 Disco, extracting the signal from the noise. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2015. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem sponsors. And now your host, Dave Vellante. Welcome back to Moscone, everybody. This is theCUBE and we're here in Moscone North at the street level. Stop by and see us. Sakthi Chandra is here as the director of Solutions Marketing for Extreme I.O. at EMC and Pablo Roche is the director technical marketing at VMware. Gentlemen, welcome to theCUBE. It's good to see you. Thanks for having us. So you're welcome. So you guys got the lab going today, the performance lab, and you got some interesting architectures. You're talking about Flash, Pablo, set it up. What's your lab all about? So the Hinton Labs are a great way for attendees to come in and actually touch the real products. So these are our virtualized labs that run in our clouds. And when we started working very early on with you guys, we had a need for the be able to meet the needs of a bootstorm that we have. So we have extreme loads come in in a very, very, very short amount of times. So usually we have 4,000 users that walk through during the course of Moscone to take a lab. On average, we do about 100,000 labs for the whole event and we deliver 10,000 labs. Each lab is about 12 EMS. So it's a lot of capacity being delivered all the time. So you have some serious infrastructure at Moscone. We do. We do. Set this stuff up, right? Yes, we do. So, Sakthi, talk about, from your standpoint, Extreme I.O. and Flash, well first of all, give us the update, you know, what's happening with the business and then how's it tie into the hands-on lab? Sure, absolutely. And again, glad to be here on theCUBE again. So Extreme I.O. as you might have seen the announcement that came out in the last day or two, we hold about 34% of the market share. We just crossed a billion dollars in revenue. So to put this in context and perspective, I think the product has been out in the market for 588 days and then from $0 to north of a billion is the ramp that we have seen in the market. So truly, I think it's a testimony of how Flash or some market has sort of evolved from sort of, you know, back in the days, it was one PCIe card that went into the server to address one particular pain point. Then it was, hey, I'll put Flash into maybe a VDI use case or a database use case, but we are seeing our customers sort of adopt Flash across the data center, multiple workloads and use cases. So really making the transformation from the data center perspective, going from the traditional disk space systems to a complete Flash-based architecture. So at the high level, I think that is the context. And what we are really proud of is really obviously our customers post about 1,700 global deployments in production and growing. So I just have to sort of interject here. So back, it was a year ago, not last year, last EMC world, two EMC worlds ago. You remember, I mean, EMC was the first to put Flash inside the array and cause the fire storm. And then you got behind, went out, you made an acquisition and then, you know, the market was kind of taking shots at you because you were late to market. At a year ago at EMC world, I said, I predict that by VMworld 2015, EMC will be the market leader, hands down and Flash. I think you probably did it earlier than that. But the reason was the momentum that I heard from the customers, the excitement that I heard. And you guys know how to sell storage. So what's the relationship between what you guys have done with Flash and what's going on with the hands-on lab? So obviously it's a great partnership between VMware and EMC to power the hands-on lab. Again, you know, when we started talking with Pablo and his team about sort of the requirements of hands-on lab. And the key here, Dave, is it's not just hands-on lab in a silo, it is what VMware can do with such an infrastructure beyond the hands-on lab as well. So the hidden secret here is the hands-on lab does not end here at VMworld, it kind of carries the journey. They have really stood up a truly internal private cloud where they host hands-on lab for obviously the show here in San Francisco, the show in Europe, but also year-round, there are multiple business units within VMware who consume the private cloud services and that's all being powered by the Extreme IO storage array. Okay, so talk more about the hands-on lab. So hands-on means I can walk in and start playing with it. Absolutely. Talk about the objectives and how it actually all works. So our mission is very simple. We want every user on the planet to take a lab. We want them to experience our products. The hands-on labs are absolutely free and after the event, we roll out the new labs. This is the part that we were talking about, the online. So online, as of January 2013, we've delivered 400,000 labs and we have 125,000 active unique users. You know, we have highest ratings in terms of quality service fashion and that has a lot to do with the storage backend. We never worry about our storage. It's always there, it's always on. We are deploying in every new location that we do. So we're very, very happy to work with you guys. 125,000 active unique users? That's a phenomenal number of 400,000 hands-on labs. So what do these labs look like? What sort of workloads? So in general, we have a lab for every product that we actively market. So you'll find labs all around our SDDC architecture. So there's a lot of vSphere labs. There's a lot of end-user computing labs, a lot of mobility labs. Some of the most interesting labs this year are obviously the EMC lab, but we also have the AirWatch lab. And the AirWatch lab uses our cloud to connect into the main AirWatch cloud. So we have a lot of interaction between the two clouds. We're able to manage the two clouds seamlessly for our users. So it's very exciting for