>>From around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of Dell technologies, world digital experience brought to you by Dell technologies. >>Hi, welcome to the cubes coverage of Dell technologies, world 2020, the virtual experience. I am Lisa Martin and I've got a couple of guests joining me. One of them is a longtime cube alumni. John Siegel is back the VP of product marketing for Dell technologies. John, it's great to see you. >>Great to be back. Thank you. >>And also joining us is Troy Massey the director of enterprise engagements from iron bow technologies. Troy, welcome to the cube. >>Hi, thank you. Grabbed him. >>So we're going to be talking about VxRail, how it's driving the future of HCI to the edge, but first let's get choice perspective. I would like the audience to understand who iron bow technologies is and what you do. And then we'll kind of look at it as what you're doing with the extra rail, as well as your channel partner business with Dell technologies. So Troy, take it away. >>Hi. Yeah. So, uh, Iron Bow is a global company. We're a value added reseller, uh, having partnered with Dell. Um, we have people physically living from Europe all the way through in Korea, um, from kind of based the globe, uh, primarily in wherever there's DOD or federal government agencies. >>And tell me about from a channel partner perspective, what you guys are doing together. >>Yeah, so we have a lot of efforts going on channel partner together, uh, specifically, uh, Iron target is, is a huge effort to where we're doing together. Uh, it's a on prem cloud, uh, that's uh, it's basis, VxRail VMware Cloud foundation on top, uh, with Intel all throughout. So there's an Intel Xeon processors and, uh, Optane drives. Uh, so just the perfect elegant OnPrem cloud, hybrid cloud solution that Dell and Iron Bow are driving together. >>So let's talk about the edge, cause a big focus of Dell technologies world this year is about the edge. How do you see Troy iron bow extending services to the edge and what do you anticipate from your customers in terms of what their needs are as they're changing? >>Great, great question. So, um, for one, I've gotta talk a little bit about what the edge and what the edges and the edges different things to different people. So I'm going to explain a little bit of the edge and what we're seeing and, and the federal government. So I'll give you one example and that's, um, uh, you know,  the air force reserves. So they have a, uh, an entire squadron that does all of the firefighting, uh, the large fires you see across California or whatever states engulfed in fires that year, um, where they take an entire squadron of airplanes out when they sort of water overall, the whole fire, uh, they don't just bring planes. They entire squatters military personnel to help communicate with the police and with the local fire and all of that takes information. So they need to bring information data with them. Is there a building over there? Do people live over there where we got to actually concentrate on site on fighting that fire priority-wise so it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to do that remotely over satellite it's large, large chunks of data that needs to be local to the customer. So, um, VxRail is, is the power beast of the HCI world VxRail at that edge provides them with the performance they need to get that job done. >>I think that's going to be a new new segment here in Silicon Valley. That thinking about all the fires we've had, and it's really VxRail at the edge, that's helping fight the fires. That's not something I knew. So thanks for sharing that. >>So there's all kinds of workings in that area, same deal. They need to know where to go rescue those people and it's all data. >>Exactly. And it's gotta be data that's that, as you said, it was not delayed sent over the wire, but obviously being able to be transmitted in real time so that actions can be taken, which is one of the things we talk about with data all the time. You have to be able to get the insight and act on it quickly. So, so John, the theme of this year's virtual Dell technologies world is the edge is a big part of the theme. So talk to us about driving the future of HCI at the edge with VxRail, how there's been a lot of growth, I think 9,600 plus customers so far. So talk to us about the future of HCI at the edge with VxRail as a driver. >>Absolutely. So first of all, I want to thank iron bow for being one of our nearly 10,000 customers for VxRail. Um, and you know, absolutely. So, you know, overall the edge is going to be a major theme for Dell tech world this week. Uh, and specifically for VxRail. Um, we of course continue to play with VxRail, a key role in modernizing data centers, uh, as well as hybrid cloud. And this week really wanted to highlight some of the recent innovations we have around extending the simplified operations of VxRail that many like, uh, iron bow and others are experiencing today in the core, uh, are in the cloud and extending those, that automation to the edge. Um, and you heard a lot about what the edge can do in the end and the implications and the value of the edge. Um, while we have lots of customers today, um, including IMO that are using VxRail at their edge locations, uh, we have others like large retail, uh, home improvement chains, financial institutions. Um, we expect the edge to soon explode. Um, we like to think that, uh, we are at the edge of the edge opportunity, um, in >>It in fact, IDC recently stated that by 2023, over 50% of new enterprise data that is generated is going to be generated outside the core data center and outside the cloud. That's up front 10% today. So this is, this is massive, um, edge locations. Um, of course come with their own challenges, whether it's sometimes less than ideal conditions around power and cooling, or they may not have typically, um, skilled it staff at the edge, right? So they, they need, they need new special configuration. They need operational efficiencies. And I think VxRail is uniquely positioned to help address that. >>Let's kind of dig into those operational challenges because in the last seven months, so much of what we all do has become remote and a good amount of that is going to be probably permanent. Right. So when you think about the volume of remote devices that VxRail could potentially manage, John, how, how do you see  VxRail being able to help in this sort of very distributed environment that might be very well much permanent? >>Yeah, I know. And like you said, it's going to just grow and grow the distributed environment and what that means for each company might be slightly different, but regardless what they do need to seamless operations across all of those different edge locations, um, and a, again, a big focus for us. So we're really doing three things to extend the, the automated operations of VxRail to the edge and doing so at scale. Uh, the first thing I want to say, talk about is that we did on avail just two VxRail platforms designed specifically for the edge, uh, the new VxRail E-Series, which is ideal for remote office locations, where space is limited. Um, the remote, uh, the VxRail D series, I think of D as in durable, uh, this is our ruggedized platform, uh, built from the ground up for harsh environments, you know, such as the DOD environments, like in the, um, in the desert. >>Um, and both of these VxRail platforms are fully automated. They automate everything from deployment to expansions to, to lifecycle management overall. Um, and now what we're doing now with extending that automation is the second thing we doing, uh, you know, to the edge from an operational perspective. And what we're doing first and foremost is we are introducing a new software as a service multi cluster management. Uh, this is part of the VxRail HCI system software that we deliver today as part of the VxRail. Uh, this not only provides a global view of the infrastructure performance, um, and capacity analysis across all the locations, but even more importantly, it actively ensures that all the clusters and the remote locate locations always stay in a continuously validated state. This means that it can automatically determine which software components need to be upgraded. Um, you know, and also automatically execute the full stack upgrades, right? >>Without any technical expertise at the site, it can be done centrally, further automating the lifecycle management process and process that we do, uh, at the core and the cloud, and now extending to the edge. So, yeah, imagine the operational efficiencies for customers with tens or hundreds or even thousands of edge sites. So this is we think truly a game changer from that perspective. And then in addition to that, we're also adding, uh, the support for BCS on VxRail. So, uh, just at VM world just a couple of weeks ago, uh, VMware announced, uh, remote edge cluster support for VCF. Uh, so those customers that run run BCF on VxRail now can get the, the, they can enjoy a consistent cloud operating model, um, you know, for those edge locations. So, you know, in summary, you're getting consistency, you're getting automation regardless of where your VxRail is located. >>And this is something that I saw in the notes. John is described as a curated experience. Can you describe what that is if I think of reference architectures and things of that, what is a curated experience and how is it different? >>Yeah,  a curated experience for VxRail...  really what it is it's about seamless. Uh, it it's about we, we have taken the burden if you will, of integrating infrastructure off of the customer's shoulders and onto ours, right? So what we do is we ensure VxRail is in fact, the only, um, jointly engineered HCI system in the market, that's doing the engineering with VMware, for VMware to enhance VMware environments. Uh, and so what we've done is we, uh, we have a pre-integrated, uh, full stack experience that we're providing the customer from deployment, uh, to, uh, again, to everyday operations, to making changes, et cetera. Uh, we've essentially what we've done here, um, is that we've, we've taken again, that, that burden off of customers, uh, and allowed them to spend more time innovating, uh, and less, you know, less time integrating >>That sounds good to everyone, right? Simplifying less time to troubleshoot more time to be able to be strategic and innovative, especially in such a rapidly changing world toy overview now, Oh, go ahead, John, >>To add to that, you know, we've seen a real acceleration this year to digital transformation, to your point earlier, just with remote everything. And I think a lot of the projects, and so including a shift that we've seen to consuming infrastructure overall, whether, you know, and that's, that's the, the onset of the cloud and wherever that cloud might be, right. It could be on prem, could it be on premises, could be off premises. Um, and so, you know, that focused on consuming infrastructure versus in that preference for consuming infrastructure versus building and maintaining it, that's something that we're going to continue to see accelerate over time. >>You're right. That digital transformation acceleration has been one of the biggest topics in the last seven months and looking at which businesses really are set up and have the foundation and the culture to be able to make those changes quickly, to not just survive in this environment, but win tomorrow. So talk over to you for a second, in terms of, of the edge. What are your thoughts on as a partner, with VxRail, you've got a solution built on it. What are your thoughts about what VxRail is going to be able to deliver, enable you to deliver at the edge? You know, you gave us that great example of the air force reserve, but what our iron bows thoughts there, what do you envision going forward? >>He talks about tens, hundreds, thousands of different sites that all need their data, they all need process and compute but those types of sites don't necessarily need to have and IT on staff at those sites, a great example is the army Corps of engineers. They have to have one or two people out at every dam to monitor the dam, but that mean it justifies an IT staffer out there with them. So the idea to remotely manage that VxRail, they're just industry leaders in the ability to deploy this  somewhere where there's not an it person and be able to manage it, but not just manage it, predictive analysis on when they're starting to run out of storage , give alerts so that we can start the upgrade. >>John talked to us about the engagement that you're expecting your customers to have with Dell technologies during this virtual event. >>Absolutely. I think so. First of all, um, yeah, virtual is different, but there's lot of advantages to that. Um, one of them is that we can have, um, an ongoing dialogue during, uh, a number of the sessions that we have, why some of the sessions might be prerecorded. There are alive chats all the way through, including a number of breakouts on VxRail, specifically, uh, as well as the edge, as well as a number of different, um, topics that you can imagine. Um, we've also just launched a new game, a fun game, uh, from mobile called data center sin, um, where, uh, customers can have some fun, uh, learning about VxRail, uh, the experience that takes and balancing the budget and staffing and capacity, uh, to address the needs of the business. So, uh, we're always looking for fun and engaging ways to experience, experience the real life benefits of our HCI platforms, such as VxRail. And, um, so customers can, uh, check that out as well, um, by searching their app store of choice for Dell technologies, data center, sin, uh, and have at it and have some fun. But again, whether it's playing the game online through it, I've met the reality experience or it's, um, you know, connecting directly with any of our subject matter experts. Um, there's going to be a lot of opportunity, uh, to learn more about how VxRail and ACI can help our customers thrive. >>Excellent. I like that game idea. Well, Troy, John, thank you for joining me today and letting me know what you guys are doing with the VxRail what's coming with the edge and the fact that they use cases are just going to proliferate. We appreciate your time. Thank you as well for my guests. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world 2020.

