>> Narrator: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a Cube conversation. I'm really excited to have our next guest on. You see them all over on social, a very active community member. And we have not heard from him for a little while, so I'm psyched to have him on. He's Bobby Allen. He is a tech and Cloud evangelist. Bobby, how you doing? >> I'm good, Jeff, how are you? >> Good, so, I'm just to have the obligatory check-in. So, you're getting through this madness of COVID, and family's good, everything's good? >> Yeah, everybody's good. I've got a teen and a twin. They haven't driven us crazy yet. So, so far, everybody's healthy and everybody's good. >> Good, good. So, let's jump into it, Bobby. You know, people talk about Cloud as being, there's a lot of great benefits to Cloud, you know, kind of, cost savings, and agility, and more importantly, really as a driver of innovation which I think most people are kind of late to the party there, they think really more on cost savings versus innovation, but now, it's been around, you know, AWS has been around kind of, broke open the door in terms of public Cloud, and then everything was a public Cloud and not because of public Cloud, and then we have hybrid Cloud and we have multicloud. And now, things are kind of, settling down. So, when you talk to people about Cloud, how should they think about the reality of it once they kind of, leave the trade show and they're getting back to their desk, and they actually have to start implementing some things? >> So, great question, Jeff, First of all, thank you for giving me that opportunity to answer that. This is how I think about Cloud. So, we often talk about Cloud in terms of gym memberships, right? Like going to the Cloud is like buying a gym membership. I actually argue that the Cloud is actually more like weights. If you apply weights to a good form you're going to get stronger, if you apply weights to a bad form you're going to hurt yourself. And what we found is that a lot of these companies, Jeff, are applying Cloud and automation to things that really didn't make a lot of sense. And so, they're wasting more money, they're getting more frustrated, and they're wondering why Cloud was not this magic bullet that just solved everything. It didn't fix world peace and global hunger, and now, they're worse off than they were before. There are a couple of reasons I can go into about that but hopefully, that answers the question at first. We're training the wrong way, Jeff. We're adding weight to things that don't make sense and we're hurting ourselves. >> So, it it just I picked the wrong application or are they operating it in a way as they operated it when it was on-prem? 'Cause the thing I always think of, which is interesting, right? Is everybody always talks about spinning up capacity, right? Spin up capacity. You're running a promotion on the Superbowl, and you're going to have a bunch of people hitting your coupon but they'd never talk about spinning it down. And I went to a really interesting presentation one time where a guy talked about their application. He's like, we like when you turn it off, when you turn off our application, we're not making any money, but it tells that you know, kind of how to operate this thing, which is turn it on, but don't forget to turn it off. And I think, you know, we had a situation on one of our little applications that we left open and let something run and ended up with a bill that we weren't necessarily anticipating, not because we did anything wrong, but we just didn't do the right thing, which was to turn off that particular service when we didn't need it. So, what's the wrong way, what's the wrong exercise? Why are people screwing this up? >> So, I think the problem, Jeff, is actually more upstream. So, my personal mantra for 2020 has been, tech is the easy part, data and behavior are the hard parts. And I think you nailed it, right? That Cloud is only about what you need to buy, not what you need to change, then you're going to be woefully disappointed with the results. And so, when I'm saying go upstream, what I'm finding is, missed expectations, Jeff, sink more projects than bad code broken APIs or large bills? The thing that we're missing is, we're thinking that technology replaces the need to have a conversation. So, for example, when we say we want to do something better in the Cloud, what does better actually mean? So, let's talk about food for a second. Hopefully, I don't make your people hungry 'cause it's around lunchtime. But if we think about Cloud application like a recipe, are we tryna make a mediocre recipe better or make a good recipe at scale, right? 'Cause if you take a nasty recipe and scale it out, you're just going to go broke faster. So, really the question is, which problem are we trying to solve? What is the issue that we're really wrestling with? And so, we need to have a better vocabulary, more descriptive conversations. And so, let me give you one that I often talk to customers about, right? We talk about technical debt a lot of times. And technical debt, Jeff, in my opinion, is being used as a misnomer. So, they're kind of, different sorts of debt that I see often in the C-suite. So, there's technical debt where I don't like what we're running, there's data debt where I don't know what we're running, and there's brain debt where I don't know what we want. And Jeff, I would argue that a lot of things that are masquerading as technical debt in the C-suite are really brain debt. I haven't figured out what we want to do, I haven't thought about what we're willing and able to change. And so, that's why the Cloud is a disappointment because we haven't figured out what we want for lunch. (laughs) >> So, it's a classic like people process technology program, you know, problem. And we hear about it all the time, right? And everyone loves to focus on the technology. I haven't heard it really explained that well, but that's what you're saying. It's like, we'll just jump to that part so we don't have to actually ask the hard questions, right? And the thing that makes me think of it when you talked about that is it's kind of like the whole data aggregation problem and all the big data adventures when half the time people don't know what data is where, so, even just going through the exercise of cataloging, finding, organizing, cleansing, all that kind of stuff before you really start to think about what can you do with the big data project? You got to get the baseline down before you can get into the fancy stuff. Sounds kind of like, what you're talking about. >> You nailed it, Jeff. And I'm actually going to piggyback on something you said. This is actually the problem that I think we're wrestling with in Cloud and in life. There it is, right? And we're got to put a fine point in it for the listeners. We are struggling, Jeff, with how to evaluate better versus different. And so, what Cloud has done more importantly, Cloud has shortened the amount of time that we're willing to spend on something before we just start over again. And so, the question that we wrestle with is, do I need to do the same thing a little bit differently? Do I need to tweak it or is there something better that's come along where I need to throw everything away, start all over again, and wipe the slate clean. And so, here's what ends up happening, right? The challenge that we have building on that is how we choose, Jeff, is more important than what we choose because a lot of us are making choices but we're not developing a framework to choose in a world where different things are pushed at us really every day and every night, right? Amazon and Azure are changing literally thousands of things every night. And if I feel like there's something new out there, I have to understand, is this noise, or is this something I pay attention to? Is this a size for a project or is this something that helps my value? If you don't have a way to choose, Jeff, every new option is going to just lead to more confusion and more decommitment. >> Right, well, I mean, you raised a really interesting point which is how do CIOs keep up with all this stuff? I mean, how do they possibly keep the lights on, you know, run digital transformation, kind of, keep up with the, Lord knows, how many changes like you said, get made at Amazon every single day I mean, the feature set when Andy stands on stage at re-invent and lists all the services. I think he's using like a two-and-a-half point font on a 200 foot video screen. I mean, there's so much there. So, how do you help people take a step back from, it's like driving, you know, a car with headlights through snow at night. You know, it's just like kuchu chu chu. How do you help people take a step back and be a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intentional, a little bit more circumspect to lay a good foundation which is going to be what the rest of the house is built on. If you don't have it, it's just going to crumble, if you have it, then at least you have a chance of success. How do you help guide them and get out of that snow storm? >> So, I'm going to give you a new acronym, Jeff, but I think it starts with humility. It starts with us admitting that we don't have this all figured out yet. I often tell a lot of customers, Cloud is that best a teenager that just learned how to drive. And Cloud similar to teenagers, the ability of what it can do is, kind of, in conflict with what it can comprehend in terms of unintended consequences. And so, if Cloud is changing all the time, let's not talk about, we crushed it, we nailed it, we knocked it out of the park. Let's raise our hand and say, you know what? I humbly need some help, because here's what we do, Jeff. In this industry, we throw around acronyms and terms all the time. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BDaaS, DBaaS, whatever. I'm going to introduce the term CaaS, but that's not containers as a service job. I think what we're getting is confusion as a service. (laughs) There's so many things that are changing that people are overwhelmed but because we want to act so much like we're crushing it on social media, we really need to say, I need help, I can't do this in a spreadsheet anymore. Please are there solutions out there that can help me automate some of this stuff so that I'm not a victim of my own ignorance. So, humility, right? Embrace other people that have solved some of this problem before, somebody has solved this problem. There are companies out there that are taking in the data, that are automating the decision-making, and that can help you, right? Bring people in, bringing outside help. >> Right, well, the other piece you just talked on is automation, and it goes back to your earlier comment about, you know, scale, bad things at scale are not good. So, if you don't get things dialed in now, and you start applying automation, and you start applying machine speed, you know, then things can get really squirrely really quick. So, that's even another kind of, you know, danger zone coming ahead, start to plan and make sure you've got your stuff organized or now you're going to automate it at machine speed, IOT, 5G, and really run things ragged super quickly. >> Jeff, I agree a hundred percent with that. I want to go back to something you talked about before. People process technology. I want to tweak that. I think we really need to evolve into people, process, product, or people, process, problem. It's got to go back to what am I creating or what am I solving this helping someone? And the technology is something that I will use or not if that helps me meet that outcome. But as technologists, Jeff, a lot of us are getting lazy. I want to play with Kubernetes. I want to play with containers. I want to play with serverless. I want to play with IOT. Who is that actually solving a problem for? Is what we've got to come back to because if I'm not doing that, the less you submit that I'm playing with this, but I'm not really making something better for a customer or adding more value to the business. >> So, again, what are your tips and tricks? 'Cause things are not going to get less complicated, right? As we've talked about Amazon's rolling out new services all the time. Google is really starting, you know, Google Cloud is really starting to rage. Obviously, Satya has done an amazing job with Microsoft, and then there's Oracle Cloud and IBM Cloud, and all these secondary Clouds, Equinix, and that acceleration is only going up. So, how do you, you know encourage people, coach people, tell people to make sure that they're taking a step back and being organized and thoughtful, and not just racing ahead at the next bright shiny object? >> So, great question again, Jeff. I think people have to have to be careful that just because you hear about something a lot doesn't mean it's proven to scale. Social media is dangerous in the sense that we think that we hear something a hundred times then a means that is polished. And I think that as enterprises and as businesses, you know, go with something that's proven, but dip a toe in the water, if you're not sure about it. So, maybe you are experimenting with some things in DevTests, but here's some practical tips that I'll give. Three things, right? I recommend that people typically start here with Cloud strategy, the three D's of data are what I recommend people begin with. Don't begin with the widgets, the shiny objects, begin with data storage, begin with data transport and begin with data organization. We know that data is the lifeblood of the enterprise, right? That's what all of us are focused on right now, right? Data is collected from watches, from websites, from things like self-driving cars, eventually. So, how is my data going to be stored? 