>> Narrator: From the VMware Campus in Palo Alto California, it's The Cube covering Women Transforming Technology. (upbeat music) >> I'm Lisa Martin with the Cube and we are on the ground in Palo Alto with VMware for the third annual, Women Transforming Technology event. Excited to welcome back to the Cube, Lily Chang, VP of strategic transformation here at VMware. Lily it's great to have you back. >> Thank you, it's fantastic to have this event again, for the third time in the history. >> Yes, in fact, I read online that it was sold out within hours and the keynote this morning was... >> Lily: Fantastic >> Fantastic >> And very inspiring. >> Very inspiring. For those of you who don't know, Laila Ali was the keynote this morning. What a great analogy, not just being a sports star, but being someone, a woman, in a very male dominated industry who just had this sort of natural confidence that she just knew what her purpose was. I thought that was a very inspiring message for those of us in tech as well. >> Yeah, and it's also very key that women leaders, such as herself, is willing to come out and share the story, and be the role model and set a path and show the example for the younger generation to follow and to look up to. That is incredible. >> I love for one of the things she said, Lily, when she said she still sometimes kind of loses sight and has to reignite that inner warrior. I thought that was a really important and empowering message too that even really strong women who are naturally confident still have times where they have to kind of remind themselves of what their purpose is. I just thought that was a very impactful statement and I think regardless of any industry you're in. >> That is absolutely true. I mean, we're only human, right? So every one of us experiences challenges in life so there are times even all genders, you're going to bump into road blocks, you're going to bump into challenges and then you need to self motivating and lift yourself up and rise to the ocassions of the challenge. A lot of times these changes, and I'm sure it's true for her as well, that actually make her a better leader. >> Definitely. So you are one of the board members of Women Who Code. This is something that's very near and dear to VMwear's heart. VMwear got involved in 2016 when it was about a 10,000 person organization. >> Actually, a little bit less than that. >> A little less than 10,000? And now it's? >> We were very young. >> And now how large is it? >> It's 137,000 members globally, 20 counties, 60 cities. >> So what's the mission of Women Who Code? >> The mission is very simple. Basically we want to basically help all women that inspire and excel in their technical career journey and in their career development. So that's basically the simple mission statement and for that a very critical thrust that Women Who Code has and kind of coincide with VMware's community vision, is basically technical woman community. So they were very young but we saw the passion, we saw the commitment, and we believed that this is a great mutual opportunity because we want to be a global company. We want to not only view leadership within U.S., we wanted it to be in NIA, to be in APJ, We have R & D research offices everywhere and so we basically collaborated with Women Who Code and that has been a very successful leadership program which only work with them. And they basically blossomed under the collaboration and we're not the only company but we are the one of two founding partner in sponsor for Women Who Code. >> It's grown dramatically as you said. >> Lily: Dramatically. >> Yeah, just a couple of years since you've been involved with VMware. What are a some of things that have surprised you about, not just the growth, but about some of the lesson that maybe you've learned by watching some of these other women come into this organization and be inspired and impact their careers? >> So I see the story, both in VMware woman leadership, and also in outside community woman leadership. Right? So what I see is all these woman basically have the passion but they were a little bit worried about let it come out but when you're actually in a community you're supporting one and other and you have that platform where they feel very comfortable to communicate, network, share, and learn, and so basically that is a very powerful thing and I see the growth and the booster of the potential, it's kind of like we lift them up all of a sudden. Right? One of the stories recently is that, for example, on the external side, We have basically a Canada city director is all volunteer positions. Right. And within a year, she actually moved from a line management position to basically to a director position because the city director role basically expose you to basically get the community view out and that encourage you and challenge you to basically has hands on soft leadership skill and so a lot of the technical woman have a lot of technology and a lot of the technologist mentality but you need to accompany that with a lot of the soft skill. And then the combination of the two that makes a perfect combination. And we see a lot of that in our VMware women as well. So we set out to do basically cities in China, we actually opened China for Women Who Code. It was zero member, and now it has like 3,000-4,000 members. It's actually in China. It's a little bit of a difficult mysterious place. Right? But we made it happen in Beijing. We made it happen in Shanghai. And it's basically participate by a lot of the local company, not just multi-national company. And in India we actually open it up, and in India now is blossomed like crazy so there are like since VMware's opening up in Bangalore basically there are three other cities that joined in. India is like basically a rose in blossoming peak point right now. And we also opened up a Sophia, so basically we work with women who go to do a corporate leadership program. And within the first year, where we appointed some of the city directors from our women, basically we have experience about a 50% promotion rate and pretty much 100% retention rate. >> Lisa: Wow. >> Yeah. >> 50% promotion and 100% retention is incredible. >> It is incredible, so I see that miracle happening and then I become very convinced after year one and then I've also learned that I'm not the only leader in the world that believes in this. That's the reason why they blossom like crazy. >> I imagine growing up in China, I was reading a little bit about your story, that the expansion in China must mean something a bit personal for you as well. It sounds like you were a bit fortunate though, with your parents saying "hey," you had two choices when you graduated from college, flight attendant, or secretary and your parents thought "she should have more options that that." So maybe kind of full circle, how was that for you when those two in Shanghai and Beijing opened? >> To me, I feel like, that is what is 21st century supposed to be. I wish it were true in the 19th century and but bottom line is, minor correction, actually I did interview for those two positions. I was rejected. I was not qualified. >> Lisa: Lucky VMware. >> Yeah. (laughing) Actually lucky United State. >> There you go. >> So basically my dad and my mom, they basically raised me up very