(intro music) >> "theCUBE's" live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> We're not going to- >> Hey everybody, welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. My name is Dave Vellante, I'm here with Dave Nicholson, day four of MWC23. I mean, it's Dave, it's, it's still really busy. And you walking the floors, you got to stop and start. >> It's surprising. >> People are cheering. They must be winding down, giving out the awards. Really excited. Pier, look at you and Elias here. He's the vice president of Engineering Technology for Edge Computing Offers Strategy and Execution at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Dan Cummins, who's a fellow and vice president of, in the Edge Business Unit at Dell Technologies. Guys, welcome. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> I love when I see the term fellow. You know, you don't, they don't just give those away. What do you got to do to be a fellow at Dell? >> Well, you know, fellows are senior technical leaders within Dell. And they're usually tasked to help Dell solve you know, a very large business challenge to get to a fellow. There's only, I think, 17 of them inside of Dell. So it is a small crowd. You know, previously, really what got me to fellow, is my continued contribution to transform Dell's mid-range business, you know, VNX two, and then Unity, and then Power Store, you know, and then before, and then after that, you know, they asked me to come and, and help, you know, drive the technology vision for how Dell wins at the Edge. >> Nice. Congratulations. Now, Pierluca, I'm looking at this kind of cool chart here which is Edge, Edge platform by Dell Technologies, kind of this cube, like cubes course, you know. >> AK project from here. >> Yeah. So, so tell us about the Edge platform. What, what's your point of view on all that at Dell? >> Yeah, absolutely. So basically in a, when we create the Edge, and before even then was bringing aboard, to create this vision of the platform, and now building the platform when we announced project from here, was to create solution for the Edge. Dell has been at the edge for 30 years. We sold a lot of compute. But the reality was people want outcome. And so, and the Edge is a new market, very exciting, but very siloed. And so people at the Edge have different personas. So quickly realize that we need to bring in Dell, people with expertise, quickly realize as well that doing all these solution was not enough. There was a lot of problem to solve because the Edge is outside of the data center. So you are outside of the wall of the data center. And what is going to happen is obviously you are in the land of no one. And so you have million of device, thousand of million of device. All of us at home, we have all connected thing. And so we understand that the, the capability of Dell was to bring in technology to secure, manage, deploy, with zero touch, zero trust, the Edge. And all the edge the we're speaking about right now, we are focused on everything that is outside of a normal data center. So, how we married the computer that we have for many years, the new gateways that we create, so having the best portfolio, number one, having the best solution, but now, transforming the way that people deploy the Edge, and secure the Edge through a software platform that we create. >> You mentioned Project Frontier. I like that Dell started to do these sort of project, Project Alpine was sort of the multi-cloud storage. I call it "The Super Cloud." The Project Frontier. It's almost like you develop, it's like mission based. Like, "Okay, that's our North Star." People hear Project Frontier, they know, you know, internally what you're talking about. Maybe use it for external communications too, but what have you learned since launching Project Frontier? What's different about the Edge? I mean you're talking about harsh environments, you're talking about new models of connectivity. So, what have you learned from Project Frontier? What, I'd love to hear the fellow perspective as well, and what you guys are are learning so far. >> Yeah, I mean start and then I left to them, but we learn a lot. The first thing we learn that we are on the right path. So that's good, because every conversation we have, there is nobody say to us, you know, "You are crazy. "This is not needed." Any conversation we have this week, start with the telco thing. But after five minutes it goes to, okay, how I can solve the Edge, how I can bring the compute near where the data are created, and how I can do that secure at scale, and with the right price. And then can speak about how we're doing that. >> Yeah, yeah. But before that, we have to really back up and understand what Dell is doing with Project Frontier, which is an Edge operations platform, to simplify your Edge use cases. Now, Pierluca and his team have a number of verticalized applications. You want to be able to securely deploy those, you know, at the Edge. But you need a software platform that's going to simplify both the life cycle management, and the security at the Edge, with the ability to be able to construct and deploy distributed applications. Customers are looking to derive value near the point of generation of data. We see a massive explosion of data. But in particular, what's different about the Edge, is the different computing locations, and the constraints that are on those locations. You know, for example, you know, in a far Edge environment, the people that service that equipment are not trained in the IT, or train, trained in it. And they're also trained in the safety and security protocols of that environment. So you necessarily can't apply the same IT techniques when you're managing infrastructure and deploying applications, or servicing in those locations. So Frontier was designed to solve for those constraints. You know, often we see competitors that are doing similar things, that are starting from an IT mindset, and trying to shift down to cover Edge use cases. What we've done with Frontier, is actually first understood the constraints that they have at the Edge. Both the operational constraints and technology constraints, the service constraints, and then came up with a, an architecture and technology platform that allows them to start from the Edge, and bleed into the- >> So I'm laughing because you guys made the same mistake. And you, I think you learned from that mistake, right? You used to take X86 boxes and throw 'em over the fence. Now, you're building purpose-built systems, right? Project Frontier I think is an example of the learnings. You know, you guys an IT company, right? Come on. But you're learning fast, and that's what I'm impressed about. >> Well Glenn, of course we're here at MWC, so it's all telecom, telecom, telecom, but really, that's a subset of Edge. >> Yes. >> Fair to say? >> Yes. >> Can you give us an example of something that is, that is, orthogonal to, to telecom, you know, maybe off to the side, that maybe overlaps a little bit, but give us an, give us an example of Edge, that isn't specifically telecom focused. >> Well, you got the, the Edge verticals. and Pierluca could probably speak very well to this. You know, you got manufacturing, you got retail, you got automotive, you got oil and gas. Every single one of them are going to make different choices in the software that they're going to use, the hyperscaler investments that they're going to use, and then write some sort of automation, you know, to deploy that, right? And the Edge is highly fragmented across all of these. So we certainly could deploy a private wireless 5G solution, orchestrate that deployment through Frontier. We can also orchestrate other use cases like connected worker, or overall equipment effectiveness in manufacturing. But Pierluca you have a, you have a number. >> Well, but from your, so, but just to be clear, from your perspective, the whole idea of, for example, private 5g, it's a feature- >> Yes. >> That might be included. It happened, it's a network topology, a network function that might be a feature of an Edge environment. >> Yes. But it's not the center of the discussion. >> So, it enables the outcome. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So this, this week is a clear example where we confirm and establish this. The use case, as I said, right? They, you say correctly, we learned very fast, right? We brought people in that they came from industry that was not IT industry. We brought people in with the things, and we, we are Dell. So we have the luxury to be able to interview hundreds of customers, that just now they try to connect the OT with the IT together. And so what we learn, is really, at the Edge is different personas. They person that decide what to do at the Edge, is not the normal IT administrator, is not the normal telco. >> Who is it? Is it an engineer, or is it... >> It's, for example, the store manager. >> Yeah. >> It's, for example, the, the person that is responsible for the manufacturing process. Those people are not technology people by any means. But they have a business goal in mind. Their goal is, "I want to raise my productivity by 30%," hence, I need to have a preventive maintenance solution. How we prescribe this preventive maintenance solution? He doesn't prescribe the preventive maintenance solution. He goes out, he has to, a consult or himself, to deploy that solution, and he choose different fee. Now, the example that I was doing from the houses, all of us, we have connected device. The fact that in my house, I have a solar system that produce energy, the only things I care that I can read, how much energy I produce on my phone, and how much energy I send to get paid back. That's the only thing. The fact that inside there is a compute that is called Dell or other things is not important to me. Same persona. Now, if I can solve the security challenge that the SI, or the user need to implement this technology because it goes everywhere. And I can manage this in extensively, and I can put the supply chain of Dell on top of that. And I can go every part in the world, no matter if I have in Papua New Guinea, or I have an oil ring in Texas, that's the winning strategy. That's why people, they are very interested to the, including Telco, the B2B business in telco is looking very, very hard to how they recoup the investment in 5g. One of the way, is to reach out with solution. And if I can control and deploy things, more than just SD one or other things, or private mobility, that's the key. >> So, so you have, so you said manufacturing, retail, automotive, oil and gas, you have solutions for each of those, or you're building those, or... >> Right now we have solution for manufacturing, with for example, PTC. That is the biggest company. It's actually based in Boston. >> Yeah. Yeah, it is. There's a company that the market's just coming right to them. >> We have a, very interesting. Another solution with Litmus, that is a startup that, that also does manufacturing aggregation. We have retail with Deep North. So we can do detecting in the store, how many people they pass, how many people they doing, all of that. And all theses solution that will be, when we will have Frontier in the market, will be also in Frontier. We are also expanding to energy, and we going vertical by vertical. But what is they really learn, right? You said, you know you are an IT company. What, to me, the Edge is a pre virtualization area. It's like when we had, you know, I'm, I've been in the company for 24 years coming from EMC. The reality was before there was virtualization, everybody was starting his silo. Nobody thought about, "Okay, I can run this thing together "with security and everything, "but I need to do it." Because otherwise in a manufacturing, or in a shop, I can end up with thousand of devices, just because someone tell to me, I'm a, I'm a store manager, I don't know better. I take this video surveillance application, I take these things, I take a, you know, smart building solution, suddenly I have five, six, seven different infrastructure to run this thing because someone say so. So we are here to democratize the Edge, to secure the Edge, and to expand. That's the idea. >> So, the Frontier platform is really the horizontal platform. And you'll build specific solutions for verticals. On top of that, you'll, then I, then the beauty is ISV's come in. >> Yes. >> 'Cause it's open, and the developers. >> We have a self certification program already for our solution, as well, for the current solution, but also for Frontier. >> What does that involve? Self-certification. You go through you, you go through some- >> It's basically a, a ISV can come. We have a access to a lab, they can test the thing. If they pass the first screen, then they can become part of our ecosystem very easily. >> Ah. >> So they don't need to spend days or months with us to try to architect the thing. >> So they get the premature of being certified. >> They get the Dell brand associated with it. Maybe there's some go-to-market benefits- >> Yes. >> As well. Cool. What else do we need to know? >> So, one thing I, well one thing I just want to stress, you know, when we say horizontal platform, really, the Edge is really a, a distributed edge computing problem, right? And you need to almost create a mesh of different computing locations. So for example, even though Dell has Edge optimized infrastructure, that we're going to deploy and lifecycle manage, customers may also have compute solutions, existing compute solutions in their data center, or at a co-location facility that are compute destinations. Project Frontier will connect to those private cloud stacks. They'll also collect to, connect to multiple public cloud stacks. And