hello everyone I'm John for with the cube we are here on the ground at VMware's corporate headquarters in beautiful Palo Alto for a special presentation I'm joined with Robyn Matlock who's the chief marketing officer of VMware good to see you hi John nice to see you to our special cube on the ground getting all the data was a lot closer to get to just a little walk yeah I love this campus you guys had the most amazing facility one that voted one of the best places to work so it's good parking is always a hassle play I'll ago that garage anyway um how are you doing great so 2016's come to a close had a great vacation I heard New Zealand amazon reinvent you guys had a big presence Pat Gelsinger was up on stage with Andy Jassy on a fireside chat keynote interesting world of that we live in as they say interesting times VMware and Amazon with a strategic relationship certainly has impacted the market market attention on VMware's cloud strategy now comes into picture how's that affecting how you guys are talking to customers you know I think it's just been a tremendous you know last several weeks and frankly of course we've been preparing for this for months and months but the market has been very responsive to the news of these two great companies coming together and the you know announced in 10 of how our technologies are going to work better and the feedbacks been so positive I think at the end of the day this just opens up many avenues for customers they love VMware they love Amazon helping make their experience as they integrate those worlds together is just a win-win for them so I person very excited about it and we're getting great feedback you know you you've always lived in this world with VMware and I always compare fiemme words like Facebook where whenever there's a changed is a revolt right as always it's always naysayers and also people complaining now when you guys did the deal with Amazon people are speculating but in reality it's the culture there's no clash there there's really a geek culture on both sides what's your thoughts on that do you see it the same way and what's your observation of you know the VMware culture because you know you do a lot of digging into the data you run vmworld is reinvent is being called a cloud version of vmworld kind of coming together those two cultures your thoughts on the two I mean I think there's a couple of different dimensions to that question from a cultural standpoint the two companies actually have very similar cultures in the sense that they really value engineering innovation these are disruptive companies and they also both I think we can say focus on the customer it's all about customer value customer impact and when you keep your customer at the forefront of all the decision-making that you do it's really easy to make the right choices because you're doing on the benefit of that customer and and hey change is a constant and that's the one thing we can count on and those of us in the industry that don't change usually don't have a great outcome in the end right changes part of delivering more value to our customers yeah Jay volante s2 I wasn't there at the Dell Dell world this year once at the Grace Hopper event was awesome awesome event but the dell event they asked Michael about vmware always we always like they ask michael dell vmware and also jeremy burton talked about the messaging around dell technologies which is simply just a holding company I guess I'm structure but the people are trying to get the message out on what Dell technologies and you guys out CR as Michael said the crown jewel of Dell technologies talk about the strategic alignment with Dell technologies how does that affect your job and has it affect the positioning of how vmware is visa videl technologies delhi MC but also your growing ecosystem sure so you know first of all we had a great relationship with Dell prior to this acquisition for you know well over a decade right so the two companies knew each other very well of course we have a rich history with emc you know for us strategically VMware's being run much like it was before it's an independent company michael has been very consistent about that his behavior is consistent his you know message of the market is consistent this message of customers and partners is consistent VMware remains an independent company our ecosystem is one of our crown jewels and Michael's been very consistent in making sure that that ecosystem is protected and knows that vmware is going to operate in the best interest of their customers and that ecosystem and so for us in a lot of ways it feels really comfortable of course we're looking for opportunity right we're looking for the upside and we are seeing tremendous opportunity with Dell technologies to make sure that our joint customers have a better together experience than ever before and we look at those as incremental opportunities and we're very committed to that but at the end of the day that's a really important part of our ecosystem is Dell technologies but it's not a replacement of you always had a good eye for marketing I see the way you guys do your events and vmware's ecosystem you're always tested people always going to hold your feet to the fire you had a very active community when you look at the changes that are going on with the Amazon we heard Pat Gelson around stage again Andy Jesse both reiterating the same ethos that you listen to customers and the customers are saying that they want to have some cloud the one put VMware in the cloud how is that gonna change how you mark it in position and talk to customers yeah well we you know we've been talking about hybrid cloud computing for a long time so you know for us this is really about how its evolving and becoming more tangible and more real you're probably very familiar with the fact that we've positioned our cross cloud architecture at vmworld and our story with Amazon is very supportive of what that whole architecture was about it's about hey I'm standing up a stack in my private you know datacenter and this is my private cloud and I want to run that stack as is in other cloud environments I want compatibility between the different cloud providers that I leverage and what I'm doing here within my firewall and that's all very consistent under our vision and strategy about this cross cloud architecture I mean for customers it shouldn't feel like very siloed separate experiences environments different tools different experiences different skill sets they should be able to