 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE! Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity. Hello, CUBE Nation, and welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We are closing down the second day of three days of coverage. This is day two, wall-to-wall coverage. Joining us is Thomas LaRocke, best job title ever, head geek at SolarWinds, author, speaker, data expert, and SQL Rockstar. Thank you. And Microsoft MVP. And Microsoft MVP, yes, importantly. And you saved me, you didn't have me on yesterday, you waited until the second day, the end of the second day. That's right. Well, Thomas, we wanted to make sure that by the time you came on, that you had got some time to, you know, really absorb some of those announcements and be ready to give us a different perspective on some of the items. All right, precisely. So this is your 10th Microsoft Ignite before Ignite. It is. I go back to TechEd 2010. So yeah, my 10th consecutive between TechEd and Ignite. Thoughts, impressions of 2019. How is it different? How is the show evolving? What is the show all about from your perspective? You know, I do a lot of events and shows. And what my impression right now, just over these two days is that this is one of the only shows this year I've been to where I feel the, from year over year, the Expo Hall is, say, bigger. I mean, I know it's the same size as last year, but I think there's actually more vendors here this year. There are. And there's more people here this year in the Expo Hall. Our traffic at the booth yesterday was amazing and continued through today. Other events I've been to, I feel it's kind of shrinking a little bit. So to me, the partners and the ecosystem for Microsoft in general is, or I should just say, Azure. Because that's what I think this show really is now. I think the old TechEd you had mentioned was more like a Windows type show. But now this is, these shows between AWS and this, you're talking about the two biggest providers of infrastructure. This is an Azure show. Yeah, well, and Thomas, if you come, follow us along. I'll be at KubeCon in two weeks and I'll be at AWS re-invent. Right after Thanksgiving, both of those shows are growing, the ecosystem are growing there too. So the cloud is definitely one of those, the raising tide is moving all boats. I want to poke, you say Azure. Azure is definitely one of the main pieces, but the applications, the data are so important here. Last year, AI front and center, it was more, they didn't use the term AI as much here. Satya, I was talking about tech intensity and all of the things we can do with data. So this, while cloud is a major piece, I wouldn't call this just a cloud show because I think that would limit what we're actually talking about here. Because there's so many of the apps and so many of the things, when I talk to some of the ecosystem providers, they're looking for that solution that fits it and therefore they're going to the ecosystem and talking about all of those pieces. So for an infrastructure guy like me, cloud's a big piece of it, but it's way more than that and that's one of the challenges is there's, everything from the latest Azure Arc all the way through Bing Edge and mobile devices and heck, there's even, in the store, they've got people playing Xbox. So there's a lot in your Microsoft community here. Absolutely. So I didn't say cloud though. I said it's an Azure show. And an Azure show is, to me, is almost synonymous with Microsoft. Now, all that stuff you see over there, that entire hall, you're right. They have all those other things. They have all the power apps. They have those applications. They have everything for developers that you need. But still, to me, so what was that stat you just gave me? We were debating. It's roughly eight upwards of 80% of workloads are still Earthed on premises, right? It's still there. So with Azure Arc, now they have the ability to take an Azure service and put it in your data center wherever you want it. So when I say it's an Azure show, it's not even that it's just cloud. The cloud is coming to you and we see it with VMware. We see it with AWS and Outpost. They have decided that 80% is a huge market and they're coming for it. All right, so Thomas, if you'd asked me two years ago, which of the hyperscale providers is best as hybrid? My answer would have been Microsoft because they're in both places. The hybrid discussion at this show is way different. There was a lot of retooling. We talked about what was going on. Azure Stack's been there, but Arc kind of is a new big push. And everybody is trying to look at that and say, wait, is this a management tool? Is this just the latest Kubernetes flavor? In your viewpoint, how does Arc fit in the Microsoft story? And what should we be comparing it to from the other Amazon, VMware, Red Hat type of players out there, Google's? I think it's the same thing that I was just saying is that Arc to me, we can talk about the plumbing. So yeah, they put a fancy name on what is Kubernetes and all that stuff. No, Arc to me is a way for Microsoft to get their hands on as many data estates as possible, right? I know data estate, right? I have a data estate and it's next to my data lake and I work at the data factory and everything's stored in the data warehouse and I shop at the data mark. We can go on forever with this stuff, but that is the reality of the world. And the thing is, all those things exist and what Azure Arc is, it's