differently in that era. They basically feel that they give me kind of almost a virtual space where I do not feel there is any difference between genders. They always made me feel like I'm a equal citizen in the family. I have the same speaking right, my dad, my mom both foster me that so when they learned that I could not get those two possible jobs and I was very well educated, graduated from the best university in the island, quoting my dad, he basically "invested on me," right? So he basically said "well" what he needs to do is "continue to invest in me." So that's the reason why he exported me to United States and then basically I went to the graduate school here and then since then I been very blessed. So this is almost like the Beijing and Shanghai success of the Women Who Code. It's almost like I'm giving it back to my origin. Right? And I'm bringing a lot of the blend between the western and eastern culture together. Right? To open that up which is fantastic and basically in the global environment to make it very diverse and inclusive at the same time. >> So you had really strong parents who instilled this belief in you that you could do anything. When we look at some of the statistics that show that less than 25% of technical roles are held by women and then we also look at the retention, the attrition is so high in tech. What were some of the things that kept you kind of focused on your dreams? How did you kind of foster that persistence? And I'm wondering what your advice is for women who are in tech and might be thinking of leaving. >> Well, very interesting, so first advice I have is, basically believe in yourself and dream very big. Because that, and the second this is never afraid of change. Change is always a good thing and that has been throughout my growth in a foreign country as well as here. Right? And I remember when I was in the university, even thought it was the best university, and I actually changed department and major twice and the third time I attempted to do it, because at that time I told my dad, say "hey, I heard there's this cool computer science thing I really want to go do" he did some calculation and said "look, if you transfer again, the third time, it will take you five to six years to graduate" so he said "no, just stick with it and then later on you want to move, go ahead." Right? So in grad school I changed again and I was very blessed that there are a lot of sponsors and mentors. Not just my parents. Throughout my growth and throughout my journey in the career basically really foster and help me, supported me, give me a lot of advice, so I'm a big believer in mentorship and sponsorship and that's what I believe the technical woman community will offer. It's kind of a genetically built it within that philosophy in the community. Right? It doesn't matter which forum. It is basically bringing in the common belief and the vision together and it's basically peer to peer mentorship and because there are different walks and different levels of women and technologist in that community then you actually could do the tiering and peering and basically help people to either inspire, basically move into new career journey, or elevating themselves. So I'm a very big believer in mentorship and sponsorship. >> Speaking of change, we talked about the changes you've made previously. You've made a big change from R & D to financier. >> Lily: That's correct. >> The very first at VMware to do that? >> Lily: Yes, very first... >> Tell us about kind of the impetus and what excited you and what you are benefiting from. >> Well, I'd been in the R & D career for a couple decades and so every ten years I look at my resume and then I kind of try to have an out of body experience to basically advise myself and say, what would you do differently, so that you actually are setup for the growth for the next ten years. Right? So when I look at my career about a year ago I basically said to myself and said "well, you've got enough R & D experience, you made enough investment. For you to be in the next journey you really need to have the business experience." And even though I have basically with VMware's support and sponsorship I did go back to the business school and got kind of the Berkeley business certificate and I got lots of great executives supporting me. But the reality is if you don't do that role, day in and day out, and really experience it blended into your DNA, it's not going to come natural. Right? And I don't want to be an imposter, so essentially I made a fairly major determination that I want to basically switch into business world. So I'm kind of a unique case in the sense that I'm both over-qualified and under-qualified at the same time. I'm very lucky that I have a lot of the executive sponsorship that I was able to find a perfect role that allowed me to learn and excel and basically be inspired basically in my role today and that is something fantastic. Only after I transfer that's where I learn that I'm actually the first employee in VMware's history that moved from R & D to finance and I still remain as the only one so far and I hope that my success can actually inspire more R & D people because I truly believe that a lot of times when you can actually can look at from the other lens it would just simply make you be able to do your original job better. Like right now, I would tell my old R & D self that some of the decision I made I would have debated and petitioned and argued and thought about it in a completely different way because my thinking has shift which I think is a very healthy shift. >> I agree, and you know, one of the things that Laila Ali said this morning was basically encouraging people to get uncomfortable, to be comfortable and that's, you talked about change, absolutely there's so many opportunities and we know that on one level but it can be pretty intimidating to change something. But I love also what you said. I think there's a parallel with saying now that you have this business experience looking through that other lens at R & D, you would have made decisions differently and I think that is very reflective and an opportunity for organizations to invest in creating a more diverse executive team. When you bring in that though diversity. >> Lily: Exactly. >> And it just opens the door, not just seeing things through different lenses and perspectives whether we're talking about gender or what not, but the profitability that can come from that alone is tremendous. >> Yeah, so for example one of the things that there is a statistics actually based on McKinsey for company that basically has reasonable percentage blend of woman leadership actually grows better and makes much sounder decision and so the experience I have moving from R & D to business and then now I work still very closely with R & D community and the product business unit, basically that's kind of a testemonial for that because the decision making all of a sudden is multi facet. And you always will be able to make a better decision and a sound decision. Now, you will be able to see a different risk at a different level, and we will be communicating in a more common language, like I used to not be able to speak the business tone and the business language, now I actually can be that effective communication