Live from Las Vegas, It's the Cube. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its Ecosystem Partners (techno music) >> Welcome back to the Cube. We are live on Day 2 in Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center. Dell Technologies World. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman and we are welcoming to the Cube, for the first time, distinguished engineer and VMAX Product Group CTO, Adnan Sahin. Adnan, it's great to have you on the Cube. >> Thank you, great to be here. >> So, big announcements going on at the event this week. Talk to us about the modern data center. Saw that press release this morning. What does the modern data center, how does Dell Technologies define it? And how are you seeing and helping customers implement it? >> Again, it goes into, like when you have, are running an application you need compute, storage and network so that really had to have a modern infrastructure to cover all those bases. So, that's really during the Keynote we heard today from Jeff Clark on our compute capabilities new servers as well as new storage offering from Dell EMC, the PowerMax >> All right, Adnan, PowerMAx, let's start there. (Adnan) Yes. So one of the flagship announcements here at this show, building on the VMAX which of course builds on the Symmetrix history. Why don't you give us a little overview and then we'll dig into some questions I have? >> So, yeah, we've been really following the industry trends. So, we introduced VMAX All Flash a couple years back. And then we are also looking at the industry trends and what we realized is that the industry is transitioning in terms of media interface, from SAS connected drives into NVMe and PCIE connected drives. And the main driver for that one is two-fold. One, is reducing the latency. And with NVMe you can get much leaner, softer layers that really gives you lower latency. And the other one is the media transition that changes from a NAM based non-withheld memories technology into newer and emerging low latency, ultra low latency technology. So with NVMe we can get both at the same time. >> All right, so Adnan, you know, we remember back when it was EMC at the time. It came with the Flash Technologies. Everybody's doing Flash. Now anybody in the storage industry, NVMe, NVMe over fabric. Everyone's talking about it. PowerMax Bob, up on stage, Bob DeCrescenzo (Adnan) Correct, yes, yes. Spent many, many years working on this said, there's a big difference between just having it and really being able to utilize it. So, without going too deep, explain to us some architectural things that have to happen, from a hardware and software standpoint to take advantage of this transition. >> Sure, so VMAX and PowerMax is really a scale-out, multi-controller architecture therefore, we need to have persistent storage, accessible through multiple controllers, at least two. So, in order to really be highly resilient and highly available to system, we need multi ported, dual ported drives available to us. One of the things that we spend quite a lot of time is to really make sure that dual ported NVMe drives are ready for our highly demanding, enterprise resilient storage system. So we spend a lot of time improving drive quality as well as our software to handle all the NVMe related concerns. >> So, at the event, the theme, Make It Real, yesterday Michael Dell kicked things off and talked about these four transformative elements where customers need to transform to be successful. Digital, IT, security, workforce. With what you just talked about and the new enhancements some of the technologies, how is that helping customers make their digital transformations effective, so that they can deliver different shades of products. I know you just came from a customer meeting. Maybe an give us an example of what you're seeing applied out there. >> The important thing is the applications. The customers have been databases, many different variants. There's been some traditional databases and new and emerging databases. Main driver is, of course, available to resilience but at the same time operational simplicity because we have simplified our user interface and overall use experience significantly over years. So that with fewer people, they can manage many, many larger capacities of the systems. And then with latency is an important aspect of application experience. If you lower the latency, either through caching or lower latency media, you give better experience to end user and therefore they can do more with what they have as infrastructure. >> Adnan, are there any specific use cases or verticals where you're finding that, especially the NVMe offering is going to be most helpful at day one. >> I think, any traditional application that has like journals that will benefit. But on top of that, if you are running large queries of random IO access storage they will get lower latency out of NVMe based systems. They could be real-time analytics, for example. You can get ultra-low latency from the back hand. And also if you are using some of the database, data warehouse type of application you can get massive band width out of VMAX and PowerMax systems that helps you process more in shorter time. >> So analytics as a use case attach the storages, of course, really interesting one, heavily growing. One of the other interesting things about PowerMax, is I think it was discussed, predictive analytics inside. So, I think back to, I mean, disclosure, I worked at EMC for 10 years. We think of intelligent storage was something we've been talking about for a long time. Explain what's different about this generation of analytics and predictive compared to previous storage innovations. >> Sure, sure. So we have the infrastructure to keep track of work loads as they find address granularity. So, we keep track of access types and access sizes in as small as five megabytes a piece. So in a larger system that could be 40 million data sets for a 200 terabyte system. And once we have data we can analyze and we have some linear regression, time series analysis that we can predict whether an active address space will remain active or whether if a cold address space will remain cold. And based on that we can make decisions. Previously, we were able to make, use those decisions for queuing in hard