>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019 brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Oh, good afternoon and welcome back as we continue our coverage live here on the cue from Mosconi North in beautiful San Francisco. Clouds of melted away In a way, of course, we're still talking about hybrid Multi. They're not going anywhere. In fact, there are very much entrenched into this show. John Wall's Justin Warren. Glad to have You with us. Joined now by Kevin Chats. Camera. Who's the vice president of Product management Enterprise and SP Solutions of Dental Technologies. Kevin. Good to see you again, sir. Nice to see you, too. Two shots in one week on the Q. We love that and Wait Holmes, who's the director of technical product management at Veum? Where? Wade, Good to see you this afternoon. >> But if you also >> so this this is kind of your party here, VM where? I mean, just give me your impression so far. First off, just kind of what you're sensing that the vibe here of the show and, ah, the kind of work that you're getting done. >> So the vibe here is excitement. I mean, I think everyone's excited about a lot of the announcements around either probably Pacific and how we're redefining the V's Fair platform and Tan Xue and now these capabilities on how these capabilities are going to be able to enhance our capabilities of our cloud provider partners. So I'm part of our club fighter salt for business unit, who specifically makes products and solutions for our cloud provider V, C P P program. And I think couldn't beam or excitement. And they've been a crescendo the past few years and be anywhere and b m world. And I think this has been one of the best ever. >> If the waves hitting the shore big time now. So you you talk about cloud providers about service providers. I mean, one of the same. Or Or how do you guys define that now? Or how do you separate that? >> Yeah, I think these terms are largely used interchangeably. To a large degree, I think if we look att at the cloud industry in the provider industry over the last several years, maybe about 5 to 7 years ago, there was a belief from every single cloud provider that they needed to build a scaled platform like a W s like Microsoft Azure like Google Compute. And that they were all in the business of a race to building the most robust, most scalable, most feature rich, most differentiated cloud that was largely erased the bottom from an economics perspective. And I think just about all of all of the service providers and now these cloud providers that we work with have really moved to a different model. What they've recognized is first off. The race to the hyper scale is not a profitable business that you want to race against. Number two. Ah, the transition for large enterprise I t small enterprise medium business to the cloud is so complex that it's not a game of building clouds and not a game of building platforms. It's a game of building practices at this point and cloud providers or building practices that allow them to find their own niche and differentiation off differentiated offerings. Whether that be on Prem Private Cloud hosted Private Cloud and then partnering with the hyper scale er's for the massively scaled multi tenant cloud world. And when we start to realize that this managed offering these cloud practices are there to help the enterprise and small medium business in their transition to the public cloud in transition to cloud and moving towards more managed I t offerings. What we're finding is the reemergence of these cloud providers in a meaningful way, starting to bridge the gap of skill, set, mismatches and expertise. Mismatches at Enterprise I t just doesn't have to embrace cloud technology. >> Yeah, for a long time there, there was the cloud Geraghty, who were saying that the public cloud is the only way this is gonna happen. Everything's going to be there. And some some of us I would count myself among them was a little bit skeptical about that. That approach to things and a lot of it with a lot of the pressure on on service providers was you don't even bother getting into the cloud business. Just shut up shop and go home. This is never going to be a good idea for you to compete in this at all. And it sounds like that that some of these providers have actually gone. You know what we've We've got a viable business here. There are customers here who need things done that we do really well that are not available out in public Cloud. So what are some of the things that some of the things that you're hearing from these cloud cloud providers, that that they are finding from customers that they value, that they not finding anywhere else? >> So I grew 100% that the club wider there, find their business is still growing, and it's due to their expertise. Is Kevin said, that the building practices they understand enterprise customers? Veum, Where business? They understand the platform that they're running the enterprise and are able to provide additional differentiated service's while leverage in the technology that the enterprise they're utilizing in their own data centers. So it's able to pride value out of service is with the same platform that air using in their own premises and providing those capability of same platform in a cloud model. So, given a pragmatic way for enterprises to be able to migrate to a cloud in a hybrid cloud, >> are there specific practices you noticing that is that kind of stand out as being particularly common? >> Yeah, s so I think that through the answer is yes, right? And the answer is that vertical expertise is king here, right? Understanding the industries in which the cloud platforms get deployed and how those industries consume. Resource is the use cases. How they monetize their business is key for success. But I think that what we where we've lived over the last several years is that the building blocks for all of these vertical industries, the only uniform way you had to do it was with the massively scaled public cloud providers. The hyper scale er's what we're doing now, Adele Technologies Cloud is we're enabling a consistent set of building blocks for all of these vertical industries that all of these vertical X three experts in the vertical industries across the cloud providers can then bring a common building block and go address the complex problems of building the use cases, building the monetization models, building the differentiated feature set. >> So I mean, can you give me an example? I mean, what you talking about? It's like if you're going about health care versus transportation versus manufacturing, some things that were going to a different way, we're going to slice this That's right. It's a different >> set of ecosystem partners. It's a different set of vertical applications, a different set of problems. It's different set of monetization models across the board, right? You know, retail has very specific requirements around Leighton See sensitivity and the need to be able to address micro transactions. Security capabilities of those transactions or what not, Health care is governed by hip on various other legislative. When you build in Europe, you have, ah, various data protection and privacy implications to keep in mind. It's right, so all of this is not typically available in public Cloud Public Cloud is built for a lowest common denominator. One size fits all, and then you come bring differentiation. On top of that now is enterprise. I T organizations start to migrate their workloads to Public Cloud. They're looking for consistency in terms of how they've lived before and how they work before how they've operated before. How do they migrate those applications, right? It's not I'm building everything natively for public cloud is that I have an entire set of applications that were designed in my enterprise i d environment that I just want to find a new way to operate in VM wears a consistent abstraction. Layers is really the path forward, So DT Cloud on Deli emcee and TT Cloud leveraging the public cloud providers in the V M wear abstraction with both feet spheres. Well, it's vey cloud foundations, eyes really a commonality that they can now the uses a foundational building block for all their service is >> yes. So where one of the things that a lot of customers have invested over a decade or Maur envy em where? And they have a lot of processes and tools and skills that