 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to day one of theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World here in Sin City Las Vegas, 15,000 attendees. I'm your host Rebecca Knight along with my co-host, Dave Vellante. We're joined by a Charlie Haney. He is the Senior Vice President of Dell Technologies Consulting Services. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Absolutely, thanks for having me again. So we were talking a little before the cameras were rolling. You have spent nearly your entire career at this company. First EMC, then Dell EMC, now Dell Technologies. How have you seen the landscape change and transform over the course of your career? Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, think about just even as consumers what we've seen in the last 10 years. I mean, I was thinking about my flight out. I booked everything online, AMEX, all my calendar and everything is managed by Tripit. I check in with my United app. I get here, I take an Uber. I mean, the entire experience is digital and we see that in our everyday lives. And today with technology, I mean, all of our customers are looking to figure out how do they apply these emerging technologies to their business so that they can open up new revenue streams or create new business opportunities to really win inside their industry. And so I think it's just an exciting time and I couldn't be happier to be here at Dell Technologies because I feel like we're at the center of all of it. So you mentioned all these exciting new technologies, AI, IoT, and all part of this digital transformation. How would you describe how your clients are thinking about all of this? What are their pain points? What is keeping them up at night? You know, I mean, not all customers are the same as you can imagine. We have some that are just starting and some that feel like they're well on their way, but it seems like as they go down their path, they learn that there is still a lot to go. I would say many of them are excited about the emerging technologies, but they're still puzzled with how to actually apply it in their business. And things like multicloud, you know, while it has a great promise, they're also, you know, a little bit betwixt with how to actually manage and run this multicloud environment. So the new solutions like Dell Technologies Cloud and the promise to actually manage that and provide a single cloud plane across hybrid environments on-prem, off-prem, you know, these are ways that as a technology company, we're able to help customers start to stitch these technologies together in a more seamless way to help enable what they're trying to do inside their business. So certainly the narrative you hear in the press and no question comes from a lot of the technology companies is, you've got to transform digitally. If not, you're going to get disrupted. Most organizations you talk to have some kind of digital transformation strategy going on, but the reality is, there are a number of industries that really haven't encountered disruption. Financial services is a good example. The defense industry, healthcare, it's probably ripe for disruption, but hasn't yet. But we certainly all believe it's coming and we all believe it underlying that trend is data. So I wonder what that discussion is like with customers. Is there a keen sense that they've got to do something? Or is it really mixed? Is there a complacency in some industries? And what role do you guys play in sort of helping them squint through that? Yeah, I mean, we certainly find that customers that are trying to transform are looking at how do they take the data that oftentimes they already have and figure out how to actually consolidate it and get it into a well run data platform first so that then they can do analytics and they can actually get the business insights out of it to actually go do something on the digital side. And so oftentimes, as an infrastructure company, we're helping them build the digital infrastructure for their data platform to enable their digital transformation initiatives. At the same time, we're helping on the IT side to actually drive out the cost of their IT to go capture the dollars, to go enable and fund a lot of those digital transformation initiatives too. So there's kind of the data play and then there's obviously the infrastructure play that enables and funds it. What we first started doing the Cube, this is our 10th year. And back then, if you talked about eliminating, you know, mundane infrastructure management tasks, a lot of people would tighten up and go, oh, that's my job you're talking about today. People are sort of embracing that because they realize there's a brighter future ahead. So maybe talk about that skills gap, what role you guys play in closing that gap. Is it just purely sort of, they outsource that? Are you teaching them how to fish? Yeah, it really varies and I would agree with you. I mean, years ago, people were afraid of what might happen to them. And today, right, with the stats, most of our organizations that we talk to already leverage five or more clouds, right? Whether it's an on-prem or an off-prem cloud or a SaaS based application. And so it's no longer afraid, it's like it's reality, it's happening. And so for us, we're helping them figure out how to stitch those things together. Now our consulting services, we can either help them build the upfront strategy to actually build a roadmap and a plan of where they should go and how they should get there, as well as those iterations of actually executing and implementing whether that is an IT transformation or a digital transformation plan. Oftentimes by us helping them build, we're actually enabling and helping them establish also an operating model of what is the people and process now that I need within the organization to actually start to deliver something like IT as a service, it's extremely different. And so then, obviously there's projects that we do jointly with organizations and customers and they learn as we go. And then obviously we have educational services if they want something that's more formal on that side. So we always talk about people process technology and practitioners will tell you, people in process of the hardest technology is the easiest part, you'll always hear that. Having said that, technology catalyzes these changes, whether it's AI, 5G, IOT. So what are some of the catalysts that you're seeing today and what kind of services are you guys providing? Well I mean, again, just think about the cloud platform that was announced earlier today. I mean, for years to be honest, we've been building on-premise private clouds and doing manual integration with public clouds. We've been creating a vision of a service catalog that actually spans multiple on-prem, off-prem clouds but not fully integrated. Now we have an entire cloud plane that actually enables what you just said. And so the technology is starting to catch up to what we want to consume, which is IT as a service, on-prem or off-prem. But again, that will change those roles within IT. You're not going to have silo-based roles around server, storage, networking. You're going to have cloud operators that are stretching not just on-prem but off-prem technologies. Could be Azure, Google, AWS, whatever, right? And so those roles are drastically different and how do we enable technology across those. And so as a consulting organization, we're helping define those roles as well as enable them and then build the platforms that ultimately deliver that service. So I want to ask you about innovation because we learned that Dell's turning 35 next week. That's sort of the start of middle age where you get a little slower, get a little creakier. How do you stay on the cutting edge and how do you make sure that you are thinking four steps ahead of your customers and what they will need next? You know, it's amazing. I mean, obviously as an organization we're investing $12 billion or more of R&D over the course of the last three years. I mean, the innovation and the funding for innovation is just continuing to pour. The synergies of bringing organizations like VMware and Dell EMC infrastructure together or Pivotal or Secureworks. I mean, it's the right blend and mixture of software and infrastructure that allows us to integrate and by integrating we can then innovate. And so I honestly think many times our customers are telling us what they need. And as long as we continue to be good listeners and we are delivering on what our customers are needing with the technology investments we're making, we'll continue to innovate. So you guys announced some announcements today around MultiCloud, the VMware cloud on Dell EMC. I want to ask you a question, Charlie, and then tie into that announcement. Is MultiCloud sort of a symptom of multi-vendor and line of business and shadow IT or is it increasingly becoming a strategy? And if so, how do you see that strategy evolving? Well, you know, I would say for the organization that hasn't built the right plan and strategy and is getting reactive, you know, it's really a reactive kind of plan, they're seeing all these clouds just kind of pop up and they're not integrated. So they're isolation of technologies in different locations. For those organizations that are building a strategy to figure out how to best leverage those technologies, it's completely different, right? And by doing that, we're able to go look at applications and do proactive cloud suitability studies and make sure that they're putting applications in the right locations to get the right benefits and cost advantage that they need. And that's a very different thing than IT waiting for the business to go invest in some SaaS model. So does there have to be a top-down edict for the latter vision to be realized? In other words, if the corner office isn't saying, hey, thou shalt pay attention to IT when they say this is our multi-cloud strategy or can it actually happen from a grassroots level? You know, I don't want to say it can't happen. Perhaps it could. I can tell you the customers that we've engaged with that are having the most success. Absolutely, it's starting at the board level, right? I mean, it is a top-down support and focus for the organization. I mean, there's going to be people challenges as we've talked about, technology challenges, financial challenges. It's going to take senior-level people to actually knock those things down. When we do advisory services like this Brokensault advisory where we help customers build a strategy, one of the number one barriers that we're knocking down is internal conflict. We bring people within the organization together with our subject matter expertise who have done this before and oftentimes we can't get the organization itself to agree on what is the vision and the guiding principles of this multi-cloud strategy. And so that is oftentimes the biggest challenge and can't be done ground up. Oftentimes it does require a strong leadership team to actually support it, fund it, and then help remove those roadblocks. Is that a typical starting point for you guys? You'll go get an executive sponsor and then you'll organize the team and then you have to catalyze the structure. You know, that's always the cleanest. But again, as we just talked about, customers are in various places along that journey. So for us, it's important to figure out where they are, meet them where they are, if they're halfway down that. Maybe it's just a course correction, maybe it's something where they're struggling with and we just need to help them with a particular area of it. So we have customers all along that journey and our goal is just to help them get to the end of that, regardless of where we start. Great. Well, Charlie, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. This was a great conversation. Absolutely, thanks for having me. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Vellante. We will have much more from day one of theCUBE's live coverage from Dell Technologies World here in Las Vegas, coming up in just a little bit.