>> Announcer: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto and Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hello everybody, welcome to this special CUBE conversation. My name is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE. We're here with Sanjay Poonen who's the COO of VMware and a good friend of theCUBE. Sanjay great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Dave it's a pleasure. In these new circumstances, shelter at home and remote working. I hope you and your family are doing well. >> Yeah, and back at you Sanjay. Of course I saw you on Kramer Mad Money the other night. I was jealous. I said, "I need Sanjay on to get an optimism injection." You're a great leader And I think, a role model for all of us. And of course the "Go Niners" in the background really incented me to get-- I got my Red Sox cap and we have a lack of sports, but, and we miss it, But hey, we're making the best. >> Okay Red Sox is better than the Patriots. Although I love the Patriots. If i was in the east coast, especially now that Brady's gone. I guess you guys are probably ruing a little bit that Jimmy G came to us. >> I am a huge Tampa Bay fan all of a sudden. I be honest with you. Tom Brady can become a Yankee and I would root for them. I tell you that's how much I love the guy. But anyway, I'm really excited to have you on. It's obviously as you mentioned, these times are tough, but we're making the best do and it's great to see you. You are a huge optimist, but I want to ask you, I want to start with Narendra Modi just announced, basically a lockdown for 21 days. 1.3 billion people in your native country. I wonder if you could give us some, some thoughts on that. >> I'm, my parents live half their time in Bangalore and half here. They happen to be right now in the US, and they're doing well. My dad's 80 and my mom's 77. I go to India a lot. I spent about 18 years of my life there, and the last 32 odd years here and I still go there a lot. Have a lots friends and my family there. And , it's I'm glad that the situation is kind of , as best as they can serve it. It's weird, I was watching some of the social media photos of Bangalore. I tweeted this out last night. The roads look so clean and beautiful. I mean, it looks like 40 years ago when I was growing up. When I would take a bicycle to school. I mean Bangalore's one of the most beautiful cities in India, very green and you can kind of see it all again. And I think, as I've been watching some of the satellite photos of the various big cities to just watch sort of Mother Nature. Obviously, we're in a tough time and, I open my empathy and thoughts and prayers go to every family that's affected by this. And certainly ones who have lost loved ones, but it's sort of, I think it's neat, that we're starting to see some of the beautiful aspects of nature. Even as we deal with the tough aspects of sheltered home. And the incredible tough impacts of this pandemic across the world. >> Yeah, I think you're right. There is a silver lining as much as, our hearts go out to those that are that are suffering. You're seeing the canals in Venice run clear. As you mentioned, the nitrous oxide levels over China. what's going on in Bangalore. So, there is a little bit of light in the end of the tunnel for the environment, I hope. and at least there's an indication that we maybe, need to be more sensitized to this. Okay, let's get into it. I want to ask you, so last week in our breaking analysis. We worked with a data company called ETR down in New York City. They do constant surveys of CIO's. I want to read you something that they came out with just on Monday and get your reaction. Basically, their annual growth and IT spend they're saying, is showing a slight decline for 2020. As a significant number of organizations plan to cut and/or delay IT expenditures due to the coronavirus. Though the current climate may suggest worse many organizations are accelerating spending for 2020 as they ramp up their work-from-home infrastructure. These organizations are offsetting what would otherwise be a notable decline in global IT spend versus last year. Now we've gone from the 4% consensus at the beginning of the year. ETR brought it down to zero percent and then just on Monday, they went to slight negative. But, what's not been reported widely is the somewhat offsetting factor of work-from-home infrastructure. VMware obviously plays there. So I wonder if you could comment on what you're seeing. >> Yeah, Dave, I think , we'll have to see . I'm not an economic pundit. So we're going to have to see what the, IT landscape looks like in the overall sense and we'll probably play off GDP. Certain industries: travel, hospitality, I mean, it's brutal for them. I mean, and I hope that, what I really hope, that's going to happen to that industry, especially there's an infusion through recovery type of bill. Is that no real big company goes under, and goes bankrupt. I mean kind of the situation in 2008. I mean, people wondering what will happen to the Airlines. Boeing, hospital-- these are ic-- some of them like Boeing are iconic brands of the United States and of the world. There's only two real companies that make planes. So we've got to make sure that those industries stay afloat and stay good for the health of the world. Health of the US economy, jobs, and so on. That's