>>Hello. Welcome back to the cubes coverage here live in San Francisco, California. I'm John furrier, host of the cubes cube coverage of AWS summit 2022 here in San Francisco, where all the developers are the bay air at Silicon valley. And of course, eights summit in New York city is coming up in this summer. We'll be there as well. SF and NYC cube coverage. Look for us, of course, reinforcing Boston and re Mars with the whole robotics AI thing, all coming together. Lots of coverage. Stay with us. Say we've got a great guest from Deibel VC. John Skoda, founding partner, entrepreneurial venture is a venture firm. Your next act, welcome to the cube. Good to see you. >>Good to see you, Matt. I feel like it's been forever since we've been able to do something in person. Well, >>I'm glad you're here because we run into each other all the time. We've known each other for over a decade. Um, >>It's been at least 10 years, at >>Least 10 years more, and we don't wanna actually go back as freeze back the old school web 1.0 days. But anyway, we're in web three now. So we'll get to that in >>It's a little bit of a throwback to the path though, in my opinion, >>It's all the same. It's all distributed computing and software. We ran each other in Cuban. You're investing in a lot of tech startup founders. Okay. This next level, next gen entrepreneurs have a new makeup and it's software. It's hardcore tech in some cases, not hardcore tech, but using software, take old something old and make it better new, faster. So tell us about decibel. What's the firm. I know you're the founder, uh, which is cool. What's going on. Explain >>What you're doing. I mean, you remember I'm a recovering entrepreneur, right? So of course I, I, >>No, you're never recovering. You're always entrepreneur >>Always, but we are also always recovering. So I, um, sort of my was company when I was 24, if you remember before there was Facebook and friends, there was instant messaging. People were using that product at work every day, they were creating a security vulnerability between their network and the outside world. So I plugged that hole and built an instant messaging firewall. It was my first company. The company was called IM logic and we were required by Symantec. Uh, then spent 12 years investing in the next generation of software companies, uh, early investor in open source companies and cloud companies and spent a really wonderful 12 years, uh, at a firm called NEA. So I, I feel like my whole life I've been either starting enterprise software companies or helping founders start enterprise software C is, and I'll tell you, there's never been a better time than right now to start an enterprise software company. >>So, uh, the passion for starting a new firm was really a recognition that founders today that are starting an enterprise software company, they, they tend to be, as you said, a more technical founder, right? Usually it's a software engineer or builder. Uh, they are building products that are serving a slightly different market than what we've traditionally seen in enterprise software. Right? I think traditionally we've seen it buyers or CIOs that have agendas and strategies, which, you know, purchase software that is traditionally bought and sold tops down. But you know, today I think the most successful enterprise software companies are the ones that are built more bottoms up and have more technical early adopters. And generally speaking, they're free to use. They're free to try. They're very commonly community. So source or open source companies where you have a large technical cook community that's supporting them. So there's a, there's kind of a new normal now I think in great enterprise software. And it starts with great technical founders with great products and great bottoms of motions. And I think there's no better place to, uh, service those people than in the cloud and uh, in, in your community. >>Well, first of all, congratulations, and by the way, you got a great pedigree and great grow, super smart admire of your work and your, and, and your founding, but let's face it. Enterprise is hot because digital transformation is all companies there's no, I mean, consumer is enterprise now everything is what was once a niche. No, I won't say niche category, but you know, not for the faint of heart, you, you know, investors, >>You know, it's so funny that you say that enterprise is hot because you, and I feel that way now. But remember, like right now, there's also a giant tech and VC conference in Miami <laugh> and it's covering cryptocurrencies and FCS and web three. So I think beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder <laugh> but no, I, I will tell you, >>Ts is one big enterprise, cuz you gotta have imutability you got performance issues. You have, I IOPS issues. Well, >>And, and I think all of us here that are, uh, may maybe students of history and have been involved in open source in the cloud would say that we're, you know, much of what we're doing is, uh, the predecessors of the web web three movement. And many of us I think are contributors to the web three. >>The hype is definitely one, three. You >>Yeah, but, >>But you know, for >>Sure. Yeah, no, but now you're taking us further east to Miami. So, uh, you know, look, I think, I, I think, um, what is unquestioned with the case now? And maybe it's, it's more obvious the more time you spend in this world is this is the fastest growing part of enterprise software. And if you include cloud infrastructure and caught infrastructure spend, you know, it is by many measures over, uh, 500 billion in growing, you know, 20 to 30% a year. So it it's a, it's a just incredibly fast, >>Well, let's getting, let's get into some of the cultural and the, the shifts that are happening, cuz again, you, you have the luxury of being in enterprise when it was hard, it's getting easier and more cooler. I get at it and more relevant <laugh> but there's also the hype of like the web three, for instance, but you know, for, uh, um, um, the CEO snowflake, okay. Has wrote a book and Dave Valenti and I were talking about it and uh, Frank Luman has says, there's no playbooks. We always ask the CEOs, what's your playbook. And he's like, there's no playbook, situational awareness, always Trump's playbooks. So in the enterprise playbook, oh, higher, a direct sales force and SAS kind of crushed that now SAS is being redefined, right. So what is SAS? Is snowflake a SaaS or is that a platform? So again, new unit economics are emerging, whole new situation, you got web three. So to me there's a cultural shift, the young entrepreneurs, the, uh, user experience, they look at Facebook and say, ah, you know, they own all my data. And you know, we know that that cliche, um, they, you know, the product. So as this next gen, the gen Z and the millennials come in and our customers and the founders, they're looking at things a little bit differently and the Tech's better. >>Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think we can, we can see a lot of commonalities across all successful startups and the overall adoption of technology. Uh, and, and I would tell you, this is all one big, giant revolution. I call it the user driven revolution, right? It's the rise of the user. And you might say product like growth is currently the hottest trend in enterprise software. It's actually user like growth, right. They're one and the same. So sometimes people think the product, uh, is what is driving. >>You just pull the >>Product through. Exactly, exactly. And so that's that I, that I think is really this revolution that you see and it, and it does extend into things like crypto or currencies and web three and, you know, sort of like the control that is taken back by the user. Um, but you know, many would say that, that the origins of this movement maybe started with open source where users were contributors, you know, contributors were users and looking back decades and seeing how, how it fast forward to today. I think that's really the trend that we're all writing and it's enabling these end users. These end users in our world are developers, data engineers, cybersecurity practitioners, right. They're really the users. And they're really the, the beneficiaries and the most, you know, kind of valued people in this. >>I wanna come back to the data engineers in a second, but I wanna make a comment and get your reaction to, I have a, I'm a gen Xer technically. So for not a boomer, but I have some boomer friends who are a little bit older than me who have, you know, experienced the sixties. And I've been saying on the cube for probably about eight years now that we are gonna hit a digital hippie revolution, meaning a rebellion against the sixties was rebellion against the fifties and the man and, you know, summer of love. That was a cultural differentiation from the other one other group, the predecessors. So we're kind of having that digital moment now where it's like, Hey boomers, Hey people, we're not gonna do that anymore. We hate how you organize shit. >>Right. But isn't this just technology. I mean, isn't it, isn't it like there used to be the old adage, like, you know, you would never get fired for buying IBM, but now it's like, you obviously probably would get fired if you bought IBM. And I mean, it, it it's just like the, the, I think >>During the mainframe days, those renegades were breaking into Stanford, starting the home brew club. So what I'm trying to get at is that, do you see the young cultural revolution also, culturally, just, this is my identity NFTs to me speak volumes about my, I wanna associate with NFTs, not single sign. >>Absolutely. And, and I think like, I think you're hitting on something, which is like this convergence of, of, you know, societal trends with technology trends and how that manifests in our world is yes. I think like there is unquestionably almost a religion yeah. Around the way in which a product is built. Right. And we can use open source, one example of that religion. Some people will say, look, I'll just never try a product in the cloud if it's not open source. Yeah. I think cloud, native's another example of that, right? It's either, it's, you know, it either is cloud native or it's not. And I think a lot of people will look at a product and say, look, you