then, what they can do, is the solutions that we talked about, they construct that using an open based, you know, protocol, template, that describes that distributed application that produces that outcome. And then through orchestration, we can then orchestrate across all of these locations to produce that outcome. That's what the platform's doing. >> So it's a compute mesh, is what you just described? >> Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a software orchestration mesh. >> Okay. >> Right. And allows customers to take advantage of their existing investments. Also allows them to, to construct solutions based on the ISV of their choice. We're offering solutions like Pierluca had talked about, you know, in manufacturing with Litmus and PTC, but they could put another use case that's together based on another ISV. >> Is there a data mesh analog here? >> The data mesh analog would run on top of that. We don't offer that as part of Frontier today, but we do have teams working inside of Dell that are working on this technology. But again, if there's other data mesh technology or packages, that they want to deploy as a solution, if you will, on top of Frontier, Frontier's extensible in that way as well. >> The open nature of Frontier is there's a, doesn't, doesn't care. It's just a note on the mesh. >> Yeah. >> Right. Now, of course you'd rather, you'd ideally want it to be Dell technology, and you'll make the business case as to why it should be. >> They get additional benefits if it's Dell. Pierluca talked a lot about, you know, deploying infrastructure outside the walls of an IT data center. You know, this stuff can be tampered with. Somebody can move it to another room, somebody can open up. In the supply chain with, you know, resellers that are adding additional people, can open these devices up. We're actually deploying using an Edge technology called Secure Device Onboarding. And it solves a number of things for us. We, as a manufacturer can initialize the roots of trust in the Dell hardware, such that we can validate, you know, tamper detection throughout the supply chain, and securely transfer ownership. And that's different. That is not an IT technique. That's an edge technique. And that's just one example. >> That's interesting. I've talked to other people in IT about how they're using that technique. So it's, it's trickling over to that side of the business. >> I'm almost curious about the friction that you, that you encounter because the, you know, you paint a picture of a, of a brave new world, a brave new future. Ideally, in a healthy organization, they have, there's a CTO, or at least maybe a CIO, with a CTO mindset. They're seeking to leverage technology in the service of whatever the mission of the organization is. But they've got responsibilities to keep the lights on, as well as innovate. In that mix, what are you seeing as the inhibitors? What's, what's the push back against Frontier that you're seeing in most cases? Is it, what, what is it? >> Inside of Dell? >> No, not, I'm saying out, I'm saying with- >> Market friction. >> Market, market, market friction. What is the push back? >> I think, you know, as I explained, do yourself is one of the things that probably is the most inhibitor, because some people, they think that they are better already. They invest a lot in this, and they have the content. But those are again, silo solutions. So, if you go into some of the huge things that they already established, thousand of store and stuff like that, there is an opportunity there, because also they want to have a refresh cycle. So when we speak about softer, softer, softer, when you are at the Edge, the software needs to run on something that is there. So the combination that we offer about controlling the security of the hardware, plus the operating system, and provide an end-to-end platform, allow them to solve a lot of problems that today they doing by themselves. Now, I met a lot of customers, some of them, one actually here in Spain, I will not make the name, but it's a large automotive. They have the same challenge. They try to build, but the problem is this is just for them. And they want to use something that is a backup and provide with the Dell service, Dell capability of supply chain in all the world, and the diversity of the portfolio we have. These guys right now, they need to go out and find different types of compute, or try to adjust thing, or they need to have 20 people there to just prepare the device. We will take out all of this. So I think the, the majority of the pushback is about people that they already established infrastructure, and they want to use that. But really, there is an opportunity here. Because the, as I said, the IT/OT came together now, it's a reality. Three years ago when we had our initiative, they've pointed out, sarcastically. We, we- >> Just trying to be honest. (laughing) >> I can't let you get away with that. >> And we, we failed because it was too early. And we were too focused on, on the fact to going. Push ourself to the boundary of the IOT. This platform is open. You want to run EdgeX, you run EdgeX, you want OpenVINO, you want Microsoft IOT, you run Microsoft IOT. We not prescribe the top. We are locking down the bottom. >> What you described is the inertia of, of sunk dollars, or sunk euro into an infrastructure, and now they're hanging onto that. >> Yeah. >> But, I mean, you know, I, when we say horizontal, we think scale, we think low cost, at volume. That will, that will win every time. >> There is a simplicity at scale, right? There is a, all the thing. >> And the, and the economics just overwhelm that siloed solution. >> And >> That's inevitable. >> You know, if you want to apply security across the entire thing, if you don't have a best practice, and a click that you can do that, or bring down an application that you need, you need to touch each one of these silos. So, they don't know yet, but we going to be there helping them. So there is no pushback. Actually, this particular example I did, this guy said you know, there are a lot of people that come here. Nobody really described the things we went through. So we are on the right track. >> Guys, great conversation. We really appreciate you coming on "theCUBE." >> Thank you. >> Pleasure to have you both. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> All right. And thank you for watching Dave Vellante for Dave Nicholson. We're live at the Fira. We're winding up day four. Keep it right there. Go to siliconangle.com. John Furrier's got all the news on "theCUBE.net." We'll be right back right after this break. "theCUBE," at MWC 23. (outro music)

>> Hello, welcome to the special Cube conversation. I'm John Furrier, your host to the cube here and our special Napa Valley remote location, connecting with Palo Alto as well as in Massachusetts, and VMware in Palo Alto. We've got a great conversation about edge technology with Dell technologies and VMware and the cube of course. Here Pierluca Chiodelli, vice-president product manager at the edge at Dell. And Munyeb Minhazuddin, VP of edge computing at VMware, joining me for this edge conversation, gentlemen, thank you for joining us in the cube. >> Thank you. >> Pleasure to be here. >> So it's like the edge is the hottest thing we've been talking about forever. Now it's important because you're starting to see the technologies come together with multicloud on the horizon, and hybrid cloud in full enterprise mode right now with 5G, consumer size expanding. On the business side, connecting the edge is becoming a cloud product cloud operations product. That also includes the on premises components. So we're in full distributed computing mode right now. And everyone's not denying this a lot too. Everyone's agreeing on it. So it's happening. So let's get into what's going on at the edge. How do you guys see edge evolving in the marketplace right now? >> Yeah, let me get started there, John pleasure to be here and partnering with your Pierluca. What's happened through the pandemic, I know you kind of said we're all sitting far apart and talking, right? So a lot of the edge has been here forever, but the pandemic has accelerated a lot of the edge initiatives, right? So people started working from home remotely, workloads now starting to move towards towards the edge. So as every industry retailers think about socially disintermediated, omni-channel retail experiences. Manufacturers think about, localized supply chains and efficiencies of that. As their global supply chains get all stressed, they're all, inventing and doing two things at the edge. So what's this driven, even though it has been there all along, it's to driving innovation towards the edge. Business processes, outcomes, new applications, we call them edge native applications are being built, now purpose for business outcomes at the edge. That's kind of a big change and acceleration the last, 15 months that we've seen. >> What's the trends driving this because you know, obviously that is making a lot of sense and modernization of the enterprise, it's happening a lot faster than many people had predicted, day one operations, day two operators are buzzwords now. I mean, day one just basically means cloud and innovation. But now there's an operating aspect to this. What's the trend driving this edge native mindset and product requirement. Can you guys share that, any thought on reaction to that? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think the main trend as Munyeb said, the restoration is bream because they use case and the transformation that needs to happen at the edge. This is, was thinking before, right? All of us, when we go to a store now we interact in different way. When we buy online, when we do all the normal things in life that we need today, we doing different. This is required to bring more things at the edge. If you look at some data, we know that 50% of what is going to be happening in 2023, will be at the edge with 90% of what is from an application point of view, exploding at the edge. That to your point, why is that as important, as you see around all the verticals, manufacturing, and also other verticals, for example, the machinery manufacturing was not connected because at that time there was no need to be connected. Now we see more and more machinery need to be connected, not only on the manufacturing floor, but also send things outside of manufacturing floor connected to other compute. So the necessity to bring more close, in Dell, we have this notion of, well, what is the edge you wear a lot? What is the edge? The edge is everything where you need to act upon the information that you create. It's really makes sense to bring things more there because you need to act on them. And so the necessity to have more compute latency, it's very big things that we need to solve. Security, and also the days operation day one day, two operation, and be able to drive everything from the cloud to the edge in the same way and same experience. >> Yeah. I mean, you basically laid out the enterprise requirements for most things, which is pretty complicated, but it has to run at scale, but also, Munyeb was as mentioning edge native. So I want to get your guys' reaction to our thoughts around this concept. I love this edge native conversation, but as customers much migrate to the cloud, okay. Migration workloads with containerization, stateful data, these are real issues. So migrating is one thing, but now if I migrate, what's (indistinct) migrating an app or workloads versus edge native, and how does someone get from migrating or re-platforming to edge native? Can you guys share your thoughts on this evolution of migrating and then becoming truly edge native? >> Yeah, John, I think it's an interesting thing, right? So it's not, it's easy to say, I have a continuum from data center to the public cloud, to the edge. What we're finding is some of the applications you've migrated to the cloud. If you think about it, both data center and clouds are very centralized compute models, right? So when you actually re-platforming refactoring applications for the cloud, what you're doing is you're fundamentally, building for elastic scale, elastic growth of compute, elastic shrink of compute. When you actually moving.. So it's more compute heavy, and you know, the plasticity of compute. When you actually moving these workloads towards the edge, they're actually data dense, they are data heavy, because to what Pierluca was saying before as well, there's a huge volume of data coming at you. And that volume of data needs to be processed. That volume of data needs to be in real-time and streamed and outcomes driven out of that. Now, do you want to take a lot of that data and then push it all the way to the cloud or the data center to get processed? Or do you want to get it processed locally and come to some actions? Now Pierluca's example of the manufacturing plant, that time delay in latency could cost you millions of dollars of bad quality product, because you missed the quality control in not replacing parts fast enough. So what we're seeing in this emergence of this new edge native applications is people are having to re-platform, refactor applications to work them at the edge because of the attributes being different, higher data density, real-time process requirements, scale. We talked about scale. We're all used to doing thousands of maybe hundreds of data centers, but not tens of thousands of edge locations. Right? So it's a different level of scale and security that you need. And that's where, when we call edge native, is fundamentally it has to operate, very closely with the operation technology rather than the typical IT stance we take. >> You're