 Live from the Mendeley Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2016. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. Welcome back to the director's set here at VMworld. We are theCUBE, I'm Peter Burris, and we're joined today by an actually very interesting panel, one that includes a reseller, a channels professor, and a strategist. Peter Bookman, chief strategist, at Sphere 3D, and then we have David Oxer, who is the channels chief, and guest of honor, so to speak, is Denny Phillips, who is the president of iPro. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you, good to be here. So, we're now in day three. Things aren't winding down, big party tonight, lot going on, got another full day tomorrow. What's your sense? What's the, what's the skeletal butt? Couple days now of announcements, people talking about what's happening. David. You know, Peter, first of all, thanks for having us on the show. Lot of excitement, lot of interest, a lot of VDI, a lot of desktop, always a lot of energy around VMware, being an industry veteran and spending five years at VMware, it just gets more and more exciting every year, and the customer excitement, the customer problems that VMware solves are fantastic, and the ecosystem around that has just been incredible. I mean, certainly, you know, Peter and I work very closely together and Denny with the solution that he provides. Without that whole ecosystem of partners, of other suppliers surrounding VMware, the success is phenomenal, and it just gets better and better and more electric every year. It's exciting, it's great to be here again. So, Denny, do you sometimes feel like chum in the water, given that everybody's circling around partners, drive more business? Exactly, I've been obviously here for a selfish reason. I mean, they're looking at the industry, the industry, what's going on here, and what other people are doing. I'm just trying to find out what can I do with my product to bring solutions back to my customers. So I'm looking at the leads, I'm looking at what the people who are walking up are asking for, and the message we see, we've got people coming up going, that's what I want, and I'm going, good. That's what I'm there to promote. So it's been great from my perspective. That's what the... And Peter, as a strategist, obviously you're not only thinking about products and problems, but also the new way that work is being institutionalized with partners, serving more complex problems with broader customer bases. How is this combination of partners, VMware, and problems coming together from a strategic standpoint? I had a great question, and this, once again, VMworld is amazing. Every year I was sharing with friends and coworkers and others that the more you come here, the more it kind of casts a little bit of a measuring stake as to how far we've come, how far VMworld's come, because it seems like every year is transformational. It seems like last year is not a good indicator of this year, and they're all the stories, the cloud, hybrid cloud, the networking stuff, all the things are very instrumental and foundational to what we're trying to do with the cloud. So as an example, it's really exciting to have spent time at the conference sharing along with some of our partners and in educating our partners about new ways to attack the application problems, new ways to attack niche desktop issues like GPU, and as well as the standard, it seems like everybody here has some storage component of some kind, and obviously we have that too, but being able to make it accessible to as many people as possible. We'd like to see cloud-based desktops and applications available for everywhere, and we've really enjoyed this show telling the story about the orphaned ones, the ones left behind, that we are excited about our channel strategy and execution of that to attack. So let's talk about that. I actually had a conversation yesterday with a CIO that I've known for years. She was here for the day, he won her on the show floor, and I asked her, I was surprised to see her, but I asked her what she felt, and she said that she felt very good that the decision that their company had made to go VMware 12 years ago was still relevant. Major, major compliment, and that's about as good as you get from a CIO. However, it's, and you raised the notion of orphans, everybody talks about the new, the new technology, the new direction, the new thing. A lot of customers still have to maintain the old, and some of it not so old, quite frankly, but still delivering a lot of value. Web's Sphere 3D has kind of an interesting approach on this, and that is how to ensure that some of those older applications can still be married to the new directions without, as you said, being orphaned. So Peter, how is this working as a story with some of these customers? Well, I think it's a great question, and I couldn't agree more, right? I have enjoyed watching, that's part of that stake in that the bar moving every year, because I remember, and maybe this is just me in my experience, but it wasn't that long ago, it was only six years ago when V3 systems, which became a part of Sphere 3D, was really innovating around solid state being the means of making virtual desktops available for knowledge workers beyond task