 Welcome back everyone to CUBE's live, because we're the broadcast booth here in the hub center, where the labs and the communities are. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE with Rob Stretchy. Our CUBE analyst leading up the collective, our new research function. We're going to bring in research and news and experts to the table. We continue to get the data, and we're going to get the data right now from an expert at VMware, who's in charge of the end user computing business. And more, shake our eye, our senior vice president GM end user computing at VMware. CUBE alumni, great to see you. Great to see you, John. Thank you. End user computing, super hot. A lot of dimensions to this, because of the word means a lot, plus hybrid work with the post-pandemic realities have changed the game, changed the infrastructure, has changed the pass layer, changed the on-premises requirements. Now we hear private AI with data is being looked at as an intellectual property asset, more complexity there, kind of chaotic, but there's a lot of cloud smart kind of thinking with some of the words you guys use in your announcements. This is an interesting time. Take us through right now, lay out your group that you're managing, you got a P&L, you're driving a business, you got customers. What does your business look like right now, as of right now? Yeah, no, our business has been on a very strong trend line, especially post-pandemic, right? And I think part of that is driven by this renewed focus on the end user, which has changed from times past to something that sort of needed to be managed to something that is a strategic asset, right? And that user is no longer sort of confined to office spaces, they can be anywhere as we know in the world of hybrid work. And regardless of that ever-changing continuum of what policies there might be in certain organizations, it's very clear that from an organization perspective, from the board level on down and certainly to the CIO, they got a plan for this topology of users that are completely scattered, right? And as we said, even in the keynote, I think the world of users actually quite more complex in the world of workloads because these users are not just, you know, multi, they're multi, multi, multi. They're in multiple locations, multiple devices, and quite frankly, multiple modalities of work, right? To illustrate a point, I think they could be working, some developers could be working 11 to nine, some people could be working in the morning. So it's become a very complex phenomenon and for enterprises, I think there are three problems that are all struggling to solve, right? One is how do you ensure that this collection of users, that's your most strategic asset, have the best possible experience? Because if you don't, they're either going to walk away or they're going to be unproductive, if they're working remotely, you won't even know, okay? The second is security, right? Suddenly, you've now opened cybersecurity risks all over. So how do you manage your risks? It's not simply about sort of saying, oh, there is an issue, let me go fix it. Yes, there are tools to fix it, but how do you build that underlying infrastructure, that foundation to ensure that you have the best possible security posture for that collection of end users, their devices, the applications, the information they consume? And then last thing, which is, how do you efficiently manage it? Because we all know in this day and age, IT budgets continue to be under pressure, right? So you've got to manage it with the ultimate operational efficiency. So those three problems of experience, security, and management have become so prominent that there's only one way to solve it. It's interesting, and you mentioned the budgets are tight. I would say, foundationally, I agree. However, there is huge spend going on on AI. So AI is hot, right? This is IT, right? This is the role, this is what we live, the world we live in. So foundation's got to be set, no cracks in the foundation to enable, and we hear modern apps, we see a lot of stuff going on there. So the app's got to land somewhere. You're going to have a big role in this. How do you see that going forward? What are you guys focusing on now to ensure that this enthusiasm for these modern apps, that the confidence is there? What do you see, what are you focused on? It makes a lot of sense to me that that's going to happen. Yeah, and I want to come back to your AI point, right? So let me address your question first. What we are focused on is providing this sort of foundational platform that we call Anywhere Workspace that addresses these three issues, right? How do you provide a great foundational management? How do you ensure fantastic delivery of apps and great experience, and how do you address security? So this platform covers three technologies that we've been very good at and we are the market leaders for. Unified management and security on endpoints, a VDI or desktop as a service and third digital employee experience. That's how we address it. Now interestingly, I think the AI shift as your point has well taken John, right? That there is a fundamental rush to AI and every organization is saying, we've got to be AI enabled. What do we do? So we asked a lot of our customers in this space. We