 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. Hi, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier. We're in Las Vegas and we have somebody from the city of Las Vegas here. We've got two gentlemen joining us, Bill Baeber, the VP of NTT. Hey Bill, good to have you on theCUBE. Thank you very much, appreciate being here. And your partner in crime, Michael Sherwood, IT director, Las Vegas, the city of Las Vegas, where we are right now. Welcome, we love having you here. Thank you for having us. So guys, we come, theCUBE comes to Vegas a lot. There's a ton of shows here. You can fit a ton of people. Last year, Bill will start with you. NTT and Dell Technologies announced this exciting smart cities initiative. Talk to us about, in the last year, first of all, why NTT is partnering with Dell Technologies and what you've done. And then of course we're going to dig into Las Vegas as one of those smart, secure cities that Michael and I can tell is just dying to tell us about. So we're in the last year, what's going on? Well, first off, when you start digging, let me see. I want to see how this really plays here. So I'm ready for that. So yes, last year we announced a partnership between Dell NTT and Las Vegas. And it's really a three-way partnership. And since then, if you ever work with city governments, how far the city of Las Vegas has come has been amazing. So within six months we installed equipment that was supposed to be there and then started for the last six months running a system there, running it around public safety perspective and really started to bring true insights to what they're doing. The Dell part brings equipment on the edge and our core data center or how to go back and forth between the entire Dell family, Dell EMC, VMware, and then the NTT family that's there. And then really the third leg of the stool is the city of Las Vegas and the insights they've allowed to us to recognize and start bringing to them so they can make changes in how the city is looking at and running the environment. And why did you decide to start this partnership with the wonderful city of Las Vegas? It's really around innovation. So Michael Sherwood and the city of Las Vegas have really become a leader in innovation around the country and they're really willing to take chances and they have an innovation zone that allows them to do projects rather quickly. Not as quick as this sometimes, but rather quickly. And then we can start to see results and then they can adjust and start to figure out how it's gonna roll out and sustain across the city. So it was their innovation and it was really Michael's legacy of what he's been doing so far and what his willingness to work with partners has been. So that's really a reason to do this as we want forward. Talk about the innovation strategy because also in Las Vegas, a lot of people come here, destination, public safety's been critical, number one. I've seen the evolution of just really smart moves, whether it's blocking the sidewalks from anyone, friendly driving on them to the use of video and processing video. You need AI for that. So I mean, it's probably a melting pot of interest to be on the forefront. Well, why would innovation go anywhere else other than Las Vegas? Where are the innovators that have entertainment? Where the innovators are fun? So why not be the innovators of technology and innovate with great companies like NTT and Dell? I mean, you can't get any better. If you want to talk about a cube of perfection, that would be it right there. You have innovation around the board surrounded by great companies. Las Vegas is innovative. We have a culture here to use technology to not only make our citizenry safer but to incite development, to incite economic growth. So innovation's not just something that is just limited to technology. It's limited to all facets of society. That's a great culture too. You don't really have to change the culture if people are already there. What bleeding edge stuff are you working on now that'd be really cool to talk about? I mean, smart cities, obviously cameras on corners, looking at things, traffic and IoT devices. What are some of the things? Share with us. Open the kimono a little bit. Talk about it. So first off, one thing. We do not say cameras. We say optical sensors because that's more pleasing to the ear. So as we gather data, it'll go. All right, thank you, Bill. So optical. Even I learned something every day in innovation. I mean, now we have optical sensors. It's all optics. It's all optics. It's all optics. Let me just start with, public safety's very important. So we're doing some things there with our partnership with Dell and NTT. I like to call it autonomous policing where we're really providing real time analysis of a location. So in the old days or current days of policing, police randomly drive around and do a patrol. That's what we call it. What we're looking at now is using cameras to provide, excuse me, optical sensors to provide real time situational awareness to those first responders. So as they're responding to an incident, number one, there really is an incident because the optical sensor has validated that there is an issue there. And as the officers respond to that, they were actually able to see real time analysis from those optical sensors. That's giving them a safety presence. So we're really taking policing and really putting policing where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. That's one category. Other one's mobility. We all want to get from point A to B at the most convenient way possible. And what we're doing with the Dell and NTT partnership in this optical sensor system as well as analytics is really looking at improving traffic flow but improving traffic flow smartly. And something that's scalable that not just Las Vegas can do but any city could do across the world. I mean, again, Las Vegas, we don't consider ourselves just a national US based innovator. We look at ourselves as world innovators. And so really mobility is somewhere that can go anywhere in the world. Same with public safety. Talk about the architecture of innovation. How do you guys pull this off? What's the playbook? A lot of people want to be in... First of all, cultural change is hard. You guys are there. Like I said earlier, what's the playbook? You got to have multi-cloud architectures. You got to start thinking about getting a system set up, either it's like some sort of sandbox or I'll see an environment in the innovation zone. How do you pull it off? What's the playbook? I think the playbook goes down to a great team. Without a great team and great partners, doesn't matter what technology you have behind it, it's the team and partnership. That's really what makes the special. I mean, you see the bond between myself and Bill, but that goes through all levels of NTT as far as all levels of Dell. It doesn't, so it's about bringing winning players and winning skill sets together and then taking great technology and bundling around that. And that is a success. Anybody can be an innovator. It's nothing special though. I'm available to help people innovate. But I think what it really takes is understanding your business, understanding your performance measures that you want to hit. What do you want to do? The football team, they want to score a touchdown. In my job, I want to use my resources effectively as I can and create things that are safe and create a better Las Vegas for everybody. And speed is critical. It used to be the old days, months to get projects done, then it became weeks, now it's days, hours, the shift in the time spectrum. It's tough. It's tough for government. Government is traditionally not known for its agility and speed. You know, we're changing some of that here, but we're still struggling in a couple of areas. We have some refinement to do. I think nationwide, purchasing is hard. We want to be fair and equal to everybody, but at the same time, we want to get these solutions out in the marketplace because it is helping the city be more effective. And so there's challenges still. But overall, I mean, the future is very bright and the technology and expertise that our partnership has really is making. I mean, in one year, I don't think any government in the U.S. has done as much as the city of Las Vegas has with our partnership. I would add that Michael's being a little humble in that there's not a lot of, everybody can do innovation. They have an innovation zone that allows him the flexibility to do that. So that's really important. And then the technology, Michael is right, that it is tough. There are times that it didn't work to the schedule, but that goes back to the teamwork of everybody saying, our end goal is we want to get this done. And everything going towards that. So how about the innovation zone? Is that a physical zone? Is it more, is it where you can deploy like new towers and test stuff and all kinds of? It's downtown Las Vegas. If you're familiar with Fremont Street, it's the big canopy area. So it's about 80 square blocks around that area that incorporates an entertainment district, a government zone, a medical, where we basically have fiber optics, different type of technologies, and we ask partners to come in and test. But to follow up a little bit, I just do a lot, and I'll disagree with my panelists here. You know, every city can do innovation. But every city can do innovation. It's about understanding risk and taking a little gamble and a little chance. We do that every day in our lives, but yet when we get into our work, we seem to forget about risk. And it's a tech playground too. You're going to attract great people when you have this kind of flexibility to just deploy, do bake-offs, test new equipment. You got it. And it's, again, so many people know Las Vegas just for what they see while they're here, which is fun and entertainment. We want everybody to know that Las Vegas also means business. We're here to be discovered. We're here to be used. Not abused, but we're here to be used. They bring the equipment in for your tech zone as a stay in Vegas. A lot of everything that happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Including the equipment. All the equipment, yes. We like to have the people remain as well. But no, I mean, we're open for business. We're not just a great place to play. We're a great place to develop your products and sell product. So talk to us about, you know, not just the innovation zone, but as you mentioned before, this is a challenging thing for governments and municipalities to undertake. It's expensive, right? There's a tremendous amount of people that are coming in and out of Vegas 24 by seven. Well, when you're talking, I presume, Michael, you're talking with your peers and other industries about this is why we set up an innovation zone. This is why it's so critical. Here's the advancements we've made and in terms of safety in the last year, but what are some of the other industries that you talked to and some of your recommendations for them to take that gamble and to find the resources to make this happen? Well, it's finding the great partners, obviously, is one. But two is start small. So many cities want to do, I want to replace all my streetlights with smart lights. That is, in Las Vegas, that would be over 100,000 streetlights to replace. A huge project, daunting. But why not start small? Get an understanding of the technology. Understand how it works and then see what you like and what you don't like. And then you can go ahead and from a small pilot, then with the education behind you, start branching it out and making it bigger. And I think the key to my success is start small, gain knowledge, gain success, and then build on that success. Don't try to shoot for that one shot and you're going to be a winner. That's great advice. What about some of the key, that those key constituents of yours, you mentioned some of the things that you're doing with policing and from this government perspective, who have been some of your key constituents to become champions of what you're doing with NTT and Dell Technologies? Well, it's really the people, the people that visit here. I mean, I look at everybody as a customer. Whether you live here, play here, you're a customer of Las Vegas. And so we want you to be happy. We want you to be able to get from A to B. It doesn't do us any good if you're stuck in the car because you're not spending any money. And so I want you excited. I want you having the best time of your life at the best restaurants. I want you having the safest experience here. I want you to return. So my objectives are no different than a private business, except I have the whole community. So it's really, it's when people in the community say, thank you for letting us get to A to B quicker. They may never thank me personally, but they're happy about it. I'm not hearing complaints about being stuck in traffic. Getting to A and B quicker is a lot of really long stoplights in Vegas. And optical sensor is going to help us with that. Taxi lines. You got to come down. I mean, hey, this year, we actually, in January, we did an autonomous vehicle all the way from Mandalay Bay down to the Golden Nugget. Great technology. It worked. We're getting there. We're getting there. Yes, traffic is still in certain areas, an issue, but come down to the innovation district. You want to drive around there. It's great. You got to have the queue there. We got to get a tour of this. We got to the inside track here. I know a guy in Vegas. You're a guy. You know, I know a guy. Guys, talk about the key learnings. So you can both share some data around the journey. Past couple of years, as technology has shifted, obviously, apps are, renaissance is happening. More apps are coming over the top. Sashka Cloud partnerships are people, equations happening. What's some key learnings or scar tissue that you guys have learned over the past few years that you could share to folks watching? I think one of the first parts is, the learning is partnership and your end goal because there are going to be bumps in the road as we go and there were bumps. Things couldn't get installed as quickly. It didn't work the way we wanted. That's why we started as a proof of conscience. But then the other part of the learning is, start small and grow. And it's not only start small in an area or even a section of the city, it's how does it grow so you have a sustainable model for the city so they can then pay for it as they go forward. Because we all want to make sure that it gives us a model forward. So the openness of the NTT and Dell partnership to allow us to have that time to do it, that was really important for us to figure a model forward. And now we're fitting into the city model a lot better and it's making it work beyond just the innovation zone. That's where we're taking it now and that's the key for us all. Mike, any learnings? Definitely, let me tag on as an openness. Number one is an open platform. Having a platform that's open, that your data is accessible regardless of what changes. Everybody knows technology changes rapidly. So having agility to situations. Today, right now, it's mobility for me. It is public safety. But I really look to the future as curb monetization where we're monetizing that curb with autonomous vehicles. How do you get there? If you have a closed system that doesn't have the interfaces, doesn't have the agility, you can't get there. So the open architecture is something to me that with the learning, I would have never come to that conclusion without the partnership and the learning avenues. But the open architecture is key. Most important question I want to ask Michael to you is when the Raiders come to town, that's going to change the game big time. You have the Oakland Raiders, the Black Hole, whole new fan base. I'm excited. I mean, I'm looking for that to be, even though I live on the other side of the stadium, so I have to go through there on the weekends, but I'm super excited. I'm not just excited about the game coming. I'm excited about the innovations and the new opportunities for a great city. And we have the Golden Knights, you could have, a phenomenal season this year. You can't give out them a shout out. And wait to come there. I will bet you in the next year there will be some new sports franchises here. And the tech involvement, I'll go kidding aside about the Raiders. It's fun to talk about because they're moving here. It's great. They are. But the tech involved in sports is cutting edge. You got entertainment, obviously here, inside the venues. And you got service, managing the team. It's all, it's the same IoT problem everyone else has. It's in a little mini city of its own. It's going to have its own IoT opportunities there. We're working closely with the stadium authority in that regard. We're sharing our experiences, sharing our partners. But I mean, couldn't be more excited and actually elated to have them here locally. Working closely to get tickets. How about a suite? I was thinking suite. I'll ask for the suite. I'll be with the regular people. Remember I'm a civil servant of the government here. You had very low connections at my late. Last thing, Michael, for you as, you know, there's, we talked about the public safety issue, but in terms of the opportunity for you to let more of the public know, there obviously have been some public incidents here that had been known the world over. It's an important message to get out to everyone. This is a global city. What are some of the opportunities that you have to share what you guys are doing with NTT and Dell Technologies so that the prospective visitors know, I'm coming into a pretty, this is a very AI enabled city that's really looking out for my best interests. I'm here on theCUBE. I thought if I was here, everybody would know about the great things we're doing. That's true. So beyond that, the other part of why we're here today is to share our story and to start outreaching more. We're doing more in the community than we've done before. We're opening a great innovation center downtown. We're calling it, it has many names currently. We're trying to focus on one, but the concept is basically a technology embassy where we're going around the world and telling, sharing our story and letting companies know that they can come here and test their technology and we can share that with the community. So really technology is nothing without a great community that supports it. And so a lot of what I do is sharing that message about what we're doing. We share with our partners and we come on shows, I mean, there's only one show to come on, but this is the show where I'm sharing what we're doing first. He's a quick learner. Well, one of the, I think the thing that it's been really cool for you guys to share what NTT, Dell and the city of Las Vegas are doing to turn AI into, turn AI, turn Vegas into this AI enabled city for societal good. But it's also this whole message I think I've heard from you guys in the last 15 minutes is this is all about community collaboration people. We thank you both so much for giving us some time this morning on theCUBE. Now you're alumni, so you got to get stickers and you got to come back because this is only going in a better direction. So we're excited to hear in the next year what happens. Doug, Michael, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. You're a great being here. I appreciate it. Excellent. For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. Can you feel the buzz of Dell Technologies rolled a 2019 sticker round? We'll be right back with our next guest.