they have invested in. And it sounds like for some of these cloud providers specializing in a particular industry, that there's a risk there that you will end up with building blocks that, yes, they're customized for one particular thing. But now I have to operate them a little bit differently. And now I've got a lot of different ways of doing things, and particularly as a provider, then that that adds cost. And I want to try to get some of those costs out there because they think that influences my margin. So is the choice. Of'em were one way of dealing with that because I can maintain that same consistent way of managing things. >> Absolutely. And that's key to some of the work that VM wear and Dell has been working together on two. Allow for Kevin Mention, Adele Technology Cloud Platform, which the baseline of that is being more cloud foundation. So been ableto have that homogeneous operational model, and Mona's data plane set is the same V sphere and XXV sand based originality perspective. So the operational model, whether it's in the providers infrastructure or whether it's on premises within enterprise is similar. >> And I think there's even 1/3 vector to this, which is, um, yeah, one public cloud provider is not gonna win. All of the public cloud providers are going to exist, and the scale of a Microsoft azure and the scale of an AWS on a scale of a Google compute put them in position to continue to lead this industry forward. And it's it's difficult to bet on one horse, right? So the GMC model on the DT Cloud model allows us to be able to scale across all of these different cloud providers and as an enterprise organization that's making specific decisions based on region or based on other financials that some of these workloads are going to say in AWS, and some of them are going to sit in Microsoft Azure, etcetera, etcetera is a common abstraction across all of them. >> But at that point, I mean the fact that you're talking about, um, vertical practices, right? Verticals having practices that might be unique to their particular industry. And now you're talking about them deciding that they might all flowed work Thio, maybe an azure. Maybe in Google. Maybe I'd be it. Whatever, Um, I mean multiple complexities for you in dealing with that because you're gonna be the translator, right? You've got to be. You've got to be multi lingual, not only within in the cloud world, but also in a vertical world too. Right? So tough road for you guys to provide that kind of flexibility and that kind of knowledge. >> Oh, I mean, that's the key to the software and solutions that GM was providing and allowing for solutions and sat space capabilities to provide a modernise, softer, defined capabilities across clouds or a and be able to manage things across, such as cost in via cloud health and other manage service's capabilities by our software platform and then be ableto have this. These capabilities in the Bean Imlay consumed by providers and turnkey fashion by utilizing del technologies, bx rail are and VCF one VX rail and having us all package together, and so that providers no longer have to focus on building a core infrastructure. But they're now able to focus on that integration layer. Focus on the additional higher level service is that are able to stitch together the use this multi cloud environment >> decision logic that our customers have. It's just so complex, and I think that the message that we've heard loud and clear from them is that they feel like once they're in particular ecosystem, they're locked into that ecosystem. And the more that we can do that give them flexibility to bring these ecosystems together and leverage the benefits and the capabilities and the regional and geo location of just about all the different ecosystems that exists and build their own ecosystems. On top of that, especially if you're a cloud provider, is really what they're looking to do. And when the foundational building blocks all look different, the integration look different the automation look different. The orchestration look different in the storage. Later look different. It's just It was impossible, right? It's really on us to provide an abstraction to make that easy for them to accomplish their business. >> Consistent foundation is critical, and that's what we're bringing through the cloud provider today. >> One thing that has changed from from technology of 12 12 15 20 years ago is the consumption model that cloud has provided. S. So what are you seeing around service providers, providing that pretty much you have to provide if your cloud provided you have to provide some kind of consumption model because that's what people have in their minds when they think about about Cloud it is. It's not just about the technology side of things. Actually, we're out the business operations about, you know, the financing and the funding models of things. What are you seeing with the cloud providers and service providers? How are they changing the way that they allow people to finance the buy of this infrastructure? >> So that's one of the pieces that, in being where Rendell is working together to allow for not just software, which through the visa program all of our software solutions are consumed through a subscription like model. So it's pay as you go, but also be able to consume hardware and consume the turnkey patches package so that VCF on Vieques rail and the Cloud Provider platform can be consumed in a pay as you go subscription model, which is a way that providers want to be able to then provides software and capabilities to their enterprise customers. >> Have they completely changed across to being purely consumption? Or do we still have a lot of industries that preferred by things that with Catholics >> it would be fantastic if the world converged on one answer? Everything is always easier when there's one answer. But I think, ah, one of the things we recognize is that, ah, and it's true and technology. It's true in business models. It's true. In operational models, there's never in. It's never just a or answer right. It's always an end, and there's a need for us to embrace multiple different models in order to meet the needs of our customers. And even a single service provider will find particular areas that they wanted, consumption based model and others that they realize that it's a well entrenched business for them, and the risk is a little bit lower, and they're willing to take on that risk and look at a Cap IX base model right there. Certainly financial implications to both an Op X and the Catholics model. There's tax implications, and you know where. We're still a little bit all over the map in terms of their preferences. >> Hopefully, we'll see that shake out a little bit and we'll have some standard patents to match the practices that will just make it a little bit easier to design the solution. >> I think the Saturn standard pattern that I expect to emerge is that we have to do everything >> for everyone >> in every way that they want to see. >> Oh, you left there, Kevin. I can't imagine that being too difficult. Everything. Everyone it all at every time. That's right. All right. Hey, thanks for the time of and the discussion and good luck with handling that. I know. That's a that's a big lift on. I know we're joking, but, uh, it's a great world for you. Certainly exciting time. And we thank you for your time here. >> Thank you. Thank you guys appreciate the time. >> I appreciate being World 2019. Coverage continues right here on the Cube. We're live and we're in San Francisco.