 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2019. Brought to you by Dell Technologies and its ecosystem partners. Hello everyone, welcome to day three live coverage of theCUBE here in Las Vegas for Dell Technologies World 2019. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Dave is Dell Technologies World. This is our 10th year, if you count EMC World 2010. First ever CUBE event where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. Now we're the number one in tech coverage. Howard Elias has been with us the entire way. Our next guest CUBE alumni, Howard Elias, who's currently the president of Services and Digital for Dell Technologies. Howard, great to see you. Hey, great to see you, John. Dave, always great to be back with you. Thank you. You've been with us for our entire CUBE journey. It's our 10th year. It's been a great ride. And one of the benefits of doing theCUBE, besides learning a lot and having great conversations is, as the industry evolves from true private cloud to big data meets technology, all the different iterations of the business, we get to have the conversations and look back and see who's right. You get to go back and see what we said. And hold you accountable. Not that you guys said anything crazy, but you were unique because we've had many conversations and most notably, during the acquisition of EMC, you were on the team leading the effort with your partner in crime from the Dell side to make sure the acquisition goes smoothly. And a lot of people were saying, oh my God, iceberg's ahead. We were pretty positive, so history treats us fairly on the CUBE. We tend to got it right. But you said some bold things that was pretty much the guiding principle of the acquisition. And I just tweeted it out this morning. So you got it right. You said some things. Looking back, almost two, three years later. Well look, John, first of all, I appreciate that. Appreciate the opportunity to be back with you. And it's amazing it's been 10 years, huh? But yeah, so over the last couple of years, I did help co-lead the integration. And we said, look, first and foremost, we're going to do no harm. The way customers transact with us, buy products, the way we service them, that's not going to change. But then that's not enough, right? It's not just about doing no harm. It's how do we add value over time? We talked about aligning our teams in front of our customers. Then we talked about unifying the approach, not just in the go to market, but in services and in technology and ultimately delivering more integrated solutions. And we've executed on that, as you rightly say. So thank you for pointing that out. And this week was a great embodiment of that because not only are we listening to what our customers want, we're delivering on it. We are actually delivering these integrated solutions to Dell Technologies Cloud, the unified workspace for client. These are things that we've delivered over time. We stitched it together and now we're unifying it, integrating it, actually now even embedding services into it. So that's the journey we've been on and we've been very pleased with the reception we've had from customers. And Michael too also was very bold. But the key on all the conversations we had on this was, and we'll get to the current situation now because that's important, is that you guys saw the growth opportunities on the synergies. We did. And we kind of had those conversations. So align the teams, unify and integrate. You're at the integration phase now. We're starting to see some of the fruit come off the tree with business performance significant. Well we appreciate that. We're gaining market share across the board and we had a hypothesis with coming together, we had complimentary product portfolios, complimentary customer segments. We were very thoughtful in how we organized our go to market. And we're seeing that. We're seeing that in market share gains. But more importantly, we're seeing the customer conversation saying thank you for that. Now I want more. How do you deliver more value faster? So I think we're past the integration stage. Now we're into the accelerating the value stage. Howard, you've been through and seen a lot of acquisitions, large acquisitions. I mean I think of the compact digital. You know, not a lot of overlap. HP with compact, much more overlap. Maybe didn't go as well or maybe a smoothly. Massive acquisition here. Why do you think it worked so well here? Because there was a fair amount of overlap. You know, definitely some shared values but maybe some different cultures. You've been on both sides and it just seems to be working quite well. You seem to be through that knot hole of maybe some of that uncomfortable early days. Why do you think it worked so well? What was kind of the secret sauce there? I think a couple of reasons. First, the hypothesis of coming together was all very customer centric. Customers wanted fewer, more strategic partners. They ultimately, from infrastructure, want more integration, more automation. They want to, as Pat said yesterday on stage, they want to look up to apps and data and somebody else worry about looking down and taking care of the infrastructure. So the hypothesis was very strong. Michael had a bold vision but the boldness to actually execute on that vision as well. I would say second, we have, yeah, while the cultures in terms of how things got done were a bit different, the