 Hi everyone, welcome to theCUBE, special presentation here in Palo Alto, California. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We've got two great guests, one for calling in from Germany, or videoing in from Germany, one from Maryland, we've got VMware and AWS. This is the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS Showcase, accelerating business transformation here in the Showcase with Simear Cadu. Worldwide VMware Strategic Alliance Solution Architect Leader with AWS. Simear, great to have you, and Daniel Reathmeyer, Principal Architect, Global AWS Synergy at VMware. Guys, you guys are working together, you're the key players in this relationship as it rolls out and continues to grow, so welcome to theCUBE. Thank you, greatly appreciated. Great to have you guys both on. As you know, we've been covering this since 2016 when Pat Gelsinger, then CEO, and then CEO AWS at Andy Jassy, did this. It kind of got people by surprise, but it really kind of cleaned out the positioning in the enterprise for the success of VM workloads in the cloud. VMware's had great success with it since, and you guys have a great partnership. So this has been like a really strategic, successful partnership. Where are we right now? Years later, we've got this whole inflection point coming, you're starting to see this idea of higher level services, more performance coming in at the infrastructure side, more automation, more serverless. I mean, just getting better and better every year in the cloud, kind of a whole another level. Where are we, Simear? Let's start with you on the relationship. Yeah, totally. So I mean, there's several things to keep in mind, right? So in 2016, right? That's when the partnership between AWS and VMware was announced. And then less than a year later, that's when we officially launched VMware Cloud on AWS. Years later, we've been driving innovation, working with our customers, jointly engineering this between AWS and VMware, day in, day out, as far as advancing VMware Cloud on AWS. You know, even if you look at the innovation that takes place with the solution, things have modernized, things have changed. There's been advancements, you know, whether it's security focus, whether it's platform focus, whether it's networking focus, there's been modifications along the way, even storage, right? More recently, one of the things to keep in mind is, we're looking to deliver value to our customers together. These are our joint customers. So there's hundreds of VMware and AWS engineers working together on this solution. And then factory and even our sales teams, right? We had VMware and AWS sales teams interacting with each other on a constant daily basis. We're working together with our customers at the end of the day too. Then we're looking to even offer and develop jointly engineered solutions specific to VMware Cloud on AWS and even with VMware's other platforms as well. Then the other thing comes down to is where we have dedicated teams around this at both AWS and VMware. So even from solutions architects, even to our sales specialists, even to our account teams, even to specific engineering teams within the organizations, they all come together to drive this innovation forward with VMware Cloud on AWS and the jointly engineered solution partnership as well. And then I think one of the key things to keep in mind comes down to we have nearly 600 channel partners that have achieved VMware Cloud on AWS service competency. So think about it from a standpoint, there's 300 certified or validated technology solutions. They're now available to our customers. So that's even innovation right off the top as well. Great stuff, Tanya. I want to get to you in a second upon this principal architect position you have in your title, you're the global synergy person. Synergy means bringing things together, making it work. Take us through the architecture because we heard a lot of folks at VMware explore this year, formerly VMworld talking about how the workloads on IT has been completely transforming into cloud and hybrid, right? This is where the action is. Where is your customers taking advantage of that new shift? You got AI ops, you got IT ops changing a lot, you got a lot more automation, edges right around the corner. This is like a complete transformation from when we were just five years ago. What's your thoughts on the relationship? So at first I would like to emphasize that our collaboration is not just that we have dedicated teams to help our customers get the most and the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. We are also enabling us mutually. So AWS learns from us about the VMware technology where VMware people learn about the AWS technology. We are also enabling our channel partners and we are working together on customer projects. So we have regular assembles globally and also virtually on Slack and the usual suspect tools working together and listening to customers. That's very important. Asking our customers where are their needs and we are driving the solution into the direction that our customers get the best benefits out of VMware Cloud on AWS. And over the time we really have involved the solution as Samir mentioned, we just added additional storage solutions