>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. We are live in Las Vegas. Day two of Dell Technologies World. I am Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, my cohost. And we're excited to welcome to theCUBE for the first time the CIO of TGen, Translational Genomics, James Lowey. James, welcome to theCUBE. >> Ah, thank you so much, it's great being here. >> So, genomics, really interesting topic that we want to get into and understand. How are you making IT and digital and workforce transformation real in it, but get give our viewers and overview of TGen. It started out about 16 years ago as a very collaborative effort within Arizona and really grew. Talk to us about that. >> Yeah, absolutely. So, TGen is a nonprofit biomedical research institute based in Phoenix, Arizona. As you mentioned, we've been around about 16 years. We were, the inception of the institute was really built around bringing biomedical technology into the sate of Arizona. And we're fortunate enough to have a really visionary and gifted leader in Dr. Jeffrey Trent, who is one of the original guys to sequence the human completely for the first time. So I don't know if you get any better street cred than that when it comes to genomics. >> And you mentioned, before we went live, give our viewers an overview of what it took to sequence the human genome in terms of time and money and now, how 15 years later, how fast it can be done. >> Yeah, so, you know we've moved from a point where it costs billions of dollars and took many years to complete the first sequence to today where it takes a little bit over a day and about $3 thousand. So it's really the democratization of the technology is driving clinical application, which, in turn, is going to benefit all of us. >> Yeah, James, genomics is one of those areas, when we talk about there is the opportunity of data, but there's also the challenge of data, because you've got to, I have to imagine, orders of magnitude more data than your typical company does, so talk to us a little bit about the role of data inside your organization. >> Well, data is our lifeblood. I mean, we've been generating terascale then petascale for many years now. And the fact is, is every time you sequence a patient you're generating about 4 terabytes of data for one patient. So if you're doing 100 patients, do the math, or you're doing a thousand patients. We're talking just an immense volume of data. And really, data is what drives us because that information that's encoded in our genome is nothing but data, right? It's turning our analog selves into a digital format that then we can interrogate to come up with better treatments to help patients. >> Can you bring this inside? When you talk about the infrastructure that enables that. You know, what I was teasing out with the last question, it's not just about storing data, you need to be able to access the data, you need to be able to share data. So as the CIO, what's your purview? Give us a little bit of a thumbnail sketch as to what your organization-- >> Oh yeah, yeah, no that's great. You know, so we've been a long time Isilon customer. The scale-out storage is what really has enabled us to be successful. Our partnership with Dell EMC has spanned many years and we're fortunate enough to have enough visibility within the organization to get early access to technologies. And really, that's really important because the science moves faster than the IT. So having things like scale-out, super fast flash, you know, having new Intel processors, all these things are what really enable us to do our job and to be successful. >> How have, you've been with TGen for a long time now, you've been the CIO for about three years. Talk to us about the transformation of the technology and how you've evolved it to not just facilitate digital transformation and IT transformation, but I imagine security transformation with human genetic data is of paramount importance. >> You know, that's a really good point. Security is always on my mind, for obvious reasons because I would say there's nothing more personally identifiable than your genome. There's the laws around these things still have not been totally codified. So we're sitting at a point today where we're still uncertain to how exactly best protect this very, very important data. But to that end, we tend to fail in the closed state of doing things, everything's encrypted. You know, we are big believers in identity management and making sure that the right people have access to the right data at the right time. We've utilized SecureWorks, for instance, for perimeter, logging, and to get their expertise. 'Cause one of the things I've learned in my tenure as CIO is that it's really all about the people and they're what drive your success. And so I'm fortunate enough to have a team that's amazing. These folks are some of the best people in their field and really do a great job at helping us, protect the data, get access to the data, as well as thinking about what the next iteration is going to look like. >> When you look at, just as a whole, the security and data protection, you think about everybody, if they get those home kits, or things like that, how has that evolved the last few years? I'm curious if that impacts your business. >> Well, I think it does impact our business insofar as it creates awareness. And you know, I think it's really fantastic when I attend a cocktail party or something and people come up and ask, say, "You know, should I get the 23andMe Ancestry?" And they're really engaged and interested and wanting to learn about these things. And I think that's going to spur questions to be asked when they go in to be treated by a physician. Which is really important. I think, I'm a believer that we should own our own data, especially our genomic data, because what's more personal than that? And so we have a lot of challenges ahead, I think, in IT in particular, in protecting, storing, and providing that data to patients. >> Just a quick followup, I'm sure you secure stuff. What's the cocktail answer for that? If, you know, should I get that? Can I trust this company? Is my insurance company and everybody else going to get that? What do you advise the average consumer? >> I would say read the terms of use agreement very carefully. >> so the theme of the event, James, make it real. You know, few things are more real than our own data, our own genomes, what does that theme mean to you from an application perspective? How are you making digital transformation real? And things like the alliance with City of Hope to impact disease study and cures? What is