 Welcome to EMC World. This is theCUBE, our flagship program. We're going to go out to the events, I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANG. I'm John with Dave Vellante, my co-host for the next three days, SiliconANGL and Wikibon will be on the ground for our fourth consecutive EMC World. And we're excited to bring you all the action on the ground floor. We're right outside the Buzz Center, EMC TV, on the ground floor, looking at an amazing, huge event from EMC as they transform the enterprise and transform their company to a new modern era of computing in the data center, private cloud, and it's been exciting. We're going to have three days of PAC coverage. We had great interviews lined up from all the thought leaders, executives, startups, entrepreneurs, industry analysts, and then of the like, and we're going to hear from them. What their take is on EMC, EMC's ecosystem, their partners, executives, and of course some notable interviews. We have Pat Gelsinger, the CEO of VMware, David Goulden, who's the president of EMC, heir apparent, apparently to Joe Tucci. Some people are saying he'll be on the queue for the second straight year, and of course we're going to have, for the first time on theCUBE, Paul Moritz on Wednesday afternoon here on SiliconANGLE TV, theCUBE. Dave Vellante, Dave, we've been here four years now. It's our fourth year at EMC World, and in our first year we said storage was sexy, and now it's evolved, and the journey to the private cloud, which was their original messaging in 2010, has evolved to big data meets cloud, now you got security, trust, the data center is up for grabs, software-defined networking has set the tone for software-defined everything, or as we've been saying, software-led infrastructure. Dave, what's your thoughts as we kick off EMC World? Well John, this is where it all started. You and I, for our first ever Cube gig together, so it's actually quite a great memory for me, and so this is our fourth year here, as you said, and EMC just keeps getting bigger and bigger and more interesting. When we started this, you know, you basically had EMC and the big message was VMware. VMware has obviously exploded since then, EMC has really super glued itself to VMware and has tried to do a better job than anybody of integrating with VMware. Of course it's got the inside track to doing that, and I think it successfully did that, but, and so both companies have risen in value, and now we've got this new federated model where you have EMC and VMware with Pat Gelsinger in charge and Paul Moritz moving over to the Pivotal Initiative, and you're going to hear a lot about that this week, but the other thing, John, is this is EMC's big show, so all the product groups, this is their big opportunity to meet with customers, to showcase their wares, to make big announcements, and so you're seeing a lot from the existing product groups, like the high end, we're going to have Brian Gallagher on, like the unified division, we're going to have Rich Napolitano on. These are the bread and butter products that drive the cash flow of EMC as well as its services business, and then you've got some new players, John. You've got the software-defined storage group under Amitabh Sravastava, and you've got Extreme I.O., by the way, Amitabh's coming on. You've got Extreme I.O. with Zahid Hussein, who's going to be coming on theCUBE. Each of these new entities is a division within the EMC core group, and they're out showing their wares. I was just in a session, John, with the executives of the Backup and Recovery Division and seeing what they had for division, so every one of EMC's product groups, this is their big show of the year, and we're going to hear a lot from them this week. Dave, one of the things that I get excited about is when you see big players making big moves, it always gets your attention, but I think what's interesting is about EMC, and I've always said this about EMC, is that EMC has evolved from 2010 as storage vendor, storage company, and completely has transformed their business, and I think the messaging we're going to hear today is software-defined storage, which sets the tone for what we've been saying about software-led infrastructure, and EMC is turning into, reminds me of watching IBM, when IBM really started transforming themselves into a massive computer company, EMC is turning into a massive computer player. It's not just storage anymore, it's software, we've heard that in the past, we've heard about applications, and with the recent Pat Gelsinger transition to VMware, and then with VMware spinning out Pivotal with Paul Moritz, who's a tools guy from Microsoft. We originally called it the wind-tail, but that relationship between Pat Gelsinger and Paul Moritz in the old days was Intel and Microsoft. Now, a completely new economy is building on the backs of open source, scale out. You see Amazon making a dent, making a hard run to the enterprise. You're seeing things like OpenStack, you're seeing software, where this is going to change the data center, and we've always said cloud computing is going to be the big utility, we're all going to have meters on the side of our data centers, and this is transformative, and I want to get your take on that, because EMC, as they enter into this next chapter, and we're going to hear about it here at EMC World, Dave, the next chapter is about transformation, so I want to get your thoughts. What is that transformation? Is the data center, you have the cloud, you have consumerization of IT, all the stuff's happening, and I want to get your thoughts on that. Well, I want to answer your question, John, with both a tactical and a strategic view. So, tactically speaking, you are absolutely right. EMC is now a story of diversity. Now, the stock has been very volatile lately, as has VMware. In the last quarter, you saw EMC tell the world that basically they were going to have a back-loaded year. Now, what's happening here, John, is they have a very tough comparison with the first quarter of 2012, so they blew it out in 2012, 2013, little softness. Stock took a little bit of a hit, but then they announced the whole Pivotal initiative. That gave the stock a little boost, and then GE invested in Pivotal, $105 million. That gave the stock a little boost, so you're seeing a little ebb and flow in what frankly is an upmarket that EMC hasn't been able to participate in earnest, but what you're seeing here is a story of diversity. EMC's core storage business grew only 3% last quarter. At the same time, you had the high end of the business grew 10%. So, John, this is the old legacy business that's supposed to be dying. It grew 10%. The IIG business grew 7%, 7%. The RSA business grew double digits and 12%. These are the businesses, John, that used to be the drag on EMC's financials, and now they're propping it up. On the flip side, you've got the unified business that's going through a product transition that's flat to down. The BRS is transforming, so you have a story of diversity. The other thing that you have is greater margin contribution from software because of VMware. So that's driving EMC's gross margins and operating margins up. So that's the tactical piece. Strategically, as I say, John, this is a company in transition to your point. It's a highly diverse portfolio, kind of IBM-like in that regard, much smaller, but nonetheless, on a similar path where they're playing in infrastructure, they're playing in middleware, they're playing in software, they've got application development, a few applications, that's really not their game, but really in services, really driving an ecosystem. And EMC is in a position to create value throughout that ecosystem. Well, look at SiliconAngle.com for the reference point, and tech innovation is always at sight, it's continuing to grow. We're really proud of the progress we've made, but here at the show, we'll be putting out a lot of blog posts, a lot of commentary, we have a full team here. In addition to theCUBE, we have our Studio B, which will be capturing footage, and we'll be checking in with folks all around the floor, from practitioners, CIOs, to other companies in the ecosystem, and of course, go to wikibond.org for all the free research. Again, we have free content, wikibond.org is free research, and it's all free, no paywall. So go there, check it out, but more importantly, we're going to dissect the moves here today from all the players, and we really want to look at this through the lens, Dave, of the competition. EMC is going after, it's not so much other companies about a market space. I want to ask you about the competition, and what you expect to hear from EMC, vis-a-vis the competition, because on one hand, you got little players like Cloudera out there that they're targeting, and on the other side, you got IBM, HP, and NetApp, amongst others, who are out there competing for the same space, software-led infrastructure. What is your take, Dave, on that? So my answer might surprise you a little bit, John. I'm not going to start with NetApp or IBM or HP or Tachi, I'm going to start with Amazon. Amazon has essentially turned the data center into an API, connect through the API, and you get a bevy of data center services. I believe that is driving the storage business and the infrastructure business. We are entering an API economy, and that is something that you're going to hear a lot about indirectly today from EMC, big announcement with software-defined storage. Essentially what they're doing is they're separating the control plane from the data plane. In other words, the parts that control the storage and manage the storage, provision the storage, from the pieces that actually place the data. And so what they're doing by separating that out is they're beginning to look like these hyperscale giants, John, that we've talked about all the time. You've made the point a number of times. If you want to see the future in the enterprise, look at what's happening today within Google and Microsoft, or Google and Facebook and Amazon, certainly Microsoft from the Azure side. That's five years later, you're starting to see the EMCs of the world start to deliver what we call Wikibon software-led infrastructure, essentially allowing you to run their rich functional software on anybody's storage, on anybody's Intel-based servers, or their own stuff. And of course there'll be some added value if you're running it on the EMC full stack. Of course theCUBE is our flagship program. We go out to the events, extract a signal from the noise. We're going to be here for three full days, wall-to-wall coverage. We're going to be broadcasting all day for the next three days. And tweet us your questions. I am at Furrier, F-U-R-R-I-E-R, and Dave is at at D-Volante, D-V-E-L-L-A-N-T-E. Of course at Silicon Angle or at Wikibon. Tweet us your questions, because we are going to unpack what's important to the enterprise, what's important to cloud service providers because of this new architecture is being developed in real time. All the big players are retooling from a platform level all the way up to the top and you're going to see massive moves. We're going to look at that. We're going to talk about APIs into the private cloud to the architectural fidelity of the platforms. And then we're going to want to hear about their answers to some of the tough questions. Like, what are you doing for customer? We want to get the meat on the bone. Not just the sizzle, Dave, we want the steak. And that's our job here at ScytheCubus, extract that signal. And of course, go to SiliconAngle.com and check all the blog posts and go to Wikibon.org for all the data. And I just want to make one more addition to the comments that we were talking about in competition. John, to me, it's going to come down to openness, open source, flexibility. So I'm really interested in talking to the EMC execs about how they define open, how open is it? How open are those APIs? Who can actually get to them? Is Amazon S3 going to be included in that vision? All questions that we're going to get the answer to, John. You know, Dave, I put a smile, that puts a smile on my face because I'll tell you why. Back in the, you know, everyone talks about, oh, inflection points. We haven't seen this kind of inflection point since the mini computer and the PC revolution combined. And we've been saying that as well. So we believe that. So check the box, no problem. We are living in an inflection point where cloud mobile and social and data driven economy is changing how people are building their infrastructure and ultimately servicing their customers. Okay, that being said, Dave, back in the heyday during those other