bridge, which I find it very powerful and very exciting and very illuminating in terms of just the whole shift, make it a very worth while actually. It's just a very fantastic personal and professional experiences so far. >> You studied that Mckinsey report and that was actually mentioned this morning that the press release that VMwear did with the Stanford Institute investing 15 million in building a womens innovation lab to study the barriers, identify how to remove those barriers, but in that press release McKinsey report found that, and this is shocking, that companies that have more diversity at the executive level, are 21% more profitable. >> Lily: Exactly. >> That's a huge number. >> That's because you actually, for business, right? The technology moves so fast and there are so many different factors will be coming in hitting the business, giving business decision, you just go down a unique lane and not basically bringing all the different facets of perspective, you tend to basically gradually work yourself into a corner or you may just believe what you want to believe. Right? So that's where the other genders perspective or even the inclusive culture will bring you, basically. So this is my firm belief. Right? It's just in a different dimension basically. >> And I think that's great advice for all walks of life Lily. Thank you so much for stopping by The Cube and sharing with us what you're doing with Women Who Code and congratulations on being the first VMware to successfully transition from R & D to finance. >> Yeah, I actually hit my one year anniversary. >> Oh congratulations and thanks so much for your time. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching the cube. I'm Lisa Martin, on the ground at Women Transforming Technology VMware. Thanks for watching. (digital music)

>> Narrator: Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat, the Linux Foundation and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching SiliconANGLE Media's Flychip Production of theCUBE. We're here at CloudNativeCon and KubeCon here in Austin, Texas. Happy to welcome back to the program, a many-time alum Tom Joyce, who is now the CEO of Pensa. Tom, great to see ya. >> Great to see you too. >> Alright, so Tom, we've had you on, so many different ecosystems, so many different waves of technology. Talk about Pensa, how it fits into this whole cloud native space that we're looking at this channel. >> Great, yeah, and like you said, you and I we've known each other a long time, we've seen a lot of revolutions in technology, and we're in the middle a number of them right now, and at this event you've got the Cloud-native folks and you've got the folks that are tackling connectainers and Kubernetes orchestration. You know, it's interesting, this crowd here is so young, and so creative. The last few days, I was at the Gartner Data Center Infrastructure show, and-- >> Stu: Not so young there? >> Not so young, but the same problems, right? Two different communities trying to solve the same problems. Which are how do we deal with insane complexity? How do we deal with an environment that's now not just three public clouds and some hybrid clouds, but a growing list of specialty clouds. How do we manage all of that? And what Pensa is trying to do, is be a part of solving that problem, using intelligent automation technology. Especially in managing the underlay complexity, the infrastructure layer. It's kind of funny we've gone through a period of time when the whole discussion has been, hey, containers are going to be at Pensa, and infrastructure doesn't matter, and infrastructure is going away. I think there's some truth to how that is evolving, but it still matters especially when you get down to having to deliver services to customers. >> Tom first of all, Dan Cone got on stage from the CNCF, and he said, "It is exciting times for boring infrastructure." >> Tom: Yeah. >> Maybe too exciting. I love that line, because every wave comes out, it was like, Tom you remember, virtualization, I'm not going to have to worry about things like that. >> It's been the biggest revolution, and it is the biggest wave of infrastructure ever. >> We spent a decade fixing that. Containers came out, oh, once again we're extracted away and it's going to take that. So, what do you see as that role, between the infrastructure layer and that cloud native? What are the big challenges? What are your customers seeing, and how Pensa have an effect? >> Well, I think what we're seeing, in my opinion, is we're going from operations running everything to DevOps, to now their starting to talk about NoOps. How do we get to a point where-- >> Ah, we might have argued over the terminology. We need Ops, obviously. >> Here's what I think, I think it's going to be less Ops and more architecture. I think the challenge becomes around, how do you do the design, how do you architect these systems so that they'll work and not fail. It's a lot like one metaphor I heard somebody use and I'm going to steal is we went from drafting on a sketch pad, using CAD technology, to using 3D CAD technology, to automated CAD technology, to now servers providing it. Right? And what happened? Everybody got smarter about architecture being the important part, not the actual physical plugging together. I think the role of the architect, in a cloud native environment, in a Kubernetes environment, in a VM environment, is frankly more important than ever. Somebody needs to know how the tools work, to make sure the the service levels actually deliver. I have sat in a lot of these meetings where people say, "Look, just put your old app in a container "and you can run it anywhere, it'll be fine." Somebody needs to think about the architecture. We want to provide intelligent technology that helps them do that. Like AutoCAD and like some of these things that came along in that ecosystem. >> One of the things I've been poking at, you know, most of this year and coming into this show especially, is people say, "Ah, it's too complicated." The response really is, "Well apologizes, it's never going to get simple." What we need is, I need proper tooling, things like automation to be able to help because humans alone will not be able to fix that. I really need to have the combination of the tooling, proper architecture, as you said. What are you seeing, how's that playing out in the customer environment? >> I think what we're seeing is folks figuring out that number one it's cross domain and cross cloud. So whatever you design needs to work in multiple different environments that are going to end up having different capabilities. Nobody really has deep expertise and everything about networking, everything about containers, everything about compute and storage, but all those things still matter. What folks are asking for is a layer of technology that kind of arbitrates between the underlying infrastructure and the upper level applications, they're actually trying to deliver. And that's where this automation layer, that's submerging comes in. Part of that orchestration, and part of it's what we do. What we're focusing on is design, validate complex designs, build them and deploy them, using tools that help people do that a lot faster and get it right every time. So mistakes don't transpire. >> Yeah, Tom, I