that reality component to you? >> Yeah, it has, you know, I really like the make it real theme, and I think it's something that we are doing every day. I think it just speaks to, you know, taking technology, applying it for meaningful use, to actually make a difference, and to do something that has real impact. And I think that at TGen, I've been empowered to build systems that can do that, that can help our scientists and ultimately help patients. You mentioned City of Hope. We're, our alignment with them is amazing. They have just hired a Chief Digital Officer as they go through a digital transformation of their own. And you know, we're on board in striving to help them go through this process because, as you might be aware, everything's about the data. And that's where we have to focus. >> James, if you go back, you talked about your scale-out architecture with Isilon. How do you report back to the business as to the results you're doing? What are the, do you have any hero metrics or things that you point out that says this is why we're successful. This is why we've made the right decision. This is why we should be doing this in the future. >> Well, I think we're especially fortunate that we can measure our success in people's lives. So, meeting a kid who's in full remission from brain cancer who was treated using drugs that were derived from being sequenced and run through our labs and then our computational infrastructure and having them say thank you, I think is pretty much a metric that I don't know how you can beat that. >> Talk about making it real. That's where it's really impactful. I'd love to understand your thoughts as you continue to evolve your transformation as a company. We've heard a lot about emerging technologies and what Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, is doing to enable organizations and customers to be able to realize what's possible with artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT. What are your thoughts about weaving in those emerging technologies to make what TGen delivers even more impactful. >> Well you just said three of my favorite things that I'm spending a lot of time thinking about. You know, artificial intelligence is going to be absolutely, is required to interrogate the vast amounts of data that are being created. I mean, this is all unstructured data, so you have to have systems that can store and present that data in such a way that you're going to be able to do something meaningful. IoT is another area where we're spending a lot of time and energy in what we believe is like quantitative medicine. So basically taking measurements all the time to see about changes and then using that to hopefully gain insight into treatment of diseases. You know, machine learning and some of these technologies are also absolutely going to be critical, especially when we start building out drug databases and being able to match the patient with the drug. >> Yeah, James, bring us inside to your organization a little bit. What kind of skill sets do you have to have to architect, operate, a theme of this show, they've got Andy McAfee, who's from MIT, we've spoken to, it's about people and machines. You can't have one without the other. You need to be able to marry those two. How does an organization like yours get ready for that and move forward? >> Yeah, it's a really good point. I think the technology enables the people, and you have to have the right people to help make the decisions and what technologies you get and apply. And I think that the skill sets that we look for is generally people who have a broad view of the world. You know, people who are particular experts, at least in the IT side are of limited use, because we need people to be able to switch gears quickly and to think about problems holistically. So I'd say most of the IT folks are working several different disciplines and are really good at that. On the scientific side it's a little different. We're looking for data scientists all the time. So if anybody's watching and wants to come work for a great place, TGen, look us up. Because that's really where we're headed. You know, we have a lot of biologists, we have a lot of molecular biologists, we have people who do statistics, but it's not quite the same as data science. So that's kind of the new area that we're really focused on. >> All right, so James, one of the things I always love to ask when I get a CIO here is, when you're talking to your peers in the industry, how do you all see the role of the CIO changing? What are some of the biggest challenges that you're facing? >> So, yeah, it's a great question. I think the role's changing towards being empowered in the business. And I think that as that has to be part of the transformation. Is you have to be aligned completely with what your objectives are. And we're fortunate, you know, we are. And I feel very lucky to have a boss and a boss's boss who both understand the importance and the value that we bring to the organization. I also see that in the industry, especially in healthcare, a need for folks who are focused beyond just the EMR and daily IT things, to really start looking beyond maybe where you're comfortable. I know that I stretch my boundaries, and I think that in order to be successful as a CIO I think that's what you're going to have to do. I think you're going to have to push the envelope. You're going to have to look for new technologies and new ways to make a difference. >> So last question, big impact that TGen has made to the state of Arizona. I read on LinkedIn that you like building high-performance teams. What are some of the impacts that this has made for Arizona but also maybe as an example for other states to look to be inspired to set up something similar? >> That's really a great question. I think, you know, Arizona made an investment, and the way that it's easy to measure. So if you come down to the TGen building and realize that that building was the first building that is now surrounded by buildings, including a full-on cancer center, that's all in downtown Phoenix. And it's almost the if you build it they will come, but it's not just the infrastructure, it really is about the people and identifying the right folks to come in and help build that, to invest in them and to provide basically the opportunity for success. You know, Arizona has really been fortunate, I think, in being able to build out this amazing infrastructure around biotechnology. And you know, but we're just getting going. I mean, we are, we've only been doing this for about 16 years and I look forward to the next 16. >> Well thanks so much, James, for stopping by and talking about how you're applying technologies, not just from Dell EMC but others as well to make transformation real, to make it real across IT, digital, workforce, security, and doing something that's really literally has the opportunity to save lives. Thanks so much. >> Well thank you very much, it's been a pleasure. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, with my cohost Stu Miniman. We are live day two of Dell Technologies World. We'll be back after a lunch break. We'll see you then.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018, the inaugural Dell Technologies World event. Have two sets side by side, three days of broadcast. I'm Stu Miniman, joined with my cohost for this segment by John Troyer. >> Happy to welcome back to the program John Byrne, who since the last time we caught up with has a new title now, the North American Commercial Sales at Dell EMC. John thank you for joining us. >> Pleasure. Good to see John, John and Stu thank you. >> All right John, what are you doing here? Isn't it almost like the end of like financials? On the road, everything like that. But, yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of the change in role and what that meant for you. >> Yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of amazing. I was only here a year ago and here I was talking about bringing together Dell EMC's brand new channel. And we're very proud that we're talking about then it was a $35 billion organization. Here we are 12 months later, $35 billion to $43 billion channel organization, which is spectacular. And it's all thanks to our wonderful partner community and what they did. They were the ones that helped us with our vision, our strategy. The wonderful program that the team has developed, and we're seeing it unfold. That's been an incredible journey. And now one of the good things is obviously when we were building this initiative there was a power of and. We want both motions to continue to go, direct and channel. And you saw the results, both are growing. So obviously my new role and I've been asked to run North America Commercial Sales under Marius Haas, by Michael and Marius. >> I'd like to dig into it a little bit. I spoke to Marius on Monday, actually in our kick off this morning, talking about kind of EMC channel and sales and Dell channel and sales, a little bit different. I mean, EMC had a great channel, has a great channel continuing, but very much considered belly to belly as how they do that. Dell has been a little bit more partner and channel focused for longer. So I'm wondering, give us a little bit of insight. So you had the channel piece, you've had the sales piece. We hear things like, oh there's turning a direct rep into now he's more of an overlay. Through a little bit of those dynamics, what's happening from the sales standpoint and the impact on the channel. >> I think we got to remember the channel is an important wheel to everything we're doing here. With Dell Technologies we have 40,000 sales makers. Within our channel ecosystem we have 140,000 people. That is a sales army. They've gone after the market with the portfolio that we have, with the capability that we have, frankly done properly is unstoppable. And actually educating how both rose to market, how we want to play with one another. We look at, it is the power of and, and especially as we go through these transformational journeys and we're talking about digital and IT and workforce security, but we need everyone to play here. The wonderful news is, you saw, and I'm sure you have from Michael, a year ago we're a $73 billion organization. Within a year we're $80 billion organization. Phenomenal growth. However, the exciting thing for me, that's in a $3 trillion market. So 2.66%, that is so much upside for us, for all of us, that look, done properly, we're going to win is the general feeling. >> It's a pretty remarkable transformation. I mean transformation has been a theme of the whole show here, right? Digital transformation, make it real. You've been involved with both channels and Dell EMC sales. The role of the technology trusted advisor has changed over the last few decades. How are you approaching both your field force and the channel and your partners there, about this new role of how do we make digital transformation real in the field? What kind of upscaling do you need to be doing? And competencies do we need to be working on for folks that are listening that might be out in the field working directly with customers? >> We've all been in the industry for a long time. You think, rewind 10 years ago, you talk about technology, you talk about IT it was a call center. You fast forward to now it's a business imperative. You know when we're talking to our customers they clearly they want to get ahead of this transformational journey. However, we know then that less than half of them have already begun the journey. Here's the good news, those that have begun the journey, here's what we know. They're moving faster, their customer satisfactions are up. They're driving incremental revenue. The costs are going down. They're driving their incremental operating income. And I think what you're seeing here, right here right now, it is no longer this discussion around the transformational journeys. Making it real is here. You're seeing like AeroFarms. You're seeing McLaren onstage talking about bringing Formula One all the way through to medical. You're seeing TGen and a wonderful, wonderful company with the capability using technology to identify cancer earlier in children. I mean, that is what our purpose is all about. Now with that of course you have to evolve your own sales organization as well as your partner ecosystem. And we're treating our partners and their sales teams as exactly one in the same. So the way they're training and all the competencies that we'd expect of our own sales team is exactly what I'm expecting from our partner community. Like, it's an evolution we're going through here. Our sales team, we're training them on these transformations. We're showing them a purpose, how we're going to do it, but the other thing was more exciting for myself. We're also targeting the next generation of sales leaders. You know, working with universities. We want these top graduates to come here, to enjoy this wonderful company and what we're doing here. So now we're investing in people. We actually set up sales universities here in the US. It can be a three month program, it can be a two year program, spending anywhere between, up to almost $400,000 on a graduate coming through so that