>> Announcer: Live from the Bill Graham Auditorium in San Francisco, it's The Cube, covering Pure Storage Accelerate 2018. Brought to you by Pure Storage. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome back to The Cube, we are live at Pure Accelerate 2018 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. I'm Lisa Martin, moonlighting as Prince today, joined by Dave Vellante, moonlighting as The Who. Should we call you Roger? >> Yeah, Roger. Keith. (all chuckling) I have a moon bat. (laughing) >> It's a very cool concert venue, in case you don't know that. We are joined by a couple of guests, Cube alumnae, welcoming them back to The Cube. Rajiev Rajavasireddy, the VP of Product Management and Solutions at Pure Storage and Siva Sivakumar, the Senior Director of Data Center Solutions at Cisco. Gentlemen, welcome back. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Rajiev: Happy to be here. >> So talk to us about, you know, lots of announcements this morning, Cisco and Pure have been partners for a long time. What's the current status of the Cisco-Pure partnership? What are some of the things that excite you about where you are in this partnership today? >> You want to take that, Siva, or you want me to take it? >> Sure, sure. I think if you look back at what brought us together, obviously both of us are looking at the market transitions and some of the ways that customers were adopting technologies from our site. The converged infrastructure is truly how the partnership started. We literally saw that the customers wanted simplification, wanted much more of a cloud-like experience. They wanted to see infrastructure come together in a much more easier fashion. That we bring the IT, make it easier for them, and we started, and of course, the best of breed technology on both sides, being a Flash leader from their side, networking and computer leader on our side, we truly felt the partnership brought the best value out of both of us. So it's a journey that started that way and we look back now and we say that this is absolutely going great and the best is yet to come. >> So from my side, basically Pure had started what we now call FlashStack, a converged infrastructure offering, roughly about four years ago. And about two and a half years ago, Cisco started investing a lot in this partnership. We're very thankful to them, because they kind of believed in us. We were growing, obviously. But we were not quite as big as we are right now. But they saw the potential early. So about roughly two-and-a-half years ago, I talked about them investing in us. I'm not sure how many people know about what a Cisco validated design is. It's a pretty exhaustive document. It takes a lot of work on Cisco's site to come up with one of those. And usually, a single CVD takes about two or three of their TMEs, highly technical resources and about roughly three to six months to build those. >> Per CVD? >> Per CVD. >> Wow. >> Like I said, it's very exhaustive, I mean you get your building materials, your versions, your interoperability, your, you can actually, your commands that you actually use to stand up that infrastructure and the applications, so on and so forth. So in a nine-month span, they kind of did seven CVDs for us. That was phenomenal. We were very, very thankful that they did that. And over time, that investment paid off. There was a lot of good market investment that Cisco and Pure jointly made, all those investments paid off really well in terms of the customer adoption, the acquisition. And essentially we are at a really good point right now. When we came out with our FlashArray X70 last April, Cisco was about the same time, they were coming out with the M5 servers. And so they invested again, and gave us five more CVDs. And just recently they've added FlashBlade to that portfolio. As you know, FlashBlade is a new product offering. Well not so new, but relatively new, product offering from PR, so we have a new CV that just got released that includes FlashArray and Flash Blade for Oracle. So FlashArray does the online transaction processing, FlashBlade does data warehousing, obviously Cisco networking and Cisco servers do everything OLTB and data warehouse, it's an end to an architecture. So that was what Matt Burr had talked about on stage today. We are also excited to announce that we had that we had introduced AIRI AI-ready infrastructure along with Nvidia at their expo recently. We are excited to say that Cisco is now part of that AIRI infrastructure that Matt Burr had talked about on stage as well. So as you can tell, in a two and half year period we've come a really long way. We have a lot of customer adoption every quarter. We keep adding a ton of customers and we are mutually benefiting from this partnership. >> So I want to ask you about, follow up on the Oracle solution. Oracle would obviously say, "Okay, you buy our database, "buy our SAS, buy the Red Stack, "single throat to choke, "You're going to run better, "take advantage of all the hooks we have." You've heard it before. And it's an industry discussion. >> Rajiev: Of course. >> Customer have it, Oracle comes in hard. So what's the advantage of working with you guys, versus going with an all-Red Stack? Let's talk about that a little bit. >> Sure. Do you want to do it? >> I think if you look at