 From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World, digital experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. Everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World, digital experience. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE, Cube Virtual. We're not in person this year, we're remote, we're doing the interviews, we're not face-to-face. So thanks for watching. Two great guests to talk about Dell Technology Storage and Data Protection for the VMware environment. It's got Caitlin Gordon, Vice President of Product Manager at Dell Technologies and Lee Caswell, Vice President of Cloud Platform Business Unit, also known as CPBU for VMware. Lee and Caitlin, great to see you both. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks, John. So what a crazy year, we're not in person. Usually the events are awesome. VMworld recently went on and then you guys have the same situation. We're all online now and it's really kind of highlighted the customer environments of cloud native and I've been saying this on all my reports and all the CUBE interviews that the executives who are in charge are now saying, look at our modern apps have to be cloud native because the obvious benefits are there and containerization has become mainstream but yet IDC still forecast, about 15% of enterprises are still fully containerized with a huge amount of growth coming around the corner. So you're seeing this mature market where containers are validated, they're being put into production. People are now moving hardcore with containers and you have the Kubernetes. I got to ask you Lee and Caitlin, what does this mean for the customers? Are they getting harder pressure points to do things faster? What does it all mean for the customer? Yeah, I'll start and Lee, you can add to it. I mean, I think what we see is the trends that were already happening have now accelerated and modern apps were kind of the top of the priority list but now it has really expedited but at the same time, traditional applications haven't gone anywhere. So there's this dichotomy that a lot of IT is dealing with of how do I accelerate those modern apps while also streamlining and simplifying my environment for my traditional apps and not only do I need to the right infrastructure to have that for production workloads modern traditional but also form a data protection standpoint how to ensure that those are all secure and do all of that in a way that simplifies life for whether it's the data protection admin, the BM admin or even the developer, right? All of the different folks involved and needing to make all of their lives simpler has just really exacerbated a challenge and really given us a lot of opportunity to try to solve that for customers together. Lee, what's your take on the landscape out there? Yeah, I'd emphasize that speed really matters today, right? That we're really looking at how do you go and deploy new applications faster, right? New ways to get engaged with customers. I mean, it's not happening physically anymore. So how is it happening? Well, it's happening largely through applications. And so as you now basically develop new applications more quickly, containers are a way to speed the pace of applications. And the theme that we continue to drive home is that that means infrastructure has to respond more quickly. And it means that for the teams that are managing infrastructure, it really helps if you have a consistent model where you can get more done with the same teams and leverage all the experience you have as well as the security and infrastructure resiliency model that we are bringing together to our customers. This brings up the real question. And if this comes up, kind of, you see more at the executive level, like we need to have a modern application direction and they'll go, everyone goes, yeah, of course thumbs up, then they go, try to make that a reality. Because even though DevOps and infrastructure's code is still the viable old path, it's hard. It's a Gatelin. We're talking about edge to core data center, hybrid to multi-cloud. There's a lot going on under the hood there. So you guys are doing a lot of stuff together, VMware and Dell Technologies. What's the solution for customers? They got to move faster, as Lee pointed out, Gatelin. How are you guys working together to make that infrastructure more modern, faster, programmable and reliable? And make it simpler for the customers, right? I think it really comes down to one of the most powerful things about the partnership is that from the Dell Technologies standpoint, we have really a plethora of different solutions to support your VMware environment, whether it's a three tier architecture with PowerEdge, PowerStore or leveraging VxRail are very commonly going to be both of those. You have the right infrastructure to support the production workloads and have a consistent operating model between them, leveraging VVols and primary storage side and all the integrations we have with the XRail. And then we have with PowerProtect Data Manager great integrations and some recent enhancements that make that even better and are now able to protect Tanzu, protect the VCF management domain and not only have the storage but also the protection for that environment but do it in a way that supports what