 Hello everyone, welcome to this special CUBE presentation of accelerating business transformation on VMC and AWS. I'm John Furrier, host of the CUBE. We have a chief Taiwan director of global sales and go to market for VMware cloud on AWS. This is a great showcase and should be a lot of fun. Ashish, thanks for coming on. Hi John, thank you so much. So VMware cloud on AWS has been well documented as a big success for VMware and AWS as customers move their workloads into the cloud IT operations of VMware customers has signaling a lot of change. This is changing the landscape globally as on cloud migration and beyond. What's your take on this? Can you open this up with the most important story around VMC on AWS? Yes John, the most important thing for our customers today is how they can safely and swiftly move their ID infrastructure and applications to the cloud. Now VMware cloud on AWS is a service that allows all vSphere based workloads to move to cloud safely, swiftly and reliably. Banks can move their core banking platforms, insurance companies move their core insurance platforms, telcos move their OSS, BSS platforms. Government organizations are moving their citizen engagement platforms using VMC on AWS because this is one platform that allows you move their VMware based platforms very fast. Migrations can happen in a matter of days instead of months, extremely securely. It's a VMware managed service, it's very secure and highly reliable, it gets the reliability of the underlying AWS infrastructure along with it. So win-win from our customers perspective. We reported on this big news in 2016 with Andy Jassy and Pat Gelsinger at the time. A lot of people said it was a bad deal. It turned out to be a great deal because not only could VMware customers actually have a cloud, migrate to the cloud, do it safely, which was their number one concern. They didn't want to have disruption to their operations but also position themselves for what's beyond just shifting to the cloud. So I have to ask you, since you got the finger on the pulse here, what are we seeing in the market when it comes to migrating and modernizing in the cloud because that's the next step. They go to the cloud, you guys have done that doing it, then they go, I got to modernize, which means kind of upgrading or refactoring. What's your take on that? Yeah, absolutely. Look, the first step is to help our customers assess their infrastructure and licensing and the entire IT operations. Once we've done the assessment, we then create their migration plans. A lot of our customers are at that inflection point. They're looking at their real estate, data center real estate, they're looking at their contracts with co-location vendors. They really want to exit their data centers, right? And VMware cloud on AWS is a perfect solution for customers who want to exit their data centers. Migrate these applications onto the AWS platform using VMC on AWS, get rid of additional real estate overheads, power overheads, be socially and environmentally conscious by doing that as well, right? So that's the migration story. But to your point, it doesn't end there, right? Modernization is a critical aspect of the entire customer journey as well. Customers, once they've migrated their ID applications and infrastructure on cloud, get access to all the modernization services that AWS has. They can connect easily to our data lake services, to our AIML services, to custom databases, right? They can decide which applications they want to keep and which applications they want to refactor. They want to take decisions on containerization, take decisions on service computing once they've come to the cloud. But the most important thing is to take that first step. Exit their data centers, come to AWS, using VMC on AWS, and then the whole host of modernization options are available to them. Yeah, I got to say, we had this right on this story because you just pointed out a big thing which was first order of business to make sure to leverage beyond-prem investments that those customers made and then migrate to the cloud where they can maintain their applications, their data, their infrastructure operations that they're used to. And then be in position to start getting modern. So I have to ask you, how are you guys specific or how is VMware cloud on AWS addressing these needs of the customers? Because what happens next is something that needs to happen faster and sometimes the skills might not be there because if they're running old school IT ops, now they got to come in and jump in, they're going to use a data cloud, they're going to want to use all kinds of machine learning and there's a lot of great goodness going on above the stack there. So as you move with the higher level services, there's a no brainer obviously, but it's not yesterday's higher level services in the cloud. So how is this being addressed? Absolutely. I think you hit upon a very important point and that is skills, right? When our customers are operating, some of the most critical applications I just mentioned core banking, core insurance, et cetera, there are most of the core applications that our customers have across industries, even large-scale ERP systems, they're actually sitting on VMware's vSphere platform, right? Now, when the customer wants to migrate these to cloud, one of the key bottlenecks they face is skillsets. They have the trained manpower for these core applications, but for these high-level services, they may not, right? So the first order of business is to help them ease this migration pain as much as possible by not wanting them to upscale immediately. And VMware cloud database exactly does that. I mean, you don't have to do anything. You don't have to create new skillset for doing this, right? Their existing skillset suffice, but at the same time, it gives them that leeway to build that skills roadmap for their team. And AWS is invested in that, right? We want to help them build those skills in the high-level services, be it AML, be it IoT, be it Data Lake and Analytics, we want to invest in them and we help our customers through that. So that ultimately the ultimate goal of making them cloud data is front and center. I want to get into some of the use cases and success stories, but I want to just reiterate, hit back your point on the skill thing because if you look at what you guys have done at AWS, you've essentially, and Andy Jassy used to talk about this all the time when I would interview him and now last year Adam was saying the same thing, you guys do all the heavy lifting. But if you're a VMware customer, user or operator, you're used to things. You don't have to be, relearned to be a cloud architect. Now you're already in the game. So this is like almost like a instant path to cloud skills for the VMware. There's hundreds of thousands of VMware architects and operators that now instantly become cloud architects literally overnight. Can you respond to that? Do you agree with that? And then give an example. Yes, absolutely. If you have skills on the VMware platform, migrating to AWS using VMware Cloud and AWS is absolutely possible. You don't have to really change the skills operations are exactly the same. The management systems are exactly the same. So you don't really have to change anything, but the advantage is that you get access to all the other AWS services. So you are instantly able to integrate with other AWS services and you become a cloud architect immediately, right? You're able to solve some of the critical problems that your underlying IT infrastructure has immediately using this. And I think that's a great value proposition for our customers to use this service. Just one more point. I want to just get into something that's really kind of inside baseball or nuanced. VMC or VMware Cloud on AWS means something. Could you take a minute to explain what on AWS means? Just because you're like hosting and using Amazon as a workload, being on AWS means something specific in your world. Being VMC on AWS mean. Yes, this is a great question, by the way. On AWS means that VMware's vSphere platform is an iconic enterprise virtualization software. It's a disproportionately high market share across industries. So when we wanted to create a cloud product along with them, obviously our aim was for them for this platform to have the goodness of the AWS underlying infrastructure, right? And therefore, when we created this VMware Cloud solution, it literally used the AWS platform under the end, right? And that's why it's called VMware Cloud on AWS using the wide portfolio of our regions across the world and the strength of the underlying infrastructure, the reliability and sustainability that it offers. And therefore, this product is called VMC on AWS. It's a distinction I think is worth noting and it does reflect engineering and some levels of integration that go well beyond just having a SaaS app and basic platform as a service or past services. So I just want to make sure that now. Super Cloud, we'll talk about that a little bit on another interview, but I got to get one more question in before we get into the use cases and customer success stories is in most of the VM world, VMware world, in that IT world, when you heard migration, people would go, oh my God, that's going to take months. And when I hear about moving stuff around and doing cloud native, the first reaction people might have is complexity. So two questions for you before we move on to the next talk track. Complexity, how are you addressing the complexity issue and how long does migrations take? Is it easy? Is it hard? I mean, the knee jerk reaction is month. You're very used to that if they're dealing with Oracle or other old school vendors, like they're like the old guard would be like, takes a year to move stuff around. So can you comment on complexity and speed? Yeah, so the first thing is complexity. And you know, what makes anything complex is if you're required to acquire new skill sets or you've got to, if you're required to manage something differently. And as far as VMware Cloud and AWS, on both these aspects, you don't have to do anything, right? You don't have to acquire new skill sets. Your existing ID operation skill sets on VMware's platforms are absolutely fine. And you don't have to manage it any differently than what you're managing your ID infrastructure today. So on both these aspects, it's exactly the same. And therefore, it is absolutely not complex as far as VMware Cloud and AWS is concerned. And the other thing is speed. Now, this is where the huge differentiation is. You would have seen that, you know, large banks and large telcos have now moved their workloads literally in days instead of months because of VMware Cloud and AWS. A lot of time customers come to us with specific deadlines because they want to exit their data centers on a particular date. And what happens? VMware Cloud and AWS is called upon to do that migration, right? So speed is absolutely critical. The reason is also exactly the same because you're using the exact same platform, the same management systems, people are available to you. You're able to migrate quickly, right? I would just reference, recently we got an award from President Zelensky of Ukraine for migrating their entire ID, digital infrastructure. And that happened because they were using VMware Cloud and AWS and happened very swiftly. That's a great example. I mean, that's one political, but the economic advantage of getting out of the data center could be national security. You mentioned Ukraine. I mean, I was bombing and death over there. So clearly that's a critical crown jewel for their running their operations, which is world mission critical. So great stuff. I love the speed thing. I think that's a huge one. Let's get into some of the use cases. One of them is the first one I wanted to talk about was when you just hit on data center migration. It could be financial reasons on a downturn or our market growth. People can make money by shifting to the cloud, either saving money or making money. You win on both sides. It's almost a recession proof, if you will cloud it. So use case for number one, data center migration. Take us through what that looks like. Give an example of a success. Take us through a day in the life of a data center migration in a couple of minutes. Yeah, I can give you an example of a large bank who decided to migrate all their data centers outside their existing infrastructure. And they had a set timeline, right? They had a set timeline to migrate the... They were coming up on a dual and they wanted to make sure that this set timeline is met. We did a complete assessment of their infrastructure. We did a complete assessment of their ID applications. More than 80% of their ID applications underlined V-Sphere platform. And we thought that the right solution for them in the timeline that they wanted, right, is VMware Cloud and AWS. And obviously it was a large bank. It wanted to do it safely and securely. It wanted to have it completely managed. And therefore VMware Cloud and AWS, ticked all the boxes as far as that is concerned. I'll be happy to report that the large bank has moved to most of their applications on AWS, exiting three of their data centers and they'll be exiting 12 more very soon. So that's a great example of the large bank exiting data centers. There's another corollary to that. Not only did they manage to exit their data centers and of course be more agile, but they also met their sustainability goals. Their board of directors had given them goals to be carbon neutral by 2025. They found out that 35% of all the carbon footprint was in their data centers. And if they moved their ID infrastructure to cloud, they would severely reduce the carbon footprint, which is 35% down to 17 to 18%, right? And that met their sustainability targets and their commitment to be carbon neutral as well. And they shift that to you guys. Would you guys take that burden, the heavy lifting there and you guys have a sustainability story, which is a whole nother showcase in and of itself. We can do it. And because of the scale of our operations, we're able to work on that really well as well. All right, so I love the data migration. I think that's got real proof points. You got, I can save money, I can move and position my applications into the cloud for that reason and other reasons, there's a lot of other reasons to do that. But now let's into what you mentioned earlier was, okay, data migration, clearly a use case, and you laid out some successes, I'm sure there's a zillion others, but then the next step comes. Now you got cloud architects becoming minted every, and you got managed services and higher level services. What happens next? Can you give us an example of the use case of the modernization around the next gen workloads, next gen applications? We're starting to see, you know, things like data clouds, not data warehouses, talking about data clouds. This is going to be all kind of clouds. These next gen apps are pure digital transformation in action. Take us through a use case of how you guys make that happen with a success story. Yes, absolutely, and this is an amazing success story. And the customer here is S&P global ratings. As you know, S&P global ratings is the world leader as far as global ratings, global credit ratings as concerned. And for them, you know, the last couple of years have been tough as far as hardware procurement is concerned, right? The pandemic has really upended the supply chain, and it was taking a lot of time to procure hardware, you know, configure it in time, make sure that that's reliable, and then, you know, distributed in the wide variety of offices and locations that they have. And they came to us, we did, again, a fairly large comprehensive assessment of their ID infrastructure and their licensing contracts, and we also found out that VMware Cloud and AWS is the right solution for them. So we worked there, migrated all their applications, and as soon as we migrated all their applications, they got access to, you know, high level services, beta analytics services, machine learning services, our artificial intelligence services that have been critical for them for their growth, and that really is helping them, you know, get towards their next level of modern applications, right? Now, obviously, going forward, they will have the choice to, you know, really think about which applications they want to, you know, refactor, or which applications they want to go ahead with. That is really a choice in front of them, but, you know, VMware Cloud and AWS really gave them the opportunity to first migrate and then, you know, move towards modernization with speed. You know, the speed of a startup is always the kind of the Silicon Valley story where, you know, people can make massive changes in 18 months, whether it's a pivot or a new product, you see that in startup world. Now on the enterprise, you can see the same thing. I noticed behind you on your whiteboard, you got a slogan that says, are you thinking big? I know Amazon likes to think big, but also you work back from the customers, and I think this modern application thinks a big deal because I think the mindset has always been constrained because back before they moved to the cloud, most IT and on-premise data center shops, it's slow. You got to get the hardware, you got to configure it, you got to stand it up, won't make sure all the software is validated on it and loading a database and loading OSs. I mean, yeah, it got easier with scripting and whatnot, but when you move to the cloud you have more scale, which means more speed, which means it opens up their capability to think differently and build product. What are you seeing there? Can you share your opinion on that epiphany of, wow, things are going fast. I got more time to actually think about maybe doing a cloud native app or transforming this or that. What's your reaction to that? Can you share your opinion? Well, ultimately we want our customers to utilize, most of our modern services. Applications should be microservices-based. When desired, they should use serverless technology. They should not have monolithic, relational database contracts. They should use custom databases. They should use containers when needed. So ultimately we want our customers to use these modern technologies to make sure that their IT infrastructure, their licensing, their entire IT spend is completely native to cloud technologies. They work with the speed of a startup, but it's important for them to get to the first step. So that's why we create this journey for our customers where you help them migrate, give them time to build the skills, they'll help them modernize, take our partners along with us, to make sure that they can address the need for our customers. That's what our customers need today and that's what we're working backwards from. Yeah, and I think that opens up some big ideas. I'll just say that we're joking. I was joking the other night with someone here in Palo Alto around serverless. And I said, soon you're going to hear words like architecture-less. And that's a criticism on one hand, but you might say, hey, if you don't really need an architecture, storage-less, at the end of the day, infrastructure as code means developers can do all the IT in the coding cycles and then make the operations cloud-based. I think this is kind of where I see the dots connecting. Final thought here, take us through what you're thinking around how this new world is evolving. I mean, architecture is not a joke, but the point is, you have some sort of architecture, but you don't have to overthink it. Totally, that's a great thought, by the way. I know it's a joke, but it's a great thought because at the end of the day, what do your customers really want? They want outcomes, right? Why did service technology come? It was because there was an outcome that they needed. They didn't want to get stuck with the real estate of a server. They wanted to use compute when they needed to, right? Similarly, what you're talking about is outcome-based desire of our customers. And that's exactly where the world is going to, right? Cloud really enforces that, right? We are actually working backwards from a customer's outcome and using our area, the breadth and depth of our services to deliver those outcomes, right? And most of our services are in that path, right? When we use VMware Cloud and AWS, the outcome is A to migrate, then to modernize, but doesn't stop there. Use our native services. Get the business outcomes using this. So I think that's exactly what we're going through. I should hear the director of Global Sales and go to market for VMware Cloud on AWS. I want to thank you for coming on, but I'll give you the final minute, give a plug, explain what is the VMware Cloud on AWS? Why is it great? Why should people engage with you and the team? And what ultimately is this path look like for them going forward? Yeah, then to the day, we want our customers to have the best path to the cloud, right? The best path to the cloud is making sure that they migrate safely, reliably and securely, as well as with speed, right? And then use that cloud platform to utilize AWS's native services to make sure that they modernize their IT infrastructure and applications, right? We want ultimately that our customers customer get the best out of utilizing, that whole application experience is enhanced tremendously by using our services. And I think that's exactly what we're working towards. VMware Cloud on AWS is helping our customers in that journey towards migrating, modernizing, whether they want to exit a data center or whether they want to modernize their applications. It's an essential first step that we want to help our customers. I should just go on director of Global Sales and go to market with VMware Cloud on AWS. He's with AWS sharing his thoughts on accelerating business transformation on AWS. This is showcase. We're talking about the future path. We're talking about use cases with success stories from customers as she's thank you for spending time today on this showcase. Thank you, John, I appreciate it. Okay, this is theCUBE's special coverage, special presentation of the AWS showcase. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching.