 As we said in our analysis of Dell's future, the transformation of Dell into Dell EMC and now Dell Technologies has been one of the most remarkable stories in the history of the technology industry. After years of successfully integrated EMC and becoming VMware's number one distribution channel, the metamorphosis of Dell culminated in the spinout of VMware from Dell and a massive wealth creation milestone pending of course the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. So where does that leave Dell and what does the future look like for this technology powerhouse? Hello and welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of Dell Technologies Summit 2022. My name is Dave Vellante and I'll be hosting the program today in conjunction with the Dell Tech Summit. We'll hear from four of Dell's senior executives. Tom Sweet is the CFO of Dell Technologies. He's going to share his views of the company's position and opportunities and answer the question, why is Dell a good long-term investment? Then we'll hear from Jeff Boudreau who's the president of Dell's ISG business unit. He's going to talk about the product angle and specifically how Dell is thinking about solving the multicloud challenge. And then Sam Grocott is the senior vice president of marketing, he's going to come in the program and give us the update on Apex which is Dell's as a service offering and a new edge platform called Project Frontier. By the way, it's also cybersecurity awareness month and we're going to see if Sam has any stories there. And finally, for a company that's nearly 40 years old, Dell has some pretty forward-thinking philosophies when it comes to its culture and workforce. We're going to speak with Jen Savidra who's Dell's chief human resource officer about hybrid work and how Dell is thinking about the future of work. We're going to geek out all day and talk multicloud and edge and latency, but first let's talk wallet, Tom Sweet, CFO and one of Dell's key business architects. Welcome back to theCUBE. Dave, it's good to see you and good to be back with you. So thanks for having me, Dave. Yeah, you bet. Tom, it's been a pretty incredible past 18 months, not only the pandemic and all that craziness, but the VMware spin, you had to give up your gross margin binky. That's kidding. And of course the macro environment. I'm so sick of talking about the macro, but putting that aside for a moment, what's really remarkable is that for a company of your size, you've had some success at the top line which I think surprised a lot of people. What are your reflections on the last 18 to 24 months? Well, Dave, it's been an incredible, not only last 18 months, but the whole transformation journey, if you think all the way back, maybe to the LBO and forward from there, but stepping into the last 18 months, it's, I think I remember talking with you and saying, hey, the scenario plane we did at the beginning of this pandemic journey was 30 different scenarios roughly and none of which sort of panned out the way it actually did, which was a pretty incredible growth story as we think about how we help customers, drive workforce productivity, enable their business model during the all remote work environment that was the pandemic created. And a couple of that with the rise then and the infrastructure spin as we got towards the tail end of the pandemic coupled with the spin out of VMware which culminated last November as we've completed that, which unlocked a pathway back to investment grade which then unlocked, quite frankly, shareholder value, capital allocation frameworks. It's really been a remarkable 18, 24 months. It's never dulled at Dell Technologies. Let me put it that way. Well, I was impressed with you, Tom, before the leverage buyout and then what I've seen you guys navigate through is truly amazing. Well, let's talk about the challenging macro. I mean, I've been through a lot of downturns but I've never seen anything quite like this with Fed tightening and you're combating inflation, you got this recession looming, there's a bear market, but you got zero unemployment, you're rising wages, strong dollar, it's very confusing. But IT spending is, you know, it's somewhat softer but it's still not bad. How are you seeing customers behave? How is Dell responding? Yeah, look, if you think about the markets we play in, Dave, and we should start there as a grounding, you know, the total market, the core market that we think about is roughly $750 billion or so. If you think about our core IT services capability, you couple that with some of the growth initiatives that we're driving and the adjacent markets that that brings in, you're roughly talking a $1.4 to $1.5 trillion market opportunity, total addressable market. And so from that perspective, we're extraordinarily bullish on where are we in the journey as we continue to grow and expand? You know, we have, we're number one share in just about every category that we plan but yet when you look at that, you know, number one share in some of these, you know, our highest share position maybe, you know, low 30s and maybe in the high end of storage or at the upper end of 30s or 40% but the opportunity there to continue to expand the core and continue to take share and up perform the market is truly extraordinary. So if you step back and think about that, then you say, okay, what have we seen over the last number of months and quarters? It's been, you know, really great performance through the pandemic as you highlighted. We actually had a really strong first half of the year of our fiscal year 23 with revenue up 12% operating income up 12% for the first half. You know, what we talked about is, if you might recall in our second quarter earnings was the fact that we were starting to see softness. We had seen it in the consumer PC space which is not a big area of focus for us in the sense of our total revenue stream but we started to see commercial PC soften and we were starting to see server demand soften a bit and storage demand was holding quite frankly. And so we gave a framework around guidance for the rest of the year as a result of what we were seeing. You know, the macro environment as you highlighted continues to be challenging. You know, if you look at inflation rates and the efforts by central banks across the globe to with through interest rate rise to press down and constrain growth and push down inflation, you couple that with supply chain challenges that continue principle, particularly in the ISG space. And then you couple that with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis that's created and particularly in Europe. It's a pretty dynamic environment. And, but I'm confident, you know, I'm confident in the longterm but I do think that there is, you know that there's navigation that we're going to have to do over the coming number of quarters who knows quite how long, you know to make sure the business is properly positioned. And, you know, we've got a great portfolio and you're going to talk to some of the team later on as you think your way through some of the solution capabilities we're driving, what we're seeing around technology trends. So the opportunities there, there's some short-term navigation that we're going to need to do just to make sure that we address some of the, you know, some of the environmental things that we're seeing right now. Yeah, and as a global company, of course you're converting local currencies back to appreciated dollars. That's another headwind. But as you say, I mean, that's math and you're navigating it. And again, I've seen a lot of downturns but you know, the best companies not only weather their storm but they invest in ways that allow them to kind of come out the other side stronger. So I want to talk about that longer term opportunity, the relationship between the core, the business growth, you mentioned the TAM. I mean, even as a lower margin business, if you can penetrate that big of a TAM, you could still throw off a lot of cash and you've got other levers to turn in potentially acquisitions and software. But so ultimately, what gives you confidence in Dell's future? How should we think about Dell's future? Yeah, look, I think it comes down to, we are extraordinarily excited about the opportunity over the long-term. Digital transformation continues. I am on numerous customer and CIO calls every week. Customers are continuing to invest in digital transformation and infrastructure to enable their business model. Yes, maybe it's been a slow or pause or maybe they're not going to invest quite at the same rate over the next number of quarters, but over the long-term, the needs are there. You look at what we're doing around the growth opportunities that we see, not only in our core space where we continue to invest but also in the, what we call the strategic adjacencies. Things like 5G and modern telecom infrastructure as the telecom providers across the globe open up their, what have previously been closed ecosystems to open architecture. You think about what we're doing around the edge and the distribution now that we're seeing of compute and storage back to the edge given data, gravity and latency matters. And so we're pretty bullish on the opportunity in front of us. Yes, we will, and we're continuing to invest and you heard Jeff Boudreau talk about that, I think later on in the program. So I'm excited about the opportunities and you look at our cash flow generation capability. We are in normal times, a cash flow generation machine and we'll continue to do so. We've got a negative CCC in terms of, how do we think about efficiency of working capital? And we look at our capital allocation strategy, which has now returned somewhere in near 60% of our free cash flow back to shareholders. And so there's lots of reasons to think about why this, we are a great sort of, I think value creation opportunity and over the long-term that the long-term trends are with us and I expect them to continue to be so. Yeah, and you guys, you do what you say you're gonna do. I mean, I said in my other piece that I did recently, I think you guys put $46 billion on the balance sheet in terms of debt that's down to, I think 16 billion in the core, which that's quite remarkable and that gives you some other opportunities. Give us your closing thoughts. I mean, you kind of just addressed why Dell is a good long-term player, but I'll give you an opportunity to bring us home. Hey, Dave, yeah, look, I just think if you look at the market opportunity, the size and scale of Dell and how we think about the competitive advantages that we have, we can, if you look at, say we're a $100 billion revenue company which we were last year as we reported, roughly 60, 65 billion of that in the client and PC space, roughly 35 to 40 billion in the ISG or infrastructure space, those markets are gonna continue. The opportunity to grow, share, grow at a premium to the market, drive cash flow, drive share gain is clearly there. You couple that with what we think the opportunity is in these adjacent markets, whether it's telecom, the Edge, what we're thinking about on data services, data management, and you put that together with the long-term trends around data creation and digital transformation. We are extraordinarily well positioned. We have the largest direct selling organization in the technology space. We have the largest supply chain, our services footprint, well positioned in my mind to take advantage of the opportunities as we move forward. Well, Tom, really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. Good to see you again. Nice seeing you. Thanks, Dave. All right, you're watching theCUBE's exclusive behind the scenes coverage of Dell Technology Summit 2022. In a moment, I'll be back with Jeff Boudreau. He's the president of Dell's ISG, Infrastructure Solutions Group. He's responsible for all the important enterprise business at Dell and we're excited to get his thoughts. Keep it right there.