>> Instructor: From around the globe. It's the queue with digital coverage of Dell technologies world, digital experience brought to you by Dell technologies. >> Hi, welcome to the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world 2020, the virtual experience. I am Lisa Martin and I've got a couple of guests joining me. One of them is a longtime cube alumni. Jon Siegel is back the VP of product marketing for Dell technologies. Jon, it's great to see you. >> Great to be back (indistinct), thank you. >> And also joining us is Troy Massey the director of enterprise engagements from iron bow technologies. Troy, welcome to the cube. >> Hi, thank you for having me. >> So we're going to be talking about VxRail, how it's driving the future of HCI to the edge, but first let's get choice perspective. I would like the audience to understand who iron build technologies is and what you do. And then we'll kind of look at it as what you're doing with the extra rail, as well as your channel partner business with Dell technologies. So Troy, take it away. >> Yeah. So IML is a global company, we're a value added reseller. Having partnered with Dell. We have people physically living from Europe all the way through Korea from kind of based the globe, primarily in wherever there's DOD or federal government agencies. >> And tell me about from a channel partner perspective what you guys are doing together. >> Yeah, so we have a lot of efforts going on channel partner together. Specifically ,iron (murmurs) is a huge effort to what we're doing together. It's a on-premise cloud that's it's basis VxRail, VMware cloud foundation on top with Intel all throughout, so there's Intel Xeon processors with Optane drives. So just the perfect elegant On-Prem cloud and hybrid cloud solution Dell, I remember driving together. >> So let's talk about the edge cause a big focus of Dell technologies world this year is about the edge. How do you see Troy iron bow extending services to the edge? And what do you anticipate from your customers in terms of what their needs are as they're changing? >> Great, great question. So for one I've got to talk a little bit about what the edge and what the edges and the edge is different things to different people. So I'm going to explain a little bit of the edge and what we're seeing and in the federal government. So I'll give you one example and that's you know, (indistinct). So they have a an entire squadron that does all of the firefighting, the large fires you see across California or whatever state and Gulfton fires that year where they take the entire squadron of airplanes out. When they, they sort of water overall the whole fire, they don't just bring planes. They bring entire squatters of military personnel to help communicate with the police and with the local fire and all of that takes information. So they need to bring information data with them. Is there a building over there? Do people live over there where? We got to actually concentrate on site and that's higher priority wise? So it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to do that remotely over satellite it's large, large chunks of data that needs to be local to the customer. So VxRail is the power in the HCI world. So a VxRail at that edge provides and what's the performance I need to get that job (indistinct). >> I think that's going to be a new segment here in Silicon Valley. That thinking about all the fires we've had and it's really VxRail at the edge that's helping fight the fires. (Murmurs)That's thanks for sharing that. (indistinct chatting) >> So there's all kinds of workings in that same deal. They need to know where to go rescue those people and it's all data. >> Exactly, it's going to be data that's, that as you said it was not delayed sent over the wire but obviously being able to be transmitted in real time so that actions can be taken which is one of the things we talk about with data all the time you have to be able to get the insight and act on it quickly. So Jon, the theme of this year's virtual Dell technologies world is the edge is a big part of the theme. So talk to us about driving the future of HCI at the edge with VxRail, how there's been a lot of growth I think 9,600 plus customers so far. So talk to us about the future of HCI at the edge with VxRail as a driver of that. >> Absolutely. So first of all, I want to thank iron bow for being one of our nearly 10,000 customers for VxRail and you know, absolutely. So, you know, overall the edge is going to be a major theme for Dell tech world this week. And specifically for VxRail, we of course continue to play with VxRail, a key role in modernizing data centers, as well as hybrid cloud. And this week we really want to highlight some of the recent innovations we have around extending the simplified operations of VxRail that many like iron bow and others are experiencing today in the core or in the cloud in extending those that automation to the edge. And you heard a lot about what the edge can do in the implications and the value of the edge. While we have lots of customers today including (indistinct) that are using VxRail at their edge locations, we have others like large retail, home improvement chains, financial institutions. We expect the edge to soon explode. We like to think that we are at the edge of the edge opportunity in IT. In fact, IDC recently stated that by 2023 over 50% of new enterprise data that is generated can going to be generated outside the core data center and outside the cloud. That's up in 10% today. So this is, this is massive edge locations. Of course come with their own challenges, whether it's sometimes less than ideal conditions around power and cooling or they may not have typically skilled IT staff at the edge, right? So they need, they need new special configurations, they need operational efficiencies. And I think VxRail is uniquely positioned to help address that. >> Let's kind of dig into this operational challenges because in the last seven months so much of what we all do has become remote and a good amount of that is going to be probably permanent, right? So when you think about the volume of remote devices that VxRail can potentially manage. Jon, how do you see the actual being able to help in this sort of very distributed environment that might be very well much permanent? >> Yeah, I know. And like you said, it's going to just grow and grow the distributed environment and what that means for each company might be slightly different but regardless of what they do need to seamless operations across all of those different edge locations and again, a big focus for us. So we're really doing three things to extend the automated operations of VxRail to the edge and doing so at scale. The first thing I want to say, talk about is that we did unveil just two VxRail platforms designed specifically for the edge, the new VxRail E Series, which is ideal for remote office locations, where space is limited the remote, the VxRail D series. I think of D as in durable, this is our ruggedized platform built from the ground up for harsh environments. You know, such as DOD environments like in the, in the desert. And both of these VxRail platforms are fully automated. They automate everything from deployment to expansions to life cycle management overall. And now what we're doing now with extending that automation is the second thing we doing you know, to the edge from an operational perspective. And what we're doing first and foremost is we are introducing a new software as a service multi cluster management. This is part of the VxVRail ACI system software that we deliver today as part of the X rail. This not only provides a global view of the infrastructure performance and capacity analysis across all the locations, but even more importantly it actively ensures that all the clusters and the remote locate locations always stay in a continuously validated state. This means that I can automatically determine which software components need to be upgraded you know, and also automatically execute the full stack upgrades, right? Without any technical expertise at the site, it can be done centrally further automating the lifecycle management process and process that we do at the core and the cloud, and now extending out to the edge. So imaginely the operational efficiencies for customers with tens or hundreds or even thousands of edge sites. So this is we think truly a game changer from that perspective. And then in addition to that, we're also adding the support for BCF on VxRail. So just at VMware, just a couple of weeks ago VMware announced remote edge cluster support for BCF. So those customers that run them on BCF on VxRail now can get the, they can enjoy a consistent cloud operating model you know, for those edge locations. So you know, in somewhere you're getting consistency you're getting automation regardless of where your VxRail is located. >> And this is something that I saw in the notes, Jon is described as a curated experience. Can you describe what that is if I think of reference architectures and things of that what is a curated experience and how is it different? >> Yeah, I know I'm curious to experience for the exhale, really what it is it's about seamless. It's about we, we have taken the burden if you were integrating infrastructure off of the customer's shoulders and onto ours right? So what we do is we ensure VxRail is, in fact the only jointly engineered ATI system in the market, that's doing engineering with VMware, for VMware to enhance VMware environments. And so what we've done there is, we have a pre-integrated full stack experience that we're providing the customer from deployment to again to everyday operations, to making changes, et cetera. We've essentially what we've done here is that we've taken again, that burden off our customers and allowed them to spend more time innovating in less, you know, less time integrating. >> That sounds good to everyone, right? Simplifying less time to troubleshoot more time to be able to be strategic and innovative, especially in such a rapidly changing world. Troy overview now. Oh, go ahead Jon >> As you can say, to add to that you know, we've seen a real acceleration this year to digital transformation to your point earlier just with remote everything. And I think a lot of the projects and so including a shift that we've seen to consuming infrastructure overall, whether you know, and that's the onset of the cloud and wherever that cloud might be, right, it could be on-prem, it could be on premises, could be off premises. And so, you know, that focused on consuming infrastructure versus in that preference for consuming infrastructure versus building and maintaining it is something that we're going to continue to see accelerate over time. >> You're right, that digital transformation acceleration has been one of the biggest topics in the last seven months and looking at which businesses really are set up and have the foundation and the culture to be able to make those changes quickly to not just survive in this environment, but win tomorrow. So let's talk over to you for a second, in terms of, of the edge. What are your thoughts on as a partner, with VxRail got a solution built on it? What are your thoughts about what VxRail is going to be able to deliver enable you to deliver at the edge? You know you gave us that great example of the air force reserve but what are iron boast thoughts there, what do you envision going forward? >> Yeah absolutely, thank you. And first expand a little bit on what Jon was paying for a picture. You talked about tens, hundreds even thousands of different sites that all need their data. They all need processing compute, but those types of scale of sites don't necessarily need to have an IT on staff at those sites, (murmurs) army Corps of engineers. They have to have one or two people out at every dam to monitor the dam but that doesn't mean that justifies it. And then 19 staff are out there with them. So the idea to remotely manage that VxRail they're, they're just industry leaders in the ability to deploy this somewhere where there's not an IT person and be able to manage it but not just manage it predictive analysis on when they're starting to run out of storage give alerts so that we can, we can start the operating. So, we see that as part of our path forward with our iron target on-premise cloud is the ability to get people back to doing their job away from doing IT. >> And Jon, I'm curious what your thoughts are in Del tech thoughts are about, some of these really interesting DOD use cases that Troy talked about really compelling. What do you see in terms of influence into the enterprise space or the consumer space as the world is so different now as we go into 2021? >> Yeah I mean, I think you know, as I mentioned earlier, I think the you know, we're talking a lot about the edge today and I think what I described earlier about the trend towards the, in the preference to consume infrastructure versus build and maintain it is something that we're seeing you know, of course, you know across highly distributed environments, more and more now. And I think that use cases are going to continue to expand whether it's financial institutions with edge, edge offices spread across the world, you know, to manufacturing, to you know logistics companies, et cetera, et cetera. These are retail's another great example. We have a number of retail companies that are going to leverage and want to have data again processed and analyzed more importantly at the edge to make more informed decisions more quickly. And this, and that's just the beginning. I mean, obviously the automotive industries and other one that frequently comes up, it's something that can take full advantage of the edge where decisions need to be made in real time at the edge. So where, you know, I think the use cases are endless and the promises is just beginning now. We're really excited to help companies of all shapes and sizes, you know, really thrive in this new world. >> Speaking of excitement, I'm sure exciting Dell technologies world obviously challenging to not be able to gather in one place in Las Vegas with what 14,000 or so, folks including many many partners. Jon talked to us about the engagement that you're expecting your customers to have with Dell technologies during this virtual events. >> Absolutely, I think so. First of all, yeah virtual is different, but there's lot of advantages to that. One of them is that we can have an ongoing dialogue during a number of the sessions that we have why some of the sessions might be prerecorded. There are alive chats all the way through including a number of breakouts on VxRail specifically, as well as the edge, as well as a number of different topics that you can imagine. We've also just launched a new game a fun game for mobile called data center sin where customers can have some fun learning about VxRail, the experience, the takes and balancing the budget and staffing and capacity to address the needs of the business. So we're always looking for fun and engaging ways to experience the real life benefits of our HCI platform, such as VxRail. And so customers can check that out as well by searching their app store of choice for Dell technologies data center sin and have at it and have some fun. But again, whether it's playing the game online through it, augmented reality experience or it's, you know connecting directly with any of our subject matter experts there's going to be a lot of opportunity to learn more about how VxRail and HCI can help our customers thrive. >> Excellent, I like that game idea. Well, Troy and Jon, thank you for joining me today and letting me know what you guys are doing with VxRail. What's coming with the edge. And the fact that they use cases are just going to proliferate. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you as well. >> For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the cubes coverage of Dell technologies world 2020. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special presentation. We have a launch from Dell Technologies updates from the VxRail family. We're going to do things a little bit different here. We actually have a launch video Shannon Champion, of Dell Technologies. And the way we do things a lot of times, is, analysts get a little preview or when you're watching things. You might have questions on it. So, rather than me just wanting it, or you wanting yourself I actually brought in a couple of Dell Technologies expertS two of our Cube alumni, happy to welcome you back to the program. Jon Siegal, he is the Vice President of Product Marketing, and Chad Dunn, who's the Vice President of Product Management, both of them with Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Good to see you Stu. >> Great to be here. >> All right, and so what we're going to do is we're going to be rolling the video here. I've got a button I'm going to press, Andrew will stop it here and then we'll kind of dig in a little bit, go into some questions when we're all done. We're actually holding a crowd chat, where you will be able to ask your questions, talk to the experts and everything. And so a little bit different way to do a product announcement. Hope you enjoy it. And with that, it's VxRail. Taking HCI to the extremes is the theme. We'll see what that means and everything. But without any further ado, let's let Shannon take the video away. >> Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Champion, and I'm looking forward to taking you through what's new with VxRail. Let's get started. We have a lot to talk about. Our launch covers new announcements addressing use cases across the Core, Edge and Cloud and spans both new hardware platforms and options, as well as the latest in software innovations. So let's jump right in. Before we talk about our announcements, let's talk about where customers are adopting VxRail today. First of all, on behalf of the entire Dell Technologies and VxRail teams, I want to thank each of our over 8000 customers, big and small in virtually every industry, who've chosen VxRail to address a broad range of workloads, deploying nearly 100,000 nodes today. Thank you. Our promise to you is that we will add new functionality, improve serviceability, and support new use cases, so that we deliver the most value to you, whether in the Core, at the Edge or for the Cloud. In the Core, VxRail from day one has been a catalyst to accelerate IT transformation. Many of our customers started here and many will continue to leverage VxRail to simply extend and enhance your VMware environment. Now we can support even more demanding applications such as In-Memory databases, like SAP HANA, and more AI and ML applications, with support for more and more powerful GPUs. At the Edge, video surveillance, which also uses GPUs, by the way, is an example of a popular use case leveraging VxRail alongside external storage. And right now we all know the enhanced role that IT is playing. And as it relates to VDI, VxRail has always been a great option for that. In the Cloud, it's all about Kubernetes, and how Dell Technologies Cloud platform, which is VCF on VxRail can deliver consistent infrastructure for both traditional and Cloud native applications. And we're doing that together with VMware. VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system built with VMware for VMware environments, designed to enhance the native VMware experience. This joint engineering with VMware and investments in software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. >> Alright, so Shannon talked a bit about, the important role of IT Of course right now, with the global pandemic going on. It's really, calling in, essential things, putting, platforms to the test. So, I really love to hear what both of you are hearing from customers. Also, VDI, of course, in the early days, it was, HCI-only-does-VDI. Now, we know there are many solutions, but remote work is putting that back front and center. So, Jon, why don't we start with you as the what is (muffled speaking) >> Absolutely. So first of all, Stu, thank you, I want to do a shout out to our VxRail customers around the world. It's really been humbling, inspiring, and just amazing to see The impact of our VxRail customers around the world and what they're having on on human progress here. Just for a few examples, there are genomics companies that we have running VxRail that have rolled out testing at scale. We also have research universities out in the Netherlands, doing the antibody detection. The US Navy has stood up a floating hospital to of course care for those in need. So we are here to help that's been our message to our customers, but it's amazing to see how much they're helping society during this. So just just a pleasure there. But as you mentioned, just to hit on the VDI comments, so to your points too, HCI, VxRail, VDI, that was an initial use case years ago. And it's been great to see how many of our existing VxRail customers have been able to pivot very quickly leveraging VxRail to add and to help bring their remote workforce online and support them with their existing VxRail. Because VxRail is flexible, it is agile, to be able to support those multiple workloads. And in addition to that, we've also rolled out some new VDI bundles to make it simpler for customers more cost effective cater to everything from knowlEdge workers to multimedia workers. You name it, you know from 250, desktops up to 1000. But again, back to your point VxRail, HCI, is well beyond VDI, it crossed the chasm a couple years ago actually. And VDI now is less than a third of the typical workloads, any of our customers out there, it supports now a range of workloads that you heard from Shannon, whether it's video surveillance, whether it's general purpose, all the way to mission critical applications now with SAP HAN. So, this has changed the game for sure. But the range of work loads and the flexibility of the actual rules which really helping our existing customers during this pandemic. >> Yeah, I agree with you, Jon, we've seen customers really embrace HCI for a number of workloads in their environments, from the ones that we sure all knew and loved back in the initial days of HCI. Now, the mission critical things now to Cloud native workloads as well, and the sort of the efficiencies that customers are able to get from HCI. And specifically, VxRail gives them that ability to pivot. When these, shall we say unexpected circumstances arise? And I think that that's informing their their decisions and their opinions on what their IP strategies look like as they move forward. They want that same level of agility, and ability to react quickly with their overall infrastructure. >> Excellent. Now I want to get into the announcements. What I want my team actually, your team gave me access to the CIO from the city of Amarillo, so maybe they can dig up that footage, talk about how fast they pivoted, using VxRail to really spin up things fast. So let's hear from the announcement first and then definitely want to share that that customer story a little bit later. So let's get to the actual news that Shannon's going to share. >> Okay, now what's new? I am pleased to announce a number of exciting updates and new platforms, to further enable IT modernization across Core, Edge and Cloud. I will cover each of these announcements in more detail, demonstrating how only VxRail can offer the breadth of platform configurations, automation, orchestration and Lifecycle Management, across a fully integrated hardware and software full stack with consistent, simplified operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications. I'll start with hybrid Cloud and recap what you may have seen in the Dell Technologies Cloud announcements just a few weeks ago, related to VMware Cloud foundation on VxRail. Then I'll cover two brand new VxRail hardware platforms and additional options. And finally circle back to talk about the latest enhancements to our VxRail HCI system software capabilities for Lifecycle Management. Let's get started with our new Cloud offerings based on VxRail. VxRail is the HCI foundation for Dell