 So we've got Tom Hayes coming on. Tom is Senior Manager in EMC's Ionix Group, Tom. Good to see you. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Joy, how you doing? Nice to see you. Good, nice to see you guys. EMC World 2011, Las Vegas, great event. How you doing? How you feeling? Oh, it's going great. It's a wonderful event. Customers are great. We've met some of the analysts here. It's unifying, isn't it? It's going very, very well. Booth is full. And so it's exciting. Yeah, good traffic at the booth. Good traffic at the booth. And great conversations. A lot of exciting things happening. We're rolling out some new products, which I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about. So good things are going on. Yeah, I kind of want to reset for people. So Ionix, not a lot of people know what Ionix is. There were portions of the Ionix asset base that were moved in, or quote, unquote, sold in, kind of an internal transfer to VMworld at one point in time. So we've been, John, systems management, right? You've been following system management for years. And this whole cloud and virtualization thing makes system management, in my opinion, a do-over. So we're talking about systems management. It's a very important area. So talk about what Ionix is and the pieces that you have maintained inside of EMC. And then we'll talk specifically about what you're announcing here at the event. Sure, and Ionix's infrastructure management, IT infrastructure management, we're focused on the infrastructure. So compute, network, and storage is really where we spend our time. We still work very closely with VMware. So even though we moved some products to VMware for the application, the VM, the virtualization management, all of that comes together. And in fact, if you look in the Ionix booth, you'll see the Ionix infrastructure management combined with VMware management right up through the application, putting together an end-to-end answer both on the provisioning side as well as on the operation side. So even though some of those products moved into VMware, still a sister company is still important of how we put that together. So the Ionix piece focused on infrastructure, VMware focused on the application and the virtualization layer that sits on top of that. Okay, so the stuff they're doing with Spring and the platforms, it made just sense to put that over there, and that's just a matter of integrating and working together. Okay, so your piece infrastructure management, you talked about server storage networking, obviously that leads us to VBlock, so Ionix, the UIM piece, is central to the whole VBlock. You know, architecture, right? VBlock, we've had a lot of discussion around VBlock, and this notion of a single logical block of infrastructure, going in cloud ready, cloud optimized, some good buzzwords, we want to understand what that means. What does it mean to have this cloud optimized a block of infrastructure, and what does that mean from a management perspective? Oh, great question, and if you think about the VBlock, the VBlock made by VCE, virtual computing environment, which is a- Vice, VMware, Intel, Cisco, EMC. People think of it, VMware, Cisco, and EMC, but the three companies have put together a company called VCE, VCE company, that builds infrastructure in a box, data centers in a box, compute network and storage, that is a purpose built for a cloud virtualized environment. The key component of that is the management component, so unified infrastructure management, which is made by EMC, the Ionix group within EMC. What that means for customers today is that, as opposed to buying compute, network, storage, all separately, having it put together, and build it out to be able to deliver services to the business and their internal or external customers, with converged infrastructure, they can move much more quickly, because they get basically a data center shift in a chassis, the VBlock, all preconfigured, all balanced for performance, delivering a certain number of virtual machines, where the 6,000, 3,000, 1,000, depending upon the customer requirement, so it's a much more efficient, effective way to build out infrastructure to support virtualized applications leading to cloud computing. Yeah, so it's... What is, so again, Dave, we got 3,000 people out there who might not know what all that meant, so let's take a step back. Some of them do. What is unified VBlock for the cloud means? That's one of the things you guys are touting, is this unified VBlock for the cloud. What is that? Yeah, why do I need to unify all of this? What is that? What's the benefit? So when you put compute, network, and storage together in a single chassis, you've just made it simpler and easier for customers to be able to deliver the infrastructure to support business applications. What's critical in putting that together is the management component of that, so we put together unified infrastructure management on top of that. What that allows us to do is provision compute, network, storage right up through the ESXi cluster with a single click. So as opposed to you've got a commute administrator, a network administrator, a storage administrator, the person that configures the ESXi cluster or the server, as opposed to having all of those individuals with a lot of handoffs, a lot of telephone calls going on to provision that, we do it with a single click, with a management component that's purpose built to do that. The objective of course is to deliver services much faster to support the business applications so we can turn it around in minutes or hours as opposed to weeks or months to stand up that infrastructure. So that's really what it means in supporting business, to supporting the business. So it sounds like a better mouse trap, I mean, in essence. And now we always hear about stovepipes, so we're breaking down stovepipes here. What are you seeing in terms of, you mentioned storage admin, network admin, server admin, what are you seeing in terms of the organizational changes that are taking place as a result of things like VBlock going in, are organizations struggling with that? Are they eager for that? I mean, nobody likes change. But what is it, from an organizational standpoint, what does that all mean to the IT practitioners out there? No, that's a great question. And as you think about it, this is the number one question. When I talk with customers that I'm talking to several a week, they talk about what do I do with my network storage and compute administrators? First of all, those professionals still need to exist in the organization to set up those policies when we deliver the services to the business. So the infrastructure service is set up based on a policy that UIM then goes ahead and implements. So you still need the experts. But once those experts set up those policies, we then use a machine, a provisioning and automation machine, unified infrastructure manager, to eliminate all of the manual, repetitive, error-prone tasks that these IT administrators used to have to do. We pick a single administrator, ideally someone that has some experience across those technologies to be able to provision that infrastructure, compute, network and storage using a single click with UIM. So it frees up the IT staff to focus on more strategic initiatives, get to things that they haven't been able to get to in the past. It is a change in organization, but it's a good change and most customers that I talk to are embracing that because the IT staff is looking at getting involved in more strategic, interesting stuff. The management