(light corporate music) >> Welcome back, everyone, to VMware Explore 22. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Dave Vellante. Our 12th year covering VMware's User Conference, formerly known as VMworld, now rebranded as VMware Explore. Two great cube alumnus coming down the cube. Ricky Cooper, SVP, Worldwide Partner Commercials VMware, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> We just had a great chat- >> Good to see you again. >> With the Discovery and, of course, Joseph George, vice president of Compute Industry Alliances. Great to have you on. Great to see you. >> Great to see you, John. >> So guys this year is very curious in VMware. A lot goin' on, the name change, the event. Big, big move. Bold move. And then they changed the name of the event. Then Broadcom buys them. A lot of speculation, but at the end of the day, this conference kind of, people were wondering what would be the barometer of the event. We're reporting this morning on the keynote analysis. Very good mojo in the keynote. Very transparent about the Broadcom relationship. The expo floor last night was buzzing. >> Mhm. >> I mean, this is not a show that's lookin' like it's going to be, ya' know, going down. >> Yeah. >> This is clearly a wave. We're calling it Super Cloud. Multi-Cloud's their theme. Clearly the cloud's happenin'. We not to date ourselves, but 2013 we were discussing on theCUBE- >> We talked about that. Yeah. Yeah. >> Discover about DevOps infrastructure as code- >> Mhm. >> We're full realization now of that. >> Yep. >> This is where we're at. You guys had a great partnership with VMware and HPE. Talk about where you guys see this coming together because customers are refactoring. They are lookin' at Cloud Native. The whole Broadcom visibility to the VMware customer bases activated them. They're here and they're leaning in. >> Yeah. >> What's going on? >> Yeah. Absolutely. We're seeing a renewed interest now as customers are looking at their entire infrastructure, bottoms up, all the way up the stack, and the notion of a hybrid cloud, where you've got some visibility and control of your data and your infrastructure and your applications, customers want to live in that sort of a cloud environment and so we're seeing a renewed interest. A lot of conversations we're having with customers now, a lot of customers committing to that model where they have applications and workloads running at the Edge, in their data center, and in the public cloud in a lot of cases, but having that mobility, having that control, being able to have security in their own, you know, in their control. There's a lot that you can do there and, obviously, partnering with VMware. We've been partners for so long. >> 20 years about. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. At least 20 years, back when they invented stuff, they were inventing way- >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> VMware's got a very technical culture, but Ricky, I got to say that, you know, we commented earlier when Raghu was on, the CEO, now CEO, I mean, legendary product. I sent the trajectory to VMware. Everyone knows that. VMware, I can't know whether to tell it was VMware or HP, HP before HPE, coined hybrid- >> Yeah. >> 'Cause you guys were both on. I can't recall, Dave, which company coined it first, but it was either one of you guys. Nobody else was there. >> It was the partnership. >> Yes. I- (cross talking) >> They had a big thing with Pat Gelsinger. Dave, remember when he said, you know, he got in my grill on theCUBE live? But now you see- >> But if you focus on that Multi-Cloud aspect, right? So you've got a situation where our customers are looking at Multi-Cloud and they're looking at it not just as a flash in the pan. This is here for five years, 10 years, 20 years. Okay. So what does that mean then to our partners and to our distributors? You're seeing a whole seed change. You're seeing partners now looking at this. So, look at the OEMs, you know, the ones that have historically been vSphere customers are now saying, they're coming in droves saying, okay, what is the next step? Well, how can I be a Multi-Cloud partner with you? >> Yep. Right. >> How can I look at other aspects that we're driving here together? So, you know, GreenLake is a great example. We keep going back to GreenLake and we are partaking in GreenLake at the moment. The real big thing for us is going to be, right, let's make sure that we've got the agreements in place that support this SaaS and subscription motion going forward and then the sky's the limit for us. >> You're pluggin' that right into GreenLake, right? >> Well, here's why. Here's why. So customers are loving the fact that they can go to a public cloud and they can get an SLA. They come to a, you know, an On-Premise. You've got the hardware, you've got the software, you've got the, you know, the guys on board to maintain this through its life cycle. >> Right. I mean, this is complicated stuff. >> Yeah. >> Now we've got a situation where you can say, hey, we can get an SLA On-Premise. >> Yeah. And I think what you're seeing is it's very analogous to having a financial advisor just manage your portfolio. You're taking care of just submitting money. That's really a lot of what the customers have done with the public cloud, but now, a lot of these customers are getting savvy and they have been working with VMware Technologies and HPE for so long. They've got expertise. They know how they want their workloads architected. Now, we've given them a model where they can leverage the Cloud platform to be able to do this, whether it's On-Premise, The Edge, or in the public cloud, leveraging HPE GreenLake and VMware. >> Is it predominantly or exclusively a managed service or do you find some customers saying, hey, we want to manage ourself? How, what are you seeing is the mix there? >> It is not predominantly managed services right now. We're actually, as we are growing, last time we talked to HPE Discover we talked about a whole bunch of new services that we've added to our catalog. It's growing by leaps and bounds. A lot of folks are definitely interested in the pay as you go, obviously, the financial model, but are now getting exposed to all the other management that can happen. There are managed services capabilities, but actually running it as a service with your systems On-Prem is a phenomenal idea for all these customers and they're opening their eyes to some new ways to service their customers better. >> And another phenomenon we're seeing there is where partners, such as HPA, using other partners for various areas of their services implementation as well. So that's another phenomenon, you know? You're seeing the resale motion now going into a lot more of the services motion. >> It's interesting too, you know, I mean, the digital modernization that's goin' on. The transformation, whatever you want to call it, is complicated. >> Yeah. >> That's clear. One of the things I liked about the keynote today was the concept of cloud chaos. >> Yeah. >> Because we've been saying, you know, quoting Andy Grove at Intel, "Let chaos rain and rain in the chaos." >> Mhm. >> And when you have inflection points, complexity, which is the chaos, needs to be solved and whoever solves it kicks the inflection point, that's up into the right. So- >> Prime idea right here. Yeah. >> So GreenLake is- >> Well, also look at the distribution model and how that's changed. A couple of points on a deal. Now they're saying, "I'll be your aggregator. I'll take the strain and I'll give you scale." You know? "I'll give you VMware Scale for all, you know, for all of the various different partners, et cetera." >> Yeah. So let's break this down because this is, I think, a key point. So complexity is good, but the old model in the Enterprise market was- >> Sure. >> You solve complexity with more complexity. >> Yeah. >> And everybody wins. Oh, yeah! We're locked in! That's not what the market wants. They want some self-service. They want, as a service, they want easy. Developer first security data ops, DevOps, is already in the cycle, so they're going to want simpler. >> Yeah. >> Easier. Faster. >> And this is kind of why I'll say, for the big announcement today here at VMware Explore, around the VMware vSphere Distributed Services Engine, Project Monterey- >> Yeah. >> That we've talked about for so long, HPE and VMware and AMD, with the Pensando DPU, actually work together to engineer a solution for exactly that. The capabilities are fairly straightforward in terms of the technologies, but actually doing the work to do integration, joint engineering, make sure that this is simple and easy and able to be running HPE GreenLake, that's- >> That's invested in Pensando, right? >> We are. >> We're all investors. Yeah. >> What's the benefit of that? What's, that's a great point you made. What's the value to the customer, bottom line? That deep co-engineering, co-partnering, what does it deliver that others don't do? >> Yeah. Well, I think one example would be, you know, a lot of vendors can say we support it. >> Yep. >> That's great. That's actually a really good move, supporting it. It can be resold. That's another great move. I'm not mechanically inclined to where I would go build my own car. I'll go to a dealership and actually buy one that I can press the button and I can start it and I can do what I need to do with my car and that's really what this does is the engineering work that's gone on between our two companies and AMD Pensando, as well as the business work to make that simple and easy, that transaction to work, and then to be able to make it available as a service, is really what made, it's, that's why it's such a winner winner with our- >> But it's also a lower cost out of the box. >> Yep. >> Right. >> So you get in whatever. Let's call it 20%. Okay? But there's, it's nuanced because you're also on a new technology curve- >> Right. >> And you're able to absorb modern apps, like, you know, we use that term as a bromide, but when I say modern apps, I mean data-rich apps, you know, things that are more AI-driven not the conventional, not that people aren't doing, you know, SAP and CRM, they are, but there's a whole slew of new apps that are coming in that, you know, traditional architectures aren't well-suited to handle from a price performance standpoint. This changes that doesn't it? >> Well, you think also of, you know, going to the next stage, which is to go to market between the two organizations that before. At the moment, you know, HPE's running off doing various different things. We were running off to it again, it's that chaos that you're talking about. In cloud chaos, you got to go to market chaos. >> Yeah. >> But by simplifying four or five things, what are we going to do really well together? How do we embed those in GreenLake- >> Mhm. >> And be known in the marketplace for these solutions? Then you get a, you know, an organization that's really behind the go to market. You can help with sales activation the enablement, you know, and then we benefit from the scale of HPE. >> Yeah. >> What are those solutions I mean? Is it just, is it I.S.? Is it, you know, compute storage? >> Yeah. >> Is it, you know, specific, you know, SAP? Is it VDI? What are you seeing out there? >> So right now, for this specific technology, we're educating our customers on what that could be and, at its core, this solution allows customers to take services that normally and traditionally run on the compute system and run on a DPU now with Project Monterey, and this is now allowing customers to think about, okay, where are their use cases. So I'm, rather than going and, say, use it for this, we're allowing our customers to explore and say, okay, here's where it makes sense. Where do I have workloads that are using a lot of compute cycles on services at the compute level that could be somewhere else like networking as a great example, right? And allowing more of those compute cycles to be available. So where there are performance requirements for an application, where there is timely response that's needed for, you know, for results to be able to take action on, to be able to get insight from data really quick, those are places where we're starting to see those services moving onto something like a DPU and that's where this makes a whole lot more sense. >> Okay. So, to get this right, you got the hybrid cloud, right? >> [Ricky And Joseph] Yes. >> You got GreenLake and you got the distributed engine. What's that called the- >> For, it's HPE ProLiant- >> ProLiant with- >> The VMware- >> With vSphere. >> That's the compute- >> Distributed. >> Okay. So does the customer, how do you guys implement that with the customer? All three at the same time or they mix and match? What's that? How does that work? >> All three of those components. Yeah. So the beauty of the HP ProLiant with VMware vSphere-distributed services engine- >> Mhm. >> Also known as Project Monterey for those that are keeping notes at home- >> Mhm. >> It's, again, already pre-engineered. So we've already worked through all the mechanics of how you would have to do this. So it's not something you have to go figure out how you build, get deployment, you know, work through those details. That's already done. It is available through HPE GreenLake. So you can go and actually get it as a service in partnership with our customer, our friends here at VMware, and because, if you're familiar and comfortable with all the things that HP ProLiant has done from a security perspective, from a reliability perspective, trusted supply chain, all those sorts of things, you're getting all of that with this particular (indistinct). >> Sumit Dhawan had a great quote on theCUBE just an hour or so ago. He said you have to be early to be first. >> Yeah. (laughing) >> I love that quote. Okay. So you were- >> I fought the urge. >> You were first. You were probably a little early, but do you have a lead? I know you're going to say yes, okay. Let's just- >> Okay. >> Let's just assume that. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Relative to the competition, how do you know? How do you determine that? >> If we have a lead or not? >> Yeah. If you lead. If you're the best. >> We go to the source of the truth which is our customers. >> And what do they tell you? What do you look at and say, okay, now, I mean, when you have that honest conversation and say, okay, we are, we're first, we're early. We're keeping our lead. What are the things that you- >> I'll say it this way. I'll say it this way. We've been in a lot of businesses where there, where we do compete head-to-head in a lot of places. >> Mhm. >> And we know how that sales process normally works. We're seeing a different motion from our customers. When we talk about HPE GreenLake, there's not a lot of back and forth on, okay, well, let me go shop around. It is HP Green. Let's talk about how we actually build this solution. >> And I can tell you, from a VMware perspective, our customers are asking us for this the other way around. So that's a great sign is that, hey, we need to see this partnership come together in GreenLake. >> Yeah. >> It's the old adage that Amazon used to coin and Andy Jassy, you know, they do the undifferentiated heavy lifting. >> [Ricky And Joseph] Yeah. >> A lot of that's now Cloud operations. >> Mhm. >> Underneath it is infrastructure's code to the developer. >> That's right. >> That's at scale. >> That's right. >> And so you got a lot of heavy lifting being done with GreenLake- >> Right. >> Which is why there's no objections probably. >> Right. >> What's the choice? What are you going to shop? >> Yeah. >> There's nothing to shop around. >> Yeah, exactly. And then we've got, you know, that is really icing on the cake that we've, you know, that we've been building for quite some time and there is an understanding in the market that what we do with our infrastructure is hardened from a reliability and quality perspective. Like, times are tough right now. Supply chain issues, all that stuff. We've talked, all talked about it, but at HPE, we don't skimp on quality. We're going to spend the dollars and time on making sure we got reliability and security built in. It's really important to us. >> We had a great use case. The storage team, they were provisioning with containers. >> Yes. >> Storage is a service instantly we're seeing with you guys with VMware. Your customers' bringing in a lot of that into the mix as well. I got to ask 'cause every event we talk about AI and machine learning- >> Mhm. >> Automation and DevOps are now infiltrating in with the CICD pipeline. Security and data become a big conversation. >> [Ricky And Joseph] Agreed. >> Okay. So how do you guys look at that? Okay. You sold me on Green. Like, I've been a big fan from day one. Now, it's got maturity on it. I know it's going to get a lot more headroom to do. There's still a lot of work to do, but directionally it's pretty accurate, you know? It's going to be a success. There's still concern about security, the data layer. That's agnostic of environment, private cloud, hybrid, public, and Edge. So that's important and security- >> Great. >> Has got a huge service area. >> Yeah. >> These are on working progress. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> How do you guys view those? >> I think you've just hit the net on the head. I mean, I was in the press and journalist meetings yesterday and our answer was exactly the same. There is still so much work that can be done here and, you know, I don't think anybody is really emerging as a true leader. It's just a continuation of, you know, tryin' to get that right because it is what is the most important thing to our customers. >> Right. >> And the industry is really sort of catching up to that. >> And, you know, when you start talking about privacy and when you, it's not just about company information. It's about individuals' information. It's about, you know, information that, if exposed, actually could have real impact on people. >> Mhm. >> So it's more than just an I.T. problem. It is actually, and from HPE's perspective, security starts from when we're picking our suppliers for our components. Like, there are processes that we put into our entire trusted supply chain from the factory on the way up. I liken it to my golf swing. My golf swing. I slice right like you wouldn't believe. (John laughing) But when I go to the golf pros, they start me back at the mechanics, the foundational pieces. Here's where the problems are and start workin' on that. So my view is, our view is, if your infrastructure is not secure, you're goin' to have troubles with security as you go further up. >> Stay in the sandbox. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So to speak, you know, they're driving range on the golf analogy there. I love that. Talk about supply chain security real quick because you mentioned supply chain on the hardware side. You're seeing a lot of open source and supply chain in software, trusted software. >> Yep. >> How does GreenLake look at that? How do you guys view that piece of it? That's an important part. >> Yeah. Security is one of the key pillars that we're actually driving as a company right now. As I said, it's important to our customers as they're making purchasing decisions and we're looking at it from the infrastructure all the way up to the actual service itself and that's the beauty of having something like HPE GreenLake. We don't have to pick, is the infrastructure or the middle where, or the top of stack application- >> It's (indistinct), right? >> It's all of it. >> Yeah. >> It's all of it. That matters. >> Quick question on the ecosystem posture. So- >> Sure. >> I remember when HP was, you know, one company and then the GSIs were a little weird with HP because of EDS, you know? You had data protector so we weren't really chatting up Veeam at the time, right? And as soon as the split happened, ecosystem exploded. Now you have a situation where you, Broadcom, is acquiring VMware. You guys, big Broadcom customer. Has your attitude changed or has it not because, oh, we meet with the customers already. Well, you've always said that, but have you have leaned in more? I mean, culturally, is HPE now saying, hmm, now we have some real opportunities to partner in new ways that we don't have to sleep with one eye open, maybe. (John laughing) >> So first of all, VMware and HPE, we've got a variety of different partners. We always have. >> Mhm. >> Well before any Broadcom announcement came along. >> Yeah, sure. >> We've been working with a variety of partners. >> And that hasn't changed. >> And that hasn't changed. And, if your question is, has our posture toward VMware changed at all, the answer's absolutely not. We believe in what VMware is doing. We believe in what our customers are doing with VMware and we're going to continue to work with VMware and partner with the (indistinct). >> And of course, you know, we had to spin out ourselves in November of last year, which I worked on, you know, the whole Dell thing. >> Yeah. We still had the same chairman. >> Yeah. There- (Dave chuckling) >> Yeah, but since then, I think what's really become very apparent and not, it's not just with HPE, but with many of our partners, many of the OEM partners, the opportunity in front of us is vast and we need to rely on each other to help us as, you know, solve the customer problems that are out there. So there's a willingness to overlook some things that, in the past, may have been, you know, barriers. >> But it's important to note also that it's not that we have not had history- >> Yeah. >> Right? Over, we've got over 200,000 customers join- >> Hundreds of millions of dollars of business- >> 100,000, over 10,000, or 100,000 channel partners that we all have in common. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yep. >> There's numerous- >> And independent of the whole Broadcom overhang there. >> Yeah. >> There's the ecosystem floor. >> Yeah. >> The expo floor. >> Right. >> I mean, it's vibrant. I mean, there's clearly a wave coming, Ricky. We talked about this briefly at HPE Discover. I want to get an update from your perspectives, both of you, if you don't mind weighing in on this. Clearly, the wave, we're calling it the Super Cloud, 'cause it's not just Multi-Cloud. It's completely different looking successes- >> Smart Cloud. >> It's not just vendors. It's also the customers turning into clouds themselves. You look at Goldman Sachs and- >> Yep. >> You know, I think every vertical will have its own power law of Cloud players in the future. We believe that to be true. We're still testing that assumption, but it's trending in when you got OPEX- >> [Ricky And Joseph] Right. >> Has to go to in-fund statement- >> Yeah. >> CapEx goes too. Thanks for the Cloud. All that's good, but there's a wave coming- >> Yeah. >> And we're trying to identify it. What do you guys see as this wave 'cause beyond Multi-Cloud and the obvious nature of that will end up happening as a state and what happens beyond that interoperability piece, that's a whole other story, and that's what everyone's fighting for, but everyone out in that ecosystem, it's a big wave coming. They've got their surfboards. They're ready to go. So what do you guys see? What is the next wave that everyone's jacked up about here? >> Well, I think that the Multi-Cloud is obviously at the epicenter. You know, if you look at the results that are coming in, a lot of our customers, this is what's leading the discussion and now we're in a position where, you know, we've brought many companies over the last few years. They're starting to