 theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Hey everyone, welcome back to Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE. We are live at MWC 23. This is day two of our coverage. We're giving you four days of coverage, but you already know that because you were here yesterday. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson. Dave, this show is massive. I was walking in this morning and almost getting claustrophobic with the 80,000 people that are joining us. There seems to be at MWC 23 more interest in enterprise class technologies than we've ever seen before. What are some of the things that you've observed with that regard? Well, I've observed a lot of people racing to the highest level messaging about how wonderful it is to have the kiss of a breeze on your cheek in a field of flowing wheat. I want to hear about the actual things that make this stuff possible. So I think we have a couple of guests here who can help us start to go down that path of actually understanding the real cool stuff that's behind the scenes. And absolutely, we got some cool stuff. We got two guests from Dell. Dave Lincoln is here, the VP of Networking and Emerging Server Solutions and Denia Davidson, Director, Edge Server Product Planning and Management at Dell. So great to have you. Two Dave's and a Davidson. And a Davidson, yeah. She stands alone here. So guys, talk about, Dave will start with you, the newest generation of PowerEdge servers. What's new? Why is this so exciting? What challenge is for telecom operators? Is it solving? Yeah, well, so this is actually Dell's largest server launch ever. It's the most expansive, which is notable because we already have a pretty significant portfolio. We're very proud of our core mainstream portfolio, but really since the super compute in Dallas in November, that we started a rolling thunder of launches, MWC being part of that, leading up to DTW here in May, where we're actually going to be announcing big investments in those parts of the market that are the growth segments of server, specifically AIML, to address that. We're investing heavy in our XE series, which we, as I said, we announced at super compute in November. And then we have to address the CSP segment, big investment around the HS series, which we just announced. And then the lastly, the Edge Telecom segment, which we had the biggest investment, biggest announce in portfolio launch with XR series. You need, let's dig into that, where we see the growth coming from, I mentioned telecom, CSPs, but the Edge, what are some of the growth opportunities there that organizations need Dell's help with to manage so that they can deliver what that demanding end user is wanting? The biggest areas, obviously, in addition, Telco has been the biggest one, but the other areas too we're seeing is in retail and manufacturing as well. And so internally, we're going to be focused on hardware, but we also have a solutions team who are working with us to build the solutions focused on retail and Edge and Telco as well, on top of the servers that we'll talk about shortly. What are some of the biggest challenges that retailers and manufacturers are facing? You know, during the pandemic, retailers, those that were successful pivoted very quickly to curbside delivery is that didn't survive, weren't able to do that digitally, but we're seeing such demand at the retail Edge. The consumer side, we want to get whatever we want right now, it has to be delivered, it has to be personalized to me. Talk a little bit more about some of the challenges there within those two verticals and how Dell is helping to address us with the new server technologies. For retail, I think there's a couple things. So one is like the fast food areas. So obviously through COVID, a lot of people got familiar and comfortable with driving through. And so there's probably a certain fast food restaurant, everyone's pretty familiar with it. They're pretty efficient in that. And so there are other customers who are trying to replicate that. And so how do we help them do that from a technology perspective? From a retail, it's one of the pickup, right? And the online experience, but when you go into a store, like I don't know about you, but I go to Target and I'm looking for something and I have kids who are kind of distracting you. It's like, where is this one thing? And so I pull up the Target app, for example, and it tells me where it's at, right? And then obviously stores want to make more money. So like, hey, since you picked this thing, these are these things around you. So things like that is what we're having conversations with customers about. It's so interesting because the demand is there. Yeah, it is. And it's not going to go anywhere. It's certainly not going to be dialed down. We're not going to want less stuff, less often. Yeah. And as typical consumers, we don't necessarily make the association between what we're seeing in the palm of our hand on a mobile device and the infrastructure that's actually supporting all of it. People hear the term cloud and they think cloud, phone, mystery. Yeah, magic just happens. Yeah, but in fact, in order to support the things that we want to be able to do on the move, you have to optimize the server hardware in certain ways. What does that mean exactly? When you say that it's optimized, what are the sorts of decisions that you make when you're building, I think of this in terms of LEGO bricks put together. What are some of the decisions you make? There were a few key things that we really had to think about in terms of what was different from a data center which obviously supports the cloud environment. But it was all about how do we get closer to the customer, right? How do you get things really fast and how do we compute that information really quickly? So for us, it's things like size, right? So our servers is literally, one of them is the size of a shoe box. We have a picture with Dave to take off his shoe. It's actually as big of a shoe. It is, it is. To be fair, it's a pretty big shoe. True. It is, but it's small in relative to the typical, relative servers that you see. I see what you're doing. You find the guy with the size 12. Yeah. That gets the size of a shoe. Yeah, but it's literally the size of a shoe. And that's our smallest, our smallest server. And it's the smallest one in the portfolio. It's the XR-4000. And so we've actually crammed a lot of technology in there going with the Intel Z on deep processors, for example, to get into that compute power. The XR-8000, which you'll be hearing a lot more about shortly with your next guest, is one, I think, from a telco perspective is our flagship product. And size was a big thing there too. Regatization, so it's like nebs three certifications. So we can actually operate continuously in negative five to 55C, which for customers, they need that range of temperature operation. Flexibility was a big thing too. And meaning that there's some customers who wanted to have one system in different areas of deployment. So can I take this one system and configure it one way? Take that same system, configure it another way, and have it here. So flexibility was really key for us as well. And so you'll actually be seeing that in the next time you're coming. I think some of the common themes you're hearing from this is our focus on innovation, purpose-built servers. So yes, our times, you know, economic situation, all that kind of stuff, is it kind of, is it tough? Yeah, but far from receding, we've doubled down on investment, and you've seen that with the products that we're launching here, and we'll be launching in the years to come. I imagine there's a pretty sizable day impact to the total-adjustable market for PowerEdge based on the launch, what you're doing. There's got to be a good-sized TAM expansion. Yeah, absolutely. Depending on how you look at it, it's roughly, we add about $30 billion of adjustable TAM between the three purpose-built series that we've launched, XE, HS, and XR. Can you comment on, I know Dell and customers are like this. Talk about it. I love to get both of your perspectives. I'm sure you have favorite customer stories, but talk about the involvement of the customer in the generation and the evolution of PowerEdge. Where are they in that process? What kind of feedback do they deliver? Well, I mean, just to start. One thing that is a central core tenet of Dell period is it all is about the customer. All of everything that we do is about the customer. And so there is a big focus at our level and from on high to get out there and talk with customers. And actually, we have a pretty good story around XR 8000, which is, call it our flagship of the XR line that we've just announced. And because of this deep customer intimacy, there was a last-minute kind of architectural design change, which actually would have been, come to find out, it would have been sort of a fatal flaw for deployment. So we corrected that because of this tight intimacy with our customers, this was in two Thanksgiving's ago about. And so anyway, it's super cool. And the fact that we were able to make a change so late in development cycle, that's a testament to a lot of the speed and speed of innovation that we're driving. So anyway, that's one just case in point example. Let's talk about AI. We can't go to any trade show without talking about AI. The big thing right now is chat GPT I was using it the other day. It's so interesting. But the growing demand for AI, talk about how it's driving the evolution of the server so that more AI use cases can become more ubiquitous. And the edge space primarily, we actually have another product. So I guess what you'll notice in the XR line itself, because there are so many different use cases and technologies that support the different use cases, we actually have a range of form factors. So we have a really small, like I said, it was a 350 milliliter, the size of a shoebox, Dave's shoebox. And then we also have at the other end of 472. So still small, but a little bit bigger, but we did recognize obviously AI was coming up. And so that is our XR 7620 platform. And that does support two GPUs, right? So like for edge inferencing, making sure that we have the capability to support customers in that too. But also in the small one, we do also have a GPU