 Live from Austin, Texas. Extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering Dell World 2015. Brought to you by Dell. Now your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. We're back in Austin, everybody. This is theCUBE. We're here live at Dell World. This is day two of theCUBE. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. Good friend Tom Joyce is here. He's the general manager of Dell's systems and infrastructure. Our systems and information software business. Tom, welcome back to theCUBE. It's great to see you. First time we've talked to you in this new role. This is, it's amazing to see the group of execs that Dell is bringing back together. So congratulations on the new role. You must be excited. Yeah, I am. I mean, it's exactly what you said. One of the reasons I'm excited to be here and why I'm here is, and I'd known Michael years ago from when we had our relationship when I was at EMC and I worked closely with Marius and Paul Perez and Jim Gontier and all those guys. And you get to a point in your career where you want to work on interesting stuff and you kind of want to work with people you want to work with. So it's a very good setup and it's a good place to be right now. There's no question about it. And I have a lot to work on that's really interesting. Well, and of course, being at EMC so long, everybody, Stu, you know this, you're a storage guy, you know? I'm an EMC analyst. I'm a storage analyst. But you've done a much more varied career. You've done M&A, you've done software stuff. And so talk about the new role, what the scope is. Yeah, so I'm, as you said, general manager of the system and information management software business. You know, I think Dell as a large management software business, I think it's probably not as well known. You know, we don't, books don't know all of what we do. So that's a big part of the opportunity. A lot of the pieces came from the acquisition of Quest a couple of years ago. And I have reporting to me substantially all of that at this point. Plus a number of other technologies that were mostly from acquisitions as well. We have an awful lot in the data protection area, things that came from Apochure. And so we have a whole bunch of technologies. And frankly, also some areas that are new for me. You know, in my career, I haven't done an awful lot dealing with the desktop. And so we have a big business around endpoint management with the case franchise. We have a big business around endpoint backup and recovery. So there's some new stuff that I'm enjoying learning and really pretty excited about. Cause you know, I do like to go new, do new things. And then we have a big opportunity and kind of tying the glue together in terms of how do you manage this, you know, platform three or the platform of the future building on things like Dell cloud manager, things like Foglight and some internal development where that Dell's been doing. So, you know, I have over 140 products in different categories across windows, system management, platforms, cloud. It's a big job and so far it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, so, and of course, big news last Monday. You've got to be pitching yourself, right? EMC acquisition. Yeah. Obviously you've got tons of DNA in this company from EMC, you know, senior executive at EMC. How's that feel? I mean, what's the discussion been like with your friends at EMC and with customers? Yeah, I'm very popular all of a sudden with folks that used to work with at EMC, which is good. I mean, as you know, and you know, it's one of those cultures that, you know, even after you don't work there for a long time, even if you don't intend to go in that direction again, it's pretty tight-knit. I mean, there's definitely, you know, there's a lot of folks that I stay in touch with. And it's a great network. It's just a terrific, you know, alumni network, if you will. And so, you know, over the last week it's been interesting, you know, folks I talk to every week and folks that come out of the woodwork to reconnect with them. You know, clearly, you know, there's a lot between the lip and the cup on this. We have a long way to go, but, you know, man, it sure is a great thing to think about. You know, I have enough to think about my current job right now, but it's, you know, I'm going to enjoy working with those guys again. Hey, Tom, so you've done a lot of M&A. I have. Some things that people look at is there are certain cardinal rules buying big and big coming together, buy coastal, different cultures. There's been some negative press and everybody's trying to understand because this is, it's a real big deal and we think a lot will change between now when the 60 days are done and by next summer. So we're still trying to tease it out. I mean, the virtuous tree and move and everything there. Is there anything from your experience that you'd add to people? Should we just kind of, you know, we can't just sit and wait for it all to play out over the next two years, but for all the, you know, Monday morning quarterbacks are out there, you know, that are just saying like, this is doomed, you know. Right. Give us some of your thoughts. Well, you know, I think one of the things you learn, I mean, again, I did M&A at EMC for, you know, five years and I did Ren Corporate Development at another large company. So one of the things you learn the hard way is when they put you under the hot lights and ask you questions about the deal, it was just announced, I'm pretty good at not saying very much. Actually, that's the part of this that I've mastered. I will say that, you know, you do have to focus on running the business that you have. Because at the end of the day, it's about the customers, it's about the shareholders and it's about the people that work here. And you know, in any deal like this, they've laid out what the timeframe is. There's a lot of things that are out of your control. And the way we do the right thing for the employees, the customers and the shareholders is to not foul it up in the meantime. So it's very difficult to maintain focus, but you know, there are proven ways you do that. Again, having done this a lot, not one this big, because nobody's really done one this big, but you know, there are ways to do it. And so right now we're very focused on that. And again, I think the way that, you know, Michael handled this in the keynote here at Dell World was terrific. He probably said more about this than you would expect. Very frequently CEOs go dark and you know, on what the strategy's going to be. And he articulated a lot. Now I do think one of the great things about working at Dell and about having a guy like Michael Dell who's really, I mean, he's a founder. He's a founding pillar of this industry is he can get up there and say those things, probably with more credibility and than any other CEO could. So I think the company has already set a tremendous amount. The way Wall Street interprets these things short-term and long-term, that's another one of these things that's sort of out of your control. So I think a lot's been said already. I think if you want to understand what the strategy is, go look at, you know, Michael Dell standing on stage at the keynote. It's probably as good a pitch as you're going to see. Well, and so you mentioned the founder-led acquisitions. I mean, this is obviously much, much larger than anything else, but you know, Furry was pointing out in the QVO they look at Ellison, what he did with Son, you know, he personally made that happen. So there's a big difference between sort of founder-led mergers acquisitions than there is. Maybe, you know, a lot of people want to compare this to HP compact, totally different. I think it's more like digital compact, but there you didn't have founder-led folks. You had sort of, you know, lack of leadership. There was a vacuum there. There's no leadership vacuum here, is there? No, I think there absolutely isn't. And you know, maybe I'm in my honeymoon period, but you know, we've all watched and kind of gotten to know Michael Dell over the years. He's one of the most approachable guys. And I'm not sucking up on camera to Michael Dell, but you know, I think what you see here is a guy that's out front on this and has the credibility to tell this story. A lot's been said and is continuing to be said about the activist shareholder environment that we're all in right now. A lot's been said about the benefits of being a private company in this environment. You know, it's more than that. You need a guy like that at the helm who has the credibility to pull this through. You know, still inside of Dell, my experience so far is you know, we're still running by day, by week, by month, by quarter to hit our numbers. You have that level of urgency there, but they do have kind of, he has the control, if you will, to make things happen that you couldn't do in another company. So, Tom, you've got a critical component in the portfolio here. I mean, software, you know, we've been talking for years about how important software is. You know, the Quest acquisition was a big one that everybody watched and you know, the feedback on the street is, you know, the integration's been a little bumpy and you said you've got 140 products. When you look out on the industry, how should we look at Dell's role in kind of the ecosystem when it comes to software? You know, I think, you know, not to blow my own horn too much, but I bring a set of skills that, you know, starts with a really understanding M&A very well and integration and so, I think we can carry this forward very nicely and we got a great game plan in terms of what's been done so far, which is a lot and what we're going to do next. I think I've also done an awful lot of marketing and remarketing of storytelling and what the message is and you guys have been very helpful in getting those messages out for me. What I would say is the story of Dell's system and information management has yet to be told, right? And we started to tell it here. We launched some things that are new, we talked about some things we already have and overall the impression that you get from customers is wow, I didn't know you had that. So we clearly have more to do in that regard. I think the other thing that you look for in this business is what's changing in the mind of the customer, you know? You got internet of things in cloud and big data and everybody understands that what's really changing in the mind of the customer and I think as it relates to software, their relationship with software is fundamentally changing. These customers, big and small, are becoming the application developer. They're developing their own apps, you know? There's DevOps, they're developing their own apps. They understand what it takes to build good software and what they want to do and what they don't want to do. What they kind of don't want to do is focus on managing the plumbing, right? They want somebody to do that for them and our story is going to be whether you're talking about things you got today, managing Windows, SharePoint Exchange, things you're going to have tomorrow. Office 365, cloud-based technologies, Amazon, Azure, OpenStack, whether you're talking about, you know, managing data in databases or