come to fruition. They're starting to play a role in, you know, how we're moving forward. >> Yeah. >> Some of those are a bit more applicable to the commercial space. We're finding commercial customers that never bought from us before. Never. Hundreds and hundreds are coming through our partner networks every single quarter, you know? So brand new to VMware. The trick then is how do you nurture them? How do you encourage them? >> So new logos are comin' in. >> New logos are coming in all the time, all the time, from, you know, from across the ecosystem. It's not just the OEMs. It's all the way back- >> So the ecosystem's back of VMware. >> Unbelievably. So what are we doing to help that? There's two big things that we've announced in the recent weeks is that Partner Connect 2.0. When I talked to you about Multi-Cloud and what the (indistinct), you know, the customers are doing, you see that trend. Four, five different separate clouds that we've got here. The next piece is that they're changing their business models with the partners. Their services is becoming more and more apparent, et cetera, you know? And the use of other partners to do other services, deployment, or this stuff is becoming prevalent. Then you've got the distributors that I talked about with their, you know, their, then you route to market, then you route to business. So how do you encapsulate all of that and ensure your rewarding partners on all aspects of that? Whether it's deployment, whether it's test and depth, it's a points-based system we've put in place now- >> It's a big pie that's developing. The market's getting bigger. >> It's getting so much bigger. And then you help- >> I know you agree, obviously, with that. >> Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, I think for a long time we were asking the question of, is it going to be there or is it going to be here? Which was the wrong question. (indistinct cross talking) Now it's everything. >> Yeah. >> And what I think that, what we're seeing in the ecosystem, is that people are finding the spots that, where they're going to play. Am I going to be on the Edge? >> Yeah. >> Am I going to be on Analytics Play? Am I going to be, you know, Cloud Transition Play? There's a lot of players are now emerging and saying, we're- >> Yeah. >> We're, we now have a place, a part to play. And having that industry view not just of, you know, a commercial customer at that level, but the two of us are lookin' at Teleco, are looking at financial services, at healthcare, at manufacturing. How do these new ecosystem players fit into the- >> (indistinct) lifting. Everyone can see their position there. >> Right. >> We're now being asked for simplicity and talk to me about partner profitability. >> Yes. >> How do I know where to focus my efforts? Am I spread too thin? And, you know, that's, and my advice that the partner ecosystem out there is, hey, let's pick out spots together. Let's really go to, and then strategic solutions that we were talking about is a good example of that. >> Yeah. >> Sounds like composability to me, but not to go back- (laughing) Guys, thanks for comin' on. I think there's a big market there. I think the fog is lifted. People seeing their spot. There's value there. Value creation equals reward. >> Yeah. >> Simplicity. Ease of use. This is the new normal. Great job. Thanks for coming on and sharing. (cross talking) Okay. Back to live coverage after this short break with more day one coverage here from the blue set here in Moscone. (light corporate music)

(light music) >> Hello, welcome back everybody to theCUBE's coverage in New York City of AWS Summit 2022. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We had Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin here earlier. I'm going to wrap it up here with James Forrester, last interview of the day here in New York. Wish we would have had another day. It's a packed house, 10,000 people. James Forrester's the VP Worldwide Technical Leader for VMware's Cloud on AWS. On AWS is a big distinction. James, welcome to theCube. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much, John. It's great to be here. >> So I think it's been like six years since the announcement of VMware's Cloud on AWS, which is a separate instance, separate hardware, but it's changed the game for VMware. You guys have done a lot of work, successful traction with customers. Clarified, I remember at that time, it really clarified VMware's Cloud play. Which then gave VMware more time to work on what it's doing now, which is, you know, using all their assets and their operations with Tanzu, Monterey, Cloud Native, Cross Cloud. What they call you guys call Cross Cloud, I call Super Cloud, action, a lot of stuff happening. So thanks for coming on. Okay. So first question is, what's the future look like for VMware's Cloud on AWS? >> Super bright, super bright. And there's a couple of great reasons for that. I think firstly, what we're seeing is that customers have now made enough progress in their cloud journeys. Many of them have chosen AWS and they're going full force. We're going to help them go faster. We're going to help them get there and get native to those adjacent services much quicker with more confidence and more resiliency. So it's a super exciting time to be doing what we do. >> You know, VMware has had a steady install base, okay. I mean basically it's like almost ingrained in the operations. What do you guys see as that next level step up function? Because you know, obviously Broadcom is buying VMware. Obviously that utility will be in place, but there's more. There's more there that customers can tap into. This is the promise of the cross-cloud. How do you talk about that when you got the AWS action? How does that all integrate? >> Yeah, absolutely. And of course, because so many customers are going to AWS on their own cloud journeys right now, what we get to have the conversation about is how they can get there more confidently. And so for customers who are just starting out, who are looking at their application portfolios, who have a ton of skilled IT professionals who they want to bring into that cloud journey, they can use the skills they already have. For those folks who are a little bit further along but they may be finding that refactoring their applications is more complex, more difficult that they anticipated, we give them a way of moving with confidence and with much less risk so they can do those cloud journeys that they anticipated. >> You know, James, I want to get your thoughts on what the state of the current situation is, vis-à-vis, your customers and your customers' appetite for AWS services. 'Cause one of the promises of the original deal was clarifying messaging but more importantly, customers can get the VMware Cloud and take advantage of the higher level services on AWS. What's the update there? What's the current state of the art? What's some of the patterns that you're seeing on the uptake of services and how they're working together? >> Yeah, it's a great call out. And honestly, one of the misconceptions that I address right out of the gate is that somehow going VMware Cloud takes you away from those services. It doesn't, it gets you closer to them. Full, direct, native access to all of those hundreds of great AWS services. So what we often find is that customers have their enterprise data, inside data workloads in their data centers. But what they want to do is get that up next to the AWS services that can use it, like Redshift and Athena and Glue. They can move those workloads right adjacent to those services to start using them right away. So it's a great way to look at the platform. >> So one of the observations that's pretty well understood right now by most people, I'd say 90%, if not more, not a hundred percent 'cause I've heard people like not get it, but it's pretty clear that the operating model for the the enterprise will be hybrid as a steady state. I don't think there's any debate on that unless you think there is. >> Do you feel the same- >> No debate. No debate. >> Okay. Hybrid's a steady state. What does that mean as clients start to think about edge and their data centers. 'Cause now the private cloud is back in the game. So I've heard people talk about private cloud, which we, I think we coined the term with Dave, Wikibon years ago, but it kind of went away because that was not the public cloud. So public cloud won, on premise didn't go away. We saw Amazon with Outpost. So now they're like, I can still have stuff on prem and run it in a cloud operations. So they're calling that private cloud, I think. So you're starting to hear the same things. What it means basically is that hybrid is winning. It's the standard. What does the hybrid environment look like from a VMware perspective as you guys look at that and have been building that out 'cause you have customers that are on premises. >> Yeah. >> Is it just to the cloud and back? Is it, is there any changes? Is there new connective tissue? Is there a glue layer? What's the operating model for VMware customers? >> Well, customers wanted those same benefits from public cloud agility, cost benefits, elasticity, innovation, sovereignty, sustainability, but they wanted to be able to do that everywhere. They wanted it in their data centers. They wanted it at the edge. And as you've pointed out public cloud delivered that for customers. AWS first out there delivering that for customers. Now with innovations like VMware Cloud and AWS outpost, we're able to bring that back into the data center. We're able to bring those same benefits of public cloud into the customers on-prem environment. And you're right. We see hybrid just rolling and rolling and being able to offer our solution across all of it. >> Yeah, we're big fans of VMware because theCube's 12 years old, we've been at every VMworld. Now they're calling it VMware Explorer, the events coming up. So the folks watching, plug for VMware Explorer, formerly VMworld, it's on the schedule. Content catalog just came out last week. It's looking pretty good. So put a plug out there. We'll be there with theCube, two sets. So you know, if you're going to VMworld, now Explorer go register, get up there. It's in San Francisco, always a great event. vSphere and vSAN, always great products. But you got Carbon Black, you got Security. So these things have all been working kind of pistons for VMware. Tanzu, I know Raghu and those guys are doing it. Craig McLuckie and team, they're working on that. You got Tanzu, you got Monterey. That's the new cloud native thing. How is that tracking vis-à-vis, the operating model of the the core engine, vSphere, vSAN and others. And then with the native services of Cloud. So you got AWS Cloud with VMware Cloud, vSphere, vSAN, Carbon Black, and Security. And then you got the Tanzu over here. How are those three things coming together? >> Well, the services that customers know and love first and foremost that they've been running the mission critical workloads on, vSphere, vSAN, NSX. What VMware cloud and AWS is, is a packaging together of those services. So customers don't have to configure it all themselves and do the heavy lifting. We manage and run it on their behalf. What we are adding to that most recently with Tanzu is now the ability to run containers within the same environment. 