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum World 2019 brought to you by VM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back here on the Cube, we continue our coverage. We're live in San Francisco. Mosconi, North Day to wrapping up Day two of our three days of coverage here, Veum. World 2019 day Volante. John Wall's glad to have you with us here on the Cube. And we're now joined by Kevin Schatz. Camera. Who's the Vice president of service provider Strategy and solutions. A deli. Um, See, Kevin. Good to see this afternoon. Thank you. You as well. And, uh, yeah, Tarazi, Who is the S v p and chief technical officer at Dell Technologies in the heart. Good to see you. Thanks for taking the time to be with us. A couple of telco guys and we've had a lot of telco on and talking about it in terms of progress that you made. This was an area that you got into with a major commitment, some probably three years ago. Kind of bitch market for me then for where you were there on on day one to where you are now today and the progress you've made and maybe the service is that you're about to provide. Yeah, >> sure. So I think if we look over the last three years, our opportunity that we defined early on telecommunications space was the virtual ization, and software to find everything was leaving the data center. And we would see the software to find architecture extend all the way from radio through the core network through the cloud over a period of time. And it started with technologies like network function virtualization. So if we flash back three years ago, where our entire strategy was built on the premise that relationships with the network equipment providers like Nokia and Ericsson, where our primary path to market our primary opportunity, I think what we've realized is we've emerged in this space to a greater detail is that our expertise, our expertise and experience in building I T Networks and Building Cloud has led to the first wave of conversations in the telecommunications industry directly not through the network equipment providers, but that carriers want to engage directly with Delhi emcee for the lessons learned and how did to play. I tr detectors. And now, as we extend towards the edge that they want to engage directly with Del Technologies in terms of how we build cloud architectures. We've had a number of big announcements. Over the last several years. We've announced partnerships and engagements with NTT. We've announced partnerships and engagements with China Unicom. Just in the last three months, we've announced partnerships with our rounds around network EJ out of France and then most recently with 18 C on the automation of EJ infrastructure related to their airship project. I think from a benchmark perspective, it's just been a continued growth opportunity for us and recognition that the more we engaged in, the more we contribute as a productive member of what is a very complex and changing and transforming industry, the more success in relationships that will build, and the more it will translate into opportunity to sell to >> when you think about you have the the modernization of N F. E. For example, as a former technologist inside a large telco, Um, what were some of the challenges? Is it? It's taken a long time. Obviously, when you talk to some of the telcos, they say, Well, you know it affects our infrastructure, but we still get this application mass. I mean, maybe you could add some color and describe for our audience why it's been so challenging. >> Yeah, I think that's an excellent question. Um, going back to my days at Telco on data centers, even S d n and the software defined tools were just beginning to show up. So the biggest challenges where you were basically having toe work with predefined operating system. But he defined hardware. The hardware was not exposed for for GAM ability, the ability to take advantage of it. And then you had to interrogate multiple players of technology in a way where it took significant time, too, not only for software development, but for product development and user experience. Since then, many of those walls have come down, and some of them have come down very hard. When you look at what we're doing, Adele here and we lead for the open networking. Not only do you have the choice of operating system were also pushing hard. Don't new open operating systems for networking like Sonic with Microsoft and bade calm. And then we're taking industry leading steps to expose the silicon chips themselves for four GAM ability. These are all the components that are critical. When you talk about five G, for example, do you really have to have those capabilities? I also would say that the software evolution have made it to infrastructure. The Dev ops and the modern applications we talk about here is also available for infrastructure, which means you really can develop a capability in weeks instead of years and months. Five people can do in amazing parkas. All of this was not possible before, >> so we talked to Shekhar about this in the earlier segment challenges in the telco business. I mean, the one hand you got these quasi monopolies in some cases real monopolies that just chug along and do pretty well. But the same time you got the cost for a bit dramatically coming down, you've got the data growth doing this. You got over the top providers taking advantage of the those those networks, and so new infrastructure allows them to be more more agile. But there's a workforce component to that, and there's a skill set, and that's how they got to transform. I wonder if you could maybe talk about that a little bit. Kevin. >> Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I think when we work within this industry, it's not just a technology conversation. It's the ability to consume an operationalized technology. And I think that comes down to a number of different things, comes down to the processes that exist when it comes down to the skill sets that exists to be able to build these new processes around. And I think if we flash back several years ago, the model of how we build networks was that the team that operated it needed to understand networking. Right now, if you look at the team that needs to operate it, they need to understand networking. They need to understand, compute. They need to understand virtualization. They need to understand AP eyes. They need to be able to script and program. They need to understand some level of data science that they can close a loop in the operational models eventually with a I and machine learning technologies. So I think that the teams that are getting built look very different than the single soul capabilities that they've had in the past, right? These air smaller teams they're more agile teams that can develop and have their own more unique processes in each part of the network. Right? And even if we think about the organizational structures, we've always built vertical organizations. Right? When I had an appliance, that was an e p. C. I had an operations team that was focused on an e p. C. And I even broke that into an S gateway P Gateway and Emma, me et cetera. If we look at the world now, that s Gateway P Gateway. Mm E consists of a server consists of the networking that connects at server consists of a virtual ization layer. It consists of a stack of a software application, and all of those need to be automated, orchestrated program toe work as any PC does. So I think that the skill sets have just really expanded in terms of what's expected, >> and this is really important because the process is used to be pretty well known and hardened, so the infrastructure could be hard, and now it's of every every months, the more the market changes right. What kind of what kind of challenges is that bring to the telco provider? But also to the infrastructure provider. >> Yeah, I actually I have a really good way to describe what I think is happening. We heard it from a lot of our customers and not just tell cause but enterprises. I would say the last 5 to 10 years everybody's been dealing with Hybrid Cloud. The Move to Cloud Waas. The Big Challenge. While this remains a key challenge, a new challenge showed up, which is how to succeed in this new modern software development model. You know, are you able to do to move at that speed, which means you have full stack engineers? Can you develop the app beginning to end? It's not a nightie model anymore. Also, you no longer have an operations team. You really have to have saris who, able with software and also the customer service, changed to a softwood Devyn. So we're starting to hear from a lot of our customers. That's the next journey they really need help with. If you think of infrastructure, those challenges are even bigger, and this is where it's important to lean on technology partners who can help you with that, >> and you hit on five G a little bit ago. You have in your initial statement and we've kind of touched on the impact that it can have in terms of you understanding there. They're going to a transformative time, right? I mean, telcos are with new capabilities, and new opportunities in this whole edge is gonna be crazy. So you've got to you've got I would say some learning to do, but you