Technologies, Cloud Platform, bringing automation and financial models, similar to public Cloud to On-premises environments. VMware recently introduced Cloud foundation for Delta, which is based on vSphere 7.0. As you likely know by now, vSphere 7.0 was definitely an exciting and highly anticipated release. In keeping with our synchronous release commitment, we introduced VxRail 7.0 based on vSphere 7.0 in late April, which was within 30 days of VMware's release. Two key areas that VMware focused on we're embedding containers and Kubernetes into vSphere, unifying them with virtual machines. And the second is improving the work experience for vSphere administrators with vSphere Lifecycle Manager or VLCM. I'll address the second point a bit in terms of how VxRail fits in in a moment for VCF 4 with Tom Xu, based on vSphere 7.0 customers now have access to a hybrid Cloud platform that supports native Kubernetes workloads and management, as well as your traditional VM-based workloads. So containers are now first class citizens of your private Cloud alongside traditional VMs and this is now available with VCF 4.0, on VxRail 7.0. VxRail's tight integration with VMware Cloud foundation delivers a simple and direct path not only to the hybrid Cloud, but also to deliver Kubernetes at Cloud scale with one complete automated platform. The second Cloud announcement is also exciting. Recent VCF for networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid Cloud, because we're now able to offer a more accessible consolidated architecture. And with that Dell Technologies Cloud platform can now be deployed with a four-node configuration, lowering the cost of an entry level hybrid Cloud. This enables customers to start smaller and grow their Cloud deployment over time. VCF and VxRail can now be deployed in two different ways. For small environments, customers can utilize a consolidated architecture which starts with just four nodes. Since the management and workload domains share resources in this architecture, it's ideal for getting started with an entry level Cloud to run general purpose virtualized workloads with a smaller entry point. Both in terms of required infrastructure footprint as well as cost, but still with a Consistent Cloud operating model. For larger environments where dedicated resources and role-based access control to separate different sets of workloads is usually preferred. You can choose to deploy a standard architecture which starts at eight nodes for independent management and workload domains. A standard implementation is ideal for customers running applications that require dedicated workload domains that includes Horizon, VDI, and vSphere with Kubernetes. >> Alright, Jon, there's definitely been a lot of interest in our community around everything that VMware is doing with vSphere 7.0. understand if you wanted to use the Kubernetes piece, it's VCF as that so we've seen the announcements, Dell, partnering in there it helps us connect that story between, really the VMware strategy and how they talk about Cloud and where does VxRail fit in that overall, Delta Cloud story? >> Absolutely. So first of all Stu, the VxRail course is integral to the Delta Cloud strategy. it's been VCF on VxRail equals the Delta Cloud platform. And this is our flagship on prem Cloud offering, that we've been able to enable operational consistency across any Cloud, whether it's On-prem, in the Edge or in the public Cloud. And we've seen the Dell tech Cloud Platform embraced by customers for a couple key reasons. One is it offers the fastest hybrid Cloud deployment in the market. And this is really, thanks to a new subscription offer that we're now offering out there where in less than 14 days, it can be still up and running. And really, the Dell tech Cloud does bring a lot of flexibility in terms of consumption models, overall when it comes to VxRail. Secondly, I would say is fast and easy upgrades. This is what VxRail brings to the table for all workloads, if you will, into especially critical in the Cloud. So the full automation of Lifecycle Management across the hardware and software stack across the VMware software stack, and in the Dell software and hardware supporting that, together, this enables essentially the third thing, which is customers can just relax. They can be rest assured that their infrastructure will be continuously validated, and always be in a continuously validated state. And this is the kind of thing that those three value propositions together really fit well, with any on-prem Cloud. Now you take what Shannon just mentioned, and the fact that now you can build and run modern applications on the same VxRail infrastructure alongside traditional applications. This is a game changer. >> Yeah, I love it. I remember in the early days talking with Dunn about CI, how does that fit in with Cloud discussion and the line I've used the last couple years is, modernize the platform, then you can modernize the application. So as companies are doing their full modernization, then this plays into what you're talking about. All right, we can let Shannon continue, we can get some more before we dig into some more analysis. >> That's good. >> Let's talk about new hardware platforms and updates. that result in literally thousands of potential new configuration options. covering a wide breadth of modern and traditional application needs across a range of the actual use cases. First up, I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new Dell EMC VxRail series, the D series. This is a ruggedized durable platform that delivers the full power of VxRail for workloads at the Edge in challenging environments or for space constrained areas. VxRail D series offers the same compelling benefits as the rest of the VxRail portfolio with simplicity, agility and lifecycle management. But in a lightweight short depth at only 20 inches, it's adorable form factor that's extremely temperature-resilient, shock resistant, and easily portable. It even meets milspec standards. That means you have the full power of lifecycle automation with VxRail HCI system software and 24 by seven single point of support, enabling you to rapidly react to business needs, no matter the location or how harsh the conditions. So whether you're deploying a data center at a mobile command base, running real-time GPS mapping on the go, or implementing video surveillance in remote areas, you can ensure availability, integrity and confidence for every workload with the new VxRail ruggedized D series. >> All right, Chad we would love for you to bring us in a little bit that what customer requirement for bringing this to market. I remember seeing, Dell servers ruggedized, of course, Edge, really important growth to build on what Jon was talking about, Cloud. So, Chad, bring us inside, what was driving this piece of the offering? >> Sure Stu. Yeah, yeah, having been at the hardware platforms that can go out into some of these remote locations is really important. And that's being driven by the fact that customers are looking for compute performance and storage out at some of these Edges or some of the more exotic locations. whether that's manufacturing plants, oil rigs, submarine ships, military applications, places that we've never heard of. But it's also about extending that operational simplicity of the the sort of way that you're managing your data center that has VxRails you're managing your Edges the same way using the same set of tools. You don't need to learn anything else. So operational simplicity is absolutely key here. But in those locations, you can take a product that's designed for a data center where definitely controlling power cooling space and take it some of these places where you get sand blowing or seven to zero temperatures, could be Baghdad or it could be Ketchikan, Alaska. So we built this D series that was able to go to those extreme locations with extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme altitude, but still offer that operational simplicity. Now military is one of those applications for the rugged platform. If you look at the resistance that it has to heat, it operates at a 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit range, but it can do an excursion up to 55 C or 131 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours. It's also resistant to heat sand, dust, vibration, it's very lightweight, short depth, in fact, it's only 20 inches deep. This is a smallest form factor, obviously that we have in the VxRail family. And it's also built to be able to withstand sudden shocks certified to withstand 40 G's of shock and operation of the 15,000 feet of elevation. Pretty high. And this is sort of like wherever skydivers go to when they want the real thrill of skydiving where you actually need oxygen to, to be for that that altitude. They're milspec-certified. So, MIL-STD-810G, which I keep right beside my bed and read every night. And it comes with a VxRail stick hardening package is packaging scripts so that you can auto lock down the rail environment. And we've got a few other certifications that are on the roadmap now for naval shock requirements. EMI and radiation immunity often. >> Yeah, it's funny, I remember when we first launched it was like, "Oh, well everything's going to white boxes. "And it's going to be massive, "no differentiation between everything out there." If you look at what you're offering, if you look at how public Clouds build their things, but I called it a few years or is there's a pure optimization. So you need to scale, you need similarities but you know you need to fit some, very specific requirements, lots of places, so, interesting stuff. Yeah, certifications, always keep your teams busy. Alright, let's get back to Shannon to view on the report. >> We are also introducing three other hardware-based additions. First, a new VxRail E Series model based on where the first time AMD EPYC processors. These single socket 1U nodes, offer dual socket performance with CPU options that scale from eight to 64 Cores, up to a terabyte of memory and multiple storage options making it an ideal platform for desktop VDI analytics and computer aided design. Next, the addition of the latest Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs brings the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional work flows. Designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what's possible, working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering, deep learning and visual computing workloads. And Intel Optane DC persistent memory is here, and it offers high performance and significantly increased memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price. Data persistence is a critical feature that maintains data integrity, even when power is lost, enabling quicker recovery and less downtime. With support for Intel obtain DC persistent memory customers can expand in memory intensive workloads and use cases like SAP HANA. Alright, let's finally dig into our HCI system software, which is the Core differentiation for VxRail regardless of your workload or platform choice. Our joining engineering with VMware and investments in VxRail HCI system software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. Under the covers, VxRail offers best in class hardware, married with VMware HCI software, either vSAN or VCF. But what makes us different stems from our investments to integrate the two. Dell Technologies has a dedicated VxRail team of about 400 people to build market sell and support a fully integrated hyper converged system. That team has also developed our unique VxRail HCI system software, which is a suite of integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver seamless, automated operational experience that customers cannot find elsewhere. The key components of VxRail HCI system software shown around the arc here that include the extra manager, full stack lifecycle management, ecosystem connectors, and support. I don't have time to get into all the details of these elements today, but if you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to meet our experts. And I will tell you how to do that in a moment. I touched on the LCM being a key feature to the vSphere 7.0 earlier and I'd like to take the opportunity to expand on that a bit in the context of VxRail Lifecycle Management. The LCM adds valuable automation to the execution of updates for customers, but it doesn't eliminate the manual work still needed to define and package the updates and validate all of the components prior to applying them. With VxRail customers have all of these areas addressed automatically on their behalf, freeing them to put their time into other important functions for their business. Customers tell us that Lifecycle management continues to be a major source of the maintenance effort they put into their infrastructure, and then it tends to lead to overburden IT staff, that it can cause disruptions to the business if not managed effectively, and that it isn't the most efficient economically. Automation of Lifecycle Management and VxRail results in the utmost simplicity from a customer experience perspective, and offers operational freedom from maintaining infrastructure. But as shown here, our customers not only realize greater IT team efficiencies, they have also reduced downtime with fewer unplanned outages, and reduced overall cost of operations. With VxRail HCI system software, intelligent Lifecycle Management upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack are automated, keeping clusters and continuously validated states while minimizing risks and operational costs. How do we ensure Continuously validated states for VxRail. VxRail labs execute an extensive, automated, repeatable process on every firmware and software upgrade and patch to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states of the customers choosing across their VxRail environment. The VxRail labs are constantly testing, analyzing, optimizing, and sequencing all of the components in the upgrade to execute in a single package for the full stack. All the while VxRail is backed by Dell EMC's world class services and support with a single point of contact for both hardware and software. IT productivity skyrockets with single click non disruptive upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack without the need to do extensive research and testing. taking you to the next VxRail version of your choice, while always in a continuously validated state. You can also confidently execute automated VxRail upgrades. No matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster. They don't have to all be the same. And upgrades with VxRail are faster and more efficient with leapfrogging simply choose any VxRail version you desire. And be assured you will get there in a validated state while seamlessly bypassing any other release in between. Only VxRail can do that. >> All right, so Chad, the lifecycle management piece that Shannon was just talking about is, not the sexiest, it's often underappreciated. There's not only the years of experience, but the continuous work you're doing, reminds me back the early vSAN deployments versus VxRail jointly developed, jointly tested between Dell and VMware. So bring us inside why, 2020 Lifecycle Management still, a very important piece, especially in the VM family line. >> Yes, Stu, I think it's sexy, but, I'm pretty big nerd. (all laughing) Yeah, this is really always been our bread and butter. And in fact, it gets even more important, the larger the deployments come, when you start to look at data centers full of VxRails and all the different hardware software, firmware combinations that could exist out there. It's really the value that you get out of that VxRail HCI system software that Shannon was talking about and how it's optimized around the VMware use case. Very tightly integrated with each VMware component, of course, and the intelligence of being able to do all the firmware, all of the drivers, all the software all together in tremendous value to our customers. But to deliver that we really need to make a fairly large investment. So as Shannon mentioned, we run about 25,000 hours of testing across Each major release for patches, express patches, that's about 7000 hours for each of those. So, obviously, there's a lot of parallelism. And we're always developing new test scenarios for each release that we need to build in as we as we introduce new functionality. And one of the key things that we're able to do, as Shannon mentioned, is to be able to leapfrog releases and get you to that next validated state. We've got about 100 engineers just working on creating and executing those test cases on a continuous basis and obviously, a huge amount of automation. And we've talked about that investment to execute those tests. That's one worth of $60 million of investment in our lab. In fact, we've got just over 2000 VxRail units in our testbed across the US, Shanghai, China and Cork, Ireland. So a massive amount of testing of each of those components to make sure that they operate together in a validated state. >> Yeah, well, absolutely, it's super important not only for the day one, but the day two deployments. But I think this actually a great place for us to bring in that customer that Dell gave me access to. So we've got the CIO of Amarillo, Texas, he was an existing VxRail customer. And he's going to explain what happened as to how he needed to react really fast to support the work-from-home initiative, as well as we get to hear in his words the value of what Lifecycle Management means. So Andrew, if we could queue up that customer segment, please? >> It's been massive and it's been interesting to see the IT team absorb it. As we mature, I think they embrace the ability to be innovative and to work with our departments. But this instance, really justified why I was driving progress. So fervently why it was so urgent today. Three years ago, the answer would have been no. We wouldn't have been in a place where we could adapt With VxRail in place, in a week we spun up hundreds of instant balls. We spun up a 75-person call center in a day and a half, for our public health. We rolled out multiple applications for public health so they could do remote clinics. It's given us the flexibility to be able to roll out new solutions very quickly and be very adaptive. And it's not only been apparent to my team, but it's really made an impact on the business. And now what I'm seeing is those of my customers that work, a little lagging or a little conservative, or understanding the impact of modernizing the way they do business because it makes them adaptable as well. >> Alright, so great, Richard, you talked a bunch about the the efficiencies that that the IT put in place, how about that, that overall just managed, you talked about how fast you spun up these new VDI instances. need to be able to do things much simpler? So how does the overall Lifecycle Management fit into this discussion? >> It makes it so much easier. And in the old environment, one, It took a lot of man hours to make change. It was very disruptive, when we did make change, it overburdened, I guess that's the word I'm looking for. It really overburdened our staff to cause disruption to business. That wasn't cost efficient. And then simple things like, I've worked for multi billion dollar companies where we had massive QA environments that replicated production, simply can't afford that at local government. Having this sort of environment lets me do a scaled down QA environment and still get the benefit of rolling out non disruptive change. As I said earlier, it's allowed us to take all of those cycles that we were spending on Lifecycle Management because it's greatly simplified, and move those resources and rescale them in other areas where we can actually have more impact on the business. It's hard to be innovative when 100% of your cycles are just keeping the ship afloat. >> All right, well, nothing better than hearing it straight from the end user, public sector reacting very fast to the COVID-19. And, if you heard him he said, if this is his, before he had run this project, he would not have been able to respond. So I think everybody out there understands, if I didn't actually have access to the latest technology, it would be much harder. All right, I'm looking forward to doing the CrowdChat letting everybody else dig in with questions and get follow up but a little bit more, I believe one more announcement he can and got for us though. Let's roll the final video clip. >> In our latest software release VxRail 4.7.510, We continue to add new automation and self service features. New functionality enables you to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades, to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch. This is extremely valuable for customers that have stringent upgrade windows, as they can be assured the clusters will seamlessly upgrade within that window. Of course, running health checks on a regular basis also helps ensure that your clusters are always ready for unscheduled patches and security updates. We are also offering more flexibility and getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level with the ability to reimage nodes or clusters to a specific VxRail version, or down rev one or more nodes that may be shipped at a higher rate than the existing cluster. This enables you to easily choose your validated state when adding new nodes or repurposing nodes in a cluster. To sum up all of our announcements, whether you are accelerating data sets modernization extending HCI to harsh Edge environments, deploying an on-premises Dell Technologies Cloud platform to create a developer ready Kubernetes infrastructure. VxRail is there delivering a turn-key experience that enables you to continuously innovate, realize operational freedom and predictably evolve. VxRail provides an extensive breadth of platform configurations, automation and Lifecycle Management across the integrated hardware and software full stack and consistent hybrid Cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications across Core, Edge and Cloud. I now invite you to engage with us. First, the virtual passport program is an opportunity to have some fun while learning about VxRail new features and functionality and sCore some sweet digital swag while you're at it. Delivered via an augmented reality app. All you need is your device. So go to vxrail.is/passport to get started. And secondly, if you have any questions about anything I talked about or want a deeper conversation, we encourage you to join one of our exclusive VxRail Meet The Experts sessions available for a limited time. First come first served, just go to vxrail.is/expertsession to learn more. >> All right, well, obviously, with everyone being remote, there's different ways we're looking to engage. So we've got the CrowdChat right after this. But Jon, give us a little bit more as to how Dell's making sure to stay in close contact with customers and what you've got for options for them. >> Yeah, absolutely. So as Shannon said, so in lieu of not having done Tech World this year in person, where we could have those great in-person interactions and answer questions, whether it's in the booth or in meeting rooms, we are going to have these Meet The Experts sessions over the next couple weeks, and we're going to put our best and brightest from our technical community and make them accessible to everyone out there. So again, definitely encourage you. We're trying new things here in this virtual environment to ensure that we can still stay in touch, answer questions, be responsive, and really looking forward to, having these conversations over the next couple of weeks. >> All right, well, Jon and Chad, thank you so much. We definitely look forward to the conversation here and continued. If you're here live, definitely go down below and do it if you're watching this on demand. You can see the full transcript of it at crowdchat.net/vxrailrocks. For myself, Shannon on the video, Jon, Chad, Andrew, man in the booth there, thank you so much for watching, and go ahead and join the CrowdChat.

