 Live from Las Vegas, Nevada, it's The Cube, covering EMC World 2015. Brought to you by EMC, Brocade, and VCE. Okay, welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas. This is The Cube at EMC World 2015. This is our flagship program. We go out to the events and extract the signal noise. I'm John Furrier, my co-host Dave Vellante, our next guest is CJ DeSise, the president of EMC's Emerging Technology. Welcome back to The Cube. Thank you. You have all the action in your group. You have all the emerging tools and platforms, and you have a clean sheet of paper if you will. I'm not saying it's a clean sheet of paper, but from an EMC perspective, it's pretty much opportunity to cobble together stuff in the back technology shed and bring some stuff to the market, cloud, and a lot of open source stuff, big data. These are the cool things out there right now. So what's on your mind? How are you viewing the opportunity, and how are you organizing your team? Yeah, so first of all, I would tell you, thanks, it's always great to be here. I would say that we are definitely not opportunity constrained. So our customers are going through a massive transformation, and what we define the mission of Emerging Technologies Division is to enable customers as they move from platform two to two and a half to platform three journey, okay? And enable them, help them with the right infrastructure. So the focus of Emerging Technologies Division is we want to make sure that we provide infrastructure products which are scale out. So we have scale out file, as you know, Isilon, scale out object, which is ECS, and scale out block, which is scale IO. We are the only company that can provide all three protocols support with industry class, enterprise class products. We are also focused on stateful and stateless applications as customers build clouds in this mobile, big data world. We want to make sure that we have the right infrastructure and work with our ecosystem partners to do that. Third is open source is a big deal. As you know, we announced project Copperhead today, and Copperhead, you know, it's a open source version of Viper Controller, or I would like to say Viper Controller is a commercial version of Project Copperhead. So this will be available on GitHub next month and customers can download it for free and hopefully they contribute and our partners contribute to it. And it is a truly historic moment for EMC to open source the first real industrial scale product at this scale. So what was it like inside of EMC? Share the internal machinery. Was it no resistance, full, no problem, changing the way we do things? Because the first time we heard John and Martin, EMC selected, try things for the first time, was it, what was it, what was some of the? Yeah, that's why I said historic moment. I mean, this is not something we are used to. But you know, if you look at the new world in platform three, we were talking about big data earlier with you guys, and most of those big data versions are available as open source versions so you can leverage community. And this was a change for EMC. You know, our team was very supportive but cross-functionally working with legal, our information technology departments, pricing, and others, because most people think open source is free. And yes, it is true that you can have an open source version as a free version, but you still, for commercial support, maintenance, and all of that, yeah, there is cost involved and you have to buy that. And I was talking to a large bank and they told me, yes, CJ Open Source, we understand it's a development model so you can leverage community, but we are not going to put anything on our production environment unless it's supported because otherwise we won't clear the audit. So there is a lot of education to be done both internally and externally, but super excited. And second big announcement, as you know, is Scale.io, which is our software defined storage product, is available for free download by end of this month. No time bound, no capacity bound, just download it because again, developers rule the world. They want to build these clouds and if they want to access Scale.io, which is best in class product, they should. I know Jay's got a question, but I want to comment. Jonathan Martin commented that the DevOps kind of experiment first day was sold out. And I think that speaks to EMC's opportunity for the potential energy around the community guys. And EMC not viewed as having a big community active. The EMware is different. I mean, they're really rapid community because they've been developing software, but now you guys are moving on. It's a huge opportunity. Do you see that as well and you investing in that? So EMC code is part of my team, which is the one that sponsored the event on Sunday. And we had many new age companies or startups and you had LinkedIn and Puppet Labs and many others, Pivotal, and they were there to speak. And yes, it was a sold out event. We were very surprised. There was no agenda in that event. It was just more sharing. And EMC code has gotten phenomenal traction through the DevOps community. And we want to make sure that that community can download something like Viper Controller or Scale.io or in the future ECS so that they can build the cloud. So that's the angle we are going with an emerging technologies division. And then the last part- So you're going to double down on that? Yeah, we are doubling down. Absolutely. That's a great proof point. You had another point. And then DSST is the other product we have besides ISL on ECS and Scale.io. Yeah, I want to talk about all that. We have enough time. I want to get back to Copperhead. So does it change at all the licensing model for Viper? Can you talk about that? Right. So if you want to download Copperhead and use it and contribute to it, that's great. If you want EMC to support it, then the licensing model is through Viper Controller. So that's the mechanics of if you want Viper Controller in production supported by EMC, that's Viper Controller. But both products, they will make the mistake. Have same features, same leverage points and helping support third-party vendors and all of that. But before today, I would, what? License Viper Controller and then pay a maintenance fee? Correct. Okay. So sort of standard upfront and then pay whatever, 15, 18% maintenance fee. And now, different pricing model. I'm paying for a support fee. Is that right? Initially, we are going with the same pricing model on controller. And as we learn from it, we'll figure out if we need to change that model. Okay, so what I'm buying for the license is the support. And then the maintenance is bundled in or? It's license plus maintenance, the usual. License plus maintenance. So it's really no change in that. No change on the controller side. Just we want, one of the things, one of the things that we heard from customers is, hey, controller can manage single pane of glass, other storage products as well from other vendors, but then really MC lock us in. And can you make sure that this is truly open? So that was the whole idea behind Copperhead. So, and then the other question I had was on scale IO. When I look at what VMware is doing with storage infrastructure and vSAN and Evo Rail and Evo Rack and I look at scale IO, I get really excited about scale IO. I have to say. That's great. Because it's not just for VMware or anything. It's in the cost structure looks really competitive. I wonder if you could talk about that. I mean, I know it's part of the Federation, it's all in the family, but it's your product, it's your baby. So talk about sort of the where that fits in the marketplace. So I think we are very clear. I mean, I will tell you that customers, you know, EMC Federation story, we have always been about choice. And like we always say, we would rather have an overlap than a gap. Right, sure. That's clear. vSAN is a great product which is integrated with vSphere. And when you want to leverage it in a predominantly VMware environment, of course go for it, right? The scale IO advantage, and you know, very proud of what the team has done. It supports bare metal. It supports, you know, multi hypervisor, whether you're running KVM Hyper-V or whether VMware. And the design point around scale IO has always been performance and being ability to scale from minimum three nodes to thousands of nodes and the performance scales linearly. So where I'm going with this is, Dave, the biggest advantage we find is I am a service provider or I'm building a public cloud and I want to block or persistent data for my SQL or no SQL types of databases. They're like, scale IO is a no-brainer because we may be starting with Docker initially. Maybe we use VMware, maybe we use Hyper-V. Who knows, but I want to make sure that also it runs on commodity. I need to open stack, right? So you have service providers, large telcos, large financial services, for tier two types of application, it's a no-brainer. And it's a very resilient product. We are announcing, you know, in the second half of this year, very good capabilities supporting IPv6 so that, you know, this large service providers can leverage scale IO, recover point integration, so for disaster recovery, and also doing a lot of things around non-disruptive upgrade. And when I say specifically is, if a server goes down, you don't want to spend too much time because it's a DAS model in rebuilding the data fabric, so. Right, right. We think it's the future of storage, of block storage, and the economics are extremely compelling, so we're excited about that as you probably know. I want to talk about DSSD and the limited time we have remaining. We're also super excited about DSSD. We've coined a new term, David Fleury coined it, I don't know if you saw it, fame, flash as memory extension. And this is just really, really exciting stuff. Give us the update on DSSD, help us understand where it fits. Obviously, super high performance, low latency. Yeah. So the way I look at, you know, DSSD is, first of all, server attached. Most people say server attached, so they're like, oh, this must not be shared storage. And I have to explain to them a few times, is server attached and shared storage. So they're like, wow, so you are now eliminating all the fiber channel overhead, other network overhead that might be associated with it. So that's number one. Number two, because it's server attached, you want the latency game, right? Because it's so close to the CPU complex, you don't have to worry about the latency and the latencies could be in microseconds. Now, it supports block interfaces, it supports HDFS, so now for a very high performance application requirement, whether you are doing real-time fraud detection, facial recognition in video surveillance mode, where you want to just, like I think Paul Murray said it best this morning, you want to catch and act, right? And affect the outcome. Yeah, and affect the outcome. So that kind of real-time needs is what DSSD can deliver. I'm excited to say that we will be in directed availability of that product called D5, this quarter. And then the question I get asked is, so when are you going to release the product? Dave, you have seen the movie I did with Extreme IO. We are going to go in directed availability. Once we feel we are ready, customer feedback is good, then only we'll GA the product. So, same path, same path, same path. So we are going to this quarter and we have unprecedented interest. Even I'll tell you, my DSSD team is here and they are maxed out. Like, we could not take any more customer meetings. There were so many customers interested in DSSD. And no change required in the application, is that right? That's the secret sauce that you guys have. Because we were always super excited about Fusion IO, the whole atomic rights thing, we geeked out on that stuff, but the problem was it had required you to rewrite the application. No, standard block interfaces as long as you support. That's game-changing, you know, we think. So that's awesome, we can't wait to see more of that. I'm proud of the Extreme IO team and this takes the whole flash performance and eliminates system overhead to the next level. So, growing portfolio, that's awesome. The two pieces, Scale IO and DSSD, Joe called out as being, I guess, a creative next year. The balance of your portfolio. People think emerging technology division, they may think, oh, not that big, not that profitable, but you got Icelon and very strong pieces. And for two seconds on Icelon, it's been great. I mean, Icelon is doing great. We just released HD 400. I mean, this is six terabyte drives and it can scale up to multiple petabytes. And the, I think I want to say there's 600 customers now for analytics use Icelon. The momentum is unbelievable on Icelon. I'm very proud of the team, double-digit growth, doing really well. Yeah, two billion dollar acquisition, I saw it, I said, no brainer. This is going to be a home run as it has been. Well, we got to wrap the final question. I'll give you the last word. There's always an engine of innovation in every group. You got a lot coming together. Great opportunity I think with the community you have proven, it's fantastic. So I'm super excited to watch that grow. But what's the lever internally? What's that core engine within your group that's going to be the centerpiece of the innovation? So I will tell you, we acquired cloud scaling last year. They bring open stack expertise. Scale Io brings software defined. We had organic innovation with ECS, which is industrial class, object storage. We have 1.2 release coming out very, very soon. It's in beta right now. And so in a combination of organic and inorganic innovation and teams working together on this mission to have scale out architecture, leverage next generation flash, and make sure that it's a software defined portfolio that can run on commodity. Very simple. I walk in, that's the message. It's not your father's EMC. We are open sourcing things where it makes sense. Free and frictionless software download. And the cloud stuff's getting a lot of traction on the crowd chats and the engagement. That's a lot of interest in the cloud. You seeing the same thing on your end? Yeah, absolutely. That customers want to build the clouds. And I think I'm getting the signal that we're out of time to get to the engine. You're not getting it. John's getting it. We'll corner you later tonight, pin you down. CJ, thanks for coming on theCUBE. Great to have you on and it was super exciting for your opportunity and great to get your insight, spending time with us. Awesome. This is theCUBE. We'll be right back into this short break. More tech athletes here bringing the signal to noise. We'll be right back after this short break.