>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering DELL Technologies World 2019. Brought you by DELL Technologies, and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin with John Furrier, day two of theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019. We have been talking with lots of great folks the last couple of days, and we are pleased to welcome to theCUBE Erin Banks, Director of Product Marketing for DELL EMC. Erin it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> It's great to be here, thank you so much. >> So this is the second branded DELL Technologies World. The first one since DELL became a publicly traded company once again. But you have a storied past of all this experience with a lot of these brands. Give us a little bit of your background as you've made your way through all these companies, and left your mark. >> Yeah, I feel like I've hit just about every corporate conference that we have under DELL Technologies, 'cause I came in originally through RSA around 2006, and then that acquisition happened, and then I transitioned over to EMC. So then we started the whole EMC World before, RSA Conference, EMC World. Always continuing to support security. Always continuing to do that. Went to VMware, they're doing the support security. We had a Vspecials program, so we wanted to sell EMC products for VMware products. So we continue to do that. So I think there's VMware and then I came back, I left for a little bit and then I came back. So I always joke that I have four companies I think left, and I would've had like, I think I get an award for having worked at every seven of the companies. (Lisa laughs) >> At least a mug, right? >> Yeah, I should get something I think. >> You should. >> Yeah, I think so. A jacket. >> Alright, so what's your current role now? So you're working in what group? Where are you now? >> Yeah, so right now I'm focused on structure, storage, divisions. So that's going to be Isilon, ECS, ClarityNow and the project Nautilus, and we're focused from a marketing perspective. I'm the Director of Product Marketing for that group. >> Yeah, storage didn't get a lot of keynote coverage. Normally they do get a lot with the EMC, 'cause obviously there's a lot of things going on around Dell Technology World, but Michael Dell said, storage isn't stopping, 'cause you have more data coming in. So unstructured is a big part of it. >> It's huge. >> Whether it's social data, gestured, any kind of Data Exaust, IoT, data is data, right? And the unstructured is the large growing percentage of the overall data population. >> Yeah, I think somebody gave me a statistic that 80% of the data that's generated is unstructured data, right? And people need to keep it and they need to, in some situations like Thomas Driving Systems, they need to keep it for a very very long time. So, there's always that debate of all these years that I've been at these conferences, about how long you keep the data, and obviously archiving them and where are you moving them, giving the customers the options. We're still obviously talking about that, which is great, but now we just have more and more data. Now it's really, from an Isilon perspective, we're focused on the management, and also the real estate, right? Because there isn't just every amount of space that every data center can have. Customers are running out of data center space, and they're running out of people, right? And they're like, listen, I can't hire anymore people, I want to focus on the business, and that's what we support from an Isilon perspective, is focusing on the business. I mean we obviously focus from all of UDS, but our announcements today were a focus on Isilon. >> So large growth, okay, but with the habit of, okay, just store it, we'll get to it later, it's been a nice luxury with unstructured, because some of the technology allows you to store it. Some call it a data lake or data swamp, depending on how you look at it. Now that the focus is getting more out of the data, while still storing it, right? Just throw it into the pile or into the corpus or into the data lake or whatever storage it is. Getting the mechanism to get the data out, and making it relevant and valuable is a focus. What's going on there? What are some key trends that are happening that you guys are riding? >> Yeah, well we're talking a lot, we have a campaign around data capital, right? And obviously as we all know, data has a lot of value within organizations. I'd like to tell customers that data has more value than we do as the employees. Companies will get bought and they'll fire the people, because they just want the data. And we can't ignore that fact, right? What does it say about the businesses customers? What does it say about their likes or dislikes? What does it say about where the company needs to go? The only way you know, to be successful, I think, in the next three to five years is to understand your customers and what they need, right? We had a bank the other day that was like, well all of our customers are 50 years old, so we're not going to do applications, and we don't really care about our data, and you're like, but you have people that are coming up behind that are using applications, right? That want more of a service. It's no longer, I say to banks, you don't need to buy another bank, right? You need to provide a service to me. How do you get that value out of that data to understand who I am as a customer or what I like, where I travel, what do I do in my day to day life, and give me that service, so I continue to be a customer for you. That's essential. >> It is essential. We talk about customer experience a lot. It's absolutely essential, because whether we're consumers of banking services or retail or whatever it is, we have so much choice. >> Correct. >> And especially with social media, I talk about unstructured data, we have a voice and the opportunity to get that out there, and go in turn. So really evaluating that data and understanding, and making decisions on that data to deliver a personalized experience is table stakes. >> Yes, I mean, we talk about this all the time, about the markets that are not doing it. Like retail, right? They always talk about, everyone wants to go to Amazon and buy their clothes or now there's boxes