always one end. Listen, health and safety of our employees always comes first. Before we even think about that. I always tell people the profits of VMware will wait if you are not well, if your loved ones not well, if your going to take care of people, take care of that first. We will be fine. This too shall pass. But if you're healthy, let's turn our attention because we're not going to just sit at home and play games. We're going to serve our customers. How do we do that? A lot of our customers are adjusting to this new normal. As a result, they have to either order devices with a laptop, screens, things of those kinds, to allow a work-from-home environment to be as close to productive as they work environment. So I expect that there will be a surge in the, sort of, end points that people need. I will have to see how Dell and HP and Lenovo, but I expect that they will probably see some surge in their laptops. As people, kind of, want those in the home and hopefully their supply chains are able to respond. But then with every one of those endpoints and screens that we need now for these types of organizations. You need to manage them, end point management. Often, you need virtual desktops on them. You need to end point security and then in some cases you will probably need, if it's a remote office, branch office, and into the home office, network security and app acceleration. So those Solutions, end point management, Workspace ONE, inclusive of a full-fledged virtual desktop capability That's our product Workspace ONE. Endpoint Securities, Carbon Black and the Network Platform NSX being software-defined was relegated for things like, load balancers and SDWAN capabilities and it's kind of almost feels like good, that we got those solutions, the last three, four years through acquisitions, in many cases. I mean, of course, Airwatch and Nicira were six, seven, eight years ago. But even SD-WAN, we acquired Velocloud three and a half years ago, Carbon Black just four months ago, and Avi in the last year. Those are all parts of that kind of portfolio now, and I feel we were able to, as customers come to us we're not going in ambulance-chasing. But as customers come to us and say, "What do you have as a work-at-home "for business continuity?" We're able to offer them a solution. So we did a webcast earlier this week. Where we talked about, we're calling it work in home with business continuity. It's led with our EUC offerings Workspace ONE. Accompanied by Carbon Black to secure that, and then underneath it, will obviously be the cloud foundation and our Network capabilities of NSX. >> Yeah, so I want to double down on that because it was not, the survey results, showed it was not just collaboration tools. Like Zoom and WebEx and gotomeeting Etc. It was, as you're pointing out, it was other infrastructure that was of VPN's. It was Network bandwidth. It was virtualization, security because they need to secure that work-from-home infrastructure. So a lot of sort of, ancillary activity. It was surprising to me, when I saw the data, that 21% of the CIO's that we surveyed, said that they actually plan on spending more in 2020 because of these factors. And so now we're tracking that daily. And the sentiment changes daily. I showed some other data that showed the CIO sentiment through March. Every day of the survey it dropped. Okay, so it's prudent to be cautious. But nonetheless, people to your point aren't just sitting on their hands. They're not standing still. They're moving to support this new work-from-home normal. >> Yeah, I mean listen, I forgot to say that, Yeah, we are using the video collaboration tools. Zoom a lot. We use Slack. We'll use Teams. So we are, those are accompanied. We were actually one of the first customers to use Zoom. I'm a big fan of my friend Eric Yuan and what they're doing there in modernizing, making it available on a mobile device. Just really fast. They've been very responsive and they reciprocated by using Workspace ONE there. We've been doing ads joined to VMware and zoom in the market for the last several years. So we're a big fan of their technology. So far be it from me to proclaim that the only thing you need here's VMware. There's a lot of other things on the stack. I think the best way, Dave, for us that we've sought to do this is again, I'm very sensitive to not ambulance-chase, which is, kind of go after this. To do it authentically, and the way that authentically is to be, I think Satya Nadella put this pretty well in an interview he did yesterday. Be a first responder to the first responder. A digital first responder, if I could. So when the, our biggest customers are hospital and school and universities and retailers and pharmacies. These are some of our biggest customers. They are looking, in some cases, actually hire more people to serve their communities and customers. And every one of them, as they , hire new people and so and so on, will I just naturally coming to us and when they come to us, serve them. And it's been really gratifying Dave. If I could read you the emails I've been getting the last few days. I got one from a very prominent City, the United States, the mayor's office, the CTO, just thanking us and our people. For being available who are being careful not to, we're being very sensitive to the pricing. To making sure customers don't