capability there that also helps in those other use cases as well. But so we've built the platforms, even though they're small, to be able to handle the GPU power for customers. So nice tight package, a lot of power there, the size as we've all clearly demonstrated the size of Dave's shoe. Dave, talk about Dell's longstanding commitment to really helping to rapidly evolve the server market. It's a pivotal player there. Well, like I was saying, we see innovation. I mean, this is, to us, it's a race to the top. You talked about racing and messaging, that sort of thing when you opened up the show here. But we see this as a race to the top. Having worked at other server companies where maybe it's a little bit different, maybe more of a race to the bottom sort of approach, that's what I love about being at Dell. Like this is very much, we understand that innovation is what's going to deliver the most value for our customers. So whether it's some of the first to market, first of its kind sort of innovation like you find in the XR4000 or XR8000 or any of our, the XC line, we know that at the end of the day, that is what's going to propel Dell, do the best for our customers and thereby do the best for us. But to be honest, it's a little bit surprising walking by some of our competitors booths. There's been like a dearth of like zero, like no, like it's almost like you wouldn't even know that there was a big launch here, right? Is it just me? It was wild. We've been walking around and yet we've had, and it's sort of maybe I should take this as flattery, but a lot of our competitors have been coming by to our booth every day, actually. They came by multiple times yesterday, they came by multiple times today. They're taking pictures of our stuff. I kind of want to just send them a sample, seeing you. Or your shoe. Right? Or my shoe, right? But anyway, so I suppose I should take it as an honor. And conversely, when we've walked over there, we're actually getting boxed out. Maybe I need to hide Dell next time, right? We just had that experience. It was kind of funny. That's a good position to be in. You talked about the involvement of the customers. Talk a little bit about Dell's ecosystem is also massive. It's part of what makes Dell. Wait, did you just say ego system? After David just, yeah. You caught that? Turn it. But talk about the influence that the partner ecosystem, and also some of the feedback from the partners as you've been rapidly evolving the server market. And clearly your competitors are taking notice. Yeah. Sorry, do you want to talk about that? I mean, I would say generally, one of the things that Dell prides itself on is being able to deliver the world's best innovation into the hands of our customers faster and better than the optimal solution. So whether it's working with great partners like Intel, AMD, Broadcom, these sorts of folks, that is at the end of the day, that is our core mantra. Again, it's wrapped around service, doing the best, what's best for the customer. And we want to bring the world's best innovation from our technology partners, get it into the hands of our partners, faster and better than any other option out there. Well, it's a satisfying business for all of us to be in because to your point, I made a joke about the high level messaging, but really that's what it comes down to. We do these things, we feel like sometimes we're toiling in obscurity, working with the hardware, but what it delivers, the experiences that are delivered at the end are truly meaningful. So it's a really fun thing to be a part of. Absolutely. Yeah, is there a favorite customer story that you have that really articulates the value of what Dell is doing for PowerEdge at the edge? It's probably one I can't particularly name, obviously, but they have different environments. So in one case it's on flights or on sea vessels and just being able to use the same box in those different environments is really cool. And they really appreciate having the small compact where they can just take the server with them and go somewhere. That was really cool to me in terms of how they were using the products that we built for them. I have one that's kind of funny. It's around X or 8000. Again, the customer that I won't name, but they're so proud of it. They almost kind of feel like they co-defined it with us. They want to be on the patent with us. So anyway, that's a great, you know what I'm talking about. And when it just shows the strength of the partnership that Dell has across the ecosystem of partners, customers, CSPs, telecoms, adge. Guys, thank you so much for joining us today. Sharing what's new with PowerEdge. We can't wait to, we're just, we're cracking up with the box. We saw the shoe and we're going to be digging in a little bit more later. So thank you. And we're going to be able to touch something soon? Yes. Yes. In a couple of minutes. Coming up next segment, I think. Yeah, all right. Thanks for setting the table for that, guys. We really appreciate your time. Thank you for having us. All right, thank you. Our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. 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