'Cause that's the most important part of likely what we're doing as a corporation. How is it going to be transported? Am I okay with spending X amount of dollars on Egress? Do I have latency issues? And then when it comes to data organization, databases, data warehouses, data lakes, I would start with my philosophy, Jeff, on how I plan to leverage that information across any of the multi or hybrid providers that I plan to spin up, because if I start with the data that connects me better to the customer, how am I going to leverage this data then make something better for them? And then any venue honestly, Jeff, that I choose to execute in we'll have tools and utilities and packages that I can leverage to make something better for someone. >> The piece you didn't mention though, was the application. So, where's the application? Say you still start with the data foundationally, and then go to the application or? >> Yes. >> But most of the initiatives driven kind of, at the application level layer? >> They are, and I'm glad you mentioned that. So, practically speaking, let me go down a level to double-click on stuff. Well, people want to be Cloud native, right? 'Cause we don't want to run servers. We don't want to run boxes, we don't even really want to do VMS anymore. One thing that I recommend, that I believe is high reward and low risk is that people strongly consider adopting database as a service, and this is the reason why. It gives us a format to go to something that's Cloud native that doesn't have to be totally rewritten. So, the juice is worth the squeeze there because I'm reducing labor, I'm reducing maintenance, I'm reducing cycles, the DBaaS that people like that have to do, but I'm not paying to refactor an application. Where we struggle, Jeff, and maybe this is another topic, we really struggle with the value of applications, and because we don't know the value of an app, we're using the cost of an app as a proxy. And so, if you don't know the value of something, you're always going to be at risk of over or under improving it. This is why I like database as a service. I can be more nimble, I can reduce labor, and I'm not rewriting an application and spending more to rewrite it than the app is worth. If I totally refactor, or if I totally replatform, the cost may outstrip the value. DBaaS is almost always a slam dunk, 'cause I'm going to reduce manual things that my people are doing that freeze them up, to focus more on customers and evolve in the end. That's what I see pretty consistently in the enterprise. >> That is really scary. That statement that you said that people don't necessarily know the value of the app and using cost as a proxy is not good. You know, I had Butch Rizzo on recently, and he did a study on, you know, trying to figure out the value of data, versus the the value of an app. And he did some research of that UCSF, and what they did is they basically said the value of the data is dependent on the business process that you can improve, or the business project that you want to do. You make an estimate as to what the ROI in that process is, and then you basically see if it's worthwhile to do. And that case and point was, you know, running a promotion at Chipola 'cause bill loves Chipola, but he had a real concrete way that, you know, if we can increase sales at the target stores by, you know, 10%, or we can increase the average ticket by 20 cents or we can increase the average number of items ordered by 0.5 or whatever. So, you know, real far metrics that tie back to real numbers, that tie back to value that you can make an assessment of that project, and that project is enabled by data. So, I hope people are doing that far applications 'cause cost is not the way to figure out value >> The challenge that we have, Jeff, when we look at a lot of the things in the Cloud, there's a big difference between if I have "big C" customers, someone who's literally pulling out a wallet or a credit card to pay for my service or product versus "little C" customers like internally. If I'm paying for a streaming service, and the cost of the streaming service goes up the value of that's likely also going up because I'm serving more big C customers. If the cost of a password reset manager goes up and internal application that nobody was likely paying for, and that's really the dilemma that a lot of folks have in the enterprise, Jeff. Am I going to take something that has limited value like a password application, and put it in a place that can have unlimited spend. Now, if I'm a Netflix or Disney plus, if my spend is going up, my value is going up because I'm serving more big C people that are going to pull out their credit card and give me money. So, a lot of the struggle is when we drill down into this in the enterprise is the people that have the little C customers that don't have anybody paying them 'cause they're tryna understand this is like funny money in our houses job. My kids are teenagers. If I was to charge them, right? For room and board or for dinner, they don't have any money. So, the value of what they think about my cooking on the weekend, right? It's hard to put a value on that because they're not paying me, but if I had a food truck, it's easy to put a value on that, are people buying it or not? So, again, the challenges between internal or external customers and asked me to get any things I charged back and show back, we need a model to understand, is this something that you're tolerating or something that you're actually choosing and are you willing to spend money on it? >> Yeah, and it's a complicated issue, right? Because the other thing is you'd say, you take this conversation over to the security space, which I always find fascinating 'cause investigating security is kind of like investing in insurance and you can't use all your money to insure everything a hundred percent or else you just, why would you even do it? But you have to have some, and it's not a real clear ROI, but the potential downside is pretty huge. So, it's this kind of, balancing act, as you said, it's not really clean as to what the true value of that is unless you tie it back to some specific event, a breach, you know, some type of pins getting stolen, et cetera. So, these are not hard questions, but it's funny 'cause they're not technology questions, right? They're business value questions, and they're priority questions, and they're trade off questions. That's the other thing, right? You don't have infinite resources. So, even if you solve the model here you need to solve it within a portfolio of challenges, opportunities to then, as you said, you know, kind of rank order, where do you spend that next version of dollar? 'Cause it really can have a very a huge difference on the return. >> Okay, I think if I was going to give a, maybe a final piece of advice to the audience, Jeff, it would be to not confuse planning and analysis. That's something that I've talked about before. There's a big difference between those two things, and I often use the analogy of tax planning versus tax preparation. Jeff, when we collect our receipts, and our W-2s and 1099s, and go to our CPA at the beginning of the next year, we can't call that tax planning. That's tax preparation. It's already kind of done and dusted as long as you don't mess it up, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. And the enterprise is doing a lot of analysis and a lot of preparation, but really we need to do more planning. We need to look at the tools and the companies that are helping us simulate and plan for the future that's coming because then when we're talking about it, right? When you're sitting with your CPA and you're saying, what if I do this with my retirement or 401k, or real estate assets, when they can talk to you about what might happen, right? You're not in crisis, it's not a fire drill, it's not a dumpster fire, you can have a very easy conversation around the pros and cons of that. So, I think that's one thing we really have to embrace is press ahead, talk to those consultants and those solution providers, is this really planning or is this just analysis? Is this looking backwards or is it really looking forward and giving me some insight into the things that are coming so that I feel smarter going into the next season? >> And the opportunity to make a change before you hit December 31st. I mean, I think that's a really great analogy. Well, Bobby, a lot of great stuff squeezed in in a few short minutes, it's super fun to catch up, and I just love all your analogies and your stories because at the end of the day, it is about people, and it's about priorities, and it's about business, it's not about the technology. So, thank you so much for sharing your insight. >> Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Oh, absolutely, all right. He's Bobby Allen, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto studio. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (bright music)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020. This is theCUBE virtual with VMworld 2020 virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante. It's our 11th year covering VMware. We're not in-person, we're virtual but all the content is flowing. Of course, we're here with Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware who's been on theCUBE, all 11 years. This year virtual of theCUBE as we've been covering VMware from his early days in 2010 when theCUBE started, 11 years later, Pat, it's still changing and still exciting. Great to see you, thanks for taking the time. >> Hey, you guys are great. I love the interactions that we have, the energy, the fun, the intellectual sparring and of course the audiences have loved it now for 11 years, and I look forward to the next 11 that we'll be doing together. >> It's always exciting 'cause we have great conversations, Dave, and I like to drill in and really kind of probe and unpack the content that you're delivering at the keynotes, but also throughout the entire program. It is virtual this year which highlights a lot of the cloud native changes. Just want to get your thoughts on the virtual aspect, VMworld's not in-person, which is one of the best events of the year, everyone loves it, the great community. It's virtual this year but there's a slew of content, what should people take away from this virtual VMworld? >> Well, one aspect of it is that I'm actually excited about is that we're going to be well over 100,000 people which allows us to be bigger, right? You don't have the physical constraints, you also are able to reach places like I've gone to customers and maybe they had 20 people attend in prior years. This year they're having 100. They're able to have much larger teams also like some of the more regulated industries where they can't necessarily send people to events like this, The International Audience. So just being able to spread the audience much more. A digital foundation for an unpredictable world, and man, what an unpredictable world it has been this past year. And then key messages, lots of key products announcements, technology announcements, partnership announcements, and of course in all of the VMworld is that hands-on labs, the interactions that will be delivering a virtual. You come to VMware because the content is so robust and it's being delivered by the world's smartest people. >> Yeah, we've had great conversations over the years and we've talked about hybrid cloud, I think, 2012. A lot of the stuff I look back at a lot of the videos was early on we're picking out all these waves, but there was that moment four years ago or so, maybe even four three, I can't even remember it seems like yesterday. You gave the seminal keynote and you said, this is the way the world's going to happen. And since that keynote, I'll never forget, was in Moscone and since then, you guys have been performing extremely well both on the business front as well as making technology bets and it's paying off. So what's next, you got the cloud, cloud scale, is it Space, is it Cyber? All these things are going on what is next wave that you're watching and what's coming out and what can people extract out of VMworld this year about this next wave? >> Yeah, one of the things I really am excited about and I went to my buddy Jensen, I said, boy, we're doing this work in smart mix we really like to work with you and maybe some things to better generalize the GPU. And Jensen challenged me. Now usually, I'm the one challenging other people with bigger visions. This time Jensen said, "hey Pat, I think you're thinking too small. Let's do the entire AI landscape together, and let's make AI a enterprise class works load from the data center to the cloud and to the Edge. And so I'm going to bring all of my AI resources and make VMware and Tanzu the preferred infrastructure to deliver AI at scale. I need you guys to make the GPUs work like first-class citizens in the vSphere environment because I need them to be truly democratized for the enterprise, so that it's not some specialized AI Development Team, it's everybody being able to do that. And then we're going to connect the whole network together in a new and profound way with our Monterey program as well being able to use the Smart NIC, the DPU, as Jensen likes to call it. So now with CPU, GPU and DPU, all being managed through a distributed architecture of VMware. This is exciting, so this is one in particular that I think we are now re-architecting the data center, the cloud and the Edge. And this partnership is really a central point of that. >> Yeah, the NVIDIA thing's huge and I know Dave probably has some questions on that but I asked you a question because a lot of people ask me, is that just a hardware deal? Talking about SmartNICs, you talk about data processing units. It sounds like a motherboard in the cloud, if you will, but it's not just hardware. Can you talk about the aspect of the software piece? Because again, NVIDIA is known for GPUs, we all know that but we're talking about AI here so it's not just hardware. Can you just expand and share what the software aspect of all this is? >> Yeah well, NVIDIA has been investing in their AI stack and it's one of those where I say, this is Edison at work, right? The harder I work, the luckier I get. And NVIDIA was lucky that their architecture worked much better for the AI