 Okay, we are back inside the CUBE day three of EMC World. We're on the ground, third day, eight hours a day programming, wall-to-wall coverage. We've had everyone in here in the CUBE, president, COOs, VPs, everyone, entrepreneurs, customers. I'm John Furrier with SiliconANGLE.com and I'm joined by my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante of Wikibon.org. We're here with a good friend of the CUBE, Howard Elias, who is president and COO of EMC's Global Services Division. Howard, welcome back. Hey, great to be back. I always appreciate it of interviewing you. John, we've loved the services angles now. We've covered that up and down for the last, you know, year or so and I've said it's EMC's secret weapon. Well, we appreciate that. We certainly have a lot to offer to help our customers consume all this great technology. Yeah, so this event is tremendous. You've been to a few EMC worlds and- I'll tell you, it is, we were just saying, it's exhausting but exhilarating, you know. Day three, actually day four, because we had our partner conference on Sunday, which is the first time we've brought together a couple of thousand of our partners as a sort of a pre-kickoff to EMC world. 15,000 people we think we're going to hit and the energy level has just been phenomenal. Non-stop, morning, noon, night, great meetings with customers, partners and, you know, the feedback's just been phenomenal. You had the CIO Summit, you know. Yeah, actually Sanjay Merchandani, our CIO and I hosted that Monday and Tuesday. We have the Data Scientist Summit. I mean, EMC world is like solely transformed. It was usually, you know, the geeks in here, the infrastructure guys. Now, with the conversations that you guys are leading in the marketplace with cloud and big data is, there's business line, manager discussions. The language is different, it's not just about provisioning and all the tech stuff. It's really about, hey, I only want to name my business, so you got the CIO Summit, I got the Data Science Summit and- Partner conference and to your point, it's absolutely right, you know, technology is certainly critical and we're a technology company at heart but technology adoption is necessary for transformation but not sufficient. You really have to have the people in process to evolve and transform along with it. So Dave and I were talking, we were at Sapphire last week and Sapphire is different conference. It's really a more conservative applications. They're talking to the head of HSO, they're a little bit conservative. We're talking about Jeremy Burton as well. They're not as aggressive as EMC in terms of the marketing and you guys have made bold moves but EMC is now in that elite conversation in the business conversation. In the C-suite, yeah. Can you share with us kind of what's happened over the past year and a half because you guys have made a considerable strides especially with the hype of cloud and the reality of cloud and big data. Hype in this case was preceding the demand so now we're seeing a lot of demand on the ground in terms of CIO conversations, real discussions around re-engineering the businesses. So Howard, share with us your key observations around the business discussions. You know, you're absolutely spot on and as I reflect on this, it's very interesting. You know, a couple of years ago we were talking about cloud and is it private or public and we use terms like internal and external and community and all this other stuff but you know, you fast forward to today and the hybrid cloud, you know, you don't think about where the infrastructure is. On-premise, off-premise, customer managed, service provider managed, EMC managed, doesn't matter. The hybrid cloud is reality. And you know, a couple of years ago we were in this early stages about well what do we really mean and what are we talking about and what are the business benefits and most importantly, how do I get started? And not only are folks started, they're well down that path. But now fast forward to today, big data. And we're right where cloud was several years ago with big data. What do we mean, you know, what's the business value but how do I get started? I'm going to share some data with you, Howard. We just did an IT transformation survey in the Wikibon community. Last year, literally a year ago, 9% of the people said hybrid cloud was their primary strategy. Today that number's 37%. There you go. I mean, overnight. Yeah, I actually chatted with a customer of ours, LoneStar. Community College down in Texas, 100,000 students. They have a hybrid cloud in operation in their second year. You know, I want to ask your perspectives. You've seen the way Joe talked about the technology. Now he always talks about the technology ways but he did it a little differently this year. He really went deep. It was kind of an interesting history lesson but it's more than history. I think it's a deep rooted part of your strategy when you guys look at the waves. Now, here's the observation I want to make and get your feedback. And Joe has said this, every new wave brings new winners and losers. But it seems to me that the CEOs of today's companies are highly cognizant of what went on in the previous waves and they're a lot smarter. They're a lot less complacent. They've got more money. They use it, you know, aggressively. The moves in the chess board are very interesting. What do you make of the state of enterprise IT and how it's changed over the last, so particularly from a competitive standpoint? I think your observation is spot on by the way because we actually have that conversation internally and with many of our customers. We've all seen this movie. We've read the book. We know the outcome. And so we're not going to make the same mistakes of the past. Now, will we make new mistakes? Sure, I don't know what they are yet. You know, as an industry, as a company, as customers. But, you know, we know that we can't just sit still and we have to essentially embrace, learn, be agile, be flexible. And one of the key things is, let's just grab ahold of it and try it. And it's almost like agile software development right now, right? Let's get into a scrum, let's go try it. Let's put it out there, experiment with it. If it works, let's improve it. If it doesn't, stop it, change it, do something else. Now, you can't be that cavalier about mission critical infrastructure. But, you know, you can find new ways to embrace and adopt technologies and try them out and just be more adventurous. Howard, I got to ask you because we've been, this is our third queue here. We did it originally three years ago in Boston. It was our first ever queue at EMC World. You were on then. Absolutely. It's been fun to watch the transformation, but you guys have executed. So, Dave and I were just talking earlier this morning around how the consultant side of the business and how the service side of the business on the services I'm talking about with customers has changed about the business conversation. But the marketplace has changed at the same time you guys were executing. Can you share with us your management style in terms of how you led the troops in this turnaround? Or, I was going to say pivot, but as you rolled out and lead in the organization, you're going after a whole new set of customers, a lot of growth involved, and this bridge to the private cloud which became the hybrid cloud and now big data is where you're being successful right now in the field. How did you do it? What was your secret to success? Well, I hate to admit it's, you know,