from Las Vegas it's the queue covering VMworld 2018 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners and we're back here at the Mandalay Bay in somewhat beautiful Las Vegas where we're doing third day of VMworld on the cube and on Peterborough and I'm joined by my two lead analysts here at Ricky bond with me Jim Camilo's who's looking at a lot of the software stuff David floor who's helping to drive a lot of our hardware's research guys you've spent an enormous amount of time talking to an enormous number of customers a lot of partners and we all participated in the Analyst Day on Monday let me give you my first impressions and I want to ask you guys some questions here you thought so I have it this is you know my third I guess VMworld in or in a row and and my impression is that this has been the most coherent of the VM worlds I've seen you can tell when a company's going through a transition because they're reaching to try to bring a story together and that sets the tone but this one hot calendar did a phenomenal job of setting up the story it makes sense it's coherent possibly because it aligns so well with what we think is going to happen in the industry so I want to ask you guys based on three days of one around and talking to customers David foyer what's been the high point what have you found is the most interesting thing well I think the most interesting thing is the excitement that there is over VMware if you if you contrast that with a two three years ago the degree of commitment of customers to viennois the degree of integration they're wanting to make the degree rate of change and ideas that have come out of VMware it's like two different companies totally different companies some of the highlights for me were the RDS the bringing from AWS to on site as well as on the AWS cloud RDS capabilities I think that's a very very interesting thing that's the relational database is services the Maria DB and all the other services that's a very exciting thing to me and a hint to me that AWS is going to have to get serious about well Moore's gone out I think it's a really interesting point that after a lot of conversations with a lot of folks saying all AWS it's all going to go up to the cloud and wondering whether that also is a one-way street for VMware Casta Moore's right but now we're seeing it's much more of a bilateral relationship it's a moving it to the right place and that's the second thing the embracing of multi-cloud by everybody one cloud is not going to do everything they're going to be SAS clouds they're going to be multiple places where people are gonna put certain workloads because that's the best strategic fit for it and the acceptance in the marketplace that that is where it's going to go I think that again is a major change so hybrid cloud and multi cloud environments and then the third thing is I think the richness of the ecosystem is amazing the the going on the floor and the number of people that have come to talk to us with new ideas really fascinating ideas is something I haven't seen at all for the last last three four years and so I'm gonna come back to you on that but it goes back to the first point that you make that yeah there is a palpable excitement here about VMware that two-three years ago the conversation was how much longer is the franchise gonna be around Jim but now it's clear yeah it's gonna be around Jim how about you yeah actually I'm like you guys I'm a newbie to VM world this is my very first remember I'm a big data analyst I'm a data science an AI guy but obviously I've been aware of VMware and I've had many contacts with them over the years my take away my prime and I like Pat Gail singers I agree with you Peter they're really coherent take and I like that phrase even though it sounds clucking impact kind of apologize they are the dial tone to the multi-cloud if the surgery really gives you a strong sense or who else can you character is in this whole market space cloud computing has essentially a multi cloud provider who provide the unifying virtualization glue to help their custom to help customers who are investing in an AWS and maybe in a bit of you know you're adopting Google and Microsoft Azure and so forth providing a virtualization layer that's the above server virtualization network virtualization VDI all the way to the edge nobody can put it all is putting it all together and quite the way that VMware is one of the my chief takeaways is similar to David's which is that in terms of the notion of a hybrid cloud VMware with its whole what's it's doing with RDS but also projects like this project dimension which is in project in progress taking essentially the entire VMware virtualization stack and putting it onto an appliance for deployment on the edges and then for them to manage it VMware of this their plans as an end-to-end managed edge cloud service and so forth Wow the blurring of public and private cloud I don't even think the term hybrid cloud applies it's just a blurry the common cloud yeah it's moving to the workload the clouds moving to the data which is exactly what we say they are halfway there in terms of that vision halfway in a sense that RDS has been announced the you know on the VMware and this project dimension they're well along with that if there was a briefings for the analyst space I'm really impressed for how they're architecting this I think they've got a shot to