 Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage here in San Francisco of VMware Explorer 2022. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante, co-st of the Hube with two sets, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. Our 12th year covering VMware's annual conference day, formerly VMware World, now VMware Explorer. We're kicking off day two, known as Sharma, Director of Product Management at Google Cloud, GCP. Notice, thanks for coming on theCUBE, good to see you. You're very nice to see you as well. It's been a while, Google Next, Cloud Next is your event. We haven't been there because of the pandemic. Now you've got an event coming up in October. Just wanted to give that plug out there in October 11th. It's going to be kind of a hybrid show. You guys with GCP doing great, getting them coming up in the rear with third place, Amazon, Azure, GCP. You guys have really nailed the developer and the AI and the data piece on the cloud. And now with VMware, with Multicloud, you guys are in the mix in the universal program that they got here. It's been a partnership. Talk about the Google-VMware relationship real quick. Yeah, no, I want to first address us being in third place. I think when customers think about cloud transformation, for them it's all about how you can extract value from the data, how you can transform your business with AI. And as far as that's concerned, we're in first place. Now, coming to the VMware partnership, what we observed was first of all, there's a lot of data gravity built over the past 20 years in IT and VMware has really standardized IT platforms. And when it comes to the data gravity, what we found was that customers want to extract the value that lives in that data as I was just talking about. But they find it hard to change architectures and bring those architectures into the cloud native world with microservices and so forth. Especially when these applications have been built over the last 20 years with off the shelf, commercial off the shelf systems. You don't even know who wrote the code. You don't know what the IP address configuration is. And if you change anything, it can break your production. But at the same time, they want to take advantage of what the cloud has to offer. The self-service, the elasticity, the economies of scale, efficiencies of operation. So we wanted to bring the cloud to where the customer is with this service. And like I said, VMware was the de facto IT platform. So it was a no-brainer for us to say, you know what, we'll give VMware in a native manner for our customers and bring all the benefits of the cloud into it to help them transform and take advantage of the cloud. It's interesting, and you called out the advantages of Google Cloud. One of the things that we've observed is, you know, VMware trying to be much more cloud native in their messaging and their positioning. They're trying to connect it to that developer world for cloud native. I mean, Google, I mean, you guys have been cloud native literally from day one, just as a company. Infrastructure-wise, I mean DevOps was, and infrastructure as code was Google's DNA. And you had Borga, which became Kubernetes. Everyone kind of knows that in the history if you're inside the ropes. So as you guys have that core competency of essentially infrastructure as code, which is basically cloud, how are you guys bringing that into the enterprise with VMware? Because that's where the puck is going, right? That's where the use cases are. Okay, you got data, clearly an advantage there. Developers, you guys do really well with developers. We see that at, say, KubeCon and CNCF. Where's the use cases as the enterprise start to really figure out that this is now happening with hybrid and they got to be more cloud native. Are they ramping up certain use cases? Can you share and connect the dots between what you guys had as your core competency and where the enterprise use cases are? Yeah, yeah, you know, I think transformation means a lot of things, especially when you get into the cloud. You want to be not only efficient, but you also want to make sure you're secure, right? And that you can manage and maintain your infrastructure in a way that you can reason about it when things go wrong. We took a very unique approach with Google Cloud VMware Engine when we brought it to the cloud, to Google Cloud. What we did was, we took a cloud native approach. It would seem like weird to say that, okay, VMware is cloud native. But in fact, that's what we've done with this service. From the ground up, one of the things we wanted to do was make sure we meet all the enterprise needs. Availability, we are the only service that gives four nines of SLA in a single site. We are the only service that has fully redundant networking so that some of the pets that you run on the VMware platform with your operational databases and the keys to the kingdom, they can be run in an efficient manner and in a stable manner and in a highly available fashion. But we also paid attention to performance. One of our customers, Mytel, runs a unified communication service. And what they found was, the high performance infrastructure, low latency infrastructure, actually helps them deliver highly reliable communication experience to their customers. And so while we developed the service from the ground up, making sure we meet the needs of these enterprise applications, but also wanted to make sure it's positioned for the future. Well integrated into Google Cloud VPC networking, billing, identities, access control, support, all of that with a one stop shop. And so this completely changes the game for enterprises on the outset. But what's more like we also have built in integration to cloud operations, a single pane of glass for managing all your cloud infrastructure. You have the ability to easily ELT into BigQuery and get a data transformation going that way from your operational databases. So I think we took a very clean room from the ground up approach to make sure we get the best of both worlds to our customers. So you essentially made the VMware stack a first class citizen connecting to all the Google tools. Did you build a bare metal instance to be able to support that? We actually have a very customized infrastructure to make sure that the experience that customers looking for in the VMware context is what we can deliver to them. And like I said, being able to manage the pets in addition to the cattle that we're getting with the modern containerized workloads. And it's not likely you did that as a one off. I would presume that other partners can potentially take advantage of that approach as