they understand exactly that the transformations are just natural in their DNA. That's what we're looking for right now. >> I love that, and Stu I love, I mean we both have a history with the Dell Technologies organizations over the years, and I'm impressed by how many people that I have met that are either long-term employees or have left and come back, right? And that investment in the people has got to be critical for your growth, especially at this size. >> Yeah, I think, John, we've gone beyond the, hey, what do you do and how do you do it, right? And now it's like what is your purpose? Our purpose is to impact human lives each and every single day. And I gave you some examples. But look, our ability using technology to connect more people around the world. Our ability to actually use technology to live longer, for us to identify, again, cancer earlier in people. That purpose is inspiring. And then you learn we're spending four and a half billion dollars in R and D to bring world class products and capabilities to the market. Done properly and with that true transformational mindset, as well as not forgetting that there's a massive market on IT infrastructure and the consolidation and winning in that space. Like I think we're, we as a collective community along with our customers we're praying to do wonderful things. >> All right, so, I want you to bring us inside your customers. So you've got North American Commercial Sales. Big market. Probably one of the most dynamic changing markets in the globe these days. what are some of the biggest challenges you're hearing from your customers who talk about digital transformation, make it real. What is your organization hearing while they're out there. >> Well also, actually you talk about North American Commercial Sales. I didn't frame it, where I work $19, $20 billion of the organization. >> Stu: Just a small piece. >> Just a small piece, but of course within we have state and local, we have education, we have federal government, we have the media and business space. Each of them all realize this digital transformation is here. And the conversation they're having with us is how do we get ahead of this, right? What experiences have you enjoyed yourself as an organization or with your partner ecosystem to make it real to them. So we're spending a lot of time with them in our executive briefing centers with our solution architects, showing well how to we enable the AeroFarms that we just talked about? It's really making a real (mumbles) conversation that we're having with them. Now there's the other edge spectrum of our customers, which is look, we want to continue to sell an unbelievable amount of PCs, and unbelievable amount of servers and storage and hyper-converge, and backup. So we have the wide spectrum. The good news is the conversation normally goes to let me tell you about Dell Technologies Advantage. Why did Michael spend $24 billion taking us private? $67 billion giving us all this wonderful array of assets. And as you walk them through these transformational journeys the normal response is oh my goodness, I did not know you did all of that. And then, okay, I'm not ready yet to go all the way there. But the comfort that you have it, okay let's begin a discussion. And that's what we're finding with a lot of our customers right now. >> All right one of the things, look you mentioned so many of the verticals there, and the commonality amongst most of them is change. Talk a little bit about the training, competencies, you know, your organization, how do you keep up? How do you help your customers keep up? >> Yeah, like, what is, change your dye it's kind of the mantra right now. We are spending an unbelievable amount of time on training. But with training also you acquire a lot of consistency. It's interesting we were here only two months ago for our field ready seminar, our sales kickoff. The feedback from our sales team was wow this seems very similar to last year. (mumbles) good. You got to learn these transformational journeys. Gone are the days of just going in and selling a single unit of product. You have to become the trusted advisor. So with that all of our training, all of our competencies are around understanding each of the transformations, how do you layer in Pivotal and Virtustream, and VMWare, and RSA, and SecureWare, and of obviously Dell EMC. How do you bring all of this together? And then also making it very clear to our sales team, This is my expectation of your role. This is what I expect you both to do. And here's the specialty teams that are around here, around you, to make you successful. So we have the training. It goes on every, actually it's consistent training, but two big ones per year. And with (mumbles) partners they've got to do exactly the same thing, that's what we're saying. >> John, as you and your sales leaders go out and talk to IT and you know, you're not, again in the field, you're way beyond oh check the box to order a new round of laptops or a new round of servers, right? Or server refresh. As you talk to the CIOs out there and the senior IT leaders, where are we in this transition? Are they getting it? I guess it's quite a range of responses. >> It really is, look some are already there. But are we there? Absolutely not. I think we're in single, we're more or less single digit. But again, when those CIOs, when they see, are you telling me look I can not only modern infrastructure, I can actually save money by getting to the modern infrastructure and I can layer in insights into my business using your technology, be it big data, be it AI, and I can yield more profitability at the end of it? You find them all in. But they're all in different levels obviously of expectation. >> Are there any characteristics of an organization that is either, is going or is ready to go that you see? >> I wouldn't say, here's what I will say. If you look across all of our transformations, VMWare is always consistent. I will tell you security remains a big theme. The other thing we've found is, again, as we get through these transformational discussions, the starting point still tends to be client. The client still seems to be the gateway to the data center for us. And I think you're also seeing, a lot of times we're also seeing, now everyone recognizing the workforce, the workforce has changed forever. Gone are the days when we remember sitting at a desk from nine til five. Look people are working remotely, people want to be reductive. They want to always be on. And I think that's why you're seeing this resurgence in the PC market. If you look now we've got 21 quarters of