>> Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with John Furrier covering Dell Technologies World 2019. This is our first day of coverage, two sides or, as John likes to say, it's theCUBE cannon, a cannon of CUBE content. We're very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni, Joyce Mullen, the President, Global Channel, OEM and IoT from Dell Technologies. Joyce, welcome to theCUBE cannon. >> Thank you so much. Happy to be in the cannon, it's a great place to be! >> The cannon is off the a great start! So, before we get started into all of the nitty gritty, I just want to acknowledge, you are one of CRN's Women of the Channel on Power 100 last year. Congratulations on that. >> Thank you. Thank you, thank you. >> It's always great to have strong females on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Talk to us a little bit about the Global Channel. There's about 4,000 partners here? >> 5,000 actually, over 5,000. >> 5,000? You've got a channel of over 150,000. Global Partner Summit kicking off today, what are some of the exciting things, news? >> Well, I'm sure you've talked about the news from this morning. I mean that obviously was dominating a lot of the discussions in terms of the solutions that we're offering and things like that. Really exciting stuff and very cool to see the collaboration between VMware and Microsoft and Dell, I mean, that's pretty powerful stuff. But also, our partners are really excited because they've been asking us for more and more highly integrated solutions. We heard about two new ones today that really span the Dell Technologies family of brands and they... You know, we have a bunch of things that we've talked about with the partners today. But we set it up last year with three strategic imperatives, and one of them is about making it easier to do more business with us. That's really, operationally, how do we improve the partner experience? The second one is around helping them enable and transform customer's environments across Dell Technologies families of brands and that one, you know, is tough to do. And so, we made some progress on that this morning, which was really exciting to hear about and then we also announced a change in our branding to our program. So we were the Dell EMC Partner Program, now we're the Dell Technologies Partner Program, which obviously carries broader significance. And then the third imperative is all around helping our partners embrace and monetize these new, emerging technologies, like IoT and AI. You heard a lot about that from Michael today, too. So we are working very hard to figure out how to help our partners do just that. >> Talk about the economics on the channel, because the channel's great leverage sales, indirect, great business models, proven over the years to be great. As new technology comes in, if it's complicated, it's hard to sell. If it's complicated, you need training. And if it doesn't throw off more profit for the partner, it tends to not work out well. You guys have really been working on this. Talk about the partner reaction to their opportunity to serve their customers, who are your customers. You're essentially going to be doing that. This has been an opportunity, because we're seeing that, with some of the services teams out there, there's more technology required in their... Skills gaps to architects. That's an opportunity for the channel partners to actually add value. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that value piece that the partners now can add on top of it, because if it's an easy, consistent end-to-end environment that's turn-key from Dell, the partners take that and they can wrap value around that. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that dynamic specifically. >> Well, so, when we think about these new technologies, and we think about the environments our customers are facing, or if you think about IoT, which is generally quite vertically specific, it requires new sets of skills, no doubt about it. But this complexity that we're basically facing right now in IT around more servers, more processors, more accelerators. I mean, we've gotten pretty used to a world where x86 is kind of king. But five years from now, it's going to be much different. Artificial intelligence will drive a whole bunch of specialized servers, for example. Anyway, that's an illustration of the complexity that our customers are facing, which is great news for our partners, to your point, John. So, when we spend time with our partners, we're talking about the importance of, of course you need to know the technology. Of course you need to know what AI means. You need to understand augmented reality. You need to understand IoT. But probably even more importantly, you got to get a deeper understanding of the businesses that your customer's in. The verticals, the industries. Because it's not a uniform, horizontal environment that we're deploying this stuff into now. It's a much, much more highly varied, highly complex environment, which is great news because customers need our help. That does mean that the partners have to have the certifications. We're trying to make that easier so that if they have gotten certified with VMware on VCF, they can apply that to Dell Technologies. Vice versa. >> Joyce, that's a great point. That kind of connects what Michael Dell said on stage, because the vertical specialism is where the data adds value. So where you actually bring data into the equation, which is the lifeblood of, or the heartbeat of digital transformation, to quote Michael Dell on that one. That's where the specialism is important. In the verticals. >> Yes. >> So knowing how to make data work is a partner opportunity. >> Absolutely. And that means you got to understand the