 Live from Austin, Texas, it's theCUBE, covering Dell EMC World 2016, brought to you by Dell EMC. Now, here are your hosts, Dave Vellante and Stu Miniman. Welcome back to Austin, Texas, everybody. This is theCUBE, the worldwide leader in live tech coverage. Marius Haas is here. He's the president and chief commercial officer of Dell EMC. Great to see you again, Marius. Dave, always a pleasure to be here with you. Looking good. We're having a good time. You guys keep getting bigger, you keep getting younger. I don't know how you do it. So it's hard times, right? I mean, you've seen so much of this industry, you've done M&A, you've worked at large companies and now you've just executed on the largest acquisition slash merger in the history of the business. How's it feel? What are you seeing out there? Oh, it feels great and what's even more compelling is the opportunity to have a robust conversation with the customer. When you look at the technologies across the board, the relevancy that we now have in virtue of every business opportunity, business challenge that our customers face, regardless of the industry they're in, it's just phenomenal. When you think about it, I'll give one example around security. If you look at the capabilities that we have within VMware with AirWatch, in remote device management, you look at NSX around network security, you look at everything we're doing with RSA and identity access management and token management all the way through to be able to do network security management just for a truly connected security story. Just one example of the types of conversations we can have with customers, which no one else can have in that kind of expansive breath and that's what's exciting. One of the big decisions you have to make with any large organization is how to organize. So talk about the organization, how you guys chose the swim lanes and what your organization specifically is responsible for. Yeah, Dave, and I'm assuming you're talking about the go-to-market capabilities for the most part. Obviously, you're well aware of Dell Technologies, the strategic line businesses and the client solutions group services and ISG. From a coverage perspective in the market, EMC legacy has an unbelievable capability that they've built around the top and the top of the enterprise accounts. A strong relationship, strong go-to-market model and then vice versa, Dell has done a phenomenal job building out a core differentiation around how to address the mid-market. Bring those two organizations together and now we have the most expansive coverage capability together with our partner ecosystem that no one else has. And then you add the last component of it is which we're building out more aggressively now is our consumer small business seems as well around the world. Three very, very strong coverage capabilities that again you augment it with a partner community best thing class in the industry with the broadest technology set to go have those conversations with customers. Last thing we wanted to do is not take advantage of that differentiation. Let's talk about the partners a little bit, right? Partners want to be with a winner, they want to make money. What's the message to partners, right? Anytime a large, you know, two large companies come together like this, partners go, whoa, okay, what's that mean for me? What are you telling partners? Well, the key thing is that there were two different programs, very similar in its structure, but there were two different programs. First and foremost, we got to bring it together as one, right? So, and the opportunity we have now between when we did close till February one, which is when we roll out the partner program is to frame this up in such a way that we take the best practices out of the existing programs, bring it together, understand from our partners what they're looking for, and you know, real key, simplicity, predictability, and profitability. Those are the three core tenants of what they're looking for in an industry-besting class channel partner organization and channel program, and those are the fundamental pillars that we're laying out today, for example, with the partner summit that we're hosting today and tomorrow. Marius, when they look at some of the big mega trends out there, you know, cloud, big data, and IoT, all of those, one of the things that unifies them is there's functionality that in the past only the largest of companies could take advantage of that we now have the opportunity to drive it down to even the smallest of companies to do. You know, what are you seeing that's kind of exciting in the customer base? You know, are they able to take advantage of some of these, you know, new puts to things in the marketplace? I think that's a, you know, if I step back for a second, you talked about how you integrate and bring the go-to-market motions together. One of the key things that we found was the lack of overlap in the account base, right? So for example, we looked at our top 10,000 accounts collectively, 5,000 on one side, 5,000 on the other side, less than 20% overlap in the account base, which means there's a big opportunity. In addition to that, when we saw, and this specifically is coming back from a partner ecosystem as well, is that over the last, let's say decade, both organizations have worked on building out a scale-out, scale-down type of model for their particular solutions, so that we can address the needs from all the different customers, no matter what industry they're in, no matter what size they are, because someone might want to start small, but they won't want to grow, and they want to be able to make sure that the capital they've invested initially is not something that's going to waste, right? The ROI that needs to be captured on that needs to be extendable. So the scale-out architecture model, an all-flash architecture model, a model that can serve any customer, any size at all the right price points is critically key, and I think we've done a very good job bringing that kind of portfolio together. How do you define the commercial segment, the mid-market segment? Okay, so we've taken roughly, think about the top 3,000 accounts around the world, and we've put that into the enterprise selling motion. And it's pretty clear who those guys are, right? Yeah. Okay. Then we've taken all of our channel ecosystem, all of our public sector customers, all of our government sector customers, we put that into the commercial space, and basically any customer below the 3,000 all sits within the commercial space. In selected markets, we have elected to also put in place a consumer small business route to market motion, because it is an opportunity for us to sell a broader set of our portfolios, and the big part of our client solutions group is it has a very, very strong value proposition in that equation. So think about top 3,000 accounts, everything in the middle, and then a select few top 10 markets for consumer small business, we've got an initiative there as well. And that's how you approach that