 theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. Good evening, everyone, live from Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE. We are at Mobile World MWC, excuse me, 23. New name this year. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Dave, we have had some great conversations. This is only day one of four days of coverage from theCUBE, but one of the things that we've been talking about is disaggregation. You've heard about it in your breaking analysis. We've been talking about it today as a big thing that's happening. We're going to be talking about that next. Yeah, open ecosystems require integration. Integration requires certification, and so you've got to have labs. We're going to talk about that and what value that brings to the community. Right. Please welcome Tibor Fabri Astalos, Senior Vice President of Telecom Systems and Product Engineering at Dell. And back to theCUBE after a couple of hours. Gautam Bagra, Vice President of Partnerships at Dell. Guys, great to have you here. Love to be here, thank you. Great to be here. I'm sure lots of conversations, lots of meetings, lots of jet lag that we're all trying to get over. Talk about, Gautam, let's start with you. Talk about the disaggregation era. What is intended to support? What is it intended to enable? Yeah, so I mean, I think, to be honest with you, Lisa, we spoke about this earlier also, like the whole vision with the disaggregation is to make sure our telco providers can take the benefits of having the innovation that comes along with it, right? So currently, we all know they're tied into like lock systems, which kind of constricts them in going after this whole innovative space. So our hope is, by working with our operators and our partners, we can help make that disaggregation journey a lot easier and work on some of these challenges and make it easier for the telcos to innovate and consolidate going forward. So we're working very closely, and we talked about the community this morning. We're working very closely with T-Boar and Esteem from an engineering perspective to help build those solutions with our partners. And we're excited about the announcements we made this morning. When you hear challenges from this ecosystem, can you stack rank them? What are you hearing kind of, what's top of mind? And so the top three, if you would. Some of the challenges are just to define moving from a closed system, an open system, just to making sure that the acceptance of that to see what's the value proposition is for an open system, and then for the carriers to see the path going from a closed system to an open system. Of course, at the end, people realize the value at the end, a field of innovation that you're going to get, all the new technologies and new features functionality you get in an open system, but then the challenge comes with it how you actually integrate those and then validate them and you're to deploy them. So in a sense, that's the opportunity and also some of the challenge along the way. And that's where, as Gautam said, that's where we're also looking at playing a key role with the hotel lab, the open telecom ecosystem lab, where we take these pieces of the open ecosystem, kind of combine them, validate them, and provide the pipeline to the customer for integration and then full integration into the production network. I know those challenges I presume vary whether you're talking to a Greenfield network operator versus somebody who's got the 40, 50 year history, 100 year history in the business, right? I mean, migration is a big issue for them, right? Whereas the Greenfield, you know, we heard from Dish earlier, they want to drive innovation. So they might be willing to sacrifice some other areas, so is that a fair summarization? And what are you hearing? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's where you see that Dish being kind of a leader in the space as they were deploying in Greenfield, they defined what the open ecosystem should look like, defined all the components of it, how you integrate them, validate them, and they were able to, you know, they won't go through it and deploy it. To your point, for an open or closed systems, as how you actually start transforming the existing network into the open one, that's going to go through a different process, right? You need to figure out how these new open systems can interrupt and work together with existing networks. So that's one likely some of those carriers will start in an isolated area and grow from there, deploy an open system in a rural area, for example, and then build from there. So what a bank would do is they say, okay, we're going to write in our own abstraction layer, right, using microservices, we're going to connect to the cloud and we're going to put maybe some lower risk applications in the cloud first and then we're going to create our own cloud. Is there a similar dynamic here? Yeah, I mean, so I think you spot on, right? Like, I think one of the things that we're seeing with the telco operators that we've spoken to is they're very risk averse, right? They have very strong SLA requirements. They cannot go down even for a second. So what that basically means is the innovation aspect is constrained by the risks that they perceive on any changes that you want to make on the architecture. So the question that comes up is, how do we make it easier for them to not worry about the bare minimum requirements of making sure the network's running and working while thinking about the new innovative technologies and solutions you want to build on the start. So back to your bank example, nine years ago, no one in a bank even was thinking about applications that would run on the cloud. Like for them, it was like a side project where they'll try and test something, see if it works, and then they'll think about cloud in the future, right? But now core applications on banks are actually being built on public cloud. I think we see the same happening with the telco operators as well. Right now, they're understanding the move from a closed ecosystem to an uncommitting system. They understand the value proposition. On the core side, it's already happening a lot. And I think they are slowly moving there and that's where I think T-Board and team have been doing a great job working with our customers to make that transition happen. There are so many permutations and integration points. How is Dell addressing that across the ecosystem? So to give you an example, we talked about Hotel, which is our brand new kind of 13,000 square feet lab that we kind of inaugurated last year based in Round Rock, Texas. Open telecom ecosystem lab. Correct, great. And so as part of that, that's a physical lab, but more importantly, that's kind of a community where partners, customers come together to actually collaborate and work on these solutions. And as part of this, we also develop what we call the SIP, or Solution Integration Platform to enable exactly what you just said. Making sure that we have a platform that actually can take all these various components, validate them individually, combine them, and then provide a DevOps and GitOps model how you actually combine them, provide a bomb or S-bomb, and then push that to pre-production and deployments for our customers. So that's part of the challenge as we talked earlier, and that's how Dell and we are looking at actually enabling this, you know, basically the validation of this insegregator to all. Yeah, so, sorry, I just wanted to, go ahead. You know, just going to add one more point, right? So when we look at the partners that we're working with as well in the Hotel, and there are three ways we're working with them. At the bare minimum, we want to make sure that solution will run on the Dell infrastructure and the hardware, right? So we have the self-certification process. We had a lot of good uptake on it, and we're seeing a lot more come in. In fact, I had a check-in with theCUBE this morning in our side, and it's more than 100 plus partners already entrusted in going through that. Awesome. Then we have other places where we work on, with partners to reference architectures together, right? So we want some sort of validated solution that will work together that we can take to the market. And then we also have engineered solutions that we're building with partners like the infrastructure block offering that we have taken, where it's all pre-packaged, pre-built by Dell, working very closely with our partners. So the telcos don't have to worry about deployment, integration, and everything else that comes around. And I presume the security supply chain is part of that bill of materials that you described. Exactly. And that would include all those levels, the engineered systems, the reference architectures as well. And how do you decide, like candidates, I mean, you can't do it all, right? So it's the big markets get the engineered system. Is that right? How do you adjudicate there? Yeah. So I mean, I think there are a couple of angles to look at it, right? I think the first and foremost is where we see the biggest demand is coming from the customers in terms of the stack they already have and where they have the pinpoints, right? So this is why we are working with Red Hat and Wind River as an example, because they are in most of the deployments that we are aware of with the customers, and where we see an opportunity for Dell to partner with these partners. I think we are seeing a lot of new players also coming up the stack. And as they come up the stack and we find opportunities to co-build and co-innovate, absolutely we'll be building joint solutions with them as well. Where are you from a partnership perspective on the strategic vision? You mentioned a number of things that have already been accomplished, quite a few, but from your journey perspective on that strategy, where are you? Yeah, so it's a really good question. I think we really want to be the partner of choice for all technology and services company within the telecom space. We're looking to drive the transformation in the network area, right? So that's the vision that we have in the telecom system business from a partnership side. We have created some really good strategic partnerships with key providers. We had independent software vendors, the network of company providers. We're having some really good strategic conversations with them. You've heard some of the announcement come out today, the work we're doing with Nokia, with Samsung, the Red Hat announcement, the Wind River, and so on and so forth. And there's a lot more in the pipeline. But more importantly, we want to grow the impact of the ecosystem. So that's why we are launching the partner community today, as well, to make that happen. How does the lab work? Who has access to it? Can I self-certify? If I can self-certify, how do you make sure that I'm following the rules, all of the stuff that you would expect? Sure, absolutely. So yes, you can self-certify. That's what Gautam just mentioned. We already had quite a few, ISVs go through that self-certification. And then there's reference architecture that's being done. And other, the engineered solutions that we talked about earlier. And the lab is set up in a way that, when needed, test lines can be isolated. So only certain set of partners have access to it. So it's made up in a way that enables collaborations at the same times. It kind of enables a certain set of customers and partners working together without having challenges of having a completely open system. Okay, but so if I want to do something with you guys, and let's say I am a candidate for an engineered system, so how's it work? Somebody's got to buy the equipment, he's got to ship it. There's a lot of Dell equipment involved, but there's other third-party GAPX, software, et cetera. So you fund that, the partners fund that, it's a hybrid funding model, how does that all get done? So today for, obviously we work closely with those partners. The engineered solutions we've developed so far, we've been funding it largely, and as you said, it's Dell infrastructure, plus the Cast Layers and the Cloud Layers we work with. So we actually put those in place, we funded