really dominate well I'll tell you so I would agree with you just to maybe provide a slightly different version of one of the things you said I definitely agree I think what's VMware hopes to do and I think they're not alone is to have AWS look like an appliance to their console to have as you look like an appliance of their Khan so through free em where you can get access to whatever services you need including your VMware machines your VMs inside those clouds but that increasingly their their goal is to be that control point that management point for all of these different resources that are building and it is very compelling I think that there's one area that I still think we need more from as analysts and we always got to look through no and what's yeah what was more required and I hear what you say about project dimension but I think that the edge story still requires a fair amount of work oh yeah it's a project in place but that's going to be an increasingly important locus of how architectures get laid out how people think about applications in the future how design happens how methodologies for building software work David what do you think what when you look out what what is what what is more is needed for you so really I think there are two things that give me a small concern the the edge that's a long term view so they got time to get that right but the edge view is very much an IT view top-down and they are looking to put in place everything that they think the OT people should fit in with I think that is personally not going to be a winning strategy you you have to take it from the bottom up the world is going to go towards devices very rich devices and sensors lots of software right on that device the inference work on those devices and the job of IT will be to integrate those devices it won't be those devices taking on the standards of IT it'll be IT that has to shape itself to look after all those devices there so that's a that's the main viewpoint I think that needs adjustment and it will come I'm sure over time but as you said there's a lot of computer science it's going to be an enormous amount of new partnerships are gonna be fabricate exactly to make this happen Jim what do you think yeah I agree terms of partnerships one big gap from both VMware and Dell technologies partnerships and romance and technology proposes AI now they have a project VMware call from another project called project Magna which is really AI ops in fact I published a wiki about reports this week on AI ops AI to drive IT Service Management and to and they're doing some stuff they're working on that project it's just you know the beginning stages I think what's going to happen is that vmware dell technologies they're gonna have to make strategic acquisitions of AI solution providers to build up that capability because that's going to be fundamental to their ability to manage this complex multi called fabric from end to end continuously they need that competency internally that can't be simply a partner providing that that's got to be their core competencies so you know I'm gonna push it I'll give you the contrarian point of view okay we actually had Khamsin VMware we've had a lot of conversations about this does that is that a reflection of David's point about top-down buying things and pushing it down as opposed to other conversations we've had about how the edge is going to evolve where a lot of OT guys are going to combine with business expertise and technology expertise to create specialized solutions and is and then VMware is gonna have to reach out to them and make VMware relevant to them do you think it's going to be VMware buying a bunch of stuff or an a-grade no solution or is it going to be the solutions coming from elsewhere and VM at VMware I just becoming more relevant to them now you can still be buying a bunch of stuff to get that horizontal in place but which way you think it's going to go I think it's gonna be the top-down they're gonna buy stuff because if I talk to the channel one of the channel people this morning about well you know but they've got an IOT connected bundle and so forth they announced this show you know I think they agree with me that the core AI technology needs to be built into the fundamentals like the IOT stack bundle that they then provide to the channel partners for with you know with channel specific content that they can then tweak and customize to their specific needs but you know the core requirements for a I are horizontal you know it's the ability to run neural networks to do predictive analysis anomaly detection and so forth this is all cross-cutting across all domains it has to be in the core application stack they can't be simply something they source for particular channel opportunities it has to be leveraged across you know the same core tensorflow models for anomaly detection for manufacturing for logistics for you know customer relationship management whatever it's or are you saying essentially that then VMware becomes that horizontal play even though even if the solution providers are increasingly close to the actual action where the edges III I'm gonna disagree we can gently on that but we'd still be friends [Music] no it's you know I'm I'm an OT guy of hearth I suppose and I think that that is going to be a stronger force in terms of VMware but there will be some places where you it will be top-down