workers. So applying that to kind of where Ipro came from, Ipro's been around since 1998, I believe, Danny, is that right? That's correct. Principally and originally kind of catered to manufacturing, but as with a lot of partners, grown, but what we were seeing in 2010 was task workers, like manufacturers were utilizing VDI for delivery. However, when you get to knowledge workers and beyond, it was a problem, and our view is until you get them all, we don't have a desktop cloud, we don't have an application cloud. So I'd love to get Danny's thoughts on what he's seen in dealing with virtual desktops and how attacking the legacy applications, like manufacturing, is part of this transformation. I'm very excited because being left behind as a human is no fun, but also if you're one of the people who has to deal with legacy applications and you can't just use any device you want, that's very hindering, right? Absolutely. Well, and our customer base, we've got over 400 clients out there in the healthcare world and the ERP world, as Peter was saying, and every one of them has problems with software that's legacy systems. No doubt they all have it. They don't want to do it, we don't want to leave them behind. And when I joined the channel with Spear, I was extremely excited about the Glassware products because it really does give them a solution now. It doesn't fix the problem, it's still got a legacy system, but it builds the gap for them to define what their strategy is. So it's an immediate solution provider right there that I can take to my customers and I'm already getting tremendous response from the customer base, and even validated here at the show, I mean people are seeing that tagline and they're going, I've got this problem, can you fix it? As a direct sales team, that's immediate to my ears. I have a solution for them. VDI, absolutely wonderful product to be able to help them as a trusted advisor go out and show them how they need to deploy better technologies, better management of all their desktops. So the combination of those two products are just tremendous opportunity for my customers in turn for me and Spear as well. And like the CI that I talked to, it allows them to say that the decisions they made, in certain cases, two, three years ago, are still relevant today because some companies are helping to bring them forward. And let's be clear, we're not talking about, Windows Vista here. We're talking about relatively new technology. Absolutely, yeah. So for example, guys like Denny, the reason why we like him is that he, Denny and solution providers like Denny have strategic relationships with their customers and have this trusted advisor relationship that can go in and say, let's look at your environment. Two, three, four years ago, I sold you an XP application, operating system or a Windows 7 application. Let's go in and talk about how we modernize your application, how we can help them continue to move the paradigm forward. VMware has great products and they introduce great products and it takes a while for adoption. So solution providers like Denny's, the iPros of the world that are on the relationship with their customer can really monetize that, help them monetize that very quickly and get that partner really, not only the Denny's in the world, confident and able to deliver a solution but package things up that really a business owner needs solves a business problem. In my situation, I could have a migration path for them. They could go up to a new version but it's cost prohibitive. They really don't want to do that to user interface issues, it's a whole new platform. Or maybe a timing piece. Time all those variables. This could help them until they're ready to migrate to that next platform. So we were actually wrote at Wikibon, David Floyer who's one of our, one of our absolutely super analysts, wrote not too long ago a piece about what he called device virtualization, which is a part based on technologies like yours and the idea that you can actually start thinking about how the best of the new interfaces can be bought to some of these older technologies. Talk a little bit about the vision that you have for how, for example, Siri can be incorporated into some of these older legacy applications by utilizing virtualization. That's one of my favorite topics. You know, I've noticed that one of the things conspicuously absent from this show is I didn't hear anybody say you're a VDI anymore. And yet, and yet, you know, the interest is still there. We're clearly seeing that. The movements are still there. So what we've seen anyway is until you can get them all, which is this perfect, beautiful dance of the endpoint and the hosted side. And so the ideal circumstance we're seeing is being able to use a combination of the isolated application delivery of the application or a virtual desktop that can be distributed and brought closer wherever it is, married to a endpoint delivery where I don't necessarily just stream it. I also can utilize things like Siri or printers or whatever else, right? Whatever I want from the new modern device that brings the table, gestures touch, even though my application isn't aware for it. So whether it's manufacturing or anything else, it's fun to watch as an example of an interface that seems like