us. Okay, so it sounds like you have N labs for each product. I don't think you have 400,000 products, right? No, no, no, no, not yet anyway. So you've got different versions, different derivatives? Sure, sure, sure. So the 400,000 number is the total amount of labs taken by our users since we rolled it out online. All right, so that's a, so a lab is a, a lab is a sequence? Yes, yes, it's a deployment in time. And we have 41 different items in the catalog and they range around all the products we even have partnered labs as well. Okay, so talk about the extreme, it's unpacked the extreme IO lab. Sure. What's in there and what's it look like? What would I see if I come in and use the lab? So I think the beauty is, again, very less so on the storage pieces. It is what the end user sees in terms of the different apps and the different products of VMware. And to unpack sort of extreme IO, the way we like to tell the story is it's very similar to how the virtualization market evolved, which is back in the day when the hypervisor was launched, that was the biggest thing. But very quickly it became a commodity and we think flash is going the same direction too. So if you unpack extreme IO, it is really all the rich data services that we have built on top of the flash media. And the beauty is with extreme IO, it is always on, it is in memory. And in fact, that we don't even allow our customers to turn anyone off those services off. So inline de-duplication, inline compression, thin provisioning, encryption, all these factors are baked in within the product. And one of the features that we are really proud of is the copy data management services. And you and I were talking about just before the talk day, which is really if you're a customer and if you're used to having one production instance and multiple copies of the production instance, it could be because your finance team needs it, your analytics team needs it, or your DevOps team needs it. With extreme IO, the way we have built the product, all the copy management is done in memory. So there is no physical tax on creating another copy and you get the same performance of the storage irrespective of which end user is using it. Right, so let's talk about that a little bit. So the copy data management piece is very interesting. The emcee was, I think, really the first to start promoting that. I think you uncovered it because your customers figured it out and said, hey, this is really cool. So we're talking about data sharing, right? So when I have a data set, I copy it. I don't know how, but IDC probably has some numbers on it, 30 times on average, or 15 times, whatever it is. And each of those copies sits traditionally on some other spinning disk and consume space, even if it's space efficient, right? And, but to get appropriate performance, I can't share a single copy across a number of use cases. I need one from my test dev or multiple from my test dev, my data warehouse, my backup, my DR, whatever. With Flash, I think one or more of your customers said, I can share one copy with multiple use cases. Absolutely. And really, again, at the foundation, it comes back to the architecture of the array, but the architecture really allows the customers to impact the business agility that a media like Flash can enable. So for instance, prior to using something like what extremely delivers, customers were forced to give their developers, let's say a limited number of copies because it's additional cost. And also the infrastructure, which the DevOps team was supported on, was usually not the tier one storage array, it was tier two or tier three because of cost factors. And also the amount of time it took to do any one of those processes was not as fast as any one of those teams would like to. But with the fact that we can deliver all this with one single Flash-enabled array, it really allows the customers not only to save on the app OPEX and the CAPEX, but it allows them to be more agile in terms of what they can do upfront in terms of the business processes. Pablo, I want to ask you, so how do you decide what labs to spin up? We actually let the users decide so they can pick any lab from our catalog and we'll spin up the lab within two or three minutes. And we can do this because of Extreme Ion. So when a user walks in to the catalog, to the seat, they can pick the lab that they want and we're ready to serve it up from within seconds. But the lab is, I mean, the lab, the virtual lab, if you will, is not static, right? You're constantly adding to it, is that right? So what, to talk a little... So the workload is very similar to maybe FaceTiming. It's very choppy performance and that's really where the storage comes in because the user, as they're interacting with the console, they can actually use our products. So they're opening up the vSphere client, they're creating clusters, so it's a real environment and it's really intensive on our storage Ion and we're able to do that because of Extreme Ion. Okay, and so kind of what's next for the lab? I mean, give us a little roadmap. Sure, sure, so today we're very strong in America and US. Right after VMworld, Europe, we're expanding to Asia, China, Japan, and the southern countries. So we expend a global expansion in terms of our service. We're localizing a lot of our labs, so native Japanese, Chinese, Korean speakers can take the lab as easy as possible. Okay, and so Sakti, I wonder if I could come back to you and just talk about what kind of feedback you've received from people who have either gone through the lab or seen it, I mean, what are they saying? So I think the excitement is over the roof in terms of just the sheer upfront, the user experience, right? As Pablo was saying, the catalog is massive in terms of the number of products that are listed there, but the end user experiences, they come in, they sit up, and then they push the