looking at it. I mean, tell about the product features that are requirements there, because you mentioned a few things in there. I'll just jump, pick one thing out, which is data. Moving data around is very expensive and everyone knows that. But you got to move compute now and with serverless, okay. And in the cloud, you want that same kind of agility and capability at the edge. So you got to have the devices at the edge, be smart enough and be software enabled to handle this. How do you deal with this in the product management side of things? Because you've got to prioritize all this. >> Absolutely John to take on what Munyeb was saying, we think of why someone should look at the Dell and VMware together is because for be successful, there are a lot of POC going on and a lot of try and buy in a lot of also verticalization of the use case. So what gear to offer is really what they say, generate insight, where they need, and also consolidate it. Cause we hear more, as Munyeb pointed out, you buy on the edge for the outcome, you buy for, security, you buy for an outcome. For example, for predictive maintenance. Now that buy of the outcome also prescribe a certain orchestration in a certain out and in software that need to run, right? If certain deployment model now in the same place, you can buy an outcome, for example, for smart buildings. All of us that we have in the advanced or most of it at home right now, but think about the buildings where you need to control that you have solar panel and stuff like that. So that outcome, if you buy today, it runs on another thing. So you end up with a very silos approach where you have a prolification actually of infrastructure. What we are proposing here is really that we need to simplify. We need to start with the building block approach that allow us to also bring the security. As you can think it, as the devices expand as the compute, you pointed out the expanding thousands or hundreds of thousand, security becomes a big deal. And in some place you need to also be, I've got things away because you don't want even to go to the internet at all. So that's a very important is this is how we perceive the things that we need to simplify the edge for our customers. >> Let's get specific now. How can customers, whether they're Dell technologies and VMware customers or new customers, leverage the combination of VMware and Dell technologies for the edge, what is the solution? What can they do? What are the things they can start with today? >> Pierluca, you want to get started with the platform on the app side. Go ahead. >> Today what really is the approach we have is, building block approach, as I said. So in Dell, we can cover a lot of things for the edge. We can cover from as small as a gateway, to large, to a plaster to multiple plasters forming an entire data center and connect all of that. And then don't forget about our apex project, where you can buy all of these as a service as well. So that layer that we have where we have ruggedized server, we have the gateways, we have also software assets that they are very important for the edge like our streaming data platform. So you need to collect this data. We need to stream this data and collect and have insight about this data. So we can bring our streaming data platform, in all of these, by the way, it runs on top of VMware. So that's where VMware is coming to play. >> Yeah, no, I think, you know, building on the foundation there, John is really about, us providing then, having the platform T-shirt sizing, as you know, pure Pierluca went from small to large is important because what we recognize is not one size fits all at the edge because they're going to be all sizes requirements. Second, what we're doing is providing the multi-cloud connectivity, multilevel cloud services that VMware knows. So bringing our software layer on top, providing developers to build applications, both VMs and containers on the edge when they can use services from any cloud provider to build those applications. So VMware provides that multi-cloud platform, which gives the ability for folks to build applications and get services from any choice of their cloud providers and run it on top of Dell, portfolio and connect that all together with, very importantly I would say, in a distributed lifecycle management and operations everywhere. Because you're not going to find IT skillsets at the edge. This is at a retail store, at a manufacturing plant. So what you don't get is very, skilled IT skillsets. So the control plane happens to be in the cloud, which is centrally operated. Whereas the data plane is all running at the edge and we're able to between VMware and Dell, bring our portfolios together to effectively deliver upon this and provide what I would call, a secure software supply chain. You can build applications securely and, deliver them from the data center to the cloud, to the edge and manage it provision it and troubleshoot it end to end. That's only possible with VMware and Dell technologies, right? >> And John, let me call it out that one of the most important things, obviously with VMware, our VxRail product, obviously is our running horse for most of the edge use case, including our server, ruggedized server. But I will say that on the VMware we are spending with the satellites nodes, that they are basically nodes that you can put in your edge location and centralized, you can manage and you can do all the life cycle management, also if you don't need the storage part. So that's a key things that expand the as with the common also reference, if you guys will follow our session, we have a joint customer actually explain our such industry, how you will run the entire things with the edge and run VMware across with the VxRail. So great example. >> That's a great answer, great call out to one of the things that's impressive. And I think this better together message comes out in that conversation is that you have a building block approach. You have a platform, these two things work together. And I think one of the things that's interesting to me, just as a, student of the industry over the years, it's kind of an operating system in itself, it's the cloud, right? It's like one big thing. So the customers can build applications on top of it and get the benefits of it. I think this is kind of a systems thinking mindset, not just design thinking, but it's a systems architecture, if you will. it's not directly a systems like a computer system, but holistically, you can look at it as a systems design problem. So customers are having more and more of these conversations around systems thinking. Can you guys share your reaction to that? Because we all saw the benefits of design thinking, oh yeah. Design thinking, you know, greatest movement. Now we're in a new era I think where, we're starting to see people talk about the systems thinking. >> You, you actually, it's a great thing, John. I think you have to have system thinking, everything we're been talking about so far is, if you don't have system thinking you won't scale to tens of thousands of locations, in a systematically, right? So design thinking is brilliant because it gives you a very user interface, user experiences where users and developers get in and have a flexibility on usage and all of that. What you're talking about here is tens of thousands of locations. And those locations don't have any skilled IT folks. So we're not used to breaking things down. So what do you want to think about is more of a scalable system design, which is like cookie cutter, push it out, and then, it has got zero touch provisioning, zero trust for architecture, with security built in and distributed lifecycle management. So you are making the edge simple to operate for that to happen, you need system thinking where it is, scalable, secure, and scalable not large, small, and highly distributed in a lot of locations, you have a proper system thinking and design system put in, then it'll operate itself. This is how we've done industry for a long time. Right? >> And the consequences have to be factored in. If something breaks there's consequences in systems, it's a ripple effect or network of what kinds of things are going on. Great stuff. You're looking at a comment on the systems thinking, I'd love to get your reaction to that. >> Yeah. Let me say one things about the system thinking. So system thinking is very important also on top of the solution that we put together, as we discussed before, right? Normally in the vertical, like the manufacturing, people by outcome. So at the end of the day, the people, they interact directly with the outcome, they look at the solution and we will offer together the solution. So we have the VMware layer, we are partnering with other people to, offer an end to end solution, to Munyeb's point The manufacturing floor person will not really care if he's interact with VxRail or VMware, but he wants to interact with the end application. So that's why it's very important beside that we need to make the infrastructure transparent and easy. So that's really good point. That's how the things going. That's why you need to system architect the things and system think the things. >> I think this edge conversation is bringing up a new modern era of opportunity and there are problems to solve and work the problem. The data is when we talked earlier. Are there considerations that you guys see out there for how architects in the enterprise who are thinking about the future of their business, how they want to set themselves up for the modern era? It's coming as here for edge for low latency, built insecurity. These are table stake enterprise features now. So, also the data obviously the cost of data and the tsunami of more data. Local data to be processed, leveraging the benefits of the cloud in a systematic way. These are all new hard problems that if solved create huge opportunities. Or as Jerry Chen, former VMware CTO of the cloud said, castles on the cloud. You can have the best of the cloud if you do this right. What are some considerations that people should think about from an architecture standpoint? >> I think from my perspective, and then let Munyeb speak about this. Think about how you can standardize from the beginning. So don't end up with the thousand of different option because then it's difficult to manage. And then have a wide approach, look at all the different edge sites, as a building block of that big edge thing. And also look at how you can not only scale, but bring security in all the things that you think, right. This is fundamental. In the past we always left security as the last of things that we thought about, at the edge is fundamental. And edge is changing, the requirement. As I explained at the beginning of this interview, edge has a very different requirement. And if we satisfy those requirement, then we are successful not only at the edge, but we are successful at the core and in the cloud, because we can bring as many application in and out, in and out where it's needed. So with that, Munyeb you want to say something about that? >> Sure, Thanks Pierluca And I think, Pierluca was absolutely right. I think you have to standardize, you have to scale, only then you can standardize easily without doing (indistinct). As an architect, one of the key things to consider, also there is, you know, I think, John you brought up 5G at the beginning, but we didn't follow up with that. Right? So we actually do believe that the service provider market for building out the next generation 5G, they have capacity, they have connectivity closest to the edge as well. So I actually do think that as architects think about it, a player as you build out your data center, your cloud, and now towards the edge, the last mile between the cloud and the edge is actually owned by the service providers, the service providers will play a critical role in placing these workloads closer to the edge, but not necessarily all far away from the cloud. So, architect design think about scalability, intrinsic security, and having different sizes. But one important factor, I actually do believe that the service providers have the opportunity of a lifetime in front of them to become like the hyper scalers for the edge, because if they can provide not just infrastructure network services, IaaS, PaaS and SaaS, they will be able to deliver extensively whole amount of edge compute services for the enterprises, which is something that architects have to think about to actually not make a bottleneck, to all go up to the cloud where they can actually be distributed as the service provider. >> Yeah. I totally agree. The service providers, they have the real estate, they got the facilities, they've got the connectivity at the edge and the footprint, what used to be a base station is becoming smaller and smaller and higher density. So it's going to start to see, and there is by the way more edges. It's not the one tower anymore. It's everywhere. These little points of access points, are thousands of points of millions of points of light, if you will to the network. Huge. Okay, gentlemen, thank you so much. I want to just say, I really appreciate this conversation. A systems thinking, edge it's the future and an edge is an architectural shift where there's only advantages, not a lot of downside if you plan it right. The opportunity with the cloud is amazing. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing your insights here on the Cube conversation. >> Thank you very much John. >> Thank you for having us John. >> This is John Furrier with the cube here in Napa remotely in Palo Alto and Palo Alto in Massachusetts for a remote interview. Great conversation with great guests. Thanks for watching.

