 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of VMworld 2020, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman. This is theCUBE's coverage of VMworld 2020, of course, happening virtually. And there are certain people that we talk to every year at theCUBE and this guest, I believe has been on theCUBE at VMworld more than any others. It's actually not Pat Gelsinger, Eric Herzog. He is the Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Global Storage Channels at IBM. Eric, Mr. Herzog in store, welcome back to theCUBE. Nice to see you. Thank you very much, Stu. IBM always enjoys hanging with you, John and Dave. And again, glad to be here, although not in person this time at VMworld 2020 virtual. Thanks again for having IBM. All right, so, you know, something's the same. You know, others very different. Of course, Eric, you know, IBM, a long, long partner of VMware's, why don't you set up for us a little bit, you know, 2020, the major engagements, you know, what's new with IBM and VMware? So a couple of things. First of all, we have made our spectrum virtualized software, our software defined block storage, work in virtual machines, both in AWS and IBM cloud. So we started with IBM cloud and then earlier this year with AWS. So now we have two different cloud platforms where our spectrum virtualized software sits in a VM at the cloud provider. The other thing we've done, of course, is V7 support. In fact, they've done several Vmugs. And in fact, my session at VMworld is going to talk about both our support for V7, but also what we're doing with containers, CSI, Kubernetes overall, and how we can support that in a virtual VMware environment. And also we're doing with traditional ESX and VMware configurations as well. And of course, out to the cloud, as I just talked about. Yeah, that discussion of hybrid cloud, Eric, is one that we've been hearing from IBM for a long time. And VMware's had that message, but their cloud solutions have really matured. They've got a whole group going deep on cloud native, the Amazon solutions have been something that they've been partnering, making sure that data protection and can span between the traditional data center environment where VMware is so dominant and the public clouds, you're giving a session on some of those hybrid cloud solutions. So, share with us a little bit. Where do the visions completely agree? What's some of the differences between what IBM's doing and maybe what people are hearing from VMware? Well, first of all, our solutions don't always require VMware to be installed. So, for example, if you're doing it in a container environment, for example, with Red Hat OpenShift, that would slightly differ. Not that you can't run Red Hat products inside of a virtual machine, which you can, but in this case, I'm talking Red Hat native. We also, of course, do VMware native and support what VMware has announced with their Kubernetes-based solutions that they've been talking about. Since VMware last year, obviously, when Pat made some big announcements on stage about what they were doing in the container space. So, we've been following that along as well. So, from the map perspective, we have agreement on a virtual machine perspective and, of course, what VMware is doing with the container space, but then also a slightly different one when we're doing Red Hat OpenShift as a native configuration without having a virtual machine involved in that configuration. So, those are both the commonalities and the differences that we're doing with VMware in a hybrid cloud configuration. Yeah, Eric, you and I both have some of those scars for making sure that storage works in a virtual environment. It took us about a decade to get things to really work at the VM level. Containers, it's been about five years. It feels like we've made faster progress to make sure that we can have stateful environments, we can tie up with storage, but give us a little bit, look back as to what we've learned and how should we've made sure that containerized Kubernetes environments work well with storage for customers today. Well, I think there's a couple things. First of all, I think all the storage vendors learn from VMware and then the expansion of virtual environments beyond VMware to other virtual environments as well. So I think all the storage vendors including IBM learn through that process. Okay, when the next thing comes, which of course in this case happens to be containers both in a VMware environment, but in an open environment with a Kubernetes management framework that you need to be able to support it. So for example, we have done several different things. We support persistent volumes in file, block and object store. And we started with that almost three years ago on the block side. Then we added the file side and now the object storage side. We also can backup data that's in those containers, which is an important feature, right? I am sitting there and I've got data now in persistent volume, but I gotta back it up as well. So we've announced support for container-based backup either with Red Hat OpenShift or in a generic Kubernetes environment because we're realistic at IBM. We know that you have to exist in the software infrastructure milieu and that includes VMware and competitors of VMware. It includes Red Hat OpenShift, but also competitors to Red Hat. And we've made sure that we support whatever the end user needs. So if they're going with Red Hat, great. If they're going with a generic container environment, great. If they're gonna use VMware's container solutions, great. And on the virtualization engine's the same thing. We started with VMware, but also have added other virtualization engines. So I think the storage community as a whole and IBM in particular has learned, we need to be ready day one. And like I said, three years ago, we already had persistent volume support for BlockStore, still the dominant storage. And we had that three years ago. So for us, that would be really, I guess two years from what you talked about when containers started to take off. And within two years, we had something going that was working at the end user level. Our sales team could sell our business partners. As you know, many of the business partners are really rallying around containers, whether it be Red Hat or in what I'll call more generic environment as well. They're seeing the force through the trees. I do think when you look at it from an end user perspective though, you're going to see all three. So it's particularly in the global fortune 1,000, you're going to see Red Hat environments, generic Kubernetes environments, VMware environments just like you often see in some instances heterogeneous virtualization environments and you're still going to see bare metal. So I think it's going to vary by application workload and use case. And I think all, I'd say mid-size enterprise up, let's say $5 billion company and up, probably will have at least two, if not all three of those environments container, virtual machine, and bare metal. So we need to make sure that at IBM, we support all those environments to keep those customers happy. Yeah, well, Eric, I think anybody, everybody in the industry knows IBM can span those environments, support through generations and very much knows that everything in IT tends to be additive. You mentioned customers, Eric, you talked to a lot of customers. So bring us inside, give us a couple of examples if you would as, how are they dealing with this transition for years we've been talking about, enabling developers, having them be tied more tightly with what the enterprise is doing. So what are you seeing from some of your customers today? Well, I think the key thing is they'd like to use data reuse. So in this case, think of a backup, a snap or a replica dataset, which is real world data and being able to use that and reuse that. And now the storage guys want to make sure they know who's, if you will, checked it out. We do that with our spectrum copy data management. You also have of course integration with the Ansible framework, which IBM supports in fact will be announcing some additional support for more features in Ansible coming at the end of October. We'll be doing a large launch very heavily on containers, containers in primary storage, containers in hybrid cloud environments, containers in big data and AI environments and containers in the modern data protection and cyber resiliency space as well. So we've talked about some additional support in this case about Ansible as well. So you want to make sure, one of the key things I think if you're a storage guy, if I'm the VP of infrastructure or if I'm the CIO, even if I'm not a storage person, in fact, if you think about it, I'm almost 70 now, I have never, ever, ever, ever met a CIO who used to be a storage guy, ever. Whether I've been in with big companies, I was at EMC, I was at Seagate and Mac Store, I've been at IBM actually twice. I've also done seven startups as you guys know at theCUBE. I have never, ever met a CIO who used to be a storage person, ever in all those years. So what appeals to them is how do I let the dev guys and the test guys use that storage? At the same time, they're smart enough to know that the software guys or the test guys could actually screw up the storage, lose the data, or if they don't lose the data, cost them hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars because they did something wrong and they have to reconfigure all the storage solutions. So you wanna make sure that the CIO is comfortable, that the dev and the test teams can use that storage properly. It's a part of what Ansible's about. You wanna make sure that you've got tight integration. So for example, we announced a container native version of our Spectrum Discover software, which give you comprehensive metadata cataloging and indexing, not only for IBM's scale out file, Spectrum scale, not only for IBM Object Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage, but also for Amazon S3 and also for NetApp filers and also for EMC Iceland. And it's a container native. So you wanna make sure in that case, we have an API, so the AI software guys or the big data software guys can interface with that API to Spectrum Discover, let them do all the work. And we're talking about a piece of software that can traverse billions of objects in two seconds, billions of them. And as ideal to use in solutions that are hundreds of petabytes up into multiple exabytes. So it's a great way that by having that API where the CIO is confident that the software guys can use the API, not mess up the storage, because the storage guys and the data scientists can configure Spectrum Discover and then save it as templates and run an AI workload every Monday and then run a big data workload every Tuesday and then Wednesday, run a different AI workload and Thursday run a different big data. And so once they've set that up, everything is automated and CIOs love automation and they really are sensitive, although they're all software guys. They aren't sensitive to software guys messing up the storage because it could cost them money, right? So that's their concern. We make it easy. Absolutely, Eric. It'd be lovely to say that storage is just invisible. I don't need to think about it, but when something goes wrong, you need those experts to be able to dig in. You spent some time talking about automation, so critically important. How about the management layer? Think back, for years it was, vCenter would be the place that everything can plug in. You could have more generalists using it. The HCI waves were people kind of getting away from being storage specialists. Today, VMware has, of course, vCenter is their main estate, but they have Anzoo on the IBM and Red Hat side. This year you announced the advanced cluster management. What's that management landscape look like? How does the storage get away from managing some of the bits and bytes and just embrace more of that automation that you talked about? So in the case of IBM, we make sure we can support both. We need appeal to the storage nerd, the storage geek, if you will. The same time to more generalist environment, whether it be an infrastructure manager or whether it be some of the software guys. So for example, we support obviously vCenter. We're gonna be supporting all of the elements that are gonna happen in a container environment that VMware is doing. We have hot integration and big time integration with Red Hat's management framework, both with Ansible, but also in the container space as well. We're announcing some things that are coming again at the end of October in the container space about how we interface with the Red Hat management schema. And so you don't always have to have the storage expert manage the storage. You're gonna have the Red Hat administrator or in some cases, the DevOps guys do it. So we're making sure that we can cover both sides of the fence. Some companies, this is just my personal belief, that as containers become commonplace, while the software guys are gonna wanna still control it, there eventually will be a Red Hat slash container admin, just like all the big companies today have VMware admins. They all do, or virtualization admins that cover VMware and VMware's competitors such as Hyper-V to have specialized admins to run that. And you would argue VMware is very easy to use, why aren't the software guys playing with it? Cause guess what? Those VMs are sitting on servers containing both apps and data. And if the software guy comes in to do something and messes it up, so what have the big entities done? They've created basically a virtualization admin layer. I think that over time, either the virtualization admins become virtualization slash container admins, or if it's a big enough for both the states, there'll be container admins at the global Fortune 500 and they'll also be virtualization admins. And then the software guys, the DevOps guys will interface with that. There will always be a level of management framework, which is why we integrate, for example, with vCenter, what we're doing with Red Hat, what we do with generic Kubernetes to make sure that we can integrate there. So we'll make sure that we cover all areas because a number of our customers are very large, but some of our customers very small. In fact, we have a company that's in the software development space for autonomous driving. They have over a hundred petabytes of IBM spectrum scale in a container environment. So that's a small company that's got all containers at the same time. We have a bunch of course global Fortune 1000s where IBM plays exceedingly well, that have our products and they've got some stuff sitting in VMware, some stuff sitting in generic Kubernetes, some stuff sitting in Red Hat OpenJet and some stuff still in bare metal. And in some cases, they don't want their software people to touch it. In other cases, these big accounts, they want their software people empowered. So we're gonna make sure we can support both and both management frameworks. Traditional storage management framework with each one of our products and also management frameworks for virtualization, which we've already been doing and now management frameworks with container. We'll make sure we can cover all three of those bases because that's what the big entities will want. And then in the smaller names, you'll have to see who wins out. I mean, they may still use three in a small company. Really don't know. So you wanna make sure you've got everything covered. It's very easy for us to do this integration because of things we've already historically done, particularly with the virtualization environment. So yes, the interstitches of the integration are different, but we know here's kind of the process to do the interconnectivity between a storage management framework and a generic management framework and originally, of course, vCenter and now doing it for the container world as well. So at least we've learned best practices and now we're just tweaking those best practices in the internet between a container world and a virtualization world. Eric, VMworld is one of the biggest times of the year where we all get together. I know how busy you are going to the show, meeting with customers, meeting with partners, walking the hallways. You're one of the people that traveled more than I did during COVID, you're always at the partner shows and meeting with people. Gives a little insight as to how you're making sure that partners and customers, those conversations are still happening. We understand everything over video can be a little bit challenging, but what do you see in here in 2020? How's everybody doing? Well, so a couple of things. First of all, I already did two partner meetings today, and I have an end user meeting, two end user meetings tomorrow. So what we've done at IBM is make sure we do a couple things. One, shorten to the point, okay? We have automated tools to actually show this drawing, just like the infamous walk up to the white board in a face-to-face meeting, we've got that. We've also now tried to make sure everybody is being overly inundated with WebEx. And by the way, there's already a lot of WebEx anyway. I can think of a meeting I had with Atelko, one of the Fortune 300, and this was actually right before Thanksgiving. I was in their office in San Jose, but they had guys in Texas and guys in the East Coast all on. So we're still over WebEx, but it also was a two and a half hour meeting, actually almost a three hour meeting, and both myself and our Flash CTO went up to the white board, which you could then see over WebEx because they had a camera showing up onto the white board. So I have to take that and use integrated tools. One, but since people are now, I would argue over WebEx. There is a different feel to doing the WebEx than when you're doing it face-to-face. We have to fly somewhere or they have to fly somewhere. We have to even drive somewhere. So in between meetings, if you're gonna do four customer calls, let's do as you know, I travel all over the world. So I was in Sweden