 Live from Berlin, Germany. It's theCUBE, covering NetApp Insight 2017. Brought to you by NetApp. Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of NetApp Insight here in Berlin, Germany. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Peter Burris. We are joined by Alfred Mannhart. He is the senior director, channel, and system integrators, EMEA, for NetApp, and Lars Goebel, who is the head of strategy and innovation for DARS. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for the invitation. So, Alfred, before the cameras were rolling, we were talking a little bit about key partnerships and why they are so critical to helping NetApp manage the data and help it flow freely. Can you tell our viewers a little bit more about the partnerships aspect? So, of course, partnering with NetApp is a base of our strategy. It's not just an initiative, so partnering is key for us. And what we currently see is that the partner landscape has to change. The existing partner, that what we are trying to help them to transform to the digital world, change the world with data on the one side, and on the other side, we need additional new partner that make the complex customer-oriented offering become reality. And this is, for example, probably DARS does anyhow, that they build up these kind of multiple partnerships to offer the customer-related offering and solution for the end customers. So, tell us how you fit in here, Lars. I mean, as this importance of partnerships. So, we are in a situation that IT is getting more and more complex. And we also get in the position that the understanding is now clear that not the company can internally are the best at every part. So, for example, global innovation index makes the analysis with the outcome that everywhere where partnerships exist, the innovation is much higher. And today we talk over new business model, we talk over innovation, scalability, flexibility. And for these topics and also for the new size of environments and also of the challenges the customers have, they need the best for every part of the solution. And we as DARS, as a full IT service provider, try to bring that together. So, we offer from co-location housing over private cloud hosting up to a public cloud in hybrid cloud scenarios, complete bandwidth. So, we bring together Amazon and web service and Microsoft Azure to realize one solution for the customer. So, every large enterprise is going to have multiple relationships like the one that they have with you. And while you are helping to bring Amazon and Azure and others under the DARS umbrella of services, there is going to have to be something that connects them a little bit more deeply, right? It's probably going to be data. So, tell us a little bit about that underlying fabric that's going to be required to ensure that data can be rendered in all of these different environments and sourced from all of these different environments according to the needs of business. What do you think? What will NetApps role in that vein? That's an interesting one. I think the world from a partnership perspective would even get more complex. Instead of making everything at the single one initial shot, more tactical, it's more outcome based, longer term based. So, if you're not thinking that way, what should be my desired outcome of what my world should look like in a year, in two years from now, you probably choose the wrong partner from the beginning. So, this kind of being relevant and be prepared for the future for all the challenges that are coming up is very, very important. And data is a short-term issue and of course you have to consider what you want to do with data long-term. That is, it's a challenge to balance out the short-term benefits, whether it's a long-term objective you have. And this makes the world more complex. So, what do you look for in a partner? As you said, you could realize too late you chose the wrong partner from the beginning, but what are sort of the key characteristics and attributes that you want? Okay, from our perspective, we do two things. On the one side, we concentrate on the existing partners and support them on their way to the new world. Not all of them will make it. And on the other side, we have an acquisition program in place that we address the partner that are needed for the future and also expand the ecosystem with partners which are probably we are not even aware of. Talking about COLO partners, Alliance partners, Cloud partners, we currently have not on our portfolio. So, it's both. Driving the existing channel ecosystem to the digital world and acquiring partner that are needed for the future. Great, well Alfred Lars, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been great having you. Thank you very much for inviting us. I'm Rebecca Knight for Peter Burris. We will have more from NetApp Insight just after this.