 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World, digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Hi, welcome to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020, the virtual experience. I'm Lisa Martin and I've got a couple of guests joining me. One of them is a longtime CUBE alumni, John Stegel is back at VP of Product Marketing for Dell Technologies. John, it's great to see you. Great to be back Lisa, thank you. And also joining us is Troy Massey, the Director of Enterprise Engagements from Ironbow Technologies. Troy, welcome to theCUBE. Hi, thank you so much. So we're going to be talking about the X-Rail, how it's driving the future of HCI to the edge, but first let's get Troy's perspective. I would like the audience to understand who Ironbow Technologies is and what you do. And then we'll kind of look at it as what you're doing with the X-Rail as well as your channel partner business with Dell Technologies. So Troy, take it away. Hi, yeah. So Ironbow is a global company. We're a value added reseller, heavy partnered with Dell. We have people physically living from Europe all the way through Korea. So we kind of face the globe primarily in wherever there's DOD or federal government agencies. And tell me about from a channel partner perspective what you guys are doing together. So we have a lot of efforts going on channel partner together. Specifically, IronTarget is a huge effort that we're doing together. It's a on-prem cloud that's, its base is VX-Rail, VMware Cloud Foundation on top with Intel all throughout. So there's Intel Xeon processors and Optane drives. So just the perfect, elegant on-prem cloud hybrid cloud solution that Dell and Ironbow are driving together. So let's talk about the edge because a big focus of Dell Technologies' role this year is about the edge. How do you see Troy Ironbow extending services to the edge and what do you anticipate from your customers in terms of what their needs are as they're changing? Great, great question. So for one, we've got to talk a little bit about what the edge and what the edge is and the edge is different things to different people. So I'm gonna explain a little bit of the edge of what we're seeing in the federal government. So I'll give you one example and that's Air Force Reserve. So they have an entire squadron that does all of the firefighting, the large fires you see here across California or whatever states engulfed in fires that year where they take the entire squadron of airplanes out and they throw water over the whole fire, but they don't just bring planes, they bring entire squadrons of military personnel to help communicate with police and with the local fire and all of that takes information. So they need to bring information data with them. Is there a building over there? Do people live over there where we've got to actually concentrate on fighting that fire priority-wise? So it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to do that remotely over a satellite beam. It's large chunks of data that need to be local to the customer. So DX Rail is the power beast in the HCI world. So a DX Rail at that edge provides them with the performance they need to get that job done in Thailand. I think that's gonna be a new news segment here in Silicon Valley that thinking about all the fires we've had, it's really DX Rail at the edge that's hoping to fight the fires. That's not something I knew. So thanks for sharing that. So John- I'm sorry, same conversation that the hurricane brought. So there's all kinds of hurricane humanitarian efforts going on right now, same deal. They need to know where to go rescue those people and it's all data. Exactly, and it's gotta be data that, as you said, is not delayed over the wire, but obviously being able to be transmitted in real time so that actions can be taken, which is one of the things we talk about with data all the time and have to be able to get the insight and act on it quickly. So John, the theme of this year's virtual Dell Technologies World is, the edge is a big part of the theme. So talk to us about driving the future of HCI at the edge with DX Rail, how there's been a lot of growth, I think 9600 plus customers so far. So talk to us about the future of HCI at the edge with DX Rail as a driver of that. Absolutely. So first of all, I want to thank Iron Bo for being one of our nearly 10,000 customers from DX Rail. And, you know, absolutely. So, you know, overall, the edge is going to be a major theme for Dell Tech World this week and specifically for DX Rail. We of course continue to play with DX Rail, a key role in modernizing data centers as well as hybrid cloud. And this week we really want to highlight some of the recent innovations we have around extending the simplified operations of DX Rail that many like Iron Bo and others are experiencing today in the core or in the cloud and extending those that automation to the edge. And you heard a lot about what the edge can do and the implications and the value of the edge. While we have lots of customers today, including Iron Bo that are using DX Rail at their edge locations, we have others like large retail, home improvement chains, financial institutions. We expect the edge to soon explode. We like to think that we are at the edge of the edge opportunity in IT. In fact, IDC recently stated that by 2023, over 50% of new enterprise data that is generated is going to be generated outside the core data center and outside the cloud. That's up from 10% today. So this is massive. Edge locations of course come with their own challenges whether it's sometimes less than ideal conditions around power and cooling or they may not have typically skilled IT staff at the edge, right? So they need new special configurations. They need operational efficiencies and I think the DX Rail is uniquely positioned to help address that. Let's kind of dig into those operational challenges because in the last seven months so much of what we all do has become remote and a good amount of that is going to be probably permanent, right? So when you think about the volume of remote devices that the X-Rail could potentially manage, John, how do you see the X-Rail being able to help in this sort of very distributed environment that might be very well much permanent? Yeah, I know. And like you said, it's going to just grow and grow in a distributed environment and what that means for each company might be slightly different. But regardless, what they do need is seamless operations across all of those different edge locations. And again, a big focus for us. So we're really doing three things to extend the automated operations of the X-Rail to the edge and doing so at scale. The first thing I want to talk about is that we did unveil just two VxRail platforms designed specifically for the edge. The new VxRail E-Series which is ideal for remote office locations where space is limited. The remote, the VxRail D-Series, I think if D as indurable, this is our ruggedized platform built from the ground up for harsh environments such as DOD environments like in the desert. And both of these VxRail platforms are fully automated. They automate everything from deployment to expansions to life cycle management overall. And now what we're doing now is extending that automation. This is the second thing we're doing to the edge from an operational perspective. And what we're doing first and foremost is we are introducing a new software as a service multi-cluster management. This is part of the VxRail ACI system software that we deliver today as part of the X-Rail. This not only provides a global view of the infrastructure performance and capacity analysis across all the edge locations, but even more importantly, it actively ensures that all the clusters in the remote locations always stay in a continuously validated state. This means they can automatically determine which software components need to be upgraded and also automatically execute the full stack upgrades without any technical expertise at the site. It can be done centrally, further automating the life cycle management process and process that we do at the core in the cloud and now extending that to the edge. So imagine the operational efficiencies for customers with tens or hundreds or even thousands of edge sites. So this is, we think truly a game changer from that perspective. And then in addition to that, we're also adding the support for VCF on VxRail. So just at VMworld just a couple of weeks ago, VMworld announced remote edge cluster support for VCF. So those customers that run around VCF on VxRail now can enjoy a consistent cloud operating model for those edge locations. So in summer, you're getting consistency, you're getting automation regardless of where your VxRail is located. And this is something that I saw on the notes, John has described as a curated experience. Can you describe what that is if I think of reference architectures and things like that? What is a curated experience and how is it different? Yeah, I know a curated experience for VxRail, really what it is, it's about seamless. It's about, we have taken the burden, if you will, of integrating infrastructure off of the customer's shoulders and onto ours, right? So what we do is we ensure VxRail is, in fact, the only jointly engineered ATI system in the market that's jointly engineered with VMware, for VMware to enhance VMware environments. And so what we've done there is we have a pre-integrated full stack experience that we're providing the customer from deployment to, again, to everyday operations, to making changes, et cetera. We've essentially, what we've done here is that we've taken, again, that burden off of customers and allowed them to spend more time innovating and less time integrating. That sounds good to everyone, right? Simplifying less time to troubleshoot more time to be able to be strategic and innovative, especially in such a rapidly changing world. Troy, over with you now. Oh, go ahead, John. I was just gonna say to add to that, we've seen a real acceleration this year to digital transformation to your point earlier, just with remote everything. And I think a lot of the projects, and so including a shift that we've seen to consuming infrastructure overall, whether, you know, and that's the onset of the cloud and wherever that cloud might be, right? Could be on-prem, could be on-premises, could be off-premises. And so, you know, that focus on consuming infrastructure versus in that preference for consuming infrastructure versus building and maintaining it is something that we're gonna continue to see accelerate over time. You're right, that digital transformation acceleration has been one of the biggest topics the last seven months and looking at which businesses really are set up and have the foundation and the culture to be able to make those changes quickly, to not just survive in this environment, but win tomorrow. So, Troy, let's talk over to you for a second. In terms of the edge, what are your thoughts on, as a partner with VxRail, got a solution built on it, what are your thoughts about what VxRail is gonna be able to deliver, enable you to deliver at the edge? You know, you gave us that great example of the Air Force Reserve, but what are Iron Boat's thoughts there? What do you envision going forward? Yeah, absolutely, thank you. And first, I'll expand a little bit on what John was paying for a picture. He talked about tens, hundreds and thousands of different sites that all need their data. They all need processing compute, but those types of scale of sites don't necessarily mean they have an IT on the staff of those sites, a great example of Army Corps of Engineers. They have to have one or two people out at every dam to monitor the dam, but that doesn't mean it justifies an IT staff or out there with them. So the idea to remotely manage that VxRail, they're just industry leaders in the ability to deploy this somewhere where there's not an IT person. And be able to manage it, but not just manage it, predictive analysis on when they're starting to run out of storage, give alerts so that we can start the upgrade. John, talk to us about the engagement that you're expecting your customers to have with Dell Technologies during this virtual event. Absolutely, I think so. First of all, yeah, virtual is different, but there's a lot of advantages to that. One of them is that we can have an ongoing dialogue during a number of the sessions that we have, but some of the sessions might be prerecorded. There are live chats all the way through, including a number of breakouts on VxRail specifically, as well as the Edge, as well as a number of different topics as you can imagine. We've also just launched a new game, a fun game from mobile called Data Center Sim, where customers can have some fun learning about VxRail, the experience it takes in balancing the budget and staffing and capacity to address the needs of the business. So we're always looking for fun and engaging ways to experience the real-life benefits of our HCI platforms, such as VxRail, and so customers can check that out as well by searching their app store of choice for Dell Technologies Data Center Sim and have at it and have some fun. But again, whether it's playing the game online through an augmented reality experience or it's connecting directly with any of our subject matter experts, there's going to be a lot of opportunity to learn more about how VxRail and HCI can help our customers thrive. Excellent, I like that game idea. Well, Troy and John, thank you for joining me today, letting me know what you guys are doing with VxRail, what's coming with the Edge and the fact that the use cases are just going to proliferate. We appreciate your time. Thank you as well. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020.