 From San Francisco, it's theCUBE, covering Radio 2018, brought to you by VMware. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's exclusive coverage. I'm John Furrier here in San Francisco for VMware's Radio 2018 14th year event. We're all the top engineers in R&D. Folks get together and show their best stuff, ideas, discussions, and have a great time. Our next guest is Nicole Aikut, who's the Vice President of Sustainability Strategy, Office of the CTO of VMware, part of the group that puts this event together, really a celebration, but also competitive. Nicole, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, great to be here, thank you. So, talk about what your role is, because sustainability, we're just talking off camera, about blockchain and the energy. Is sustainability an energy thing? Is it a society thing? What is your focus? John, we think about sustainability at VMware in a holistic way, and it's the sum total of how we run our business, so from an operations perspective, how we do that in a responsible, environmentally responsible way, but it also includes our people on culture. Sustainability is a lot about culture change, and then most importantly, it's also about what we do, and the impact of our product. And so, at VMware, I think we focus on sustainability and what's unique about our approach is that it's in the business, that we have placed the sustainability function in the Office of the CTO, because we believe that the biggest impact that we can have is actually through our technology. You guys do a great job, I have to say. The building, by the way, in Palo Alto, that your headquarters, which has voted one of the best places to work, is very sustainable. I know, I got a couple of pens from the trees, and you guys use all the wood, all the stories involved in the building, so the culture's there. So I got to ask you here at Radio, what are some of the sustainability ideas? What are some of the conversations with the papers? What is some of the core tech off-road map that is exciting you and the team at VMware on sustainability? Right, it's really exciting, and Radio is such a magical event for all those reasons. And the sustainability piece of this is really exciting, and there's a couple of dimensions that we have. We have an expo up in the sort of science fair part of the event, where some of our engineers who participated in our recent Borathon, which is like a hackathon, and the theme was sustainability. And so they are presenting their hacks, some of them crazy cool ideas. You know, one on one end there was a project around using blockchain technology for microgrids. There is a broken build predictor. There is projects around monitoring real-time energy for our service. So fascinating sort of skunk work projects in the office of the CTO. And then we also are going to be doing a paper co-sponsored with two of our principal engineers looking at and asking a really big question, and that is around code sustainability, and how we think about sustainability and energy as a metric of success, just like we consider performance, quality, and security. So I'm excited about that because that ultimately is about culture and it's about thinking about hard problems. And that's what innovation is about, right? It's creativity solving hard problems and bringing something, implementing something as a result. And you know, the big debate about, oh, servers aren't going to be made because the cloud's eating away at server market share. Well, someone's got to buy servers. Someone's got to run data. And it's always been the challenge of, how do I get more power? And now internet of things, IoT devices, are need power. So you get solar, a lot of challenges at the network layer, but also power layer. Because it's not connected to the network, it has to transmit needs power. How do you guys see that evolving on the R&D front? You know, I think that's one of the big horizon issues for our industry, frankly. You know, VMware celebrating our 20th year anniversary and recently we had an event with some of our alumni and founders and they were asked the question, what are the things that keep you up at night about our industry? And there are two answers to that. One is security and the other is energy. So we really have to fundamentally think about this question and that is something that we are taking to heart at VMware and considering what does that future look like? You know, for some companies, sustainability is about trying, innovating around things like, can we make products from plastic pollution in the ocean? And for us, we're asking the question, what does the future of energy look like for our customers and for our industry? And that future is going to be a distributed energy future. So what does that mean for computing? I don't have the answers right now, but that's part of an event like this where we bring our smart people together to start to ask those questions and that's where innovation begins. And you don't know where the spark is going to come from. That's what's great about these tech events is that there's no bad ideas because you can kick it around. There's enough people around you and then now you go back to the company and you're digitally connected. So you have the hackathons and the tech talk to have a cool and vibe environment. And the question I want to ask you with that is, is that, is that distributed energy challenge, the number one item on the agenda? What are some of the things, I guess, the question, what are some of the key things that are shaping the agenda for you guys with sustainability? Because I think that's what folks might want to know about, okay, what should I think about? Is it energy? What are some of the things that I should start thinking about in the shower, thinking about as I'm, you know, at work or at play? Right, great question. And, you know, sustainability is a complex issue that challenges us as a society. For us at VMware, we, like I said, we're taking a holistic perspective on sustainability. So that includes environmental, social and governance matters. But to answer your question from a technology perspective, we are focused on energy. That is, it's not the only thing, but it is a priority. So we're looking at that from several dimensions. One is our own processes. So that's where the Sustainable Code Initiative comes in. So how we make our code on our product. And then the products and features that get built into our products and services to our customers. And then layered on top of that is then the energy mix and doing our part as a progressive company to drive the renewable energies market. So we've made a commitment to 100% renewable energy, to carbon neutrality, to do our fair share, but also to help shift the market. Because it is about, the future is about not only the applications and the problems that technology can help solve, but it's also about the nature of energy and the energy, the grid mix. So that's a combination. And the empowerment of society is also a big one. Huge focus this year on, not this year, but this decade on mission driven initiatives. Sustainability clearly falls on that. We were talking before we came on camera about blockchain and one of the things I've observed in my reporting is that there's a lot of energy ideas in blockchain. You mentioned one of them. Where token economics could be an issue. I know blockchain has its own challenges with energy, but that's a hard problem that could be solved. That needs to be solved. So folks watching solve the energy problem and the speed problem too on blockchain. But these are the new ideas that are growing in India and in Africa. These new areas of the world where the middle class is exploding in growth. More access people to computing, more mobile devices. So you're starting to see new geographies around the world challenged. Absolutely. And I fundamentally share the optimism around technology. I think as technologists we need to be thoughtful about the impact of technology. And I think that is another topic of the day. We could have a separate conversation on that. But when you look at the challenges of the world, and the United Nations has put out the Sustainable Development Framework that really names those big gnarly problems of the world that we need to solve. And at the heart of all of those, I believe our technology plays a role. And so it's not a, to me, I think that's where companies like VMware can have a bigger impact is to think about where is that sweet spot around which we can help bridge those divides and enable a better future more globally. I know you got to go real quick, describe what's going on here, radio in San Francisco. For the folks that are watching, couldn't make it. What's the vibe? What's it like? Share some color commentary. It's, you can just feel the energy. It's just, it's like a big science fair. And or, you know, it's, but at the end of the day. It's social too. It's very social. And this event is actually, it's about technology, but it's actually about community. So, you know, we talk a lot about all the cool things and you know, things that are future off road map. But at the end of the day, software is all about people. And you see that here, you feel it. It is a community event and it is about people connecting. And that's the best part about it. It's a social collaborative construct. We love coming here. Thanks for inviting us. I mean, there's a really, if you're engineering, action's happening. It's happening here at Radio in San Francisco. For VMware, it's the CUBE coverage. I'm John Furrier. We'll have more coverage after this short break.