 Okay, welcome back to the final RACU, a special presentation exclusive coverage of NetApp's most awesome, most excellent, chilling customer party here at AT&T Park. This is the baseball field, the home of the San Francisco Giants. We're actually on the outfield grass. I'm John Furrin with my co-host Dave Vellante. And this is an extension to our VMworld 2013 coverage where we are live every day for three days in the main lobby of Moscone South. What a treat, Dave, to be here on the lawn on the outfield. We talk about the ESPN, it's like we both love sports. I was just here for the Red Sox series on the interleague games. Ronnie Lodge just walked by. Ronnie Lodge, come on, come on, yeah. Great event for NetApp. Props to NetApp, again, second year in a row, they bring theCUBE this year, last year we're doing stand up. But great event, what's your take about this event here? Wow, they stepped it up from last year for sure. So last year they did VMworld, they did Oracle OpenWorld, stepped it up this year. I understand VMware is having its VMworld party here tomorrow night, so they're taking a page. NetApp setting the trend, they did a really good job here. You know, and NetApp, you know, Tom Georgins, very staid CEO, you know, he's not flashy, but you know, he let it out tonight, let his people roll up to sleep, so that's good. You know, John, here's the thing about NetApp, they are, as I said, number of times tonight, the last pure play independent storage company of any significant size. I mean, you've got other guys, you know, Fusion IOs, public company, violence, but NetApp, you know, multi-billion dollar company. Jeff, bring that, we might as well, so we have some sponsorship here. San Francisco, Brood, Anchorsteam. All right, great. This is us. Like the code problems. I think someone's been drinking this one. Anchorsteam, San Francisco, Local Beer, we're live in San Francisco, we're proud to be here. Special sponsor, Anchorsteam, Beer, The Cube. Dave, The Cube, it's got Anchor Desk and the Field. Beautiful, John, I tell ya. Great interviews. And so, yeah, the venue's great, so I want to talk about NetApp for a minute, so this is a company that's in transition, right? Their imperative was to get Clustered On Tap out to the marketplace and really try to drive further innovation into their platform. And, you know, NetApp's under fire, right? A lot of competition in the industry, a lot of transitions, but they've weathered the storm, they came out of the recession very, very strong, but they're not without challenges, so what are some of those challenges? So NetApp really has to continue to prove out its Clustered On Tap, build up proof points, demonstrate that it can compete, you know, head to head in the cloud, and remain independent, and it has to do so with a partnership strategy. More than any company, NetApp's partnerships, its ecosystem, and its channel strategy are fundamental to the future growth of the company, and it's, you know, long-term. Dave, I wrote a post on Forbes that you and I both wrote called the Suffer to Find NetApp, and that really was a post that set the stage for what we're really seeing NetApp execute on. That's Clustered On Tap, they are going in, guns blaring, they aren't going to take it from EMC. EMC's trying to pin down NetApp with the over-marketing spend that Jeremy Burton, who's a good marketer, is trying to outspend NetApp, and to me it's a guerrilla warfare. NetApp can play in the shadows, they've got smart people there, they can change the game. If they can change the game with the software and the software-led, they can be nimble, and that's how, you know, quite frankly, the American Revolution beat the British Redcoats in the open field. NetApp's out in the open field, they shouldn't go out in the open field, and they're playing smart. I got to give NetApp credit, if On Tap has legs and runs hard with software-defined storage, that could be just the little thing that slips them into a leadership position in a big way. Well, I think there's, again, it's an interesting crossroads. I've had this conversation with Tom Georges before. You know, for the last 20 years, competition has occurred on individual layers of the value chain, being an independent, pure-play storage company has been historically an advantage. You know, however, as the industry converges, it's tougher and tougher. So how does NetApp deal with that convergence? They deal with that convergence through partnership, so it's got to be better at partnering than anybody else, and partnering's not easy. Sort of, number one, I mean, I think the other thing that you're seeing here is, you talk about EMC. NetApp is the one company who consistently has been able to compete against EMC. Now, certainly HP, IBM, Dell, and Oracle compete against EMC, but they compete largely on the basis of their server businesses. That's where they compete. Only NetApp competes, you know, across the board in the marketplace. NetApp is being targeted by EMC, and that's a direct threat and complement to NetApp. At the same time, EMC's worried about NetApp. They've got a bigger fish to fry, in my opinion. So, we're live here. We're getting a hook here. We're going to pull us out, Dave. Got a great venue. Hey, what do you think? Awesome job. This was a great day. We've gone from 10 o'clock a.m. to 9 p.m. This is, I think, the longest cube, 11 hours straight cube. Shout out to NetApp for having the vision to bring the cube out on the field and, again, great executives. You hear the professionalism from NetApp. The executives here, Dave, professional, technical. They know their stuff. They're humble. They're not, they're very, very humble, but hard-charging personnel at NetApp. Thanks to NetApp. Dave, great day. Longest cube day we've ever done. 10 in the morning to, what time is it? 10 at night, 12 hours of coverage. Thanks so much, Dave, this week. Mark and team, thanks for working hard. Guys, awesome job. That's a wrap. We're getting booted live here. Tomorrow morning. Special cube presentation, AT&T Park. See you tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning at 10 o'clock, 9 o'clock. 8.40, 9 o'clock. Pat Gelsinger tomorrow morning on the cube back at the anchor desk at VMworld. That's a wrap live from San Francisco, AT&T Park in the outfield.