 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host Dave Vellante. Two sets, three days, wall-to-wall coverage, everything going on in Dell Technologies. Really happy to welcome back to the program Sam Grocott, who's the senior vice president of product marketing at Dell EMC. Hey, I am psyched to be here. I'm so excited. So, you know, Dave and I will talk. You know, we come to these shows and back in the EMC World days, it was like, okay, let's walk through this massive portfolio in all the different areas. Last year we talked, there's a lot of simplification going on. And boy, this year it felt like, you know, massive infusion of cloud and talk to a lot of your team about what's really happening now. It's not cloud-watching, we're well past that. You know, EMC and Dell both, you know, rode through a lot of that today. But, you know, take us inside the keynote, putting these things together, and it's still quite a massive portfolio. It is, it is. And I get the honor of being the, kind of the marketing front for the entire Dell EMC portfolio. So, whether it's storage, server networking, data protection, and now, hyper-conversion, now cloud, our newest member of kind of the family, so to speak. I get the opportunity to kind of represent that, which to your earlier point, creates a challenge as well, because it's such a broad portfolio of technology. So, anytime we get the opportunity to come to adult technologies world, or VM world, or other big event, we want to make sure we shine the brightest light on the products that are both new and innovative, as well as continue to grow at a high rate. So, it's always a challenge. I wonder if I'm seeing a little bit of trend in there. So, a year ago, PowerMax was unveiled. We talked to the data protection team at PowerProtect. The networking stuff got rebranded with Power, and they've got the shirts with the flip the switch, power switch on there. So, you know, am I sensing a trend here is when we simplify the portfolio, power is the brand that lives off? Are you the father of power? I am, to some degree, yes. It was kind of the genesis of an idea that we built on the original PowerEdge brand, which predated my arrival here. But we do, look, we look at the portfolio from a strategic lens, and we're looking at the various different solutions we have across all the storage, high-end, mid-range, unstructured NAS to the server product lines. Now we've powered up the data protection with PowerProtect. To your point, power switch is now on, so we've turned that one on. And we will continue to power up the rest of the portfolio. So, you're definitely onto something. There is a trend here, multiple points on that trend line, and I think you should be excited to know there's a lot more to come there, too. So, when people talk about large portfolios, they always talk about integration, and sort of threads across an architecture that maybe brings them together. From a marketing standpoint and messaging standpoint, what are some of those threads that you're weaving through the portfolio? Right, so one of the unique opportunities we have with such a broad portfolio is we want to make sure we have very strong, hard-hitting product messaging. So, of course, you've got the typical storage and data protection server messaging to talk about the key customer dynamics and trends that are going on at the individual product level. Now, what's newer this year, and what you'll start to see more of as we go forward is we're now taking that product approach, now going vertical with that, talking about solutions and workloads and applications. So, the big opportunity we have, and you saw that with the introduction of the Dell Technology Cloud, as well as the Dell Technologies Unified Workspace, is we're now telling a broader solution story that includes, frankly, many products within Dell EMC and many products across the broader Dell Technology family that provide more of a business outcome, solution outcome discussion for our customers, complimenting the strong kind of just individual piece-part discussions, which we have to have. Yeah, and Sam, you know, we've looked at some of those solutions for a number of years. You know, VMware and Pivotal and the storage products have been put together for a lot. Something I saw more than ever is, you know, they're baked together. It's, you know, VCF on top of it, the whole SDDC stack, you know, big day one keynote was a lot about the talk of, you know, the better together as the pieces, gives a little bit of insight as to, you know, how closely, you know, Dell and the other logos on the banner are working together. Yeah, if you think about over the last few years, better together has been a big focus of ours, especially as we've come together as one large company, but I would say we lived in the same neighborhood, you know, now we live in the same house. And it's about how do we have the best integration between one product line or one room of the house with our neighboring room of the house for another product line. And you've seen that most recently with VxRail, with the VCN technology and the Dell EMC infrastructure, but now you're seeing it even broader than that. Dell technology cloud is my favorite one to talk about, of course. And that is the bringing together the VMware cloud foundation suite of software, this amazing set of software, combined with this market leading, segment leading