(bright upbeat melody) >> Welcome back to Dell Technology World 2021. Dell Tech World, the virtual edition. My name is Dave Vellante. We're going to talk about the Edge. I'm very excited to invite Pierluca Chiodelli, who's the Vice President of Product Management for the Edge portfolio at Dell. And Gil Shneorson, who's the Senior Vice President, Edge portfolio also at Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, great to see you welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, Dave. >> Thank you, great to see you. >> Yeah, great to see you guys too. Wish we were face to face but maybe in '22. Gil, let's start with you. The Edge is very exciting, it's not really defined. It's very fragmented, but it's there. It's kind of, you know it, when you see it. What do you get excited about when you think about the Edge? >> I think of there's two elements. The first one, is that we all live at the Edge. In other words, the areas we deal with are around us everyday. When we shop, when we consume, when we drive. So it's a very physical type of activity, we know it's there. What's really exciting mostly to me is that, and you started with talking about fragmentation right off the bat. It is a great opportunity for Dell Technologies to add value. Because it's so fragmented, because it's so new, because it has developed and evolved the way it is. We see an amazing opportunity for us to add much more value than we do today and solve problems that have yet to be solved in the industry. >> And Pierluca, it's an exciting, it's almost like an infinite playground for a technologist. I mean. >> Yeah, Dave, I think that's exactly what we find out. The Edge is very exciting, there is a lot of motion especially due to the pandemic and other things. Big factor that is accelerating the innovation at the Edge but this is an inorganic acceleration and what it cause for most of our customers is also confusion, right? They need to apply multiple solutions but not very organized. So you try to solve the outcome like having the right production on your line because demand is surging. But you don't have an organic things to do that and solve the problem. So you see a lot of silos coming in for each one of the solution, and that's what Gil was referring. That's a great opportunity for us as Dell with the breadth of the portfolio we have and what our team that is a new team is focusing doing is to bring that idea to be able to consolidate multiple things at the Edge and process things at the Edge. >> We did an event. CUBE had an event called the CUBE on Cloud and Q1, we had John Rose on and the title of the segment was something like gaining the technology Edge. And we were kind of geeking out on the tech at the Edge. And my takeaway there was... We were trying to like what is Edge? It's like, well, it's the place where it makes most sense to process the data. And so that brings up a lot of challenges. There are technical challenges and there are business challenges. I wonder if we could sort of dig into those a little bit. How do you guys look at that? Maybe Gil, you want to start maybe. Maybe on the business side and then we can dig into that. >> Sure. The way things evolved. If you think about it, at the Edge is very verticalized. And because of that, they're very use case driven. And so in every industry possible, you start with some business person making a decision whether they have a need or they want to grow their business. And so for example, they will buy an applying to do fraud protection in retail or detection retail. Or they will apply an application to merit robotics and the factory need would come with its own gateway, implant, compute, and a cloud portal. And then you do it again and again, and again, every time you have a business opportunity. All of the sudden you have this proliferation of IT type equipment. At the end where it's the worst place to have it really because you don't have the right IT resources and you are in the need to protect it in a much more... In a different way that you can do in a data center. And so all of that, bring us to a point that we see an opportunity to simplify. And so not only simplification. And this is, you know, simplification or simplicity is the most important driver for any IP purchase. Things that are simple or the easiest and the most economical to operate. The next demand that we see from a customer is security. Because things are at the edge, they have a much more extended attack surface. They need to be connected to networks. They need to be connected without IT staff. So if you can simplify insecure, you can really unlock amazing value by processing data close to where it's created. Without it, we're seeing this opportunity as businesses but we can't really get to it because there are those two hurdles in front of us. >> So Pierluca. We need to you thank you for that, Gill. When you hear a lot about AI inferencing at the Edge. And if you think about AI today, much of the work is modeling. It's done in the cloud. But you're not going to be doing AI inferencing in real time in the cloud. Take the autonomous vehicle example. So that brings some technical challenges. There's obviously data challenges. I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean, we always talk about how much data is going to be persisted. I think Tesla persists like five minutes of data, right? But some of it is going to go back. That's true. But a lot of it is going to be processed real time. And that's just really different than the way we typically think about IT. >> Yeah, absolutely. So at the Edge, especially in manufacturing, we see right now, or in other use case, it's very important to get the outcome very quickly. Now, you don't use that a deep learning model for that. You need to just understand. For example, in the computer vision use case where you take image of your production line. To your point, Dave, you not keep those image, you keep the image where you have the defect. But you need to process that AIML needs to be intelligent enough to understand that you have a defect, and send that image then to the club. So the search of the data at the Edge is a very important factor. And why you need to process data at the Edge, because as your point, you can't wait to send to the cloud and then wait, right? Tesla is a clear example of that. All the autonomous car where you need to react instantaneously to a change. But in manufacturing, for example, that is our focus for now, is for example, the robots. That if you need to optimize the robot, you need to have a immediate understanding of where the pieces are and when they need to put. And the tolerance need to be act immediately. Otherwise, you come out with the thousand of pieces that they are not in the right tolerance. So, and at the end of the day, what we see is not only the search of the need of processing AIML to the Edge, but also the need to have a new type of compute at the Edge. So in the past, was just gateway and you'd get the gateway and you send the data to the cloud. Now, it's a form of a new compute that has also GPU capability and other things to process this data. So very important. And I think that Dell, especially, we are very focused on that because is really where the customer need to extract the value. >> Thank you. And Gil, I want to get Gil to the unique value proposition to Dell and what makes you distinct. If I infer from your comments, your strategy, you said it's to simplify. And so I see two vectors there. One is to simplify at the Edge. The other is where needed connect that Edge, whether it's on prem, a public cloud, cross-cloud, that kind of simplification layer that abstracts the complex the underlying complexity. Maybe you could talk about your strategy and what makes you guys different? >> Sure. We've been talking to our... Well, we always talk to our customers. And we've been doing business at the Edge for many, many years. Let's call it coincidence that we're a very large company. We have reached, we serve our customers. So when they decide to buy something for their Edge, you know, environments, they come to us as well as other vendors. When the percentage of the time based on our market share. But when we decided to take another look at how can we be even more relevant, we started talking to a lot of them great depth. And what we discovered was the problem I talked about before. The problem of complexity, the problem of security and the problem of choice. And so our focus is to do what we do best. At the end of the day, we're an IT company and our customers for the most part are IT people. And we see them dragged more and more into Edge projects because customers need to connect Edge to the network. And they need to security, and that's how it starts. And so those worlds of IT and OT are coming together and they're coming together, applying IT best practices, which is exactly what we know how to do. And so, because of that, we think that they need to think about architecture versus unique silence solutions. Architecture that can support multiple use cases that can grow with time, consolidate more and more use cases as they grow, simplify what they do by applying tried and true or tried and true IT best practices in a secure manner. So the dealer approach would be doing that, taking a more architectural approach to the adverse as a use case. And then just like you predicted, meet the customers where they are from an application standpoint. And so we know that a lot of applications are growing and be developing on a hyper scale or public clouds. We would like to connect to those. We would like to allow them to keep working as they have, except, when they run it at the Edge. Think about environments, if can consolidate multiple workloads and not solve it for each one at the same time. And so that will be our overall approach. That's what we're working on. >> Yeah. So, okay. So in that horizontal layer, if you will, to serve many, many use cases, not just... You're not going to go a mile deep into one and be the expert at some narrow use case. You want to be that horizontal platform. Here, look, I wonder, does that call for more programmability over time of the products to really allow people to kind of design in that flexibility, if you will, build my own. Is that something that we can expect? >> Yeah, absolutely. So we spoke a little bit about this before the interview. And the things that is very important is composability, starting from a very small form factor to the cluster, and then expand to the cloud is the fundamental things. And the trend that we see. The fact that you can compose the infrastructure, starting from a small gateway that is changing in this market right up to the cloud, and be able to use the same layer that allow you to run the same application is a fundamental things. And we are working on that. We are working on this vision and our strategy is really to be able to be transparent but provide the right building block to do all the use cases that they are required. Where the data. So we, again, not only meeting the customer but meeting where the data are, what the customer wants out of those data. So that's a fundamental things. And we have project Apex. So obviously we are plugging in the project Apex. From a Edge point of view, will allow the customer to have these unique experience to go in Apex and also deploy the Edge infrastructure that is needed. We're starting right now with that. So we will touch later, but that's the first building block of that journey. >> Excellent. Let's touch now. You've got some news around Apex and what are you announcing? >> So we are very excited because as I said our team it's pretty new and it's a very important investment that Dell makes. Not only in us as a team, but as a motion. So we are announcing a reference architecture with PTC. PTC is one of the biggest company for... Actually based here in Boston for manufacturing. And reference architecture will be run on base on Apex private cloud. So the customer can go to the portal, order Apex private cloud and deploy PTC on top of that. So very important things is the first step in this journey. But it's very important steps so we want to thank you also PTC to allow us to work with them. We have other stuff as well that we are announcing. I don't know if you are familiar but we have a very unique streaming data platform. Streaming data platform that can stream multiple data collected from gateway, from every place. And that it's a need. Obviously, when you need to process data in real time, whatever is streaming. What are we doing with the new streaming data platform approach is the ability to deploy single node. So it can be very appealing for the Edge and up to three nodes. >>Awesome. That's great. So a couple of comments on that. So it was funny. We did the LiveWorx show in theCUBE a couple of years ago. PTC is a big event and it was the Edge. And I remember looking around and saying "Where's all the IT vendors?". And so that's great to see you guys leaning in like that. Pierluca, the streaming platform. Tell me more about that. What's the tech behind it? >> So the streaming data platform is a project, that we start couple of year ago, is actually start from open source Pravega. It's a very interesting technology where you can stream multiple data. It's not a traditional storage. Use a technology that can really collect thousands of different streams. And that's very important when you need to mind the data. Bring the data, the structured data in efficient that you can process them at the real time. It's very important. So there are very cool use case of that. But now, that we look at the Edge, this is make more and more tangible sense because we have a lot of partners that they're working with us, especially to extend. When you have all these sensor, you bring the data to the gateways and from the gateways, then you can use data streaming platform to collect all these streams. And then you can easily process them. So it's a very fundamental technology. We are very proud of that. As I said, our enterprise version, it's getting more and more. And now we can land these on different architecture. So it can be backed up by an unison. It can be also on different storage type now. And as I said, we looking now to bring from a what was it data center kind of structure, down to the Edge because now we can put it in a single node up to three nodes. >> It makes a lot of sense. Is this like a Kafka based thing or open source or is it something you guys built or a combination? >> It's a combination. The project is an open source project but we did that. We start this many years ago. And it works with Kafka but it's not Kafka. So it has plugging that can work with Kafka and all the other things. And it's very easy to deploy. So it's a very, very important. And the other things is the scalability of this platform. >> Yeah, so I mean, that sounds like the kind of thing you had in the labs. And you said, "Okay, this is going to be important". And then boom, all of a sudden, the market comes to you. As if you pop it right in. And then of course, the Accenture relationship. Deep, deep industry expertise. So that makes a of sense. 