inflection points, the word multi-vendor was a very big conversation. You had to be multi-vendor. You had to support multiple vendors' boxes. Now we're living in an era where the same conversations are happening, except Dave, they're not talking about multi-vendor. They're talking about open. So one of the themes that we're going to extract here at EMC World is what does open mean? Is open the new multi-vendor? I think it is. I think you're going to hear the same kind of conversations around multi-vendor support back in the 80s and 90s. And this modern era is about openness, API support. What APIs can I use? Data fabric separated from the control plane. All these new conversations are going to change the tone. What does open mean? Does that just mean choice? Does that mean lock-in? These are questions that are on everyone's mind. I don't want to be locked in. I want free choice. But Dave, what does open mean? Those are the questions we're going to ask. Yeah, and so I think that's going to be the new defining factor in the infrastructure businesses. Infrastructure is a platform, this notion of an API economy, which many folks are beginning to talk about. And say, we're covering it here. So you're going to see big SDS, we're going to have Pat Gelsinger on, we're going to have Paul Moritz on. Today we're going to have the new CIO of EMC on. We're going to have some Microsoft practitioners within EMC, we've got customers coming on, we've got Tom Roeloff, a big lineup today. Yeah, and also for the folks out there on the SiliconANGLE team that are watching, make sure all the blog posts have the pound EMC world and the title of the blog posts. And if you want to tweet to us, make sure you put the hashtag pound EMC world because we are tracking all the conversations on our proprietary technology. We want to harvest all those technologies. We want your questions, be interactive, feel free to tweet us and comment to us on the feed. We're happy to answer those questions. Dave, anything else you want to share about what you expect here at EMC world? Well as I was saying earlier, it's the opportunity for EMC product groups to share their vision, their technology, their direction and essentially lock in the remaining of the years. They said this is a second half story financially for EMC. So they've really got to line up some customer action and some traction. So I think you're going to hear a lot of new products. You're going to hear a lot of innovation and you're going to hear a lot about this new EMC, this new federation. I'm actually quite excited about that from a business model standpoint. I think it's quite innovative. EMC is becoming one of the smartest companies in the world in terms of acquiring organizations and towards acquiring IP. What's your take on all this, John? Well we have, in the last couple of minutes, I think I'll just share my point of view is that what I'm expecting to hear is I expect EMC to start laying down the crown work and setting the table for their next five to 10 year mission. And that is going to be complete transformation to a storage-centric model to a completely open and software-driven infrastructure. And this is going to be a real big challenge for EMC because EMC traditionally has not had success organically doing that in the company. In the past they had to buy their way with big acquisitions, billion dollar acquisitions to take down big market spaces. So what I'm interested in seeing is that organic transformation. And I will say that since Jeremy Burton's been on board with Pat Gelsinger going back to when Pat was here, Dave, we've had them on theCUBE, you've seen EMC turn up the heat on organic product development. And you're starting to see that with the flash. Yeah, they made some acquisitions, but I think you're going to see them take a much more internal, build it out mode. So I think EMC clearly wants to be more like IBM, less like the old EMC. Here's the difference that I think you'll see. And I think you'll hear a lot about this this week is that partner ecosystem. Obviously IBM talks about partners, but EMC really recognizes that it can't do it alone. Jiu Jitsu always makes the point as a services company, we're not going to compete with our services partners. EMC is going to put a big push on the channel. You're going to hear a lot about the channel, a lot about service provider partnerships. How can EMC help foster an ecosystem that can compete with Amazon? I think you're going to hear a lot about that today. EMC has a partner summit, Joe Tucci and the senior executives, Moretz, Gelsinger are speaking at that partner summit this morning, so they're putting a lot of emphasis on the partners. And I'm actually going to be in there this afternoon. Alex Wilcox and I, gathering intelligence from that partner summit, finding out can EMC foster an ecosystem that can compete effectively with Amazon and keep pace? We're going to have our team on the ground. This is Silicon Angles, The Cube, our flagship program, got some great names. Tom Rollos coming on today with the CIO from EMC. Going to talk about what they're doing. I see EMC, you know, they eat their own dog food. They do a lot of things internally. We want to hear about virtualization. We want to hear about how they're using data, the data-driven enterprise. We see what they have to say. And of course, Zahid Hussein, who's the senior VP and GM of the Flash products division. Flash is core to EMC. And we expect them to have some announcements around that. Again, software defined, everything is what we're hearing. We've been saying it on The Cube. And you know, I'm interested Dave in hearing how they respond to some of the big pressures from the public cloud guys who are vectoring in on the private cloud. You see Amazon, OpenStack, and some of these alternatives. So Cloud Mobile and Social, our editorial mission from day one in 2009 is still mainstream. And we're going to expand on that. I see big data, software-led infrastructure. Again, core sweet spot. So storage is sexy. The storage angle will be here all three days as well as the angle for all the news and breaking analysis here on The Cube. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back with our next guest. We'll be broadcasting all day for three days here on SiliconANGLE.com and keep stay with us for all the analysis and commentary.