 Live from Boston, Massachusetts. It's theCUBE, covering Red Hat Summit 2017. Brought to you by Red Hat. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of the Red Hat Summit here in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Stu Miniman. We are joined by Armagan Ahmad. He is the Senior Vice President and General Manager Solutions and Alliances at Dell EMC. Thanks so much for joining us. It's my pleasure. Good to see you, Rebecca. So we've had you on the program before, but your role has changed a bit at Dell EMC since then. Tell us what you're doing now. Sure. I have the pleasure to now lead our solutions business unit that we have under Infrastructure Solutions Group. What we drive is focus areas of customer outcomes, right? Workload orientation around high performance computing, driving data analytics, business critical applications, software defined solutions, and then also hybrid cloud. So those are our five big priorities. It's a big mandate. It is a big mandate, right? And as you know, Dell EMC is number one in everything. That's what we talk about. You'll hear this at Dell EMC World next week. But at Red Hat Summit, we're really having this discussion, right? Red Hat OpenStack Summit, which is really around our differentiation, how we're driving human progress forward, social innovation forward. So that's exciting. So as we take our applications and partner with our alliance partners, that's the differentiation we're excited to share with customers and partners here at Red Hat Summit as well. So Dell EMC, as you said, is uniquely suited to do these things and lead in this way. But how do you make deployment easier? I mean, that's the big questions that the customers and partners want me to know. Yeah, absolutely. So as you know, being number one in everything when I joke about this, not joking about this, if you really think about our market share and compute or servers, if you look at our market share and storage, external storage, internal storage, you look at our market share and converge infrastructure, hyperconverge infrastructure, if you see our market share and data protection or our market share and open networking, right? So we're top, all the way to the far top right of the Gartner Magic Quadrants, number one in market shares and revenue. But that's all interesting, but what's fascinating for the customers is really more about how do you make all of this real? If you envision like a pyramid almost, right? And you think that the bottom is all of these infrastructure layers. The next one above that is virtualization. The next one above that is orchestration. But really on the top is a platform, top of the pyramid. That's where the business sits. Business one's a platform. And what we're doing is trying to make all of that easy. We know that the customers will build and they would want to do a DIY and bespoke based solution. And we obviously have that, we've been doing it for decades. But we're really trying to move to that top end of the pyramid with our hybrid cloud solutions, our converge solutions, but more the solutions that my organization leads is the blueprint solutions. And the whole idea about blueprint solutions is that, how can we offer ready offerings to customers that they don't have to really worry about the bottom of the pyramid, but the top of a platform, so that it's easy to deploy. And customized for their business. Absolutely. Armagan in the keynote on day one, we heard that one of the top priorities for customers is figuring out their cloud strategy. Now Dell EMC, you have a number of offerings. Can you bring us up to date? Where does OpenStack fit into that? And of course we're going to want to talk about the Red Hat joint solution that you guys are. Yeah, absolutely. OpenStack, let me take it even a step back. Michael, 31 years ago since he founded Dell, has always stood for choice for customers, open ecosystems for customers. And even though we have Dell technologies now with the acquisition of so many of the other assets that are under Dell technologies, we're really delighted to partner and ensure that we have the right kind of choice that we're offering to our customers. So OpenStack puts a very big differentiation forward. We're here with our Dell EMC team at Red Hat OpenStack Summit and our customers are telling us in a very, very clear way and the channel partners who are here is that they're looking for Dell EMC to really provide open source based solutions in telecom markets, when you take a look at telecom and it's moving from 3G to 4G to now 5G coming on, it's really going to be the applications and how those applications become scale out versus just infrastructure becoming scale out. So now the evolution of OpenStack and how Dell EMC contributes to it, we never really wanted to build our own ecosystem of OpenStack like some of our other competitors have done. We've always stood by Red Hat OpenStack based solutions to say, hey, if they're number one in OpenStack markets and they're already tuning that, why can't we tune our infrastructure solutions the exact same way so that one plus one equals five for the customers, right? And it becomes much easier for them to deploy that. So absolutely, you mentioned some of the telecoms. NFV was probably the most talked about use case for OpenStack at last year's summit. We've got the OpenStack summits here in Boston next week. We'll be covering it. Is that a top use case for your solution with Red Hat? What are the real business drivers for people doing OpenStack? Is it just a private cloud solutions that they offer that you said mentioned the open source? People are still trying to figure out where this OpenStack fits compared to some of the other options that they have. It's too, you know, what I'm finding, and you know, you and I have had these discussions several times across the stack, right? Of server storage networking and others. The largest cost associated with deploying or consuming IT is really your OPEX cost. So if you envision for a second a pie chart and you look at a customer spend, a capital spend, about 25% of that is CAPEX oriented, which is how much you pay for infrastructure or software. About 75% of that is OPEX