values were frankly not just similar. They were identical. We may have talked about this before but when we did the integration planning, we actually surveyed half the population of both Dell and EMC. The top five values in order were the same from both team members. Focus on customers, act with integrity, collaborate, win as a team, results orientation. It was phenomenal. I would say third, it's just the moment in time and it's really a continuation. You think about the 10 year partnership that Dell and EMC had back in the 2000s. That actually helped us get to know each other, how we worked and helped form those shared values. So, and then finally, approximately 150,000 team members signed up to the mission. You know, the tech industry is Star for Tech talent and the fact of the matter with that we have approximately 150,000 team members across Dell technologies signed up to our vision, signed up to our strategy, executing every day on behalf of customers is just awesome to see. So, digital transformation, of course, is a big buzzword. So, I got to put it on you guys. What are you doing for your own digital transformation? You have proof in the pudding. What gives you the right to even talk about that? What are you doing internally? Yeah, you know, it's a great question and to your point, we talk with customers all the time. In addition to looking after our services businesses worldwide, I also am responsible for Dell Digital inside of Dell Technologies. That's our IT organization. We purposely named it Dell Digital because we are on our digital journey as well. And so, we are transforming everything that we do the way we do. We actually call it the Dell Digital Way. We've got a couple of nice breakouts. Our booth in the showcase has got TED Talk style conversations around this and it's really embracing this notion of agile, balanced teams, getting close to the business. Actually, the business in the dojo with our developers moving more to a product orientation versus a project orientation and it's really focused on outcomes and IT, you hear us talk about this all the time. Technology strategy is now business strategy and whether it's in sales or marketing or services, Doug's doing great work and support assist using telemetry and artificial intelligence and machine learning. The recommendation engines in our dot com, the onboarding within hours now with what used to take weeks with our business customers and our Premier Portal. We are looking at every opportunity, everything from the introduction of bots in RPA, all the way through machine learning, AI and true digital transformation. We are walking that talk. Really, you're going hard after RPA. That's a, what are your results? We've actually been doing RPA for many, many years and for, especially when you have a complex system, a complex ecosystem, as you're rewriting and developing either replatforming, refactoring or cloud native, you still got to get work done. So, I'll give you a great example. In an online world of today, it's amazing to know that we still get millions of orders by email and fax. And instead of outsourcing that and having humans retype the order, we just have robotics. Read it automatically, translate it and... So, the narrative in the media you hear a lot is, oh, automation is going to kill jobs. But I've talked to several RPA customers and they've all said the opposite. We love this because it's replacing mundane tasks. It allows us to do other things. What's your experience? You are spot on. I'm a technology optimist and I believe that AI, machine learning robotics will do the tasks that humans are either not good at or don't want to do or don't like to do and allow humans to be more human. Creative thinking, creative problem solving, human empathy, human compassion. That's what humans are good at and we need more people focused on those things and not road tasks. One of the things that Michael Dell and the key themes in the keynote, day one and day two and some day three, a lot of societal impacts, I love that, it's kind of touchy-feely. But the reality is of re-skilling people. The skills gap is still a huge thing. Culture in the enterprise is moving to a cloud operation which favors your strategy of end-to-end consistent operational excellence as well as data-driven value of the app layer. By the way, we've been saying on the queue the same thing for years, horizontally scalable, vertically specialized in all industries with data at the center. So, good strategy. Gaps in culture and skills are coming up. How are you guys doing that? Because service is, you've got a lot of people on the streets, a lot of people that need to learn more about AI dashboards, taking the automation, flipping a new opportunity to create value for people in the workplace. We have this conversation continuously inside of our teams and inside of our company. Look, we have a responsibility to make sure that we bring everybody along this journey. It starts by painting the vision, being that technology optimist. Technology is a force for good and how do we apply the technology and the digitization and creating our digital future, bringing our team members along. So, setting that vision. It is about culture and behavior, set the tone from the top. But we also have a responsibility in retraining and reskilling and bringing team members new opportunities, new ways to learn. Our education services team, for