virtual reality has been pretty hot on the show floor. I don't know. I didn't see any classes or anything on that, but it's interesting to conceive of where we're going and being able to use the VDI and the application hosted and the device capabilities as a bridge where I don't leave behind the app, but I do bring the device capabilities with it. I love that day before, please. It was great and we were flattered to be mentioned in it for how this can be, how this should be so that in the movement in the cloud, we don't leave things behind. We get the best of all worlds. All right. One of the things that's going to happen is you mentioned, for example, a virtual reality. One of the things that's going to happen is graphics are going to become increasingly important to these interfaces and what characterizes a modern application. Virtualization historically has been, let's figure out how to run a lot of these graphics or instructions on the CPU in an emulation mode. How are you guys, or how do you guys envision that we're going to get to a point where graphics itself is virtualized as a co-processor or something like that? Well, I'll talk technology and then I think that because that's a great question that involves both technology, but also execution of the channel and what the channel brings. Again, because the way I see it, the way we see that is that it is an application by application and a customer by customer decision. I can't help but notice very much like we buy our PCs and our laptops and our devices, there isn't a one size fits all answer to that question. So I'm infatuated as an example, Microsoft identifies over a hundred thousand line of business applications. I believe recently they spoke about 14 million speaking of left behind applications. But from our approach, being able to technologically say, well, I can use a isolated hosted application delivery, container like situation, or I can use a niche virtual desktop with a drop in appliance that has a specific for that type of workload. We can leverage the GPU in very unique ways, but it still leaves the handoff that says, hey, we need the partner system that actually can take it from there, tie in all kinds of other partners and make very good and important architecture and delivery systems decisions like where to put the appliances and how to deploy them, when to use public cloud, when to use private, when to use hybrid cloud and all of those are possible with all of this. So do you guys have ideas? For my situation, you know, I don't want to sell one size fits all. Spear has done a great job of offering three flavors, a knowledge worker for those just task workers doing their thing. And you can move up to the business graphics box that has the necessary horsepower. And then you go on to the professional graphics for those people who are high intense on graphical users. So instead of selling everybody the same thing, they've got those tiered approaches which gives my customers what they need when they are intensive graphic users. And he can talk about the hardware that supports that Well, what I want to do is on the notion of tiers, there's also a notion of tiers in customers and there's also a notion of tiers and the quality and the skills of the resellers. Technology, what I like to say is for the first 50 years of the industry, we had known process and unknown technology. We knew we were going to do accounting and we understood the process is accounting. And the question is we're going to do on our mainframe, mini computer clients or some other technology that was always in motion. Now we got a pretty good idea of what the target technology is going to look like. Increasingly, it's going to look like a cloud. The details still have to be worked out but the applications themselves are not defined by known process to the same degree. We're working with customers, we're building new engagement, big data, IOT, an enormous amount of data being collected with a lot of analysis, it's going to drive system behavior. They can't be programmed years in advance. Long way of asking the question. Sure. You're the channel chief. How are you starting to look at your channel partners and envisioning up-leveling their skills not just at a technology level but especially at a business level to help them understand these application directions? Yeah, that's a great question, Peter. That's the old balance that you have to have with the channel, right? And if you believe that no channel partners created equal, they're not, right? They have different capabilities and different skills. Some have a bench, some leverage a bench, some don't use a bench at all and it depends upon the products that they sell. So our strategy is to go forward with the iPros of the world that are looking to build and augment the bench that they have, but also those partners that also have strategic relationships and say, you know, I'm not there and I really don't have a bench, but I want to partner with someone that has a bench that could help me do the delivery but they have the intrinsic knowledge of that customer business problem. That's really what we're looking for. We're looking for partners that not just sell the technology but understand what the business problems are, right? And can work with other partners. Without question, this is a partnership. This is a channel. The way a channel works well is by clear swim lanes but also the ability to do partnerships, right? So Denny isn't the, you know, no disrespect to Denny but he's not the be all end all. He's very good at what he does. But if a customer says, hey, I want to do this also, Denny can come to us and we say, you know what? Let's look at the right partner you partner with, right? If Denny's looking to build out his practice, it's up to us, meaning the rest of the channel to help him build that. Mentor him into that. Not just throw him into the walls and say, figure it out but we can take you through a step program. And that's really what I'm working on developing is this whole methodology. And we're there. We'd say we're, you know, in the next couple of months we're probably 90% through where we need to be. Identifying them. All right, Ben. Well, from my perspective as well, the one thing that's helped us really escalate our knowledge base as well is we have the products. We actually, my company, I converted to VDI through their products. We use it every day. We know, we know, we live with that environment. We know what it does. So when I go to my customer base, they know that I'm already there. Same thing when we're on a glassware product, we're containerizing things. Because I want to make sure that my team knows it, lives it and can then, it's easy to then teach and show other people if you've already been there. Denny's got a very unique approach to that. He says, you know, I'm going to buy the technology and employ the technology internally and use it. And also when customers call me, my customers call me wanting to know more about it. Not only can I show them the technology, I can show them how it's working in my environment. So he's kind of eating hard dog food, if you will. But that's really, he's made the investment and I know Peter and I are really very excited about working with the Denny's of the world and those partners that are willing to make that commitment. But I can tell you though, you could have as many certification programs as you want to, my guys will pass them. But until they play with it every day, in and out on a daily basis, they're not going to retain it as well as they would if they're actually working on each day. And that's what we found over the years, that's the experience we've had. If we're going to sell something, we're going to use it. So one of the things that excites me strategically about all of this, and this is a great question, is Sphere 3D Merge with Overland Storage to have also a storage side of this portfolio, which plays a great role. A lot of the BDI things we've done, we could plug into other storage of course, but it's become very easy and frictionless to deploy our storage along with the rest of these components. But to that end, there was a very long established historical channel there to pull from. So it's great to be able to combine Denny and Habez, Dave was talking about the swim lanes so that I can say, well, here's where I pro plays and is going to be able to grow as great as it is with the 400 customers and what have you that are there that we're leveraging and building together. It's even better to know that we're going to grow together and utilize the rest of this channel to feed and also to escalate even beyond that. So it's, as mentioned, not the be all end all but it's an exciting time, especially in VM, again, VMworld and VMware because it's got a great ecosystem and so many people want this that when we have a drop in appliance based approach and a certification and accreditation that we can offer our partners, we have a great partner pool to pull from, 17,000, 19,000 partners worldwide. We have lots of things going on worldwide. It's very exciting to be able to build those swim lanes, evolve those swim lanes, and learn together with iPro and others about how we can do it better. The other thing that one more point is we have to do is we owe it to our partners to make transacting business easy. It has to be easy. We have to be able to- You owe it to your customers. We do. We have to make it easy. We absolutely do. And the easiest way is to make it easy for your partners. You're right on that. And that's really what we're working on. We have to be able to articulate the value proposition for the partner to communicate to the end users. Oh, it's very difficult to do business if we don't know what the end goal is. Well, look guys, it's been great to have you on theCUBE. It's great to get the perspective. I mean, look, if we're learning nothing from VMware, the technology is important, but increasingly customers want to talk about how are you going to help me get value out of the technology? And that requires great Denny Phillips. It requires great Phillips from my, Denny Phillips from my pro requires great partners. It requires David Auxer from the channel chief at Sphere 3D and Peter Bookman. Strategy, making sure that it all comes together. Thank you very much for being on theCUBE. Thank you. All right, we are ending day three or getting close to the end of day three here at VMware on theCUBE. The director's set. Stay with us. We've got a lot more to come over the course the next 24 hours from VMware or VMworld.