>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering VMworld 2017! Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (electronic music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We're on day three of our continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. We've all counted our steps, lots of steps we've gotten in, lots of great conversations. I am Lisa Martin with my co-host John Troyer. We're joined now by two guests who are new to theCUBE. Chanda Dani, Senior Director of Product Marketing, Storage and Development at VMware. Welcome to theCUBE! >> Thank you. >> And you're also joined by Mark Vaughn, you're the Director of Strategic Technology Group with Presidio, welcome! >> Yes ma'am, thank you. >> So guys we're at day three of, hopefully your feet aren't too sore, of VMware 2017. Big announcements on Monday about VCF, on AWS yesterday, the pivotal container service with Google, Pat Gelsinger mentioned on Monday, 10,000 customers on VSAN. Chanda, have you heard from customers at the event? What has their reaction been to some of the great news that's been announced? >> Customers are actually really excited. They see VMware evolve and become more and more mature and bigger, and the see us as a partner. In the context of VSAN, they are even more excited. I met a lot of customers who wanted to try out our hands-on labs, and these were actually storage admins who were like, "I'm really interested, can you guide me through this process?" I had a session on Sunday and I thought, people are still pouring in, checking into the hotel. And the session had four, five hundred people and it was on VSAN and there was so much excitement! So it's really, really amazing. Great time for VSAN right now. >> Wow, did Pat say adding 100 customers a week? >> Yes, we are adding 100 customers a week. >> That's remarkable, and it sounds like you're seeing maybe a shift in terms of the skill types that are wanting to learn about this technology? >> Exactly, so VI admins have always been a champion, but what has been very interesting this VMware that a lot of storage admins have come to the show and they are all at the hands-on labs and the sessions wanted to learn about it more and more. >> From a market perspective, Mark, question for you. Given that, and we're hearing quite a bit, John, over the last couple of days on both of our sets here, generational shifts, skillset shifts. In terms of shifts and trends in the market, what are some of the data center trends that you've heard, Mark, articulated on the show floor and from your partner, VMware, this week? >> There's definitely the shift with VMware Cloud on AWS. That's been a real emphasis this week, which again builds on what we've been doing in the private data center. So building on VCN, building on NSX, building on the VMware hypervisor. So those are some trends we've really seen and, honestly, in the data center in general, we've seen a shift in storage the last few years. So it's moving more towards an emphasis on the software. So whether you're releasing that now as a virtual appliance or a cloud appliance, or going a step further and having a solution that is totally self-defined, like VCN, we're beginning to see the emphasis move from hardware to software. >> So Mark, we've had a lot of innovation in hyperconverged infrastructure in the last few years. With VCN being one of the pillars of innovation. But the market is interesting, a lot of players in the market, some being pulled out, others entering, where are we in this whole evolution? What is the state of hyperconverged infrastructure and hyperconverged storage in 2017? >> As we look so much to public cloud, and it's been such a buzzword for the last few years, we've noticed that a lot of our customers have moved to it and realized it doesn't work everywhere. But what attracted them to the cloud, they still want, even when they run on-prem data center now. So they want that flexibility, they want that ability to scale easily, they want flexible billing, as well, and consumption-based models. And so software-defined storage and VSAN really create the ability to, you may not want everything in the cloud. But you can still have what you liked about the cloud in your own data center. And so that's part of the modernization story that we're walking through with a lot of our customers. >> Chanda, how are you seeing the consumption models? Software versus VMware ready-nodes, build-your-own partner ecosystem, how are people taking, you know, is it in the cloud, is it on-prem, how are people taking these in? >> Actually, this is one of the key reasons why customers like VSAN, the wide choice of consumption models that they have. They can fully-customize it, build it themselves, they can go with the ready-nodes, they also have a choice to go with an appliance-based solution which we have with Dell EMC called VxRail, and they also like the choice that, what they could do on-prem, now they can do it on AWS and it's just yet another site for them. And, for example, disaster recovery as a service is one of the use cases they really want to move forward with. I just came back from a customer meeting, explaining to them how it would work, and they're really excited and waiting for it to come. >> So you mentioned Dell EMC, and one of the questions I