 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE live coverage here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2018. It's our ninth year covering VMworlds. Since 2010 we've covered every VMworld watch. Been with a journey in the transformation of VMworld. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We've got two sets here in the middle of VM Village and we wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the CMO, Robin Matlock, who's on theCUBE right now. Welcome back, great to see you. I'm happy to be here guys, again. Again, thanks for the support for bringing theCUBE here. The community has been responding positively to the coverage and because you guys have so much content here this year. As Pat said, a lot of the fruit's been blooming off the tree from all the investments in product and business is good. Good, we'll keep you guys busy I hope. Yeah, it's been good. So what's going on, let's get the numbers. You always get out of the way. How many people are here at the event? We're at the Mandalay Bay. What's the story? Yeah, it's a great audience this year. We're definitely seeing some nice growth. We're well over 21,000 here today. Covering all segments of the market. Covering Asia Pacific, the Americas. Also executives as well as our true blue IT practitioners. You've got CIOs and practitioners with the hands-on labs. A range of audience personas. Yeah, it kind of goes from the practitioner base up, your mid-level management, VPs, IT decision makers, CIOs. We really have a very wide variety. And the theme this year is? Possible begins with you. Okay. I popped into the CIO event last night. Yeah. And it was pretty high quality folks. I mean, I don't recall five, six, seven years ago seeing that kind of emphasis and that kind of seniority at the event. Did I just miss it or is that new? No, it's been evolving over the years. I mean at VMworld's core, it is a technical complex, right? So I would say the base, the volume of the program is still catered towards a real hands-on, technical practitioner and middle management. But we are seeing more business executives come. They want to know what their teams are exploring. They want to understand vision. And I think VMware's value proposition to enterprises is growing and therefore it's starting to be more of a business conversation. So that is a segment of the audience that is growing. And you're nurturing that. Also, you're making sure the hands-on labs are the best of the best. I saw Eric Nielsen has this new VMware code thing going on here and a little code of hackathons happening. So a lot of the mix in the community, the community is still robust. The ecosystem floor probably has more energy than I've seen in since probably 2012. So the last time I've seen it this massive, 2012, I remember Dave was pounding and then this year it just, the lift is big. Where's that coming from? Yeah, I think it's coming from a lot of things and there's no one silver bullet. First of all, VMware is just doing really well, right? The company is very performing. It's successful. Our customers have really come to buy into our strategy and our vision and they have a voracious appetite to learn and this is the place. You want to understand where the industry is going. You are technical and you want to be on the edge of the latest and greatest. VMworld is the place to come. So I think we're hitting on many different categories of technology and it's all pulled together here. So it's one week where you can go from networking to storage to management, automation, cloud, mobility. It's all right here. And you guys always kind of keep a low profile in the market. You don't over amplify or overplay your hand and grandstand too much on the marketing side, which has always been the DNA of VMware. But this year you got Amazon coming on stage. Again, Andy Jassy returns to do a major announcement that Amazon really for the first time is building a product for VMware on VMware for on-premises. Pat's on stage. So you see the commitment from the two companies, the biggest public cloud provider and the biggest operator of virtualized infrastructure and private cloud partnering and performing. So I think that really kind of put a lot of wind in your sales. I mean, a lot of people are talking about it. It's been pretty much the top news story, the impact of that relationship. How has that affected VMworld as closely the announcements that seems like reinvent more announcements than ever before? How has that relationship changed you guys? Well, I definitely think we're several years into it now and we are seeing the fruits of that effort. A couple of thoughts. First of all, the AWS relationship is not our sole element of our cloud strategy, but it's a big pillar of our cloud strategy. And I think at the end of the day, by understanding our vision for how we can help deliver a bridge to the public cloud, the hybrid cloud, it is giving our customers the license and the comfort and the confidence to continue to invest, whether it's in their data center or is in their public cloud. So there's something about just having that clarity of vision and strategy that unleashes potential even in the data center. I think the second thing to me, what was so significant about this Amazon announcement with VMware is you are now talking about public cloud services running on-prem. The line between public and private, the