Dell EMC infrastructure to provide that end-to-end turnkey on-premise hybrid cloud, which now can go to Azure or Amazon. Yeah, Dave gives a whole nother meaning to the noisy neighbor problem I get to talk about. Yeah, right. I got to ask you. It's a fun house. It's a very fun house. So, when you were with Icelon, you had a relationship obviously with VMware, right? You got the SDK and you would do it. Then, of course, you get acquired by EMC. VMware is sort of a sister company. Oftentimes, EMC would argue, well, our integration is better than NetApps or whoever else's, and you know, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, fine, compete. But today, there seems to be a conscious effort to really drive integration across the portfolio, using VMware as the linchpin. I wonder if you could talk about that in terms of the strategy and what it means in terms of product marketing. Yeah, and so it really depends on the use case or workload or solution. Certainly in the cloud, I think Dave, you're dead on. The VMware cloud foundation suite is the linchpin is the operating hub for our hybrid cloud strategy, sitting on top of our infrastructure. So that is absolutely the case. But if you look at other solutions, maybe there's another member of this extended family that should be the pointer, should be the lead of kind of the charge into a specific workload or use case. We'll evaluate those on a case-by-case basis. I think the important thing, though, is the strategy starts from the top with Pat and Jeff really working with both the VMware and Dell EMC teams. It is super clear, the prioritization, the focus in the alignment to go build these combined solutions together. We may not have had that alignment in the past, so if you look back historically, we probably didn't execute as well or as fast as we wanted. We are now operating in absolute alignment and synchronization on the strategy, which makes it really easy for the teams to operate, whether it's a marketing team, an engineering team, a services team, we are absolutely in lockstep. I'm fascinated by this, why? What's changed? What is it that Dell has brought to this culture that has enabled that and catalyzed that? I think, you know, starting at the top with Michael, but certainly Pat and Jeff spent the time, I think Jeff, over a year and a half ago, they sat down and said, here are our key strategic tenants. Here's what we need to go do as better together. We think we can move faster in the market. We aligned on those priorities and we execute on those every single day. So I think that day one alignment has really helped to make the change very, very quickly. It sounds so simple, but if the assumptions that they make at the top don't pan out, then you have to pivot. And you see it all the time in the tech business. All right, we're going to take that hill. Okay, we took that hill, but nobody's buying that hill. So now we got to go over here and we got a constant shifting. So is that the secret sauce or at least part of it? Is that they got it right early on or fast course correction? Yeah, so I think the hero example that we've had the most run time with is the VxRail, which I definitely think we've hit a grand slam with that one. Now we're trying to replicate that in a more complex solution in something that's not just in an appliance. It's more broader, it's more strategic. You're not extending into partners like public cloud players. So it's much more, it's very, very important to have a plan, have a strategy, align to that, execute, but by no means are we heads down and just going to take the hill if the environment changes, if the facts change, Jeff, Pat, the extended teams, we constantly reevaluate and we're nimble and agile and we'll shift if we have to. So Sam, we've spent a lot of time digging in with the storage team here. I went through the expo hall, lots of gear you can touch, lots of demos you can do. There's some people went to the keynote and they're like, oh my gosh, this is not EMC world. There's not that much storage. It kind of got glossed over when you talk about cloud and converged and all these things there. Talk about how you balance that internally and from a messaging standpoint. Where is the message in the state of storage today in 2019? Yeah, so yesterday we really focused on the Dell technology solutions. Dell Tech Cloud, Dell Tech Unified Workspace. Today's keynote, we really pivoted back to the infrastructure conversation. This is where you saw the new enhancements with the Unity XT, the Icelon, continuing to advance data protection with the new power protect announcements. So I would say Day 2 probably felt a little bit more familiar for the traditional EMC world teams. We had great demos showcasing the new capabilities. We were able to have great customer examples how they're taking advantage of these new capabilities. But with a portfolio so broad at the Dell technologies level, never mind the Dell EMC level, you have to pick and choose on how you message your customers, your partners to all of you of course as well. So we're trying to kind of align a solution story that's then complimented by great best of breed individual piece parts. And I think you saw that balance over Day 1 and Day 2 today. How do you measure your success from a marketing standpoint? I mean, is it just revenue? I mean, obviously one, but it's sort of removed. But I mean, what other