business, the outcomes that your customers are looking for, and what that data looks like in those environments. So it's way different if you're in a plant or a hospital. I mean, those are pretty different environments. You got to know what you're talking about. I think it's a great opportunity for partners, but it does mean, maybe a reorientation, or a consideration of vertical expertise. >> I want to get your thoughts on IoT. So two verticals that are smoking hot right now are health care and manufacturing, machine, you know... >> Industrial Automation. >> Industrial Automation, yeah, thank you. I know RPA is high. I see people using RPA, it's really hot. In those areas, okay, OT, operational technologies, and IT have been kind of at war. Not at war, but they're different cultures. IT is about connecting internet protocol devices that have data to it. OT's, some cases, HVAC system or something else. All are getting computers on them now. So for say, for security... So the realization that it's an IT mindset, coming together with operational technology folks, are two culturally different markets but the products are blending, it's kind of becoming blurred. What is your view on this? How do you guys see that? How do you posture to that marketplace? What's the value proposition? >> Yeah, so I think it's fascinating, because we've been in cases where we're talking to customers on the operating technology side, and on the IT side, of course, given our heritage. But through our OEM group, we have a lot of experience with industrial automation, for example. And we've actually introduced people at the same company to each other. On the OT side and the IT side. >> Wow. >> Because they just you're... I don't know if I would say that they were at war, John, but they were definitely... It was parallel play going on. You know what I mean? They were not necessarily helping one another. And I would say, still, when we are in these environments, I would say roughly a third of the time, the operating technology guys say, I got this. I don't need the IT guys to tell me what to do. I'm running my plant. They do not understand. I am all about throughput, I'm all about yields, I'm all about output, I'm all about safety, I'm all about quality, whatever. The IT guy is saying, Um, well, yeah but you got to be all about security. If you're going to put this stuff on my network it's got to meet these criteria, right? So the Operating Technology guys a third of the time will say, Don't talk to the IT guys, I got this. On the IT side, a third of the time they'll say, Those OT guys really don't understand what I'm up against here. I've got to make sure this is a completely secure environment and I've got to think about all sorts of terrible data issues and things like that, privacy, all that sorts of stuff. Let me... I got this. And then, about a third of the time, we have a very productive relationship where they're working together. I expect that those... That third will become half, will become 75 percent, because it has to. >> Which half becomes 75 percent? >> I think we're going to >> The collaboration. >> see a collaboration and we will not have people taking sides because you just can't. You can't afford it. You can't afford these parallel universes. From a security point of view, or an economic point of view. >> You can't be warring, that's what you're saying. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You've got to come together and get a solution. >> Exactly, exactly. >> How can you facilitate your partners becoming that enabler of that collaboration? In terms of educating them on, a third does this, a third does that, this is my sandbox, that's yours, and then there's the third that's like, Oh, we kind of get it. How do you see yourselves as enabling your channel to be that mediator, that facilitator? >> So there's a couple of different ways. One is through Competency Development, and we have things like an IoT Competency. We have a Dell Technology Cloud Competency, as of this morning. And we will see more and more solutions-based competencies, versus product-based competencies. So, clearly, that's a trend. And that means we're helping our partners develop a level of expertise around deployment of those solutions. So that's step one. The other thing is, we're trying to figure out how to facilitate that with product offerings. So Integrated Product Offerings. You heard a couple of those today. We also have things like our award-winning, actually, IoT Connected Bundles, which are trying to facilitate that. And then the third way we're trying to do that is, we're trying to encourage our partners to take advantage of the power of this massive ecosystem we have. If you think about all of the OEMs who are building their solutions on Dell Technology, and you think about all of the partners who are trying to figure out how to offer a broader solution set to their customers on the OT side. Video Surveillance is a great example. Digital City Solutions is another one. That combination could be really, really powerful. So we have, I would say it's a very rudimentary capability right now, we call it Partner Finder. We also have something called Cloud Partner Connect, in case a partner needs service provider capability. We're going to build that out this year and include our OEM, so our partners can actually find like-minded partners who have the same kind of focus on Dell Technologies as a core component of the solutions. That means it's just going to be easier to integrate these things. >> Channels love bundles, they love turn-key because, again, that reduces their, cuts cost. >> Yeah, of course. >> They can wrap margin around that with services. >> Of course. >> Always a great playbook. >> Exactly. >> Simplicity wins. On