know, you were not designed in the cloud era. Therefore I just won't try. I you, and sometimes, um, like it or not, it's a religious decision, right? Yeah. It's some, it's something that people just believe to be true almost without, uh, necessarily caring >>About I data, data drives all decision making. Let me ask you this next question. As a VC. Now you look at pitch, well, you've been a VC for many years, but you also have the founder entrepreneurial mindset, but you can empathize with the founders. You know, hustle is a big part of the, that first founder check, right? You gotta convince someone to part with their ch their money and the first money in which you do a lot of is about believing in the person. So faking it till you make it is hard. Now you, the data's there, you either have it cloud native, you either have the adaption or traction. So honesty is a big part of that pitch. You can't think, oh, >>AB absolutely. You know, there used to be this concept of like the persona of an entrepreneur, right. And the persona of the entrepreneur would be, you know, somebody who was a great salesperson or somebody who tell a great story. And I still think that that's important, right. It still is a human need for people to believe in narratives and stories. Yeah. But having said that you're right. The proof is in the pudding, right. At some point you click download and you try the product and does it, is it gonna, it's gonna do, or it doesn't, or it either stands out to the load test or it doesn't. And so I, I feel like in this new economy that we live in really, it's a shift from maybe the storytellers and the creators to, to the builders, right. The people that know how to build great product. And in some ways the people that can build great product stand out for on the crowd. And they're the ones that can build communities around their products. And, you know, in some ways can, um, you know, kind of own more of the narrative because their products exactly >>The volume back to the user led >>Growth. Exactly. And it's the religion of, I just love your product. Right. And I, I, I, um, Doug song is the founder of Joe security used to say, Hey, like, you know, the, the really like today's world of like consumption based software, like the user is only gonna give you 90 seconds to figure out whether or not you're a company that's easy to do business with. Right. And so you can say, and do all the things that you want about how easy you are to work with. But if the product isn't easy to install, if it's not easy to try, if it's, if the, you know, it's gotta speak >>To the, to the user. But let me ask you a question for the people watching, who are maybe entrepreneurial entre entrepreneurs, um, masterclass here is in session. So I have to ask you, do you prefer, um, an entrepreneur come in and say, look at John. Here's where I'm at. Okay. First of all, storytelling's fine. Whether you're an extrovert or introvert, have your style, sell the story in a way that's authentic, but do you, what do you prefer? Just say, here's where I'm at. Look, I have an idea. Here's my traction. I think here's my MVP prototype. I need help. Or do you wanna just see more stats? What's the, what's the preferred way that you like to see entrepreneurs come in and engage? >>There's tons of different styles, man. I think the single most important thing that every founder should know is that we, we don't invest in what things are today. We invest in what we think something will become. Right. And I think that's why we all get up in the morning and try to build something different, right? It's that we see the world a different way. We want it to be a different way, and we wanna work every single moment of the day to try to make bad vision of reality. So I think the more that you can show people where you want to be, the more likely somebody is gonna align with your vision and, and want to invest in you wanna be along for the ride. So I, I wholeheartedly believe in showing off what you got today, because eventually we all get down to like, where are we and what are we gonna do together? But, um, no, I, you gotta show the path. I think the single most important thing for any founder and VC relationship is that they have the same vision. Uh, if you have the same vision, you can, you can get through bumps in the road, you can get through short term spills. You can all sorts of things in the middle. The journey can happen. Yeah. But it doesn't matter as much. If you share the long term vision, >>Don't flake out and, and be fashionable with the, the latest trends. Cause it's over before you even get >>There. Exactly. I think many people that, that do what we do for a living will say, you know, ultimately the future is relatively easy to predict, but it's the timing that's impossible to predict. So you, you know, you sort of have to balance the, you know, we, we, we know that the world is going this way and therefore we're gonna invest a lot of money to try to make this a reality. Uh, but sometimes it happens in six months. Sometimes it takes six years. Sometimes it takes 16 years. Uh, >>What's the hottest thing in enterprise that you see the biggest wave that people should pay attention to that you're looking at right now with Desel partners, Tebel dot your site. What's the big wave. What's your big >>Wave. There, there's three big trends that we invest in. And they're the, they're the only things we do day in, day out. One is the explosion and open source software. So I think many people think that all software is unquestionably moving to an open source model in some form or another yeah. Tons of reasons to debate whether or not that is gonna happen on AMWA timeline >>Happening forever. >>But, uh, it is, it is accelerating faster than we've ever seen. So I, I think it's, it's one big, massive wave that we continue to ride. Um, second is the rise of data engineering. Uh, I think data engineering is in and of itself now a category of software. It's not just that we store data. It's now we move data and we develop applications. And, uh, I think data is in and of itself as big of a market as any of the other markets that we invest in. Uh, and finally, it's the gift that keeps on giving. I've spent my entire career in it. We still feel that security is a market that is underinvested. It is, it continues to be the place where people need to continue to invest and spend more, more. Yeah. Uh, and those are the three major trends that we >>Run and security, you think we all need a dessert do over, right? I mean, do we need a do over in security or is what's the core problem? I, >>I, I keep using this word underinvested because I think it's the right way to think about the problem. I think if you, I think people generally speaking, look at cybersecurity as an add-on. Yeah. But if you think about it, the whole economy is moving online. And so in, in some ways like security is core to protecting the digital economy. And so it's, it shouldn't be an afterthought, right? It should be core to what everyone is doing. And that's why I think relat to the trillions of dollars that are at stake, uh, I believe the market size for cybersecurity is around 150 billion and it still is a fraction of what >>We're, what we're national security even boom is booming now. So you get the convergence of national security, geopolitics, internet digital that's >>Right. You mean arguably, right. Arguably again, it's the area of the world that people should be spending more time and more money given what to stake. >>I love your thesis. I gotta outta say, I gotta love your firm. Love what you're doing. We're big supporters of your mission. Congratulations on your entrepreneurial venture. And, uh, we'll be, we'll be talking we'll maybe see a Coon. Uh, absolutely certainly EU maybe even north Americans in Detroit this year. >>Huge fan of what you guys are doing here. Thank you so much for helping me on the >>Show. Guess a bell V see Johnson here on the cube. Check him out. Founder for founders here on the cube, more coverage from San Francisco, California. After this short break, stay with us.

(upbeat music) >> Hey guys and girls. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Coupa Inspire 2022, from the Cosmopolitan, in bustling Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here, and as I mentioned, day two of our coverage and fresh from the main stage, Raja Hammoud joins me, the Executive Vice President of products at Coupa. Raja, welcome back to theCUBE and happy 10th anniversary at Coupa. >> Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you, and welcome back to Inspire. >> Thank you. It's so great- >> We're so happy you're here. >> It's great to be here. So you're just about coming up on your 10 anniversary with Coupa. You showed some great photos of your time there but you've seen, you've lived the evolution that is this rocket ship that's Coupa. >> Raja: It's been incredible journey. I really couldn't believe at first it's been 10. This is the longest I've ever been anywhere. And I honestly feel more refreshed and excited than even when I joined back in the day 10 years ago. And so much has changed, but also so much has not. >> Lisa: Yeah. >> The size of course. We were like 60 people when I joined, the product development team was one person in, in a product, roughly 12 engineers, and fast forward to the scale that's today, it's phenomenal difference. But what has not changed is the, the core values, how, the hustle, how people love working with each other, how we support customers, how we keep stepping up our game how we believe none of us is as smart as all of us, and the community keeps getting stronger and stronger. It's been, it's been really exciting journey. >> The theme of none of us is as smarter as all of us, I'm not sure if I got that right, but the idea is you feel that when you're talking to Coupa partners, I've had the opportunity to talk with Coupa partners and customers and Coupa folks that, that is not just a value statement, people are living that. >> Raja: Yeah. It's, it's everywhere. In the, in the company walls, outside the company walls, you often see product people in different organizations where, they start living in an ivory tower, they think they know everything, I mean, back to what we were discussing earlier about Barbara, when