had was, just about one-year-post combination of Dell taking over. One of the things that was very clearly articulated during the keynote by Michael Dell himself was that, the importance of the VMware ecosystem really growing. And the independence. So long-time partners, Presidio and VMware, talk to us about your channel strategy, and how it's going to evolve or is evolving as you need to give customers this flexibility of private-public hybrid based on their needs and this consumption-driven model. How is the channel strategy evolving to facilitate that? You can both take a shot at that. >> One thing I've noticed, upfront, when it comes to consumption models is, we're actually seeing vendors like Dell and other OEM partners beginning to offer consumption models where you can actually now get hardware on six-month, one-year, you know, shorter term, where it gives you the flexibility of the cloud of, you don't have to make a longterm commitment to hardware, you can flex, you can grow. Even when it's on-prem, you can still have some of that flexibility. We've also worked out some cost models for some of our customers where we can help them have that flexibility and consumption models to allow them to actually grow on-prem in a similar way that they would in the cloud. >> Chanda, same question for you, the channel strategy. Kind of, what do you see as some of the next steps to make that channel, and make, event the partnership with Presidio even better? >> Right. So actually, Presidio has been a very successful partner for VSAN and, talking about channel strategy, if you look at it, VSAN, today, has 10,000 customers. vSphere has 350,000 customers. We are not even 4% penetrated in our own install-base, and given the tight correlation between vSphere and VSAN, we all know that vSphere obtained this large install-base through our channel. So for VSAN to have such a big install-base and increase our penetration, it is actually channel that will do that for us. And Presidio is well ahead on that curve right now. So our strategy, actually, is related to server refresh. It is projected that, by the end of 2019, about 60% of our customers would be going through a server refresh. And as they go through a server refresh, they adopt hyperconversion infrastructure more and more. Because they're buying these new servers, they say, might as well buy a ready-node. And we want to ensure that our channel is well-equipped to take advantage of this wave that is coming. So there are many things we are doing, for example, number one, that they are able to build their practice. And Presidio is quite ahead there. But the rest of the world is able to do that too, globally. And secondly, we are trying to simplify and streamline things for them by having product packages which they can sell easily. For example, we have a package of vSphere and VSAN called HCI Kit, where we have designed it such that, the most profitable way to sell vSphere is to sell it with VSAN, because if they sell vSphere, if they qualify, the ad-plus at the back is 10%. But if they sell the HCI kit, which is Vspere and VSAN, the back-end ad-plus is 30%. So for our channel, the most profitable way is to sell vSphere along with VSAN. Then we have also designed a whole bunch of sales tools. Like, they can go into an account, do an assessment, do a whole sizing for the VSAN ready node, do a full ready-node configuration with our OEM partners such as HP, Dell, Fujitsu, Lenovo, et cetera, they are all at the solution exchange here. And then they can have a full TCO conversation. All of this is now available for our channel, and we went ahead and did a practice builder workshop in all major cities globally to help them come up to speed on all this stuff. There are many other programs. And we are now providing POC gears so that you can actually do successful POCs too. So it's now execution for us. >> Yes. And it's been great because VMware has really created and ecosystm that we can work well within, and it actually creates a journey for our customers. So we've been able to walk a number of customers, I was working with a customer just this week that has been a long-time ESX environment for their VMware hypervisor. Probably four years ago they began using VSAN early on, and since that time they've moved, VSAN is now their primary storage, and now they're moving into deployment in SX. And as that is going along, they're beginning to look at vRealize Operations, they're beginning to look at Airwatch, so it really creates an ecosystem that we can walk people through the journey of moving into these, and there's often opportunities where we can come in and do a number of these at a time. But there's also a lot of opportunities where customers kind of need to mature their own processing and go through this journey. >> Mark, I'd like to drill down on that a little bit. I've known you for years, you know, back in the day when the virtualization admin was the role that was just created, and started to bridge some of those silos between storage, networking, Windows, security, teams. You talked about the channel, let's talk about the customer uptake and enablement on their side. Who are the people that are being trained on this? Is it, do folks still have the traditional storage admin? Is it a combined team? Who's buying