 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2017, brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partner. Hey, welcome back everyone. We are live here in Las Vegas for VMworld 2017. We are on the floor, I'm John Furrier with theCUBE with Dave Vellante, our next guest is Juan Vega, Director, Ready Solutions Product Manager for Dell EMC. Welcome to theCUBE. Thank you for my first time, really looking forward to it. Okay, first, what's ready solutions mean? So ready solutions are literally a bunch of services that we apply to infrastructure to help build confidence, convenience, and a better customer experience for folks who are consuming a do-it-yourself, who want to take a do-it-yourself approach to converge systems or SDDS. So I got the button that says nodeorama. What is that? Nodeorama. Well, we're launching a bunch of nodes this year, right? We have a lot of nodes that we're putting out there for a variety of workloads, including vSAN, right? And with vSAN, we're introducing 14G technologies. This show, we just launched it recently, and we're bringing lots of new performance technologies in that 14G space that'll help a bunch with software-defined storage. No, Nodeorama. John likes developer, he thought it was NodeJS or something, he's getting excited. So Juan, I wonder if you could talk to something that we've been addressing all week here on theCUBE. You see in VMware's results a lot of momentum, doesn't look like it's a one-quarter. I mean, three-quarters of growth appears to be some momentum. The AWS deal sort of clarified for customers the cloud strategy, and I think the other piece that we've been talking about is the reality that customers have that they're not able to reform their business and stick it in the cloud. They're really trying to take the cloud model and bring it to their data, and in order to do that, they need simplification. So first of all, do you buy that, and what are you guys doing to facilitate that? I absolutely buy it. I mean, if I look at Dell EMC's capabilities across the spectrum, right, there's a broad variety of services that we can offer a customer to help them adopt that technology, right? We would call it sort of absorbing their tech debt as it were, and we can do that from very basic, do-it-yourself hardware infrastructure, right? All the way up through, you talked to Colin earlier today, we talked about VxRail and VxRack, where we're actually providing sort of lifecycle management for those environments. Already nodes and ready bundles sit between those two. There's a little bit more service, a little bit more confidence, a little bit more convenience, a little faster time to value, right, on that infrastructure, without really moving the customer to an environment where we manage it for them. Okay, and so, why do you need to do that? You know, I thought VMware was so simple, push a button and go, talk about sort of how you're closing that gap. It can be simple, and once you're in the virtualization layer, it absolutely is simple, but there's a relationship between the virtualization layer and the hardware that has to be maintained. So, why is there an HCL, right? Why do we have that? Because there's a known relationship between that software and that hardware that enables that virtualization. We're making that easier and easier for customers all the time. And virtualization does not equate to cloud? Of course. And so, how do you look at cloud, and how do you sort of, I don't want to get into what you define as cloud, but at what point do customers say yes, this is a viable alternative for me to attack my IT labor problem, for me to tick the box with my management, that I'm cutting costs, et cetera. What are those attributes that you are driving toward, that you see customers demanding today? Well, I see that space evolving, right? And the part that we're focusing on, ready nodes, is really focused on that software defined storage component. So, as that piece of the puzzle evolves, right? We're trying to remove complexity in that environment, right? Go back to that ability to confidently present you with a hardware solution that is absolutely adapted for that software environment. Make it faster time to value so that it's showing up preconfigured with services that help you enable that environment more quickly, right? And then, should something need to be done downstream, say a drive fails or whatever, right? We can provide a better support experience by contextualizing that hardware in that environment. So, it's a space for customers who are still very much doing it themselves, very much building their own environment, right? In the software defined storage space. But we're providing a set of services that increase that confidence for them, right? Make it more convenient, give them a better experience. It's interesting, you know, this is our 8th PM world. Dave and I have been here since 2010. It's been a great run. Thank you everyone for watching the queue. We love coming every year. But it's been interesting watching the journey. Software defined data center, the hype of what, five years ago? Maybe four years ago. But now it's reality, NSX is in there, Crown Jewel, crowd native coming over the top. vSAN has been like this rising star. ServerSAN from Wikibon has crushed it on the research side. But I got to ask you, now we're hearing customers deploy new use cases under digital transformation that merge software stacks with hardware stacks. What is the biggest challenge that customers have? Because they want more vSAN. Yes. How are you guys helping customers get more vSAN? And what are some of the key challenges that you guys solve? Well, I think there's a couple things that we're doing. First of all, we're enabling a very broad set of hardware, including cutting edge technologies. They're helping them improve the performance, improve the reliability of their implementations in this space. So today we're looking at six different hardware platforms with about 15 different configurations on the HCL. And we're expanding that this month significantly. All of those can be delivered on the hardware side. All of those can be delivered in a way that they fit seamlessly into a data center environment that's deploying software-defined storage. So I think helping them simplify that is really how we're trying to make this more of a reality. And Dell has always brought strong operationalization to any customer we work with. So I got to ask you on the software side, again, software's eating the world. Wikibon's true private cloud report really validating a lot of the success that vSAN's having. Sure. I mean, all the actions on premise, transforming the cloud operating model, which is to be more agile. What is the key software piece of it? Because now you got DevOps, the cloud native side, saying, hey, infrastructure is code. I want you to run invisible. The ops guy's saying, wait a minute, when you got hardware stacks, you got software stacks, they got to come together. Absolutely. So our open manage enterprise solution is our software connection for helping manage that hardware in the vSAN vCenter environment. And it allows them to actually move all of the controls for updating and managing that system into one pane of glass, which is their vSAN vCenter pane of glass. And so we're really trying to help drive that automation and enable that capability for the do-it-yourself customer. Now if a customer wants to have significantly less tech debt, then we're happy to talk to them about VxRail and VxRack where we start adding more management software capabilities to help drive an even better experience. One more thing, you