>> From Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Public Sector Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back, everyone, to CUBE coverage here in Bahrain for AWS Summit. Cloud computing's changing the landscape, startups, business, government, and society. We're here with a special guest, His Excellency, Aymen Tawfiq Almoayed. Thank you very much, thanks for coming, thanks for joining us. >> Thank you for having me. >> And of course Max Peterson, Vice President of International Sales, Worldwide Public Sector for Amazon Web Services. >> Good to be here, John. >> Your Excellency, this program you're doing with Amazon, this MOU you've signed is interesting, I want to unpack it, because it speaks to the bigger picture of how the region is shaped by its generational shift of cloud computing and the people here. This is a really big part of this modernization plan. >> No question, no question. So the program that the government adopted, so Vision 2030, which was adopted a while ago, is based on one premise, one key premise. That the government is going to move from operator to regulator, and our focus would be to focus on and establish, create almost, an open, just, competitive environment. So the idea is for us to provide the platform and then allow the meritocratic system to let those that can aspire to opportunities and reach these opportunities come up through the system. So this program really sets the stage to get a new level going. >> Explain the difference with this program and why it's different than some of the things we've been hearing. We saw a cloud computing degree coming out of the University of Bahrain. We're seeing a lot of job skill training. This is different, this is a unique thing. Can you give a more detail around how it works. >> So, what we're doing is we're looking at very quick wins. And for us, six months, for somebody to spend six months, one year, in Amazon is a very quick win. This is not an extended degree. What this is is it's an opportunity to interact with the best of the best in their world sector. And to, honestly it's almost like a reset, where what Max and I were talking about earlier is somebody that spends a year with Amazon, I think that something happens to the pulse rate, right. So your pulse literally starts to beat much faster. >> Max knows all about that. >> Exactly, exactly. We hear about their traveling patterns, and that in itself is amazing. So in any case, so the reason it's different from a degree is it gives you real-life vocational experience. It gives you the networking opportunity. It gives you the lifestyle exposure. And then it gives you the shortcuts in organization. >> So you're exposing them to the excellence of what a culture looks like, Amazon in this case. They're hard-charging, they're fast. Anyone who's worked with Amazon knows that they move pretty quickly. But they're disciplined. It's a world-class organization. It's like a sports team being promoted to varsity or the pro team. Work their way up from the entry-level. >> So maybe the difference as well is, in this sort of program it's sink or swim. It's really as simple as that. I mean, you need to hit the ground running and take off. Maybe with a degree, it's much less so. With a degree, you go through your first year, your second year, your sophomore and so on. So what we do, what we want, is we want our youth to hit the ground running. We want very quick wins and I have no doubt that once the first trench, first team goes out to Amazon, comes back, I'm sure that the ripple effect that you see in industry and you see in the marketplace will be tremendous. >> Max, what's your take on this? 'Cause obviously you're on the Amazon side. You're taking them in Amazon Web Services here in Bahrain, or is it outside corporate headquarters in Seattle? Is there a definition around? >> All good questions. First, we're excited to be the first company that is partnered with the Ministry on this effort. We're sure many others are going to join, but we're excited to be first. I think what makes it different is the aspect of experiential. There's a lot of experiential learning that's going on different than the academic learning. Equally or maybe even more necessary is the sort of organizational cultural learning. Just what does it take to operate at world scale or at pace. And then to be able to bring that back to the region. We'll do that wherever we've got the right mix of skills. So it could be in Bahrain, where we've got a big office now, it could be in London, could be Washington, D.C., could be Seattle. >> Your Excellency, we always talk about on theCUBE over the years, tech athletes. Because, you know, to be an athlete, you got to have durability, intelligence, stability. Being a tech athlete, the travel schedules, we were just joking last night about it, you mentioned it. But also the intelligence and the integrity to do this at this speed. So this is kind of, I love the theme, so I want you to elaborate why this connects in with your vision and how did this idea get started, what was the origination around this effort? >> So initially the, again, if one takes a step back, we started experimenting about a year ago, a year and a half ago with the sports sector. So what we were doing with the sports sector, because it was a much smaller sector. What we're trying to experiment there is, if you were to allow our athletes to interact with the best in class, what would happen? Would they live up to that experience or not? And so one of the segments that we were looking at is, for example, triathlons. So about two years ago, this sport, triathlons in general, just simply didn't exist in the region. So two, maximum three years ago, they just, they were nonexistent. So His Highness had ordered that we go ahead and see if we can develop this and see if we can develop the athletes for it. And so what we needed to do, essentially, was pick some-- >> Find the athletes. (laughs) >> Is find the athletes, exactly. Send them out, we did a few triathlons. They did Kuna and Florida, came back, loved it, the addiction and the adrenaline kicked in, and then we started arranging duathlons and then triathletes here in Bahrain. Of course, I don't know if you know this, a year, fast forward, a year and a half later, and BE13, which is our triathlon team, is number one in the world. Simply it's number one in the world. Now we're doing this, we tried this with biking. So we sent a team to the Tour de France, and we started to do exactly the same thing. We were aspiring to look at greats like Sky team and the rest, and just learning from them, imitate, and then innovate, and-- >> One, if you have to have the talent to begin with, your theory is put 'em in, let 'em see it, and they'll either level up or they won't. It's self selection. >> Absolutely, no question. >> And you want to bring that formula to tech. >> It's pure meritocratic sink or swim. So we've got, so there's two, there's two phrases that we live by, all right. Number one, our role is open, competitive, just environment. That's it, all right. The number two is we open doors with no hand-holding. Simply no hand-holding, but we'll get you the opportunity. But if Amazon calls us and says participant number 606 or whatever isn't up to the cut, then they're not up to the cut. And what our youth have proven to us time after time is they're always up to the cut. As long as you make that clear, they-- >> The expectation defines the experience. So if you say this is what it is, you can swim or you can sink, your choice, people will tap out, they won't even jump in. >> I like the tech athletes piece. >> Yeah, I'm loving it, absolutely. >> Well, I mean, a lot of tech athletes, it takes a lot of energy, it is like you said, you don't know what it takes to build a company, it's really hard, I mean, it's not easy. >> It is, and the thing, just like this program, the thing that was interesting about the University of Bahrain idea was they're going to try and immerse everybody, because cloud and technology now is immersed in any field. I mean, anything becomes digital. And we were talkin' earlier about e-sports, so you need a whole bunch of great tech athletes to start bringing e-sports services to the world. >> Absolutely. >> Do you see e-sports emerging? >> Yeah, no doubt. So what we did on Friday is we signed the first agreement, this is the first time that a region hosts, we're hosting BLASTPro's finals in Bahrain, this is going to be on the 13th and the 14th of December, and that's running, streaming on Twitch. So we're excited, we're excited to be doing this with the guys at BLASTPro, and we're excited to be using Amazon's infrastructure to do it. So yes, absolutely, there is amazing things to be seen in e-sports and we're excited. >> This is awesome, digital disruption, you guys have been so proactive on this. I was commenting this morning on Twitter, then stats went out about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley in the U.S., 51% of all ventures fail. And some other ones, 4% become unicorns, but it was all about optionality, et cetera, et cetera, and entrepreneurs are about getting on the right wave and falling and trying again, and this is, you guys have been very proactive on this. >> Right, so that's