 Hey everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of VMware Explorer 2023. It's theCUBE live at the Venetian Expo. We've been here so many times. This is day one of three days of coverage of CUBE content for you. We've got two sets. Lisa Martin here with Dave Vellante. We've got a lot of alumni, VMware executives, partners, customers, industry, laureates. We've got one of our alumni back with us, Raj Wikramasing, Senior Managing Director, Global Lead, Hybrid, and Emerging Cloud Platforms at Accenture. Welcome back, Raj. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me and nice to see you guys. Nice to see you as well. So talk to us about what's new with Accenture before we kind of really dig into some of the meat with VMware and Accenture. Sure. Well, we are very much in the thick of figuring out AI and Gen AI. That's a huge initiative for us. We continue to be very dialed in with what's going on with our clients' business problems. We remain extremely relevant about addressing them and we are excited about our coming new fiscal year which starts on September 1. Oh, just around the corner. Yeah. Talk a little bit about, I see, over 500 completed projects with VMware. Give us a little bit of the history of the partnership. Yeah. VMware and us, we started partnering earnestly just about when this IPO'd. So about 15 years ago. So since then we've created a global practice around VMware. We have 2,500 plus certified practitioners deployed globally and a lot more associated with the practice. And yes, as you said, we've developed, we've delivered more than 500 successful outcomes projects for our clients and we are looking to build on it. We are excited about the Broadcom connection and looking forward to what that brings. Really? What are you excited about? Well, Broadcom is a huge player in the technology market, especially with the acquisitions they've done around and mainframe, but from our conversations with Hawk and his team, it looks like they are very much now focused on marrying that hardware and chip background with software, hence this acquisition. So that plays very much into our strengths and our industry lenses and so on. So I think it should be an exciting future for us. I mean, it makes sense, right? They're a horizontal play. They want to be everything to everybody, any industry, any application, any workload. And of course, you guys do that, but you do it with great specificity and massive global presence. What are you hearing from customers since the AI heard around the world? AI seemed to be, it was hot for a while. Certainly during the pandemic, people were spending money on automation. Maybe you call that AI. It died down a little bit and then all of a sudden chat, GPT comes out and the boardrooms are putting top-down pressure. What has changed in terms of how people think about AI, forgetting about the buzz for a moment? How are people thinking about deploying it to their business? Well, I think it's a broader, you had to broaden the aperture a little, Dave, because what we are hearing as we talk about, as we talk to our customer set, we're just typically the G2000 enterprise customers and when we connect with the C-suite, CTO, CIO, CFOs, what we are really hearing about the broader cloud landscape is they have, their investments are now maturing, right? So they have, they bought into the notion of what cloud could bring. They are now becoming more disciplined about how they want to look at that and how they operate in it. So when they look at it in those lenses, there's a couple of things that they are very much talking to us about. One is, how do you really drive business value from their investments in the cloud? And the second is, how do they address complexity? Because their estates are now very complex and I think AI and Gen AI has a big role to play on how we solve those problems. So that's what I'd be asking you guys, is how can I drive business value as from beyond experimentation and then I'm curious as to how you think about what role VMware plays. They don't really have a strong data play, that's not really their thing, but they have a very strong infrastructure play, obviously. You guys work with all the cloud players, they have really, really strong AI. Where do you see, you heard VMware strategy today, obviously Jensen was up on stage, private AI, our data suggests that customers are basically split evenly in terms of where they're going to deploy AI, half in the cloud, half's going to be on-prem because of the legal and compliance exposures. But at the same time, the on-prem guys have to keep pace in order for that to be a reality. So how do you see that playing out? 100%, so back to the kind of problem statements, right? So we have a different couple of approaches to that. First is we look at the entire continuum, right? So yes, what workloads do you have on public cloud? What belongs in private? How do you modernize? Mainframe is not going away. How do you continue to get value from the modernized mainframe and then edge, right? So first of all, you look at the entire set of workloads, what's the right disposition? Do we need to repatriate stuff from public cloud and so on? So we have that conversation. Then we look at the second problem, which is, as I said, how do you operate in this very complex multi-cloud environment? Then there are fundamental questions around financial engineering, right? So they have massive investments in data centers, data center optimization, data center exit. Then, so you look at that entire spectrum and then you bring AI, right? So how do you address each one of those with an AI lens and each of those has a very kind of bespoke approach, depending frankly on the industry as well. So you think about modernization and how it's evolved. You mentioned mainframe a couple of times. So modernization used to be, oh, I can run Linux, right? And then it became, all right, well, let's bring in containers and microservices and maybe a little automation and big data. And now it's obviously AI. So is it about in your opinion, and I'm sure it's both, but I'd love to hear thoughts on this, injecting AI into the sort of existing application portfolio to make it run better, make it more intelligent, drive automation, which is a bit of a bolt-on. Yep. By the way, that's maybe okay. I don't mean that as a pejorative, but it's true. Take the existing apps and put on AI on top or are you seeing a real need to rewrite from scratch and really modernize the portfolio that way? I have no doubt it's both, but how do you see that playing out? So, excellent, you captured it really well. So I think