the Oracle databases being deployed, this is a, this really powers many companies. This is really the IT platform. And one of the things that customers, or major customers standardize on this. Again, if they have a standardization from an Oracle perspective, they have a standardization from an infrastructure perspective. Just a database alone is not necessarily easy to put on a different infrastructure, manage them, operate them, go through lifecycle. So they look for a architecture. They look for something that's a overall platform for IT. "I want to do some virtualization. "I want to run desktop virtualization. "I want to do Oracle. "I want to do SAP." So the typical IT operates as more of "I want to manage my infrastructure as a whole. "I want to manage my database and data as its own. "I want its own way of looking." So while there are way to make very appliancey behaviors, that actually operates one better, the approach we took is truly delivering a architecture for data center. The fact that the network as well as the computer is so programmable it makes it easy to expand. Really brings a value from a complete perspective. But if you look at Pure again, their FlashArrays truly have world-class performance. So the customer also looks at, "Well I can get everything from one vendor. "Am I getting the best of breed? "Am I getting the world-class technology from "every one of those aspects and perspectives?" So we certainly think there are a good class of customers who value what we bring to the table and who certainly choose us for what we are. >> And to add to what Siva has just said, right? So if you looked at pre-Flash, you're mostly right in the sense that, hey, if you built an application, especially if it was mission-vertical application, you wanted it siloed, you didn't want another application jumping in and kind of messing up the performance and response times and all that good stuff, right? So in those kind of cases, yeah, appliances made sense. But now, when you have all Flash, and then you have servers and networking that can actually elaborates the performance of Flash, you don't really have to worry about mixing different applications and messing up performance for one at the expense of the other. That's basically, it's a win-win for the customers to have much more of a consolidated platform for multiple applications as opposed to silos. 'Cause silos are always hard to manage, right? >> Siva, I want to ask you, you know, Pure has been very bullish, really, for many years now. Obviously Cisco works with a lot of other vendors. What was it a couple years ago? 'Cause you talked about the significant resource investment that Cisco has been making for a couple of years now in Pure Storage. What is it that makes this so, maybe this Flash tech, I'm kind of thinking of the three-legged stool that Charlie talked about this morning. But what were some of the things that you guys saw a few years ago, even before Pure was a public company, that really drove Cisco to make such a big investment in this? >> I think they, when you look at how Cisco has evolved our data center portfolio, I mean, we are a very significant part of the enterprise today powered by Cisco, Cisco networking, and then we grew into the computer business. But when you looked at the way we walked into this computer business, the traditional storage as we know today is something we actually led through a variety of partnerships in the industry. And our approach to the partnership is, first of all, technology. Technology choice was very very critical, that we bring the best of breed for the customers. But also, again, the customer themself, speaking to us, and then our channel partners, who are very critical for our enablement of the business, is very very critical. So the way we, and when Pure really launched and forayed into all Flash, and they created this whole notion that storage means Flash and that was never the patterning before. That was a game-changing, sort of a model of offering storage, not just capacity but also Flash as my capacity as well as the performance point. We really realized that was going to be a good set of customers will absorb that. Some select workloads will absorb that. But as Flash in itself evolved to be much more mainstream, every day's data storage can be in a Flash medium. They realize, customers realized, this technology, this partner, has something very unique. They've thought about a future that was coming, which we realized was very critical for us. When we evolved network from 10-gig fabric to 40-gig to 100-gig, the workloads that are the slowest part of any system is the data movement. So when Flash became faster and easier for data to be moved, the fabric became a very critical element for the eventual success of our customer. We realized a partnership with Pure, with all Flash and the faster network, and faster compute, we realized there is something unique that we can bring to bear for the customer. So our partnership minds had really said, "This is the next big one that we are going to "invest time and energy." And so we clearly did that and we continue to do that. I mean we continue to see huge success in the customer base with the joint solutions. >> This issue of "best of breed" versus a kind of integrated stacks, it's been around forever, it's