she talked about, get out of your doors, right? A lot of people can tend to do that. We always, from the beginning, believed in the best ideas are out there and you collaborate with each other. And I truly, truly believe that the success that we have achieved today to our community is in a large, large part, because we believed in that. So like on Monday, we hosted, I can't keep track of the number now, so, so many in-parallel Community Advisory Board meetings, and just talking to the products managers and everybody is buzzing with new ideas. And when we go back, there's so much new innovation that has just been co-created here in this conference, and this keeps going on and on and on. >> Lisa: Yeah. I like how you call it, the Community Advisory Board. I'm still used to hearing CAB as Customer Advisory Board, but what Coupa has built, especially with the launch of the Moonshot, the, the community AI, is, is just that. >> Yes. >> It's a very collaborative community. One of the things that's around here, hashtags everywhere, but #United by the Power of Spend. >> Yes. >> What does that mean to you as the EVP of products, and what do you think that means to the community? >> When I think... What we are doing, we're building this platform that is powering all these businesses out there. And the reality of it is you can only, only do so much when you try to do things alone. When we are doing things together, we are way more successful, we are more profitable, we are more sustainable, we are more efficient. And community.ai from a technology standpoint, is making that happen, because what we are doing is taking AI, applying it to all this 3.3 trillion in data, and then bringing back prescriptions that we give back to each and every customer so that everybody can see where they are, how they up their games, and we connect them with other people like them. Now, people love coming to conferences like this, but even in conferences like this, if you think about it, the people you're going to meet, it's, some people are going to do matchmaking but you are also losing an opportunities of meeting the maximum number of people who've done exactly the thing that you did. But when you have the ability to look at all of that data and you can match make people. So we did that already with, for sourcing professionals. So if you are somebody who source a certain category, we can tell somebody else has done something like this in this geography and we offer you to connect to each other. >> Lisa: Wow. >> So this is incredibly powerful way where we are really uniting the whole community by spend, making everybody truly stronger together. >> Lisa: Matchmaker in, in a sense. >> It is matchmaking. >> But it's, but it's- >> It's Spend matchmaking. >> Spend matchmaking, but it's also the opportunity to unite professionals across sourcing, procurement- >> Raja: Yes. >> ... finance, treasury. >> Raja: Yes. >> To your point, and, and Rob said this in his keynote, and he said it here on theCUBE, you know, we've got to break down these silos. >> Raja: Yes. >> People and companies functioning in silos are not going to be successful. >> Raja: Yes. This has been one of the, probably one of the things that we were talking earlier, what has changed, what hasn't. This is one of the fundamental things that has never changed since I've joined. The vision has been very clear. The execution on it, of how we drive successful business spend management program is by breaking down the silos and this idea of sweet synergy, where in product, you start building these capabilities that helps these professionals in the different organizations to actually connect on the touch points, where, where things really matter. >> Lisa: Sweet synergy, was that thing from a concept perspective, did that come from the community, in terms of Coupa going, this is actually what's happening, this synergy across the BSM suite? >> Yes. So in the very beginning, it was early idea. I would say in the first two Inspires that we did, we hadn't given it actually the name itself, and we used to call it unified capabilities, and it started with the first silos we broke down. The first silos we broke down were procurement and AP. And they didn't even used to talk in the same room or even want to care about each other. So we started building so many capabilities that brought these teams together and little by little the community started to feel that and see the value of that. And then the community started to ask us to go break down more silos. So in the beginning, I would say the, the vision before I even joined, the company was on that trajectory. And the early customers saw that and they championed it and then they drove us to do more. So they came to us and said could you please do what you did here in contract? Could you please do what you did here in sourcing? And I was in a meeting last week, a leadership meeting, and one question was asked to leaders in the services team about what are they hearing about, from the customers, about a particular area. And it was music to our ears when we heard the customers are asking for more synergy, right? So, they even have the name for it and they're asking for more and more, and we have built hundreds of these already, but the reality is there is so much opportunity. >> Lisa: Right. >> The world is siloed, no technology has attempted to do that. And I think that's what's a exciting is to go and forge new grounds and do something very special to unite everyone together. >> You guys talked about the waves. Rob talked about the waves yesterday. You talked about it again this morning. And when I think of Inspired community, as that third wave, I see it on both sides. I see the Inspired community that is the Coupa community, but also what you just talked about, that flywheel of that sort of symbiotic relationship that you guys have with your customers as Coupa in and of itself being in a community inspired by the community that it has built. >> Raja: Yes, it's, it's very, very, it's a circular effect. Like it, we inspire one another, and we strengthen one another, and it's, it's just a beautiful, beautiful thing. One of the special things that we are starting to do is we want to take the whole product experience itself, to be a complete community experience. So anywhere you are going to Coupa, when it makes sense, of course, you are not only looking at your data, you are getting connected with people for that particular thing. So we've done that already for 15 different product areas and we're constantly doing more and more and more and more. You can imagine one day we can, where we can start within the product pages themselves, where we host community experts to talk via video and connect with others. So you bring that whole community experience alive in a product in enterprise software, which has not been done. >> Kind of like creating your own influencer network. >> Yes, yes, yes. And give people their voice and, and, and it becomes exciting. It is very different when you're just working on your own and driving goals, and you have no idea how good that can pass on the world. And then when right then and there, you get to learn that some people have hit that, some people have achieved these goals, you just get excited, "I want to hit that goal too. Who are these people? Connect me with these leaders. Let's have a conversation. How did they do it?" And they start creating best practices together. We even have started places where they collaborate on actual documents and templates, and they put them in the community exchange as a way for people to share with others, even taking templates from the product putting them back into a community exchange. So it is sharing, being enabled on the platform, platform itself. >> Lisa: How did you guys function during the pandemic, the last two years when we couldn't get together? >> Raja: Yeah. >> I know that your customers are really the lifeblood of Coupa and vice versa. >> Raja: Yes. >> But talk to me about some of the things that Coupa did with its customers, you know, by video conferencing, for example, that really helped the evolution and some of the innovations that you announced this morning. >> When we first... when the pandemic first hit I think like we all didn't believe what, what is going on. And there was this, I would call it a beautiful period in a way, despite how horrific that was, and that period was where everyone rose to the occasion, everybody wanted to help one another. Across Coupa everywhere, we started having documents of how can step up and help our customers, help our communities. We started to look at how we get PPE, and get it in the hands of our customers. We have access to suppliers. We started looking at helping suppliers with digital payments to speed things up. So, so many things we started doing as a community to just help each other. And then as we got to the next level, then we started, of course, starting to do things over, over zoom. And the big surprise, was we were incredibly productive. If anything, we were worried about people feeling burnt out. >> Yeah. >> Because they were just in it, completely in it. And it created a lot of new avenues for us because often you go and do these meetings in person. Now you could have a user experience session with a customer very easily, they're available more often than they used to. >> Lisa: Right. >> So we did not miss a beat with the community. We moved into virtual caps. We had the advantage of having them recorded as well, where we could have the global development teams learn and see exactly what the, what the customers are are co-creating together. And our goal lives accelerated, because a lot of these implementations, they used to happen in person, so schedules, they actually got accelerated- >> Lisa: Right. >> ...through that. Now of course, there is nothing that matches to this. You can do it, you can do a lot, but a ton of the collaboration comes from real life dialogue and kind of conversation. So it's that balance between the two that I think will be great. >> Lisa: What are some of the things that you've heard the last few days? You mentioned the Partners Summit and, and the Community Advisory Boards on Monday, yesterday, everything kicked off today. What are some of the things that you've heard in your meetings