software, Dave, I totally agree is the key to this because if you look at cloud and big data, the number one issue is automation and configuration management. So those are white spaces that are underdeveloped and I think you guys are highlighting some real automation simplification in the network management or cloud management, that's the network management, so used to saying network management. But the management software is the key. If you look at Hadoop, you look at big data, you look at what Green Plum's doing, look at what these guys are doing, whoever nails the management software piece wins it. Yeah, so I talked about better mousetrap before. So to me, Tom, if it's a blank sheet of paper, this is like a no-brainer. But now, of course, as you know, we've got legacy infrastructures, there's a lot of stovepipes out there. So how are people, how are you helping people or how are your customers getting from point A, which is all these stovepipes, all these different roles to point B, which is kind of this nirvana single block of infrastructure? Right, great question. And most customers that I talked to today are taking the VBlock, the VBlock platform, and deploying it for the next critical application, be it VDI, for example, they may put Exchange on it, SAP on it. So they may move the next application that they'd like to deploy and they'll use the VBlock for it. The existing infrastructure will continue to exist, of course, and it will be depreciated over time and over time, five, six, seven years from now, most of their infrastructure will be based on a VBlock platform. So it will be a transition, usually the first VBlocks going in to support the next critical business application. What that means in terms of management is managing the VBlock in a new way. It's converged infrastructure. Let's manage it in a converged way in the way we've provisioned it and operationally manage it. One of the announcements we made at the show is unified infrastructure manager operations to operationally manage the VBlock differently in its entirety, not in stovepipes, and leveraging provisioned information so we know exactly what's going on in that VBlock. So if there is a problem, we know where the symptoms are and where the root cause is. So manage the VBlock differently, then leverage that information in a broader IT management solution. We do it with IONIX, IT operations intelligence. That information would also feed into other enterprise management platforms that are out there that many of the other companies are offering. So it goes in there in an elegant way. But so there's a lot of homogeneity in your solution, right, I mean that's an advantage that allows you to simplify things. And many people have pointed the fact that a lot of the cloud providers have a great deal of homogeneity. And that's one of the reasons why they've got such simplified and cost effective infrastructure. I like to, not to use a political analogy too far, but I like to think of Republicans and Democrats, both smart constituencies, different philosophies. Your philosophy is homogeneity, keep it simple, single logical block of infrastructure. So if a customer says, well, I want to use a different management system, you say, okay, well, go ahead and use it, but you can't get VBlock, you can't get our package, correct? No, if the customer has a VBlock, rather a different management system. So for example, they may have BMC, just to bring up a name, or they may have CA. That's a good example, BMC, CA, HP, whatever it is. Exactly, HP, IBM, and so forth. More of the common management platforms you may see out there. VCE is doing a terrific job of building partnerships. In fact, earlier this week, I think it was earlier this week or late last week, there was a CA announcement, talking about the CA management capability for a VBlock platform. And of course they leverage unified infrastructure manager because the unified infrastructure manager of the VBlock platform manages the VBlock and then provides that information northward, the alerts, the topology information to be able to provide that to a CA management system. Which then becomes a manager of a manager. Exactly right, so the VBlock UIM information is intended to feed a broader IT management solution and it could be any one of those platforms is a very nice API to be able to do that. Okay, so the diversity could be connecting to other parts of other ecosystems, other products, but the hardware itself certainly is a fixed block. Is that right? The hardware, and that is a significant advantage. The VBlock platform is a fixed set of infrastructure, compute, network, and storage, built to provide a certain level of performance. The fact that it's standardized, and we know exactly what it is, allows unified infrastructure manager to provision it. There's no custom scripts, it knows exactly what's in there, it can make sure it's fully compliant. So that standardization of that VBlock using best of breed technology, Cisco, VMware, and EMC is a key advantage that allows us to do what we do on the management side. So you talk about the booth traffic being pretty substantial, right? What are you guys showing over there, and get a little bit more specific around that? Yeah, great question because I've been talking about unified infrastructure manager provisioning to provision the VBlock. If you think about it, what ends up happening is that provisions the infrastructure, compute, network, storage, right up through the ESXi cluster. Then we have an integration into vCenter. So that configured ESXi cluster, those resources, are then synchronized with vCenter so the vCenter administrator can now provision VMs. Further, we leverage vCloud director, vCenter request manager, vCloud chargeback, VMware service manager. So there's a number of components that we put together to provide the broader provisioning and operations management solution around the VBlock. So what we're showing in the booth is a lot of those broader stacks of management capability that enhance what you can do with the VBlock. So where do you see all this going, Tom? If you had to look out three to five years, where do you see this whole logical block of infrastructure, UIM? Where's it going? Long term, it's interesting if you look at IBM, HP, EMC, Cisco, VMware, VCE, Oracle, it's hard to pick a company that isn't driving customers towards converged infrastructure, excuse me, which is a better answer over time for customers, for service providers to provide services, much more efficient, much faster in delivering services. So over time, I would fully expect that the world or data centers, the next generation data centers will be based on converged infrastructure, VCE because of best of breed, the management capability, some of the things that VCE has done already, I would say gives them a leg up, of course I would be saying that. You're a little biased, Tom. A little biased, but great answer with the VBlock. Actually, we have said on this program and others that we see it right now as a two horse race in our view, it's VCE and HP really going after it hard with this logical block in IBM and Oracle, you mentioned the others, they're playing, but not nearly as aggressively, and so it's going to be really interesting to watch. I think it's a big market, it's potentially billions, maybe even tens of billions, so it's definitely room for two, and we wish you luck, Tom, great, great having you here. I love the energy, the passion, great on camera. We're having a great time. Thanks for coming on to theCUBE. Dave, thanks very much. John, thank you. Okay.