5G's happening. A different world the next 10 years than the last 10 years. Isn't it? >> Yep. >> What is it about manufacturing? Why did you start there? >> I can take this. We looked at where the opportunity was from two perspective. One is whether what are the opportunities to sell, Dave. And the other one obviously comes with it because there's an opportunity to have. And manufacturing today at the Edge is about 30% of the opportunity in sales. According to IDC. But more so, it's been around for the longer time. And so it's maturing, it's the most demanding. And you know, it's got very long horizons of investment. And what we did was, we figured that if we can solve problems for industry, we can then extend that and solve it for everybody else. Because this would be the toughest one to solve. And we like challenge. And then, so we decided to focus and go deep. And you said it before, well, our approach is definitely horizontal approach. We cannot take an horizontal approach without verticalizing and understanding specific needs. So nobody can avoid doing both at the same time. You need to understand. But you also want to solve it in a way that doesn't proliferate the silos. So that's our role. We will understand, but we will make it more generic. So other people can never (indistinct). >> Yeah. And David, if I can add, I think the manufacturing is also very exciting for us as a technologist, right? And Dell technology, as in the name, the technology. So it's very exciting because if I look at manufacturing, we are really in the middle of a industrial transformation. I mean, it's a new era. If you think about, nobody care in the past to connect their machinery with... That they have PLC to the network. All of these is changing because the life where we live right now, with the pandemic, with the remote working, with the fact that you need to have a much more control and be able to have predictive matter. So you're not stopping your manufacturing. Is pushing the entire manufacturing institute industry to connect these machines. And with the connectivity of these machinery, you get a lot of data. You get also a lot of challenge. For example, security. So now, that's the place where connectivity brings the IT aspect in. And the OT guys, now they starting to speak (indistinct) because now it's a more complex things, right? It's not any more computerized only to one machinery. Specifically, is the entire floor. So it's a very interesting dynamics. >> Is the connection between that programmable logic controller and the Dell solution, you mentioned to secure, better security. And I presume it's also to connect back to whatever the core or the cloud, et cetera. Is it also to do something locally? Does it improve? Is there value add that you can provide locally? And what is that value add? >> Yeah, absolutely. So the value add, as I said, if you think right in the past, right? You have a machine that probably stay in the manufacturing for 20, 25 years then you have an hardware attached to that machine that they used the POC about 11 year. The guy that he knows better about that machine, is actually not the software component of it. But he's the guy that he's been working on that machine for 15 years. Now, how you translate that knowledge to a learning algorithm that actually can do that for thousand of machine. And that's really the key, right? You need to centralize information, process those information, but not in the cloud, not in a central data center, but on the manufacturing floor. And you need to have a way to represent these things in a very simple way. So the plant manager can take action, or the guy that is responsible for the entire line, can take action immediately. And that's where the change is. It's not anymore to... Is trying to extend that knowledge to multiple machine, multiple floor, and try to get these change immediately. So that's very important. >> So the PLC doesn't become a general purpose computer, or even necessarily an Uber computer. It connects to that capability because that enables data sharing across clouds. >> That's enable the entire things. You can't do a model just with one source. You need to have multiple sources. And also think about the manufacturing is changing not only for the machinery, but people that they build new manufacturing, right? They need to be smart building. They need to have a technology for being more green, solar energy consumption. So the manufacturing itself is mean five or six different things that you need to solve. It's not just the machine. So this idea of this silos environment is starting to collapse in one. And that's why it's important for us to start from a vertical, but also in the manufacturer, you already see this will expand to multiple things. Also, smart building another thing because they need it. >> Yeah. The red guilt to your point of view. Manufacturing is like the Big Apple. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And you've got adjacencies that you can take the learnings, and manufacturing, and apply them to those adjacent industries. Gil, give us the last word. >> No, usually when we talk at Dell technologies world, we talk to an ideal audience. And we're thinking this year that the way to talk about Edge, at least with the people who traditionally buy from us is expose them to the fact that they are more and more going to be responsible for every projects. And so our advice would be, our hope that they would partner with us to think ahead. Just like they do with data center with our cloud strategy. Thinking ahead as they think about their Edge and try to set up some architectural guidelines. So when they do get the request, they're ready for it. And think about what they know, think about the IP best practices that they applied. All of that is coming to them. They need to be prepared as well. And so we would like to partner with all of our customers to make them ready. And obviously help them simplify, secure, consolidated as they grow. >> Well, guys, thank you. I learned a lot today. We've made a lot of progress. You know, this is the hallmark of Dell, right? It's a very high, let me make sure I get this right. Very high do to say ratio, right? As you guys talked about doing this, a couple of couple of years ago. And you've made a lot of progress and I really appreciate you coming on theCUBE to explain this strategy. It makes a lot of sense. And so congratulations and good luck in the future. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Dave. >> All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE's ongoing coverage of Dell Tech World 2021, the virtual edition. Keep it right there, I'll be right back. (closing music)

>>Welcome back to Dell Technology World. 2021. Del Tech World. The virtual edition. My name is Dave Volonte. We're gonna talk about the Edge. Very excited to invite Pierluigi Deli, who's the Vice President, Product management for the Edge portfolio. Adele and Gil Schwarzman, who is the Senior Vice President. Edge portfolio, also with Dell Technologies Gentlemen. Great to see you. Welcome to the cube. >>Thank you. Thank >>you. You see you, >>Yeah, great to see you guys to which we were face to face, but maybe maybe in 22 Gil, let's start with you. The edge is very exciting. Uh, it's, you know, not really defined, it's very fragmented, but it's there, you know, it's kind of, you know, it when you see it, what do you get excited about when you think about the edge? >>Yeah, I think uh there's two elements. The first one is that we all live at the edge. In other words, the areas we deal with our around us every day will show up um when we uh, you know, when we consume when we drive. So it's a, it's a very physical type of activity. We know it's there. What's really exciting motive to me is that you started with talking about fragmentation right on the bet. Um, it is a great opportunity for the technology is to add value um because it's so fragmented because it's so new because it has developed and evolved the way it is. We see an amazing opportunity for us to add much more value than we do today and solve problems that have yet to be solved in the industry. >>And it's an exciting, it's almost like an infinite playground for a technologist. You >>dave, I think that's exactly what we find out. The Edge is very exciting. There is a lot of motion, especially due to the pandemic and other things. Big factor that accelerate innovation at the edge but this is an inorganic acceleration and what it kills for one of the most of our customer is also confusion, right? They need to apply multiple solution but not very organized. So you try to solve the outcome like having the right production on the, on your line because demand is surging but you don't have an organic things to do that and solve the problem. So you see a lot of silence coming in for each one of the solution and that's what Gil was referring. That's a great opportunity for us as dealt with the breath of the portfolio we have and what our team that is a new team is focusing doing is to bring that idea to be able to consolidate multiple things at the edge and process things at the edge. >>We did a an event cube, had an event called the Cuban cloud and Q one and we had john Rosen and the title of segment was something like gaining the technology edge And we were kind of freaking out on, on the tech at the edge. Uh it might take away there was trying to like what is the edge? It's like, well it's the place where it makes most sense to process the data and so that brings up a lot of challenges. There are technical challenges and there are business challenges. I wonder if we could sort of dig into those a little bit. How do you guys look at that? Maybe gil you want to start maybe on the business side and then we can dig a short, right >>the way things evolved if you think about it, um, at the edge of very vertical lesson because of that they're very use case driven And so in every industry possible you start with some business person making a decision whether they have a need or they want to grow their business. And so for example they would buy an applying to do fraud protection in retail or detection retail or they will apply an application to medical robotics in the factory. And it would come with its own gateway in plant compute in a cloud portal and then you do it again and again and again every time you have a business opportunity all of the sudden you have this proliferation of I. T. Type equipment at the end where it's it's the worst place to have it really because you don't have the right I. T. Resources and you are um in the need to protect it in a much more um in a different way than you do in a data center. And so all of that brings to bring us to a point that you know we see an opportunity to simplify. Um And so not only simplification and this is you know simplification or simplicity is the most important driver for any I. T. Purchase. Um Things that are simple are the easiest that the most economical to operate the next demand that we see from a customary security because things are at the they have a much more um you know extended attack surface um they need to be connected to networks, they need to be connected without I. T. Staff. So if you can simplify insecure you can really unlock amazing value by processing data where closely to where it's created without it. You know we were seeing this opportunity as businesses but we can we get to it because there are so those two hurdles in front of us. >>So when you say thank you for that bill, when you think about, when you hear you hear a lot about AI influencing at the edge and and if you think about AI today much of the work is modeling, it's done in the cloud, but you're not going to be doing A i influencing in real time in the cloud, you know, take the autonomous vehicle example, so that brings some some technical challenges. Um, there's obviously data challenges. I'm curious as to how you think about that. I mean we always talk about how much data is going to be persisted, I think Tesla persists like five minutes of data, right? But some of it is gonna go back, that's true, but a lot of it is going to be processed real time and that's just really different than the way we typically think about. Yeah, >>absolutely. So at the Edge, especially in manufacturing, we see right now or in a uh, another use case, it's very important to get the outcome very quickly. Now. You don't use that a deep learning model for that. You need to just understand, for example, in a computer vision use case where you take the image of your production line, you actually to your point dave you not keep those image when you keep the image where you have the defect. But you need to process that. Ai Ml needs to be intelligent enough to understand that you have a defect and send that image them to the club. So the search of the data at the edge is a very important factor and why you need to process data, the Edge because your point, you can't wait to send to the cloud and I'm waiting right? Um, Tesla is a clear example of that all the autonomous car where you need to react instantaneously to change. But in manufacturing for example that is our focus for now is for example the robots that if you need to optimize the robot, you need to have a immediate understanding of where the pieces are and when they need to put in the tolerance need to be act immediately. Otherwise you come out with the thousands of pieces that they are not in the right tolerance. So at the end of the day, what we see is not only the search of the need of processing ai ml to the edge but also the need of a new type of compute at the edge. So in the past was just Gateway and you get the gate when you send the data to the cloud. Now it's a form of a new computer that come as also GPU capability and other things to process the data. So very important. And I think the Dell especially we are very focused on that because is uh is really where the customer need to extract the value. >>Thank you. And Gil I want to get into the unique value proposition to tell what makes you distinct. And it's uh I infer from your comments, your strategy you said is to simplify and so I see two vectors. There. One is to simplify at the edge. The other is to where we're needed, connect that edge, whether it's on prem public cloud across cloud, that kind of simplification layer that abstracts the complex, the underlying complexity. Uh Maybe you could talk about your strategy and what makes you guys different. >>Sure. Um We've been talking to a, well we always talk to our customers and we've been doing business at the edge for many many years. Um You know let's call it coincidental were very large company we have reached, we serve our customers so when they decide to buy something for their you know environment, they come to us as well as other vendors and we win a percentage of the time based on our market share. Um But when we decided to take another look at how can we be even more relevant? We started talking to a lot of them great depth. And what would we do we discovered was the problem I talked about before, the problem of complexity, the problem of security and the problem of you know choice. And so our focus is to do what we do best. We at the end of the day we're an I. T. Company. Um and our our customers for the most part our I. T. People and we see them dragged more and more into edge projects because customers need to connect edge to the network and they need to security and that's how it starts. And so those worlds of I. T. And OTR coming together and their coming together applying best practices which is exactly what we know how to do. And so because of that we think that they need to think about architecture versus unique silent solutions architecture can support multiple use cases that can grow with time, consolidate more and more use cases as they grow. Simplify what they do by applying you know tried and true or tried and true best practices in a secure manner. So the deal approach would be doing that taking a more architectural approach to the adverse as a use case and then just like you predicted um meet the customers where they are from an application stand book. And so we we know that a lot of applications are growing and development on a hyper scale or public clouds. We would like to connect to those. We would like to allow them to keep working as they have except when they run into the edge. Think about environments