feel like, in any way, that we're looking at the economics of it will always come just serve your customer. I got an email yesterday from a very large pharmacy. Routinely we were talking to folks in the, in the healthcare industry. University, a president of a school. In fact, Southern New Hampshire University, who I mentioned Jim Cramer. Sent me a note saying, "hey, we're really grateful you even mentioned our name." and I'm not doing this because, Southern New Hampshire University is doing an incredible job of moving a lot of their platform to online to help tens of thousands. And they were one of the early customers to adopt virtual desktops, and the cloud desktops, and the services. So, as we call. So in any of these use cases, I just tell our employees, "Be authentic. "First off take care of your families. "It's really important to take care of your own health and safety. But once you've done that, be authentic in serving our customers." That's what VR has always done. From the days of dying green, to bombers, to Pat, and all of us here now. Take care of our customers and we'll be fine. >> Yeah, and I perfectly understand your sensitivity to that notion of ambulance-chasing and I'm by no means trying to bait you into doing that. But I would stress, the industry needs you and the tech it-- many in the tech industry, like VMware, have very strong balance sheets. They're extremely viable companies and we as a community, as an industry, need companies like VMware to step up, be flexible on pricing, and terms, and payment, and things like that nature. Which it sounds like you're doing. Because the heroes that are on the front lines, they're fighting a battle every day, every hour, every minute and they need infrastructure to be able to work remotely with the stay-at-home mandates. >> I think that's right. And listen, let me talk a little bit of one of the things you talked about. Which is financing and we moved a lot of our business to increasingly, to the cloud. And SaaS and subscription services are a lot more radical than offer license and maintenance. We make that choice available to customers, in many cases we lead with cloud-first solutions. And then we also have financing services from our partners like Dell financial services that really allow a more gradual, radibal payment. Do people want financing? And , I think if there are other scenarios. Jim asked me on his show, "What will you do if one of your companies go bankrupt?" I don't know, that's an unprecedented, we didn't have, we had obviously, the financial crisis. I wasn't here at VMware during the dot-com blow up where companies just went bankrupt in 2000. I was at Informatica at the time. So, I'm sure we will see some unprecedented-- but I will tell you, we have a very fortunate to be profitable, have a good balance sheet. Whatever scenario, if we take care of our customers, I mean, we have been very fortunate to be one of the highest NPS, Net promoter scorer, companies in the industry. And , I've been reaching out to many of our top customers. Just a courtesy, without any agenda other than, we're just checking in. A friend in need is a friend indeed. It's a line that I remembered. And just reach out your customers. Hey listen. Checking in. No, other than can we help you, if there's anything and thank you, especially for ones who are retailers, pharmacies, hospitals, first responders. Thank them for what they're doing to serve many of their people. Especially people in retail. Think about the people who have to go into warehouses to service us, to deliver the stuff that comes to our home. I mean, these people are potentially at risk, but they do it. Put on masks. Braving health situations. That often need the paycheck. We're very grateful for that, and our hope is that this world situation, listen, I mentioned it on on TV as a kind of a little bit of a traffic jam. I love to ski and when I go off and to Tahoe, I tell my family, "I don't know how long it's going to take." with check up on Waze or Google Maps and usually takes four hours, no traffic. Every now and then it'll take five, six, seven. Worst case eight. I had some situation, never happen to me but some of my friends would just got stuck there and had to sleep in their car. But it's pretty much the case, you will eventually get there. I was talking to my dad, who is 80, and he's doing well. And he said, this feels a little bit like World War Two because you're kind of, in many places there. They had a bunker, shelter. Not just shelter in place, but bunker shelter in that time. But that lasted, whatever five, six years. I don't think this is going to last five, six years. It may be five, six months. It might be a whole year. I don't know. I can guarantee it's not going to be six years. So it won't be as bad as World War two. It certainly won't be as bad as the Spanish Flu. Which took 39 people and two percent of the world. Including five percent of my country, India in the 1918 to 1920 period, a hundred years ago. So we will get through this. I like, we shall overcome. I'm not going to sing it for you. It's one of my favorite Louis Armstrong songs, but find ways by which you encourage, uplift people. Making sure, it is tough, it is very tough times and we have to make sure that we get through this. That jobs are preserved as best as we can because that's the part I'm