 The Cube at EMC World 2014 is brought to you by EMC. Redefine VCE, innovating the world's first converged infrastructure solution for private cloud computing. Brocade, say goodbye to the status quo and hello to Brocade. Okay, we're back, this is Dave Vellante with Stu Miniman, we're here at EMC World 2014 and we're drilling down, this is a spotlight into the future of storage and networking, the software-defined data center, a lot of buzz around the software-defined network, the software-defined storage. Essentially what's happening here is companies are extracting a lot of the value and function that have existed for years, sort of locked inside of the box, all the metadata inside of that box and they're extracting that and over the next decade or so, organizations are going to be able to exploit that information, that data in new ways and drive new economic models. Chris Wetzel is here to talk about that, he's the director of storage products at Rackspace, Chris, welcome back to theCUBE, good to see you. Thanks, good to be back. Okay, so first of all, EMC World, every year it seems to get bigger. It's this Jack was saying, it's the premier storage show, you're a storage guy, these are your peeps. Absolutely, it's awesome, they do a great job putting the show on, it's great to see everyone, EMC people here, the partners, it's a really, really good experience, so. So, when you think of Rackspace, you think of a lot of things, but you don't necessarily think, storage doesn't not come necessarily top of mind, so talk about your role at Rackspace and how they look at storage. Sure, sure, I'd say actually over the past couple of years it's been interesting that storage has become front and center in a lot of the conversations with customers about infrastructure and where your storage is at, often time defines where you will add services to it. So, Rackspace with our hybrid model really helps open that conversation up that it isn't just one way you can do it. And we've been very successful in helping customers solve problems in a different way. That a lot of the hybrid messaging you hear today is tied right directly to that, so. Storage definitely has dragged services over the year. What kind of services you're talking about that your customers are layering that might be storage or data led? Yeah, yeah, probably the most exciting one to me right now is just the big data stuff that kind of everyone's talking about. You know, we're big fans of having multiple ways of doing kind of any one business problem or a customer problem. But, you know, as you look at that big data, as you look at the data lake concept that you'll hear a lot about around here really plays well into what Rackspace is doing. So, let's unpack that a little bit. What are we talking about? What is that sort of big data storage stack, if you will, a stack of services look like and where does Rackspace play? Sure, sure. It's still early for us. I think, you know, we have some offers today. We've got some cloud offers. We've got some where you can do bare metal servers and all the way to, you know, working with EMC on external storage. Where I think it goes is really it's going to be talking a lot more about, again, what your needs are of analyzing the data. If you're going to have some real-time analytics, you might have some persistent jobs. And starting with kind of where you want to be and then where you're going to start, Rackspace can help really build that hybrid solution for you. We don't believe any one infrastructure will work for it. But it's being able to add the different services. You know, a great example is the Pivotal story. Right, so an EMC product with Icelon and Pivotal at Rackspace, you know, something that we are continually talking about. How do we put that together as an offer for customers? So we've been watching, of course, the converged infrastructure trend and networking and compute coming together. You see all the server guys kind of going in that direction. Of course, storage is part of that. You guys have always been converged. Yeah, absolutely. Converging, storage, and networking. So I wonder if you could talk about the trends as it relates to that convergence and how is that changing? Yeah, you know, I think everything has its time and place and I know, you know, Rackspace, again, a lot of the convergence message you got, we've been doing for many years on behalf of customers. I think in the hybrid world, very similar to kind of what we've done there in that convergence, honestly, for us is a how. It's like ways to deploy infrastructure and when it makes sense to converge it and buy it in one box and that solves the problems, we do that. When it makes sense to kind of split it out and do it different ways, we have that flexibility as well. We really try to spend our time trying to find out where is kind of two elements to it? What are the problems we're solving on behalf of the customers and then where can Rackspace apply our fanatical support with our specialists to deliver the experience that customers really need and don't want to do themselves? So how do you see the SAN as we know it evolving? I mean, it became this multi-billion dollar industry that had a tremendous value function moved further and further away from the host and created just a phenomenon. Yeah. And it's driven awesome value, but that's changing now. You know, you see these functions shift back, you're seeing those things like server SAN emerge, software defined, all the buzzwords. So what do you see? How does it relate to Rackspace's strategy? Yeah. You know, the good news for us is we will continue to partner with the right people in the industry. You know, we're very strong partners with the EMC, we've got VMware as a partner as well. And you know, I think what time will tell where it all goes in. I'm a believer that a lot of these will end up complimenting each other. There are, as you mentioned, a very large industry and a lot of infrastructure