>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome to theCUBE's live coverage here in Las Vegas for Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm John Furrier, Stu Miniman, Dave Vellante. Day two of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We got two sets called theCube Cannon. We've got the Cannon of Content, interviews all day long, out at night at the analyst briefings, meet-ups, receptions, talking to all the executives at Dell Technologies VMware and across the industry. Stu, Dave, today is product announcements on the keynotes. Yesterday was the grand vision with Michael Dell and the big reveal on the Microsoft partnership with Satya Nadella's surprise visit onstage, unveiling new Azure-VMware integrations with Dell Technologies. Dell announced the Dell Cloud, which is a little bit of Virtustream, but they're trying to position this cloud, I guess it's a cloud if you want to call it a single cloud of glass. Dave, single pane in the glass with a variety of other things, unified workspace and some other things. This is Dell trying to be a supplier end-to-end. This is the pitch from Dell Technologies. We'll be talking to Michael Dell, also Pat Gelsinger, the CO of VMware. Dave, were you impressed, were you shocked, were you surprised with yesterday's big news and as the products start coming online here, what's your analysis? >> Well yesterday, John, was all about the big strategic vision, Michael Dell laying out check for good and then the linchpin of Dell strategy which of course is VMware for cloud, multicloud, hybrid cloud, kind of VMware everywhere. I was surprised that Satya Nadella flew down from Seattle and was here on stage in person. Didn't come in from the big screen. So I thought that was pretty impressive. You had the three power players up on stage. Today of course was all about the products. Both Dell and EMC have always been very practical in terms of their engineering. Stu, you used to work there. Their R&D is a lot of D. It's sort of incremental product improvements to keep the customers happy, to keep ahead of the competition, to keep the lifecycle going. They had like 10 announcements today. I can go through 'em real quick if you want, but they range from new laptops to talking about new branding on servers, new storage devices. You had PowerProtect which is their new rebranded backup and data protection and data manage portfolio, an area where Dell EMC has been behind. So lots of announcements. Another kind of mega launch tradition and again, a lot of incremental but important tactical improvements to the product line. >> Last year, what we heard from Jeff Clarke is they're looking to simplify that portfolio. Back in the EMC days, it was oh my gosh, look at the breadth of this. Every category, they had two or three offerings and you know, the stated goal is to simplify that and that means most categories are going to get one product. It's interesting. You talk about networking just got rebranded with that Power branding. I kind of said there there's marketing behind it. If you know what that product is because it's the Power brand and they put it out there. So you know, PowerMax, has been their tiered storage. They had a good update for Unity. It's Unity XT. Doesn't have a power name yet so maybe there's still some dry powder left in the product portfolio there, but they're making progress going through this 'cause these things don't happen overnight. It's great to spin up the clouds, but in the storage world, customers, they trust, they have the code, they test it out. So going to new generations, making that change, does take time but you've seen that progress. The tail end of that integration between Dell and EMC on the product side. >> Stu, what's your analysis of the products so far 'cause again like Dave said, it's a slew of announcements. What's resonating, what's popping out, what's boiling up to the surface? >> Yeah so look, the area that I spent so much time on, John, that hyper-converged infrastructure. If you look at a lot of the pieces underneath it all, it's VxRail. One of the things we've had a little bit of a challenge squinting through is oh wait, there's this managed service stack, it's VxRail underneath. Oh wait I've taken the appliance and I put VCF. Oh that's VxRail and then I've got this other, it's like I see three or four solutions and I'm like is it all just VxRail with like a VMware stack on top of it? But it's how do I package it, what applications live on it, how is it consumed, manage service, op ex, cap ex. So they've got that a little bit of complexity when VxRail itself is you know, dirt simple and really there so they're making progress on the cloud piece. Dell is the leader in hyper-converged. I'll point out, you don't hear anybody talking about Nutanix here, but Dell still has a partnership on the XC Core. They're going to sell a lot of Dell servers into Nutanix environment so I expect you'll still have the Nutanix show. John you're going to be at that next week. They're still going to talk about Dell. I'm sure you'll talk to Dheeraj. Yes they made a partnership with HP, but that does not kill the relationship with Nutanix just like Microsoft, heck. I'm going to see Satya Nadella on stage at Red Hat Summit next week and