workload. But it was built on two decades of hard work in building a parallel data center architecture. And they have built a complete software stack for all the major AI workloads running on their platform. All of that is now coming to vSphere and Tanzu, that is a rich software layer across many vertical industries. And we'll talk about a variety of use cases, one of those that we highlight at VMworld is the University, California, San Francisco partnership, UCSF, one of the world's leading research hospitals. Some of the current vaccine use cases as well, the financial use cases for threat detection and trading benefits. It really is about how we bring that rich software stack. This is a decade and a half of work to the VMware platform, so that now every developer and every enterprise can take advantage of this at scale. That's a lot of software. So in many respects, yeah, there's a piece of hardware in here but the software stack is even more important. >> It's so well we're on the sort of NVIDIA, the arm piece. There's really interesting these alternative processing models, and I wonder if you could comment on the implications for AI inferencing at the Edge. It's not just as well processor implications, it's storage, it's networking, it's really a whole new fundamental paradigm, but how are you thinking about that, Pat? >> Yeah, and we've thought about there's three aspects, what we said, three problems that we're solving. One is the developer problem where we said now you develop once, right? And the developer can now say, "hey I want to have this new AI-centric app and I can develop and it can run in the data center on the cloud or at the Edge." Secondly, my Operations Team can be able to operate this just like I do all of my infrastructure, and now it's VMs containers and AI applications. And third, and this is where your question really comes to bear most significantly, is data gravity. Right, these data sets are big. Some of them need to be very low latency as well, they also have regulatory issues. And if I have to move these large regulated data sets to the cloud, boy, maybe I can't do that generally for my Apps or if I have low latency heavy apps at the Edge, huh, I can't pull it back to the cloud or to my data center. And that's where the uniform architecture and aspects of the Monterey Program where I'm able to take advantage of the network and the SmartNICs that are being built, but also being able to fully represent the data gravity issues of AI applications at scale. 'Cause in many cases, I'll need to do the processing, both the learning and the inference at the Edge as well. So that's a key part of our strategy here with NVIDIA and I do think is going to unlock a new class of apps because when you think about AI and containers, what am I using it for? Well, it's the next generation of applications. A lot of those are going to be Edge, 5G-based, so very critical. >> We've got to talk about security now too. I'm going to pivot a little bit here, John, if it's okay. Years ago, you said security is a do-over, you said that on theCUBE, it stuck with us. But there's been a lot of complacency. It's kind of if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but but COVID kind of broke it. And so you see three mega trends, you've got cloud security, you'll see in Z-scaler rocket, you've got Identity Access Management and Octo which I hope there's I think a customer of yours and then you got Endpoint, you're seeing Crowdstrike explode you guys paid 2.7 billion, I think, for Carbon Black, yet Crowdstrike has this huge valuation. That's a mega opportunity for you guys. What are you seeing there? How are you bringing that all together? You've got NSX components, EUC components, you've got sort of security throughout your entire stack. How should we be thinking about that? >> Well, one of the announcements that I am most excited about at VMworld is the release of Carbon Black workload. 'Cause we said we're going to take those carbon black assets and we're going to combine it with workspace one, we're going to build it in NSX, we're going to make it part of Tanzu, and we're going to make it part of vSphere. And Carbon Black workload is literally the vSphere embodiment of Carbon Black in an agent-less way. So now you don't need to insert new agents or anything, it becomes part of the hypervisor itself. Meaning that there's no attack surface available for the bad guys to pursue. But not only is this an exciting new product capability, but we're going to make it free, right? And what I'm announcing at VMworld and everybody who uses vSphere gets Carbon Black workload for free for an unlimited number of VMs for the next six months. And as I said in the keynote, today is a bad day for cyber criminals. This is what intrinsic security is about, making it part of the platform. Don't add anything on, just click the button and start using what's built into vSphere. And we're doing that same thing with what we're doing at the networking layer, this is the last line acquisition. We're going to bring that same workload kind of characteristic into the container, that's why we did the Octarine acquisition, and we're releasing the integration of workspace one with Carbon Black client and that's going to be the differentiator, and by the way, Crowdstrike is doing well, but guess what? So are we, and right both of us are eliminating the rotting dead carcasses of the traditional AV approach. So there's a huge market for both of us to go pursue here. So a lot of great things in security, and as you said, we're just starting to see that shift of the industry occur that I promised last year in theCUBE. >> So it'd be safe to say that you're a cloud native and a security company these days? >> Yeah well, absolutely. And the bigger picture of us is that we're this critical infrastructure layer for the Edge, for the cloud, for the Telco environment and for the data center from every endpoint, every application, every cloud. >> So, Pat, I want to ask you a virtual question we got from the community. I'm going to throw it out to you because a lot of people look at Amazon and the cloud and they say, okay we didn't see it coming, we saw it coming, we saw it scale all the benefits that are coming out of cloud well documented. The question for you is, what's next after cloud? As people start to rethink especially with COVID highlighting and all the scabs out there as people look at their exposed infrastructure and their software, they want to be modern, they want the modern apps. What's next after cloud, what's your vision? >> Well, with respect to cloud, we are taking customers on the multicloud vision, right, where you truly get to say, oh, this workload I want to be able to run it with Azure, with amazon, I need to bring this one on-premise, I want to run that one hosted. I'm not sure where I'm going to run that application, so develop it and then run it at the best place. And that's what we mean by our hybrid multicloud strategy, is being able for customers to really have cloud flexibility and choice. And even as our preferred relationship with Amazon is going super well, we're seeing a real uptick, we're also happy that the Microsoft Azure VMware service is now GA. So there in Marketplace, are Google, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba partnerships, and the much broader set of VMware Cloud partner programs. So the future is multicloud. Furthermore, it's then how do we do that in the Telco network for the 5G build out? The Telco cloud, and how do we do that for the Edge? And I think that might be sort of the granddaddy of all of these because increasingly in a 5G world, we'll be enabling Edge use cases, we'll be pushing AI to the Edge like we talked about earlier in this conversation, we'll be enabling these high bandwidth low latency use cases at the Edge, and we'll see more and more of the smart embodiment smart city, smart street, smart factory, the autonomous driving, all of those need these type of capabilities. >> Okay. >> So there's hybrid and there's multi, you just talked about multi. So hybrid are data, are data partner ETR they do quarterly surveys. We're seeing big uptick in VMware Cloud on AWS, you guys mentioned that in your call. We're also seeing the VMware Cloud, VMware Cloud Foundation and the other elements, clearly a big uptick. So how should we think about hybrid? It looks like that's an extension of on-prem maybe not incremental, maybe a share shift, whereas multi looks like it's incremental but today multi is really running on multiple clouds, but a vision toward incremental value. How are you thinking about that? >> Yeah, so clearly, the idea of multi is truly multiple clouds. Am I taking advantage of multiple clouds being my private clouds, my hosted clouds and of course my public cloud partners? We believe everybody will be running a great private cloud, picking a primary public cloud and then a secondary public cloud. Hybrid then is saying, which of those infrastructures are identical, so that I can run them without modifying any aspect of my infrastructure operations or applications? And in today's world where people are wanting to accelerate their move to the cloud, a hybrid cloud is spot-on with their needs. Because if I have to refactor my applications, it's a couple million dollars per app and I'll see you in a couple of years. If I can simply migrate my existing application to the hybrid cloud, what we're consistently seeing is the time is 1/4 and the cost is 1/8 or less. Those are powerful numbers. And if I need to exit a data center, I want to be able to move to a cloud environment to be able to access more of those native cloud services, wow, that's powerful. And that's why for seven years now, we've been preaching that hybrid is the future, it is not a way station to the future. And I believe that more fervently today than when I declared it seven years ago. So we are firmly on that path that we're enabling a multi and hybrid cloud future for all of our customers. >> Yeah, you addressed that like Cube 2013, I remember that interview vividly was not a weigh station I got hammered answered. Thank you, Pat, for clarifying that going back seven years. I love the vision, you always got the right wave, it's always great to talk to you but I got to ask you about these initiatives that you're seeing clearly. Last year, a year and a half ago, Project Pacific came out, almost like a guiding directional vision. It then put some meat on the bone Tanzu and now you guys have that whole cloud native initiative, it's starting to flower up, thousands of flowers are blooming. This year, Project Monterey has announced. Same kind of situation, you're showing out the vision. What are the plans to take that to the next level? And take a minute to explain how Project Monterey, what it means and how you see that filling out. I'm assuming it's going to take the same trajectory as Pacific. >> Yeah, Monterey is a big deal. This is re-architecting the core of vSphere and it really is ripping apart the IO stack from the intrinsic operation of vSphere and the SX itself because in many ways, the IO, we've been always leveraging the NIC and essentially virtual NICs, but we never leverage the resources of the network adapters themselves in any fundamental way. And as you think about SmartNICs, these are powerful resources now where they may have four, eight, 16 even 32 cores running in the SmartNIC itself. So how do I utilize that resource, but it also sits in the right place? In the sense that it is the network traffic cop, it is the place to do security acceleration, it is the place that enables IO bandwidth optimization across increasingly rich applications where the workloads, the data, the latency get more important both in the data center and across data centers, to the cloud and to the Edge. So this re-architecting is a big deal, we announced the three partners, Intel, NVIDIA Mellanox and Pensando that we're working with, and we'll begin the deliveries of this as part of the core vSphere offerings beginning next year. So it's a big re-architecting, these are our key partners, we're excited about the work that we're doing with them and then of course our system partners like Dell and Lenovo who've already come forward and says, "Yeah we're going to to be bringing these to market together with VMware." >> Pat, personal question for you. I want to get your personal take, your career going back to Intel, you've seen it all but the shift is consumer to enterprise and you look at just recently Snowflake IPO, the biggest ever in the history of Wall Street. It's an enterprise data company, and the enterprise is now relevant. The consumer enterprise feels consumery, we talked about consumerization of IT years and years ago. But now more than ever the hottest financial IPO enterprise, you guys are enterprise. You did enterprise at Intel (laughing), you know the enterprise, you're doing it here at VMware. The enterprise is the consumer now with cloud and all this new landscape. What is your view on this because you've seen the waves, have you seen the historical perspective? It was consumer, was the big thing now it's enterprise, what's your take on all this? How do you make sense of it because it's now mainstream, what's your view on this? >> Well, first I do want to say congratulations to my friend, Frank and the extraordinary Snowflake IPO. And by the way they use VMware, so I not only do I feel a sense of ownership 'cause Frank used to work for me for a period of time, but they're also a customer of ours so go Frank, go Snowflake. We're excited about that. But there is this episodic to the industry where for a period of time, it is consumer-driven and CES used to be the hottest ticket in the industry for technology trends. But as you say, it has now shifted to be more business-centric, and I've said this very firmly, for instance, in the case of 5G where I do not see consumer. A faster video or a better Facebook isn't going to be why I buy 5G. It's going to be driven by more business use cases where the latency, the