 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome to theCUBE's live coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018. I'm Stu Miniman and this is the second of three days of wall-to-wall coverage we have here at the Sands Convention Center and I'm thrilled to welcome to the program, back to the program, Michael Dell, who's the CEO of Dell Technologies. Michael, thanks so much for having us here and thanks for joining us on theCUBE. Oh, great to be here. Thank you guys for all the great coverage. You always do a wonderful job, getting into the technical details and exploring everything in depth and we appreciate you and your team being here. Thanks so much. You started off the keynote talking about the platform for the possible. Said it was 34 years in the making. Now, this is my 15th year at the show formerly known as EMC World. I'd attended the Dell World show for a number of years. So, tell us to start with what's really different now about the companies altogether, it's renamed now Dell Technologies World. Why is this the platform for the possible? You know, I'm kind of amazed and inspired when I step back and look at what our customers are doing with our technology. And we have hundreds of technical sessions here where we get in depth as we've always done at historically EMC worlds. But we're also taking a broader view and saying, hey, what's this really all about? What's the impact on the world? And this was one of the motivations for bringing together Dell and EMC and VMware and Pivotal and the whole family and it's working. And so, we're telling the story through the eyes of our customers and it is really an amazing time when you think about what's going on in the world. You know, we have this incredible platform that's been built over the last 30 years but now there are all these new enabling technologies that are going to take it much further. And the domain of information technology is not the IT department anymore. And we're seeing that in a big way. So, it's a super exciting time and obviously we think we're a new company across digital transformation, IT, workforce, security and it's working. So, it's all good, Stu. Michael, one of the great lines that we liked in the keynote was, today we'll have the most change that you've ever had in your life but compared to what we'll see tomorrow, it's going to keep changing faster. When I look at the Dell technologies family, a lot has changed. Pivotal just went through an IPO. I have to imagine the tax laws changing in the recent administration has an impact. What's changed since kind of the day one decision to purchase EMC, the largest merger in technology history to today? Maybe give us a little bit of insight as to what's happening inside the family that's different. You know, there've been a lot of reports about the tax law. That actually was not much of a change. I mean, it kind of inconsequential change. It's very good for the broader industry growth and kind of broader economic growth and we're quite excited about that. And so, I see it as a net positive. You know, when we step back and go back a little bit in time here to, you know, 2009 when Joe and I first, you know, talked about this idea, 2008, 2009, wasn't the right time, financial crisis, and we restarted it in 2014, announced it in 2015. Here we are, you know, four years after, you know, we had the last set of initial discussions and it's all come together very well. Look, I mean, the revenues are much stronger than we thought, a business is excellent. The demand is very strong, the portfolio fact, I think you're seeing increasing integration of the family of businesses, you know, particularly with VMware and Dell EMC and Pivotal and, you know, and the relevance of what we are doing has never been greater. And so, you know, we're able to have conversations with companies that are very different than we had before. And at the same time this is occurring, I think, you know, the business leaders and the chief executives of companies are waking up to the power of technology, whether it's because some new disruptor is showing up or because they realize that they have to change and evolve. You know, it used to be it was just us folks in the tech world that, you know, we're in this fast changing world where everything was, you know, moving very quickly and, you know, we used to, and when people wanted to come work for us, we'd say, hey, how do you like it when things change, you know? How are you dealing with ambiguity? If they didn't like it, it would say, yeah, you probably shouldn't come work here because you won't be happy, you know? Everything's changing all the time. It's like that in every business now. And like you said, I mean, it's only going to get faster. Right. So, wondering if you look at the portfolio, Michael, one of the things since the EMC acquisition, it's a pretty broad portfolio. There's some streamlining that I understand is happening. How do you balance the streamlining with the breadth of portfolio? Make sure you're reaching the customers. There's absolutely some kind of simplification and optimization of the expansive set of capabilities we have. We also have some incredible platforms, right? And so what you want to do is rally around the platforms. That's exactly what we're doing. So you'll see us not only create a very seamless and logical path for every customer, but rally around the winning platforms. And you already detect that as a theme here, Dell Technologies World, and it's going well. When you look at your overall portfolio, I wonder if you could talk to kind of some of the macroeconomic things happening on margins that are happening. If Dave Vellante was here, you know, we're talking half of your business is client. You know, you've got the ISG portfolio. That transformation of when Dell went private and now bringing EMC in, which allows you to change things, you know, how do you look at that? And, you know, what does Dell look like, you know, when you get to say, you know, the 2020, 2030? You know, right now it looks great and I think it'll look even better in 2020. You know, what I see is, you know, we have positioned ourselves as the essential infrastructure company and there's that massive infrastructure build out and it's on the edge, right? It's a distributed core and it's the cloud and, you know, cloud is not just the public cloud and everybody's kind of figured that out now. We were saying it, you know, before it was cool, but, you know, it's, you know, so if I think about the different businesses, I mean, you know, Pivotal's doing great and, you know, we don't need to say too much about that because they just went public and we're in a bit of a quiet period, but, you know, the Pivotal business is a great business. VMware is doing fabulously well. Pat did a great job yesterday with the keynote and I think, you know, if you watch the keynote, you see, wow, you know, Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal, VMware really, really working together at a very deep level. And then you go into our, you know, our client business. Client business is growing really fast, but not as fast as our data center business. The data center business is growing even faster. So we're gaining share. You'll see it in the first quarter. We're gaining share in storage. We're gaining share in servers. We gain share in clients. And there's a portfolio effect where customers look across everything that we're doing and say, you know, I don't really want to deal with 25 little companies. I wouldn't have a bigger relationship with Dell Technologies. So bringing everything together, putting real effort behind these big platforms that we have. And look, we've got some big new initiatives, you know, NSX, you know, network virtualization. You know, I'm a big believer in that. And I think this is ultimately bigger than server virtualization. And you know, we're in an ideal position with our open networking and VMware NSX to drive that forward. Yeah, Michael, both Allison and Jeff brought some great customer stories up on stage. One of the things sometimes you hear out there, it's like, well, Dell, they're just an infrastructure company. An infrastructure, you know, I care about my data. I care about my applications. What's the role of infrastructure? And maybe give us, what does infrastructure mean to you when we talk about those digital transformations that you're helping your customers through? Well, you sort of go back to, you know, what's the plot here, right? You know, and the plot is better outcomes, results, and success for a business. Well, how do you do that? Well, you do that with data, right? And you know, you know, people talk about clouds. Well, what are clouds or build on infrastructure? You know, it's a bit like the internet. You know, 20 years ago, we'd say, hey, we have the internet. We have the internet product strategy. You know, vice president of the internet, internet product division. Where's all that now? It's just, it's everywhere. You know, cloud, AI, very, very similar. At the core of all this is the data and the computer science. You know, you want to have artificial intelligence, machine learning, got to have data. So that's infrastructure. So, you know, AI is eating software, right? And, you know, software is eating hardware. But AI doesn't run on software. Software doesn't run on software, right? You know, software runs on hardware. So, you got to put it all together, right? And that's exactly what we do. Great. Michael, what learnings have you had going through this? I know there's a lot of planning. We talked to Howard yesterday, talking about some of the cultures coming together. The big survey they did that like the top five things across everybody, it was like, not only were the top five things in agreement, but even the order was in agreement. But, I have to imagine there were some things bringing, you know, these large companies together. You know, I might notice that in the keynote so far, it's been all people that came from the Dell side that are up on stage. PowerMax Bob, I know, is from the EMC side, but mostly from the Dell side. What have you learned so far? How some of those cultural pieces come together? And how do you keep, you know, a quite large organization, you know, rallying and focused around, you know, what's ever changing in broad portfolio? You know, it's been a lot of fun. You know, first of all, to have so many unbelievably talented people join our company. And, you know, that was a real delight, because, you know, there's just a wealth of enormously talented people now in our company. And, you know, over-communicating, you know, listening, getting to know them, you know, understanding their point of view, and ultimately creating a shared vision and an aspiring vision for what we want to do in the future. And then of course, when you're winning, everybody sees it, everybody's excited, and they want to be part of it, and they're, you know, engaged, and it's working. So, you know, certainly during the period, sort of before, you know, the integration, and still today, I mean, we're, you know, yeah, we're in the business of technology, and we've got products and services, but ultimately, it's really a people business, right? And, you know, the talent comes in and walks out every single day, so you got to keep them engaged, excited, and, you know, fortunately, we're doing that, and we're adding a lot more. So, you know, we need a few more thousand salespeople, so if you're really talented, you know how to sell stuff, you know, come join us at Dell Technologies. We're hiring more salespeople. Well, Michael, I think you're going to get calls there. And, you know, on a personal note, you know, I've been watching on social media. Everybody's really, you give your time back. You spend time. I know something you really enjoy is speaking to people, understanding what's going on, getting into it, and for, you know, someone, I mean, Michael, you've created all of this, and you've been there, and just, you know, giving your time and getting involved, you know, is impressive. I've read, like, every book that Walter Isaacson's done. We're going to see a biography from him about you sometime in the future, or? Well, look, I mean, I think if you're honored enough to have a biography by Walter Isaacson, that's pretty good. I'll leave that to him. He's a great one, for sure. Look, I mean, I just think this is my