>>We're back with Jess Borgman of Starburst and Richard Jarvis of EVAs health. Okay. We're gonna get into lie. Number two, and that is this an open source based platform cannot give you the performance and control that you can get with a proprietary system. Is that a lie? Justin, the enterprise data warehouse has been pretty dominant and has evolved and matured. Its stack has mature over the years. Why is it not the default platform for data? >>Yeah, well, I think that's become a lie over time. So I, I think, you know, if we go back 10 or 12 years ago with the advent of the first data lake really around Hudu, that probably was true that you couldn't get the performance that you needed to run fast, interactive, SQL queries in a data lake. Now a lot's changed in 10 or 12 years. I remember in the very early days, people would say, you'll, you'll never get performance because you need to be column. You need to store data in a column format. And then, you know, column formats were introduced to, to data lake. You have Parque ORC file in aro that were created to ultimately deliver performance out of that. So, okay. We got, you know, largely over the performance hurdle, you know, more recently people will say, well, you don't have the ability to do updates and deletes like a traditional data warehouse. >>And now we've got the creation of new data formats, again, like iceberg and Delta and hoote that do allow for updates and delete. So I think the data lake has continued to mature. And I remember a quote from, you know, Kurt Monash many years ago where he said, you know, it takes six or seven years to build a functional database. I think that's that's right. And now we've had almost a decade go by. So, you know, these technologies have matured to really deliver very, very close to the same level performance and functionality of, of cloud data warehouses. So I think the, the reality is that's become a lie and now we have large giant hyperscale internet companies that, you know, don't have the traditional data warehouse at all. They do all of their analytics in a data lake. So I think we've, we've proven that it's very much possible today. >>Thank you for that. And so Richard, talk about your perspective as a practitioner in terms of what open brings you versus, I mean, the clothes is it's open as a moving target. I remember Unix used to be open systems and so it's, it is an evolving, you know, spectrum, but, but from your perspective, what does open give you that you can't get from a proprietary system where you are fearful of in a proprietary system? >>I, I suppose for me open buys us the ability to be unsure about the future, because one thing that's always true about technology is it evolves in a, a direction, slightly different to what people expect and what you don't want to end up done is backed itself into a corner that then prevents it from innovating. So if you have chosen the technology and you've stored trillions of records in that technology and suddenly a new way of processing or machine learning comes out, you wanna be able to take advantage your competitive edge might depend upon it. And so I suppose for us, we acknowledge that we don't have perfect vision of what the future might be. And so by backing open storage technologies, we can apply a number of different technologies to the processing of that data. And that gives us the ability to remain relevant, innovate on our data storage. And we have bought our way out of the, any performance concerns because we can use cloud scale infrastructure to scale up and scale down as we need. And so we don't have the concerns that we don't have enough hardware today to process what we want to do, want to achieve. We can just scale up when we need it and scale back down. So open source has really allowed us to maintain the being at the cutting edge. >>So Jess, let me play devil's advocate here a little bit, and I've talked to JAK about this and you know, obviously her vision is there's an open source that, that data mesh is open source, an open source tooling, and it's not a proprietary, you know, you're not gonna buy a data mesh. You're gonna build it with, with open source toolings and, and vendors like you are gonna support it, but come back to sort of today, you can get to market with a proprietary solution faster. I'm gonna make that statement. You tell me if it's a lie and then you can say, okay, we support Apache iceberg. We're gonna support open source tooling, take a company like VMware, not really in the data business, but how, the way they embraced Kubernetes and, and you know, every new open source thing that comes along, they say, we do that too. Why can't proprietary systems do that and be as effective? >>Yeah, well I think at least with the, within the data landscape saying that you can access open data formats like iceberg or, or others is, is a bit dis disingenuous because really what you're selling to your customer is a certain degree of performance, a certain SLA, and you know, those cloud data warehouses that can reach beyond their own proprietary storage drop all the performance that they were able to provide. So it is, it reminds me kind of, of, again, going back 10 or 12 years ago when everybody had a connector to hit and that they thought that was the solution, right? But the reality was, you know, a connector was not the same as running workloads in hit back then. And I think similarly, you know, being able to connect to an external table that lives in an open data format, you know, you're, you're not going to give it the performance that your customers are accustomed to. And at the end of the day, they're always going to be predisposed. They're always going to be incentivized to get that data ingested into the data warehouse, cuz that's where they have control. And you know, the bottom line is the database industry has really been built around vendor lockin. I mean, from the start, how, how many people love Oracle today, but our customers, nonetheless, I think, you know, lockin is, is, is part of this industry. And I think that's really what we're trying to change with open data formats. >>Well, it's interesting remind of when I, you know, I see the, the gas price, the TSR gas price I, I drive up and then I say, oh, that's the cash price credit card. I gotta pay 20 cents more, but okay. But so the, the argument then, so let me, let me come back to you, Justin. So what's wrong with saying, Hey, we support open data formats, but yeah, you're gonna get better performance if you, if you, you keep it into our closed system, are you saying that long term that's gonna come back and bite you cuz you're gonna end up, you mentioned Oracle, you mentioned Teradata. Yeah. That's by, by implication, you're saying that's where snowflake customers are headed. >>Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a movie that, you know, we've all seen before. At least those of us who've been in the industry long enough to, to see this movie play over a couple times. So I do think that's the future. And I think, you know, I loved what Richard said. I actually wrote it down. Cause I thought it was an amazing quote. He said, it buys us the ability to be unsure of the future. That that pretty much says it all the, the future is unknowable and the reality is using open data formats. You remain interoperable with any technology you want to utilize. If you want to use spark to train a machine learning model and you wanna use Starbust to query via sequel, that's totally cool. They can both work off the same exact, you know, data, data sets by contrast, if you're, you know, focused on a proprietary model, then you're kind of locked in again to that model. I think the same applies to data, sharing to data products, to a wide variety of, of aspects of the data landscape that a proprietary approach kind of closes you and, and locks you in. >>So I, I would say this Richard, I'd love to get your thoughts on it. Cause I talked to a lot of Oracle customers, not as many te data customers there, but, but a lot of Oracle customers and they, you know, they'll admit yeah, you know, the Jammin us on price and the license cost, but we do get value out of it. And so my question to you, Richard, is, is do the, let's call it data warehouse systems or the proprietary systems. Are they gonna deliver a greater ROI sooner? And is that in allure of, of that customers, you know, are attracted to, or can open platforms deliver as fast an ROI? >>I think the answer to that is it can depend a bit. It depends on your business's skillset. So we are lucky that we have a number of proprietary teams that work in databases that provide our operational data capability. And we have teams of analytics and big data experts who can work with open data sets and open data formats. And so for those different teams, they can get to an ROI more quickly with different technologies for the business though, we can't do better for our operational data stores than proprietary databases. Today we can back off very tight SLAs to them. We can demonstrate reliability from millions of hours of those databases being run at enterprise scale, but for an analytics workload where increasing our business is growing