that really inspire you on say the next 10 years at Coupa? >> Raja: By far, by far, by far, it's a validation of, that what we are doing is, we're absolutely on target with it, and that, we just can do so much more. The silos are massive and there are so so many opportunities that you hear in every different areas that we could be doing this, we could be doing this together. So we can break down more and more silos. And using community.ai is just the tip of the iceberg of what we are, what we are doing. Yes, we created tens and tens of capabilities, helping, helping the community with all of that, but data drives everything. And when you look at that, every single process in every single silo can be informed by the power of data within your own company, and then even better, data across. And, and to the point where we're talking about concepts that customers are really excited about, even thinking about this community, they're customers of each other. And when you are a customer of each other what are the different ways as a community, you can help one another more. So we're talking about community netting as new types of concepts. >> Lisa: Talk to me a little about that. You mentioned the community netting this morning but I didn't quite... Help me understand. >> Raja: It is very simple terms is if, if we are buying from each other and we have to do money movements every time I have to pay you, I have to incur fees and likewise, but since we are part of this community we can manage that relationship. So we just pay the Delta, we net it out. So it, it saves reconciliation times it saves money movement. And these are tip of the icebergs of these very cool things that we're doing together. >> Wow. That's fantastic. Last question for you, as you talk with prospects who are in the early stages, or, or still determining, do we go through like a supply chain digital transformation? I mean, I think of companies that probably haven't now or need to get on the bandwagon. >> Raja: Yeah. >> What are some of the things that you advise to those customers to be able to do what Mick Ebeling talked about this morning and that is, commit and then figure it out? >> Raja: Yes. The number one thing is just make sure you don't do the analysis paralysis. There are just so many opportunities so many opportunities start with a project, get going, and it creates incredible momentum, and then you can move on from one to another, to another, to another, instead of trying to just go for a year or two, trying to look at how the world has changed in that process. And so often you could see that projects pay for themselves within the first month of go life. You do that, you'll create another one. And it's not like you are coming in to do something so new nobody has done. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands as a matter of fact, of other community members have done that. It is proven. So get started with those and then continue. Other things I will be talking to them about is to make sure that they understand the way we work is all about partnerships spread. Often people who haven't worked with us in the enterprise software, they're used to working with vendors. We are not that. We never were that. Like the number one, if we're not going to be real partners, honest, transparent and work with each other, we don't waste each other's time. >> Lisa: Well, Raja, it's been great having you on the program. I've really enjoyed your keynote this morning. Congratulations on your 10 years at Coupa. >> Raja: Thank you. >> I'm excited to see what the next 10 years brings for you. We appreciate your insites and everything that Coupa is doing in partnership with its customers is very evident in an event like this. >> Raja: Thank you. And thank you for coming and covering us as well. We really appreciate it. >> Lisa: It's our pleasure to be here. >> Thank you. >> For Raja Hammoud, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage, day two of Coupa Inspire 2022, from Las Vegas. (upbeat music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. Day two of Dell Technologies World. Loads of people here, 14,000 in attendance. 65 hundred partners, analysts, press, you name it. It's here talking about all things transformation. We're very excited to welcome back to theCUBE, Sam Grocott, senior vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Group Marketing. Welcome back! >> I'm psyched to be here, thanks for having me again. >> Lots of news, lots of buzz. >> Mhm. >> Break it down. >> We're powering up the modern data center. I think that was a big theme of this morning's keynote. We're very much focused on taking the, what we refer to as the pillars of the modern data center, to the next level, and being able to introduce a handful of new products this week. Very, very excited about them, and I think we're getting the feedback and response we expected. >> Stu: Yeah Sam, I heard Jeff actually said powers that brand that I want to hear. You know. >> Sam: Yeah. >> We got the PowerMax and the PowerEdge, and you know. >> Sam: You might want to get used to it a little bit. >> Yeah. >> Sam: You might be able to connect a couple trends here. We're powering up the modern data center, but we're not done yet. Obviously today and this week was a big push there, with the introduction of of PowerMax, the new PowerEdge servers. As well as the VX rail, VX rack XDC enhancements. But this is a journey we're on, as we power up the portfolio, and we're just getting started. >> Stu: Alright. Sam, give us the update on the portfolio. You basically have marketing for all the Dell EMC >> That's right. >> Which is the data centerpiece there. EMC you know, Joe Tucci always used to say, overlap's good, I never want to let a wedge in there. But the critique would always be, it was like oh my gosh, I can't figure out, you know, what that portfolio is. >> Sam: Right. >> It's kind of sprawling. So, how do you balance the breadth and meeting what the customers need. And how should we be looking at, both from a product and a market standpoint? >> Yeah, so, you're right. Our history is no creases, no gaps, choice for everyone. Options for everyone. The alternative, one product for everything. We've always chosen not to go that path. However, there is a balance here that I think we all strive for. And that's something that I'm working very closely with the rest of the ISG team and Jeff's team to really understand as we move forward and power up this portfolio. How do we walk that fine balance of choice and flexibility for customers and partners. As well as simplification and simplicity for end users that want to make sure that they're deploying the best upreach solution for their needs. And not confuse them at any time. So, it's a fine line. I think we're making good progress there, we're going to continue to do that as we move forward. >> When you're talking with customers, the users, what is it that they're looking to power up? What, how is it actually applied within an organization? >> Sam: The big shift going on is this world of traditional enterprise applications that are certainly considered mission critical, tier one. Those aren't going anywhere. Those are needed to require the highest levels of resiliency and data services, and everything you would expect from an enterprise grade ray. What is new is the next generation applications that have historically been run in a sandbox, off the beaten path, a line-up business, an architect. Built their own thing, and then guess what, it became important. In fact, now mission critical. This is where you find things like AI, ML, deep learning, IOT. When it becomes mainstream and important, guess whose problem it becomes. It moves to IT. Because that's where they run their end to end data services, their resiliency plans, their data replication plans, business contingency. The expectations of those use cases now, are at the enterprise level. So the bar is being raised there because they don't want sprawl of use cases and applications, especially for their mission critical use cases. So that's what we're focused on. As those apps become mission critical, providing them solutions that give them the enterprise-grade capability, but the performance and capabilities they expect for that other segment of the market. >> Sam, when I look at the portfolio, I wonder if you could speak to really who you're targeting with the messaging. Think back ten years ago, well, EMC was a storage company, Dell was primarily server and PCs and the like. Now we're talking digital transformation. Powering the future. Jeff and Michael and Allison went through all of these trends >> Transformations, yeah. >> How do you position where the products fit and who you're hitting, who some of the chief constituents that you will add to with. >> Yeah, it's gotten more complex. There's no doubt about it. Especially as the next generation work loads emerge in various spots of the organization. As well as some more, as you talk about digital transformation, you're really moving up the stack so to speak in terms of type of people you're selling to. So we've got the world's greatest sales force in the industry, but we've had to modernize them as well. So we've gone through this product modernization. How do we modernize a sales force that of course can have the storage admin conversation. The backup admin conversation. That's what we've been having for 20 years. But that's no longer good enough. You've got to be able to pivot, and go up into the CXO level in terms of the leadership of the IT department. The line of business leaders, which a lot of times are architects or specialists within a given field. And frankly even some cases, in my role, the CMO you're selling into because it's a business data analytics engine, or something that's providing new insights, new markets, and new businesses. So it has gotten more complex there, and the skills required to sell at the byte level all the way up to the boardroom level, is of paramount importance as we go forward. So we spend a lot of time on that now. >> We were talking with a gentleman from TGen earlier today, Stu and I were. It's such an exciting topic, biomedical research. Sequencing the human genome, and how much faster they can do it now, and how much more data they're generating. But they have