security and the bandwidth will have radically differentiated views of the new applications that will be the case. So we do think that we're in a period of time and I expect that it's probably at least the next five years where business will be the technology drivers in the industry. And then probably, hey there'll be a wave of consumer innovation, and I'll have to get my black turtlenecks out again and start trying to be cool but I've always been more of an enterprise guy so I like the next five to 10 years better. I'm not cool enough to be a consumer guy and maybe my age is now starting to conspire against me as well. >> Hey, Pat I know you got to go but a quick question. So you guys, you gave guidance, pretty good guidance actually. I wonder, have you and Zane come up with a new algorithm to deal with all this uncertainty or is it kind of back to old school gut feel? >> (laughing) Well, I think as we thought about the year, as we came into the year, and obviously, COVID smacked everybody, we laid out a model, we looked at various industry analysts, what we call the Swoosh Model, right? Q2, Q3 and Q4 recovery, Q1 more so, Q2 more so. And basically, we built our own theories behind that, we tested against many analyst perspectives and we had Vs and we had Ws and we had Ls and so on. We picked what we thought was really sort of grounded in the best data that we could, put our own analysis which we have substantial data of our own customers' usage, et cetera and picked the model. And like any model, you put a touch of conservatism against it, and we've been pretty accurate. And I think there's a lot of things we've been able to sort of with good data, good thoughtfulness, take a view and then just consistently manage against it and everything that we said when we did that back in March has sort of proven out incrementally to be more accurate. And some are saying, "Hey things are coming back more quickly" and then, "Oh, we're starting to see the fall numbers climb up a little bit." Hey, we don't think this goes away quickly, there's still a lot of secondary things to get flushed through, the various economies as stimulus starts tailoring off, small businesses are more impacted, and we still don't have a widely deployed vaccine and I don't expect we will have one until second half of next year. Now there's the silver lining to that, as we said, which means that these changes, these faster to the future shifts in how we learn, how we work, how we educate, how we care for, how we worship, how we live, they will get more and more sedimented into the new normal, relying more and more on the digital foundation. And we think ultimately, that has extremely good upsides for us long-term, even as it's very difficult to navigate in the near term. And that's why we are just raving optimists for the long-term benefits of a more and more digital foundation for the future of every industry, every human, every workforce, every hospital, every educator, they are going to become more digital and that's why I think, going back to the last question this is a business-driven cycle, we're well positioned and we're thrilled for all of those who are participating with Vmworld 2020. This is a seminal moment for us and our industry. >> Pat, thank you so much for taking the time. It's an enabling model, it's what platforms are all about, you get that. My final parting question for you is whether you're a VC investing in startups or a large enterprise who's trying to get through COVID with a growth plan for that future. What does a modern app look like, and what does a modern company look like in your view? >> Well, a modern company would be that instead of having a lot of people looking down at infrastructure, the bulk of my IT resources are looking up at building apps, those apps are using modern CICD data pipeline approaches built for a multicloud embodiment, right, and of course VMware is the best partner that you possibly could have. So if you want to be modern cool on the front end, come and talk to us. >> All right, Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware here on theCUBE for VMworld 2020 virtual, here with theCUBE virtual great to see you virtually, Pat, thanks for coming on, thanks for your time. >> Hey, thank you so much, love to see you in person soon enough but this is pretty good. >> Yeah. >> Thank you Dave. Thank you so much. >> Okay, you're watching theCUBE virtual here for VMworld 2020, I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante with Pat Gelsinger, thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>> Narrator: From around the globe. It's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020. This is theCUBE virtual with VMworld 2020 virtual. I'm John Furrier your host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante. It's our 11th year covering VMware. We're not in person, we're virtual, but all the content is flowing. Of course, we're here with Pat Galsinger, the CEO of VMware. Who's been on theCUBE all 11 years. This year virtual of theCUBE as we've been covering VMware from his early days in 2010, when theCUBE started 11 years later, Pat is still changing and still exciting. Great to see you. Thanks for taking the time. >> Hey, you guys are great. I love the interactions that we have, the energy, the fun, the intellectual sparring. And of course that audiences have loved it now for 11 years. And I look forward to the next 11 that we'll be doing together. >> It's always exciting cause we'd love great conversations. Dave and I like to drill in and really kind of probe and unpack the content that you're delivering at the keynotes, but also throughout the entire program. It is virtual this year, which highlights a lot of the cloud native changes. Just want to get your thoughts on the virtual aspect of VMworld, not in person, which is one of the best events of the year. Everyone loves it. The great community. It's virtual this year, but there's a slew of content. What should people take away from this virtual VMworld? >> Well, one aspect of it is that I'm actually excited about is that we're going to be well over a hundred thousand people, which allows us to be bigger, right? You don't have the physical constraints. You also are able to reach places like I've gone to customers and maybe they had 20 people attend in prior years. This year they're having a hundred, they're able to have much larger teams. Also like some of the more regulated industries where they can't necessarily send people to events like this, the international audience. So just being able to spread the audience much more broadly well, also our key messages a digital foundation for unpredictable world. And man, what an unpredictable world it has been this past year? And then key messages, lots of key products announcements technology, announcements partnership, announcements and of course in all of the VMworld, is that hands on (murmurs) interactions that we'll be delivering our virtual, you come to the VMware because the content is so robust and it's being delivered by the world's smartest people. >> Yeah. We've had great conversations over the years. And we've talked about hybrid clothing 2012, a lot of this stuff I looked back in lot of the videos was early on, we're picking out all these waves, but it was that moment four years ago or so, maybe even four, three, I can't even remember, seems like yesterday. You gave the Seminole keynote and you said, "This is the way the world's going to happen." And since that keynote I'll never forget was in Moscone. And since then you guys have been performing extremely well both on the business as well as making technology bets and is paying off. So what's next? I mean, you've got the cloud scale. Is it space? Is it cyber? I mean, all these things are going on. What is next wave that you're watching and what's coming out and what can people extract out of VMworld this year about this next wave? >> Yeah, one of the things I really am excited about I went to my buddy Jensen. I said, "Boy, we're doing this work and smart. Next We really liked to work with you and maybe some things to better generalize the GPU." And Jensen challenged me. Now, usually, I'm the one challenging other people with bigger visions, this time Jensen said, "Hey Pat, I think you're thinking too small. Let's do the entire AI landscape together. And let's make AI a enterprise classwork stowed from the data center to the cloud and to the Edge. And so I'm going to bring all of my AI resources and make VMware, And Tansu the preferred infrastructure to deliver AI at scale. I need you guys to make the GPS work like first class citizens in the vSphere environment, because I need them to be truly democratized for the enterprise. so that it's not some specialized AI development team, it's everybody being able to do that. And then we're going to connect the whole network together in a new and profound way with our Monterey Program as well being able to use the SmartNIC, the DPU as Jensen likes to call it. So now it's CPU, GPU and DPU, all being managed through a distributed architecture of VMware." This is exciting. So this is one in particular that I think we are now rearchitecting the data center, the cloud in the Edge. And this partnership is really a central point of that. >> Yeah, the Nvid thing's huge. And I know Dave, Perharbs has some questions on that. But I ask you a question because a lot of people ask me, is it just a hardware deal? I mean, talking about SmartNIC, you talking about data processing units. It sounds like a motherboard in the cloud, if you will, but it's not just hardware. Can you talk about the aspect of the software piece? Because again, Nvidia is known for GP use, we all know that, but we're talking about AI here. So it's not just hardware. Can you just expand and share what the software aspect of all this is? >> Yeah. Well, Nvidia has been investing in their AI stack and it's one of those where I say, this is Edison at work, right? The harder I work, the luckier I get. And Nvidia was lucky that their architecture worked much better for the AI workload, but it was built on two decades of hard work in building a parallel data center architecture. And they have built a complete software stack for all of the major AI workloads running on their platform. All of that is now coming to vSphere and Tansu, that is a rich software layer across many vertical industries. And we'll talk about a variety of use cases. One of those that we highlight at Vmworld is the university of California, San Francisco partnership UCSF one of the world's leading research hospitals, some of the current vaccine use cases as well, the financial use cases for threat detection and trading benefits. It really is about how we bring that rich software stack. this is a decade and a half of work to the VMware platform so that now every developer and every enterprise could take advantage of this at scale, that's a lot of software. So in many respects, yeah, there's a piece of hardware in here, but the software stack is even more important. >> So well on the sort of Nvidia the arm piece, there's really interesting, these alternative processing models. And I wonder if you could comment on the implications for AI inferencing at the Edge. It's not just as well processor implications, it's storage, it's networking. It's really a whole new fundamental paradigm. How are you thinking about that Pat? >> Yeah, we've thought about, there's three aspects, but what we said three problems that we're solving. One is the developer problem, what we said, now you develop once, right? And the developer can now say, "Hey, I want to have this new AI centric app and I can develop, and it can run in the data center on the cloud or at the Edge." You'll secondly, my operations team can be able to operate this just like I do all my infrastructure. And now it's VMs containers and AI applications and third, and this is where your question really comes to bear. Most significantly is data gravity, right? These data sets are big. Some of them need to be very low latency as well. They also have regulatory issues. And if I have to move these large regulated data sets to the cloud, boy, maybe I can't do that generally for my apps or if I have low latency heavy apps at the Edge, ah, I can't pull it back to the cloud or to my data center. And that's where the uniform architecture and aspects of the Monterey program, where I'm able to take advantage of the network and the SmartNIC that are being built, but also being able to fully represent the data gravity issues of AI applications at scale 'cause in many cases I'll need to do the processing, both the learning and the inference at the Edge as well. So that's a key part of our strategy here with Nvidia. And I do think is going to be a lock, a new class of apps because when you think about AI and containers, what am I using it for? Well, it's the next generation of applications. A lot of those are going to be Edge 5G based. So very critical. >> We got to talk about security now, too. I mean, I'm going to pivot a little bit here John if it's okay. Years ago you said security is a do over. You said that on theCUBE, It stuck with us. There's there's been a lot of complacency it's kind of, if it didn't broke, don't fix it, but COVID kind of broke it. That's why you see three mega trends. You've got cloud security, you see in Z scaler rocket, you got identity access management and I'll check, I think a customer of yours. And then you've got endpoint you're seeing CrowdStrike explode. You guys pay 2.7 billion I think for carbon black yet CrowdStrike has this huge valuation. That's a mega opportunity for you guys. What are you seeing there? How are you bringing that all together? You've got NSX components, EUC components. You've got sort of security throughout your entire stack. How should we be thinking about that? >> Well, one of the announcements that I am most excited about at Vmworld is the release of carbon black workload, this research we're going to take those carbon black assets and we're going to combine it with workspace