not going to go away. I mean obviously Cisco, in the early days of converged infrastructure, put a lot of emphasis on integrating, and obviously partnerships. Since that time, I dunno what it was, 2009 or whatever it was, things have changed a lot. Y'know, cloud was barely a thought back then. And the cloud has pushed this sort of API economy. Pure talks about platforms and integrating through APIs. How has that changed your ability to integrate "best of breed" more seamlessly? >> Actually, you know, I've been working with UCS since it started, right? And it's perhaps, it was a first server system that was built on an API-first philosophy. So everything in the Cisco UCS system can be basically, anything you can do to it GUI or the command line, you can do it their XML API, right? It's an open API that they provide. And they kind of emphasized the openness of it. When they built the initial converged infrastructure stacks, right, the challenge was the legacy storage arrays didn't really have the same API-first programmability mentality, right? If you had to do an operation, you had a bunch of, a ton of CLI commands that you had to go through to get to one operation, right? So Pure, having the advantage of being built from scratch, when APIs are what people want to work with, does everything through rest APIs. All function features, right? So the huge advantage we have is with both Pure, Pure actually unlocks the potential that UCS always had. To actually be a programmable infrastructure. That was somewhat held back, I don't know if Siva agrees or not, but I will say it. That kind of was held back by legacy hardware that didn't have rest space APIs or XML or whatever. So for example, they have Python, and PowerShell-based toolkits, based on their XML APIs that they built around that. We have Python PowerShell toolkits that we built around our own rest APIs. We have puppet integration installed, and all the other stuff that you saw on the stage today. And they have the same things. So if you're a customer, and you've standardized, you've built your automation around any of these things, right, If you have the Intuit infrastructure that is completely programmable, that cloud paradigms that you're talking about is mainly because of programmability, right, that people like that stuff. So we offer something very similar, the joint-value proposition. >> You're being that dev-ops kind of infrastructure-as-code mentality to systems design and architecture. >> Rajiev: Yeah. >> And it does allow you to bring the cloud operating model to your business. >> An aspect of the cloud operating model, right. There's multiple different things that people, >> Yeah maybe not every single feature, >> Rajiev: Right. >> But the ones that are necessary to be cloud-like. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Dave: That's kind of what the goal is. >> Let's talk about some customer examples. I think Domino's was on stage last year. >> Right. >> And they were mentioned again this morning about how they're leveraging AI. Are they a customer of Flash tech? Is that maybe something you can kind of dig into? Let's see how the companies that are using this are really benefiting at the business level with this technology. >> I think, absolutely, Domino's is one of our top examples of a Flash tech customer. They obviously took a journey to actually modernize, consolidate many applications. In fact, interestingly, if you look at many of the customer journeys, the place where we find it much much more valuable in this space is the customer has got a variety of workloads and he's also looking to say, "I need to be cloud ready. "I need to have a cloud-like concept, "that I have a hybrid cloud strategy today "or it'll be tomorrow. "I need to be ready to catch him and put him on cloud." And the customer also has the mindset that "While I certainly will keep my traditional applications, "such as Oracle and others, "I also have a very strong interest in the new "and modern workloads." Whether it is analytics, or whether it is even things like containers micro-services, things like that which brings agility. So while they think, "I need to have a variety "of things going." Then they start asking the question, "How can I standardize on a platform, "on an architecture, on something that I can "reuse, repeat, and simplify IT." That's, by far, it may sound like, you know, you got everything kind of thing, but that is by far the single biggest strength of the architecture. That we are versatile, we are multi-workload, and when you really build and deploy and manage, everything from an architecture, from a platform perspective looks the same. So they only worry about the applications they are bringing onboard and worry about managing the lifecycle of the apps. And so a variety of customers, so what has happened because of that is, we started with commercial or mid-size customers, to larger commercial. But now we are much more in enterprise. Large, many large IT shops are starting to standardize on Flash tech, and many of our customers are really measured by the number of repeat purchases they will come back and buy. Because once they like and they bought, they really love it and they come back and buy a lot more. And this is the place where it gets very exciting for all of us that these customers come back and tell us what they want. Whether we build automation or build management architecture, our customer speaks to us and says, "You guys better get together and do this." That's where we want to see our partners come to us and say, "We love this architecture but we want these features in there." So our feedback and our evolution really continues to be a journey driven by the demand and the market. Driven by the customers who we have. And that's hugely successful. When you are building and launching something into the marketplace, your best reward is when customer treats you like that. >> So to basically dovetail into what Siva was talking about, in terms of customers, so he brought up a very valid point. So what customers are really looking for is an entire stack, an infrastructure, that is near invisible. It's programmable, right? And it's, you can kind of cookie-cutter that as you scale. So we have an example of that. I'm not going to use the name of the customer, 'cause I'm sure they're going to be okay with it, but I just don't want to do it without asking their permission. It's a healthcare service provider that has basically, literally dozens of these Flash techs that they've standardized on. Basically, they have vertical applications but they also offer VM as a service. So they have cookie-cuttered this with full automation, integration, they roll these out in a very standard way because of a lot of automation that they've done. And they love the Flash tech just because of the programmability and everything else that Siva was talking about. >> With new workloads coming on, do you see any, you know, architectural limitations? When I say new workloads, data-driven, machine intelligence, AI workloads, do we see any architectural limitations to scale, and how do you see that being addressed in the near future? >> Rajiev: Yeah, that's actually a really good question. So basically, let's start with the, so if you look at Bare Metal VMs and containers, that is one factor. In that factor, we're good because, you know, we support Bare Metal and so does the entire stack, and when I say we, I'm talking about the entire Flash tech servers and storage and network, right. VMs and then also containers. Because you know, most of the containers in the early days were ephemeral, right? >> Yeah. >> Rajiev: Then persistent storage started happening. And a lot of the containers would deploy in the public cloud. Now we are getting to a point where customers are kind of, basically experimenting with large enterprises with containers on prem. And so, the persistent storage that connects to containers is kind of nascent but it's picking up. So there's Kubernetes and Docker are the primary components in there, right? And Docker, we already have Docker native volume plug-ins and Cisco has done a lot of work with Docker for the networking and server pieces. And Kubernetes has flex volumes and we have Kubernetes flex volume integration and Cisco works really well with Kubernetes. So there are no issues in that factor. Now if you're talking about machine learning and Artificial Intelligence, right? So it depends. So for example, Cisco's servers today are primarily driven by Intel-based CPUs, right? And if you look at the Nvidia DGXs, these are mostly GPUs. Cisco has a great relationship with Nvidia. And I will let Siva speak to the machine learning and artificial intelligence pieces of it, but the networking piece for sure, we've already announced today that we are working with Cisco in our AIRI stack, right? >> Dave: Right. >> Yeah, no, I think that the next generation workloads, or any newer workloads, always comes with a different set of, some are just software-level workloads. See typically, software-type of innovation, given the platform architecture is more built with programmability and flexibility, adopting our platforms to a newer software paradigm, such as container micro-services, we certainly can extend the architecture to be able to do that and we have done that several times. So that's a good area that covers. But when there are new hardware innovations that comes with, that is interconnect technologies, or that is new types of Flash models, or machine-learning GPU-style models, what we look at from a platform perspective is what can we bring from an integrated perspective. That, of course, allows IT to take advantage of the new technology, but maintain the operational and IT costs of doing business to be the same. That's where our biggest strength is. Of course Nvidia innovates on the GPU factor, but IT doesn't just do GPUs. They have to integrate into a data center, flow the data into the GPU, run compute along that, and applications to really get most out of this information. And then, of course, processing for any kind of real-time, or any decision making for that matter, now you're really talking about bringing it in-house and integrating into the data center. >> Dave: Right. >> Any time you start in that conversation, that's really where we are. I mean, that's our, we welcome more innovation, but we know when you get into that space, we certainly shine quite well. >> Yeah, it's secured, it's protected, it's move it, it's all kind of things. >> So we love these innovations but then our charter and what we are doing is all in making this experience of whatever the new be, as seamless as possible for IT to take advantage of that. >> Wow, guys, you shared a wealth of information with us. We thank you so much for talking about these Cisco-Pure partnership, what you guys have done with FlashStack, you're helping customers from pizza delivery with Domino's to healthcare services to really modernize their infrastructures. Thanks for you time. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much. >> For Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin, you're watching the Cube live from Pure Accelerate 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back.

>> Narrator: Live from San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Pure Accelerate 2017. Brought to you by Pure Storage. >> Welcome back to Pier 70 in San Francisco, everybody. This is theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, and we're here covering Pure Accelerate 2017. Andy Vandeveld is here. He's the Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Veeam, and Rajiev Rajavasireddy. I'm going to do that again, Rajavasireddy. >> Awesome. >> Did I get it? >> Love it. >> VP of Solutions at Pure. I thought I had it, Rajiev. >> You were so close. >> Alright, next time. I hope you come back so I can get it right. Anyway, welcome to theCUBE. Andy, good to see you again. I tweeted out today, I was joking, Veeam is like theCUBE. They're everywhere. You guys have been having great fun, hosting parties. Of course you're here now. We heard you up on the main stage today. So, let's start with the partnership. What are you guys doing with Veeam? >> So, we get a lot of requests from the field to partner more closely with Veeam. So, we have a lot of common customers. If you look at basically where we come from and where Veeam comes from, both of us have virtualization as a common thread. And the traditional backup software had to come into virtualization after the fact, so retro (mumbles) virtualization, whereas if you look at where Veeam started with virtualization, if you look at Pure it's a similar history, right? So, we came during the virtualization phase where people were trying to 100% virtualized data centers. So, both of us have this affinity for simplicity, virtualization centric, and efficiency and performance. Obviously, Pure is all about performance. So, there is a lot of natural synergies between Veeam and what Pure does. >> And we talk about this all the time, backup. For years, this has been a bolt on. It's been an afterthought. It's been one size fits all. I've written a lot about some of the challenges with backup. Now, talk about the announcement that you're making. Snapshots are not backups, right? >> Rajiev: That's right. >> But, they could be a critical enabler. So talk about the announcement and exactly what you guys are doing. >> Yeah, so as Rajiev was saying, we hear a lot from customers and a lot from partners about the customers wanting native snapshot integration with Pure Storage. So, that's what we announced today. We're in the lab. We're working through development right now. We provided the APIs to Pure, and our target is to get full snapshot integration out in GA sometime shortly after our Version 10 hits the market. >> Okay, and this is starting with block, and then eventually is files in the road map. >> So basically, as Andy was mentioning, we have the SDK. We have to sign the non disclosures, usual non disclosures with each other, and we have Veeam's SDK. So, our engineering is working on it, and we're planning to get this out, snapshot based integration with Veeam. And we're also in parallel working on solutions for FlashBlade along with Veeam as well. >> Okay, so I want to definitely talk about solutions, because that's important, and that's obviously your title. What about, what are the real use cases that you guys are seeing that you're going after? Let's start there and then we'll get into solutions. >> Rajiev: You want to take or do you want me to take? >> Andy: Yeah, go ahead. >> Sure. So obviously, the no brainer, virtual server, virtual desktops, Veeam is very strong. Pure has a ton of that in their customer base, and those are basically low hanging fruit for both of us. >> Alright. Others that you feel like will emerge over time? >> Pretty much. I mean if you really think about it, even databases-- >> Host: Right, I was going to say-- >> It runs well, but they run in VMs, and so we do those backups as well. So, there's a lot of databases that are on Pure, as well. >> Are you doing much, does Veeam do much in Oracle? Is that a big market for you or not so much yet, or is it emerging? >> Oracle Database is certainly a backup source for us, but in terms of applications I think we look at more of how do we facilitate the movement of those virtual machines and the backing up and the availability of those virtual machines from the storage perspective. So, we'll move into the application layer as we go along, and as we make more and more of our push into the enterprise, but I think right now it's focused on how do we take the virtual machines and the files in the storage environments and orchestrate those across the various environments that customers are finding themselves in, whether it's on premise, whether it's in the cloud, some combination of the both of them. >> Well, that's fundamental