exactly why we think that sports plays a big role. So the idea behind the program was simply to gamify everything. The idea behind this program, the idea behind adopting the new bankruptcy law in Bahrain, and the new reform regulations that are coming in, all we're doing is we're gamifying things. What we're simply saying is when you fall, it's OK to fall. As long as you get back up and hit the ground running once again, we're OK with that. So you'll start to hear phrases that are pretty interesting. Like I said, with the entrepreneurships, what we're looking at is unlocking levels. So we're gamifying. With education we're doing exactly the same thing, we're looking at vocational training where you get to unlock levels. So as long as people know that the name of the game is just to stay in the game, and then outpace everybody else, then we're good. >> And the funding's been fantastic. You guys have been supporting it with resources. Now that the region's up and running, Max, do you feel good about the development so far with the new region? Therese was just on earlier, she mentioned first day they turned it on, a bunch of companies were launched already. >> Besides the cannons and the confetti that shot out today at the summit, the other exciting thing's I think when we launched the region, we had over 350 different companies, many small businesses, small and medium enterprises that put their offerings into the AWS Marketplace. When it was launched, anybody in the region, anybody in Bahrain, could literally turn on 1,700 different types of software solutions at the push of a button, so I think that's big. I think we heard how 35 local companies have created migration offerings and fast-start offerings. We heard from one great entrepreneur on stage today and we heard from government about how government's operating faster than business, I think Sheikh Salman threw down a bit of a challenge to the rest of the government and state enterprises and even corporations. And then of course I think we saw the digital bank of the future from Bank ABC with their first virtual banking assistant up on stage who, by the way, lives in the cloud over Bahrain. >> Yeah, digital employee, we had a great chat about that. This speaks to the generational shift, this is something that's going to be an interesting footnote in history. The sea change around expectations, you brought this up earlier, I think this is important. The younger generation, they want the world to be at a different speed, and they don't want an intolerant blockers in their way. And so whoever can be out front on setting up the environment, whether it's society, government, citizen services, but money-making potential, banks got to operate. So this is the replatforming of society is happening. >> No question, yeah, no question. I'll give you just the, when you compare ministries, when you compare government entities, you would walk in and you'd assume the ultra-bureaucratic system is still in place where you've got to go through tiers and so on and so forth. As far as the youth at the Ministry of Youth is involved, these guys are running things with chats, we've got internal chat systems, and so there is no memo-writing process where you then have to escalate it, and then it goes to the minister's office and so on. Absolutely not. These guys are on the likes of Slack, the likes of Teams from Microsoft and so on, and that's how government is run. >> Max, email's for old people like us. >> Hey, modern digital governments are redesigning the way all this stuff works, and it doesn't, the thing that's interesting to me is it doesn't just impact these things that you would think of as tech. I thought the example of going from 130 days to 5 days for permitting approvals-- >> For building permits, sure. >> That takes out a massive amount of inefficiency from the industry, right, and it enables that very industry to then move faster, instead of government as a blocker to so many of these things, becomes an enabler. And I think it's that attitude about modernized, customer-focused or citizen-focused that is the hallmark of what folks are doing now to make a difference. >> Well, thanks for coming in and sharing the insights. Your Excellency, great to see you. I have one final question, take a minute to explain to the folks what is the Ministry of Youth and Sports Affair, what's the charter, you going to add tech athletes to the mix now that we've kind of defined that term? But take a minute to explain-- >> Tech athletes. So the vast majority of the population is under the age of 35. The ministry's mandate is to make sure that anybody within that constituency, their touchpoints are being managed in the right way. So our job, very, very simply, is to be effectively the change agent for them, number one, and number two, to protect their interests. So we're the ones that are negotiating regulations that come in, but what touchpoint really is relevant? We're negotiating new laws that impact youth when it comes to their trades, new laws that impact youth when it comes to their rights, new laws-- >> Whether it's culture or art or whatever. >> Any touchpoints, so effectively we're customer-relations for youth, or client relations for youth. So that's that from one perspective. With regards to sports, we're simply regulators. So what we're doing is we're moving from an operator model to a regulator model, and what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a sports industry. So instead of us focusing on the actual tournament itself only, we're looking at sports diplomacy, we're looking at sports industry, we're looking at human performance and things like that. So any sectors that we can catalyze to grow in Bahrain that relates in any way, shape, or form to sports, whether it was medicinal development, technological development, regulations or otherwise, that falls under Ministry of Youth and Sports. >> You're charged to look at the whole individual across all spectrums touchpoints. >> Exactly >> That's awesome. >> So we're a horizontal as opposed to a vertical. >> Your Excellency, great to have you on theCUBE, great topic, could talk about it forever. We love sports, of course, on theCUBE, we love talkin' sports, Max, you're a tech athlete. >> I'm a tech athlete, I learned that today. Brilliant. >> You go from city to city, hit a home run everywhere you go. >> I'm looking for the next league to compete in. >> Guys, thanks so much for the insights. CUBE coverage here at AWS Summit in Bahrain, I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (bright music)

(upbeat electronic music) >> Live from Bahrain. It's theCUBE. Covering AWS summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> And welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage here in Bahrain for the exclusive coverage of the AWS's summit and their announcement and their execution of a new region which should be online here in early 2019. I'm John Furrier, your host with SiliconANGLE Media theCUBE, extracting the signal from the noise, meeting all the people. First time the Middle East and the region should be a big impact, having a digital footprint as size of Amazon Web Services, bringing energy and entrepreneurship and innovation and economic revitalization and enablement. We'd love the coverage, we meet a lot of great people. Our next guest is Simon Martin who's the ambassador of the British embassy here in Bahrain. Simon, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thanks. >> Thanks for joining us. >> My pleasure. >> So, OK, so I want, I want to just kind of get your perspective. I met the US ambassador yesterday the last night at dinner. He's kind of new to the area and the job. >> But he's already, >> You've got experience, >> But he's already well informed, I can tell you (laughs). >> He's well informed (laughs). Birth by fire, thrown in the deep end. You've been here for a few years. >> Yeah, three. >> Take a minute to talk about the environment here, because we're first time here. We're learning or observing. I'm certainly surprised. My daughter was asking me: What are the women like there? We had a women's breakfast yesterday. 