the VM admin needs and also gives that consistent protection, consistent storage, consistent operating model for the rest of IT. And at the same time, you're enabling the developers to move faster. Lee, you guys have been doing a lot of joint development and we've been covering a lot of the news of VMworld, a lot of joint engineering, a lot of joint integrations. You guys have been collaborating with Dell Technologies for a long time, also the relationship. Where is that today? Can you expand on that a little bit and take a minute to explain the joint collaboration? John. I'll start with the fact that good marketing is really easy when you have great engineering. And so the work that we're doing together between our companies now, we have a lot to talk about, right? I mean, the work as Gailen mentioned right around V-Balls integration, for example, on PowerMax, right? And on PowerStore, right? I mean, you start looking at the integration work that we're doing together. It means that customers are getting the benefits of the joint integration work and testing, right? That comes, and so you're guaranteed out of the box to work. Also, don't forget that containers and all of the things we're doing around containers, it's basically designed to accommodate the fact that containers are spun up more quickly or destroyed more quickly. They're shared across the hybrid cloud more frequently. And without an inherent security model and built-in data protection, it's really hard to go and see how you can deploy these with the enterprise resilience that's demanded at enterprise scale. And so that's what we're doing together, right? And, you know, we build great software, but without great hardware partnerships, it's one-hand clapping, right? It's about getting our teams together, right? That really makes it sing at the customer level. You know, I think that's a really example of the business performance results have come in. VM, where you guys have been doing a great job. I go way back to the years ago when Pat and Raghu were talking from Amazon and all, since then it's been joint development, joint integrations, and that's a great business model for you. And so, Caitlin, I want to get back to you because at VMworld, we covered Project Monterey, the new initiative for VMware, but a year before they had Project Pacific, that came to life with product results. Tanzu specifically, you guys had the PowerProtect data manager that we talked about in the summer, but now for Tanzu support and Tanzu environments, that's super relevant. Can you share any updates on your end on the PowerProtect data manager and Tanzu? Yeah, I couldn't agree more that great engineering makes our jobs a lot more fun and a whole lot easier. So we've been really lucky and the partnership we've had has really never been stronger. So yeah, the most recent release of PowerProtect data manager introduces the support for that Tanzu protection. It also introduces really important things like storage-based policy management. So in vSphere, when you set up a storage policy, you have data protection as part of that and you have the integration with PowerProtect data manager. So you're able to automatically protect new VMs that are created by that storage policy, it being applied, but at the same time, it's also being tracked in PowerProtect data manager. So you have that consistency across enabling your vAdmins and enabling your data protection, your IT team to keep track of that. We also have a tech preview that we did at VMworld about how we're working as from Dell technology standpoint to innovate around how do you protect some of these VMs that are so large and so mission critical that you need to be able to protect them in a new and innovative way that doesn't disrupt the business. And we did a tech preview of that and it's something you'll hear more about from us too, but it's VMs that traditionally would be in this category of unprotectable because of the impact it could have on the environment and how we're really looking to do that in a more efficient and intelligent way. So we can actually protect those VMs and there's really a whole lot more when you talk about object scale and everything else that we've done. It's really exciting and I think Lee and I have ever talked as much as we do now and it's been a lot of fun. It's been great following both of you guys on theCUBE interviews over the years, the success and the vision. We had early conversations about what the plans were, it's kind of all playing out. So I want to congratulate both of you at VMworld Dell technology. So good job. Going forward, the collaboration, I want to get to that in a second and drill into it, but Caitlin Lee, I want to get your thoughts because one of the big themes this year, besides COVID and all the issues that that's highlighting, but in the cloud world, automation has been the number one conversation we've been hearing and with that you've got machine learning, all the tech around that. As you abstract away the complexity of the infrastructure to make the modern apps, automation has been great. The business cross-connect is everything as a service. We're seeing this is the big wave coming. Could you guys share your vision on how all this submission VVOLs and all objects scale, all these things. There's a lot of plumbing