to the strategy, kind of like snoop, multi cloud. (Rajiev laughs) >> Good reference. >> Rajiev let's talk about... Inside joke. We won't bore our audience. Maybe we'll tweet out a picture, show you what we mean. Anyway Rajiev, let's talk about solutions. What are solutions to you and Pure, and what specific solutions are you working on? >> So basically, if you look at our portfolio of offerings, we have FlashArray, which is a block based array, which is (mumbles) and fiber channel as protocols. Then we have FlashBlade, which we did earlier this year, and FlashBlade is targeting next gen applications, so a very large customer is using us for artificial intelligence and machine learning. We are targeting applications like IoT, big data analytics. So, all the cool stuff, the next gen workloads, that's where FlashBlade is targeted. We're doing file and object. So just today we GAd our S3 implementation on FlashBlade, and we have NFS support, and we also have native, not native, but SMB support with FlashBlade. So, that's targeting the next gen workload, the file and object workloads, sorry, FlashBlade is, and FlashArray is targeting the block workloads. And then we have a partnership with Cisco. It's a jointly branded converged infrastructure we call FlashStack. So, these are all the portfolios that we have. And as you can tell, the solutions on the FlashArray side are mostly, if you will, virtual servers, virtual desktops, databases, Oracle, SQL, and of that nature, and they're already talking about the FlashBlade application. FlashStack can incorporate FlashArray as well as FlashBlade. >> Okay, and then in talking to some of the Veeam customers over the last several weeks, many of them lacked, before they found you guys, a disaster recovery strategy, and they sort of got one by default. Does that fit in terms of what you guys are doing together? Do you find that similar in the Pure customer base? Wondering if you could talk about DR for a moment. >> Yeah, DR is definitely a strong solution and value proposition that we can bring together. Customers need that. As we move more and more into the enterprise, that becomes so mission critical for that enterprise class of customers. Not only do they want the availability, but in the event of some disaster they want to have that ability to recover. I think doing the native snapshot integration gives us an even stronger solution to take into the DR market, whether it's DR on premise, DR as a service with service providers, whatever that mix is, it really does give us that more robust solution, and I think that's in addition to the other value propositions and other use cases that Rajiev talked about. That is a big one. >> Rajiev, maybe you can talk about the nature of the partnership. We talked about there's some engineering integration going on. What about the go to market? What's going on in the channel? >> So basically, again, there's a lot of synergies there. So, we have a direct sales force, and so does Veeam, but we are 100% go through the channel, and so does Veeam. And it turns out a lot of our channel partners are also Veeam's channel partners, and there is scope for us to do incentive programs and so on and so forth. So, there's a lot of synergy right there. Combine that with Cisco and the FlashStack, both of us have Cisco as a partner, and it turns out Cisco's channel partners are pretty much near 100% overlap with ourselves. And I'll let Andy speak for Veeam, but I suspect there's a lot of the same partners that also sell Veeam. >> Yeah, I think that's another aspect of the relationship that really when we started looking at what's the next integration that we're going to do, this was an important one for us, and we'll soon go to market. It just seemed so aligned, and it was aligned with not just between ourselves, but with that common partner in Cisco and the reseller communities around all of our businesses. So, that was a real point of interest for us in deciding to do this integration. Not only were you hearing it from customers, but the infrastructure, the ecosystem, of partners was something that we just readily take advantage of. >> Well, it's no secret that you guys both compete with Dell EMC, and obviously a merger of that size has to have an effect on the channel. How have you specifically been able to take advantage of that, or have you been, and has it been substantial? >> Of course, right? Anytime you have mergers of that size there's some level of uncertainty in the channel market. Customers don't deal with uncertainty well. When you combine two big companies that have a lot of overlapping products, there's always that, and so we've definitely made the A out of that. >> So, you've specifically picked up channel partners that say like, "Hey, I really want to give you guys a look," that might not have before? >> So basically, that is part of what we've done. The other part is also the existing channel, I mean there are some channel partners who sell both portfolios. A lot of channel partners have multiple portfolios. >> And so what's that? A mix, a share shift, a mix in the... >> Rajiev: It's a combination I would say. >> Okay, how about you guys? >> Yeah, I would say the same thing. Eventually they're going to figure it out and they're going to get it right. Everybody should expect that. But