70 plus people. The energy, the diversity, interesting culture. Feels like very open, what's your thoughts. >> Well, very much so, I mean, Bahrain has been at the sort of crossroads of international travel for hundreds and hundreds of years. The UK's relationship with Bahrain, the formal one, goes back just over 200. And that was all to do with trade. Manama means the place of sleep. And it was the place that people used to stop to rest on their way across the Arabian subcontinent and towards the Indian subcontinent, and so on. So, it's a place which is naturally welcoming of foreigners and outside ideas. And I think that's what Amazon have found here. So, there is an often lot of change going on in this part of the world. Bahrain is relatively small economy compared to its neighbors. It was the place that oil was first discovered in the Gulf, but, actually, once they discovered it, they realized that she had rather less than most of the neighbors and, therefore, it's an economy which has had to adapt to keep, keep growing. In contrast, >> Mainly, mainly the dependence on oil, other oil-rich areas. >> Yeah. >> Right, is that it? >> Yeah. So, that's been the main stay of the economy for some time, but there is not the, there is not yet the potential for the growth that's needed in order to help develop an economy with its, with the necessary modern infrastructure. A growing population, a need for, for quality employment for young people which is something that we've heard a lot of in the last few years. >> Talk about your history, how long have you been in the job you're in, what's the background, what are some of the things that you've done >> OK >> at the government in the UK. >> Yeah, well, Thank you, so I've been here for three years. Before that, I was working, actually, for His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales. And in that role, visited this part of the world on a couple of occasions, and so, and so the impact of that very important part of our relationship, royal family's relationship with the royal families in this part of the Gulf, and it just opened my eyes a bit to the, to the importance of having multifaceted relationships. And, again, this is what we're now, this is what we are now seeing here, that Amazon Web Services with the cloud region that they are building here have brought a new dimension, >> (laughs) The fly got... >> Not surprised, to the Bahraini economy. >> So, tell me about the multifaceted piece of news. What I'm fascinated by is the Dubai dynamic, right. You know, I see Dubai, a lot of events there, Blockchain events, AI events, a lot of tech events. Feels like New York to me, using the American metaphor. It's kind of like a Silicon Valery kind of vibe. But they all work, been working together for years. What's the historical relationships, how have they changed, and how does cloud computing make up for that? How does that play into it? >> Well, of course there've been, it's been a very collaborative and yet competitive relationship between the different, particularly the finance centers of the Gulf for many years. The economic success story of Dubai is very well known. Bahrain has continued to develop, but without the resources that underpin the UAE success, has done so on a more, more progressive way. But this is always be, going to be a much smaller economy and Bahrain has to, has to compete in niches in which it has the competitive advantage. And it's this, what we have now happening here, is creating a wonderful new niche opportunity for Bahrain. But, of course, I don't think am letting out any secrets to say that each of the countries in the Gulf would love to have been hosting the new cloud region. >> Yeah. >> So Bahrain had try incredibly hard to present an environment in which to host this kind of, this kind of investment which requires regulation. It requires openness and ease of doing business and it also requires an openness to developing the labor force to support not only the Amazon, but all of the train of companies that we're expecting to invest along behind it. >> Well, Simon, I really appreciate your experience and candor here on theCUBE. Certainly, for us it's a new area and you have certainly a perspective for, for the Royal Family in the UK, and now being here. But one of the interesting things I'd like to get your perspective on is, you know, you look at globalization and you look at regulations, you look at digital, things like GDPR, you see all traditional things, you mean, you can go back when I was a young kid growing up, I remember the pound and the French franc and all the different currencies going on, and then EU comes together. And now you have Asia and cryptocurrency. So you have a whole another cloud computing generation coming where that might reimagine the political landscape, might imagine the economic relationships. These are opportunities, but also threats. And so how people handle it is interesting. So, how do you, when you look at that kind of dynamic, you got a little bit uncertainty and opportunity at the same time, depending how you look at it, it's the glass half full or the glass half empty. >> Exactly. >> How should executives and government officials start thinking about this new model, this new marketplace. London is certainly the center of the action and connects now into Bahrain, could be a different dynamic, frictionless, digital. >> Mhmm. >> People living across borders. These are new dynamics. What's your thoughts on this new melting pot of digital impact? >> Well, of course, everybody wants a piece of it, everybody wants to be at the center of a new melting pot. And for Bahrain, they're looking to be the of it within, within this region, but of course, the Dubai Finance Center and, you know, Abu Dhabi and Kuwait, and so on are also, are also very keen, and no one, no one is expecting to be the dominant player. And certainly from Bahrain's perspective, it's very much about creating the environment in which companies will see, this is a good place to start. The Gulf region is a coherent region with an incipient single market, and so on, within the GCC, and so, naturally, investors from the outside are going to look at one place to start. And so what Bahrain has done, and I think it's, it's been very well founded, it's just taken place over the three years that I've been here, it's to dramatically increase the ease of doing business, and then find proportionate ways in which the government can support new companies to get them established. So, you mentioned GDPR and, you know, how's this going to affect a company in the Gulf. Well, I was at the launch of a very interesting new big data software project by one of the, in fact British owned new startups in the FinTech Bay here which is supported by the Economic Development Board. They're starting point is that the product that we are selling out of Bahrain is GDPR compliant, which gives you an idea of the way, >> Yeah. >> in which even from, from this relatively small island in the Gulf, >> Yeah. >> the global perspective has been taken. >> And certainly with, you know, digital currency, the Know Your Customer Anti Money Laundering is the big thing too, you got to get that right. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So, they have an opportunity with FinTech. Final question for you, as you look out and see the human capital market and the future of work. >> Yeah. >> It's a big conversation we're always having and certainly I live in Silicon Valley where everyone's, no secret that there's a migration out of Silicon Valley due to the prices of living there, but yet concentration of entrepreneurship. People are going to have engineering teams all over the world. so you have a disperse workforce now crossing borders and not just the domicile issue, that's one, you know, taxes, where to domicile, outside say the US or other countries. So, you have a combination of diverse workforces. >> Mhmm. >> This is big, this is a big opportunity too, challenge and opportunity. >> It is, it is. And, of course, there are not just big changes, now, there's constant fluctuation in the way the workforce and the populations in this part of the world and within the gulf are changing. Look at Vision 2030 in Saudi Arabia, the big increase in the Saudi workforce, both through the policy of Saudization and through the creation of many more opportunities for women in the workforce. That's affecting Bahrain. But Bahrain has always been a place where people come to work and sometimes to work remotely, sometimes to live here and work across in Saudi Arabia. So, the Bahrainis feel that they are very, very attuned to these challenges. But I might just mention as well that this is not just about economics. And what impresses me about the reform program you see going on here is that, the idea is that we will create a broader and wider spread opportunity, particularly through the opportunities for young professionals working in AWS, but also in the environment all the way around it, for all communities in Bahrain, not just the wealthy, not just the sort of Ivy league equivalent graduates. >> Yeah. >> And so that's why the academy that they're setting up here can, >> And then network does emerge in social networking is going to bring people closer together. >> Yeah. >> OK, great to have you on. Final question is, as people look at this moment in time, maybe an inflection point, shot heard around the Gulf, if you will, of Amazon, certainly they did this with CIA in our country, the said success is coming in, and kind of changing how things do, reimagining value creation and value capture. What do you see as the impact of the, a diverse region have been in this area and the geography? Just your thoughts on what the impact's going to be. >> Well, of course, this is a virtual world and a cloud region is the virtual concept, so it's easy to say, well it shouldn't take an Amazon Web Services cloud region to transform the way in which governments work here. In practice, what AWS have seen wherever they have established cloud regions, it's a magnet for other businesses to develop around it, and it provides the reassurance that governments need to take that step forward. I don't know whether you heard Max Peterson and his presentation this morning saying he was amazed at the speed with which the entire Bahraini government system has embraced the move to the cloud which, indeed, my