>> Announcer: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is theCube Conversation. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. And welcome to this special presentation. We have a launch from Dell Technologies updates from the VxRail family. We're going to do things a little bit different here. We actually have a launch video Shannon Champion, of Dell Technologies. And the way we do things a lot of times, is, analysts get a little preview or when you're watching things. You might have questions on it. So, rather than me just wanting it, or you wanting yourself I actually brought in a couple of Dell Technologies expertS two of our Cube alumni, happy to welcome you back to the program. Jon Siegal, he is the Vice President of Product Marketing, and Chad Dunn, who's the Vice President of Product Management, both of them with Dell Technologies. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us. >> Good to see you Stu. >> Great to be here. >> All right, and so what we're going to do is we're going to be rolling the video here. I've got a button I'm going to press, Andrew will stop it here and then we'll kind of dig in a little bit, go into some questions when we're all done. We're actually holding a crowd chat, where you will be able to ask your questions, talk to the experts and everything. And so a little bit different way to do a product announcement. Hope you enjoy it. And with that, it's VxRail. Taking HCI to the extremes is the theme. We'll see what that means and everything. But without any further ado, let's let Shannon take the video away. >> Hello, and welcome. My name is Shannon Champion, and I'm looking forward to taking you through what's new with VxRail. Let's get started. We have a lot to talk about. Our launch covers new announcements addressing use cases across the Core, Edge and Cloud and spans both new hardware platforms and options, as well as the latest in software innovations. So let's jump right in. Before we talk about our announcements, let's talk about where customers are adopting VxRail today. First of all, on behalf of the entire Dell Technologies and VxRail teams, I want to thank each of our over 8000 customers, big and small in virtually every industry, who've chosen VxRail to address a broad range of workloads, deploying nearly 100,000 nodes today. Thank you. Our promise to you is that we will add new functionality, improve serviceability, and support new use cases, so that we deliver the most value to you, whether in the Core, at the Edge or for the Cloud. In the Core, VxRail from day one has been a catalyst to accelerate IT transformation. Many of our customers started here and many will continue to leverage VxRail to simply extend and enhance your VMware environment. Now we can support even more demanding applications such as In-Memory databases, like SAP HANA, and more AI and ML applications, with support for more and more powerful GPUs. At the Edge, video surveillance, which also uses GPUs, by the way, is an example of a popular use case leveraging VxRail alongside external storage. And right now we all know the enhanced role that IT is playing. And as it relates to VDI, VxRail has always been a great option for that. In the Cloud, it's all about Kubernetes, and how Dell Technologies Cloud platform, which is VCF on VxRail can deliver consistent infrastructure for both traditional and Cloud native applications. And we're doing that together with VMware. VxRail is the only jointly engineered HCI system built with VMware for VMware environments, designed to enhance the native VMware experience. This joint engineering with VMware and investments in software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. >> Alright, so Shannon talked a bit about, the important role of IT Of course right now, with the global pandemic going on. It's really, calling in, essential things, putting, platforms to the test. So, I really love to hear what both of you are hearing from customers. Also, VDI, of course, in the early days, it was, HCI-only-does-VDI. Now, we know there are many solutions, but remote work is putting that back front and center. So, Jon, why don't we start with you as the what is (muffled speaking) >> Absolutely. So first of all, Stu, thank you, I want to do a shout out to our VxRail customers around the world. It's really been humbling, inspiring, and just amazing to see The impact of our VxRail customers around the world and what they're having on on human progress here. Just for a few examples, there are genomics companies that we have running VxRail that have rolled out testing at scale. We also have research universities out in the Netherlands, doing the antibody detection. The US Navy has stood up a floating hospital to of course care for those in need. So we are here to help that's been our message to our customers, but it's amazing to see how much they're helping society during this. So just just a pleasure there. But as you mentioned, just to hit on the VDI comments, so to your points too, HCI, VxRail, VDI, that was an initial use case years ago. And it's been great to see how many of our existing VxRail customers have been able to pivot very quickly leveraging VxRail to add and to help bring their remote workforce online and support them with their existing VxRail. Because VxRail is flexible, it is agile, to be able to support those multiple workloads. And in addition to that, we've also rolled out some new VDI bundles to make it simpler for customers more cost effective cater to everything from knowlEdge workers to multimedia workers. You name it, you know from 250, desktops up to 1000. But again, back to your point VxRail, HCI, is well beyond VDI, it crossed the chasm a couple years ago actually. And VDI now is less than a third of the typical workloads, any of our customers out there, it supports now a range of workloads that you heard from Shannon, whether it's video surveillance, whether it's general purpose, all the way to mission critical applications now with SAP HAN. So, this has changed the game for sure. But the range of work loads and the flexibility of the actual rules which really helping our existing customers during this pandemic. >> Yeah, I agree with you, Jon, we've seen customers really embrace HCI for a number of workloads in their environments, from the ones that we sure all knew and loved back in the initial days of HCI. Now, the mission critical things now to Cloud native workloads as well, and the sort of the efficiencies that customers are able to get from HCI. And specifically, VxRail gives them that ability to pivot. When these, shall we say unexpected circumstances arise? And I think that that's informing their their decisions and their opinions on what their IP strategies look like as they move forward. They want that same level of agility, and ability to react quickly with their overall infrastructure. >> Excellent. Now I want to get into the announcements. What I want my team actually, your team gave me access to the CIO from the city of Amarillo, so maybe they can dig up that footage, talk about how fast they pivoted, using VxRail to really spin up things fast. So let's hear from the announcement first and then definitely want to share that that customer story a little bit later. So let's get to the actual news that Shannon's going to share. >> Okay, now what's new? I am pleased to announce a number of exciting updates and new platforms, to further enable IT modernization across Core, Edge and Cloud. I will cover each of these announcements in more detail, demonstrating how only VxRail can offer the breadth of platform configurations, automation, orchestration and Lifecycle Management, across a fully integrated hardware and software full stack with consistent, simplified operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications. I'll start with hybrid Cloud and recap what you may have seen in the Dell Technologies Cloud announcements just a few weeks ago, related to VMware Cloud foundation on VxRail. Then I'll cover two brand new VxRail hardware platforms and additional options. And finally circle back to talk about the latest enhancements to our VxRail HCI system software capabilities for Lifecycle Management. Let's get started with our new Cloud offerings based on VxRail. VxRail is the HCI foundation for Dell Technologies, Cloud Platform, bringing automation and financial models, similar to public Cloud to On-premises environments. VMware recently introduced Cloud foundation for Delta, which is based on vSphere 7.0. As you likely know by now, vSphere 7.0 was definitely an exciting and highly anticipated release. In keeping with our synchronous release commitment, we introduced VxRail 7.0 based on vSphere 7.0 in late April, which was within 30 days of VMware's release. Two key areas that VMware focused on we're embedding containers and Kubernetes into vSphere, unifying them with virtual machines. And the second is improving the work experience for vSphere administrators with vSphere Lifecycle Manager or VLCM. I'll address the second point a bit in terms of how VxRail fits in in a moment for VCF 4 with Tom Xu, based on vSphere 7.0 customers now have access to a hybrid Cloud platform that supports native Kubernetes workloads and management, as well as your traditional VM-based workloads. So containers are now first class citizens of your private Cloud alongside traditional VMs and this is now available with VCF 4.0, on VxRail 7.0. VxRail's tight integration with VMware Cloud foundation delivers a simple and direct path not only to the hybrid Cloud, but also to deliver Kubernetes at Cloud scale with one complete automated platform. The second Cloud announcement is also exciting. Recent VCF for networking advancements have made it easier than ever to get started with hybrid Cloud, because we're now able to offer a more accessible consolidated architecture. And with that Dell Technologies Cloud platform can now be deployed with a four-node configuration, lowering the cost of an entry level hybrid Cloud. This enables customers to start smaller and grow their Cloud deployment over time. VCF and VxRail can now be deployed in two different ways. For small environments, customers can utilize a consolidated architecture which starts with just four nodes. Since the management and workload domains share resources in this architecture, it's ideal for getting started with an entry level Cloud to run general purpose virtualized workloads with a smaller entry point. Both in terms of required infrastructure footprint as well as cost, but still with a Consistent Cloud operating model. For larger environments where dedicated resources and role-based access control to separate different sets of workloads is usually preferred. You can choose to deploy a standard architecture which starts at eight nodes for independent management and workload domains. A standard implementation is ideal for customers running applications that require dedicated workload domains that includes Horizon, VDI, and vSphere with Kubernetes. >> Alright, Jon, there's definitely been a lot of interest in our community around everything that VMware is doing with vSphere 7.0. understand if you wanted to use the Kubernetes piece, it's VCF as that so we've seen the announcements, Dell, partnering in there it helps us connect that story between, really the VMware strategy and how they talk about Cloud and where does VxRail fit in that overall, Delta Cloud story? >> Absolutely. So first of all Stu, the VxRail course is integral to the Delta Cloud strategy. it's been VCF on VxRail equals the Delta Cloud platform. And this is our flagship on prem Cloud offering, that we've been able to enable operational consistency across any Cloud, whether it's On-prem, in the Edge or in the public Cloud. And we've seen the Dell tech Cloud Platform embraced by customers for a couple key reasons. One is it offers the fastest hybrid Cloud deployment in the market. And this is really, thanks to a new subscription offer that we're now offering out there where in less than 14 days, it can be still up and running. And really, the Dell tech Cloud does bring a lot of flexibility in terms of consumption models, overall when it comes to VxRail. Secondly, I would say is fast and easy upgrades. This is what VxRail brings to the table for all workloads, if you will, into especially critical in the Cloud. So the full automation of Lifecycle Management across the hardware and software stack across the VMware software stack, and in the Dell software and hardware supporting that, together, this enables essentially the third thing, which is customers can just relax. They can be rest assured that their infrastructure will be continuously validated, and always be in a continuously validated state. And this is the kind of thing that those three value propositions together really fit well, with any on-prem Cloud. Now you take what Shannon just mentioned, and the fact that now you can build and run modern applications on the same VxRail infrastructure alongside traditional applications. This is a game changer. >> Yeah, I love it. I remember in the early days talking with Dunn about CI, how does that fit in with Cloud discussion and the line I've used the last couple years is, modernize the platform, then you can modernize the application. So as companies are doing their full modernization, then this plays into what you're talking about. All right, we can let Shannon continue, we can get some more before we dig into some more analysis. >> That's good. >> Let's talk about new hardware platforms and updates. that result in literally thousands of potential new configuration options. covering a wide breadth of modern and traditional application needs across a range of the actual use cases. First up, I am incredibly excited to announce a brand new Dell EMC VxRail series, the D series. This is a ruggedized durable platform that delivers the full power of VxRail for workloads at the Edge in challenging environments or for space constrained areas. VxRail D series offers the same compelling benefits as the rest of the VxRail portfolio with simplicity, agility and lifecycle management. But in a lightweight short depth at only 20 inches, it's adorable form factor that's extremely temperature-resilient, shock resistant, and easily portable. It even meets milspec standards. That means you have the full power of lifecycle automation with VxRail HCI system software and 24 by seven single point of support, enabling you to rapidly react to business needs, no matter the location or how harsh the conditions. So whether you're deploying a data center at a mobile command base, running real-time GPS mapping on the go, or implementing video surveillance in remote areas, you can ensure availability, integrity and confidence for every workload with the new VxRail ruggedized D series. >> All right, Chad we would love for you to bring us in a little bit that what customer requirement for bringing this to market. I remember seeing, Dell servers ruggedized, of course, Edge, really important growth to build on what Jon was talking about, Cloud. So, Chad, bring us inside, what was driving this piece of the offering? >> Sure Stu. Yeah, yeah, having been at the hardware platforms that can go out into some of these remote locations is really important. And that's being driven by the fact that customers are looking for compute performance and storage out at some of these Edges or some of the more exotic locations. whether that's manufacturing plants, oil rigs, submarine ships, military applications, places that we've never heard of. But it's also about extending that operational simplicity of the the sort of way that you're managing your data center that has VxRails you're managing your Edges the same way using the same set of tools. You don't need to learn anything else. So operational simplicity is absolutely key here. But in those locations, you can take a product that's designed for a data center where definitely controlling power cooling space and take it some of these places where you get sand blowing or seven to zero temperatures, could be Baghdad or it could be Ketchikan, Alaska. So we built this D series that was able to go to those extreme locations with extreme heat, extreme cold, extreme altitude, but still offer that operational