actually right before COVID. And in one day, the day after we had a launch, we launched our new Flash System products in February on the 11th. On February 12th, I was still in Stockholm and I had two partner meetings and two end-of-year meetings, but the sales guy was driving me around. So in between the meetings, you'd be in the car for 20 minutes or half an hour. So that's different when you could do WebEx after WebEx after WebEx with basically no break. So you have to be sensitive to that when you're talking to your partners, sensitive to that when you're talking to the customers, sensitive when you're talking to the analysts, such as you guys, sensitive when you're talking to the press and all your various constituents. So we've been doing that at IBM really since the COVID thing got started is coming up with some best practice so we don't overtax the end users and overtax our channel partners. Yeah, Eric, the joke I had on that is we're all following the Bill Belichick model now, no days off, just meeting, meeting, meeting, every day you can stack them up. Right, you used to enjoy those down times in between where you could catch up on a call, do some things. I had to carve out some time to make sure that stack of books that normally I would read in the airports or on flights, everything, to enjoy reading a book every now and again. So, final thing, I guess, Eric, here at VMworld 2020, give us final takeaways that you want your customers to have when it comes to IBM and VMware. So a couple of things, A, we were tightly integrated and have been tightly integrated for what they've been doing in their traditional virtualization environment. As they move to containers, we'll be tightly integrated with them as well, as well as other container platforms, not just from IBM with Red Hat, but again, generic Kubernetes environments with open source container configurations that don't use IBM Red Hat and don't use VMware. So you wanna make sure that we span that. In traditional VMware environments, like with version seven that came out, we make sure we support it. In fact, VMware just announced support for NVMe over Fiber Channel. Well, we've been shipping NVMe over Fiber Channel for just under two years now. It'll be almost two years, well, it will be two years in October. So we're sitting here in September, it's almost been two years since we've been shipping that, but they haven't supported it. So now of course we, and actually as part of our launch, I pretty say something, as part of our launch the last week of October at IBM's TechU, it'll be on October 27th. You can join for free, you don't need to attend TechU, we'll have a free registration page. So just follow ZogginStore or look at my LinkedIn's cause I'll be posting shortly when we have the link, but we'll be talking about things that we're doing around v7 with support for VMware's announcement of NVMe over Fiber Channel, even though we've had it for two years coming next month, but they're announcing support, so we're doing that as well. So all of the sort of checkbox items will continue to do as they push forward in the container world, IBM will be there right with them as well because we know it's a very large world and we need to support everybody. We support VMware, we supported their competitors in the virtualization space cause some customers, in fact, some customers have both, they've got VMware and maybe one other of the virtualization elements. Usually VMware is the dominant of course, but if they've got even a little bit of it, we need to make sure our storage works with it. We're going to do the same thing in the container world. So we will continue to push forward with VMware, it's a tight relationship, not just with IBM storage, but with the server group, with the clearly with the cloud team. So we need to make sure that IBM as a company stays very close to VMware as well as obviously what we're doing with Red Hat and IBM storage makes sure we'll do both. I like to say that IBM storage is a Switzerland of the storage industry. We work with everyone. We work with all these infrastructure players from a software world. And even with our competitors, our spectrum virtualized software that comes on our flash systems range supports over 550 different storage arrays that are not IBM's, delivering enterprise class data services, such as snapshot replication, data rest encryption, migration, all those features, but you can buy the software and use it with our competitors storage arrays. So at IBM, we've made a practice of making sure that we're very inclusive with our software business across the whole company and in storage in particular with things like spectrum virtualized with what we've done with our backup products. Of course, we back up everybody's stuff, not just ours. We're making sure we do the same thing in the virtualization environment, particularly with VMware and where they're going into the container world and what we're doing with our own obviously sister division Red Hat, but even in a generic Kubernetes environment, everyone's not gonna buy Red Hat or VMware. They're people gonna do Kubernetes energy standard, then you use that if you will open source container environment with Kubernetes on top and not use VMware and not use Red Hat. We're gonna make sure if they do it, what I'll call generically, if they use Red Hat, if they use VMware or some combo, we will support all of it. And that's very important for us at VMworld to make sure everyone is aware that while we may own Red Hat, we have a very strong, powerful connection to VMware. I'm gonna continue to do that in the future as well. Eric Herzog, thanks so much for joining us. Always pleasure catching up with you. Thank you very much. We love being with theCUBE. You guys do great work at every show. And one of these days, I'll see you again and we'll have a beer in person. Absolutely, absolutely. So definitely Dave Vellante and John Furrier, send their best. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you as always for watching theCUBE.