such potential there, you mentioned Stavros for example, to be able to use that data, combine it, recombine it, to people always say, oh, actionable insights. It's one thing to be able to get actionable insights. It's another thing to be able to have an infrastructure and agility to be able to capitalize on them and deliver differentiated products to market. Revolutionize the customer experience. From a digital transformation perspective, are you finding any industries in particular, you mentioned biomedical research, where they're kind of really leading the charge here and helping you guys develop the product strategy? Or is it more horizontal? >> Sam: Yeah, I think genomics and medical and the health industry are great examples of traditional, large businesses that also play very aggressively in early adopters. I was kind of born and raised in a small company called Isilon, that is now part of the Dell EMC portfolio. And what we are able to do with a breakthrough, leading edge technology ten years ago was we went right after a vertical, go to market strategy, so genomics research, media and entertainment, manufacturing. These are areas that are large businesses but they make big bets on emerging technology, because it's the only place you can go to get those next generation capabilities as those applications mature over time. The great thing about within Dell EMC and the ISG portfolios, we have solutions that can now meet both of those roles needs. More so as they start to mature and become mission critical. I think we're even more well-positioned to help them lead through that transformation that we're seeing going on in all those different verticals today. >> Sam, one of the the things we heard in the keynotes, is are some of the emerging trends. Give us a little look forward, your ISG group, what kind of things are hot on your plate? Especially if you kind of look at the enterprise customers. What's kind of near term and give us a little bit of a roadmap. >> Sam: Yeah. Couple things. I would certainly say cloud, and moving to a cloud, first cloud enabled world. That is really driving a lot of our roadmap innovation as we go forward. So it includes everything from mobility of information, from an on-ram hybrid, to exclusively cloud native off-ram. We're innovating in all of those vectors. You really can't just pick one anymore. So that's a key area. As well as cloud-based analytics and telemetry information. Leveraging the cloud to understand how your infrastructure is operating over time. I would say that's definitely a major area of investment. The other major areas, we have a vision of autonomous infrastructure, within the storage world. Autonomous storage. Really eliminating the need for the day to day management of storage, because the system is so smart, it really takes care of all those typical tasks that consume a storage administrator's, system administrator's day to day. We are in the business of creating outcomes and helping our customers create outcomes. The more we can get them out of the managing and migrating and protecting data and into the application there, where they're adding a lot more value to the organization. I think that's a win-win for both organizations. So machine learning AI as the technology, that's going to allow us to enable an autonomous infrastructure, really make the infrastructure invisible so you can focus on your applications and your outcomes. >> What are some the things that you're hearing from channel partners in terms of, they're on the front lines, often dealing with customers that are at some stage, of a digital, of a transformation journey, we'll say. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing from the channel, we know that there's a number of announcements, we spoke with Cheryl Cook this morning. >> Sam: Yes, good, good. >> How are they being enabled to deliver these solutions, to help drive autonomy for example? >> We've got, in parallel to Dell Tech World, we've got the Global Partners Summit, we've got just an enormous amount of the channel community here for this event. We did make some key announcements, including the Dell MC Ready Bundle. I think it's a great, Ready Stack I should say. Its a great example, which reflects the feedback that they've given us, is give us all the pieces to be successful, to stand up a IT transformation, in their customer's environment. Train them, enable them, package it for them, to make it easy and seamless for them to go in and be that trusted partner for those organizations. So that's one example of the direct feedback from the channel partners. They asked for that offer. We responded very, very quickly. And now we've provided them that kind of end-to-end, kind of reference architecture to build your own Dell EMC end-to-end CI infrastructure. So, very excited about that, and that's direct feedback from the partner community. >> Alright, so that's partner. How about the customer feedback you've gotten so far? Went through a lot of announcements. I can't even imagine how many customer sessions are going on here. >> Sam: Oh yeah. >> What's the consensus so far? >> The excitement is around MVME, and look, we're not first to market. I'm totally okay with that. I'm fine admitting it here in theCUBE. But we are the first to get to market the right way. And that's really what I measure ourselves on. We didn't just build our own custom MVME modules. We didn't build something that would be difficult to add on to, in terms of MVME over-fabrics, or storage class media. We built something architected via software defined architecture, with an end-to-end MVME implementation. Our customers love that because it gives you the right away benefits of performance, but it also in the future, in that they'll be able to easily add in storage class memory, MVME over-fabrics when it becomes available into that system. So its not a forklift upgrade. It's built for today as well as tomorrow. They love that aspect. >> So if customers, their pent-up demand for the MVME solution, can you give us any guidance as to is this going to be 10%, what kind of, how fast will adoption be of something like this? >> Sam: Yeah, so, the reality is, its still fairly early days there as well. We expect this to be an offering that's going to start small and grow over time. That's why, in the high end space where PowerMax is complementing our BMax line, the Bmax 950 and 250 are not going anywhere any time soon. For our organizations that need to bring those next generation applications together, and need that real-time response, PowerMax is the way to go. We expect 60 to 70% of all organizations by 2020 to have at least one real time application running in a mission critical environment. That's one. 60 to 70%. So I would say its still early days. You're going to have a specific need for that level of performance to go to MVME. But it's going to start accelerating here over this year. Particularly with MVME over-fabrics coming to market later. As well as storage class memory. That's going to accelerate it even more. >> Stu: Alright Sam, just want to give you the final word. >> Yep. >> Take aways you want people to have understanding Dell and the Dell EMC portfolio when they leave DELL EMC Dell Technologies World 2018 this year. >> Yeah, certainly I hope they see the investments we're making to power up the portfolio. I think the announcements we made this week have been fantastic in terms of responding to market needs, customer needs. And frankly, I want them to learn more. I want them to watch more and more of theCUBE, to learn deeply how things are rolling out. What was the mind behind the madness of building these products. I know we've got a large amount of the team speaking in theCUBE, but whether its in theCUBE, or through the sessions, learn, adjust. Because everybody's modernizing, everybody needs to transform, this is a great opportunity for them to do that with their skill set and their knowledge in the industry. >> Lisa: Everybody does need to transform. Sam, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: For sharing what's new, and what you're doing, leading marketing for all of Dell EMC. >> Sam: Thank you, thank you. >> Lisa: You've been watching theCUBE, we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin, for Stu Miniman, we are live day two of Dell Technologies World in Vegas. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (pop music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering HPE Discover 2017 brought to you by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. >> Hello and welcome back to Las Vegas for theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Discover 2017 or HPE Discover 2017. This is theCUBE, our flagship program from SiliconeANGLE media. We go out to the events, and extract the signal from the noise. I'm John Furrier, the co-founder of SiliconeANGLE. with my co-founder, Dave Vellante, my co-host. Our next guest, Jason Newton, Vice President of HP Marketing Pan-HPE Market cross HP, and Jim Jackson, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Group Marketing. The big dogs here at HP laying out the show here for 2017. Guys, great show again, our seventh year, appreciate it. But this year, more than ever, is a seminal moment, obviously everyone knows what's going on in the news, is a huge shift in the market place, what's happening at the show, set the scene for us, what's the backdrop? You guys lined up all the messaging, you have the whole set up to the show, tell us: what is this show about this year? >> First, welcome to Discover, guys! We're really excited to have you guys here. And you know, we got a lot going on at this show, so for example, yesterday, we had our Global Partners Summit so we brought out top 1300 partners, and we had an amazing session with them. This week starts Discover, so it's going to run for the next three days. We've exceeded our tenants targets, so we're feeling really good about it. I think what that shows is there's a lot of interest, a lot of energy, a lot of passion, for what Hewlett-Packard Enterprise can bring. You know, I'm not going to go through all the mechanics of the separation and the spin merger, but I would say that that was all designed to make us a faster, more nimbler company, and one that is really aligned to where we want to