 The Cube presents On the Ground. Hi, I'm Lisa Martin with The Cube and we are at the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley with the Association for Corporate Growth or ACG. Tonight is ACG's 12th Annual Grow Awards and we're very fortunate tonight to be joined by the keynote of the event tonight, Jeremy Burton. Jeremy is the President of Products and Marketing at EMC. Jeremy, welcome to The Cube. All right, thank you. Great to be here. So Jeremy, you have a wealth of expertise in technology, a veteran of over 20 years. You have expertise in M&A and obviously marketing, product dev, you've run multi-billion dollar companies. As we look at all of the options that you have for participating in communities like this, what makes ACG unique and worthy of your time? I mean, I've worked at a big company today clearly and I think you get like an injection of energy when you come to these things. I like to see what people are doing. I'm nosy by nature. Tech, for me, is as much a hobby as it is a job. But really, I mean, what are people thinking? What are people doing? Feed off the energy a little bit and then take that back to work with you for the rest of the week. So I always try and balance my time, even in my day job, between doing the day-to-day and running the big battleship, so to speak, but going and visiting some of the smaller entities that we've got within the portfolio. And I imagine that a lot of the networking opportunities for you to engage with other leaders in software and storage and cloud is phenomenal with the ACG. Oh yeah, I mean, you find out what's going on. I mean, the one thing's for sure in Silicon Valley, you know, if you look at all the great ideas you've had, the chances are that there are more people outside that have had even better ideas. And so, you know, you come to a place like this and it really is an exchange of ideas and keep current with what's going on. Excellent. So we've talked about the extensive expertise that you have in technology being a leader and really a catalyst for growth of companies like Oracle, Serena Veritas, EMC clearly. As we look at Silicon Valley companies today and the leaders of them, what are some of the challenges that they face when looking at building a successful growth strategy? I mean, the biggest challenge is always a great idea, right? And that's not easy, right? So, you know, that aside for one second, I think in this part of the world, it's a massive competition for talent. If you can't hire the best and brightest and you can't motivate the best and brightest, it's tough to build a great company. So the war for talent, I think, is huge. And you know, I think, you know, probably we as a tech industry, maybe you could even do more to make sure that we get more talent into our industry because if you look at the way the world's going, the indications are is that every company is going to be a tech company a few years from now. But I think the war for talent is the critical one. I think increasingly as well, look at global perspective. I love Silicon Valley. I've been here over 20 years. I love the feel of the place. I love the energy of the place. But Silicon Valley is not the world. And so when you talk about growing a company, you're going to grow beyond the confines of Silicon Valley and probably beyond the shores of the United States. And in fact, some of the fastest growing markets now are elsewhere in the world. And so I think, you know, one of the challenges is always to bring a global perspective into a company that was inherently, you know, born and bred in Silicon Valley. Excellent. And that was actually going to be one of the things I was curious to understand and get your perspective on. You have a tremendous amount of experience as we talked about leading large corporations to be very successful. What is it that you feel the impact is that Silicon Valley brings to high tech and innovation globally? What starts here and spreads? Or does it come back this way? It's the spark, right? I mean, I have never, I've been many places in the world. I have never been to a place like Silicon Valley. It's got this amazing way of reinventing itself. I mean, I've heard over the years, you know, I could go back 10 years ago. I could go back 15 years ago. People would say, oh, it's over. It's dead. You know, how many times have you heard the bubbles burst? Silicon Valley is not going to be what it used to be, but it constantly reinvents itself because you've essentially got a risk taking culture. And you've got folks who've made money that have become VCs and now they want to bet on people like them to go change the world. So that circle, I mean, certainly the time I've been here 22 years now has continued and it shows no sound at all of stuff. And so it's the innovation and innovative spark, but primarily because I think you've got a group of folks who will, who are not just smart, they'll take risks and they'll make it happen. I love that. The risk taking, also the energy. As we look at what's happening now and then transformation of businesses to that digital destination, how in your opinion do, does the IT side and the business side need to come together and align to facilitate a successful transformation? Well, the interesting thing is the IT guys are under the spotlight right now because I've talked to many companies where they're not relying on their own IT department to drive that transformation. I said a second ago that every company is going to be a tech company. So that's a huge change and that's in every industry. And we're seeing it on our doorstep here. Tesla really, it's an automotive company, but it's also got a pretty good software DNA. I think the companies that can point the IT department in the right direction and that can drive that innovation, that can build out some kind of software development DNA. IT will be in a great position and they'll do very well. The IT departments that don't respond, that don't adapt, that can't change the DNA, I think they're going to find pretty quickly that another group appears that does have that DNA. And that group may in fact be not in IT at all. It may be in the business. So I've seen both models. I've seen IT departments galvanized and arm in arm with the business, going to the digital future. I've also seen the business guys show up without IT and say, hey, he's my head of software development. We're going to the digital future together. So for IT folks, there's a little bit of fear involved here. If I was in IT right now, I would find the business person who's going to drive the new digital agenda and I would go in lockstep with that person and support them any way I could. That's great advice. Speaking of advice, I want to give Jeremy the last word here. If we look back to Jeremy Burton, 22 years you said you've been in the Valley, standing in your shoes today, what advice would you give to young Jeremy 22 years ago or even to young talent? As you mentioned, the needing to have a culture here of fostering talent. What is the advice you would give to that young person who wants to be like yourself, a senior executive leader in technology? Yeah, it's kind of humbling, I've been the old guy. I'm now old enough to give advice, that's awesome. No, look, I look back and I think when you're young, you think you can do it all. Look, I don't need any help. I don't need any advice. I've got my vision of what I want to get done and hey, I'm taking no prisoners to get there and what I wish I'd done, so my advice to myself would be, as you go through your career, particularly in your 20s and 30s, make a conscious attempt to build the relationships and keep in touch with folks. It can be as simple as that. The guy that I've been fortunate to work with the last few years, Joe Tucci, he's now at the other end of the spectrum, he's retiring. But Joe has got the best Rolodex of anyone I've ever seen. He keeps in touch with everyone and he's worked hard at it. And so now that CEO job, it's a lonely job, but if you've got people you can call for advice, if you can run an acquisition past someone, and maybe it's a deal that you're doing with a customer, if you've got those relationships, they make your life easier and I think it'll make you a better executive in the long run. Excellent, great advice from Jeremy Burton, the president of products and marketing at EMC. Jeremy, thank you so much for joining. Good luck on your keynote tonight. Thanks for being here. Thank you. Excellent, and thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, and we'll see you next time.