 Okay, we're back, this is Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org and this is a segment where we're looking at solutions, talking to customers at the event, they really want solutions. They don't want to do this non-differentiated heavy lifting, they want help and simplification of their management, of their infrastructure. Josh Kahn is back, we just heard from Josh, the Vice President of Solutions Marketing at EMC, and Jim McHugh, who's the Vice President of Marketing for the UCS component of Cisco. Alright, thank you for having me. So good to see you guys, so Cisco and EMC, renowned partnership, give us the update. Let's start with Josh on the relationship and what you guys are doing here at EMC World. Yeah, I mean, it's a relationship that has gone for over a decade, continued, started in a very profitable way by helping our customers deploy data center infrastructure and continues today in the same direction. EMC and Cisco both are leaders in their respective markets and share a common vision of what the future of the data center looks like and what the best path to that data center infrastructure is today and in the future. So, very, very productive partnership for our two companies and for our customers. So Jim, you guys have made some pretty bold moves. When I first saw them I said, ah, Cisco getting to the server business, what's that all about? Of course, it was several years ago, but talk about that journey and where you guys are today. Well, I mean, it's clearly been incredible growth. I mean, so from Cisco to declare and yes, everybody was saying, no way, this is not going to work. Do we need another vendor in this space? And here we are, three years later, three and a half years later, number two in the US in X86 blades, number three worldwide with the market share we have. It's just phenomenal growth, phenomenal success. So it's not much you can say except for the fact that it was a very well timed product bringing together both the compute and the networking aspects of it and just caught the market at a transition. And now it continues to grow because we do have that solutions focus. So talk about some of the joint solutions that you guys have and where you're winning in the marketplace. So for all our products when we bring them together, whether it's actually a VSpec solution or VBlock, we have our CVDs or Cisco Validated Designs, which are the reference architectures that start as the core. And what we do is we target not only what is going to be the workload, say desktop virtualization or say a Microsoft solution on top of that exchange or SharePoint, but we also target the size. So for 250 desktops, this is the particular CVD that we use. For X number of VMs, this is the CVD that you use. And they're all targeted about how do we get the best performance for the application. And a lot of people look at it, okay, well applications, that's between the application and virtualization layer. But the reality is it goes all the way down to the infrastructure. The infrastructure is really important. And that's why both of us are very open about our infrastructure, the programmability of that, and it's just playing out pretty well. So this industry's really evolved. It's quite amazing when you look at it. You talk about Microsoft and you talk about companies that partner, companies that compete, companies that cooperate. This is the endless matrix and web. Let's talk about Microsoft for a minute. You guys do a lot of business with Microsoft. There's some competitive aspects clearly with VMware. Another interesting angle is Microsoft will come out with something like say Exchange 2013, say don't use SAN, use DAS. How do you guys approach these markets, whether it's Microsoft or Oracle or SAP? And maybe we can tick off some of those examples. How do you approach them from the standpoint of delivering customer value? Where does it start and take us through that scenario? Yeah, well I think one of the interesting things I think you find across all of these companies is when there is a solution deployed and they run into a problem, I've actually never seen a scenario where the company's support organizations don't dive in with all hands and make sure the customer problem gets solved. So I think that's one truism that I've seen in our industry is that solutions that are deployed together, that are supported solutions, you can count on the companies working together to make those work. Now as strategies evolve and product roadmaps evolve, there are places where you have co-opetition, right? I don't know if our industry invented the term, but we certainly are the poster child for it. Yeah, right. And you know, I think what, the big focus for us has been to try to find the areas of cooperation and focus on those rather than the areas of competition. And these companies are very big companies. There's lots of opportunities to do things together to address customer opportunities, customer challenges, and focusing on those and the places where we can work together for the customer benefit tends to be much more successful than focusing on the areas of competition. So the other funny thing is sort of humorous, but you guys did Vblock together, you got VC and E and it's got some serious commitment going on there. And then you guys announced Vspecs and then the world goes, oh, well, this is unraveling of the relationship and here we are talking about the relationship with Cisco and generally in the Vspec specifically, talk about what you guys have done with Vspecs, let's say in the past 