own government is doing as we speak. And this, I think, is going to be one of the really big, the really big impacts which will allow governments to get smaller and more efficient and more transparent >> And serve their citizens in a different way, in a better way. >> But one last thing, John. Because, you may not have heard about this is, we're hearing a lot about the shift towards renewable energy in this part of the world, and people say, why on earth would we need renewable energy which is, you know, so much of the world's petrol carbon resources are based here, but, of course, if you don't burn them, you can sell them. And that's very simple economics. The fact is that it has taken longer than other parts of the world for the transition to renewable energy, even though we have so much sunshine and at times quite a lot of wind. The government here just put out a tender for a 100 megawatt solar farm. And the driving force behind that is because AWS have said: we want to power our cloud region from renewable energy. And this is an example of industry and the big investors actually applying a positive force to speed up the direction of the government policy already. And it's something that has been well. >> It's happened fast, this private partnership public relationship, that's a success story. >> And I think there are lots of other ways we will see this happening, as I say, you can't have over 2000 people here all focusing on the cloud technology without bringing an awful lot of extra attention to and focus on what else is going on in Bahrain. >> Yeah. >> From my perspective, the Bahrain government is saying we welcome, we welcome this, this publicity, and we look forward to explaining ourselves. And I think we'll see a lot of further development in this area. >> Simon that's a great point. Sustainable energy and the trade-off between industry, private industry trying to make money, but contributing technology and a co-creation with the government. >> Yeah. >> I mean, data center, it's hot here, you need cooling, you got sun power, you see, you got to have that solution. >> Absolutely, yeah. >> You can't burn it, you can sell it, so good opportunity. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Simon Martin, ambassador, the British ambassador to the embassy here in Bahrain. Thank yo for sharing your insights and color commentary. >> Pleasure to meet you, John. >> Appreciate it. Okay, live coverage here. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE bringing you all the new observations. Our first time in the Middle East region well coherent structure, great economics, great society benefits, cloud computing, Amazon Web Services region opening up in 2019. Exclusive coverage. Stay with us fore more after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)

>> Live from Bahrain, it's theCUBE. Covering AWS Summit Bahrain. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage. We are here in Bahrain in the Middle East for exclusive coverage of AWS's new region in the area. I'm John Furrier, cohost of theCUBE. It's our first time in the Middle East, as we go out into the world and expand theCUBE's mission of bringing you the best content, extracting the signal from the noise, meeting new people, connecting with thought leaders, people creating innovation, creating a new cultural shift with cloud computing. It's a societal global phenomenon, it's a change that's going to impact society, culture, economics, and humans. And this is theCUBE coverage, we're going to continue with that we are excited to have Khalid Al Rumaihi who is the CEO of the Bahrain Economic Development Board. He's the man, and responsible with his team for all the success and vision of bringing an Amazon region into the area. Here in Bahrain, Amazon has announced a region that's going to come in. And we expect to see economic revitalization. We expect to see an amplification of culture. Welcome to theCUBE, thank you for joining me. >> Thanks for having me John. >> Thanks for inviting us, and thanks for having us here. Here in the middle of all the action. Teresa Carlson from Amazon had a vision and you aligned with that vision, you guys are like-minded individuals. You saw something special with digital. >> Right. >> And this is not new. It's not like you woke up one morning and said, hey, let's bring Amazon in. Take us through the history of how we got here with Amazon about to launch a region early 2019 in Bahrain. You guys have had a vision, take us through that. >> You know, I started in my position about three years ago. I remember March 2015, a little more than three years ago. And my first week on the job, was joining his highness the crown prince in a meeting with Teresa. And so, in that meeting, that's what kicked it really off. Teresa heard form his highness, who is the chairman of the Bahrain Economic Development board, the vision for the country. We deregulated our telecom sector about 13, 14 years ago. We were the first country to do that in the Middle East. Which meant that we introduced competition on broadband, on mobile. It dropped prices by about 50%. On connectivity in the country. That attracted Amazon. When they looked at the region, they said, here's a government that's allowing true competition and for a data center obviously broadband communication, and the competitiveness of that price is key. And she was also impressed with his royal highness's vision for the country going forward. We want to become a digital economy, we want to transform this economy from an oil-based economy, to one that is based on information. And so we had a common view. And we determined, at that point, that we were going to do everything in our power to translate the conversation we had there to a reality. And here we are, almost three years later, almost to have a region here. >> And you know, people know my rant and rave, I always talk about, data is the new oil, information is the new oil. In that data and information, digital assets are digital. It a life-blood now of society. Citizen are reacting. Everyone's now connected with mobile devices, you're starting to see autonomous vehicles, you're starting to see a cultural blending between the old world, and then digital. And citizens can get new services, there's more efficiencies but there's actually a better opportunity for the citizens. And also in general. How do you guys look at that when you guys have your meetings, and you're looking at the vision of the future, the citizen benefits. Whether it's an entrepreneur or someone who's just living life. >> Well you know, when we had this discussion with Amazon, we decided to do what we call a cloud first policy. And we decided that we were going to move the government work loads to the cloud. We were going to actually, challenge any government institution, why they're not using the cloud. And it's been phenomenal. Now, it's been phenomenal from a cost saving perspective, which we want to pass on to the citizens. So for the citizens, for be for them to be able to get government services on their mobile phone, to pay their electricity bill to do get their license. And the government, if it reduces its cost can pass that on to that citizen. But more importantly, it's going to allow innovation to take place in the government. We're going to be able to have our education data in the Ministry of Education, communicate with our labor data. We're going to be able to do education in a new way. So it is going to unleash innovation in the government and the way it offers its services. We think it's going to do the same for businesses and for startups. >> We didn't get a chance to film it yesterday, but we were part of with Teresa Carlson's team with you and your startup Bahrain. All the entrepreneurs from the community, very vibrant, talking General Keith Alexander was there, knows a thing or two about cyber and then we had an entrepreneur visionary in John Wood, who's been in the business, but he's also a visionary. He made a comment and you reacted to that around the impact of the AWS region coming here. He was almost like, there's a storm of innovation coming and you align with that. You said, you kind of reacted at dinner last night about it. What is your feeling of what this will bring to the region? 'Cause Amazon has proven that when they put a region out, there's unexpected consequences sometimes like things you might not see. What are you expecting for the impact. For AWS? >> I think it's a game changer. I mean, you said data is the new oil. If we think back to the 30s, this country was the first country to discover oil. When, at that time, Texaco and So Cal started a refinery and started extracting oil, all the industries that developed around it refineries, oilfield engineering, oilfield services. You know, I think we're seeing we're going to see that in the new digital economy with data. Amazon coming here is going to do several things. Number one, it's going to unleash this innovation, it's going to reduce latency for people who are storing data looking to retrieve that. It's going to create new jobs, data scientists. We estimate 10,000 jobs are going to come on the back of this, that is going to be for the entire region. And I get it, I emphasize this is going to be a game changer, not just for the kingdom of Bahrain, but for the entire Middle East. We're already seeing startups who are getting educated about what the cloud can do for them, and the scale, the scale that they can reach by going to the cloud early on, we've seen them in the United States. Why can't this region see a unicorn that is able to be a global leader, just by virtue of, going to the cloud and learning from Amazon. And Amazon, AWS shares our passion for the startup community and what this can do for that. >> I want to get to the what's going to attract business to come into Bahrain. But first about what startup impact Amazon has proven and I heard a comment from one of the startups, Amazon Web Services is for big companies. Whoa, whoa, yeah, big companies are using Amazon now, but they won, they were built on the backs of startups. When Amazon first started and startups still use Amazon. It is a dream for a startup, the cost to get a company up off the ground, the speed of innovation with Amazon has proven startups, this is a big opportunity. And so this is going to impact how you set policy and get out of the way entrepreneurs, do you help them? As you look at policy, is that almost a tough decision on your part? 'Cause you guys are used to helping entrepreneurs, very entrepreneur friendly, but almost do you get out of their way, do you help them? What's the strategy for the startups? How do you look at this, because if the acceleration comes in and the training kicks in, you're going to see a renaissance of entrepreneurs, >> Right? >> What do you do, get out of their way, help them out? What's that? >> You got to balance it. I think, you can't coddle them. You can't do everything for the entrepreneur, there's got to be that grit, the resilience, that hunger at the entrepreneur. I was an entrepreneur before I took this role, and I think you've really got to have that fire in your belly. So what we want to do is we want to create an ecosystem, but we don't want to spoon feed them. So what we've done is for instance, we launched a $100 million venture capital fund of funds. And we said, the government shouldn't invest in startups but let's create a fund of funds that will invite venture capitalists to base themselves here, but we're not going to tell these venture capitalist how to invest. So each startup has to pitch itself to these venture capitalists and make sure that there's justification for it. We're going to create, you know, training, we're going to create elements, the regulation. We introduced a bankruptcy law this year, that is going to allow people to fail and to restructure. So we're going to put the policy in place. We're going to allow capital to be there, we're going to look at our training and education. But again, it really is down to the entrepreneur, to, so you've got to mix you've got to balance it. You've got to say, the burden is also on you to think about what's the market opportunity. Here is what the country will do, but then the rest is up to you. And I think, we're going to see our young youth in the region. We're doing this because this region is transforming. This region needs to create jobs. There's about a 100 million jobs you need to create in the Middle East over the next couple years. You're not going to be able to create that in the normal way. So we want people to become employers become entrepreneurs, rather than just employees and looking for a nine to five job. So it's integral to the vision of the region. >> Entrepreneurship is the engine of innovation. All right, let's talk about the region. You know, we're first out here so I'm kind of new, fresh eyes and you see Dubai out there, you got Asia, China and all these in Hong Kong and Singapore. So you guys have a unique opportunity. Dubai is kind of like a New York, it's hustle bustle is built out. You guys have this feeling like a Silicon Valley vibe. >> Right? >> It feels very open, very friendly, so you don't have to compete with each other. And New York does things, Silicon Valley does things. So you have this entrepreneurial culture. The key is a global co-creation a connection. How are you going to attract businesses? Because there is demand in the US for domiciling in places outside the United States. There's been a lot of competition. >> Sure. >> So are you prepared for companies to come here work with you? I know you guys are doing a lot of work. What do you say to the folks out there saying, I need to have a presence. Can I domicile in Bahrain? What's it like? What's the opportunities for me to connect into a growing ecosystem around Bahrain? >> So I'd say first of all, on the region, I mean, just like in Asia, just like in the US, you can have multiple hubs. So you know Bahrain will be a hub alongside a Dubai or a Riyadh or a Kuwait and so forth or a Abu Dhabi. And our niche is, as a small country, we're going to be very agile. One of the reasons why Amazon chose Bahrain is because we have a team Bahrain approach. And I, you know, I came from the private sector, when you're talking to General Electric, you're not talking to one department in General Electric, especially if you're a large customer. The whole company's going to rally around you and bring a solution to you as a customer. We're going to do that as a country. So with Amazon we got all the various ministries and we took a team Bahrain approach and we said we're going to solve through the economic development board, we're going to solve for your problem. Mondelez, which chose to locate their $100 million facility in Bahrain, built a facility about 30 soccer pitches, and they did it within a year and a half. We reclaimed land and had the land ready for them. They called it 'cause they make Oreos, they call it turning ocean to Oreos. >> Yeah. >> And so it's that agility that is going to differentiate us. In terms of niche, we're very interested in FinTech. We think we're going to take a leadership position not only regionally, but globally in FinTech. We have exciting announcements that we're going to make in FinTech. It's a small country, we can be nimble, agile, startup friendly, and kind of innovate. And so we're determined to carve a niche in open banking, in crypto currency exchanges, interesting innovation areas that we think we can excel at. >> Cloud computing certainly is a driver, artificial intelligence, obviously clearly. The fodder for entrepreneurship because it allows you to do things with data at a scale with a cloud engine, talk about FinTech and banking you can't ignore blockchain and crypto currency, which is bubble-ish right now, and then was kind of cleaning itself out, sorting itself out, but when that starts to settle and it becomes legitimate in the sense of a global access to digital money, or software defined money. >> Right. >> And data, that could be an integral part. How do you guys look at that? I know that's something that everyone's talking about. People are looking to do token kind of business models and there's really hasn't been any leadership globally at all on. >> Right. >> This is a place people can domicile, here Malta, here, there and there. So how do you guys look at that market, are you thinking about it, are you kicking the tires, what's happening? >> We're looking at FinTech and saying, really, beyond all the logos and all that. We're looking to reduce the friction for a customer doing the simple things. Looking at aggregating your accounts, understanding how you're spending money, looking at how to transfer money, looking at how to raise capital. If we can look at reducing the friction for people around these challenges, these day to day challenges and use our country as a pilot for doing that. Then imagine the potential that once you illustrate the potential here, you could go replicate it elsewhere. So we're very interested in blockchain. So you talk about crypto currencies, I think the real interesting element is the blockchain opportunity in FinTech and beyond. How can you allow the distributed ledger to have multiple applications. We're going to introduce issuing car licensing by a blockchain. Land, real estate transactions via blockchain. In addition to that, we're looking at open banking and allowing open banking to be prevalent here and allowing entrepreneurs to plug in and get access to that data and innovate around that. So that's how we're thinking about innovation in FinTech. >> Really, thanks for coming on and spending the time. I know you're super busy, and thanks for hosting us with theCUBE as part of the Amazon contingent. I give you the final word for the folks watching out there. What should they know about Bahrain that they might not know about it? And how do they engage with you guys? What are you guys doing? How should someone contact you? How do we engage? And what's the secret sauce of the Bahrain plan? >> Well, first of all, I'm going to plug my institution. It's simple, look at bahrainedb.com. It's on the internet. It's going to give you everything you need about what Bahrain. And what I'd say is, this is a small, but you know in this, in today's world, a global world and interconnected world, small is beautiful. So we're a small, forward thinking country. We're in a region that is about $1.5 trillion in terms of just the Gulf Cooperation Council. And here is a great gateway for tapping into that opportunity. We're about 30 minutes from the kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is doing wonderful things with Vision 2030, and you can be in Bahrain accessing that opportunity. And so I'd invite you to come, look at our website and the Bahrainedb will help you translate that kind of opportunity to a reality. >> Khalid, Chief Executive of Economic Development Board in Bahrain. Bold move congratulations. Bold moves have bold payoffs. Big bet with Amazon. >> Thanks, for having me John. >> Thanks for coming on. It's theCUBE here, we're live in Bahrain here at the Ritz Carlton for AWS summit 2018 here in the Middle East. I'm John Furrier. We'll be back with more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

(techno music) >> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners. >> Welcome to Las Vegas everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. My name is Dave Vellante, and I'm here with Stu Miniman and this is the inaugural Dell Technologies World and Pat Gelsinger's here, he's the- >> Hey, great to be with you today, >> Dave: the CEO of VMware, awesome to see you, >> Oh, thank you. >> Our number one guest of all time, this is our ninth Dell/EMC World and your 900th CUBE interview, But it never gets old Pat. It's really a pleasure to see you. >> Oh it's always fun to be with you guys. Thank you for the chance to spend some time on theCUBE, you've come a long way. >> So, thank you for noticing! So, you were the first, and people are recognizing this, to really sort of call the boom in the data center. We certainly have seen it with cloud, and we saw a little bit with data and big data, and now digital transformation, but well over a year ago, you said, we have tailwinds, it just feels right, so good call. >> Yeah, hey thank you, and you know clearly like the IDCs, Gartners, you know, they began last year, 2% to 3% growth, I said no, I think it's at least 2x that, and we ended of the year almost 6% growth in IT, and everybody's raised their forecast, and I think they're still a little bit conservative, and I think in this period, where technology is becoming more pervasive in everything, every business is becoming a tech business, every area of every business is becoming influenced by tech, and as a result, hey I think we're going to see a long run of tech strength and every company in tech is going to benefit and those that are well-positioned are going to benefit in a big way. >> Yeah, you see, you called it, "tech is breaking out of tech" >> Yep, yep absolutely, right, you know, we're no longer that little IT thing stuck in the back corner making sure your mail runs, it's now everything. You know, back office has become front office, right. You know, every aspect of data becomes mission-critical for the business. As some have called it, you know, data is the new oil, right, in the future. And it really is thrilling to see some of our customers, and Michael had a few on stage this morning doing really pretty cool things. >> Well VMware is on fire. I mean, it's only 10% of Dell's revenue, but it's half, it generates half of its operating cash flow. Obviously we love the software business, of course. Talk about your business, the core is doing really well, you got NSX crankin', vSAN cranking, the cloud now, there's Clarity in cloud, give us the overview of your business and give us the update. >> Sure, and as I say, you know, there's three reasons we're doing well. You know, one is our strategy is resonating with customers, and you know, when you got strategic resonance with customers, you're not in the purchasing department, you're in the business units, the CIO's office. So strategy is resonating well, across what we do for private cloud, what we're doing for public cloud, what we're doing for end user and workforce transformation, our security strategy, every aspect is resonating. You know, second, we're executing well. And I'll say, you know, your good strategy, you're executing it well, and you know, clearly the Dell momentum has helped us. We're ahead of schedules on the synergies that we've laid out, and that's been a powerful accelerant. It was like we're doing well, you know, and you put some turbochargers on, whoa, you know this is going, and then finally as we said, it's a good market, right. And well-positioned tech companies are benefiting from that. So across our product families, you know, NSX, vSAN, and HCI, you know, our cloud management is really performing, the end user computing, you know, all of these seeing, you know 30, 50, 100 percent growth rates. You know, my overall cloud business, you know, VMware is growing in the teens you know, my cloud business is growing in the 30s, and way ahead of the growth rate of the business, so pretty much everything that we've laid out is firing on all cylinders. >> Pat, I think most people understand some of the products of VMware. I think it's, you know, 20 years now, since server virtualization laws You've, you know great momentum with NSX with vSAN, wonder if you could talk a little bit about the digital platform though, you know how does VMware look, you know, for the next five to 10 years, fit into the Vision 2030 like Michael was talking about. >> Yeah, yeah, you know very much, you know, as I say, you know, our objective is to be the essential, ubiquitous, digital infrastructure, right. Where you know, this idea, you know, essential. You know we run this mission critical stuff and increasingly we're seeing businesses put their crown jewels running on VMware. You know, 'cause we ran a lot of the stuff of the past, we'd run your SharePoints, your Outlooks, and so on, but now, they're putting core banking on us, you know, core transactional platform. They just say, you are essential, ubiquitous, our strategy is to move all the way to the edge, and the IOT use cases, into the core networks of our service provider partners, You know, to as I say, build these four clouds, the private cloud, the public cloud, the telco cloud, and the NF or the IOT cloud. All of those on a common infrastructure, that enables applications to build on and leverage all of the above. So you know, we're increasingly ubiquitous, digital infrastructure, meaning that they can build their applications from the past as well as in the future on us. And as we're partnering with Pivotal with our PKS strategy, reaching more to the developer, right, and delivering that infrastructure for the next-generation apps, and of course the dirty secret is, is that almost all of the cool new apps are some ugly combination of new and old. And if we can give a common operational security management and automation environment that transcends their cool new container, and function as a service, but combine it, in a consistent operational and security environment with today's infrastructure, oh, that's like the big easy button for IT. Got it, we could take you to the future, without giving up the past. >> We hear from our, you know, CXOs, in our community, in our audience, they really, they want to get digital right. So my question to you is, what kind of conversations are you having with executives around getting digital right? >> Uh-huh, yeah, and lots of those things are, you know, like just with a big media company, was with a huge Bank, on the phone with a big consumer goods product last week. You know these interactions occurring, you know like you say they want to get it right. And with it we're seeing the conversation shift, because a lot of it used to be, you know best of breed. Oh that looks good, and I'll stitch it together with this, and maybe I'll put it that, and a lot of their bandwidth was being put to putting the pieces together, and we're saying no, right. What you going to do is have robust infrastructure. Increasingly rely on fewer, more strategic vendors. It's my job to put it together, so you can take your investments and put them into the applications and services that really differentiate your business. And this is becoming a sea change in how we work with customers and say, okay, yeah I can't stitch all these pieces together, I can't have a hundred security vendors, I must rely on fewer vendors, in much more strategic ways. And in that, obviously we're benefiting from that enormously and they're expecting us to step up like never before, to be a partner with them, and it really is a thrilling time for us. >> So that simplifies all the complexity on there, and at least in concept. Who's leading this charge? Do you discern any patterns of the guys that are getting it right, versus the guys that are maybe struggling, or maybe complacent, specifically in terms of leadership? >> Yeah, and it's super, super interesting, because I find leaders in every industry, right? You know, you find leaders and laggards in those, I had one customer not a lot, long say, "Hey is that virtualization stuff, can I really rely on it?" It's like, ding dong, you know, you're now the trailing edge of technology, but for every one of those trailers, we're seeing those front end customers, and you saw some of them on stage this morning. Where they're just really going and saying, boy we are now ready to ante in, in a big way. We're seeing that in car companies. We're seeing that in financial