consecutive share gain, number one in the world on units, on revenue. Number one on profitability. Number one on server, number one on storage. Obviously number one with VMWare. That's consistent is they want to be dealing with Dell Technologies. >> John I want to give you the final word on key takeaways from the show. But I have to take away a couple things. Yes it does rain in Vegas, and you know, people, you know, playing at events, so other than those two things, what do you hope that people come away from from Dell Technologies World 2018? >> I hope people, well a few things. One, I hope they understand our purpose. We are and we have a desire to impact human life each and every day, by being the essential infrastructure. There is no longer buzz words around these transformational journeys. It's here. You can feel it, you can see it, there's real proof points. I think it's also clear these two motions that are happening. Mass consolidation of IT infrastructure, we want our customers and our partners to leave with Dell Technologies. And as you go through this transformational journey there is only one company who has all of the portfolio to satisfy all the needs, and it's Dell Technologies with the support of our customers and partners, and I'd be remiss if I don't always end by just saying, thank you. None of this is possible without wonderful customers supporting us on this journey. So that's (mumbles). >> All right, John Byrne really appreciate catching up with you. Look forward to catching up with you in the future. Hope you keep this job a little more than a year this time. >> I need to. John, thank you as well, thank you. >> I'm Stu Miniman with John Troyer. We'll be back with lots more coverage. Thanks for watching theCUBE.

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering Dell Technologies World 2018, brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Hey, welcome back to theCUBE, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. Day two of Dell Technologies World. Loads of people here, 14,000 in attendance. 65 hundred partners, analysts, press, you name it. It's here talking about all things transformation. We're very excited to welcome back to theCUBE, Sam Grocott, senior vice president of Infrastructure Solutions Group Marketing. Welcome back! >> I'm psyched to be here, thanks for having me again. >> Lots of news, lots of buzz. >> Mhm. >> Break it down. >> We're powering up the modern data center. I think that was a big theme of this morning's keynote. We're very much focused on taking the, what we refer to as the pillars of the modern data center, to the next level, and being able to introduce a handful of new products this week. Very, very excited about them, and I think we're getting the feedback and response we expected. >> Stu: Yeah Sam, I heard Jeff actually said powers that brand that I want to hear. You know. >> Sam: Yeah. >> We got the PowerMax and the PowerEdge, and you know. >> Sam: You might want to get used to it a little bit. >> Yeah. >> Sam: You might be able to connect a couple trends here. We're powering up the modern data center, but we're not done yet. Obviously today and this week was a big push there, with the introduction of of PowerMax, the new PowerEdge servers. As well as the VX rail, VX rack XDC enhancements. But this is a journey we're on, as we power up the portfolio, and we're just getting started. >> Stu: Alright. Sam, give us the update on the portfolio. You basically have marketing for all the Dell EMC >> That's right. >> Which is the data centerpiece there. EMC you know, Joe Tucci always used to say, overlap's good, I never want to let a wedge in there. But the critique would always be, it was like oh my gosh, I can't figure out, you know, what that portfolio is. >> Sam: Right. >> It's kind of sprawling. So, how do you balance the breadth and meeting what the customers need. And how should we be looking at, both from a product and a market standpoint? >> Yeah, so, you're right. Our history is no creases, no gaps, choice for everyone. Options for everyone. The alternative, one product for everything. We've always chosen not to go that path. However, there is a balance here that I think we all strive for. And that's something that I'm working very closely with the rest of the ISG team and Jeff's team to really understand as we move forward and power up this portfolio. How do we walk that fine balance of choice and flexibility for customers and partners. As well as simplification and simplicity for end users that want to make sure that they're deploying the best upreach solution for their needs. And not confuse them at any time. So, it's a fine line. I think we're making good progress there, we're going to continue to do that as we move forward. >> When you're talking with customers, the users, what is it that they're looking to power up? What, how is it actually applied within an organization? >> Sam: The big shift going on is this world of traditional enterprise applications that are certainly considered mission critical, tier one. Those aren't going anywhere. Those are needed to require the highest levels of resiliency and data services, and everything you would expect from an enterprise grade ray. What is new is the next generation applications that have historically been run in a sandbox, off the beaten path, a line-up business, an architect. Built their own thing, and then guess what, it became important. In fact, now mission critical. This is where you find things like AI, ML, deep learning, IOT. When it becomes mainstream and important, guess whose problem it becomes. It moves to IT. Because that's where they run their end to end data services, their resiliency plans, their data replication plans, business contingency. The expectations of those use cases now, are at the enterprise level. So the bar is being raised there because they don't want sprawl of use cases and applications, especially for their mission critical use cases. So that's what we're focused on. As those apps become mission critical, providing them solutions that give them the enterprise-grade capability, but the performance and capabilities they expect for that other segment of the market. >> Sam, when I look at the portfolio, I wonder if you could speak to really who you're targeting with the messaging. Think back ten years ago, well, EMC was a storage company, Dell was primarily server and PCs and the like. Now we're talking digital transformation. Powering the future. Jeff and Michael and Allison went through all of these trends >> Transformations, yeah. >> How do you position where the products fit and who you're