 Nice to meet you. And he's a virtualization product specialist. Yeah, we're going to talk about fun stuff. Desktop virtualization, right? Or no, just virtualization in general. Yes, both. Sure. I'm an expert in compelled storage. I'm an expert in gameware, so hangs free game in that room. Oh, OK. So I had just had VDI as a note next to your name. So that's just one of many things. We can talk a little bit about that. If you can start off maybe talking about your day-to-day job, obviously you just talked a little bit about what you focus on. But go into a little bit on your job and inside the company. Yeah, I have a very unique role within Dell Compellent. It's actually probably one of the coolest roles in the company, in my opinion, obviously. Next to Phil Sorens. Yeah. He's got the coolest role, right? Yeah. Never hates to be the boss, right? Oh, I think there was a little bit of a... There are perks to being in charge. I love what Phil said this morning. Sorry to digress about startups. He goes, hey, no, it's actually startups. Less stress, because you've got to make a decision to just make it. Yeah, totally. I don't know about less stress, less politics. Yeah, Phil's a great guy to work for. I've worked for the company for over five years now. So it's been a fun ride. So basically a little bit about my role. So at Dell Compellent, I'm a product specialist. And in our team, we have everybody from Microsoft product specialist to Unix product specialist and obviously virtualization product specialist. I used to do all the hypervisors, Microsoft included, Citrix. But now, since we've grown a little bit bigger, now my focus is VMware. Now my role, what I do is I go back into the lab. I get all the early release, compelling firmwares and all the latest and greatest cool new stuff to play with. I obviously, we're a VMware partner. I get all of their new stuff. I go back into the lab. I play with it. I make sure everything works together. And then what I do is I write papers. A great example is the best practices paper that we can give to customers to say, hey, I've already went down that road. Here's what I found. Or reference architectures. That's the latest thing that I've been working on is VMware reference architecture for VDI. So how many times do you have to go through that process of writing that for the customer? Because obviously you probably miss things the first time. Not because you're not awesome at what you do, but because maybe the customer doesn't understand quite like you mean it or things like that. Yeah, a great example is the best practices document. That's a work in progress. Okay, constantly. I always get feedback and through talking with customers saying, hey, I don't think you're right on this or maybe this needs a little bit tweaking or I didn't understand this. Usually I can figure out what chapters need revisions just by the questions I'm getting from it. So maybe if a lot of questions come in about a particular feature or something, I can maybe reword it, rewrite it. But otherwise I try to get out a new copy of it with every new release of our firmware or VMware. Totally random question. Do you, how do you distribute that? Is it a PDF, the email or using the cloud in some sort of way? It is, it is a PDF. Okay, okay. We do have a knowledge base. We call it Knowledge Center. Right, here you go. Hey everybody, I've got a new version that I revised since yesterday. You can have a private Twitter account. I mean, it would be viable. Usually it's my customer request, but it's available out on our Knowledge Center for people to download freely. Okay. Darren, let me ask you a question. So you're talking about, you work closely with VMware. As a small company, a compelling, VMware has a big company, but it has limited resources, right? So has your relationship with VMware changed going from just a little old, compelling to now big, whale Dell? In terms of getting VMware's attention? It definitely has. So are you getting SDKs sooner, for example? You know, the relationship? More VMware love? Well, it is. We do get a lot more attention now that we're Dell. I mean, like you said, there are limited resources at VMware. And not that we weren't a really great partner with VMware before, but like Phil said in the speech this morning is now we've got more cloud with them. So in the past, where we may not have got the most recent spec on the day it was released, now that we're part of Dell, pretty much if there's a new product coming out, we know about it ahead of time. Whereas, you know, as a partner, compelling, right, you know, we usually didn't get stuff on the first day. I was going to say, well, you weren't even in the first tranche, right? I mean, you know, I mean, it's all the big guys and of course it's EBC because they own VMware. And then it was like, okay, now it's the smaller guys. So that had to make it hard. So how long, let's see. So you've been with Dell now what, four months? Yeah, probably, well, since end of February. Four months, okay. All right, so we've done a study