you're like oh well VMware and Red Hat. Red Hat's here. Red Hat's a Dell-ready partner. If you want to put open shift on top of their stack, they can do that so hardware and software, everybody's got their pieces, everybody's got their pieces, everybody competes a lot, but they partner across the board. IBM Global Services is here. There's so many companies here. Dell's a broad company, deep partnerships. The question I have is Pat Gelsinger was just on stage saying that this SDDC will be the building block for the future. I said kudos to them. They've got it on AWS, they've got it announced with Azure, we announced it with Google, but that is not necessarily the end state. VMware is a piece of the puzzle. I don't know if VMware will be the leader in multicloud management. vCenter was the leader in virtualization management so how much of that will there or do I get an Amazon and then start moving some stuff over? Do I get to Azure and start modernizing my environment so that I don't need to pay VMware and I don't need virtualization. VMware and Dell are going to containerize everything so in the future, are they containerware, you know? That's the competition kind of post-it note. They are VMware at their core. VMware is centra of the strategy and there's still some work to go, but they're making some good progress. >> I want to get your thoughts, guys, on the role VMware is playing here at the show. Normally they're here, usually they're here, but this year it seems to be much more smoother integration of talking points, messaging, product integrations. The show's got a good beat to it. Pretty packed, but the role of VMware, Dave, Stu, what's your reaction and thoughts? We've seen them dance all the time. Obviously VMware, Dave as you pointed out yesterday, a big part of the valuation of Dell Technologies, but what's your observation on the presence of VMware here at Dell Technologies World? >> I mean I've said many times that this company and I said this about EMC, it's kind of a boring company without VMware. You put VMware in the mix and all of a sudden, it becomes very strategic and very interesting from a lot of standpoints. Certainly from a financial standpoint. Remember, the Class V transaction that took Dell public was the result of an $11 billion dividend because of VMware. They took VMware's cash and they said okay, we're going to give nine billion to the shareholders. Without VMware, that wouldn't have happened. As well, the multicloud strategy, the underpinning of that multicloud strategy is VMWare. What strikes me, John and Stu, is that the cultural change. You had Dell, you had EMC. They said ah yeah the companies are compatible, but they're different companies. They maybe had shared kind of goals and values, but they had different cultures and really in a short timeframe, Michael Dell and his team have put these two companies together and they have aligned in a big way. I mean they are basically saying VMware and Dell, boom. That's how we're going to market and you know, Pat's coming on later today and I'm sure he'll say hey we love NetApp, we love HBE, we love IBM, but it's clear what the preferred partnership is. >> Dave, when the acquisition happened, there was talks of synergies and we were like oh where are they going to cut everything? If I look around here, they've got the seven logos of the primary companies. It's Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, RSA, Secureworks, Virtustream and VMware. They're one company. Michael Dell will go on calls for any of them. Friends of mine at Pivotal says you talk to Michael quite a bit. You know, he's out there. We talked about it yesterday. Dell and VMware are closer and tighter aligned than EMC and VMware ever were. Now on the one hand, EMC kept them separate because the growth of virtualization required that. Today in this cloud environment, it's a different world and it's matured so VMware, sure, there's still work on HP and IBM and all this other stuff, but Dell leads that move as you said, Dave. >> John, you're big on culture. This is a founder culture. What's your take on what Michael Dell has accomplished and how does it stand to compare with sort of other great cultural transformations that you've seen? >> Well I think HBE is a great example of a culture that split, was uncharged there. We know what happened there and I think they're hurting, they're losing talent and they're not winning in categories across the board like Dell is. I think Michael Dell, the founder-led approach that he's having 'cause he told us years ago, if you guys remember, here on the record, also privately that I'm going to take this off the table with EMC and I'm going to do all these things. We're going to execute. So he brought his execution mojo and ecos of Dell and become Dell Technologies, as Stu pointed out, a portfolio of multiple companies under one umbrella and he brought the execution discipline and this is a theme, Dave. Last night at the analysts reception, as I was talking to other analysts and talking to some of the execs, both from VMware and Dell Technologies, that the execution performance across the board both on product integration, which was a weak spot as you know, is getting better, the business performance discipline. We're