live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering Dell technologies world 2019 brought to you by Dell technologies and it's ecosystem partners welcome back everyone to day one of the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world here in Sin City Las Vegas 15,000 attendees I'm your host Rebecca night along with my co-host Dave Volante we're joined by a Charlie Haney he is the senior vice president Dell technologies consulting services thanks so much for coming on the queue absolutely thanks for having me again so we were talking a little before the cameras rolling you have spent nearly your entire career at this company at first EMC then Daley MC now Dell technologies how how have you seen the landscape change and transform over the course of your career yeah it's it's crazy I mean think about just even as consumers what we've seen in the last 10 years I mean us thinking about my flight out you know I booked everything online Amex all my calendar and everything is managed by TripIt I check in with my United app I get here I take an uber I mean the entire experience is digital and we see that in our everyday lives and today with technology I mean all of our customers are looking to figure out how do they apply these emerging technologies to their business so that they can open up new revenue streams or create new business opportunities to really win inside their industry and so I think it's just an exciting time and I couldn't be happier to be here at Dell technologies because I feel like we're at the center of all of itself so you mentioned all these exciting new technologies AI IOT this in the end this is all part of this digital transformation how would you describe how your clients are thinking about all of this but sort of what what are their pain points what is keeping them up at night you know I mean not all customers are the same as you could imagine we have some that are just starting and some that feel like they're well on their way but it seems like as as they go down their path they learn that there is still a lot to go I would say many of them are excited about the emerging technologies but they're still puzzled with how to actually apply it in their business and things like multi-cloud you know while it has a great promise they're also you know a little bit betwixt with how to actually manage and run this multi cloud environment so the new solutions like dell technologies cloud and the promise to actually manage that and provide a single cloud playing across hybrid environments on prem off prem you know these are ways that as a technology company we're able to help customers start to stitch these technologies together in a more seamless way to help enable what they're trying to do inside their business so certainly the narrative you hear in the press and no question comes from a lot of the technology companies is you've gotta transform digitally your gut your if not you're gonna get disrupted most organizations you talk to have some kind of digital transformation strategy going on but the reality is there are a number of industries that really haven't encountered disruption Financial Services is a good example the defense industry health care it's probably ripe for destructive disruption but but hasn't yet but we certainly all believe it's coming and we all believe it underlying that trend is data yet I wonder what that discussion is like with customers is there a keen sense that they've got to do something or is it really mixed is there a complacency in some industries and what role do you guys play and sort of helping them squint through that yeah I mean we certainly find that customers that are trying to transform are looking at how do they take the data that oftentimes they already have and figure out how to actually consolidate it and get it into a well-run data platform first so that then they can do analytics and they can actually get the business insights out of it to actually go do something on the Digital side and so oftentimes you know as an infrastructure company right we're helping them build the digital infrastructure for their data platform to enable their digital transformation initiatives at the same time we're helping on the IT side to actually drive out the cost of their IT to go capture the dollars to go enable and fund a lot of those digital transformation initiatives - so there's kind of the data play and then there's obviously the infrastructure play that enables in Hansa when we first started doing the Cubist is our tenth year and and back then if you talked about eliminating you know mundane infrastructure management tasks a lot of people would tighten up ago that's my job you're talking about today people are sort of embracing that because they realize this is the there's there's a brighter future ahead so maybe talk about that skills gap what role you guys play in closing that gap is it just purely sort of they outsource that and you teaching them how to fish yeah it really varies and I would agree with you I mean years ago people were afraid of what might happen to them and today right with the stats most of our organizations that we talked to already leveraged five or more clouds right whether it's an on-prem or an off Prem cloud or a SAS based application and so it's no longer afraid it's like it's reality it's happening and so for us we're helping them figure out how to stitch those things together now our consulting services we can either help them build the upfront strategy to actually build a roadmap and a plan of where they should go and how they should get there as well as those iterations of actually executing and implementing whether that is an IT transformation or a digital transformation plan oftentimes by us helping them build we're actually enabling and helping them establish also an operating model of what is the people and process now that I need within the organization to actually start to deliver something like IT as a service it's extremely different and so then you know obviously there's