have. You've got to get up to speed on what their new fundamentals are going to be, right? Yeah, I think that's >> true. I think where you know, we we've understood >> their fundamentals because it's the same transition that the IittIe world's gone through. And to a large degree, that cloud world has gone through. I think that the challenge we've we've been working to break through collectively as an industry is the paralysis at the rate of adoption of new technologies because they're so much change so quickly because we talk about virtualization. And then we're talking about kubernetes. We're talking about cloud native we're talking about Ah, bare Metal Service's. We continue to talk about Micro Micro Service's architectures. We see this progression of technology that's happening so fast in various segments of the industry. I think that the telecommunications industry has been somewhat paralyzed in terms of where do they jump in and which do they adopt and how fast they migrate between them. And which of them can be capable of being hardened to be telco grade and fit into their requirements. That they have for being able to offer regulated service >> is paralyzed because it's just too fast. It's too fast for a big amazed, a big decision to make for big. But but things are evolving too quickly. That's that's It's evolving >> too quickly. And they also sometimes have a concern that they get stuck on a dead end path, right, Because things change so quickly it's Do I jump here? Then here, then here, then here, Then here. Where do I follow a logical path and what we tend to find when we work with the telecommunications industry is that, yes, del technologies can define a strategy. Certainly VM wear and L E. M. C can define our individual strategies. Are operators can define their strategies. But there's just not one strategy for this industry. Reality is, is that when you get when you get together with an ecosystem of partners, and you work at a particular telecommunications company. That is a strategy, and you start from scratch when you go to the next right because they're their ability to consume technology. It's just so different the end game, maybe the same across the board. But the path to get there will look different, >> so every customer's different Get that. But clearly some patterns must be emerging. So my question is, where do you start your sitting down with What are you seeing in terms of common starting points and advice you'd give Thio? >> I think that to Maine has everybody starting with First of all, the physical infrastructure. Compute storage Networking is moving to X 86 model of some sort, which means many, many parts of their infrastructure today that is not based on X 86 needs to transition. So what? Seeing big art piece significant discussions of how you take compute and this new programmable networking and put it everywhere like in thousands of locations. So infrastructure wise, that is a known specific thing to be solved at early stages and given you know, that capability he's we've delivered toward enterprises. We have a lot of tools and capabilities to give them, and the 2nd 1 is that a lot of people are approaching this as a network issue. In reality, it's a cloud decision, not a network. You hurt Shaker, talk about it so the tools capabilities you need to build a cloud is completely different. This cloud may not be genetic cloud it needs to be. It needs to support the defense specific platforms under for they want Cloud, and they needed to support the specific capabilities. So that's the two. A year ago, nobody even could articulate. That was the challenge they were facing. But I would say that's what we are today. >> I would add to that that as we kind of think about the infrastructure and then that cloud decision that there's abstractions that exist between those right at the infrastructure layer, there is the need tohave, an automation system that has the ability to support multiple different cloud platforms that sit on top of it. And that's work that we're doing in the deli in seaside and then secondary to that at the cloud layer. It's the ability to support a multi virtualization environment. Virtual machines do exist and will continue to exist. Kubernetes and cloud native containerized applications do exist and will continue to exist. And the challenge becomes. How do I orchestrate an environment that allows those two exist simultaneously and be layered on top of a common building block of infrastructure? And I think that's really the power that the broader Del Technologies has is that we have all of these entities and capabilities in house. >> How long does this take? A telco toe transform is this decade. Is it? Is it Maur can Obviously certain parts can happen faster. But when when you sit down with with customers and they put together their plans, I mean, what what what's their time horizon? >> So I would argue that we define the first NFI standards and 2012. And if we look globally and even within the vast majority of the Indus story and carriers were somewhere in the 10 to 15% range, yeah, >> yeah, that too compelling. Uh, hey, is that enough? Maybe be a forcing function for making some of those decisions. Are the economics on moving toe X 86 are very compelling. It's 10 times the speed to deploy, and it's a massive order of magnitude and costs. Therefore, it's not something that you could wait on as you continue to build capacity. So that's is forcing the infrastructure decision. The second forcing function is that what five G's starting to look like is not network and wireless, independent from enterprise solutions, you really have to collapse. The single infrastructure you know to offer service is and why it lists embedded on That's another forcing function in terms of enterprises is starting to ask for those capabilities. >> You know, you mentioned X 86 couple times and when you think about the Telco Cloud generically what we're talking about here in the in the commercial cloud not to tell ghost no commercial but the mainstream cloud you're getting a lot of offload, you know, hardware offload alternative processing arm uh, GP use F p g a Z even, you know, custom, a six coming back. You've seen the same thing in the Telco club >> for sure, I think I think if if you look at what we've done over the last several years, we've seen this dramatic shift in almost a pendulum swing away from a six and proprietary hardware towards everything on X 86 I think what we've learned over the last several years at X 86 is a platform that has its value. But it's just not for every work with So we've seen things like network slicing and control, user plane separation and technologies that her first moving user playing very high Io applications back onto smart nicks and F PJs and eventually onto merchant silicon with programmable silicate in the network switches. But I think that even if you look at what's happening in in Public Cloud with things like GPU virtualization, they're still largely virtualized in the time domain, which means that they're used by a particular application for a period of time and then the next application scheduled it in the next application schedule. Is it that doesn't work for network workloads? So I think that what we're finding is we go to this Toko Cloud model, especially with offload in the virtual ization of Acceleration Technologies, is that it's an entire set of problems that just aren't solved in public cloud yet. >> Yeah, I would say, based on experience, the vast majority of network workloads have to be x 86 I definitely think arm cores and GPO offloads will play all at some point in the future. But they that's not the heavy duty that you need to offload those functions because most of these network applications were it. And for custom, a sick. That's very high performance that you know, it has high throughput. Security, built in ability to build service is directly into the silicon. So that kind of transition over time you'll feed. You see a lot of distributed applications, it and container formats all the way at the edge. But that transition to that kind of distributed model from what we are today is probably not possible. And I would argue you'll always have their mics off high performance, high throughput. I mean, think about it. If you're trying to activate 20,000 I ot devices instantly, you really need a high core density, you know, x 86 chip with significant memory. You really worry about the data plane and how much data you can put. So it's better >> we didn't even hit I ot dead. Wait, wait Another day, Another conversation. Hey, thanks for the time. We certainly appreciate it. Been a good show I for you all to write for, sir? Good. Good energy. Good vibes and good business. Thanks for the time We appreciate it. >> Thank you, guys. Thank >> you very much for your time. >> Watching the Cube live coverage Here it Veum World 2019 in San Francisco. Thank you.