 Host this week at the Dell Storage Forum. This is theCUBE, and we've been covering the Dell Storage Forum the last three days. This is day three for us. This is the second year theCUBE has been at the Dell Storage Forum. We've been witnessing the transformation of Dell. Really on two vectors. One, of course, is the aggressive incorporation of intellectual property in storage through acquisitions. And the second major vector that we're hearing about today is really the integration between server and storage and networking. What we've been talking about is converged infrastructure. And we're here with Ben Tao, who's the director of worldwide product marketing for virtualization and private cloud at Dell slash converged infrastructure. Ben, welcome to theCUBE. Great, thank you very much, Dave. Appreciate it. So Stu, there is definitely a symbiotic relationship between converged infrastructure and cloud, isn't there? Yeah, absolutely. And virtualization is kind of the driver for all of this. We talked about kind of the ripple effect of server virtualization having an impact on networking and storage. And we've seen a lot from Dell is to kind of pull in all the pieces together. They've met a lot of acquisitions. We had Dario on earlier this week talking about how the networking component come in. And what Ben has is the V-Start product. And if people aren't familiar with it, this is Dell's offering that kind of puts together, integrates and makes a sellable option that has the server, the storage and the networking put together. So Ben, I'm wondering if you could just tell us the kind of the update on the news there. And the other thing we break it into two parts is there's converged and then there's integrated. So we saw the converged, ecologic array in the blade chassis. So what's the differentiation and can you talk a little bit about the portfolio there? Sure, so let me start out with the V-Start family. So this week we announced the V-Start 1000. But let me talk about the V-Start family overall. So to your description, V-Start is about pre-engineered, pre-integrated infrastructure. So it includes all the necessary components across server storage and networking to deliver the customer pre-built virtualization infrastructure. One of the key things that customers want when they purchase a V-Start is a fast implementation time. They're more interested in using virtual infrastructure. They don't want to spend the time of designing it, architecting it, ordering it, getting it in, receiving it, testing it and actually building it before they actually start using it. So fast time devalue is one of the key attributes of the V-Start family. It also gives them a very standardized block of virtualization versus if they order virtualization on their own every two to three years or every two to three quarters, they make it very different variations in the architecture. This gives them a very standardized architecture that they can base their entire virtualization infrastructure upon. So just for clarification, we're talking virtual infrastructures. So do I have to run a hypervisor on this configuration? Yeah, the V-Start 1000 or V-Start family in general is targeted for customers who want to run a 100% virtualized environment. They can certainly couple it with non-virtualized servers side-by-side, but the V-Start solution is 100% virtualized. My understanding, you have two flavors today. You've got the VMware and the Microsoft Hypervisor. Correct, we support those two hypervisors specifically. So with the V-Start 1000, it's a little bit differentiated than the previous versions of V-Start in that. The V-Start 50, the 100 and 200 were designed for smaller environments and were designed for customers who just wanted simple virtual infrastructure. They're rack-based servers that you could use to ecological storage because it's very easy to use. With the V-Start 1000, we're actually targeting a customer who really is looking for an application platform or private cloud platform. They're not just looking for simple virtualization infrastructure. So it's based on our latest generation of blades. It uses our compelling storage, specifically the fiber channel version of our compelling storage. And it also integrates one of our more recent acquisitions in that it uses force 10 networking for the top or X switch as well. Okay, great. So if we look at the previous generations of V-Start, it was rack servers, equal logic storage, and the power connect on the networking. So now you've got kind of the bigger environments and some of the newer pieces put in there. And it's also designed for customers again who want to deploy private cloud infrastructure. So for instance, it falls within Microsoft's private cloud fast track validation program. And that's a program that Microsoft has that works with OEMs such as Dell to ensure that, for instance, in this case, System Center 12 works really well with this infrastructure, this converged infrastructure. So when you combine System Center 2012 with V-Start 1000, in essence you're getting pre-built private cloud infrastructure. Yeah, so you actually did a dual launch with the V-Start 1000 this week. Actually talked to Scott Lowe who wrote an article about the equal logic blade array. He's at Microsoft Tech in Orlando and he said he saw the V-Start 1000 and expect us to cover that a little bit more. So it's your second question. The difference between converges and integration, we leverage integration as a way to drive differentiated convergence. So if you think about the second announcement, major announcement that we had this week around the converged blade data center, it's an example of using a common platform, in this case Dell's M1000 E chassis, our standard 10U blade chassis, and doing a ton of integration between the active elements of the data center, server storage networking to form a converged infrastructure solution. And so we're leveraging the fact that Dell