 So we have Doug Wood coming up. Doug is Mr. VNXE, if you recall, VNXE is the super-simple kindergarten proof box that Jeremy Burton's kid demonstrated at the Megalons, John, we had him on. So that was pretty fun. Doug, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Doug, this is my partner, co-host John Furrier. Yes, that's right. So, let's see, Jeremy's son was, how old was he, John? Edward, he was in fifth grade. Fifth grader? So easy a fifth grader could do it. I think he was fifth grader, yeah. No training. He had his iPad and he was going crazy, and it was fun. We had him on in London and VNXE. It's a great new product. We want to hear all about how it's going, but let me start with it. So, why did you guys do VNXE? Where did that come from? Well, there was really a couple of different reasons to look at VNXE. The bottom line was we had a number of assets that we needed to converge into more cost-effective packages, even to go mid-tier and up. And then we had the combination of incredible growth in markets we weren't serving adequately. So we needed to combine the technology and the packaging and go after the markets where we saw the strongest growth. Yeah, you really didn't think of VMC as the company with simple storage, did you? Prior to VNXE, and of course you see in the consumerization of IT, we've got iPads and iPods and iPod touches and everything else, and it's really simplified. So, are you seeing new distribution channels for these products and how are you dealing with that as a company that's known for selling big mainframe class iron? Yeah, and I like the fact that you connect simplicity into the channel because the solution couldn't just be that we designed product for the IT generalist and it would show up. We had to go out and create a channel for the M&SMB and that same kind of simplicity would serve the needs of that channel. Simplicity that would range across the selling process, the training and certification process. Every aspect of what we could do to reduce the effort for our new partners so that they could make more money and work with EMC in a cost effective way. So it's soup to nuts simplicity. I think one of the things that was exciting about our trip to the mega launch besides the analyst event where Dave cornered Joe Tucci in the hallway and asked him what big data was, was that VNX, EMC is a big iron like company. They've been servicing storage at a high end, real complex system software, solutions, great sales force. Now they come in with Pat Gelsinger and they got this, I don't want to say low end because it's not low end, it's good product, entry level products that's very channel friendly. So this is a new area for EMC going into this channel. So that's a small medium sized business where cloud and virtualization actually is compelling. So think about like those solution partners we're talking to and the theme seems to, for me this show is that solution providers are as the big meat on the bone. Sexy sizzle is, you know, flash and Hadoop and big data. But cloud is ultimately an SMB value proposition in a big way. Can you talk about the things you're doing around channel? How's that changing your partnerships and what's the outlook? Sure, and just to connect to what you say, you know, it's one thing to talk about cloud infrastructure. It's another thing to take cloud based services and add value to small business. So I think we have an active and rich opportunity for a cloud strategy even at the low end. I mean consumerization of IT, I mean think about Google Gmail for example, people, our small business we use Gmail and other consumer cloud services. So you've got to be services with consumer-like features. So can you elaborate on that? And the business model obviously is channel based. What are you guys doing there? Yeah, absolutely. We're excited about Unisphere and its role in this overall process. Unisphere as a portal knows a lot about the needs of the storage array interfaces as well. And Unisphere can do a lot to add service, value to know the services that would best apply to your array. And those could be SaaS environments for example. I just want to say welcome back to the Justin.TV and our other syndicators out there. We have 1,700 people watching now. So you're going to hear about EMC Corporation in the channel business, which means small, medium sized business to start up entrepreneurs. Dave, we're seeing this massive change from EMC growing from the storage company to this information infrastructure coming with channel strategy, entry level products to cloud and big data. I mean it's changing the impact to the consumer side of the business. Yeah, I mean we were talking about Jeremy Burton's son using an iPad to provision a VNXE. I would imagine too, Doug, that the servicing of VNXE and the channel and the customers is different. I mean people coming in, they might want to use different touch points to interact with EMC, again known for a very high touch services culture. Can you talk a little bit about that? I mean things like chat and other innovations. How is that going? What changes have you guys made in that regard? Well we had a couple of different, I think it's driving our strategy. For one thing, this audience expected instantaneous response to service and help. They're quite capable on their own and they're as savvy as can be. So they expected our service