on VMware integration. We've been looking at this for a while. My colleague David Floyer and Stu Miniman up on wikibon.org, you can check it out. Just go to wikibon and search on VMware integration and you'll see a lot of work that we've done looking at proof points, right? And things like VAI and things like VADP. I think they evaluated 38 integration points. So it's a mind boggling list that you guys have to deal with. It's somewhat complex, right? Cause you guys are trying to simplify everything. But so I presume you know that list that I'm talking about, right? It's all kinds of crazy stuff, multi-pathing and backup and change, block tracking and you know, a zillion things that you know, I can't remember. But so do you live that? I mean, is that what you spend time doing? Is making all that stuff happen? Well, and where are you guys at? I do live it, but I'm not in charge of everything, right? We have multiple people on this. Obviously I have a product manager that's in charge of being that champion for when VMware comes up with some new feature set that they want to integrate with us. He brings that to the engineering and is really kind of a lobbyist towards getting that up in the engineering field. Priorities? Yeah, we have a product marketing guy who's just dedicated to VMware and it's in our little clique of people that are dedicated to VMware that takes care of all the marketing and playbooks and everything like that to help with sales guys and everything. So there's a whole team of people that really makes sure that all those integrations happen and in a timely manner. And then the engineering team has to support everything. They got to do Hyper-V, they got to support Citrix. So my question is, you've been with part of Dell now for four months, where are you? Say on a scale of one to 10, one being behind, woefully behind, where you want to be 10 being Nirvana in terms of VMware integration. Visa V, your competition, where are you on that scale and how much impact will be part of Dell allow you to accelerate that and get to that 10? Yeah, you know something, I would say that we were pretty well in the game. We had most of the major integration points covered. I would give the compelling team seven and a half or eight out of 10. There's only just a couple of items that we weren't involved with that aren't either being worked on or already done. Yeah, okay, and so do you feel like Dell can actually learn something from that or was that more a function of the compelling architecture? Well, something, being a smaller company, it's a lot easier and faster to get those type of integrations in with engineering. I don't see that changing with Dell coming in anytime soon. Because they're keeping it a little separate for that reason? Well, you know, the way I see it, it's full steam ahead, right? And we're doing everything that we used to do and we're just trying to deal with the growth at the same time. Really, our toughest problem is getting people in and trained so that they can get working on the new stuff fast enough. I need to, before you go, I'd like to get a card because I want to follow up with you and make sure that our team at Wikibon does its due diligence and evaluates, you know, in full the Dell capabilities before we publish. Yep. All right, and you guys have been busy. Yeah. Lot of change. Haven't been able to get a hold of you and so maybe you can help. Absolutely. I could. He's being live to really get you. Yeah, we're live, you can't renegade him. You can't say no, right? I'll do everything that I can do to help you. So let's talk about desktop virtualization and what's happening there. You're a VMware guy, right? Yep. But we were at Citrix Synergy a couple of weeks ago and just judging from the enthusiasm around, I have to say we were at EMC World last August, September, you were probably there, right? Were you there? Well, I was at all the VMware events, but not Synergy. So Maritz, in his comments around VDI, I think was cautious, right? I was like, okay, we haven't really figured it out. We're getting there. You know, we're still trying to find that momentum. Now that was September of last year. In May, at Synergy, Templeton and the team were different story. VDI, they didn't call it VDI, it's desktop virtualization, going like crazy, mobile, proof points with customers, the real deal. My sense is that Citrix really is the leader there as the VMware sort of VDI person. What's your take on what VMware has to do and you guys to really get adoption of VDI going? Well, you know something, I think that it's, I think that the desktop virtualization is still in its infancy, where server virtualization has really proved itself. I think in my role, I'm on a lot of calls where a lot of customers are looking at it and even doing proof of concepts and seeing if it's something that can work, right? Cause there's a lot of things involved with getting virtualizing company desktops and it's not just the technical issues, but it's also the business issues with it, not to mention the price point, right? Is we all know that virtual desktops are tad bit more expensive than if you were to just buy a physical desktop but they, all the companies right now are I think really evaluating if it's cost effective and if there's gonna be an ROI on it and there's not enough firm data out there to really say, you know, one way or the other, whether or not this is gonna pay off for each company. So I see it as in its infancy, but you know, on the flip side of the coin, you know, everybody is asking about, I see it as everybody's asking about it, but everybody's kind of stepping into it a little bit slowly to make sure that it makes sense in their company's roles. Now, with regards to Citrix, I understand why they're full steam ahead on it. Virtualizing desktops and virtualizing user environments, that Citrix is forte, right? They've been doing that since I was a young kid in IT. So, I mean, Citrix is good at it. Yeah, they're good at it, and it's a big opportunity. So maybe the whole notion of desktop virtualization has to change, maybe the value proposition has to shift from, are we gonna do this to cut costs? Because I'm not sure you're gonna cut costs. Maybe it has to shift from that to access to any device, any data, anywhere. Like the whole naming of desktop virtualization, just. That really bugs you, huh? It does, because if desktop virtualization seems like so 20th century. That's it. Yeah. I mean, it's all, it's a mobile enterprise, a mobile world. I mean, do you think that's a valid premise that that whole, no, we gotta do a bit flip there? What do you think? Yeah, there is, I mean, like you said, desktop does create these visions of a big honking machine sitting on your desk. A big bloated desktop, right? Right, okay. You know, device virtualization or, I mean, some of the things I kind of see too is application virtualization, right? With presentation server, VMware's got their own ways of virtualizing apps to deliver those to people. Maybe, I mean, maybe it's gonna go away from virtualizing the whole desktop because the operating system is really a lot of bloat. It was designed to really abstract that hardware and now that it's a common set of hardware, you don't need that huge operating system anymore. Maybe it's gonna move more towards just virtualizing apps, just the apps that you need. Now, having said that, my rant about desktop virtualization, there are use cases and plenty of them where it makes sense, right? They've been somewhat narrow, call centers, certain financial services, government, where you need a lot of security and we had a Dell customer on several months ago, Brown Shoe, if you know those guys. They weren't a compelling customer, but they were a Dell customer, I think Dell servers. And they had a great desktop virtualization VDI story. So there are those narrow use cases, but I personally think that this tremendous potential here, I think you're right, Darren. I like it, application virtualization. Maybe there are, you know, device virtualization. We need to do a term and we've just coined it. On the queue. All right. Exclusive. No desktop virtualization. But you can keep the same acronym, right? The D, V, if you go device, but you'd have to change it completely if you go A. A, V, right? So you and I beforehand were talking about VDI on iPads. People are accessing the iPads, or DVI on the iPads. Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, you know, something I think that, let's all be honest, most all techies have some sort of a smart device, whether it's a smartphone or some sort of tablet. At least one. At least one, yeah. And I think even 10 years ago, my dream was to be able to administrate my servers from the boat while I'm fishing, right? And I think with mobile technologies and those tablets and mobile devices being so popular, I think that, you know, being able to log into your systems or whatever you, I mean, for the administrators, your people's desktops from remotely or whatever it has to be for you to get your work done. I don't think that you're going to be limited to, you have to have a laptop to get in anymore. But does that mean we all just head out to the lake and fish all day and just take care? That's the dream, is what I have to make you laugh. So with Synergy, Templeton, the CEO of Citrix, who's very good, by the way, extremely dynamic individual, he's like a, he's a good pitchman. He's not Steve Jobs, but a good pitchman. So he's up to in the demos and he had one of his people, a product manager type come on and they were doing a demo, just that, all right? I'm going to administer these systems from a remote location and the gentleman came on stage and said, I just happened to be on a lake in my boat. Well, the irony was the wireless at the Moscone was so bad they couldn't run the demo. So they had to plug in with an ethernet. It's my MacBook Air problem. And so that is a constraint that you have, with that vision. So we talk about all this bandwidth, we still don't have enough bandwidth. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's definitely one area that's going to have to grow before this becomes the mobile marketplace is going to really get into it. So I have a question about it, virtualization specialist expert, server virtualization exploded. But people haven't virtualized their storage in concert. Is that a softball question? No, why? Hey, you know something, the compelling storage is fully virtualized. I know, but why haven't people said, duh, server virtualization breaks storage, right? Storage virtualization is part of the answer and that integration that we were talking about before. Is it just because the compelling was too small and is Del going to change it? Are you guys going to be able to move the needle on that? You know something, I think that being a small company, the messaging just never made it out, right? It's the small voice in a really large room. It was Liam's fault. Oh, I wouldn't blame Liam. Oh yeah, he's calling you out. But I think that with regards to that, there's really, I mean, like I said, the server virtualization, one of the old marketing things that we used to say is, why bother virtualizing your servers if you're not using virtualized storage, right? And that was our whole pitch for years is we virtualize all the blocks and all the spindles. And a lot of customers got it. And the customers you talked to that adopted it said, why would we do anything else, right? And so that says to me, there's proof points out there. I guess the point of all this discussion is proof points out there, you didn't have the juice as compelling. Small company, I mean, they didn't have the marketing resources, it's true. It's not Liam's fault, they just didn't have the resources. And now with Del, you would think that's a huge play for you. It is a big play. So I would think you could move that needle pretty substantially. Well, the thing about storage virtualization is that you really need to be in a virtualizations frame of mind, people that are used to the legacy way of thinking about storage where you're putting spindles together and stuff like that, that's to break into virtualizing those spindles is a technical sell, right? And the way I explain it is when I sit in sales meetings with customers, you can pinpoint that moment where that light bulb comes on and they get what we're doing, right? And once that light bulb comes on and they go, they do that, wow, then you know, you got them, right? Once they realize the power and the flexibility of it, then showing them all those benefits, all those add-on benefits of virtualizing the storage, that is where you convert people from non-believers into believers, right? Is there a way you can make that less of a one-on-one sell? Or can you kind of expand that, not math, market? You can scale that, you have to do it belly-to-belly. You know something? I think that's just something that's gonna have to develop over time, right? It is, you remember how virtualization started off and everybody's like, I'm putting multiple servers on one server, oh wow, that's crazy, what are you talking about? I think as time goes, right, people are gonna kind of see the value of this and as obviously Dell Compellant grows, I think it's more and more people are gonna know about it and it's gonna eventually gain traction, right? So you're saying patience? It is a patience thing, it really is. I can drill down on that, double-click on that a little bit because you do have a lot of expertise in the virtualization and I'm not a technologist or a practitioner, so it's hard for me to sometimes cut through the vendor height, but so take what you were saying about Compellant, fundamentally virtualized architecture, so it should be a better fit with server virtualization. Take a platform like EMC's, just to pick a big company with a lot of market share. With a system that I wouldn't consider a virtualized backend, but would you, but they've done a lot of things like V lawns and virtual ports and to make it look kind of virtual and they've used VMware to kind of mask a lot of that complexity. Why doesn't that approach ultimately get you to the same place that you guys get to talk about the differences? Well, I think one of the fundamental advantages that we had and we still have is that we don't have 20, 30-year-old code or run legacy stuff that we need to keep in there, running the system, right? So, when the company was founded in 2002, it was a grassroots approach, right? They basically took everything that they knew about storage and tried to throw it out. Matter of fact, when new employees started Dell Compellant, the first thing we tell them is, forget everything you know about storage. We do that with analysts when they come on a Wikibon. Seriously, forget all that other stuff you learned at all those crazy companies. Yeah, so scrub your brain. I mean, one of the problems that I think the legacy vendors are gonna have is the fact that they have to retain some sort of backwards compatibility. Whereas, since we're virtualizing everything, we can slip components in and out. So, as the industry changes, if there's a new connectivity protocol next year, we get the best of breed card popping in our controllers and we can use that. Everything's modular in the Compellant system, right? So, all we need to do is just write drivers for the latest and greatest hardware, protocol, disk drive, anything, right? So, that should speed your time to market, should lower your R&D costs, and simplify your integration. Everything, all those things, D, all the above. It's interesting, I mean, I buy it. It's just I'm impressed that the companies with all that code base can do such a good job competing, why do you think that is? Is it because their services are good? It's the safe bet? Well, everything, I think it's a matter of scale, right? Think about EMC, think about how many employees they got, think about how many programmers they got. They can... Proof-forcing. Yeah, essentially. They've got the resources to make things happen. Now, whether or not they could throw everything out and start from scratch too, we've kind of got scene rumblings in the marketplace. Well, you've seen products that have been announced that do just that. So, we'll see if that maybe becomes the future. Because you wonder, is that sustainable? If guys like you were going to come in, we've been talking about how Dell's Danger is starting to peak course about how Dell's Danger is. Why? Because it's coming from a low-margin business into a high-margin business. So, it doesn't need, you don't need 65% gross margins to be happy, right? No, hold up. You're lovin', and Dell's gross margins are like 23% as a company. So, anything north of 23% moves the profit, you know, the operating profit. And so, you're dangerous. So, you would think that that model that we're talking about, the legacy model is not sustainable. And that's probably why EMC's diversifying in so many different areas. And, you know, the Mware and et cetera. But so, I mean, sure, they see the writing on the wall. So, we're watching. Yeah, we'll have to see how it all plays out, right? It's fun, isn't it? I appreciate you having this open-candid conversation. People sometimes get scared coming on theCUBE, talking about the competition. But customers want to know, you know, because they're havin' these conversations. So, we want to bring those conversations to them. You know, something, and I think this all boils down, if you heard Phil talking this morning, or yesterday morning, it all boils down to what we call the culture at Dell Compound is positive-aggressive. And the one thing that every last one of us brings to every sales call is never bash the competition. You know something? EMC, they have got great product lines. When we walk in and sell against them, we merely present our product, show the advantages, and sit back and let the customer make the decision, right? That's a hard thing for people to do. And, you know something, when there's so much fear, uncertainty, and doubt being spread throughout the storage industry, it's really hard to keep the positive tone and say, hey, you know something? I'm gonna say positive about this, never bash the competition. And I think that's gotten us a long way in the industry, is when a sales guy comes into the office and he's a fresh face that doesn't start off on negatives, right? Is that a Minnesota thing? Is that something? I actually think it is. Because that would never happen in the East Coast. Oh, never, never. No, no, no, no. Yeah, Minnesota, everybody says Minnesota nice, and you have to actually go there until you experience it. When you're walking through down the street and people are saying hello to you, complete strangers, you start to see the Minnesota nice. And I think positive, aggressive, is a portion of that. We do that in Texas. Well, yeah, I mean. We do that in Haudy. That's true, we say Haudy. I guess there are storage companies in Texas now, right? That's Del, Del is a storage company, so. Right, absolutely. I had Phil in the cube last year at VMworld, and I was asking about, you know, why Minnesota? And he pointed out, well, remember, Dave, control data, IBM used to have a bunch of facilities, so we have this great talent base, and there's not a ton of competition, you know, like there is in Silicon Valley, in the East Coast, you know, for that talent. There's competition, but it's not as insane, so we can retain talent. Yeah. And he felt like that was a real competitive advantage. I mean, the world, it's a lot of things. If Phil says it, you know, people listen. He's like, you know, V.F. Hutton, guy, you know. So. Well, Darren, we really appreciate you coming by and spending some time with us and being frank and candid and all of that good stuff. We look forward to. Double clicking, good luck with everything, Darren. Double clicking. I like it. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. Well, you're going to be in VMworld this year. Yes, absolutely. Good, we'll be there as well. You know, I'll have the cube there, so come on back. All right, thanks for having me. Thank you. Thank you.