underneath and a lot of tooling, a lot of part piece parts. If that gets programmable, automation kicks in, which then enables everything as a service. Could you guys both share your vision on what that means in terms of what's going to change and what would impact the customer? Yeah, and it's very relevant for this week, right? Dell Technologies World, that's a big part of what we've announced this week and our commitment to really bringing our portfolio as a service. And it's really interesting, especially for folks like Lee and I who have been doing kind of more product marking and talking about speeds and feeds and thinking about how you make the product life simpler and how do you automate that, have the intelligence built in things like VRO have been such an important part of that, especially with PowerStore coming to market. But if you think about where that leads us, it actually changes everything, which is when you have everything as a service and we're really delivering outcomes to our customers and no longer products, that automation is actually just as important and maybe even more important, but it's not the end user that cares about it directly, it's actually us, because as Dell Technologies, we become the ones managing that infrastructure, owning that infrastructure. And the more automation we can bring in, the more intelligence we can build in for ourselves, the more insights we can give to our customers, the better that service can become. And it's really a flip from how we've always been thinking about and really rolling out automation. It's not actually about enabling our end users to do anything, it's actually about enabling them to not worry about any of it, but enable our own organization to support their outcomes better. So it really changes everything. Lee, what's your thoughts on this? Everything is so good. You've got vSphere, vCenter, you got all the storage, you got all the backup, all this stuff has to be automated, makes sense, but as a service, how does that impact your world? You know, it really does. When you think about the VMware Cloud Foundation, right? Which is the integration of all of our vSphere with vSAN, with v, you know, our NSX products, the vRealized Management Suite, Tanzu now, right? All of this pulled together. One of the things that's interesting is when you go to the public cloud, we have some experience now where we always deliver that full stack together. And what that does is it frees up customers to go and focus on the applications, and they're thinking, stop looking down at the infrastructure, start looking up at the apps. And so we're offering and bringing that same level of experience to the on-premises data centers and now bridging that across the hybrid cloud. That all of a sudden gives you this sense that, hey, I'm future ready. No matter where I am today, if I'm thinking about the hybrid cloud, I can go and move there, right? And with our partnership with Dell Technologies, there's such a great opportunity to bridge that uniquely, by the way, across all of my on-premises infrastructure, including common policy-based management back into storage through our VVOLs efforts, right? And then back in through object scale, right? Into object-based applications and through our DP efforts, data protection efforts, then back into like full data protection. And so what you get now is we're helping customers realize that I got this. I can take new Kubernetes orchestrated applications and I can make them work and do it with the same operational model that I have today, start spending more time on the applications less time, basically configuring and managing underlying infrastructure. Yeah, Caitlin, you had mentioned that I only have the top of the segment, ease of use, making it easier, simpler. Great stuff. On the future, Leigh, I got to ask you about Project Monterey. We did a lot of coverage on it at VMworld on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE. I love how this comes out. It's always, you know, the brain trust at VMware lays out the future. They fill it in throughout the year. Expect to see some meat on the bone there. But what is that going to do for new capabilities and with Dell Technologies? Because it's end-to-end, right? This, Michael Dell and I talked, I think two years ago at Dell Tech Worlds and then last year, he hit the point home hard end-to-end with Dell Technologies. It kind of feels like it's going to be a good fit. Could you share how that Monterey project fits in with Dell Technologies? Yeah, we were so pleased to be showing this together with Dell Technologies at VMworld to showcase this new idea that you could basically go and start offloading CPUs and using smart NICs as a way to basically now provide a more, let's call it a, you know, an architecture that allows you to be responsive to new application needs. So let me talk a little bit about that. So when we opened up Tanzu, right, we got this out complete inflow pouring of new container-based Kubernetes orchestrated apps. So what we found was, hey, they're driving a lot of CPU needs. They're driving a lot of scale-out security needs for things like distributed firewalls. And so we started looking at this and what's clear is we need to basically use the CPU very judiciously. So it's basically reserved for the