that could consolidate multiple workloads and not solve it for each one at the same time. And so that would be our overall approach. That's what we're working on. >>Yeah. Okay. So that horizontal layer, if you will uh to to to serve many many use cases, not just you're not gonna go a mile deep into one and be the expert at some narrow use case. You want to be that horizontal platform. But at the same time, look, I wonder does does that call for more program ability as we over time of the of the products to to really allow people to kind of design in that flexibility if you will build my own. Uh is that something that we can expect? >>Yeah, absolutely. So uh we spoke a little bit about this before the interview and the things that is very important is compose ability starting from a very small from factor to the cluster and then expand to the cloud is a fundamental things and a trend that we see. The fact that you can compose the infrastructure um starting from a small gateway that is changing in this market, right up to the cloud and be able to use the same layer that allow you to run the same application is the fundamental things and we are working on that. Um we are working on this vision and our strategy is really to be able to be transparent but provide the right building block to do all the use case that they are required where the data are. So we again, not only meeting the customer but meeting where the data are, what the customer wants out of those data. So that's a fundamental things. And you know, we we have project Apex. So obviously we are plugging into the project apex from an edge point of view, will allow the customer to have this unique experience to go in Apex and also deploy the edge infrastructure that is needed. So that's that's we started right now with that. So we will touch later, but that's the first building block of that journey. >>Actually, let's touch now you've got some news around Apex and and and and talking what are you announcing? So >>we are very exciting because as I said, our team is, it's pretty new and um, it's a very important investment that Dell makes uh not only in us as a team but as a motion. Um, so we are announcing a reference architecture with PTC. PTC is the one of the biggest company for actually based here in boston uh for manufacturing and reference architecture will be run on based on apex private cloud so the customer can go to the portal, order, order apex private cloud and deploy deploy PTC on top of that. So, very important things is that the first step in this journey and but it's an important, very, very important steps. So we want to thank you also PTC to allow us to work with them. Um, we have other stuff as well that we are announcing. Um, I don't know if you are familiar but we have a very unique streaming data platform, um, streaming data platform that can stream multiple data collected from Gateway from every place. And uh it's a need obviously when you need to process data in real time, very important to have a streaming, what we're doing with the new streaming data platform approach is the ability to deploy single note. So it can be very appealing for the edge and up to free notes and last but not least gil if you want to speak about our other partnership is very important. >>Sure. Um once we started looking more in depth into manufacturing, we discover that this market is today served by combinations of um oT vendors, people who make equipment? S eyes, people who consult on integration and um and you know, a lot of SVS that make up this ecosystem and people like ourselves. And so one of the things that we decided to do is partner with accenture, accenture Industry X practice to bring our joint value to customers. We started by investing in in a five G lab. They have four industry act. So you know the usage of five G. Manufacturing industry and we will still we will expand that and work on that as a as a joint offer for our joint customers going forward. So we're really excited about this because we feel that consolidation needs to happen not only technology but also in the partnerships, we need to partner if you want to bring true value to our customers and that's the first step, >>awesome. That's great. So a couple of comments on that. So it's funny, we did the live work show in the cube a couple years ago. PTC is a big, big event and it was like it was the edge and I remember looking around saying where's all the vendors? So that's great to see you guys leaning in like that parallel to the streaming platform. Tell me more about that. What's the tech behind it? >>Uh So the streaming data platform is a project that we start a couple of years ago is actually uh start from open source Provida. Um it's uh it's a very interesting technology where you can stream multiple data, it is not a traditional storage, ah use a technology that can ah really collect thousands of different streams and that's very important when you need to mind the data, bring the data um in the structure data in a inefficient that you, you can process them at the real time. It's very important. So um there are very cool use case of that. But now that we look at the edge, this is make more and more tangible sense because we have a lot of partners that they're working with us, especially to extend when you have all this sensor, you bring the data to the gateways and from the gateways then you can use data streaming platform to collect all these dreams and then you can easily process them. So it's a very fundamental technology, we are very proud of that. Um as I said, our enterprise version uh is getting more and more and now we can land this on different architecture, so it is, it can be backed up by an Iceland. Uh it can be also on different storage type now and as I said, we're looking now to bring from a what was a data center kind of structure down to the edge because now we can put a single node up to three notes, >>it makes a lot of sense. Is this like a Kafka based thing or open source or is it something you guys built or a combination? >>It's a combination. We actually project. The project is an open source project, but we did that, we start this many years ago and um he works with Kafka, but he's not Kafka. So it's, it's a he has plugging that can work with Kafka and all the other things and, and it's very easy to deploy. So it's a very, very, very important. And the other things is the scalability of this platform. >>I mean, it sounds like the kind of thing you had in the labs and you said, OK, this is going to be important. That boom all of a sudden the market comes to you as if you pop it right in. And then of course, the accenture of relationship deep, deep industry expertise, so that makes a lot of sense. 55 Gs happening a different world the next 10 years in the last 10 years isn't it? What is it about manufacturing? Why why did you start there? >>I can take this. Um We looked at where the opportunity was from two perspectives. One is where the opportunity, what the opportunities to sell, even the other one obviously comes with it because there is an opportunity to have and manufacturing today at the edges about 30 of the opportunity in sales according to NBC but more so it's been around for the longer time and so they it's very it's maturing um it's the most demanding. Um and you know, it's got very long horizons of investment and what we did was we figured that if we can solve problems for industry we can then extend that and solving for everyone years. Because this would be the toughest one to solve and we like challenge. And so we decided to focus and go deep. You said it before? Well, our approach is definitely horizontal approach. We cannot take a horizontal approach without vertical izing and understand specific needs. So nobody can avoid doing both at the same time. You need to understand. But you also want to solve it in a way that doesn't proliferate the silos. So that's our role. We will understand what we will make it more generic so other people can never get later on >>and David, if I cannot. Uh I think the manufacturing is also very exciting for us as a technologist, right? Uh and uh Dell technology as in the name the technology. So it's very exciting because if I look at manufacturing, we we are really in the middle of a industrial transformation. I mean it's a new era. Um If you think about um nobody care in the past to connect their machinery with that the F. P. L. C. To the network. All of this is changing because the life that where we live right now with the pandemic with the remote working with the fact that you need to have a much more control and be able to have predictive matters. So you're not stopping your manufacturing is pushing the entire manufacturing instrument industry to connect this machine and with the connectivity of this machinery you get a lot of data. You get also a lot of challenge. For example security. So now that's the place where connectivity brings the I. T. Aspect in and U. T. Guys now they're starting to speak with because now it's a more complex things right? It's not any more computerized competitor eyes only to one machinery specific is the entire floor. So it's a very interesting dynamics >>is the connection between that programmable logic controller and the Dell solution is you mentioned to secure better security and I presume it's also to connect back to whatever the core or the cloud etcetera. Is it also to do you know, something locally? Does it improve? Is their value add that you can provide locally? And what is that value add? >>Absolutely. So the value, as I said, um if you think right in the past right, you have a machine that uh, probably stay in the manufacturing for 2025 years, then you have an artwork attached to that machine that it is the P. L. C. About 11 years. The guy that he knows better about that machine is actually not the software component on. But he's the guy that has been working on that machine for 15 years now. How you translate that knowledge To a learning algorithm that actually can do that 4000 of machine. And and that's really the key right. You need to centralize information, process those information but not in the cloud, not in the central data center, but on the manufacturing floor. And you need to have a way to represent these things in a very simple way. So the plant manager can take action or the or the guy that is responsible for the entire line can take action immediately. And that's where the changes is not anymore to is trying to extend that knowledge to multiple machine multiple floor and try to get this change immediately. So that's really >>so the PLC doesn't become a general purpose computer or even necessarily the Uber computer. It connects to that capability because that enables data sharing across clouds and that's >>enabled the entire things. You know, you you can't do a model just with one source. You need to have multiple sources. Um, and also think about the manufacturing is changing not only for the machinery, but people that they build new manufacturing right? They need to be smart building. They need to have a technology for being more green solar energy consumption. So the manufacturing itself is mean five or six different things that you need to solve. It's not just the machine. So this idea of the silence environment is started to collapse in one and that's why it's important for us to start from a vertical, but also in the manufacturing, you already see this will expand to multiple things. Also like smart building another thing because they need it. >>Yeah. The red guilt to your point manufacturers like the Big Apple. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere and you've got adjacent seas, you can, you know, you can take the learnings from manufacturing and apply them to those adjacent industries. Uh, give us the last word. >>Um, look, usually when we talk at the technologies world, we talked to an I. D. Audience and we were, we're thinking this year that the way to talk about edge, at least with the people who traditionally buy from us is exposed them to the fact that they are more and more are going to be responsible for projects. And so our advice would be our hope that they would partner with us to think ahead. Just like they do with data center with their cloud strategy, think ahead as they think about their edge and try to set up some architectural guidelines. So when they do get the request, they're ready for it and think about what they think about the best practices that they applied, all of that is coming to them. They need to be prepared as well. And so we would like to partner with all of our customers to make them ready and obviously help them simplify secure, consolidate as they grow. >>Well guys, thank you, I learned a lot today. I you made a lot of progress. You know, this is the hallmark of Dell, right? It's a very high, let me make sure I get this right, very high due to say ratio right. You guys talked about doing this, you know, a couple a couple of years ago, uh, and you've made a lot of progress and I really appreciate you coming in the cube to explain the strategy. It makes a lot of sense. And so congratulations and uh, good luck in the future. >>Thank you. >>All right. And thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Volonte for the cubes, ongoing coverage of Del Tech World 2021. The virtual edition. Keep it right there, right back, >>mm.

>> Narrator: Live, from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high-tech coverage, It's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware, and its ecosystem partners. >> And, welcome back here on theCUBE, we're at the Moscone Center here at downtown San Francisco. Gorgeous day outside, by the way. Picture perfect day. Chamber of Commerce weather, but a lot of big news happening inside here for VMworld 2019, along with John Troyer. I'm John Walls, we're joined by Pierluca Chiodelli, who's the Vice President of Product Management at Dell EMC. And, Pierluca, good to see you, Sir. >> Thank you, it's awesome to be here. >> Great, thanks for being here. And Muneyb Minhazuddin, whose the VP of solutions product marketing at VMware. And Muneyb, I know you're right just hot off the presentation stage. >> Yes I am. >> Catch your breath, it's all going to be fine. How was your audience? I'm sure standing remotely. >> Yeah, it was thirteen hundred plus >> Excellent, yeah. Been a big week, already. >> Of course it has, yeah. >> For you and your team. So, first off, let me just, let's step back, talk about the vibe of the show, the theme of the show we saw Pat on the stage. >> Muneyb: Perfect. >> About an hour and a half this morning, just your thoughts about day one and the big announcements that VMware's been making. >> It's been a great week, and it's actually been a great approaching week. As you know, on Thursday we announced intent and acquire both Pivotal and Carbon Black for close to about $5,000,000,000. So, that's, kind of a big announcement by itself, and then how do you kind of bring in and keep day one where you're not too focused on those two, but get the narrative of VMworld across. And really, you know, where we have, you know, CUBE has been with us on this journey for a long time. >> Right. >> We've seen that data center shift into kind of two tangents. One is, you know, workloads into data center break out into public clouds. Second, rerouting into cloud native applications. And, if you've seen our strategy wall when that was kind of the key messages. Hey, we're embracing both the modern app development, the focus on Kubernetes and Tanzoo announcement, was all about to say, "VMware platforms ready "for the breakout of both tangents." First, Cloud Native, we've got Kubernetes, we're bringing it right into vSphere, so that everybody in the audience can support it. Second, the breadth of our cloud everywhere, right, so, we've gone from Amazon to IBM to Google to Ajour. So, it'll give you the infrastructure for your workloads to be your choice. Modernize or migrate. (chuckles) That was a key message for us to kind of land today. For a lot of our audience who are kind of stuck in that same piece of, "What am I doing with my workloads? "What is that platform I got to build on?" And, you know, the key foundational platform being VMware Cloud Foundation. Right, that was our strategy, and I think last year we called out VMware Cloud Foundation in Pat's keynote, because I wrote it 44 times. (laughs) (group laughter) We didn't do it that many times, this time. We only said that's the platform that lands in Amazon, GCP, Ajour, IBM, and 4,200, you know, cloud provider partners. That gives you really that public cloud extension. The second part being modern apps, Kubernetes is a new, kind of, modern app development platform, vSphere is embedded into that project pacific and the whole Tanzoo announcement, right? So, really, a powerful message, what do you think? Was that successfully landed? >> I think so. John, do you feel good about what you heard today? >> Yeah, absolutely, I think VCF is super interesting. I'm also kind of, so there was an announcement today also about the Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Designs for using VCF. So, VCF the layer, which is kind of the VMware stack with some extra magic in it, that can be in, can make a private hybrid cloud, you know, everywhere. So, talk to us a little bit about Dell Technologies Cloud. As I call it, "DTC." The, it's a lot, there's a lot of stuff in that as well, so, but we have two very complicated solutions stacks that are, we're talking about now, so. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Can you talk a little bit about the validated design and what came out of that? >> Absolutely, so before we go into the validated design, I think it's very important as Muneyb said. When we think about the Dell Technology Cloud, really, it's a component of the best (murmurs) technology from our storage, networking, and also compute, but we did the VMware VCS on top. So, we work very closely with VMware, and today we are announcing today the Cloud Validated Design. As we announce at the Dell Technology World in May, we said Dell Technology Cloud is this, now we want to tell to the people, how you can easily deploy this. What is make this tangible? So, what we are doing today is rapid time to value. We did design and pretested configuration, that we put in Dell Technologies Cloud Validated Design, as we said. The other important things as Muneyb said, right? It's... And, I heard this also from theCUBE. There was a debate with Stu and other people about, what is the Cloud? How I deploy the Cloud? When we think about Dell Technologies we speak with different peoples, and two set of peoples. One is the app, right? The Cloud app, all the app people that, they want to build have all the automation, DevOps operation and all these things. But, behind those people, there's still an infrastructure. So, we are speaking on both things. So, it's very important this paradigm is there, where you can have people that they can consume the technology, and understand how to build the infrastructure to be automated, and build that automation for the Cloud. So, that's what is the Dell Technologies Font Validation Design. Right. So, one of the biggest things here that we announced, is not only the Cloud Validation Design. It's the first one but also the ability to have compute, storage and network together, and also use it primary storage as a primary citizen of the VCF. So, we should talk about that later but that's-- >> Absolutely, and I think to catch onto that, you know, talking about the applications et cetera, you know, again, in the evolution of Cloud, and we've been on the journey for 10 years is, we've had, the first few years of the Cloud journey was, felt a little like a one way street, which was, kind of meant where people were shutting down data centers and going to all these public cloud providers, was always a one-way street. Now, VMware, and if you followed us closely, we had a service call VMware, you know VCHS, which is VMware Hybrid Cloud Service before the vCloud Air and then we came out with this solution, right? The idea was, we thought there's going to be movement back-and-forth but it wasn't the case. People were seriously shutting down and going one way. As we made all these partnerships of you know, Amazon, IBM, we started seeing, and you heard stories of IHS, Freddie Mac on stage where they take six weeks to move 100 applications one way into the Cloud, customers started asking us some questions, say, 'If it's so easy to go that way, is it also that easy to bring it back?' >> Come back! >> Right? And, that kind of lead to the whole kind of Dell partnership, Dell announcement within the Dell Cloud Foundation, you know, VMware Cloud Foundation, Dell Technologies Cloud Platform to say that, "Hey, it's actually..." There's a notion of not going from hardware-specific, you know, just high-tuned for workloads to commodity hardware in the Public Cloud. There's now a need for having common hardware platform on both on-PRAM, off-PRAM because there is a need for customers to take EC2 workloads or, you know, Ajour workloads and bring it on PRAM again. That was just a notion of how fast it is. I add that point because it is so critical to know that your hardware is performing in tuned, to perform for a high business critical applications. People forgot about them the first few phases of going to the Cloud, and now as they think about a hybrid, true hybrid Cloud nature, they want optimal performance in the software layer, in the hardware layer. You know, hence our announcement of Dell Technologies Cloud, Cloud Foundation, Validated Design. It's really supporting that customer notion. >> So, it's like this optimal, or maximized flexibility is what you're trying to give people. I mean, is that-- >> Pierluca: With the Cloud simplicity, that's really the key. >> But what drives that? I know that you have, you've, you know, whether you're on-PRAM or you're off-PRAM, you're going to decide what workload's going to go on what space on, so forth, but is some of that kind of hedging bets for future workloads because you can't predict where they're going to be done or where you want them done? Or is it just providing flexibility today, and let's not worry about tomorrow? You know, it just seems like there's a lot of runway here, if you will. >> Yeah, and I think there's no right or wrong answer. One of the big workshops I do with our customers is really kind of say have you figured out what's your three to five-year application strategy? Because again, in that first phase of that fast migration to the Public Cloud, people were just like CIOs I know, it's like, I have a cloud for strategy, what does that mean? I'm shutting down all data centers, I'm going to the Cloud. Right or wrong, and that's my Cloud First strategy. Now, what they've come to realize is not all workloads work effectively in the Cloud, right? So, they kind of like, hey, put an application strategy to say what are the most optimal applications that will get the benefit of Cloud? These are like, e-commerce retail. They have to have, you know, Black Friday, expanding elasticity. If you got no slow, mundane, you know backend processes doing batch processes of massive storage of in a bank ledger in the back end, they're not going to get that elasticity. I know what it is, I know how many, you know, batch processes I got to run. So, people are getting smarter about which ones get the benefit of, you know, modern app development, or Cloud elasticity, which ones don't really need to have that. So, we've seen best practice customers actually have a very good app strategy, three to five years, and then decide how much of my app strategy is gone to the right, you know, or gone to the left, right? It's pretty much to say, "I don't have to change." 60, 70% of my Eastern European customers, their banking ledgers are still on mainframes. They're not in a hurry to go to the Cloud, whereas, you know Fintech on the East Coast is going, "I'm going to the, I'm going to the Cloud", right? So, it's really that strategy that's, they should take the app strategy and decide what the infrastructure strategy is on the top shelf. >> I think from the storage business, we see that really clear, right? The app is definitely what is moving the things, right? It's not, people they're not thinking anymore because the transformation is in the way that you consume the infrastructure. They not thinking anymore about what I put there, but is about what app I need to run, how I build my app. So, it's the environment. And, I don't think personally I meet a lot of customer. There is not one right way or wrong way, it's an end, right? As you can see also in VCF we have Vsend, VxRail and primary storage. If you look at two years ago, we will be sitting here and say, you know, "It's only this, not the other things." When we, I been in governor conference, three years ago was like, it's all Cloud. It's reality is the world, the information technology world is always the same, where is a natural genius things. Because people, they need to have the trust, right? You cannot run your entire things on something that you don't know or you didn't prove. So, what we give here today with our technology is the flexibility. You can have a Cloud approach, but use the trusted PowerMax, for example, in conjunction with Vsend, in conjunction with the Unity. So, not all these is the proof that you can preserve your investment. But, is the proof that you can start to build those up. And, if you've seen what paths say today, then those app can live everywhere. So, you can go, you can move, it's much easier to move, and you can just trust what you're doing. >> And, you hit an important point on the move part, right? And, people are so easy, like, "Hey I moved a thousand applications in six weeks "to VMC and AWS." The fundamental notion where that was not possible before, was compute, network, storage. Like, we've been doing vSphere for a long time, you know that. And, it wasn't that easy because what used to happen is people thought, "Hey, a virtualized computer, I can move it." But, what did not happen as you moved that, was your databases, you know, your storage, rules didn't follow you into the Cloud. Your networking QOS and, you know, policies, and you know, priorities didn't follow you into the Cloud. So, that was kind of like, you know, you know, I'm an Australian, so it was a half-assed solution, right? (group laughing) So bear with my language, right. It was a half-assed solution, but really what needs to happen is your compute, your network, your storage has to all work together. And, that's where Cloud Foundation was powerful. And, what we're lighting with this Validated Designs is also that capability that your computer, or storage is one unit from a app. Once you package it and make it available in all the platforms, then that migration becomes six weeks, two weeks to move that. Because once you break it apart, it's a nightmare. There's not a lot of folks who have survived database migrations. (laughs) >> I mean maybe Pierluca, you can kind of sum us up here. This conversation's been a lot around evolution, right? And, there's also been an evolution of data center design and what to expect with that, you know, just buying things off the shelf and getting a Var and, you know, the VMAX, and we've been through this whole, and now, we've talked about VxRail, which can be part of this solution. But, can you talk, just, maybe, take us in, take us out with the, or into the future with the Dell Technologies Cloud as the idea of the Validated Design, the idea of this stack from Dell Technologies in storage et cetera, what can we expect in the near future? And, how much guidance will folks get? >> Yeah, absolutely. So, without breaking any NDA things, but this is only the first step. So, the Cloud Validated Design is just the first step where we said, 'Okay, we are tasked in this, "we putting this together." We are working very closely to also solve the entire things that VCF allow you to do first day deployment, allow you to expand the infrastructure, and allow you also to do life cycle management. For example, with the VxRail we already have the life cycle management part. We are working in way to do that also for our storage and other things. So, if you think about that then it becomes as you said, all the policy we put, like with Vworld, will be strategically in that sense, the policies can be carried over. So, then you can go to VMC, you can go to another place where the software and infrastructure can move back. So, because people can do this on PRAM, a replicate exactly but not only replicate the application, but replicate the (murmurs). What do you do on the QOS, all these key things that makes people running enterprise application, right? So that's, I think, it's very exciting moment. I think it's just the starting of this dream. >> Absolutely. >> Gentlemen, thanks for the time. >> Thank you. >> And you're all, you paint a pretty exciting future, don't ya? >> I hope so. >> So, I can't wait to look forward to even VMworld 2020? >> Wait 'til Barcelona, come on? (laughs) >> All right, well I'm not making that road trip, so unfortunately-- >> We going to more out there. >> But, Barcelona's going to be good. >> Yes, thank you for having us. >> No, I'm not the best guy, so, all right good. Hey, gentlemen, thank you for the time. >> Thank you >> Thank you. >> I appreciate it very much, great discussion. >> Thank you very much. >> Thanks for having us. >> Back with more from San Francisco right after this. (techno music)