them, of course with participation from them, and that's been done through those labs. Okay, great, so you guys are providing that benefit to the ecosystem, writing checks, bringing engineering talent to the table. Yeah, and at the same time, I mean it's a partnership at the end of the day, right? So depending on the kind of partnership we are, so if you're an ISV, it's fairly simple, come into our labs, you don't have to worry about the infrastructure. Run it all in our labs and you're good. If you're a hardware vendor or a NEP, network equipment provider, that's where it gets interesting where they need to send us stuff, we need to send them stuff, and usually like Teevor mentioned, it's a joint collaboration, we all put in our chips on the table and we work together. So when you're having conversations with prospective partners, obviously different types of partners, Gautham, that you just talked about, what's in it for them, what's the value proposition, what does this community give them from a competitive advantage standpoint? Yeah, so I mean there are, so the way I think about it, right, there are three things that Dell is bringing to the table. The first one is our experience and expertise on doing this transformation within the enterprise space and the learnings we have from there that we're bringing to Telco now, right? So Dell's been working with enterprises for many, many years, we are one of the big providers there, we all know what transformation enterprise went through. The whole IT transformation. Exactly, and that's the experience we have which we're bringing to Telco. The second one is our investment, both from a go-to-market side, as well as the way we're working with our sales and marketing and so on and so forth with the engineering side. And finally, I think, and this for me is the best one, is Dell is a very partner-centric organization. Our strategy is built around partnerships. So that's the other piece that we're bringing to the table. Where are the labs? Oh, go ahead. And just one more note on that, and also we're talking about the engineered solutions, there's also the supply chain, then because that's a basic appliance and then that goes through the Dell's supply chain which is best in class. And where are the labs? How many are there? So Rundrock, Texas is the biggest one, the 13,000 square feet. We also have extension to it. We just announced opening one in core for the EMEA market to making sure that we can cover any regulatory challenges but also basically any test lines that we need to cover that have latency challenges, that's why we want to make sure that we have labs in other areas as well. And the go-to market, is it an overlay organization, a dedicated organization? Yes, so it's a bit of both as you know. But yeah, in the telecom business unit we have a dedicated sales organization as well as an alliance organization very close with product and engineering to take it to market. Given the strength and the breadth of the partner program in the community, based on this is only day one of MWC but is there anything that you've heard today that excites you where telecom is going and where Dell and its ecosystem is going and really burgeoning? I don't know how many meetings since six a.m. this morning so it's been an amazing event and we're just having so many great conversations with partners, our customers. And I think a lot of today is all about figuring out what our strategy and our vision is, where is each side going and what the overlap is. I think the end result is going to be follow-up conversations with a lot of these partners that we are working with or will be working with soon and then thinking about do we build the engineered solutions together? Do we go validated route? Like we're going to figure that out. But I mean for me this is like the perfect place to come and share your vision and strategy and understand what we're trying to solve for. To me what's been interesting that all the interactions and discussions are about how to get to and the open ecosystem. You know, that's great to see that the focus is on how to make it work versus still questioning it. And I think that's a pretty good place to go. Well you guys launched this business I think during the pandemic, right? So I mean you could do a lot over Zoom but as we were talking about earlier, having the face-to-face interaction there's no replacement for it. You know, the six AM meetings versus the 30 minute Zoom calls. You know, and your body language, I mean you learn so much that you can take away from these events. Absolutely, seeing someone in 3D is so different and it's good to build that relationship and rapport as well with the folks. It is, there's so much value in the hallway conversations that you can't have over Zoom. That is so true. I guess last question for you as we head into day two. What are some of the things that we can be on the lookout for from Dell and its ecosystem? Interesting. I mean all our announcements are out. I think what you can look at for us to really be leading in this segment, taking a leadership role and continuously looking at how we can really enable the open ecosystem and how we can provide more value there and how we can see how we can lead in the space. How you can lead in the space. Yeah, I mean for me, I mean day two is like I have a lot more meetings in day two than day one so I don't know if it's like people flying in today or what but it's amazing to just meet the partners and customers and just. So that theme of velocity for you is going to keep going. Oh, it's not stopping. That's for sure. We are excited about it. Well thank you for carving out some time to talk to us on theCUBE about the partner program, the open ecosystem and the commitment to growing that and enabling partners to really differentiate their services with Dell. We appreciate it. We appreciate it as well. Thank you for having us. All right, our pleasure. For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live in Barcelona, Spain at MWC 23, day one of our coverage. We'll be right back with our final guest of the day so stick around.