projects that we do jointly with organizations and customers and they learn as we go and then obviously we have educational services if they want something that's more formal on that side so here's talking about people process technology and and practitioners to tell you people and to in process of the hardest technologies the easiest part you'll always hear that yeah having said that technology catalyzes these change whether it's AI 5g you know IOT so what are some of the catalysts that you're seeing today and what kind of services are you guys providing I mean think again just think about the cloud platform that was announced earlier today I mean for years to be honest we've been building on-premise private clouds and doing manual integration with public all right we've been creating a vision of a service catalog that actually spans multiple on-prem off Prem but not fully integrated now we have an entire cloud plane that actually enables what you just said so the technology is starting to catch up to what we want to consume which is I see as a service on Prem or off Prem but again that will change those roles with NIT you're not going to have silo-based roles around server storage networking you're going to have cloud operators that are stretching not just on Prem but off Prem technologies could be as your Google AWS whatever right and so those roles are drastically different and how do we enable technology across those and so as a consulting organization we're helping define those roles as well as enable them and then build the platforms that ultimately deliver that service so I want to ask you about innovation because we learned that Dell is turning 35 next week that's sort of the start of middle age where's that you get a little slower and get a little creepier how do you stay on the cutting edge and how do you make sure that you are thinking four steps ahead of your customers and and what they will need next you know it's amazing I mean obviously as an organization we're investing 12 billion dollars or more of R&D over the course of the last three years I mean the innovation and the funding for innovation is just continuing to pour the synergies of bringing organizations like VMware and L EMC infrastructure together or pivotal or secure works I mean it's the right blend and mixture of software and infrastructure that allows us to integrate and by integrating we can then innovate and so I honestly think many times our customers are telling us what they need and as long as we continue to be good listeners and we are delivering on what our customers are needing with the technology investments we're making we'll continue to innovate so you guys announced some had some announcements today around multi-cloud the VMware cloud on gel EMC I want to ask you a question Charlie and then tie into that announcement is multi cloud sort of a symptom of multi vendor and line of business and shadow IT or is it increasingly becoming a strategy and if so how do you see that strategy evolving well you know I would say for the organization that hasn't built the right plan and strategy and is getting reactive you know it's really a reactive kind of plan they're seeing all these clouds just kind of pop up and they're not integrated so they're isolation of technologies in different locations for those organizations that are building a strategy to figure out how to best leverage those technologies it's completely different right and by doing that we're able to go look at applications and do proactive cloud suitability studies and make sure that they're putting applications in the right locations to get the right benefits and cost advantage that they need and that's a very different thing than IT waiting for the business to go invest in some SAS model so there's a hut there have to be a top-down edict for the latter vision to be realized in other words if the corner office isn't saying hey without pay attention to IT when they say this is our multi cloud strategy or can it actually happen from a grassroots level you know I don't want to say it can't happen perhaps it could I can tell you the customers that we've engaged with that are having the most success absolutely it's starting at the board level right I mean it's it is a top-down support and focus for the organization I mean there's going to be people challenges as we've talked about technology challenges financial challenges it's gonna take senior level people to actually knock those things down when we do advisory services like this broken saw advisory where we help customers build a strategy one of the number-one barriers that we're knocking down is internal conflict we bring people within the organization together with our subject matter expertise who have done this before and oftentimes we can't get the organization itself to agree on what is the vision and the guiding principles of this multi-cloud strategy and so that is oftentimes the challenged and can't be done ground up oftentimes it does require a strong leadership team to actually support it fund it and then help remove those roles typical starting point for you guys you'll go get an executive sponsor and then you'll organize the team and then you know that's always the cleanest but again as we just talked about customers are you know in various places along that journey so for us it's important to figure out where they are meet them where they are if they're halfway down that maybe it's just a course correction maybe it's something where they're struggling with and we just need to help them with a particular area of it so you know we have customers all along that journey and our goal is just to help them get to the end of that regardless of where we start well Charlie thank you so much for coming on the cube this was a great conversation absolutely thanks for having me I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Volante we will have much more from day one of the cubes live coverage from Dell technologies world here in Las Vegas coming up in just a little bit [Music]