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's the Cube. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Okay, welcome back, everyone. We are here live at Dell EMC World 2017, our eighth year coverage with the Cube. Formerly EMC World, now Dell EMC World. This is the Cube's coverage. I'm John Furrier, my cohost, Paul Gillin. Our next two guests are Craig Bernero, who is the senior vice president general manager of the midrange and entry storage solutions at Dell EMC. And Pierluca Chiodelli, VP appliance management at Dell. Guys, welcome to the Cube. Great to see you guys. >> Likewise. >> Thank you. >> Give us the update. We're hearing a ton of stories, 'cause the top stories, obviously the combination, merger, acquisition, whatever side you want to call acquired who. But all good, good stories. I mean, some speed bumps, little bumps along the way, but nothing horrific. Great stories. Synergies was the word we've been hearing. So you got to have some great growth with the Dell scale. Entry-level touchpoint growth, high end, get more entry level, give us the update. >> Yeah, absolutely. So again, first and foremost, I wanted to call out to all our customers and partners that are critical for the success that we've seen. No doubt, and actually, we've committed better together one fourth, which is why you saw two of our launches, both on the Unilining and the Assine line, which historically were part of EMC and Dell respectively prior. And main point is, a lot of the feedback we got from customers was they really respected and appreciate our customer choice first philosophy. But also understanding that there's clear demarkation where each of those technologies play in their sweet spot-- >> Well, how are you demarcating them right now? >> Absolutely, so traditionally, pre the EMC acquisition, what we actually ended up determining is, when you define the midrange market segment we were looking at, it was more in the upper range, upper level of it, where they're driving value from a technology aspect and with their Unity product set. We are focusing heavily into the all-Flash market segment, too, which is one of the major refreshes we did here. And then in the Dell storage, which is very server affinity, a direct attached construct at the entry through the lower end of the midrange band, it was actually some very clear swim lanes of where each of the respective products played to their strengths as well. And so as a result of that, we've really taken that to heart with our hybrid offering on the C side to get your economics. Again, effectively, our 10 cents per gig as they've rolled it outlined on Monday as far as the most affordable hybrid solution there on the market. And then you go to the upper, premium level of value capability, with all Flash to deal with your performance workloads and other characteristics, too. >> Here Luca, talk about the overlap, because we address that, we hit him head on with that. Turns out, not a lot of overlap. But as you guys come together with, we just had Toshiba on earlier. Flash is obviously big part of the success. Getting those price points down to the entry, midrange, enabling that kind of performance and cost is key, but as you look at the product portfolio, where are the areas you guys are doubling down on, and where is kind of some of the overlapping taking care of, if any? >> Yeah, so let me tell you, the first thing that is very important and we have in the show is the reaffirmation of the investment in the two product. So we have a panel entry yesterday also a panel with 120 customer. Divide 50% between the legacy, the heritage Dell and the EMC customer, and the amazing things there was the Flash adoption is very strong, but also they want to have it economical, so Four I is very strong. So this is really feet to our two product. Because if you remember, Compellan has been created as the best storage for data progression. And we double down on Unity now that we are now that we are now so completely full line of Unity product today. So in the other face, on the FC line, we reaffirmed the completion of the family with the new 5020. That provide more performance, more capacity, much more lenience. And we'll drive our 4020 customer to a very new product. So yes, some people before they think, "Oh these guys, they have a lot of overlap." But actually, we have two amazing product that they play together in this market. >> And talk about the customer dynamic, 'cause that's interesting about that. Almost the 50/50 split as you mentioned. They got to be, I mean, not, their indifference is probably, they're probably like, "Bring on the better product." I'm not hearing any revolts. Right, that no one's really revolting. Can you just share the perspective of some of the insight that they're telling you about, what they're expecting from you guys? >> So I think it's very fun to be in this position where we are right now, where we have such a good portfolio of product where a customer, company, people inside of our company start to learn how this product works. Because you sell what you know, right? Or you use what you know. People, right, try to do the same things every day. So we are forced now to look outside of our part and say, "You know, we have two product. "What is the benefit?" And now, we sparkle this discussion with the customer. And in any customer, we have before tremendous amount of common customer, right? The customer, they have a preference, but now they say, "Oh let me," an EMC customer say, "Maybe I have a huge case for "an all-Flash upgrade with Unity." And the SC customer say, "Oh, maybe now I can run "this application on Unity or SC "or Open App to a different things." What we say is, this is the line I use. We are the top one now because we can solve any use case. Right, if you look at our competitors, they try to cover everything with one product, right? >> John: You can mix and match. >> Yes, you can mix and match and we have a very differential part between the two. And we said, "SC economy, drive economy with the fact "that we can have a de-looped compression on speedy media." Unity optimized for Flash. >> Is there any incompatibility between the two? Do the two platforms work pretty seamlessly together? >> Pierluca: Yes. >> Yeah, so I'm going to expand a little further on that. So one of the things we did highlight as part of the all-Flash offering for Unity, 350 through the 650, the four new entry models, customers were surprised, you know. And there were some questions on the level of innovation we're driving. A year later, getting a full platform refresh was a very big surprise for customers. I typically, two years, 18 months of other vendors in the field, and they're like, "You just launched "the product last year, and you already have a refresh." And we did that 'cause we listened to customer requirements and the all-Flash, the performances as absolutely critical, so the controller upgrade. We went from a Haswell to Broadwell design. We actually added additional core capabilities in memory, and all with the architecture built to do an online date and place upgrade that will be driving later in the year, too. So, and the SC 5020 that we announced too as a separate product line to complementing, as Pierluca stated, but the third area that hasn't been necessarily amplified but customers have raved about seeing in the showroom area is our Cloud IQ technology, which is actually built off of Cloud Foundry. That's a value, the portfolio of the company and a strategic aligned business. And actually, it does preemptive and proactive not only monitoring, but we're taking that from Jeff Boudreau's keynote today. That whole definition of autonomous and self-aware storage well, in midrange 'cause of all the use cases and requirements, we're driving that into it. And there's actually, we have compatibility between Unity and SC in Cloud IQ. As that one pane of glass, it's not helmet manager, but more to take that value to a whole new level. And we're going to continue to drive that level innovation beyond, not just through software, but clearly leveraging better together talent to really solve some key business needs for customers. >> As David Guilden always says in the Cube, it's better to have overlap than holes in a product line. So that's cool that you guys got that addressed, and certainly mixing and match, that's the standard operating procedure these days in a lot of guys in IT. They know how to do that. The key is, does it thread together? So, congratulations. The hard question that I want to ask you guys and what everyone wants to know about, where the customer wins? Okay, because at the end of the day, you'd be number one at whatever old category scoreboard. >> Craig: Sure. >> Scoreboard of customers is what we're looking at. Are you getting more customers? Are they adopting, are they implementing a variety of versions? Give us the updates on the wins and what the combination is of Dell EMC coming together. What has that done for sales and wins? >> Yeah, so there's a public blog I posted for Dell EMC World, and it's about the one two punch with midrange storage. >> John: What was the title of that blog post? >> It was basically a one two punch, our midrange storage. And I'll provide you the link in followup. >> John: I'll look at it later. >> The reason we preemptively provided that was the biggest question I would get from customers was, which product are you going to choose? And our point was, both, right? Both products, the power of the portfolio. We don't need to choose one. Our install base on both those technologies is significant. But in that post, I also did quote some of the publicly available IEDC data, which showed us in our last quarter, in Q4, where you compare Q3 to Q4, we actually had double digit quarter growth for both Uni and SC, our primary leading lines in both the portfolio, which actually allowed us to get effectively back into a midrange market share segment. Now that's for purpose build. >> That reflects a very positive trend for Dell EMC midrange storage portfolio. I'm quoting directly from your blog post. One two punch drives midrange storage momentum. >> Craig: Correct. >> And it's not only the storage, right? I've been with a very big customer of ours. I was telling to an analyst this morning it's amazing to see the motion of the business that we can do now that we are Dell EMC. So being a private company in one sense allows us to do creative things that we didn't do before. So we can actually position not only one product or two product, but the entire portfolio. And as you see, with the server business, the affinity that some of the storage they have with the server, we can drive more and more adoptions for our work class. >> Just quickly, how is your channel reacting to all this? Are they fully on board, do they understand? Are they out there selling both solutions? >> 100%, we put a lot of investment into our channel enablements across the midrange storage products in portfolio as well, 'cause that's the primary motion that we drive as well. And that it allowed us to actually enable them for success, both in education enablement, and clearly, proper incentives in play. They're very well received. The feedback we've gotten has been overwhelmingly positive. And we've been complementing that more and more with constant refresher of not only our technology and sharing roadmap delivery so that it can plan ahead as that storage is used. >> I asked Mike Amerius Hoss and David Guilden the question, they both had the same answers. It's good to see them on the same page. But I said, you know, what's, where are the wins? And they both commented that where there's EMC Storage, they bring more Dell in. Where there's Dell, they bring more EMC Storage in. >> Yes, that's why they judged this with this customer. The new business motion that we can now propose like we have a very loyal customer from Arita GMC for example, but now we can offer also server, a software define on top of all that and the storage, right? And you can enter from the other one, from the server and position now a full portfolio of storage. >> Alright, I'm going to ask you a personal question. I'd like to get your reactions. Take your EMC hat off for a second. Put your industry participant, individual hat on. What's the biggest surprise from the combination, from your area of expertise and your jobs that you've personally observed with the combination? Customer adoption, technology that wasn't there, chaos, mayhem, what? >> Yeah, so I'll comment first. I think the, I mean, recognizing the real power of global scale, and what I mean by that is the combined set. So from an organization and R and D investment, being able to have global scale, where you have engineering working literally 24 by five, right, based on effectively, a follow the sun model, that's how you're seeing that innovation engine just cranking into high gear. And that was further extended with the power of the supply chain and innovation bringing together has been in my opinion, super powerful, right? 'Cause couple customers had shared with me, it's like, my concern if I go with a startup that may not be in business and relative to the supply chain leverage and the level of innovation, breadth, and depth of products that we have. >> Craig, that's a great point. Before we go to Pierluca, I just want to comment on that. We're seeing the same thing in the marketplace. A lot of the startups can't get into the pure storage play because scale requirements is now the new barrier entry, not necessarily the technology. >> Exactly. >> Not necessarily the technology, so that kind of reaffirms, that's why the startups kind of are doing that a lot of data protection, white space stuff. And their valuations, by the way, are skyrocketing. Go ahead, your comment, observation that surprised you or didn't surprise you, took you by storm, what? >> I need to say that I'm living a dream in this moment because I think it's a few times in life that you can experience a trust formation. And you can have the ability, actually, in my role that I have right now to accelerate this trust formation. And that it's not the common things to do in the company that is already established. So this shape, this come together give you more and more opportunity. So I'm so very exciting to do what I'm doing, and I love it. >> Injection of the scale, and more capabilities, it's like, go to the gym and you're like pumped up, you're in shape. >> Actually, I started to go to the gym after 20 years. (laughing) >> It's like getting a good meal. You're Italian, you appreciate a good buffet of resource, right? >> That's right. >> Dell's got the gourmet-- >> You know, every day, I find something new, some product that I didn't know, something that we did, innovation that we have in the company that we can actually use together. It's very very exciting. >> And the management teams are pretty solid. They didn't really just come in and decimate EMC. They essentially, it was truly a combination. Some say that EMC acquired Dell, some say Dell acquired EMC. But the fact that is even discussed shows a nice balance in terms of a lot of EMC at the helm. Its great sales force, great commercial business with Dell, very well play, I think. You guys feel the same way? >> I appreciate that, and couldn't agree more. And I think it shows as you look at business results and even from an employee satisfaction level. We continue to see that being record high, 'cause there's always that uncertainty, but the interesting piece is people have really been jazzed based on opportunity ahead. >> Alright, we're done complimenting. Let's get to the critical analysis. What's on the roadmap? >> Craig: A lot. >> Tell us what's coming down the pike. I know you privately do your earnings call, but you guys have been transparent, some of the things. What can you say about what's coming out for customers? What can they expect from you guys in the storage? >> I'll let Pierluca run the product management team. He drives that every day. >> So I do not say much, things that I'm getting. >> Share all, come on. You're telling, just spill it out. Come on. You and your dream, come on, sell it. >> We have only 20 minutes, so, really, as I said, we announced the 5020, right, we add the 7020 in August. We are planning to finish the lineup of the new family of SC for sure. We announced the ability to tiering to the Cloud, we're going to expand that. Also, we announced a full new set a family of Flash Unity. So we're going down that trajectory to offer more and more. And we are going to be very bold to offer also upgrades from old jan to the new jan and non-destructive upgrade and also a line upgrade. So it's a very very beefy roadmap that we show with our customer in the A and DH section. I need to say the feedback is tremendous, and to your point at the beginning, what is the ecosystem? How do you integrate the thing? You're going to see more and more, for example, the UI, the experience for the customer being the same. So the experience from the UI perspective-- >> Paul: Simplicity. >> Yes, simplicity. >> Paul: Simplicity is the new norm. >> Cloud IQ key, but also going between the products who have the same kind of philosophy. >> Hey, I always say, this great business model, make thins super fast, really easy to use, and really intuitive. Can't go wrong with that triple threat right there. So that's like what you guys are doing. >> Yes. >> Absolutely. >> Guys, thanks so much for coming on the Cube and sharing insight and update. Congratulations on the one two punch and the momentum and the success. That's the scoreboard we look at on the Cube. Are customers adopting it? Sharing all the data here inside the Cube live in Las Vegas with Dell EMC World 2017, stay with us for more coverage after this short break.