metrics do you use to sort of inform your strategy? Yeah, so again, I had the pleasure of working both for Jeff Clark and Allison Dew. So I actually have two bosses, which is a lot of fun at times. Literally, seriously, yeah, dual report to both of them. And what's great about that is there is no air gap between the marketing accountability, the marketing goals and objectives with the business within Dell EMC. So look, the ultimate factor that we look at in addition to revenue is market share. How are we competing in the markets that we select to compete in and are we taking share or not? We've had a great run over the last year and a half on that front. So that goal is the same goal that we drive within marketing. Yes, there's things like share of voice and pipeline growth. Traditional marketing factors that we count within marketing to evaluate how things are working. But we are absolutely focused on the only goal. The only goal that matters is hitting the plan, hitting the revenue growth and taking share from our competitors. So you use market share, I presume you use IDC data as at least in part, maybe Gartner data. You've led them, yes. Okay, how's the market data? Because this market's so huge. We heard today with Pat Gelsinger was talking today about $2 trillion market. And I say to myself, wow, how do you even measure the various segments in such a big market when there's been such consolidation? But what have you found in terms of the consistency and the accuracy of the data in terms of how it's translated to, I mean, ultimately you can tell by your revenue growth comparing it to others revenue growth. So there's that measure, but is it pretty much stable and you're able to, is it reasonably predictable? You know, I won't get into the specifics, but we have a very detailed process on how we measure our success or not. We do use various resources in terms of IDC and others to kind of measure and judge how the market's going. I would say it's an input. It's not the exact science that we would certainly follow. But to your earlier discussion on do things change, obviously market predictions, if I were to tell you three years from now what the market is, you know, I would be a genius in Nostradamus and I would be predicting a lot of other things. It changes constantly. What we do know is the overall market is growing very quickly. It's in an unpredictable state of growth because of the amount of data that is growing. We think from a Dell EMC infrastructure standpoint, they're just going to require a lot more infrastructure. So we feel very good about where the market is going in our role within this data era that we talked about today. But whether it's us or the market predictors, everybody is constantly adjusting because you just don't know. You have other sources. You have obviously the channel. You have your talk to customers. I mean, okay, et cetera. Tom Sweet was telling us that the, I think it's IDC was saying that IT is going to grow, IT spending is going to grow 2X GDP, which I'm intrigued by. And I believe it. I just, historically, it's such a big market. It's been aligned with GDP, but it does feel like it's accelerating faster. You look at the tech trends, 5G, the emergence of the IoT internet of things at the edge, the advancements within the modernizing of infrastructure, the move to a hyper-converge, these new cloud solutions. As we look to provide an on-prem cloud, you look at the public cloud vendors who now have taken notice and said, hey, you know what? It's not all one way or the other way. We got to get into that game as well. So you're seeing a tremendous amount of growth, a tremendous amount of opportunity. At the end of the day, how are we helping our customers digitally transform is our goal and our mission. And I think we've got a great track record of doing that in the research. Well, the other thing is your size, a little bit of growth, there's a lot of cash. Absolutely. Yeah. So, Sam, want to give you the final word. You talk about the digital transformation, gives us a little bit of insight to the customers you're talking about, where they are in their journeys, is kind of the biggest challenges and opportunities that they're facing today. Look, we've been talking about digital transformation for a few years now. I would say we're still in the early innings. You certainly have a lot more customers that are taking advantage of digital transformation in typically lines of business, but not necessarily wholesale transformation. So I would say we're seeing a lot more customers, we're seeing a lot more success in line of business conversion to digitally transform. But the next wave of transformation is wholesale business transformation. You got a few highlights here and there, but for companies that are not born in this world that are more of a traditional business, it's the early early innings. So I think it creates a tremendous opportunity for everyone. All right. Well, Sam, first of all, congratulations. We know it's not just the event, but all the different pieces that come through take more than a year for all these pieces together. So congratulations so much. Yeah, thank you. I love the partnership. Looking forward to seeing you guys at the next big event. Awesome. All right. For Dave Vellante, I'm Stu Miniman. Be back with more coverage here from Dell Technologies World 2019 in Las Vegas. Thank you for watching theCUBE.