that are coming to your door with all the clothes in it. So how does the real estate business stay essential to me as a buyer, we all need clothes, but what gets me back into the store, right? And we talk about the sensors, right? We talk about the data that is generated of just me walking around the stores. How long do I spend in front of an item, right? Can I have a coupon that's popped up on my phone, right? How do I get more from an experience. And I think these are the struggles that organizations are having. We were talking to a customer that's managing a sports arena and the biggest thing is, how do you get them back into the arena? How do you change their experience, because they're a Canadian company, they don't want to be standing outside in the cold, 'cause it's hockey season, everyone loves it. How do you get them in earlier, because now there's more security, right? We have this, I always call it the physics effect, right? You have one change, it ripples into everything else. So it's cold, the security lines are long, I'd rather be at home watching this. How do I get that experience? And these are the partnerships that are being created with companies like athletic companies, and sports arenas and sports teams and things like that to really change an experience that we have, and the only way you could do that is with data, right? The enormous amount of data that we have. We couldn't do that if we didn't have the data. >> So what do they just come up with a better solution, not standing outside and getting in quickly? >> Yes, so, yeah we talked about this, right? We did a great podcast about this, because they're now doing these programs where they'll bring you in earlier, right? So maybe they'll have dinner and of couple beers, right? And you can come in and kind of enjoy the arena when no game is going on, but you get in earlier out of the cold. They talked about buying retail from your seats, right? And they test it out. That wasn't successful. So it's a really good kind of option along those lines. People like to walk around and look, and they touch and feel the items, and look at all of their options. So these are great things that they were able to test. The digital signage has been a huge impact from an analytics perspective. Really being able to change it. The amount of growth that organizations have achieved from just digital signage has been enormous. So, they're really transforming their businesses in different aspects, and it's all really driven from the data. >> So what's going on with the products that you guys are doing? What's the value proposition for Isilon? Where's the focus for you now? >> Yeah, so, we're always continuing to just answer the questions that our customers are having. Which always comes down to the amount of data that we have, how to continue to manage that, and then how to manage it in this data center. So we had a release today, which were focused both from a software aspect as well as a hardware aspect and now our software of OneFS, so it's still the single file system, is not being able to scale out to 252 nodes. It was 144 before. Now it's 58 petabytes. And what I love most about that is, how you manage 58 petabytes is exactly how you manage a terabyte. I mean that's important to a customer, where they're saying, I could easily add storage within a minute, I don't have to worry about it, and I have the same amount of people managing the system. I just have to focus on the workloads, and I just have to focus on the applications. And then our customers are saying, again, we're running out of the real estate, how can you give us a more dense box, right? We need the performance of a hybrid, but we need the capacity of an archive systems, again, we need to be able to do more with less almost. So we introduced the H5600 this week or today. And really just being able to give our customers what they need to really continue to drive their business forward. I always say, it's always about the workloads, and the applications. I'm inspired by what our customers are doing. They're just doing these innovative tools, and work and everything, because no longer they're being constrained from an IT perspective, right? The technology is now doing the heavy lifting, and now we're able to really utilize the data for what it's worth and getting the most out of it. Which I just love that, right? I think that's important to businesses. >> Put today's announcements in the perspective of the Workforce. We've talked a lot about Workforce the last couple of days, about really enabling businesses to do so much with this distributed Workforces, but in terms of Workforce optimization, the density that you just talked about, what are some of the immediate impacts that customers are going to realize that's going to, besides productivity improvements? >> Yeah, again, I've had direct conversations with customers, it was like an autonomous driving system, and they were saying, listen, again, I don't have a head count, nobody wants to give me more head count. I can't keep doing this. What the business wants to do is, they want to get to market fast. Because if we can get to the market fast, then we can drive that business faster, and that's what we need. How can you help me? And that's what I love about, not only the unstructured data conversation, but the Isilon conversations that we're having is like, how can you help my business? Well okay, we understand that there's struggles. Again, no data center, don't have the head count, they'll give us developers, right? They want to drive in these other markets, right? And then were saying, great, we'll continue to drive this one file system capability, but give you this enormous growth, and really continue to drive that, right? >> If they get revenue, they can get head count. So this I back to >> Correct. >> the cloud model of, let's get some value out there quickly, time to value. >> Yeah, and then the question is, where is the optimal head count that you need? Is it to do with somebody just continuing to rack and stack. Or is it someone that's really going to get the value out of that data, continue to push that, to test the systems. Again, they want to get to the market first. How can we enable that? How can we really help them to do that? That's our goal. >> So talk about customers and their receptiveness for AI. We hear a lot about it all the time, but really looking at, we talked about the volume of data, we could talk about that for days and days, but really enabling customers to harness the power of AI machine learning to extract the insights. Where are those conversations going with customers as it relates to Isilon and some of the things today, but just in general, where's there appetite with respect to being ready to harness the power of AI? >> We ask this question a lot about where are we in the AI landscape, right? And some customers are really focused on that, but they have a completely different model than some of the companies that have been our traditional companies that we've been kind of like focused on. So it's kind of a between the both, right? I think a lot of it, in my opinion, a lot of it has to do with the culture, right? It's a completely different way of thinking about a business, and it's a completely different way of focusing on, not only your data, but like the data management. You know with the joke about a data swamp, cleaning the data, having a business focus that's driven specifically from data is a culture change. And not a lot of people are willing to have that culture change. New companies can do that, 'cause that's how they developed the company, right? But when you see some of the companies that we've all been a part of for all of these years, that's not that easy. So, in the little baby steps, which is why I love telling those customer stories, so I'll be like, listen, this is possible, this is not just fake, we're not just fairies floating around us, right? This is truth capablities-- >> It's real transformation, that's the theme. The developers are a key part of this. This is something that we've seen. Developers using data as part of their application. Making that addressable, making it fast access is one, that's awesome. The other interesting dynamic that I want to get your thoughts on, because you have a security background is securing data and also governance or also driving use cases in applications that might not have been foreseen. We're one year into GDPR, and I don't think really anything's changed, but, I don't want to go on that rant, but now you have other regulatory things that's saying, hey, you know what, we might have to deal with the data differently. So how is Isilon enabling that? Is it just another use case? >> Yeah, I mean it is absolutely just in another use case that we're just going to have to focus on from the aspect of what's the implication. What are their customers looking at? When we talk specifically about GDPR, that's fairly new, right? We're just trying to figure this out, and trying to look at those different kind of aspects. A lot of that was also the right to know, and right to remove, and saying, what do you know about me and how do you kind of manage that? So a lot of that is really focused on a data management aspect and it's not just from Isilon, but it's, how do you manage it, right? So the ClarityNow capabilities that we have, right? This product that we were able to acquire, that really will give you that great insight into your data, so you can make those decisions, it says, alright, well this is all of our information on Erin Banks, this is her likes, dislikes, whatever that information has, right? We're able to really manage that a lot better, and the data management is the really next important step of the data collection, the data processing. It's understanding what you have, because it all comes in, but it doesn't add value until you really know what you have and what you don't have. Because even from an analytics perspective, you might have to supplement that data from some other resource. Maybe you need to change the application, and get additional data. This is all really driven across that same kind of aspect. This is the same conversation, and we'll just continue to fuel that and have that, and enable them to do that. That's why I say, we want to inspire our customers to be like, wow, I didn't realize that I could do that with tech, right? And then start enabling them to be innovative, and that's what we're still continuing to do. >> What's one of your favorite stories of, we had talked about your tenure within the Dell Technologies family when we first started, but looking at today in 2019, every company is a tech company or has to be. If you look back over the last 10, 12 years, what's some of your favorite stories of how this company Dell Technologies has enabled, and it's companies, a surprising customer to become a tech company? >> Yeah, and I think the number one thing that I personally love, right? That keeps me here. That brought me back, right? Not only was it just 2006 and staying, but said, I want to go back to that, is because what I really feel is, our experience that we have across every market, right? The geographies, the struggles that customers are having, and what we're able to learn from them, and really help our customers excel. It's not just us selling products, right? It's not just selling services, it's not just selling software, right? It's us trying to get out there and saying, this is how other customers are using it, this is how they've been successful, this is where they've downfall, lets help you, right? As we're trying to bring companies further along on their business journey, and we're saying, we've worked with customers to do this, we'll continue to work with you to do that, and we can do it across all seven of these companies end-to-end. It's a very impactful capabilities across applications, security, which is incredibly important, right? IT and Workforce and all these individual transformations, and that's what I think is a passion, and the best part of what we do. >> Well Erin, thank you so much for joining John and me on theCUBE this afternoon, and walking us through some of these key things, helping customers of any industry really excel, and unlock the capital in their data. We appreciate your time. >> I appreciate yours, thank you so much. >> Our pleasure. For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live day two of our coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019 from Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)