take our partners on their digital transformation journey. You know, what we're seeing today, is digital transformation is impacting every single customer and every single industry, and digital business is technology, and really, that's where we play and that's why we're so excited to get our story out. And when you look at over the last year, there's a lot that's happened at this company around really innovation, acquisitions, and ecosystem. Just look at some of the innovation that we've brought to the market, Synergy. Amazing innovation, it created a new category, it really enables our customers to now get a public cloud experience, but on PRIM. And we're hearing from a lot of customers, I want to leave my applications on PRIM, but I need that capability. So we're delivering that with that kind of innovation. Another one is HPC. High growing market, we're leading in that space. What we're doing in the storage flash space, we rebooted, and rebranded our services organization, it's not called Pointnext. We want to help our customers point next to whats' next for their business. When you look at the Edge, just amazing innovation happening there, whether it's Aruba technology, whether it's what we're doing with all of our Edge compute solutions, so just a tons of things happening and then when you layer on top of that all the acquisitions. SGI, we're already the leader in HPC, we have 140 of the top 500 systems, SGI makes our position that much stronger. That's a hot market, it's growing at six to eight percent. SimpliVity, when we brought our capabilities, our UI from our technology, combined it with the data services from SimpliVity, we now have the leading HC solution in the industry. When you look at Niara, that gives up additional capabilities at the Edge to help secure that. When we look at Cloud Cruiser, we can help customers understand and balance what's happening across their workloads. And then Nimble gives us just an amazing portfolio across storage. We're really the leader now in the storage space when you look at the ability to dress almost any use case, from MSA to SimpliVity, for customers looking for more of that hyperconverge play, to Nimble, to 3PAR. Our strategy, super simple. Make hybrid IT simple, power the Intelligent Edge, and it's not just the compute, it's to bring the analytics so that we can translate insight into action, and really to bring the services to help our customers on their journey. And those services are our Pointnext services complimented by our partner services. So, you know what, we're fired up, we're excited, there's a lot happening. >> You guys got so much going on and we've documented the whole spin merge thing 'till the cows come home, we've already done that. You guys got a lot going on, a lot of customers are talking a lot of people are talking about you in the industry, at an industry level, certainly at a partnership level, you guys have always been customer focused. We heard that, you mentioned that, they kind of want to know: what is HP going to do now? You're going to put the stake in the ground, they want to know what's happening, where is the phoenix coming from out from all this decoupling, and more agile messaging, it's a lot of corporate governance, corporate development, I get that, what's next? When are you guys going to put the stake in the ground, you going to be aggressive, when are we expecting to hear from Meg Whitman? >> This week, right, you're going to see it this week. I think that's why we're so excited, this is our opportunity to bring our story together and talk about the innovation and the outcomes that we're delivering for our customers. We are playing offense, and you're going to see that this week. You know, I think one of the themes about this whole week is really about outcomes. I just hosted a panel, with four amazing customers, we had Dreamworks on there, we had CenterPoint Energy, we had CallidusCloud, and I had one more, can't think of it, Merck. And just amazing stories in terms of their digital transformation journey and how HPE is helping to enable that. You're going to hear that on main stage, we're going to have additional customers, Symmetry, others, talking about their digital transformation journey. So, we're really fired up about the main stage, and the story that we're going to get out today. Backstage talking with the executives, they're ready to rock and roll. You know, we know we have a great story and we need to package it, we need to send it out there to the marketplace, and that's what's going to happen later today. In addition to the outcomes, and I think that's what's different about us maybe from some of our other competitors who come to these similar events and just have a bunch of products, we're really talking about how our technology is enabling outcomes but you're going to see a lot of innovation today as well really themed along our strategy. We're going to highlight and roll out the next generation of our compute experience. We're going to talk about how we're delivering the industry's most secure industry standard servers. That's complimented by a whole set of announcements we did last week on our storage portfolio, and the software defined space updates to our synergy solution to HP OneView, and then we're going to be previewing our multi cloud hybrid stack, which will be available later in the year. When you look at the edge, new campus solution, core solution, so what we're really doing is if you think of a data center course which we're bringing that to the campus, so we can essentially now manage from the ceiling, to the side, to the floor. So we're bringing all the capabilities. Asset tracking capabilities coming in as well. Pointnext, we're bringing in new innovations to the marketplace around Consume. Jason, maybe you can talk a little bit about some of the IOT Edge stuff that's coming out as well. >> Yeah, I mean we think, a core part of our strategy is to power the Intelligent Edge. We think that's where all the innovation is going and increasingly, you know, we think about data and getting insights from data, right? Going forward, we're going to start thinking about how do I take data and put it into action, right? The Edge is a place, and there's lot of different places that we can bring technology to bear to put into action and create value and so, tons of examples of what we'll be talking about with customers and really interwoven within that are the need for analytics, you know, big data, high performance computing, having a renaissance because of that, and the need for hybrid computing right because the stuff needs to be secure and it needs to be driven by applications, and so it really is a great way to try to exemplify why our strategy is the right strategy and why it's a winning one, because those are the unique elements that are going to power this world going forward, and we've got 'em. >> 43% of data will be analyzed at the Edge by 2020, so think about that, right. >> Yeah and we actually think that it'll be much higher over time, that moving around all this data is going to be challenging, I know you're working on the speed of light problem in the labs, and that number I think will increase. So, I wanted to ask you about messaging because messaging in very important. It clarifies your vision and it underscores your relevance to customers and previously a lot of the HP and now it's HPE, messaging was very product centric, and one tended to get lost in that. How have you sort of transformed your messaging architecture to address things like outcomes and business impacts. >> Yeah, you know customers today, it's really about outcomes, right, so technology matters but if you just look at making hybrid IT simple, as an example, that's a easy statement to say, hybrid IT is not simple. So when you, think of the messaging though, of how we're talking to our customers about that it's really at multiple different levels and let me give you a couple of examples. It's, first of all, the services from Pointnext, how do we come and engage them, and help them characterize their applications, understand their environment, and ultimately give them a roadmap with the right mix of technology, not only for today, but for the future. So, that's an example of leading much more with services in terms of our Pointnext services, in terms of how we're engaging our customers. Getting very disciplined in terms of when you think about okay how do I want to run my hybrid IT environment? We believe it runs best on a software defined infrastructure solution, Synergy gives us that. So, customers are telling us, hey I want to have more on PRIM, or I want to be able to run my applications on PRIM but I need the same experience that I can get from a public cloud, we can now do that with Synergy. Fully programmable, we're seeing amazing interaction with it we have almost 400 customers engaging, and that pipeline is continuing to grow. And then I think the third part of it, when you talk about solutions, again it's not just about technology, it's how do I want to consume this, right? So, we're hearing from our customers, you know, I need, not all of them want to just buy it from us and install it. So, we do amazing things here that we probably haven't gotten out to the market, and you're going to see us get a lot louder this week about that. For example, through our flexible financial services organization, we have amazing capabilities to really engage with other parts of the line of business, the CFO, and talk to them about how do you really want to finance this, what kind of business relationship are you looking for? With Flexible Capacity services, we bring amazing capabilities to help our customers get a public cloud experience on PRIM, so it's sitting on their environment, we're managing it, they only pay for what they use. The other part of it is, it is customers are telling us increasingly, hey you know what I want to actually have a network of service providers that I can get services from. We have done that through our Cloud28+ and our service provider partner ready program, we have a whole set of service providers optimized for infrastructure, for applications, many of them are located close to our customers, so just a few examples, I think of how we're trying to bring this all together, and a solution