drives and flash drives. More recently, we are using it for data reduction technologies. For compression, for example, duplication. If data set is highly active, we don't necessarily compress them because they will be updated frequently therefore the CPUs used will not be effective. So then taking to the next level the storage class memory becomes available. We will be able to use the media based on the strengths. So if for storage class memory, low latency, we can place read heavy and write heavy work loads into storage class memory. >> So giving customers, presumably, the ability to take data, use it as a catalyst in many different lines of the business to combine it, recombine it and be able to use the analytics that are built in, it sounds like, to not just get insights they can take action on but actually act on them. (Adnan) Correct. >> Give us an example of a customer that's maybe doing that to be able to deliver a differentiated product or service to their customer. >> So part of the important features that they are introducing is available both in PowerMax and VMAX systems is service levels. So that's very relevant to all or most of our customers because, for example, if you are a service provider, customer service provider, even though all the data resides on very fast NAM flash media they can still provide differentiated performance to their own tenants. For example, if the tenant is paying a certain amount they may get silver or bronze service level. They may no see the full benefit of Flash with that service level but when they upsold into a higher performance level or service level. With a simple change in Unisphere, for example, they can get Flash response time right away. So it's basic changes and simplify their business models makes it more predictable for them. Another one is also the prioritization. They can also set priorities for applications as long as high priority service level gets it is response time, expected target response time everybody will get enjoy low response time. But if the high priority group or application does not meet its targets then we start to increase response time of lower priority applications to give more resources for high priority applications. So that's really a way that customers can capitalize with this feature. >> All right, Adnan, I wonder if you can give us a little bit, dig into NVMe, NMVe over fabric and you talked about storage class memory. Specifically looking at availability, maturity and what kind of pricing considerations for these that we can expect kind of today and the next 12 months. >> So, NVMe as the interface drives themselves, this day they may be at a premium compared to SAS but the expectation when we talk to industry leaders and vendors there will be crossover expected very soon. So that really is the positioning that we just want to be in this market. Get the product out. And then really be ready when that crossover happens. In terms of storage class memory, again, it comes at a premium. But then we, using our intelligence, if we can direct most of the eyeOS to this premium source media then we can let customers enjoy benefits of that extra premium that would endure. They would help to pay but over time, just remember, early days of Flash, when the first Flash came out. It was very expensive at the time but over time it became more and more prevalent. So what our expectation is storage type class of memory, over time will follow similar path. And it will become very possible in the near future that we will see all storage class memory systems coming out of vendors. >> All right, how about the NVMe over Fabric? >> NVMe over Fabrics, we are looking, definitely we have plans for NVMe over Fabrics. Of course, standards are still evolving and also for enterprise customers there's concerns around multi pathing, support and not sure of that. We are working with standards bodies and other vendors on improving that aspect. >> Okay, so there's one thing about this transition that's a little different than most. It has an impact on the application. So where is Dell getting involved or how are you working with your customers? You talked about getting ready for that storage class memory. This is not just, we've been skuzzy for a long time. So, how do we get ready as an industry? What's Dell's positioning in that discussion of applications? >> I mean, Dell seems very so close to participating in standards bodies and with the industry thought leaders on really getting to come up with standard based solutions. I think that is one direction that we are going after with this. >> Anything on the application side, though? Or is that more on the pivotal VM? >> Application side of course, we have VM we have very deep discussions with VM and NVM over fabrics and how we can work with them more efficiently. >> So, Adnan, when we kicked off this segment we talked about it being the first Dell Technologies World. Indicator of the absorption of the EMC federation. Over your shoulder is the Dell EMC Partner Program. What are some of the feedback that you're hearing from partners, technology partners who are collaborating. You mentioned VMWare. What's some of the feedback that you're hearing at the event in terms of what you have announced and how do your partners influence design of these leading technologies? >> There's great excitement. We've been working with them, listening to them, learning from them and I think overall, everybody is excited with the new product. And we are also, as a group very excited with and been working for awhile. And we are happy to be able to release the product today. >> Adnan, one of the other product lines that, there were a bunch announced around the xtrem IO and the X2. Can you just help us make sure we understand positioning today of things like VMAX and PowerMax and the xtremIO Family. >> Each product platform has strengths. If customers are happy with what they are using, they should continue with the same product line. It think that really makes it easier for everyone. Xtreme, I believe, announced a remote application, as well. So, it's great. >> From a foundational perspective, what are these technologies going to be able to do to enable enterprises to start taking advantage and realizing the possibilities of emerging technologies machine learning, artificial