simplicity. Now military is one of those applications for the rugged platform. If you look at the resistance that it has to heat, it operates at a 45 degrees Celsius or 113 degrees Fahrenheit range, but it can do an excursion up to 55 C or 131 degrees Fahrenheit for up to eight hours. It's also resistant to heat sand, dust, vibration, it's very lightweight, short depth, in fact, it's only 20 inches deep. This is a smallest form factor, obviously that we have in the VxRail family. And it's also built to be able to withstand sudden shocks certified to withstand 40 G's of shock and operation of the 15,000 feet of elevation. Pretty high. And this is sort of like wherever skydivers go to when they want the real thrill of skydiving where you actually need oxygen to, to be for that that altitude. They're milspec-certified. So, MIL-STD-810G, which I keep right beside my bed and read every night. And it comes with a VxRail stick hardening package is packaging scripts so that you can auto lock down the rail environment. And we've got a few other certifications that are on the roadmap now for naval shock requirements. EMI and radiation immunity often. >> Yeah, it's funny, I remember when we first launched it was like, "Oh, well everything's going to white boxes. "And it's going to be massive, "no differentiation between everything out there." If you look at what you're offering, if you look at how public Clouds build their things, but I called it a few years or is there's a pure optimization. So you need to scale, you need similarities but you know you need to fit some, very specific requirements, lots of places, so, interesting stuff. Yeah, certifications, always keep your teams busy. Alright, let's get back to Shannon to view on the report. >> We are also introducing three other hardware-based additions. First, a new VxRail E Series model based on where the first time AMD EPYC processors. These single socket 1U nodes, offer dual socket performance with CPU options that scale from eight to 64 Cores, up to a terabyte of memory and multiple storage options making it an ideal platform for desktop VDI analytics and computer aided design. Next, the addition of the latest Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs brings the most significant advancement in computer graphics in over a decade to professional work flows. Designers and artists across industries can now expand the boundary of what's possible, working with the largest and most complex graphics rendering, deep learning and visual computing workloads. And Intel Optane DC persistent memory is here, and it offers high performance and significantly increased memory capacity with data persistence at an affordable price. Data persistence is a critical feature that maintains data integrity, even when power is lost, enabling quicker recovery and less downtime. With support for Intel obtain DC persistent memory customers can expand in memory intensive workloads and use cases like SAP HANA. Alright, let's finally dig into our HCI system software, which is the Core differentiation for VxRail regardless of your workload or platform choice. Our joining engineering with VMware and investments in VxRail HCI system software innovation together deliver an optimized operational experience at reduced risk for our customers. Under the covers, VxRail offers best in class hardware, married with VMware HCI software, either vSAN or VCF. But what makes us different stems from our investments to integrate the two. Dell Technologies has a dedicated VxRail team of about 400 people to build market sell and support a fully integrated hyper converged system. That team has also developed our unique VxRail HCI system software, which is a suite of integrated software elements that extend VMware native capabilities to deliver seamless, automated operational experience that customers cannot find elsewhere. The key components of VxRail HCI system software shown around the arc here that include the extra manager, full stack lifecycle management, ecosystem connectors, and support. I don't have time to get into all the details of these elements today, but if you're interested in learning more, I encourage you to meet our experts. And I will tell you how to do that in a moment. I touched on the LCM being a key feature to the vSphere 7.0 earlier and I'd like to take the opportunity to expand on that a bit in the context of VxRail Lifecycle Management. The LCM adds valuable automation to the execution of updates for customers, but it doesn't eliminate the manual work still needed to define and package the updates and validate all of the components prior to applying them. With VxRail customers have all of these areas addressed automatically on their behalf, freeing them to put their time into other important functions for their business. Customers tell us that Lifecycle management continues to be a major source of the maintenance effort they put into their infrastructure, and then it tends to lead to overburden IT staff, that it can cause disruptions to the business if not managed effectively, and that it isn't the most efficient economically. Automation of Lifecycle Management and VxRail results in the utmost simplicity from a customer experience perspective, and offers operational freedom from maintaining infrastructure. But as shown here, our customers not only realize greater IT team efficiencies, they have also reduced downtime with fewer unplanned outages, and reduced overall cost of operations. With VxRail HCI system software, intelligent Lifecycle Management upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack are automated, keeping clusters and continuously validated states while minimizing risks and operational costs. How do we ensure Continuously validated states for VxRail. VxRail labs execute an extensive, automated, repeatable process on every firmware and software upgrade and patch to ensure clusters are in continuously validated states of the customers choosing across their VxRail environment. The VxRail labs are constantly testing, analyzing, optimizing, and sequencing all of the components in the upgrade to execute in a single package for the full stack. All the while VxRail is backed by Dell EMC's world class services and support with a single point of contact for both hardware and software. IT productivity skyrockets with single click non disruptive upgrades of the fully integrated hardware and software stack without the need to do extensive research and testing. taking you to the next VxRail version of your choice, while always in a continuously validated state. You can also confidently execute automated VxRail upgrades. No matter what hardware generation or node types are in the cluster. They don't have to all be the same. And upgrades with VxRail are faster and more efficient with leapfrogging simply choose any VxRail version you desire. And be assured you will get there in a validated state while seamlessly bypassing any other release in between. Only VxRail can do that. >> All right, so Chad, the lifecycle management piece that Shannon was just talking about is, not the sexiest, it's often underappreciated. There's not only the years of experience, but the continuous work you're doing, reminds me back the early vSAN deployments versus VxRail jointly developed, jointly tested between Dell and VMware. So bring us inside why, 2020 Lifecycle Management still, a very important piece, especially in the VM family line. >> Yes, Stu, I think it's sexy, but, I'm pretty big nerd. (all laughing) Yeah, this is really always been our bread and butter. And in fact, it gets even more important, the larger the deployments come, when you start to look at data centers full of VxRails and all the different hardware software, firmware combinations that could exist out there. It's really the value that you get out of that VxRail HCI system software that Shannon was talking about and how it's optimized around the VMware use case. Very tightly integrated with each VMware component, of course, and the intelligence of being able to do all the firmware, all of the drivers, all the software all together in tremendous value to our customers. But to deliver that we really need to make a fairly large investment. So as Shannon mentioned, we run about 25,000 hours of testing across Each major release for patches, express patches, that's about 7000 hours for each of those. So, obviously, there's a lot of parallelism. And we're always developing new test scenarios for each release that we need to build in as we as we introduce new functionality. And one of the key things that we're able to do, as Shannon mentioned, is to be able to leapfrog releases and get you to that next validated state. We've got about 100 engineers just working on creating and executing those test cases on a continuous basis and obviously, a huge amount of automation. And we've talked about that investment to execute those tests. That's one worth of $60 million of investment in our lab. In fact, we've got just over 2000 VxRail units in our testbed across the US, Shanghai, China and Cork, Ireland. So a massive amount of testing of each of those components to make sure that they operate together in a validated state. >> Yeah, well, absolutely, it's super important not only for the day one, but the day two deployments. But I think this actually a great place for us to bring in that customer that Dell gave me access to. So we've got the CIO of Amarillo, Texas, he was an existing VxRail customer. And he's going to explain what happened as to how he needed to react really fast to support the work-from-home initiative, as well as we get to hear in his words the value of what Lifecycle Management means. So Andrew, if we could queue up that customer segment, please? >> It's been massive and it's been interesting to see the IT team absorb it. As we mature, I think they embrace the ability to be innovative and to work with our departments. But this instance, really justified why I was driving progress. So fervently why it was so urgent today. Three years ago, the answer would have been no. We wouldn't have been in a place where we could adapt With VxRail in place, in a week we spun up hundreds of instant balls. We spun up a 75-person call center in a day and a half, for our public health. We rolled out multiple applications for public health so they could do remote clinics. It's given us the flexibility to be able to roll out new solutions very quickly and be very adaptive. And it's not only been apparent to my team, but it's really made an impact on the business. And now what I'm seeing is those of my customers that work, a little lagging or a little conservative, or understanding the impact of modernizing the way they do business because it makes them adaptable as well. >> Alright, so great, Richard, you talked a bunch about the the efficiencies that that the IT put in place, how about that, that overall just managed, you talked about how fast you spun up these new VDI instances. need to be able to do things much simpler? So how does the overall Lifecycle Management fit into this discussion? >> It makes it so much easier. And in the old environment, one, It took a lot of man hours to make change. It was very disruptive, when we did make change, it overburdened, I guess that's the word I'm looking for. It really overburdened our staff to cause disruption to business. That wasn't cost efficient. And then simple things like, I've worked for multi billion dollar companies where we had massive QA environments that replicated production, simply can't afford that at local government. Having this sort of environment lets me do a scaled down QA environment and still get the benefit of rolling out non disruptive change. As I said earlier, it's allowed us to take all of those cycles that we were spending on Lifecycle Management because it's greatly simplified, and move those resources and rescale them in other areas where we can actually have more impact on the business. It's hard to be innovative when 100% of your cycles are just keeping the ship afloat. >> All right, well, nothing better than hearing it straight from the end user, public sector reacting very fast to the COVID-19. And, if you heard him he said, if this is his, before he had run this project, he would not have been able to respond. So I think everybody out there understands, if I didn't actually have access to the latest technology, it would be much harder. All right, I'm looking forward to doing the CrowdChat letting everybody else dig in with questions and get follow up but a little bit more, I believe one more announcement he can and got for us though. Let's roll the final video clip. >> In our latest software release VxRail 4.7.510, We continue to add new automation and self service features. New functionality enables you to schedule and run upgrade health checks in advance of upgrades, to ensure clusters are in a ready state for the next upgrade or patch. This is extremely valuable for customers that have stringent upgrade windows, as they can be assured the clusters will seamlessly upgrade within that window. Of course, running health checks on a regular basis also helps ensure that your clusters are always ready for unscheduled patches and security updates. We are also offering more flexibility and getting all nodes or clusters to a common release level with the ability to reimage nodes or clusters to a specific VxRail version, or down rev one or more nodes that may be shipped at a higher rate than the existing cluster. This enables you to easily choose your validated state when adding new nodes or repurposing nodes in a cluster. To sum up all of our announcements, whether you are accelerating data sets modernization extending HCI to harsh Edge environments, deploying an on-premises Dell Technologies Cloud platform to create a developer ready Kubernetes infrastructure. VxRail is there delivering a turn-key experience that enables you to continuously innovate, realize operational freedom and predictably evolve. VxRail provides an extensive breadth of platform configurations, automation and Lifecycle Management across the integrated hardware and software full stack and consistent hybrid Cloud operations to address the broadest range of traditional and modern applications across Core, Edge and Cloud. I now invite you to engage with us. First, the virtual passport program is an opportunity to have some fun while learning about VxRail new features and functionality and sCore some sweet digital swag while you're at it. Delivered via an augmented reality app. All you need is your device. So go to vxrail.is/passport to get started. And secondly, if you have any questions about anything I talked about or want a deeper conversation, we encourage you to join one of our exclusive VxRail Meet The Experts sessions available for a limited time. First come first served, just go to vxrail.is/expertsession to learn more. >> All right, well, obviously, with everyone being remote, there's different ways we're looking to engage. So we've got the CrowdChat right after this. But Jon, give us a little bit more as to how Dell's making sure to stay in close contact with customers and what you've got for options for them. >> Yeah, absolutely. So as Shannon said, so in lieu of not having done Tech World this year in person, where we could have those great in-person interactions and answer questions, whether it's in the booth or in meeting rooms, we are going to have these Meet The Experts sessions over the next couple weeks, and we're going to put our best and brightest from our technical community and make them accessible to everyone out there. So again, definitely encourage you. We're trying new things here in this virtual environment to ensure that we can still stay in touch, answer questions, be responsive, and really looking forward to, having these conversations over the next couple of weeks. >> All right, well, Jon and Chad, thank you so much. We definitely look forward to the conversation here and continued. If you're here live, definitely go down below and do it if you're watching this on demand. You can see the full transcript of it at crowdchat.net/vxrailrocks. For myself, Shannon on the video, Jon, Chad, Andrew, man in the booth there, thank you so much for watching, and go ahead and join the CrowdChat.