example, you see it here, the certifications, the accreditations we do, the hands-on labs that we do. It's all about allowing opportunities for people to upskill, learn new skills, learn new opportunities that are available and customers need this higher value health and support. What about the transformation that's been impacting the workflow and work streams of your services group with customers as they are maybe not as far ahead as you guys are on the transformation. Maybe they're cloud native in one area, kind of legacy in the other. How is the impact of delivering services, one, constructing them services, formulaing the right products and service mix to delivering the value? How has technology changed that you mentioned, R.P.? What are some of the highlights in your mind? Well, it's a journey and mileage varies here, right? Depends on what you're trying to accomplish, but we never do wrong by focusing on what's right for the customer. So what are customers looking for? What are their business outcomes they're looking for? Here's a great example in the unified workspace. We've been doing PC as a service for a while. Even before PC as a service, we're delivering outcomes, delivering PCs, doing some factory integration, some image management, lifecycle management, deployment services. But now what we've done is really taken not just the end-to-end view, but we've packaged it and integrated it into a single solution offering across the life cycle. So now once we understand the customer and users personas, we can factory image the configuration, ship it to the team member's desk, not just to a doc someplace, but right to the team member's desk, have auto deployment, auto support, telemetry back and manage that life cycle. We've packaged that up now end-to-end. This is a new capability that customers are really looking for. Before I know, D, you've got a question. I want to get your reaction to a quote I'm reading from an analyst, big time firm. New solutions launched at Dell World Show that work to align seven businesses over the last 18 months is starting to pay off. We just talked about that. Cross family solutions minimizes time on configurations and maintenance which opens up incremental total addressable market and reduces IT complexity. Michael Dell yesterday said that there's a huge swath of market opportunity revenue-wise in kind of these white space gap areas that we're servicing, whether it's image on PCs, and you kind of mentioned PCs as service. The analyst see this as TAM expansion. You're coming in reaction to that. I couldn't say it better myself, and look, the two integrated solutions we announced this week is a great example of that, of the seams. It's Workspace One. It's security from secure works. It's the Dell endpoint management capabilities. It's the PC hardware itself. It's the services life cycle from pro support, pro deploy, pro manage, all integrated in that end-to-end, easily more consumable. We're even doing our consulting business with our new pro-consult advisory offer. But look at the Dell Technologies Cloud. Dell Technology infrastructure with VMware. We'll be adding PCF as a service on top of that. This is exactly what customers are looking for. So what's your marching orders to the team? Take that hill. Is it a new hill? Is it the same hill? What's the marching orders down to the team? Marching orders is get out and visit customers every single day. Make sure we understand how our technology and services are being utilized, consumed and impacted, and where do we add more value over time? So I want to ask you from a customer standpoint, we were talking about digital transformation earlier. And the customer's always right is the bromide. You guys are very customer focused. However, when it comes to digital, a lot of customers are somewhat complacent about it. Obviously technology companies like yours embrace digital transformation. But I hear from a lot of companies, well, we're doing really well. I'm going to be long gone, but before this really disrupts my industry, it's somewhat of a concern. Do you see that? And how do you, I mean, I think one of the reasons you're so successful in your career is you take on hard problems and you don't freak out about it. You just have a nice, even keel. What do you do when you encounter that complexity? Do you coach them through it? You just say, okay, hey, customer's always right. But there's a concern that they'll get disrupted in there. Your customer, they're spending money with you today. So how do you get through, break through that complacency? Yeah, it's a great question. And one of the other marching orders I give to my team, is that things are going so well, it's time to change. And so this is what we have to take to our customers as well. And look, we have to be respectful about it, but we also have to be true telling. And so we will meet with our customers, hear them out, and where they're doing well, we'll point it out. But where they're not or where we've got different examples, we'll just lead by example. Our own internal example, other customer examples, in a very respectful way, but in a very direct way, especially at the senior levels, where that's what they need to hear sometimes. So, do you have a question? Because I want to sort of switch topics a little bit. Yeah, I want to just follow up on the one problem statement I heard. I wasn't really announced as a problem