 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE here in Las Vegas. I'm Stu Miniman joined by my co-host John Troyer and happy to welcome back to theCUBE, returning guest John Bolia, who's a general manager with IBM Cloud. Great to see you. Thanks, thanks for having me. All right, so, multi-cloud is a big discussion of the show here, but cloud discussions aren't new. I think back to the first VMworld that we did with theCUBE was 2010. We actually brought a lot of our San Francisco friends that were doing cloud and people were like, why are you talking about cloud? And we're like, well, because that's the way it's going. Two years ago, VMware had kind of, you know, extracted themselves from vCloud Air and re-put things together for what is now called VMC. And the big partner up on stage was, of course, another IBM. So, help connect the dots from us. Since two years ago, I know we've seen a lot of change from VMware. We've been tracking a lot of change from IBM. So, help try to bring us up to speed. Yeah, well, I mean, I think at the end of the day, it's a really natural partnership. I mean, we've partnered for a long time with VMware. We have our mutual clients in the enterprise. They're pretty much, you know, overlapping heavily. And we run a lot of people's data centers for them. So, VMware was almost a big presence for us. It was kind of natural to move to the cloud. So, what we've seen since then is really a set of requirements from enterprises. How do they, you know, get to the cloud? And what are the use cases behind that? So, you know, in early days, we saw backup and DR, kind of big use cases that people used as low-hanging fruit. But now we're seeing more with capacity expansion. And what comes with that is, you know, as they move and move workloads to the IBM cloud, they're wanting to access new features and new capabilities. So, we have American Airlines as a good example of that. They started off looking at, you know, digitizing what they were doing with the kind of modern applications and realized, you know, they really needed to move some of those existing workloads out to the cloud as well. And so they used VMware to do that and then connected to some of the cloud native services. Yeah, I wonder if you can help level set our audience a little bit, because I know a challenge that many of us have is, IBM does a lot of things. So, you know, when I think of cloud and IBM, it's like, well, I interviewed Walmart a couple of years ago doing global ZOS. It's like, well, that's not the same as the stuff that was SoftLayer and Bluemix and I talked to the Kubernetes people at IBM. So, maybe just help the landscape as to where your piece fits into it, into the overall portfolio. Yeah, well, my job at the end of the day is really to move workloads to the cloud. And so they come from sort of two angles. One is what we would call kind of enterprise out. So, VMware fits into that category. They're existing footprints that people are looking to, you know, gain leverage as they move to the cloud. But we also have a fair number of cloud in use cases, the, you know, net new cloud native. We see Kubernetes and containers being a base for a lot of that as people put in CICD and Agile as a kind of way to build out those next generation. So, the world's come together and, you know, I get a lot of questions about, you know, does containers replace VMs or VMs, you know, back and forth, at the end of the day, these things both have a role to play and we look to integrate the two of them together in a lot of these use cases. Yeah, just the thing, if my previous question, you know, connects to the new one, IT is always additive and nothing ever dies. That is correct. That is correct. So, Bob, you talked about taking advantage of services in the cloud. So, I know at the fundamental level, you've got to be kind of the business out and be saying, you know, what do our customers need? How do we need to transform? How can we go faster? Time to value? All that sort of good stuff. Then you get one layer down and okay, okay, now what are the toolboxes I have to work with? My assumption is IBM has a big toolbox, like we said. So, what are some of the services that, you know, are attracting people to IBM cloud and that are really kind of the forefront of innovation? Yeah, well, we see a lot of what I think the VMware team calls the 4.0 technologies, which would be things like AI, things like blockchain, IoT as big examples. And those are kind of the use case drivers. So, people say, I want to do that. And then as you said, you get one level deeper and you're like, ooh, I'm going to have to do that by actually integrating all the stuff I've got. Because most of the interesting data is already there, right? It's not like most of these things are islands. So, that's when that next conversation comes in. So, we have a lot of technologies and the VMware partnership is a great example where we're trying to leverage as much of what you already have, get value out of it as you move to the cloud and then easily connect it to some of these new systems. So, it's a very common use case. It might be interesting to drill in a little more to the VMware, IBM connection and VMware cloud and the VMware tool set there. Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, as Stu said a couple of years ago, we made the announcement with VMware and IBM. And since then, we now have 1,700 mutual customers that have adopted IBM cloud and VMware on IBM cloud. And, you know, migration is a big part of that. And so, we were also one of the early adopters of HCX when that came out. And that has really, really streamlined what it takes to get a workload out to a cloud environment from an on-premise data center. And to date, we've done about 100,000 cloud migration. So, you know, we have some pretty good traction. We've been available in our 60 data centers worldwide. So, we can also put a footprint in place that is across, you know, a bunch of geographies, which is also very helpful. And then this week, we actually announced VMware cloud availability. So, we have a DR solution in our cloud based on VMware's offering that gives people the ability to do DR, you know, right from that environment. Yeah, boy, Donnie, you think about migrations are, you know, challenging to do even when, you know, we have a good tool set. One thing that IBM does quite well is has really expertise and practices in the verticals and understand industries. Maybe any insights you can share because, you know, you ask a typical analyst and I'm an analyst and always like, oh, it depends and it varies and it's a spectrum, but you guys have, you know, Watson and AI and all these things. So, what data are you learning about industries? What are leading? Any, you know, patterns that you can help share with us about the cloud? You know, cloud, fundamentally, it's cross-industry. So, I mean, it is a, you know, it's not even a, it depends, it's everywhere, right? We don't see an industry that isn't changed by that. And some of these technologies like AI, blockchain, I mean, these are the things that people are looking at as differentiators, right? They feel like they have to get there in order to be relevant in that next wave. For VMware and IBM specifically, you know, we've seen a lot of interest with FSS. So, you know, we have clients like TD Bank and Westpac. In Westpac's case, they're very aggressive of moving out into, you know, a cloud data center. And as a bank, you know, that was a pretty interesting thing for them to ponder and do and we have them hosted in a couple of data centers in Australia and it's been a great partnership there as well. It just, you know, kind of underscores the value of VMware for these clients and it's a, you know, key part of their franchise and a key part of what they want to look at doing as they move forward into cloud. Yeah, the financial industry is very nuanced because some be like, oh wait, well they have to keep it in their environment. And it's like, well, when you talk to global banks, there's some places where they just don't have the footprint, so certain geographies that you can help. I've done some case studies with them. It's, as you said, it's a complex and nuanced world. So, yeah, how does IBM help? You know, you've got to imagine services, you know, play a large role here too. It is, yeah. There's a lot of consulting, there's a lot of services. You know, fundamentally people trust us from an enterprise perspective to do things in a way that, you know, makes sense for enterprises. In fact, a lot of what we've done over the last two years partnering with VMware is really, you know, trying to figure out what are those things that are key for people to be able to move out into these kind of environments. And so things like the DR solutions and the backup solutions, those are things people need, right? If you can't deliver on that day one, then it's not really going to be an implementation that works for most people. So it is nuanced and it is complex. I'm kind of curious about how executives are looking at movement to the cloud these days. I don't want to fetishize time to value because, you know, two weeks is two weeks, two months is two months. There's only so much even with, you know, superpowers that one can do, right? But on the other hand, even in the Fortune 100, you know, projects don't need to be five years long. So how are executives looking at that? How should people be thinking about time to value? Do you start small and go? Are there, you know, proof points along the way? Yeah, it's a really good question. So in cloud in general, what we've done is developed a methodology we call the garage, which we started off with cloud, but we've actually now expanded out into things like blockchain. And what it boils down to, you know, the analogy I always use is, you know, just because I give you a set of golf clubs doesn't make you a golfer, right? We have a big tool set, as you mentioned, within IBM, but people need to have the skills to be able to use that. And so this is a way for them to apply that. We time box it to your point. It's something that becomes, you know, very quick wins, you know, MVPs, those kinds of things, an agile practice. We use our design thinking as part of sketching that out. And so we tend to get the business and the technical teams together for that. That's typically the most effective. And we come out the other side with, you know, something that actually works. And that's something that they can then take to the business and say, hey, this doesn't have to take, you know, five years. This can be something that takes, you know, a few months. And in general, you know, once people get started on this thing, it's something that sort of takes over as a wave, especially as they gain the skills. All right, yeah. The natural follow on for that is, can you give us the update on how developers fit into this and what IBM's helping in the cloud space? Developers, DevOps. Developers are king, right? As everybody keeps saying, and it is true. You know, never before have the tools been so easily available. And that's really the key is you got to have the latest and greatest, you know, tech out there for people to be able to use and play with and ultimately build applications and services with. So whether that's a microservices based on containers or functions as a service, you know, DevOps, as you mentioned, sort of a key part of that. And then what we see from clients is, you know, at some level, that's the fun part, right? But then comes the reality of that's got to all connect back to all the existing franchise that you have. And so integration, you know, secure connectivity, how do you get data back and forth? And ultimately, you know, how do you leverage as much of what they have, you know, with that kind of new world? So we have both sides of the equation. And again, as part of my role to get workloads onto the cloud, it comes from both directions. Yeah, the follow up to that, you know, at this show, I haven't heard a little bit of discussion if you say, you know, serverless, okay, they've kind of heard of it. You know, if I went around and said, okay, how many people know OpenWisk? It's the open source project that, you know, IBM's heavily involved in. It's like, well, we're not talking a lot about that. Little bit of Kubernetes here and there, but how do you bridge between kind of the virtualization world and the cloud world when you span both? Yeah, I mean, I think they're very complimentary, you know, at the end of the day, you know, most things are running, even containers, frankly, generally run on a virtualized infrastructure. So, you know, VMs and containers aren't really competitive from that perspective, at least in my mind, and all the existing stuff is in VMs. Let's face it, right? Everything that you have today is probably a, you know, a thing that's in a virtual machine. But as people go forward, it really comes down to the abstraction level, right? Can I get farther and farther away from having to deal with the details of the hardware of the various things underneath and really focus on just the thing I want to do. So, you know, functions I think is the extreme of that, right? All I want is, you know, here's a piece of code, you know, you figure out how to run it and here are the specs, right? I don't care how you do it, I don't care anything underneath it. All the way back to, you know, bare metal, which we also support in our cloud, which is, you know, the other extreme where I want full control of everything that I do. And we marry those technologies together. So, our container service, which is based on Kubernetes, you know, we have kind of a dial you can twist, which starts at, you know, full-shared multi-tenant all the way to bare metal. And, you know, we have our own Watson team, for example, with their machine learning tools that need bare metal because they need access to the GPUs. And so, as we started, you know, making that available to them internally, we said, you know, this is something that we see enterprises eventually needing as well as they start to do those kinds of workloads. Just expands the number of workloads that you can actually support on the cloud. Yeah. Don, I want to give you the final word is takeaways. We got to geek out on a lot of technologies here. Customers you're talking to, key things that they're coming to IBM and VMware for. Yeah, again, it's that know-how when it comes to enterprise workloads and what it takes to move those. And then the right set of tools once you get there, right? And that starts with some of the fundamentals around things like disaster recovery and backup. But then, you know, immediately starts to move towards the, how do I modernize this application? How do I extend it into blockchain, IoT, Watson AI? And ultimately, you know, I think that partnership gives us the ability to both bring people from where they are and obviously put them in the next generation as well. Okay, and I didn't get to see Tony Hawk. Did you get to check him out? I did. I got a picture with him last night. I sent a photo to my kids who informed me that I was on the West Coast and they were already asleep. So, but you know, it's funny generationally. I know him from, you know, skateboarding times. All my kids know him from the video games. And it's interesting how he's really reinvented himself from that perspective. Yeah, absolutely. Bridging between the physical and the digital world just like we're doing in TechNet. All right, Don, thank you for all the updates here. For John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman. Getting close to the end of three days wall-to-wall coverage here at VMworld 2018. Thanks for watching theCUBE.