in that direction, we can't do better than open data formats with cloud-based data mesh type technologies. And so it's not a simple answer. That one will always be the right answer for our business. We definitely have times when proprietary databases provide a capability that we couldn't easily represent or replicate with open technologies. >>Yeah. Richard, stay with you. You mentioned, you know, you know, some things before that, that strike me, you know, the data brick snowflake, you know, thing is always a lot of fun for analysts like me. You've got data bricks coming at it. Richard, you mentioned you have a lot of rockstar, data engineers, data bricks coming at it from a data engineering heritage. You get snowflake coming at it from an analytics heritage. Those two worlds are, are colliding people like PJI Mohan said, you know what? I think it's actually harder to play in the data engineering. So IE, it's easier to for data engineering world to go into the analytics world versus the reverse, but thinking about up and coming engineers and developers preparing for this future of data engineering and data analytics, how, how should they be thinking about the future? What, what's your advice to those young people? >>So I think I'd probably fall back on general programming skill sets. So the advice that I saw years ago was if you have open source technologies, the pythons and Javas on your CV, you command a 20% pay, hike over people who can only do proprietary programming languages. And I think that's true of data technologies as well. And from a business point of view, that makes sense. I'd rather spend the money that I save on proprietary licenses on better engineers, because they can provide more value to the business that can innovate us beyond our competitors. So I think I would my advice to people who are starting here or trying to build teams to capitalize on data assets is begin with open license, free capabilities because they're very cheap to experiment with. And they generate a lot of interest from people who want to join you as a business. And you can make them very successful early, early doors with, with your analytics journey. >>It's interesting. Again, analysts like myself, we do a lot of TCO work and have over the last 20 plus years and in the world of Oracle, you know, normally it's the staff, that's the biggest nut in total cost of ownership, not an Oracle. It's the it's the license cost is by far the biggest component in the, in the blame pie. All right, Justin, help us close out this segment. We've been talking about this sort of data mesh open, closed snowflake data bricks. Where does Starburst sort of as this engine for the data lake data lake house, the data warehouse, it, it fit in this, in this world. >>Yeah. So our view on how the future ultimately unfolds is we think that data lakes will be a natural center of gravity for a lot of the reasons that we described open data formats, lowest total cost of ownership, because you get to choose the cheapest storage available to you. Maybe that's S3 or Azure data lake storage or Google cloud storage, or maybe it's on-prem object storage that you bought at a, at a really good price. So ultimately storing a lot of data in a data lake makes a lot of sense, but I think what makes our perspective unique is we still don't think you're gonna get everything there either. We think that basically centralization of all your data assets is just an impossible endeavor. And so you wanna be able to access data that lives outside of the lake as well. So we kind of think of the lake as maybe the biggest place by volume in terms of how much data you have, but to, to have comprehensive analytics and to truly understand your business and understanding holistically, you need to be able to go access other data sources as well. And so that's the role that we wanna play is to be a single point of access for our customers, provide the right level of fine grained access controls so that the right people have access to the right data and ultimately make it easy to discover and consume via, you know, the creation of data products as well. >>Great. Okay. Thanks guys. Right after this quick break, we're gonna be back to debate whether the cloud data model that we see emerging and the so-called modern data stack is really modern or is it the same wine new bottle when it comes to data architectures, you're watching the cube, the leader in enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> Hello, everyone. I'm Khalil Ahmad, Senior Director, Architecture at S&P Global. I have been working with S&P Global for six years now. Previously, I worked for Citigroup and Prudential. Overall, I have been part of IT industry for 30 years, and most of my professional career has been within financial sector in New York City metro area. I live in New Jersey with my wife and son, Daniel Khalil. I have a Master degree in software engineering from the University of Scranton, and Master in mathematics University of Punjab, Lahore. And currently I am pursuing TRIUM global Executive MBA. A joint program from the NYU Stern, LSE and HEC Paris. So today, I'm going to talk about building multi-cluster scalable container platform, supporting on-prem hybrid and multicloud use cases, how we leverage that with an S&P Global and what was our best story. As far as the agenda is concerned, I will go over, quickly the problem statement. Then I will mention the work of our core requirements, how we get solutioning, how Docker Enterprise helped us. And at the end, I will go over the pilot deployment for a proof of concept which we leverage. So, as far as the problem statement is concerned. Containers, as you all know, in the enterprise are becoming mainstream but expertise remains limited and challenges are mounting as containers enter production. Some companies are building skills internally and someone looking for partners that can help catalyze success, and choosing more integrated solutions that accelerate deployments and simplify the container environment. To overcome the challenges, we at S&P Global started our journey a few years back, taking advantage of both options. So, first of all, we met with all the stakeholder, application team, Product Manager and we define our core requirements. What we want out of this container platform, which supports multicloud and hybrid supporting on-prem as well. So, as you see my core requirements, we decided that we need first of all a roadmap or container strategy, providing guidelines on standards and specification. Secondly, with an S&P Global, we decided to introduce Platform as a Service approach, where we bring the container platform and provide that as a service internally to our all application team and all the Product Managers. Hosting multiple application on-prem as well as in multicloud. Third requirement was that we need Linux and Windows container support. In addition to that, we would also require hosted secure image registry with role based access control and image security scanning. In addition to that, we also started DevOps journey, so we want to have a full support of CI/CD pipeline. Whatever the solution we recommend from the architecture group, it should be easily integrated to the developer workstation. And developer workstation could be Windows, Mac or Linux. Orchestration, performance and control were few other parameter which we'll want to keep in mind. And the most important, dynamic scaling of container clusters. That was something we were also want to achieve, when we introduce this Platform as a Service. So, as far as the standard specification are concerned, we turn to the Open Container Initiative, the OCI. OCI was established in June 2015 by Docker and other leaders in the technology industry. And OCI operates under Linux Foundation, and currently contains two specification, runtime specification and image specification. So, at that time, it was a no brainer, other than to just stick with OCI. So, we are following the industry standard and specifications. Now the next step was, okay, the container platform. But what would be our runtime engine? What would be orchestration? And how we support, in our on-prem as well as in the multicloud infrastructure? So, when it comes to runtime engine, we decided to go with the Docker. Which is by default, runtime engine and Kubernetes. And if I may mention, DataDog in one of their public report, they say Docker is probably the most talked about infrastructure technology for the past few years. So, sticking to Docker runtime engine was another win-win game and we saw in future not bringing any challenge or issues. When it comes to orchestration. We prefer Kubernetes but that time there was a challenge, Kubernetes did not support Windows container. So, we wanted something which worked with a Linux container, and also has the ability or to orchestrate Windows containers. So, even though long term we want to stick to Kubernetes, but we also wanted to have a Docker swarm. When it comes to on-prem and multicloud, technically you could only support as of now, technology may change in future, but as of now, you can only support if you bring your own orchestration too. So, in our case, if we