to VMware Cloud on AWS. We now have three different instance types that cover a broad range of workloads. So for example, we just added the I4 I host which is ideally for workloads that require a lot of CPU power such as you mentioned it, AI workloads. Yeah, so I want to guess just specifically on the customer journey and their transformation. You know, we've been reporting on Silicon Angle and theCUBE in the past couple of weeks in a big way that the ops teams are now the new devs. I mean, that sounds a little bit weird but operation IT operations is now part of the lot more data ops, security, writing code, composing, you know, with open source a lot of great things are changing. Can you share specifically what customers are looking for when you say as you guys come in and assess their needs, what are they doing? What are some of the things that they're doing with VMware on AWS specifically? That's a little bit different. Can you share some of the highlights there? That's a great point because originally VMware and AWS came from very different directions when it comes to speaking people at customers. So for example, AWS very developer focused whereas VMware has a very great footprint in the IT ops area. And usually these are very different teams, groups, different cultures, but it's getting together. However, we always try to address the customer needs, right? There are customers that want to build up a new application from the scratch and build resiliency, availability, recoverability, scalability into the application. But there are still a lot of customers that say, well, we don't have all of the skills to redevelop everything, to refactor an application, to make it highly available. So we want to have all of that as a service, recoverability as a service, scalability as a service. We want to have this from the infrastructure. That was one of the unique selling points for VMware on premise. And now we are bringing this into the cloud. Sameer, talk about your perspective. I want to get your thoughts and not to take a tangent but we had covered the AWS remars, actually it was Amazon remars, machine learning automation, robotics in space. It was really kind of the confluence of industrial IoT, software, physical. And so when you look at like the IT operations piece becoming more software, you're seeing things about automation but the skill gap is huge. So you're seeing low code, no code, automation, hey Alexa, deploy a Kubernetes cluster. I mean, that's coming, right? So we're seeing this kind of operating, automation meets higher level services, meets workloads. Can you unpack that and share your opinion on what you see there from an Amazon perspective and how it relates to this? Yeah, totally right. And look at it from the point of view where we said this is a jointly engineered solution but it's not migrating to one option or the other option, right? It's more or less together. So even with VMware cloud on AWS, yes it is utilizing AWS infrastructure but your environment is connected to that AWS VPC in your AWS account. So if you wanna leverage any of the native AWS services, so any of the 200 plus AWS services, you have that option to do so. So that's gonna give you that power to do certain things such as for example, like how you mentioned with IoT, even with utilizing Alexa or if there's any other service that you wanna utilize that's the joining point between both of the offerings right off the top. Though with digital transformation, right? You have to think about where it's not just about the technology, right? There's also where you want to drive growth in the underlying technology even in your business. Leaders are looking to reinvent their business. They're looking to take different steps as far as pursuing a new strategy. Maybe it's a process. Maybe it's with the people, the culture like how you said before where people are coming in from a different background, right? They may not be used to the cloud. They may not be used to AWS services. But now you have the capability to mesh them together. Then also. I'll go ahead. Yeah. No, no, I was gonna say what it also comes down to is you need to think about the operating model too where it is a shift, right? Especially for that vSphere admin that's used to their on-premises environment. Now with VMware cloud on AWS, you have that ability to leverage a cloud but the investment that you made in certain things as far as automation, even with monitoring, even with logging. You still have that methodology where you can utilize that in VMware cloud on AWS too. Daniel, I want to get your thoughts on this because at Explore and after the event now as we prep for KubeCon and reinvent coming up the big AWS show. I had a couple of conversations with a lot of the VMware customers and operators and there's like hundreds of thousands of users and millions of people talking about and peaked on VMware, interested in VMware. The common thread was one person said, I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to put my career in the next 10 to 15 years. And they've been very comfortable with VMware in the past, very loyal and they're kind of talking about I'm going to be the next cloud but there's no like role yet. Architects, is it solution architect, SRE? So you start to see the psychology of the operators who now are going to try to make these career decisions like what am I going to work on? And it's kind of fuzzy but I want to get your thoughts. How would you talk to that persona about the future of VMware on say cloud for instance? What should they be thinking about? What's the opportunity and what's going to happen? So digital transformation definitely is a huge change for many organizations and leaders are perfectly aware of what that means. And that also means to some extent, concerns with your existing employees, concerns about do I have to relearn everything? Do I have to acquire new skills and trainings? Is everything worthless? I learned over the last 15 years of my career and the answer is to make digital transformation a success. We need not just to talk about technology but also about process people and culture. And this is where VMware really can help because if you are applying the VMware cloud on AWS to your infrastructure, to your existing on-premise infrastructure, you do not need to change many things. You can use the same tools and skills. You can manage your virtual machines as you did in your on-premise environment. You can use the same managing and monitoring tools. If you have written and many customers did this, if you have developed hundreds of scripts that automate tasks and if you know how to troubleshoot things, then you can use all of that in VMware cloud on AWS. And that gives not just leaders but also the architects at customers, the operators at customers, the confidence in such a complex project. The consistency, very key point, gives them the confidence to go and then now that once they're confident, they can start committing themselves to new things. I'm here, you're reacting to this because on your side, you've got higher level services, you've got more performance at the hardware level. I mean, a lot of improvement. So, okay, nothing's changed. I can still run my job. Now I got goodness on the other side. What's the upside? What's in it for the customer there? Yeah, so I think what it comes down to is they've already been so used to or entrenched with that VMware admin mentality, right? But now extending that to the cloud, that's where now you have that bridge between VMware cloud on AWS to bridge that VMware knowledge with that AWS knowledge. So I will look at it from the point of view where now one has that capability and that ability to just learn about the cloud. But if they're comfortable with certain aspects, no one's saying you have to change anything. You can still leverage that, right? But now if you wanna utilize any other AWS service in conjunction with that VM, there resides maybe on-premises or even in VMware cloud on AWS, you have that option to do so. So think about it where you had that ability to be someone who's curious and wants to learn. And then if you wanna expand on the skills, you certainly had that capability to do so. Great stuff, I love that. Now that we're peeking behind the curtain here, I'd love to have you guys explain because people wanna know what goes on behind the scenes. How does innovation get happened? How does it happen with the relationship? Can you take us through a day in the life of kind of what goes on to make innovation happen with the joint partnership? You guys just have a Zoom meeting, do you guys fly out, you write code, you ship thing? I mean, I'm making it up, but you get the idea. What's the, how does it work? What's going on behind the scenes? So we hope to get more frequently together in person, but of course we had some difficulties over the last two to three years. So we are very used to Zoom conferences and Slack meetings. You always have to have the time difference in mind if you're working globally together. But what we try, for example, we have regular assembles now also in person, geo-based, so for EMEA, for the Americas, for APJ, and we are bringing up interesting customer situations, architectural bits and pieces together. We are discussing it always to share and to contribute to our community. What's interesting, as events are coming back, before you weigh in on this else, I'll comment as theCUBE's been going back out to events, we're hearing comments like, what pandemic? We are more productive in the pandemic. I mean, developers know how to work remotely and they've been on all the tools there, but then they get in person, they're happy to see people, but there's no one's, no one's really missed the beat. I mean, it seems to be very productive workflow, not a lot of disruptions, more, if anything, productivity gains. I agree, right? I think one of the key things to keep in mind is, even if you look at AWS's and even Amazon's leadership principles, customer obsession, that's key. VMware is carrying that forward as well, where we are working with our customers like how Daniel said earlier, right? We might have meetings at different time zones, maybe it's in person, maybe it's virtual, but together we're working to listen to our customers. We're taking and capturing that feedback to drive innovation and VMware Cloud on AWS as well. But one of the key things to keep in mind is, yes, there has been the pandemic, we might have been disconnected to a certain extent, but together through technology, we've been able to still communicate, work with our customers, even with VMware in between with AWS and whatnot, we had that flexibility to innovate and continue that innovation. So even if you look at it from the point of view, right? VMware Cloud on AWS outputs, that was something that customers have been asking for. We've been able to leverage the feedback and then continue to drive innovation even around VMware Cloud on AWS outputs. So even with the on-premises environment, if you're looking to handle maybe data sovereignty or compliance needs, maybe you have low latency requirements. That's where certain advancements come into play, right? So the key thing is always to maintain that communication track. In our last segment we did here on this showcase, we listed the accomplishments and they were pretty significant. I mean, GEO, you get the global rollouts of the relationship, it's just really been interesting and people can reference that, we won't get into it here. But I will ask you guys to comment on as you guys continue to evolve the relationship, what's in it for the customer? What can they expect next? Because again, I think right now we're at an inflection point more than ever. What can people expect from the relationship and what's coming up with re-invent? Can you share a little bit of kind of what's coming down the pike? So one of the most important things we have announced this year and we will continue to evolve into that direction is independent scale of storage. That absolutely was one of the most important items customer asked us for over the last years. Whenever you are requiring additional storage to host your virtual machines, you usually in VMware Cloud on AWS, you have to add additional notes. Now we have three different note types with different ratios of compute storage and memory. But if you only require additional storage you always have to get also additional compute and memory and you have to pay for it. And now with two solutions which offer choice for the customers like FSx for NetApp OnTap and VMware Cloud Flex Storage. You now have two cost effective opportunities to add storage to your virtual machines and that offers opportunities for other instance types maybe that don't have local storage. We are also very, very keen looking forward to announcements, exciting announcements at the upcoming events. Sumir, what's your reaction take on what's coming down on your side? Yeah, I think one of the key things to keep in mind is we're looking to help our customers be agile and even skilled with their needs, right? So with VMware Cloud on AWS that's one of the key things that comes to mind, right? There are gonna be announcements, innovations and whatnot without coming events. But together we're able to leverage that to advance VMware Cloud on AWS to Daniel's point. Storage for example, even with host offerings and then even with decoupling storage from compute and memory, right? Now you have the flexibility where you can do all of that. So to look at it from the standpoint where now with 21 regions where we have VMware Cloud on AWS available as well where customers can utilize it as needed when needed, right? So it comes down to, transformation will be there. Yes, there's gonna be maybe where workloads have to be adapted where they're utilizing certain AWS services but you have that flexibility and option to do so. And I think with the continuing events that's gonna give us the options to even advance our own services together. Well, you guys are in the middle of it you're in the trenches you're making things happen you've got a team of people working together. My final question is really more of a kind of a current situation kind of future evolutionary thing that you haven't seen this before I want to get both of your reaction to it and we've been bringing this up in the open conversations on theCUBE is in the old days it's going back this generation you had ecosystems, you had VMware had an ecosystem AWS had an ecosystem, you know we have a product, you have a product biz dev deals happen people sign relationships and they do business together and they sell each other's products or do some stuff. Now it's more about architecture because we're now in a distributed large scale environment where the role of ecosystems are intertwining and this you guys are in the middle of two big ecosystems you mentioned channel partners. You both have a lot of partners on both sides they come together. So you have this now almost a three-dimensional or multi-dimensional ecosystem, you know interplay. What's your thoughts on this? Because it's about the architecture integration is a value not so much innovations only you can do innovation but when you do innovation you got to integrate it, you got to connect it. So how do you guys see this as an architectural thing sort of see more technical business deals? So we are removing dependencies from individual ecosystems and from individual vendors. So a customer no longer has to decide for one vendor and then it is a very expensive and a high effort project to move away from that vendor which ties customers even closer to specific vendors. We are removing these obstacles. So