 Okay, welcome back to VMworld 2013, our special CUBE presentation live at AT&T Park, OMA, the San Francisco Giants. We're on the outfield grass, and just outside the infield of AT&T Park, I'm John Furrier, the founder of Silicon A, with Dave Vellante, co-founder of wikibond.org, and we have the vice president of Global Alliances, Maria Olson, welcome to the CUBE, first time on theCUBE. First time on theCUBE, thank you very much. Share with the folks what you do at NetApp, and we have a bunch of questions for you, we'd like to hear what you up to. Absolutely, so Maria Olson, vice president of Global Alliances at NetApp, managed all the technology alliances, including VMware, very excited to be here tonight with both of you. VMware, big commitment out there, Pat Gelsinger, Carl Etchenbach, Ragu, all we're in the NetApp jerseys, of which was made famous by, last year, is Pat Gelsinger, NetApp jerseys, first year in the job at VMware. Great relationship with VMware, share with the folks out there how deep the VMware relationship is, a lot of people know it's good, but they don't really know how deep it is. Absolutely, so this at VMworld, this is our over 10th year that we've been here. We've had a partnership that extends even longer, which has been fantastic, and we've had over 30 VMware executives that have spent a majority of their time here, including all their top level executives, talking about the partnership. My most favorite part of the evening was actually Pat Gelsinger basically saying that NetApp was the number one partner. So it's an extremely great partnership, we're doing great things together, we're working hard for it to find absolutely awesome. So managing the technology alliances must be fun these days, because there's a lot of stuff going on under the hood with cloud and enterprise, IT, and it's changing the business landscape, and that's causing a lot of growth, and this growing pains, there's some relationship maturity, some new relationships. So what's your current state of the landscape or the ecosystem from a NetApp perspective? Software-defined data center kind of really goes to NetApp's wheelhouse, technical company, their software-based, the interstate distributed computing, all that's playing out. So what's your view on the current state of the ecosystem? We're seeing the most major disruptions in the IT industry today, across cloud and mobility, big data, converged infrastructure, and NetApp is in a perfect position right now, because all of these partners are actually coming to NetApp to work a lot more strategically than we've ever done before, and that is actually a huge opportunity for NetApp. So we have very strategic relationships across a broad variety of ecosystems, and partners are really coming to us today, which is fantastic. Why? Why are they coming to you? They're coming to us because we actually have huge differentiation in what we build, and it's actually how we actually partner with our ecosystem today. We have, which I think is NetApp's number one biggest secret is we have an organization that not only builds our storage, but actually specializes in terms of thousands of people that work from product management, engineering, technical enablement standpoint to create the best solutions on NetApp storage to integrate into these partner offerings. Yeah, so, and as well, you're a large independent storage company. I've made that point several times tonight. And so you've got the resources to do it, and you've got enough channel mojo to build momentum with your partners. We had Dave Hitson, Maria at Oracle Open World a couple of years ago, several years ago now, I think it was three years ago, and he made the statement, John, you might remember this, Dave Hitson saying, listen, if this were the Oscars, we wouldn't be up for the vote of best actor. We would be best supporting actor. We're like the plumbing, and nobody thinks about the plumbing until it breaks, and that kind of theme. But so, my point is- They like the analogy, but I understood what you're saying. My point is, partnerships are critical for NetApp. As the best supporting actor, you've got to have a leading lady or a leading man in that role. So you got to go out to the Oracles, the Microsofts, the VMware's of the world, and develop those relationships to really drive value, because you got IT infrastructure, it touches the business through the application. So talk about application centricity as an important vector for NetApp. Absolutely, so inside our NetApp storage products, I mean the number one thing that actually sells NetApp storage products are the application workloads that go out there. So the work that we do with SAP, the work that we do with Oracle, the work we do with Microsoft, the work with VMware is actually how we go to market. Partnering is so core, not only from a channel perspective inside a NetApp, but also from a technology alliance standpoint. It's actually how we actually go to market because it drives so much of the storage decisions going out there in the future. So talk about some of the Alliance, the day-to-day operations. Dave and I had to drill on, you know, you're a tech athlete, you're out there managing a really important part of the business. I mean, you make or breaks the company, the alliances. What goes on in your day-to-day job? I mean, you're doing events, you support the partnerships with engineers, code, co-marketing, all that stuff. Is that some of the things that you do? I mean, what goes on behind the curtain? Absolutely, behind the curtain is really important. So really what we're trying to drive is big global sales initiatives that we can actually go to market and bring value to the customer at the end of the day. Because at the end of the day, we really need to satisfy the customer. So what is it that we do in terms of working with an SAP or with a VMware to actually have a differentiate inside of that customer? So we work on big go-to-markets, pushing out big sales initiatives. It could be events like this here at VMworld, one of our biggest customer events. I call this the Super Bowl of All Events, even though I'm sitting here at AT&T Park, which is baseball, but really from a customer standpoint, big event for us. And working on events overall from a sales initiative standpoint, from customer-facing events is a big focus of our job. Yeah, it's a go-to-market. Any go-to, R&D, any development partnerships, or just all go-to-market? Absolutely, we have an organization that we work hand-in-hand inside a NetApp that has over a thousand people dedicated to product management engineering that the sole job is to make sure that we have the best integrations from a NetApp storage standpoint into a VMware and SAP and Oracle, Microsoft. So let's dig into that a little bit. What does that mean? That means what? The fastest, the most available, the easiest to use, all of the above? Give us some color on that. Absolutely, I think the biggest color is with our cluster data-on-tap solution that we have integrations into a VMware and SAP. And I think the best way to portray that story is through a customer, right? I mean with Revlon, specifically a customer, that's not only with VMware, it's with SAP, it's with Oracle. We were able to reduce 72% of the storage efficiencies down there in their data centers. We're able to achieve a six-nines environment, which basically, they only have 13 seconds of downtime a year. I mean, it's those type of ground-making moves that we have those thousands of people inside of products and engineering that are working on building those solutions. Okay, Maria, we're getting the hook here. We're live at AT&T Park, special cube presentation, Silicon Angle is a cube. And I'm really glad you get the final word in on the segment, which is, share with the folks what you're most excited about right now. I mean, not like right now, because we're in AT&T Park, but you know, like in the business. So, you know, what's really getting you jazzed up? Is it technology? Is it the people? Is it the disruption? Is the innovation all of the above? I think it's a combination of all of that. I mean, I've been in high tech for quite some time and I've never seen a bigger disruption in the IT industry than it is today in terms of how the consumption models are changing, which really leads to opportunities. It leads to reinvention. It really leads to, you know, how do you capitalize on what you have and who do you need to partner with over the next two to three years to make sure you can maintain that advantage? Well, one of the things I love about theCUBE, besides being at the outfield of AT&T Park, where we have the Coke bottle lit up behind us, is meeting you here. We're going to be following you. Alliance is a very big part, big part of our story lines at theCUBE at VMworld 13. The ecosystem is the key to success. Rising tide floats all boats. Good partnerships, very key. Maria, we'll be following you from this point forward. We'll be watching you. This is SiliconANGLE theCUBE. We'll be right back with John and Dave wrapping up here as we get the, getting the boot off the field. At some point they will have to kick us out. And we'll stay as long as we can. We'll be right back into this short break.