 Mr. Rogers is here. I thought I saw him. I just saw him. Patrick is the VP of alliances at NetApp. And obviously an infrastructure company. We had, John, you remember you had Dave Hitzon at Oracle Open World? He was phenomenal. Yeah, he was very good. And we were asking at the time, all the storage CEOs and executives, how is storage sexy? And you were sort of telling him that. You were moving on. He said, let me tell you my answer. We're not sexy. We're the plumbing. We're the infrastructure. So we're going to hear from Patrick. And Patrick, why don't you come on in? So Patrick Rogers, as I say, VP of alliances at NetApp. NetApp, very fast growing storage company. One of the leaders out there, fastest growing, big storage company out there. There may be some little guys growing faster, but from a tiny little base. NetApp, four or five billion dollar company. Patrick, welcome. Good to see you again. Thanks for coming on. My co-host, John Furrier. Great to see you. I think you guys have met. So yeah, Sapphire. Sapphire now. It's a good show. We were here last year. You guys made some announcements last year. We did. You got some stuff going on this year. We start, why are you here? What's going on with SAP? Yeah, so the big news for us at Sapphire this year is really around infrastructure refresh. We're hearing a lot from customers that they want to move to virtualized, oftentimes x86 type platforms. And they would really like to drive cost and improve efficiency, speed, time to market for their SAP applications. And so we're very excited to be rolling out a new pre-integrated, pre-packaged solution for SAP. And we're doing this together with Cisco. And so our big news is what we call SAP applications built on FlexPod. And so we announced FlexPod pre-integrated solutions with VMware and with Cisco last November. And now we're doing this specifically for the SAP stack. So these are solutions that are pre-tested, pre-configured, is that right? That's right. They're pre-certified. It's a design architecture. But the idea is, as a customer, you don't want to have to integrate the server, the storage, the network backbone, the virtualization software. You'd like to have that all done for you ahead of time. So you guys have proven this out in your labs? We usually have customers that have implemented this. So as part of this announcement, very large copper mining company here in the US, Freeport Mac Moran has implemented and gone live with SAP applications, running on a combined Cisco VMware NetApp solution. So you're hearing a lot about the changes in infrastructure applications, and of course the devices, tectonic shifts going in all of those. The Sapphire crowd, as you know them, is a storage company. You guys sell to storage admins and guys in the infrastructure world. This is a different crowd, isn't it? It's a business crowd. A lot of line of business, CIOs, maybe even some CEOs here. How do you get them to care about infrastructure? Yeah, so the key word is cost savings and business agility, right? So that's what they're looking for out of their application environment. And a lot of them recognize how complicated and complex it is to run all the various SAP modules, and you need an infrastructure that helps simplify that. And so they do care. They probably don't care about the details, but they care about the result. So the cost savings thing, so the agility I could see that resonating strongly with an application head. I don't want to get it done faster. I don't want to get the function out quicker. Do they care about the cost of the infrastructure? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you wouldn't believe what infrastructure expense can be. If you have a 30 terabyte SAP instance, it's a pretty significant investment that you're making and you have to refresh every three years. Same thing goes with your server infrastructure. Oh, I don't customers care. I don't doubt that. It's the application head. Does the application head care? Or does he or she say, yeah, that's somebody else's problem. And how do you navigate through that maze? How do you get, or do you even try to fight that though? No, I understand your point. That's a very good one. And really the story for the application developers is, gosh, you're doing upgrades, applying patches. Oftentimes you're doing this on a monthly basis, right? Wouldn't it be great if we could speed that whole patch deployment process, right? And refresh or upgrades. And so moving to one of these new FlexPod infrastructures allow you to do that. You can really cut the time to install a new module or upgrade an existing module from months down to weeks. So huge advantages there. So for them, it's about agility and it's speed, right? NetApp, you guys are innovating, obviously. It's a Silicon Valley-based company, darling in the startup world. You guys grown crazy, crazily fast in the 90s, I mean the 2000s, and then innovating. How do you handle the whole M&A craze going on? Cause that's mashing up technology. Cisco, we were talking about last week at EMC World is kind of missed the whole Web 2.0 movement because they had the big mashup of acquisitions and their leader in internet 1.0 kind of missed the boat on internet 2.0 and chambers is on the hot seat. You know, we think he's kind of missing a stride, losing a step a little bit in terms of a tech athlete. So Cisco's kind of rebooting. They got to go sideways. Mainly because I think it's the acquisitions because you got all this technology. You guys have not done a lot of acquisitions, done some here and there, strategically kind of lower price relative to the big guys. How do you operate in that environment as a tech company? Everyone's bulking up with acquisitions. What's the core philosophy? How do you talk to your customers and say, hey, NetApp, you're a mid-range player in a niche storage vendor? Well, we may not be well known to everybody, but now 20% of all storage by capacity comes from NetApp. So we're not a niche player anymore, right? So NetApp today is one of