well. Is that true? Absolutely. Our other examples is SAP. Our SAP infrastructure runs on very similar kind of highly redundant infrastructure, some parts of it. And then we also have in the same context partners such as NetApp. So customers want to truly... So there's two parts to it. One is to meet customers where they already are but also take them to the future. And our partner NetApp has delivered a cloud service that is well integrated into the platform, serves use cases like VDI, serves use cases for tier two data protection scenarios, DR, and also high performance contexts that customers are looking for. Explain to people, I think a lot of times people don't understand, oh, NetApp, it doesn't Google have storage. So explain that relationship and why that is complementary and not just some kind of divergence from your strategy. Yeah, yeah, no, so I think the idea here is NetApp, the NetApp platform, living on-prem for so many years, it's built a lot of capabilities that customers take advantage of, right? So for example, it has the snap mirror capabilities that enable instant DR between locations. And customers, when they think of the cloud, they are also thinking of heterogeneous context where some of the infrastructure is still needs to live on-prem. So they have the DR going on from the on-prem side using snap mirror into Google Cloud. And so it enables that entry point into the cloud. And so we believe partnering with NetApp kind of enables these high performance, high reliability, and also enables the customers to meet the regulatory needs for the DR and data protection that they're looking for. And NetApp, obviously a big VMware partner as well. So I can take that partnership with VMware and NetApp into the Google Cloud, correct? Yeah, it's all about leverage. Like I said, meeting customers where they already are and ensuring that we smoothen their journey into the future rather than making it like a single step, quantum leap, so to speak, between two worlds. I think, I like to say that for the longest time, the cloud was being presented as a false choice between the infrastructure of the past and the infrastructure of the future. Like the red pill and the blue pill, right? And I like to say, we've brought into this context the purple pill, right? Which gives you really the best of both worlds. Yeah, and this is a tailwind for you guys. Now I want to get your thoughts on this and your differentiation around multicloud that's around the corner. Everyone now recognizes at least multiclouds are reality. People have workloads on AWS, Azure, and GCP. That is technically multicloud. Now the notion of spanning applications across clouds is coming. Certainly hybrid cloud is a steady state which essentially DevOps on-prem or Edge in the cloud. So you have now the recognition that's here. You guys are positioned well for this. How is that evolving? How are you positioning yourself with and how you're differentiating around as clients start thinking, hey, you know what, I can start running things on AWS and GCP and on-prem in a really kind of a distributed way with abstractions and these things that people are talking about. Super cloud, we call it. And that's really the conversations. Okay, what is that next future around the corner architecture look like? And how do you guys fit in? Because this is an opportunity for you guys. It's almost, it's like Wayne Gretzky. The puck is coming to you. It seems that way to me. How do you respond to that? Yeah, no, I think, you know, Ragu said yesterday, right? It's all about being cloud smart in this new heterogeneous world. I think Google Cloud has always been the most open and the most customer oriented cloud. And the reason I say that is because, you know, looking at like our Kubernetes platform, right? What we've enabled with Kubernetes and Anthos is the ability for a customer to run containerized infrastructure in the same consistent manner, no matter what the platform. So while, you know, Kubernetes runs on GKE, you can run using Anthos on the VMware platform and you can run using Anthos on any other cloud on the planet, including AWS Azure. And so it's, you know, we take a very open, we've taken an open approach with Kubernetes to begin with. But, you know, the fact that, you know, with Anthos and this multi-cloud management experience that we can provide customers, we are letting customers get the full freedom of an advantage of what multi-cloud has to offer. And I like to say, you know, VMware is the Kubernetes of IaaS, right? Because if you think about it, it's the only hypervisor that you can run in the same consistent manner, take the same VM image and run it on any of the providers, right? And you can, you know, link it, you know, with the L2 extensions and create a fabric that spans the world and multiple providers. With almost every company using VMware. That's right, that's right. It's the largest, like the VMware network of infrastructure is the largest network on the planet, right? And so it's truly about enabling customer choice. We believe that every cloud, you know, brings its advantages and, you know, at the end of the day, the technology of, you know, capabilities of the provider, the differentiation of the provider, need to stand on its merit. And so, you know, we truly embrace this notion of multi-cloud. Those ops guys have to connect to, opportunities connect to you guys in the cloud. Yeah, absolutely. I'd like to ask you a question sort of about database philosophy and maybe futures a little bit. There seems to be two camps. I mean, you've got multiple databases. You've got Spanner for, you know, kind of global distributed database. You've got BigQuery for analytics. There seems to be a trend in the industry for some providers to say, okay, let's converge the transactions and analytics and kind of maybe eliminate the need to do a lot of ELT-ing. And others are saying, no, no, we want to be, you know, really precise and distinct with our capabilities and have bespoke set of capabilities. Right tool for the right job. Let's go. What's Google's philosophy in that regard and how do you think about database in the future? So I think, you know, when it comes to, you know, something as general and as complex as data, right? You know, data lives in all shapes and forms. It moves at various velocities. It moves at various scale. And so, you know, we truly believe that, you know, customers should have the flexibility and freedom to put things together using, you know, these various contexts and, you know, build the right set of outcomes for themselves. So, you know, we provide Cloud SQL, right? Where customers can run their own, you know, dedicated infrastructure fully managed and operated by Google at a high level of SLA compared to any other way of doing it. We have a database born in the cloud, a data warehouse born in the cloud, BigQuery, which enables zero ops, you know, zero touch, you know, instant, you know, high performance analytics at scale. You know, Spanner gives customers high levels of reliability and redundancy in a worldwide context. So, with extreme levels of innovation coming from the NTP, you know, syncs that happen across different instances. So, you know, we do think that, you know, data moves at different scale and different velocity and, you know, customers have a complex set of needs. And so, our portfolio of database services put together can truly address all ends of the spectrum. Yeah, and we've certainly been following you guys at CNCF and the work that Google Cloud is doing, extremely strong technical people, really open source focused, great products, technology, you guys do a great job. And I would imagine, and it's clear that VMware is an opportunity for you guys, given the DNA of their customer base, the install base is huge, you guys have that nice potential connection where these customers are kind of going, where this puck is going, you guys are there now. For the next couple of minutes, give a plug for Google Cloud to the VMware customer base out there. Why Google Cloud? Why now? What's in it for them? What's the value of it? Give the plug for Google Cloud to the VMware community. Absolutely, so I think, you know, especially with VMware Engine, what we've built, you know, is truly like a cloud native next generation enterprise platform, right? And it does three specific things, right? It gives you a cloud optimized experience, right? Like the idea being, you know, self service efficiencies, economies, you know, operational benefits, you get that from the platform. And a customer like Mitel was able to take advantage of that, being able to use the same platform that they were running in their co-located context and migrate more than a thousand VMs in less than 90 days, something that they weren't able to do for over two years. The second aspect of our, you know, transformation journey that we enable with this service is cloud integration. What that means is the same VPC experience that you get in the networking, global networking that Google Cloud has to offer. The VMware platform is fully integrated into that. And so the benefits of, you know, having a subnet that can live anywhere in the world, you know, having multi-VPC. But more importantly, the benefits of having these Google Cloud services like BigQuery and Spanner and cloud operations management at your fingertips in the same layer three domain, you know, just make an IP call and your data is transformed into BigQuery from your operational databases. And Karafor, the retailer in Europe, actually was able to do that with our service. And not only that, you know, do the operational transform into BigQuery, you know, from the data gravity living in VMware on VMware Engine, but they were able to do it in a, you know, cost-effective manner. They saved, you know, over 40% compared to the current context and also lower the, increase the agility of operations at the same time, right? And so for them, this was extremely transformative. And lastly, we believe in the context of being open, we are also a very partner-friendly cloud. And so, you know, customers come and bring VMware platform because of all the IT, you know, ecosystem that comes along with it, right? You've got your Veeam or your Zerto or your Rubrik or your Cohesity for data protection and backup. You've got security from Fortanix, Thales, Fortinet. You know, you've got, you know, like we already talked about NetApp storage. So, you know, we are open in that technology context. ISVs, you know, are fully supported. Integrations key. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, that's how you build a platform, right? And so, we enable that. But, you know, we also enable customers getting into the future, going into the future through their AI, through the AI capabilities and services that are once again available at their fingertips. So. Menoche, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. And, you know, as super clouds we call it, our multi-cloud comes around the corner. You got the edge exploding. You guys do a great job in networking and security, which is well known. What's your view of this super cloud, multi-cloud world? What's different about it? Why isn't it just SaaS on cloud? What's this next gen cloud really about it? You get to kind of explain that to business folks and technical folks out there. Is it something unique? Do you see a refactoring? Is it something that does something different? What doesn't make it just SaaS? Yeah, I think there's different use cases that customers have in mind when they think about multi-cloud. I think the first thing is, they don't want to have all eggs in a single basket, right? And so, it helps diversify their risk. I mean, and it's a real problem, like you see outages in availability zones that take out entire businesses. So customers do want to make sure that they're able to increase their availability, increase their resiliency through the use of multiple providers. But I think, so that's like getting the same thing in different contexts. But at the same time, the context is shifting, right? There's some data sources that originate, you know, elsewhere and the scale and the velocity of those sources is so vast, you know, you might be producing video from retail stores and you want to make sure this security and there's information awareness built about those sources. And so, you want to process that data at the source and take instant decisions with that proximity. And that's why we believe with the GDC and with both the Edge versions and the Hosted versions, GDC stands for Google Distributed Cloud, where we bring the benefit and value of Google Cloud to different locations on the Edge as well as on-prem. And so, I think, you know, those kinds of contexts become important. And so, I think, you know, we, you know, we're not only do we need to be open and pervasive, you know, but we also need to be compatible and also have the proximity to where information lives and value lives. Mnuch, thanks for coming on theCUBE here at VMware Explorer, formerly VMworld. Thanks for your time. Thank you so much. Okay, this is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante live. Day two coverage here at Moscone West Lobby for VMware Explorer. We'll be right back with more after this short break.