>>The Cube presents Ignite 22, brought to you by Palo Alto Networks. >>Hey guys, welcome back to the Cube, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage. We are live in Las Vegas at MGM Grand Hotel, Lisa Martin with Dave Valante, covering our first time covering Palo Alto Ignite. 22 in person. Dave, we've had some great conversations so far. We've got two days of wall to wall coverage. We're gonna be talking with Palo Alto execs, leaders, customers, partners, and we're gonna be talking about the partner ecosystem >>Next. Wow. Super important. You know, it's funny you talk about for a minute, you didn't know where we were. I, I came to Vegas in May. I feel like I never left two weeks ago reinvent, which was I, I thought the most awesome reinvent ever. And it was really all about the ecosystem and the marketplace. So super excited to have that >>Conversation. Yeah, we've got Wet Whit Krump joining us, director of America's business development worldwide channels and customer programs at AWS marketplace. Wet, welcome to the Cube. Great to have >>You. Thanks for having me. Give >>Us a, you got a big title there. Give us a little bit of flavor of your scope of work at aws. >>Yeah, sure. So I, I've been with the marketplace team now almost eight years and originally founded our channel programs. And my scope has expanded to not just cover channels, but all things related to customers. So if you think about marketplace having sort of two sides, one being very focused on the isv, I tend to manage all things related to our in customer and our, our channel partners. >>What are some of the feedback that you're getting from customers and channel partners as the marketplace has has evolved so much? >>Yeah. You know, it's, it's, it's been interesting to watch over the course of the years, getting to see it start its infancy and grow up. One of the things that we hear often from customers and from our channel partners, and maybe not so directly, is it's not about finding the things they necessarily want to buy, although that's important, but it's the actual act of how they're able to purchase things and making that a much more streamlined process, especially in large enterprises where there's a lot of complexity. We wanna make that a lot simple, simpler for our customers. >>I mean, vendor management is such a hassle, right? But, so when I come into the marketplace, it's all there. I gotta console, it's integrated, I choose what I want. The billing is simplified. How has that capability evolved since the time that you've been at aws and where do you, where do you want to take it? >>Yeah, so when we, we first started Marketplace, it was really a pay as you go model customer come, they buy whatever, you know, whatever the, the whatever the solution was. And then it was, you know, charged by the hour and then the year. And one of the things that we discovered through customer and partner feedback was especially when they're dealing with large enterprise purchases, you know, they want to be able to instantiate those custom price and terms, you know, into that contract while enjoying the benefits of, of marketplace. And that's been, I think the biggest evolution started in 2017 with private offers, 2018 with consulting partner private offers. And then we've added things on over time to streamline procurement for, for >>Customers. So one of the hottest topics right now, everybody wants to talk about the macro and the headwinds and everything else, but when you talk to customers like, look, I gotta do more with less, less, that's the big theme. Yeah. And, and I wanna optimize my spend. Cloud allows me to do that because I can dial down, I can push storage to, to lower tiers. There's a lot of different things that I can do. Yeah. What are the techniques that people are using in the ecosystem Yeah. To bring in the partner cost optimization. Yeah. >>And so one of the key things that, that partners are, are, are doing for customers, they act as that trusted advisor. And, you know, when using marketplace either directly or through a partner, you know, customers are able to really save money through a licensing flexibility. They're also able to streamline their procurement. And then if there's an at-risk spin situation, they're able to, to manage that at-risk spend by combining marketplace and AWS spin into into one, you know, basically draws down their commitments to, to the company. >>And we talk about ask at-risk spend, you might talk about user or lose IT type of spend, right? Yeah. And so you, you increase the optionality in terms of where you can get value from your cloud spend. That's >>All right. Customers are thinking about their, their IT spend more strategically now more than ever. And so they're not just thinking about how do I buy infrastructure here and then software here, data services, they wanna combine this into one place. It's a lot less to keep up with a lot, a lot less overhead for them. But also just the simplification that you alluded to earlier around, you know, all the billing and vendor management is, and now in one, one streamlined, one streamlined process. Talk >>About that as a facilitator of organizations being able to reduce their risk profile. >>Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that, that came out earlier this year with Forrester was a to were total economic impact studies for both an ISV and for the end customer. But there was also a thought leadership study done where they surveyed over 700 customers worldwide to sort of get their thoughts on procurement and risk profile management. And, and one of the things that was really, you know, really surprising was is was that, you know, I guess it was like over 78% of of respondents DEF stated that they didn't feel like their, their companies had a really well-defined governance model and that over half of software and data purchases actually went outside of procurement. And so the companies aren't really able to, don't, they don't really have eyes on all of this spin and it's substantial >>And that's a, a huge risk for the organization. >>Yeah. Huge risk for the organization. And, and you know, half of the respondents stated outright that like they viewed marketplaces a way for them to reduce their risk profile because they, they were able to have a better governance model around that. >>So what's the business case can take us through that. How, how should a customer think about that? So, okay, I get that the procurement department likes it and the CFO probably likes it, but how, what, what's the dynamic around the business? So if I'm a, let's say I'm, I'm