in future forms, we really have it all. We have all of that, you know, all the way down to the desktop from the data center. So I think we have work to do to tell that story more effectively. Great thing is you got a terrific platform in which to do it and you look for opportunities to also go build new solutions and there's a lot to work with here at Dell. So, when you think about M&A, a lot of times, you know, a lot of the value of the M&A, you know, even the perceived value occurs after the M&A because the people in the front line say, wow, I could do that with that and start putting together things that, you know, the guys in the corner office who were doing the deal might not have necessarily you've seen or been the impetus for the deal. When you think about the opportunities with your portfolio, which is very broad and fast and piece parts within EMC, do you see some real synergies there? Do you not know yet? You got to do some more due diligence. What can you tell us about sort of the possibilities down the road there at a high level? Yeah, I think there's a tremendous amount and there's a lot we can do right now well before we get to that conversation. I would tell you that if you look at the business I have, you look at the big parts of it, you have a tremendous number of customers that are running on data center platforms today like Windows that need to do that better. Moreover, they're trying to figure out how do I move to the platform of the future and Michael's talked about that and EMC's talked about that, you know, what's that platform going to be? And we have this huge business around migrating people, migrating identities, cleaning up and migrating your active directory to cloud-based technologies, moving you from your SharePoint and your Exchange and your database and your data center to cloud technologies. You know, I think as you get access to a customer base like EMC has, the opportunities are enormous to kind of help more customers with that. So that's pretty interesting. I think we also have a tremendous amount about management of cloud technologies, especially for mid-sized customers, right? So there's Dell Cloud Manager technology that Michael talked about on stages and the example of that. So I think that's going to be, that's a breakthrough component that we can use now and we can use, I think, in many of these combinations in the future. And then they think there's a great business around data protection. The way you do data protection is changing fundamentally. Totally. You know, as you guys know, every time the target changes for backup, there's a huge change in terms of who's on top of the, you know, who wins, right? It happened when we moved from tape to automated tape, from there to backup to SATA, to Ddupe, and now it's going to be cloud. And we have that, right? We have cloud-ready technologies for data protection now. And that's something that, you know, you might look at it and say, well, you know, the other guys have backup technologies too. Frankly, I think there's a lot of synergy. So I think you're in a really interesting position because as we talked about in theCUBE a couple of weeks ago, before the EMC acquisition, we were pointing out that Dell is a company that's lived on, grows margins in the high teens. And we always said, if Dell could figure out how to really drive software, we've said this about HP too, and it sort of hasn't manifested itself, but if Dell can figure out how to, you know, corral its software assets and get a bigger contribution from software, that's, Dell could be very, very dangerous. And then, of course, the EMC acquisition occurs, and you've got a big software component in VMware, but the whole gross margin model of Dell is changing. The gross margin model of EMC had to change. It can't sustain 60 plus percent gross margins in this new world. So it's a really interesting time. A lot of forces coming together. So, you know, we're really excited for it. I wonder if you can comment on that and then we'll wrap. Well, I think, you know, I think ideally, if you can tap into that Dell machine, you're going to win, right? So, we've already done some of that. You know, we have a technology, again, called CASE, that does endpoint management of, you know, MacBooks as well as Windows laptops and Android and pretty much everything Chromebooks, devices like, you know, flat panel displays, Internet of Things kinds of things. You know, we're now shipping that just over the last few weeks. Every time you buy one of these, you know, laptop devices from Dell, you can get the CASE technology by the drink. As you buy laptops, you buy two of them or you buy 10,000 of them, you get that. There's a success model there that the companies use to ship Dell data protection encryption software. So now, you know, hundreds of thousands of people are using that technology. So I'm looking to hook into that every way I possibly can. And you know, I think, you know, that's the next wave for us and there's a whole bunch of programs. I would tell you that the Dell sales guys, especially the mid-market sales folks are very focused on how can we add more to the conversation and we have more. So that's something that we're going to focus a lot of attention on. Excellent, Tom, well, you're a great acquisition of human capital for Dell. Really, congratulations on the new role and really excited to be watching it. Thanks so much for stopping by theCUBE. Thank you very much. Good to see you guys. All right, keep right there, everybody. Stu and I will be back with our next guest right after this, we're live from Dell World 2015 in Austin. This is theCUBE.