oriented, which is your human cost of managing it, your serviceability and others. The whole idea about us talking about this Dell EMC ready bundle solution that we're taking to market. So we announced yesterday our opportunity to really go out and simplify all of this for customers for cloud solutions or for their NFV or NFVI solutions, right? As we're seeing NFVI. For our audience that doesn't know NFVI, what's the differentries there? Well, I mean, you know, our opportunity to take a network function virtualization then taking VNF capabilities and then also making sure that we're virtualizing a lot of those aspects on NFVI so that our customers are driving service provider opportunities to then containerize these opportunities as part of OpenShift and others. And we feel that our differentiation at Dell EMC really then ends up becoming our tested, validated offerings so that customers don't really have to worry about the infrastructure layer or even the software layer for that matter. And we can just give them a platform that I was referring to earlier. So that ready bundle for OpenStack that we have offered and I'll be talking about it in my keynote today. That whole ready bundle at Dell EMC solution has been validated, tested. It's got not just reference architectures but deployment guides, run books. But we've also taken it one step forward. We actually internally called it JetStream. And the whole idea of JetStream internal code name was if you guys are familiar with JetStreams around the world and you catch one of those JetStreams they usually go from, you know, West to East. If you go from Boston to London you can get there pretty quickly if you hit one of those because it's 160 miles an hour. That's why we selected the name JetStream. And the whole idea is if you actually imagine if you put a concord in that JetStream you can actually do that trip now in three hours or you could have done it when concords were around at that time. So if we can actually create that concord-like style of a ready bundle solution that has, that is running OpenStack platform we can not only get the customers to deploy much faster and reduce their OPEX but there's a tooling that's required. So for example, the customer wants to deploy an OpenStack solution. We actually created a JetPack. JetStream JetPack. And the whole idea of a JetPack is very quickly us providing sizing tools and deployment tools for customers that they can get to their destination very, very fast. In terms of their OPEX. And how fast are we talking here? So we're talking, I'll actually have a customer East Carolina University on stage with me. Something that would take three weeks they've got it done in three days, right? Using this JetPack solution. So us creating these ready bundles and deploying OpenStack much faster either for cloud environments or environments for NFV and eventually for NFVI. And then we're also working with our Dell EMC code group which is now looking at containerization solutions as well. So that's sort of the differentiations that we're talking about. And Armaghana, I know we're really good usually at quantifying that kind of, that deployment, that shrinking right months to days or days to hours. That operational efficiency though of once it's in there do you have any metrics or cost savings that your customers in general are seeing of rolling this out versus the old kind of together themselves? Great questions too, great. So we all measured, Rebecca you know this, you've written for HBR which is really about ROI and TCOs for customers, right? What is your return on investments and your total cost of ownership? And really what we're finding is that we can do this about 30% more effective. I'd love to say it's 80% more effective where we can take your OpEx down and others. But realistically if you really look at East Carolina University or many of the other customers who are deploying this, they're seeing on average about 30% improvement in their operating costs. Now it's not just related to cloud or it's not just related to NFV and NFEI, we're also seeing a huge use case of OpenStack now as part of high performance computing, right? So as high performance computing is evolving from traditional research and moving more into machine learning and AI frameworks, we're also seeing customers leverage OpenStack in that environment as well. And I wonder also, I mean just talking about the difficulties with calculating ROI but talking about how it is having this big impact on high performance computing, what about high performance teams? The people who are actually doing the work? Absolutely. And you know, so talking about high performance team, right, the VEPTEC, we grew up in, it started in Silicon Valley now, it's in Dublin, Ireland or it's in China or all of these other places. They've really figured out, right? How do you drive efficiency? I mean at Facebook I think one server admin manages 50,000 physical servers or something like that, right? That's a scale out way. And the thing we always say, that person's job is very, it's not just that they're doing three orders of magnitude more than the poor guy running around the data center. You know, they've changed really how they focus on the application and that job's very different. So they don't really even have server admins, they just have the number of headcount that they do. Number of headcount that's required. Hyper scale model, very different from what we had in the enterprise world. Absolutely, absolutely. But there are lessons to be learned from a hyper scale model and if you can drive, I mean according to IDC, one server admin manages about 40 physical servers, somewhere between 30 to 40 physical servers versus the number that I just shared with you, right? From these big web tech providers. So if we can even improve that to 100 or 1000 to one admin, right? I think CIS admins still should continue to exist even though this whole public cloud is coming in but the rise of edge computing for us is also a big, big phenomenon, right? And we want to ensure that the rise of edge computing, Dell EMC is at the forefront of ensuring that we're providing analytics solutions to our customers and a lot of the analytics