 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2017, brought to you by Dell EMC. Hey, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE live at Dell EMC World 2017. It's our eighth year coverage of EMC World now, first year as Dell EMC World 2017. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE. My co-host is Keith Townsend, CTO advisor. Our next guest is CUBE alumni Marius Haas, president and chief commercial officer of Dell EMC. Marius, great to see you. Thanks for taking the time. Thanks, John. I appreciate you having me on one more time. We know you've been up since 6 a.m. I'm your staff meeting notes to the grindstone, as they say, you pound in the pavement. You got a lot of clubs in your bag, a lot of stuff into the toolbox there from product standpoint. What a story. The Dell EMC portfolio is pretty comprehensive. Your job is to make it simple to sell across now a swath of clients across the board. So what's the update? Give us a quick update on status, traction, and your philosophy. Well, I'll tell you what's beautiful about the portfolio is that you can truly translate it into the digital transformation conversation with a customer. And I haven't had a customer yet that isn't in some phase of a transformation. Obviously, the way we depict it is around workforce transformation, IT transformation, security transformation, all encompassing then that drives what's the next new wave of how we do business. So every aspect of that, every customer, and regardless of what segment they're in, they're looking to us to really identify what's that path forward? What are the changes required? And then how do we best lay out the overall portfolio that truly is depicted in all of Dell Technologies to help make that happen? Yesterday we were commenting about to the folks, Michael in particular, as well as Howard Elias, that there really hasn't been many big, massive horror stories on the integration. Actually been pretty positive, very positive in fact. But the question I get a lot on this combination is, wow, you got a little bit of Dell, you got some EMC over here, you got VMware, a lot of piece parts that have been kind of loosely coupled. Now you got the digital transformation story which gives a holistic picture. We heard Michael yesterday say that we want to be the strategic partner to large enterprises and SMBs as they grow into large enterprises. So now bringing that together is kind of your job. So how hard has that been and what has been some of the proof points that the story is threading together? Well I think one of the things as part of the integration that was exciting to us is that the big surprise was that we didn't have any big surprises, right? You want to be able to figure out and plan the integration out well. You want to make sure that the team members are positioned to best serve the customers, best present the value proposition holistically. I think a lot of that has been put in motion in exactly the right way with again, no big surprises. Now yes, it was a loose confederation if you will or federation. And I think one of the key mandates from the customer base is bring it all together for us, make the engagement model consistent, make it from an ease of use, from an ease of engagement perspective as simple as possible. We're rolling out what we call TLA's, ELA's consistently across all of Dell technologies and making that available to our customer base. We'll also including easier consumption models which is based on pay by the usage and we're going to put as much of the Dell technologies portfolio into that again. What's an ELA and TLA just to describe that? You know, enterprise license agreement across all of Dell technologies. So they have one engagement, one commitment to them to make sure that we present. So we're kind of going back to classic IT but kind of in the new era as Michael says next three years. I mean, at the end of the day they want one throat to choke as they say, right? Or a single pane of glass. We see that in the product side with the management. How is that going? What's your plan to scale that out? Because that's a challenge. I mean, it's not easy. Oh, it's not easy. You don't do it overnight but we I think laid out the way to get it done and we're taking strong steps forward. I'll give you an example. Yesterday we were with the partner community, our channel partner ecosystem. We're having a big global summit here and that is their ask, is bring it together, make that engagement simple, make that engagement predictable and consistent around the globe. And all that feedback and we've always said we've got big years, we're listen and it's helping us involve our programs so that from again, from an engagement perspective we're simplifying it and it's all down to then execution and velocity of the business. Especially in my world and the commercial world it is truly how do we outrun the competition? How do we make that engagement model easier than anyone else? So we take that pretty serious. Channel partners are finicky too. If you slack at all, they're going to be on you. They have alternatives. They have alternatives. So I'm a customer and one of the things that exciting is just the depth of capability that Dell EMC, Dell Technologies brings from the endpoint, security, data center, virtualization, hybrid cloud. The challenge as a customer is that I've had these silo relationships in the past with the different silos of Dell EMC, Dell Technologies, et cetera. How have you guys helped bring that message to the customer, to the right customer and then help break down some of those silos? No, I'll give you a perfect example. I just had a meeting with one of the largest hospital systems that is based in Tennessee. Seventy hospitals around the United States, they have been served in that silo type of ecosystem in the past. The key message from them was, hey, I'm looking for one strategic partner. I'm looking for you to bring all this together, inclusive of VMware, because ultimately the way I look at it, the way I consume my take is in an architecture manner. It's a solution that I have to provide in order to provide the business services back to my constituencies inside the hospital system. So they don't want to be the systems integrator. They look to us to provide that. So that message gets reinforced every day. And again, it's our job to go make that simple. And in many cases it is with a broader channel ecosystem that does provide significant value add in many of those cases. Mars, we've chatted, I mean, years ago and seen you've had tons of experience on all aspects of the industry, but recently there's been a conversation we've been having on theCUBE around management style in this agile world, okay? So as Cloud comes to the table and all the digital transformation, it's a completely different ball game. And what we're curious on is your vision and the company's philosophy on how do you manage that? I mean sales in particular, commercial sales, is very challenging across large companies, a lot of touch points, a lot of things to manage. How do you guys manage that? Because from a philosophy standpoint, you have to be agile, you got to be listening, and then you got to execute. What's your philosophy, what's your vision on the management side? I think the first most important piece is how do we bring our team members together, right? How do we make sure that everyone's got on the same sheet of music as to what are we prioritizing from how we sell to what we sell? And do it for any size customer consistently. So just here, a couple months ago, we had all of our sales makers, especially our leadership team together, with Michael, with all of our product leaders to make sure that that message was loud and clear as to what the expectations were. Then now what we need to do in the field to your point is how do we now have, we've got the broadest depth, the broadest coverage and the broadest depth in general sales makers as well as specialty sales makers within the individual businesses that we have. How do we bring them together? How do we create a single architecture strategy for our customers? And that's what we're molding to now. And it does take some time. We've got phenomenal pre-sales consultants as an example. Well, a big portion of that community came from the traditional EMC side of the house. So they're very strong when you come at it from a data, from a storage perspective, but we have a phenomenal compute architecture strategy, great open networking strategy. Bring it all together, present it holistically to the customer from a architecture perspective. Bring in the strategically aligned businesses for, from secure works, from Pivotal, from RSA, from VMware. And again, it goes back to your point about such a great portfolio. It's our job to really bring it together. You know, it's interesting. I mean, having spent some time in my life in commercial sales with HP back in the 90s, I know how hard that is because compensation, organizational structure, there was a rumor that we actually was covered, we covered the story of Oracle's looking at reorganizing their sales force. They used to have a fin for yourself. So, you know, the same sales guide knocking on five different doors. So Oracle couldn't have like literally seven sales guys calling on a customer. That's been one approach. Worked well and it very decentralized. Some of it's specialties. How do you guys organize that? Because that's certainly going to define the engagement. No, there's no doubt. I mean, you mentioned it earlier, right? The customer's looking for a single throat to choke. So we want to have one account executive that's responsible for everything we sell into that account, right? So you have one quarterback. However, the quarterback in and of itself cannot and will not deliver the broadest breadth of capability. So how do you then effectively and efficiently align specialty teams to be able to have that transformation conversation and then close and deliver on it? It's like global account manager and then team, sub teams. And the beauty of being able to plan the integration that we did is that we had the time to make sure that we knew exactly for enterprise, for commercial, for our partner ecosystem, how do we align our team members? What are the optimal ratios of specialty sales to generalists that produce the highest level of productivity and efficiency, right? That is not a, here is the Nirvana answer once, right? That is an iterative process you work through and we've built out a very strong sales operations team to make sure we constantly measure that. Well, Bass, the CIO was just on, we're talking about self-service lights out, data center strategies. It's only going to get more complicated and challenging for you as self-service becomes part of it. So you don't take your medicine now and set the foundation. I mean, is that how you're looking at it? Because ultimately, customers will be buying potentially self-serve cloud technology. You know, you take the conversation, again, digital transformation. Typically, the customer will listen and look at the portfolio we have and say, yep, I get it, I understand. Now, before I go and jump in, tell me what you've done, right? So that's where Bass is a great partner of ours because he's like one of our best sales makers, right? Customers want to see, how did you do transform your own environment? What are the lessons learned you had? How can I go to best practices right away, skip a few of those tough steps and help me in this journey quickly? How have you done it in certain other verticals? The conversation that I'm having peracably as I get to host the public sector around the world, there's an example. Smart nation, smart city, e-government, everyone's asking the same questions, right? How do I provide more consistent capabilities and services to every one of my constituencies and every one of the metropolitan areas or nations that I serve? They all want to see what others are doing. They all want to understand how we best serve them and leveraging that expertise has been pretty darn cool because you have a lot to pull from. So, during this conference, Dale on down to Pat have been reinforcing that the value that Dale EMC brings, Dale Technologies, is a package solution. Move your internal teams higher up the stack, let Dale take care of the small details that add value at the bottom layers of the stack. Your sales team is normally lit upon as a solutions, not just technology solutions, but business solutions, as a consultant almost. How has the conversation changed or how have you guys handled trying to shift the focus of your customers from having that, oh, we want to know how the IOPS work to, you know what, these package solutions are what's best for your business moving forward for the digital transformation. No, Keith, great question. It's actually even further up