have control over orchestration control and not locked in with one cloud provider, that was the ideal situation. So, with all that, research, R&D and finding, we found Docker Enterprise. Which is securely built, share and run modern applications anywhere. So, when we come across Docker Enterprise, we were pleased to see that it meets our most of the core requirements. Whether it is coming on the developer machine, to integrating their workstation, building the application. Whether it comes to sharing those application, in a secure way and collaborating with our pipeline. And the lastly, when it comes to the running. If we run in hybrid or multicloud or edge, in Kubernetes, Docker Enterprise have the support all the way. So, three area one I just call up all the Docker Enterprise, choice, flexibility and security. I'm sure there's a lot more features in Docker Enterprise as a suite. But, when we looked at these three words very quickly, simplified hybrid orchestration. Define application centric policies and boundaries. Once you define, you're all set. Then you just maintain those policies. Manage diverse application across mixed infrastructure, with secure segmentation. Then it comes to secure software supply chain. Provenance across the entire lifecycle of apps and infrastructure through enforceable policy. Consistently manage all apps and infrastructure. And lastly, when it comes to infrastructure independence. It was easily forever lift and shift, because same time, our cloud journey was in the flight. We were moving from on-prem to the cloud. So, support for lift and shift application was one of our wishlist. And Docker Enterprise did not disappoint us. It also supported both traditional and micro services apps on any infrastructure. So, here we are, Docker Enterprise. Why Docker Enterprise? Some of the items in previous slides I mentioned. But in addition to those industry-leading platform, simplifying the IT operations, for running modern application at scale, anywhere. Docker Enterprise also has developer tools. So, the integration, as I mentioned earlier was smooth. In addition to all these tools, the main two components, the Universal Control Plane and the Docker Trusted Registry, solve lot of our problems. When it comes to the orchestration, we have our own Universal Control Plane. Which under the hood, manages Kubernetes and Docker swarm both clusters. So, guess what? We have a Windows support, through Docker swarm and we have a Linux support through Kubernetes. Now that paradigm has changed, as of today, Kubernetes support Windows container. So, guess what? We are well after the UCP, because we have our own orchestration tool, and we start managing Kubernetes cluster in Linux and introduce now, Windows as well. Then comes to the Docker Trusted Registry. Integrated Security and role based access control, made a very smooth transition from our RT storage to DTR. In addition to that, binary level scanning was another good feature from the security point of view. So that, these all options and our R&D landed the Docker Enterprise is the way to go. And if we go over the Docker Enterprise, we can spin up multiple clusters on-prem and in the cloud. And we have a one centralized location to manage those clusters. >> Khalil: So, with all that, now let's talk about how what was our pilot deployment, for proof of concept. In this diagram, you can see we, on the left side is our on-prem Data Center, on the right side is AWS, US East Coast. We picked up one region three zones. And on-prem, we picked up our Data Center, one of the Data Center in the United States of America, and we started the POC. So, our Universal Control Plane had a five nodes cluster. Docker Trusted Registry, also has a five node cluster. And the both, but in our on-prem Data Center. When it comes to the worker nodes, we have started with 18 node cluster, on the Linux side and the four node cluster on the Windows side. Because the major footprint which we have was on the Linux side, and the Windows use cases were pretty small. Also, this is just a proof of concept. And in AWS, we mimic the same web worker nodes, virtual to what we have on-prem. We have a 13 nodes cluster on Linux. And we started with four node cluster of Windows container. And having the direct connect from our Data Center to AWS, which was previously existing, so we did not have any connectivity or latency issue. Now, if you see in this diagram, you have a centralized, Universal Control Plane and your trusted registry. And we were able to spin up a cluster, on-prem as well as in the cloud. And we made this happen, end to end in record time. So later, when we deploy this in production, we also added another cloud provider. So, what you see the box on the right side, we just duplicate test that box in another cloud platform. So, now other orchestration tool, managing on-prem and multicloud clusters. Now, in your use case, you may find this little, you know, more in favor of on-prem. But that fit in our use case. Later, we did have expanded the cluster of Universal Control Plane and DTR in the cloud as well. And the clusters have gone and hundreds and thousands of worker nodes span over two cloud providers, third being discussed. And this solution has been working so far, very good. We did not see any downtime, not a single instance. And we were able to provide multicloud platform, container Platform as a Service for our S&P Global. Thank you for your time. If any questions, I have put my LinkedIn and Twitter account holder, you're welcome to ask any question

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas it's the CUBE, covering VMworld 2017 brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partner. (techno music) >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live on the floor at the VMvillage of VMworld 2017. This is the CUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier. We are here with Michael Dell, the CEO, founder of Dell Technologies, chairman of the board of Vmware. With my co-host Dave Vellante. Michael, great to see you again. >> Thanks for coming out. >> Always great to be hanging out with you guys. This is a lot of fun. Thanks for being here at VMworld. >> Every time I see you, you've got a spring in your step, got a smile. People love you, you're in the crowd walking around, checking things out. Congratulations, and VMware stock is really looking good. It's got a nice slope up, up and to the right. >> I've noticed that. Yeah, I think it's highly correlated to how the business is doing and, look, the open ecosystem of Vmware has always been a hallmark of it's success. And it's as strong and as vibrant as ever. And now, of course, you see we're puttin' up new cylinders on the engine. >> You got a great bet on VMware. You said on the CUBE here it's the crown jewel of Dell Technologies when you, before and even during your Dell, EMC combination. It's certainly now valued, and Dave thinks undervalued. What was your thesis back then that others didn't see? >> Well, look, when you imagine forward in this world of multi-cloud, there is absolutely no question that the answer isn't public or private, it's both. Alright, and then you layer in manage services and softwares of service. And in that world the capabilities that VMware has are absolutely incredibly valuable to connect to all of the public clouds. Alright, and to integrate the on-premise infrastructure, which we continue to see having a very important role, you know. We're having double digit growth in our server business. There's a lot of infrastructure being laid down in private data centers all over the world, as you guys know and have reported on. And when you think about future scenarios out to 2020 and beyond, the boom in edge computing. And the thing I'm seeing which is really fascinating is all of the companies outside of the IT space making their products smart and intelligent. And so IT's breaking out of IT. It's becoming business technology, and that's going to create a whole 'nother wave of technological innovation. And VMware has an incredibly special position in the industry to be able to bring all that together. >> So, Michael, John's right. I do think the company's undervalued. Usually a chairman's not going to comment that the company's overvalued. I've never seen that happen before. But if you look at the operating cash flow of three billion dollars, and you look at the multiple on that, it is a relatively inexpensive stock. People talk about the Dell discount. Is that even a viable concept? Why would there be a Dell discount, and why on the other hand would Dell give it a lift? What kind of governance or guidance do you give that should give that company a lift? >> Well, if you read through the detailed financial filings, what you'll find in there is that the Dell technologies generated revenue for VMware is growing very, very fast. >> Right. >> And so, you know, as I said on stage, I think VMware, Dell EMC go together like peanut butter and chocolate. And so the more we do together, the more we drive innovation, it's fueling the success of VMware and Dell Technologies and Dell EMC. So, you know, the market will do what it's going to do. >> Dave: Right. >> In the short term, don't really care to be honest. What I care about is the three, five, 10, 20 year outcome, the lifetime outcome. And we're building a great company here, and, you know, the team is executing. Innovation engine is on high, and the more we do across the Dell Technologies family, the better it gets. You saw what we're doing with Pivotal, you know. We're in a great spot. And overall Dell Technologies, our revenue synergies are running more than we thought. And for a company of our size, we're growin' way faster than the industry. >> Well, but and the ecosystem has responded quite well. Somewhat surprisingly, maybe better with Dell's ownership than it has, perhaps with EMC's ownership. Do you think people had a misconception about that coming in, and what have you learned in the one year or so that you've watched this unfold? >> Well, it's been almost two years since we announced the plan to combine, a year since we completed the combination, and we've been very clear the whole way through, you know, and now again and into the future, on the importance of the open ecosystem. And this is why we created this concept of strategically-aligned businesses. So Dell EMC can work incredibly closely with VMware, but so can all of Dell EMC's competitors. Alright, and that's great. And you see them all here. You see them announcing things, That's fantastic. And Pivotal has a great open ecosystem. And now you see us extending out to these major public clouds, you know, AWS being the biggest. >> I got to ask you because one of your partners, well first of all, it has been working great, the ecosystem seems buzzed up about they now know what's going on on-premise and cloud. >> Well, you do what you say you're going to do and you stick to it, and, you know, good things happen, right? >> You know channels. You know ecosystems. Clarity is the gold for the channel. But one of the things interesting is Andy Jassy showed up, one of your now key partners at VMware. >> Sure. Yeah. >> On stage with Pat Gelsinger. I noticed the new hugging thing going on with Pat, kind of cool. Hugging Andy Jassy on stage and then when he left. But Andy Jassy very much looked in the camera, looked at the audience and said, "This is not an optical illusion relationship, and I got your back." Okay, and coming from the cloud leader, that's a pretty big testament. What's your thoughts and reaction to Andy Jassy on stage? >> So, I was involved in the discussions early on, you know, before, everything came to fruition. I won't take any credit for that. Pat and team deserve all the credit. But what I've seen behind the scenes is the incredible amount of co-innovation going on across, you know, AWS and Vmware. And it's not an announcement, you know. >> John: It's not a barney deal (laughing). >> There's an enormous amount of work that's gone on, and we have a real product that we're standing up with a large number of customers. And it's going to roll out rapidly across the world. And of course it's a VMware operated service. and, it'll also, you know, connect into all the things we're doing on-premise. And so I'm delighted with how it's all come together. Everbody's executed according to what they said they were going to do, and, you know, it's rolling forward. >> He's also very clear too. We listen to customers. That's kind of the Dell way, and a lot of parallels there. >> I don't know how you could actually succeed in business without that, (John and Dave laughing) but that's just me talking, right? >> Dave: When you talk to, >> That's how we've done it, so. >> There are some models, but we won't go there. >> Vaporware models. >> When you talk to customers, let's say in the past year, since the AWS announcement of the partnership, how do you feel that that's brought clarity to customers? And has that been a factor in VMware's momentum? In other words, the fact that you're not going to build your own hyper cloud. There's not all the confusion about what the strategy was. How much of a factor has that been when you talk to customers in terms of VMware's momentum? >> I think more and more customers are figuring out that it's a multi-cloud world, that there is a right place for any particular workload, and it's not one size fits all. Alright, and you know, this idea of everything to the public cloud, that's not really very likely to happen. And as we've been able to improve the on-premise systems and make them more competitive, the modernization, the automation, that's great. And, look, customers will ultimately decide where they want their workloads to run. And when you think about this coming boom in edge computing, that's not all going to go to the center somewhere. So, is it public cloud? Is it private cloud? Yes, it's both. And we're well positioned for this multi-cloud future. And we've got incredible capabilities with Cloud Foundry, with Boomi, with Virtustream. Our whole portfolio has been architected, not only to help customers with the existing, you know, Platform 2 apps and modernize, automate the infrastructure for that, but also to enable this new cloud-native future. But cloud, as I've said in the past, cloud's not a place. Cloud's a way of doing IT. You can do cloud on-premise very efficiently as well. >> Michael, thanks for comin' on. I know your handlers want to get you on, but my final question is, we were just talking with our Wikibon analyst about how the computer industry has been tossed in the air. You're a veteran of the computer industry. You built Dell computers, now Dell Technologies. Now it's going to land on the table with multi-cloud. What is the number one thing that you're focused on to help customers pull that together to make it really easy to execute in this complex new era? >> We see four big things. We see a digital transformation, IT transformation, the workplace, workforce transformation, and security. And we've architected our whole Dell Technologies family to be able to address that. And certainly, the work that Pivotal's doing around applications and developers and developer-ready infrastructure, now joined with the VMware ecosystem. We're a lot more relevant for developers than we were a few years ago. >> And you're pleased with VMware's execution to date? >> Well, how could you not be? (John and Dave laughing) I mean, the company's firing on all cylinders, puttin' up new cylinders, and, you know, Pat and team are doing a great job. >> They're delivering some great cloud with Amazon Web Services. Now, the Pivotal opportunity with Vmware and Google cloud. Kupernetes orchestrating and making it all easier. Thanks for coming on the CUBE. As always, great to see you. >> You got it. >> Thanks for sharing your perspective. >> Great to see you guys. >> I'm John Furrier along with Michael Dell here, chairman of the board of Vmware, also founder and CEO of Dell Technologies. We'll be right back with more live coverage at VMworld 2017 after this short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Hello everyone, welcome to our live coverage from SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. We are here at Dell EMC World 2017 with Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, which is the company that owns Dell EMC, but this is the first year of the EMC World passing the baton formally to the Dell EMC World. There was an event in Austin, a small event one month after the close in September, eight months ago. Michael, great to see you and thanks for spending the time out of your valuable schedule to come on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Always great to be with you, John. >> This is like the SportsCenter of all the techs, so I'm going to go hard-hitting question first. You know I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship, and certainly a big fan of innovation, and the work that you've done. Saw on your Facebook page, 33 years, and you had that video when you were a kid. I forget how long in that was but you were still in your dorm room. 33 years ago last week, and a trillion dollars in sales. Really pretty amazing. I noticed Mark Zuckerberg also commented on your, probably built Facebook on a Dell laptop. Congratulations. >> Thank you, thank you. It's been fun, it's been exciting, interesting, and thrill of a lifetime. But I actually think the next 33 years will be much, much more exciting, so I couldn't be more excited about the future. >> It's really good to see you kind of, we talked about years ago, when rumors of you going private. Certainly there's a spring in your step every year. You seem to get stronger with the private, not being the public company, but I got to ask you from an entrepreneurial standpoint. You're the founder-led CEO entrepreneur. You can't take that entrepreneur out of the kid. What's the management style? 