it, who's responsible for it, and how are you helping them succeed with VSAN? >> We really have to approach that based on each customer's individual makeup. And we need to see how their organizations worked out, and where their skillsets lie. But we see that, really, as a mix. It's been much the same way as networking. At first, networking was separate from virtual networking, and they quickly realized as, you know, 80 or 90% of their environment became virtualized, you can't just sit outside of the hypervisor, you have to be participating in the network inside the hypervisor as well. So there's definitely skillsets that the storage admin brings to bear that the average systems admin doesn't have. So it's really a partnering of the two. And I see the same thing with cloud. So, where virtualization admin was a niche ten years ago, now you can't work in the data center if you don't know how to participate in the virtualization environment and you're not familiar with VMware. Cloud is kind of becoming a niche, but in five years you won't be able to work in the data center if you don't know cloud. >> Yeah, what's one of the trends that we've seen as well, just in doing some reading online, is that, it used to be, everybody was trained, you know, that would come here to VMworld, would be trained in virtualization and certifications. And now we're starting to see that shift towards cloud. Sounds like there's been this natural evolution that's been customer-driven, in terms of enablement and the education, but you're now seeing the importance of the guys and gals that are storage admin, maybe the system admins as well, the VI admins. How are you guys working together to sort of tailor the conversation as more ... You see a diversity in the types of people that are interested in this type of technology, and as the conversation, maybe on the storage side, goes up to the C level, because they're storing massive amounts of data that's got to be able to extract value from in new lines of business. How is your enablement evolving as these skillsets are shifting? >> Alright, so, the name "hyperconvergence" actually says it all, it's not just causing convergence of technologies, it's causing convergence of people and skillsets and teams as well, and that does include people who just used to be computer admins and storage admins and network admins now. So going back to that context of how we are doing the enablement, I think what we are doing right now is helping each side understand the value, and having them come together. Earlier they used to work as silos, and now the teams are coming together just as the technology is coming together. And as regards, talking to decision-makers in the organizations, at the CIO level, people are more interested in competitive advantage for their own organization. And we find that the hyperconvergence technology allows the entire organization to move fast. So CIOs are able to do their business initiatives in a much faster way, get their profits coming in a much fast way, their risks are minimal, so they like the technology for that reason. And VP of infrastructure, applications, et cetera, like the technology because it streamlines the operations, standardizes the processes for them. VI admins have always been a champion, because it's so easy to use for them, the learning curve is very less. And storage admins really like it because, at the time when their traditional array is running out of capacity or horsepower, they don't have the budget to go and procure something new. They do have the budget to go and acquire a few servers and SSDs, they are still able to move forward and give the organization what it needs within the budget constraints, and yet meet the timeline. So this is something which is driving a lot of convergence. >> And storage has always been so critical to how virtualization works and operates. From vMotion to DRS, there's so many baseline features that relied on the underlying storage. So the storage admins and the VI admins have been growing closer and closer together for a long time. But what we're seeing with hyperconverge, and whether it's on-prem or, especially, in the cloud, is it's not only changing the storage technology, but it's changing the cost model. So now the conversation also has to happen at a business level of, is this going to be capex? Is this going to be opex? Is this going to be a traditional purchase method? Is this going to be a consumption method? So the conversation, now, actually, has to transcend from just the technology to also the business impact and the business drivers behind selecting one method or another. >> Absolutely, absolutely. And that's a theme that we're hearing a lot, as customers talk about digital transformation. Well I love the play on words with "convergence", and it sounds like the different folks that are now really needing this type of technology are folks that you've had the chance to speak with at the show. So we want to thank you guys for taking the time on Day Three to come and chat with us on theCUBE. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> For our guests, and for my co-host John Troyer, I am Lisa Martin, you've been watching theCUBE live on Day Three, continuing coverage of VMworld 2017. We'll be right back after a short break. (electronic music)