the stack, if you will. The conversation really starts almost at the development level nowadays. It is truly, as a customer, I want to spend my time, my energy developing the applications that drive greater productivity for my workforce, provide greater level of services for my customers and it's got to be all mobile, it's got to be all secure. That is not an IOPS conversation, right? It is a conversation about what platform are you going to do that on? And then you bring in a pivotal, native cloud application development platform and start the conversation there. You don't even talk about compute. You don't even talk about storage arrays. It's really around the enablement of those services and having the customer spend their money on the things that's going to differentiate them. Especially when you think about this world where people are terrified of being Uberized, terrified of being Airbnbized. I've got traditional brick and mortar industries, companies that you would think are never going to get disrupted, are the actual, are the ones that are actually being almost more aggressive in trying to figure out how do they transform themselves before someone else does it to them. We were talking about the IoT wave is coming and it's an architectural question, not an IOPS question to your point. To follow up on that, I have to ask you on the synergies. We had Michael on yesterday, I asked him, where are you winning? He made a comment and I'm sure Pat's going to say, oh, we're winning, we're getting new deals. So I want to ask you, where are you winning? So talk about some of the wins you've had with the combination because we discussed yesterday where there's big EMC shops, we brought more Dell in. Where there's been big Dell shops, we brought more EMC storage. And so that's obviously synergies. What are the key synergies that you're seeing out in the field where you're winning? Well, I think one of the things, and I think I shared with you last time we were together, is that one of the key findings as part of the early discovery work was the overlap in the account base was actually very small, less than 20%, right? Which by definition meant tremendous opportunity, right? So you've got this phenomenal sales for us on the enterprise side, on the commercial side, great channel program to augment our coverage very well. And the field or that runway is so long. And with this portfolio that we got, it all translated into, again, how do we execute? How do we best align our team members and how can we execute at a velocity that no one else can keep up with? So, look, wins, it's hard to pinpoint one because you can go across the board. But a lot of wins. Oh, we're growing faster than we thought. Okay, so you mentioned 20% overlap. That's an opportunity for the sales teams, obviously. So I got to ask you the hard question. This is, put you on the spot. There was a video floating around around the green night when applying a competitor and implying that they're, pay your people more. So I got to ask you, are you comfortable with your compensation to your sales teams? Obviously compensation motivates behavior. With all this opportunity, how are you looking at comp? Do you feel like sales guys are going to make some good bank on the opportunities? Go ahead. I mentioned, I gave you the opportunity I gave you a small hint there that we're growing faster than we anticipated, which is always a good problem to have, right? And art sales makers are motivated. They're excited. Yes, compensation drives behavior. We're going to continue to keep tweaking little levers, not big levers, little levers to keep driving that collaborative discussion in front of the customer. That's critically important. But EMC culture was very compensation driven for the sales teams. They'll be doing just fine. They're motivated. So they'll be making a lot of bank there. They'll kind of connect the dots here. They'll be doing real well. Mario's final question, your thoughts on just the scene here. We're at the Snot EMC world, but it's a continuation of our eighth year covering the EMC world. Now it's Dell EMC world. Just kind of like, give us some personal color. I mean, you've done big deals here at KKR. You've known with the M&A scene, like this is the biggest acquisition ever. Looking back now where you are today, are you kind of having a pinch me moment? Is this kind of what you had thought? Share some personal insight to the scene here and what it means for the combination. I, again, what I didn't realize before we finally got together and had an opportunity to really have that communication from the customer is again, what you already articulated. It's that breadth of the portfolio. There isn't a single conversation that we're having with a customer where the customer says, I'm not interested. Not a single one. There's always somewhere from an opportunity perspective where they say, yes, I want to learn more. It might be on the data center side. Clearly, we think we're obviously in a very strong position of strength there. But even on the client side, even on the managing remote devices with AirWatch, securing the network with SecureWorks, it's across cloud, it's across security, it's across your software defined data center architecture. All these areas are all right there in our wheelhouse. And as Michael would say, we're number one in everything we do and it's a great position to be in. And again, it starts with what we first discussed. How do we present that in a way to our customers? So from an adoption perspective for bringing them on this journey and this digital transformation, it is seamless plug and play for the customer. And you've been involved also, you've seen with Michael on the going private. How does that feel? Certainly a lot more latitude to be agile. We're thinking strategic, we're thinking long term. What investments do we need to make now to create long-term value in relationships with our customers and partners? It's night and day difference and it's exciting to be part of it. Marius Haas, President and Chief Commercial Officer Dell EMC, obviously senior executive in the industry. Also now Chief Sales for the big opportunities that they will be taking down and will be tracking the progress. Thanks for spending the time on your very busy day to come on theCUBE and thank you for support. It's theCUBE, I'm John Furrier with Keith Townsend. We'll be back with more live coverage after the short break.