line between on-premise and off-premise is fading, it's blurring. We're going to get to a point where we're just going to talk about what's the workload and what's the service I need to deliver the workload. Okay, and then I can consume those services in different ways and what's the right way to consume those services, but it's not a monopoly on an off-premise or a monopoly on an on-premise, it's a blur. And I think that's going to be the best interest of customers because I think it's going to really boil down to what is the workload? What are the services I need? And I have a lot of options to how to consume that and I'm all for that and it's going to be great. I got to say, so I mean, John and I have watched this evolution for now, as you said, this is our ninth year. You guys have done a great job of really being calm about all the things that we're supposedly going to kill you. Open stack, open source, cloud, Kubernetes, containers, you've just embraced them all. I mean, I know cloud for a while was a little bit confusing, but now it's a real tailwind for you guys. I mean, great job there. And I think a lot of that is sort of how you've dealt with it internally, messaged it externally. I wonder if we could just address that. Yeah, you know, I love that observation about VMware because that speaks to two big concepts. Resiliency and innovation. In this industry, you have to be constantly innovating. And if you get too protective of the market that you're in, you start to get into a cocoon and then people are innovating around you and they're making you obsolete and you're not even seeing it happen. I think VMware has a voracious appetite for innovation and we are pushing and pushing and pushing and we're never relaxed. We are always, you know, often pleased but not satisfied, right? It's like you're never, ever done. And that keeps us being open to innovating where once we might have been protective, it's like, don't worry, things will change. We'll innovate on top of that. It's all right, a new environment. We'll innovate in that context. And I think we're very good about that. And then the other thing I think is resiliency in this industry. There's not that many that can go from decade to decade and still be highly relevant but you have to have the grit and you have to have the kind of gorilla appetite that you will continue to reinvent yourself, listen to your customers, bring your ecosystem along and partner like nobody else. And in the end, you'll deliver more value. You know, that's a great point. I love that comment. That's going to be a highlight on our highlight reel for sure. I'll add and love to get your reaction to how you guys have maintained the community vibe and the ecosystem vibe. Again, to Dave's point, this is core. Pat said on earlier today, you know, we're always going to have an open ecosystem. That's been the core of DNA of VMware. So, and you also have a really strong community hence the technical focus. These tech oriented folks, they love the tech and they speak up a lot. You know, that they speak well. They let you know when it's not right. But you guys embrace it. That hasn't changed. That's been a positive. How do you do it? Yeah, that's exactly right. I think we have over the years just built ecosystem into our core DNA. It's now defined by who we are and how we do things. And you know, going back to your Amazon comment, I think that is simply an example. We know how to partner. We've been at it for 20 years and it's just been part of how we perceived the requirements to be successful. And because of that, it's now, we're just good at it. We get it. And the reason we're good at it is because we very much understand it's bi-directional. You can only win when you win together. You know, one of the things I want to point out and at least give you guys some props while you're here and get your reaction to it is we've done a little bit more cube with you guys outside of the scope of the event. We did a lot of women in tech leadership events. We were invited to the first radio event where they opened it up to some press. So we got a glimpse inside. You have an internal engineering kind of concept. It's a total R&D with all the technologies being incubated. It's a really great thing. Also being on campus, you guys are always constantly voted the best place to work. You got the innovation in the R&D and you just got a great workforce. So that is also a cultural thing within VMware, right? Because Pat said we're going to continue to drive technology products and sales and marketing for customers. Your reaction. Yeah, I think people are at the heart of great businesses, right? And we have to create an environment where people can do their best work. Radio is a wonderful example. So that's an internal conference for our engineering teams. But what it is is about building community within our engineering community. How do they explore new things? How do they take risks and explore and innovate and try new things? And then how do they share that with their colleagues from all over the world? And I think that's just part of our value system is creating these kind of communities internally and externally. And you opened it up to press. You opened it up to press, talking about taking it at risk. It's the first time you've ever opened up to some press outlets. We were one of three, but it was a peak. That's a risk. It is a risk. And I think the idea there is that being protective is not really helpful. That what you need to do is to really be open. That there's so much to deliver value and innovate. There's no reason to be so secretive. It's more about how can we feed off each other's ideas? How can we plant seeds and see if these things are going to resonate? We don't know for sure these new emerging things are going to work or not. So the more we get feedback early, I think the faster we'll innovate. It'll accelerate innovation. It won't hold it back. Well, your point about the ecosystem is right on. Sanjay made the point about ROI today. I thought that was really interesting data about, you know, 10X was a conservative return number and the, you know, hundreds of billions if not trillion of dollars that you've sort of paid forward through the ecosystem to the end customers. Powerful. Very powerful. At the end of the day, we need to just continue to focus on delivering more and more economic value, right? It's that whether it's cost savings, whether it's being able to fuel new innovation, whether it's consolidation. At the end of the day, we all have to get more done with less and have more value and more impact. Well, it's interesting to see you bringing Amazon into this ecosystem because you said you guys partnering as part of your DNA, you know, generally Amazon's partnerships have been come on into the marketplace, right? And now they're diving into this world, bringing their technology on-prem which was heresy five years ago. You never would have seen Amazon do that. So do you think you can teach Amazon something about partnering? Humbly. Well, I'll let Amazon comment on that. Amazon's got a lot of partners, Dave. They've got thousands of partners. But you know, I'm going to go back, you know, I can't speak for Amazon and what their learning journey has been. I do feel confident that VMware, we are good at partnering and I think we build good partnerships. My final question for you as community, obviously as people grow, there's a demand for more cloud advocates, more cloud engineers, just some cloud architects. You guys always had a nice lock on that constituent, but we're seeing a lot of other competition higher away, people from communities. How do you maintain that community fabric when potentially they might be migrating to other communities? Is it through open source, Dirk Hondel is leading the efforts with open source as I'm last night. How are you thinking about maintaining an open but yet inviting community when people potentially are being migrating around different communities? Yeah, you know, I think you have to look at communities as personalities and kind of the DNA of a community. And it's not a one size fits all, right? When you're in the DevOps world, you need to act and behave and engage a certain way. You need to bring a certain type of content to that and trust me, they don't want a lot of marketing in those conversations, right? When you're in enterprise class, you might be dealing with a different type of DNA. It's about proven stability, security, resiliency. So you have the little different nature of the community and the dialogue there. I think our philosophy is you got to bring the right content to the people. And it's different, but make sure you understand the needs of the community and we don't own these communities, right? These are volunteer people do this because they care and they want to and they're passionate about it. Our job is to foster that passion, help make them effective, let them share amongst themselves. They are going to move around communities. We just want to be a part of it. Like we're not trying to own it. We're trying to be a part of it. That's the key, you try to get a land grab ownership. That's when they run. Yeah, that's what it's about. I think it's really just about what is the sense of community? What does the word mean? It means coming together. It means sharing. It means helping each other. It means people with like-minded needs and wants and interests. Robin, thanks for coming on the queue. I know you're super busy. Thanks for sharing. Final word, just overall impressions so far. You have the way things going, the confidence phenomenal. Everything going smooth. You know, I couldn't be more excited about what's happened here so far. We're only into day two. For me, a couple of the highlights is how now the industry is starting to talk about tech as a force for good. So now we're starting to move out of the conversation of just the technologies and the products and the impact. But what are we collectively doing to make this world a better place? That's a new dialogue. And I got so much positive response from Malala today, from, you know, some of the things that we're talking about impact on the world. And I think there's just nothing but upside and opportunity for us. And that speaks to the culture. You guys are very inspirational. Love the tech for good that people want to work for a company that's doing tech for good as well as making a profit. So do I. Thanks for coming on. Appreciate it. We're doing our best for good here in the queue by bringing the great voices in the community and also the executives bringing the content to you here. Two stages, ninth year covering VMworld. We're here with Robin Malala at the CMO. Stay tuned. I'm John Furrier and Dave Velothi. We'll be back with more coverage. Stay with us.