one. We're going to build it in NSX. We're going to make it part of Tansu and we're going to make it part of vSphere. And carbon black workload is literally the vSphere embodiment of carbon black in an agentless way. Ans so now you don't need to insert new agents or anything. It becomes part of the hypervisor itself, meaning that there's no attack surface available for the bad guys to pursue, but not only is this an exciting new product capability, but we're going to make it free, right? And what I'm announcing at VMworld and everybody who uses vSphere gets carbon black workload for free for an unlimited number of VMs for the next six months. And as I said in the keynote today is a bad day for cybercriminals. This is what intrinsic security is about, making it part of the platform. Don't add anything on, just click the button and start using what's built into vSphere. And we're doing that same thing with what we're doing at the networking layer. This is the act, the last line acquisition. We're going to bring that same workload kind of characteristic into the container. That's why we did the Octarine acquisition. And we're releasing the integration of workspace one with a carbon black client, and that's going to be the differentiator. And by the way, CrowdStrike is doing well, but guess what? So are we, and like both of us are eliminating the rotting dead carcasses of the traditional AV approach. So there is a huge market for both of us to go pursue here. So a lot of great things in security. And as you said, we're just starting to see that shift of the industry occur that I promised last year in theCUBE. >> So it'd be safe to say that you're a cloud native in a security company these days? >> You all, absolutely. And the bigger picture of us, is that we're critical infrastructure layer for the Edge for the cloud, for the telco environment and for the data center from every end point, every application, every cloud. >> So Padagonia asked you a virtual question, we got from the community, I'm going to throw it out to you because a lot of people look at Amazon, The cloud and they say, "Okay, we didn't see it coming. We saw it coming. We saw it scale all the benefits that are coming out of cloud, Well-documented." The question for you is what's next after cloud, as people start to rethink, especially with COVID highlighting all the scabs out there. As people look at their exposed infrastructure and their software, they want to be modern. They want the modern apps. What's next after cloud. What's your vision? >> Well, with respect to cloud, we are taking customers on the multicloud vision, right? Where you truly get to say, "Oh, this workload, I want to be able to run it with Azure, with Amazon. I need to bring this one on premise. I want to run that one hosted. I'm not sure where I'm going to run that application." So develop it and then run it at the best place. And that's what we mean by our hybrid multicloud strategy is being able for customers to really have cloud flexibility and choice. And even as our preferred relationship with Amazon is going super well. We're seeing a real uptick. We're also happy that the Microsoft Azure VMware services now GA so they're in marketplace, our Google, Oracle, IBM and Alibaba partnerships in the much broader set of VMware cloud Partner Program. So the future is multicloud. Furthermore, it's then how do we do that in the Telco Network for the 5G build out, The Telco cloud? And how do we do that for the Edge? And I think that might be sort of the granddaddy of all of these because increasingly in a 5G world will be a nibbling Edge use cases. We'll be pushing AI to the Edge like we talked about earlier in this conversation, will be enabling these high bandwidth, with low latency use cases at the Edge, and we'll see more and more of the smart embodiment, smart cities, smart street, smart factory, or the autonomous driving. All of those need these type of capabilities. >> So there's hybrid and there's multi, you just talked about multi. So hybrid are data partner ETR, they do quarterly surveys. We're seeing big uptick in VMware cloud and AWS, you guys mentioned that in your call. we're also seeing the VMware cloud, VMware cloud Coundation and the other elements, clearly a big uptake. So how should we think about hybrid? It looks like that's an extension of on-prem maybe not incremental, maybe a share shift whereas multi looks like it's incremental, but today multi has really running on multiple clouds, but vision toward incremental value. How are you thinking about that? >> Yeah, so clearly the idea of multi is to link multiple. Am I taking advantage of multiple clouds being my private clouds, my hosted clouds. And of course my public cloud partners, we believe everybody will be running a great private cloud, picking a primary, a public cloud, and then a secondary public cloud. Hybrid then is saying, which of those infrastructures are identical so that I can run them without modifying any aspect of my infrastructure operations or applications. And in today's world where people are wanting to accelerate their move to the cloud, a hybrid cloud is spot on with their needs because if I have to refactor my applications it's a couple million dollars per app, And I'll see you in a couple of years. If I can simply migrate my existing application to the hybrid cloud, what we're consistently seeing is the time is one quarter and the cost is one eight, four less. Those are powerful numbers. And if I need to exit a data center, I want to be able to move to a cloud environment, to be able to access more of those native cloud services. Wow. That's powerful. And that's why for seven years now we've been preaching that hybrid is the future. It is not a waystation to the future. And I believe that more fervently today than when I declared it seven years ago. So we are firmly on that path that we're enabling a multi and a hybrid cloud future for all of our customers. >> Yeah. You addressed that like CUBE 2013. I remember that interview vividly was not a waystation. I got (murmurs) the answer. Thank you Pat, for clarifying than going back seven years. I love the vision. You're always got the right wave. It's always great to talk to you, but I got to ask you about these initiatives you seeing clearly last year or a year and a half ago, project Pacific name out almost like a guiding directional vision, and then put some meat on the bone Tansu and now you guys have that whole Cloud Native Initiative is starting to flower up thousand flowers are blooming. This year Project Monterrey has announced same kind of situation. You're showing out the vision. What are the plans to take that to the next level and take a minute to explain how project Monterey, what it means and how you see that filling out. I'm assuming it's going to take the same trajectory as Pacific. >> Yeah. Monetary is a big deal. This is rearchitecting The core of vSphere. It really is ripping apart the IO stack from the intrinsic operation of a vSphere and ESX itself, because in many ways, the IO we've been always leveraging the NIC and essentially virtual NICs, but we never leverage the resources of the network adapters themselves in any fundamental way. And as you think about SmartNICs, these are powerful resources now where they may have four, eight, 16, even 32 cores running in the smartNIC itself. So how do I utilize that resource? But it also sits in the right place in the sense that it is the network traffic cop. It is the place to do security acceleration. It is the place that enables IO bandwidth optimization across increasingly rich applications where the workloads, the data, the latency get more important both in the data center and across data centers to the cloud and to the Edge. So this rearchitecting is a big deal. We announced the three partners, Intel, Nvidia, Mellanox, and Penn Sandow that we're working with. And we'll begin the deliveries of this as part of the core vSphere offerings of beginning next year. So it's a big rearchitecting. These are our key partners. We're excited about the work that we're doing with them. And then of course our system partners like Dell and Lenovo, who've already come forward and says, "Yeah, we're going to be bringing these to market together with VMware." >> Pat, personal question for you. I want to get your personal take, your career, going back to Intel. You've seen it all, but the shift is consumer to enterprise. And you look at just recently snowflake IPO, the biggest ever in the history of wall street, an enterprise data's company. And the enterprise is now relevant. Enterprise feels consumer. We talked about consumerization of IT years and years ago, but now more than ever the hottest financial IPO enterprise, you guys are enterprise. You did enterprise at Intel. (laughs) You know the enterprise, you doing it here at VMware. The enterprise is the consumer now with cloud and all this new landscape. What is your view on this? Because you've seen the waves, and you've seen the historical perspective. It was consumer, was the big thing. Now it's enterprise, what's your take on all this? How do you make sense of it? Because it's now mainstream. what's your view on this? >> Well, first I do want to say congratulations to my friend Frank, and the extraordinary snowflake IPO, and by the way, they use VMware. So not only do I feel a sense of ownership 'cause Frank used to work for me for a period of time, but they're also a customer of ours. So go Frank, go snowflake. We're we're excited about that. But there is this episodic, this to the industry where for a period of time it is consumer-driven and CES used to be the hottest ticket in the industry for technology trends. But as you say, it is now shifted to be more business centric. And I've said this very firmly, for instance, in the case of 5G where I do not see consumer a faster video or a better Facebook, isn't going to be why I buy 5G. It's going to be driven by more business use cases where the latency, the security and the bandwidth will have radically differentiated views of the new applications that will be the case. So we do think that we're in a period of time and I expect that it's probably at least the next five years where business will be the technology drivers in the industry. And then probably, hey, there'll be a wave of consumer innovation and I'll have to get my black turtlenecks out again and start trying to be cool, but I've always been more of an enterprise guy. So I like the next five to 10 years better. I'm not cool enough to be a consumer guy. And maybe my age is now starting to conspire against me as well. >> Hey, Pat, I know you've got to go, but quick question. So you guys, you gave guidance, pretty good guidance, actually. I wondered have you and Zane come up with a new algorithm to deal with all this uncertainty or is it kind of back to old school gut feel? (laughs) >> Well, I think as we thought about the year as we came into the year and obviously, COVID smacked everybody, we laid out a model, we looked at various industry analysts, what we call the swoosh model, right? Q2, Q3 and Q4 recovery, Q1 more so, Q2 more so, and basically, we build our own theories behind that. We test it against many analysts, the perspectives, and we had vs and we had Ws and we had Ls and so on. We picked what we thought was really sort of grounded of the best data that we could put our own analysis, which we have substantial data of our own customer's usage, et cetera, and pick the model. And like any model, you put a touch of conservatism against it, and we've been pretty accurate. And I think there's a lot of things, we've been able to sort of, with good data good thoughtfulness, take a view and then just consistently manage against it and everything that we said when we did that back in March, sort of proven out incrementally to be more accurate. And some are saying, "Hey, things are coming back more quickly." And then, oh we're starting to see the fall numbers climb up a little bit. Hey, we don't think this goes away quickly. There's still a lot of secondary things to get flushed through the various economies, as stimulus starts tailoring off small businesses are more impacted and we still don't have a widely deployed vaccine. And I don't expect we will have one until second half of next year. Now there's the silver lining to that, as we said, which means that these changes, these faster to the future shifts in how we learn, how we work, how we educate, how we care for, how we worship, how we live, they will get more and more sedimented into the new normal relying more and more on the digital foundation. And we think ultimately that has extremely good upsides for us longterm, even as it's very difficult to navigate in the near term. And that's why we are just raving optimists for the longterm benefits of a more and more digital foundation for the future of every industry, every human, every workforce, every hospital, every educator, they are going to become more digital. And that's why I think going back to the last question, this is a business driven cycle, we're well positioned, and we're thrilled for all of those who are participating with VMworld 2020. This is a seminal moment for us and our industry. >> Pat, thank you so much for taking the time. It's an enabling model. It's what platforms are all about. You get that. My final parting question for you is whether you're a VC investing in startups or a large enterprise who's trying to get through COVID with a growth plan for that future. What is a modern app look like? And what does a modern company look like in your view? >> Well, a modern company would be that instead of having a lot of people looking down at infrastructure, the bulk of my IT resources are looking up at building apps. Those apps are using modern CICD data pipeline approaches built for a multicloud embodiment, right? And of course, VMware is the best partner that you possibly could have. So if you want to be modern, cool on the front end, come and talk to us. >> All right. Pat Galsinger the CEO of VMware here on theCUBE for VML 2020 virtual here with theCUBE virtual. Great to see you virtually Pat. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for your time. >> Hey, thank you so much. Love to see you in person soon enough, but this is pretty good. Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much. >> Okay. You're watching theCUBE virtual here for VMworld 2020. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vallente with Pat Gelsinger. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

