 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Hello, and welcome back to theCUBE, virtual 2020 coverage of VMworld 2020 virtual. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. Joining me with Dave Vellante. We've got a great guest, Carol Carpenter, who's the chief marketing officer of VMware. CUBE alumni, move from Google Cloud to VMware. Carol, great to see you, and thanks for coming on theCUBE for VMworld 2020 virtual coverage. Thank you. Yeah, thank you both for having me here. Delighted to be here. So we've talked to you many times before, but you're very in the cloud native space. You know the market pretty well. I got to ask you, what attracted you to come to VMware? What was the reason? Now you're heading up marketing for VMware. What was the driving force? Well, a few things. Number one, I've always had a passion for this space. I love the cloud. I was involved in an early stage company prior to Google Cloud that really had the promise of helping people get enterprises, get to the cloud faster. And when I look around and I look at which companies are shaping the future of technology, VMware is certainly one of those companies. Second reason goes without saying the people and the culture, incredible leadership and empowerment all throughout VMware. And it's quite exceptional. And the third is I really think customers are on a really tough journey. And having been at a hyperscaler, having worked at places where, you know, companies are in a more traditional legacy environment, it made me realize like this is a tough journey. And I think VMware is uniquely positioned to help enterprises with what is a complex journey. And it's a multi-cloud world. I'm sure you know that our customers know it. And how do you make all these disparate systems and tools work together to deliver the business results? I believe VMware is uniquely positioned to deliver. It's interesting. VMware is going to a whole other level. We've been commenting on our analysis segments around the business performance, obviously. And the moves they've made over the years, this is our 11th VMworld. Cube started 10 years, 11 years ago. We've been seeing the moves. So great technology moves, product moves, business performance, the relationship with the clouds is all in place, but then COVID hits, okay? And then all that gets accelerated even further because you've got companies that have to use this downtime to remodernize and some people get a tailwind with modern application opportunities. So it's interesting time to be on this trajectory with VMware and the clouds. What's your thoughts? Because you joined right in the middle of all this. And you're in eye of the storm. What's your view on this? Because this is a forcing function for companies to not only accelerate the transformation, but to move faster. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's been an incredibly challenging time, I think, for everyone. And I hope everyone who's watching and listening is safe. That, you know, we talk about decades of progress being made in two weeks. And I guess that's the silver lining if there is one, which is this ultimate work remote work from home that we've enabled and the work anywhere. It's been completely liberating in so many ways. You know, it's an area where I look at, there's how do we lead our teams and how do we maintain relationships with customers, which obviously requires a different type of interaction, a different type of outreach. And then there's what are the solutions at scale? And, you know, I'm pleased to say, like there were absolute big lifts in certain areas of our business, particularly around, you know, remote work and our digital workspace solutions, you know, really enabling companies to get thousands of workers up and running quickly, that combined with our security solutions and our SD-WAN solution to really enable all of these remote homes to become thousands of remote offices. So there's all of that, which is incredibly positive. And at the same time, you know, I have to tell you, I joke, but I still haven't figured out where the bathroom is, you know, three, three plus months. So, you know, we, I miss the human connection. I miss being able to just see people and give people a hug now and then when you want to. I mean, VMware, Carol, it's amazing company. You mentioned the culture before. It really started as a workstation virtualization company, right? And then so many challenges, you know, end user computing, you guys do an acquisition, bringing Sanjay Poonan, all of a sudden you're the leader there. Cloud, you know, fumbled a little bit, but now all of a sudden the cloud strategy kicking in all cylinders. We see that, you know, growing like crazy. The networking piece, the storage piece. You mentioned security, which is an amazing opportunity. Containers are going to kill VMware. Well, guess what? We're embracing them. It seems like culturally, VMware just has this attitude of if there's a wave, you know, we're going to ride it, we're going to embrace it and figure out how to deliver value to our customers. What's your thinking on that? Yeah, I mean, it's such an, VMware is such an innovative company and that is another reason that attracted me. Invisibility to look at what customers need. Like this is an incredibly, we are an incredibly customer-centric company listening to customers, understanding their needs and providing a bridge to where they need to go while also providing them the resiliency and needs they have today. That is what thrills me. And I think we have such an incredible opportunity to continue to drive that future innovation while also being that bridge. I have to tell you, you know, I've known VMware for a long time and what appealed to me is this broader portfolio and this opportunity to actually tell a broader business value story, to be able to actually tell that story about not just digital transformation, but business transformation. So that's what, that's the journey we're on and it's happening, it's real. I mean, you look at all the customers, whether it's, you know, JPMorgan Chase to a non-profit like Feeding America to, you know, large companies like Nike, it's really incredible the impact and value we can bring. And I feel that my job and the marketing team's job is, I tell them, like, they're all these diamonds in the backyard. It's just some of them are little dirty and some are, they're just not fully revealed. And it's our job to go and, you know, dust them off and tell the story to help customers and prospects understand the value we can bring. That's a super good- So how should we be thinking, how should we be thinking about that, that business value transformation, business transformation? You know, you certainly, when you think of an applications company, you can easily connect the dots, but how should we be thinking about VMware and that value chain? Are you an enabler for that transformation? Can you provide some color there? Yeah, let me give you some specific examples. Like, look at, so the addition of Tanzu to the portfolio is what enables us to have these discussions that let's face it. The only reason people need or want infrastructure is because they want to deploy an application. They want to write an application. They want to move an application. And Tanzu, which is our container-based, Kubernetes-based orchestration solution and lots more to it. That's how it is in simple terms. That gives us this ability to work with companies, lines of business as well as developers around real business transformations. So two quick examples. One, I can't say the name quite yet, but I think very large pharmaceutical company who wants to launch and have a mobile app to help patients, people who are taking COVID-19 tests, get the results, understand their results, ask questions about their results and have one place to go. That's really powerful. And to be able to develop an app that is scale, you know, built for scale, built for enterprise, built to be resilient when patients are trying to get information in four weeks. I mean, that's pretty, that's quite incredible. Another example is, you know, very large e-commerce company that, you know, you mentioned COVID and some of the challenges. You know, retail has certainly been kind of a tale of two cities, right? Some companies with lots of lift and others with real struggle in the physical world. But anyway, large retailer who had to, within weeks, flip to curbside pickup, being able to look, customers being able to look at inventory on demand. Those kinds of capabilities required a wholesale rewrite of many of their e-commerce applications. Again, that's a place where we can go in and we can talk to them about that. And by the way, as you know, the challenge is it's one thing to write and deploy an app. And then it's another to actually run it at scale, which then requires the networking scalability and flexibility. It requires the virtual storage. It requires all the other elements that we bring to the table. So I think that's kind of the landing spot, but it's not the ending spot when we talk to customers. Carol, talk about the challenge of VMworld 2020 this year. It's not in person. It's an industry event. It's been one every year. It's a place where there's deep community, deep technical demos, deep discussions, a lot of face-to-face hallway conversations. That's not happening. It's virtual. You came right in the middle of all this. You guys pulled it together, got keynote sessions, and thanks for including theCUBE. We really appreciate that as well. But you have all this content. How did you handle that and how's that going? And share some color on what it took to pull it off and what's your expectation? Yeah, so, yes, VMworld is considered the gold standard when it comes to industry events. I mean, from the outside in, this is the canonical IT event. And so I feel really honored that this franchise is now in my hands and I have an incredible team of people who obviously have been working on it from prior to my joining. So I just feel honored to be part of it. This is going to be the world's largest VMworld. And on the one hand, miss the energy in the room, miss seeing people, everything you talked about, the serendipitous interactions at the food line or coffee bar, but going virtual has so many benefits. Some of the things we were talking about earlier, the ability to reach many, many more people. This event is going to be five to six times larger than our physical event. And that's not even including the VMworld that we're running in Asia, in China. And the other thing that makes me super happy is that over 65% of our registrants and the attendees here are actually first-time VMworld attendees. So this ability to broaden our tent and make it easier. I mean, let's face it, being able to fly, whether it was Vegas or San Francisco as originally planned, stay in these expensive hotels and take that time, it's a big ask. So by going virtual, we actually have expanded our audience tremendously. The other thing I am really excited about is we have 800 plus content sessions. We are following the sun. We have live Q&A after every session. We have really the best mobile app for any events. So I encourage you to take a look at that, which does enable the chat, the interaction, as well as pathfunding through the many channels we have of content. It's, look, we're learning and I'd love to follow up with you later to hear what you've learned, because I know you've also been doing a lot virtually. I think the world is going to move to something that's more hybrid, some combination of virtual and small group, you know, in-person, some local events of some sort. But this one I'm super excited about. We really have seen high engagement and I just think, well, I look forward to hearing everyone's feedback. But I think one of the things that we've been hearing is that I can now go to the VM world. I can participate. Now virtually it's kind of, I would call first generation. It reminds me of the web early days, but you're right. I think it's going to open up the eyes to a bigger community access, a bigger pool of data, bigger pool of interactions and community. And when they do come back face to face, people will be able to fly and meet people they met online. So we think this is going to be a real trend where it's like the ROI of this virtual space is tremendous. You can do demos, you can serve yourselves, you can consume a demo, but then meet people face to face. And by the way, we have, you know, a tremendous number of fun activities. Hopefully you've taken part in some of them. Everything from puppy therapy to magic shows to yoga to, you know, John Legend performing. So I agree. I think the level of personalization and ability to self-serve is going to be out of this world. So yeah, this is the best for your event. Just some key things that we can share with the audience. Cloud City has over 60 solution demos. There's a VM world challenge. That's fun. There's also an ask the expert section where you got Joe Beda and Ragu and other luminaries there to ask the questions. That's the top talent in the company, all online and it was course and you get the CTO innovation keynote with Greg Lavender. So, you know, you're bringing the big guns out on display and it's free access. That's amazing. It's awesome. Congratulations. Well, good for to see what the data looks like after. So what's the storyline for you? If you had to summarize out the VM world 2020 this year, what's coming out from the data? What are you hearing as the key themes? I see the tagline, you know, what possible together digital foundation, unpredictable world, but what are you hearing in the virtual hallways? Well, a few things, but I'd say the top takeaway is that VM where has spread its wings, has embraced more of the different IT audiences and is driving business transformation for companies in new and pretty unique ways. Yeah. And then obviously like slew of announcements, new partnerships, new capabilities, everything around multi-cloud. We have, as you know, every single cloud provider as a partner on the security front, intrinsic security built in throughout the entire stack. The other part that I think is super exciting are these partnerships we're announcing. Everything from what we're doing with NVIDIA to make AI more accessible for enterprises in production to what we're doing around SASE, Secure Access Service Edge, being able to provide a holistic, secure distributed environment so that every worker, no matter where they are, every endpoint, every remote office can be fully secured. You know, in VMware is the gold standard of the ecosystem. And VMworld, of course, they're all on the showcase and it was hard fought. I mean, it took a long time to get there and you know the challenges of building that. And now you mentioned NVIDIA, you see all these new tailwinds coming in and I've seen companies launch at VMworld. And so, you know, that ecosystem is, as I say, it's very difficult to build, but then becomes a huge asset because this just gives you so much leverage as an organization, your companies, your partners, your customers. Thank you, Dave. Yeah, we're super excited. And I should say that, like the partner and the ecosystem here is unparalleled and our challenge is how do we provide, and you know this, like how do we provide the strategic vision and that practitioner level content? So we're gonna, you know, that's what we're committed to is making sure that our practitioners get everything they need in every area of expertise as well as making sure we're conveying our business story. Carol, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate the insight. One final question for you. As we get through this crisis, soon hybrid comes back for events, certainly, but as the CMO, the next-gen story, you now have a chief customer officer. We interviewed him as well. VMworld's going to the next level. What's your goals? What are you trying to accomplish? And you got a lot of things going on, certainly a big story to tell, a lot of ingredients to kind of cook a great story here. What's your goals at CMO for the next year? You know, my goal is to help drive the business transformation. And you've heard it from Sumit, you've heard it from others at this point, but really, you know, the company is going, we are going through a dramatic transformation from being, you know, a license on-prem company to being a multi-cloud, modern SaaS company. So my goal is to support that, and that means modernizing the way we do marketing, which, you know, you say, well, what does that mean? It means customer focus, customer lifecycle marketing. It means agility, being able to actually use data to drive how we interact with customers and users so that they have those great experiences and they continue to use the product and drive adoption and growth. And the other part of it is B2B marketing, as you may or may not have noticed, is incredibly boring and dull. And I know I'm guilty of this too. We get caught up in a lot of the jargon and the language, and I am on a mission that we are going to do great B2B marketing that helps customers understand what we do and where we express the value simply, clearly, and in a differentiated way. That's awesome. Why should the consumer guys have all the fun, right? Right. Well, and that's part of being, by the way, a SaaS or subscription company, is everything we do needs to be consumer simple, at scale and with the security and the reliability of what an enterprise means. Well, I got to tell you that the irony of all this virtualization of the world with COVID, virtual events, I think one of the big surprises we're going to be looking back at is, how much it's opened up to more audiences and new ways of modernizing and taking advantage of that, certainly with content and community, you guys are well positioned. Congratulations for a great event. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insights. And we'll keep in touch. We'll try to make it exciting. It's theCUBE. Thank you, Carol. Appreciate it. Thank you, awesome. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, John. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Cube coverage of VMworld 2020 Virtual. This is the virtual cube. We have now virtual sets everywhere all around the world. It's global. Thanks for watching.