are really happening at the edge because you need to make those analytics decisions very quick. Can't really have a lot of latency back to public cloud for that. So our hybrid cloud solutions, working very closely with OpenStack to drop OPEX costs down, all of that really matters to customers right now. Armagan, I want to go back to something you talked about in the very beginning which is this element of human progress. It's a professional and personal passion of yours to use technology for good to solve some of the world's most complex problems. Educating young women, working in developing countries, curing cancer. Talk a little bit about what you're doing. You know, Rebecca, that's a huge passion of not just mine but Michael and all of our executive leadership team at Dell EMC. I'm sure we were talking earlier before this interview started. It's a passion of yours and Stu's, right? We all love to, as human beings, contribute to society. And human progress is really, technology is impacting human progress in different ways, right? If you talk about manufacturing jobs versus what automation is. But at the same time, technology is also helping in many different areas, right? So if you look at developing countries, I'm personally involved in girls' education in third world countries where they're not prioritized and what can technology do at schools to really get them to learn coding and get a differentiation out very, very quickly. But at the same time, our Dell initiatives, we call it the legacy for good. The Dell initiatives are really not just about diversity and inclusion, it's also about improving human progress. I'll give you an example. We have a great customer, TGen. And TGen is in a healthcare field and they drive genome sequencing solutions. So they have scientists who drive genome sequencing. Now, if you think about genome sequencing before technology, how long it would take somebody to sequence certain genomes for the purpose of cancer research, that would take you years. Now, if you can get that done in minutes and that technology will learn, and then next time you do it, it would be even seconds for the same platform. So we actually developed a life sciences genome sequencing high performance computing cluster, right? For this customer. And now they're able to very quickly, help young girls and young kids improve their longevity with their cancer treatment that they're going through. So those are the things that really matter to our teams and I know it matters to our customers and our partners because now we're not talking about just OpenStack or Dell EMC and our great number one and everything solutions we have. Those are fantastic. But how do you relate that to social innovation? How do you relate that to human progress? To me, that is really the differentiation that we all collectively need to continue to drive and talk about this a little bit more, right? We do need to find more connection points that we know that technology can help but it's really those medical professionals and those researchers. They're really the brainiacs who use our technology. Our opportunity as tech geeks, or I call myself a geek at least, is how do we take that and then take that out to them and then real researchers can build their platforms on top of it to cure cancer, right? Or to go drive manufacturing jobs for social innovation purposes in middle America or around the world, right? That's the difference. And those are the solutions that my team, along with many others at Dell EMC, along with our partners with Red Hat, we're focused on, we talk about that a lot and Jim Waiters talked about social innovation and how Red Hat is also making that a priority this morning in his keynote. Armagan, it sounds like your team's quite busy and I know you've got your big event coming up next week so if you finish the keynote here, you'll be jetting out to Las Vegas. Rebecca, a big set of our CUBE team will all be out in Vegas to cover the show. So give our audience a little bit of a preview of what you can about what we should expect for. The new Dell EMC world is kind of taking together what EMC world has been doing for many years and Dell world in the past. You know, we're really excited Stu about Dell EMC world because this is the first time Dell world and EMC world comes together in Vegas. So, you know, look forward to having you guys there. We have great speakers lined up. We, it's really focused for customers and technical audiences. We've got lots of partners there. But more importantly, we're showcasing all the solutions and the culmination of Dell EMC merger that has happened along with our Dell technologies. You know, a group of companies like Pivotal, along with VMware, along with SecureWorks, along with Virtustream and how do we differentiate not just the Dell brand, which is our, you know, client computing group that we have, but also our Dell EMC, that's server storage networking and then, you know, with VMware and Pivotal and others. What you'll see is not just great keynotes with some great speakers, great entertainment. I don't know if that's been released. I think it's been released. It's on Gwen Stefani. I think it's... Andy Grammer and, yeah, Gwen Stefani. Gwen Stefani, yeah. So that's going to be pretty cool. So we're excited about that. But the speakers that we have lined up on main stage, along with, I'm more excited. I geek out, I love going into these technical breakouts where we've got lab equipment set up where people can actually get to enjoy, and I call it enjoyment, which is, you know, really geek out with understanding what are all of those solutions that we have put together and those blueprint solutions. What are they? We have obviously our server storage networking and data protection, but then how do you get into those labs and run some demos and proof of concepts that makes it easy for the customers? So we're excited about that, as you can see. Well, we're looking forward to it. We'll see you there. Yeah, we look forward to hosting you there. Armageddon, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. My pleasure. This has been Rebecca Knight and Stu Miniman. We will return with more from Red Hat Summit after this.