offerings to reflect that. Secondly, in order to make sense out of a volume based product you have to take cost out of everything that would get in the way of margin and profitability. And frankly we set a goal of pulling 90% of the service costs out of that service activities around VNXE. Our early data suggests early products you consume a bit more time but we're well on track to reduce that. And that doesn't just benefit EMC, it benefits our partners. More and more of them are becoming service enabled. They make products there and make it compelling for our partners to take service as an expansion to their business and do it profitably. John had Tony Kholishan from the customer support side of EMC on. What was that John, maybe a month or two ago? He was great. He was very candid about recognizing the delivery and value proposition to the businesses has to be in these new channels. He talked about social media, he talked about the new level of transparency is emerging. These new channels, new channels being distribution channels and new channels for services. He really has a good vision of the future. I really like him. He's solid. I think that's a bright spot because you guys are, as a company, moving in, look at the message Joe Tucci is putting out there. EMC is cloud and big data and they have a lot of muscle. So now they've got good products. They keep running at the pace of change and we're seeing a massive amount of innovation. Even at the entrepreneur level but more importantly at the consultants as well. I'm seeing more new consultancies emerging that are specialists and are having specialism. I think, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say working with Tony was a pleasure. He's been involved in the process from the start and in the way I would describe the problem is from big data to small customers EMC's got your size that's what we really have to pull off. There's similarities and there's a lot of specialization in there and Tony and his team helped us understand that environment, where the cost was where the delays on service were and how we could address them aggressively. Yeah, it's interesting to watch the VNXC. Now, of course yet another EMC platform that guys like Tony and his team have to service. You hear a lot of talk about unified storage and simplifying IT portfolios are becoming more complex. They have in the last 20 years become more complex. I don't necessarily see that changing, although maybe people talk about well VNXC could scale in theory, maybe slap a fiber channel interface on that someday, maybe not, I don't know. But what's your take on that? Clearly the architecture can go up market and gobble more of that. I guess I'd like that as a customer. More simple, that's goodness, but what's your lens tell you there? So the reality is, if you look at Rich Napolitano's business and how it segments today from the under 75k USD sort of space that I focus on and the 75k in up that can first and focus on, these businesses are healthy, they're growing. There's a lot of opportunity to innovate but one of the things we hear loud from our customers is let's draw value up and down between both, not just from the new business that my team and I created, drive up the value of app awareness for example, but drive down the enterprise sophistication and provide it at the cost and complexity of a VNXC. So I think what you will see is a great deal of incremental commonality between VNX and VNXC and you'll still see value in the architectures that they represent today, whether it be a unified integrated model that VNXC is built on and it will drive up and down but also the VNX in its unified modular approach which offers uncommon scale and availability. So I would think about the two as architectural choices over time for the same software with a lot of commonality. Well I think the two key is I mean as I say, storage portfolios are getting more granular, more complex but at the same time the challenge is and you'll hear there's John from chat is to make storage invisible and make it so that we don't have to worry about what's underneath and then people like us can debate people in the storage industry can debate well is my product more unified at the end of the day the customer wants simplicity, they want that storage to be hidden essentially, don't they? Yes, absolutely and we did a lot of research on that, we focused in that area and we heard a lot about what causes a server based small business for example where it needs to make decisions that are disruptive to their overall thought process even their knowledge base and a lot of times it was scale or it was the need to virtualize or is the need to consolidate and in all those different cases VNXE through Unisphere sought to take storage out of the equation what if that step, that tipping point wasn't so disruptive and they could continue in natural language or in the language of their applications to bring on board the capacity and the solutions they need so instead of becoming a DBA or a storage administrator they could remain an IT generalist and be quite competent to manage and leverage enterprise class solutions We're talking to Doug Wood VP of Entry Systems of EMC Entry Systems of EMC used to be a $90,000 Clarion and now it's a VNXE and great Doug having you on the Cube and talking to you really appreciate your insights Thank you so much