 Everyone, welcome to this special CUBE conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE here and our special Napa Valley remote location connecting with Palo Alto as well as in Massachusetts and at VMware in Palo Alto. We've got a great conversation around edge technology with Dell technology at VMware and CUBE. Of course, here Luca Pierre, Luca Ciudelli, Vice President of Product Manager at the edge at Dell and when he was the VP of edge computing at VMware joining me for this edge conversation. Gentlemen, thank you for joining us on theCUBE. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure to be here. So it's like the edge is the hottest thing we've been talking about until forever. Now it's important because you're starting to see the technologies come together with multi-cloud on the horizon, but hybrid cloud in full enterprise mode right now with 5G consumer size expanding but on the business side, connecting the edge is becoming a cloud product, cloud operations product that also includes the on-premises component. So we're in full distributed computing mode right now and everyone's not denying this a lot to everyone's agreeing on it. So it's happening. So let's get into what's going on at the edge. How do you guys see edge evolving in the marketplace right now? Yeah, let me get started there, John. Pleasure to be here and partnering with your Luca. What's happened through the pandemic? You know, I know you kind of said we're all sitting far apart and talking, right? So a lot of the edge has been here forever the pandemic has accelerated a lot of the edge initiatives, right? So people started working from home remotely workloads now starting to move towards the edge. So as every industry retailers think about socially disintermediated omnichannel retail experiences manufacturers think about localized supply chains and efficiencies off that as their global supply chains get all stressed they're all inventing and doing few things at the edge. So what's this driven even though edge has been there all along, it's driving innovation towards the edge business processes, outcomes, new applications we call them edge native applications are being built now purpose for business outcomes at the edge. That's kind of a big change in acceleration the last 15 months that we've seen. What's the trends driving this? Because obviously that is making a lot of sense modernization of the enterprise. It's happening a lot faster than many people predicted, you know, day one operations day two operas are buzzwords now. I mean day one just basically means cloud and innovation but now there's an operating aspect to this. What's the trend driving this edge native mindset and product requirement? You guys share that thought and reaction to that. Yeah, absolutely. I think the main trend as Manit said the acceleration is green because the use case and the transformation that needs to happen at the edge. This is what's not thinking before, right? All of us when we go to a store now we interact in different way when we buy online when we do all the normal things in life that we do today we doing different. This is required to bring more things at the edge. If we look at some data we know that 50% of what is going to be happening in 2023 will be at the edge with 90% of what is from an application point of view exploding at the edge. To your point, why is that is important as you see around all the verticals manufacturing and also other verticals. For example, the machinery manufacturing was not connected because at that time there was no need to be connected. Now we see more and more machinery need to be connected not only on the manufacturing floor but also send things outside of manufacturing floor connected to other compute. So the necessity to bring more close and in that we have this notion of what is the edge? You heard a lot, what is the edge? The edge is everything where you need to act on the information that you create. It's really makes sense to bring things more there because you need to act on them. And so the necessity to have more compute latency it's very big things that we need to solve security and also the day zero operation, day one, day two and be able to drive everything from the cloud to the edge in the same way and same experience. Yeah, I mean, you basically laid out the enterprise requirements for most things which is pretty complicated but has to run at scale. But also, you know, me was mentioning edge native so I want to get your guys reaction to our thoughts around this concept. I love this edge native conversation but as customers much migrate to the cloud. Okay, migration workloads with containerization and stateful data, these are real issues. So migrating is one thing. But now if I migrate, what's interesting migrating an app or workloads versus edge native? And how does someone get from migrating or replatforming to edge native? Can you guys share your thoughts on this evolution of migrating and then becoming truly edge native? Yeah, John, I think it's an interesting thing, right? So it's not, it's easy to say I have a continuum from data center to the public cloud to the edge. What we're finding is some of the applications you've migrated to the cloud, if you think about it both data center and clouds are very centralized compute models, right? So when you actually replatforming refactoring applications for the cloud what you're doing is you're fundamentally, you know building for elastic scale, elastic growth to compute, elastic shrink to compute. When you're actually moving so it's more compute heavy and you know, elasticity of compute when you're actually moving these workloads towards the edge they're actually data dense, they're data heavy because to what Pierluco was saying before as well there's a huge volume of data coming at you. That volume of data needs to be processed that volume of data needs to be in real time and streamed and outcomes driven out of that. Now, do you want to take a lot of that data and then push it all the way to the cloud or the data center to get processed or do you want to get it processed locally and come to some actions? Now, like Pierluco's example of the manufacturing plant that time delay and latency would cost you millions of dollars of bad quality product because you missed the quality control in not replacing parts fast enough. So what we're seeing in this emergence of this new edge native applications is people are having to replatform, refactor applications to work them at the edge because of the attributes being different. Higher data density, real time process requirements, scale we talked about scale, we're all used to doing thousands of maybe hundreds of data centers but not tens of thousands of edge locations, right? So it's a different level of scale and it's security that you need. And that's where, when we call edge native is fundamentally it has to operate very closely with the operation technology rather than the typical IT stance we take. Pierluco, I mean, tell about the product features and the requirements there because you mentioned a few things there I'll just jump pick one thing out, which is data. Moving data around is very expensive and everyone knows that but you got to move compute now and with serverless, okay? And in the cloud, you want that same kind of agility and capability at the edge. So you got to have the devices at the edge be smart enough and be software enabled to handle this. How do you deal with this in the product management side? I think it says you've got to prioritize all this. Absolutely, John. And to take on what Munib was saying we think why someone should look at Dell and VMware together is because for be successful there are a lot of POC going on and a lot of try and buy and a lot of also verticalization of the use case. So what we hear to offer is really what they say generate inside where they need and also consolidate the edge because we hear more as Munib pointed out you buy on the edge for the outcome. You buy for security, you buy for an outcome for example, for predictive maintenance. Now that buy of the outcome also prescribe a certain orchestration in a certain hardware and software that need to run, right? It's sort of deployment model. Now in the same place you can buy an outcome for example, for smart building. All of us that we have in the advanced most of it at all right now but think about the buildings where you need to control over that you have solar panel and stuff like that. So that outcome if you buy today it runs on another thing. So you end up with a very silos approach where you have a prolification actually of infrastructure. What we are proposing here is really that we need to simplify we need to start with the building block approach that allow us to also bring this security as you can think it as the devices expand as the computer you pointed out to expand in 1000 or hundreds of 1000 security becomes a big deal. And in some place you need to also be I've gotten too late because you don't want even to go to the internet at all. So that's very important is this is how we perceive the things that we need to simplify the edge for our customer. That's great. Let's get specific now. How can customers whether they're Dell technologies and VMware customers or new customers leverage the combination of VMware and Dell technologies for the edge? What is the solution? What can they, can they do? What are the things they can start with today? Here, Luca, you want to get started with the platform on the app side. Go ahead. Today what really is the plot the approach we have is a building block approach as I said. So in Dell we can cover a lot of things for the edge and we can cover from as small as a gateway to large to a cluster to multiple cluster forming an entire data center and connect all of that. And then don't forget about our Apex project where you can buy all of these as a service as well. So with that layer that we have where we have Ragadai server, we have the gateways we have also software asset that they're very important for the edge like our streaming data platform. So you need to collect this data. We need to stream this data and collect and have insight about this data so we can bring our streaming data platform. And all of these by the way, it runs on top of VMware. So that's where VMware is coming to play. Yeah, no, I think, you know building on the foundation there John is really about, you know us providing then having the platform T-shirt sizing as you know, peer Luca went from small to large is important because what we recognize is not one size fits all at the edge because they're going to be all sizes requirements. Second, what we're doing is providing multi-cloud connectivity, multi-cloud services that VMware knows. So bringing our software layer on top providing developers to build applications both VMs and containers on the edge when they can use services from any cloud provider to build those applications. So VMware provides that, you know multi-cloud platform which gives ability for folks to build applications and get services from any choice of their cloud providers and run it on top of Dell portfolio and connect that all together with very importantly, I would say in a distributed lifecycle management and operations everywhere because you're not going to find IT skill sets at the edge. This is at the retail stores, at the manufacturing plan. So what you don't get is very, you know skilled IT skill sets. So the control plane happens to be in the cloud which is centrally operated whereas the data plane is all running at the edge and we're able to between VMware and Dell bring our portfolios together to effectively, you know, deliver upon this and provide what I would call a secure software supply chain. You can build applications securely and you know deliver them from the data center to the cloud to the edge and manage it provision it troubleshoot it end to end. That's only possible with, you know VMware and Dell technologies, right? And John, let me call it out that one of the most important things obviously with VMware, our VxRail product obviously is our running horse for most of the edge use case including our server, ruggedized server but I will say that on the VMware we are spending with the satellite nodes that they are basically nodes that you can put in your edge location and centralized, you can manage and you can do all the lifecycle management also if you don't need the storage box. So that's a key things that expand us with the common also reference if you guys will follow our session we have a joint customer actually explain our scotch industry how you will run the entire things with the edge and run VMware across with the VxRail. So great, great example. It's a great call out to one of the things that's impressive and I think this better together message comes out in that conversation is that you have a building block approach you a platform, these two things work together and I think one of the things that's interesting to me just as a student of the industry over the years that it's kind of an operating system in itself it's the cloud, right? It's like it's one big thing. So the customers can build applications on top of it and get the benefits of it. I think this is kind of a systems thinking mindset not just design thinking but it's a systems architecture if you will. I mean it's not directly a systems like a computer system but holistically you can look at it as a systems design problem. So customers are having more and more of these conversations around systems thinking. Can you guys share your reaction to that because we all saw the benefits of design thinking. Oh yeah, design thinking, you know, greatest movement. Now we're in a new era I think where we're