'Cause when I interview Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos, they have that founder-led entrepreneurial culture, but it's transforming into a management practice now, from folks who are, through experience, and observing what's in front of them, have to take on the next 33 years. What is the key to success based on your experience and how are you executing the Dell technologies? Because you have that entrepreneurial spirit, you are executing, and you have to still grow off this base of a consolidating IT market. Go. >> You know we've been able to be bold, and being private allows us to take on some risks and make some investments, and certainly going private back in 2013, and then the combination with EMC, and Vmware, and Pivotal and the whole Dell Technologies family has created a different kind of company. Much stronger than Dell or EMC were by themselves. And customers reacted very positively to that. So when I step back and look at the future of our industry and what's happening with digital transformation, and then all the assets and capabilities we have now, again, couldn't be more excited about the opportunities ahead. >> Bezos said on his interview, I'll ask you the same question in the context of your world. He said you know Amazon started out driving his car around, and going, dropping stuff off at the post office, and then it became what it is today. And he said he still has the guiding principles that's timeless for his culture, which was lower prices and get stuff to the consumer fast. That's been the ethos of Amazon's culture and a lot of other things wrap around it, but that's been kind of the guiding principles. What is your guiding principles that have been timeless for you as an entrepreneur-led CEO? >> It's been customer focus. It's been big ears and listening. It's been understanding the customer's challenges and opportunities, and designing the company from the customer back. It's been understanding the technology and then finding the intersection between the customer's challenges and the technology to create the solution. And I think that's stood the test of time for us and worked really well, and wow, the opportunities ahead of us, again, are even much, much more exciting. >> Well congratulations. So let me ask you the question that's on everyone's mind here at the show. There's also the EMC, Dell EMC, culture still intact, we gave Howard some props on the combination, the merger of equals, but now you have obviously a strategy, I'm not going to deny it's a pretty good one, mature market, consolidating, win the game there. You see that happening, but the question that I have is the growth strategy. Okay, 'cause you now got to have a growth strategy in a hyper-flywheel market called the Cloud, Cloud computing, cloud-native, Kubernetes, machine learning, Pivotal. What is that growth strategy as you build off that existing market? >> Well certainly with Pivotal we've got kind of the tip of the spear of our Cloud strategy, as the platform to develop cloud-native apps, the operating system for the internet of things, and the digital transformation for many of the largest companies in the world. Then we Virtustream. We've got a mission-critical public Cloud for those super-high-performing intensive workloads, VMware driving the software-defined data center. Everybody wants to have a data center that is software-defined. And what VMware has done in virtualization, obviously, is unparalleled, taking that into the network and into storage, VMware's got incredible momentum. I know you're going to have Pat on tomorrow to talk more about that. When we put all this together with the consolidation that's going on in the existing several-hundred-billion-dollar client and data-center business, the combination together, we're very well-positioned to grow. >> I got a lot of heat for a few years ago when I said to Pat Gelsinger, Hybrid Cloud is a destination that most people go to, but I made a comment, I said the Cloud is not a product, Hybrid Cloud is not a product, and you can't get a skew on a Hybrid Cloud. You can't say "Give me a Hybrid Cloud." It's more of a mindset destination of the customers. You said on stage that Hybrid Cloud and Cloud is a way of doing IT. Explain specifically what you mean by that and how does that translate into growth for you? >> Well let me take you back to the internet, okay? Because if we were having this discussion 20 years ago, we wouldn't be talking about the Cloud, we'd be talking about the internet, and we'd be talking about our internet strategy and our internet prog division, and our Vice President of the internet, and where is all that today? It's everywhere. The internet is part of everything. Internet is a way of doing IT, and Cloud really is the same thing. If you look at these large public Cloud companies, what they've done is extrapolated the workload up to the application layer. And that's what we're doing with Pivotal. That's what we're doing with the software-defined data center. That's what we're doing with Converge and Hyper Converge infrastructure, and that's why all those things are white-hot in terms of growth and customer options. >> The internet was a bubble that burst and everyone had a website. Remember that, those days. But you mentioned the internet. Let's stay on that for a second because that's interesting. Software has changed, right? Shrink-wrap software, and for the internet, you download it. Okay, now you have the Cloud access. So we were just talking in our intro that the role of a software company isn't the business model of selling software, it's how software works within the business model of this new modern era of computing. What's your vision around that, because a lot of people will say, and I even said to you privately, where's the software play? And a lot of people jump to that, right? So what's your vision around software? You don't have to sell any. Facebook doesn't sell software. They have software DNA and they're open-source, but their business is an application. Can you explain your vision on software? >> Sure, well obviously you've got mission-critical apps. You've got some of the traditional Platform 2 kind of apps and you've got the cloud-native apps. And there's a right place and a right way to develop all those. And it's not a monolith. There are many, many different approaches within that. That's why we see it as a multi-cloud world. For cloud-native, Pivotal is clearly our platform, and a winning platform, and has tremendous momentum, and avoids this problem of lock-in that many customers are starting to experience with the public Cloud. You can leverage the public Cloud but also run them on-premise. In fact 80 percent of the Pivotal Cloud Foundry instances end up on-premise. Then for the traditional apps, the Platform 2 apps, VMware is continuing to do great. You'll see that in the growth of their business and all the success that VMware is enjoying as now part of Dell Technologies. And then for those mission-critical apps, like SAP, like Oracle, like Epic, you need a different level of performance and capability, and that's where Virtustream comes into play. >> So I asked you a question last year. What are you most excited about, what are you digging into? What's getting you stoked about the stuff in front of you? You mentioned Pivotal. Obviously you've seen that change and I think a much stronger strategic front row with Cloud Foundry. This year, what is that thing for you, is it NSX? What are you looking, what are you geeking out on right now? In terms of you look at the future, you're making some bets. What are you looking at? What is Michael Dell unpacking the most for you personally? Not so much for the business, for you personally. What are you learning, what are you understanding deeper? >> What's exciting is how all of our customers are engaged in this digital transformation. And we're just in the beginning of this. And we're all trying to figure out, hey, how do I use all this data to make my product and service better? And they're all on this digital transformation journey. So again you put together what we're doing with VMware, with the software-defined data center, with NSX, with Pivotal, with Converge and Hyper Converge, the amount of growth in the data, and then all the new computer science. The machine intelligence that's being reasoned over that data. Super exciting time, and if you're not excited now, you're totally asleep or you're dead. >> That's super. If you're a computer science major right now, best time to be coding and building stuff. Okay, Pat Gelsinger. What's the conversation with Pat like these days? Because VMware's market cap is greater than HPE right now. That's one of your companies. It's not even part of the, not even the holistic view of everything you got. One piece is bigger than HPE. You've competed with HPE over the years. So you got to go to Pat and say, "You've got to watch what you're doing here. "You've got a tiger by the tail with VMware." What are some of the conversations you have with Pat? Share some color around how you guys interact, what is he thinking? Obviously he's got some new things with the Amazon relationship. What's the conversation like? >> Well I've known Pat for almost 30 years. We met a long time ago back when he was at Intel, and VMware's doing great, and the team there continues to innovate in virtualization, now with the whole software-defined data center. I am particularly excited about NSX because what you can do when the network is delivering its code by virtualizing the network, and virtualizing all the functions in the network, all the