intelligence, IOT? >> I think, important part is. If you look at all those things, what is really needed is ultra low latency high band width, capabilities from storage. Because you have massive compute capability sometimes customers use in memory applications as well. And we need to be close to compute as close as possible to memory. It's not always possible but we want to get to be there. We have significant value add to be clear. For example, we have local and remote reapplication capable. If you're running any of those applications in a mission critical in mind. You want to make sure that you have local application capability as well as remote application disaster recovery. Business continues models built around. And what we have with our infrastructure to really give customers that type of mission critical. You can not take in chances in this day and age with these applications. >> Adnan, I got to talk to Jeff Clark, earlier today on the Cube and he talked about the engineering culture. From the EMC side, I'm curious if working with your Dell team, you've got that whole server team. Has that changed some of the processes there? How does that impact the development and the viewpoint of the engineering team? >> There's very clear, much better communication. We're been talking to the server team very easily and very frequently actually. Just to make sure that, for example, we understand their challenges and then type of solace that they come up with on the service side and we can apply on our storage. And the same from our side. We give feedback on our experiences on the storage to them. And not only with the server side but also across different portfolio components in our storage in our business units as well. >> So last question: Customers that are here in the early stages of transformation and are looking for best practices, where do we start? Do we start with transforming IT to make it into a profit center. What are your recommendations? >> Can you repeat? I could not hear the last one. IT? >> Yeah, what are your recommendations for customers that might be at the very beginning of their transformation journey. What do you recommend? Where do they start, in terms of going, 'hey we've got our business leaders, recognize IET should become a part of our business strategy. It shouldn't be a cost center. It should be a profit center." How do you recommend they start these conversations with Dell EMC/ Dell Technologies to get... >> They just need to talk to their representative about business need and application needs. We have a large portfolio of products available to our customers. Again, on the high end there's the resilient storage with more capabilities that might be VMAX. On the mid range it could be either unity or storage center. And on the sever side, again, similar types of options available. They just need to talk about their application needs, virtualization needs, storage needs, hyper converge says traditional lock storage versus file storage connectivity. Those make all the difference and I think our field people have experience in really helping customers out. >> Well, Adnan, thanks so much for stopping by and sharing with us what's new with the technologies. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you. Thanks. >> We want to thank you for watching the Cube. I'm Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman. We are here live Day 2 of Dell Technologies World from Vegas. Stick around. We'll be right back after a short break. (techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell EMC World 2017. Brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Welcome back to Dell EMC World 2017. We're live here in the Venetian in Las Vegas. Day one of the three day show. Had Michael Dell out on the keynote stage earlier today. Also had David Blaine, world famous magician. Pretty interesting performance to say the least. >> Yeah I went down to get an ice pick. (man laughing) During our break. >> We'll get into that later but it was interesting. Keith Townsend, John Walls also joined by Itzik Reich who is the CTO of XtremeIO at Dell EMC. Itzik, thanks for being with us. It's good to see you sir. >> Thank you very much. >> All the way from Tel Aviv and great to have you. Alright, so your sweet spot of the company is giving birth to a new baby today. >> There you go. >> XtremeIO X2, tell us about that. What spawned that, and then what that responses be, what you developed. >> Right, I think in order to understand Xtreme, you need to start with the beginning, the X1. So, November 2015 I was having my class reunion, meeting my ex-girlfriend, and we've launched X1. And X1 became, within two quarters, the largest sole Dell flash array in the world. From nowhere to the largest sole flash array, at least in terms of units sold to the market. Right, both Garthner and I. And it was huge. A huge building and a success for us. A success because nobody would become the number one leader. And we built them because we didn't have the life cycle to normally mature a product. Right, so you mentioned being a father. I'm a father to two daughters, lovely daughters. One of them is six years old, one of them is five. And the young one is starting to show some signs of being a really clever person. And I'm afraid that somebody will tell me, oh she can skip the first class. Because skipping class serves some association with it. Social aspects of it. So we've been really busy trying to understand XtremeIO X1. Making super stable. Today we're already about 5/9 in the market. But it also would stand to refresh the product and come with something new. So our life cycle wasn't a traditional year or year and a half of refreshing the product. It took us longer for us to X2 and this is what we announced today. So what's new with X2. The first thing is the ability to come with really Dell's XO Drive and Dell's configuration. In X1 each DAE, you could put up to 25 drives inside of the DAE. And X2 can put out up to 72 drives per DAE right. And you can scale just like before. Up to 8X bricks. It's a huge capacity which you need for the vast majority of the use cases out there they don't know. Just VDR or just a single database is right. Today XtremeIO can fill pretty much every transaction while closing including virtualization wall