the business side, I want to get your thoughts on the integration stuff. I love the simplicity, bundling, love that, but when you start dealing with channels within channels within channels, you get the embedded relationships. I got VMware on Azure, I got Dell Technologies with VxRail, going through this Microsoft guy. The joint sales, I mean, my mind kind of explodes. It must be really hard. How do you guys handle that complexity? Is that something you're used to? Is it not a problem? Computation programs and things of that nature? >> I mean, for sure, we got to figure out how to weed through all that, and then simplify it to a point that a partner understands what they get. If you do X, this is what you get. If you do Y, this is what, I mean, cause they have to make their own economic decisions about that. And so, yes, we have to weed through that. I think that one of the things, though, that we're very, very clear on now is, through our track system in our partner program, we've tried to ask partners to designate themselves. I am a service provider. I am a systems integrator. I am an OEM partner. The truth is, those lines are blurring, and are increasingly meaningless, and we have to meet partners where they are. So, we're working very hard this year on trying to get rid of a bunch of those tracks, simplifying the program. It doesn't really depend on what you call yourself, you want to deliver the solution how the customer wants to buy it, and we need to facilitate that. >> And be profitable, make some money. >> Of course. >> There's always that. Well Joyce, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE cannon! >> Hey, theCUBE cannon! I love it! >> ...this afternoon, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live, from Dell Technologies World 2019. Thanks for watching. (electronic 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

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas. It's the Cube, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. You're watching the Cube and our continuous coverage of Dell Technologies World. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm with my co-host, Stu Miniman. Marius Hass is here, he's the President and Chief Commercial Officer of Dell EMC. Great to see you again. >> Dave, great to see you and Stu, wonderful. >> You're lookin' good. Business is good. The commercial business is cranking. Particularly impressive in servers and networking but the whole business is just really booming. What's going on? >> We're very pleased with the progress that we're making and I think from, you look at it last year and the share gain that we'll be able to have in all the key lines of business. The transformation stories are real and enabling our customers to progress in the journeys that they're on into a digital transformation movement and to an IT transformation movement. A workforce transformation security transformation. Every one of our portfolio elements plays a role in that. And it's resonating well. We're doing, we're aligning our team members to best serve our customers. Our partner community has really stepped up and performed really well around the globe as well. So we see every region doing quite nicely. >> And just to clarify for our audience, the commercial businesses, not the top of the pyramid, it's sort of everything else. Maybe you could just quantify it. >> If you think about it, take the top 3,000 accounts around the globe, it's the top of the pyramid it's at. So everything below that, so you take all public sector, you take some federal, and then here in the US also, department of defense, we've got a big customer, NATO in Europe is an example. All commercial accounts, and then in addition to that, I also have the pleasure of hosting our channel program. So we wanted to make sure we had two amazing channel teams when we brought the company together. We wanted to have one channel team, one program, driving simplicity, driving a predictable engagement model, and obviously making it extremely profitable for our partners. So that was the objective and it's all starting to come together very nicely. >> So a channel obviously a critical component of your business. Maybe talk a little bit more about that. You brought in sort of EMC's channel piece, your channel piece. Those things evolve, I mean, every five years the whole channel business changes. The Cloud changed everything. So how have you dealt with that? How would you describe this state of your channel business? >> I think, let me start by, the first thing you want to make sure that you do is that you align every single one of your core assets, which is inclusive of our team members as well as our partner team members, towards how do we best cover the total TAM. It's a 3 1/2 billion, almost 3 1/2 trillion dollar addressable market, large account-based, well over 500,000 that we've got as named accounts around the globe. And then you can imagine all the other small, medium businesses as well. So first thing we did is ensure that we understood how do we best cover those accounts with our team members? And then how do you best augment with a complementary coverage model with our partners? And then, now that you have the ability to get more at-bats with more customers, then how do you make sure that you present the best possible plays or solutions that solve their key business problems? And being able to do all of that refining, all of that, takes a lot of time and effort. But once you've got those levers and pulling them right, you just start to see the progression and then the nice momentum that we for example see today. >> Marius, what are some of the key concerns that you're hearing from the consumer clients that you have? Is it the digital transformation that we