 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. Welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2019 from Las Vegas at the Sands Expo Center. I'm Lisa Martin with John Furrier. This is day one of two sets of coverage for three days for theCUBE. There are at least 15,000 people here. We just came from a great keynote. Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger, Jeff Clark, Satya Nadella was here. John and I are pleased to welcome to theCUBE. Back to theCUBE, one of our guests. We've got Doug Schmidt, President of Dell Technologies Services. Doug, welcome back. Well, thank you for having me. And you brought a partner in crime. We have Alex Gerardo, Senior Vice President of Dell Technologies Services, Strategic Planning and Technology. Alex, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Happy to be here. So guys, I always love the keynotes. Michael always has, and Michael and team have great energy. A lot of cool announcements. All talking about digital transformation. But Doug, let's start with you. Let's talk about the transformation of Dell Technologies Services. Give us an overview of your organization and what you're doing for Dell Technologies Services. Yeah, well, again, thanks for having us back. I know we're here there last year talking a little bit about Dell Technologies. And wow, what an opening keynote this morning. And following up on that look, services, key component, obviously, helping our customers do their transformation. Our number one priority, it's really simple. It's literally about for and helping the customers, whether it be specifically kind of three areas, the sport, deployment, and their managed services, and helping them not only keep their data center to the edge, running correctly, making sure that help them through their transformations that they're going through, that we talked a lot about this morning. And then what we do is we support our customers really with 60,000 people globally. About half of those are Dell Badge. The others we leverage partners in various countries for. Look, it's about getting up every day, making sure everything runs correctly for them. That's our job. Alex, talk about the strategy for services because one of the highlights on the keynote was Bank of America talking about how where they got to where they are today and then how they go forward. It's not the same. Things are changing. You guys have to change. What's changing in services? What's the strategy because it's a whole new ball game? Yeah, great question. In fact, technology is the essence of our own transformation. In fact, Doug and I spent quite a bit of time talking about a technology roadmap. And really if you open the aperture of what's technology, it's everything from data science to our bots, to our software engineers, and to the AI engineers that we're developing, both in-house as well as partnering with others. That is really the essence of what we're doing in services and you see customers like Bank of America really adopting that because it's helpful in the value that customers get out of our technology. And the data was also important. They mentioned data. How are you guys using data in services? I'm sure you must be data-driven. I mean, the mandate up from high, Michael's like, it's a data-driven world. It's clear as day. Absolutely, data is essential. In fact, if you look at the amount of data that's out there and the growth of the data, it's just phenomenal. But the way I actually like to talk about data is the insights that we get from data. Data is interesting, but the value that you get from data comes from the insights. So we spend a lot of time actually developing models and that's what we use our data science and sort of software engineers again to develop models to generate value from the data. And that values what customers are looking for and what we're focused on. In terms of value, one of the things that was also talked about this morning in the keynote is people and the workforce being massively distributed for any kind of business. 81% of the average worker is outside of a traditional office with over half of these people on one of them working in at least three different places every week. You've got customers that are highly distributed as is your workforce. What can you talk to us, Alex, about the unified workspace that was announced on stage this morning? Fantastic new offering that we have. Obviously you heard from Jeff on stage talking about that. And if you look at that, there's a couple elements that are interesting to me. First, you see all the pieces of Dell technologies coming together to create greater value for the customer. And if you look at the value that's generated there to your point, wherever you are as a customer, you're able to access your specific information, whatever the device. And so if you think about your whole experience, whether it device independent, as well as from a software standpoint, we can offer all in one. How is, sorry, I was gonna, how is services integral to this? Well, that's, yeah. So what that really is about is so, you have workspace one coming from VMware, great, great offer you have in product. And then you have our services, which would be pro-deploy, our pro-support, and in some cases even the managed services coming together with that to provide a wrapper around that. So customers have that end-in experience with unified workspace, getting those four great service offerings together, which really then brings it all together for the customer. So they have to do very little, quite frankly, to make that happen. One of the comments from Satya Nutella was the whole new renaissance of IT is needs infrastructure. And you see the VX rail being bundled in to data centers of service. The demo of the VMware cloud where they just deploy a data center to the edge. I mean, this is just completely game-changing. How is that changing how you guys do the services because it was self-healing. There was a lot of stuff in the dashboard. No one was deployed. It was all being done with software. How is this changing your mix of business, personnel, economics? Great question. We talk about how we're helping customers transform Dell technologies. Well look, services is going through its own transformation as well. And I think that's what you're bringing up. And really there's four pivots around that transformation we see inside of services. We have to do to stay up and make sure we're cutting edge for our customers. The first is around technology. Alex talked a little bit about that. But really what that's about is the telemetry to help our customers data insights. It's not just the data. The second is around our systems that we're putting in place to leverage all that telemetry. You know, we're basically building whole new CRM, bringing everything together. Our field capabilities in terms of systems we're building out as well. So a massive transformation on the infrastructure inside just running this to support really is 150 million install base. Can you share just stats or data on what's the most popular services you're deploying and which ones are trending? Like which ones are kind of people kicking the tires on? Obviously you got the groove swing on some of your key products. What's the hottest services products that you guys have? Well look, our Pro Support Plus is a very hot product for us. It's largely provides end-to-end support for our customer. Provides what we call a technical account manager or service account manager with it. Gives you the insights then to really go help you. So it's not just about break fix anymore. What it's about is proactive, predictive service. And then actually using that to go to the customer and saying, hey, you know what? Here's what we're seeing. Here's how you can improve your environment. Not only prevent issues from happening, but what are we doing to actually improve and carry that environment forward? And our customers love that. Any up and coming trending products, services you see? Obviously I can see Azure's going to probably be some new services there, but what are the hot new techniques? I think seeing the same spot in Pro Manage, which you'll see as carry forward here, and carrying it into the managed services, how do we continue to provide more of that end-to-end? Really what you're seeing is a convergence of deployment support and managed service all really coming together. Our customers really looking for more and more of that kind of one stop shop, but one offer across the board. So that's what we're seeing. But just to add to that, if you look at our Pro Support Suite, we have Support Assist, which is our technology, behind Pro Support, and the insights that we're generating. We have 55 million devices connected now. So you look at the connectivity and the value that customers are getting out of that. It's amazing. 20 terabytes of data per day generated out of those devices. So it's a lot of information coming in. Customers see the value, they connect more, and again, back to your loop that you're talking about the data. Well, the security visibility too. I'm just looking at the data with all those devices now with Windows and all the new multiple vendors. I mean, you got all that data. That's right. But I think it's the insights. You know, we keep talking about that. Those insights are really helping us leverage that for the customer so they can see in front of them. And I think what we always say internally is, look, customers aren't looking for a rear view mirror. They're looking through the windshield. The more we can use that insight to help them see when and where they need to get through for their transformation is what it's all about. And talk to us about how both of you, Doug, we'll start with you. How have customers been sort of symbiotic to the digital transformation of services in terms of knowing we've got to get predictive? How are they helping you to evolve what you're delivering so that ultimately services as part of this technology differentiation and product breadth that Dell Technologies has? Yeah, well, you know, the history of Dell Technologies and really the core of our foundation culturally for all 140,000 of us is listening to the customers. And I think that culture has really allowed us to adapt and stay close to not only what the customers are telling us, using the insights we're getting back, but knowing where the customers want to head. And it really is, it's a one-on-one listening to the customers, listening to where their issues are at, then using this technology and the solutions to solve their problems that they're bringing up. But I got to tell you, there's not a big hammer that just one question, one answer for that. It literally is how are we helping consumers? How are we helping small, medium, business, large? All of them have a variation of what's the same and all of them have a variation of difference as well. Now, let's talk about strategy for a minute. You got, look at the strategy, strategic landscape. How has Dell Technology Services changed with the vendor landscape? Now you've got multiple vendors turning into multiple clouds, multiple clouds with open source software. You've got all kinds of new things emerging. How do you stay on top of it? What's the strategy, what's the long game look like for you guys? Yeah, if I were to summarize, I'll say in a nutshell, it's software. We're investing quite a bit in software, whether that is in our predictive capabilities, but as well as in deployment services and Doug alluded to, ProManage. So, software is a pivotal key component of this. So this is how we are approaching from a services standpoint. Whether you talk support, deploy, or manage services, the umbrella around that is really our capability to do the software component. So that's where we're placing our bets. We think that's where the future is. Whether it's support, assist, or our ProManage offering, it's all the backbone based on software development. And where is, we talk a lot about digital transformation and services, but the people, the people being essential to, we need the technology to do our jobs in any industry. What about skill, up-leveling skills? It's great to have all the technology, but we need to have people to be trained, certified professionals to be able to maximize the value of the services. Doug, go ahead and start. And then Alex, maybe from a strategic perspective, where is that people cultural part of the services? Well, look, it's huge. I don't think it's just for services. I hear our customers talking about it as well. And as Alex just mentioned, that software's driving more and more of it. You know, we use a lot of different acronyms and titles to kind of describe it. Digital transformation, AI, BI. I mean, there's all of this, but it is kind of, I'll summarize and say that digital transformation. And the impact it has on our team members is vast. So look, open communication. Yes, it is changing the way we do business and quite frankly, the world's doing business. The simple tasks are getting more and more automated through these insights and they're going away, making it easier for our customers. Means you're not getting as many break fix calls, you're not getting these transactions. But what we're doing at the same time is we're up-skilling the team, telling them where we need to be in the future, helping them with those skill sets, reset. The interesting thing is our team members are seeing the value of it. Their jobs actually come more enriched because you're doing higher value things for our customers, but there is a transformation they're going on. And Doug, there's some cultural changes as well as we think about how we measure the business. Some of the metrics that we look at, the legacy metrics versus new metrics that they are different now. How we think about people development is different. So I think it's a great question because the actual talent transformation, it's huge. There's short-term impact and long-term impact and if you don't plan that right, obviously you can't execute a strategy. How should your customers start rethinking about how they're leveraging the services because with unified workspace, data center as a service and now multi-cloud, architecture is really important. Where the data sits, using real-time data you mentioned in software and data. So as they think about now looking at not resetting but taking services for their advantage because they look at services, they want to be in the right position. It seems that architectures are more important now, multi-cloud architecture. So more technical people are involved. The roles are changing. What should customers, how should they expect to be thinking about? Yeah, it's another great question. Well look, I'll let Alex follow up as well with his thoughts on this one. But I think this is really about us. The customers have to look as a true partnership. We're really there trying to help them with every single day. We talk about keeping the solutions and the systems running to what they need and what they've wanted. But we can also help by helping their staff free up time through the services we have so they can stay focused on their transformation and provide the value that their teams and customers are looking for. That's really how we see that. So in other words, going to them and saying, hey look, we can take some of these tasks off whether it be the deployment, the unified workspace we talked about was announced today. These are all about not only providing better technology for their team members and their customers, but then leveraging their time then to go spend it on their transformation. That's really it, quite frankly, simply put. Yeah, I would say it depends. Customers want to do a variety of things. So it depends on their business outcomes. So at the end of the day, I would say, if you look at Dell Technologies, we have all their Lego blocks. You tell us what you're trying to achieve from a business standpoint and we have the Lego blocks to make it happen. I think we're in a unique position to be able to deliver that value proposition to customers. So it's not a one size fits all. More data, more workloads. I mean, I've heard the term workload mentioned so many times in all my CUBE interviews. We'll talk about workloads, but now with IoT and Edge, you're going to see a proliferation of more workloads, some small, some massive, and managing that workloads is a huge challenge for organizations. This comes up as the number one issue. How does services play into that? How do you guys make that easier? And I love the operating model simplicity, but when you guys take that realization into services, what do you guys bake out of that? What comes out of that? Yeah, I would say two things. First, the reason why the workloads exist is because it's important for the business. So it's got to be up time, it's got to be 100%. It's got to be up and running. It's got to make sure that that happens. Second, if you look at the workloads, they're actually running critical pieces of the business. So we actually ensure that we are providing additional value beyond actually just running infrastructure, actually giving value on how you should optimize that infrastructure so you can do more or less. Can you give, share an example of a customer? John mentioned BFA was highlighted this morning. Draper was as well. I think some of the trailblazer winners were right before we started. Customer that comes to mind that really demonstrates the value that they're getting from Dell Technologies suite of services. Well, look, I think there's a lot of those. But going back to maybe, we talked about the customers today in the keynote speeches that were happening. But look, there's a lot of small, medium businesses that are, one, trying to stay with and ahead of technologies. The last case is actually farther ahead, right? In their transformation. I think I know of one that I've recently had a conversation with a kind of a doctor's office that had four or five offices in a town here in the US. And they're, look, they're standing ahead of that. They want us to look, we want to buy things that have easy deployment, easy install run. We also need you to come in and help us, tell us how to access and leverage the technology we have better running it easier, staying ahead of that digital transformation. And then providing really their virtual CIO with a technical account manager sitting on pulling all that together. You know, all from the storage, their server, their client products come in together. They don't view it as, you know, the customer's not coming to us and talking to us about individual products. That's not the discussion. What they're saying is we need to purchase this, we know we need the solution, we need to have you guys come and pull it all together. We're looking for our people to take care of the patients, get the information that needs to the government and get paid, that's it. And we need you to help us pull all that together for them, and we're doing that. Dr, my final question for you. Michael Dell always talks about this, either in the hallway, conversations, or on the queue. He says, the best way to create valuable teams is to attract and retain the best talent. How are you guys retaining, attracting and retaining the talent because the workforces are changing, the technology is changing. What are some of the hard problems? Because people love to solve hard problems. What's the pitch for people out there watching that might want to come work in the services group? What's the environment like? How do you attract great people? What kind of problems will they work on? Give a little taste. Well, first of all, you know, you have to love and want to take care of our customers. That's really exciting to me, and I know to the other 60,000 team members, that's what we get up for every day. There's an energy that comes from that. I mean, you're getting up and helping our customers, whether they're hospitals, small, medium businesses, or consumers, really be productive in their lives, whatever it may be. So there's an energy that comes from that. I think a lot of people enjoy doing that. What's more, can't be more exciting than that, right? Second of all, career, just so many aspects to this. You think about digital, future, technology. We have everything from being able to go out in the field and help our customers, to the remote, just there's just so many different opportunities. And then we also have our employee resource groups. So even participating beyond just work, we have the ability to join all of our different resources groups, whether it be pride, or veterans, or whatever they may be. People like and see value to just not coming into work, but being able to take their passions that they have on the outside and bring it in as well. So it's real citizenship opportunities to bring and contribute back. Exactly right, giving back to our communities, very strong, very strong. I know I get a immense amount of pride in the things that I want to contribute to outside of work and seeing and getting empowered by Dell to do those things. So, and then constant learning, constant, constant learning. And I would also hint a bit of competitive differentiation. If you've heard any barking during our interview, speaking of things to do outside of work, we're next to Michael's angel pause, which is near and dear to Michael Dell, so that's the service dogs that are actually here for all of us to get our dog fixes on. So Doug, Alex, thank you so much for explaining to us the momentum, the excitement behind the digital transformation of Dell technology services. Thank you for having us. Our pleasure. Thank you. For John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE live at Dell Technologies World 2019. This is day one of two stats of CUBE coverage. Stick around our next guest, but join us shortly.