'Cause customers tell us they've got parts of their organization that are very much on vSphere VMs. Parts of their organization are moving to containers. We want be able to provide a single operating model, a single layer, a single way of managing all of that. No matter where it's deployed. >> You know, remember back in the day, when Raghu wasn't the CEO, Carl Eschenbach was there, Sanjay Poonen was there. Carl's now at Sequoia Capital, Raghu's a CEO. Sanjay's kind of looking for a next gig. I always said, why doesn't vSphere and NSX become that abstraction layer and commoditize the network so that white boxes and Dell and HP could all play in that layer? It just never happened yet. Is that something you guys talk about at all? Like, I mean in the, in the smokey room, in the execs, is that happening? What's the vision? >> Well, we always work backwards- from customers, right? (John laughing) And what customers are telling us is they want us to help them with that undifferentiated heavy lifting. So who knows where that could take us, but right now we're very focused on helping those customers move with confidence to the cloud. >> You didn't take the bait on that one. I appreciate that. (James laughing) Okay. So let's get some perspective. You're out with customers. What are the big things that you're seeing right now from your customers right now? 'Cause you look behind us here, 10,000 people at this event. This is not a no-show. This is not a throwaway event in, you know, somewhere in the corner of the world. This is New York City, only one summit. This is bigger than Snowflake Summit and that was packed. So from an event standpoint, this is pretty a big game statement here for AWS. These companies are not experiencing headwinds, they're changing. So what are your customers telling you around what they're looking at for the cloud native architecture? I mean obviously the digital transformation is continuing, obviously clouds here. And again, we were saying earlier, this is the first time in history that the cloud hyperscalers have been in market during a so-called downturn. So there's no other data. 2008, I wouldn't call 'em up and running. They were building, but AWS, Azure, others, these cloud players they're in market. And so you're starting to see kind of some data coming out saying, Hey, this thing's still working, the engine of innovation is cranking out and it's not slowing down the digital transformation. It might change the capital markets and valuations but it's not changing customers. That's what I'm hearing. Now, you probably would agree with that, right? >> James: I think that's exactly right. >> Okay. So let's stay with that. If you believe that, then it's like, okay, what are they doing? So what are customers doubling down on? What are some of the patterns you're seeing in the environment today that you could share with the audience? >> Yeah, so I think first and foremost is that steady transition to the cloud to deliver all of those benefits, agility, cost, elasticity, innovation, sovereignty, sustainability that hasn't gone away at all. In fact, it's only accelerated. With workloads like virtual desktops, which became so critical during COVID the need to be able to provide that kind of scalable elastic capacity has only increased. Now, coupled with that, most of these customers are already on a cloud journey. And while some folks may have had the luxury of letting that go a little bit more slowly, nowadays the urgency is pervasive across all of the industries that we get to talk to in New York. Everyone needs to go faster. Everybody's not seeing the progress that they expected that we think we can help them deliver. So the opportunity I think that's come out of COVID is more workloads, different use cases, disaster recovery, ransomware- >> Is that more of an awareness or reality or both? >> Both. Absolutely. >> Okay. So let me ask the next question. 'Cause this is a good conversation, I think. I agree a hundred percent. We're seeing the same exact thing. Now let's talk about how companies are thinking about the real opportunity that's emerged, which is refactoring the business model without actually changing the makeup of the organization per se, to take on new territories and potentially take over categories. >> James: Mm hmm. >> So I mean a data warehouse and a data cloud's kind of the same thing. Snowflake probably wouldn't like me saying that they're a data warehouse because they call themselves a data cloud, but it's kind of the same thing, just refactored on AWS. >> James: Yep. >> That's a super cloud. So that's an opportunity for everyone to do that in every vertical. How many customers are actually thinking that way and actually taking steps to pursue that, capture that opportunity? Or do you agree it's the opportunity? >> No, I think that that is an opportunity and I love that idea of super cloud in that what I think customers have started to realize, over the last couple of years in particular, is it's very difficult to take advantage of all of those great cloud services if your applications are still behind a whole lot of different layers of firewalls and so forth. So getting the application close to those services, in proximity to those services is that first step in modernization. Then it doesn't have to be a change the wings on the plane while it's flying conversation, which- >> John: Yeah. >> You know, is very risky for a lot of organizations. >> John: Exactly. >> It's a let's get the plane going a little bit faster. Let's get the plane going a little bit smoother, and let's get the plane to its destination with less risk. >> You know, James, that reminds me of the old school conversations of non disruptive operations. Remember those days? >> James: I do, yeah. >> Mostly around storage and, and servers. But that's what basically what you're saying. Transform while operating, right? >> James: Exactly. >> So this is, you can do both. You got to make time and it's a talent question too. I'd love to get your thoughts on how customers are thinking about who do you put on which task. 'Cause you want your A players on both areas. You don't want all your A players, what I hear, CSOs and CIOs telling me is that, I put all my A players on transformation, I got no one running the business. >> James: Mm hmm. >> So you got to kind of balance. That's a cultural team decision. >> It's a cultural team decision. It's also a skills marketplace decision. >> John: Yeah. >> And there's a practical reality to the skills that are available and how fast you can hire them. So a big part of the conversation that we have is when customers have existing skills sets, plug those into their transformation, plug those into their business outcomes. I like to use the phrase, "Let's make heroes out of IT" because they can be a much more critical player than they think they can be. Yeah, IT basically is not even around anymore. It's part of the organization. And then you have data science and data engineering coming in. So it's, you know, IT is not a department anymore, it's the company >> Exactly right. >> If you're kind of going down that road, yeah. >> Yeah. Alright, so final question. What's the biggest change you've seen and observed in your current year and a half? You know, we're coming out of COVID, knowing what was before, what sea change, what inflection point are we in now? How would you describe this current market? 'Cause again, we're kind of in a unique market. You know, you got crypto around the corner, people getting attracted to that, little bubbly obviously, reality of cloud and 2.0 or super cloud emerging. On premise is not going away. Edge exploding on the industrial side, especially with machine learning coming along. So this operating model is clearly in sight. What's the biggest observation you've noticed. >> I think it's the sense of urgency over the last couple of years in that most customers I talked to are no longer relaxed about the timing of delivering cloud capabilities to their organizations. Most customers are on sort of a transformation journey of their own and digital transformation and cloud transformation are absolutely fundamental to that. >> One more real quick follow up question if you don't mind, 'cause I appreciate your time. One of the things that's come up a lot in our conversations is the role of the ecosystem. Not only as a part of the business model but also validation of the enablement that cloud offers companies. You have an enabling platform, your ecosystem is well known. And so your customers are starting to develop ecosystems. So if the cloud model kind of trickles like downstream, ecosystem is kind of a proof of something. >> James: Mm hmm. >> What's your view of all this ecosystem discussion as we transform this next generation? >> Yeah, I think it touches on a couple of things. So obviously there is a technology ecosystem, which is evolving very rapidly in support of cloud and cloud transformation. But what's interesting, I think is the business ecosystem that's evolving around it. We're seeing our customers evolve their own businesses to assume that those cloud capabilities will be available to them. And if the cloud capabilities are not available to them in a timely fashion, then the ecosystem starts to have a domino effect. So the ecosystems are interdependent between business, and technology, and skills, and talent. And I think that's a great to be >> James Forrester, they're going to shut us down. The speakers are on, they're going to pull the plug. Thanks for being our last interview here in New York City and bringing us home. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on theCube. >> John, thanks so much. Great to be here, really enjoyed it. Okay. We are wrapping it up here in New York City. I'm John Ford with theCube, great day. For Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, and the entire crew of theCube here on the ground. Live in person events are back. theCube hybrid, get online, check out our coverage there. The SiliconANGLE and thecube.net. I'm John Furrier signing off from New York City. See you next time. (light music)

>> [Narrator] From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Radio 2018. Brought to you by VMware. (upbeat techno music) >> Welcome back everyone. We're here with theCUBE in San Francisco for exclusive coverage for VMware's Radio 2018. I'm John Furrier, your host. This is the event where everyone comes together in the R&D and the organic engineering organization of VMware to flex their technical muscles, stretch their minds, compete for the papers, and also get to know each other. And the key person behind this is the chief research officer David Tennenhouse. Thanks for joining us today. >> Thank you John. Really glad to be here. >> So you're the chief research officer. You got to look at the company-wide agenda. But this event is more of a special event, organically. Talk about for the folks out there watching what's different about this event that goes outside the scope of kind of the top-down research. >> Yeah this is really, you know, for the developers by the developers. So when you said I'm in charge, I'm definitely not in charge. And you know, we have a program committee. There's a programming committee chair. It's much like the way an academic conference might be organized, where you know, there's kind of a group of academics that sort of watch over the content. In this case, we have many hundreds of folks that submit proposals into radio. They can't all get selected. It's very competitive because in addition, if you get accepted, you get a ticket to radio. You get to attend. So everybody really wants to do that. >> Talk about the organic nature. 