why from the mandalay bay convention center in las vegas it's the kue covering vmworld 2016 brought to you by vmware and its ecosystem sponsors now here's your host John furrier hey welcome back everyone we are here live in Las Vegas at the mandalay bay convention center in the hang space at vmworld 2016 i'm john fervid SiliconANGLE is our flagship program the cube where we go out to the events and extract the signal it annoys this is our seventh year covering vmworld and every year it gets bigger and better the cube and the guests on the content and I'm here with the person who's made it happen from day one Robyn Matlock was the CMO of VMware first of all congratulations on a great event and thank you for supporting the cube for seven years it's been fantastic and it gets better every year you well I'm thrilled to be here and you know a huge fan of the cube you're an integral part of the program so here we go again John we're ingesting all the day that we're analyzing and we're providing great great videos a lot of volume but what an interesting thing I want to get your take on because you have written the vmworld bus for a very long time don't remind me it's changed and grown and one of the conversations we've had all week is what I've been calling ecosystem two point oh what is the ecosystem going to evolve into for vmware and vm world and it's been interesting and so on to get your take on and one of the things that it was striking was what pat kelsey has said to me yesterday on the cube interview was VMware's not only if not a prop one product company anymore it has grown to be a multiple set of products on technologies which has created a diverse and growing community absolutely can you add some color to that because this has been it's always been the community is very strong in VMware vmworld and VMware so but it's evolving that's honestly shifting and changing it in bad way it's just growing and morphing can you comment on there I think it's a really interesting topic it's in it's a rich topic because it as VMware's business is changing first of all our value about the community has never changed I mean we really value an ecosystem our customers wanted expect that we work and play really well with the variety of technologies that are in their but of course is our business in portfolio has grown and expanded the nature of the types of companies that are engaged in and around as shifts and changes to and if it doesn't then we're probably all going to have some issues down the road so I think it's a lot like driven from customers what do they want all of us vendors to do to work together so their life is easier yeah and the other thing David's lawyer is the CTO Wikibon is very technical comment that it's the best vmworld ever from a statement of direction standpoints very clear that the data center role that vmware has and this intercloud in which we call Pat calls it cross cloud is a real rich area for innovation and growth oh I think we're just on the cusp of the potential of that so you heard us talk about the cross cloud architecture and we broke that down into a few things like the VMware cloud foundation that's recension the software-defined data center stack all with lifecycle management that you can consume on-premise and off premises the IBM partnership the opportunity for the V clutter network partners I mean there's just so many the size O's are involved in this it's just really it's almost like a whole economy that can integrate into this broader you know offering I guess with all that in mind how are you managing the logistics because you know it's pretty obvious at vmworld is back in Vegas Moscone is pretty much under construction for the next few years you're going to be here for a couple more years yes here for a couple more you learn and it's just growth in this community what's how do you do that what's the key keys to that you know I think first of all it's about really making sure you're connecting with your customers and your partners and it's about experiences right it's making sure that you're getting them the rich content this is a technical conference so we're going to be measured by did we showcase and engage our audience with the right kind of technical information give them hands-on access to the things that they want to learn and further their careers and you know I always use that it's like we've got to stay close to our customers so any feedback that you've heard positive areas to work on what are your thoughts and as you look back now it's day three looking out over the past few days and we can I say one of the things I'm most proud of and I am seeing it in the Twittersphere is the fact that we had a lot of customers do the talking customers do the showing there were over a hundred summer's here this week on panels in labs in keynotes on videos all talking about their experiences and this group of people they want to hear from their colleagues in their peers so I think customers really helped us this time tell our story and help people understand what does this mean for their business so customers coming on today on the cube so you continue to watch if you're out there I got to ask you the question because one of the things I every every cube event I always have my little puzzle pieces I want to try to figure out how know where the puzzle corners are and I've been asking all the VMware executives kind of hidden question but it's basically this what does VMware scan for and I've been kind of getting a couple different answers so you're obviously CMO so you're going to be right on message I want to get your thoughts on that but before your answer the best answer came from a former VMware employee Steve arid who is the CTO now he's a venture capitalist and just off the cuff II just said VMware likes to make complexity go away they want to simplify complexity create abstraction layers and that's essentially the theme of the show here so it's that how do you guys talk about that because the customers want to see the direction of VMware what is the official messaging what is is that is he on targeting me sees that you kind of made it comment like it's in the DNA of VMware I would agree that you know simplifying complexity is in our DNA I think it's a little bit hard to say that today's IT world though is simple III think we all have a long journey to really make IT simple I think we're about unleashing the innovation from IT and in order to do that you have to simplify the complicated so they can focus on the strategic right but I would say and our core what we're really about is how do we unleash that potential and remove obstacles simplify complexity to ensure they can contribute to their businesses with the most impact at the accelerated pace as possible that's why i think pats across cloud is interesting because that is certainly probably one of the most complex things to do absolutely to the cross cloud and only getting more complicated i think that's what we're seeing now you know fast for the cloud era is maturing but what we're finding now is businesses have many clouds they have SAS applications they have their private cloud they have multiple public clouds they have managed cloud services and we know we've been down this route before in the old compute server world managing these silos can become extremely complicated so I think right now we're already thinking about how do we drive this and simplify this other comment from our analyst kick off this morning and breaking down kind of the vmworld ecosystem and VMware and I like to get your thoughts on kind of the internal VMware conversation because I know and obviously the dell transaction with emc is going to be on the 7th so that's public now so but VMware it seems that David floyer said is unleashed and Michael Dell's making a commitment to VMware that's pretty sincere about being independent and partnering well I'm kind of seemed like EMC kind of had that invisible hand is invited to this David Floria said this but share some of the VMware because this is in the DNA is to be independent right you're right it is definitely in our culture and i think michael has been extremely consistent I've been with him in many meetings both public private and he is never wavered from his commitment to support VMware's independence to support our ecosystem and to really open up opportunities for us to grow at our full potential and I we are partnered with dell for a decade right this is not new to us and we have a great relationship with them regardless of this acquisition I think the opportunities and the doors are going to open even further there's a lot more we can do together but I really feel we've got a really good balance he knows that our ecosystem is the core success factor for us so ecosystem is a big big part of the success so in your definition what is the ecosystem two point oh I think the ecosystem involves a variety of things first of all there's emerging technologies their service providers their sizes there's the telcos there's ISVs there's the SAS providers there's the two-tier distribution the channel partners the people who touch the customers there's a consultants I mean I think it's just all evolving with us kind of in one big tornado you know I think it's all those things to get a lot of growth it's not a moving parts no and how about containers that so that you know a whole nother dimension right do and I was saying the container buzz was talking to Jerry Chen last night and say last year's all about containers only one session the cloud native session yesterday they did talk about it but it didn't dominate the show like it did last year the cross cloud really kinda was great and I'll see the end user computing stuff seems really compelling yeah I think things kind of ebb and flow it depends what's really new and so you know there's kind of different focuses each year I so give us the internal or our marketing philosophy now that you have stuff clicking together now with the product side you see the NSX with vsphere playing nicely it's a lot of stuff d-san is exploding the product the products are clicking absolutely oh there's a great chair that pad announced okay with it we'll do that later but how does that get marketed no product teams going to do it yes because it's interesting there's standalone products but also work well integrated yeah you know we're at this very interesting chasm and i would say we're kind of in our teenage years right now in my analogy and that when these products let's take virtual San or NSX when they're first coming out the door they need to be incubated and they need almost like startup attention and as marketers we wanted to give them that really dedicated focus but it's time for us now to grow into our 20s and what we need to do is to be more solution oriented and we need to be more industry oriented look at verticals and help our customers associate what's the impact in my world whether it's retail or its government or its healthcare so you'll see marketing at VMware shit more vertical solutions and verticals yes and by line of business kind of thing going on more mature more businesses I think it's really thing of the day our customers don't think about our line of businesses they think about what business problems are they trying to solve and they you know whatever business units we have is irrelevant to them I've taught in some of the VCS last night at that light speed party and a lot of Silicon Valley DC's were there and I said you know there's no Gartner Magic Quadrant for this horizontal solution set so you know usually have the magic quadrant you know the leadership's by categories but now you have this new kind of disruptive solution set which could be a vsphere here there and kind of stuff kind of cobble together integrated there's no magic quadrant for that so it's really hard for customers to find out the playbook right and we have to make that really simple for customers i also think that's the potential that vmware has which maybe is unique to a point product startup that they have one product we can put these things together for even more impact more value and a more seamless experience because i think that's key it's got to come together as an experience I no question Robin what are you going to take away from vmworld this year we're gonna take back to the ranch what are going to digest what are you going to share with your with your team and your colleagues that you've learned from this show you know I think we're really we're executing I think we've created a great experience I think we've attracted the right kinds of attendees you know this is just the first of many because we roll this program into barcelona in six weeks then we roll the following week all over asia i'm off to mumbai vented beijing we're just going to roll through Asia through December so the key is we're onto this right the content is right the cross cloud architecture is really resonating the cloud foundation it makes sense workspace one we just got to stay the course help make this stuff really simple and clear for our customers and partners that's great stuff it does make a lot of sense in and it's got clarity and you can see the 20 mile stare the straight and narrow and congratulations on a great vmworld John thank you so much appreciate it Robin Matlock CMO here inside the cube live at the Hang space the mandalay bay convention for vmworld 2016 you watching the cube