want you to help explain to our audience this whole SDN wave, kind of it played out, and sure Vmware NSX and Cisco ACI, they're doing okay, but for a lot of the industry, SDN equals still does nothing. Yet networking critically important, heavily involved in both the container and all this cloud native discussion. How are we fixing networking, how is it being set up for this type of environment versus what we we're trying to do with SDN? >> I think this is a good point, I think you've got SDN and the enterprise. You also have network functions virtualization and the service providers and often overlook that in the enterprise you're going through cloud native and DevOps transitions. And surge providers are going through a revolution of their own. Going from being telcos, becoming digital service providers. The problems are similar that technologies are different. My observation is this, is the hype cycle's real. We've gone through five years of talking about SDN, talking about open stack, talking about network functions virtualization. All of a sudden now, what I've seen in this job is that there's real money getting spent and the technology's being used. NSX's being used in a whole variety of ways that people didn't anticipate. We're seeing in everyone of these service providers, whether they're a classic telcos, they're wired, or they're wireless, or they're cloud. They're investing in technologies to revolutionize how that core of that network works, and how the edged network works. I think the first signs of that are really NSX and SDN. SDN has now gone mainstream because customers have seen that there's a real used case for it. That's kind of your first broadly applicable network function. And I think through the next couple of years, it will be one after another. Those problems are going to get knocked down. Frankly in our business, we started focusing on a lot of these enterprise problems with NSX and VSAN and software defined data center technologies around VMware. We're working on containers, but frankly the biggest area of growth for us is probably going to be these large service providers. It's like a trillion dollar business and it's going to be revolutionized over five years. We're getting involved in a lot of these network functions virtualization conversations. I wouldn't say it does nothing, it does a lot, but getting there, it's been a really hard technology to figure out. >> It took a little bit while to mature. The other thing you've got some strong background on, the management monitoring in this type of environment. What's new? How does that change in the networking space, when we have all microservices and all of these various pieces there? What are you seeing there? >> The short answer is I have a little bit of a controversial view on that. It's not unique but I think-- >> John Ferrer would say, we love controversy here on theCUBE. >> I think monitoring goes away. Monitoring the way it's been done for the last 30 years goes away. I think when we had mainframes, we had client servers, we had internet, and now we have this set of technologies we're working with in virtualization. Every time that transition has happened, there's been a whole bunch of monitoring companies. I think classic monitoring is eventually going to go away. Ultimately, there is a lot of complexity, and the machine needs to manage it, right? The machines going to need to manage it. The eyeballs watching the problem and remediating it to a greater and greater extent, are going to be automation technologies. Versus throwing out more and more alerts in front of a human that says, "I'm just going to turn them off "because I don't know what this means." I think automation technologies are going to replace classic monitoring. Again, you go around this event here, the folks that are doing cloud native, they don't want to have a bunch of monitoring alerts. They're not going to tolerate that. They just want to deliver an application service. They don't want to deal with operations, they don't want to deal with monitoring, they don't want to deal with problems, they want the problems to take care of themselves. That's hard, but I think that's coming. >> Tom, the end users whether it be enterprise, service providers, there's a lot of technology out there, there's a lot of things happening out there. When do they know to call Pensa? Give us some of the big value problems that they should knowing that say, "Oh hey", "Yes that makes sense to me, I need to give you guys a call" >> You can boil it down very simply, we deal with two kinds of people, and they're really the architects. Think about that CAD analogy. We're dealing with people that are doing complex designs in two areas. One is typically software defined data center. So people that are bringing all of these technologies together and need to deliver a working system, maybe a really complex proof of concept or big systems where they're using VMwear, as an example. We help them get that job done, do it fast. That's what the automation systems we provide do. The other is, in large scale service providers. Folks that are dealing with onboarding VNF's, building complex networks and have been grappling with that, with open stack in some of these early technologies for a number of years. We have a revolutionary way to onboard those VNF's, validate designs, deliver designs and do it in a way that integrates with all the open source technologies people are using. To be honest with you, I don't which of those is going to be more important to us, but their two big areas, and our technology applies to both. >> Tom, you've been CEO at a couple of companies now. I want to get your view point, just being the CEO for a startup in today's landscape, what's it like? What advice do you give your peers? When you guys are grabbing a drink at the bar, what are some of the biggest challenges and biggest things that excite you? >> We are to tired to grab a drink at the bar. I'll tell you that I love this. It is a great mental challenge, because again I've been like you, I've been doing this for over 30 years. It forces you to learn and learn and learn and question what you know. And that's what I really like, the opportunity to engage with the leading edge of technology. Frankly all the folks here are young and creative and it's forced me to become better at what I do. There are a lot more unknowns than working for a big company. With a big company, a lot of what you have to do is laid out before you. In this job, I have to constantly force myself to question what I know, to listen to the customer, to learn new things, and it can be tiring, but it's a good kind of tiring. >> Alright, last question I have for you. What are you most proud, what you've done since you've joined Pensa? And give us a little bit of outlook for 2018, for those that are watching, what should we be looking for, kind of miles stone deliverables or other items. >> I think what I'm most proud of, this sounds like a silly statement, but I'm proud of what the team has accomplished. I didn't do anything, right? I don't write the code. We have a bunch of engineers that are actually delivering the product. I think we've been really fortunate to keep all those people and get them focused on some big problems. I'm proud of delivering Pensa Lab to