a bus, I'm a business person, I'm a, and running the process, I got my little, I get my procurement reach around. Yeah. What does the data suggest that what's in it from me, right? From a company wide standpoint, you know, what are the, maybe the Forester guys address this. So yeah, that overall business case I think is important. >>Yeah, I think, I think one of the big headlines for the end customer is because of license flexibility is that is is about a 10% cost savings in, in license cost. They're able to right size their purchases to buy the things they actually need. They're not gonna have these big overarching ELAs. There's gonna be a lot of other things in there that, that they don't, they don't really aren't gonna really directly use. You're talking about shelfware, you know, that sort of the classic term buy something, it never gets used, you know, also from just a, a getting things done perspective, big piece of feedback from customers is the contracting process takes a long time. It takes several months, especially for a large purchase. And a lot of those discussions are very repetitive. You know, you're talking about the same things over and over again. And we actually built a feature called standardized contract where we talked to a number of customers and ISVs distilled a contract down into a, a largely a set of terms that both sides already agreed to. And it cuts that, that contract time down by 90%. So if you're a legal team in a company, there's only so many of you and you have a lot of things to get done. If you can shave 90% off your time, that that's, that's now you can now work on a lot of other things for the, the corporation. Right. >>A lot of business impact there. You think faster time to value, faster time to market workforce optimization. >>Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it, it, you know, from an ISV standpoint, the measurement is they're, they're able to close deals about 40% faster, which is great for the isv. I mean obviously they love that. But if you're a customer, you're actually getting the innovative technologies you need 40% faster. So you can actually do the work you want to take it to your customers and drive the business. >>You guys recently launched, what is it, vendor Insights? Yeah. Talk a little bit about that, the value. What are some of the things that you're seeing with that? >>Yeah, so that goes into the, the onboarding value add of marketplaces. The number of things that go into, to cutting that time according to Forrester by 75%. But Vendor Insights was based on a key piece, offa impact from customers. So, you know, marketplace is used for, one of the reasons is discoverability by customers, Hey, what is the broader landscape? Look for example of security or storage partners, you know, trying to, trying to understand what is even available. And then the double click is, alright, well how does that company, or how does that vendor fit into my risk profile? You know, understanding what their compliance metrics are, things of that nature. And so historically they would have to, a customer would've to go to an ISV and say, all right, I want you to fill out this form, you know that my questionnaire. And so they would trade this back and forth as they have questions. Now with vendor insights, a customer can actually subscribe to this and they're able to actually see the risk profile of that vendor from the inside out, you know, from the inside of their SaaS application, what does it look like on a real time basis? And they can go back and look at that whenever they want. And you know, the, the, the feedback since the launch has been fantastic. And that, and I think that helps us double down on the already the, the onboarding benefits that we are providing customers. >>This, this, I wanna come back to this idea of cost optimization and, and try to tie it into predictability. You know, a lot of people, you know, complain, oh, I got surprised at the end of the month. So if I understand it wit by, by leveraging the marketplace and the breadth that you have in the marketplace, I can say, okay, look, I'm gonna spend X amount on tech. Yeah. And, and this approach allows me to say, all right, because right now procurement or historically procurement's been a bunch of stove pipes, I can't take from here and easily put it over there. Right. You're saying that this not only addresses the sort of cost optimization, does it also address the predictability challenge? >>Yeah, and I, I think another way to describe that is, is around cost controls. And you know, just from a reporting perspective, you know, we, we have what are called cost utilization reports or curve files. And we provide those to customers anytime they want and they can load those into Tableau, use whatever analysis tools that they want to be able to use. And so, and then you can actually tag usage in those reports. And what we're really talking about is helping customers adopt thin op practices. So, you know, develop directly for the cloud customers are able to understand, okay, who's using what, when and where. So everyone's informed that creates a really collaborative environment. It also holds people accountable for their spin. So that, you know, again, talking about shelfware, we bought things we're not gonna use or we're overusing people are using software that they probably don't really need to. And so that's, that adds to that predictable is everyone has great visibility into what's happening. And there's >>Another, I mean, of course saving money is, is, is in vogue right now because you know, the headwinds and the economics, et cetera. But there's also another side of the equation, which is, I mean, I see this a lot. You know, the CFO says financial people, why is our cloud bill so high? Well it's because we're actually driving all this revenue. And so, you know, you've seen it so many so often in companies, you know, the, the spreadsheet analysis says, oh, cut that. Well, what happens to revenue if you cut that? Right? Yeah. So with that visibility, the answer may be, well actually if we double down on that, yeah, we're actually gonna make more money cuz we actually have a margin on this and it's, it's got operating leverage. So if we double that, you know, we could, so that kind of cross organization communication to make better decisions, I think is another key factor. Yeah. >>Huge impact there. Talk ultimately about how the buyer's journey seems to have been really transformed >>The >>Correct. Right? So if you're, if you're a buyer, you know, initially to your point is, you know, I'm just looking for a point solution, right? And then you move on to the next one and the next one. And now, you know, working with our teams and using the platform, you know, and frankly customers are thinking more strategically about their IT spend holistically. The conversations that we're having with us is, it's not about how do I find the solution today, but here's my forward looking software spend, or I'm going through a migration, I wanna rationalize the software portfolio I have today as I'm gonna lift and shift it to aws. You know, what is going to make the trip? What are we gonna discard entirely because it's not really optimized for the cloud. Or there's that shelf wheel component, which is, hey, you know, maybe 15 to 25% of my portfolio, it's just not even getting utilized. And that, and that's a sunk cost to your point, which is, you know, that's, that's money I could be using on something that really impacts the bottom line in various areas of the business. Right. >>What would you say is the number one request you get or feedback you get from the end customers? And how is that different from what you hear from the channel partners? How aligned or Yeah. Are those >>Vectors? I would say from a customer perspective, one of the key things I hear about is around visibility of spin, right? And I was just talking about these reports and you know, using cost optimization tools, being able to use features like identity and access management, managing entitlements, private marketplaces. Basically them being able to have a stronger governance model in the cloud. For one thing, it's, it's, you know, keeping everybody on track like some of the points I was talking about earlier, but also cost, cost optimization around, you know, limiting vendor sprawl. Are we actually really using all the things that we need? And then from a channel partner perspective, you know, some of the things I talked about earlier about that 40% faster sales cycle, you know, that that TEI or the total economic impact study that was done by Forrester was, was built for the isv. >>But if you're a channel partner sitting between the customer and the isv, you kind of get to, you get a little bit of the best of both worlds, right? You're acting as that, you're acting as that that advisor. And so if you're a channel partner, the procurement streamlining is a huge benefit because the, you know, like you said, saving money is in vogue right now. You're trying to do more with less. So if you're thinking about 20, 27% faster win rates, 40% faster time to close, and you're the customer who's trying to impact the bottom line by, by innovating more, more quickly, those two pieces of feedback are really coming together and meeting in, in the middle >>Throughout 2021, or sorry, 2022, our survey partner, etr Enterprise Technology Research has asked their panel a question is what's your strategy for, you know, doing more with less? By far the number one response has been consolidating redundant vendors. Yes. And then optimizing cloud was, you know, second, but, but way, way lower than that. The number from last survey went from 34%. It's now up to 44% in the January survey, which is in the field, which they gave me a glimpse to last night. So you're seeing dramatic uptick Yeah. In that point. Yeah. And then you guys are helping, >>We, we definitely are. I mean, it, there's the reporting piece so they have a better visibility of what they're doing. And then you think about a, a feature like private marketplace and manage entitlements. So private marketplace enables a customer to create their own private marketplace as the name states where they can limit access to it for certain types of software to the actual in customer who needs to use that software. And so, you know, not everybody needs a license to software X, right? And so that helps with the sprawl comment to your point, that's, that's on the increase, right? Am I actually spending money on things that we need to use? >>But also on the consolidation front, you, we, we talked with nikesh an hour or so ago, he was mentioning on stage, if you, if you just think of this number of security tools or cybersecurity tools that an organization has on its network, 30 to 50. And we were talking about, well, how does Palo Alto Networks what's realistic in terms of consolidation? But it sounds like what you're doing in the marketplace is giving organizations the visibility, correct, for sure. Into what they're running, usage spend, et cetera, to help facilitate ultimately at some point facilitate a strategic consolidation. >>It's, that's exactly right. And if you, you think about cost optimization, our procurement features, you know, the, the practice that we're trying to help customers around, around finops, it's all about helping customers build a, a modern procurement practice and supply chain. And so that helps with, with that point exactly. The keynotes >>Point. Exactly. So last question for you. What, what's next? What can we expect? >>Oh, so what's next for me is, you know, I, I really want to, you know, my channel business for example, you know, I want to think about enabling new types of partners. So if we've worked really heavily with resellers, we worked very heavily with Palo Alto on the reseller community, how are we bringing in more services partners of various types? You know, the gsi, the distributors, cloud service providers, managed security service providers was in a keynote yesterday listening to Palo Alto talk about their five routes to market. And, you know, they had these bubbles. And so I was like, gosh, that's exactly how I'm thinking about the business is how am I expanding my own footprint to customers that have deeper, I mean, excuse me, to partners that have deeper levels of cloud knowledge, can be more of that advisor, help customers really understand how to maximize their business on aws. And, and you know, my job is to really help facilitate that, that innovative technology through those partners. >>So sounds like powerful force, that ecosystem. Exactly. Great alignment. AWS and Palo Alto, thank you so much for joining us with, we >>Appreciate, thanks for having >>With what's going on at aws, the partner network, the mp, and all that good stuff. That's really the value in it for customers, ISVs and channel partners. I like. We appreciate your insights. >>Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. >>Our guests and Dave Valante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube Lee Leer in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>> "theCube" presents Dell Technologies World, brought to you by Dell. >> Hey everyone, Welcome back to "theCube's" continuing coverage of Dell Technologies World 2022. Live from the show floor in Las Vegas. We have been here since Monday evening. About seven to 8,000 folks here. It's been a fantastically well-attended event that Dell has done. Lots of talk about announcements, including APEX. Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante are going to unpack more of APEX with our next two Cube alumni who are returning, Akanksha Mehrotra, VP of APEX product marketing joins us, and Chad Dunn, VP of product management APEX. Guys, welcome back. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> It is really great to be back. >> So just in case there's anybody out there that's been under a rock since Monday, APEX has now been what GA for a year, celebrating a momentous year and some big news. Akanksha, walk us through that and then talk about some of the feedback that you've gotten on what you guys announced just two days ago. >> Yeah. So it's been an exciting week like you said. APEX just for sort of background is our portfolio of as-a-service solutions, we introduced it a year ago. We have now 10 plus services in our portfolio. We added our very first full stack managed service for cyber recovery this week. The feedback from customers over the past year and then the conversations we've had, you know, over the course of this week has been phenomenal. If I had to really summarize it, I would say the pain point that we're looking to solve, helping organizations manage data across disparate and fragmented environments across a variety of clouds, you know, on-premises, in a co-lo, on the far edge, at a hyperscale or in the telco edge is resonating. This is a pain point... This is very real pain point for them. And our goal in our vision to create a consistent and a secure experience across all of these different, you know, silos of data, if you will. It's something that they really want more of from us. >> Chad, talk a little bit about the influence of the customer in the last couple of years. Well, in the last year, in terms of releasing the cyber recovery solution on APEX, we have seen the threat landscape massively change. >> It increases every day. >> It increases every day, ransomware is no longer a... Is it going to happen too? It's a matter of when? >> Yes. >> Talk to us about the influence of the customer of this being the first full stack solution on APEX. >> Sure, like I don't think there's a boardroom in the world where this isn't being discussed as just such a high risk environment for cyber techs. It's damaging to lose your data. It's damaging to your reputation, it's financially damaging. So it's incredibly important into our customers. And we're finding that, you know, many of them don't necessarily have all the expertise to be able to defend against it themselves. And so that's where an as-a-service solution, like the one that we're offering really makes sense to them, right? They're much more apt to consume as-a-service when the competency doesn't necessarily already exist in their IT organizations. So we've been doing this for a few years as a solution with managed services. And in fact, we've deployed over 2000 of these, and making that a standardized offering with T-shirt sizing, subscription basis, really seems to be a winner. And every customer I've talked to has been absolutely over the moon with it. >> All right, so we have Chad in product management, Akanksha, you're in product marketing. So you knew going into this, that it was going to be different. So I'm interested in kind of what your learnings were, that internal transformation, which is ongoing now, I understand that, but how did it change how you manage, you know, deploy the life cycle of the product and communicate that. >> I'll get us started and I'm sure Chad will add on. So, you know, to your point, when we started this journey internally before we started it externally, we knew this was going to be a multi-year transformation for us. And a multi-year transformation that affects every part of the company, how we build products, how we market products, how we bring them to market, how we sell them, et cetera. And so we made a very conscious effort to kind of secure that buy-in early on. And it starts Michael on down. This is a strategic priority for him as I'm sure both of you know. And each function has kind of established, you know, areas where they know they need to transform and a north star goal for where they want to get to. So I'll speak for marketing as a place that's, you know, close to my heart. One, we know as we get into this space, we're going to be talking to different types of folks and having conversations with different types of personas within an account than we have had before. Using cyber recovery solution as an example, yes, we want to talk to, you know, IT administrators and CIO who we've been talking to. But as Chad said, this is something that CISOs care about. This is something that security teams care about. That those are a different set of personas for us to market to, to communicate with, whose pain points we need to understand better. So that's an example of a change. Another one is moving from a... I mean, events like this are great, and we certainly love to be back in person, but in as-a-service model, you want to have much more frequent communication with your intended audiences. So we've moved to more of an always on-marketing motion leveraging our blog, leveraging other vehicles. And that's that has also been a transformation for us. >> On the marketing side, I'm curious, sorry, Dave. Chad, you brought up one of the big things that is a huge challenge for any organization and any industry with respect to the cybersecurity in that threat landscape is brand reputation. >> Yeah. >> Are you having more conversations at the CMO level? I'm just curious if they're involved in this. We got to make sure that we don't have... We're not the next one on the news because customers will churn like crazy. Is that at all part of the conversation than persona change? >> It is certainly part of it. But, you know, we don't want to be motivated by fear, right? We want to be motivated by preparation and securing the business and growing the business. So, you know, it is a sea level discussion to, you know, understand how we need to protect our critical data. But it's really from a lens of, you know, how do we grow and we grow more quickly? And you know, if you look at APEX overall, yes, we've made a lot of internal changes to get where we are and we're going to continue to make those. And