globally, is that correct? That's how we're going to do it globally, yes, sir. Okay, do you find challenges with that model in different regions, or is it pretty consistent now? I mean, the world is flat, you know? Look, we're early innings, right? The fortune we had is we had almost a year to plan all of this before we became one legal entity. Now, there's good things and bad things about being able to plan. You can plan, but you can't execute. And then what you find out is, legally, there's a lot of things you cannot share prior to actually being able to be one company. So account level specific planning was not, we were not able to do, so we were in that motion now. So big reason why we decided, hey, let's align all of our core capabilities, a lot of our key programs, for example, our channel program launch, align it to our next fiscal year, which is February 1. It gives us an opportunity to make sure that what we put on paper is part of the integration planning, the rest of the information that we needed to really do this well, which we can now do in this phase, all then sets up for us to be able to roll out the right account segmentation, the right account coverage for every rep, make sure we have an ability to engage our customers to make sure we're addressing the needs that they want, the right way, make sure that we align our channel programs the right way, all with the intent of how do we take this amazing portfolio and really take advantage of the opportunity we have here to really serve our customers better. So I'm curious as to the questions you're getting from the channel partners in particular. You said three things, simplicity, predictability, and profitability. So simplicity, I'm presuming they're saying, you got a complex portfolio. Help me understand how I take it to market. Predictability is don't head fake me every quarter. How do I make money? What specific questions are you getting from the channel partners? And the simplicity side is not, the portfolio is actually a big advantage in the sense that they have a broad range of capabilities. So that's not the complexity piece. Simplicity is around the program structure. How do I, what incentives, what behaviors do you want me to drive as a channel partner? How do I get paid for it? So it's the simplicity of the program, make sure I understand it, make sure that I can align my business priorities to that program. Obviously the profitability piece is if I do all of this, am I going to get paid? Am I going to get paid consistently, predictability, but also the engagement model in the field then is if I sell storage and we've launched a storage line of business and company program, for example, for the channel, so that we could bring the EMC channel program in, make sure that all of those folks feel that their business is protected with the business that they've been, and the accounts they've been selling to, now they have a broader opportunity to sell more into that account base. But they wanted to make sure that they were protected, they wanted to make sure that it was predictable how we're going to protect them, and they also wanted to make sure that the selling motion into that account was predictable. And so back to the simplicity piece, so things like deal reg, tears, things of that nature to qualify for certain incentives, all that stuff, they don't want nine million ways to Sunday. Exactly. And generally, you must have a pretty good handle on how to do that. I mean, this industry has made a lot of fall starts with regard to that. We have launched at our partner summit program, John Byrne, who leads the channel program for us globally, went through the program elements today, and at the end of it, he had a standing ovation from the partner team, so I think we're on the right track. And then, so the last question about the partners, what about the customers, and what are the big questions that you're getting from customers, and what are you telling them? Customers are, I care about solving the business opportunities I have, solving the business challenges I have. Dell Technologies, Dell EMC, make sure that the full portfolio that we have gets translated in such a way so that they can understand better how we're creating the blueprints, how we're creating a full solution that enables them to solve the problems that they have, the challenges that they have. So what they don't want is they don't want silo-selling of technologies coming into their organization. They want to make sure that the ease of engagement, the ease of doing business with is there, and that's why as we build out or go to market strategy, the whole notion of creating still that single account executive model is core to what we're doing, both on the enterprise side as well as on the commercial side. So the customer has a single point of accountability, a single generalist that has responsibility for everything we sell, and underneath that we have amazing teams of specialists, technologists that can come in and supplement where we need to have the deeper level conversation around architecture strategy. Mario, since you come to Dell, the competitive landscape has changed so much. Unbelievable. Dell Private Company, I mean, Joe Tucci, who we really admired, talking about the waves, and at each successive wave, some company's not going to make it through, and then you look what happened to EMC at Dell, nobody predicted that, right? You see Amazon now coming on strong, the deal between VMware and Amazon last week that nobody predicted. So many changes. What gives you confidence in your competitive posture? Talk about that a little bit. Oh yeah, look, I can go back four or five years here for a second. We've known each other for quite some time. You know, I came here to help build an enterprise franchise, and my God, I had no idea, and I knew Michael was committed. I had no idea that he was ready and willing to do, take this big step to really make sure that we help transform this industry, and especially across the board, on the client side as well as on the full data center side. So the capabilities that we now have are second to none. So it is now down to how do we execute, right? How do we take all of that 12 months of planning, put that into motion, make sure we execute, execute, execute, zero disruption in front of the customer, and make sure that the core focuses are on solving the customer problems, engaging our customers in such a way that view us as their trusted partner as they go forward, as they transform into a digital era, into their workforce transformation, to their security transformation, and the underpinning IT transformation needs to take place in order to make that happen. We've got a great hand here, and it's our job to make sure we take advantage of the opportunity we have. Dell EMC was a huge move on the chessboard, and Michael was making moves beforehand, but they were kind of like relatively small moves. I mean, they're billion-dollar moves, but still relatively small. You were brought in to accelerate that, and like you said, you