layer four through seven functions, and then run that on top of our open switching. It's a huge opportunity, and you combine that with everything else we're doing, VMware's incredibly well-positioned, and certainly for us, when we think about how do you modernize and automate the data center, VMware's at the very center of that. >> So you have conversations with Pat. Are they like, hey, let's take that beachhead, let's conquer that hill? What are some of those conversations when you take him to the ranch, or you guys have your meetings. What's the strategy? Take us to the war room. What are some of the conversations strategically? >> We work together quite closely, as well as ensuring that the open ecosystem that VMware has continues to thrive. Because VMware also works with the rest of the industry, and that's been an important part of their strategy and an important part of their growth for a long time. What you're seeing now is a much tighter collaboration across Dell Technologies. So Boomi and Pivotal working together. Pivotal and VMware, NSX working together. Dell EMC and VMware working together, and bringing together combined innovations in the form of new products and new solutions, like the kinds we're introducing here at Dell EMC World. >> So you got 33 years under your belt with Dell, your company, Michael Dell's company, Dell Technologies now, a whole new future ahead of you. What's your reaction to EMC World now converted into Dell EMC World? Again, you had a little event in Austin. It wasn't really the real big EMC World event. This is the Dell EMC. We spoke last year. I think we walked back from the party chatting. What's it like this year, what's different, what's your perspective, what's your reaction? Share some color on what you think is happening here. >> We've been really thrilled with the reaction from customers and partners. I'll tell you I think initially there was a bit of a wait-and-see. Customers were like, oh, how's this going to work? I think we're past that, and now customers are seeing that we really are one company, and they're seeing the new products and innovations. And the theory that we had that customers would want to buy more of everything from one company is absolutely playing itself out in the wins in the business that we're seeing. >> And the internet's a great example. I use that analogy, because internet was over-hyped, it popped, it all delivered the same. It was pet foods online, everything happened that everyone said was going to happen, just didn't happen the way they thought. Do you see the Cloud the same way? Because in a way you're taking a very cautious pragmatic approach by saying we're going to integrate our customers and have this operating environment called multi-cloud, or whatever the customers want. Do you see that internet analogy happening the same now with Cloud? >> Yeah I think, as I said, Cloud is not a place, it's a way of doing IT, and having sold billions of dollars of equipment to the public Cloud providers for years and years, what we see, the big difference there, is that these companies have, again, moved up to the application layer. They've moved to the software-defined data center. Everybody wants that. And as we can bring those efficiencies, and now with our Cloud flex pricing, we see lots of opportunity. >> As an entrepreneur, now CEO, go back to the entrepreneur, final question for you. Is there always the hustle in the entrepreneur, I mean that in a good way, Mark Cuban talked about it like the same way, in a way, you still got to have that agile mindset, never settle for complacency. Bezos' shareholder letter kind of points out the same thing. Common thread amongst entrepreneurs. What is the Michael Dell zeal right now that you have that you're pushing through your organization that really is more of a, not an order, but more of a mindset to be an entrepreneur, because it is moving very fast, this transformation. It's business, it's technical, it's supply chain, it's everything across the board, software. What do you tell your troops to keep their eye on the prize? What is that entrepreneurial ethos? >> We call it pleased but never satisfied. We are relentless about innovating and improving on behalf of customers, and designing our business with the two billion interactions we have a year with customers, and taking that input and feedback, and making our products, our systems, our services, everything we do better on behalf of our customers to enable them. >> What's the coolest thing that you saw last year with customers in the transformation of Dell and EMC coming together? What is the coolest customer example you could point to? >> I saw some customers that used Pivotal to fundamentally change the way they develop applications inside their own businesses. One particular customer showed us that they had 1,500 developers developing a thousand applications with only four operations people. And the way they did that was that they, again, extrapolated up to the platform level using Pivotal Cloud Foundry. That is the nirvana state that many of our customers seek to obtain, and we certainly want to help them get there. >> Dave Vellante wanted me to ask you a question. He says, "Michael, with all that money you spent "to buy EMC, sixty billion, all the piece parts, "do you have any money left for M&A?" And if you do, I saw a little venture announcement, it looks like the Dell EMC venture's kind of coming together, saw that release. So it's good to get the hands in the water, you invest personally through your capital company, but M&A, there's a lot of activity going on. Do you have any dry powder left for M&A? >> We sure do, and we've already made some acquisitions, both in the Dell EMC level and at the VMware level, and of course Dell Technologies' capital, we're now having a bit of a coming-out party explaining what we're doing with the portfolio and the new investments, and lots of new investments in machine learning, deep learning, security, and Cloud, and all the next-generation business models that are imported to us. >> Are you going to be involved in some of those decisions? Are you going to see 'em all, or does that all roll up to you, or are they going to be autonomous? >> I'm involved in 'em, but we got a fantastic team with Scott Darling, and team running the show there, and I'm there to support them. >> Well great keynote, final final question. You mentioned A.I. a little bit, some machine learning, you brought that up. Good to see you not really hyping up the A.I. and not having anything to back it up, not promoting A.I. Everyone's coming out and saying A.I. So I want to ask you, what's your take on A.I. these days, because obviously augmented intelligence is here today, but A.I.'s been around for a while. Neural networks has been around for years. What's your view on A.I., and how do you see that impacting Dell EMC short, medium, long-term? >> I think the potential here is really tremendous. It takes time though. You know, DARPA had this contest to see, could you drive a car through the desert, a vehicle through the desert, 150 miles back in 2004. The first year, I think the farthest they got was eight miles. By 2005, they had lots of cars completing the entire 150 mile journey. Now we still don't have self-driving cars, that was 12 years ago. So it does take time for these things to evolve, but the level of improvement and advancement in the processing power, and the learning that's going on in these systems is tremendous. And, again, when you have hundreds of billions of nodes, and all this data, and an increase in processing power, it is really a Cambrian explosion, we do think of it as the fourth Industrial Revolution. To me that is incredibly exciting. >> Michael Dell here inside theCUBE. Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, and this is the Dell EMC World 2017, the first of the Dell EMC World. Congratulations. Great to see you on theCUBE. >> Michael: Thank you John. >> More live coverage here at Dell EMC World 2017 after this short break. Stay with us, be right back.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Hello everyone, welcome to our live coverage from SiliconANGLE Media's theCUBE. It's our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. We are here at Dell EMC World 2017 with Michael Dell, the chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, which is the company that owns Dell EMC, but this is the first year of the EMC World passing the baton formally to the Dell EMC World. There was an event in Austin, a small event one month after the close in September, eight months ago. Michael, great to see you and thanks for spending the time out of your valuable schedule to come on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Always great to be with you, John. >> This is like the SportsCenter of all the techs, so I'm going to go hard-hitting question first. You know I'm a big fan of entrepreneurship, and certainly a big fan of innovation, and the work that you've done. Saw on your Facebook page, 33 years, and you had that video when you were a kid. I forget how long in that was but you were still in your dorm room. 33 years ago last week, and a trillion dollars in sales. Really pretty amazing. I noticed Mark Zuckerberg also commented on your, probably built Facebook on a Dell laptop. Congratulations. >> Thank you, thank you. It's been fun, it's been exciting, interesting, and thrill of a lifetime. But I actually think the next 33 years will be much, much more exciting, so I couldn't be more excited about the future. >> It's really good to see you kind of, we talked about years ago, when rumors of you going private. Certainly there's a spring in your step every year. You seem to get stronger with the private, not being the public company, but I got to ask you from an entrepreneurial standpoint. You're the founder-led CEO entrepreneur. You can't take that entrepreneur out of the kid. What's the management style? 