market, and I'm proud of the customers we've signed up, since we launched that just at the beginning of October. I'm proud of what we're doing with Nokia on large scale networking in the NFP area. And frankly I'm proud of the ability of this team to constantly engage and learn and try new things and take risks and screw up and try again. It's that whole experience, it's good to work with good people that you like. >> Alright and 2018? >> 2018 I think is going to be surprising for the people in terms of the kind of the reemergence of open stack. I think open stack is coming back. >> Don't let them hear that Tom, the wolves will come out. Why? >> Well because I think it's reaching at a point where the economics of certain kinds of cloud models, and frankly the economics of the Mware are forcing people to reconsider. But it especially around digital service providers. These large companies have been grappling with "How do we revolutionize our poor networks" for five years dealing with open stack. And they kind of got a lot of the stuff to work now. I think that is another sort of controversial statement. When I got into this job, I was like "Yeah open stack is dead". I was involved with Helion at Hewlett-Packard, and I was like "That's never coming back". Well guess what, it's coming back. I think the other thing is, we're going to see a lot more money being spent on revolutionizing the core networks, and these telcos and digital service providers. That's what I think the big things going to be. >> Absolutely, we've been at the open stack show for any years. The networking component especially for the telco and service providers, absolutely a strong area of focus. Your average enterprise, might not be looking for open stack. >> There might be pockets. >> Internationally there's some pockets, but absolutely. Tom Joyce, always a pleasure to catch up with you. Looking forward to seeing you the next time. And well be back with lots more coverage here from theCUBE at KubeCon. In Austin Texas, you're watching theCUBE.

>> Announcer: From the SiliconANGLE Media office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. >> A couple of years ago the research analysts at Wikibon coined the term "true private cloud" and it was based on the recognition from talking to practitioners in our community, that they weren't really able to reshape and reform their business and stuff it into the cloud. Rather, what they wanted to do was bring the cloud experience, the cloud operating model, to their data, wherever that data existed. My name is Dave Vellante. Welcome everybody to this Cube Conversation. HCI, the fundamental foundation for IT transformation. I'm here with Jon Siegal who's the Vice President of Product Marketing at Dell EMC. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming out. >> Yeah, good to see you as always. >> So what's happening in the world of HCI? It's hot, it's exploding. Give us the update. >> Wow, is it hot. I mean 2017 has been quite a year when it comes to the hyper-converged infrastructure. It's the hottest IT infrastructure segment in terms of growth right now. 40, 50, 60% a year, depending on who you talk to. Regardless, it's big. A couple billion dollars this year and it's going to be up to 10 billion dollars by 2021. So we're talking big, big, big. And I think really what this has to do is the fact that it's really gone mainstream. Right? It's really crossed the chasm and for a couple reasons. One is I think what you just referred to is what you're calling the "true private cloud," if you will, experience that customers want. This is really a de facto, HCI is the de facto now, foundation for what customers really need to build a private cloud, number one. >> Okay, so what about HCI, I mean, I understand why it's growing because it essentially does bring that cloud experience. What about HCI makes it that foundation for cloud? Can you elaborate a little bit? >> Absolutely, first of all it's software-defined. It's dirt simple. We essential make it a Turn-Key. So really what we're helping customers do is build a foundation so they can build an IAS, or a platform as a service on top. In order to build the foundation, you have to make it as simple and Turn-Key as possible. So what we've done is, we've made sure that there's a single throat to choke. We made sure that we it there the automation for deployment, for day-to-day management, all the way through lifecycle management. We made sure that we have a platform, if you will, that now allows it now to enable self-service. You can start small and grow. The pay-as-you-grow model, for example, that has really been, I think, widely received very positively in the cloud space. As you said, we're bringing the cloud-like attributes to on prem with HCI as a foundation. >> So let's unpack those a little bit. So, one of the things you think about with the cloud vendor, public cloud. I swipe the credit card. I have a relationship with that vendor. It's a single throat to choke. Is that the relationship that I have with you when I do business with you? >> Yes. So, Dell EMC, and one of the reasons that Dell EMC has become number one in this space, is because we've made it simple for customers. We have the HCI appliance called VxRail. It's the only HCI appliance on the market that's co-engineered with VMware, to insure that we have that single throat to choke for our customers. >> Okay, so there's an integration component. I mean, you don't go all the way up to the highest level application, but from an infrastructure standpoint, services are fully integrated. Is that right? And you come in, and when I install it, all those services are there? It's not like I'm rolling my own? >> This is fully integrated in Turn-Key. Really what, you know, again, the reason I think we're seeing HCI take off like we are, is because we've taken a lot of that pain, and the aggravation that customers have to spend trying to build to maintain their core infrastructure, We've taken that on. Right? And we're actually doing that for them. So that when it arrives, from day one, all the way through day 365, we've taken care of the automation for them, and this allows them to spend much more time focused up the stack. Right? So they can actually start to figure out where hey can differentiate their business with IT, because IT plays a critical role in how customers are going to transform their business and go from really a traditional IT model, to a digital transformation model. In order to do that, they need to spend less time building and maintaining the infrastructure, and that's really what HCI has done for our customers. >> Well, I think that's a really important point, and it's a big reason why it's growing so fast. Just to throw some data in there, we see about 150 billion dollars over the next 10 years exiting, what you were talking about, that low level infrastructure management, shifting labor resource up to whatever, AI, or, doing other types of application development work, digital business transformation. So let me ask you, am I correct that you can manage your hyper converged products as a single entity of pools of resource? >> Exactly right. So really what we've done is we've simplified the infrastructure, like I said. What we're doing is, we're bringing the cloud like experience to on