 Okay, we're back, this is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org and we're live here at VMworld 2012. This is theCUBE, SiliconANGLE.tv's continuous coverage of VMworld. We're down here in the hang space in Hall E at the Moscone so if you're out there, please stop by and see us. We got a great action going on this week. This is our third day and we're hearing a lot about so-called software-defined data center. We just had Steve Herod on and really we're seeing the expansion of the ecosystem. Steve Herod actually gave VMware and A, VMware and Ecosystem and A on the level of quality, I'll call it, that they've delivered for servers and compute and memory, a B or a B plus for storage and a C, C plus for networking. Now, so a key aspect of this vision of software-defined networking or software-defined data center is the ecosystem itself and a key part of that is services. So we're here with Ted Newman who's a senior director at EMC Global Services. One of the services companies that was involved in the CloudOps forum. Now the CloudOps forum is the elite services companies that are going to market with VMware to really expand the ecosystem. These services companies realize that VMware is really the transformational platform and they are there to participate in that transformation as a business opportunity. So first of all, Ted, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks very much for having me. I really appreciate it, I've been looking forward to it. theCUBE alum, Ted's been on before and it's good to have you back. So this CloudOps forum, you guys must have been pleased to be in that. A lot of great names up there, you know Accenture, Deloitte, all the blue chips and EMC, three important letters that you love to see. So tell us about CloudOps forum and what your role is there. So the CloudOps forum is a pretty exciting opportunity really for VMware and their partners to help customers understand what does it take to run a cloud. And what we've seen is as customers are adopting and choosing these new technologies and implementing them, that's really only a part of the story. And to get the full value out of their investments and to really deliver the agility that the end users are looking for, they need to transform more than just the infrastructure. They really need to address process, operations, training, et cetera. And that's what the operations forum is about is to come together and work out some best practices that can be shared with the entire community about what does it take to operate these new environments and how do you really drive up customer satisfaction and customer adoption? So what's your take, we had Steve Herron earlier, I was saying, and he talked about it. He said virtually every customer I go see is going through a portfolio exercise. He didn't call it portfolio rationalization, I do. I think familiar with that term, but basically they got a chunk of applications that they're not going to touch. A chunk that they want to modernize and a chunk that they want to invest in and probably another chunk that they want to throw away and rationalize. So my question is, as they do that and as you have this huge disruption coming in the industry, big data, cloud, virtualization, business processes are going to change. And that increases the complexity from your standpoint of the knowledge transfer that you're providing to customers. How are you working through all that? Or is that not really an issue that's on the mind? Are those organizational tensions something that you guys pay attention to in your consulting engagements? So that's a great analysis, really, of what we see happening. And I think the important thing that we're seeing is that the concept of business processes being over here and IT processes being over here is really going away. And we're seeing some incredible initiatives like DevOps collapsing process within the IT side of the house. We're seeing new technologies that allow you to really address business process and IT process, automation, and integration in the same tool. And we're seeing that as the rise of service management continues, the concept of what is the service is expanded off of just the IT stack. And really, you need to design services the same way, regardless of if it's a business service or an IT service, because eventually, the goal is going to be that those services are enabled by IT. And it could be provided by internal IT, a cloud provider, a virtual private cloud, et cetera, right? But part of that application rationalization needs to continue to extend further up and address services and how do we begin to think more in terms of services than apps? That's really interesting, Ted. You're basically familiar with, I'm sure, the notion that, okay, I've got this application and it supports this business process and you sort of, people would go through a mapping what you're saying is those two are becoming intrinsically linked. That obviously puts changes on your knowledge base and your expertise. You're doing a lot more business-oriented consulting and planning than just straight IT, is that right? It's definitely right. And what we're seeing is the CIO and his entire organization needs to think more in terms of outcomes than apps and infrastructure and that sort of thing. What's the business outcome that we're looking for here, right? Faster time to market, new features and functionality in the hands of an end user. One of my favorite things that I saw yesterday in Steve's keynote was the fact that we've stopped referring to that top level of the three levels that we talk about as end user compute and we're talking about it as access. That's huge, right? Because that's exactly what we're looking for. The users aren't even thinking in terms of compute. They're thinking in terms of devices and access and how do I get what I need? And the consumerization of IT has driven that and now we're seeing the IT-ification of consumers, right? Everybody's savvy and smart and able to use technology to their advantage. Business and IT are merging, in my opinion. So I know platform as a service is a topic that is near dear to you. What's going on with platform as a service? What are customers telling you? What changes is it driving in the environment? Well, certainly platform as a service is really about rethinking how you develop, package, deliver, maintain applications and really enable the developers and the business to focus on outcomes. And we're seeing right now a lot of customers are intrigued and interested. Certainly there are some platforms out there in the public realm, the public cloud realm that are getting some traction. Certainly VMware has Cloud Foundry, which I think is just doing Yeoman's work out there in the marketplace and getting people inspired and understanding what it is that platform as a service can do for an organization. Customers are trying to figure out how to do that internally as well, right? So one of the things that we're seeing is how do we enable the CIO to maintain control as a service broker with access to platforms internal and external and really drive the same level of policy enforcement, security, without getting in the way of that agility. So that obviously brings us to the topic of hybrid cloud. We've seen a lot more interest in hybrid cloud lately. At the same time, it's a challenge. So many have observed that the Googles and the Amazons of the world have high degrees of homogeneity, a limited number of applications. It's the exact opposite of IT. It's heterogeneous in hundreds if not thousands of applications. So clearly companies like VMware are trying to drive as much homogeneity at the same time preserving open standards. So it's a balancing act. What are you seeing as far as the hybrid cloud? What's working? So we're seeing some pretty exciting things where customers are actually able to deploy to many clouds, right? And I think the whole multi-cloud approach is one that VMware is embraced and that CIOs and CFOs are certainly embracing. Yeah, the open stack announcements for people this week. Exactly, and the fact that Cloud Foundry you can deploy to multiple different clouds right through there. So from that point of view, we really believe that hybrid cloud and EMC is one of the first organizations to really talk about the transition from private cloud as the be-all and the end-all to the hybrid cloud model. That's my personal opinion, but I think we've been out in front of that for a while and certainly within our consulting organization and the work we're doing with our customers is about how do you enable an organization to take advantage of those services that are compelling to them, regardless of who that service provider is, without for-fitting security and compliance. You know, Ted, I'd say EMC was one of the first. I would agree with that. In fact, Chuck Hollis was one of the first guys that blogged about it. He'll tell you, he wasn't the first, but he was one of the first and he laid out what at the time he called private cloud, which is what people today think of as hybrid cloud. So private, and then what happened is the industry just morphed the term into private cloud, meaning internal cloud and then all IT, where it says, that's just the IT. And then remember, we had that two years of what really is it, but essentially that original definition was being able to control and govern your data, your security, and have that common platform. So you're saying that you have real examples of customers that are actually doing that today. Can you talk about that a little bit, either, you know, don't name the customers if you can't, but just give us the examples in the use cases. So, you know, what we're seeing, and we have a customer that we worked with here in the Bay Area, where they went about it in a two-pronged approach, right? One was consuming publicly available cloud services in order to be able to rapidly build some new capability and do it in a very agile way for one of their business units. And then the other was deploying some new features and functionality targeted at their partner organization so that their partners would be able to consume and offer some new services. And they did that as a public cloud, right? So we're seeing many organizations latch onto this concept of a hybrid cloud, not just consuming internal and external cloud resources in a private way, my personal opinion, right? Private cloud does extend outside of the data set. I liked the definition, actually. Yeah. I thought it had a lot of meat to it. Well, and that's what we need to deliver, right? Regardless of what we call it, you know, that's what we need to deliver. But many customers are really taking advantage of the fact that they can not only consume services, but also offer services both internal and external, and that opens up new lines of revenue, you know, all kinds of new agility, et cetera. Well, and there's some clear examples of that. We had NYSE on Fergalo Sullivan. I love that example. There's a couple others too that we've covered at Wikibon. Cerner is another one that gets the Cerner Cloud, Healthcare Cloud, and USC has an archive cloud. NYSE is very interesting. They essentially did, you know, sort of Amazon for