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell World Technologies here in Las Vegas. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight along with my cohost, Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment. We have Honore LaBourdette. She is the VP, Global Market Development, Telco Business Group. Welcome, VMware, thank you, sorry. >> Thank you, yes. >> Welcome. And we have Kevin Shatzkamer, Senior VP, Networking and Solutions, Dell EMC. Thank you both so much for coming on the show. >> Our pleasure. >> Thank you. >> So Kevin I want to start with you. There was a big announcement this morning, signing with Orange of France. Tell our viewers a little bit more about this. >> Yeah, sure. So, I think as overall Dell Technologies continues to focus on helping our service providers through what is a very complex transition, both in their business, in their operations, in their technology investments, in the operational skill set gaps, in the business models, the architecture's use cases kind of comes across the board of how their businesses are evolving. What we continue to do is focus on a core set of telecommunication service providers that we can partner with very deeply to help in that transformation and use the knowledge gained through that collaboration as a means to expand the Dell Technologies capabilities globally. So, I think that the belief is that when we help solve problems, it not only benefits the service provider we're working with, it benefits the industry as a whole with the lessons learned, so that we can then contribute back. >> And so far, there's been some enthusiasm about this? >> There certainly has. I think it's been a big day for us. Obviously, the first two days at Dell Technologies World, we're extremely focused on new product introductions across the Dell portfolio, and today, with the opportunity to expand the messaging and announce some of the great things we're doing with partners, we're doing with out customers, and we're doing within the ecosystem, I think we continue to drive a very positive message. >> Honore, the networking component is something that we know service providers have a need and is ever-changing. We've watched that expand greatly in the VMware portfolio over the years. I've done plenty of interviews with telcos talking about things like NFV, network functions virtualization, but the big thing everybody's been talking about, the last couple of years it feels like, is 5G. So, maybe we could start there, but talk a little bit about what you're hearing from service providers and how VMware and VMware plus Dell are helping to meet some of those requirements. >> Sure, well, needless to say, 5G is the topic of every conversation we have with our telecommunication customers, and I think that there's a number of areas around 5G that are most prevalent in those conversations. One is really how does the service provider get a return on investment for the huge amounts of monies that they're investing in this infrastructure, right? So, 5G is a new infrastructure, a new technology, that's going to require a refresh of the entire infrastructure. And so, while they're making all of those investments, and they are doing so very aggressively to have a first-mover advantage, in terms of the first to deliver on a 5G technology, they want to work with vendors who can, in fact, accelerate their time to a return on the investment for that infrastructure. So, many of our conversations are really focused around how can we help these service providers actually accomplish that, right? Not just build out, or take advantage of a software-defined infrastructure and all of the technologies that both Dell and WMware offer to them under the umbrella of the Dell Technology Companies, but also, how can we help them accelerate services that they want to to put on top of the 5G technology? I think one of the key differentiators of 5G over its predecessors is that the industry has recognized that it's going to require partnerships in order for the service providers to really get their return on investment. And that's where the partnership with VMware and with Dell and the work that Kevin and I are doing together to focus on service providing is really anchored, right? It's bringing together those partnerships, so that these telecommunication customers can take advantage of our technology and do it very quickly. >> So, there's a real acknowledgement of the need for partnerships? >> Yes. >> So then, how do you show customers that the VMware-Dell partnership is the right direction? >> Well, needless to say, it's anchored in our technology. Kevin and I have been working together for a number of years now, and our partnership really started out focusing on just making sure that the components of the stack worked as promised, right? That we could deliver a high degree of confidence to our customers that when they software-defined the infrastructure on Dell Technology hardware, and then layered on top of that, their virtual network functions, that it would perform our outperform their legacy, bare-metal, vertical-stack equipment. Over time, however, our partnership has progressed to where we're actually collaborating to bring new technology to market together. And one example of that is the City of Las Vegas. We recently announced a Smart City IoT use case, and that technology, that solution, was co-developed with NTT, Dell EMC, and VMware using VMware software, Dell hardware, as well as Dell Storage, Dell Data Analytics and Intelligence, and NTT's infrastructure and points of presence. >> Yeah, I think there's both a technical reality and an operational reality to the technologies that we speak of, right? The technical reality is that the transformation that the telcos are going through around NFV and the direction toward network edge, edge computing, cloud environments, is really just software-defined data center similar to what we've done on the IT side for a long time. So, the technologies that the telecommunications industry is adopting are the technologies that both Dell EMC and VMware have been working on for a very long time. The operational reality is that just taking what you've done in IT and applying it into a telco network is not sufficient. Understanding of the workloads, how those workloads layer on top of infrastructure, understanding that those workloads are in a transformation of their own, and that virtual network functions were not designed to natively consume and compute. They were designed for network appliances, and that there are still requirements that they drive down to the infrastructure was, I think, where Honore and I have been investing for the last several years, right? How do we complement the broad capabilities of both Dell EMC and VMware in IT virtualization software-defined data center, and bring in telco service provider networking expertise and domain knowledge that we can use to be able to really ramp up and accelerate the partnerships we have in the service provider industry? >> That's great stuff. We actually got to do an interview on the smarter cities earlier this week, and a fascinating discussion to see how there's, Kevin, I like what you laid out there. When I look at this space, scale gets talked about a lot, but you talk to telcos, they have a little bit of a different scale, and the management for these kind of environments is also quite a bit different than if you were talking to the enterprise. Are those some of the key items? Where would you say your focus? >> I also think that even further. That the challenges of scale that have been solved in the public cloud are a different set of challenges than the telco industry is really trying to wrestle with, right? In the public cloud, we're taking about a very small number of facilities, and we can build a homogenous architecture within there. We define a standard server. We replicate that server across a rack, replicate that rack across rows, replicate those rows across a data center. The reality is, as we get further and further towards the edge of the telco network, it looks more heterogeneous, right? I need GPUs for particular instances. I have cloud-native applications. I have virtualized applications that sit inside of VMs. I have native Linux environments. I need to handle dense networking topologies. I have east-west traffic, north-south traffic that I need to take into account. And I think that what we've figured out and what we've learned in automating and orchestrating the public cloud is how to handle hundreds of thousands of things at single-digit number of locations. And what we're talking about here is hundreds of thousands of locations with single-digit number of things. >> And that's another key area of the collaboration between the two groups, in terms of how we deliver value to our telco customers. So, rather than us working in silos and delivering yet another disparate technology for managing the edge, cloud, or all these different locations, we're working together so we can bring a cohesive technology to market for them. >> That's right, I think the infrastructure demands and openness and a willingness to be a productive member of a complex and consistently changing ecosystem, and I think that, obviously, Dell EMC does that in our way. VMware does it in their way, but there's clear recognition that the better capabilities are when we work together to really drive the platform and bring the true capabilities of the broader Dell technologies together. >> So, telcoms is a hugely competitive industry, and as you've talked about, there's a lot of challenges, and it's a real transformative moment for this sector. Can you lay out some of sort of what you're thinking about for after 5G, which as you've said, is a hugely expensive investment for these companies? But sort of post-5G, what are we looking at? What's on their minds of your customers? >> So, I don't know that there's going to be distinct, post-5G event, right? I think that 5G, in and of itself, is going to take some time to roll out and proliferate, to the extent that its predecessors is now deployed across all locations all over the world. I do think that 5G, in addition to the infrastructure technology, or the refresh of that technology, a lot of what is going to happen around 5G is, in fact, the applications and use cases that's going to take advantage of 5G. If we about what 5G is capable of enabling, it doesn't just address consumer applications. 5G also will address enterprise applications. And that opens up a whole world of innovation, and again, applications, partnerships, and vendors coming together, who can really help the service providers put those pieces together and deliver on those applications. There's already talk about 6G, although it's very limited. So, it's easy for me to say what's coming next after 5G will be 6G, but I think that there's still a lot of activity and a lot of innovation that will happen around 5G for some time to come. >> Yeah, we know that standards and the consortiums always have to be working. I was looking at terabit ethernet on the networking side. So, I wanted to help kind of bring this conversation together. If you have maybe a customer example, love if you could share who it is, but if not, give us a little bit of anonymity around what it is to help highlight this partnership. >> Sure, I think Honore shared the City of Las Vegas as a great example of where we're enabling the Smart Cities use case. We can speak to MetTel, in terms of the capabilities of Dell Technologies to be able to transform their NFV offerings and really help them bring NFV to market at scale. We can speak to at least one tier-one service provider in AMIA that is delivering a full-stack offering, in which we extended the capabilities of our Ericsson partnership that both Dell EMC, as well as VMware have, to build a complete stack offering of Ericsson, VMware, as well as Dell EMC. >> Yeah, and to Ericsson, there's some of the edge computing in there. I've talked to them quite a bit about what they're doing on their edge offering. >> Yeah, so I think we have a number of examples that we also can't share as publicly. But we continue to collaborate. I think we're driving fantastic innovation. The industry is responding extremely favorably across the board, and I think that the strategy that we have jointly to not just develop technology, but really change the way we engage with telecommunications organizations and service providers to work with them well before they're ready to deploy technology, and also, help them scale their own operations and understand this transformation is really key to the success here. Because just having the best technology at this inflection point in the industry is not enough. We really have to partner to help them understand how to operationalize and monetize that infrastructure. >> And we do have a number of innovation projects, with regards to the edge and far edge with some of the top-tier service providers, in particular, in the Americas, where we're working together for edge solutions. I've got to hear what this far-edge is in a future conversation, because I thought I was getting my arms around it, but -- >> I know, it was edge, and now it's edge and far-edge. >> That's for Dell Technologies World 2020. >> That's right. >> Honore, Kevin, thank you both so much for coming on theCUBE. >> My pleasure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> It's a great time. >> You are watching theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World. There's more to come after this. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018 here in Las Vegas. I'm Stu Miniman joined by my cohost Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome to the program first time guest, Kevin Shatzkamer, who's the Vice President of Service Provider Strategy and Solutions with Dell EMC. Kevin thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Alright, so first time on the program, give us a little bit about your background, you know, what brought you to the Dell family of technical companies. >> Sure, absolutely. I've been in the service provider industry, supporting and working with service providers, about 20 years, working in areas first at the launch of 2G mobile data services, 3G, 4G. Now, we're at the advent of 5G. And during the entire time what we've continued to witness is this continued move away from proprietary more towards open technologies, obviously moving away from proprietary hardware appliances more towards X86-based appliances. The networking stacks moving more and more open in the last 18 months. During my journey here at Dell EMC, it was an opportunity to really come in and recognize Dell EMC and Dell Technologies family of companies as the foundational technologies for how we watch the telco industry really transform itself and start to embrace IT transformation into their own operations. >> Yeah, that's a great background. Keith and I had a great discussion with Tom Burns talking about networking. We've been watching the open networking feeds, but we haven't gotten into all the G's as much. Explain to our audience, we've got Interrupt down the street, we've done coverage of Mobile World Congress, but 5G, some of the standards are there, but some of the things are going to sort out. These type of transitions do take years to go, but why so important and how does Dell play into the story? >> I think if we go back towards kind of the 2012 timeframe, I think there were two acronyms that really came to the forefront. It was SDN and it was NFV. And at the time it was really discussed in the lens of how we saw the second half of 4G materializing and recognizing that for the second half of 4G with the early days of IoT, the economics of how you operate the network needed to change drastically. We saw some of that start to happen when we look at NFV in the industry, I think there's a little bit of trough of disillusionment out there, and I think we see some use cases that have been successful. We've seen some challenges in terms of operationalizing NFV at scale. I think SDN to date has really been confined to sitting within the data center or interconnecting servers and building overlay technologies for the data centers. But what I expect to see now as we go into 5G is not the need for incremental improvement but the need for an absolute step function in terms of performance, in terms of reliability, in terms of reduction in latency, all at a drastically different cost economics. So now when we start to think about the second wave of NFV and we think about SDN leaving the data center, I think that's where we're going to see 5G really play a lead. From taking some of the technologies we've been talking about in siloed pockets and really see them move to scaled operations. >> So, you mentioned a lot of the telco space and in this environment, I've got familiarity with how EMC used to work with the service providers. Dell, of course you know, plays up and down and all over the place. What's the relationship with the telcos and the service providers from the Dell family? >> I think when Dell Technology speaks about the four transformations, we talk about workforce transformation, IT transformation, digital transformation and security transformation. I think all of those are opportunities for the telcos and service providers in two ways. One, is recognizing that their own network operations are transforming and that embracing the concepts of the IT transformation inside of their own operations, obviously with the telco grade reliability, is an area that we work very closely with the telecos and SPs around. The second part is recognizing that the digital transformation and the shift towards digital for most of small medium business will be recognized through service providers, through cloud technologies. So the second way we work very closely with these service providers is helping them build the services that allow them to capture digital transformation as it moves off-prem into the cloud. >> Can you provide some clarity or vision into the service provider space, when it comes to the need for innovation to make that step transformation to 5G? With an enterprise we can see VMware NSX and we're blown away by it and that's way beyond what a lot of customers need, but there's still a lot of work to go through to your point. What are some of those innovations that have to happen? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think if you're at Mobile World Congress and just about any tradeshow event, and even Michael Dell's keynote this morning at Dell Technologies World, the conversation of the edge came up. I think that there's still a lot of debate around what the edge is, and I know that the conversation came up around distribution of compute. But I think that the conversation is really around decentralization. If we've looked over the last five years as cloud services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, IBM SoftLayer, various others, have really been built. They've been built around a model that said that to achieve efficiency and scale you have to build massively scaled centralized data centers. Now it turns out that low latency, highly interactive services that are very data driven just don't work well when the distance between the applications and the users consuming those applications is really large. Latency is too high, jitter's too high, it's a little bit too unpredictable. I think that the number one iteration, the number one innovation that we will see in the network's is the innovation at the edge. Now, the edge can be on-prem, it can sit on-prem at stadiums and venues. It can sit at the cell site, it can sit in the mobile backbone network, it can sit at central office locations. I think what we'll continue to see is recognition of, not necessarily, if you build it, they will come model, but recognition that there is a class of services and applications that the edge just makes sense to rally around. And we'll see the edge become the new cloud. >> We talk about NFV, the edge, shed some light, what would a CPE device look like at the edge? Is that NFV running on the customer's virtualized infrastructure, is that truly some x86 box that the service provider puts in place that's provided by Dell? Paint a clearer picture, I hope, for the edge. >> So the answer is yes. >> Keith: I was afraid you'd say that, It's a CPE that sits on the branch and at the enterprise prem right. Dell EMC and Mobile World Congress and most recently announced our Virtual Edge Platform family of products with the first platform being the Virtual Edge Platform 4600. The industry's first Skylake-D platform, specifically targeting the access and branch edge. But in addition to that, I think that what we're going to see is in the central office locations the boundaries between what is a compute device and what is a network device really start to blur. That modular servers, that include x86 and merchant silicon and FPGA to terminate certain circuit switch workloads, like cloud LAN and smart NICs to be able to process data on the NIC itself are really going to start to come to the forefront. Maybe we see GPU start to be included in that as well for more machine learning and artificial intelligence use cases. But I think that going forward the end goal of the programmability that we talked about, both at the application layer as well as at the infrastructure layer, means that the boundaries between what's a server, and what's a network device, really start to blur. >> Last question I have for you. When I talk to service providers, it feels like that they're being pulled from both sides. On the one side, there's public cloud, lots of them are figuring out how to do direct connect, work to integrate into those services for VMware's partnering with them on that. On the other side, there's all this edge stuff that you've been talking about. You know, massive footprint and there's so many pieces that they need to think about. What do you hear from your customers? What's their biggest challenges and opportunities that they're facing? >> Yeah, I think you're right. I think that when customers are being torn and service providers are being torn in the way that they are, they somewhat retreat to an or mindset, right. Is it this or this, do I live in the public cloud or do I live at my edge? Do I live in an open source environment or do I embrace technologies coming from industry vendors? I think more and more what we're seeing is a transition to an end environment and recognition that certain applications and workloads are well suited to reside in particular locations. Michael said in his keynote this morning that the cloud is not a place, it's a business model. I think that what we actually see is even extending that thought a little further, is that the cloud is just a whole bunch of different places. We're going to move services and applications and workloads to the locations that are best able to meet the subscriber experience and deliver on what the applications expect. >> Kevin, really appreciate your help giving us an instant insight into one of the more dynamic pieces of the IT industry. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Dell World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, this is Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018 here in Las Vegas, I'm Stu Miniman joined by my cohost Keith Townsend. Happy to welcome to the program first time guest Kevin Shatzkamer who's the vice president of Service Provider Strategy and Solution with Dell EMC. Kevin, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> Alright, so, first time on the program. Give us a little bit about your background, you know what brought you to the Dell family of tech companies. >> Sure, absolutely. So I've been in the service provider industry, supporting and working with service providers, gosh, about 20 years. Working in areas first at the launch of 2G mobile data services, 3G, 4G, now we're at the advent of 5G, and during the entire time, what we've continued to witness is continued move away from proprietary more towards open technologies, obviously moving away from proprietary hardware appliances, more towards x86 based appliances, the networking stacks moving more and more open. In the last 18 months, during my journey here at Dell EMC it was an opportunity to really come in and recognize Dell EMC and Dell Technologies' family of companies as the foundational technologies for how we watch the telco industry really transform itself and start to embrace IT transformation to their own operations. >> Great background. Keith and I had a great discussion with Tom Burns about networking. We've been watching the open networking piece. But we haven't gotten into all the Gs as much, so explain to our audience, you know, we've got interrupt down the street, we've done coverage of Mobile World Congress, but, 5G, some of the standards are there, some of the things are going to sort out. These types of transitions do take years to go, but why so important and how does Dell play into the story? >> Yeah I think, you know, if we go back towards kind of the 2012 timeframe, I think there were two acronyms that really came to the forefront. It was SDN and it was NFV, and at the time it was really discussed in the lens of how we saw the second half of 4G materializing and recognizing that for the second half of 4G, with the early days of IoT, the economics of how you operate the networks needed to change drastically. So we saw some of that start to happen. When we look at NFV in the industry, I think there's a little bit of trough of disillusionment out there. I think we see some use cases that have been successful. We've seen some challenges in terms of operationalizing NFV at scale. I think SDN to date has really been confined to sitting within the data center for interconnecting servers and building overlay technologies for the data centers. But what I expect to see now as we go into 5G is not the need for incremental improvement, but the need for an absolute step function in terms of performance, in terms of reliability, in terms of reduction in latency, all at a drastically different cost economics. So now when we start to think about the second wave of NFV, and we think about SDN leaving the data center, I think that's where we're going to see 5G really play a lead, from taking some of the technologies we've been talking about in siloed pockets and really seeing them move to scaled operations. >> So you mentioned a lot of the telco space in this environment. I've got familiarity with how EMC used to work with the service providers. Dell, of course, plays up and down and all over the place. What's the relationship with the telcos and the service providers from the Dell family? >> Yeah, I think when Dell Technologies speaks about the four transformations, we talk about workforce transformation, IT transformation, digital transformation, and security transformation, I think all of those are opportunities for the telcos and service providers in two ways. One is recognizing that their own network operations are transforming and that embracing the concepts of the IT transformation inside of their own operations, obviously with the telco grade reliability is an area that we work very closely with the telcos and SPs around. The second part is recognizing that the digital transformation and the shift towards digital for most of small-medium business will be recognized through service providers, through cloud technologies. So the second way we work very closely with these service providers is helping them build the services that allow them to capture digital transformation as it moves off-prem into the cloud. >> So Kevin can you help provide some clarity or vision into the service provider space when it comes to the need for innovation to make that step transformation to 5G? In the enterprise, you know, we can see (mumbles) we're blown away by it and that's way beyond what a lot of customers need, but there's still a lot of work to go through, to your point. What are some of those innovations that have to happen? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think if you're at Mobile World Congress, just about any trade show event, and even Michael Dell's keynote this morning at Dell Technologies World, the conversation of the edge came up. I think that there's still a lot of debate around what the edge is, and I know that the conversation came up around distribution of compute. But I think that the conversation is really around decentralization. So if we've looked over the last five years as cloud services like AWS and Microsoft Azure, IBM Softlayer, various others, have really been built, they've been built around a model that to achieve efficiency in scale, you have to build massively scaled centralized data centers. Now, it turns out that low latency, highly interactive services that are very data driven just don't work well when the distance between the applications and the users consuming those applications is really large. Latency is too high, jitter's too high. It's a little bit too unpredictable. So I think that the number one iteration, the number one innovation that we will see in the networks is the innovation at the edge. Now, the edge can be on-prem, it can sit on-prem at stadiums and venues. It can sit at the cell site. It can sit in the mobile backhaul network. It can sit at central office locations. And I think what we'll continue to see is recognition of not necessarily a if you build it they will come model, but recognition that there is a class of services and applications that the edge just makes sense to rally around, and we'll see the edge become the new cloud. >> So as we talk about NFV, the edge, shed some light. What would the CPE device look like at the edge. Is that NFV running on a customer's virtualized infrastructure? Is that truly some x86 box that the service provider puts in place that's provided by Dell? Paint a clearer picture, I hope, for the edge. >> So the answer is yes. >> Keith: (laughs) How dare you say that? >> It's a CPE that sits on the branch and at the enterprise prem, and Dell EMC and Mobile World Congress and most recently announced our Virtual Edge Platform family of products with the first platform being the Virtual Edge Platform 4600. The industry's first Skylake D platform specifically targeting the access of branch edge. But in addition to that, I think that what we're going to see is in the central office locations, the boundaries between what is a compute device and what is a network device really start to blur. And that modular servers that include x86, and merchant silicon, and FPGA to terminate certain circuit switch workloads like Cloud-RAN and SmartNICs to be able to process data on the NIC itself are really going to start to come to the forefront. Maybe we see GPUs start to be included in that as well for more machine learning and artificial intelligence use cases. But I think that going forward, the end goal of the programmability that we talk about, both at the application layer as well as at the infrastructure layer, means that the boundaries between what's a server and what's a network device really start to blur. >> Kevin, last question I have for you: when I talk to service providers it feels like they're being pulled from both sides, so on the one side there's public cloud. Lots of them are figuring out how to do direct connect, work integrate into those services for VMwares, partnering with them on that. And on the other side, there's all this edge stuff that you've been talking about. Massive footprint, and, you know, so many pieces that they need to think about. What do you hear from your customers? What's their biggest challenges and opportunities that they're facing? >> Yeah, I think you're right. I think that when customers are being torn and service providers are being torn in the way that they are, they somewhat retreat to an "or" mindset. Is it this or this, right? Do I live in the public cloud or do I live at my edge? Do I live in an open source environment or do I embrace technologies coming from industry vendors, right? And I think more and more what we're seeing is a transition to an "and" environment and recognition that certain applications and workloads are well suited to reside in particular locations. Michael said in his keynote this morning that the cloud is not a place, it's a business model. And I think that what we actually see is, even extending that thought a little further, is that the cloud is just a whole bunch of different places, and we're going to move services and applications and workloads to the locations that are best able to meet the subscriber experience and deliver on what the applications expect. >> Kevin, really appreciate you help giving us some insight into one of the more dynamic pieces of the IT industry. We'll be back with lots more coverage here from Dell World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman, this is Keith Townsend. Thanks for watching theCUBE.