under the leadership of John Byrne initially and now Joyce Mullen you know I think that they incent you to work with them they try to incent the salespeople and sent the companies but they also put together very good programs for you to run marketing events like this so an event like this we couldn't do it without the support of Dell technologies and they've been you know very supportive of us you know they're providing speakers like Dave singer you've got all kinds of subject matter experts here we've got lots of hardware and software for folks through you know demo so I think I think overall the partner programs been very good great in Nutanix is this a you you get it through the Dell so I'm curious has it has the move as Nutanix is shifting more to really that software model does that have any impact on on your business or are you isolated from that since you've been using the Dell xcs yeah well I mean first of all we've been involved in Nutanix for you know three plus years now right before Dell acquired EMC our hyper-converged solution was Nutanix we've built together you know a very nice base with customers many of whom you know are here today so as they evolve to a software model I do think they're going to be less concerned about what or where platform it goes on because they're truly creating all their revenues you know from the software side so they're very they're they don't care really what you know what hardware platform is being used so you know we feel like we've got the best two solutions in the hyper-converged marketplace between the portfolio of Dell solutions you know visa and VX rail vce and then Nutanix with the Nutanix solution typically with Nutanix we tend to put that on a Dell server platform that's where we lean we think Dells got the best server technology in the industry that's a nice way for us to bridge that gap between the two companies so a lot of times our customers are putting a new tannic solution on a dell platform you know key themes I heard your talk rick's talk david singers talk this morning and what i hear from customers digital transformation and hybrid cloud are those top of mine with your customers today absolutely yeah I think you know Rick alluded to it in his talk a lot of customers are coming to us saying hey help us with our cloud strategy and so we're going in and saying tell us about your applications you know these are applications that we think belong in the public cloud that makes sense and the public cloud and you know that could be disaster recovery could be backup it could be office 365 and these are other applications that we think might be more well suited for an on-premise solution so that could be active file transfer and so you know we think that leads naturally to a hybrid cloud discussion we've got a customer here today a financial customer from New Hampshire and their CIO called me I had known him previously at a famous sneaker company in town he went to a financial institution and he said hey we wanna we want to move everything to the cloud can you come up and consult with us on that and we ended up putting in a hybrid cloud for him you know featuring a hyper-converged solution that had the cloud integration that he needed so I think that's the kind of activity we're involved in today yeah you use the word conversation that and the customers I've talked to they like they they need advice and they want someone that's not just oh well here's the solution that you're going to buy it no no it's a conversation there's lots of decision points and as you build out that hybrid cloud yes it's going to be made of by definition multiple pieces it's not necessarily going to be one company that's going to do it all but you know your team helps them that journey absolutely I mean you can't go in with a cookie cutter approach at sea you know you've got two years in one mouth we tell other salespeople you got to use them in that portion so you really kind of listen to the customer as I said try to understand what their applications are you got to understand what their biases are if it's a Microsoft shop you know as your might be their choice for you know public cloud or they might be interested in AWS so you got to kind of work through those you know scenarios and then build out a solution that's gonna work for them we and we rely on our solutions architects Brian veenu runs our sa team and he's got a group of five essays that we think are very adept at you know putting those solutions together yeah Brian's actually not not far from I said here you've got the new hands-on lab is one of the new things that you added here and anything from that or from other things at the event that you won't want to highlight as we wrap yeah I think I mean the hands-on lab gives you know customers the opportunity to come in and play with kind of structured and scripted demos and I see a number of customers in there using that so I'll talk to our team after the event and find out how it went we always try to look for you know improvements along the way but you know there's opportunity in there to play with those demos in terms of storage in terms of hyper-converged in terms of Dell OpenManage essentials which is the software that manages your entire server farm so I think that's been a good addition I'd say the other addition is this year is we were planning it we said hey our people are really good we need to get our people up in front instead of relying so much on the OEM and they're great and they provide great resources but I know that our people have so much to offer as well particularly because you know we're out there you know you're putting solutions together for customers and I think that breadth and depth you know comes through so that's been a nice addition this year where it's not just been Rick out on myself but we've utilized a number of members on our team Ed Palmer is the moderator for a customer experience as an outcome session this afternoon that we're really excited about because at the end of the day is a solution provider that's our job is to produce results and outcomes for our customers that's how we're going to be judged that's how we want to be judged so I'm really excited about that session because we've got em privada and Boston Architectural College they're going to present up their respective deployments and they were different of hyper-converged technology so I think the voice of the customer we really want to make sure we're continue to bring that back to this event so well Scott always a pleasure to see you thanks so much for taking the cube back to this event and thank you for all the customers we get access to we always loved to talk to the customers by the way if you're looking to get a customer on the cube that's we were always looking for customers so we look at the events or we do have a Boston area studio and a lovely Palo Alto studio so reach out to the team be happy to talk mom's to minimun thanks so much for watching the Q

from Austin Texas it's the cube covering cube con and cloud native con 2017 brought to you by Red Hat the Lenox foundations and the cubes ecosystem partners hello everyone welcome to the cube live in Austin Texas for exclusive coverage of cloud native conference and cube con cube con with the linux foundation on john fourier co-founder silicon angle media tube Minutemen with ricky bond and also covering the developer community we just came off Amazon reinvent last week we're now in Austin Texas for a continuation of the Builder theme around this new generation of developers exclusive coverage of cloud native con and cube con or cube cons to cube con like kubernetes john byrne not to be confused with the cube of course when 2018 we're gonna do cube con right John yeah so cube con is coming to check for local listings around an area near you will be will be there stew what a great event I love this events one of my favorite events as you know personally for the cube audience out there and who know us I've been following us we've been growing up with this community we've been covering the Linux Foundation from the beginning if you go back to our roots around 2010 we've always been on the next wave whether it was big date of the converge infrastructure on the enterprise and then cloud the cube is always on the wave and then wave and we call that we were there when kubernetes was formed we were there with the principles JJ when and his team cuz Maddock with blue Tucker kind of brain so me hey we should do kubernetes and we said then kubernetes would be huge it would be the orchestration that would be the battleground in what we were at the time calling the middleware of the cloud turns out that was true that is happening huge change in the ecosystem as containerization with docker originally starting it and then the evolution of how software developers are voting with their workloads they're voting with their code and no better place than the Linux Foundation to your analysis obviously we're super excited but there's some dynamics going on there's a class of venture backed companies that I won't say are groping for a strategic position are certainly investing in open source but brings up the questions of the business model where's the value being created what is the right strategy do I do services do I have a different approach there's a lot of different opinions and if the customers choose wrong they could be on the wrong side of history as this massive wave of innovation with AI machine learning is impacting infrastructure and DevOps it's awesome we heard Netflix on stage let's do what's your take what's going on here cloud native cons yeah so so John I love you know Dan who were you know runs the CN CF gets out on stage and he says you know it's exciting time for boring infrastructure maybe maybe too exciting I even said you know we've been watching this wave of you know containerization and kubernetes and this whole CN CF ecosystem has really taken you know that container piece and exploded beyond this really talking about how I build for these cloud native environments you know there's 14 projects here kubernetes is the one that kicked it off but so many pieces of what's happening here john AWS last week phenomenal like 45,000 people a lot of the real builders the ones you know heavily involved in projects or like ah I actually might skip AWS come to come to coop con this coop con this is where you know so many people we've seen you know founders of companies working on so many projects you know large community you know great community focus I know you like Netflix up there talking about culture big diversity I think what was it 130 scholarships for people of diversity there so really phenomenal stuff you know this is where really that multi-cloud world is being built yeah and good points too because that's really the elephant in the room which is the prophets and the monetization of developer communities is not the primary but it's a big driver and how people are behaving and Amazon reinvent in this world are parallel universes you know it's interesting you don't see a lot of reinvent hoodies I wore mine last night got a couple dirty looks but this is you see a lot of Google you see a lot of Microsoft John John John we have Adrian Cockcroft was in the keynote this morning everybody's saying we're braising the databases here you don't think that's the case I think everyone does embrace it isn't number one isn't really no second place they're far back as I said at reinvent I still stand by that but you got big players okay dan cohen basically said on stage okay it's my projects products and profits and they're putting profits actually in the narrative because they're not shying away from soup but it's not a pay-to-play kind of ecosystem here it's like saying look at the visibility of the cloud has shine the light on the fact that there is an opportunity to create value of which value then can be translated to monetization and developers like to get paid no one likes that do things totally for free that is the scoreboard of value it's not just about chasing the dollar and I think I like how the CN CF is putting out the prophets saying look at this real value here in businesses is real value in products that come from these projects this is a new era and