but other places that where it's going to be need needed to adjust but I think there's one other there very interesting area I'd like to bring up in terms of of this question of acquisition what what we heard about beforehand was excellent results and VMware has been adding a you know a billion dollars a year in terms of free cash there and they have thirteen billion in short term cash there and the the refinancing from Dell is gonna take eleven of that thirteen and put it towards the towards the the company now you can work towards deltek yes well just Dell Dell as a hold and and silver later towards those partners I I personally believe that there is such a lot of opportunity that's going to be out there if you take NSX for example it has the potential to do things in new areas they're gonna need to provide solutions in those new areas and aggressively go after those new areas and that's going to mean big investments and many other areas where I think they are going to need acquisitions to strengthen the whole story they have the whole multi-cloud story about this real-time operating system in a sexy has a network routing virtualization backplane I mean it needs to go real-time so sensitive guaranteed ladies if they need that big investments guarantee yeah they need to go there yeah so what we're agreeing on that and I get concerned that it's not going to be given the right resources you know to be able to actually go after the opportunities that they have genuinely created it's gonna mean from you see how that plays out so I think all drugs in the future I think saying though is that there is going to be a solution a set of solution players that VMware is going to have to make significant moves to make them relevant and then the question is where it's the values story what's the value proposition it's probably gonna be like all partnerships yeah some are gonna claim that they are doing it also some are gonna DM where it's gonna claim that they do more of it but at the end of the day VMware has to make themself relevant to the edge however that happens I want to pick up on NSX because I'm a pretty big believer that NSX may be the very special crown jewel and a lot of the stuff this notion of hybrid cloud whatever we call it let's just call it extended cloud let me talk of a better word like it is predicated on the idea that I also have a network that can naturally and easily not just bridge but truly multi network interoperate internet work with a lot of different cloud sources but also all different cloud locations and there's not a lot of technologies out there that are great candidates to do that and it's and I look at NSX and I'm wondering is that gonna be kind of a I want to take the metaphor too far but is that gonna be kind of a new tcp/ip for the cloud in the sense that you're still gonna run over tcp/ip and you're still gonna run over the Internet but now we're gonna get greater visibility into jobs into workloads into management infrastructures into data locations and data placement predictive movement and NSX is going to be the at the vanguard of showing how that's gonna work and the security side of that especially to be able to know what is connected to what and what shouldn't be connected to what and to be able to have that yeah they need stateful structured streaming others Kafka flink whatever they need that to be baked into the whole nsx virtualization layer that much more programmable and that provides that much better a target for applications all right last question then we got a wrap guys David as you walk out the door get in the plane what are you taking away what's your last impression my last impression is one of genuine excitement wanting to work wanting to follow up with so many of the smaller organizations the partners that have been here and who are genuinely providing in this ecosystem a very rich tapestry of of capability that's great Jim my takeaway is I want to see their roadmap for kubernetes and serverless there wasn't a hole last year they made an announcement of a serverless project I forgot what the code name is didn't hear a whole lot about it this year but they're going up the app stack they got a coop you know distribution you know they're if they need a developer story I mean developers are building functional apps and so forth you know you can and they're also containerized they need they need a developer story and they need a server list story and they need to you need to bring us up to speed on where they're going in that regard because AWS their predominant partner I mean they got lambda functions and all that stuff you know that's that's the development platform of the present and future and I'm not hearing an intersection of that story with VMware's a story yeah my last thing that I'll say is that I think that for the next five years VMware is gonna be one of the companies that shapes the future of the cloud and I don't think we would have said that a couple of names no they wouldn't I agree with you so you said yes all right so this has been the wiki bond research leadership team talking about what we've heard at VMware this year VMworld this year a lot of great conversation feel free to reach out to us and if you want to spend more time with rookie bond love to have you once again Peter burrows for David floor and Jim Kabila's thank you very much for watching the cube we'll talk to you again [Music]