really, really concerned about. The loss of jobs and how we're going to recover as US economy, but we will make it through this. >> Yeah, and I want to sort of second what you're saying. That look, I know there are a lot of people at home that going a little bit stir crazy and this, the maybe a little bit of depression setting in. But to your point, we have to be empathic for those that are suffering. The elderly, who are in intensive care and also those frontline workers. And then I love your optimism. We will get through this. This is not the Spanish Flu. We have, it's a different world, a different technology world. Our focus, like many other small businesses is, we obviously want to survive. We want to maintain our full employment. We want to serve our customers and we, as you, believe that that is the recipe for getting through this. And so, I love the optimism. >> And listen, and we can help be a part of my the moment you texted me and said, "Hey, can I be in your show?" If it helps you drive, whatever you need, sponsorship revenue, advertising. I'm here and the same thing for all of our friends who have to adjust the way in which the wo-- we want to be there to help them. And I've chosen as best as I can, in terms of how I can support my family, the sort of five, five of us at home now. All fighting over bandwidth, the three kids, and my wife, and I. To be positive with them, to be in my social media presence, as best as possible. Every day to be positive in what I tweet out to the world And point people to a hope of what's going to come. I don't know how long this is going to last. But I can tell you. I mean, just the fact that you and I are talking over video interview. High fidelity, reasonably high fidelity, high bandwidth. The ability to connect. I mean it is a whole lot better than a lot of what happened in World War 2 or the Spanish flu. And I hope at the end of it, some of us, some of this will forever change our life. I hope for for example in a lot of our profession. We have to travel to visit customers. And now that I'm building some of these relationships virtually. I hope that maybe my travel percentage will drop. It's actually good for the environment, good for my family life. But if we can lower that percentage, still get things done through Zoom calls, and Workspace ONE, and things of those kinds, that would be awesome. So that's how I think about the way in which I'm adapting my life. And then I set certain personal goals. This year, for example, we're expanding a lot of our focus in security. We have a billion dollar security business and we're looking to grow that NSX, Common Black, Workspace ONE, and accompanying tools and I made it a goal to try and meet at all my sales teams. A thousand C-ISOs. I mean off I know a lot of CIO's in the 25 years, I've had, maybe five, six thousand of them in the world. And blessed to build that relationship over the years of my SAP and VMware experience, but I don't know. I mean, I knew probably 50 or 100. Maybe a few hundred CISO's. And now that we have a portfolio it's relevant to grant them and I think very compelling across network security and End Point security. We own the companies with such a strong portfolio in both those areas. I'm reaching out to them and I'm happy to tell you, I connected, I've got the names of 1,000 of the top CISO's in the Fortune 1000, Global 2000, and connecting with many of them through LinkedIn and other mixers. I hope I talked to many of them through the course of the year. And many of them will be virtual conversations. Again, just to talk to them about being a trusted advisor to us. Seeing if we can help them. And then of course, there will be a product pitch for NSX and Carbon Black and how we're different from whoever it is, Palo Alto and F5 and Netscaler and the SD line players or semantic McAfee Crowdstrike. We're differentiated so I want to certainly earn some of the business. But these are ways in which you adjust to a virtual kind of economy. Where I'm not having to physically go and meet them. >> Yeah, and we share your optimism and those CISO's are, they're heroes, superheroes on the front line. I'll tell ya a quick aside. So John Furrier and I, we're in Barcelona. When really, the coronavirus came to our heightened awareness and John looked at me and said, "Dave we've been doing digital for 10 years. "We have to take all of the software that we've developed, "all these assets and help our customers pivot." So we share that optimism and we're actually lucky to be able to have the studios and be able to have these conversations with you guys. So again, we share that, that optimism. I want to ask you, just on guidance. A lot of companies have come out and said we're not giving guidance anymore. I didn't see anything relative to VMware. Have you guys announced anything on guidance in terms of how you're going to communicate? Where are you at with that? >> No, I think we're just, I mean listen, we take this very carefully because of reg FD and the regulations of public company. So we just allow the normal quarterly ins. And of outside of that, if our CFO decides they may. But right now we're just continuing business as usual. We're in the middle of our, kind of, whatever, middle of our quarter. Quarter ends April. So work hard do the best we can in all the regions, be available for all of our