close. You just need a lot of capacity for thousands of VM's. So that's one of the things. The other thing we improved performance of the X2 array. And the magic story around there was that because of the thousands and thousands of customers that we're involved with really got the good insight of the workload that they are running. And what we found out is something very interesting. The majority of those customers are running workload that they're very small block size. So you storage every item that arrives in the system as a different blocks characteristic and we found that the majority of them are using very, very small block size. And we want them to improve the performance of those block sizes. The IOPS and the latency. And we also wanted to make sure that it's actually more economical cheaper than the very expensive drives that the new NVMe drives that are out there. So different design goals. Making it faster and also making it cheaper in different dimensions. So we come with a new feature called Drive Boost. In a nut shell, in a nut shell Drive Boost will give you 80% better latency for pretty much every walkthrough that is out there. >> So... With that small block sizes versus big block sizes. Why is that important? We're at a conference and we're talking a lot about digital transformation. CEO, we teased John earlier. You know he's a sports guy, he doesn't do LAG goals. >> (laughing) Sorry. >> That's alright. >> Help us understand the value of that data type. >> Sure, so you know we like to think about digital transformation but at the end of the day. You're the customer, you have a database. You'll use it on query or queries against the database. If it's a very large database, there are thousands maybe even millions of queries everyday. Those queries take time for the end user to get a response for. So let's assume that you want a monthly report. And this report normally takes nine hours to generate. If I can shrink the report crunching time to two hours instead of nine, that means that I have provided better value for the business success. Right. One of the stories is that we have a financial customer in the Middle East. They need to generate the report every month between midnight because this is where they locate their reports. Up until eight o'clock in the morning. Why eight o'clock because this is when the employees start to come to work. And every hour that they exceed after the eight hour generation they get fined by the government. So if I'm saving this customer four hours then they are not getting fined by the government for generating the report. That's a true value for the customer return. Cause those things are important. People tend to think about just performance numbers in terms of IOPS but the real magic number is latency. How quick can you make the query? Whether it's a database application or a VDI VM or just a generic web server running on a Voltron machine. Those are the important things today. >> So transactional apps. Big deal. Are these transactional apps, we learned a lot about virtualization and cloud computing to date. Are these transactional apps running in a virtualized environment or are we still relying on big heavy metal workloads going to treat IO2. >> Yeah, it's a good question. At least from my experience some would argue that anywhere between 70 to 80% of the customer that allowed it went full virtualized. So their running their entire application running either under V6 or a Microsoft type of V. So they are fully virtualized. Some of the customers are still running their workload on a traditional physical servers right. Even in the S6 at the end of the day it runs on a physical server to all day the kill in itself. But yeah, the majority of them are already there in terms of virtualization. >> So what are customers really excited about when it comes to features sets for an XIO2 versus XtremeIO version wise. >> Right, amazing question. So performance, we've already discussed performance. 80% better latency, that's not something that you get because of the usage of better CPU's. Intel moves slow, it's basically dead right. They don't give you 200% performance between generation so we wanted to do something else and solve the same problem. The other thing is quality of service. We are not cheaping NGA but it's coming soon. The ability to give a specific VM, a specific IO copying and the latency copying. And also could give you the ability to burst to more IOP's techniques needed for a couple of minutes. So quality of service I the noisy neighbor right. Somebody generate too much noise you want him to be quiet. That's what quality of service is. The other things that we've announced native replication. We found out finally of our own replication that can replicate between one XtremeO2 and another. But it's not a traditional replication. The unique thing about XtremeIO was always the cusp. The content of dressable architecture. People typically think about it as a D Duplication feature but in fact we don't have a feature called D Duplication. We analyze the data as it goes through the system itself. And we give a unique shot signature to each one of those blocks. And if the shot signature already exists in the system we dupe the block. But it's not the feature per se. That why the D Duplication's so fast on XtremeIO. So up until now the customers architecture was only applicable to writing the data into the array itself. Now it's also applicable for replicating the data. So for example if you have a data reduction of five to one which is very common in virtualize use case. Many VM, many the same template and so on. You know need to replicate four times less the data at the source to the destination target. Right. So that's a very, very big thing because you need to replicate more and more data. But the 24 hour window isn't changed. God didn't upgrade it where the server respects the time. Right. >> (laughing) Right. >> It's still 24 hours per day. So this is super important for us and we're very excited about it. And the other thing is that, again larger denser configuration of the array itself so the customer can have up until two-thirds cheaper. The drive, the cost drive of the XtremeIO in itself so it's cheaper for them to put their walkthrough on ExtemeIO. Whether to really pick up the just the database that needs all the performance in the world. So we can really become a true enterprise array with those features. >> It seems like it's got to be for you a constant chase though right. You're looking for higher performance, you're looking for lower costs. You've said you just gained 80% increase in your performance capabilities. >> Yup. >> And now people are going to be looking at you over the next Xtreme and so what next? You know, where are the gains to be had in the next generation of technology and just in terms of philosophically approaching that so what do you do. >> Yeah, yeah again another good question. I actually gave a briefing about it just earlier. So, the first thing we need to do is an industry not just the daily insists to lower the costs of the drive itself to be even cheaper than and economical drive. That's not Dell today right, the hybrid mechanical drive. You can get a more economical drive if you apply data reduction on it right. So if you're five times cheaper because of the data that's gets integrated into the array and get a different compress and different provisioning. Then you can be on par with the mechanical drives. So first we want to be on par if not cheaper. We want everybody to move to S's. And we were the first twirl for charade the portfolio of Dell EMC. That's the first thing. The second thing is to really get a better insight into your wall application, wall close. Today people analyze things like IOP's and latency but what does your application really think? Where are the cues in the application stock itself right. How can you find them out in the storage sub-system itself right. So we are on a journey to over there with our importing mechanisms. So a year and a half ago, we started a new project to completely change the reporting mechanism of the WebUI. The interface of XtremeIO right. And today you can really get to drill down into pretty much every aspect. Up until now you had to purchase a third party software that will analyze your walkthrough for you. So things like Instagram, IO's, block size, read and write like I can see pair of blocks. So you can really understand your workload. We also give you something like abnormalities. We can tell you every week this application is being fine but on that Friday for some reason the response time wasn't that good. You should go in and check it out. Maybe it's in the application there is a bottleneck. Maybe it was a bottleneck in the storage load. So you can actually find it out. But I would argue that the long term goal. That's a vision right? That I'm not announcing anything yet. Is really the ability to marriage or combine between the softer defined wall right. The input converge mechanism, to the traditional arrays right. Although SSD's not that traditional. Maybe you can have a denser configuration with very small to DAE but the performance aspect of it will not be drive from the DEA where it actually store the data but from Voltron machines. That you can spin up and down in a cloud like fishing. That will bring you all the performance that you need. That's a thing to me the only gray. The really merging between the walls. Cause there isn't one perfect answer right. The softer refined guys will tell you everything should go to softer defined storage. We will tell you everything should go to flash arrays. But really the truth is like always right in between. And this is really one of the direction that we are approaching. >> I tell you what, for now I want you to enjoy X2 for now. How about that. >> That sound good. >> It's a good day for you. And don't let that five year old skip either. I think that's a good idea too. >> Very good. Very good. Thank you very much. >> And so thanks for joining us. >> Thank you. Thanks. >> Back with more here on theCUBE. We're live in Las Vegas at Dell EMC World 2017. (exciting techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. >> Hey, welcome back everyone. We're here live in Las Vegas for Dell EMC World 2017. This is theCUBE's eighth year of covering, since the inception of theCUBE. EMC World, which is now called Dell EMC, with the first year of the combination coming together. Exciting, a lot of storylines here. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE, and my co-host with SiliconANGLE, Paul Gillin. Our next guest, Jeff Boudreau, who's the president of Dell EMC Storage Division. It sounds weird to say that because EMC used to be a storage company. Now, they're a part of Dell Technologies with a zillion brands. Jeff, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you for having me. >> So first, explain quickly what the storage division is, because Chad Sakac does converge infrastructure, but, you own all the storage. >> Jeff: Correct. >> So just quickly, just. >> Yeah, real quick, keeping it simple, if you think about the components and the building blocks, you have Ashley running compute, you have Tom Burns running network, you have myself running storage, and you have Beth Phalen running data protection, and then Chad's the converge platform, so when we integrate the solution, Chad has that piece. So yes, all storage, and that would be Legacy or Heritage Dell storage, but also Heritage and Legacy EMC storage. All that came together so, just massive revenue, massive amounts of customers, and then obviously tons of engineers around the world. >> You got a lot of work to do. Obviously storage is not going away. It's changing radically and in different ways. Certainly cloud is accelerating it. The data center world is changing. They call it data center. They don't call it server center. They call it the data center 'cause there's more data coming. So I got to ask you, one of my favorite quotes in your keynote this morning was, "We have self-driving cars. "Why don't we have self-driving storage "or autonomous storage?" Which is provocative, but also very relevant. Can you explain what you meant by that, and let's dig deeper into that. >> Yeah. I mean, actually, it's one of my favorite topics, actually. So I have these notions of the pillars of innovation, right? And I want to start looking at, to your point, things are changing in the markets and in the way customers are using our products, and I want to embrace that change and innovate around that change. The notion of the day