going to have the CFO on here to talk more about it, they're executing. Howard Elias is going to be on this afternoon. He called this three years ago when he was talking about the integration that they saw synergies, they saw opportunities and they were going to unpack those. They stayed relentless on that. So I think this is a great example of keeping the founders around for all the VC-backed companies. You're thinking about getting rid of founders. Never let a founder leave a company. They bring the vision, they bring also some guts and grit and they bring a perspective and you can put great talent and team around that, that attract and retain great executives like Michael's done and he's poaching HPE, other companies and pulling talent in 'cause they're executing. They pay well, it's a great place to work according to the statistics. So again, this is all because of the founder and if the founder's not around, you have all the fiefdoms and the policists who kick in and then it becomes kind of sideways. So that's kind of what I see other companies that don't have founders around and HP lost their founders obviously and then the culture kind of went a little bit sideways. So they're trying to get back in the game, seeing them go back to their roots. We'll see how they do. We don't do that show anymore and again we don't have a lot of visibility into what HP's doing but we do know, Dave, that they do not have a lot of the pieces on the board that Dell does. So if you want to have an end-to-end operating model, and you're missing key value activities of an end-to-end value chain, that's going to be hard to automate, it's hard to be a performant, it's going to be hard to be successful. So I think Dell is showing the playbook of how to be horizontally scalable operationally and offer perspectives and data-driven specialism in any industry in any vertical. >> Yeah Dave, if I can just on the cultural piece 'cause it's really interesting. You talked about EMC, East Coast hard driving versus VMware, software, Silicon Valley company. While they're working together, a lot of it, you know, I talk to VMware people and they're like well it's great the Dell force is just selling our stuff. It's not like I'm having storage shoved down my throat or we have to have our arms twisted. It's the product portfolio that they're selling, the vSAN, NSX, the management software suite and those pieces, things like SD-WAN, there's some good synergies there. So the product portfolio is a nice fit that just jointly go out to market that they just really line up well together and Dell's a very different cultural beast than EMC was. >> Well again, staying on culture for a moment, when I discussed with some of the folks that I know out of Hopkinton the narrative early on was oh Dell's ruining EMC, tearing it apart and so forth. When you talk to people today, they say, you know what, it was painful. Dell came in and said okay, you're going to be accountable, really had an accountability culture, but now they've come out the other side, the narrative is it was the right thing to do. Jeff Clarke came in and sort of forced this alignment. There's like no question about it. People, this is a guy who you know, his calendar's set for the year. People know where he's going to be, what meeting he's going to have, what's expected and they're prepared and it seems to be taking hold. I mean if a $90 billion company that's growing at 14% in revenues, in profitable revenues, that's quite astounding when you think about it and I think it's a big result of the speed at which Dell has brought in its operating model to the broader EMC and transformed itself. It's quite amazing. >> Awesome show, guys. We've got clips out there on the #DellTechWorld on Twitter. We've got a lot of videos. We've got two sets here, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Final word on this intro for day two, guys. Thoughts on the show? It's not a boring show. It's a lot of activities, a lot of things. They've got an Alienware eSports gaming studio which I think is totally badass. A lot of kind of cool things here. It's not the glitz and glam that we've seen in other EMC Worlds before or Dell Worlds, but it's meat and potatoes and it's got a spring to its step here. I feel it's not, it feels good. That's my takeaway. >> Well the big theme is hybrid cloud and multicloud. Jon Rowe as we were leaving the room today that we were early with that multicloud. Thanks for everybody else in the industry for hopping on board. The reality is the first time I heard the sort of hybrid cloud was called private cloud. Chuck Hollis wrote a blog back in the mid to late 2000s. Now I will make an observation in the customers that I talk to. Multicloud is not thus far, has not thus far has been a deliberate strategy. In my opinion, it's been the outcropping of multivendor, shadow IT, lines of business and I think the corner office is saying hold on, we need to reign this in, we need to have a better understanding of what our cloud strategy is, build a platform that is hybrid and sure, multicloud, to build our digital transformation. We need IT to basically help us build this out to make sure we comply with the corporate edicts and that's what's happening. It is early days. There's a long way to go. >> Yeah, as Dave, as you know, I sat right down the hallway from Chuck Hollis when he wrote that piece and I went and I called up Chuck and I was like hey Chuck, this sure sounds like my next generation virtual data center stuff that I joined the CTO office to work on and he's like yeah, yeah, new marketing branding and I wrote a piece, exactly what you said, Dave, on Wikibon.com, hybrid and multicloud were a bunch of pieces, you know. It's not a cohesive strategy. The management's not there. We're starting to see maturation. Some of the point products, you know, developed really fast. When we talk about VMware on AWS, that happened really fast. I heard if you stop by the VMware booth here at the show, they're showing outposts and I said is a diagram? No, no, I've got customers in production running this. I'm like hold on, I need to hear about this. Outpost in production? But that strategy as you said, hybrid and multicloud, we're starting to get there, starting to pull it together. David Foyer wrote a phenomenal piece about hybridcloud taxonomy. We've spent a lot of time on the research side. Really what does the industry need to do, how should customers think about all of the layers? You know, data and networking and all of these components to help make not just a bunch of pieces but actually drive innovation and help be better than the sum of its parts. >> Well ironic followup on that post, the Chuck Hollis post was around they called it the private cloud and it was all about homogeneity and now multicloud is everything but homogeneous. Outpost, however, is. Same hardware, same software, same control plane, same data plane so interesting juxtaposition. >> We'll see Amazon Outpost. Guys, go to SiliconAngle.com, Wikibon.com. Great hybridcloud, multicloud analysis coverage and news. And some of the headlines hitting the net here. Dell Technologies makes VMware linchpin of hybrid cloud, data center as a service, end user strategies from Zdnet. eWEEK, Dell makes major hybrid cloud push. Obviously great analysis, guys, right on the number. Day two, CUBE coverage here in Las Vegas. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante, Stu Miniman. We've got two sets. Rebecca Knight, Lisa Martin and more. Stay tuned for more coverage of day two after the short break. (upbeat music)

>> Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE, covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE. Lisa Martin with John Furrier covering Dell Technologies World 2019. This is our first day of coverage, two sides or, as John likes to say, it's theCUBE cannon, a cannon of CUBE content. We're very pleased to welcome back one of our alumni, Joyce Mullen, the President, Global Channel, OEM and IoT from Dell Technologies. Joyce, welcome to theCUBE cannon. >> Thank you so much. Happy to be in the cannon, it's a great place to be! >> The cannon is off the a great start! So, before we get started into all of the nitty gritty, I just want to acknowledge, you are one of CRN's Women of the Channel on Power 100 last year. Congratulations on that. >> Thank you. Thank you, thank you. >> It's always great to have strong females on theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Talk to us a little bit about the Global Channel. There's about 4,000 partners here? >> 5,000 actually, over 5,000. >> 5,000? You've got a channel of over 150,000. Global Partner Summit kicking off today, what are some of the exciting things, news? >> Well, I'm sure you've talked about the news from this morning. I mean that obviously was dominating a lot of the discussions in terms of the solutions that we're offering and things like that. Really exciting stuff and very cool to see the collaboration between VMware and Microsoft and Dell, I mean, that's pretty powerful stuff. But also, our partners are really excited because they've been asking us for more and more highly integrated solutions. We heard about two new ones today that really span the Dell Technologies family of brands and they... You know, we have a bunch of things that we've talked about with the partners today. But we set it up last year with three strategic imperatives, and one of them is about making it easier to do more business with us. That's really, operationally, how do we improve the partner experience? The second one is around helping them enable and transform customer's environments across Dell Technologies families of brands and that one, you know, is tough to do. And so, we made some progress on that this morning, which was really exciting to hear about and then we also announced a change in our branding to our program. So we were the Dell EMC Partner Program, now we're the Dell Technologies Partner Program, which obviously carries broader significance. And then the third imperative is all around helping our partners embrace and monetize these new, emerging technologies, like IoT and AI. You heard a lot about that from Michael today, too. So we are working very hard to figure out how to help our partners do just that. >> Talk about the economics on the channel, because the channel's great leverage sales, indirect, great business models, proven over the years to be great. As new technology comes in, if it's complicated, it's hard to sell. If it's complicated, you need training. And if it doesn't throw off more profit for the partner, it tends to not work out well. You guys have really been working on this. Talk about the partner reaction to their opportunity to serve their customers, who are your customers. You're essentially going to be doing that. This has been an opportunity, because we're seeing that, with some of the services teams out there, there's more technology required in their... Skills gaps to architects. That's an opportunity for the channel partners to actually add value. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that value piece that the partners now can add on top of it, because if it's an easy, consistent end-to-end environment that's turn-key from Dell, the partners take that and they can wrap value around that. >> Absolutely. >> Talk about that dynamic specifically. >> Well, so, when we think about these new technologies, and we think about the environments our customers are facing, or if you think about IoT, which is generally quite vertically specific, it requires new sets of skills, no doubt about it. But this complexity that we're basically facing right now in IT around more servers, more processors, more accelerators. I mean, we've gotten pretty used to a world where x86 is kind of king. But five years from now, it's going to be much different. Artificial intelligence will drive a whole bunch of specialized servers, for example. Anyway, that's an illustration of the complexity that our customers are facing, which is great news for our partners, to your point, John. So, when we spend time with our partners, we're talking about the importance of, of course you need to know the technology. Of course you need to know what AI means. You need to understand augmented reality. You need to understand IoT. But probably even more importantly, you got to get a deeper understanding of the businesses that your customer's in. The verticals, the industries. Because it's not a uniform, horizontal environment that we're deploying this stuff into now. It's a much, much more highly varied, highly complex environment, which is great news because customers need our help. That does mean that the partners have to have the certifications. We're trying to make that easier so that if they have gotten certified with VMware on VCF, they can apply that to Dell Technologies. Vice versa. >> Joyce, that's a great point. That kind of connects what Michael Dell said on stage, because the vertical specialism is where the data adds value. So where you actually bring data into the equation, which is the lifeblood of, or the heartbeat of digital transformation, to quote Michael Dell on that one. That's where the specialism is important. In the verticals. >> Yes. >> So knowing how to make data work is a partner opportunity. >> Absolutely. And that means you got to understand the business, the outcomes that your customers are looking for, and what that data looks like in those environments. So it's way different if you're in a plant or a hospital. I mean, those are pretty different environments. You got to know what you're talking about. I think it's a great opportunity for partners, but it does mean, maybe a reorientation, or a consideration of vertical expertise. >> I want to get your thoughts on IoT. So two verticals that are smoking hot right now are health care and manufacturing, machine, you know... >> Industrial Automation. >> Industrial Automation, yeah, thank you. I know RPA is high. I see people using RPA, it's really hot. In those areas, okay, OT, operational technologies, and IT have been kind of at war. Not at war, but they're different cultures. IT is about connecting internet protocol devices that have data to it. OT's, some cases, HVAC system or something else. All are getting computers on them now. So for say, for security... So the realization that it's an IT mindset, coming together with operational technology folks, are two culturally different markets but the products are blending, it's kind of becoming blurred. What is your view on this? How do you guys see that? How do you posture to that marketplace? What's the value proposition? >> Yeah, so I think it's fascinating, because we've been in cases where we're talking to customers on the operating technology side, and on the IT side, of course, given our heritage. But through our OEM group, we have a lot of experience with industrial automation, for example. And we've actually introduced people at the same company to each other. On the OT side and the IT side. >> Wow. >> Because they just you're... I don't know if I would say that they were at war, John, but they were definitely... It was parallel play going on. You know what I mean? They were not necessarily helping one another. And I would say, still, when we are in these environments, I would say roughly a third of the time, the operating technology guys say, I got this. I don't need the IT guys to tell me what to do. I'm running my plant. They do not understand. I am all about throughput, I'm all about yields, I'm all about output, I'm all about safety, I'm all about quality, whatever. The IT guy is saying, Um, well, yeah but you got to be all about security. If you're going to put this stuff on my network it's got to meet these criteria, right? So the Operating Technology guys a third of the time will say, Don't talk to the IT guys, I got this. On the IT side, a third of the time they'll say, Those OT guys really don't understand what I'm up against here. I've got to make sure this is a completely secure environment and I've got to think about all sorts of terrible data issues and things like that, privacy, all that sorts of stuff. Let me... I got this. And then, about a third of the time, we have a very productive relationship where they're working together. I expect that those... That third will become half, will become 75 percent, because it has to. >> Which half becomes 75 percent? >> I think we're going to >> The collaboration. >> see a collaboration and we will not have people taking sides because you just can't. You can't afford it. You can't afford these parallel universes. From a security point of view, or an economic point of view. >> You can't be warring, that's what you're saying. >> Yeah, exactly. >> You've got to come together and get a solution. >> Exactly, exactly. >> How can you facilitate your partners becoming that enabler of that collaboration? In terms of educating them on, a third does this, a third does that, this is my sandbox, that's yours, and then there's the third that's like, Oh, we kind of get it. How do you see yourselves as enabling your channel to be that mediator, that facilitator? >> So there's a couple of different ways. One is through Competency Development, and we have things like an IoT Competency. We have a Dell Technology Cloud Competency, as of this morning. And we will see more and more solutions-based competencies, versus product-based competencies. So, clearly, that's a trend. And that means we're helping our partners develop a level of expertise around deployment of those solutions. So that's step one. The other thing is, we're trying to figure out how to facilitate that with product offerings. So Integrated Product Offerings. You heard a couple of those today. We also have things like our award-winning, actually, IoT Connected Bundles, which are trying to facilitate that. And then the third way we're trying to do that is, we're trying to encourage our partners to take advantage of the power of this massive ecosystem we have. If you think about all of the OEMs who are building their solutions on Dell Technology, and you think about all of the partners who are trying to figure out how to offer a broader solution set to their customers on the OT side. Video Surveillance is a great example. Digital City Solutions is another one. That combination could be really, really powerful. So we have, I would say it's a very rudimentary capability right now, we call it Partner Finder. We also have something called Cloud Partner Connect, in case a partner needs service provider capability. We're going to build that out this year and include our OEM, so our partners can actually find like-minded partners who have the same kind of focus on Dell Technologies as a core component of the solutions. That means it's just going to be easier to integrate these things. >> Channels love bundles, they love turn-key because, again, that reduces their, cuts cost. >> Yeah, of course. >> They can wrap margin around that with services. >> Of course. >> Always a great playbook. >> Exactly. >> Simplicity wins. On the business side, I want to get your thoughts on the integration stuff. I love the simplicity, bundling, love that, but when you start dealing with channels within channels within channels, you get the embedded relationships. I got VMware on Azure, I got Dell Technologies with VxRail, going through this Microsoft guy. The joint sales, I mean, my mind kind of explodes. It must be really hard. How do you guys handle that complexity? Is that something you're used to? Is it not a problem? Computation programs and things of that nature? >> I mean, for sure, we got to figure out how to weed through all that, and then simplify it to a point that a partner understands what they get. If you do X, this is what you get. If you do Y, this is what, I mean, cause they have to make their own economic decisions about that. And so, yes, we have to weed through that. I think that one of the things, though, that we're very, very clear on now is, through our track system in our partner program, we've tried to ask partners to designate themselves. I am a service provider. I am a systems integrator. I am an OEM partner. The truth is, those lines are blurring, and are increasingly meaningless, and we have to meet partners where they are. So, we're working very hard this year on trying to get rid of a bunch of those tracks, simplifying the program. It doesn't really depend on what you call yourself, you want to deliver the solution how the customer wants to buy it, and we need to facilitate that. >> And be profitable, make some money. >> Of course. >> There's always that. Well Joyce, thank you so much for stopping by theCUBE cannon! >> Hey, theCUBE cannon! I love it! >> ...this afternoon, we appreciate your time. >> Thank you. >> Great. Thank you guys very much. Appreciate it. Thanks so much. >> For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live, from Dell Technologies World 2019. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)