I'll talk through some examples. But this is also a journey for our customers, right? The change to, you know, consuming by the drip, consuming APEX, consuming as-a-service, you could take two companies with identical size and an identical vertical, and they're going to have different priorities about how they want to consume this infrastructure and these services. So we're on that journey with them just as we have to transform ourselves internally, from the way that we do accounting, from the way that we do sales compensation, from the way that we actually build product. And in fact, we just changed up the model by which we're, you know, developing product in APEX today. So I'm about 90 days into my role in APEX. I came from the HCI business. And I'm here with my engineering leader who was also in the HCI business. So we were able to be fortunate enough to work in an organization that went from zero to 4 billion in pretty quickly. So, Hey, let's see if we can apply some of that learning to this. But it's an incredible partnership inside of Dell with people like Dell Digital and our transformation office. Because we've done things roughly the same way for about 30 years. And this is all very new to us. So it's pretty amazing journey. >> I'm interested in what's different. You weren't first to market. The public cloud guys might say, "Eh, it's not cloud." >> No. >> Okay, so how are you different than public cloud and how are you different from your traditional on-prem competitors? >> Again, I'll get us started and chime in. I would say... I'll take your first example. I want to go back to kind of what our customers... Where they want help from us and what are they're asking us for. As I said, the debate is over. They have told us pretty definitively, and our data and your data shows it, that they will and the data will continue to grow in all these different fragmented silos. What they want is an experience that orchestrated across all of these different environments, by a vendor that they trust, right? And that's what we are committed to delivering to them. That's our north star, that's where we're going. I would argue that any one of the hyperscalers don't have incentives to kind of make that same experience happen across all those different environments. A vendor like Dell, who has been trusted by many years... You know, for many years from our customer, who doesn't have a single dog in the race, but is looking to partner with folks across the entire ecosystem, is looking to innovate with our software, our services, and our infrastructure is best positioned to help them orchestrate across. >> Yeah. Well, you know, if you're wondering what's different, you really have to look at what the value proposition is for public clouds versus keeping data on-prem or keeping it in a place where it's accessible to multiple clouds. You know, I think if you haven't been under a rock here at the show, you know it is all about multi-cloud, and you know that we're, you know, absolutely embracing it from, you know, Project Alpine where we're putting storage endpoints in public cloud, to what we're doing with APEX and our data storage services and the move of our customers into co-locations where the data can be accessible to multiple clouds. I think that getting the commerce capabilities in place that we've done over the course of the last year is a great first step. But look for us to double down on the day two management and operations, using that platform that we've created for APEX. And that's going to allow us to create more velocity and bring more solutions into the fold more quickly, and then provide more day two management optimization operation of the solutions by our customers. >> Okay. Sorry. So definitely agree with the public cloud. And I got to trust them to do my multi-cloud or what I call super-cloud. What about your traditional competitors? Is it the normal sort of what we'd expect for the Dell differentiators portfolio, supply chain, et cetera, or are there APEX specific differentiators? >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so there are absolutely the Dell differentiators of the breadth of our sales force through both our direct sales teams as well as our partners, our secure supply chain, our services team, and the expertise that they've built, which we're obviously bringing to bear with this market and this offer. Those are kind of the Dell wide advantages that we bring to bear with this. But specifically for APEX against the traditional on-prem competitors, I would say the simplicity with which we are bringing our offers to market is a differentiator for us. And it's one that our customers in the past year have retreated back to us. So the commerce experience that Chad was just talking about, we have made very conscious efforts to simplify and abstract the way that complexity from our customers, so that they are picking very easy to understand outcomes that they care about. And then not really worry about the peace parts, whether it's the hardware, the software, or the services that help make that service level outcome happen. I would argue, you know, some of the other competitors, traditional competitors that we have haven't done that. And it's more of a... You know, that complexity is still there. And what we hear from our customers is, I want the simplicity and agility that public cloud provides. That's something that hyperscalers did get right. And we're bringing that experience to our infrastructure. >> Yeah. Like I think the other way that we'll differentiate ourselves is going to be by the breadth of the solutions, right? So we've got a tremendous amount of IP in solutions like cyber recovery, right? This wasn't a new thing for us. This is something we've been doing for a few years as there's tremendous consulting capabilities, services capabilities, the underlying products of course. Well, there's a pipeline of solutions lined up behind that. So as we move into high performance computer as-a-service, MLOps as-a-service, we can draw on those solutions that we've offered, but in a very custom way in the past now at a high velocity manner in the console. >> Well, the high velocity these days is critical. As we've seen the last two years, things have changed so dramatically for customers in every industry that needed to pivot with speed and accelerate their transformation. >> And the transparency. Right? So going back to his example, having that price transparency. You can go to our website and look at the pricing, pick in the two or three very simple options and see it right there and order it through the