in the meantime there has been some disruption, and I think partners are looking around and saying, "Where am I going to make my money? "Are the assets in that portfolio "of those two merged companies going to even still exist?" And as that all starts to get, it works its way out, there's a gap in time, and I think that we've been able to fill that gap from a data protection standpoint. Pure has been able to fill that from a storage standpoint. And we're taking advantage of this opening that we've got. >> And it's interesting, I want to talk more about the channel, in the context of solutions, Rajiev, because if you look at the channel and the way it's evolving, you've got the box sellers. We love them. That's probably where most of the business still is even today. But, that business is declining, and we know that. Those channel partners, they had great businesses. They still do. They've got boats and mansions and whatever else, but that business is in decline. The margins are under pressure. And then you've got the solution folks, and this is where I want to get your feedback. Solutions used to be defined as SAP, Oracle, VMware. Now you're talking about these emerging solutions around data, analytics, IoT, machine learning, a whole new set of solutions players, and then of course there's the cloud, the cloud service providers, and ISVs. It seems like the channel is in flux in a big way. So, to the extent that a company like EMC, and maybe we saw this somewhat with IBM as well when they sold off x86 and BNT, to the extent that their channel is in any kind of uncertainty, how do you see the channels shaping and emerging, and how are you taking advantage of... First of all, is what I described accurate, and how are you guys taking advantage of it? >> Absolutely. You know, there's also another trend that you didn't talk about. I mean cloud. It's the elephant in the room. The cloud is here, and people want to look at what they want to do with the cloud when we talk about customers. It is a challenge as well as an opportunity for channel partners, right? So basically, if you look at, for example, what we're doing with FlashStack and with Veeam, we are still providing infrastructure, and infrastructure by itself is not a solution. If you look at what the IT folks are dealing with is their developers. So, you can go to the cloud, and you can actually go ahead, the developers can go ahead and provision themselves VMs and everything else very quickly. They don't even know what infrastructure is running underneath it. Now, the challenge for the IT folks is to see how they can provide a similar experience to their user base, and a lot of the times it could be developers. So, it's incumbent on us, and Veeam, and everybody else to provide an infrastructure that also ties in. When you say solutions, there's tiers of solutions. You need to have automation orchestration. They're solutions. You need to have management solutions that still provide infrastructure, and then you have applications that run on top of that infrastructure. So, the channel partners have a lot of scope to actually add services. And if you really think about channel folks, I mean the good ones, they always want to make money on services, not on pushing boxes, like you called earlier. >> Host: That's where they get their margin. >> And it's a great opportunity for them. >> Margins, stickiness, loyalty, I mean all that stuff. And the fact that the definition of a solution is evolving is an opportunity for those players who can move really fast. >> And we see our channel partners trying to do a good job in that space right now and evolving there. >> Both of you, when you look at that mix that I talked about, I said 70% are sort of box sellers. Well, you guys don't sell boxes, but you know what I mean. Is your mix weighted more toward solutions in your companies? >> Yeah, I would say we kind of measure it more on on-prem versus cloud, or some sort of subscription managed service environment. But, we definitely see the higher growth coming from those non on-prem environments. And I think that's a place where the more advanced resellers are spinning up services. And we're following that trend. We're seeing that trend right before our eyes. >> And yesterday we had our global partner forum here, and Hatfield, our COO, was on stage, and he basically highlighted what we call the scarcity model. We don't sign up thousands of channel partners. We sign up a few channel partners who will add real value, and we make sure that they're doing just as well as we're doing. So, if you look at Pure, right, we have about, I think the official number is north of 3,300 or so customers, but our revenue is very high relative to that. So, we are selling to enterprise customers who need... You add a lot of value. You have to sell solutions. You just can't sell a box and be done with it. >> Yeah, I think that's a really important point. Alright gents, we got to leave it there. Thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. Good to see you guys. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Alright, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back with our next guest right after this short break. This is theCUBE; we're live from Pier 70 in San Francisco at Pure Accelerate. We'll be right back. (techno music)