 From Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's live coverage in Las Vegas, Nevada in the broadcast booth in the VM Village at VMworld 2018. This is theCUBE's ninth year covering VMworld. Nine years theCUBE has been in existence. We've been at VMworld every consecutive year. It gets better and better. I'm John Furrier, your host with my co-host Dave Vellante. Our next guest is CUBE alum, that bass guy here, who's the general manager of Edge IOC product line within VMware and also the CIO for VMware. Welcome to theCUBE. Because you didn't have enough to do. Like I told you, my assistant always- Keep getting promoted, it's all these CUBE videos. I don't know if it's promoted. I'd be getting more jobs and my assistant says, I should stop smiling because if you smile, people think you're not busy. They give you more to do. So you're a CIO, not that that's a hard enough job and full time. You're also running the product line profit loss for Dell Technologies IoT Edge. That's right. Across all Dell portfolios. That's right. All right, so what's the update? Why is that a product line now? We saw a little bit of taste of Edge, not that impressive. That was clear and transparent. We're still connecting stuff. Intelligence is coming later. Is that where we're at? I think the Edge wave is coming. That people are starting to see when is that wave coming? Right now we're just hooking up things, right? We had a lot of sensors. At home you've done this. You hooked up your Ring computer, Nest, whatever. But these things are just sending you information. It's not doing intelligent things. The processing is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger at the Edge, and in an enterprise especially. And so it's a good time to be thoughtful about how do you bring all the things that VMware does and Dell does and give a managed appliance at the Edge, if you will. And it's also good for the CIOs and IT guys to get ahead of it. Because you know it's coming. This place is going to have, it's already have thousands of sensors and gateways. How do you manage it? How do you update it? How do you run it? So it's an interesting time to look at it across the board. The power of Dell and VMware is we can do it both ways. You can give it better together. So hardware, software, everything, put it up there. Or some people choose to assemble it themselves. I want to buy my own hardware vendor. I want to get the VMware software. You can choose it that way as well. So we're going to give you a simple way to say buy an appliance, completely manage from us, manage all the Edge, set up an architecture in place, so I can get ready for the Edge computing revolution. So Vasky, you previously, last 12 months roughly, you've been CIO across all Dell technologies. Now what was that like? What did you learn? Did you become a supply chain guru? Were you doing digital transformation? What was going on there? It's a Jekyll and Hyde kind of a feeling because it's two different companies, even though people believe it's within the family, VMware is independent as you know. And VMware has got all software, hardly any supply chain, no manufacturing. Dell is the other side, 120,000 people, you know, a real enterprise company with supply chain, et cetera. So it's two different jobs, two different audit committees. And each audit committee would ask me if I was spending 100% of my time in their companies. And I had to tell them I'm spending 37.5 hours on your company. And that was the truth, but it is two jobs. It was fun because, you know, you were also dog food to a lot of their stuff, which makes it harder. That's right, not more challenging. That's right. You got to be on top of it. It is. The thing with VMware was we have done the transformation a little earlier. So initially I thought I'll cut and paste that in Dell. That was a dream. But every company is different. Every culture is different. So first six months, I didn't make much progress in Dell. Then I had to get back to basics, the people, process, and then technology. So culture always trumps all of this, right? So you have to say, I don't have good technical people. I don't have interest in technology. We need to hire new people and we need to value people who are technical. And then we did a process change. We created something called the Dell Digital Way, which is, think of it as lean Six Sigma kind of, but for digital, where you train people that this is a new way of operating, et cetera. And surprisingly, the technology was the easier part. I mean, it's a hybrid cloud, mobile computing, AI, IoT. But if you don't have the people, you can do much. And most companies, as you know, have outsourced, off-shared. They've gotten so far away from tech that you had to hire the people. You had to put value. So how are you managing your time now with the P&L, which is a business unit, basically, and CIO, which is pretty much whitewater rapids in and of itself. You're paddling, the waves are crashing over the, oh, how do you do both? So I think the edge IoT job is a lot more listening job. So I'm spending a lot more time with fellow CIOs and CTOs and CISOs and the OT guys, the manufacturing guys, on what would make sense at the IoT, what would make sense at the edge. So it's a lot of listening, getting the strategy, rather than say, here's a solution. In the CIO job, it is both blocking and stackling. And also strategically, I want to show that edge computing and IoT works in Dell and VMware. Otherwise, you don't have credibility. So we're putting a lot of use cases in production. The third thing, the nice thing about it is I already spent a lot of time with customers as a CIO for VMware and for Dell. So in fact, we are hosting a session tomorrow with all the CIO friends. They're just interested more in what is really happening in Edge, what is happening in IoT, it's a nice crossover. So that's the logic, is you're going to, sort of, as John said before, dog food it, inside, and then bring a solution to market eventually. That's right. Make some mistakes, fail fast. I would rather make mistakes on our end, the customer. The good news for us is with the portfolio projects you have, and you saw the announcements, we got a ton of stuff to offer on the Edge and on IoT. But we don't want to just overpower the customers. There was a lot of announcement even today that is mind-boggling to people. So you need to package it into a solution to say, if you do building automation, this is what you do. If you do robotics, this is what you do. If you do smart cities, this is what you do. So package that into a solution that's meaningful. Yes, talk about the IQ levels of the current enterprises around IoT and Edge, because certainly the Edge is not the amount of handle it, they haven't had enough reps in the game yet. So where are they, are they just kicking the toe on the water, are they actually deploying? Because you have OT, which is more mature market, sensors, et cetera, we know that. VMware's a software company, and most hardware companies aren't becoming software companies. IoT has to be rendered into software, yet you got the OT. How is the CIOs and the CXOs dealing with this? Where are they level-wise, progress-wise, early? I think 50-50, I mean, the enterprise IT, as you know, is a little slow to the game, the consumer gets ahead of it, and it is going to come through OT and other kind of places. So we did that in mobile, right? I mean, the enterprise IT didn't jump on mobile. People started bringing their own phones, and they started doing things with their blackberries and iPhones, and then we had to come up with the MDM and other ways to get in. I'm hoping that's not the case in the IoT and Edge, but it's likely. So I'm telling my counterparts, to bring their sensors to the table, kind of thing. This could have thousands of sensors and gateways for all you know, and the IT guys may not know about it. So the next hacking you're going to get is through gateways here, not necessarily through a phishing attack. So unfortunately, the skeptic in me says that that's how people are going to come screaming into it, but the evangelist in me is saying, get ahead of it. There's an opportunity for you to look like a hero, and the security side certainly is a big one. Yeah, don't wait for it. Now, look at the number of devices that's been put on. And it's not being done by IT. They're going to have open passwords. They're going to have different versions. It's not going to be upgraded, updated, patched up. So I'm trying to educate, you know, fellow CIOs, there's a good 30, 40% of the people who are ahead. There's a good 70% who are going to wait till it happens. So what about your ecosystem? You talk about that, what you're doing specifically. I mean, you got AWS, there's an edge play there. You got tons of Dell stuff, as you said. And you got a sort of ecosystem of both traditional partners slash competitors of Dell. And these guys that, you know, like PTC, for example, or others that, you know, just are out there in operations technology. So what are you doing to put together that ecosystem? So actually the traditional IT partnership, you know, you're going to rely on its strength with VMware. I mean, the same thing on how do you connect private cloud to the edge? Same VMC software that we released that works with Amazon. So that one works well, and those people know us. When you go to the other side, the OT side, the Honeywells, the Siemens, the GEs, the Johnson Controls, those become important partners. We do not want to claim that we know that industrial control is better than them. We need to establish partners with partnership with them. The interest that comes is when the OT folks get to a stage where there's a lot of information and traffic, then the IT guys come into play. We've been credibility to the IT side. You know, we know CIOs and CISOs well. So when you assure them that this box that is running your factory is really a VMware software running Dell, there's a lot more credibility. So I think there's a partnership. In fact, when I talk last to the industrial vendors, they want us to bring this cloud in a box. They say, we don't understand all these things that we have to put together on how do you manage private cloud, public cloud, et cetera. We expect you to bring that expertise together. So that ecosystem partnership has to be developed. Things like automobiles, I mean, everybody initially resisted this autonomous driving and smart cars. You know, I'm a big car guy, which I'm sure you are, turbochargers and superchargers. Those are important. All of a sudden you're looking, oh, it's a computer on wheels, and it's more than an internal combustion engine. So all those folks want partners and they want a partner credible like Dell technology. This is where the partnership of Dell tech, not just VMware, comes in pretty handy. They want a partner end to end, you know. And it's interesting, we had Andy Petrescindern earlier talking about Ares' relationship to VMware and he said, quote on theCUBE, you mean a great testimonial, especially coming from a guy like him. NSX is perfectly positioned with the security model around closest to the app. That allows the decoupling of security teams for the security team here and his networking team. There's no cross-pollination, there's no problem there. Similar across the other technologies, people can be highly cohesive in their work effort and bring it all together. That's why we only talked about this. Exactly, so it's going to start on the OT. So my head of facilities is going to bring a building management solutions. She's not going to tell me that it's actually a computer systems, right? I wouldn't even know, I would be signing it without knowing it's a computer system. But sooner or later you look and say, that's a massive computer system. What version of Linux does it run? How do I manage it? How do I patch it? Of course you've got to get a Tesla S model and the SUV, just to be the R&D team that you are. You need a computer on wheels, you need to have it. Yeah, well you heard of the Tesla, I need one. Please tell Michael Dell now that I need a Tesla, both models and then you will. I'll put it a good word for it, Michael. All right, take a step back. And you've got a great reputation as a great leader within VMware and Dell Technologies. Take us through the day and the life of what you do. You say you talk to a lot of customers. You know, how are you organizing your teams? Obviously you've got a very emerging and no doubt relevant edge piece to it. IoT obviously, we know what IoT is, but the edge is coming really fast. 5G, Pat kind of referenced it again, the keynote, telco opportunities massive. He wanted to tease that out further, but there's not enough time it seemed like. But you've got a massive networking game on. It's going to go up crazy. How are you running the team? What's your management style? Take us through some of the day-to-day life of it. This is what helped me, even managing Dell and VMware, is you need to have an empowered team, but you should empower, but not abdicate. You know, they need to know that you're there. You can't just dump it on them, but they run fairly empowered way. And in IT, you know, my batting average would be 80, right? Because I've done it for a long time. So if you ask me what firewall to pick, I can tell you what network to pick and I'll be 80% correct. So it's almost resisting the temptation to give the answers, let the team come back with a decision. So VMware acted fairly independently, but they need to know you're there to back them up. You know, especially political issues and other things you have to fight. So it's a similar model of empowering the teams. The only thing in IoT is, you got to bring Dell and VMware together. And even though they are family of companies, you know, sometimes it's difficult within the families to raise relationships. Luckily, I worked on both sides. I've been a leadership team member on both sides. So part of my job is to make sure people understand. You get along with everybody. I get along. As I get older, I believe that with a beer, you can solve every problem. All right, so I asked you the same question I asked Andy Peschistine. What is the one enabling technology that you see coming in this new era that's upon us with cloud? That will have the same kind of impact that TCPIP did on networking, which created massive amount of interoperability, created massive internet working boom. It created a ton of value that became what we are today. What's the one thing in the cloud that people? I think I'm going to give two things, sorry, because sometimes we miss the combination when you pick one thing. When you do internet of things, when you're just hooking up the sensors, that's interesting. But when you pick AI and machine learning with it, then it becomes really useful. Right now, we are kind of sensor enabling