in the life of the storage admin, or the day in the life of the data center admin, and the day in the life of just about anybody using the product. We got to make it simpler, right? It goes back to consumer simplicity, a lot of this stuff. What we're trying to do there is actually make the storage be smart enough to actually just take care of itself. It's kind of the set it and forget it notion. So, as part of autonomous storage, we look at four attributes simplistically, in regards to how you would have a self-driving system. The first one is about being application-centric, 'cause, at the end of the day, it's all about the app and the workload. We all know that, right, and that's what the users care about. So the way I kind of looked at that this morning is, the example is, that's like telling your car where you want to go, or is it a turn-by-turn decision, right, that you would give it? The second thing is about being policy driven. I'm not going to say, hey listen, do I want to take the fastest route or do I want to take the scenic route? >> John: Yep. >> Right, simplistically. And then, I'm going to be honest, that stuff's relatively easy and we do a bunch of that stuff today. Really when it starts to get the next level is when this stuff becomes self-aware, right? Understanding its resources, and then understanding if you're in or out of those boundaries. So, am I, you know, swerving out of my lane? Do I have enough gas? Dot, dot, dot, right, as an example. And then where it gets really powerful is the fourth component for me, is self-optimization. That's being able to understanding what, you're self-aware and then making a better outcome for your customer. At the end of the day, that could be, hey, there's not enough charging stations to get to your destination, or you don't have enough charge, or better yet, the storage will actually or the system would tell you, hey take this path. There's enough charging stations. I'll get you there on time and safely, right? >> So you'd be very happy if you had the brand bumper sticker of the Tesla of storage. >> Absolutely. >> To your point about the stations, you know, people love Teslas. It's very sexy and it's relevant. I got to ask you about machine learning. It's obviously AIs hyped-up. We call it, not artificial intelligence, more augmented intelligence. That's a better definition because artificial intelligence is this weak, weak word. (laughing) It doesn't really exist, it's kind of out there. But, augmentation of value is about machine learning and deep learning. These are the learning systems you mentioned. Self-optimization, that's basically learning machines. >> That's right. >> What are you guys doing around big data, I meant big data machine learning and some of these things? >> So we're doing a handful of things. So along the keynote, I mentioned builtin analytics. That's two things, you know. Dell EMC, we store, protect and secure more data than anybody else in the world, par or not. So, you know and I used to joke, EMC used to be known for where information lives. Dell Technologies and Dell EMC has to be known for where information comes alive, right? And actually providing value or generating value for our customers. So, what we're going to do is, we're going to have builtin capabilities into the array, but also we're going to plug into the broader ecosystem, you know, with analytics and service providers to really help drive that value and that creation. So, you'll see a lot more around the storage itself around that self-learning and understanding. That kind of, the core components of an array. What makes it run healthy or unhealthy enables the customer to better utilize and add more value to their stack. Then also, going into that broader ecosystem, making sure that they can really drop that value to their customers and to their business. >> What pieces will you be delivering first? >> On the storage side itself, specifically, we'll be, we already have a lot of products that have probably two or three of the capabilities. So between app-centric, policy driven, and self-awareness, those are the ones we're on right now, big time. And I have a team focused on the machine learning, so we can really start self-optimizing. We actually just, we mentioned, I don't know if the guys that were on, where all the folks we've had on the show talked about a thing called cloud IQ? >> Paul: Yes, they did. >> That was something that we built a SAS model in the cloud, which is all about machine learning. >> So, that's part of this whole rollout, is moving to the cloud eventually. >> Oh, absolutely. It's critical. >> So another quote that I have off from your keynote, because it had some great soundbites, Isilon, one of the products in your portfolio, "Isilon is known to be the gold standard "for storage in the genome sequencing." Obviously, with the massive amounts of computers available, certainly cloud computing has now made it possible to do amazing things with the data, and make that literally come alive, and hopefully people could live longer. But, genome sequencing is actually doable, and price points at. >> It's crazy, probably the last two years alone, it's dramatically and drastically just reduced. >> But why is Isilon the gold standard for sequence? What specifically is it that's great about it? >> Well, it basically, in regards to the data structure and how we can process that big data, and make sense of it quickly as we analyze it, there's nothing faster in the market. And it'd be interesting, and now that we've brought out the Isilon All-Flash array with the new infinity platform, we've taken something that, two years ago took weeks, down to days, down to hours, and with the All-Flash array we've taken it down to minutes, 22 minutes to be exact. >> So I got to to ask you, I'll let you think about the portfolio question and I'm going to ask in about a minute how you're going to rectify all that, where the overlap is or isn't, so you can work on that, but the next question is, the industry, you're not seeing a lot of start-ups trying to do what Isilon did. You heard Isilon guys leaving, starting companies, and everyone's kind of pivoting, but you are seeing startups in the white spaces, data protection, so question, how hard is it to do a startup right now and get venture funding, because it seems to be scale is the issue, and it's hard to be a, quote, pure storage company, pun intended. Pure Storage was the last company to challenge you guys. (laughing) >> You know, I've also thrown that app in there as well, it's standing on their own, regardless of that. But, let's be clear, this market is consolidating. That's good for us, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. So, with our size and scale, Dell and EMC, and Dell Technologies together, our size, our scale, our buying power, unmatched by anybody. It's going to be hard, for you know, there's a lot of companies. >> Hard nut to crack, for a start up to come in and it could be the table stakes are too high. >> So in regards, the innovation, spending R&D, value chain that we get, efficiency, buying power, intel, I mean think about all the stuff around the whole ecosystem, it's just really hard to do, so this market is consolidating. We're good with that. What I want to do is consolidate this market faster, and I want to drive more share of this market in regards to that, and I think it's really tough. So, you've seen small guys be bought recently. Some guys that aren't doing well. Some people, >> Acquihires. >> Maybe some of these orange people are really in the red, going back to your pun. So, they're struggling, right, some of these guys are struggling, so I really think this is an opportunity, as we force this market as it consolidates, for us, I think it's a real big thing. >> Alright, so the question on the consolidation, sorry Paul to interrupt, but okay. I get the consolidation. Now the growth, we're going to put the pedal to the medal. It's going to come from where? You got a mature market, you're consolidating. You lock that in, so that's big dollars by the way. It's not like small numbers, and the table stakes are high so, storage going to crack that nut. Then you got to have the growth strategy where there's a hockey stick opportunity. >> Yeah, so, from a storage perspective, let's be clear, they're going to have the growth. It's going to come through things like HTI. It's going to come through things like software-defined, in regards to how we do that, right? That's obviously part of, software-defined is part of my portfolio as well, so, it will be a journey in regards to where we grow. The traditional space is huge, let's be very clear. It's massive, right. We have to do that and do that extremely well, and protect that, and make sure our customers are taken care of, but as they go on their journey, if it's software-defined, or cloud, or what have you, we want to make sure we're relevant can help with that. So, one will be taking share in that space, there'll be opportunities as the consumption models, the technology, and the deployment models change, we'll be front and center in all of those. >> Speaking of software-defined, essentially that can deposition some of the storage elements below it. Cisco is wrestling with that right now. Where they sort of held off for a couple of years on software-defined network, and they're finally embracing it. What are you doing to balance the need for your, the elements of your portfolio to shine, with also the need to get customers to software definition? >> Absolutely, so, right now, I mean, it's a journey. Let's be clear, right, so, I have a, actually, a large customer that was on stage with me. I'll leave their name out, if anyone wants to watch who I talked to on day one, they'll know who I'm talking about. They're on a journey. Right now, today, they're probably one of the, I would say, leaders in software-defined storage and driving software-defined storage is part of their IT transformation and their data centers. They're 20% software-defined, 80% still traditional physical infrastructure. They have a big stake in the ground. In three or four short years, 2020, they're going to be 50/50. Right, and these the guys that are leading and driving. So just give the folks a little bit of balance in regards to yes, that's where their growth will come from, this is where the appeal is, but it will be a journey in how we get through that, but also for me, going back to scale and Dell Technologies, I have products like Scale IO. I have virtual Isilon, I have virtual Unity. In regards to what we do with ECS, that's an object store, so file blocker object, we have it. And then I have wonderful 14G servers from my friend Ashley in the compute team. Go well together. >> So, Pat Gelsinger's talking about a developer-ready infrastructure. You've mentioned on your keynote, I thought was clever, the cloud-ready storage. Talk about that dynamic because, love this soundbite, "Storage has to be cloud ready, cloud connected, "build out on off prim, and live in a multi-cloud world." Don't comment on the multi-cloud. We think that's going to happen. Not ready for primetime right now. I'm pretty certainly it is happening. Their is some latency issues on multi-cloud. >> Sure >> We don't want to digress. But hybrid is definitely happening, but multi-cloud is the gateway, hybrid cloud is the gateway to multi-cloud. Dealing with legacy to cloud native, that gap with hybrid. How do you look at that, cause that's truly going to be a great opportunity for you, and being cloud storage ready, I'm sorry, cloud ready. >> Cloud ready. >> Ready storage, how do you make that happen? >> Yeah, so, cloud connections is one of the big ones for me. So, the ability to connect to the cloud and allow people to move, seamlessly move data in and out of the cloud. So depending if it's a traditional on prim or off prim, so we have great technologies for file, we have CTA, which is a cloud tiering appliance, all file based, gets rave reviews from our customers and we're able to help them not only on our products but actually on some competitor file products to move it off to the cloud if need be, which has actually been a pretty big win for us. In addition to that, Isilon has a notion of cloud pools that people haven't seen, but again it's a transparent seamless data mobility from Isilon, from core to the cloud, if you will. Then, lastly we have a cloud array, which is a block device that allows us to move block data from a traditional asset into the cloud as well, so, we have a handful of products or features that are natively in certain products today. We'll be evolving that over time. >> You got everything! >> Well we'll be evolving that over time too, so we want to have a more coherent simple storage for our customers, right? It doesn't matter what the data type is, we want to be able to present it to the cloud. >> But you, by that I mean EMC, were late to the Flash market, but have caught up, are now the leaders in the Flash market. Phenomenal growth year over year. What did you do to pull that off? That's kind of counter-intuitive. >> Focus and energy, and a lot of great engineers. I'll be honest with you, alright. And then a great sales team behind it as well. So, we were late to the game. We made some decisions to lead with certain products and drive certain products where if we, you know if you took a step back, I think we'd said, "Hey, listen, we all agreed Flash was critical. Flash will be everywhere, compute, storage, network." And then you could debate on the consumption model, if it would be all Flash systems versus hybrid systems, or what have you. At the end of the day, Flash was pretty critical, and I think we're all on the same page there, in regards to how you want to attack the problem, if it's a hybrid or all Flash, that's maybe where we got a little stuck in our own way. But then focus from all the teams, if it was Bemax or Midrange or Xtreme IO, Isilon now. Teams have done an amazing job catching up, and then working with Billy and Marius, and the go-to-market teams, they've been phenomenal. It's been a huge shape with our. >> Well that's a good point to my portfolio question, is you guys really worked that problem hard. I think it was a two year window, we saw all kinds of architecture, but that was good timing on that, because you were early on the trend architecturally was happening in a real sense, although late to the game. Things kind of played out and you kind of shaped your portfolio up during that time. Kind of a forcing function. One, is that what happened, and two, what is the current view of the portfolio right now? Do you feel comfortable about the overlap, gaps, things that you think about? >> Yeah absolutely, so let me take the media one first, and go back to Flash specifically. We learned a lot, and yes that did help us shape our portfolios and go forward and actually try to focus specific architectures to specific-use cases to make our customers successful. We also learned is we didn't ever want to be late again. That's why, with NVME specifically, that we actually were major contributors and actually a codeveloper on NVME. Which others can talk about NVME in their marketing material. They weren't actually at the table codeveloping. >> You get the scar tissue, saying if we don't get out in this, we're going to. (laughing) >> That's right, so we've learned and I don't want it to happen again. I want to be a learning organization. I don't want it to happen again, so we're going to be driving that, and we'll be a leader in NVME, and as more media transitions happen in Flash, there'll be more, trust me, a few years down the road beyond that, we're already looking at, we'll continue to make sure that we're a leader in that space. Now on the portfolio, I talk to customers all the time. They love the portfolio in the sense of, that they understand, they believe in the fact that there's no, one size does not fit all. They have said, though, "Hey you got a lot of products "and you have to simplify." In full transparency that's something we've been working through and we'll continue to work through that. We will have overlap, and we want overlap, it's good. >> John: Better to have overlaps than gaps. >> And Joe Tucci was a huge person and I couldn't support more but we want it to be planned overlap versus unplanned overlap, because we want to be making sure we want to make our customers successful, and we say hey, and that we can articulate clearly to our customers why they'd use a product and the value its going to drive for their use-case, for their application. Same thing our sales guys, same thing for our service guys, same thing for our own engineers. We want to keep people aligned and focused on what we're trying to do. So that way, we can provide a better outcome on the other side. >> Are you looking at, when you're looking out at the future, do you see anything disruptive on the horizon? Is there anything that could change this industry fundamentally? >> Obviously, I always keep cloud in the back of mind. It's still something, you know. Depending on how people want to portray it or look at it. People call it a destination, some people call it a media, what have you. I call it a virtual infrastructure. Depending on how you want to define it, there's different ways. >> A mainframe in the sky. >> You know, I say that one always keeps me up at night, depending on how things go, but there's a lot of cool things going on in storage actually where I think, first, let's be clear, storage in general maybe hesitant. It's lost some of the sex appeal, if you will, the attractiveness of it. I think that's starting to come back with some of the things like NVME and cloud-ready and multi-dimensional scaling. There's a whole bunch of things going around there that actually is going to kind of drive that back. Now in addition to that, though, we all know internet of things, machine learning, you know, video, it's exploding. So let's be very clear there'll be a lot, >> Storage is not going away, but the machine learning certainly is going to be a nice jolt in the arm for optimization and automation. >> There's a huge opportunity there, in regards to that. Cloud is one of the big ones, but I think there's a lot of things, I guess the had-wins stay at wins, there's a lot of things in favor to really kind of push us forward. >> Jeff Boudreau, thank you for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate the insight, and candid commentary and analysis and insight into your business. Appreciate it. You got the storage, it's not going away. It's called the data center and the cloud for a reason. It's all about the data and the value of business will be data driven. This is theCUBE bringing data to you here live from Las Vegas at Dell EMC World 2017. I'm John Furrier with Paul Gillin. Back with more, stay with us after the short break. (lively music)