there are two distinct buckets of problems and solutions. One is how do you deploy the right AI capabilities to drive efficiency, to bring the latest industry knowledge? How do you change fundamentally the interaction between a workload and their customer? There's a lot that AI compute can do there. But the bigger problem and the immediate problem we are seeing is in order to do that, the currency is data. And when we look at these big enterprises, there's an enormous amount of work to be done for them to be AI ready for these capabilities to be properly deployed. Yes, machines are learning, but what are we teaching them? What do we want to teach them? And how do we do it ethically? How do we do it with the right principles? That is all about what the data sets are and what those trends are. So that's kind of how we approach these things with our clients. What does the typical customer journey look like for a customer that knows that if we're not doing AI by now, we're behind? As many leaders have said recently, what does the typical customer journey look like to help, especially large enterprises, with huge volumes of data that will only continue to grow? How do they come to you, to Accenture and VMware, and say, help us really formulate a strategy so that we're really approaching this in the right way to get that business value that you guys just talked about? Yeah, so first of all, the capabilities that VMware brings to bear in this entire, in that journey is really good, right? So they are a really strong multi-cloud player. They are now embedding AI, as you heard from the keynotes today, into their capabilities. So they are very critical in the technology stack on how we approach these things. But back to your question, the journey is, it's actually quite traditional. What is the business problem we are trying to solve? What are the outcomes you are looking for? And then you drill down into the technology stack back to the VMware's of the world are very helpful in that. And then we look at data. So it's all about preparing that entire stack to provide that ultimate outcome they're looking for. So AI has been around. So JNAI is what's providing this huge new flywheel. But in order for us to really realize what the value is, you have to really break it down. And when you break it down, it's actually pretty traditional in terms of how you look at these, how you break these down. Yes, there are capabilities in each of those buckets that each, whether it's a global SI or a console brings with the industrial end zone, whether it's with a competitive advantage lens, but the approach, that journey back to your point is relatively straight, I don't want to say straightforward, but relatively traditional. The logic is straightforward. In the early days of the cloud, the incumbent on prime vendors, they were dismissive. Let's face it. And then because of security concerns and privacy, et cetera. And then of course, the cloud proved it actually does a pretty good job with security, notwithstanding it's got some challenges. And of course, there's many cost issues and we've played that out a lot on theCUBE. But the nature of my question is, I feel like the incumbents today are saying, look, we have the advantage on prem because of the fear and certainty of doubt and doubt around legal compliance. Edge is a latency game. And I'm not sure that VMware, Dell, HPE, IBM has any better story than the cloud guys. We'll see how that plays. That's almost like jump ball. And you guys don't care, you're wherever it is. We do care. I think it's playing out, actually. But no, I'd love your thoughts on that. What I mean is you're agnostic, wherever it goes, you're going to go, but how do you see it? Let's start with Edge. I think what's happening is really, everyone's kind of getting into bed with each other. They're embracing each other as opposed to... Yes, they're embracing each other. I mean, you take Dell, for example. Dell and VMware had a very strong, they were born with each other, frankly. Now, if you look, Dell and Red Hat have a very strong relationship. VMware and AWS have an extremely strong relationship. And so, I don't think you can kind of, because two things. One is the cloud providers bring massive scale and automation to the edge and so on. But a lot of the innovation, a lot of the actual innovation is still happening at companies like VMware and so on. So I think that marriage is very valuable. So it's like Matt Baker says, I don't know if you know Matt Baker, he used to run strategic planning at Dell. Now he's doing some secret project, I think. But he always says it's not a zero-sum game. Yeah. Okay, and he's right. And your commentary sort of underscored that. But so, back to my original question was, you've got that cloud innovation and you've got the fear and certainty doubt factor in favor of the on-prem guys. Your premise is, because they're embracing each other, and it's true by the way, AWS is of course embracing on-prem guys as well, because they know how hard that is. So it's a rising tide that lifts all boats is really essentially your premise. Absolutely, and the tide is continuing to rise. There's an enormous set of opportunities across technology that all these companies will benefit from, profit from, grow from. And we haven't even started talking about the global reach. So a lot of this is happening still in the western part of the world. And yes, there's a lot of innovation coming through, but I think the scope back to the water analogy, I think we are just beginning to see the early, we are still in the early days of what the real promise is here. So everyone can benefit. That's a good point, everyone can benefit. I want to talk pivot on the innovations you talked about for a second. During Ragu's keynote this morning, he talked about VMware's five innovations, and one of them had to do with ransomware. We know that is a household term. It's a matter of customer companies and any industry saying it's when, not if. He talked about VMware enabling customers to recover from ransomware 75% faster, which is huge, incredibly important, because nobody wants to be the next headline. How does Accenture help VMware and customers in that ransomware recovery and even planning for it? Yeah, I don't know if we have a specific conversation going on with VMware around ransomware, but I know we have a very at scale security practice. We have a quantum security practice that does exactly that. I want to learn more about what Ragu just announced, and I think to your point, there's a big connection there that we can make and bring joint value to our