heard in they keynote? How much is that pervasive across every company these days? >> Oh, there's no doubt, I think every customer in every industry is going through some transformation today. They're choosing Dell Technologies as a partner of choice for them. The first question is, help me assess where I am in that journey, and then how do I translate, or how do I intersect that journey with the right technology so that I can now move forward? And many a time, it starts with the conversation around, how do I become a digital company? How do I transform my applications into a native Cloud application-based model that can reside on any OS, on any Cloud, anywhere? You talked to Pat earlier today from VMware. Clearly a big push for what they're doing. That conversation is typically the first one we have. But then very quickly it translates also into well what other core infrastructure components that I need in order to be able modernize it, automate it, and then start to orchestrate service levels so that I've got the best optimized infrastructure to be able to deliver those applications and those services to my constituencies. >> So your relationship with clients since the integration has evolved. I mean when you think about Dell, the Dell brand, EMC's long-term relationships. VMware, and then the other business, RSA, Pivotal, Dell Financial Services. You bring a lot to the table. Maybe talk about how you use that as a competitive weapon. >> I think it's the ability that we have now to transform the business problem conversation into here's how you solve it with technology and here are all the components and solutions that we have. And we bring that together in a business problem solving manner. That's where, it's what we call the art of the possible. It's truly transformed the way we have a conversation with our customers. And truly puts us in a position of being a strategic partner of choice. >> And how about the cross selling, the cohort selling. How has that transpired? How much of a lift is that to your business? Maybe you could give us some color there. >> I'll give you a little bit of a sense. One of the things obviously we did during the integration planning when we still had to operate as two separate companies was, how can we dissect all the accounts that we have? How much of our, in every one of these accounts, how many of our lines of business have we sold into those accounts? So from a planning perspective, we were able to get ready for the cross sell enablement as soon as we became one company. That truly put us in a position where once the clock started ticking the teams went off and running. They knew exactly which accounts to go pursue. They knew exactly what solutions to be offering to the customers. And our team members came together very nicely. We compensated them to go bring together a single architecture strategy. So all of those pieces were all part of the planning cycle that once we were able to execute, people were running at it at a fast, fast pace. >> So that requires some leadership. We were sort of talking off camera about some of the complexities of bringing two large organizations together. EMC for years, belly-to-belly, those guys love account control. You've had your organization, and you were hit in a groove swing before the merger, so how did you address that cultural mix? >> Well I think what, the cultures were a lot more similar than people expected. I think, we've talked about this before where we put all of our cultural traits and asked every single one of our team members, I think it went out to 75,000 of our team members and said, rank these 27 cultural traits in order. And the top five were exactly the same and in exact same order. From both cultures, which was impressive. And the first thing was always about embrace the customer. So then when we then go through and said to our team members, okay, we're going to align by our customers. And then make sure that we've got an account exec, we've got a pre-sales team, we've got a specialty organization, that is all aligned towards how do we best serve this customer? And then make it a very scalable model. All of a sudden you see that engine started clicking. You start the team members starting to realize that we're going to win together, as long as we win the hearts and minds of our customers. And that was a truly a differentiator in the process. >> Marius, one of the themes in the keynote this morning Michael talked about the pace of change. I want you to address how the channel is dealing with this pace of change. Because I think about when conversion infrastructure first rolled out, as Cloud over the last 10 years has come out. It's been challenging for some of the channel to work their way through. Where they add value, where they make dollars. What are you seeing out there, and how are you helping the channel through their own transformation? >> So we're kicking off our global channel summit today, this afternoon. Joyce Mullen is our channel chief. She's going to have Michael on stage. Willie Scannell and myself will be there with her as well. You see over 60% of what we call our metal partners, so these are titanium and so forth, grew well into the double-digits with us. So these are the majority of our partners that have understood how to embrace a solution orientation with our full portfolio. They're selling more lines of business, we added and re-activated 54,000 customers just this past year alone. That's a big number. And so, what they're finding is, again, embracing the transformations, embracing the portfolio, and becoming a lot more relevant to the customer journey. And we've seen nothing but success so far. So we've been very, very happy. >> So you have to position yourself with a channel obviously as relevant, and then of course at the end of the day, they care about margin, they care about things like deal registration. How complicated was it to bring those two different systems together? And it seems like you've done it pretty quickly but. >> We've done a good job, and we had plenty of time to get ready for it too. >> Dave: Yeah. >> Now as systems go, you know that it's never perfect. Right, so there was still opportunities for us to improve the deal registration process. We got well over 70% of the inquiries coming in are getting approved right away. And then you've still got to work long tail of the 30%. And how do you try to do that in a frictionless manner as quickly as possible? We've got SLAs that we've deployed for every one of our partners, so they know exactly how long it'll take to get a deal reg done, and some instances it's automatic where they've got lined-up business encompassing for example. So trying to put as many rules into the process to make sure that we have a very efficient, effective engine. Now we're still in the process of consolidating all our quoting and config engines site. I think you're familiarized with the EMC engine was an SAP-based model, the Dell core engine is an Oracle-based model. Well, bringing those configurations engines together isn't something that you do overnight. So what can we do to mask some of that complexity to our partners? By giving them an SLA that truly enables them to compete effectively across the globe. And we get better, and better, and better at it. To the point that our partners are feeling, obviously able to grow, obviously be in a position to be extremely competitive with us. >> So I'm guessing you masked that with people in process, right? >> Some of that, yes, and we continue to invest significantly in our IT infrastructure to continue to improve that. >> Right, right, okay so, what's going on this show? You talked about the partner summit. What else should we know about? >> Well, obviously you heard Michael's keynote. He was signaling some of the new technology announcements that will be made tomorrow. Jeff Clarke is going to have an amazing keynote and he's going to launch a number of new products, new solutions, new updates. Basically across the whole portfolio. Pay close attention. >> Well, I'm glad you brought up Jeff Clarke because he's not been shy about talking about simplifying, I mean you've done very well despite the fact that storage business is not held up to expectations. So you got some upside there. Jeff has come in and said we're going to simplify this. And so that could potentially add fuel to the fire in the next 12 months. >> And he'll certainly help for sure. And it's all about how do we simplify? How do we streamline? How do we accelerate the pace of innovation? How do we create a more consistent management orchestration layer across all of our storage assets is an example. And he is marching down that path at a feverous pace. So we're extremely excited about all of the things that are going to really enable us in sales and make us to present an even better portfolio to our customers. But, look, in the fourth quarter we grew storage. We've seen that same momentum continuing in the first quarter. So we're feeling pretty bullish about where we're heading. And we're pretty bold in our communications to our channel partners. Say hey, this ought to be a refuse to lose it approach. We're number one in storage today. Our customers have voted to have us as part of their solution. So, let's make sure that we embrace 'em. Let's make sure we bring 'em the best technology possible. >> Marius, one of the things people on the outside often don't notice some of the big changes that happen inside a company. We remember back when you joined Dell, gone through the whole privatization, we've had this huge merger. How is Dell different today than it was when you joined just a few years back? >> Can you believe it? It's been six years ago. I think that's when we probably first met, right? And it's again the, the magnitude shift, and what this portfolio can now do for our customers. It's mind-boggling. It's just unimaginable six years ago. Yes, we had great technology on the client side. We were making great strides on the compute side. We were starting to make hay in the networking side. Starting to progress on the storage side. And we've just now completely changed the industry landscape. Where I don't have a conversation today with a customer where there isn't an opportunity that they want to engage with. Not a single customer says I'm not interested in working with Dell Technologies. It just doesn't exist. So I think the stat is 99% of our Fortune 500 customers are Dell customers. Dell Technologies' customers. >> Well, it's hard not to bump into Dell when you walk into an account. I mean it's virtually impossible in some way, shape, or form. >> Marius: That's a good thing right? >> That's true. >> Yes. >> When your customers, particularly in the commercial area, go home, and they write up their trip report, what are their takeaways? What do you want them to take away from this event? >> I'd say it's a place your bets on Dell Technologies. That's the right partner for you. It's going to move you and your company into being future-ready all the time. Michael's got the right vision of where this is going. He's got the right technology to do it. And we've got great team members to help you get there. >> Marius, you look great, you got a winning spring in your steps. >> Love it. >> So congratulations. I know there's a lot more to go. You're not done yet, and we'll be watching. So thanks so much coming-- >> There's always more to do. Dave, Stu, awesome. >> Great to see you again. 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