prem, like you said. And that means we need to simplify management, as well, and that's a key part of it. So that the entire virtual infrastructure, right, can be easily managed by a VMware administrator. >> So let's test that a little bit. There are two attributes that people in our community talk about when they talk about the cloud and all. There's the self service component, and the pay by the drink. >> Yes. >> Can I actually use your products to create that type of capability for my business? >> Absolutely. So, we have a couple different options here. So, first of all, HCI, the basic premise of HCI, is that it allows customers to start small and grow. Right? And we're basically able to tailor the hyper converged, configuration to whatever our customers need. So they only buy what they need, and then they can easily grow, and seems to grow to what they want, number one. Number two, is we have capabilities, things like cloud flex, flexible financing models, and financing structures, so that customers can literally pay as they grow, much like they do in the cloud space. >> How about hybrid? Is the, I mean, everybody talks about hybrid. Hybrid cloud is the future, but can you accommodate, sort of, hybrid models with HCI? >> Absolutely. So again, HCI is that foundation for the cloud, and then we seamlessly integrate with tools, with VMwear, for example, like vRealize automation, and other things like that. And that allows things like self service which allow customers to first of all, manage their on prem, like a cloud. And then we also have capabilities for customers to even tier their data, if you will, to public clouds, as well. >> Can you give us a little bit more detail, Jon, on the underlying technology here. What are the key enablers? You mentioned, software defined. How should we think about the technology enablers to HCI? >> I think the technology enablers t6o HCI first and forward is software defined. It is based on software defined capabilities out there. VCN's a very popular one, as an example, which is really greatly simplifying moving customers away from that three tier, kind of, infrastructure model, to a new two tier model. Right? And customers really can appreciate the simplicity of this. So this allows them, again, from day one all the way through day 365, to be able to automate the deployment, automate the management, automate the life cycle management, all the way across the board. >> How about the family? You're part of Dell, now, Dell Technologies. What's that like? What's Dell bring to the HCI conversation? Talk about that a little bit. >> It's been tremendous. First and foremost, what we've done with HCI is we've leveraged, essentially, our partnerships across the Dell technologies companies. For example, I don't think there's a better example at Dell Technologies of where their groups are working together.6 We have, for example, VxRail is a perfect example of how we have Vmware and Dell EMC working, essentially, very, very closely together to ensure that we have a seamless experience for our customers. It's the only co-engineered, HCI appliance on the market with VMware, number one. Number two is we're also working very closely with Pivotal, because what customers need is they build that on prem cloud. They start with HCI, and then on top of that you can then add Turn-Key IAS which his our integration with Vmware. You can add Turn-Key platform as a service which is integration with Pivotal. So, all together what we're trying to do is enable our customers to have that on prem, cloud experience. >> All right, give us the summary. So, specifically the announcements, and what's the portfolio look like, post announcement? >> Yeah, so, what we're announcing today, we're real excited about. We're taking the simplicity, if you will, of HCI, and marrying that to the power and the flexibility of 14th generation PowerEdge servers, because what's really interesting is that, yes, HCI is defined by software. But really what it's all about is how well you integrate the software with the hardware, to ensure a Turn-Key experience for our customers, and that's what we've done introducing our VxRail and XC series appliances based on 14th generation PowerEdge6 servers. >> Okay, so you've got, sort of, horses for courses, I like to say. Different work loads are going to require different configurations. You know Dell EMC, you've been known for your large portfolio. The saying is, "Better to have overlap, than it is to have gaps." You feel like you've got the gambit covered, here? >> We do. So up until now, I think, we've seen HCI, as I said, cross the chasms. For HCI, last couple of years, was traditionally used for noncritical workloads, whether it was VDI projects, it could be test DEV. Sometimes it was small consolidation projects, and then we've started to see over the past year, it started to be applied to the majority of virtualized workloads. And now with this announcement, we think it now can apply to all workloads across the data center. That's because what 14th generation PowerEdge servers bring to the table, is first and foremost, it brings together powerful, and predictable performance. We're talking double the IOPs. Right? We're talking more predictable performance where actually customers can now expect less than a millisecond response time for their key applications. Applications like online transaction processing which in the past, hadn't necessarily been applied to HCI. So really what I think this announcement is doing overall, is we set HCI as the foundation for the on prem cloud, and up until now, we've support some workloads in the data center. But now, with this announcement, with 14th generation PowerEdge servers running our HCI solutions, we can now extend HCI across the data center, and extend that cloud like experience now, to all the applications in the data center. >> Great. Okay, let's wrap. Where do people go to find more information and dig into the product details? >> Oh, yeah. We make it really simple Again, that's HCI, it's simple, right? So, DellEMC.com/HCI is where you can go. We're also going to have a crowd chat, hashtag Nextgenhci. I believe it's going to be December 1st, so we'd love to have customers tune in and check that out, and participate, as well. >> Excellent, Jon, thanks very much for coming back to theCUBE. >> All right. >> Great to see you again. >> Great as always, thanks a lot. >> Appreciate it. Thanks for watching everybody. We'll see you next time. This is Dave Vellante. We're out. (upbeat jazz music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2017! Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. (futuristic music) >> Welcome back everyone, we are live, here, in Las Vegas for VMworld 2017, I'm John Furrier, my cohost Dave Vellante, eighth year with theCUBE, proud to have two great guests, Josh Epstein, CMO of Kaminario and Eyal David, CTO of Kaminario, great to see you guys again! >> Likewise, great to be here! >> You guys had a great event in Boston recently, what's going on with you guys? Give me an update on the company. >> Sure, I'll go first. Kaminario's been around for awhile, but we've been, first of all, moved the headquarters over to east coast US, outside of Boston, Massachusetts, opened up a great new office space there. Got a lot going on from a product perspective, a lot going on from a go-to-market perspective, you see a lot happening in the all-flash space and the storage space in general, and just, really excited to take it to the next step. We see a lot of things happening here. >> It's a pretty big week this week. We saw Scott Dietzen from Pure Storage become the Chairman and Jean Carlo, ex-CISCO MNA guy from Silver Lake come in to be CEO, so Dave and I were speculating, All flash, a lot of, what's going on! A lot of people saying, woah, is it growing? Still a need for flash. What's the big hubbub about? >> So, we definitely see a change in the market, and the emergence of two different models. The way people used to buy storage, and the way next-generation application, cloud-scale application, software-to-servers, e-commerce, online businesses, need to buy storage. And their need for simplicity, performance and cost-efficiency at scale is still driving the need for flash storage, and we'll talk about this yet to come some more. >> And you guys see those as really distinct opportunities, is that right? Can you add some color to that, Josh? >> Yeah, I think that we see the flash space made up of two different markets, one is just the massive stocking function of traditional enterprise data centers, making the move en masse to flash. And there you have, obviously, the incumbent vendors with their flash solutions, you know. That's a dogfight, there's a lot of competition in there. There's this other market which we see growing more healthily, more organically, which is the growth of these cloud-scale applications. As Eyal said, flash provider, or, software-to-server providers, e-commerce providers, fintech, healthtech, these large, highly-scalable, database-driven cloud-scale applications. That means a different type of of scale, so that's where we see less competition from the incumbents and more opportunity -- >> What's different about that market, what's the requirement, what are they looking for that makes this a good engine for them? >> So one of the key requirements is agility and flexibility. One of the current characteristics is they don't really know what is going to be the next workload, how their workload is going to change in scale over time. So they need an infrastructure that can change and adapt to their needs, still deliver the same level of performance, still deliver the same level of simplicity. But have that flexibility to address their changing needs in capacity and performance, to address growth in customers, changing in workload application, without too much pre-planning. >> So I'd ask the question to you guys, I get this all the time. So since you guys are the gurus in the area. I get this question a lot, what is a modern data center? With all the action on private cloud happenings, true private cloud, they truly point out, people are re-tooling their data centers to operate like cloud, it's still on-premise. That's kind of the gateway to hypercloud, very clear. Public cloud, workloads, all bursting, that stuff's great. What's a modern architecture, what's a modern data center? When I hear that term, what do you guys mean? >> That's a great question. So the modern data center, or even the next generation data center is exactly that, one that allows enterprises to achieve the same levels of scalability, efficiency, as the hypercloud, but on-premise, or in a hybrid fashion. But it allows them to have that level of control against operation simplicity that's hard to come by, but on their own terms, adapting to their own needs. >> So without the need to build out a massive engineering team to build this from the ground up. >> So are the buyers different, are those two worlds coming together? I wonder if you could address that. >> Yeah, I think the buyers are, in fact, different. I think, now, you see a convergence over time as the classic enterprise data centers start to look more like a private cloud. But we see this growth in large-managed private cloud providers really exciting, and they come in different forms. You have the Telcos getting into the business, you have the outsourcers getting into the business, you have the traditional channel getting into the business. We have a great partnership with Vion, a big federal reseller, and using Kaminario as a flash service offering. And they start looking like a cloud provider, and they're thinking like a cloud provider. >> And what's the benefits then? Cause I was just looking at the gov cloud impact, I was just at the Amazon Public Sector Summit. Huge traction right now because it's so fast, you can get into the government cloud quickly. Why is that unique, why, as a service, and why are you guys really driving that? >> One, it fits with our architecture perfectly. But I think from a customer standpoint, the ability to procure, like, procuring from the cloud, but also to get the kind of services, you know, as people start re-engineering applications thinking about dev-ops, cloud-data-type applications, leveraging the same kind of utilities that they might get from an Amazon or an Ajer, from a managed private cloud provider, it becomes really important. >> And Al-fed ramp is there, you get all the federal information stuff going on around it. >> So I wonder how you deal with this problem, it's a relatively small company, you're up against the big guys, you say, it's like a rock fight. But you have an affinity to, let's say, SAS players. They like your product and it fits better with their vision. But then you have this big whale, saying, okay, I'm going to buy my HR software from, you know, some SAS provider, I'm going to do some, whatever, 70,000-person deployment, but, as a quid pro quo, you've got to buy my all-flash array. So you must see that all the time. When you peel back the covers, underneath that SAS provider, what do you really see? Like, they fence off, sort of, legacy-vendors' stuff, and they really drive in their core business with your modern platform? Or is it sort of just a mishmash? >> No, I think we're seeing a shift. I think what we're seeing is, some of the legacy architectures are running up against boundaries. Boundaries in terms of complexity, boundaries in terms of agility. Kaminario was built to scale from the get-go. It was built for performance and it was built for scale. And I think what we're seeing is, the main value of these SAS providers, as they're reaching scale, is the ability to deliver consistent performance, consistent cost-efficiency, and really, our predictability. The ability to sort of forecast in the future what cost structure's going to look like in order to continue to deliver high-performance to their own users. >> So the hypothetical example I gave, I'm sure you see it, but are you, you know, winning head-to-head in those environments, and your piece is growing, and that's sort of just a static one-time deal? >> That's exactly what we're seeing, so our main growth, our main focus is on these software-to-service companies or software-to-service departments within existing companies building these types of offerings to deliver this as a service consumption model. And you were asking about the back-end, in the back-end, these are often large-scale databases operating mixed types of workloads, for example, transaction processing, analytics, all at the same time. And the need to support these types of workloads requires an infrastructure that can deliver at-scale, consistent performance. And when we face off the legacy vendors in those environments, we win out. >> You have to be substantially better as a small company. You are, otherwise, you're out of business. >> Absolutely. >> And so, interesting thing about the flash market it, a lot of the big guys realized right away, wow, I'm way behind, so they went out and they bought a lot of startups. What happened, did they sort of pollute them, through the integration, or ... (laughing) >> I think the marketshare statistics are a little bit confusing, but what we see is, you know, the bulk of the legacy vendors, you know, push in what we call retro-fit flash, basically taking their old legacy architectures, their scale-up or scale-out architectures, and cramming flash into it, and basically, then, they don't bring the same kind of simplicity, same kind of agility, same kind of scalability as a built-for-flash-offering like Kaminario. >> Right, what about, you guys have some announcements this week? >> Yup, take that? >> Yeah, two weeks ago we announced our next-generation platform, K2.n, which is based on a fully-converged, NVIO mean over fabric back end. This is basically taking our core operating system, Vision OS, which is a mature and robust storage software stack with all the data services and enterprise features that enterprises need. And deliver it on an NVIO fabric backend which leverages the existing capability to aggregate capacity and compute, and take it to the next level, delivering a very scalable and agile storage cluster that allows you to mix and match different types of resources, to add and remove resources very dynamically, and make your data center responsive in minutes and not hours or days or even months. >> You guys are familiar with our service and research, and we're very excited about NVIO over fabric, because we've been talking about it since probably, maybe 2008, 2009, some type of ability to scale and to communicate, and that's here today, finally. How close are we to actually having a product in the field that I can actually deploy? >> We will actually be shipping this in Q1, the K2.N They added another layer on top of that, We also announced a new software platform called Kaminario Flex, which is a orchestration platform which rides on top of K2.N, and allows you to dynamically compose virtual arrays out of these NVME-connected resources. So I really take that, looking ahead, that the classic notion of a monolithic shared-storage array, is going to die over time. >> Well, here's the numbers. I mean, it's automatic, go ahead. >> Well no, this is the whole debate that we've been clearing up with the true, private cloud report. I mean, guys, no-brainer, check, as a service, as the future, so you're good there. (laughs) The true pilot board, too bad it shows the on-prem stuff is declining in general, that's settlement for buying boxes, and the old way of doing things. Labor's being automated away and shifted, that's pretty obvious. Enter your business model, right? I mean, this is perfect for any cloud deal. >> Right. >> The question is, track record, bulletproof, reliability, security, the table stays all shift, data protection, all these details, that's what they care. You guys check that box ... (laughing) >> So the disability takes vision away, so I'm going to take it to the next generation. Technology is what actually allows us to do that. Whether it's in a hypercloud or we're going into a managed cloud provider, that is becoming a very desired consumption model for a lot of the ads of service members, allows them to build such a flexible architecture, based on a mature software step. >> So you guys, really, from what I see is your strategy is, get this out there quickly from a tech standpoint, software, flex, and integration with cloud is critical. Because you can offload a lot of that heavy lifting on those unique requirements to the cloud guys, where the pre-existing tech exists. Did I get that right? >> Yeah and I think what we see is these managed cloud providers are going to want to have a say in it, they want to actually be part of the evolution of the platform, right? >> Yeah, go ahead, fine, it's your stop! You can always buy the servers more flash! (laughing) >> So talk about your channel, and you go to market, help us understand that a little bit better. >> Yeah, I think it's all about focus for Kaminario. I mean, let's face it, the flash space is competitive, right, if we're going to go head-to-head with everyone, kind of, pull one of these growth-at-all-cost models. And you see what the market values those types of companies. So we've been really focused in two ways. One, SAS providers, next-generation business. I mean, if we opportunistically find a VDI deal, okay, that's great, we have a great solution for VDI, but it's not something that we're going to go out and hunting day to day. The second is really to focus on channel partners. We've got a channel first model, really, effectively 100% of our new business in 2017 will come through a channel partner. Most of those channel partners are looking at developing some type of managed services offering as well, so you know, it's not just about the margin on the deal, it's about the longterm -- >> Cause they're trying to respond to the market transit and value. >> Exactly, so it's about focus on a relatively small number of channel partners that get it, that like our model, and again, it's just -- >> Hey, you'll make money from it, cause that's all, at the end of the day, you've got to get that leverage, because that's your David and Goliath story. >> Exactly, yeah. >> And, global footprint? Is it primarily US and Europe or -- >> Yeah, so it's been, we started in Israel, US has been a good focus, last year we opened up the UK and France, end of the great we opened up Korea, we're now in Singapore, we're moving into China through partners, and so yeah, this is a global story. Clearly, US is the, in terms of adoption of these server infrastructures, US is really the furthest ahead, but it's a global phenomenon. >> What do you make of the VMwear momentum? Because two years ago, VMwear was, the stock was sort of in the tank and there was no growth, and now it's on fire, the data center's on fire, you can't get data center space! (laughing) >> From my perspective, the fast adoption that VMwear had for new technologies, for adopting containers, for adopting cloud paradigms, for adopting this new delivery model, and enabling a fuller stack aligns very well with the kind of demands of the next-generation data system we talked about, where the management plane, the orchestration plane, is becoming more and more important in optimizing the way in this infrastructure gets delivered. So that's, I believe, what is driving that forward. >> Josh and Elay, thanks so much for coming out, coming our way, you guys, company watch, love the business model. The tech comes home, you get it with that integration, man there's not a leverage there, congratulations on your success! (laughing) Great business. TheCUBE bringing you the CUBE as a service, all flash content here! Back with more VMworld coverage after this short break. (futuristic music)