statement, but it was a theme throughout all the breakout sessions and the keynotes. And you guys are aware of it, so it's not a surprise to the Dell senior people. You guys recognize that as things are going well on the acquisition and the integration, Dell Technologies, there's still a focus on still working better with customers, taking away the friction of doing business with Dell Technologies. It's a hard problem statement. You guys are working on the problem. What's your view on that? Because we hear that from your customers and partners. We love working with Dell, which is going to make it easier. We still have more work to do. Actually, Karen Kintos and I are partnered up, our chief customer officer on Ease of Doing Business. And look, we are a complex company. We have a lot of different business units, technologies, brands. We're working to bring them together in more integrated solutions like we saw this week. But we still can be complex sometimes in front of our customers. And we're working on that. It's a balance, because on the one hand, customers want more aligned, coordinated, sometimes single hand to shake. We get that. But the balance is they also want access to the right subject matter experts at the right time. And we don't want to inhibit that either, either way. So whether it's with our customers directly or with our partners, we're on that journey. We will find the right balance here. We've got new commercial contract mechanisms in place now to unify our core Dell EMC as we're packaging more VMware content, more security content into the offer and be able to deliver it as a package solution in one quote, one order, one service. Doug's doing some great things in the back end of services, connecting our service request systems, our CRM systems. Actually, even with VMware and core Dell EMC technicians co-locating in support centers to solve the customer's problem in one call, not in three calls, we still have a ways to go, but we are making progress. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and tell you and I, Howard, have known each other for decades and you've never wanted to talk about yourself. You always want to talk about the team, your customers, your company, but I wanted to talk about your career a little bit because John Furrier did an interview with John Chambers. And it was an amazing interview. He talked about when he was at, you know, the WAG and the 128, there is no entitlement and you've seen a lot of the waves. You started out your career, you were electrical engineer, back when, you know, that was like hardcore physics, assembly language, it was sort of the early days of computer science, awesome. And then, you know, it had a number of different, you know, roles. You, as I mentioned, there was digital, there was compact, there was HP. And then you- Don't forget Radio Shack. Radio Shack and Chandy. Yeah, yeah, right. Radio Chandy. That's right, the early PC days. And then you joined EMC in 2003, which marked the next era. We were coming out of the dot-com boom and you and Joe Tucci and a number of other executives built, you know, in the amazing next chapter of EMC, Powerhouse, and then now you're building the next new chapter with Dell. You've really seen a lot of major industry shifts. You seem to have been on the wave. I wonder if you could reflect on that, reflect on your career a little bit for our audience. I'm just amazed and blessed to be where I am. I couldn't be more pleased. Sometimes I wonder how I even got here. But when I do reflect back, it is my love of the technology. It's my love of what technology can do for businesses, for customers, for consumers. And frankly, my love of the customer interaction. This is, you know, from that first time in the Radio Shack retail store. And, you know, the parent coming in and learning about this new TRSAD. And I've, you know, heard about this and what does this really mean? And being able to help that person understand the use of the technology, how to make it happen for them. It has always given me great satisfaction. And so, you know, from those early days, and I've worked with a lot of great people that I've just, you know, listened and learned from over the time. But, you know, when I mentor, you know, people coming up in their career, I always say, look, you know, it's not work if you get up every morning. You love what you do. You see the impact that you make. You like the people you're working with. You're making a little money and having some fun. And those things have always been true for me. I have been so lucky and so blessed in life to be able to have that be the case. And you're operational too. You understand how to make operations work, solve problems, as Dave pointed out. It's been great. From my first basic program I wrote was on a TRSAD in high school. So thank you for, you know, getting those out there. And then I've actually bought a Tandy, got an IBM with a 10 meg hard drive. And I bought my modem from PC's Unlimited. Some small company that was selling modems at the time. Michael, we remember those dates. Howard, great to have you on theCUBE as a distinguished CUBE alumni, great career. And always we got it all documented. We have all the history. There you go. Calling the shots. Howard Elias, calling the future, predicting it and executing it. Living the dream here on theCUBE. More CUBE coverage here at Dell Technology World after this short break.