hitting, who some of the chief constituents that you will add to with. >> Yeah, it's gotten more complex. There's no doubt about it. Especially as the next generation work loads emerge in various spots of the organization. As well as some more, as you talk about digital transformation, you're really moving up the stack so to speak in terms of type of people you're selling to. So we've got the world's greatest sales force in the industry, but we've had to modernize them as well. So we've gone through this product modernization. How do we modernize a sales force that of course can have the storage admin conversation. The backup admin conversation. That's what we've been having for 20 years. But that's no longer good enough. You've got to be able to pivot, and go up into the CXO level in terms of the leadership of the IT department. The line of business leaders, which a lot of times are architects or specialists within a given field. And frankly even some cases, in my role, the CMO you're selling into because it's a business data analytics engine, or something that's providing new insights, new markets, and new businesses. So it has gotten more complex there, and the skills required to sell at the byte level all the way up to the boardroom level, is of paramount importance as we go forward. So we spend a lot of time on that now. >> We were talking with a gentleman from TGen earlier today, Stu and I were. It's such an exciting topic, biomedical research. Sequencing the human genome, and how much faster they can do it now, and how much more data they're generating. But they have such potential there, you mentioned Stavros for example, to be able to use that data, combine it, recombine it, to people always say, oh, actionable insights. It's one thing to be able to get actionable insights. It's another thing to be able to have an infrastructure and agility to be able to capitalize on them and deliver differentiated products to market. Revolutionize the customer experience. From a digital transformation perspective, are you finding any industries in particular, you mentioned biomedical research, where they're kind of really leading the charge here and helping you guys develop the product strategy? Or is it more horizontal? >> Sam: Yeah, I think genomics and medical and the health industry are great examples of traditional, large businesses that also play very aggressively in early adopters. I was kind of born and raised in a small company called Isilon, that is now part of the Dell EMC portfolio. And what we are able to do with a breakthrough, leading edge technology ten years ago was we went right after a vertical, go to market strategy, so genomics research, media and entertainment, manufacturing. These are areas that are large businesses but they make big bets on emerging technology, because it's the only place you can go to get those next generation capabilities as those applications mature over time. The great thing about within Dell EMC and the ISG portfolios, we have solutions that can now meet both of those roles needs. More so as they start to mature and become mission critical. I think we're even more well-positioned to help them lead through that transformation that we're seeing going on in all those different verticals today. >> Sam, one of the the things we heard in the keynotes, is are some of the emerging trends. Give us a little look forward, your ISG group, what kind of things are hot on your plate? Especially if you kind of look at the enterprise customers. What's kind of near term and give us a little bit of a roadmap. >> Sam: Yeah. Couple things. I would certainly say cloud, and moving to a cloud, first cloud enabled world. That is really driving a lot of our roadmap innovation as we go forward. So it includes everything from mobility of information, from an on-ram hybrid, to exclusively cloud native off-ram. We're innovating in all of those vectors. You really can't just pick one anymore. So that's a key area. As well as cloud-based analytics and telemetry information. Leveraging the cloud to understand how your infrastructure is operating over time. I would say that's definitely a major area of investment. The other major areas, we have a vision of autonomous infrastructure, within the storage world. Autonomous storage. Really eliminating the need for the day to day management of storage, because the system is so smart, it really takes care of all those typical tasks that consume a storage administrator's, system administrator's day to day. We are in the business of creating outcomes and helping our customers create outcomes. The more we can get them out of the managing and migrating and protecting data and into the application there, where they're adding a lot more value to the organization. I think that's a win-win for both organizations. So machine learning AI as the technology, that's going to allow us to enable an autonomous infrastructure, really make the infrastructure invisible so you can focus on your applications and your outcomes. >> What are some the things that you're hearing from channel partners in terms of, they're on the front lines, often dealing with customers that are at some stage, of a digital, of a transformation journey, we'll say. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing from the channel, we know that there's a number of announcements, we spoke with Cheryl Cook this morning. >> Sam: Yes, good, good. >> How are they being enabled to deliver these solutions, to help drive autonomy for example? >> We've got, in parallel to Dell Tech World, we've got the Global Partners Summit, we've got just an enormous amount of the channel community here for this event. We did make some key announcements, including the Dell MC Ready Bundle. I think it's a great, Ready Stack I should say. Its a great example, which reflects the feedback that they've given us, is give us all the pieces to be successful, to stand up a IT transformation, in their customer's environment. Train them, enable them, package it for them, to make it easy and seamless for them to go in and be that trusted partner for those organizations. So that's one example of the direct feedback from the channel partners. They asked for that offer. We responded very, very quickly. And now we've provided them that kind of end-to-end, kind of reference architecture to build your own Dell EMC end-to-end CI infrastructure. So, very excited about that, and that's direct feedback from the partner community. >> Alright, so that's partner. How about the customer feedback you've gotten so far? Went through a lot of announcements. I can't even imagine how many customer