the ability to extend into there because what is Azure and AWS? They're nothing more than an electric company, their utility and the utility you're going to offer similar services and that's what they have. And of course VMware is in the mix as well and it's just the ability for all those companies to have their hands on your data wherever it is, whether it's in your data center or with them, they don't care. They just want the ability to have a piece of that data as it's in transit or at rest. And so what's the end there? I mean, you're making that sound like there's some sort of nefarious end game here, Thomas. I wouldn't say nefarious, I would just say it's market share. What's the end is to survive, to have the market share, to continue to build new cool things, right? I think the end is some consolidation. I don't think the end is, I don't know, let's say there's five major players. I don't think those five will always exist. I think you're going to see shrink over time, but that depends on how well they partner with each other too. I think there's room for everybody, but it just depends on where they want to say, if they want to coexist or not, right? So for some of them, like a VMware, that's really just kind of software, right? They're partnering with clouds, but the clouds are the infrastructure hosts. So how long does VMware really have? Now they've done a nice pivot and I think they're going to last a little bit longer, but had they not taken that pivot in the last year or two, I think their timeline would have been much shorter. It's interesting because we've been looking at, you talk about that cloud adoption, some of the traditional vendors out there, many of which are ecosystem providers that have shown here they have to react and deal with the cloud. Everybody's jumped on the Kubernetes bandwagon, everybody's partnering, especially with Azure, but also AWS and the like. Thomas, you and your company deal with a lot of end users out there. What are they looking for when it comes to being a trusted provider? What's there and how does Microsoft stack up when we talk about that? Satya talked about trust a lot and just curious how you see them being perceived out there and when customer want to lead partner, what do they want? Well, for us, we have I believe over 300,000 customers at this point and I think roughly 53% of them are Azure based and that's a higher percentage than what we have for AWS for our customer base. So we have taken steps to be that trusted partner. So when these companies are going to take that 80% workload that isn't there yet, just in the booth discussions this week where they come to us and they say, hey, we're going to 0365, how can you help us? We're going here at small steps at the time so that workload that will chip away at it, but we're a company that can help with that transition as people move their workloads and their systems into a place like Azure. I think what you're going to also see is our ability to help people understand wherever they want the infrastructure. So for example, last week we announced how we have 15 of our products are now deployed to the Azure marketplace. So you're talking two clicks and everything's deployed for you and you're up and running. And then if you want, if you want to manage the nodes that are still in your data center, you can just point everything to go up to Azure and Azure handle a lot of those infrastructure needs for you. So that to me is the trust where you partner with a company like Microsoft and you say, what will it take for us to get in the marketplace? What will it take for us to help us help us help you get that data into your cloud, right? I think our customers really want to know that when it comes to, hey, I got to go to Azure, are you somebody that can help us get there and stay there and manage and monitor the stuff for us? I want to talk productivity because I think you have a pretty different take from Satya Nadella. So he had a, on the main stage yesterday, he said that human attention and inattention is at the root of all productivity. He laid out a stat when you multitask, it takes 25 minutes. Tom Thomas over here, I was here. I got distracted by somebody over there, I'm sorry. So was it 25 minutes? Yes, 25 minutes and you lose 40% of your productivity with that 25 minute lapse. So I found that compelling and that rang true to me. That absolutely rings true. So right after you got done with that, Microsoft told us the answer was they were going to take Yammer and shove it inside Teams and shove it inside Outlook. I don't think we need more productivity tools. I don't think we need more ways of distracting us. They say, hey, it's great. We'll put tasks from Outlook right inside Teams. I'm like, maybe I'm in Teams because I shut down Outlook because I'm distracted by email and other things right now. Maybe I don't need that. Is it a nice to have and it's a possible thing, I guess? But at the end of the day, I don't need you shoving all these extra things into all the things. You're just making the problem worse. We need fewer productivity tools. At what point do we hit peak productivity, I guess? I think we're there. I think I have all the tools to enable me to do my job already. I don't need them all tightly integrated. I need to shut more things off, right, in order to get stuff done. That's an excellent point. Because when I want to get work done, I go to a place where I can't get online. Right. Because