message is really elevating it and saying: what is the outcome you're trying to drive, starting there, and then looking at engaging them holistically across all of that. So you're seeing more and more of that. Our demos highlight that, that's the stuff we're trying to highlight at the show. >> Dave, can I pile on to the message piece, too, as well? His messaging guy here, for Jim. You know, there's a lot of noise also out on the marketplace, and I think one of the keys is the advantage of being a more focused company now, we can be much more simple, and forthright and direct in our messaging, right, in terms of who we are, what we're about, what's our strategy, what are the elements that we're putting in place to execute that strategy and it's I think it's really important because you don't get but 60 seconds, right, in front of a customer, or to grab their attention off a Twitter feed, or whatever and so, simplicity is really really important, and I think the advantage of an event like this is it brings our strategy and that message to life, I mean it's three dimensional out there right. It's living and breathing, we bring the customers forward first, that's the lead of every message because that's what other customers want to hear about, what are you going to do for me, right? >> Well, lets talk about the messaging and how it translate, from as I always say, if you got the sizzle you better have the steak, to use that old expression. Just as a random example, the user experience is changing significantly in IT, I mean yesterday I was delayed coming in Southwest coming from Silicone Valley and, you know they sold my seat, they didn't have to drag me off the plane, but you know I'm getting some help in the analog face to face but I got on Twitter, had to DM Southwest, instant channel to Southwest. That proves that the interface to technology in a digital business is changing. Now IT is transforming in a similar way, how are you guys taking the messaging of simplicity at the same time as the product evolution is shifting and architectures are changing. The people who have to consume and manage this stuff, their work is changing, so how do you guys talk about that because that's really where the meat on the bone is sitting that's where the rubber is hitting the road, your thoughts? >> I'll start, and maybe Jason you can pile on, you know I think Jason poked at it, we are a much simpler company today, so our strategy is very clean. It's to make hybrid IT simple, it's to power the Intelligent Edge, and it's to bring the services to help our customer go along that journey. So just starting with that simple message means that we can get out whole organization, our partner organization, on message in terms of what we bring and how we can help them to do that. I think the other part this that's really important is we view innovation today as really a team sport, and as we become more focused, we're actually leaning in a lot harder to our partner ecosystem. Whether it's our traditional partners, like Microsoft and SAP, whether it's new partners like Docker, Mesosphere, you know bringing the containerized environments, or actually curating a new set of partners for the future with Partner Next. Because it is about getting it down the simple thing of what's the outcome you're trying to drive, what's the technology, and the ecosystem and how can we be the company to help bring that forward? And I think that's a lot of the simplicity that you're going to see. You know on stage later today, I think why we're so excited about this is, you know you're going to hear Meg talk a little bit about the journey we've been on but more importantly the outcomes that we're delivering for customers and then what we're going to do is we're going to feature three customer scenarios, talking about what they have done, what their journey has been, their outcomes, their experiences and what they can do today, and then of course, how HP technology is enabling that. >> We had in our opening, Dave and I always talk about this, because we love the shiny new toy. Certainly I'm from Silicone Valley, he's from the east coast but the reality is that all this stuff about declining markets here and there is always a shift to another growth market, even on PRIM, you know, people might buy and consume and interface differently with technology but it doesn't mean that the data is slowing down, it doesn't mean that the value creation is changing, it's shifting. So I think that has really been something that I think you guys have had online, maybe lost in some of the tactical things but, you know, from new style of IT, to this, it's been kind of a cadence that you've been on it's not like you guys are groping for messaging. >> What goes down, yeah, and you can't just snap your fingers and be the transformed company that you want, right, but we're moving at break-neck speed on that and it does all go back to the advantage of that strategy, and the world you just described, right, you want to be nimble. You know, there may be something next month we've never heard of that disrupts the entire container market, right, containers become oh that's so yesterday, we want to be the company that's ready to pounce on the next thing, right, and we're geared to do that. You know, competitors - >> John: (mumbles) containers in microseconds is kind of a big deal, and it's coming out of the labs. >> Well you know, the other thing, I want to just add, so you talk about customers, you start with the customer the technology business is always moved faster pretty much than any business, but now, every customer is technology company, and so they're accelerating the pace, so you've got to accelerate that pace with them and be that provider. Digital transformation is all about data, it's all about becoming a technology company. So what's the message to your customers in terms of your role in helping them accelerate their transformation? >> Well, I think you pretty much hit it, right, in the statement that I use is digital business is technology. You are not going to seed with your digital transformation unless you have the right technology foundation and that's what we heard from those customers on the panel. It's about speed, it's about flexibility, it's about having the right technology that enables me to deliver services back to my internal clients at the speed I need to do it. And you know, that's where our innovation is really focused today, and that's why we're seeing a lot of customers coming to us and saying I want to understand how you did it for CenterPoint, or for Dreamworks and how we can take advantage of that. The other part of it is, technology is a big part of it but it's also the learning and the expertise that we can bring to actually make that technology work in that customer environment - we know how to do that. We're proven in doing that, and I think that's something because we're close to the technology, we not only have the right innovation, we have the right expertise to make it work for our customers, and that's important. >> I don't even think it's early innings either, Dave, I think it's not the game hasn't even started and I think you know one of the things that we believe and we're doing some research on is, we think asset evaluations is going to be completely data driven. Data will be an asset and that will impact the evaluation mechanism to >> Dave: Data is the new currency! >> John: To companies' value, so I think the shift is so early. So, riding the wave, guys thanks so much for coming on theCUBE we really appreciate it. Looking forward to the keynote from Meg Whitman to hear the messaging. Congratulations as you guys continue to - >> Dave: We're fired up! >> Jason: He's fired up. >> Dave: There's a lot of energy, Meg's fired up >> Jason: She's going to bring it today - >> Dave: Antonio is fired up, there's a lot of energy at the company, and you know, we're just excited to get our story out and engage customers. Thanks guys for the opportunity. >> Live here from HPE Discover, this is theCUBE's exclusive coverage, we'll be back with more live action. Three days of wall to wall coverage after this short break. (electronic music)

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

hi everybody welcome back to the Q we're here live at the Stanford accel partners summit I should say event here at Stanford University I am joined by Satya Nadella who is the president of server and tools baby Scholars Program with the Q I thanks so much for coming on appreciate it I think first time here on the cube we've had of course lots of folks on Microsoft on in the past and always a great to get your your take so tell us a little bit about your your your thoughts on this event in general you know last year was about big data this year it's a little bit more focused a little bit broader focus on the modern enterprise as they say what's your take on kind of this events it's a great event down this is my first time here as well and um having a chance to even see a couple of panels and just participate I think this notion of a modern enterprise is for real I think that it is a reimagining of what does infrastructure mean what do applications mean inside of the enterprise and we're going through this tectonic shift which we participate in and so to have a forum like this to discuss that was just great so let's dig into that a little bit what you know what makes the what makes the modern enterprise it's it's certainly a cloud and virtualization you've got the big data piece kind of the DevOps model of application development how do you kind of define what all bring to bringing together all these different elements what makes a modern enterprise yeah one of the things that I like to sort of make sure we focus on I work on the infrastructure business at Microsoft so you're in the infrastructure business the key thing is to be in touch with the applique and it turns out in our own case today we are building a pretty diverse set of applications both consumer and enterprise so they're building Bane which is an applied machine learning application we learn building office 365 which is an enterprise focused collaboration communication application we're building dynamics and another Enterprise CRM ERP in the cloud application and what have you so that diversity of