12 months since you've announced. Maybe Jim, we start with you. So I mean, you say it's interesting that we sometimes we talk about the Vblock and then say, and then we had Vspecs, reality is we had products, we had best of products that we actually have been doing a lot of business together with for a long time. And we went to this truly converged infrastructure that is Vblock, right? And there's other people who are using that term in sort of convoluted ways, but a truly converged infrastructure brings it all together and it's actually put in. But we know our customers, because we've had these customers for a long time together, they also need something in between to help them get there. They already have our products together and they're saying, you know what I really need is a reference architecture to help me expand my current data center or take it to the next stage, but I'm not quite ready to go to a fully converged infrastructure. That's where Vspecs is just a natural fit. So, and that's one element. The other element is mid-market and meeting in the channel. It gives us a real opportunity. Cisco's a very channel-oriented company and so EMC has taken a very channel-oriented approach to Vspecs and we're meeting in the channel and doing good business. And as we look at Vspecs and we look across the Vspecs configurations and the success we're having, a big part of that is a result of the work we're doing with Cisco and offering our customers and our partners the choice of Vblock for the fully converged all the way down to Vspecs and even doing themselves with just a simple CBD. So, let's talk some more about what the Vspecs component of the solution allows you guys to do that you couldn't get to with Vblock. Is it just different market segments? Obviously, it's more channel friendly. Talk about that a little bit. Well, so, I mean, if let's start with mid-market. So, as we target mid-market with Vspecs, it tends to be a lot more partner-led for us and the partners are actually involved. They're the trusted advisor of those customers. They're knowing where they are, they're knowing what their problems are and they're helping them go through that. That puts the level of partner interaction up front. So, what Vspecs is a perfect program and product because it actually lets the partner lead there, lets the partner actually configure it, let him and gives him that flexibility to say, you know what, this is actually what he needs right now. Gives him a time to value that they can't get by doing custom design, but isn't a complete and truly converged infrastructure but is a definitely great step in that direction. You know, I wonder if we could, so when I looked at, go back to the early Vblock days, there were starts and stops, there were Acadia and Accelerant and Build Transform and all that stuff. And so it took some time to get that right. And then I've noticed some of your competitors having, going through the same sort of progression, it's very sort of predictable. You didn't see that unless I just missed it with Vspecs. It seems like they're ramping for 12 months, 2200 systems, it seems like a ramp is a lot faster. Why is that? Is it just because Vblock's just a lot more complicated and harder and you got to do a lot more engineering up front? Is it because the channel is just bigger? Why is that? I mean, well, I think actually, Jeremy says it really well. I mean, when we look at Jeremy from EMC, when we look at it from, what is the market segment that's here? There's a certain percentage of customers that are ready to go to truly converged infrastructure today and there's a certain percent that are going to just take products and customize them. We think, and why I have seen Vspecs be so successful, it is bridging that. It is taking them in that direction, like you can have the flexibility you need, you're not quite ready to go truly converged, but you have the options you need. You get the understanding of how do you get time to value, how do you actually make your deployments. It gives you the opportunity to look at this and say, what's the SAP application I'm trying to solve? What's the Microsoft application I'm trying to solve? And really just resolve it right today. It gives you that flexibility, is my opinion. Yeah, I think that's, I think it's a great point. I also think a lot of customers are now ready to buy in that way. I mean, there's a pretty big change in an environment where four or five years ago and even in a lot of places still, decisions are made in networking, in storage, and in compute differently. And when you talk about something like converged infrastructure, I mean, it was a brilliant vision for simplifying the customer's IT environment, but it required a fairly different way to think and a fairly different way to invest in data center infrastructure and data center operations. And so, I think we've seen a lot of the market understand that and start to get their head around it and realize the value of it. And I think there's a natural progression, as Jim said, from something that is a pretty hard commitment, which is, hey, you make all the decisions on exactly what's in there and how it gets integrated and I'll just buy it from you to something where I have more and more influence. And I think it's easier to accelerate something where the customer has more of that flexibility to deploy it the way they want. I think to be fair to the VCE cause and what's going on there, customers who are willing to make that commitment actually get a lot of value. Tremendous amount of