 We're back, this is Dave Vellante with David Floyer, and we've been unpacking Flash and the relationship of Flash to Oracle and increasing performance, cutting costs, changing applications, changing the way in which customers are designing their applications. Ken Grohwe is here, we're going to talk more about that. Ken, welcome back to theCUBE. Thanks David, theCUBE's been good to us. Yeah, last time, last time we talked to you, right, was at VMworld. Only a month ago, yeah. And then, you guys just announced you were selling the company for like $680 million. No to other vendors out there, go on theCUBE, things happen. Sell on theCUBE, right? Sell your company. I said things happen. Good things happen. Good things happen. Nobody's ever been fired for coming on theCUBE. No, no. We've enjoyed it. Thank you for having us on here. Well, yeah, you're welcome. Welcome back. So, yeah, big news. That's awesome. And it kind of shocked everybody, you know, that it occurred, when it occurred and to whom it occurred. So, congratulations. Well, thanks. We're excited to be part of H-E-S-T. It's not official yet. We expect there are other governing bodies that have to be involved, but we do expect around middle of October. We'll be a big part of the family and it gives us more resources, gives us more feel in the street, gives us more engineering talent. It should be a very good force in the flash space. So, in the last 12 months, you guys have kind of transformed the operation and really got focused. Talk about that a little bit. Where have we come from in the last 12, 15 months? Well, it's, what we've decided to move, I recently read a book Blue Oceans. What I mean by that is, it's, everyone else is competing on the hardware space. I'll just move into the software space, be able to share it, David, I've met with you at our place a couple of different times, really go into the new ocean, try the new space where you actually have new sharing software, new VHA hardware, failover, and then actual caching. In fact, it's ironic, we're here at Oracle Open World, and some of our customers at the booth, I think it's about 10 feet away from us, are meeting with us because they're looking for an affordable solution for Oracle Rack. And what better than having V-Share, the ability to use between the different different cars. That's really where our investments through our boss, Mike, I was just sitting on the board, have been in the software space, because that's how we're really leading a flash platform transformation like I talked about last time, because I think if you go hardware only, you're going down a trail that you're not going to like in five years. Well, you're going to compete against the big fabs, you're going to compete against SanDisk and guys that, you know, love that business, they love that low margin, right? I mean, software is where it's at, we write about software-led infrastructure. So what's different about your software approach than, say, some others? It's designed with a flash, actually the flash kernel and expertise. Our founders actually started seven years ago, I think David, you know this, actually with a newer appliance. That's right. Two types of, two types of flash. They chose newer, a little bit faster, get in the kernel and actually put it in there, a very, very helpful way to go through it. But they took that expertise, learned through the scar tissue and took the scenic route, as one of our founders talks about it, to get to the end. But for the last two years, we've really been dominating first with hardware and now with software. I'm curious, David, your take on our software strategy. I was privileged to hear two presentations from you guys. One was, I don't know, about a year ago and you were looking down some difficult paths or different alternatives. And then the second one, which was about the software that you had put in place. And then the one thing, piece of that software, which really, really impressed me, was the ability to back up databases, the ability to do that. Absolutely, availability across the servers. And that's something, it's okay for the people who are writing software where they're going to take care of that themselves. So those are the hyperscale people. But for the other 95% of the market, they need that capability. And I think that was a game changer. That was really a great piece of software. That's my take on it. And how's it going? You've got customers that have got that installed yet? Where is it going? I've got hundreds of people using the product today. Really excited about it. In fact, it's okay with you, gentlemen. I'd like to make an announcement. Now, last time I was here, you said I was the only one who brought a prop. So I figured, keep it going. In my hand, and we'll be announcing it out to the public tomorrow, but for the people watching theCUBE today, I have in my hand a half height, half length, 4.8 terabytes. David, I said 4.8 terabytes. Amazing. 4.8 terabytes on a PCI Express card. We talked about having vShare and Oracle Rack in the past. You know, you actually have the two cards across the servers and actually share the information. That should look like a decade or so ago what you would do with the sand. So at the speed of microseconds, 50 microseconds or below, as far as having the number of hundreds of thousands of IOP, she can get out of a 4.8 terabyte card. This is the announcement from Verden today. We think we bring it forward. We believe it's three times more dense at a half length format than our competitors. And we're seeing a lot of uptake for the product as it is now. And we'll announce it to the world as far as our press release tomorrow. So this is always the big problem, right? These are essentially direct attached devices. They didn't talk to each other. You guys are essentially creating a sand-like capability through software that allows you to recover from failure, to move data, to share data, access data, all the things that you expect from the sand. All the things, Dave, you and I were both in the business when people were selling RAID storage, very application by application. I happen to be a member of the sales force that when sands came out, it wasn't to improve the speed, it was to improve the access, the availability, the usability. That's what I think is going to make this flash more pervasive. We're leading a flash platform transformation, and by having that software, people in the enterprise space can feel as comfortable as the scale of customers that you and I deal with every day, David. So that's a big move for us. I don't want to say it's just the hardware, but it's really good to have the world's best hardware when it comes to flash. It helps sell the software and they pull each other. Why, David Floyer, what was the technical challenge in achieving that? Why did, because the industry used to say, remember, we would give presentations back in 2009, and say this is the future, and people say, oh, how are you going to solve this problem? What's the technical gate there? The technical gate within that was, A, focusing on it, but because the hyperscale people solved it that way. Because it would kill your sand business. Okay, you said that. But secondly, and more importantly, to do that, you actually need the two controllers to be talking to each other. You have to have it right down at the kernel level within the controller within each of those spaces. It's not a big investment. It's not a trivial investment. If you don't have that communication at that level, then you can't have the single point of control if you like, shared across the two. That's the technical reason. Most of the other systems in this area, the point of control is in the server itself. It's at the time of commitment. Here, they talk to each other, so there's dual commitment happening all at the same time. Ken, what have you got here? The VIP impact program, what's that? You're the best straight person of all time, David. I appreciate it. A lot of people have come to us, especially on the channel, saying, we get it now. We know Flash is the building block. So a quick prop for everybody. Last Tuesday, we announced the VIP, Verident Impact Program, last Tuesday. And what it's allowing people to do is not just have our own Salesforce, RIOEMs, Build and Lead, the Flash platform transformation, but instead having the channel, the people actually put the servers together. And that certainly helps. In fact, announced today, and big of announcements today, we're also announcing something called a VPAC. So small VPACK, or VPackage, what we'll do is every new VIP partner between now and the end of the year, we will actually include a piece of our software for all the hardware they sell. So you find a new customer in Illinois or Iowa or in Milan. We'll include one of our pieces of software, your choice, VCash, VHA, or VShare, which is a demonstration of the booth just right next door to get rack affordable as part of the program. The other logo I wanted to show, and what I've become a fan of, and this is Verident Validated, what I've become a fan of is building a huge certification program. So if we just keep it to the 200 or so people within Verident and keep it within that ecosystem, that's great. But if we extend it to channel partners, that helps the system, but if we extend it to professionals, so think of the people you call in the end-user community. If they build out their first Flash network, and then they move to a different company for whatever reason, or decide to become a consultant, that logo stays with them. So they go through the due diligence of actually taking the test, become a certified professional like you'd have many other vendors take. But we want to be the leader and the thought leader and the Flash experts, and that's what Verident Validated has become for a certification program for those inclined to build out a Flash platform. So you guys have some pretty impressive performance stats that I've seen, independent, like sniffing around at different labs and, you know, people running iometers. The Verident, you know, product keeps popping up as a leading product. You know, why is that? What is it about your system, your architecture that makes it go so fast? Well, I think David hit a home run before. It's not just a software. The hardware is designed from the Flash translation layer right from the very beginning. So we designed it so your sub 50 microseconds on reads, sub 50 microseconds, sub 25 microseconds on writes. And what I'm pleased to say is, because of doing it at the kernel level, at the Flash translation level layer, you'll be able to put redundant server actual software, VHA hardware between the two and the software. You can keep that same low latency. It's all about going after latency. You had said before how people went to the sand type bases and like the usability. If you change the building block to Flash and you keep the nice usability of sand, you get the best of both worlds. But that's what Verident is best on. We came from the newer appliance basis, moved it to NAND. Once you've made an appliance based on Flash, it's easy to make cards. So I wonder if we could talk about sort of the industry trends and some of the transitions we're seeing. For the last several years now, we have seen some major storage exits. You saw the tier 1.5 guys get absorbed. I felt like that wasn't as transformational as Flash is going to be. Now you're starting to see, you guys have announced an acquisition. You're seeing some companies go public. You're seeing some moves in the chess board. Cisco made a move. Dave and I have talked about this a lot. We feel like it's different. It's not like a one time Ddupe hit. Ddupe location came and went. It's there still, but it's sort of embedded in. And maybe Flash gets embedded in the same way. But we feel like it's all about the application. The applications are changing. I wonder if you could talk about what's changing in your customer base or your customer's customer base from the standpoint of applications. Well, you can't fight physics. So if people are moving the applications to the web, that's what really changed it all. These devices that we all run around with, we're trying to do everything. I noticed you've been on the web right before. We're using this as your first or second device. You're actually approving and actually making applications stand up very quickly. I saw through, I think it was Mark Hurd's presentation earlier today, he mentioned that the average application, legacy application, is 19 years old. Well, by the time my kids get in this workplace, that's going to just be unacceptable. 19 years ago, that's 1993. That was before Twitter was out. It was before most of Internet was out. You could find it. The web was back then. We were using Mosaic back then. Or AOL and using Dial-up Modems or whatever. We designed applications at microsecond speed with flash inherently in there. I'm seeing Oracle embrace it. I'm seeing some of the other application partners embrace it, but you can't fight physics. So if you had to do it all over again, which is why we're doing so well, we talked about this when we were at our location, why we're doing so well with China. China has to go right to flash. They don't have to roll out of sand and then undo the sand half a decade later. They can go right to flash and then bypass it. Go right to mass transit and forget the car, for example. Well, that brings up an interesting point because if you can compete with a clean sheet of paper, you can get a much more competitive advantage. A lot of people will say, well, people aren't going to rewrite applications. You know, there's the inertia of the install base and nobody knows that better than we do. But at the same time, you know, you mentioned China. If they're developing applications on a greenfield basis, doesn't that give organizations like that a huge competitive advantage? And doesn't that entice others to really think about rewriting applications for a new medium? Absolutely. You can learn how to swim much better at five years old than you can at 50. And the point being is, you don't have to learn how to do a bad application before you go from the very beginning. So clean sheet of paper, you're able to design everything with a web in advance and with mobile as far as in advance. In fact, the last announcement I wanted to talk through is some of our customers, so I mentioned the partners are coming towards this. Some of the professionals are coming towards this, which is why we announced VIP and Verden Validated. We have denser cards we announced just, you know, five minutes ago. The last announcement we have is some of our customers who have bought early stage flash. So some of the early movers in flash, you probably have some of the people here earlier today. The cards were great, but there was sub one terabyte or maybe sub two terabyte. Believe it or not, those folks, some of those web scale comes, have approached us saying, hey, can you take these cards back in trade? Because we want to get as quick as we can to the fastest 20 nanometer, fast microsecond type speed, 4.8 terabytes in a half height, half length type format. So can you take these products back in trade? So we're announcing a great investment protection for our customers who want to trade those products in towards the denser cards. That enables their investment protection and able to get over to a Verden card maker. Competitive products. Competitive products. Yes. I'd like to go back to this whole area of how do you get new applications out there? Where do you think the seed bed if that's going to be? I mean, there's clearly a complete rethinking of how you design the system, how you design the import, how you design the analytics to be near real time, complete rechange of how you can do that. We've talked about China, within the Europe and the states, et cetera. That's still the biggest market. Is it going to be a new cloud provider who's sitting in some garage somewhere? Who are the people who are actually leading this? One of the more innovative users, and they're large, they're probably the places we might shop in a weekend, starts with a W, starts with a T. They're huge users of e-tailing. So they're trying to compete with, I'll say the names, the Googles, the Amazons, in many ways the LinkedIn's and the Facebook's far attention off the web. So it's the brick and mortar companies that are billions and billions in size, but they're not just competing with same store sales, they're competing at the web type accounts. So e-tailing is a huge use case for us. It's all about the application, but applications are made up of nothing more than databases. So whether it be freeware, NoSQL, MySQL type databases, that's really the engine that we really get improved. That's where time is money. And the last thing, and I've seen some presentation today, analytics, and external analytics. Those are the three use cases we're seeing from it. As far as geography, we're doing a lot in the Northwest. We're doing all across the bay. A little bit slower embracement across Amia, but China's a big hotbed for us, and good global business for us, good balance, but we are seeing pockets of improvement outside of e-tailing around the scale-out type business. But great question. All right, Kim, run up against the clock. Really appreciate you coming back, sharing the props. Sure. Always a pleasure seeing you. Thank you, David. Thanks, go Veridun. Right there, buddy. Ray Wang is here. He'll be coming on theCUBE. Ray is an Oracle Watcher, Enterprise Software Analyst, head of Constellation Research and a longtime Cube guest. So keep it right there, but right back, this is theCUBE.