everything. So the thermostat is telling you what it's doing. Ring is telling you there's somebody in front of your house. After a while, it's just a lot of false negatives, right? I shut those apps off. But if the house comes and tells you there's an FBA most wanted person outside your home, I've already notified FBI, don't go home. This is just for information. That's powerful. That's like magic. So I think the combination of the sensor enabling IoT and AI, I think those two are fabulous. Then you throw a block chain on top of it, whereas you don't have to really govern it. I think those combination of things that we are getting right now is just fascinating. That's where I see gold miners. People are going to IoT, people are going to AI. When you look at a combination, I mean, things cannot be managed with people. Things have to be managed with intelligence. I highlight that point on the IoT if you think about notifications. If all the alarms are coming, it's like a hospital, what do you pay attention to? You got to have some AI. Assisting you to understand what's important in context at the moment. That's right. All these alarms going off. What do you do? Oh, you shut it off. So you got the substrate, which is the IoT and the instrumentation, and then you've got the AI, ML and blockchain layer. That's about automation. What you described was, I don't have to go do anything. It's telling me what to do or what not to do. Well, see, luckily I'm a lazy person. I want things to do, things for me. I don't want things to tell me what to do. I don't want anything to tell me what to do. I want the things to do the job, right? We're not there yet. We're installing all these software and gadgets. It is telling me too many things to do. I want my house to tell me, would you like to say $400 a month or $40 a month? I don't want to even know how. Just say yes. Push this button, right? Push this button, yes, right? I think you're getting to a stage where these things can be intelligently put together, where you can actually do useful things, right? So I believe that the mundane has to be automated and still not being done. I found a better route six minutes faster. Don't even tell me, just go. I'm going to automate the queue. Send us the best guest please, yes. Yeah, I know. I know. Bas, I want to ask you one final question. I know you're tight on time. I want to wrap up, but I've got to get this out of your head is that you talk to a lot of CIOs in this digital transformation journey with the cloud, some things that are going on. You're starting to see visibility in what multi-cloud looks like, what hybrid cloud is. Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Then you've got the edge which you're managing. What is that? What's the top couple of things that are ranked up on the order, the patterns that emerge. Top order conversations you're involved in with CIOs. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities? Most CIOs, the CEOs and the board is asking them about digital transformation. Sometimes they don't even know what that means, but they're asking that question. So the CIOs have to be clever enough to answer, how do you do digital transformation? It's not all about technology, business change, business agility and so on. Unfortunately, the press always says the CIO role is dead. It is true, every year the job is dead because there's a new role that is getting stated. It's supposed to be dead 10 years ago, right? It never dies. It never dies, but you have to reinvent yourself, right? So the next reinvention is you have to be the digital transformation person for the company. So a lot of people we all want to learn on, you know, what does it mean, how do you do it, where do you get the people. You see a lot of reversing of trend, outsourcing, offshoring. Now all of a sudden you want to do digital, you want people sitting in the room, you know, in-house to do those work, so that is happening. And also, several jobs, there's a chief digital officer, chief information security officer, chief data officer. A CEO doesn't want to have five different people managing information assets. So the role of the CIO is going to evolve even further to be you got to manage the whole thing for me, right? For the new P&L job, what's the one thing that keeps you up at night? I got to make money. Well, so then, I mean, people talk about, you know, CIO is going to be more business savvy. That'll make you business savvy. That's right. There you go, hit it. One of my colleagues, Raghu, said, you know, revenue is very strategic, so I'm very focused on revenue. And also, Raghu, when you learn in the startup business, if you want to have success with this, don't run out of money. That's right. That is my goal. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. Really appreciate it. theCUBE live here at VMworld 2018. I'm John Furrier. Stay with us. Live coverage continues three days. We're in day one. We'll be right back. Stay with us.