 Hey all you cool cats and kittens, and welcome back to AWS re-invent. We are live from the show floor here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson, joined by my co-host, Paul Gillan. Paul, how you doing? We're now full blown into your first day of AWS re-invent ever. Overwhelmed. Overwhelmed. Drinking from the fire hose. There's so much going on here. There really is, isn't there? Anything stuck out, stood out to you, in that fire hose? I think the importance of data, we're hearing about a lot of tools here, a lot of talk about how organizations need to take advantage of the cloud, to leverage their data more effectively. That's clearly a theme in the show, hearing a lot about vertical industries and the move of the cloud into more verticalization, which we're going to be talking about here with our next guest, among other things. Monty Batia, who's the Vice President of Global Systems Integrators at VMware. A company that really pioneered partnerships with AWS as well as other cloud providers. And also Ranjit Bawa, the principal U.S. cloud leader for Deloitte, a company that has been a leader in vertical clouds, as well as in cloud, cloudifying its customers, if you will. Welcome, thank you both for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you for having us. Thank you for being here. Monty, I just have to say, I know I said it before, I think you might be the best dressed. You know, you may have to say it again. I've got to record this and say it to my wife. Because she always says that I should wear age-appropriate colors. And she thinks yellow and hot pinks are not age-appropriate. So I've made a deal with her that when I'm traveling, and everybody else has heard the story, when I'm traveling and she's not around, I can wear any colors I want. It is an attention drabber, it is a conversation starter and I love it. I'm all for the talk trigger and you told me you have 32 different sets. That's right. And you're branded, right? Give us a little lapel peek. I know. Well. Brilliant. We don't always do a fashion segment to open each clip, but I trust, I couldn't let this pass. Thank you. I appreciate that. You're just absolutely, absolutely smashing it. Deloitte and VMware, you've got a unique strategic partnership. Monchi, can you tell me a little bit about that? Yeah, absolutely. We've been working together for close to a decade now with VMware. Nice. In Techland, that might as well be a century. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And we've had a number of very successful large-scale transformations across industries together, particularly as our clients are moving to cloud, which really in our world is a metaphor for modern engineering, modern technology, how tech shows up differently to support the business. So we're really excited about what we've done and where we're going together. I want to ask you about the transition that we see going on at AWS. Really going from being an infrastructure provider to more of a platform provider for vertical applications, for HPC, for AI, for specific uses. Is this a transition that you see your customers, are they applauding this transition? Yeah, most certainly. And we saw this coming a while ago, and as does AWS and VMware and others, that from more horizontal clouds, we're going to start to move into vertical clouds that support industries and sectors and sub-sectors. So increasingly, as we move from IAS to more PaaS and even into SaaS land, that is going to continue. The good news is that AWS has formed a really good foundation and a set of common frameworks that people can use to build upon. And then with VMware as well, we've started to build these vertical clouds and insurance and life sciences and healthcare and all kinds of other sectors, including manufacturing. And you know, in our booth here, we have a demo of our manufacturing vertical clouds as well. So we certainly see that the direction of travel and our clients are really egging us on as well. So what is VMware's role in building these vertical clouds? Because you're not a vertical, I don't think of you as being a vertical services provider. Yeah, so from a VMware standpoint, we're going through a transition ourselves, right? It's a transformation happening at VMware. And while we are traditionally an infrastructure, we're a plumbing company, right? We provide all the horizontal space. That's where we need the partnership. So we do have some capability built around industries, but that's where our partnership with Deloitte is very important to us because they have all these industry clouds. We have the tech platform that provides that. And then when partnering three-way partnerships with hyperscalers like AWS, we can bring the scale and everything together to serve our customers. So it's very important for us to make use of our technology stack. We have customers in all industries. We have huge customer base and we have customers in all industries, right? And so we want to really create that industry angle working with our partners like Deloitte to serve those customers and working with our ecosystem partners, ISV partners, hyperscaler partners. Obviously, AWS is a big partner of ours and we want to bring it all together to serve our customers, their journeys basically. Let's hang out there for a second because you see, you both see, extraordinarily large customers across different verticals and industries. Talk about some of the trends that you might be seeing that transcend across all of them. Ranjit, we'll start with you. Yeah, it's a great question. Certainly more, you