value. They get, you know, test dev savings when you actually want to scale out, it's just your existing environment, you just keep growing from that standpoint. So there's tremendous TCO values and, you know, speed values that you can get from this book. Yeah, we've looked at it in a pretty solid case and in many cases it's much greater than if you're sort of either using a reference architecture or clearly rolling your own, but, so. And it's interesting too, when you look at, when you analyze customers who have purchased Vblocks, what you realize is for them to make the decision to buy a Vblock the first time, it takes them really thinking broadly about how it's going to fit into their environment. Once they get it in there and they get it operating and they see the results for themselves, they very quickly want to figure out how they can deploy more Vblocks. And it's because they experience their own, you know, sort of the difference between marketing and their own customer experience. You know, they run the numbers themselves and they say, wow, this is a phenomenal benefit to us. That's a great point. And I think they could start with a workload like desktop virtualization and then consider a complete re-platform. Right, right. And yeah, if it's a green field, then it's a lot easier to decision. A lot of them are afraid of getting locked in. I mean, they see that and they go, oh, well, and so that's something like VSpecs. They say, okay, well, I have choice. Right, right. Okay, we've heard a lot about choice. You know, the whole notion of open is changing. Unix used to be the poster child from open and now it's at the other end of the spectrum. It's the most closed system that you can imagine, right? So, that definition's changing, isn't it? It is, but I'll tell you what, I think what a lot of our customers are seeing is when they analyze their environment and they figure out where the highest costs are and the highest risks are in their environment, they're actually not in the infrastructure itself. It's in the operating model and how they invest to make these things work. And what you find is the hardware infrastructure and picking a best of breed solution that has the best networking, the best compute, the best storage, and it's pre-integrated is going to save you so much on your operating costs that the risk of lock-in actually tends to become a secondary thought. I agree with that. I mean, there's lock-in everywhere. You need an open source, there's lock-in, right? And so, the key decision point for customers that we talk to is, okay, is the business value that I'm going to receive, does it outweigh the potential downstream risk of that lock-in? And if it does, then it's a good business decision. If it doesn't, then you might want to rethink it. So, I want to talk about, we talked earlier about the sort of web of competition and I sort of used Microsoft as an easy example. The harder example is you guys work with other storage vendors, you guys work with other server vendors, other networking vendors. How does that all work out and how you guys stay very close, you know? And do you just let the customers decide? Is that the simple answer? I mean, at the end of the day, it is the customer deciding, right? And, you know, in our view, whether, you know, the customer already has a competing compute platform, I still want Nexus to be going there, right? So, you know, we make the decision inside Cisco. We go like that sales and I'm sure EMC does the same thing. So when we naturally go to the next level, where two big partners are coming together, two leading companies, it's going to be natural. It's going to be sometimes our partners are leading it that way, it's just going to be sometimes legacy customer choice and they're not ready to make the transition yet. So it's customers making the choice, it's partners, obviously partner affinity and it's, who does the best job? So it's a perfect market. I mean, like I said, welcome to our world. Right, I mean, it's actually, the Cisco one's actually pretty easy. I think sometimes the tougher one for us is EMC and VMware and now soon going to be EMC, VMware and Pivotal, right? I mean, I remember when Pat Gelsinger went from heading the EMC product division to being the CEO of VMware because we were at VMworld shortly after that change had happened and there was Pat who had spent all this time talking about how important it was to win in storage against another storage vendor and the next thing I know I'm looking on Twitter and there he is at the ballpark with NetApp and their most important customers and you have this feeling of like Pat, what's going on? But he goes in there and he embraces that role and the way Joe has set up, Joe Tucci has set up EMC is really a federation of businesses that are strategically aligned but free to execute on their vision and that is I think an incredibly innovative and brilliant way to deal with the co-operation even within EMC, as I said I think Jim's answer was exactly right on the EMC Cisco partnership but at EMC we have the same challenges for our own family. Excellent. Jim, Josh, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE. I really appreciate the insights and congratulations, good luck going forward. Keep it right there everybody, this is theCUBE. We have a special guest, the new CEO of Fusion IO, Shane Robison, is going to Skype in, we're going to ask him what's going on in Utah and so keep it right there, we'll be right back with Shane Robison at 140 Pacific Time. Thanks for watching, we're right back.