button, the lab needs to be served up almost instantaneously because that split second makes a huge difference in end user experience, and then the more curious folks go back behind the scenes to kind of look at, okay, so what's powering the infrastructure in terms of how will you measure it in terms of latency or IOPS or the scale, and then they kind of delve into the architecture and the beauty of extreme IO. So immediately they're related back into some of the use cases that they're facing internally. Hey, my database application, maybe the reason why it is slowing up or how I could improve it, they can quickly point it back into their own personal sort of use case and then they relate to it. So do you tease them to go deeper or how does that work? I think it's self-selecting, they naturally are hooked and they want to do more. It's how about, what kind of analytics do you have? So we run surveys and get feedback on the content. We're listening every day on what we're seeing. We're also very big on the user interactions so we can kind of predict if a lab's going to fail or not and we fix them in time. Our set ratings from contents, usually in the very high 90s, so we have a huge fan base and they're always expanding. You do click-stream analytics or no? We do third-party survey methods, it's who we use. They're integrated on the platform and for us it was just an easy solution. You go into the lab, you poke around and then when you finish, survey pops up. Survey pops up and we also have an analytics on how far in you go into the lab and what areas you stay on and we can tune the content in real time if you will. Okay and so there's not like a certification at the end. I mean it's a chore, right? It's a demonstration. It's a self-serve, self-select. We do find the use cases that a lot of people use it to practice for certification exams. We also see our field use it for proof of concepts or demos and obviously for customers to come in and evaluate features. And I presume people come back, you have repeat visitors. They always come back. How long do they typically spend inside the lab? So they're spending about 90 minutes here on average. 90 minutes, you get an hour and a half poking around your lab. Dedicated user time, it's a long time. That's longer than people watch our videos. Yeah. So they're the captive audience, they enjoy the product, they're all very well documented. Another key part about it is that we have product experts on the floor to answer questions or to walk users through it. It's very exciting. Wow, that is tremendous. And I was going to just say it kind of mimics a typical life cycle in a VM farm. So when Pablo talks about these courses for an hour and a half, you spin up a VM, you use the VM, you delete the VM, and then you spin them up again. So it is probably the most intense of the workloads when you look at a typical sort of a VM farm that gets spun up in these hands-on labs. So any infrastructure that you put in to support it, if it can stand that kind of a stress, then it can meet any one of the enterprise workloads out there. So how does a customer, talking about it before, the customer can pick a choose from the catalog and then apply it to his or her problem. So it's pretty robust catalog. I mean, you've got an infinite number of combinations that sounds like. And so I'm interested, this is like a great freebie for customers and the sales guys must love it. Absolutely. So how does it translate? I mean, what have you, back up, how long you've been doing this? Three years. So three years. And you must see a direct impact on business. We're seeing a phenomenal uptake. I think mainly it's because customers can actually touch the product. So we're seeing it equally or even more effective than white papers or presentations because we're in an age now where customers, they don't necessarily want to wait through a video. They want to pop right in and get access to the product. Think about the time they save. They don't have to set up hardware. They don't have to configure anything. They don't have to get licenses. All they need is a modern browser and they can pop themselves into a lab. So I mean, it's essentially a little, the form of POC really, right? I mean, it's genius. And look at the explosion of the products in VMware, right? So the last three years, you know, it went from one product company to really multifaceted firm and for them to kind of expose each one of the products as they come and mature and give them real access, as Pablo was mentioning, for them to get hands on. It's probably the best we need to do it. But we were talking to Carl about this yesterday, Carl Aschenbach. I mean, you know, we've seen VMware expand its total available market by coming out with, you know, zillions of products. Great. But at the same time, gotta figure out that's a complexity, you know, from a go-to-market standpoint and the channel and the sales team. And so I would imagine from a account executive standpoint, well, don't take my word for it. Go check it out. Or I can't really answer these questions, but let's go play around a little bit. That's tremendous. And the channel has access to it as well. Absolutely love it. We have a program called H-O on the box and it allows our channel partners to actually reserve capacity and run their own workshops. So we've seen a tremendous uptick on that and we welcome our partners to participate in. It's amazing. I mean, I'm really impressed. I love these customer freebies, especially ones that drive business. I mean, it's a win-win. And so that's great. Sakti and Pablo, thanks very much for coming to theCUBE today and sharing the story. It's great. I'm really excited for you guys. Thanks for having us. All right, pleasure. All right, keep right there. We'll be back with our next guest. This is day three. We're live from VMworld 2015. We're right back. This is theCUBE.