(electronic music) >> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE! Covering NetApp Insight 2018. Brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of NetApp Insight 2018, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and guess who's here now, Dave Hitz, EVP and founder of NetApp, Dave, welcome back to theCUBE. >> Thank you and glad to be here. >> This is a big event, we were in the keynote this morning when we were walking out, standing room only really strong messages delivered by George Kurian, who stopped by for the first time couple hours ago. Great customer story, the futurist was very interesting perspective, 26 years ago, can you envision? >> You know the futurist? >> Where you are? >> Never mind that, I have a very different perspective than him, I think we are entering the golden decade of artificial intelligence. It's smart enough to be super, super cool and it hasn't figured out how to kill us yet, decade. (laughing) >> Lisa: That's good. >> Enjoy your last 10 years. >> Oh no, that's it? >> I, no, no, you asked, you asked that I envision this 26 years ago, oh my god, no, I mean, you know, we were a little start-up and we had these spread sheets that said we would grow to, you know it basically that, what the VC's told us if we could get to 100 million in revenue we can go public, so, naturally our spread sheets showed 200 million (laughs) in revenue, you know or five, six, some where in there and is like, we're so far beyond anything I imagined when we started, and we were doing technical nerdy products for little engineers and little work groups, you know and the idea that that part of the storage market would merge against the heavy duty, high-end enterprise storage market doing databases, and then that would end up colliding with the cloud market and helping, like no we didn't even imagine this stuff that's happening now, I mean it's so far beyond. >> Enabling DreamWorks to make movies, I mean-- >> I love that, you know they do showings, they do previews for their vendors and so I've gotten to take my 11-year-old daughter, she's 11 now, but to see, you know early viewing of some of these movies it's, it's just fun. >> So, Dave, it's always interesting in the industry a lot of time you say like, okay, this architecture is long in the tooth, there's a new generation do things better and everything like that. ONTAP, been around for a long time now.. >> You know, so let me-- >> Seems like it's been reinvigorated with the cloud and everything like that, you know. >> Let me make a comment about that. >> Yeah. >> Cause people do this, oh, ONTAP is so old, isn't that the old generation? So lets talk about old. Mainframes are old, and AS400s are old, and Unix is old, and then there's Windows which is kind of younger, and ONTAP's younger than that, and then there's Windows NT, which was a rewrite of Windows and Clustered ONTAP is younger than that, so like stop with the old, you know I mean iOS is after that, so okay fine we're older than iOS, but it's not an ancient, and then we've revamped it again to go run in the cloud, I mean we first started doing ONTAP running in Azure, sorry I mean Amazon initially, we started that work in 2013 and shipped it in 2014, so like that was yet another refresh so. >> Well, but you bring a point, you've, it is adjusted and moved, it wasn't something that's static. Can you speak a little bit, that cloud, the you know, the rewrite and focus around the cloud and what, that mean internally, I know you've been reinvigorated. >> Ha! >> With everything that's happened for the last few years. >> You know, the cloud everybody's doing it now and everybody's trying to be cloud relevant, we were really struggling early on I will say you know 2013, 2014 we were really trying to get our heads around what to do and a lot of people were stepping back like, no, no, no, let's see if we can slow it down, and, I mean not just outside of NetApp but NetApp as well, and the guy that was the CEO of the time Tom Georgens, and George Kurian was part of the staff then. We, I'm proud of what we did was we said, you know let's really lean in, its either going to happen or it's not going to happen, probably not, based on what we do, and if it does happen we'll be way better off leaning into it early, learning how to make this stuff work, and that's, you know we shipped ONTAP in the cloud in 2014, and it sucked, I mean, and no one body else had anything like it, it was awesome, right, whenever you look at old tech die, the first iPhone sucked too, but it was both great, but it needed so much more work, like the very first rev I remember a story, Joe CaraDonna as a programmer he's like, we tried to get our own IT organization to use it and they told us the security wasn't good enough, so we had to fix the security, like, I mean we've been through so much stuff that's almost five years ago. We've been working on it, and so you do all of this work and then Cloud Volumes is a complete, have you guys had Anthony on? >> Both: Yes. >> Couple hours ago. >> I love how Anthony thinks, so, he's a cloudy guy right from the foundation, he joins the executive staff, whole new perspective on stuff, so Cloud ONTAP, like ONTAP's my baby and we put it in the cloud. I'm proud of that, like you have our forward leaning cloud and Anthony's like, you know, just so you know, that's not nearly good enough, like, that is a very old school infrastructural thing, probably storage infrastructural people will like that they can have their same old OS running in the cloud, but it's not what cloudy people want, cloudy people don't want to run a storage OS in the cloud, cloudy people just want to say, I'd like a volume, please. Here's your volume, Thank you, and by the way, it should be a RESTful API, like God, ONTAP was none of those things and so if you look at the work we're doing now is like, okay, here's a RESTful API, here's the JSON schema, send it to the Azure Resource Manager Like that's cloudy and so, it was because, you know we did a good job engineering getting it in but we didn't, we didn't have that like the, what does cloud smell like? If you know what I mean, like, the right whiff of cloud. Anyway, so Anthony really brought that and I, and I just feel really good about where we are at now, because, it's like cloud developers, develop this stuff for other cloud developers, it feels like that. >> Well in the last five years it sounds like tremendous amounts of transformation, reinvigoration, NetApp has some bold marketing messaging. We are the data authority, we help customers become data driven, you talk about these three business imperatives, customers have lots of choices that, you know public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, George talked about this morning in his keynote that hybrid and multi-cloud is now de facto. >> You know, someone asked me, I was giving a talk and they asked me, okay so much cloud, how long do you think till NetApp's not shipping hardware? And I was like, no, no, like we don't see that going away anytime soon, if anything we think our success in the cloud, 'cause customers want to do that, will help us gain share on-prem because customers also want to do that, right? George's picture shows, yes there is traditional on-prem IT, enterprise IT, there's private clouds people, HCI, convergence CI, and then there's public cloud. To me the interesting question, is why do people do those different things, the number one driver for public cloud is innovation, like, if you just, like all the catchwords you can think of, if you want to start up a DevOps team to-go program, I would like a new mobile phone app and I want it to take a picture of the person's face, oh look it's a woman, she looks happy, and then you want it to listen to her, to the voice, and like transcribe the voice and then do a sentiment analysis on the words, oh, she looked happy but it's snarky, and then you want to feed that into neural net deep learning engine, and say, what should we try to sell her, like, I guaranteed you, the team working on the public cloud will beat the on-prem team hands down every time. Right, I mean that's, so when you look at people and they go, we want all in on the cloud, or there's got to be 100% cloud. My question is what, what's your, like, don't start with that, what's your problem? If it's derive innovation, for the private cloud, typically that's just all about speed. They're so uniform regular, they're all the same you have extra capacity, you know you got empty rack space, for where the next one goes, someone says, I need some storage, and you say, hey, it's got a self service offer defined API, like, just do it yourself, and then in the enterprise space, the enterprise IT, Unix, Windows, clients, server, like that zone, probably the bulk of your investment, right? That's where you been spending the money historically. Probably still the bulk of most people's investment, but they want to modernize it, they don't want to get rid of it, they don't want to turn it off, it's working, but they'd like it to work better, so flash enable it, just get the performance issues out of the way. By the way, shrinks your footprint in the data center, frees up space, and connected to the cloud. Like not moving it, but just back it up or do DR, or like something cloudy and so to me I look at those three goals are tightly linked to the three styles of infrastructure. Notice, I haven't talked about products yet? The conversations I like to have with customers these days, help me understand what your business challenges are, your trying to move faster, be more innovative, modernize the stuff you have. Okay, like what ratio, now lets talk about how we could do those things together with the Data Fabric and let you build the Data Fabric you need, I mean, our Data Fabric strategy is not to tell customers what to do, it's to help them build the Data Fabric they need for their needs based on, oh, we're all about innovation, all on the cloud, like okay fine. We can do that like, but let's talk about that or is it. Now I'm stuttering. >> You bring up a great point there, Dave. >> I'm excited about this stuff. >> It's really exciting 'cause you know I think back, you know, just a couple of years ago, if you go to the enterprise, oftentimes storage was the boat anchor to prevent me from moving forward. Now we know that data, is absolutely going to be one of the drivers going forward, how do we help those people make that transition? How do you see NetApp driving that transition? So boating, that's an interesting word because I think if you look at cloud compute, it's very easy to move compute into the cloud, right. >> Stu: Yes. >> The thing about compute is it just happens and then its done, like you turn it on, you turn if off. You spin up the VM, you spin down the VM, it's easy. The reason data is a boat anchor is not because its a boat anchor, because data is the hard part, like you fired up the compute to the cloud but usually you're computing some data, well, how did you get the data to the place where the compute is? And then when you're finished a lot of times you created some data, well, how do you keep track of the data you created in the cloud, and is it legal for it to stay in the cloud, and now you want to put the data in a different cloud or put the data in your own data center and like, who's watching all that data? It's not a boat anchor because data sucks, it's a boat anchor actually because its the important thing you want to keep forever, right? I mean, maybe you do or maybe you want to delete it and know for sure it's gone. Like, those, compute doesn't have any of those issues. So, what's my point, whatever is hard, like if this was easy anybody can do it, right? Whatever is hard, you go hire lots and lots of smart people to work on hard problems and then customers are like, whoa, you're solving hard problems, I guess I will pay you after all. Isn't that what business is? >> So the majority of your conversations start with helping customers identify what they've got, where best to spread out their investments, it's not product based its about business outcomes. I'd love to get kind of in the last few minutes here, your perspective on NetApp's own IT and digital, and cultural transformation, how does that help your legacy long time enterprise customers feel an even stronger trust with NetApp? >> I think prior to our cloud work customers for the most part, customers and potential customers, they knew us, you know, it was interesting even as we thought about marketing the new work that we are doing, one of the questions was like, how much should be about the cloud, how much should be about the old stuff, and we've really leaned in almost 100% on telling people our new cloud stories, they're both public and private. And our VP of marketing I think she had a really, Jean English, she had a really good perspective. She basically said look, we've been telling the on-prem storage iron story for 26 years and if there's a customer who's out there waiting to decide who to use I don't think telling them that story again and year 27, is going to be the thing that makes the difference, like, they've decided they're happy with their Hitatchi or they're EM's, whatever it is, but, but they don't know that NetApp can help them in this brave new world. Right, they have no clue that ONTAP is also running on Amazon, I mean, It's like, seriously, I can run ONTAP on Amazon? Yeah like fire it up, it's five bucks an hour, or whatever the number is, it's like that's crazy, you know and so, so and then people go, well, we've had so many conversations where they're trying to get a cloud strategy together, and we talk about all these things and data movement and data management and cloud, and like just all of these tools and they're very excited about where they're trying to go and they said, you know, by the way, I do also have a on-prem storage need. Could you do me a quote for like what I need this week and meanwhile let's do some planning about what I need next year, right, you've got both of them working together, and I think it's that combo that's important. >> Last question, how do you, if only you had more energy and excitement like legitimately about this, but how do you keep some of the NetApp folks that have been here for a long time? How have you helped reinvigorate them to, to really be able to digest the massive impact that you guys are being able to make across industries? >> One of the things I think helps, 'cause there is a... Let me back up a step, you know, Steve Jobs, is such an awesome guy and also in his life he made so many mistakes, and one of the things he did when, when Apple was almost entirely floated on their Apple III business and, was that Apple III, Apple II? And he was doing the Mac, and basically his message to everybody else was, if you're not working on the Mac, you suck, except, by the way, that's the product that's floating the entire business and generating all the products, and I really was conscious of, like that's the wrong way to do it. And when I look in particular of what we're doing we've got new operating systems like E-Series and like SolidFire, the HCI is a whole new thing, and yet ONTAP is still shot through our entire product line. I mean, the Cloud Volumes' the cool, hottest new thing. It's ONTAP under the covers, right, and you look at the HCI it's got the SolidFire block storage built in there as a very scalable model, oh but if you'd like files guess what? We run ONTAP in a VM, it's HCI it runs VM, and so actually if you look at what's going on in there the work that we've done going way back, and yes it's evolved, it's changed, but that same work is actually shot through as technology, no longer the front piece but it's shot through all of it as technology, so it is kind of a unifying characteristic. If you talk about that, I think it helps people get more comfortable both internally but, we have the same, you know, you asked how do you get employees comfortable, a lot of customers have the same problem, you know-- >> Lisa: Right. >> They've spent a lot of investment and learning ONTAP's foibles over the year and Cloud Volume's hides all of that. So, gee, maybe I don't like this, you know what if you need all those features Cloud ONTAP, you can run ONTAP, like some people do want to do that, so, I just feel like the fact that the pieces all fit together, work together, actually gets people comfortable with it. >> Excellent, well Dave thanks so much for stopping by. >> Thank you for having me. >> Thank you for sharing your energy, and your excitement, your passion and all this wisdom and looking at where you guys are 26 years later, we look forward to year 27. >> Great, thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman, we're at NetApp Insight 2018 in Vegas. Stick around Stu and I will be right back with our next guest. (electronic music)