services companies. We're seeing that in supply chain companies. And some of those are now really seeing these startups now putting pressure on their business for the first time, and they say no, we got to innovate in a very aggressive way. And for that, you know, the Dell Technologies family, you know all of us coming together, you know with our, each skills and focus areas, but together being able to present that holistic solution that says, that's right, we can lead you on digital transformation, we could change your infrastructure, we can build-in security, we could transform your workplace, we could take you to the multi-cloud future, we got it. >> Pat, there was one of the things that caught my ear, Allison Dew, when she was talking about the Dell Technology Institute, said that, together you're going to become a force for good. I know that's something that's near and dear to your heart, >> Pat: Yeah. >> So, maybe, you talked about the tech, and the security and everything, what about the Dell families as a force for good out there? >> Yeah, and I've described this era, and I've said there's four superpowers. You know, technology superpowers that are bigger than any of us, right. And the four I described, you know, mobile. The ability to reach anyone, over half the planet is now connected. Cloud, the ability to scale as never before. AI, the ability to bring intelligence to everything, and IOT, the ability to bridge to the physical world everywhere. And those four are really reinforcing each other, right? They're accelerating each other, as Michael said, you know, "Today, the fastest day of your life. "Today, the slowest day of the rest of your life, "for tech evolution." And we see them just causing and accelerating each to go, as I mentioned in my talk this week at the Grow Awards in Silicon Valley, in 1986 I was making the 486, a great AI chip, right. It's like, what? 31 years ago? And now it's a success because the superpowers are coming together. The compute is now big enough, the data is now volumous enough, that we can do things never possible before. But with that, technology is neutral. The Gutenberg printing press did the Bible, you know, Luther's Bible, it also prints Playboy. It sort of doesn't care. Technology is neutral. And it's our job as a tech industry to shape technology for good. You know that's our obligation, and increasingly we need to be involved in, and shaping, legislations, policies, laws, to enable tech to be that force for good. >> Pat, you mentioned kind of the speed of change in the industry. You're a public company with you know, a lot of employees, how does, internally, how do you keep up with the pace of change, keep inspiring people, get them working on the next thing? You know, Michael talked about going private was one of the things that would help him restructure and get ready for that, so maybe discuss that dynamic. >> Well, you know and for us, you know, as a software company living in Silicon Valley, we feel it every day, right. I'll tell ya' you know, we see these startups, that are hovering around our people, and our buildings, and they got ideas, you know, so we're synthesizing those ideas. We have our own research effort, our advanced product efforts, we're engaging, you know, and thousands of customer interactions per day. And ultimately, it's my job to create a culture that enables my 8,000 software engineers to go for it every single day, right. Where they are just, you know, they love what we do as a company, they love who we are as a company, our values. And then find ways that we enable our teams to, what I say, innovate in everything. Not just in R and D, but how we sell our products, how we support our customers, you know, how we enable these new use cases. We have to innovate in everything, if we're going to keep pace with this industry, and to some degree, I think it's almost in the water in Silicon Valley, right. You know yeah, you got some crazy master's student coming out of Stanford, and he thinks he's going to start up a company to displace me. It's like, what are you talking about? But we feel that every day, and as we bring those people into our environment, creating that culture that allows everybody to innovate in everything, >> So it's hard to argue that things aren't getting faster, that speed, but speed is an interesting question. When you think about blockchains, and AI, and natural language processing, just digital in general, there's a lot of complexity in terms of adopting those things. So speed versus adoption. What do you see in terms of adoption? >> Yeah, you know in a lot of these things like, you know, you look at a technology like NSX, cool, breakthrough, you know we're five years old now, almost on NSX, right? Since we did the Nicira acquisition as a starting point, 4 1/2 years on NSX, and some of these things need to be sedimented, as I describe it, into the infrastructure. Hardened, you know when you've really proven all of the edge cases. You know, those things don't move every day. >> Dave: Right right, fossilized, Furrier word, >> Yeah, you know there is, you know similarly with vSAN. Boy, these edge use cases, data recovery, pounding on the periphery of failure cases, disk drives, failure modes on flash drives, some of those things need to be sedimented, but as you think about those layers, always it's you know, how do you sediment? How do you standardize? And then expose them as APIs and services to the next layer. And every layer as you go up the stack gets faster and faster right, so as somebody would consume the software-defined data center, they need to be able to do that pretty fast. You know, how can I make, you know VM, we just released 6.7. Which reduced by an order of magnitude the time to launch a VM. You know, increase the, by 20x the amount of V-Center bandwidth, just so I can go faster. Not that I needed to go faster for VMs, I needed to go faster that I can put containers in VMs, and they need much higher speed of operation. So to me, it's this constant standardization, sedimenting, integrating, and then building more and more agile surfaces, as you go higher in the stack, that allows people to build applications where literally they're pushing updates, and seeing their CICD pipeline allow new code releases every day. I'm not changing NSX every day, but I am changing my container environment for that new app literally every day, and the whole stack needs to support that. >> Cloud partnerships, we talked last year at Vmworld, about the clarity that the AWS deal brought, of course you have an arrangement with IBM, you're doing stuff with Kubernetes, so, just talk about your posture with the big cloud players, and how that has affected your business, and where you see it going. >> Yeah, you know, clearly the cloud strategy, the AWS partnership, as I said, more than anything else, when we announced that, people moved their views of VMware. Oh, I get it, VMware isn't part of my private cloud, or part of my past, they're the bridge to the future. And that has been sort of a game-changing perspective where we can truly enable this hybrid cloud experience. Where I could take you and take your existing data centers, I can move them into a range of public cloud partners, AWS, IBM, you know, and be able to operate seamlessly in a truly hybrid way. Oh your data center's getting a little hot, let's move a few workloads out. Oh, it's getting a little bit cool, let's move some workloads back. We can truly do that now, in a seamless, hybrid multi-cloud way, and customers, as they see that, it's not only the most cost-efficient, right, it also allows them to deal with unique business requirements, geo-requirements that they might have, oh, in Europe I have to be on a GDPR cloud in Germany. Okay, we support, we have a right, you know here's our portfolio. Other cases, it's like, oh, I really want to do take advantage of those proprietary services that some of the cloud vendors are doing, you know. You know, maybe in fact that new AI service is something that I could differentiate my business on, but the bulk of my workload, I want to have it on this hybrid platform that truly does give them more freedom and choice over time, while still meeting unique compliance, legal, security, issues, as they've come to know and love from VMware over time. >> So to clarify, is it, are you seeing it as use-case-specific, or is it people wanting to bring that cloud experience on-prem, or is it both? >> It is truly both, because what you've seen, is many people, and if we were talking four years ago, you would've been asking me questions, "oh, you know I just talked to Fred, "and he says everything is going to the cloud" right. And people tried that student body right to the cloud of their existing apps, and it was like, oh crap, right? You know, it's hard to re-platform, to refactor those applications, and when I got there, I got the same app, right. You know, it's like, wow that was a lot of investment to not get much return, right. Now, they look at it and they say, "Oh boy, you know, "I can build some new apps in cool new ways" right, with these cloud native services. I can now have this agile private hybrid cloud environment, and I truly can operationalize across that in a flexible way. And sometimes we