applications makes you rethink what is the infrastructure needed from storage compute as well as the network and so we are building a new operating system for the modern enterprise to be able to deploy these modern applications so that's kind of how I conceptualize I would say there are four major elements to it the first one is it's inside of the data center you have much more of a software driven data set where you're orchestrating your compute storage and network in support of your applications either at the data center or multi data center scale because there's not a single enterprise that's not using some public cloud provider or another service provider in addition to what they already are virtualizing inside their own private cloud so that is all a software control plane and so we are really thinking about what is the modern operating system that enables you to manage the data center a second dimension would be the what is driven through consumerization of IT I like to describe it as transforming IT to be much more people central so you want end-users to adopt the devices they want and still have access to all their applications and data and yet IT needs to be able to set compliance and policy so how do you really arean that is in another dimension big data is something you referenced there's not going to be a single application that's not a big data application and so those are the major Keane's and the last thing I would say is this DevOps so not only have you built the application but it's even the lifecycle around the application is being reimagined how developers and operations professionals come together in support of an ongoing improvement and continuous integration these four mega trends I think constitute a modern enterprise infrastructure matrix so let's dig into a little bit about what you mentioned about the use of kind of public cloud infrastructure as well as your internal data center so you've got these hybrid environments that are starting to emerge again pretty much software lead a software led infrastructure is what we're calling it a wiki bond how do you go about actually making it possible for for CIOs and their teams and to actually manage those environments in an efficient way as possible you know making decisions about which applications are deployed in the public cloud which are deployed in your data center how they interact potentially applications that are drawing on data from both spots it's obviously can get very complex so you know Microsoft is one of those public cloud providers with Windows Azure so how do you approach that problem so if you sort of take what you just described which is if you you sort of start with the design point that there will be a public cloud there will be a private cloud and a service provider cloud then how you think about the software control is going to be defined by that design so it's not going to be narrowly defined as bring everything into my data center and I'll help you manage it but it is actually distributed so if I think of this is the true fruition of distributed computing and we believe in that so then what are the things that matter first is identity so anything whenever things get distributed the most important thing that brings back things together is actually identity of users and identity for resources so Active Directory was a great resource for many enterprises in terms of how they came the complexity of the previous generation of client server now we've replumbed and we my Active Directory with Azure Active Directory so this consistency in directories helps IT administrators manage this complexity the next one is virtualization so not only will you be able to virtualize on your private cloud you should be able to move the same work cloud workload which is virtualized to any of these other clouds so you need a degree of guarantee that the performance characteristics of a virtualized workload get maintained across all so that's another thing that with our hyper-v investments and our agile investments we are making sure that happens the other one would be management so with if you can be sitting on the system center management console and the orchestrator and looking at a workload which could be in fact in one one of these clouds or in fact the tears of a single application could be split which is the front end is on Azure the back end is back in on-premise and so that's also very very important to have a management tier which is the control plane that allows you to manage this complexity and lastly it's the consistency of the application platform itself so if you're building a development you never want to be in the state where you build a great app but you can never check out so you if you build it in the public cloud in the case of azure you should be able to take it and run it on a private cloud or on a service provider cloud so these four things are on identity management virtualization and application platform I think is the core investment you've got to make to help enterprises truly adopt the cloud while you know it's complex but you gotta tame the complexity and then of course what you're talking about it really is a lot of data being generated companies of course want to want to start taking advantage of that data they want to analyze it they want to actually take those insights and turn them into either applications or perhaps convey them to executives and others in terms of visualization and of course one of those underlying platforms is to do talk about Microsoft's approach to Hadoop I know you're working with Hortonworks you actually kind of discontinued working on your own big data technology when you as I think that you know Hadoop was given is going to become the de facto standard so talk about how you're making it possible to bring the dupe into this environment where more and more companies are looking to bring that in maybe as a big data hub kind of store a lot of data and then feeds out to applications different workloads what is your approach actually making that I guess Enterprise ready yeah and making it easy to get and get started and then turn you know maybe science projects into really production whether the point is right I mean this notion of being able to take data and convert it into insights in support of enterprise goals is sort of the holy grail of this moment and so one of the things that we are actively doing is to bring a lot of the traditional value we've always had if you think about the momentum we have with our self-service bi capabilities on the edge of data which is Excel sharepoint sequel analysis services is where all data goes to in order to be able to drive insights within and you know with it with end users because at the end of the day humans will be involved to be able to drive inside out of all of this data so now the question is how do we take that edge loop and connected with the information production which is upstream and that is where we are completing the story with having HD inside having even a relational interface on top of HD insight for in-memory ad hoc query analysis like a data warehouse on top of it which I think the Hadoop community itself is adopting which is a sequel interface on Hadoop is probably one of the more talked about things nowadays and so this notion of having a complete data platform everything from MapReduce to stream processing to sequel like query interactively and then empowering end-users and workflows with data around end users which share or in Excel where we've invested in things like a power pivot and Power View which are actually powerful in-memory databases in fact I would say the most powerful in-memory database now is Power View inside of Excel from where you can issue a sequel I mean basically a hive query to HD inside and populate millions of in a tabular column form that you're very familiar with we think that that democratization of big data is going to be very very important to acceptance of it as you said it from science projects or just being in the data science department to bring ubiquitous so we've only got time for one more question so just love to get your kind of future outlook what are some of the key priorities for you and your group over the next say six to twelve months I mean the key thing for us is really bootstrapping our cloud business we've got some fantastic traction with office 365 it's really doing very well in the q3 earnings we talked about how we have a moving on a run rate basis of billion dollars a revenue going to office 365 and many customers who are coming to office 365 never bought an exchange server from so we're even it's not even 0 some really in the short run at least and so we're very glad with that and there is a j''r is just a natural complement to any customer who's already got office 365 SharePoint extensions the end user bi Active Directory administration all of these are sort of very natural extensions but Azure itself now has got very very significant momentum yesterday we talked about how Azure and Azure services with all of our service provider partners has also got a billion dollars of revenue so that means when it comes to the core of the enterprise and their move to the cloud which is going to be complementing a lot of what they're already doing in on-premise is something that we're a pretty major player on and if anything we want to be solving the here and now practical problems with a forward-looking vision around identity around consistency of the management plane around virtualization compatibility around the application platforms and I think that that's what we are up to in the immediate future alright yeah I think you really hit on something there with these gonna be hybrid deployments they're going to you know just much like in big data you know doop isn't going to come in and replace your database your relational database and neither is the cloud going to replace your internal data center they've got to work together it sounds like you guys are working hard to kind of make that as seamless of the proposal as possible for your clients so Satya Nadella for Microsoft we appreciate you coming on the queue thanks very much well hope you come back and join us about three thank you so much we'll be right back from the Excel Stanford symposium with our next guests ready for this