'Cause this is one of the things that I've seen that's been part of a world-class organization. Like Amazon has their own process for it called the big idea. They have certain working documents that process to foster any idea across the organization. How important is that as part of Radio? I mean literally it's anyone right? >> Well it's not just Radio. It's important to the whole company. So I think of this as when you're working on innovation, you're gonna have sort of a breadth component. You want everybody doing a little. And some of that's gonna be incremental. One thing I learned in a prior role at a different company is you know if you add up a lot of two percenters, that's how you can double things and keep on Moore's law every year. So you're gonna get some of that. And you're gonna get some really disruptive ideas. So you know, from a top-down point of view, we try to drive some disruptions. Some disruptions show up organically from the troops. And a ton of that breadth stuff shows up. >> I'm honored to be here. It's the 14th year, and some T-shirts commemorating the key milestones from way back in the day. This is the first year press was allowed in. I noticed a handful of folks came in to kind of document this. A lot of the brightest minds in VMware here. Again, great to have us. We're super excited. But share with us. Like, what's happened over the years. Give some examples of where people were coming together, where there's a collision of ideas, and just that combustion that happens. Can you share some stories around key notable, or potentially as Raghu pointed out, there's been some misses too. (laughing) >> Yeah, you're gonna get some of that. I mean you've gotta take risks. Not everything's gonna work. You know and just to speak to misses. What I've learned in the innovation and research space is as much as anything, it's about timing. It's pretty rare that you completely technically miss. Usually engineers have an idea. They'll figure out a way to make it happen. Then the question is, is it the right time? Are the customers ready? Is the market ready to go in that direction? So, that's just to talk to that. >> Timing's everything. >> Timing is a big deal. >> Well there's never a miss too in R&D because if you, like Pat Yelson said, understand when it's gotta be re-casted. Know if it works or not. >> Yeah just understanding. So those are the ones actually you know I feel, what I really hate is if for some reason we have to end a project and we haven't actually gotten to the bottom of it. And so you don't know yes or no. And sometimes that can be the kind of time's run out, right. You've decided well, even if it works, it's too late. But you know, getting back to some of the examples, I'll focus on some more recent ones. We had some really interesting work come together on containers. And there were some folks that, and this is going back like four years ago. Containers aren't a new story, and certainly not for VMware. But around four years ago, there was a proposal at Radio that had to do with hey let's make containers a first class citizen on VMware's platform. Okay, so top level that makes great sense. Let's go do it. Containers are great for developers. The IT folks still want the isolation they get form VMs. Let's put these together really effectively. So that was top level. There was a next level, the idea that said gee at Radio, a couple years before, there'd been this idea of being able to do something called VM fork, or being able to clone a VM. And saying you know... And this came out of our end user computing group, the VDI folks. And if you think about it, if you've got a virtualized PC, you want to be able to clone that so you can start these up really fast. And the container folks said hey, we've got the same problem. Could we actually try to make use of that technology and use that as part of our bigger container push? So you know, those are examples of things that came together at Radio. And there are also examples of things where the market timing may not have quite been there. So we went out with the container work. That was actually post-Radio. It was funded. We incubated it. You've got vSphere Integrated Containers hit the market exactly the right time. >> Timing right there. >> Right, timing right there. But what we learned as we actually started doing trials with customers was that they didn't actually need the instant clone on the containers. What they needed is throughput. They wanted to know that they could do large numbers per second as opposed to you'll get that container really quickly. So as the team went along, they actually shifted away from that fork idea. We'll probably come back to it when the time's right for it. >> Well you have a nice little positioning there. I like the timing. 'Cause by the way, entrepreneurial timing is the same way. You go outside... >> I was a VC. (laughing) >> Okay, so you know okay. Timing's everything. How many times you seen that entrepreneur wicked early on it going... And they keep scratching that itch and finally they get it. The art of the timing. But also the art of knowing when to, what to keep in inventory. Pat mentioned vCloud Air as an interesting example. Recognizing abandonment there. Okay hey, let's just stop, take pause. Let's use what we have. >> Do something else. >> Do something else. >> Gotta do something else. And by the way along the way, in parallel with vCloud Air, we had built up these vCloud partners. And that's phenomenal right. So we have you know, people think in terms of a couple of very large public clouds. But we've got literally thousands of people running public clouds in either specialized markets, or particular countries, that are running on our platform. And you know that whole vCloud Air effort helped push that forward. >> So where were you a VC? Just curious. >> I was actually in a company that fits with sort of my role in research and innovation. I was in a specialized firm, boutique firm, new venture partners, that specialized in spin outs from large companies. This goes to the timing, right. I'd previously been at another large company. You know, and whenever you have a research portfolio, you're gonna have some projects that you started. They were technically successful. That's your first notch. Then you go look and say hey, can I find a business model for it. Some of these are both technically successful. You find a business model, but you had anticipated that the company strategically was gonna zig. The company zagged. Now this is a great opportunity that doesn't quite fit. So you know, we did those as spin outs. >> Well I love the perspective too of you said earlier, David, around not getting to the bottom of it. And that's the most frustrating part. Because you just gotta get some closure you know. Like okay, this thing, we took it to the end, completion, this is not gonna... Good try guys. >> And we know why. >> And you know why. Now let's take it to the next level. Now the market we're living in now I heard with Ray O'Farrell, I was talking with earlier. We talked about the confluence of these big markets coming together. Infrastructure market, which is kinda declining on paper. But cloud is filling the void. Big data's becoming AI, and blockchain over the top. These are four major markets. And at the center of them, intersecting all these nuances, security, data, IoT. >> Governance. >> Governance. So there's some sticky areas that are evolving based upon these moving markets. Opportunity recognition's another one. So this is what you're kind of doing now with the research. Talk about opportunity recognition. >> We definitely do that. And I do want to say on the infrastructure side, you know something to recall is that as people, you know they've got their private clouds. Those are individually getting actually bigger as they consolidate. But now with IoT, you're seeing edge computing pop up. Right, so the private infrastructure doesn't go away, it moves around. It's like a liquid. And you pour it from place to place in some sense. >> Moving computer around. Sound like what Ray O'Farrell was talking about in his keynote, early days of VMware. Again, Compute's the center of this. >> Right, Compute, but you know I'm a networking guy so you know, we've grown that. And I think that in fact, you know more and more as we make progress with software defined network, and network virtualization. And if you think about that, so you know let's look at that. So Compute's definitely at the center of what happens in the data center, in the cloud, right. You're gonna want to be able to string those piece together. So today we've got AirWatch. I think that's strategically really key. Because it gives us a little bit of presence on the edge devices that touch people. That's one of the ways information gets from the physical world to the virtual world is through people. >> It's an edge device. People are things too. >> IoT, right. So we're you know, working hard. And that's one of the projects that we incubated, and researched, and is now become a business at Vmware. It's to get that presence right at the edge of the gateways that bridge between the things that are connected to the physical world, and bringing it into the virtual world. Now if we can put our software defined network between all that, so you got it between the public cloud, the private cloud, the mobile devices in people's hands. >> And on premise, data center. >> Exactly, all of 'em. >> All right, so here's a question for you. This is one of those trick questions. Is the cell phone an edge device or an IoT device? >> Well I think it's in many ways both. And what I think of it is is more of a gateway. If you think about the IoT world, you have the things. >> IoT is a strict definition though in your mind, right. People refer to IoT as more of a sensor thing to a physical device. >> I tend to think of it as it's got some connection to some physical device. It's able to bring information in from the physical world. Okay, so now you look at your cell phone. It can bring information. It's got that microphone. It's got that camera, right. It can bring information in. >> [John] Connect it to a physical person. >> It can put information back out. Yeah, through a physical person. I've been in the space for a long time. Going back to my time at DARPA, we set out to create the IoT world. This wasn't an accident, right. We looked at this and said, okay the main way information gets between these two worlds today is through human beings. The way I used to explain this to the generals is you know, we can't keep putting human beings in the direct line of fire of information technology. So we've gotta get these devices, gotta get all these sensors. It's taken a long time. This is you know again, timing. But if you look at the research world. >> By the way, incredible work you've done by the way from there to here, it's been amazing. >> You know pull this along. But you know so when you look at that cell phone, it's got some of those sensors. It's got actually a whole pile of sensors in the phones today. It's got actuation, the ability to put the information back out. It's also a gateway. Because typically you know, particularly through its Bluetooth functionality, and as we get Bluetooth low power now. So it's also acting as a gateway to connect up other devices around your body, network etc. >> Personal networking, whatever comes on your physical presence. >> So you know, turn that around and it says in the IoT world, we've gotta manage gateways. We've gotta make sure gateways stay secure. Because they're really gonna be the sort of main perimeter, the line of defense. If you think about all these things that are gonna be out there, as an industry, we're gonna collectively try very hard to secure all those things. But let's be realistic. They're gonna be supplied from a wide variety of companies, and they're gonna last longer than people might think. >> How much of those devices are operationally, operation technology is non IP, versus not IP. Internet Protocol. >> Non Internet Protocol. Yeah, yeah. >> Internet Protocol now. >> [David] Non Internet, you had it right. >> Got the VC in the brain there. The VC, IP, I'm like get that IP right. So internet protocol devices, which has some challenges but that's getting fixed, versus OT just sensors proprietary. >> Yeah well either proprietary or let's say, you know it may be an industry standard, but an industrial standard. So today, a very large fraction, particularly you asked about how we focused at Vmware. Well one of our foci is we're about what are our enterprise customers gonna need. So when we think IoT, we're not really thinking that much about the consumer devices. We're thinking about those enterprise devices. So a lot of those will use... >> That's where AirWatch might come in. So employees still have phones though. >> Employees still have phones. So that's why I said, so there's the human interface. We want to be there. And there's the other enterprise interfaces to all these sensors. That could be in a factory. It could be in a smart city, any number of places. So as we pull information in from those, we're gonna find that they come from a lot of different suppliers and they're gonna last a long time. You know, even if you buy a device that's got a three to four year lifetime, probably 10 to 20% of those still gonna be around 10 years later, right. You're smiling because you know that in your home you have some wifi connected devices that are a little older than they probably should be. >> And they have full processing capability threaded processes on it, which could be running malware as we speak. >> So as I said, as an industry, we'll try to secure those really edge things. But the reality is we're gonna have to draw the line at the gateway. >> It's a lot more security work. I totally hear you. I mean the light bulb could have a full thread on there. The surface area is so huge now. >> And there have been attacks on light bulbs. >> Yeah I know. So I gotta ask you a question. 'Cause you bring up this networking edge, which by the way I love anything that's network. 'Cause I think this is the future of work. How is the future of work impacting some of the R&D you're doing. Because you talked about AirWatch them having more mobility. The human impact, society, whether it's mission driven and or just human collaboration going digital. You're gonna need to have policies. You need to have a networked society. This is super relevant. But it brings back that future work. >> It does. And so couple different aspects. You know, one you know, which just relates to a point you raised is if you look at something like our Workspace ONE product, if you've had a chance to do that. It's kind of a win win, because you get one portal. So you know, an employee for an enterprise, they've got one portal. They get access, it doesn't matter whether they're getting to a web app, they're getting to a you know, a DVI supported application. They're getting to something that's on a server, something on a SAS player, right. They get through that portal. So for them it's convenient. I mean for me as a manager, I love this, right. Because whether I'm on my cell phone, I'm on a laptop, doesn't matter, I can get to the same expense app. I can approve things. >> You don't need to carry two phones. My work phone and my... >> And I can do all these approvals really easily, right. So I also don't worry. I don't see the difference between which device I'm on. At the same time that you're delivering that convenience to the user, you're delivering governance because the IT team can be deciding how that portal's populated, how things are connected, right, and how the wiring works. All the authorization, you've got a common identification system and all of that. So that's kind of very specific to you know, let's say near term changing the user interface. In terms of the broader future of work, clearly machine learning is the big story here, right. And I think that what we're gonna see is, particularly again in enterprise, more and more need for data analysts to be able to look at the big data. We're gonna see sort of more and more use of machine-learning technologies. It's gonna you know basically creep in everywhere. And we're getting this at just the right time. So if you want to think about future work in the big national and international scale, what you really sort of stop to look at is say, gee, okay, these machines are gonna do all this work. What about the people? And you know a lot of people therefore get concerned. Gee, the computers are gonna take away all the jobs. Right, you get these sound bytes. >> I think right now we're worried about fake news and real content. (laughing) >> Well let's come back to that one later. But there is a sense of gee, you know, the computers will take on all the jobs. And you know what I think people are not doing carefully is looking at the demographics. Because if you look at basically all the developed economies for practical purposes, we actually have a demographic problem. Our problem is actually not a surplus of workers. It's gonna be a shortage of workers. In fact, actually in the US right now, you're starting to feel this. Now that's at the peak of the economic cycle. So of course you feel it, you know, a bit. >> They need trained workers too. Also people who qualify. >> Right. So I think the thing we really need to look at is how do we do a much better job at matching, you know, sort of workers, both folks coming into the workplace, people with existing skills, to available opportunities. Because actually we're gonna have a shortage of workers. And it's not just sort of the US and Europe. I mean China, Japan. Well Japan for a long time. China, headed to a shortage of workers. I was out in Singapore not too long ago and was surprised to find out not just that they're concerned. But they went and looked at the Southeast Asian countries around them that are their markets. They're looking at a shortage of workers. So you know, if we didn't have something like machine-learning and AI coming along, we'd be sitting there saying, how are we gonna keep our economies growing? >> We need augmentation for sure. >> We need this augmentation. And it's coming at just, you know, you talked about timing. You know, it's coming at just the right time. Now, there definitely are gonna be some tough transitions along the way, right. So we definitely, you know, for example, as autonomous vehicles come along, we've gotta figure out, okay, all those people that are driving vehicles, what are they gonna do going forward? But let's not kid ourselves too, you know. If you've got trucks moving around with high-value cargoes, you're not gonna leave those unattended, right. We're gonna have to figure all this out. So there's gonna be a lot of interesting opportunities. >> What's your take on blockchain? Well first of all, GDPR, real quick. Train wreck, useful? >> I think it's you know, if you backed up and asked me four or five years ago, I'd have said train wreck. And largely because we still don't have the sort of kind of international consensus on what the rules should be. >> But you mentioned governance earlier. That certainly needs to be at the center of the action. >> Right, but you know, if we take a look now, it seems like it's showing up at just the right time, right. You know, in that sense. I think part of what's happened is over the intervening years, a lot of countries outside of Europe, because they realize these regulations would apply to them, they've worked with European regulators to help the regulators understand the technology, you know, help the companies understand. >> That's a good politically correct answer. I'll just say I think it's a shit-show personally. But you know. I mean it's gonna force people... It's like Y2K in money making, but Y2 never happened. It's forcing people to really, I think the value of GDPR is the big companies are gonna get hit hard on some suits. Just the trolling thing bothers me. Just the trolls that come out of the woodwork. But I think the positive that puts the center of the value proposition, making data, not a one off, like backup and recovery. It has to be core to technical operations. >> And making privacy something that's really in that first class category. You know, as I said. >> Great first step, but... There's a big but. >> There is more to be done. >> Hopefully they don't go after us little guys. All right, final question, blockchain. We are super excited about blockchain. You have teams working on this. >> [David] I am super excited about blockchain. >> Talk about your view on blockchain. Why are you excited about it? Obviously we feel it's very efficient, makes inefficiencies efficient across all industries. Your thoughts. >> Okay so again, we look at things through this prism. What are enterprise customers gonna be looking at? What do they want? And you know, so we're not you know... I think you're in the same place. We're not looking at the crypto currencies, right. That's not the thing. And in fact, we're not even looking at cohabiting on the Bitcoin blockchain. Because do you really want to run your business in the same place that a whole bunch of other people are running illegal businesses and the whole thing. >> And by the way, there's some technical issues. (laughing) >> We'll get to that. We're gonna get there. But just even as a starting point. So we pretty quickly looking even you know, three, four years ago said, okay enterprise is not gonna want to go that way. But this idea of a federated ledger, right. So if you can make federated ledgers and we can have reusable technology, that means now, if I want to federate with other companies or other organizations, or you know, or you need companies federating with governments, or governments federating with each other. Anywhere you want to pull together essentially a club for the exchange of data, with a persistent record of what happened, you've now got a common way of doing it, right. Or we can drive towards that. You know there'll be a standardization process to get there. But so it's not to me, federated ledgers means lowering the barrier to federation. And I think that's pretty exciting. Whole bunch of places. You know, supply chain, clearly one. Financial technology, but... >> David, we gotta spend some time, have you come in the studio. I'd love to explore some of these great topics with you. But I gotta ask you one final question. You know, with your history going back to ARPA, D-ARPA days, and looking at really the beginning of the information super highway, IP, connecting some universities together, to today, the waves that have gone through. We've talked about standards. The OSI stack, you had all these grandiose standard plans. Not all of them have happened exactly as planned. But defacto standards play a really important role. It galvanizes community, gives people guiding principles, a north star, whatever metaphor you want to use. The key is the enabling disrupting technologies, a defacto standard. What's happening now in your mind that you see out there that's starting to emerge as defacto? 