open source I think that's legit again pay-to-play is a completely different animal yeah vendors come in control the standards pay pay pay not anymore Brendan burns told me last year Microsoft no pay to play Microsoft's got a big platform they're gonna come in and make things happen ok so John the money thing is a big question I have coming into this week dan talked up on stage there's certified service providers for kubernetes and there's certified kubernetes partners 42 certified kubernetes partners for the most part kubernetes has been commoditized today that certification doesn't mean that hundred-percent everything works but it definitely over a you know short period of time it will be means that I if I choose any platform that uses kubernetes that certified I can move from one to the other it doesn't mean that I'm actually going to make money selling kubernetes it's that that's part of the platform or services that arm offering and it is an enabler and you know that's what's a little different you think about you know John we try for years OpenStack thought we were gonna make money on it how we're gonna make money even go back to Linux you know it's what can be built using this set of tools so people have said this is really rebuilding the analytics for the cloud environment but money is kind of its derivative off of it it's an enabler to are there great software it brilliants dude this is the bottom line here it's the tale of two stories in the industry okay this in the backdrop is this and if prices are an IT specifically in development teams platforms are shifting big time the old is an old guard as Andy Jackson said the invest in a new guard the dynamics are containerization drove megatrend number one that turbocharged the cloud infrastructure and gave developers some freedom micro-services then take it to another level what it's actually done has changed at two theaters in the industry theater one is the vendors that are getting funded that participants in open source work trying to create value and then what I would call the rest of the market there is an onboarding a tsunami of new developers coming in I'm seeing in the in theater one all the people that we know in the industry and then I'm seeing new faces these are people who are going to the light the light is the monetization and that's the value creation so you seeing people here for the first time you're seeing developers who have a clear line of sight that this community creates value so that's two dynamics so that the companies that got a hundred million dollars in funding from venture capitals they're trying to figure out can they take advantage of that wave of new developers there's been an in migration into cloud native of new developers and these are the ones they're going to be creating the value the creativity the solutions and certainly the cultural impact from those solutions will be great I see a great opportunity if people just don't get scared and just hold the line keep your hitting value it'll figure itself out so the evolution is natural and that is something I'm interesting to see okay and John the thing I'm looking for this week first of all when we talked about containers we talked about this whole cloud native environment that boring infrastructure stuff it still matters networking has matured a little bit there's the CNI initiative the cloud native I'm sorry container networking interface which is approaching one auto they're getting feedback here second one is storage most of the these solutions we really started talking about stateless environments state absolutely has to be a piece of this how do we fit you know you know data AI ml all these things data is critically critically important so that needs to be there and then the new technology that you know we spent a lot of time talking about at AWS that was serverless and there's actually like a half day track here at this show talking about how all of these solutions how serverless fits into them there was a question does serverless replace the because I don't need to think about it really a lot of the same tooling a lot of these usage will fit into those server lists frameworks so it's not in either/or but really more of an an environment but definitely something that we expect to hear more of this we've done we've got a phenomenal lineup I'm super excited did you know some of these builders that we've got you know big players we've got startups we've got authors we've got a good diverse audience coming on the cube so and you know I know near and dear to your heart you know lots of developer talk a lot of their over talks do this is a fun time the commoditization of kubernetes is actually a good thing in my mind I think there will be a lot of value to be created and this really is about multi cloud you mentioned all three of the major clouds and now Maurice are all a bob on stage just in China you got a lot more growth you're seeing that kubernetes really is an opportunity for Google and Microsoft and the rest of the community to run as fast as they can to create services so that customers can have a choice choice is the new black that's what's going on and multi-cloud not yet here but certainly on the horizon and if Google and Azure do not establish a mike-mike multi cloud environment Amazon could run away with it that's my that's my tag that's my visibility on it the bottom line is whoever can creates the value so what I'm gonna look for is the impact of the continued kubernetes kinda monetization and the new formations do the new relationships the existing players like red hat are going to continue to kick ass you're gonna start to see new players come in you can expect to see new partnerships because the stack is being developed very fast smooth announcements for me theists flew and deke container D Windows support coming with 1.9 kubernetes what's happening is they're running as fast as they can they're pedaling as fast as they can because if they do not they will be blown away that's the cube coverage here kicking off day one I'm John Purdue minimun exciting times here at cloud native and cube on back after this short break