that's the biggest distraction. That's what, I work remote from home. One of my advantages is I don't have people just walking by my desk and distracting me with all sorts of things. That's a huge advantage. I try to take advantage of what, because I work remote. But for people in an office, bells, whistles, list that and the other, you know what? I just get a cup of coffee, you know? It's difficult. And I'm not sure that these companies, not just Microsoft, I just don't think companies are really thinking through if they're making things better or not. Every one of them, Slack, all of them. They all think that they're the one that's all you need. It's not true. And it's not making things better. Yeah, it's true. We've had good feedback about teams overall here, especially we've talked to a number of people that are remote workers. And they feel that that does help them get connected with their teams in the remote areas. And by itself, but great point on the productivity stuff. Do you use teams as part of that? I do use teams, kind of reluctant at first, like, do I need yet another tool? But now that we've all kind of started switching to it and my company went over 365 as well, so Teams comes with it. And I do find that very useful. Much more so than I have any of the other tools in the past. I think Teams took a lot of good things from a lot of different tools and they rolled that into one. And it works for me. It doesn't work for everybody though, right? Exactly, exactly. So what else are you taking away from your 10th ever Ignite? You go back to the office, but is your home on Monday? What kinds of conversations are you going to have most stayed with you of most resonated? Yeah, okay. For me, I focus a lot on the data platform and I think the thing that's going to resonate the most with me, it really is Azure Arc and what that really means. And getting a little more involved with understanding where they're headed with it. Like just the idea that they're going to give me that one management console that can control everything, earth and cloud. That's an interesting thing I see come at me. I work for a tools vendor. So as a tools vendor, I'm sitting there going so Microsoft's building something that gives visibility into both now. What does that mean for me? And where might we want to think about pivoting to make sure that we stay ahead and keep offering value where Microsoft might have a gap? So I think those are the things I'll probably be thinking about. My role as head geek is to help our users and the people who write the code, connect, share and learn, figure out where things are going and that also involves partnering and having conversations with folks at Microsoft to help our company continue to have that edge. So I think that's what I'll be thinking about on Monday, probably now on the plane ride home on Friday, but who knows? All right, Thomas, any other final words about the community here? You know, you're Microsoft MVP as we set up to the front. You know, Microsoft should get great kudos for they put the unity in community and they talk about diversity and inclusion, something they highlight, something that at least from the viewpoint we've had that they seem to be doing a good job and moving the needle here. But as an insider to the Microsoft community, anything particular that you'd call out? Well, certainly the changes and the emphasis I've seen on diversity and inclusion over the years, you're absolutely right. I think I noticed you were having some interviews earlier to have those specific discussions and it's an important conversation to have. As somebody who organizes events, it becomes, you know, what's the diversity, how diverse should an event be? At what point are we diverse enough? And what does that really mean? So I look at it and I say, if I'm going to run an event that caters to say an IT community, well, what's the makeup of that IT community? Then the speakers should represent the community that they're trying to speak to. So what I've seen over these 11 years is a lot more focus for events, especially like ones I help organize, where it's like, you know what? I'm going to go out and recruit the speakers that I need to represent the people that I want them to be presenting to. I don't think, I don't recall that. I'm old, I don't recall a lot of things. But, you know, 11 years ago when I joined and became an MVP, I don't think that the diversity was there and I don't think the efforts were being done. I think those efforts have come just in the past few years, four or five years, maybe society as a whole, but specifically inside of Microsoft and their programs. And I think it's fabulous. I think you could never be diverse enough, I guess. I don't know how to say that. I think you can always do more to include, I always say inclusion is better than the exclusion any day. You can never do enough for that and I think Microsoft's made great efforts on it. I'm really proud to call myself a Microsoft MVP. I think it's a great program. I'm glad I question, you know, their selection method, maybe, because they keep inviting me back, but they do. But I love it. It's been a great ride. A great note to end on. Thomas LaRocke, head geek. Great, great to have you on the show. Great, it was great. Thanks for having me back. I really appreciate it. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman's Come Back Tomorrow for more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite.