 Live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high-tech coverage, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone. LiveCube coverage here in San Francisco, California at Moscone North, we're in the lobby for VMworld 2019. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Our 10 years covering VMworld, it's been exciting Dave and we've watched all the changes and our next guest is going to illuminate all the benefits at the top of the stack, as I call it, the end user experience. Shankar Iyer, who's the SVP in general manager, the end user computing group in VMware. What that means is he takes care of all the stuff that virtualization creates those efficiencies. I think what Palmer used to call it, end user computing, still, they still had that name back then, if I remember correctly. Yeah, it's, you know, the name is stuck because it sort of encompasses all the technologies that end users use, right? As digital interfaces, so that's why it's end user computing. It's any digital interface that anybody at work uses. Now the interesting thing is people don't work in an office anymore and the interface is no longer just a laptop. Well I want to get into some specific questions around the work environment, because whether you're working at a cafe or at home, there's all kinds of security issues, also user experiences, collaboration software, but let's first get the news out of the way, digital workspace news, what's going on at the show? What are you guys announcing? Yeah, so before we get into the news, let me frame it up a little bit, right? Because when you think about organizations today, especially with the changing demographics, where they're going in terms of new devices, the mobility phenomenon, right? The transformation they're going through in terms of just their own cloud and apps and so on, right? Every one of those things affects employees, right? And at the end of the day, you know, what organizations want is for the employees to have a great experience, all the way as we call it from hire to retire. Now to do that, you know, you need a platform because I can't just give you a pretty app running on your laptop and say, great, that's the end of the employee experience, right? It's fundamentally transforming the whole environment, that's why it still retains its term and uses computing. And to do that, you have to hit at least three facets, right? One is, of course, how do you deliver a great experience to the employee where they can get any app, any device, anywhere, any form, any way? That's one aspect of it. The second aspect of it is, from an IT standpoint, I've got to manage all this complexity, right? And it's only growing, it's not shrinking with all the heterogeneity. So there's a management angle of it. And then the third angle of it is, you know, security, as you pointed out, right? Security's so important. In fact, what users want is they don't want any security-driven compromises. What is an example of a security-driven compromise that I have to go through three passwords because you simply don't trust me? Heck, figure it out is what the users say to IT, especially the millennials, right? So you've got to address that. So the platform that we have, Workspace One, actually addresses all three. So we have innovations today and news in all three areas, right? So as an example, employee experience is something we've been driving with enterprises and corporations for at least two years now. We've upped the ante. We've now introduced a virtual assistant that employee can use either through voice or text to essentially ask questions. Hey, how do I get into Wi-Fi? What's my employee directory? You know, who do I go to for this and that, right? As the employee on boards the organization. Those are examples a virtual assistant can do it. So we release the virtual assistant. So that's a big piece of news. In the employee experience area, another big piece of news is we are introducing a tech preview of what we call digital employee experience management, which means IT now has a user experience score that they can look at and say, hey, Dave, getting a great experience. You know, it's poor and I can dive right in. I can find out the root cause. I can fix the issue and I can do that automatically through the platform. So new KPIs can come out of that, right? In terms of serviceability. Absolutely. And I think, you know, I've talked to many CIOs and we, you know, we drive Workspace One and Dave for a while sort of told me, hey, this is all good, but I don't know how I'm doing. How am I doing with respect to, you know, your best, best customer? Am I ahead and behind and far behind? So this really helps. Sure, let me ask the question because that's a good point. I want to, because this gets down to the heart of the issue. What is the top request that you're getting from your customers or top two or three features that can, the pattern that can send you and comes back from your customer base when it comes to end user computing the experience? I think it spans all three things, right? So the first thing is they're saying, listen, I want to be able to deliver a great employee experience. So, you know, help me do that and help me measure and make sure I know what journey I'm in. So that's one, right? Second is I've got this heterogeneity. I've got this complexity. I've got, you know, iOS phones. I've got Android tablets. I've got a, you know, a Dell laptop. I've got a MacBook. I've got, you know, a rugged device. I've got some workspace IoT devices like printers and et cetera, et cetera. I've got this heterogeneity. Just help me manage this complexity in a sort of a unified, seamless, uniform way, right? And third is help me secure my enterprise. So there's a whole model emerging called Zero Trust where in the old world, what you would do is you would just build a huge wall around the enterprise, right? A perimeter and say, I'm inside the wall. I need to be domain joined on that inside the firewall and therefore I'm good. I mean, you got to throw that out of the window anymore. Because- It doesn't exist in your model because if I'm a millennial or a worker and I'm working at home, that means every single IP device on my network is potentially a compromise point. Correct, so you have to start with that device never ought to be trusted and every network is hostile. Right, if you start out with that trimise, then you build trust over time, right? And how do you build trust? You first say, you leverage user identity. You say, okay, Dave's who he is, right? And so that becomes an identity. You say this device is trusted or partially trusted. So one of the things we're announcing as part of innovations today is what we call Workspace Risk Analytics. So which means we're able to provide a risk score, right, for that device. And we can say, hey, this device has a risk on a score of one to 10 of eight, which means I can mostly trust it. Maybe I don't trust the sensitive apps. So therefore I block access to the most sensitive apps, so you use a combination of different things. You use things like NSX micro segmentation to your point about how we build in the VMware stack. The carbon black acquisition is phenomenal because it gives us threat intelligence. So collectively we're able to sort of implement the Zero Trust model, right? So those are the three main topics, right? Is employee experience, unified management and Zero Trust security are really, really important. I want to ask you about, I mean, your tenure at VMware coincided with the AirWatch acquisition. And prior to that event, VMware struggled in this space. Citrix dominated your pre-year old, your former company, and we were kind of fumbling around with it. Then AirWatch, now AirWatch, if I recall, correct me if I'm wrong, was not like the number one player. Just like people are saying carbon black's not the number one player right now. And then you get into the VMware flywheel effect where Sanjay Poonan came in and was great leader. But I wonder if you could sort of describe the ascendancy of the end user computing business at VMware. And I'm curious, you mentioned carbon black and you kind of replicate that with our endpoint cloud security piece. There's obviously a security use case so you clearly just described it. But take us back a little bit. That's a great, great, great question. So actually I joined right when literally maybe a month before the AirWatch acquisition, right? And so Sanjay and I and the rest of the team sort of worked this. We said, hey listen, AirWatch is a phenomenal sort of mobile management and security player. We had a very good product in Horizon, VDI but it was a little bit isolated and there were others like Citrix that have sort of moved ahead in that space. So the first thing we did is we had three assets actually. The third asset was we had a federated identity asset that we had purchased but not leveraged. So we said, you know what? The identity really has to get coupled with the desktop world and the mobile world. So we actually took these three piece parts and started integrating it. As we started integrating it, we said, you know this actually forms a very interesting workspace and we said it's a digital workspace. So we sort of coined that term and started to really tie together the experiences a user would have whether they were in a mobile device, a physical desktop or a virtual desktop, right? And made that seamless. So that's when the Workspace One app was born and this was probably around the 2015 timeframe. So we started releasing it and then we started stitching together basically all the backend integrations, right? So out of that was born a workspace and so in 2016 when it's a momentum in the workspace, our desktop business came back because now it had, we've done a lot of work in the desktop business as well. We made it very competitive with Citrix. We bought app volumes, we integrated that, we made it actually the best VDI solution in the market. So we've got tremendous traction by itself in the horizon space. And then integrating at Workspace, people said, you know what? I need to get to that workspace and why am I dealing with Citrix? This horizon solution within Workspace, more than solves my problem, in fact, it's better in certain areas. So that sort of got momentum going around that. So we really built that workspace momentum and that was, I would say, till about 2016 or so. And then we saw these three things coming up. One is, hey, employee experience matters. We really started pouring effort into the employee experience from day one, day two and beyond. And then recently, including this show, we've added sort of day zero and then the off-boarding piece as well. So employee experience became sort of the lightning rod for why somebody would adopt this Workspace One platform, which we had built by then, right? And then we added on this ability to do modern management, especially on Windows and Mac, which was really starting to take off last year, completely rounded out that portfolio and handset capability. And then we added now the zero trust model, which is now sort of bolstered by the acquisition of Carbon Black. So you can see this, there's a set of cascading, thoughtful moves, but we did it in a way where it was really, truly integrated. So as we come out with Carbon Black, now one of the most interesting things is right when Carbon Black comes into the fold, we've already done the integration. We're actually going to show it in my keynote right after this, right? We're actually showing the integration between Workspace One intelligence and Carbon Black. So there you have it. You already have an asset that's completely integrated. So the risk score is interesting to me as well. So as endpoint security becomes much, much more important. We know phishing is a big way that people get, you know, give up credentials. Does any of this seep into machines and IoT and edge? Yeah, fabulous question. I wonder if you could comment on that. No, absolutely. I think, listen, we, if you think about risk scores, and if you think about risks at large in devices, they've been largely on Windows devices. And not to blame it on Windows. I think they've, you know, Microsoft has done a fabulous job of sort of, you know, progressing Windows, but you know, by far it's the most used operating system in the enterprise, right? But mobile's getting used. They're, you know, it's starting to make, you know, a huge, it's starting to take a large part of the real estate of the enterprise. So I think we have a unique opportunity now through the data we collect on mobile devices with Workspace One using the underlying air wash technology coupled with some of the, you know, data that, you know, data analytics tools we have in the Carbon Black cloud and the way they do sort of threat analysis and determine potential attack vectors. We have an opportunity to leverage that intelligence and that data lake and that technology coupled with the data we have to really now build a broader sort of threat surface understanding across multiple devices. And eventually that goes into IoT, right? So we're actually going to be working even with some of the other technologies we have in VMware called Pulse, right? Pulse is very interesting because they have the ability to speak multiple device protocols that nobody does, okay? So we're going to take advantage of them potentially to sort of be able to start to poke into devices that are attached to the office but not quite attached to the office in the sense they're not mainstream devices you and I would use but indirectly you may use it, right? So be able to sort of get a much broader view of a visibility of devices. Second is how to manage them through a combination of Workspace One and Pulse. And third to get the data so that we can feed it into this federated cloud of Workspace One Intelligence and Carbon Black to understand the risk. And that way you have this three pronged thing, right? Yeah. I want to ask you a personal question. Pat Gelsinger was very prolific this week I gave him props of his social media mojo doing a selfie on stage with Craig Joe Bada. Yeah. Doing a little morning thing telling people how he prepares for his keynote. Yeah. So how do you prepare for your keynote? Do you get up at 4 a.m. and hit the gym or you got a keynote coming up right after this interview? I do. I'm not, Pat's incredibly disciplined and I think he's been waking up at 4 a.m. for a long time so I'm not that much of an early bird but I prepare because I've been involved in the construction of the keynote so for me it's, we started work on this probably about three months ago because the stories came together it's very natural to me. Just like you asked me the question, tell me about the evolution it's just a very natural thing because it's like telling your own personal story. It's relevant more than ever it's not just VDI, it's got so much more now. It's so much more and I've lived through this and I've participated in most of the decision making so when my head of product marketing came to me I said, hey what should we do with the keynote? I said, I have the storyline in mind, right? And it's around the same three or four pillars I'm talking to you about, right? How do we tell the story to the audience about what is the platform? Why should they sort of bet on it? How do they sort of deploy it? Show them some real world examples and then basically sprinkle in all the innovations it sounds exciting. So because of that the storyline's always been in my head so it's not that hard so it's just sometimes you just need to sort of as you're in stage. Well you're preparing it's all you're part of the construction you're not, no one's handing it to you. Nobody's handing it. You formulated it. So for me I think it's just sometimes just rehearsing some of the key parts and then of course there are visual cues when to slam home the big point. There you go. You know I've been looking at your career you're a technologist but also you've pretty much been a product leader in your career. Definitely, definitely. So I got to ask you around some of the big movements in the industry. I want to get your perspective as an industry participant and also as a product leader as well executive in there and done that. Amazon introduced their first conference around cloud security called Reinforced this year. We had cube coverage there and it was interesting because it wasn't like a typical security conference like Black Hat, Def Con, RSA. It wasn't so much IT it was really about cloud security. And so Dave and I were speculating we're like this is kind of the first cloud security show. I mean dedicated to kind of cloud security. They didn't say cloud security but it was essentially cloud security. What is your take on that cloud security? Because a little bit of a different view there's a little bit architectural change but if you got to have the on-premise if you're going to have the cloud if things are going to be working together there's some things you're doing in security quite frankly around isolation to working in any environment. You're in the middle of it all. What is cloud security and why have a conference is it relevant? What's your thoughts? That's a great question. I think you see many of these trends. I think, listen, many of these conferences they're thought provoking. So it forces you to think, right? So when I think about cloud security now traditionally when you think about cloud security you would think about technologies like CASB like cloud access service broker. You would think about encryption. To me it's much more than that. All the usual stuff with McAfee's there other people are there but you know. Yeah, I mean more than McAfee I think you know it's sort of you think of the analog to cloud security is data center security where you think of this sort of Amazon cloud living in an Amazon data center and how can we protect the data and the egress access into those cloud and you know same technology sort of apply but to your point that you sort of just touched upon it's that cloud is not living in isolation, right? First of all that Amazon cloud is connected to a whole bunch of you know applications that are still sitting in a data center, right? So they are potentially not moving the Oracle database to a data center. They're moving some workloads to the cloud, right? That's what most companies are. Hey, guess what? There's all these endpoints that are connecting. They're connecting both the data center and the cloud. You're not going to proxy to the cloud to get to the data center so there is gateways. So to me cloud security can't be an isolated you know sort of technology that companies have to sort of think about. Now is there an opportunity to leverage the cloud to manage security better and get visibility on your security environment to do security analytics? Absolutely. So I think to me that's where it's going because security I think has been proven is no longer you know sort of one single thing. It's just you have to do multiple things. Every time I go talk to CISOs they tell me they got this technology. I said hey wait a minute you have 20 did you cut down any? Yeah we cut down a few but you know they're just nervous about cutting down too much because of that one piece of software catch. It's almost like an insurance policy they're insecure. Well they cut two they added four. That's what happens. Another tool, tool shit. I think the architecture will get simpler because it's way too complex. But at the same time I think you have to there's no such thing as cloud security or network security or endpoint security. So maybe there's a whole new group emerging within VMware that you could add to your repertoire. Endpoint computing group. Your end user computing. Why not have endpoint computing? That's what you're basically happening. Computing is all about what do we need to do for the user both as IT and the end user okay. And now folks like HR and so on. So security has to be built into it right. So much like that I think when you go build out data centers or the public cloud and build this hybrid clouds you know security has to be built into that as well. Well Shikhar thanks for coming on and sharing your insights. It's a super important area. We're going to be covering this. This is cloud two-point and this is end user computing. This is where the edge of the network is. That's where the people are. They are part of the edge. A thin part of the edge or a big part of the edge. You're going to be in the middle of it. We'll be following your traction. Thanks for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for having me. Pleasure. Thank you. Cube Live here in San Francisco. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Stay tuned for more. We got two sets, three days of wall-to-wall coverage. We're only in day one. Stay with us. We've got to have Michael Dell, Pat Gelsinger come on tomorrow and a lot more guests coming on today. We'll be right back.