the four largest storage suppliers in the world today. And the only one that's growing at 20% annually. So our message is getting out there is continue to be heard. You've had great financial performance. I mean, you're consistently leaving it. And market share performance. Even we're proud of the financial performance. We're even prouder and we're really driven by our market share gains. We had Tom Georgins on at VMworld. And we were asking about that. How is it that NetApp is able to grow at the time, 35% when the industry's growing at whatever, pick your number, nine, 10%. And he said, you know, we don't really look at the 35%. That's not what we tune our business towards. We tune it toward gaining share. Exactly, right. One or two points a share per year, right? Is that the mindset? That is exactly right. The company's all about not growth for growth's sake, but really trying to become the largest player in the storage space. And to your point about acquisitions, we've been very focused, right? We are focused on data management. And we have such a powerful and important ecosystem of partners we work with at the server networking layer and at the application layer. And frankly, you know, one of the keys to success for NetApp is our partner ecosystem. And we have such great teamwork, you know, with companies like SAP or with VMware or you name it VMC in the management side. How do you compete with VMware? I mean, EMC for example, they own VMware, right? So obviously, you know, they're number one with VMware virtualization. How do you guys, do you guys feel second place there? I mean, I mean, obviously they have inside information given that they own each other and they got to be. Yeah, yeah. So how do you guys respond to that? Well, VMware's been very good about maintaining effectively a firewall or a Chinese wall between their operations and the rest of VMware. And it was a pretty significant move and they decided to spin out and have a separate tracking stock for VMware because their responsibility of VMware is now to their fiduciary, you know, stockholders, right? And of which, you know, EMC is a major one but they also have many other partners there or stockholders that they're responsible to. So sort of similar question but in a more specific to FlexPod. So you really, when you think about... By the way, can I just compliment you guys? You did a recent study on share of virtualization partners and it looked pretty much to us that the two dominant players by far were EMC and NetApp in terms of... Well, thank you, thanks for that. There's a study that was done at Wikibon and I think there was some significant findings there. There's a loyal base amongst your... One was EMC and NetApp came out one and two in terms of VMware brand affinity. The other interesting thing there when we asked customers, all right, who's your primary supplier? It was EMC and VMware or NetApp were the two primary suppliers. But then we asked who's number one at VMware storage, only EMC and NetApp customers said EMC and NetApp respectively. All the other vendors said somebody else. That's right, yeah. Now that was interesting. Now when you dig into it, for example, they didn't have a lot of three par information in there. Three par gets very high marks. They do a good job of integration but small. So we'll see if HP can make that but very good scores for NetApp clearly which refuted some of the other stuff that we'd seen in the marketplace. So we were happy to confirm that. So thank you. So when I look at FlexPod and really we've said that there's two big whales going after that single logical block of infrastructure. It's really VCE and HP with converged infrastructure and then NetApp as a clear strategy. I mean, IBM is really not doing any of Oracle's sort of doing its appliance thing. So what do you bring to the table that's different than say a VCE or an HP? So let's pick off VCE first. So initially VCE was set up to provide full integration services. That was the objective. Acadia as you recall was a key initiative for them and effectively provide an integration capability that allowed them to compete effectively with HP or with IBM. NetApp took a different approach. We're not in competition with the integrators. They are our partners. And so we developed the FlexPod concept which is really a pre-packaging and consolidated pre-configured solution that we made available to all of our joint channel partners and system integrators. And that turned out to be a very, very effective approach and has resulted in a pretty significant ramp of product being sold in that form with Cisco. HP is certainly a very formidable competitor because they've been established for a long time, significant market share, but we're finding that most of our wins are at the expense of HP. And people are looking for best-of-breed, best-in-class technologies at the server layer, at the storage layer, particularly IP-capable switches that provide a much better value proposition than what you would think of as traditional sand, and then of course NetApp storage with its efficiency and flexibility advantages. So it's really that entire stack of best-of-breed technologies that we find is becoming a very popular choice. So if I translate that, I mean, essentially you compete the same way you compete in storage. Yeah, take it up another layer, Dave, exactly. Great, yeah, all right, good. So the other thing we're hearing here is mobility, right? The mobility, mobility, mobility, simplicity, but mobility is a really big, strong theme. And you don't necessarily think about SAP as the mobile enterprise company, but they're changing that from a brand standpoint. What do you make of that, and what does it mean for NetApp? Well, from a storage provider's perspective, it has implications. And that is, with mobility, it is actually driving more storage to the core, right? Because people are effectively keeping short-term information on their mobile devices. They want to have the permanent store in a central, secure, mission-critical, enterprise-ready