job, right? You know, our job is to be with our customers, be with our people, learn, listen. That's how we become a better company, and I wouldn't know what else to do if I wasn't doing that. One of the things in your keynote you spoke about is helping customers making it real. Like in Jeff's keynote, it was, you know, that, you know, the business and the IT are becoming one the same. Maybe, do you have any good customer stories, or, you know, how are you helping customers making it real? Yeah, I think this topic of change management is really important because, you know, let's say you're a customer, and you come to the Dell Technologies world, and you see this amazing, dizzying array of new things, and you're like, wow, that sounds great, but how do I do it, right? And so, you know, I'll give you one story. You know, we met with a large, rather large company, and, you know, they had a situation where for any number of reasons, the IT environment was sort of put on hold for a couple of years, you know, where things going on around them that were beyond their control, they just really couldn't do anything. So the environment very quickly atrophied, and they wanted very quickly to get up to speed and needed a lot of help. And so, we pulled in our professional services team, make no mistake, we're not trying to replace Accenture or TCS or something, but a thin layer of architecture consulting to very quickly help them map out what the new architecture should look like, and then go make it happen. And of course, we have lots of partners all over the world that also are engaged in helping that happen. So, you know, but we're very aware that change management is a big topic for a lot of our customers, and we're spending a lot of time on, how do we make it easier? So make these more ready-made solutions for the fast track to the modern data center, like, you know, the VX rack, VX rail, VBlock solution. Yeah, we touched on it briefly, but that concept of change, you know, when I talk to customers, one of the challenges they have is, they learn about something, they get ramped on it, by the time they've rolled it out, there's something else that it's like, oh wait, maybe I should have waited. It used to be, you know, oh geez, you know, I should have started that project two years ago, and now it feels like wait, maybe I should wait another year because things are changing so fast, economics are changing. How do you work with customers? And internally, how does the team, you know, manage this just unprecedented, you know, rate of change? I think there's a, you know, pretty massive movement going on across organizations to be more agile, you know, and it kind of started in, you know, software development, some technical organizations, but now you're seeing it spread, and we're certainly working as a company to do more and more of that, and look, I think we're living in a very dynamic world. I mean, yeah, at first we had the internet and all the things that that brought, now we have the 5G and the blockchain and, you know, autonomous computing and all kinds of new things that are being explored out there, and so, you know, we have to be highly adaptable and flexible, and look, I think, you know, companies that aren't able to do that are going to have a problem. You know, we're in a way blessed that we grew up in a world where, if we didn't do that, we'd have been out of business a long time ago, so. Yeah, Michael, you mentioned crypto. You know, we've talked to the VMware and Dell EMC teams that are starting to look at those technologies, do some of the underlying things, but you know, you're a big investor. You, you know, made some big things, everything from, think about the radio frequencies to in the, you know, sports arena. What do you think of this whole, the crypto, Bitcoin, all that, what's your take on that from a personal side? Well, look, as a personal investor, you know, I have almost none of my money in cryptocurrency. Okay, so I'll be clear about that. I'm a massive believer in distributed computing and blockchain, but you know, I don't have a lot of my money or really anything, you know, to speak of in cryptocurrency. So maybe I'm missing out on the next great investment opportunity. Don't really know. I guess we'll find out, but you know, big believer in distributed computing and blockchain. Yeah, yeah, I think you'll be doing okay. Either way, Michael, I want to give you the final. It's worked out pretty well so far, so I'm. I want to give you the final word. I mean, there's so much here, over 14,000 people, lots of tracks, you know, I've been talking to all my friends, you know, it's a great nerd fest. I think some people have said, so always geeking out. Give us the final takeaway. What you hope people walk away and what maybe they understand Dell Technologies a little better about that they might not have in the past. Well, first, I'm very grateful for our customers, for the trust they place in us. I mean, it's really gratifying to see how the Dell Technologies capabilities have resonated. And look, I think a lot of people are a bit surprised that all the capability we have across the company, that's really the purpose of this event, is to bring it all together, explain the capabilities we have. We want them to engage in the hundreds of technical sessions that we have, but still come away with, I wish I could have gone to some more, right? And so we have all those online and for us this is also big ears. We're listening and we're learning, we're hearing from our customers and we're going to go take that back and bring the next set of innovations and we want to be the trusted partner for our customers. We think there's never been a better time to be doing what we're doing and there's a business investment cycle that's technology led. It's very powerful and there's no company on the planet that has the capabilities Dell Technologies has across all the four transformations. All right, well, Michael Dell, thank you so much for joining us here. Really appreciate getting to talk to you and getting to cover this event. Got two more days full of live coverage here from Las Vegas. I'm Stu Miniman and you're watching theCUBE. Thanks, Michael. Great, thanks, Stu.