>> lie for Las Vegas. It's the queue covering VM World twenty eighteen, brought to you by IBM Wear and its >> ecosystem partners. Welcome back to Las Vegas were here of'Em World twenty eighteen Number. We've heard from BM, where for many years is you know, they've got five hundred thousand customers this morning on stage. Pat Gelsinger said that now over fifteen thousand of those customers are using v san. Hi, I'm Stew Minutemen. With me is John Troyer. We're gonna dig into a little bit of a V San discussion here, joining the first time guests on the program. We have Ernie China, who's the director of the San Worldwide product marketing with the M where and also Brent Collins, who's a global practice director with W. W. T. Who is part of the distribution channel partner of V M wear and many others in the ecosystem. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. Thank you very much for having us. All right, Ernie, let's start charging V san. Uh, I would be San was first announced. I said this was the rising tide that will really lift on launch what we called hyper converge infrastructure. Right? Number of interesting announcement. Maybe, you know, give us a thumbnail of what >> happened. S so there's great. So we actually made some big announcements. First of all, we talked about how the moment, um, we've had two to your point right. Huge amount of adoption by our customers, especially elope sphere customers adopting descend on the marketplace today and then we kind of added to a lot of the things they like about the sand by announcing a few things around the product with a current update one which basically prevented two categories of capabilities. One is some management capabilities and make it much easier to administer to manage a visa and deployment. So being able to, uh, recapture any type of capacity that's not being used, for instance is a great thing for administrators are trying to manage also when they're doing trying to do any trouble shooting or trying to do any management. They also have some great trouble shooting capabilities that we announced this well. And then I think, for tea and of the other partners Way also announced new incentives to allow them to be more profitable, especially as they start selling more visa and compared to traditional storage. Some great ways for them to be profitable with Decenas. Well, >> all right, we've We've had a few guest from W W t on our program in the nine years we've been doing it, but it helped. The company I know has gone through a lot of changes, just like everybody else in this industry. So I want you to talk about the visa and stuff, but give us for a second, you know? W w a d T. How should we think of W W T? How do you differentiate from your peers in the marketplace? >> Yes, so I think you know W Vt. Is about a ten and a half billion dollar technology integration firm. We started off a little bit smaller, so a lot of if you haven't been around in awhile. We've grown quite a bit in the last few years but really have built a company or in around speed. So it's, uh, how do we help customers get things moving a lot faster? So it's speed to an informed decision with our advanced technology center. So it's, uh, it's about a two hundred million dollars playground that we used for everything from demos to proof of concept. So what we call lab is a service which is a longer term proof of concept. Um, we also have an integration facility. So we take that informed decision we make maybe a blueprint, So talk a lot about the sand, but it's indifferent consumption models. We might package that together with servers, top Iraq, switching in the rack and really stamp that out multiple times for larger clients. So we take that to the immigration facility, and we also have a world class global supply chains. So we started as a supply chain company. Not a lot of people know that, but you take that, you prove it out, you run it through immigration facility, and then you put it anywhere in the world. It's a really powerful set of capabilities for big customers. >> Well, Brit, I wanted to ask specifically around Lisa. Uh, and you talked about the consumption models. One of the interesting parts about the sand, right. You can roll your own, take the software, roll your own piece and ready notes, or buy it from, you know, from somebody already fully assembled in baked. What do you mean? You're obviously you're working with customers at a range of sizes and use cases. But I mean, can you talk about what? What in twenty eighteen, whether some of the common consumption models to people you know? Are you pulling it all together with the full rack and rolling it in? Or how what people look to W. W. T. And as a V San partner for >> sure, It's a great question. So we actually get all of the above. So we focus on the enterprise space, the larger clients and they a lot of them want custom solution. So we go prove out whatever they want toe have in there and again to the model I talked about earlier. We stamp that out and put it in their data centers. Now, some of them wanted in a V San rule your own. These others want VX rail, and then others want a full stack like the extract std. See, so way I see it for different use cases, right? So we look at it, uh, the sand in and of itself is an easy button, but when you package it in with the reference architecture, it's even easier for people to go, go roll that out and support different models. Whether that's VD, I or general purpose, virtual ization or even enterprise applications so way really like the the ability to customize that, depending on what the customer is looking for. >> All right, Ernie, which one of these things are is everything g et that we've talked about here, you know, how are their customers that have lined up and done? Some of these may be unpacked for us a little bit as toe. What's hitting the door? The door Which one's already rolled out as toe? What piece of those? You know, >> things have hit the door already. They're already out for a lot of customers. A lot of customers, actually, as we do a lot of times have them tested out beforehand. So many customers are already actually using a lot of these capabilities today. Some of them are actually being at the show, talking about some of the things that we've done here. Yeah, >> so what? One thing I love both of you to give us some commentary on when we look at the difference between kind of my data center and the public cloud is the public cloud. Nobody calls you and says, Hey, what version of eight of us are azure? You running right, as opposed to we know the history with these here. It's like, Well, what version of easier? Well, you know, I've got my little lab. Yeah, they're they're testing, you know, six, six, six, seven things like that. But I still got that five five deployment that you no way have plans, but it's gonna take awhile. How does the sensitive into that picture? And, you know, how do you help customers stay on the rev Upgrader to you once you want to sell it or you kind of done and they deal with GM wear? How does that dynamic work? >> I think the value The channel is really making it easier for customers to buy easier Teo deploy and easier to manage. So we do all the above. I think one of the things that we were talking about earlier is I think people look at cloud is the easy button and it is. But there's an interim step there. So for customers to say, Hey, I want it easy. You have the option to do it on Prem as well as in the clouds. So it's really, you know, when I look at my business, it's I'm in the computation of data management business, and V San fits into the really that data management side. The different question when you incorporate Cloud is it's not a question of, you know, Are we still doing the same thing? It's it's Where is it? How do I buy it? So I really like h c. I think it's it really is that interim easy button for people that say I want the simplicity a cloud, but I wanted on prom So >> we're going to get a commentary on kind >> of the management from the manager perspective. We're making it very, very easy for customers to go from whatever version they need to. Obviously the fact that we have all these great new features coming in, it really gets sense a lot of customers to want to move to the latest capabilities, but in general, for them, for customers who make it really easy for them to be able to move up to whatever whatever level they need to >> Nice Brian, I wanted to ask you talk about H I V and the easy. But in a couple of years ago, when a chai architectures we're just coming in, it was The industry always has a little bit black and white. It's either gonna destroy everything or save everything, and it's gonna be one hundred percent one way or the other. Turns out, you know, there's a mix of use cases for traditional storage as well as a C I What? What do you particularly like a CZ use cases for for bee san, uh, your customer base that you roll out? When do you When do you really say you know what? You should really look at this hyper converged infrastructure that we can build you first is, um or, you know, a traditional, bigger, different ray. Bigger array, separate array, sort of storage. >> I'LL give you the answer to everybody hates, which is It depends, right? So I think you know the sands a great platform, and we see it for a lot of different use cases. A lot of it depends on you know, what's the customer looking to do, what's there, what investments that they already made and then where is the fifth best? So from a technical perspective, I mean, I think we all know that general purpose virtual ization of Edie I make their great use cases were v san, but we're starting to see that creep into other use cases. So you start here and then you could say, Well, you know what? I'm refreshing over here. Maybe it makes more sense to take a look at something different a same time. Some people say, Hey, maybe a traditional storage array still makes sense for us, so we kind of see it both ways. But again, as people turn Estes comment as people start with the sand, they try it out. The simplicity, the ease of management and the cost effectiveness they really look at it and also the integration. We don't talk about a lot, but the integration with all the other virtualization tools makes it really easy all in. So because of some reasons why people might take a hard look at that versus a traditional storage array. >> Just add to that start off with media. Everyone was in that particular use case. Then remote office came in, so the edge was a big one that started to grow. Now, majority of our use cases around business Critical lapse. Most of the customers Air sequel Oracle. They're starting to deploy their so actually expanding quite a bit. And the nice thing, actually for partners is in many cases, the services are now starting to catch up. As you start going to these, this is critical APS. Actually, the services get bigger. So going back to that hole profitability element, it makes it more profitable foreigners as well. Right? >> Front V san isn't just a standalone product or, you know it is, obviously is always with the hyper visor. But it's an important piece of the Via MacLeod Foundation is W W t involved in any of those solutions that you know, Uh, yeah, way Don't do anything. Okay? Yeah, that's real straight for itself. But somewhere, cloud Is that something You talk to your customers about her, >> Of course Way. Do all of the above and you know, significant investments in the cloud in general. So a lot of over finding actually not to pivot too hard off of what we're talking about today. But you know, when we look at, uh, v r automation, for example, a lot of customers of purchase it but aren't taken advantage all the different features. So when we look at the entire stack, part of our methodology is working with customers to figure out, what do you have? And then how do we deploy and help you take advantage of what you have and then come back to the real question, which is? Let's take a holistic view out of all of those things and figure out how to maximize it. So it might be vee are a might be vey san. But in general, let's style those things together into something that makes more sense as a platform for what that customers looking to do. >> Okay, Ernie, wanna give you the final word? You know a lot of pieces. People are always trying to do it through. What's one thing that people should look at from the sand that they might have missed? >> So I think, from from the sand perspective, as they start to look at modernizing their infrastructure, they started looking at this whole idea of digital business and how we've become more agile, I think, actually, kind of pivoting a litte bit off. The point that was just made decent is a great way to get started, so it's a great way to be able to bring in some of those capabilities. And then it's a great start than to bring in the rest of our portfolio. That really adds a whole stack solutions. I really make that a reality. And along the way we make it very easy for especially the Spear customers to be able to deploy that >> real important point. Thank you, Ernie. China Front. Collins. Appreciate all the updates and, uh, the user perspective for John Troyer on student and back with lots more content from Veum World twenty eighteen. Thanks for watching the cue. Thank you.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partner. (bouncy upbeat music) >> Welcome back to SiliconANGLE Media's production of VMworld 2017. This is theCube. I am your host, Stu Miniman. Happy to be joined for this special segment. Calling it the independent wrap analysis multi-hybrid focus with Blue Cow. Blue Cow is here. First-time guests on the program and Blue Cow has brought a few of the friends. Friends of mine, people that I got to know through this phenomenal VMware community also guest host on the program here. Been a pleasure working with all three of you. John Troyer from Tech Reckoning Justin Warren from Pivot 9 and Keith Townsend, the CTO advisor. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming here. Now, we're independent when we come to this and I don't think any of us are shy as to kind of sharing our opinions. I think all of us have had "I can't believe what you said on Twitter" at least once. In fact, I remember when John Troyer was working for VMware I did get a call every once in awhile. I've said, if I didn't get a call at least once a year from him saying, "Hey Stu, can you moderate that a little," I'm probably not doing my job. Let's get into it. The first thing I'd say is it's 2017. We blinked and like we're getting towards the end of it. Of course, there's the big party. There's still a whole bunch of sessions going for another day. Reactions on the show, high-level things. Keith, let's start down with you. >> First off, the energy of the show this year was, I have to say it was, I have to say it was up a notch. There was a lot of uncertainty around the acquisition and even Pat's future, whether or not he would be here for the VMworld this year, as the head of VMware he announced, I think it was kind of like with a little bit of pride, that he said "This is my 5th year as CEO of Vmware" and he bought the energy Monday and I think that energy has transferred throughout all of the VMware staff and throughout the show for the past few days. >> Just in that question, of course, and how many selfies has Blue Cow done at the show? >> Not as many as usual, unfortunately, because we've been very, very busy with briefings and meetings, so we haven't