has the first and only quarter height server within a blade chassis. And we're using that particular blade server in our solution to maximize the number of nodes within this single chassis. We're leveraging the new Force 10 MXL switch as a switching device within the chassis. We're choosing that because it has 10 gig, 40 gig capabilities. It has outstanding performance from an East West traffic standpoint. So all the virtual machines and all the storage that they're talking to has very high performance. In addition, it supports DCB and Dota Center bridging. So it allows us to unify the both land and sand traffic into a single network. And then finally, the last piece that we are missing as far as being able to integrate this into this overall solution is the new Ecologic Blade Array. So from a storage standpoint. So for customers who truly could put want or put their entire data center within a 10U chassis because maybe they only have around 100 virtual machines or 200 virtual machines, you literally could get your entire data center chassis, data center in this single 10U chassis with three cables. That does have some scalability. The Ecologic can scale outside of the array just like an external Ecologic could before. Yeah, absolutely. So Ben, I tweeted out earlier this week that Converged Infrastructure has become the anti and high stakes game of data center infrastructure. And everybody's on the bandwagon. My question to you and maybe Stu could chime in as well is how much of what's going on here with the Converged Infrastructure is invention versus packaging innovation. And what does that mean for the competitive landscape? And in other words, can startups participate? Is there an opportunity for them to fill white space? And where is the invention versus the packaging innovation? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so when I think about the sources of value from an infrastructure convergence standpoint, I think there's sort of two main ones that Dell's exploiting. So the first one is what I would call form factor or hardware convergence. And that is true innovation. And in that there's a lot of engineering work that is necessary to actually integrate all this stuff together and put it in a predefined package like that blade chassis that I talked about earlier. Back to your question of who can participate in this. It's probably not relevant for a single startup but the people who can best bring value from a hardware innovation standpoint are end to end IT providers like Dell. Because by definition, it's server storage networking. If you only own a couple pieces of that, you can certainly drive innovation say around servers and networking but if you don't own the storage piece, you can't have that third leg and drive innovation around what you could do, for instance, in a blade chassis. And so because Dell owns all three of those pieces, we can make all the tough calls and trade-offs between server storage and networking from a design standpoint and come up with an optimized solution for customers and not force customers make those trade-offs on their own. The other thing we talk about a lot of the last year or so here in theCUBE is this IT labor problem. And what we mean by that is if you look at servers and storage and the associated spending, more than half goes to people and the processes around them. So, and our premise is that that investment is really constricting innovation at the buy side, absolutely, practitioner base. And people always talk about, we talk about the 70, 30 mixed, 70% of the investment goes to maintenance, 30% goes to growing the business. Are we starting to move the needle and do you have any proof points that you can share just in terms of attacking that problem? Yeah, absolutely. So, virtualization has created a huge amount of benefits for customers, specifically around capital expenditures, but to your point, it's actually created a ton of problems primarily in the operational space. So you've sort of moved those dollars around, saved money in the hardware, but now I've created actually operational challenges and increased operational expense. And so if you look at going back to innovation within the commercial infrastructure space, VSTART represents another type of innovation in that innovating the consumption model of virtual infrastructure and collapsing all the steps that are necessary to actually build out virtual infrastructure. I touched on them before, designing, architecting, procuring, actually receiving that all, testing, assembling, and so forth. We're collapsing, we're consolidating, we're converging that consumption model so customers can then spend their time actually using virtualization versus spending all their time actually maintaining virtualization. I think the industry absolutely has overall has helped move that dial from that 70, 30 to down to more palatable levels. Dell four years ago was probably north of 9010. We were clearly not best in class. And through innovations around virtualization, innovations in improving processes, innovations around leveraging some of our own tools, we've actually gone below 50%. We've actually gone below 50%. You're talking about internally. Internally, yes. Yeah, so, you know, and that's innovation we've brought to the market as well. So we're proof that you absolutely can do it, but below 50% as I mentioned, and we're leveraging that IP and best practices and how we work with our customers. So Ben, that's a great point about the kind of the consumption, we definitely see convergence as that time to market and deployment. The other real challenge is when it's ongoing, automation and orchestration for a virtual environment, how much of this is VMware vCenter, Microsoft center or Dell's orchestration layer? Can you talk a little bit about your software story? Yeah, so our current approach is focusing on leveraging the virtual consoles that our customers spend most of their time in. So to your point, it's VMware vCenter. If you're VMware customer, it's the Microsoft tool set if you're a Microsoft customer. And so our approach is what I would call an integrated management approach. Let you manage your underlying hardware infrastructure directly from those virtual consoles that you use today. So it's not another console you have to go to. It's not yet another console you have to integrate with the broader systems management tools that you have in place already. Okay, what about the Dell VIS orchestration tools? Can you speak a little bit about what those are and where we are today? Yeah, sure. So you mentioned cloud versus converged infrastructure. You know, when I think about a private cloud infrastructure holistically, there's that hardware layer which we generally call converged infrastructure. And then typically you layer on top automation, some sort of automation software, primarily to provide self-service, provide some charge back. But there's also the management of the actual workloads or the VMs throughout their entire lifecycle. It's not a matter of just deploying virtual machines. You actually have to manage them through their lifecycle. And at some point, you have to kill off that virtual machine once that project is done. And so that's what the VIS portfolio is designed to do. It's designed to help customers manage the virtual machines on top of that converged infrastructure, help manage it through that entire lifecycle in a very efficient, automated way. Great, so the other place, when you talk about making an environment comfortable for virtual machines, not all virtual machines are created equal. What's Dell done to kind of understand workloads? Do you have templates? Do you have, how many different workloads do you expect VSTART to go into? Great, so great question. So to your point, VSTART is basically just virtualization infrastructure. What Dell is doing is we're actually building what we call application recipes. So for instance, we have an application recipe for SharePoint that helps a customer understand best practices, how to deploy a SharePoint workload on top of that converged infrastructure solution that VSTART represents. And we expect to have additional application recipes initially mostly focused on the Microsoft application suite but will expand from there. So recipe is documentation, correct? So I wanted to ask you about that. So what's changing and evolving in the lab environment to support converged infrastructure? So dial back, whatever, 10, 20 years, it was the IBM Redbook. And that resulted in documentation, a white paper essentially. And there's a lot of talk about reference architectures and then embedding some of that intelligence into the actual product. Is that achievable? Is that a pipe dream? And what is Dell doing in that regard? Yeah, so we think the application recipe is the right level of value today because the challenge with convergence in general is convergence absolutely is a trade-off, right? You absolutely are giving some things up to gain other things. And so with regards to tightly integrating those workloads directly into the infrastructure, we think at this point that's maybe a bridge too far from a trade-off standpoint for customers. And so we think customers still want these application recipes that provide best practices because it does give them some low flexibility. Like just with any other reference architecture recipe allows you some latitude to go left or go right, you don't have to follow the recipe exactly. So let's talk about those trade-offs. So the value obviously integration, faster deployment, you're reducing your risk, it's pre-integrated, it's simpler, what's the drawback? Yeah, so for VSTART, one of the ways we get the very fast time to value is is actually a fairly fixed configuration, right? That's the thing that allows us to actually be able to deploy VSTARTs very quickly. So if you want to tweak a particular setting within a server, if I don't like that switch, I want this switch, if I want potentially a different type of storage technology, right? Those aren't necessarily degrees of freedom within the VSTARTs. We have degrees of freedom within the VSTART family. So if you want fiber channel storage, we have the VSTART 1000. If you want ice guzzies storage, we have the smaller VSTARTs. But there are sort of limited degrees of freedom within the actual componentry. Because again, we've designed this with best practices in mind. In a sense, we've commoditized virtual infrastructure. Customers, for the most part, don't build their own server. For those customers who have adopted virtualization, they understand that that virtual infrastructure can be commoditized and standardized, and they can buy it in those standardized blocks. And ideally, there's less need to tweak the blocks. But some customers do want to. But how about, so this value in integration. I've said to customers, look, you should expect to pay a premium. Now, customers don't always necessarily pay a premium for converged infrastructure. What's Dell's philosophy there? Are you charging a premium for that integration? Or are you trying to gain footprint, essentially, and compete on price? Yeah, one of the benefits of the VSTART solution is it's actually available at a fixed price. We actually have a defined fixed price. That actually also includes the enterprise deployment services, which is a, it's not a special contract that you have. We actually engineered into the actual offering. So it's a fixed price. If you actually went to Dell.com and assembled it yourself based on the list price, it's lower than the actual list price that you can get at Dell.com. And so that's one of the things we've done with VSTART is we want to give customers a fixed price. So take it or leave it, walk away, make it simple. We think it's a good value price based on the value we're delivering. And so that's the approach we've taken with VSTART. Yeah, so that's a premium, right? That people pay for that integration. Well, it's a discount relative to the list price on Dell.com, depending on. It has services packages in it. Yeah, so the point is in the total cost of ownership, it's going to be less. And that's your value proposition. Yes, exactly. But from the CAPEX standpoint, you might be going to pay a little bit more than you would if you just bought bespoke pieces and put together services on your own. You may or may not. It depends. Well, you should is my point, right? I mean, this is value. Yeah, I know. And I'm always leery when people bomb pricing and say, okay, there's no, because I think that's, I think a lot of people are head faking and saying, all right, we're going to basically lock them in and jack up and price them. The way we did the fix the data down the road. The way we did the fixed pricing, we absolutely deal with the comprehension there's a TCO benefit to a customer. All right, so if a customer doesn't do that value, doesn't value that sort of thing and they're looking at initial purchase price, right? That's not that that value equation may not work for them. But absolutely, we think we've priced it such that it still gives a very, very good TCO. Yeah, okay. So first question I have for you is systems integrators used to do this work to kind of put together the solution. How does VSTART integrate with the channel? Yeah, absolutely. So a lot of our channel partners are pretty interested in VSTART, I've been selling it because to some extent the work that I described that we're taking away from the IT administrator or internal IT staffs, to be honest, that's low value work for the channel as well. They don't want to necessarily be selling rack and stack and simple enterprise deployment services. They rather, for instance, be selling you virtualization consulting services to help you migrate some of your physical environment to virtualized environment or size virtual machines, or even the more advanced value out resellers want to do application work. They actually want to help you deploy that new application, either new application or upgrade from the previous application. VDI is another one. VDI, a new platform for Oracle or SAP, that's really the value out services, the majority of the channel partners really want to engage on versus just simple rack and stack. So there's a very proposition for channel partners as well. Great. The other thing, can you give us any indication as to how many VSTARTs are there out in the field and what we can expect from them? Yeah, what we can expect from them. And what's our future looking for, Gaston? What's the build plan? Tell us being added to the blazer. Hang on, let me check. I have that right here. Let me check. You know what? I forgot to bring that today. But more seriously, it was interesting. I was talking to one of the industry analysts here at Dell Storage Forum and they said, we'd like to start tracking converged infrastructure sales and we want to have projections. I know who that is. We sort of laughed and we said, good luck. Because back to my earlier points, convergence and converged infrastructure, there's no really well-defined metric. So for instance, some people offer just reference architectures. How do you count the value and the sale of a reference architecture? So to answer your question, VSTART is not only a fixed offering to actual instantiation. There's a reference architecture behind VSTART that our sales teams, and more importantly, our customers absolutely leverage when they're buying converged infrastructure offerings of virtualization from us. So bottom line, it's hard to quantify what the actual impact is because we get great leverage from those architectures. So my final question is, you know, when you look at upgrade cycles, seems to be one of the toughest things who talk kind of reference architecture versus buying it all. My server, my network, my storage don't go together. What's your experience been so far and how are you overcoming that? Yeah, so you're right. So back to the definition of what's converged infrastructure. Is it just server networking or is it inclusive of storage? You know, in our mind to have that well-balanced system, we think it's really critical to have storage to again, eliminate a lot of the challenges for customers. But you're right, there's a lot of customers who have established storage environments that they run as a silo and they're going to prefer to buy in a much more peace part manner. So for those customers who really want that balanced system and have that mentality of buying things in a very modular fashion, VSTART's a great fit. For those who choose to treat storage as a separate consolidated silo, you know, we have all their offerings for them. Great, excellent. And what do you think about the Patriots this year, Ben, as a final note? You know, I think their offense is going to be definitely a little better. The defense, we're all very hopeful, but you know, ultimately, they have to demonstrate on the field. You saw they signed Gronkowski for long-term deal. Long-term deal. Absolutely, hopefully, Wes will be back and even Aaron Hernandez. Wes was cool about it. Wes was okay, really happy. True team player. Yeah, they're managing their salary cap very well. So ESPN has not taken over yet, but... All right, Ben, thanks very much. It was a great segment. Thank you. I really appreciate you bringing the perspectives on Dell's convergence strategy. This is theCUBE and I have to say we couldn't be here without the generous support of Dell and so thank you for having us here. Legal Seafood is our other sponsor, so go to legal.seafood.com. No, shop.legalseafood.com. Father's Day is coming up, so it's got to ship all over the world, actually all over the country, so check that out. But thank you very much. Keep it right there. We'll be right back, live from Boston. This is Dell Storage Forum. This is theCUBE. Keep it right there.