didn't even envision something this large. I mean, is it fair to say that Dell has now transformed into an enterprise powerhouse? Not that you're complete, not that your job's done, but basically that vision that Michael set out, I don't know, almost 10 years ago, you've now realized that, haven't you? No doubt. Hey, look, let's be clear, Michael's never done. Yeah. So I'm a huge, huge fan, and it's always about how can we do more? How can we help, help, as Michael always says, enable the full human potential by providing innovation and technology to drive the transformation in the industries that ultimately drives a better world? And there's always more to do. We've got a great hand now. We got a lot of work to do to make sure this all goes really well. Cultures have gelled together unbelievably well. We're all excited about ultimately how do we serve our customer better? How do we grow this business? And look, the next chapter will still be written, but I feel really good about where we're going, how we're growing the business. Some of our competitors decide they want to shrink. Don't think that's a winning strategy, but again, we stay focused on ourselves, stay focused on how we serve our customers, and we'll let the customers vote. Mario, so we're expecting the keynote tomorrow. There's going to be everybody standing up on stage talking about number one positions in leadership. Of course, I look at Microsoft, I look at VMware, Dell and EMC together have very strong positions there. I don't want to argue about cloud, but as kind of the cloud part of the marketplace, how does Dell kind of maintain its leadership and differentiation in the coming years? You do have to look at it from a Dell technologies perspective holistically. If you spend some time at VMworld, and you looked at what they were doing and said, hey look, how do we enable any cloud on any infrastructure, on any device for any application, and then look at how they enable the transformation in the workforce to then have that accessibility, all done in a software-defined ecosystem, right? Phenomenal capabilities across the board, all with the intent of how do we accelerate and cloud adoption across the board. And then when you look at what we see on the Dell EMC side, enabling a hybrid cloud ecosystem that optimizes the investments made by our customers that ensures that they have flexibility, enable, be able to deploy workloads seamlessly as possible, where you take their core applications, their core data that's critical to their business, in some cases, mission critical, they're going to look at Virtustream as an example, right? An asset of solution that really drives that capability in mission critical, ultra-secure private cloud solutions, right? You have large customers like Coca-Cola that are deploying that across the board. I think it's now at least in 10 or so countries with their core applications. You go down further in the architecture and you look at the assets and capabilities that we have and you think about the cloud transformation towards a native cloud app environment and then you look at Pivotal, how it enables that with its Pivotal Cloud Foundry. You can't but get excited about what you see that portfolio bringing together. And again, our job is to how do we present that in such a way that it translate directly into what that customer specifically is trying to do. And again, relevant conversation in almost every one of these key trends that emerges, do we have everything now? But that's a big part of why us having an open architecture mindset has always been core tenant of our development activities. We can bring together partnerships that allows us to complete the solution. And then also a partner ecosystem in the channel could also bring other solutions to the table that optimizes what they're trying to do for their customer base. So it also lends an opportunity for them to create further value added differentiation within their environment as well. So the business is a whole, not growing double digits anymore. So you got to gain share to grow. That fair premise? There are parts of the market that are declining. And so that means that you have to take from others in order to grow. That means that you need to be building a trusted partnership relationship with partners and customers so that you can influence the opportunities that come around. Make sure that you're well positioned. Make sure you're proactive in identifying how can this customer do things better, faster, cheaper and put the trust in them to make sure that they choose us in helping them make that transformation, right? So that goes back to your earlier question about why do we want to make sure we have a very robust enterprise, commercial and consumer small business route to market capability is because we have to have that trusted partnership relationship so that we can have the opportunity to have that conversation, have that opportunity to showcase to them hey, here are how others are doing it within your particular industry. Here is how it translates to your specific needs as to how you can create value and differentiation for you and become more competitive. That's what's important. Now you mentioned culture before. My last question is around culture. I mean EMC is a culture of execution. Dell has a customer, a culture of customer affinities. As does EMC. What are the similarities? What are some of the challenges that you're seeing as you bring these together? I'll tell you, it's amazing. One thing we did and we sent a survey out to 75,000 of our employees on both sides of the house prior to close and we gave them 22 cultural traits and we asked them to rank them one through one. Not only were the top five cultural traits the same on both sides, they were in the exact same order, right? So where there is some belief that there are significant cultural differences, ultimately what matters and what were the core cultural lever or drivers or characteristics were exactly the same in the exact same order in both companies. It was fascinating when that came together and that certainly helped us when we started to think about, okay, now how do we take our collective team members, take the individual out of the equation and think about how together we can better solve and serve our customers because we're all thinking the same way. How do we win together? How do we best serve our customers together? Well, it starts from the top. You guys are great leaders and you've picked up some pretty phenomenal talent on the EMC side. So congratulations on getting started and really appreciate you guys having us here and being part of this transformation. You're part of the family. We're thankful that you could be here for this many years and looking forward to a healthy and very long relationship with you. We can't be anything but excited. All right, Mariah Soss, thanks again for coming on theCUBE. All right, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back with our next guest. We're live from Austin, Texas, Dell EMC world, right back.