'Cause when I interview Andy Jassy, Jeff Bezos, they have that founder-led entrepreneurial culture, but it's transforming into a management practice now, from folks who are, through experience, and observing what's in front of them, have to take on the next 33 years. What is the key to success based on your experience and how are you executing the Dell technologies? Because you have that entrepreneurial spirit, you are executing, and you have to still grow off this base of a consolidating IT market. Go. >> You know we've been able to be bold, and being private allows us to take on some risks and make some investments, and certainly going private back in 2013, and then the combination with EMC, and Vmware, and Pivotal and the whole Dell Technologies family has created a different kind of company. Much stronger than Dell or EMC were by themselves. And customers reacted very positively to that. So when I step back and look at the future of our industry and what's happening with digital transformation, and then all the assets and capabilities we have now, again, couldn't be more excited about the opportunities ahead. >> Bezos said on his interview, I'll ask you the same question in the context of your world. He said you know Amazon started out driving his car around, and going, dropping stuff off at the post office, and then it became what it is today. And he said he still has the guiding principles that's timeless for his culture, which was lower prices and get stuff to the consumer fast. That's been the ethos of Amazon's culture and a lot of other things wrap around it, but that's been kind of the guiding principles. What is your guiding principles that have been timeless for you as an entrepreneur-led CEO? >> It's been customer focus. It's been big ears and listening. It's been understanding the customer's challenges and opportunities, and designing the company from the customer back. It's been understanding the technology and then finding the intersection between the customer's challenges and the technology to create the solution. And I think that's stood the test of time for us and worked really well, and wow, the opportunities ahead of us, again, are even much, much more exciting. >> Well congratulations. So let me ask you the question that's on everyone's mind here at the show. There's also the EMC, Dell EMC, culture still intact, we gave Howard some props on the combination, the merger of equals, but now you have obviously a strategy, I'm not going to deny it's a pretty good one, mature market, consolidating, win the game there. You see that happening, but the question that I have is the growth strategy. Okay, 'cause you now got to have a growth strategy in a hyper-flywheel market called the Cloud, Cloud computing, cloud-native, Kubernetes, machine learning, Pivotal. What is that growth strategy as you build off that existing market? >> Well certainly with Pivotal we've got kind of the tip of the spear of our Cloud strategy, as the platform to develop cloud-native apps, the operating system for the internet of things, and the digital transformation for many of the largest companies in the world. Then we Virtustream. We've got a mission-critical public Cloud for those super-high-performing intensive workloads, VMware driving the software-defined data center. Everybody wants to have a data center that is software-defined. And what VMware has done in virtualization, obviously, is unparalleled, taking that into the network and into storage, VMware's got incredible momentum. I know you're going to have Pat on tomorrow to talk more about that. When we put all this together with the consolidation that's going on in the existing several-hundred-billion-dollar client and data-center business, the combination together, we're very well-positioned to grow. >> I got a lot of heat for a few years ago when I said to Pat Gelsinger, Hybrid Cloud is a destination that most people go to, but I made a comment, I said the Cloud is not a product, Hybrid Cloud is not a product, and you can't get a skew on a Hybrid Cloud. You can't say "Give me a Hybrid Cloud." It's more of a mindset destination of the customers. You said on stage that Hybrid Cloud and Cloud is a way of doing IT. Explain specifically what you mean by that and how does that translate into growth for you? >> Well let me take you back to the internet, okay? Because if we were having this discussion 20 years ago, we wouldn't be talking about the Cloud, we'd be talking about the internet, and we'd be talking about our internet strategy and our internet prog division, and our Vice President of the internet, and where is all that today? It's everywhere. The internet is part of everything. Internet is a way of doing IT, and Cloud really is the same thing. If you look at these large public Cloud companies, what they've done is extrapolated the workload up to the application layer. And that's what we're doing with Pivotal. That's what we're doing with the software-defined data center. That's what we're doing with Converge and Hyper Converge infrastructure, and that's why all those things are white-hot in terms of growth and customer options. >> The internet was a bubble that burst and everyone had a website. Remember that, those days. But you mentioned the internet. Let's stay on that for a second because that's interesting. Software has changed, right? Shrink-wrap software, and for the internet, you download it. Okay, now you have the Cloud access. So we were just talking in our intro that the role of a software company isn't the business model of selling software, it's how software works within the business model of this new modern era of computing. What's your vision around that, because a lot of people will say, and I even said to you privately, where's the software play? And a lot of people jump to that, right? So what's your vision around software? You don't have to sell any. Facebook doesn't sell software. They have software DNA and they're open-source, but their business is an application. Can you explain your vision on software? >> Sure, well obviously you've got mission-critical apps. You've got some of the traditional Platform 2 kind of apps and you've got the cloud-native apps. And there's a right place and a right way to develop all those. And it's not a monolith. There are many, many different approaches within that. That's why we see it as a multi-cloud world. For cloud-native, Pivotal is clearly our platform, and a winning platform, and has tremendous momentum, and avoids this problem of lock-in that many customers are starting to experience with the public Cloud. You can leverage the public Cloud but also run them on-premise. In fact 80 percent of the Pivotal Cloud Foundry instances end up on-premise. Then for the traditional apps, the Platform 2 apps, VMware is continuing to do great. You'll see that in the growth of their business and all the success that VMware is enjoying as now part of Dell Technologies. And then for those mission-critical apps, like SAP, like Oracle, like Epic, you need a different level of performance and capability, and that's where Virtustream comes into play. >> So I asked you a question last year. What are you most excited about, what are you digging into? What's getting you stoked about the stuff in front of you? You mentioned Pivotal. Obviously you've seen that change and I think a much stronger strategic front row with Cloud Foundry. This year, what is that thing for you, is it NSX? What are you looking, what are you geeking out on right now? In terms of you look at the future, you're making some bets. What are you looking at? What is Michael Dell unpacking the most for you personally? Not so much for the business, for you personally. What are you learning, what are you understanding deeper? >> What's exciting is how all of our customers are engaged in this digital transformation. And we're just in the beginning of this. And we're all trying to figure out, hey, how do I use all this data to make my product and service better? And they're all on this digital transformation journey. So again you put together what we're doing with VMware, with the software-defined data center, with NSX, with Pivotal, with Converge and Hyper Converge, the amount of growth in the data, and then all the new computer science. The machine intelligence that's being reasoned over that data. Super exciting time, and if you're not excited now, you're totally asleep or you're dead. >> That's super. If