starting to see people talk about systems thinking. You actually it's a great thing, John. I think you have to have system thinking just everything we've been talking about so far is if you don't have system thinking you won't scale to tens of thousands of locations in a systematically, right? So design thinking is brilliant because it gives you very user interface, user experiences where users and developers get in and have a flexibility and usage and all of that. What you're talking about here is tens of thousands of locations and those locations don't have any skilled IT folks so we're not used to breaking things down. So what you want to think about is more a scalable system design which is like cookie cutter, push it out and then it's got zero touch provisioning, zero trust for architecture with security built in and distributed life cycle management. So you are making the edge simple to operate. For that to happen, you need system thinking where it is scalable, secure and scalable not large, small and highly distributed in a lot of locations. You have a proper systems thinking and design system put in and it'll operate itself. This is how we've done industry for a long time, right? And the consequences have to be factored in. If something breaks, there's consequences in systems. It's a ripple effect, it's a network of all kinds of things are going on. Great stuff. You're looking at comment on the systems thinking I'd love to get your reaction to that. Yeah, let me say one thing about the system thing. So I think system thinking is very important also on top of the solution that we put together. As we discussed before, right? Normally in the vertical like the manufacturing people buy outcome. So at the end of the day, the people they interact directly with the outcome they look at the solution and we will offer together the solution. So we have the VMware layer. We are partnered with other people to offer an end to a solution too many point. The manufacturing floor person will not really care if he's interacting with the VxRail or a VMware but he wants to interact with the end application. So that's why it's very important. Beside that, we need to make the infrastructure transparent and easy. So that's really good point. That's how the thing's going. That's why you need to system architect the things and system thinking. I think this edge conversation is bringing up a new modern era of opportunity. And there are problems to solve and work the problem. The data is one we talked earlier. Are there considerations that you guys see out there for how architects in the enterprise who are thinking about the future of their business, how they want to set themselves up for the modern era that's coming us here for edge, for low latency, built-in security. These are table stake enterprise features now. So is there a new concern data? Obviously the cost of data and the tsunami of more data, local data to be processed, leveraging the benefits of the cloud in a systematic way. These are all new hard problems that, if solved, create huge opportunities. Or as Jerry Chen, former VMware CTO of the cloud said, castles on the cloud. You can have them the best of the cloud if you do this right. What are some considerations that people should think about from an architecture standpoint? I think from my perspective, and then when we're speaking about this, but think about how you can standardize from the beginning. So don't end up with a thousand of different options because then it's difficult to manage. And then have a wide approach. Look at all the different edge sites as a building block of that big edge thing. And also look at how you can not only scale but bring security in all the things that you think. This is fundamental. In the past, we always left security as the last things that we thought about. At the edge is fundamental. And edge is changing the requirement. As I explained at the beginning of this interview, edge has a very different requirement. And if we satisfy those requirements, then we are successful not only at the edge, but we are successful at the core and in the cloud because we can bring as many to say that application in and out, in and out where it's needed. So with that, Muneep, you want to say something about that? Sure. Thanks, Piraluka. And I think, Piraluka is absolutely right. I think you have to standardize, you have to scale only then you can standardize easily without doing bespoke. The, as an architect, one of the key things to consider also, there is, I think, John, you brought up 5G at the beginning but we didn't follow up with that, right? So we actually do believe that the service provider market who are building out the next generation 5G, they have capacity, they have connectivity closest to the edge as well. So I actually do think that as architects think about it, a player, as you build out your data center to a cloud and now towards the edge, the last mile between the cloud and the edge is actually owned by the service providers. The service providers will play a critical role in placing these workloads closer to the edge but not necessarily all far away from the cloud. So architect design, think about scalability and intrinsic security and having different sizes. But one important factor, I actually do believe that the service providers have the opportunity for lifetime in front of them to become like the hyperscalers for the edge because if they can provide not just infrastructure network services, IAS, PAS, and SAS, they will be able to deliver extensively whole amount of edge compute services for the enterprises, which is something that architects have to think about to actually not make a bottleneck to all go up to the cloud but they can actually be distributed at the service provider. Yeah, and I totally agree in the service provider. They have the real estate, they got the facilities, they got the connectivity at the edge and the footprint, but it used to be a base station is becoming smaller and smaller and higher density. So it's going to start to see, by the way, and there's more edges. It's not the one tower anymore, it's everywhere. These little points of access points are thousands of points of millions of points of light, if you will, kind of to the network, yeah, huge. Okay, gentlemen, thank you so much. I want to just say I really appreciate this conversation, systems thinking, edge, it's the future and edge is an architectural shift where there's only advantages, not a lot of downside. If you can plan it right, the opportunity with the cloud is amazing. So thank you so much for coming on, sharing your insights here on theCUBE conversation. Thank you, thank you very much, John. Okay, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE here in Napa remotely in Palo Alto and Palo Alto in Massachusetts for remote interview, great conversation with great guests. Thanks for watching.