deployed today. And finding ways to compliment that with newer ways of doing things that are faster, more automated, kind of deliver that, without losing the kind of the punch of what if you really need kind of purpose-built, dedicated devices, I'll say a storage array, you could still get that and combine them together. So I think it's a very exciting time. I think storage had a couple years of a great run in terms of being more in the forefront. And I think this is just the next step in terms of delivering it in a better fashion, get better economics, get better speed, and get better experiences for the customers. So Chris, one of the biggest challenges, coming to EMC World for as many years as I have, is that the operational models of going between the storage and the network was kind of difficult. When I think about Rackspace, one of the key differentiators you guys have out there, you guys have a phenomenal operational model. In many ways, they're helping customers to adopt that operational model, whether they use your services or build a private offering based on what you're doing or some kind of hybrid model in there. Can you unpack that a little bit for us? Tell you what you guys have learned through the experience and where you see the industry adopting and what you're helping customers with. Yeah, sure. And I think it's interesting that Rackspace over time, years ago at the infrastructure level, there was a much larger value that we placed on being able to do that for customers. And as we've evolved, our ability to run it at scale and very, very large scale is actually almost table stakes for us. Our investments now are kind of working our way, either up the stack or more into the applications. We talked about kind of Hadoop earlier as a new area that trying to find those areas where customers either can't invest, don't want to invest, more often than not is actually outside the infrastructure. It's kind of expected that we're still running kind of best in class and that's just, it's up and running. Yeah, I think that's a great point. So, infrastructure should become more simplified. Can you talk to your partnership with Brocade on this? How have they really simplified the environment or what services are there helping you with kind of move up the stack? Yeah, and I think our relationship with both Brocade and EMC is very, very strong in this area. Best example we had, I believe it was last year when we went to the latest generation director class fabric and we did it in such a way that it was non-disruptive and not aware of to our customers, which is what we expect from running our infrastructure at scale. So the fact that we, again, we designed it up front with them, we had a plan in place, our implementation went flawlessly and that sets the bar for what it should be every time. There shouldn't be interruptions, shouldn't be downtime, shouldn't be any worry about that. As we continue to evolve, we're working with both those partners about how do we do a better job at expanding that outside of Rackspace data centers. So we've got a more heterogeneous solution for customers and that's just, over time, those kind of get better and we adopt them as our standards. So what are some of the biggest challenges that you see customers facing today that all this new stuff's going to address, whether it's the software-defined data center, software-defined storage, or object storage, or new network storage paradigms? Yeah, I think some of it's the same stuff. It's still speed to market, it's speed to ROI. It's price is always an area that we try to shave. On top of that, it's really access to the specialists. As all these technologies are evolving, as all these changes come, your decision is either evaluating all of them one-on-one, kind of deciding which one is best for your company in doing it, or leveraging a partner like Rackspace who has that breadth and we can actually kind of provide a better choice for you. If this is important to you, we'd solve it this way. If it's a different way, we'd do it a different way. Let's talk a little bit about partnerships and partnering. So you got, let's take the example here of Rackspace, Brocade, and EMC. You guys all sort of work together. You partner together directly. So you may partner with Brocade. You might partner with EMC. Do you leverage that triumvirate? I wonder if we could talk about the relationships there for a minute. Yeah, it's funny. We have things we're working on right now I think that we'll show it. So if this was show maybe it was three months later, we could talk a little more about it. But I think, what is it? Oh, come on, tell us a little bit. Wish we could, but a little soon, literally. But I think, again, I'll keep back on some of the, some of the big data stuff that we talked about. You know, absolutely. It's a very, very hot trend, very kind of exciting buzz. How you go do it. How the data lake concept has evolved. You know, from a Rackspace standpoint, working with the EMC team and Icelon team. Look on the other side, you know, in sand, customers that are running big sands, and how do we adopt those kind of add the services on top of it for them. It's really the areas that we work together on. And I think, you know, it's as fast as we can kind of lock down what the customers want. So what do you look for? For instance, in a partner like a Brocade or an EMC, what do they bring to the table? And what do you bring to the table? What do you reciprocate with? Yeah, the best partners we have, appreciate service providers, right? I think there were many years where many products were designed for enterprises. And an enterprise-grade product does not always work well at scale. And I'd say, you know, EMC and Brocade, put in our top category in terms of partners that understand that and get that. And then you design it differently when you're going to run, you know, hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of a device, rather than for an