mentioned tech debt, because I want to get that on the table. Real issue is technology debt, meaning trying to move faster, take some shortcuts, or move the needle too fast. What are some of the technical debts that customers are getting into? And what's good technical debt and what's bad technical debt? Oh, that's a tough question. I think that in terms of bad technical debt, let's start there, right? Anything that is going to be sort of routine spread across lots of different customers within a base that could be offloaded to a service provider who can provide that sort of scale is bad technical debt. So things like driver updates, managing your HCL, paying attention to how to go about replacing a hard drive in a server that's gone down in a node. Those are sort of bad technical debt. You shouldn't be wasting your resources that are focused on your business outcomes on that sort of technical debt. And even at our most basic level, the ready node, we're starting to provide that level of service to the customer. And I think we advance that even more as we get into our rails and racks. In terms of good technical debt, yet to be determined, but I would suspect that a lot of that has to do with developing the code. You can pay back. Right, that you can pay back as I still do. We don't want to hang on too much debt and can't pay it back, you'll be bankrupt. And that's the sort of code that's directly tied to your environment, right? So for example, all of the AI infrastructure that they were building in the keynote today for the pizza company, right? That's a good example of I'm developing code that's intellectual property for my business. That's good technical debt. I'm going to pay that off. Excuse me, I can pet a little bit. Yeah, that you could use to pay off the investments that you've made. So you're a disruptor of sense. I mean, you've got, John talked about the server sand, something we published years ago. And basically, you're disrupting an install base that you guys own, right? Sounds like a story I heard a long time ago when virtualization first came on the scene. Oh, we're going to be running out of servers. That didn't happen. We're selling more servers than we ever have. Well, so yeah, not that you'll stop selling, but you've got this massive install base, and you're essentially, we're appropriate migrating that install base to a new way. I wonder if you could talk about that dynamic and what those customer conversations are like. Well, I think it's important to us to be a trusted advisor to our customers. It's always been Dell's sort of way of doing business, right? We roll up our sleeves and we get to work with you. So as this transition is happening to the industry, I think it's up to us to provide those kind of, feet on the street services that make it easier for customers to absorb and deal with that transition, right? And again, I know I sound like the broken record here, but it's about helping them have confidence that as they move into this transition, they're not having to deal with all the vagaries of mismatched hardware and software and capabilities. It's about being able to get faster time to value because we did some of the basic steps like pre-configuring that system, so it's just ready to go, right? And what about workloads? How do you see those evolving? So one piece is simplification and attacking the IT labor problem with non-differentiated patching and other stuff, the bad technical debt, as you guys were talking about. What about workloads? What are you seeing emerge in terms of the types of workloads that have an affinity to these types of systems? Well, I think, you know, we heard Chad talk earlier about how the network was becoming sort of the bottleneck, right? And I think that we're seeing more and more storage workloads with affinity for storage moving into the cloud space, right, into the converged space as that technology begins to evolve. And we're seeing things like the new NVMe drives in our 14G servers, right? We have 6x the capacity that we had before, which means applications, workloads that have a storage affinity are able to actually start moving into this more, I know you don't want to use the word virtualized, but this is more software defined space, right? All right, bottom line for customers, ready node. You guys are doing some good stuff. These stands hot. Gelsinger said, the world's going to get much faster. Today's the slowest day of your life going forward. Or something along those lines, just implying that it's going to get pretty crazy. Peter Burris, head of research for wikibomb.com, said the whole computer industry's been turned upside down. It's going to be landing on the table and it's going to re-sort itself out. When you deal with customers, how, what's that conversation like? Because they're scrambling to lock down their true private cloud on premise. They see hybrid cloud as that pathway, the multi-cloud. That's their end state, but right now they got to take care of business at home. That's like clean up their own house in IT. What are some of those conversations when this, that kind of disruption, chaos, complexity? Sure. I think everyone's looking for a little bit more of that confidence, right? In the whole relationship with their, with their supply chain. We're doing it. Our customers are doing it. And every time we have that conversation with them, it basically boils down to what can you do for me that is going to make it easier for me to deal with this transition? How can I trust that what I've- So ease of use is a big thing. I'm sorry? Ease of use? Pretty big deal. Not just ease of use, but trust that I'll be supported downstream. So a ready node builds that, for example, into its value proposition. We want to make sure that you understand that downstream, we know what you're using it for, and we're able to help you in that context. And that's a real key example of how I think we help build that trust with our customers. Michael Dell, final question for you, you talked about, final question for you is that Michael Dell was mentioning technology synergies between Dell technologies across the portfolio, including VMware. So the question for you is what are some of the synergies that you guys are getting with VMware? Has that put it to motion? Sure, there are several, actually. We've done a lot of our development work in the VxRail space around management in conjunction with VMware. I think that the evolution of the software defined space is being driven by them, and we're happy to participate in it in every way we can. So I think there's a lot of development and tech support opportunities that we're finding in that relationship. So positive outcomes, you guys are having a good time. Certainly VMware is doing great. Good to see Pat Gelsinger on the up slope in terms of stock prices of over 104. As of yesterday, I don't even check what it was today, but certainly clarity in the community, clarity in the ecosystem, clarity in the product, cloud and IoT edge. I mean, the wave slide is pretty much baked at this point. Yep, and I'm excited to see Dell EMC having a presence across that whole breadth. Yeah, Dave was commenting, it seems like that the new Dell technologies is much more sanity now in the community. It's all sorted out. Looking good, congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. Juan Vega, director, ready solutions with Dell EMC. He's the product manager, he's the product czar. Thanks for spending the time. It's theCUBE coverage live here at VMworld 2017, day two of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We'll be right back with more after this short break.