with VMware cloud on AWS moving to the cloud firstly it's not a dead end. If you decide at one point in time because of latency requirements or maybe some compliance requirements you need to move back into on-premise. You can do this if you decide you want to stay with some of your services on-premise and just run a couple of dedicated services in the cloud you can do this and you can manage it through a single pane of glass. That's quite important. So cloud is no longer a dead end it's no longer a binary decision whether it's on-premise or the cloud it is the cloud. And the second thing is you can choose the best of both worlds, right? If you're migrating virtual machines that have been running in your on-premise environment to VMware cloud on AWS by the way in a very, very fast, cost-effective and safe way then you can enrich later on enrich these virtual machines with services that are offered by AWS more than 200 different services ranging from object-based storage, load balancing and so on. So it's an endless, endless possibility. We call that super cloud in a way that we were generically defining it where everyone's innovating but yet there's some common services but the differentiation comes from innovation where the lock-in is the value not some spec, right? Sameer this is going to where cloud is right now you guys are not commodity Amazon is completely differentiating but there's some commodity things having got storage, you got compute but then you got now advances in all areas but partners innovate with you on their terms. Absolutely. And everybody wins. Yeah, 100% agree with you. I think one of the key things, you know as Daniel mentioned before is where it's a cross education where there might be someone who's more proficient on the cloud side with AWS, maybe more proficient with the VMware technology but then for partners, right? They bridge that gap as well where they come in and they might have a specific niche or expertise where their background where they can help our customers go through that transformation. So then that comes down to hey, maybe I don't know how to connect to the cloud maybe I don't know what the networking constructs are maybe I can leverage that partner that's one aspect to go about it. Now maybe you migrated that workload to VMware cloud on AWS. Maybe you want to leverage any of the native AWS services or even just off the top 200 plus AWS services, right? But it comes down to that skill set, right? So again, solutions architecture back of the day, end of the day what it comes down to is being able to utilize the best of both worlds. That's what we're giving our customers at the end of the day. I mean, I just think it's a refactoring and innovation opportunity at all levels. I think now more than ever you can take advantage of each other's ecosystems and partners and technologies and change how things get done with keeping the consistency. I mean, Daniel, you nailed that, right? I mean, you don't have to do anything you can still run the sphere the way you're working on it and now do new things. This is kind of a cultural shift. Yeah, absolutely. And if you look not every customer, not every customer not every organization has the resources to refactor and replatform everything. And we gave them a very simple and easy way to move workloads to the cloud simply run them. And at the same time they can free up resources to develop new innovations and grow their business. Awesome, Samir, thank you for coming on, Daniel. Thank you for coming to Permanente. October Fest, I know it's evening over there. Weekend's here and thank you for spending the time. Samir, final, I'll give you the final word. AWS re-invents coming up, we're pairing. We're going to have it exclusive with Adam. But Friar, we do a curtain raise, we do a little preview. What's coming down on your side with the relationship? And what can we expect to hear about what you got going on at re-invent this year? The big show. Yeah, so I think, you know, Daniel hit up on some of the key points but what I will say is we do have, for example, specific sessions, both that VMware's driving and then also that AWS is driving. We do have even where we have what are called chalk talks. So I would say, and then even with workshops, right? So even with the customers, the attendees who are there and whatnot, if they're looking for to sit and listen to a session, yes, that's there. But if they want to be hands on, that is also there too. So personally for me as an IT background, you know, been in CIS admin role and whatnot, being hands on, that's one of the key things that I personally am looking forward. But I think that's one of the key ways just to learn and get familiar with the technology. Yeah, re-invent some of the amazing show for the in-person. You guys nail it every year. We'll have three sets this year at theCUBE. It's becoming popular with more and more content. You guys got live streams going on, a lot of content, a lot of media. So thanks for sharing that. So me and Daniel, thank you for coming on on this part of the showcase episode. Really the customer successes with VMware Cloud on AWS, really accelerating business transformation with AWS and VMware. I'm John Furrier with theCUBE. Thanks for watching.