teams. Pat, myself, and others we're, to the extent that we're healthy and we're doing well, but thank God, is reach out to CISO's and CIO's and CTO's and CEOs and help them. And I believe people will spend money. The questions we have to go over. And I think the stronger will survive. The companies with better balance sheet and unfortunately, some of the weaker companies won't. And I think quite frankly, if you do your job well. I don't mean this in any negative sense. The stronger companies will take share in these environments. I was watching a segment for John Chambers. He has been through a number of different, when I know him, so an I have, I've talked to him about some of the stuff. He will tell you that he, advises is a lot of his companies now. From the experiences he saw in 2008, 2001, in many of the crisis and supply chain issues. This is a time where leadership counts. The strong get stronger. Never waste a good crisis, as Winston Churchill said. And as you do that, the strong will come strong because you figure out ways by which, if you're going to make changes that were planned for one or two years from now. Maybe a good time to make them is now. And as you do that you communicate a vision for where you're going. Very clearly to your employees. Again incessantly over and over again. They, hopefully, are able to repeat it in their own words in a simple fashion, and then you get all of your employees in our case 30,000 plus employees of VMware lined up. So one of the things that we've been doing a lot of these days is communicate, communicate, communicate, internally. I've talked a lot about our communication with customer. But inside, our employees, we do calls with our top leaders over Zoom. Calls, intimate calls, and many, often we're adjusting to where I'll say a few words. I have a mandatory every two week goal with all of my senior most leaders. I'll speak for about five minutes and then for the next 25 minutes, the top 12, 15 of them I listen. To things, I want all of them to speak up. There's nobody who should stay silent, because I want to hear what's going on in that corner of the world. >> But fantastic Sanjay. Well, I mean, Boeing, I heard this morning's going to get some support from the government. And strategically that's very important for our country. Congress finally passed, looks like they're passing that bill, and support which is awesome. It's been, especially for all these small businesses that are struggling and want to maintain full employment. I heard Steve Mnuchin the other day saying, "Look, we're talking about two months of payroll "for people if they agree to keep people employed. "or hire them back." I mean the Fed. people say, oh the FED is out of arrows. The Feds, not out of arrows. I mean, I'm not an economist either. But the Fed. has a lot of bullets in their gun, as they say. So Sanjay, thanks so much. You're an awesome leader and really an inspirational executive and a good friend so thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Dave, always a pleasure. Please say hi to all of my friends, your co-anchors, and the staff at CUBE. Thank them for all their hard work. It's a pleasure to talk to you this morning. I wish you, your family, and your friends and all of our community, stay safe and be well. >> Thank you Sanjay and thank you for watching everybody. This is Dave Vellante for the cube and we'll see you next time. (soft music)

(click) >> Stu: Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and this is a special on-the-ground here at the VTUG: Summer Slam 2019. It's the 16th year of the event and unfortunately it's actually the final event. I've been to a few of these in Maine. I've been to many more of them at the Winter Warmer at Gillette Stadium and welcoming back to the program someone that's been to many more of these that I have, Chris Collotti, who's a principal technologist today at Cohesity but you know, who is doing many other jobs and actually used to live here in New England, southern New Hampshire before. >> Chris: That's right. Chris, welcome back. >> Chris: Thank you, good to see you as always. >> Yeah, give us a little bit of your history with these events and you know, what you've been seeing at you know, user groups and regional events and what brought you back for the final one. >> So this one was interesting cause even last night when I showed up for the night before, I think I knew everybody in the room, it was all hugs and you know, it's just, it's all about the people, I mean, this is all the same people that we've had up here. But, yeah, I grew up in southern New Hampshire, since moved to Tennessee five years ago but I was actually at another event before this and when we found it was the last one, well, Cohesity has always sponsored it but I actually decided to fly over here, being the last one cause knowing the Harneys really well and see all you guys it's just, it's kind of an odd thing to have the curtain go down. >> Yeah, you talk about the people and communities, Chris, I think back to the earliest days that I came to this event I'm like, there's that guy on stage, he's almost always wearing a Patriots jersey there and >> (laughs) I did make that famous. >> Figuring out it was I believe P90x and some of the other things there so, you know, what's the workout regime today? >> Uh, this morning I actually jacked up my neck, um, back in to lifting heavy a little bit but yeah, it was always great to be the guy who always came up on stage and always had a Brewsky jersey on or something. I remember the one year that someone told me they were practicing that year and I was in the middle of the presentation and I was, you know, conflicted on what to do but, um, no I think it's always been good to come back and talk, not just about technology, but I've had so many conversations over the years about where my career's gone and the changes and it was always that opportunity a couple times a year to figure out what changed for everybody. And even now, I mean, there's guys that I've seen that have different shirts on that we're, you know, I have one different from last year when I was at the Winter Warmer. >> Yeah, 16 years it's safe to say almost everyone here has changed what logo they had here. Many of the companies >> We've lost a little more hair, we've got a little more gray. >> So a lot of changes. One thing I tell you, 16 years has been a good run for the Patriots over the last 16 years >> People don't like us when we talk about that for some reason >> We're here in New England, we're allowed to talk about it. >> That's true, that's true. >> At this event, Chris, it's The Cube, you always like talking about sports and if they don't like this piece of it that's all right but, you know, I tell you talking to the vendors here, they're always hiring, like, SEs, technical people, you know, if they understand that latest in technology, usually they can find a job here. What else are you seeing? What are some of the you know, kind of in-demand jobs, of course, you know, the space that your company is playing in, data, is at the center of so much of what we talk, >> Absolutely. Data protection, data management, is a super hot space. >> Yep. I think, I've definitely seen a lot of, all the new companies are always hiring SEs, right? They got to get their sales up and running. For Cohesity, it's a bit similar. I mean, we took over another couple of floors in one of the other buildings in San Jose, which is great, the growth is unbelievable. For people who don't know, you know, we've got a truck rolling around the country that John Hildebrand and I personally, pretty much built over the course of a couple a months, but I think that speaks to it. There's all this stuff happening and everybody's trying to find a different way to get out in front of customers, right, whether it's a salesperson, whether it's the marketing, whether it's creative videos or something else and we're always trying to figure out what's the next, well, not even technical ability, but what's just the next ability you want to hire, right, is it a coder, is it, I mean, we always have developers, we're always hiring developers, but around here, I've been out of the area so much I'm really not sure, like what the hotbed is right now around the Boston area and southern New Hampshire. >> Boston's such a hotbed lately for, you know, everything that's going in IoT, of course, Cloud's having an impact, those people that hadn't been to the Seaport District, oh my gosh, it's great to see those buildings go up. >> Oh yeah. >> You know, not just, you know, Red Hat put in a big facility there, AWS and Amazon, of course, has a strong presence, but between Cambridge and Boston there's so much growth here. Chris, want to give you the kind of final word, as you've been at more of these events than many people, you know, what's it like to see kind of the end of an era and any final memories you have from these shows. >> The only, and I've been talking about this memory, and you may remember this one, and Ed Hartley would too, I think, Tex, he will, when my Challenger broke down. Were you here for that one, when I pulled into Gritty's? That's my worse memory of these but it's the one that always comes up when I come back and everybody saw it on the flatbed driving by, you know, Luigi and everybody. What made it interesting was a horrible situation for me because I drove up here but it speaks to the community because everybody ran out to ask what happened, do you need a ride home, what's going on? And I do think the Harneys have done such an incredible job over the years just bringing all these people together. It's a little bit sad I think, you know, my wife came up for this, Julie actually flew up because she knows everybody and being the last one. She also won't turn down lobster, at all. I'm happy for them though, I think, a lot's happened in their lives in the last couple years and to finally get down to Florida and spend more time down there, I'm happy for them, I think it's great, I think they've done a, they've left a legacy, really I think, I don't think anybody can match up here. >> The intersections of great information, great people and you throw in >> Great food. a great New England Lobsterfest, you really can't go wrong with that, Chris, thank you so much for sharing the update. Always great to catch up with you. >> Yeah, great seeing you again. We'll see you tonight at the bake. >> All right and we'll see Chris and many others at VMWorld later this year as well as lots of other shows. Be sure to check out thecube.net. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thanks for watching. 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