the capital markets with a better SLA. And actually Fergalo said you guys were involved in helping them think that through. I don't know if you're familiar with that situation. It's a great example of an organization turning IT, which is always thought of as a cost center into a profit center. Exactly, and I believe that they had Nancy Turbey from our organization up with them on Monday, I think, talking about that. And I believe she's also presenting tomorrow on some of the successes that we had with them. But, you know, they came to us at least 18 months ago to say, we have this idea, right? And NYSE is certainly a place that is recognized that all of their business agility, 100% depends on IT agility, right? There is nothing that they do that is not dependent on IT. And then they realize that they have developed over the course of the last 30 years some incredible technology, some incredible processes. And to make that available to their partners and customers would add a lot of value, right? And open up some new revenue streams. We're seeing that not just in financial services, but also in pharma and healthcare. And, you know, we've seen that in a number of different markets where you can really have an impact on the business's bottom line, not just by reducing costs, but by adding new lines of revenue. Yeah, so now, so those are examples of three I gave USC, Cerner, and NYSE, are examples of companies actually becoming cloud service providers. I'm inferring from your comments that even if an organization doesn't become a cloud service provider here, swipe the credit card and that's not what NYSE's model is, but metaphorically swipe the credit card, here's some services. You're saying that organizations are offering different types of services, maybe not direct cloud services that are being enabled by that hybrid cloud or what we call the private cloud capability, the business capability. Exactly. So, not just a direct cloud service provider. Can you give me an example? Sure, there was a healthcare organization that had a lot of expertise around, you know, being able to take a look at radiology exams and provide, you know, some remote v-expert type service that's been enabled via cloud technologies, right? There's also another doctor's organization in the west, right, where they synced up a number of long-term healthcare facilities and have, you know, virtual doctor's visits, right? Where they use some of the Cisco telepresence technology to have a doctor in the room with the patient, even though they're, you know, three or four states away. And, you know, that is one that increases, you know, customer intimacy. It addresses some needs and allows them to extend their reach, right? And, you know, it's built on top of a lot of these cloud services and it's very exciting. It expands that market by allowing them to offer new products and services. So, that's an example where they're not selling IT as a service, they're selling a service that's enabled by IT. Exactly. That's the perfect example of tying back to our earlier conversation of how the business process and the IT processes are just slammed together. Right. Interesting. Now, you mentioned DevOps before, Ted. That's something that we've covered here on SiliconANGLE pretty extensively and essentially it's the intersection of application development and operations and that cross-training of those disciplines and really getting rid of some of the back and forth and speeding up time to delivery, time to deployment. What are you seeing there in DevOps? Well, we're seeing a couple of things, right? One notable thing, and I'm sure you've seen it as well, is that DevOps is quickly becoming the new cloud, right? In terms of a term that everybody's using and not necessarily everybody understands, right? So, there's not necessarily a definitive body of knowledge out there about DevOps yet, unfortunately, and certainly we're trying to help with that. But we are definitely seeing many customers adopting the spirit and some of the tenets of DevOps as a way to bring their IT organization together, right? Nobody wants silos anymore. Cloud has been great about breaking down the silos from an infrastructure perspective. DevOps is doing the same thing from the, you know, higher up the stack, right? The application development, the operations, the maintenance, et cetera. And it's a powerful tool by any name, right? You know, I think it is a key tenet of overall IT transformation. Yeah, we had a, on Wikibon, we had a great peer insight with Munder Capital. Go to Wikibon and check out, if you just search on Munder Capital, there was a peer insight that we did that was really effective, achieving hyper-productivity through DevOps, a new methodology for business technology management. This is actually a real example of DevOps, not just because we're a coldly transformed organization. Check that out, look into that. Ted Newman, we're out of time. We could go on forever. I mean, every time I talk to somebody from EMC Consulting, it's like this treasure trove of knowledge and information. You guys are doing a great job. Very interesting business, kind of the tip of the spear, I call it, for a lot of great activities that are going on. So, enjoy the rest of VMworld. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing your insights and perspectives with our audience. Oh, thanks very much for the opportunity. Great to see you. All right, keep it right there. We'll be right back with our next guest from AppFrog. James Waters is coming on. John Furrier's going to be back and keep it right there. This is theCUBE live from VMworld 2012.