leverage their resources to be able to deliver these workloads in whatever cloud environment they choose and that's really cornerstone to our cloud strategy and Amazon's a major option for customers to extend into the Amazon Cloud but we also have the IBM cloud that's available to them we have over 4,000 service providers that provide specialty cloud services that are available to our customers the whole idea is that we unify this and make this a seamless experience and that's what that crossed out architecture is all about that's a great point Sanjay poonen brought that up q But reinvent around connecting the digital Islands so how is that changing if anything or is it the game still the same on the digital transformation on those solutions is the unification cross cloud the fundamental piece of it is there more to the story what's the essence of this digital transformation yeah I mean I think first of all at the heart of digital transformation is software right that is enabling this kind of unified approach and so that's kind of one point the second point is really the value for customers in the end user is about applications and then the question is how do you deliver those apps in all types of apps right we need the new modern apps the stuff that works on our cell phones and our iPads we also need the ERP systems and the mission critical systems and all that needs to be delivered in a seamless experience what I T and enterprise need is more options about where to put those workloads what's the right place for those workloads based on whatever their requirements are geography service levels back up discovery you know disaster recovery whatever their requirements are they need flexibility but they also need control and governance and management in a really efficient way and so I think at the heart of it is how you deliver apps to users in a much more expedient fashion as we come down to the end of 2016 we're looking at 2017 what's the vibe internally at VMware and what's your outlook for 2017 now CVM world will be again a the big tent event not sure what your thoughts are that was probably working on right now but is there any thoughts can you share any color around how you guys see 2017 or what's the conversations between you jeremy burden the folks within the core teams around the outlook for 27 you know I think people are feeling really bullish on VMware we're exiting the year in a position of great strength it's been a great year from a revenue standpoint it's been a great year from a emerging technology standpoint we're getting critical mass in some of the you know smaller businesses like network virtualization and you know software-defined storage with virtual san and hyper converged infrastructure you're seeing a lot of great traction our customers are speaking that you know they're out on stage with us they're really advocating and evangelized and the value that they're getting from their VMware invest and you know the bottom line is is we're executing across the world we have really strong you know footprint across all the regions and everybody's performing so I feel like the momentum is really theme for theme emerging for 2017 that's sauteing around in your marketing brain in terms of what you might feel happening yeah you know John I'm not gonna debut that right here watching things up our sleeves but you know at the heart of it this notion of unifying clouds is gonna be centerpiece to our strategy in 2017 and we are working on some new interesting ways of packaging it that but the whole cross cloud architecture truly is a driving force for us in 2017 and how we keep delivering that to customers and new and fresh ways and our ecosystem as well making sure they can deliver that has anything about the Amazon of announcements on web service announcement because you had Pat Gallagher and Andy Jassy and that was really kind of a big shocker for everyone I think I mean you can get it now you look back but they both onstage and II Jesse never comes down to San Francisco to do a press event pretty big announcement for Amazon to stand on the stain stage as vmware and same for you guys this opens up a whole nother dimension any surprises anything that's changed in your world that you can share that's been positive or concerns or comments from customers that that this relationship has changed with you well I think you know what our Amazon relationship does is kind of solidify that our position in the cloud is you know very viable because at the end of the day these are the leader and private cloud and the leader in public cloud coming together to deliver more hybrid cloud value to our customers now remember we also had announcement with IBM earlier in the year and I think this is just kind of reiterating this notion that what we've done in the private cloud is very special adds a lot of value to customers but they want this in public cloud environments and the more that we can make that seamless and easy and consumable for our customers the more we can take the complexity out of it the easier it is for them to govern it you know the more value this is for customers obviously Amazon's the brand in public cloud and I think that relationship has just made everybody more relevant both VMware & M's I'm very customer centric to it turns out you guys operates not like a magical Doremi worked on it yeah what Sanjay and the team exactly well Robin thanks so much for come on our special on the ground here we are on the ground here the VMware head coach Robin Matlock the CMO of VMware here telling us her thoughts on 2017 looking back the momentum of 2016 I'm John furrier thanks for watching

why from the mandalay bay convention center in las vegas it's the kue covering vmworld 2016 brought to you by vmware and its ecosystem sponsors now here's your host John furrier hey welcome back everyone we are here live in Las Vegas at the mandalay bay convention center in the hang space at vmworld 2016 i'm john fervid SiliconANGLE is our flagship program the cube where we go out to the events and extract the signal it annoys this is our seventh year covering vmworld and every year it gets bigger and better the cube and the guests on the content and I'm here with the person who's made it happen from day one Robyn Matlock was the CMO of VMware first of all congratulations on a great event and thank you for supporting the cube for seven years it's been fantastic and it gets better every year you well I'm thrilled to be here and you know a huge fan of the cube you're an integral part of the program so here we go again John we're ingesting all the day that we're analyzing and we're providing great great videos a lot of volume but what an interesting thing I want to get your take on because you have written the vmworld bus for a very long time don't remind me it's changed and grown and one of the conversations we've had all week is what I've been calling ecosystem two point oh what is the ecosystem going to evolve into for vmware and vm world and it's been interesting and so on to get your take on and one of the things that it was striking was what pat kelsey has said to me yesterday on the cube interview was VMware's not only if not a prop one product company anymore it has grown to be a multiple set of products on technologies which has created a diverse and growing community absolutely can you add some color to that because this has been it's always been the community is very strong in VMware vmworld and VMware so but it's evolving that's honestly shifting and changing it in bad way it's just growing and morphing can you comment on there I think it's a really interesting topic it's in it's a rich topic because it as VMware's business is changing first of all our value about the community has never changed I mean we really value an ecosystem our customers wanted expect that we work and play really well with the variety of technologies that are in their but of course is our business in portfolio has grown and expanded the nature of the types of companies that are engaged in and around as shifts and changes to and if it doesn't then we're probably all going to have some issues down the road so I think it's a lot like driven from customers what do they want all of us vendors to do to work together so their life is easier yeah and the other thing David's lawyer is the CTO Wikibon is very technical comment that it's the best vmworld ever from a statement of direction standpoints very clear that the data center role that vmware has and this intercloud in which we call Pat calls it cross cloud is a real rich area for innovation and growth oh I think we're just on the cusp of the potential of that so you heard us talk about the cross cloud architecture and we broke that down into a few things like the VMware cloud foundation that's recension the software-defined data center stack all with lifecycle management that you can consume on-premise and off premises the IBM partnership the opportunity for the V clutter network partners I mean there's just so many the size O's are involved in this it's just really it's almost like a whole economy that can integrate into this broader you know offering I guess with all that in mind how are you managing the logistics because you know it's pretty obvious at vmworld is back in Vegas Moscone is pretty much under construction for the next few years you're going to be here for a couple more years yes here for a couple more you learn and it's just growth in this community what's how do you do that what's the key keys to that you know I think first of all it's about really making sure you're connecting with your customers and your partners and it's about experiences right it's making sure that you're getting them the rich content this is a technical conference so we're going to be measured by did we showcase and engage our audience with the right kind of technical information give them hands-on access to the things that they want to learn and further their careers and you know I always use that it's like we've got to stay close to our customers so any feedback that you've heard positive areas to work on what are your thoughts and as you look back now it's day three looking out over the past few days and we can I say one of the things I'm most proud of and I am seeing it in the Twittersphere is the fact that we had a lot of customers do the talking customers do the showing there were over a hundred summer's here this week on panels in labs in keynotes on videos all talking about their experiences and this group of people they want to hear from their colleagues in their peers so I think customers really helped us this time tell our story and help people understand what does this mean for their business so customers coming on today on the cube so you continue to watch if you're out there I got to ask you the question because one of the things I every every cube event I always have my little puzzle pieces I want to try to figure out how know where the puzzle corners are and I've been asking all the VMware executives kind of hidden question but it's basically this what does VMware scan for and I've been kind of getting a couple different answers so you're obviously CMO so you're going to be right on message I want to get your thoughts on that but before your answer the best answer came from a former VMware employee Steve arid who is the CTO now he's a venture capitalist and just off the cuff II just said VMware likes to make complexity go away they want to simplify complexity create abstraction layers and that's essentially the theme of the show here so it's that how do you guys talk about that because the customers want to see the direction of VMware what is the official messaging what is is that is he on targeting me sees that you kind of made it comment like it's in the DNA of VMware I would agree that you know simplifying complexity is in our DNA I think it's a little bit hard to say that today's IT world though is simple III think we all have a long journey to really make IT simple I think we're about unleashing the innovation from IT and in order to do that you have to simplify the complicated so they can focus on the strategic right but I would say and our core what we're really about is how do we unleash that potential and remove obstacles simplify complexity to ensure they can contribute to their businesses with the most impact at the accelerated pace as possible that's why i think pats across cloud is interesting because that is certainly probably one of the most complex things to do absolutely to the cross cloud and only getting more complicated i think that's what we're seeing now you know fast for the cloud era is maturing but what we're finding now is businesses have many clouds they have SAS applications they have their private cloud they have multiple public clouds they have managed cloud services and we know we've been down this route before in the old compute server world managing these silos can become extremely complicated so I think right now we're already thinking about how do we drive this and simplify this other comment from our analyst kick off this morning and breaking down kind of the vmworld ecosystem and VMware and I like to get your thoughts on kind of the internal VMware conversation because I know and obviously the dell transaction with emc is going to be on the 7th so that's public now so but VMware it seems that David floyer said is unleashed and Michael Dell's making a commitment to VMware that's pretty sincere about being independent and partnering well I'm kind of seemed like EMC kind of had that invisible hand is invited to this David Floria said this but share some of the VMware because this is in the DNA is to be independent right you're right it is definitely in our culture and i think michael has been extremely consistent I've been with him in many meetings both public private and he is never wavered from his commitment to support VMware's independence to support our ecosystem and to really open up opportunities for us to grow at our full potential and I we are partnered with dell for a decade right this is not new to us and we have a great relationship with them regardless of this acquisition I think the opportunities and the doors are going to open even further there's a lot more we can do together but I really feel we've got a really good balance he knows that our ecosystem is the core success factor for us so ecosystem is a big big part of the success so in your definition what is the ecosystem two point oh I think the ecosystem involves a variety of things first of all there's emerging technologies their service providers their sizes there's the telcos there's ISVs there's the SAS providers there's the two-tier distribution the channel partners the people who touch the customers there's a consultants I mean I think it's just all evolving with us kind of in one big tornado you know I think it's all those things to get a lot of growth it's not a moving parts no and how about containers that so that you know a whole nother dimension right do and I was saying the container buzz was talking to Jerry Chen last night and say last year's all about containers only one session the cloud native session yesterday they did talk about it but it didn't dominate the show like it did last year the cross cloud really kinda was great and I'll see the end user computing stuff seems really compelling yeah I think things kind of ebb and flow it depends what's really new and so you know there's kind of different focuses each year I so give us the internal or our marketing philosophy now that you have stuff clicking together now with the product side you see the NSX with vsphere playing nicely it's a lot of stuff d-san is exploding the product the products are clicking absolutely oh there's a great chair that pad announced okay with it we'll do that later but how does that get marketed no product teams going to do it yes because it's interesting there's standalone products but also work well integrated yeah you know we're at this very interesting chasm and i would say we're kind of in our teenage years right now in my analogy and that when these products let's take virtual San or NSX when they're first coming out the door they need to be incubated and they need almost like startup attention and as marketers we wanted to give them that really dedicated focus but it's time for us now to grow into our 20s and what we need to do is to be more solution oriented and we need to be more industry oriented look at verticals and help our customers associate what's the impact in my world whether it's retail or its government or its healthcare so you'll see marketing at VMware shit more vertical solutions and verticals yes and by line of business kind of thing going on more mature more businesses I think it's really thing of the day our customers don't think about our line of businesses they think about what business problems are they trying to solve and they you know whatever business units we have is irrelevant to them I've taught in some of the VCS last night at that light speed party and a lot of Silicon Valley DC's were there and I said you know there's no Gartner Magic Quadrant for this horizontal solution set so you know usually have the magic quadrant you know the leadership's by categories but now you have this new kind of disruptive solution set which could be a vsphere here there and kind of stuff kind of cobble together integrated there's no magic quadrant for that so it's really hard for customers to find out the playbook right and we have to make that really simple for customers i also think that's the potential that vmware has which maybe is unique to a point product startup that they have one product we can put these things together for even more impact more value and a more seamless experience because i think that's key it's got to come together as an experience I no question Robin what are you going to take away from vmworld this year we're gonna take back to the ranch what are going to digest what are you going to share with your with your team and your colleagues that you've learned from this show you know I think we're really we're executing I think we've created a great experience I think we've attracted the right kinds of attendees you know this is just the first of many because we roll this program into barcelona in six weeks then we roll the following week all over asia i'm off to mumbai vented beijing we're just going to roll through Asia through December so the key is we're onto this right the content is right the cross cloud architecture is really resonating the cloud foundation it makes sense workspace one we just got to stay the course help make this stuff really simple and clear for our customers and partners that's great stuff it does make a lot of sense in and it's got clarity and you can see the 20 mile stare the straight and narrow and congratulations on a great vmworld John thank you so much appreciate it Robin Matlock CMO here inside the cube live at the Hang space the mandalay bay convention for vmworld 2016 you watching the cube

it's the kue here is your host John furrier hi I'm John furrier with the cube we are on the ground in san francisco for vmware's big launch in February this is the one cloud any application any device in San Francisco all the influences the whole press course here in the enterprise we had Quintin Hardy on stage i'm here with Robyn Matlock who's the CMO of VMware great to see you hi John free to be here pat pat gelsinger quentin hardy from the year x jeffrey more crossing the chasm awesome years all the influence all the press was here tell us about the event well this is all about really coming together and take a moment to sit back and see all of the great products and technologies that we're bringing to market so we launched one cloud any application any device and essentially this is a discussing a whole framework or architecture of how we're delivering and harnessing the power of all of your cloud and computing environments into one common architecture for one cloud how that supports both traditional apps modern apps and is delivered on any device for your consumers will be doing a bunch of crowd chest throughout the month and you guys have a lot of activities planned but this is really the kickoff you had a sales meeting last week get a partner exchange going on burnings were good business is good but there's a lot of competition right now so I want you to comment on the big announcement because Pat Gelsinger said this is the biggest vsphere launch in the history but it's not just vSphere it's a whole platform I'm it's complicated where you put it all together for the crowd out there you know it's a very dynamic marketplace right now and businesses are changing and transforming every industry we know is undergoing really significant transformations we think there's no better time to be in the industry we feel extremely well-positioned we have laid out a foundation for the data center of the future it's based on the software to find architecture we have tremendous opportunity now to help our customers harness all of their cloud silos into one cloud we think really we've got a great offering and it's just a great time to launch so you got VMware come I'm sure you got some point vmworld coming up what's the planning like he gives a little cheesy iran what's happening tomorrow this year John I'm just trying to get through partner exchange right now starting tomorrow so we've been really debris our day 7 of 10 days of intense launch and events and activities with our shareholders with our sales force with our partners so we're really going to think of it right now when I live for the moment we have a great offering some of the biggest news to come out of the company in a long time and so it's really I'm sure it's on your plate but it's around the coma talk about the partners change is one of things that's really important in ecosystem VMware's ecosystem is really really impressive but it's changing its growing you guys are growing what's new give us the update on the ecosystem you bet I mean our philosophy first of all is that we can't do this alone that we have to team and partner wisely and we are surrounded by the richest ecosystem in the industry bar none now I do believe that it is transforming as consumption models are changing as technologies are changing as cloud is stepping in it does require new types of services and new types of partners so we're talking more service providers more ISVs more sass providers but all of us coming together as one large ecosystem and ensuring that our customers have a unified experience what are you seeing the trends for them for the for the partners is it more channel more software more of ours what's the mix recent service providers that's new is that yeah I mean we've been in all of these various partner you know types for a long time I do think though that the mobile cloud era is putting you know more emphasis on services on cloud services on consulting services helping companies transform their operations that requires process transformation people transformation so I do think system integrators ISPs there's there's definitely new partner types I think are getting a day in the Sun so I gotta ask you I'm really impressed with the VMware culture you know that a big fan of VMware living in Palo Alto being a local local boy but in a fanny pack el Senor you've done an amazing job you're an amazing campus what's the culture like now at vm you guys are at the heart of Silicon Valley you know there's a lot of things going on in Silicon Valley right now that's really great and some things they're not going so great what's going on with VMware what's going on with your culture can you give us an update on what's you know I've been there almost six years and I think the VMware culture is stronger than it's ever been our culture is anchored around our values and its really clear their epic execution passion integrity customers and community and you will talk to any VMware employee and they feel that in their heart that's what we are first and foremost it's more about how we do what we do technology is great but if you know the day it's all about our values and it kind of shows when your campus is just so beautiful I mean just shows it okay so the next question final question is how do you market this complex complexity to customers obviously it's changing for you guys product wives heard the whole announcements change for your customers well how do you stay on top of the marketing and what is your strategy to market to the customers because you have now more stakeholders but used to have the IT guys out there so I would define data center what's new and what's some of the marketing opportunities you have well it's a great question at the end of the day our customers want business outcomes they want real value that solves critical business problems and I think although our portfolio is really is complex and diversifying what we ultimately deliver for our customers is getting quite simple we help them deliver one cloud for any application on any device we help them solve their business mobility problems we have a new term liquid-liquid cloud liquidity with whether that come from the pats no no no you're are you we're all behind that liquid is really just describing the context of the environment we're in that's the world around us business you know rigid structures of the past are giving away too much more fluid dynamic business models it's a liquid world it's real time and I think that speaks to it an average your storage a lot of announcement so summarized final question what's the bottom line for this event what's the main takeaway the main takeaway is that vmware is continue to innovate i mean we are really fearless innovators and we are delivering tremendous innovation that is helping deliver a brave new model of IT that is instant fluid and secure brave new world we are here on the ground robin Matlock CMO at vmware this is on the ground i'm john forever the cube thanks for watching you