know, sort of fundamentally we see this as a huge opportunity this decade. Many folks that I've worked with call this the Roaring 20s all over again. You know, hopefully won't end the same way as the last one, but in many ways every client of ours across every industry is going through a huge disruption. As they're thinking about the businesses they're in, the products they serve, the segments they support, the client demographics that are changing. So that's one big mega sort of trend. The other one is the rate of change. I think most everybody's dealing with the rate of change of technology, right? You come here last year and this year there are a thousand new services. Every day they release five or seven more and every other technology provided out there as well. So our clients in general are struggling with how do they embrace and adopt this change quickly. Today they're not set up for that, right? Decision overload too, so much. That one and then the ability to be able to absorb this change, right? A typical client of ours, enterprise client, has a three to four year journey to embrace new technology. That's the refreshed cycle. But now we see that half-life going down to three months and six months. So a large part of this transformation is how do you build that muscle to be able to deal with this change that's only going to continue to accelerate? So not only are we helping them think about new products and new businesses, but also how to build this muscle and fundamentally change the way they deliver technology. And that's I think also a place where our partnership is really valuable. It's like your sprint muscles versus your marathon muscles. You're totally fast, which is an entirely different set. Exactly right. What about you, Monty? Yeah, and so from a technology standpoint also, one of the biggest trends that we are seeing, you know, two years ago when you looked at it, it was all about hyperscalar, public cloud, cloud first. Now we're seeing more of a multi-cloud approach, right? We're seeing that pullback into towards hybrid cloud. I know John talks about- The super cloud. The super cloud, right? Yes, one of our favorite terms here. Deloitte talks about meta cloud. We talk about cloud, cross-cloud services. So that's a trend that's coming up. And you know, we're, from a VMware standpoint, we're very well positioned in the multi-cloud space. You know, our partnership with other hyperscalars, actually all cloud providers, and then our partnerships with, you know, system integrators like Deloitte, it is really helping us propel, you know, that solution to our customers. And so that's a big trend we're seeing around the multi-cloud and the modern application space. How, I mean, the multi-cloud issues seem to be very hot a couple of years ago to die down, at least with the amount of coverage that's afforded to it. Is that because customers are less interested in multiple clouds, or is it because that's become simply part of the landscape? You know, I think there was a recent study done that over 70% of the enterprise customers are inherently multi-cloud, right? And multi-cloud just doesn't mean the hyperscalars, right? We take multi-cloud as the hyperscalars, the private cloud, the edge cloud, the industry cloud. They've got data all over the place, right? So inherently, most enterprises are multi-cloud. They're realizing it now that the vendor lock-in is an issue with them. And so, you know, over 70% of the customers are actually looking at building that orchestration layer on top of the clouds, which can provide them a more meaningful and simplified decision-making for their cloud workloads. And maybe to add to that, John, I think your point about the fascination with multi-cloud four or five years ago and how that tapered off, I think the use case people were solving for back then was to have three different cloud options for the same workload. So they could swap between those three, maybe they could arbitrage on cost, et cetera. That in our view is a fool's errand because it's just the juices and worth the squeeze. But what we are seeing now is for different workloads, you want to give people optionality. So you're an edge computing workload, you're serving a restaurant, you need that to run on a different cloud provider because they have better analytics, the better geospatial data, that's fine. But your main core application, we run on a different cloud. So you're still supporting multi-cloud, but you're not confusing the same workload to be trying to run them on multiple clouds at the same time or things of that nature. So I think that's where it's kind of moving towards. So I, we've talked a lot about big partnerships, one of the exciting trends at the show is all the new collaboration that's happening. I love that you've been partners for a decade. It shows a long-term commitment to the community. If I'm an AWS customer who has not yet taken advantage of your fabulous partnership, what is it about it that makes it so magic? Give me a little bit of the pitch. Go for it, Monty. You're rolling. I like it. Let's go with it. So I think for an AWS customer, so we have VMware has an offering that we built with AWS, VMC on AWS, right? I think there is a real value in it. There are specific use cases that create a financial benefit, an operational benefit for the customers, right? We've traditionally not done a great job of elevating that message. And that's our goal, right? That's our goal is to make sure that the VMC on AWS offering, it's not a competitive offering to AWS. It's actually a complementary