sessions are going on here. >> Sam: Oh yeah. >> What's the consensus so far? >> The excitement is around MVME, and look, we're not first to market. I'm totally okay with that. I'm fine admitting it here in theCUBE. But we are the first to get to market the right way. And that's really what I measure ourselves on. We didn't just build our own custom MVME modules. We didn't build something that would be difficult to add on to, in terms of MVME over-fabrics, or storage class media. We built something architected via software defined architecture, with an end-to-end MVME implementation. Our customers love that because it gives you the right away benefits of performance, but it also in the future, in that they'll be able to easily add in storage class memory, MVME over-fabrics when it becomes available into that system. So its not a forklift upgrade. It's built for today as well as tomorrow. They love that aspect. >> So if customers, their pent-up demand for the MVME solution, can you give us any guidance as to is this going to be 10%, what kind of, how fast will adoption be of something like this? >> Sam: Yeah, so, the reality is, its still fairly early days there as well. We expect this to be an offering that's going to start small and grow over time. That's why, in the high end space where PowerMax is complementing our BMax line, the Bmax 950 and 250 are not going anywhere any time soon. For our organizations that need to bring those next generation applications together, and need that real-time response, PowerMax is the way to go. We expect 60 to 70% of all organizations by 2020 to have at least one real time application running in a mission critical environment. That's one. 60 to 70%. So I would say its still early days. You're going to have a specific need for that level of performance to go to MVME. But it's going to start accelerating here over this year. Particularly with MVME over-fabrics coming to market later. As well as storage class memory. That's going to accelerate it even more. >> Stu: Alright Sam, just want to give you the final word. >> Yep. >> Take aways you want people to have understanding Dell and the Dell EMC portfolio when they leave DELL EMC Dell Technologies World 2018 this year. >> Yeah, certainly I hope they see the investments we're making to power up the portfolio. I think the announcements we made this week have been fantastic in terms of responding to market needs, customer needs. And frankly, I want them to learn more. I want them to watch more and more of theCUBE, to learn deeply how things are rolling out. What was the mind behind the madness of building these products. I know we've got a large amount of the team speaking in theCUBE, but whether its in theCUBE, or through the sessions, learn, adjust. Because everybody's modernizing, everybody needs to transform, this is a great opportunity for them to do that with their skill set and their knowledge in the industry. >> Lisa: Everybody does need to transform. Sam, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE again. >> Thanks for having me. >> Lisa: For sharing what's new, and what you're doing, leading marketing for all of Dell EMC. >> Sam: Thank you, thank you. >> Lisa: You've been watching theCUBE, we want to thank you for watching. I'm Lisa Martin, for Stu Miniman, we are live day two of Dell Technologies World in Vegas. Stick around, we'll be right back after a short break. (pop music)

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, to EMC World. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with co-host, Paul Gillin. We are joined by Eric Seidman. He is the Senior Product Manager, Product Marketing, Dell EMC. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Eric: Thanks for having me. Pleasure. >> So I want to start out by talking about the Isilon launch. Tell us a little bit about the impetus for this new platform. >> Yeah, right, so thanks. You know, we see a lot happening from our customers' standpoint. I mean, there's a lot of trends in the industry. All flash, move to cloud. But in our particular markets and such is also a huge demand for more performance and really unconstrained scalability. And being able to do that but not compromise on enterprise features or protocols. Our customers still need all of the security and the protection that they expect as in their other storage platforms. And so we took a look at how we architected the Isilon hardware. Brought in all these different considerations and then went back to our engineering and said, "You need to make the number one mass "scale-out platform in the industry even better." And so here's your challenge engineering. And what they did was they developed a completely new architecture that goes from the traditional node in a chassis to being able to put that same type of node in a lot smaller space. And we've achieved that being able to take what would normally take 16 U of rack space and four nodes and compress that into a single 4 U chassis. But they just didn't make it smaller, they made it more reliable and also much, much faster. Six times faster in terms of IOPS, twice as the capacity that would be in a normal 16 U of space in a single 4 U. And so that has huge advantages for our customers who have these huge demands. So now they have more performance and less space, more capacity and less space, 75% reduction-- (audio and video defect) then tier that in the cloud as well. So we give them paths to be able to have the genomic research done faster, store more data, and can continuously store more data in less space. >> Manuvir Das was on earlier and talking about how you're positioning ECS is Tier 1 storage, and Isilon is Tier 2 storage. >> Eric: That's the other way around. >> My notes are wrong, (laughs) my mistake. >> Eric: Quite alright. >> Is there a merger at some point of those two, or are we going to continue to have two distinct tiers of storage? >> Well, we're bringing them closer together all the time. One of the unique capabilities that we have with Isilon is be able to tier, to ECS our cloud storage. And that has significant benefits for our customers, because when the data is in the ECS object store, now it can be automatically replicated across geographies around the world for higher redundancy capabilities, and also to be able to access that data remotely from other geos as well. So we're always looking at how to bring those two platforms closer together, and then you'll see tighter integration of Isilon and ECS as we progress. We kind of look at it though, the file and object as two distinct use cases and have different requirements. So our path has been to really be able to provide the best of breed for both of those. Best of breed for Scale-Out File with Isilon and its protocols for file, and then ECS for object protocols. But we're bringing those capabilities closer together with the tiering capabilities and the interactive capabilities with the data, whether it's in the file platform or in the object platform. >> You are a veteran of the data industry. Before the cameras were rolling you were telling us about how you really were at this at the beginning. So can you talk a little bit about how customers needs have changed over the years since you've been in this industry? >> Yeah, so I mean, significantly I've been around in the storage industry since RAID-- well, not RAID, but OpenRAID platforms for Linux systems came rolling out and things were transitioning from the mainframe to Linux and then that kind of area, and SANs were kind of the new concept back in the day. And that had a lot of capabilities about being able to consolidate different servers and different applications to share a storage for block protocols. And that was a big boon for the industry and changed how applications could be deployed and reduced the cost of storage and improved efficiencies. And with Isilon that scale-out capability for file protocols has kind of been that same type of breakthrough where we can now consolidate multiple types of workflows from many, many different data types and applications. We have customers consolidating tens, hundreds of different applications on a single Isilon cluster because it can scale in performance and capacity and can support so many different protocols so that you can, say, bring in data from weblogs from your Linux servers and then do in-place analytics on that to gain more insights into what's happening in your environment and that sort of thing. So it's kind of being that same kind of continuation of what we saw, or I saw, back in the day with RAID and SAN consolidating block storage. We've been able to bring that even further with scale-out NAS and then integration of object and cloud just kind of continues that. >> There's a massive transition going on right now form hard disk to flash-based storage. What are your customers, how are your customers driving this? I mean, what are they asking for from you in terms of flash capability? What are their buying plans for conventional rigid-- - Yeah, that's a great question. (audio and visual defect) Just, they want flash, 'cause sometimes it's like the new shiny thing. But they're not exactly sure-- (audio and visual defect) >> in a number of different industries. Can you talk about what you see as the most exciting and profound changes that you're seeing? >> Yeah, certainly. Well, I mean, the reason I keep mentioning genomic research, 'cause we were just in a meeting with one of our great customers, TGen, and they're doing life-saving research and movies are great and all, but it's kind of different on the scale of what we can do to help mankind. So obviously life sciences and health care is just a huge benefit that we're seeing brought out as well. But just a lot of the high-performance commercial environments like we talked about with media and entertainment being able to change how they're doing their workflows and enable them to actually see their daily shootings as they filmed them rather than having to compress them and watch their dailies in a lower compressed format and that sort of thing. So it's transforming that as I mentioned in the EDA space, being able to get their chips to market faster. And then particularly in that space, their data's doubling twice every year. So they have huge constraints around the amount of data that they can store, so we're helping them by being able to reduce their rack space by 75% with our new technology. So it's really impacting a lot of different use cases, not only in the performance side but as well as in the density and TCO as well. >> We hear about things like holographic storage and stuff that's coming out of the labs right now that sounds very exciting. As a storage guy, what excites you most? I mean, what's the next big thing? >> Yeah, that's a great question. Well certainly we're always looking at what's evolving in the storage. And that's one of the cool things about our architecture that we've announced here with our new generation of Isilon is that it's really future-proof. So it's designed for an eye on the future. It's extremely modular. It allows us to be able to independently change out the CPUs, change out the storage media, the networking capabilities and such. So as new technologies do come to market, we can quickly bring those into the product fold and then incorporate the features of that technology into the software and bring them to market very, very quickly. So, like, when a hundred gigabit ethernet is available in the market, we'll be able to accommodate that by just slipping in a new HBA in this modular architecture. It's designed on the media side to be very, uh, media agnostic. Today it supports SAS and SAS and SATA technologies all in the same node types, right. So and that allows us to configure these things in different ways for different types of use cases and such, so, yeah, I'd say, getting back to your original question here is that, we look forward to these new things coming out so that we can look at how we can integrate those into this new modular architecture. >> Paul: You're not going to pick winners though. >> (laughs) Not right now. >> One of the other things that Michael Dell talked about during his keynote was-- (audio and visual defect) >> You know, customers are very, very concerned about that. It's top of mind. You know, one of the key features again with Isilon is that you not only get this enormous performance benefit from this new flash nodes that are GAing this week, and all the new capabilities of the architecture, but we don't compromise on any of those areas, right. So we provide multi-protocol access through many, many different types of unstructured data, protocols, and Hadoop at HDFS, and Object APIs. But it just doesn't stop there, right, so we also have the security and the compliance with encryption and audit and a secure access zone so you can wall off a cluster, make sure it's secure, make sure storage admins can only do the admin and not get to the data. Things that are top of mind for our customers across a broad segment of markets. >> Eric, thanks so much for joining us. This has been great. >> You're welcome. Thank you very much. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Paul Gillin, we will have more from EMC World after this.