'Cause certainly there's a lot of standard things going, open sources for tier one citizen growing, rapidly, which is greatness. Cloud is booming, unlimited resources, Compute, fingertip compute... All this is good. >> Yeah. >> All these new standards, I got Kubernetes, I got this going on, what's emerging? >> Well again, they're defacto, right. Kubernetes is an interesting example of basically open source meets defacto. And that's pretty exciting right. I mean, we're excited about it. I think people are often surprised we're a fan of open source. And I guess really, I just like to sort of back up a notch. Because you know what you touched on is defacto standards, whether it's open source or not, have suddenly become a lot easier. When I say suddenly, over like a 10 year period. And I think what's going on there is this is part of the change to software. So you know, if you're talking about hardware, and you got screws, you know, and you got threads, these physical things have to match, and they have to match exactly, right. Say when you travel overseas, you need to carry converters, physical converters to convert from one thing to another. So if you want to interoperate, if you and I want to have stuff that interoperates, we needed to build like either, do the same thing, or have a physical adapter. There was a cost to not having a standard. If you think about in the software world, we can build software converters, right. So if I've got you know, say we've got two, or three, or four, or even 50 defacto standards in the software world. You know, blockchain. So there's 50 new things. Everybody launches their own. Pretty quickly, the market will drive that down to a small number. And then you can put software converters in place. So we no longer actually have to get to one. >> [John] That's the software economic model. >> It's a big change. >> And that is huge. So by the way, we had Dirk Hohndel on at CubeCon. Love his open source mission, just a shout out to you guys, doing a great job. You guys at VMware certainly that we know, love you over on the East Coast. Final prediction. Final question. Give us a prediction. >> Give you a prediction. >> 2018, second half of the year, what's gonna happen? What's gonna be a notable thing that you see out on the horizon that might happen in the marketplace that might be notable for people to stand up and pay attention to? >> I think we're gonna see some significant developments in the blockchain space. And it's gonna be in the category of people starting to announce real deployments. And you know, if you're sort of looking at that time frame, you know you've had a lot of different enterprises try things. We've had people kind of dabble at things. I think you're gonna start seeing some people really move significantly in that space. >> And do you think like, just to follow up on that, do you think like in the database world now, where by the way, it's okay to have a zillion databases now. 'Cause you talk about databases. >> But it consolidated down to a few players. >> You get some extraction layers. It's okay to have a few variety of blockchains. I mean, there's no one blockchain. >> Correct, so that's where I think as I said, you're gonna see actually a bunch of these deployments. They'll be using different technologies. And then the fun really starts right. As people consolidate, especially with open source, they swap ideas. We boil it down to what's the best of the best. We've got you know, stuff we're doing certainly to knock the throughput down, sorry throughput up, latency down. (John laughing) And you know, we think we've got a very scalable approach. And most important, you know something that's really... I don't know if you talked to people about our sustainability. You know, it's a key value for VMware. >> [John] Yeah, lot of great standards there, yeah. >> So you can imagine we looked at blockchain. We looked at proof of work. And we said that's proof of energy wasted. We're not going there. >> Gotta make it more efficient. >> I think you're gonna see more and more folks focusing on things like Byzantine fault tolerant. Ours is scalable. You know SBFT. >> Yeah performance is key. And the energy's a huge problem. >> But performance and at acceptable energy. You can't you know, just waste. It's immoral to just waste energy. And it really goes against what a lot of the whole IT industry's built up. You know, I think we've, over the decades, we've done a lot of things for the good of society. And we gotta stay the mission. >> I think as the more, I won't say mature, but big world-class organizations join in, I think that'll straighten itself out. And certainly, as any evolution would see, the web. I remember dial-up and AOL. It can't go as fast as this minicomputer. Well you don't get it, it's the web okay. David, thanks so much for coming on, appreciate it. Great conversation here at Radio 2018. I'm John Furrier, Cube coverage of VMware's annual 14th year conference, at Radio 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat techno music)

>> From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering Radio 2018. Brought to you by VMware. (lively electronic music) Hello everyone and welcome to special Cube coverage here in San Francisco, California. We're at VMware's Radio 2018 event. This is their annual R&D event where all the best people, smartest people, come together to collaborate on new projects, new innovations. Not imitation, innovation. Had great speakers up there. They had Steve Herrick, Cube alumni, now a venture capitalist, formerly CTO of VMware. And our first guest here today is Ray O'Farrell, executive vice president and CTO of VMware, been on theCUBE before. Great to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Great to see you, good morning. >> So I love this event 'cause it's, like you mentioned before we came on camera, Steve Herrick said it's like a sales kick-off for engineers. >> Correct yeah, yep. >> Which is like a rah, rah but also, you know, really motivating, but also putting out the north star. >> [Ray] Yep. >> Which is the innovation message. >> [Ray] Correct. >> So take minute to talk about what this event is. Explain to the folks, what is Radio 2018? There's a lot of history involved here. >> [Ray] Yep. >> Behind us is a t-shirt row of, you know, key milestones of VMware history. You know, think inside the box, now it's, think inside the cloud. What's this event about? >> So, um, the event has quite a few years. This is like the 14th year we've done this, right? And when it started, what it was really focused on was, in some ways, a recognition that, as the company begins to grow, as you begin to build new products and engage in new partnerships, In order to keep innovation alive, you almost need to manage it. The problem is you can't manage innovation. Almost by, you know, by definition it's something chaotic. It's an inspirational idea. It's something that was not expected. That's what makes it innovation. But what you can do, is you can create a culture which promotes that innovation or creates opportunities for those ideas to emerge. Or when those ideas do emerge, make sure there's a place for them to be heard and there's an opportunity for a network to build around them. And Radio is a part of that. We have lots of other programs in VMware to help keep driving that culture of innovation, but Radio is probably the primary one. >> Talk about some of the history from this event. What has come out of these events? 'Cause I wanna get into some of the specific questions around how R&D works these days vis-a-vis how it used to work. But, specifically, what has come out of these events? Can you point to any things that kind of popped out? Because R&D, I won't say hit or miss, but it's the idea is to experiment and try new things and nail it. What has come out of VMware's Radio years of history? >> Yeah, so, very practically, we get a lot of patents out of Radio. That's just a very practical sense. As people are building up the papers, as they're looking at the ideas they want to drive, as they work with different teams to build prototypes. Quite a few times people do that at Radio when they're making a presentation. They'll generate ideas, invention disclosures, which generate new patents. This show alone, even though we just actually entering the show at this stage, has already generated about nearly 240 IDFs. A lot of those have the potential to become patents. So it's very, very practical and pragmatic about the generation of patents and new ideas. When you look at the products side of things, quite often what you see at Radio is not necessarily a new product in a whole new area. What you tend to see is, we have existing technologies bubbling in different spaces and now, because you're able to bring these teams together, somebody gets an idea that says, Oh, I can combine machine learning with what we're doing in terms of logging and now I've got an interesting product to help support our customers, you know, deal with real world problems. >> So, it's not take that hill, build me a blockchain product, it's more of, take a step back, zoom back, look at the big picture, understand the fusion of where things are coming together, look at architecture. Is that kind of the-- >> Yeah, actually, sometimes there is the, take that hill, take the blockchain product, but quite often, it starts as something small. You have a Radio event where somebody will say blockchain is cool and interesting. Here's how you run it in a more efficient fashion on vSphere, something like that. And that would be a poster session. And it's only then when somebody sees that that says, I can really run blockchain on vSphere? Can I do it better even now it's physical in some way? And that's when the story emerges. So you don't necessarily see the product announcement coming from Radio itself. What you see is the core of that idea and then a few months later, or the next major VMWorld, or two VMWorlds out, you begin to see these things emerging. >> It's like you're creating sparks of innovation, throw onto the fire, create some action. >> That's exactly the way it works. You know, things like, a lot of stuff what we do in containers. You know, the VMware integrated containers, the combination of containers and VMs from a security point of view. You can trace a lot of that back to ideas that were generated for Radio. And it's pretty rigorous. People have to go through, submit papers, there's a submit ideas. And, you know, our most senior engineers crawl all over those and critique them and so, you know-- >> So it's competitive? >> Oh, it's very competitive. That it is, in many ways, it's a mark of honor to be invited to Radio or to present a paper and so people fight very hard to do so. >> Built in gamifications called just be smart and show some good papers. >> Yes, it's a little bit tougher today. >> How much goes into the prep for this? Because obviously that's a great bar. You guys set a high bar, high is great. And it's a great place here for people to stretch and flex their technical muscle. >> Yep. >> What's the process? How do people get to that bar? Do they collaborate? Is there meet-ups? Is there organic processes of top-down? How do you guys handle it? >> So we've a lot of different processes or programs around driving innovation, but when you look at Radio itself, and it leverages some of those others, but when you look at Radio itself, basically we create a Radio committee. The one for next year will be starting somewhere in the next couple of weeks, right? We create a Radio committee. It is typically driven by members of the office of the CTO, but works and pulls in our fellows, our principle engineers, and we form a committee which really splits into two different directions. One of which is all around the technical papers, the presentations which are gonna be presented later here today. And another one which focuses around how do you do the keynotes? How do you get invited speakers? How do you create this inspirational, you know pervasive sense of innovation. And so you have those two groups working, while cooperating somewhat independently of each other. And it takes a long time. So for instance, only about 15% of the papers which are actually submitted are presented here. So there's a lot of work going through, scanning those, combining those. One of the most exciting things you can do at VMware is, if you go back somewhere in around the February timeframe, all of our most senior engineers sit in one of our largest conference rooms with a bunch of engineers submitting papers and so on, and there is a lively debate working through paper after paper, idea after idea, and saying is this a good thing for Radio? Is this original? Hey, nobody else thought of that. What we gonna be able to do to do that? Or, in some cases, saying these two people, one from Bangalore, one from Bulgaria, we've earned these sites all over