(upbeat techno music) >> From Sand Hill Road, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE. Presenting the People First Network, insights from entrepreneurs and tech leaders. >> Hello, everyone, I'm John Furrier the co-host on theCUBE, founder of SiliconANGLE Media. We are here at Sand Hill Road, at Mayfield for the 50th anniversary celebration and content series called The People First Network. This is a co-developed program. We're going to bring thought leaders, inspirational entrepreneurs and tech executives to talk about their experience and their journey around a people first society. This is the focus of entrepreneurship these days. I'm here with Navin Chaddha who's the managing director of Mayfield. Navin, you're kicking off the program. Tell us, why the program? Why People First Network? Is this a cultural thing? Is this part of a program? What's the rationale? What's the message? >> Yeah, first of all I want to thank, John, you and your team and theCUBE for co-hosting the People First Network with us. It's been a real delight working with you. Shifting to people first, Mayfield has had a long standing philosophy that people build companies and it's not the other way around. We believe in betting on great people because even if their initial idea doesn't pan out, they'll quickly pivot to find the right market opportunity. Similarly we believe when the times get tough it's our responsibility to stand behind people and the purpose of this People First Network is people like me were extremely lucky to have mentors along the way, when I was an entrepreneur and now as a venture capitalist, who are helping me achieve my dreams. Mayfield and me want to give back to other entrepreneurs, by bringing in people who are luminaries in their own fields to share their learnings with other entrepreneurs. >> This is a really great opportunity and I want to thank you guys for helping us put this together with you guys. It's a great co-creation. The observation that we're seeing in Silicon Valley and certainly in talking to some of the guests we've already interviewed and that will be coming up on the program, is the spirit of community and the culture of innovation is around the ecosystem of Silicon Valley. This has been the bedrock. >> Mm-hmm. >> Of Silicon Valley, Mayfield, one of the earliest if not the first handful of venture firms. >> Mm-hmm. >> Hanging around Stanford, doing entrepreneurship, this is a people culture in Silicon Valley and this is now going global. >> Mm-hmm. >> So great opportunity. What can we expect to see from some of the interviews? What are you looking for and what's the hope? >> Yeah, so I think what you're going to see from the interviews is, we are trying to bring around 20 plus people, and they'll be many John on the interview besides you. So there will be John Chambers, ex-chairman and CEO of Cisco. There'll be John Zimmer, president and co founder of Lyft. And there also will be John Hennessy who will be our first interview, with him, from Stanford University. And jokes apart, there'll be like 20 plus other people who will be part of this network. So I think what you're going to see is, goings always don't go great. There's a lot of learnings that happen when things don't work out. And our hope is, when these luminaries from their professions, share their learnings the entrepreneurs will benefit from it. As we all know, being an entrepreneur is hard. But sometimes, and many times, actually it's also a lonely road and our belief is, and I strongly personally also believe in it, that great entrepreneurs believe in continuous learning and are continuously adapting themselves to succeed. So our hope is, this People First Network serves as a learning opportunity from entrepreneurs to learn from great leaders. >> You said a few things I really admire about Mayfield and I want to get your reaction because I think is a fundamental for society. Building durable companies is about the long game because people fail and people succeed but they always move on. >> Mm-hmm. >> They move on to another opportunity. They move on to another pursuit. >> Mm-hmm. >> And this pay it forward culture has been a key thing for Silicon Valley. >> It absolutely has been. >> What's the inspiration behind it, from your perspective? You mentioned your experiences. Tell us a story and experience you've had? >> Yeah, so I would say, first of all, right, since we strongly believe people make products and products don't make people, we believe venture capital and entrepreneurship is about like running a marathon, it's not a sprint. So if you take a longterm view, have a strong vision and mission which is supported with great beliefs and values? You can do wonders. And our whole aim, not only as Mayfield but other venture capitalists, is to build iconic companies which are built to last which beyond creating jobs and economic wealth, can give back to the society and make the world a better place to work, live and play. >> You know one of the things that we are passionate about at theCUBE, and on SiliconANGLE Media is standing by our community. >> Mm-hmm. >> Because people do move around and I think one of the things that is key in venture capital now, than ever before is not looking for the quick hit. >> Mm-hmm. >> It's standing by your companies in good times and in bad. >> Mm-hmm. >> Because this is about people and you don't know how things might turn out, how a company might end up in a different place. We've heard some of your entrepreneurs talk about that, that the outcome was not how they envisioned it when they started. >> Mm-hmm. >> This is a key mindset for a business. >> It absolutely is, right? Let's look at a few examples. One of our most successful companies is Lyft. When we backed it at Series A, it was called Zimride. They weren't doing what they were doing, but the company had a strong vision and mission of changing the way people transport and given that, they were A plus people, as I mentioned earlier. The initial idea wasn't going to be a massive opportunity. They quickly pivoted to go after the right market opportunity. And hence, again and again, right? Like to me, it's all about the people. >> Navigating those boards is sometimes challenging and we hope that this content will help people, inspire people, help them discover their passion, discover people that they might want to work with. We really appreciate your support and thank you for contributing your network and your brand and your team in supporting our mission. >> Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure and we hope the viewers and especially entrepreneurs can learn from the journeys of many iconic people who have built great things in their careers. >> Were here at Sand Hill Road, at Mayfield's venture capital headquarters in sunny Silicon Valley, California, Stanford, California, Palo Alto California, all one big melting pot of innovation. I'm here with John Hennessy, who's the Stanford President Emeritus, also the director of the Knight Hennessy Scholarship. Thanks for joining me today for this conversation. >> Delighted to be here, John. >> So I wanted to get your thoughts on the history of the valley. Obviously, Mayfield, celebrating their 50th anniversary and Mayfield was one of those early venture capital firms that kind of hung around the barbershop, looking for a haircut. Stanford University was that place. Early on this was the innovation spark that created the valley. A lot of other early VCs as well, but not that many in the early days and now 50 years later, so much has changed. What's your thoughts on the arc of entrepreneurship around Stanford, around Silicon Valley? >> Well, you're right, it's been an explosive force. I mean, I think there were a few companies out here on Sand Hill Road at that time. Now nearly the number of venture firms there are today. But I think the biggest change has been the kinds of technologies we build. You know, in those days, we built technologies that were primarily for other engineers or perhaps they were tandem computers being built for business interest. Now we build technologies that change people's lives, every single day and the impact on the world is so much larger than it was and these companies have grown incredibly fast. I mean, you look at the growth rate? We had the stars of the earlier compared to the Googles and Facebooks of today, it's small growth rates, so those are big changes. >> I'm excited to talk with you, because you're one of the only people that I can think of that has seen so many different waves of innovation. You've been involved in many of them yourself, one of the co-founders of MIPS, chairman of the board of Alphabet, which is Google, Google's holding company, the large holdings they have and just Stanford in general has been, you know, now with CAL, kind of the catalyst for a lot of the change. What's interesting is, you know, the Hewlett-Packards, the birthplace of Silicon Valley, that durable company view. >> Mm-hmm. >> Of how to build a company and the people that are involved is really a, still, essential part of it. Certainly happening faster, differently. When you look at the waves of innovation, is there anything that you could look at and say, hey, this is the consistent pattern that we see emerging of these waves? Is it a classic formula of engineers getting together trying to solve problems? Is it the Stanford drop out PH.d program? Is there a playbook? Is there a pattern that you see in the entrepreneurship over the years? >> You know, I think there are these waves that are often induced by big technology changes, right? The beginning of the personal computer. The beginning of the internet. The world wide web, social media. The other observation is that it's very hard to predict what the next one will be. (laughing) If it was easier to predict, there would be one big company, rather than lots of companies riding each one of these waves. The other thing I think that's fascinating about them is these waves don't create just one company. They create a whole new microcosm of companies around that technology which exploit it and bring it to the people and change people's lives with it. >> And another thing is interesting about that point is that even the failures have DNA. You see people, big venture backed company, I think Go is a great example, you think about those kinds of companies. The early work on mobile computing, the early work on processors that you were involved in MIPS. >> Mm-hmm. >> They become successful and/or may/may not have the outcomes but the people move on to other companies to either start companies. This is a nice flywheel, this is one of the things that Silicon Valley has enjoyed over the years. >> Yeah, and just look at the history of RISC technology that I was involved in. We initially thought it would take over the general purpose computing industry and I think Intel responded in an incredible way and eventually reduced the advantage. Now here we are 30 years later and 95%/98% of the processors in the world are RISC because of the rise of mobile, internet of things, dramatically changing where the processors were. >> Yeah. >> They're not on the desktop anymore, they're scattered around in very different ways. >> It's interesting, I was having a conversation with Andy Kessler, who used to be an analyst back at the time for Morgan Stanley. He then became an investor. And he was talking about, with me, the DRAM days when the Japanese were dumping DRAMs and then that was low margin business, and then Intel said, "Hey, no problem. "We'll let go of the DRAM business." but they created Pentium and then the micro processor. >> Right. >> That spawned a whole nother wave, so you see the global economy today, you see China, you see people manufacturing things at very low cost, Apple does work out there. What's your view and reaction to the global landscape? Because certainly things are changed a bit but it seems to be some of the same? What's your thoughts on the global landscape and the impact of entrepreneurs? >> It certainly is global. I mean, I think in two ways. First of all, supply chains have become completely global. Look at how many companies in the valley rely on TSMC as their primary source of silicon? It's a giant engine for the valley. But we also see, increasingly, even in young companies a kind of global, distributed engineering scheme where they'll have a group in Taiwan, or in China or in India that'll be doing part of the engineering work and they're basically outsourcing some of that and balancing their costs and bringing in other talent that might be very hard to hire right now in the valley or very expensive in the valley. And I think that's exciting to see. >> The future of Silicon Valley is interesting because you have a lot of the fast pace, it seems like ventures have shrink down in terms of the acceleration of the classic building blocks of how to get a company started. You get some funding, engineers build a product, they get a prototype, they get it out. Now it seems to be condensed. You'll see valuations of a billion dollars. Can Silicon Valley survive the current pace given the real estate prices and some of the transportation challenges? What's your view on the future of Silicon Valley? >> Well my view is there is no place like the valley. The interaction between great universities, Stanford and Cal, UCSF if you're interested in biomedical innovation and the companies makes it just a microcosm of innovation and excellence. It's challenges, if it doesn't solve it's problems on housing and transportation, it will eventually cause a second Silicon Valley to rise and challenge it and I think that's really up to us to solve and I think we're going to have to, the great leaders, the great companies in the valley are going to have to take a leadership role working with the local governments to solve that problem. >> On the Silicon Valley vision of replicating it, I've seen many people try, other regions try over the years and over the 20 years, my observation is, they kind of get it right on paper but kind of fail in the execution. It's complicated but it's nuanced in a lot of ways but now we're seeing with remote working and the future of work changing a little bit differently and all kinds of new tech from block chain to, you name it, remote working. >> Right. >> That it might be a perfect storm now to actually have a formula to replicate Silicon Valley. If you were advising folks to say, hey, if you want to replicate Silicon Valley, what would be your advice to people? >> Well you got to start with the weather. (laughing) Always a challenge to replicate that. But then the other pieces, right? Some great universities, an ecosystem that supports risk taking and smart failure. One of the great things about the valley is, you're a young engineer/computer scientist graduating, you come here. You go to a start up company, so what it fails? There's 10 other companies you can get a job with. So there's a sense of this is a really exciting place to be, that kind of innovation. Creating that, replicating that ecosystem, I think and getting all the pieces together is going to be the challenge and I think the area that does that will have a chance at building something that could eventually be a real contestant for the second Silicon Valley. >> And I think the ecosystem and community is the key word. >> And community, absolutely. >> So I'll get your thoughts on your journey. Take us through your journey. MIPS co-founder, life at Stanford, now with the Knights Scholarship Program that you're involved in, the Knight Hennessy Scholarship. What lessons have you learned from each kind of big sequence of your life? Obviously in the start up days. Take us through some of the learnings. >> Yeah. >> Whether it's the scar tissue or the success, you know? >> Well, no, the time I spent starting MIPS and I took a leave for about 18 months full-time from the university, but I stayed involved after that on a part time basis but that 18 months was an intensive learning experience because I was an engineer. I knew a lot about the technology we're building, I didn't know anything about starting a company. And I had to go through all kinds of things, you know? Determining who to hire for CEO. Whether or not the CEO would be able to scale with the company. We had to do a layoff when we almost ran out of cash and that was a grueling experience but I learned how to get through that and that was a lesson when I came back to return to the university, to really use those lessons from the valley, they were invaluable. I also became a much better teacher, because here I had actually built something in industry and after all, most of our students are going to build things, they're not going to become future academics. So I went back and reengaged with the university and started taking on a variety of leadership roles there. Which was a wonderful experience. I never thought I'd be university president, not in a million years would I have told you that was, and it wasn't my goal. It was sort of the proverbial frog in the pot of water and the temperature keeps going up and then you're cooking before you know it. >> Well one of the things you did I thought was interesting during your time in the 90's as the head of the computer science department is a lot of that Stanford innovation started to come out with the internet and you had Yahoo, you had Google, you had PH.ds and you guys were okay with people dropping out, coming back in. >> Yeah. >> So you had this culture of building? >> Yup. >> Tell us some of the stories there, I mean Yahoo was a server under the desk and the web exploded. >> Yeah, it was a server under the desk. In fact, Dave and Jerry's office was in a trailer and you go into their room and they'd have pizza boxes and Coke cans stacked around because Yahoo use was exploding and they were trying to build this portal out to serve this growing community of users. Their machine was called Akebono because they were both big sumo wrestling fans. Then eventually, the university had to say, "You guys need to move this off campus "because it's generating 3/4 of the internet traffic "at the university and we can't afford it." (laughing) So they moved off campus and of course figured out how to use advertising as a monetization model. And that changed a lot of things on the internet because that made it possible for Google to come along years later. Redo search in a way that lots of us thought, there's nothing left to do in search, there's just not a lot there. But Larry and Sergey came up with a much better search algorithm. >> Talk about the culture that you guys fostered there because this, I think, is notable, in my mind, as well as some of the things I want to get into about the interdisciplinary. But at that time, you guys fostered a culture of creating and taking things out and there was an investment group of folks around Stanford. Was it a policy? Was it more laid back? >> No, I think-- >> Take us through some of the cultural issues. >> It was a notion of what really matters in the world. How do you get impact? Because in the end that's what the university really wants to do. Some people will do impact by publishing a paper or a book but some technologies, the real impact will occur when you take it out into the real world. And that was a vision that a lot of us had, dating back to Hewlett-Packard, of course but Jim Clark at Silicon Graphics, the Cisco work, MIPS and then, of course, Yahoo and Google years later. That was something that was supported by both the leadership of the university and that made it much easier for people to go out and take their work and take it out to the world. >> Well thank you for doing that, because I think the impact has been amazing and had transcended a lot of society today. You're seeing some challenges now with society. Now we have our own problems. (laughing) The impact has been massive but now lives are being changed. You're seeing technology better lives so it's changing the educational system. It's also changing how people are doing work. Talk about your current role right now with the Knight Hennessy Scholarship. What is that structured like and how are you shaping that? What's the vision? >> Well our vision, I became concerned as I was getting ready to leave the president's office that we, as a human society, were failing to develop the kinds of leaders that we needed. It seemed to me it was true in government. It was true in the corporate world. It was even true in some parts of the nonprofit world. And we needed to step back and say, how do we generate a new community of young leaders who are going to go out, determined to do the right thing, who see their role as service to society? And their success aligned with the success of others? We put together a small program. We put together a vision of this. I got support from the trustees. I went to ask my good friend Phil Knight, talked to him about it, and I said, "Phil I have this great idea," and I explained it to him and he said, "That's terrific." So I said, "Phil I need 400 million dollars." (laughing) A month later he said, "Yes," and we were off and running. Now we've got 50 truly extraordinary scholars from around the world, 21 different birth countries. Really, some of them have already started nonprofits that are making a big difference in their home communities. Others will do it in the future. >> What are some of the things they're working on? And how did you guys roll this out? Because, obviously, getting the funding's key but now you got to execute. What are some of the things that you went through? How did you recruit? How did you deploy? How did you get it up and running? >> We recruited by going out to universities around the world, and meeting with them and, of course, using social media as well. If you want get 21 year and 22 year olds to apply? Go to social media. So that gave us a feed on some students and then we thought a lot, our goal is to educate people who will be leaders in all walks of life. So we have MBAs, we have MDs, we have PH.ds, we have JDs. >> Yeah. >> A broad cohort of people, build a community. Build a community that will last far beyond their time at Stanford so they have a connection to a community of like minded individuals long after they graduate and then try to build their leadership skills. Bringing in people who they can meet with and hear from. George Schultz is coming in on Thursday night to talk about his journey through government service in four different cabinet positions and how did he address some of the challenges that he encountered. Build up their speaking skills and their ability to collaborate with others. And hopefully, these are great people. >> Yeah. >> We just hope to push their trajectory a little higher. >> One of the things I want you is that when Steve Jobs gave his commencement speech at Stanford, which is up on YouTube, it's got zillions and zillions of views, before he passed away, that has become kind of a famous call to arms for a lot of young people. A lot of parents, I have four kids and the question always comes up, how do I get into Stanford? But the question I want to ask you is more of, as you have the program, and you look for these future leaders, what advice would you give? Because we're seeing a lot of people saying, hey you know people build their resume, they say what they think people want to hear to get into a school, you know Steve Job's point said, "Follow your passion, don't live other people's dogma" these are some of the themes that he shared during that famous commencement speech in Stanford. Your advice for the next generation of leaders? How should they develop their skills? What are some of the things that they can acquire? Steve Jobs was famous to say in interviews, "What have you built?" >> Yeah. >> "Tell me something that you've built." It's kind of a qualifying question. So this brings up the question of, how should young people develop? How should they think about, not just applying and getting in but being a candidate for some of these programs? >> Well I think the first thing is you really want to challenge yourself. You really want to engage your intellectual passions. Find something you really like to do. Find something that you're also good at because that's the thing that'll get you out of bed on weekends early, and you'll go do it. I mean, if you asked me about my career? And asked me about my number one hobby for most of my career? It was my career. I loved being a professor. I loved research, I love teaching. That made it very easy to do it with energy and excitement and passion. You know there's a great quote in Steve Job's commencement speech where he says, "I look in the mirror every morning "and if too many days in a row I find out "I don't like what I'm going to do that day, "it's time for a change." Well I think it's that commitment to something. It's that belief in something that's bigger than yourself, that's about a journey that you're going to go on with others in that leadership role. >> I want to get your thoughts on the future for young people and society and business. It's very people centric now. You're seeing a lot of the younger generation look for mission driven ventures, they want to make a difference. But there's a lot of skills out there that are not yet born, yet. There's jobs that haven't been invented yet. Who handles autonomous vehicles? What's the policy? These are societal and technology questions. What are some of things that you see that are important to focus on for some of these new skills? There's a zillion new cyber security jobs open, for instance. >> Right. I mean there's thousands and thousands of openings for people that don't have those skills. >> Well I think we're going to need two different types of people. The traditional techno experts that we've always had but we're also going to need people that have a deep understanding of technology but are deeply committed to understanding it's impact on people. One of the problems we're going to have with the rise of artificial intelligence is we're going to have job displacements. In the longterm, I'm a believer that the number of opportunities created will exceed those that get destroyed but there'll be a lot of jobs that are deskilled or actually eliminated. How are we going to help educate that cohort of people and minimize the disruption of this technology? Because that disruption is really people's live that you're playing with. >> It's interesting, the old expression of ATMs will kill the bank branch but yet, now there's more bank branches than ever before. >> Than ever before, right? >> So, I think you're right on that, I think there'll be new opportunities. Entrepreneurship certainly is changing and I want to get your thoughts. This is the number one question I get from young entrepreneurs is, how should I raise money? How should I leverage money investors and my board? As you build your early foundational successes whether you're an engineer or a team, putting that E team together, entrepreneurial team is critical and that's just not people around the table of the venture. >> Correct. >> It's the support service providers and advisors and board of directors. How should they leverage their investors and board? How should they leverage that resource and not make it contentious, make it positive? >> Make is positive, right? So the best boards are collaborative with the management team, they work together to try to move the company forward. With so many angels now investing in these young companies there's an opportunity to bring in experience from somebody who's already had a successful entrepreneurial venture and looking for really deciding who do you want your investor to be? And it's not just about who gives you the highest valuation. It's also about who'll be there when things get tough? When the cash squeeze occurs and you're about to run out of money and you're really in a difficult situation? Who will help you build out the rest of your management team? Lots of young entrepreneurs, they're excited about their technology. >> Yeah. >> They don't have any management experience. (laughing) They need help. >> Yeah. >> They need help building that team and finding the right people for the company to be successful. >> I want to get thoughts on Mayfield. The 50th anniversary, obviously, they've been around longer than me, I'm going to be 53 this year. I remember when I first pitched Yogan DeGaulle in 1990, my first venture, he passed, but, Mayfield's been around for a while. I mean, Mayfield was the name of the town around here? >> Right. >> And has a lot of history. How do you see the relationship with the ventures and Stanford evolving? Are they still solid? They're doing well? Is it evolved? There's a new program going on? I see much more integration. What's the future of venture? >> Well I think the university's still a source of many ideas, obviously the notion of entrepreneurship has spread much more broadly than the university. And lots of creative start ups are spun out of existing companies or a group of young entrepreneurs that were in Google or Facebook early and now decide they want to go do their own thing. That's certainly happens but I think that ongoing innovation cycle is still alive. It's still dependent on the venture community and their experience having built companies. Particularly when you're talking about first time entrepreneurs. >> Yeah. >> Who really don't have a lot of depth. >> My final question I want to ask you is obviously one relating, pure to my heart, is computer science. I got my degree in the 80's during the systems revolution. Fun time, a lots changed. Women in computer science, the surface area of what computer science is. >> Mm-hmm. >> It was interesting, there was a story in Bloomberg that was debunked but people were debating if the super micros was being hacked by a chip in the system. >> Right. >> And more people don't even know what computer architecture is, I was like, hey now, the drivers might able to inject malware. So you need computer architecture, a book you've written. >> Mm-hmm. >> Academically, to programming so the range of computer science has changed. The diversity has changed. What's your thoughts on the current computer science curriculums? The global programs? Where's it going and what's your perspective on that? >> So I think computer science has changed dramatically. When I was a graduate student, you could arguably take a full set of breadth courses across the discipline. Maybe only one course in AI or one course in data base if you were a hardware or systems person but you could do everything. I could go to basically any Ph.d defense and understand what was going on. No more, the field has just exploded. And the impact? I mean you have people who do bio computation, for example, and you have to understand a lot of biology in order to understand how computer science applies to that. So that's the excitement. The excitement of having computer science have this broad impact. The other thing that's exciting is to see more women, more people of color, coming into the field, really injecting new energy and new perspective into the field and I think that will stand the discipline well in the future. >> And open source has been growing. I mean if you think about what it's like now to write software, all this goodness coming in with open source, it just adds over the top. >> Yeah. >> More goodness. >> I think today a, even a young undergraduate, writing in Python, using all these open libraries, could write more code in two weeks than I could have written in a year when I was graduate student. >> If we were 21 together, sitting here you and I, today, we're 21 years old, what would we do? What would you do? >> Well I think the opportunity created by the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence is just unrivaled. This is a technology which we have invested in for 50 or 60 years, that was disappointing us for 50 or 60 years, in terms of not meeting it's projections and then, all of a sudden, turning point. It was a radical breakthrough and we're still at the very beginning of that radical breakthrough so I think it's going to be a really exciting time. >> Diane Green had a great quote at her last Google Cloud conference. She said, "It's like butter, everything's great with it." (laughing) AI is the-- >> Yeah, it's great with it. And of course, it can be overstated but I think there really is a fundamental breakthrough in terms of how we use the technology. Driven, of course, by the amount of data available for training these neural networks and far more computational resources than we ever thought we'd have. >> John it's been a great pleasure. Thanks for spending the time with us here for our People First interview, appreciate it. >> My pleasure, John. >> I'm John Furrier with theCUBE, we are here in Sand Hill Road for the People First program, thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from San Jose, it's theCUBE! Presenting Big Data Silicon Valley, brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. Our continuing coverage of our event, Big data SV. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host George Gilbert. We're down the street from the Strata Data Conference, hearing a lot of interesting insights on big data. Peeling back the layers, looking at opportunities, some of the challenges, barriers to overcome but also the plethora of opportunities that enterprises alike have that they can take advantage of. Our next guest is no stranger to theCUBE, she was just on with me a couple days ago at the Women in Data Science Conference. Please welcome back to theCUBE, Ziya Ma. Vice President of Software and Services Group and the Director of Big Data Technologies from Intel. Hi Ziya! >> Hi Lisa. >> Long time, no see. >> I know, it was just really two to three days ago. >> It was, well and now I can say happy International Women's Day. >> The same to you, Lisa. >> Thank you, it's great to have you here. So as I mentioned, we are down the street from the Strata Data Conference. You've been up there over the last couple days. What are some of the things that you're hearing with respect to big data? Trends, barriers, opportunities? >> Yeah, so first it's very exciting to be back at the conference again. The one biggest trend, or one topic that's hit really hard by many presenters, is the power of bringing the big data system and data science solutions together. You know, we're definitely seeing in the last few years the advancement of big data and advancement of data science or you know, machine learning, deep learning truly pushing forward business differentiation and improve our life quality. So that's definitely one of the biggest trends. Another thing I noticed is there was a lot of discussion on big data and data science getting deployed into the cloud. What are the learnings, what are the use cases? So I think that's another noticeable trend. And also, there were some presentations on doing the data science or having the business intelligence on the edge devices. That's another noticeable trend. And of course, there were discussion on security, privacy for data science and big data so that continued to be one of the topics. >> So we were talking earlier, 'cause there's so many concepts and products to get your arms around. If someone is looking at AI and machine learning on the back end, you know, we'll worry about edge intelligence some other time, but we know that Intel has the CPU with the Xeon and then this lower power one with Atom. There's the GPU, there's ASICs, FPGAS, and then there are these software layers you know, with higher abstraction layer, higher abstraction level. Help us put some of those pieces together for people who are like saying, okay, I know I've got a lot of data, I've got to train these sophisticated models, you know, explain this to me. >> Right, so Intel is a real solution provider for data science and big data. So at the hardware level, and George, as you mentioned, we offer a wide range of products from general purpose like Xeon to targeted silicon such as FPGA, Nervana, and other ASICs chips like Nervana. And also we provide adjacencies like networking the hardware, non-volatile memory and mobile. You know, those are the other adjacent products that we offer. Now on top of the hardware layer, we deliver fully optimized software solutions stack from libraries, frameworks, to tools and solutions. So that we can help engineers or developers to create AI solutions with greater ease and productivity. For instance, we deliver Intel optimized math kernel library. That leverage of the latest instruction set gives us significant performance boosts when you are running your software on Intel hardware. We also deliver framework like BigDL and for Spark and big data type of customers if they are looking for deep learning capabilities. We also optimize some popular open source deep learning frameworks like Caffe, like TensorFlow, MXNet, and a few others. So our goal is to provide all the necessary solutions so that at the end our customers can create the applications, the solutions that they really need to address their biggest pinpoints. >> Help us think about the maturity level now. Like, we know that the very most sophisticated internet service providers who are sort of all over this machine learning now for quite a few years. Banks, insurance companies, people who've had this. Statisticians and actuaries who have that sort of skillset are beginning to deploy some of these early production apps. Where are we in terms of getting this out to the mainstream? What are some of the things that have to happen? >> To get it to mainstream, there are so many things we could do. First I think we will continue to see the wide range of silicon products but then there are a few things Intel is pushing. For example, we're developing this in Nervana, graph compiler that will encapsulate the hardware integration details and present a consistent API for developers to work with. And this is one thing that we hope that we can eventually help the developer community with. And also, we are collaborating with the end user. Like, from the enterprise segment. For example, we're working with the financial services industry, we're working with a manufacturing sector and also customers from the medical field. And online retailers, trying to help them to deliver or create the data science and analytics solutions on Intel-based hardware or Intel optimized software. So that's another thing that we do. And we're seeing actually very good progress in this area. Now we're also collaborating with many cloud service providers. For instance, we work with some of the top seven cloud service providers, both in the U.S. and also in China to democratize the, not only our hardware, but also our libraries and tools, BigDL, MKL, and other frameworks and libraries so that our customers, including individuals and businesses, can easily access to those building blocks from the cloud. So definitely we're working from different factors. >> So last question in the last couple of minutes. Let's kind of vibe on this collaboration theme. Tell us a little bit about the collaboration that you're having with, you mentioned customers in some highly regulated industries, for as an example. But a little bit to understand what's that symbiosis? What is Intel learning from your customers that's driving Intel's innovation of your technologies and big data? >> That's an excellent question. So Lisa, maybe I can start my sharing a couple of customer use cases. What kind of a solution that we help our customer to address. I think it's always wise not to start a conversation with the customer on technology that you deliver. You want to understand the customer's needs first. And then so that you can provide a solution that really address their biggest pinpoint rather than simply selling technology. So for example, we have worked with an online retailer to better understand their customers' shopping behavior and to assess their customers' preferences and interests. And based upon that analysis, the online retailer made different product recommendations and maximized its customers' purchase potential. And it drove up the retailer's sales. You know, that's one type of use case that we have worked. We also have partnered with the customers from the medical field. Actually, today at the Strata Conference we actually had somebody highlighting, we had a joint presentation with UCSF where we helped the medical center to automate the diagnosis and grading of meniscus lesions. And so today actually, that's all done manually by the radiologist but now that entire process is automated. The result is much more accurate, much more consistent, and much more timely. Because you don't have to wait for the availability of a radiologist to read all the 3D MRI images. And that can all be done by machines. You know, so those are the areas that we work with our customers, understand their business need, and give them the solution they are looking for. >> Wow, the impact there. I wish we had more time to dive into some of those examples. But we thank you so much, Ziya, for stopping by twice in one week to theCUBE and sharing your insights. And we look forward to having you back on the show in the near future. >> Thanks, so thanks Lisa, thanks George for having me. >> And for my co-host George Gilbert, I'm Lisa Martin. We are live at Big Data SV in San Jose. Come down, join us for the rest of the afternoon. We're at this cool place called Forager Tasting and Eatery. We will be right back with our next guest after a short break. (electronic outro music)