had as much selfie time as we've had, but we still make time to take a few photos around the show. And, yeah, I agree with Keith. The energy this year, and I think it had started with the example that Pat set at the first keynote. Which, it's just been lifted this year and I've been saying for, I've been hearing it from a lot of different people and I've been having it in conversations as well that this year, VMware stopped apologizing for existing and it's embraced itself, and I'm sure that having the stock price hit a nice high of a 107, I'm sure that helped with Pat and his idea of, "That makes you happy. Makes it a lot easier for you to keep your job." >> That's great, there was a comment actually The first time most of us remember. The week of Vmworld? The stock actually was going up. John, you know, you've got lots of experience with this community; your take. >> Certainly more energy than last year. I mean, let's look at the micro and the macro. There's always tactical stuff going on. Last year, Vster 6.5 had not been released. Dell acquisition and nobody was sure what was going on exactly. This year, the big VMware cloud on AWS announcement, I think, is an acknowledgement of maybe, that we can talk about. That, wait a minute. Once you get down to the nitty-gritty plumbing infrastructure layer, you still need to partner with somebody like VMware. I think the industry and the analysts, and the market, that's one of the things they like and then look at the macro trends on the economy. If you look at the Expo floor this year? Huge, lots of money being spent, lots of vendors here. There's something macro going on as well with the people here. >> Let's talk about two things I look at. Did VMware meet expectations? Was it what you expect? And, what are we going to be looking back at when we come here? John, I'll start with you, you hit on the big topic from my standpoint, looking at VMware and AWS. What will VMware look like in the future? Are they going to be a SAS provider? How does that transition from an infrastructure software company to a different fit for how they do cloud today versus the whole Vcloud era and everything before it? That was era not error even though, you know... >> Hey, they had a lot to do, of messaging and a lot of product-in announcements and a lot of introductions this week. I don't know, let's give them a B for that because there were a lot of them and they had a lot to do in a short space especially, like, through the lens of say the keynotes which is the lens a lot of people have. I think AWS, VMware Cloud on AWS is the big story. I don't know, I predict that in a year or two VMware will probably be the biggest VMware hoster service provider, right? I think a lot of workloads are going to shift into the AWS service through VMware and that will happen to excess capacity. It'll happens through a lot of different things. But, that's my prediction. >> I'm sorry, you say VMware will-- >> VMware will be the largest VMware hoster within a year or two. >> I feel like I'm watching the NFL Network. Bold predictions, here we have it. VMware has got 4500 partners, John. I've have Ajay Patella on a couple of times talking about his tiers of partners and everything like that. But let's let some of the guys weigh in. >> I'll extend on that, I kind of agree. I think that there's a lot of customers who will basically do a lift and shift and use cloud and I think having to choose between which of their children is the most beautiful and which one they love more has been has been really tearing them apart and I think that now they don't have to make that choice. I think they're going to be a lot easier for, particularly CIOs, to just say, "Yep, I'm doing some cloud." The announcement on Tuesday sort of felt a little flat for me because they were talking about Google container services which is running on Pivotal. Pivotal's sort of an unappreciated part of the whole portfolio, I think. There's a lot of companies some really interesting software development work there. But, as we mentioned, the development community? That's not this community. This is much more about infrastructure people. That kind of whole announcement and what they were talking about on Day 2? Just kind of went, it felt a little bit off for me. >> Yeah, I want to echo, I think a couple of statements that you've made. One, that VMware's seemed to embrace... Monday, they seem to embrace being VMware. You know what? We may pick on the concept of VMware VSphere being cloud. That VMware is very proud of calling their SDDC strategy which is an important strategy. It adds a lot of value to, not just legacy IT but current things that people are doing in their data center and they embraced being what they do well on Monday, and then we had cloud pizza on Tuesday which kind of broke that but I think I loved the message for VCF, VMware Cloud Foundation, this concept, this reference architecture, this validated design that I can run in my data center. I know that at a Rax pace, at a CNF such as... take your Switch, take your choice between Switch and CenturyLink, etc. I'm going to get that consistent openstack what should have been openstack filling across cloud providers, but John, I agree with you. AWS is AWS at the end of the day and it's a easy checkbox to say VMware Cloud on AWS? Really easy to do and it's easy to consume. I don't have to go and choose between Cloud providers. >> One of the things of this show is that there never enough hours in the day, even Vegas. I actually have to admit I got to bed at a reasonable hour every night. We still have one more night for me here so we'll see on that. Hallway conversations, parties, some of the really cool stuff on on the show floor we talked about a little. I'll start off with kind of, from a customer standpoint, Some customers I talked to; a number of them seemed to be, "I want to move faster. "I'm interested in trying new things "and price isn't necessarily number one on my list. "It's further down the list." Which reminds me: It's not quite there yet but I go to Amazon Reinvent and this will be the fifth year and we are doing the Cube at that show. That's the thing that really excites me. There's cool new things we're trying. I echo and agree with a lot of what you all said about Day 2. Most of the customers here aren't ready for PKS. Sure Pivotal has lots of customers that are using Vmware, but the average attendee's not there. Kind of a wild card, customer insights, cool parties, things there. John, do you want to start down on your end? >> Sure, my channel check and the most surprising thing that I saw this week were talking to SC's from VMware and saying that their customers were coming to them and asking "Help? I now have Kubernetes in the house. "What do I do with it?" That surprised me. I have been a Kubernetes and Container advocate but a skeptic as far as adoption and at least anecdotally the folks that I talk to, it sounds like actually it's now trickling its way and kind of to the mainstream to where the VMware accounts are going to be able to have to deal with it. Now I will say on the flip side, Stu, if you look out at the show floor there are no developer tools, dev ops tools, cloud tools, maybe some cloud tools. That side of, that AWS side of the house, the people that are there, those companies that are there who are not here. If you were a customer, if you were an IT person looking to, this year, finally, educate yourself on how to do that that wasn't here at this show. >> For me, it's been about migration. This is about we have a whole bunch of stuff running on VMware, it's already there and that was one of the reasons VMware was popular in the first place, was that you could take stuff you already doing and you can virtualize it and then you could increase the capacity utilization that you have and you could get some more efficiencies out of that and then people started to layer additional services on top of that and to do interesting an new things on that. It allowed them to do that because it kind of freed up some time. I think we're going to say that again as things start to move to the cloud people start to do them in different ways. the workloads will migrate. It's not just going to happen tomorrow and some of the things that we're seeing, one of the things that impressed me about the show was a company called Densify who had been around previously. They were called Server and they did a rebrand and repossession and nailed it and it's a very, very simple tool that actually sells about the business. It's not about a technology, they don't actually talk about how the thing works or what's going on underneath it. But it allows you to understand the effect of what's happening if you move from VMware here over to that cloud, this cloud or the other cloud and it shows you the pricing. I looked at that and just went I can walk into a CFO and I can sell them on the idea just showing them this. That kind of experience, I think, we're going to start seeing a lot more of that as people moved to the cloud. >> So Monday gave me a new catch phrase for VMworld. VMware moves at the speed of the CIO and, you know what? With hallway conversations I still talk to, John, I don't remember like one-third of the attendees of VMworld are all first-time attendees, I talked to a lot of first-time attendees and it's amazing because VMware has an enormous sales team and they are very aggressive getting to accounts and talking about the overall message. I had people coming up to me and saying "Man you know what, I just found out about this "vRealize Log Insight and it's amazing!" and I'm thinking, Wow, that doesn't get much much more traditional IT than log management with vRealize and you know VMware has preached that for the past 5 or 6 years at the show I think it just shows the Delta in the community from those looking to do the developer, dev ops and cloud-native integration. Us, as analysts, pushing VMware saying, "Hey, what's your digital transformation story? "It's something other than cloud pizza," to all the way, to the keeping the lights on with SAP and Oracle apps that will not change and haven't changed and probably won't change for the next 10 to 15 years. >> Yeah and actually it brings up an interesting point; I had a conversation with Pumela this morning and we were talking about how it used to be, come to the show and it's the virtualization show. Now, It's a pretty broad ecosystem and in some ways it's, I wouldn't say fragmented but I'm grasping for a better word because you walk through the show floor and Dentrify, interesting. We had one of their co-founders on as to that kind of cloud management, and how all those pieces, these big hairy issues that people are solving. We've got people working at analytics and data. You've got all the cloud pieces, security all over the place, networking, we've always had storage at the show. But I'd been a little jaded coming to VMworld. It's now my 8th year and I've kind of re-energized this year. I know that some people have stopped coming. There's a new influx coming in. Let's fast-forward to VMworld 2018. What are you hoping to see from this ecosystem? Any final things you'd want to say? "Hey, this is what we can do better?" Or, "This thing, Do it absolutely again especially!" We've got one more year in Vegas then I think we'll probably go back to San Francisco. You've all been to many of these. Where do we start? >> I'll take two. One, is I like'd to see more basketball players and rappers. We had a lot of them on. >> Did you hang with KD? >> I did not. I was busy. He called my people and I don't know if you want tee that one up, what that one is. >> You could mention that absolutely. >> Sure. I mean Rubrik was here winner of the Best of Show of VMworld. Also spent a lot of marketing dollars on Kevin Durant who was also an investor and also Henson Nischlak >> Did they make cards? I'm on a trading card. How hilarious is that? >> Keith: Trading cards were cool, I have one. >> Yeah. Absolutely. >> They came to play and and they bought it this year. Marketing dollar spent, I actually have a second predication which is that next year or the year after we'll be talking about, it seemed like VMware and Red Hat are throwing down against each other so I think next year we might be talking about the Dell technologies Red Hat wars in the cloud. >> Open source comes up but hadn't been discussed much except we did some Red Hat interviews here. Red Hat? Absolutely. Hybrid cloud environment, Microsoft, VMware, and Red Hat all players there. John's been thinking about this wrap for a while I know. >> Well I'm going to switch completely differently and into the future what I like to see just to shake it up a little bit. I don't think we should talking about AWS things around containers. I think there will be some of that conversation but what I want to see is that VMware starts hosting a function service. I want to see functions on VMware because I reckon that's where the industry is going to move to in the long time. >> Stu: Serverless, you're saying? >> Yeah, Serverless. >> Like I mentioned on Day two? >> I want to see a functions as a service on VMware on AWS. >> Oh, that will happen. >> There you go product management. That's what you can go build. >> You can tie it into Lambda right now, right? You'll have your... >> yeah but if you're tie it into Lambda that just plays right into AWS's hands. >> Give Chris Wolfe a call and Kit Colbert will make that happen. >> You know what? Full disclosure. I was part of judging for best of VMworld and Rubrik won Best of VMworld. I don't want to see more data protection. I don't want to see more secondary storage. I think one of the driving elements that part of that discussion, pulling back the onion a little bit was about redefining something in the data center that had been forgotten, that API level access Rubrik pushes API level access to the data center. This is something that I've asked from VMware forever which is to basically be the API to my data center. You may not ever, I may never get function as a service. I may never get PaaS, I may never get all these cool things from a developer perspective that I want from VMware but at the very minimum, you're the software defining data center. I want to have APIs into the data center and that data center is not just my physical Data Center but this whole VCF thing that's pushed whether it's in my data center, in Rackspace, or some other VCAMP partner or in AWS. My interface, If infrastructure is going to continue to be VMware's customer then you should enable me from an API perspective to manage my software-defining data center, believe it or not. >> Unfortunately, I love to chat with these gentlemen for hours at a time if I can. We're limited with the queue. We only give you a taste of what's happening at these shows if I've mentioned before, you need to come to these kind of events to talk to these quality people. We also mentioned a few of the sponsors on the show. Sponsorship helps us bring, not only the Cube to the event, but helps me bring high quality, independent analysis from gentlemen like this. Please check out all of our sponsors. Check out all of our content on theCUBE.net. These, all three of them, creating a lot of content. Go to their Twitter handle, @ctoadvisor, @jpwarren, and @jtroyer, I'm @stu. Thank you so much for joining us for our coverage of VMworld 2017. Reach out to all of us. Really, we'll get back to you. Love to hear your feedback. Thank you so much for watching theCUBE. [bouncy techno music]