you're a computer science major right now, best time to be coding and building stuff. Okay, Pat Gelsinger. What's the conversation with Pat like these days? Because VMware's market cap is greater than HPE right now. That's one of your companies. It's not even part of the, not even the holistic view of everything you got. One piece is bigger than HPE. You've competed with HPE over the years. So you got to go to Pat and say, "You've got to watch what you're doing here. "You've got a tiger by the tail with VMware." What are some of the conversations you have with Pat? Share some color around how you guys interact, what is he thinking? Obviously he's got some new things with the Amazon relationship. What's the conversation like? >> Well I've known Pat for almost 30 years. We met a long time ago back when he was at Intel, and VMware's doing great, and the team there continues to innovate in virtualization, now with the whole software-defined data center. I am particularly excited about NSX because what you can do when the network is delivering its code by virtualizing the network, and virtualizing all the functions in the network, all the layer four through seven functions, and then run that on top of our open switching. It's a huge opportunity, and you combine that with everything else we're doing, VMware's incredibly well-positioned, and certainly for us, when we think about how do you modernize and automate the data center, VMware's at the very center of that. >> So you have conversations with Pat. Are they like, hey, let's take that beachhead, let's conquer that hill? What are some of those conversations when you take him to the ranch, or you guys have your meetings. What's the strategy? Take us to the war room. What are some of the conversations strategically? >> We work together quite closely, as well as ensuring that the open ecosystem that VMware has continues to thrive. Because VMware also works with the rest of the industry, and that's been an important part of their strategy and an important part of their growth for a long time. What you're seeing now is a much tighter collaboration across Dell Technologies. So Boomi and Pivotal working together. Pivotal and VMware, NSX working together. Dell EMC and VMware working together, and bringing together combined innovations in the form of new products and new solutions, like the kinds we're introducing here at Dell EMC World. >> So you got 33 years under your belt with Dell, your company, Michael Dell's company, Dell Technologies now, a whole new future ahead of you. What's your reaction to EMC World now converted into Dell EMC World? Again, you had a little event in Austin. It wasn't really the real big EMC World event. This is the Dell EMC. We spoke last year. I think we walked back from the party chatting. What's it like this year, what's different, what's your perspective, what's your reaction? Share some color on what you think is happening here. >> We've been really thrilled with the reaction from customers and partners. I'll tell you I think initially there was a bit of a wait-and-see. Customers were like, oh, how's this going to work? I think we're past that, and now customers are seeing that we really are one company, and they're seeing the new products and innovations. And the theory that we had that customers would want to buy more of everything from one company is absolutely playing itself out in the wins in the business that we're seeing. >> And the internet's a great example. I use that analogy, because internet was over-hyped, it popped, it all delivered the same. It was pet foods online, everything happened that everyone said was going to happen, just didn't happen the way they thought. Do you see the Cloud the same way? Because in a way you're taking a very cautious pragmatic approach by saying we're going to integrate our customers and have this operating environment called multi-cloud, or whatever the customers want. Do you see that internet analogy happening the same now with Cloud? >> Yeah I think, as I said, Cloud is not a place, it's a way of doing IT, and having sold billions of dollars of equipment to the public Cloud providers for years and years, what we see, the big difference there, is that these companies have, again, moved up to the application layer. They've moved to the software-defined data center. Everybody wants that. And as we can bring those efficiencies, and now with our Cloud flex pricing, we see lots of opportunity. >> As an entrepreneur, now CEO, go back to the entrepreneur, final question for you. Is there always the hustle in the entrepreneur, I mean that in a good way, Mark Cuban talked about it like the same way, in a way, you still got to have that agile mindset, never settle for complacency. Bezos' shareholder letter kind of points out the same thing. Common thread amongst entrepreneurs. What is the Michael Dell zeal right now that you have that you're pushing through your organization that really is more of a, not an order, but more of a mindset to be an entrepreneur, because it is moving very fast, this transformation. It's business, it's technical, it's supply chain, it's everything across the board, software. What do you tell your troops to keep their eye on the prize? What is that entrepreneurial ethos? >> We call it pleased but never satisfied. We are relentless about innovating and improving on behalf of customers, and designing our business with the two billion interactions we have a year with customers, and taking that input and feedback, and making our products, our systems, our services, everything we do better on behalf of our customers to enable them. >> What's the coolest thing that you saw last year with customers in the transformation of Dell and EMC coming together? What is the coolest customer example you could point to? >> I saw some customers that used Pivotal to fundamentally change the way they develop applications inside their own businesses. One particular customer showed us that they had 1,500 developers developing a thousand applications with only four operations people. And the way they did that was that they, again, extrapolated up to the platform level using Pivotal Cloud Foundry. That is the nirvana state that many of our customers seek to obtain, and we certainly want to help them get there. >> Dave Vellante wanted me to ask you a question. He says, "Michael, with all that money you spent "to buy EMC, sixty billion, all the piece parts, "do you have any money left for M&A?" And if you do, I saw a little venture announcement, it looks like the Dell EMC venture's kind of coming together, saw that release. So it's good to get the hands in the water, you invest personally through your capital company, but M&A, there's a lot of activity going on. Do you have any dry powder left for M&A? >> We sure do, and we've already made some acquisitions, both in the Dell EMC level and at the VMware level, and of course Dell Technologies' capital, we're now having a bit of a coming-out party explaining what we're doing with the portfolio and the new investments, and lots of new investments in machine learning, deep learning, security, and Cloud, and all the next-generation business models that are imported to us. >> Are you going to be involved in some of those decisions? Are you going to see 'em all, or does that all roll up to you, or are they going to be autonomous? >> I'm involved in 'em, but we got a fantastic team with Scott Darling, and team running the show there, and I'm there to support them. >> Well great keynote, final final question. You mentioned A.I. a little bit, some machine learning, you brought that up. Good to see you not really hyping up the A.I. and not having anything to back it up, not promoting A.I. Everyone's coming out and saying A.I. So I want to ask you, what's your take on A.I. these days, because obviously augmented intelligence is here today, but A.I.'s been around for a while. Neural networks has been around for years. What's your view on A.I., and how do you see that impacting Dell EMC short, medium, long-term? >> I think the potential here is really tremendous. It takes time though. You know, DARPA had this contest to see, could you drive a car through the desert, a vehicle through the desert, 150 miles back in 2004. The first year, I think the farthest they got was eight miles. By 2005, they had lots of cars completing the entire 150 mile journey. Now we still don't have self-driving cars, that was 12 years ago. So it does take time for these things to evolve, but the level of improvement and advancement in the processing power, and the learning that's going on in these systems is tremendous. And, again, when you have hundreds of billions of nodes, and all this data, and an increase in processing power, it is really a Cambrian explosion, we do think of it as the fourth Industrial Revolution. To me that is incredibly exciting. >> Michael Dell here inside theCUBE. Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, and this is the Dell EMC World 2017, the first of the Dell EMC World. Congratulations. Great to see you on theCUBE. >> Michael: Thank you John. >> More live coverage here at Dell EMC World 2017 after this short break. Stay with us, be right back.