location. And so it is driving actually more business for us as people move from a distributed storage model to a more centralized solution that supports various mobile devices and platforms. Patrick, is there something in the marketplace out there? Obviously, you're involved in that pretty innovative company. You're dealing with alliances and strategy and ecosystem. And you know, there's a lot of money being made here at SAP. This show clearly demonstrates that this ecosystem has been flourishing for over a decade, clearly. And money has changed hands significantly in this market. And it's changing, again, cloud, mobile. And we're hearing that, and everyone sees it. So it's a frenzy. How do you look at that, the money-making relative to NetApp? How do you go in there and talk to customers saying, we can help you fit better with SAP? Is it virtualization? Are there new technologies out there that are on your mind, that are like, hey, we're making a bet on this technology. Val is on theCUBE at SMW, Storage Networking World. And he said, basically, I'm paraphrasing, Hadoop flat-footed us. And so these new techs are out there, like Hadoop, big data. What is your story in these new tech areas? Can you show us some vision around? How that vectors into this ecosystem that will enable more scale on the tech side and more business growth? Yeah, so one of the areas that we're investing heavily in is object-based storage. And if you remember, we did an acquisition about 18 months ago. We view big data as predominantly coming to market in the form of object-based interfaces. Bycast. Yeah, that's bycast. And so we've seen tremendous interest for anybody who's doing large amounts of video storage or patient data records or PAX images. You know, those all require a more object-oriented approach where you're storing metadata associated with those items for fast search and retrieval. And so we see that as a significant trend in the market and one that we're going to continue investing in as we go forward. So that is modifying our roadmaps and plans. You know, in the case of Hadoop, we think that's pretty compelling technology as well. And we're trying to understand how that is going to adapt and change and grow in the marketplace. You're going to do your own Hadoop distribution in SiliconANGLE announced last week? We announced yesterday that, again, we announced, is that we will be distributing Hadoop with every cube deployment, like everybody else. So we're jumping on the Hadoop bandwagon. You guys aren't going to do that, are you? Yeah, I was. Pre-announce some Hadoop distribution. Yeah, no plans at this point. No, I mean, it's obviously Big Data's trendy. I mean, you know, we're talking to SAP and he actually mentioned Bill McDermott, the co-CEO mentioned on stage, actually used the word Big Data, but they haven't really had any Big Data story here at Sapphire. And so, you know, the CIO and the other guys were saying essentially, inherently Big Data. They've been dealing essentially with what people call Big Data for years. And so to them, it's not so much about Big Data. They actually used the term that we coined in the cube called fast data. And so there's a real trend towards, it's not about the data being big. It's about data is the linchpin to the value proposition, which is get it there fast. So in memory, the SSD markets hot. How are you guys dealing with this fast data equation? Can you share with us anything? There's a tech, your alliances, your partnerships. So just to start with the fast data concept, one of the things we recognize there's a huge opportunity to incorporate flash into our designs, right? No, a lot of storage vendors took the approach of solid state disk drives, right? And they said, you know, let's just take this very fast memory that we need for fast data and we'll put it in the format of a disk drive and then put it behind this thin soda straw of a pipe. And that took a very different approach. And we said, you know, fast memory needs a fast bus and it should be sitting as close to the consumer that data as possible. And so we developed a flash cache that sits right on our processor bus and our controller. At front ends, all of our disk drives, what you're finding is for, you know, large big data applications where you are having particular files or portions of the objects that are frequently accessed, they can retrieve those from flash far faster than they can from disk drives. So that's a big advantage. So SAP is embarked upon their HANA project, right? They are going to be heavily dependent, you know, on flash memory for storage of large, you know, HANA data items. And we expect to support that with our flash cache technology. You're seeing flash throughout that sort of IO stack and even into the other side of the channel. As they say, the best IO is no IO. So although we hope some IOs hang around, so we have a job. Efficiency is another big theme of NetApp. We've heard Dave Hitz very, you know, really articulate around storage efficiency. We heard him recently at a customer dinner it's just talking about turn it on, you know. I don't do a good Dave Hitz, but just turn it on, try it, you know. And you guys have done a great job of embedding technologies like compression, like D-dup in there, giving it away for free. Understand there's some cycles in the processor that's required, but that's been a good strategy for you guys. And, but still the uptake isn't as much as you might think. You know, there seems to be a lot of upside there. Why do you think that? Well, you know, what Dave was really trying to articulate is we have many different storage efficiency technologies. It's not just one, right? And it's really the accumulation of those technologies that provides the value to our customers. We have some technology that everybody turns on, but there are others that aren't being as adopted as rapidly. And so Dave's point is, is you're only recognizing half the value until you turn on all these software features. The other great story is we had a customer come to us, very large, you know, Fortune 500 customer and they said, you know, Nanap, you told me about your D-dup and your cloning technology and, you know, everything that you do to save me space. But he said, you're the only vendor that actually tells me this is ready to go and should be turned on immediately at first deployment. He said, you know, most of the other storage vendors I'm working with are saying, well, be careful, you know, we don't want to disrupt your existing environment. He said, Nanap said, please, turn this on now, see the advantages, we're that confident in what we're doing. And that really is our approach. You know, we've worked very hard to make these technologies bulletproof. Many of them have been in existence for the past three to five years. We want everybody to use them ubiquitously. And we don't care about selling more disk drives. I was going to say, don't you sell less storage at the near-term when you're at it? Yeah, we'd rather sell them software to not have to use as many of those. Patrick, we've been hearing from SAP about the, you know, investment in the core platform. There's been a lot of complaints from some of the user base around. They're not moving fast enough. But that, again, that's been a good move for SAP given all the security issues that are happening and with all this edge mobile stuff that they're launching. What do you see the SAP core platform evolving into and how are you vectoring into that? Because we're going to have the SVP for the platform up next here coming on board. We want to ask him some tough questions. But I'd love to get your perspective because you're a partner with SAP. You deal with the alliances. How do you see that evolving? Where is it today? Obviously it's transforming. And what are some of the key things that you see in that? So SAP's been very consistent in driving to lower cost infrastructures on which to run their software. So you think all the way to the days back in the mainframe, when they were one of the first companies to adopt client server open systems computing, they drove aggressively forward with Linux and Windows and x86 architectures. They're now driving their customer base aggressively forward to virtualized environments, right? Through their partnership with companies like VMware. We have a very similar vision that we believe there's tremendous cost savings to be realized by driving to standardized, lower cost architectures. And that's really how we collaborate best with SAP. That's soft, or is that silicon, or both? That's both, right, yeah. So virtualization is software, right? x86 is really all about silicon. IP based networking is again, oftentimes about. Is there software out there that you see that could be, you say that's out there today that's not in silicon, that could be in silicon very quickly? That should be in the silicon? Yeah, sure, yeah. Like what? Oh, everything. Encryption, right? Yeah, you know, there's obvious algorithms that are far faster to put into silicon that we will take advantage of. Patrick, before you go, I want to ask you about the Ingenio acquisition. We were talking about acquisitions before. Sure. I think you picked up a nice asset there. I think a lot of people, a lot of people will first of all criticize you because you're basically a unified storage company, one architecture, waffle, you know, on tap. And then, sort of, you brought in Bycast, but that's okay, it was sort of object. Object's a little different anyway. Yeah, and it's important to realize that Bycast builds on top of our current on tap technology. Yeah, and you're bringing that in, I would respect. Ingenio is quite a bit different. I presume that's not just going to morph into on tap anytime soon, but we've said, financially, this is a great deal because you're talking about, you picked it up for what, 438, I think, and it's a company with 700 million in revenue. You're trading it, whatever you're trading at, three, four, five times revenue. The day you did that transaction, you made a lot of money for your shareholders. It's a great move from a financial M&A standpoint. But now it gives you some other options in the marketplace. You've focused on the video, Val talked to us about, you know, being rich data applications. What does it do from your standpoint from as an alliance executive? What does it do for you, if anything? So Ingenio has, you know, two very valuable attributes of our business. One is, is they have relationships with a number of existing storage suppliers, OEM type relationships, and we gain access to those markets, you know, that previously we didn't. But the other important point is, is that they have a core competency in developing very high bandwidth storage, and there are certain applications in the market that require that, and we'll take full advantage of that using the Ingenio technology. So it's a nice rounding out of our technology portfolio. So supply chain and new markets, really. Exactly. That's exactly what's going after. So the question for folks out there that might want to know, your Twitter address, if you have one, do you have a Twitter account? Do you tweet? I apologize. Do you blog? What do you do on the network? Are you too busy? CIO of SAP? Guys, NetApp, you got to get your, you know, what together, because you know, SAP's got everyone blogging. Yeah, well, we have, we have a question. We know Val's out there, we know they hit that stuff all the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They might even be watching now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Val's great, great interview we had with him. But you guys got a lot of tweeters, but you know. You're not tweeting away, you're too busy doing business, you know, I have enough communication going on in my life right now, but we do have people at NetApp that are spending a lot of time. Simplify is the goal, not to expand, right? Thanks for coming on theCUBE. We really appreciate you following NetApp. Great to see you as always. Yeah, we want to do.