apps. And so what we're doing now is we're basically saying, there's an opportunity for us to go and offload the CPU for things that look more like infrastructure, including ESXi and other things. And at the same time, then we can go and work together with Dell Technologies to be the deployment vehicle. And so just like project Pacific, which was going broad, if you will, this project moderate, which is going deep, like the Canyon, John, not far from here, is, you know, a source of all new discovery, right? Where we'll be working together and over time, just like the project Pacific name faded to black and became products, Tanzu, VCF with Tanzu, vSphere with Tanzu. We'll see that project moderate will evolve into new products coming together with Dell Technologies. Kather, can you elaborate on, take a minute, explain the product, how this renders into products because I can also imagine just the benefits just from a security standpoint, efficiency at the platform, let me see the range of things. Could you take a minute to explain the impact on product? Yeah, and I think you'll hear a lot more about it, but we're obviously excited to be partners on this as well. And I think it's just another example of the more intelligent the infrastructure can become than the rest of the entire IT organization can run more efficiently. And that can come in the form of the AI built into PowerMax. That can come in the form of the VVOLs that we have both in PowerMax and PowerStore. They can come in the form of it, even just the fact that we have now built a fully containerized S3 compatible object store platform called Object Scale, which we have now in Early Access that can run on the vSAN data persistence platform. And it just gives you the ability to leverage this, all of the right technology and we can continue to really partner on that. And I think project moderate really opens up even more opportunities to do that. And you'll certainly hear more from us on that in the future. I mean, you got compression, you got encryption, a lot of benefits across the board. Great to have you guys both on. And congratulations on the great event. Final question for both of you. Talk about this has been a crazy year. We're not face to face, so everything's gonna be online. What should customers and partners and people watching know about the relationship between VMware and Dell Technologies this year? What's the big message to take away? What should people walk away with and think about? I think it's never been stronger than ever than it is right now. We have never had more breadth and more depth of integration. I think that the partnership on the engineering level, on the product management level, on the marketing level, we have really never been in a better place. And what my team has really enjoyed with VM World Season and you coming up on Dell Tech World Season is we've really enjoyed the fact that we've had so much richness of that integration to talk about. And we also know there's even more coming. So from my standpoint, we really feel it and probably the best and most rewarding time we hear about that is when we bring new things into market and we hear that back. And when Power Store came into the market and over the past few kind of first months in market, one of the most resounding feedback that has come out as one of the most differentiated parts is that it is so incredibly integrated with VMware. But we've even gotten questions from analysts asking, did you purposely make it feel like you were really working similarly to a VMware environment? And you know what? It just shows how closely we've been working as organizations is that it comes a very seamless experience for our customers. Lee, final word. What should people walk away with this year and the relationship between VMware and Dell Technologies? Well, I think the best partnerships, right, are ones that are customer driven. And what you're finding here is customers are actually encouraging us, right? We're doing a lot of three-way meetings now, right? Where customers are like, hey, tell me how you're going to go and evolve this. How do I basically modernize, right? And preserve my existing investment perhaps or update here or how do I grow? Like customers have really complex individual situations. And what you can find is that we're helping jointly not just simply with the engineering side, which is awesome, but also with the idea that we're helping customers go and deploy responsibly in a time where it's very difficult to plan. And so if you come to us, we can help you jointly plan for the future in uncertain times and make sure that you're going to be successful. And that's just a great feeling when you're a customer looking at how do you deploy going forward in this, you know, with the amount of pace of change that we've got. Paul, I want to congratulate both of you. I've been following you guys. Success has been proven out on the business results and also the products and the enablement that you guys are providing customers has been great. Thanks for coming on. Great to see both of you have a great event. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. It's always a pleasure. Okay, I'm John Furrier here with theCUBE, covering Dell Technology World's Digital Experience, 2020 is theCUBE virtual. Thanks for watching.