have customers that are bringing workloads out of native cloud, and saying, oh that's become too big in my operation role. You know I have different governance requirements. I'm going to bring that one back. Other cases are saying, "Oh, I didn't want to move it to the VMware cloud on Amazon", or you know, IBM, the migration service is really powerful. I want to get out of the data center. Other cases, they look at their cost of capital, and the size and scale they're operating, and says, "Hey, I'm going to keep 80% on-premise forever, "but I never want to be locked in, "that I can't take advantage of that, "should there be a new service." It really is all of the above. And VMware, and our Dell relationship, and our key cloud partners, now 4,100 cloud partners strong, it's really stepping into that, in a pretty unique and powerful way. >> And the key is that operational impact, as Pat is saying. >> So Pat, just one of the challenges we've heard from users we talked to is, if this was supposed to get simpler, virtualizing it, you know, I kept all my old applications. Going the cloud, there's more SKUs of compute in the public cloud than there are, if I was to buy from Dell.com. You know, in management, you know we're making steps, but you know it's heterogeneous, it's always add, nothing ever dies, how do we help customers through this? >> Yeah, and I do think they're, you know we're definitely hearing that from customers. And they're looking to us to make these things simpler. And I think we've now, you know, laid the templates for a truly simpler world. Right, in the security domain, intrinsic security. Build many of the base security capabilities into the platform. Automation, automate across these multiple cloud environments, so you don't care about it, we're taking care of it against your policies. Being able to do that, you know, and have an increasingly autonomous infrastructure that truly is responding and operationalizing those environments, without you having to put personnel and specific investments, right at that fundamental operations level, because it's too big, it's too fast, you can't respond at the pace the business requires. So I feel really good, we have some key innovations, you'll see us announcing. Now, we're going to talk at VMworld right? >> Dave: Oh absolutely. >> Okay, >> I will 100% be there, >> I have some cool announcements in this area, by VMworld as well, specifically, in some of these management automation, we see some of that applying, some new AIML techniques, to be able to help with some of those workload management and policy management areas. So, some really cool things going on to help these problems specifically. >> We've seen, oh we saw blog recently, about you guys working on some blockchain stuff. I know it's early days there, but it's exciting new technology. >> Yeah, and the blockchain stuff is what I'm really, really pretty excited about. We have some algorithmic breakthroughs that right now, you know, blockchain on a log scale basically scales at you know log or super log, right. Which meaning, it's problematic right. Is you get lots of nodes, right, you know the time to resolve those, gets to be exponentially expensive, to be able to resolve. We've come up with some algorithmic breakthroughs that drop that to near linear. And when people look at that, they sort of say, wow, I can make my blockchain environments much larger, much more distributed as a result, so as a result of some of that work we'll be increasingly making blockchain as a primitive. We're not trying to deal with the application level, you know for insurance, for financial, but we can increasingly deliver a primitive infrastructure along with vSphere in the VMware environment, that says yeah, we've taken care of that base issue. We've guaranteed it from a vendor you trusted, and you might remember there was a couple of breaches, of some of the blockchain implementations, so yeah, we hope to take care of some of those hard problems for customers and bring some, a good breakthrough engineering, from VMware to that problem. >> Well, it's great to see companies like VMware and you know enterprise plays, IBM obviously involved, into bringing some credibility to that space, which everybody says "Crypto, oh", they don't walk they run, but there's real potential in the technology. I want to ask you about a Silicon Valley question. >> Pat: Okay. >> Any chance I get, so if I broadly define Silicon Valley, Let's include, you know, Seattle. And we generally don't do that, but that's okay, but I'm going to. >> We'll take this, we'll take 'em in okay. >> it's technology industry, but technology industry seems to have this dual disruption agenda. We've always sort of seen, tech companies own this horizontal stack, you know, and go attack, and cloud, and big data, and disruption, but it seems like, with digital, you're seeing them attack new industries. Whether it's healthcare, or groceries, or media. What do you make of that? Can Silicon Valley, broadly defined, pull off this dual disruption agenda? >> You know I really believe it can, right. In that, I'm, you know, being part of it. I'm a huge optimist on it. I don't think it will be exclusive to Silicon Valley, right. You know, there's a tech community in Boston, that's a bit more focused on healthcare, right. Obviously, the cloud guys coming out of Seattle. You know, Austin, and you know, Texas has increasing, Research Triangle, when you go around the world, you see more places because, you know, in that sense, one of my favorite, you know, cartoons, is a picture of a dog at a terminal. I'm sure it was a Dell terminal, but you know, and the caption reads right, "On the internet, "they don't know you're a dog." Right, you know the point being, hey, when you're on the net, it doesn't matter where you are, right. And it enables innovation, whether that's Afghanistan, whether that's Bangladesh, whether that's Myanmar, you know any of those places, become equal on the net, and it does open up that domain of innovation. So I view it much more as tech is disrupting everything. And that's my theme of, "tech is breaking out of tech". Clearly the hub of that, is Silicon Valley. Right you know, that's the center where you know, every third door is a new startup, as you walk down the street. It really is an incredible experience. But increasingly, you know, that innovative disruptive spirit is breaking out of Silicon Valley, to you know, literally across the world. The Chinese think they might be the number one. You know, Europeans, oh sort of a renaissance in France, you know that we haven't seen for many years, and so on. And I do believe that it will continue to be technology, in this horizontal way you know, but increasingly, and I think you know, Amazon has led the way on this. We're seeing boy, we can disrupt entire industries you know, leveraging that. You know, Tesla in automotive, and Airbnbs. All of these are changing industries in fundamental ways, and I do not see that slowing down at all. You know, I'm thrilled to see like, you know, health care, right. Boy, I have not seen this amount of disruptive technology startups in healthcare, healthcare one of the lowest percentage of spend on IT. Can you imagine that? Right, you know at that level, and boy, we're starting to see that pick up. So industry by industry I think we're just getting started. >> And that's an industry that is really ripe for disruption. >> Pat: Oh my gosh. >> So Pat, we're going to hear about some of this, this afternoon at your keynote, I presume? Maybe show us a little leg there, and we'll wrap. >> Yeah, yeah. >> Dave: Alright, take it home. >> Hey, you know we're, today's keynote, obviously going to talk about the better together aspects, we'll update on vSAN and HCI and our strategy there, some of the cool things we're doing with Dell, and AirWatch Workspace ONE, and the client space. Yeah, we're going to talk about networking. I'm going to lay out our networking strategy, and we're going to give a teaser this afternoon of a broad set of networking announcements that we're doing this week. And hope to really lay out, what we think of, as the virtual cloud network of the future, and how the network is essential to that future. So, we're going to have a little bit of fun there, and you'll see me don the VR headset, right, and hey we're going to go into the virtual, virtual data center today, >> Virtualization inception. >> There we go. >> Well Pat, on a personal note, you've been a great friend of theCUBE, and we really appreciate that, and you've been an awesome guest, we saw you come from Intel with an amazing career, and we just see it going from there. So congratulations on all your personal success, your team success and continued. >> Love you guys, it's always great to be on theCUBE. You guys do a fabulous job, >> Dave: Thank you. >> For live tech coverage, and it really has been a lot of fun, and next year we're going to go party for your 10 year anniversary on theCUBE. >> Dave: That's right. Love it. >> Okay, cool, very good. >> Alright. >> Thank you, thanks so much. >> Good. Thanks. >> Alright, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our wall-to-wall coverage of Dell Technologies World. 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