enterprise you may do, you know, single digits or dozens. So that's really where we've had the most success and recognizing that and aligning your development around that really, really helps. Yeah, okay, so scale is one unique aspect of the service provider. The other is the business model. Sure. It's an IT sort of for-profit center as opposed to most IT shops, which are, right, enterprise IT is not a cost center, it's not a profit center. How does that change how you work with partners? I actually do, a lot of it is the same. I think even IT shops are trying to get out of being just a cost center, right? I think Rackspace has an extension of your IT and leveraging Rackspace and our relationships to help you deliver better results back to the business as an IT leader. I think it's the same activities. The difference for us is, and we tell our customers this, you may have a problem, you may have a need. If you do, there's a good chance we probably have it dozens or hundreds of times over. So consolidating that and getting that message back into the hands of the right partners, we can fix things faster and we can innovate better. You hear a lot of talk about IT transformation and CIOs being more business leaders. How are your customers transforming or are they transforming? I presume everybody's constantly, it's an organic world, but we're constantly transforming but how are your customers transforming and how are you helping them? Yeah, I think every customer's on a different pace. And we have a wide range of customers that have, you know, house, large, private clouds, leveraging VMware and we're helping them transform by VMware, extend it into our data center as an extension of theirs that we call that dedicated eCenter product. Other customers have consumed some of our services and kind of realized the value behind not needing the staff and not needing to build that expertise in-house. And once we get that kind of foothold in place, we look to add services and add other products on top of it for them. So everyone's kind of evolving differently but I think you were a spot on. Everyone is at some point in that journey and just the question is what your next step is. Partner like Rackspace, again, we key on the specialty and for areas where business is complex and infrastructure is complex, the choice to leverage us to do that or do it yourself, it is a very good value we bring to be able to do that for customers. How do you deal with the notion, at least in my sense or perception that you guys will accommodate customers, you're very flexible for customers. If customers want to do actual support acts, if customers want to do why, it's great, let's do why. How do you rationalize that need for customer service, customer flexibility with what you were talking about before, scale? Is that where things like OpenStack might fit? Can you talk about that a little bit? Because what's changed since you guys started in the business is you have these big homogeneous public clouds that can scale at the massive levels, everybody sees that, the enterprise, the big financial services guys, you guys, how are you working through that sort of dissonance, if you will? Yeah. I'm not sure if I get to root of your question entirely, but it was just centered around. So you have, you support basically anything, right? Anything a customer wants to do, right? Well, yes and no actually, in that area there, again, since we're about the fanatical support piece, I believe we can solve almost all of our customer problems with something, not always everything, right? So in the hybrid world, again, sometimes public cloud is great for something, sometimes it's not. Along the lines of even with some given, whether it's a technology or a discipline, we might not support a given one, but we might have an alternative that we talk through. And that's really the collaborative type of a model we have with those customers to try and see. More often than not, our portfolio is strong enough that we can solve it with one of our standards. And if not, we do absolutely always look to a standard. Okay, so you've essentially rationalized in the portfolio and you've got a suite of services that you're offering to the customers. Yeah, you can't support everybody. So Chris, you know, I've got Jan here and we were talking with Brocade about OpenStack. So I need to get your opinion, talk about rationalization. Where do you see FiberChannel fitting into OpenStack? Yeah, it's a great question. I think, in my opinion, the jury's still out on that one. I will tell you that, you know, we've been talking about FiberChannel, why FiberChannel will be a dying product at Rackspace for years now. It is very, it's rock solid for us. And my opinion, as long as the FiberChannel continues to form the way it needs to, we can do to innovate in the areas that we need to, I think it still has legs in OpenStack and even across other areas as well. So, you know, sometimes I believe I'm one of the few that thinks that, but you know, so far it's proven true that as long as it delivers the value and delivers the service that it needs to, I'm a fan. Yeah, no, I appreciate your honesty on that. You know, of course Brocade does more than just the FiberChannel side. They're also working on the Ethernet side. Absolutely. Do you guys partner with them on that or just have kind of strategic roadmap? Most of what my team's done right now is more on the FiberChannel, but it's a natural extension we're talking to them about both, I would say, Ethernet is also outside of Rackspace as well. They're a strong partner there. Okay, we'll have to leave it right there. Thanks very much, Chris, for coming on theCUBE and sharing your perspectives and good luck going forward with all the changes that are happening in your business. All right, everybody, keep it right there. We'll be right back with our next guest. We're live, wall-to-wall coverage, three days here from EMC World 2014. This is theCUBE, right back.