clients. So I'm looking forward to that. But I think it looks like there are good thought leadership on both sides that we need to connect here. There's sort of thinking about the global impact of AI brings me to productivity. So in order for that tide to lift all ships, we've got to have an impact in terms of productivity. We've got a weird economy right now. The supply chains still challenged. We're shifting supply chains to southern APAC countries, India obviously picking up a lot of the slack, Malaysia, Vietnam, et cetera. The whole tension between the US and China creates uncertainty. But at the end of the day, I feel like productivity solves all these problems. What do you think about that? How do you, where are we? You said we're in early innings, but we saw with PCs the productivity boom was massive. The internet actually largely cut out a lot of the middlemen, but then created middlemen markets. How do you see any assumptions that you guys have around the higher level productivity impacts? We're starting to see some improvements, but wages are still relatively high. Inflations, the rate of inflation is coming down, but it's still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Interest rates, all these weird factors that make it very hard to predict. Can AI wash over and cleanse all this uncertainty? I don't know if it can cleanse everything, but first of all, I think productivity will continue to be a competitive advantage and it'll get driven more and more by AI, certainly machine learning, et cetera. However, I think the opportunity set that we will be solving, I think, well, not to be gloomy, but I think the problem set really, which is really opportunities, will continue to expand. I think we will have more and more things that we will want to address. So yes, we'll be more efficient in addressing what we are facing today, but I think we are gonna just expand. I mean, look at sustainability and look at what we can do about the environment. How can we do it in a much more efficient way? Back to your point with productivity, but in a much more sustainable greener way. I think AI can help there. There are entirely new industries coming. We are beginning to think about space as an opportunistic industry at Accenture. So I think the universe of things that we can be solving as a technology company, as an advisory company is continuing to expand, but yes, we'll and our partners and our clients will do it in an increasingly competitive way. You're right. I mean, space tech, health tech, even fintech and the disruption, especially globally, that's going on there, and it all comes back to data in my view. And to your earlier point, I think during the big data era, many companies, their data strategies got more complicated, more difficult. I mean, the big firms, the big internet companies, obviously were able to put data at the core. Most companies weren't able to do that. Then you saw the ascendancy of companies like Snowflake. Put all the data into Snowflake and now you can at least create a data strategy. We'll see how that plays out. It's certainly helpful, but it may not be the be all end all because data is so distributed. There's this thing called the edge and real time autonomous vehicles. And so to your point, the world gets more complicated and data is part of that complication. So does it have to start with data strategies? We have to sort of restart there? It is absolute, I mean, so cloud enable, the way we look at it is cloud is the enabler for whatever the solution stack is. Data is, data powers everything, right? Data powers everything and AI is the differentiator, right? So that's how we kind of bring all those things together. And not only getting the data right is critical, but the volumes of data that are being generated through the edge, whether it's autonomous cars or intelligent buildings or what have you, right? The volume is incredible. So how do we not only keep everything organized, disciplined, configured correctly, but how do we also deal with the massive volumes of data? I think those are again the opportunities that we do and yes, it's absolutely critical to particularly back to what are we gonna actually teach these machines? Data is gonna be absolutely critical and fundamental to that. Where are the partner ecosystem and from an eccentric perspective, the role of technology partners in that? How do you see that? Well, as you, back to the original place where we started, when we talk to our clients, when we talk to our senior technology executives, one of the things they're realizing, especially as they look at the entire continuum, you have to now really have a coalition of partners, technology providers, public cloud vendors that come together for effective solutioning. So Accenture has a unique role to play because we have strong partnerships with each of those and we become the kind of the quarterback, the coalition builder for those. So I think we have a role to play. We have great relationships with these set of companies and it's increasingly critical that we approach our clients jointly. There's nothing more powerful than sitting in front of our common client together in front of, in a table presenting a joint solution and being easy to do business with as a joint team. So that's a fundamental principle that we approach our clients with and our partners will be absolutely critical as we go forward on how we provide value. Can you take us out here with one of your favorite joint customer stories that really shines a light on the value that Accenture and VMware are delivering together? Well, I can't mention the client, but in fact, we are VMware, Accenture, Dell and Azure actually are having a very creative, innovative conversation right now with a healthcare provider that we will announce hopefully pretty quickly that I think we'll create an entirely new capability around how we provide private cloud driven value to healthcare. So I'm excited for that to come out and hopefully we can talk about it soon. Wow, you just played our appetites with that one. We'll be keeping our eyes on that, Raj. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me on theCUBE today at VMware Explorer. Really talking about what's happening at Accenture, what's happening at Accenture, the partnership, the value in it and how you're going to really help customers extract and really use the value of Gen AI to power their businesses. We appreciate your insights. Pleasure, thanks for having me and great to see you guys as always. Likewise, our pleasure as well. For our guest and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage.