 The Cube at EMC World 2014 is brought to you by EMC. Redefine VCE, innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing. Brocade, say goodbye to the status quo and hello to Brocade. Welcome back everyone, we're here at VMworld 2014 at the Palazzo Hotel, our fifth year of having the Cube at VMworld, and this is a special year, we actually have two cubes running concurrently which is a first for us, but the shows we got a lot of great information, a lot of great insight. I'm joined in this segment by my co-host, Stu Miniman. Thanks Jeff, and yeah, it's actually wrong part of the federation, we're at EMC World. I'm sorry? You know, we will, we are looking forward to the fifth year at VMworld. Live TV will be at VMworld later this year. EMC World, fifth year, and I think this is the fourth year in Vegas in a row. We were, the first year was in Boston. It's kind of nice for me, it was a short drive, but you know, yeah, here, here, thanks so much. Our segment, we're focusing on converged infrastructure and specifically the V-SPEC's product line, which the Cube is, had a close eye on since the launch that we were actually broadcast from back in April 2012. Our segment right now, we've got John Tomfatt, who is the director of business development and marketing for converged and data solutions with AVENET. John, thanks for joining us. Glad to be here, thank you very much. Yeah, so, we're very familiar with AVENET. AVENET helps their distributor, they help build solutions, very active in the converged infrastructure space, and you guys launched a pretty interesting solution with V-SPEC's about a year ago. Can you just give us a little intro to the solution itself, a portable moving V-SPEC's, and where are we today? Right, so, we wanted to really launch our services capability and really make a splash, and so, we decided to integrate a fully converged infrastructure, in fact, it was a V-SPEC configuration in a mobile data center that was hardened, and we worked with a particular manufacturer where the enclosure can move up to three miles an hour, it runs in a hostile environment in terms of weather and conditions, and it's really designed to operate in disaster recovery type scenarios, and in fact, it's at the EMC booth this year as well, making a second appearance, and so, if you sort of think about the need to make a splash, and I think the unit did its job. It's gone on, literally, a national tour with a number of partners that's used it to get the conversation going about V-SPEC's turning reference to reality, right? So, it's done a terrific job. Yeah, I think it's a good showcase to show the flexibility of the solution, because it's a message very much out of EMC, and especially from V-SPEC's, it's about choice, it's about building something that the customer's going to need. Can you talk, how's the adoption of a solution like that? I'm curious, is this mostly used in wartime places? No, actually, we did have a number of federal partners look at and deploy similar solutions, but what we found interesting enough is there was a number of state and local disaster recovery folks who needed, essentially, sort of think of, if you have a natural earthquake or tornado hits, you want to roll out a data center, plug it in, and in hostile conditions it runs. And so, from an adoption perspective, it did well. I think what it really did well was it allowed our partners to have the conversation around choice to your point, right? So, converging infrastructures from a number of manufacturers, from VCE and V-SPEC's with EMC, it really proved the point that through some level of customization, partners can bring value to the proposition, and can only so does distribution. And from the time we launched last year to now, I'm really pleased to tell you that our partner community has really adopted V-SPEC's. We've probably tripled the number of partners who are now quoting and configuring V-SPEC's. We've had some in its, what I want to call it, some in its individual state, and quite a few in the pre-integrated state. We've noticed. And just to clarify, the pre-integrated state means that AfNet actually puts it all together and ships it out as what we might call a single-managed entity. Yeah, so yes, right close to that. Pre-integrated is when the partner buys the compute, the network, and storage individually. Post-integrated is when we take that service and does it for the partner. We've launched a number of enablement activities that has resulted in a significant number of increased both close deals as well as increasing the close rate of V-SPEC's. So we're very, very excited about that. I think if we were to look back then and now, it's really allowed us to extend our services capability and deliver more advanced services, right? So full-blown implementation as in standing up a fully converged infrastructure and really giving the partners true choice of a pre-integrated, aka VCA, aka another manufacturer, versus V-SPEC's that has choice. So we couldn't be happier at this point. John, how much of a project like that is really designed to deliver that solution because there's a big demand for it versus really building capabilities to demonstrate more general-purpose things that you'll use in a number of areas? Yeah, so I'd answer it like this, that a lot of most of our partners fall sort of into two categories. One, that they have the capability to do the implementation themselves and partners who don't have that capability, right? And for the ones that do have that capability, it comes down to a conversation of where they can get a better utilization rate of their bench, right? So they can get that consultant out at a higher billable rate and source sort of the basic integration services out. It's turned out to be a boon for those partners as well. So it fits both sides of the calculus of the partner base. And how big is this mobile data center? I'm just curious. Three miles an hour. So I'm trying to picture it rolling down the road into this hostile post apocalyptic earthquake scene. I was in San Francisco in 89. Could have used it down in the marina probably, right? It's actually about two and a half feet wide. It's about six feet tall. And it weighs about 25 and a half pounds because it's completely self-contained. It's battery operated. The air... So it's battery operated too. So it's completely self-contained. That's right. It's the air inside the enclosure, never mixes with the outside air. So you can have it in the middle of a windstorm, right, dust storm. And as long as you've got electricity, it continues to run. Wow. In terms of what we're excited to talk about this year and what we're doing with our show floor, is we've got two new converging infrastructures that addresses different segments of the market. So the first one is a 75 VM configuration. Again, it's V plus E plus E. And a 12 U enclosure. And it's really designed to address the SMB market and the Canadian market, interestingly enough, right? So when we launched last year with three and 600 VM configs, the Canadian folks came back and said, hey, look, we're looking for a little smaller sizing. And we're very excited to showcase the unit on the floor with the brand new VNX3200 and the DD2200 in it, right? So it's a fully running V-specs with the latest technology and we plan on bringing that out to market. So we're very, very excited. The second one is ScaleIO. So we've got a ScaleIO configuration. And for us, it's the prelude to the hyperconverge market. And so we're very excited about that. Yeah, can you speak a little bit more about that? What have you been hearing kind of, because when I hear hyperconverged, I think a bunch of startups. So we've covered ScaleIO quite a bit right and written about it, but what's interest in the marketplace and why you're excited about the ScaleIO piece? Sure, I think, particularly from the way that we're deploying the solution. We're aiming it at the sub 50 VM configuration where there's no network involved, right? So you can really compress the price and really get folks into just that, a converged infrastructure at a starting point that gives them a great deal of flexibility and then continues to allow them to grow. The thing that we hear a lot is how can we get converged infrastructures a little bit more down market, right? And we think that ScaleIO really solves that issue. Okay, I'm curious, because when I think down market there, I think VMware vSAN could be a potential fit there. Is that an option that you guys are looking at? We are, we're looking at vSAN as well. I think when you get into sort of the M of the mid market and sort of the S of SMB, partners are looking for choice, right? To address a much smaller market and still allow the room to grow. So, yes, vSAN is part of the calculus for us. Yeah, so when you say choice, you know, VMware vSAN is only on a VMware environment. I understand. The ScaleIO can work across many hypervisors or even a physical environment. So is that what you mean by choice? Yes, that's exactly right. Cool, okay, yeah, so you know, tell us, you've been, Abnet was at EMC World last year, you're here this year. What's your impressions of the show so far? Well, I'll tell you, I was astounded when I walked into Joe's opening session today. I don't know what the real numbers are, but it felt like it was almost twice the size. So do you guys have a sense of... They flipped the stage, which was kind of weird on us. It took a little while. I heard the room could hold 12,000 people. And, you know, as I walk through, there were definitely plenty of people standing in the back. So I know we're north of 12,000. And, you know, this is a record-breaking EMC world as it is most years. But yeah, so it's definitely a good buzz, good attendance so far. Where I was just that, astonished by the turnout. And I'm very excited about the message in terms of going from second to third platform. I think it's... So one of the things we've been beating on here is because EMC is more than just a storage company. If EMC was a storage company, this would be a five to 7,000 person show. So, you know, how was your relationship at Avnet changed with EMC over the last few years? Sure, that's a great point. And to pick up on that thread, if you think about just even three years ago, we were predominantly selling just EMC hardware, hardware software to a very sort of small and niche set of partners who concentrated solely on storage. And what I would say to you today is that partner base has grown because it's not just storage partners, it's application vendors and partners. It's compute partners, right? These specs allows us to open up the aperture of the ecosystem. So I would say to you, our partner base has changed rather dramatically over that time. Okay. Well, hey, John, really appreciate you coming and showing. I definitely want to go check out that mobile, you know, unit in the show floor. It looks like you guys have a video online that people can check out to see that mobility. But, you know, this has been Stu Miniman with Jeff Frick and John Tantat from Avnet. Thanks for joining us. We'll be right back with our next guest. Thanks, guys.