>> Announcer: Live from New York City, it's the Cube. Covering Lenovo Transform 2017. Brought to you by Lenovo. >> We are wrapping up a day of coverage, the Cube's coverage, of Lenovo Transform. I'm your host, Rebecca Kinight, along with Stu Miniman. We have been here, we've interviewed all the great guests, heard a lot of great content, we were there at the keynote. Stu, what have we learned? Yeah, so Rebecca, they talk a lot about, think differently, and we're transforming, and we know that there's so much change happening in the industry. On the one hand, I step back and I say, okay, it's a new generation of Intel Chipset. That's great. Said great a few times already. They've got some people that have been with the company a long time. YY, the CEO's been there for many years, steady at the helm. But there's a lot of new leaders in the group. Kirk Skaugen, who we've now interviewed a couple times, Kim Stevenson, who we've known, a great Cube alum, talked about why she joined a company like Lenovo. Said, they're an underdog, and she feels that they have a great position without that legacy baggage. You know, legacy is one of those terms that gets thrown around. One of our guests today said, you know, oh, in five years from now, we'll be calling software defined legacy because, I was at a conference, they said legacy is what you installed yesterday. (laughs) >> Good point, yeah. >> So, you know, that being said, Lenovo understands, you know, fanatical devotion to that, you know, customer-centricity, is the term they put out there a few times. They want to be reliable, they want to be trusted, and they've got metrics and stats to prove that they are meeting what they're doing. They're not just, you know. John Farrier texted me, he said, "There's meat on the bone at this event, Stu." Absolutely. So, interesting to look at, kind of where they are, where they're going forward. The server industry as a whole is a bit challenged. >> Mm-hmm. >> Storage has been going through radical transformation. Networking is driving more to software defined. And all of that means that there's opportunity for new players to rise through the ranks. And Lenovo feels that they're got the pieces to put together both with themselves, and with their channel and technology partners to be able to drive forward. >> So, one of the things that we're hearing a lot about is that they are number one in customer satisfaction. Because they are so reliable, and because they have great service. In terms of what they were hearing from their customers, we heard this a lot, is that the customers want simple, they are overwhelmed sometimes by too much choice. They want nothing too complicated. And they want things future-proofed. I mean, is that possible? >> Yeah, it's really tough. I did an article a few years ago looking at Amazon. And people would say, oh the hyperscale companies, they use commodity off the shelf hardware. I mean, Intel chips everywhere, what's the difference? Well, I wrote, Amazon actually hyper-optimizes. They have to build for one data center; it's their own. So if they built an application, it's 10,000 or 50,000 servers that they can build for that exact environment. Now, Lenovo leads with data centers around the globe. So, where can they simplify and standardize, and where do they need to fit around the world? So, it's great that they can have a common form factor for a power supply, but you know, we've got different power usage in various places around the world. But they do need to be, customers want help to be a little bit more opinionated, and to simplify what they're doing. I talked to a CIO a couple of years ago, and he said, we were really good at, you know, give us a big chunk of money and 18 months and we could build a temple to our application. Today I need to be faster. I need to be able to build, be more modular, and a lot of that means that I need to have architectures that are more software driven. I still need redundancy, and availability in the hardware, but I'm not going to build, you know, that monolithic infrastructure for a specific application. I just need something that's more flexible. And Lenovo understands that, and they've taken the assets that they had internally, added the pieces that they've gotten from IBM, and are driving these pieces forward, and with a lot of partners, as we've said. Interesting stuff coming from Microsoft. Azure Stack was one of my favorite interviews, talking about that mixture of I need standardization but, I also need some flexibility >> Right. >> in what I'm doing. >> Do you think that the product launches that we heard a lot about today, at the keynote, and also in our interviews today. Do you think that they will, how much do they move the needle forward is what I want to ask? >> Yeah, great question because Kim Stevenson told us, I mean, the last year, if you look revenue and units, Lenovo didn't do great. So, they've got the pieces together, the new generation. They've talked to their customer base. I think they understand what they're going to do when they hyperscale, what they're going to do in the enterprise market, and what they're doing partnering on converged, hyper converged, offering to put those together. Some of these things are really easy for us to track. We come back a year from now and we'll say, okay, the quarterly trackers done by someone like Piers in the analyst industry, you know, the numbers don't lie. You know, customers will vote with their wallets, and we will be able to say whether or not they move the needle. It's great to say, number one in customer support, but if, you know, your competition is growing, and you're shrinking, there's only so far that'll go. >> Well, that's just what I was going to ask you. I mean, is it enough? And what do you predict? I mean, can you look into your crystal ball a little bit, and say, where you think we will be one year, five years from now. Will Lenovo be the underdog? >> Yeah, so Lenovo's in a really interesting place because they do have that global footprint. They, doing, when we talk to Kirk, it's where are they in the hyperscale? It's companies like Baidu and Tencent?. Massive, massive growth. They can ride that wave. When the sky like architecture is available, you know, pretty soon from Intel, they know that they're going to get an influx of business to be able to drive that. They're also getting into some of the west coast hyperscales as they've said. The enterprise is a little bit slower to uptick on that adoption, so, you know, I'm sure Lenovo will be able to give us by segment, how they're doing, and how they're growing. They should be reaching the point that we should see the ship be turning around. We saw this story when Lenovo had purchased the PC business from IBM over a decade ago. And, you know, they sunk for a while before they eventually started to rise, and now they're number one in the world. So, they're trying to repeat history, which is challenging to do, even if they know the playbook. Lenovo, if you look at the margins that they run on, they talk about how they can live on slim margins, they understand that consumer side of the business, they've got a lot of good pieces. And, competing against the ones ahead of them in market share, primarily US based companies, and they're fighting it out. You were at Dell in Sea World. Dell and HP, they are fighting it out, it's going to be a death match. You're going to see them just trying to beat the heck out of each other. Reminds me of, can Lenovo be the Abe Lincoln on the side, saying that, you know, I might not have been the first choice, but at the end I could end up a winner because everybody else kind of beats themselves apart. >> And then all of its partners is a team of rivals. We can do this. We can... >> There you go. We started this morning talking Hamilton, and now we're going in >> We're learning (mumbles) >> New York City used to be our capital here, so, we're bringing it full circle. >> Exactly. So, let's talk also about what we've been hearing from Lenovo employees and executives about the culture here, and we hear time and time again, how it's very flat, and how decisions are made, it's collaborative, there's a lot of teamwork, there's a lot of listening that goes on, not only to colleagues but also to customers. Do you buy it? I mean, what do you think? >> Yeah, so right. So one of the things, you know, I've spent a lot of time on the converged and hyper converged infrastructure solutions. And, one of the things you can spot really easily is if the server and the storage teams aren't working together. That CI solution didn't do well. >> It shows. >> Number of companies that didn't do there. Lenovo, primarily they have some IP, but a lot of what they're driving is really through partnerships. So, at the center of it, it's the server team. Storage is coming to look more and more like, you know, x86 servers, and they're running on top of that. Networking is tied closer to the server. So, they actually don't have, you know, this big structure that they have to overcome, unlike some of their competitors. They have, you know, a sizable team, with a good position in the market share. So, I do buy a lot of it. I've been in analyst meetings with Lenovo for the last couple of years. Their messages are all in sync. It's not, oh wait, I heard one group, and I heard this group, and you know, which way is the future? So, they are making some progress. Of course, I'm really interested to see who they might pick up from an M and A standpoint. There's been rumors for the last couple of years as to some moves they'd make. Their competition has, you know, not been sitting still. We've seen, you know, Dell obviously made a lot of big acquisitions, including the really big EMC piece. HP has bought another number of companies. Cisco actually, their server business, which is the UCS, really seems to have plateaued out. So, they had been the driver of change in the storage, in the server industry for the last, gosh, you know, over five years. So, there's that opportunity for the next horse to try to take the lead. Once again, Lenovo feels they're there. I think they have, you know, they've got the resources, they have a reason to be on the track, and to drive that forward. Whether or not they can execute on, remains to be seen. And, you know, they've got, they're looked at their channel, they've looked at their sales team, and they know what they need to do now they can go do it. >> And they've made the changes. Exactly. >> Yeah, so cultural wise, I mean something you study real closely, you had a lot of businesses. Rebecca, what did you hear today? What did you like? What did you want to hear more about? >> Well, I was really fascinated by what Kim Stevenson was saying, talking about the greater numbers of women in senior leadership roles. And also, the greater numbers of people of color. And how important that is in terms of how Lenovo goes about making its decisions, thinking about the customer, empathizing with the customer, and really understanding where to go from there. And then also, then how it comes back in terms of making decisions to go to market with which products. So, that was really fascinating and I think that she's right. I mean, particularly at a time where all you see are the headlines about this machismo culture that is so pervasive in Silicon Valley and in the technology industry. And so to see, you know, YY on one hand, and Travis Kalanick on another, and you just can see these very different models and, so, I'm hoping Lenovo is the one that really prevails in the end here because this is, I think, the future, the future of work, the future of the workforce. And so, I would like to see this model of leadership and of teamwork prevail. >> Yeah, it's a different type of event here. It's nice. It's very intimate. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> You know, Lenovo obviously knows how to do some cool things. The layout here, it's a beautiful facility here >> It is. Yes. >> In New York City. The keynote had some, you know, funny yet, you know, good videos. >> Yeah. That was (mumbles). >> You know, sometimes they fall a little flat, when you go to some of those keynotes. >> Yeah. >> But, you know, Lenovo needs to continue to build their brand, outside of the consumer space. >> Right, right. >> And be known more in the enterprise, and you know, they have a chance to ride some of those waves. >> Yeah, yeah. Well this has been a great show. It's always so much fun to co-host with you on The Cube. I love it. >> All right. >> It's really fun. Great crew. >> Rebecca, thank you so much, and, yeah, actually Kirk Skaugen's going to be back on The Cube next week. I will be with Dave Vellante at the Nutanix .NEXT event in Washington, DC. We have done so many events with the Cube. Of course, as it says on the sign behind us, theCUBE.net, where all the videos are. I'm sure will be record-breaking for us yet again, as to how many shows, how many interviews we do. >> Exciting stuff. >> Rebecca, it's a pleasure to be with you again, and thanks so much for joining with me, you know, the quick train ride down from Boston. >> Yes, exactly. >> Yeah. >> Well, thank you so much, Stu. That wraps it up for us at the Cube. This has been the Lenovo Transform Conference. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. Thank you so much for tuning in. (funky music)