offering. It helps everybody. It helps the customer. It helps VMware. It helps AWS in bringing all these pieces together to solve the customer problems. There are certain use cases that are really good for moving to a native cloud like AWS. There are definitely use cases. There are financial advantages, operational advantages that the customers will get out of doing the VMC on AWS offering. And again, our partnerships with our most strategic partners who are bringing the industry expertise on top of it will even accelerate that even faster. I know you're not in liberty in talking at length about the Broadcom acquisition, but can you offer our listeners any insight into what will be continued, what Broadcom's approach or attitude toward the partnerships that you've already built and how strong those are, how committed they are to continuing them? You know, there's things we can share. There are things we cannot share and I'll let Ranjit talk about it. From our standpoint, I think, you know, what Broadcom has openly stated, we'll say that again, right? They are looking at this as a very strategic acquisition. From their standpoint, they've made it clear that multi-cloud and modern applications are two of the big strategic initiatives they want to continue. They've also stated openly that, you know, in order for us to scale, we still need these partnerships. And so the partnerships and the ecosystem that VMware has built, you know, it's going to be looked upon as, you know, something they'll continue to do for, at least for the near future. You know, what's going to happen in the future, we don't know, but in the near future, they don't want to disrupt the partnership, the channel programs that we've already built. You know, and that's very important to us because that's one of our biggest go-to-market routes through the partners. And most importantly, that logo isn't changing, so you get to wear all of your personalize stuff. Well, yes, I was worried if I changed the logo, then I have to re-order my t-shirts again. But now, you know, we're good for now. We're good for now. So, you both are such wonderfully seasoned veterans, so you don't look at it like we talked about earlier, but both of you with 20-plus years of experience in the industry. I, we're doing a new thing on theCUBE, this show, where we're looking for your 30-second hot take. Think of it as your thought leadership, sizzle reel. What is the most important story or theme coming out of this year's show? I'll see who looks most ready. Monty looks ready, all right, let's go. You know, one of the things that I've seen, and I've been coming to re-invents for quite some time, you know, this is my sixth re-invent. But I really like the ecosystem story that is now building, right? It used to be from an Amazon standpoint, it used to be always customer obsession which is still there, but they've added partner obsession now, right? And that's a new thing. That means now they are focusing on the ecosystem, just like we are focusing, just like Deloitte is focusing on ecosystem. And that to me is a trend worth talking about. I love that, and very holistic, and very astute. All right, Ranjee, what about you? Well, first I love the energy. It almost feels like there was no pandemic, right? So that's a good reminder, and hopefully there's a world beyond what we've been through. I also think, you know, to that point, there's a lot more focus on ecosystem plays that move beyond just the lift and shift to the cloud, but less be thoughtful about changing the way you serve your clients, the capabilities you want to deliver, and a lot of that is through the ecosystem around client problems and working backwards from clients. I think it's also amazing. Yeah. And finally, I'm also always energized by the team that's here, the folks that are here. I think it's become more pervasive. You know, earlier on it was more CIOs and senior execs. I think we're seeing a lot more across the organization which is a great way to drive adoption and things. Really beautiful point. I love that the diversity here is definitely noticeable. This is a cheeky thing to say live, but I noticed this is probably the first tech conference I've ever been to as a woman where there was actually a line for the restroom. Normally we're straight in at these. And it's a silly thing. Yeah, now it breaks, I have to allow a little extra time, but it was one of those moments where I very much noticed it earlier today and had to text Noah, I was going to be a little later back to the set. But I think, I'm glad you brought that up because this community is special, it's inclusive, it's collaborative, it's massive companies as well as tiny startups from all over the world. It's very exciting. I really enjoyed talking with both of you. I hope we get to have you back on the show. It was fun, it was fashionable. Ronsheed, Bonti, thank you both so much for bringing me your thoughts and insight. We'd love to come back and talk pink next time and talk about it. I mean, the Delighted Sultans usually know how to thread up, but it is. I got it up. Great, great. I know, I'm seriously overshadowed. But I'm wearing my neon's next time. I wear a very bright pink. So generally speaking, although the sequence we're making, so we'll definitely do it, but thank you so much for being here. And thank all of you for tuning in to our continuous live coverage here from AWS re-invent in Las Vegas in Nevada. My name is Savannah Peterson with Paul Gillian. We are The Cube and we are the source for leading and spicy, zesty, fashionable tech coverage.