>> Announcer: Live from Chicago, Illinois, it's theCUBE. Covering VeeamOn 2018 brought to you by Veeam. >> We're back at VeeamOn 2018, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. I'm Dave Vellante with my cohost Stu Miniman. Stu, always great working with you. Bruce Shaw is here, he's the Senior Director of Global Alliances and Industry Solutions at NetApp. Great to see you, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So, I got to start out with NetApp, I mean, we've followed NetApp for decades, ya know, from the very beginning back when I was at IDC, Stu, you were probably still in your mother's womb. (laughing) But you guys are back in a big way, I mean, for a while there it looked vulnerable. You took advantage of the Dell EMC merger. You're gaining share again, you're growing, stock price is up, there's a spring in your step, what's going on? >> Well, a lot of things are going on. I think we've had a lot of leadership additions to the company, Henri Richard joined and took over as the CSO with the company. We've got a new CMO in Jean English. But more importantly, a lot of the areas that we were late to the market, and candidly we've admitted we were late. We didn't have a good Flash story a couple years ago. We've been very aggressive with Flash over the last 24 to 18 months. We're now the fastest growing Flash storage provider out in the market, and we think we'll exit this year as number one. In fact, we think that's the current course and trajectory. We're very happy with where that's going. The FlexPod partnership with Cisco was great this past year. We had a record year in Converged infrastructure, which was a down market, we picked up about 13 points a share according to IDC, so a lot of the cylinders are starting to fire, but the one that is probably the biggest and the most shocking for folks is three, four years ago, the belief was that cloud was going to kill on-prem storage for companies like NetApp. I think the one thing that they did right ahead of the curve was they embraced the cloud. They've got great partnerships with Google, Amazon, the hyperscalers, and cloud strategy and the business that drives the company there is the fastest part of the company, and Anthony Lye runs that team, and it's doing an amazing job. >> Explain how, and you're absolutely right, many, most, frankly myself at times, felt that way. Explain how cloud is a tailwind and not just a one-way street into the roach motel. >> Oh well, there isn't an enterprise today that isn't thinking about cloud in some way, shape, or form, right? Now, ya have prognosticators on either side saying it's all going to the cloud or something less than that, but the truth is when you look at a strategy like ONTAP and the ability to move your data, whether it's on-prem or to the cloud and manage it through our data fabric story, that's where NetApp really starts coming into their own. I think, again, that's where we've been able to take advantage, and it's not just having it one way or the other or being good just with the hyperscalers or good with the guys that want to be secure because most companies do a hybrid story, and they want to bit of both. >> Well, I think the one thing that I would observe about NetApp, having followed the company for many, many years, which I think gives you an advantage, is NetApp really has always had storage services in software that were largely decoupled from the hardware, and that allowed you to get into cloud early, don't ya think, Stu? >> Yeah, absolutely, and Bruce, we're here at VeeamOn, and their message sounds a lot like that to me, so maybe help explain, we were just talking to Veeam's CMO, when you hear some of the descriptions of storage services, software, multicloud, and everything, NetApp and Veeam sound alike. How are they complementary in, ya know, maybe where do they bump up against each other, yeah? >> Yeah, well, we both compete in the same market, which is storage, so of course, there's areas where we're going to compete with each other, but we are very complementary in terms of the story and the markets that we serve, right? NetApp is incredible strong in the enterprise. Veeam has great commercial channel presence, so from a route to market there's a lot of complementary stuff we do with each other. Price point, in terms of where we hit the market and the things that we go after, we have a lot of opportunity where there's not overlap to help each out to the point they're now, the relationship's evolved over the last four years where we're actually doing OEM of each other's products. We've got our E-Series we just announced yesterday that we're OEMing with these guys, which again is targeted at exactly those markets. The story between the two that we're both at our core not hardware companies, not storage companies, but data management companies really is where this starts to come together and play well. The fact that they're mutually supportive of each other makes for a really strong value proposition for the customer and the channel, especially the guys like the service providers or ya know, hybrid cloud providers, it's a big time story for them. >> So you're growing with, the partnership with Veeam is growing. >> Right. >> Ya got a combination of trends that become tailwinds, but then you've got execution. Can you explain what are those tailwinds, and what's the execution ethos with the partnership? >> We are a channel-only company for all intents and purposes. >> Dave: Oh yeah, I don't know what the number is now, but you've always been very, very high performing. >> Yeah, I know, so we look at businesses that we drive, and channel is at the core of what we do, so when you have a tailwind like, ya know, where we are with Flash and the growth there, the channel partners are making more money, the programs that are coming for them, we're not taking business that they're doing today and pushing it towards the cloud. Again, we're talking about the story that's transitory between the two, so for a lot of the channel providers that are out there getting in the market, that's a very powerful story for them. That it's not a competitive business, we're not going to try to create our own cloud service to take away from them. We want to help them as they migrate between the two. >> All right, Bruce, one of the other areas we're hearing a lot about at this show that I think lines up with NetApp is the analytics and AI, can you maybe talk about how that ties into the products? >> Yeah, I mean, you look at a lot of these markets like AI, like analytics in terms of what companies are doing, it sheds off a tremendous amount of data, right? And that data is at the heart of what they want to analyze and go through, and when they bring those things to market, the goal is how I quickly move it from where I'm capturing it to where I need it, and ONTAP does a really good job of doing that in terms of being able to take the data to where they need it, whether it's at the edge or whether it's back at the core of the company, so that you can actually do the real work with it and gain the insights that drive the business. >> Bruce, what's the resale agreement that you have with Veeam, can you explain that? >> We have Veeam on our price list. Our sales reps can sell Veeam, can be compensated for it, vice versa, they can absolutely hook in and drive away with NetApp, and now that we're getting products like E-Series where their product is embedded in ours, that only strengthens that kind of motion. So for a NetApp sales rep today, if they have an opportunity where Veeam is needed on it as part of the offering, it's absolutely in their wheelhouse to go sell it, and they get the sale level of love and attention from quote and comp standpoint that they would if it was NetApp only products. >> So this is kind of interesting innovation that Veeam, I think, has been out in front of, they, and I dunno how they do it, Stu, but I think Veeam understands the lifetime value of a customer and is willing to make, put sweat equity into a deal as part of a partnership to make it transparent to a partner sales force. >> Yeah absolutely. >> That's innovation in business model. >> Absolutely, we're very proud of our sales force and the work that they're able to do. We view ourselves as kind of the last big enterprise standalone storage company that's out there doing this, and I run strategic alliances, and some partners integrate really well with our sales guys. Others, it's more of a, ya know, it requires more work. To your point, Veeam has done a superb job at identifying how and where they play with our folks and getting together where we go to market together. >> It's interesting, we used to, ya know, several years ago now, ask the question can NetApp remain independent. We've seen all these independent storage companies kind of go away. Used to have this conversation with David Scott at 3PAR all the time, EMC itself wasn't able to maintain it, and then NetApp got to the point where it was almost too big for an acquisition, and although stock price was down, everybody, NetApp was the rumor of MNA more than any company I can think of in the storage business, but now you're seeing sort of antithetical to what most people expected, it's kind of like the cloud we were talking about before, storage companies emerged. Pure was the first one over a billion since NetApp. What are your thoughts, and what's that, I wonder what, you guys must talk in the hallways about that whole, the dynamics of the industry. It seems like it's still a viable business model to be best of breed. >> It's very viable, so I took over running the strategic alliances at the beginning of January, and my dance card's full. I can't believe the number of folks that are calling up wanting to partner. I think we've gotten much more mature in terms of how we view the market and our ability to get strategically with other companies to be successful, and there absolutely is always going to be a place out there for a best of breed story. Customers want the best technology that they can get to handle their business needs, and if we partner with great partners, whether it's Veeam or others to provide that for them, I think the viability of NetApp only gets stronger not weaker. >> It's interesting because now ya got NetApp, Pure, Nutanix, soon to be Veeam, as billion dollar independent pure play companies in the storage business. Isilon couldn't get there, Data Domain couldn't get there, Compellent couldn't get there, 3PAR couldn't get there, Lefthand couldn't get, EqualLogic, I can go down the list. They were never able to reach that escape velocity, and maybe it is cloud, maybe cloud is that weird tailwind for people who can figure out how to take advantage of cloud and hybrid cloud, your thoughts? >> Yeah, I think it is, number one. I think also the companies that you mentioned at various times, and I'm a hardware industry dinosaur, I've been around forever. A lot of those companies you talk about the difficult moment from them was hey, we're a storage company, now we want to add compute or now we want to go into this part of the market that put them at odds with the guys they were partnering with. George, our CEO, has been absolutely maniacal with his vision of our path forward is managing data, period. Whatever that form takes, we don't need to be a compute company, we don't need to be a networking company, we want to be a data company. I think how that then drives the decisions, whether it's partnering with cloud, whether it's going into new markets with HCI, even if it's things about transforming the legacy data center from traditional data center and how it's managed on-prem to something that's all Flash driven and much more efficient and much more programmable than it was in the past, so it's easier to administer, those are the areas that we can go innovate, and as long as we're partnering with the right partners out in the industry, that makes us a very good viable destination for the customer without worrying about well, do we have a compute node, are we in the server business now, are we suddenly in the switch business? Those are things that are not even on our radar. >> Yeah, I mean, you guys are in a unique position from that standpoint. You're very large now, you're the largest independent storage company, so everybody wants to work with you. You don't bump up into these adjacencies, and you can make bets, you can place your chips in areas whereas some of the startups, there's tons of innovation, but it's really hard to hit that escape. The amount of resources that you need, the money you need for promotion, the talent war that's going on out there, the go-to-market challenges, the partner challenges, so you guys are in a pretty good position right now. >> We really are, and I think we've actually done a lot of the restructuring internally to continue that and capitalize on it. Probably the biggest change, which outside the company, most folks wouldn't notice immediately, is that we moved at the beginning of this year to a three distinct business unit structure where we're focusing on three parts of the business to go forward. We've got our cloud business unit, which is driving into, as I said, the hyperscalers under Anthony Lye. We've got cloud data center, which is more of the new technologies like HCI and Converge and object storage technology like StorageGRID, and that's, right now that's an incredibly fast growing business for us. Then, of course, we've got our traditional storage software infrastructure business where we have products like E-Series and modernizing the data center, which is primarily driven with this transition to Flash. You've got three BUs now that are maniacally focused on the different areas of the market where we see here's an immediate opportunity in Flash. Here's a slightly longer opportunity in things like hybrid cloud and HCI and Converge infrastructure and a much longer term bet was how does the cloud really become a piece where we're managing between all of those. It lets us be a lot nimble between it. It's almost like three subbusinesses where we're going to market. >> Yeah, Dave, and actually that aligns perfectly with the research we've been doing for over five years from server stand and true private cloud, you've got the hyperscale, you've got the transformation locally in spanning those two, and then you've got that transition from the traditional. >> Oh, I think it's a sound strategy, and it'll serve us well in the years to come. >> There's obviously a lot of noise about artificial intelligence in the marketplace. You've got some companies trying to position to be the platform for machine intelligence or artificial intelligence, what's NetApp's point of view on that? >> Well certainly, we share some of that, but again, I think at the end of the day for us, it's much more important about fine, wherever I'm capturing that artificial intelligence is not likely the place where I'm going to do a lot of the analytics and work on it, so it really does come down to, ya know, am I moving it up to the cloud to do that work, where am I making my big insights, where am I mining through it, and then how am I relating that back, whether it's at the edge or whether it's at the core data center, and again, we think with ONTAP, with the partners that we're going to market with for AI, for ML, IoT, that's the difference maker for us at the end of the day. It's not that we're just another storage company storing the telemetry data off of a car for AI, we're putting it into a format and a form that's usable quickly, efficiently, real time, where Tesla can go make a decision on the car right now, not days, weeks, months from now. >> All right, Bruce, well hey, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate your time and good luck. >> Enjoyed having me, thank you. >> All right, great. >> Good to see you guys. >> All right, keep it right there everybody. We'll be back with our next guest. You're watching VeeamOn 2018, this is theCUBE.

>> Narrator: Live from Midtown Manhattan, it's theCUBE. Covering Big Data New York City 2017. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem sponsors. >> Hello everyone. Welcome back to our CUBE coverage here in New York City, live in Manhattan for theCUBE's coverage of Big Data NYC, our event we've had five years in a row. Eight years covering Big Data, Hadoop World originally in 2010, then it moved to Hadoop Strata Conference, Strata Hadoop, now called Strata Data. In conjunction with that event we have our Big Data NYC event. SiliconANGLE Media's CUBE. I'm John Furrier, your cohost, with Jim Kobielus, analyst at wikibon.com for Big Data. Our next guest is Gus Horn who is the global Big Data analytics and CTO ambassador for NetApp, machine learning, AI, guru, gives talks all around the world. Great to have you, thanks for coming in and spending the time with us. >> Thanks, John, appreciate it. >> So we were talking before the camera came on, you're doing a lot of jet setting really around Evangelize But also educating a lot of folks on the impact of machine learning and AI in particular. Obviously AI we love, we love the hype. It motivates young kids getting into software development, computer science, makes it kind of real for them. But still, a lot more ways to go in terms of what AI really is. And that's good, but what is really going on with AI? Machine learning is where the rubber hits the road. That seems to be the hot air, that's your wheelhouse. Give us the update, where is AI now? Obviously machine learning is super important, it's one of the hot topics here in New York City. >> Well, I think it's super important globally, and it's going to be disruptive. So before we were talking, I said how this is going to be a disruptive technology for all of society. But regardless of that, what machine learning is bringing is a methodology to deal with this influx of IOT data, whether it's autonomous vehicles, active safety in cars, or even looking at predictive analytics for complex manufacturing processes like an automotive assembly line. Can I predict when a welding machine is going to break and can I take care of it during a scheduled maintenance cycle so I don't take the whole line down? Because the impacts are really cascading and dramatic when you have a failure that you couldn't predict. And what we're finding is that Hadoop and the Big Data space is uniquely positioned to help solve these problems, both from quality control and process management and how you can get better uptime, better quality, and then we take it full circle and how can I build an environment to help automotive manufacturers to do test and DEV and retest and retraining and learning of the AI modules and the AI engines that have to exist in these autonomous vehicles. And the only way you can do that is with data, and managing data like a data steward, which is what we do at NetApp. So for us, it's not just about the solution, but the underlying architecture is going to be absolutely critical in setting up the agility you'll need in this environment, and the flexibility you need. Because the other thing that's happening in the space right now is that technology's evolving very quickly. You see this with the DGX from NVIDIA, you see P100 cards from NVIDIA. So I have an architecture that we have in Germany right now where we have multiple NVIDIA cards in our Hadoop cluster that we've architected. But I don't make NVIDIA cards. I don't make servers. I make really good storage. And I have an ecosystem that helps manage where that data is when it needs to be there, and especially when it doesn't need to there so we can get new data. >> Yeah, Gus, we were talking also before camera, the folks watching that you were involved with AI going way back to in your days at MIT, and that's super important. Because a lot of people, the pattern that we're seeing across all the events that we go to, and we'll be at the NetApp event next week, Insight, in Vegas, but the pattern is pretty clear. You have one camp, oh, AI is just the same thing that was going on in the late '70s, '80s, and '90s, but it now has a new dynamic with the cloud. So a lot of people are saying okay, there's been some concepts that have been developed in AI, in computer science, but now with the evolution of hyperconvergence infrastructure, with cloud computing, with now a new architecture, it seems to be turbocharging and accelerating. So I'd like to get your thoughts on why is it so hot now? Obviously machine learning, everyone should be on that, no doubt, but you got the dynamic of the cloud. And NetApp's in the storage business, so that's stores data, I get that. What's the dynamic with the cloud? Because that seems to be the accelerant right now with open source and in with AI. >> Yeah, I think you got to stay focused. The cloud is going to be playing an integral role in everything. And what we do at NetApp as a data steward, and what George Kurian said, our CEO, that data is the currency of today actually, right? It's really fundamentally what drives business value, it's the data. But there's one little slight attribute change that I'd like to add to that, and that it's a perishable commodity. It has a certain value at T-sub zero when you first get it. And especially true when you're trying to do machine learning and you're trying to learn new events and new things, but it rapidly degrades and becomes less valuable. You still need to keep it because it's historical and if we forget historical data, we're doomed to repeat mistakes. So you need to keep it and you have to be a good steward. And that's where we come into play with our technologies. Because we have a portfolio of different kinds of products and management capabilities that move the data where it needs to be, whether you're in the cloud, whether you're near the cloud, like in an Equinox colo, or even on prem. And the key attribute there, and especially in automotive they want to keep the data forever because of liability, because of intellectual property and privacy concerns. >> Hold on, one quick question on that. 'Cause I think you bring up a good point. The perishability's interesting because realtime, we see this now, bashing in realtime is the buzzword in the industry, but you're talking about something that's really important. That the value of the data when you get it fast, in context, is super important. But then the historical piece where you store it also plays into the machine learning dynamics of how deep learning and machine learning has to use the historical perspective. So in a way, it's perishable in the realtime piece in the moment. If you're a self-driving car you want the data in milliseconds 'cause it's important, but then again, the historical data will then come back. Is that kind of where you're getting at with that? >> Yeah, because the way that these systems operate is the paradigm is like deep learning. You want them to learn the way a human learns, right? The only reason we walk on our feet is 'cause we fell down a lot. But we remember falling down, we remember how we got up and could walk. So if you don't have the historical context, you're just always falling down, right? So you have to have that to build up the proper machine learning neural network, the kind of connections you need to do the right things. And then as you get new data and varieties of data, and I'll stick with automotive, because it can almost be thought of as an intractable amount of data. Because most people will keep cars for measured in decades. The quality of the car is incredible now, and they're all just loaded with sensors, right? High definition cameras, radars, GPS tracking. And you want to make sure you get improvements there because you have liability issues coming as well with these same technologies, so. >> Yeah, so we talk about the perishability of the data, that's a given. What is less perishable, it seems to me and Wikibon, is that what you derive from the data, the correlations, the patterns, the predictive models, the meat of machine learning and deep learning, AI in general, is less perishable in the sense that it has a validity over time. What are your thoughts at NetApp about how those data derived assets should be stored, should be managed for backup and recovery and protected? To what extent do those requirements need to be reflected in your storage retention policies if you're an enterprise doing this? >> That's a great question. So I think what we find is that that first landing zone, and everybody talks about that being the cloud. And for me it's a cloudy day, although in New York today it's not. There are lots of clouds and there are lots of other things that come with that data like GDPR and privacy, and what are you allowed to store, what are you allowed to keep? And how do you distinguish one from the other? That's one part. But then you're going to have to ETL it, you're going to have to transform that data. Because like everything, there's a lot of noise. And the noise is really fundamentally not that important. It's those anomalies within the stream of noise that you need to capture. And then use that as your training data, right? So that you learn from it. So there's a lot of processing, I think, that's going to have to happen in the cloud regardless of what cloud, and it has to be kind of ubiquitous in every cloud. And then from there you decide, how am I going to curate the data and move it? And then how am I going to monetize the data? Because that's another part of the equation, and what can I monetize? >> Well that's a question that we hear a lot on theCUBE. On day one we were ripping at some of the concepts that we see, and certainly we talk to enterprise customers. Whether it's a CIO, CVO, chief data officer, chief security officer. There's a huge application development going on in the enterprise right now. You see the opensource booming. This huge security practice is being built up and then it's got this governance with the data. Overlay that with IOT, it's kind of an architectural, I don't want to say reset, but a retrenching for a lot of enterprises. So the question I have for you guys as a critical part of the infrastructure of storage, storage isn't going away, there's no doubt about that, but now the architecture's changing. How are you guys advising your customers? What's your position on when you come into CXO and you give a talk and I said, hey, Gus, the house is on fire, we got so much going on. Bottom line me, what's the architecture? What's best for me, but don't lose the headroom. I need to have some headroom to grow, that's where I see some machine learning, what do I do? >> I think you have to embrace the cloud, and that's one of the key attributes that NetApp brings to the table. We have our core software, our ONTAP software, is in the cloud now. And for us, we want to make sure we make it very easy for our customers to both be in the cloud, be very protected in the cloud with encryption and protection of the data, and also get the scale and all of the benefits of the cloud. But on top of that, we want to make it easy for them to move it wherever they want it to be as well. So for us it's all about the data mobility and the fact that we want to become that data steward, that data engine that helps them drive to where they get the best business value. >> So it's going to be on prem, on cloud. 'Cause I know just for the record, you guys if not the earliest, one of the earliest in with AWS, when it wasn't fashionable. I interviewed you guys on that many years ago. >> And let me ask a related question. What is NetApp's position, or your personal thinking, on what data should be persisted closer to the edge in the new generation of IOT devices? So IOT, edge devices, they do inference, they do actuation and sensing, but they also do persistence. Now should any data be persisted there longterm as part of your overall storage strategy, if you're an enterprise? >> It could be. The question is durability, and what's the impact if for some reason that edge was damaged, destroyed or the data lost. So a lot of times when we start talking about opensource, one of the key attributes we always have to take into account is data durability. And traditionally it's been done through replication. To me that's a very inefficient way to do it, but you have to protect the data. Because it's like if you've got 20 bucks in your wallet, you don't want to lose it, right? You might split it into two 10s, but you still have 20, right? You want that durability and if it has that intrinsic value, you've got to take care of it and be a good steward. So if it's in the edge, it doesn't mean that's the only place it's going to be. It might be in the edge because you need it there. Maybe you need what I call reflexive actions. This is like when a car is well, you have deep learning and machine learning and vision and GPS tracking and all these things there, and how it can stay in the lane and drive, but the sensors themself that are coming from Delphi and Bosch and ZF and all of these companies, they also have to have this capability of being what I call a reflex, right? The reason we can blink and not get a stone in our eye is not because it went to our cerebral cortex. Because it went to the nerve stem and it triggered the blink. >> Yeah, it's cache. And you have to do the same thing in a lot of these environments. So autonomous vehicles is one. It could be using facial recognition for restricting access to a gate. And all the sudden this guy's on a blacklist, and you've stopped the gate. >> Before we get into some of the product questions I have for you, Hadoop in-place analytics, as well as some of the regulations around GDPR, to end the trend segment here is what's your thoughts on decentralization? You see a lot of decentralized apps coming out, you see blockchain getting a lot of traction. Obviously that's a tell sign, certainly in the headroom category of what may be coming down. Not really on the agenda for most enterprises today, but it does kind of indicate that the wave is coming for a lot more decentralization on top of distributed computing and storage. So how do you look at that, as someone who's out on the cutting edge? >> For me it's just yet another industry trend where you have to embrace it. I'm constantly astonished at the people who are trying to push back from things that are coming. To think that they're going to stop the train that's going to run 'em over. And the key is how can we make even those trends better, more reliable, and do the right thing for them? Because if we're the trusted advisor for our customers, regardless of whether or not I'm going to sell a lot of storage to them, I'm going to be the person they're going to trust to give 'em good advice as things change, 'cause that's the one thing that's absolutely coming is change. And oftentimes when you lock yourself into these quote, commodity approaches with a lot of internal storage and a lot of these things, the counterpart to that is that you've also locked yourself in probably for two to four years now, in a technology that you can't be agile with. And this is one of the key attributes for the in-place analytics that we do with our ONTAP product and we also have our E series product that's been around for six plus years in the space, is the defacto performance leader in the space, even. And by decoupling that storage, in some cases very little but it's still connected to the data node, and in other cases where it's shared like an NFS share, that decoupling has enormous benefits from an agility perspective. And that's the key. >> That kind of ties up with the blockchain thing as kind of a tell sign, but you mentioned the in-place analytics. That decoupling gives you a lot more cohesiveness, if you will, in each area. But tying 'em together's critical. How do you guys do that? What's the key feature? Because that's compelling for someone, they want agility. Certainly DevOps' infrastructure code, that's going mainstream, you're seeing that now. That's clearly cloud operation, whatever you want to call it, on prem, off prem. Cloud ops is here. This is a key part of it, what's the unique features of why that works so well? >> Well, some of the unique features we have, so if we look at your portfolio products, so I'll stick with the ONTAP product. One of the key things we have there is the ability to have incredible speed with our AFF product, but we can also Dedoop it, we can clone it, and snapshot it, snapshotting it into, for example, NPS or NetApp Private Storage, which is in Equinox. And now all the sudden I can now choose to go to Amazon, or I can go to Azure, I can go to Google, I can go to SoftLayer. It gives me options as a customer to use whoever has got the best computational engine. Versus I'm stuck there. I can now do what's right for my business. And I also have a DR strategy that's quite elegant. But there's one really unique attribute too, and that's the cloning. So a lot of my big customers have 1000 plus node traditional Hadoop clusters, but it's nearly impossible for them to set up a test DEV environment with production data without having an enormous cost. But if I put it in my ONTAP, I can clone that. I can make hundreds of clones very efficiently. >> That gets the cost of ownership down, but more importantly gets the speed to getting Sandboxes up and running. >> And the Sandboxes are using true production data so that you don't have to worry about oh, I didn't have it in my test set, and now I have a bug. >> A lot of guys are losing budget because they just can't prove it and they can't get it working, it's too clunky. All right, cool, I want to get one more thing in before we run out of time. The role of machine learning we talked about, that's super important. Algorithms are going to be here, it's going to be a big part of it, but as you look at that policy, where the foundational policy governance thing is huge. So you're seeing GDPR, I want to get your comments on the impact of GDPR. But in addition to GDPR, there's going to be another Equifax coming, they're out there, right? It's inevitable. So as someone who's got code out there, writing algorithms, using machine learning, I don't want to rewrite my code based upon some new policy that might come in tomorrow. So GDPR is one we're seeing that you guys are heavily involved in. But there might be another policy I might want to change, but I don't want to rewrite my software. How should a CXO think about that dynamic? Not rewriting code if a new governance policy comes in, and then the GDPR's obvious. >> I don't think you can be so rigid to say that you don't want to rewrite code, but you want to build on what you have. So how can I expand what I already have as a product, let's say, to accommodate these changes? Because again, it's one of those trains. You're not going to stop it. So GDPR, again, it's one of these disruptive regulations that's coming out of EMEA. But what we forget is that it has far reaching implications even in the United States. Because of their ability to reach into basically the company's pocket and fine them for violations. >> So what's the impact of the Big Data system on GDPR? >> It can potentially be huge. The key attribute there is you have to start when you're building your data lakes, when you're building these things, you always have to make sure that you're taking into account anonymizing personal identifying information or obfuscating it in some way, but it's like with everything, you're only as strong as your weakest link. And this is again where NetApp plays a really powerful role because in our storage products, we actually can encrypt the data at rest, at wire speed. So it's part of that chain. So you have to make sure that all of the parts are doing that because if you have data at rest in a drive, let's say, that's inside your server, it doesn't take a lot to beat the heck out of it and find the data that's in there if it's not encrypted. >> Let me ask you a quick question before we wrap up. So how does NetApp incorporate ML or AI into these kinds of protections that you offer to customers? >> Well for us it's, again, we're only as successful as our customers are, and what NetApp does as a company, we'll just call us the data stewards, that's part of the puzzle, but we have to build a team to be successful. So when I travel around the world, the only reason a customer is successful is because they did it with a team. Nobody does it on an island, nobody does it by themself, although a lot of times they think they can. So it's not just us, it's our server vendors that work with us, it's the other layers that go on top of it, companies like Zaloni or BlueData and BlueTalon, people we've partnered with that are providing solutions to help drive this for our customers. >> Gus, great to have you on theCUBE. Looking forward to next week. I know you're super busy at NetApp InSight. I know you got like five major talks you're doing but if we can get some time I think you'd be great. My final question, a personal one. We were talking that you're a search and rescue in Tahoe in case there's an avalanche, a lost skier. A lot of enterprises feel lost right now. So you kind of come in a lot and the avalanche is coming, the waves or whatever are coming, so you probably seen situations. You don't need to name names, but talk about what should someone do if they're lost? You come in, you can do a lot of consulting. What's the best advice you could give someone? A lot of CXOs and CEOs, their heads are spinning right now. There's so much on the table, so much to do, they got to prioritize. >> It's a great question. And here's the one thing is don't try to boil the ocean. You got to be hyper-focused. If you're not seeing a return on investment within 90 days of setting up your data lake, something's going wrong. Either the scope of what you're trying to do is too large, or you haven't identified the use case that will give you an immediate ROI. There should be no hesitation to going down this path, but you got to do it in a manner where you're tackling the biggest problems that have the best hit value for you. Whether it's ETLing goes into your plan of record systems, your enterprise data warehouses, you got to get started, but you want to make sure you have measurable, tangible success within 90 days. And if you don't, you have to reset and say okay, why is that not happening? Am I reinventing the wheel because my consultant said I have to write all this SCOOP and Flume code and get the data in? Or maybe I should have chosen another company to be a partner that's done this 1000 times. And it's not a science experiment. We got to move away from science experiment to solving business problems. >> Well science experiments and boiling of the ocean is don't try to overreach, build a foundational building block. >> The successful guys are the ones who are very disciplined and they want to see results. >> Some call it baby steps, some call it building blocks, but ultimately the foundation right now is critical. >> Gus: Yeah. >> All right, Gus, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great day, great to chat with you. Great conversation about machine learning impact to organizations. theCUBE bringing you the data here live in Manhattan. I'm John Furrier, Jim Kobielus with Wikibon. More after this short break. We'll be right back. (digital music) (synthesizer music)