the world, these ideas look similar. Can we get those guys to talk to each other? And see what comes out of that. >> So it's kind of a team-building exercise. At the same time, pre-innovation, but it's interesting. You've mentioned you've got the challenge of the papers, which is, you know, get the accuracy on the facts, original content, original ideas. >> [Ray] Correct. >> And then the content program for the event has to be inspiring and motivating at the same time Two different things, but two design standards for you guys. >> Yeah. And, you know, we need to combine them both and, 80% to 90% of the people who are here are hardcore R&D engineers. Their day job is to write code, produce product, archetype product, right? And, you know, if you haven't worked with a group of senior engineers, they are not going to be tolerant of presentations which, oh, we saw that before-- >> [John] Or fluff. >> Or fluff, right. They want to get hardcore into the meat. In fact, the presentations that you see that get some of the highest ratings, tend to be those that are deeply technical in nature. You know VMware's software base is primarily systems software, systems engineering. They expect to see deeply technical solutions to how to attack some real world problems. >> You guys do have some smart people. It's great to have you on theCUBE. This is our ninth year doing VMWorld. Great to start coming in to the more technical events. It's fantastic. The question I gotta ask for you is, Pat Gelsinger always says on theCUBE, he's says on theCUBE a few times, but consistent theme, you gotta get out in front of that next wave or you're driftwood. To the point of, don't just take that point product at view, jump on the wave. And the wave is all about the next 10 years or 20 years. What is the wave that you guys are, that you would categorize, obviously Cloud is key, but as you have the hyper-convergence and the on-premise private cloud boom and VSAN's great. We've seen great results from that. The cloud's right there. You've got Amazon, you got Microsoft, kicking butt on the numbers. As the R&D tries not to get caught up into the fashionable day to day, you can have the long view. >> [Ray] Yeah. >> What's the wave for the long view? >> So I think there's two waves we're looking at. One of them is you need to spend a lot of time with customers and understand what their agenda is. What their innovation agenda is. You look at that, you see, you know, products popping up. How will I leverage AI in a new and interesting way? How will I do something with Blockchain? You know, I want to run AI algorithms, I need different hardware and different management software to do that. So we focus on those and make sure we're doing that. But perhaps, more importantly, I think when you begin to look at what's happening with the industry right now, you know, you saw private cloud, you saw public cloud, you see how you connect these together. It's actually that connectivity is going to be important. You know, I believe you're going to see the emergence of Edge infrastructure, but isolated? That's not powerful. Now combine that Edge infrastructure with how you can leverage what's going into the public cloud or how you're going to be able to secure all these in a way that falls back into, you know, even Teleco in some way. You're now beginning to see this synergy across all of those things. And I think, you know, that's where our sweet spot is. We know how to deal with those hard, how do I connect things together? How do I manage complex different piece of systems software? So that's where we're gonna see it. >> Well, it's great stuff. One of the benefits of being so close to VMware over the past nine years, and I was showing you some of our online data analysis. When I look at the VMware ecosystem, the interesting see the evolution and kind of the journey, 14 years. And looking at the milestones. Clearly, infrastructure, on-premise data center. And then you saw that emergence of clouds. You start to see these markets emerge. Cloud, big data comes on the scene. Data warehouse in the infrastructure. Now, that's AI, cloud is bigger. All kind of taking a little bit off the infrastructure, kind of squeezing that down, but it moves up into the Cloud. And now you've got that, over the top, Blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralized applications. In the middle of these circles, is security, IOT, and data. >> Correct. >> You guys are right there, so I have to ask you, because they're all, the confluence of all of those are coming together. You're not up here playing Blockchain, although there's some stuff we can get into. You got some AI influencing. So, in the center of infrastructure, Cloud, AI, and Blockchain, etc. is security data, IOT. How is that coming together? What's the R&D task? >> So, actually, I think the key word you used there was confluence. You cannot really look at these as independent things. And, you know, so our focus is what does it mean to be, essentially, the infrastructure. The infrastructure management story for that new form of multi-Cloud, Edge, IOT type of narrative. So our role there is, we believe security is one of the key things to focus on. And we believe that, in that new world, connectivity is a key part of what goes on. The Edge was taught to the Cloud. The Cloud was taught to the Teleco. The Teleco was taught to the IOT. >> [John] They need power. >> Right. They need power, they need communication. They need those things. So a lot of the time, a lot of where we focus comes back to intersects. We do believe that software-defined networking is a key way of being able to deliver a new fluidity of when you get that confluence. And intersects very quickly brings you into security. That's how you begin to understand how you isolate those components, understand what you need to do to detect. When that Edge IOT device is not even the device you think it is. Somebody might have replaced it. That's where you begin to be able to see the communications as a result sort of from that. So security is key, interconnectivity is key, and you know, when we speak about IOT itself, I've got kind of a dual role at VMware. While I'm the CTO at VMware, I also focus on IOT for Dell Technologies. And when we look at that, you know, today many of the examples of IOT are very narrow, almost point, solutions. The real power will come when you begin to combine across those solutions. You know, the thing that tells you the weather, the thing that tells you the traffic, and then the thing that tells you, you know, what's the best way to get there in your car, or whatever it is. Combine those things, now you gotta secure all that. 'Cause you're sharing information. >> [John] It's super exciting. It's probably the best time to be doing R&D because Dave Vellante and I always talk about on theCUBE all the time, that, you know, if everything was Cloud operations, because the confluence is happening, what is IOT? >> [Ray] Yep. >> You have a thin Edge, could be a windfarm, traffic signal, sensor network, or it could be a data center. The data center could be an Edge. I mean, you could look at it any way, it depends on how you look at it. >> One of the biggest questions that comes up all the time is what exactly is the edge, right? And I think, you know, it means different things within different industries. It's very clear on the extreme edge. That's a device, it's a windfarm, it's measuring the behavior of a robot, or something like that. And it's very clear on the other side. That's a Cloud, I run a bunch of analytics over there. It's the interesting piece in the middle where it is both, you know, a lot of opportunity and a lot of, you know, difficulty defining it. Is the SD1 server inside of an office, is that edge? Yeah, that looks like edge, it's at the edge of the network. But it's not controlling something physical. But that SD1 server inside in a retail store, may well also be doing something with the refrigerators or the cold chain or something in that store. And now you begin to see it more as kind of an IOT device. >> That's awesome, and it's great conversation. Certainly fodder for more R&D and more innovation and the management site's key. And, I think the holy grail on all this is programmable networks, right? Come on, we've been waiting. How fast is that coming, pedal harder, come on. I know you've got to go thanks for coming on. >> But I do wanna ask you, you guys are, I wanna give you some props and just get your thoughts on obviously Blockchain. We see things like Filecoin had a very huge ICO on the IPFs side, but, you know, they didn't really have a product, but they're promising, hey, store using decentralized, we have them in the Blockchain. Obviously, it's a network storage infrastructure, it's not so much selling tokens with token economics, although it does have a piece of it. That's gonna impact you guys on the horizon. What's the current state of you guys view, your view, the team's view of Blockchain-- >> Of Blockchain? Obviously, a lot of the hype and even some of the valuations and things you see are tied to what's happening on the financial side. Bitcoin, and so on. We're not focused on that at all. What we're saying is Blockchain, or more specifically, a distributed hyper-ledger, forms the basis of a community of companies or organizations being able to, essentially, look at trust as a service. I've got a contract with you, we're now able to look across a group of companies and say we all agree, that contract is valid because of our leverage of this blockchain. That then becomes an application story. How do I run it more efficiently? How do I make sure I run it securely? How do I make sure that that community is able to leverage that service in a shared fashion? And that's what we're focused on. In fact, one of the more interesting things is when you look at things like Blockchain, when it's used in the context of something like Bitcoin, there's a degree what people value is an anonymity. We don't know who bought it, but somebody bought it. But when you look at it from a trust point of view, we actually want to be able to see who exactly did the contract. I agree that you put the contract, we worked the contract together, and we're all agreeing with that. So you see these changes when you begin to bring these technologies into enterprise. >> Efficiencies come, big time-- >> Correct. >> On supply chain. >> Exactly. Actually, we've put a lot of focus on efficiencies. We've got a research team whose job has been very focused on, given Blockchain, how do I improve the core algorithms? How do I make them more applicable to something that'd be run by a typical enterprise, or by a group of enterprises? And, you know, that's a little bit unusual for us because we're entering a kind of an application space, but what's good about this application space, it is hard systems engineering. And that's what we know how to do and that's why we think this is a great application space for us to be able to deliver real value. >> And the key word is engineering, you also mentioned earlier, community. Open Source has brought this community dynamic together where there's no middle men. This is the beautiful thing of the future infrastructure. How do you manage it? How do you make it secure trust as a service. >> Yes. >> You guys are doing a great job. Based on our data, you are on the ecosystem. You guys have all the waves covered. >> Okay. >> Ray thanks for coming on. >> Great, thank you very much. >> I appreciate the conversation. I'm John Furrier, here in San Francisco for VMware's Radio 2018. 14th year of their annual engineering kick-off, motivation, hardcore engineering critique, and also collaboration where the sparks of innovation are happening. Be right back with more. Thanks for watching. (lively electronic music)