console. In a matter of minutes versus, you know, wait for two weeks to get the code and then wait for a month to get the hardware, and then wait for the services team to show up. So what we are hearing... I mean, we have truly been able to take deployments that used to take several months to a matter of days. And so that's how the simplicity kind of, you know, pays off not only in that initial deployment, but over the course of the subscription, the day two operations that Chad was just talking about and the innovation and the work that we're doing to simplify their lives in that process, allow them to focus in other areas. >> Oh, absolutely. That time to value, time to market has never been more critical. And the ability, to your point, Akanksha, to allow folks to be able to focus more on the strategic initiatives that will actually help move the business for... Add value, move the business forward and allow it to be competitive and differentiate itself is critical for everybody in every industry. Chad, I wanted to kind of pivot on multi-cloud for a second. You talked about that. And we had Chuck Whit on yesterday. He was talking about, you know, multi-cloud. A lot of organizations, many, many, many in multi-cloud by default. But what Dell wants to do is change that, multi-cloud by design. Is APEX going to be a facilitator of multi-cloud by design? Talk to us about that for customers. >> We absolutely will be. So if you look at what made customers multi-cloud by default, it's them going for the services that exist in the cloud and looking for best of breed services. Whether it's machine learning, speech recognition, database, they're going to those best of breed players. And so the value proposition for us is since you're in those clouds, you want access to your data and you want it centrally, so you can see it, leverage it, use it from any of those clouds, but you may have other reasons for keeping your data or even your compute on-prem or in a co-location. It could be data sovereignty, it could be policy compliance, it could be data gravity. So we want to make the concept of having your workloads or your data anywhere, very seamless for our customers, right? So it's really embracing the concept of multi-cloud and making it easier. >> The cyber recovery solution is really interesting to me. I was talking to one of the partners here and they said, "Dave, this was a really good show for us." And they probably had a quasi competitive solution. I don't really know. But like a lot of customers and, you know, got a lot of leads out of it. So it's the hot topic and that's what they said. This is cyber, everybody wants cyber. So how did that solution come together? Because I know you... You really... You've always been security conscious. But I never really full cracked the security solution. And now here it is in APEX, it's like, boom, out of the box or out of the service. How'd that come about? >> It really started back in 2014, specifically. It's funny when you can point to an event where, you know, something started like this. So there was a fairly high profile ransomware attack in 2014. And that caused us to look at the assets that we had from our data protection portfolio, from a software and storage perspective and say, "Hey, we can put something together that can really address this, right? Through novel use of existing technology." So we built out reference architectures. We built out the consulting service on how you protect your data. We partnered and built software to be able to secure the data in an air gaped imutable vault and offer the services to be able to manage that, monitor that, restore the data when needed. So we did that in a very custom way for years. In fact, as I said, over 2,000 systems deployed this way. So having a vehicle like APEX that has the as-a-service capability built in, the subscription capability built in, the ease and velocity of purchasing and operating was really a natural fit. So you know, we expect this is going to be a very high volume solution for us. >> Great. Awesome. >> Akanksha, can you talk a little bit about the partner ecosystem involved here in APEX? You know, when I think about ransomware in data protection, I think organizations need to be able to protect apps, users, data platforms. But we think of how data is so spread out, customers want that single pane of glass to be able to manage all that and know that that data is protected. Talk to us about how you're working with partners. I know the partner ecosystem at Dell's huge. How are you working with partners and how can they build upon APEX? >> Yeah So our partners are a very important part of our ecosystem. They help expand our reach. They also help complement our capabilities. You know, for example, in specific verticals. They may have services or expertise in a particular area. For the APEX portfolio, we actually offer a wide variety of ways for partners to engage with us. Starting out, they could refer our solutions and refer, you know, some of our services, if they want to take more of an advisory role in some capacity. They could resell our services with additional services included. In this scenario, for example, they would leverage our console, include some of their services in there and then offer it to their end customers. They could host APEX offers in their own data center or in a co-lo data center and build their practice on top of it. A lot of our partners and customers, we've got kind of joint customer partners that for example, have built a healthcare practice on top of an APEX solution, where they've added their services or built their business on top of it. And then finally, there's of course, technology and ISV partners, right? And that is where we might leverage, you know, some of their technology, built it to be part of a service or a solution that we're doing and join the go-to market. So I think the answer is lots of ways for partners to engage with APEX. And we absolutely are engaging with them in a wide variety of ways. And I think cyber recovery is no different. >> Well, there must be not a dull moment with what you guys have going on with APEX. Thank you for taking some time to talk to us about that. Sounds like the momentous year that you've had is going to continue. And it sounds like you've gotten great feedback from the customers and the partner so far. Thank you for joining "theCube" and telling us what's going on. And we can't wait to hear more next year. I'm sure there will be lots more next year. >> Yes indeed. >> Absolutely. Thank you very much. >> For our guests and Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, and you're watching "theCube's" coverage of Dell Technologies World 2022, live from Las Vegas. Stick around, we'll be right back with our next guest. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: Live from Orlando, Florida, it's the Cube. Covering Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. Brought to you by SiliconAngle Media. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of the Grace Hopper Conference, here in Orlando Florida. I'm your host Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host Jeff Frick. We're joined by Sarah Clatterback. She's the Senior Director of Engineering at LinkedIn, and Erica Lockheimer, the head of Growth Engineering at LinkedIn. Thanks so much for coming on the show, again. >> Yes, thank you. >> Thanks for having us again. >> We're getting the band back together. >> Absolutely. >> So before the cameras were rolling you were talking about the exciting initiatives and programs you have at LinkedIn. One of them that definitely caught Jeff's imagination was Reach. It's sort of a cross-fit for engineers. So tell us more about Reach. >> Yeah, so Reach is a program where we wanted to really look at how we're hiring talent in a different way. So one of the things, actually it was an inspiration of a candidate that we had at Grace Hopper last year, where she had come and she gave us her resume. >> Yep. >> Abby, and she said "I can't get an engineering job. I did a boot camp but no one will hire me. I don't have enough experience." And she really was the catalyst that really created the program. We said, we need to look at talent in a very different way. So we decided, it stemmed also from her and also from Whit where if there's working mothers, how do they get back into the workforce? So these two ideas started coming together, and we said, why not create a program where we can maybe have them come to LinkedIn, get their skills back up, teach them how to code, and eventually work at LinkedIn. So we kicked off the program, and we did very little media, and we had over 700 people apply, and we went through 500 applications, and had 30 candidates at LinkedIn. So they just finished the end of the group session, but they are converting. They're learning how to code. They're checking code live to the site, and these are people from different backgrounds. As a veteran, returning back to work, even some people that have been in a bad situation of being homeless. I mean, this is talking about, not only about career transformation, but transforming their lives. And it's such a special program that has just changed the way that we're thinking about hiring. I don't know if you want to add anything. >> Yeah, I mean, I think that it's had a great impact on our company. I think, the way we think about hiring, but also how the whole team has interacted and really come together to support these apprentices, in being successful as engineers. So I've seen it actually transform the entire culture of our engineering team through this whole program. >> It's interesting, you use the word apprenticeship . And I think of that too, 'cause there's always the talk, right, about technology taking jobs. On the other hand, we hear over and over, there's all these open tech jobs. There's nobody to fill them. >> Yes. >> And then you got the transition with the truck drivers that are all going to be displaced by autonomous trucks, in the not distant future. So it's interesting as you point out, to kind of rethink, kind of the classic, go to school do your time, come in at the bottom and work your way up. Because there needs to be a much more variant to be able to get people to retrain, to take people through various backgrounds. And are you seeing that reflected, 'cause you guys, obviously, represent a bunch of companies that are looking for people. Are you seeing a broader adoption of this kind of non-traditional approach to getting talent? >> Well, it's a program that we started off as a pilot. >> Okay. >> We are definitely going to do a second round. So we would love to share and open source how we're doing it and we'd love to have other companies thinking this way. But it's truly, back to Sarah's point, it's really not only transformed our culture, but it's even thinking about how we're hiring. We're in hiring committee every single week, and we start looking at these candidates, like oh, it looks like a Reach candidate. Before you would've maybe bypassed them and said oh they're not ready. This is now a different way to invest. But I definitely want more companies to do this, and we'll pilot, we'll share it, we'll open source it, and it will be fantastic. >> So talk about some of the other programs including Invest, and how you're helping, making sure that employees are happy where they are. >> So Invest is a program that came out of the Women and Tech Initiative between Sarah and I, and we thought about some of the personal experiences that we had, is how did we get to where we're at? And you want to design a program about your own experiences. You're like, hey I know that works. Let me just create a playbook around it. So we met, and we said we have executive coaching. We had basically a community of people, we could talk to about some challenges and we had managers invest in us. So why not create a program about that. So we have, this is our third session that we're doing it, and we have 50 women in the program. But the program consists of two day executive coaching, one-on-one with your manager, continuant of bringing the community of women together, and going through this. And what we've found in the success results is there's zero in the last 10 months of them being part of this program, and 40 percent promotions which is fantastic. And then what also happens is they go into this program, and they want to be mentored, and they graduate really literally from the program. Now we want them to pay it forward. >> Pay it forward to the next cohort that's going to come through this program. And I think we have several things we can measure. I mean, you talked about the promotion rate, but we can also talk about, did they have, sort of, a career moment in the year following their trip through the program. Were they able to step up and take a bigger assignment, more responsibility. There are other ways to measure the success of the program, as well, and we're seeing that across the board. >> Yeah, and just to add on to it, it really is a community that we're starting to build within the company, and it just feels fantastic. People feel great. We're walking around through the hallways like, I'm part of Invest when can I sign up. Everybody wants to be a part of it. So we need to figure out, and we can scale it faster. >> Well measurement is also so important too, because so many companies want to know what the return on investment. So how do you think about the data collection and then measuring progress? >> Yeah, so basically for all these initiatives before we start them we say what are going to be the things that we're going to measure? What are the metrics of success. And I think in this particular case, Erika mentioned attrition rate. That's what's in it for the company is retaining top talented women. But then on the other side, are they achieving their career goals? Are they getting promoted? Are they able to step up? So those were, kind of, the two metrics that we had set for the program before we even started. And then we can basically check and see, are we achieving those results, or do we need to pivot something about the program, or reshape the program. So we do this at least yearly, if not quarterly, to see if we're tracking towards our goals. >> And just to add on to measurement, like she mentioned, it's hard to mention, how do you feel? You went through this program, how do you feel? They are feeling better. They are feeling more empowered. They want to actually be part of Whitmore and then help pay it forward. So that's also an amazing measurement of success too. >> I went to an interesting pitch night a little while ago. Stanford, I think MIT, Babson, and Cal, and there was a start up there. They were looking at external data sources, social media, et cetera to try and quickly identify high-risk leaves inside the company. So to basically would be the drive your candidate's election to say this person looks like, they're doing behaviors that might indicate they might be boogieing. >> Right, right? >> So maybe they should invested in to keep it going. 'Cause obviously it's so much better to keep your good people than to have to hire, retrain. >> Definitely. >> Et cetera. The huge ROI. And of course, the last thing, and I joke with you guys every time I see you. 'Cause I see you so often on LinkedIn usually, in a classroom. >> Good, keep on using LinkedIn >> With a bunch of little girls, teaching them, taking your weekends to teach coding and tech. It's just fantastic. But really interesting that you're expanding that program as well. So that Sarah can get some of her Saturdays back which I'm happy for. And really taking something successful. >> Yeah. >> And as you said, open sourcing. Open source continues to be such a great innovation engine. One of you can tell us a little bit about that. >> Yeah, absolutely. So our high school trainee program, we've been running it for three years now. We just finished our third cohort, and I think the results sort of speak for themselves. We've got a 96 percent rate of students going on to pursue stem degrees, and 89 percent studying computer science in particular. So I think we're actually seeing the result that we want out of the program, and we've even gone and reached a lot of girls who might be first generation college attendees, and we're even having the same success with them. So we really wanted to expand this program, horizontally scale it so to speak. So what we've done is we've put our program outline, as well as our curriculum that we do during the summer, online on GitHub, and we're encouraging other companies to pick this up, to adapt it to their own needs, and to provide additional opportunity for students around Silicone Valley and beyond. >> What's the biggest, consistent, it's not a surprise if it's consistent, and you've been doing it for three years. But as you run these programs, when you get the girls in for the first time, what's the thing that most people would never expect that you see over, and over, and over? >> I think for me, it's really seeing the identity transformation of the students. They come in. They're not sure if they belong. They feel intimidated, and by the end of the summer, they're confident, they're certain that they're going to be engineers. They see a future for themselves in Silicon Valley, and that's reflected not only at the end of the program, but also as they follow up with us in the subsequent years. So, for example, one of our first cohort has already finished her undergrad at Berkeley >> Yay! >> Wow! >> in two years, in computer Science. >> She finished in two years? >> She finished her undergrad >> She's a very motivated lady. >> She's so excited. >> She's amazing. >> Wow. >> And she's in a third year master's program right now. I get updates periodically from all the students. How they're doing, how their programs are going. One of the women from our first cohort, Vanessa, is also here at Grace Hopper. So we're going to meet up for dinner tomorrow night. It's really great to follow them as they become confident technologists into their career. >> Great story. >> So I want to ask you, being here at Grace Hopper, it's easy to feel that companies really get it in the sense of the importance of recruiting and retaining women, making sure that there's opportunities for them. But in terms of the state of the industry, and I'm asking LinkedIn which really epitomizes professional career management. >> Yes. >> Do companies get it? Where are we? >> So I think there's several companies that want to do something, I think we're all still trying to figure it out. As sad as that may be at times, but it's a hard problem to solve. When you're at a conference like this and you're like, there's not enough women in tech. There's tons of women in tech. If you have to think about how you're hiring in and if you want different results, you have to do something different. So what are you doing? Your old ways of doing things is not the way to do it, clearly. So how can you pivot and change? So I think they need to continually try different things. But I feel good. I feel we're going to get in that right trajectory, but it's going to take some time. >> Yeah, I think this is algorithm optimization, right? >> Yes, good analogy, good analogy. >> The inputs and the outputs. Are we getting the result that we want? And we're all iterating our algorithms to figure out what's working, and how we can do better. >> New inputs, new inputs. >> Excellent. Well Erika, Sarah, thank you so much. It's always so much fun having you on the show. >> Well thank you for having us, it's fantastic. >> Absolutely >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Jeff Frick who will be back tomorrow with more from Grace Hopper. See you then. (upbeat music)