in fact just came off two of our strategic boards in Europe and America. We said, hey, how are you going to apply AI? So they're very interested. So they turn back to us and say, how would you recommend we do it? So we said, you got to really think about AI spend in this space because AI spend in this space can really help you solve these problems. In fact, we've been using AI in our technology for the past four, five years. In fact, last time I was in cube in 2019 and I probably talked about it, right? And quite frankly, we announced a vision of autonomous workspaces last year at Explorer. Quite frankly, and this was like interestingly four months before chatGP to hit the waves, right? So we were very, very happy we announced it and we were playing around with foundational models probably in the beginning of last year. So AI has a huge impact to this space because it's going to automate things better, right? I mean, the example you shared with me, right? Great automation through NLP. Second, it's going to let you get insights on the fly that will take on you forever, which is so important, the end user computing space. Because what happens in end user computing space? Admin gets a call and says, hey, our CIO is having a problem or our CEO is having a problem. How do I fix it, right? So I think one of the announcements was the intelligent assistant here and being able to look at and help you with that kind of configuration and you're bringing that to the end user compute world. Absolutely, and that's more in the mode of the third point which is assisting with the help of a human, right? So that's where we bring in things like co-pilot. In fact, we have this pretty simple model that's been used, right? Human in the loop, on the loop and outside the loop. Outside the loop is completely automated, right? In the loop, they're in with the system and on the loop is where it's largely driven by the system where the human can sort of run interference before it gets deployed. So we're using all those three modalities of generative AI to now look at where can we really raise the bar on this? So I think it has a tremendous impact and quite frankly, I think as organizations see the impact of AI, they're going to have to think, where did they apply it? Okay, great, I've got some great budget now, but where do I apply it? But I think one of the things, just going back to a previous thing you said around security and different industries. In fact, I was with one of your customers at an analyst round table. Yeah. I don't know what day it is, it's Monday. It wasn't Monday. Yeah, it was Monday. All I know is- We're all forgetting the day. The good thing is they gave us lunch. He had already had lunch, so we were sitting there. We couldn't ask as many questions. No, we actually got a lot of questions. He was very open and it was around end user computing and it was a hospital system that was modernizing their end user computing. And I think one of the things he said, why he liked the VMware solution was really, it's really well architected and it can support that vertical very well because there's a lot of compliance and older applications and things of that nature that can go into it. Is that what you see is that you tend to be stronger in certain verticals because of the functionality. I know you're strong. I think we're very strong across the board, especially where it's an enterprise level, complex environment, because these three things I talk about, management, security and experience, they're not point solutions, they're integrated solutions. Because if you don't have your devices appropriately managed, you cannot address security. You just cannot, right? Because you've got to have hygiene to be secure in today's world. So how do you get hygiene? You've got to be well managed. If you don't have great app delivery, you can provide experience. So they're interrelated. So as organizations start to realize these three problems are interrelated and they realize they need a platform, we become quite frankly the only choice. So you're very, very good in the, so I would say the top 5,000, 10,000 customers in the world. And that's sort of a playground because that's where we see these complexities, we see scale, we see this three-dimensionality that needs to come together. So we're very, very strong in that area. Shankar, VMware is very lucky to have you as a leader. You're very technical, you have a great computer science background. Rob brings up a good point, I want to just double click on that because you mentioned AI earlier, when you have all these devices, it's also what's on them. And it's also the software could be impacted by the environment. It's in, it might not be the software, it could be the network, it could be hardware. It's all this observability data. And so you mentioned AI as a product, I want to get your thoughts. From a computer science standpoint, yeah, AI has been around, supervised, supervised machine learning, all that NLP, you guys have a head start. But as generative AI comes in, how is that going to change some of these operating and administrative functions? And you really can't automate architecture, all you can get assistance. But I see the operational side of it with where you're running stuff or managing and then the configuration, you know, cloud admin, does that go away? I mean, you don't need to be in it. Like, where's your vision on this? Because this is what I was trying to figure out. Where's AI going to be perfectly deployed, or at least a safe zone to enable the people to unleash their creativity? Yeah, I think generative AI in my opinion is tremendous applicability in sort of this end user space at large, right? So in this space, we sort of play in which you alluded to John, right? There is this whole notion of what I call operations, right? I think one of the analysts I spoke, they call it digital operations, right? And they're doing a whole bunch of work on that. So I think when you apply that concept of digital operations, which applies to every facet of IT to the sort of device user app world, you know, you start to uncover a lot of really interesting potential, right? Which is where, you know, I'll switch to say, what could be the future, but perhaps, right? So let's say, you know, when you walk in as employee, it'd be fantastic to know exactly what your preferences are to the extent you want to share it. So before you join the organization today, what do they ask you? They ask you for your social security number. Which device do you want? They give you three choices, you know, Mac, Windows, or something else, or I get my own device, right? Probably. So if they really understand the way you worked, the way, you know, where you went to school, did you use Google at Workspace? Did you use Microsoft? Did you use something else? And they, you know, the best organization would have gotten that data and would have instantly known the best working environment for you. So you walk in one day and you would just have an environment. Let's call it environment. Let's not call it device. Could be multiple devices that you get provisioned on. So you're in, you've got the right apps, the right information, all that is in there, right? And so that's, I would say, number one. And then, and after that, you're sort of monitored on a regular basis to make sure you have the best possible experience for the role, okay? So that's where, you know, the notion of AI comes in at large. And Gen AI, of course, helps you build far more sophisticated models to get your context and remediation right. So the next thing that happens, I think, is it simplifies the role of this administrator. Not that they're out of the loop, but they become far more, you know, intelligent human beings that are making strategic decisions. They're not worried about, oh, there is this, this particular device is unpatched and I have to spend eons to get that device patched. No, that's all done, you know, automatically, right? Either the device is patched, or if it requires a user permission and policy dictates that you can't leave it, you automatically just lock the device and get that action done automatically. And also everything has a double-edged, everything's a double-edged sword on the, or other side of the coin is the hackers could use AI too to get in there. So there's a constant, you know. There is, but you know, traditionally, look, there's always this battle between hackers and securities ours, right? So I think that is going to continue for a long time. So that's why I'm saying, if you free up the bandwidth of the CISO organization to focus on sophisticated sort of elements of the environment versus the mundane elements of the environment, which AI takes away, I think they're going to be far more equipped to fight the hackers, right? Because they'll start, I mean, it's always an ever-ever-present chess game. It's just you're now freeing the bandwidth of these smart people to focus on that game. It's funny, we did a lot of study around AI, impact humans plus AI, and chess has been one discipline where it's very, very, very engaging culture, if you know what I'm saying, they're all online. They all talk about computers versus computers, humans versus a computer, but humans with computers against other humans with computers are fair and it changes the game. Humans plus computers beats computers. So again, the human mind is a whole mother development, and this is kind of, there's a breakout session here talking about the human aspect of, I think there's going to be a creative boom in the tech world, a creative class, like we've never seen before in technology. I mean, it's always been creative coding and doing all good computer science, but I'm thinking like a whole mother level, if all the remedial tasks are automated and trusted, that's going to swing new minds working on new things that are going to be opportunistic, so. 100%. I think it's almost, I feel like as technology providers, especially as platform providers, our role and our mission ought to be to unlock the creativity of the people that are in our customer base, okay? So that to your point, getting rid of the mundane, automating things, making it easy, resolving issues, giving them an environment that is truly reliable, like an airplane is an example, right? But to your point, you unleash that creativity. Human minds, they're trained a certain way, but if you train them to focus on the creative, you will get a lot more creativity that can influence humanity. Rob, Dave and I are doing a big report right now on not so much end user computing, but the modern apps, which is going to tie directly into what you do. So we'll definitely keep in touch on that topic, and I definitely want to follow up and get some more information on that. I want to ask you a little bit more about your business. You're one of the three major pillars in VMware's core focus going forward. As this chapter of VMware, the iconic VMware closes, I'd say it's the Mount Rushmore of tech industry, you know, really one of those games, virtualizations change the game. Jensen said it on stage, he was legit. It created enterprise computing at a home level. That was powerful, yeah. It was very much, it was nuanced, but if you're in tech, you know him and Raghu, just that, it was just a moment, it was awesomeness. As you go forward, what's your business plan? What are you focused on? What are you trying to do? Obviously we heard Eco says it's going to be very important. What is your plan? What's your business plan? What do you hope to accomplish in the next day? I think we're excited because we see this, you know, explosion of this sort of distributed work environment. Like I said, this multi, multi, multi environment. We think every organization is going to require this platform I talk about, right? The three-pronged thing of experience management and security that have to be integrated, right? It's going to be powered by AI, much like I think Jensen said in the cloud infrastructure world, this is going to be powered by AI like we have discussed, right? So we see just a tremendous opportunity to make this environment reliant, you know, resilient, automated and powerful so we can unlock the creativity of those individuals that the end users, right? That are the true creators in these enterprises. So we see a tremendous opportunity. We've seen some tremendous growth in the business, especially over the last year and we expect to that, you know, to continue. Is there a product focus that you like more than others in terms of driving out of the gate for the next couple of months? You'd see- I think a lot of the focus is going to be on the experience and security with the management being the underpinnings of it, I would say. The Aria with Tanzu, I think was a nice move to clean that up a bit. I think, I'm a big fan of hybrid work. Some people are poo-pooing it right now. I think everything is hybrid, steady state. Now you can- But regardless if the continuum are on, it's going to be hybrid, right? Yeah, I mean- And nobody's either going, nobody's going to back to the offices, nor is anybody going remote unless there's some situational reason in a particular way. I think my position is looking at the data, looking at the customers is that certain industries have a physical requirement. And you'll see more of that, but it's not going to be a hundred percent at all. That's for sure. So if it's not a hundred percent, if it's less than 80, it's hybrid. I mean, what's the number? 80, if you're below 80%, that's still hybrid. Yeah, it's hybrid, but more importantly, it's distributed and that creates complexity which needs to be solved across these three dimensions. That's what we saw, right? Yeah. And I think it also is very vertically, to your point, vertically, like financial services have very different requirements and reporting requirements that even with end user computing and being able to log in and be managed and secured and logged and all of that, they still want to know what are you doing on your other device right next to your- Totally. Thing. Totally. I think that's where it comes in. Absolutely. All right, final question before we wrap, because I know you're in the hot seat here, but it's okay, it's fun. The fun conversation is we're kind of riffing. Multicloud. Yeah. We're perfectly positioned to be playing as the environment. You mentioned environments earlier. Yeah. What about environments? You've got multiple cloud environments. True. Including on-premise environments. So I think in our VDI business, that's certainly true. In fact, we started building a next generation architecture about three years ago and we are proud to have launched it more than a year ago. So we have a technology in VDI that's truly, truly multicloud. It's actually a single license you buy as a customer. It's basically one singular architecture, a cloud-based broker. You can deploy it anywhere. You can deploy it on-prem. You can deploy it in Azure and AWS and Google and sovereign clouds. And it acts so seamlessly and dynamically that you can decide today you want to switch 200 from one to the other, right? Shankar, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. I really appreciate it. I'll give you the final word. What's the, talk to the customers out there. What's your goals? Put the plug in for the group. Share your vision. So it's very simple. I would say, you know, bet on a platform that can run your business on the end user computing side. That's us. All right. A lot of exciting things happen here in the broadcast booth. We're getting all the action and the data. We've got the great executives coming in. We've got experts. We've got panels. We've got analysts. We've got all the coverage. This is day two of three days. I'm John Furrier with Rob Stretch. Thank you for watching. Stay with us for our next segment coming right up.