 Okay, we're back here inside theCUBE. theCUBE is SiliconANGLE's flagship program where we go out to the events and extract the signal from the noise. We are at EMC World in Las Vegas for three days. This is day one, wall-to-wall coverage. We'll be broadcasting all day. Turn to siliconangle.com and wikibond.org for the free research and free content. I'm John Furrier, the founder of SiliconANGLE. I'm joined by my co-host. I'm Dave Vellante from wikibond.org. Lloyd Carney is here. He's the CEO of Brocade Real Estate. Relatively new CEO of Brocade, former CEO of some other companies. Lloyd, welcome to theCUBE. Thank you. Great to be here. Yeah, it's good to see you. This is obviously a big show for EMC. You guys have been partners with EMC for quite a long time now. Industry's transforming. So let's start with you. I mean, you're at the company nearly 100 days. What did you learn in the first 100 days? Any surprises? Any pleasant unpleasantness? Any unpleasant surprises? And how are you applying that going forward? So it's a great opportunity for us to be here. I've got VM at this opportunity. I almost said VM World. It's hard to differentiate sometimes. I'm almost like my email to these two guys at EMC World. But they're the largest investment we make before a show. If you look at the investment we make in people, in floor space, in activity. And it's reflective of the fact that we've been 15 years now with VMC. And we've shipped 8 million ports, 50,000 joint customers. So they are a significant player with us. And we look at them more as a customer than as a partner. I mean, a significant part of my revenue comes from... How many years have you broken apart? 15 years? 15 years of tight relationship, solid relationship between at every level of the organization. So we're excited to be here, expecting to have this relationship only get better over time. One of your questions, one of the good things I learned was the strength of our partnerships. Every partner we have, every major partner we have that we've met with, wants to see us succeed. They have a vested interest in seeing us succeed because the choice that they have is not a very pleasant choice. If you think about what the competitive landscape looks like, it's important for them to have someone besides the big C as a partner. Because the big C has a broad range of interests. We're pretty focused. We do fiber channel connectivity to IP connectivity storage. We're not doing video monitoring. We're not doing laptops. We're not doing servers. We're not getting into the storage business. We're pretty focused on what we do. And so our partners like the fact that they know exactly where we play, exactly what our limitations are, and how we complement them. So the number one most surprising for me was just how strong those relationships were. I could guarantee you that we have stronger partnerships today with all our major partners, EMC being included, and we even see one of our most important partners that we did a year ago. Without a doubt. So that's one of the positives. I think one of the disappointing things for me is just how few people understand the strength of our IP offering. We have an IP Ethernet fabric offering that has ever been as good as our SAN offering. The benefits that we bring to scale out NAS, to SSDs, we're using our IP connectivity is unparalleled. No one even comes close. So if I go one to ten, I'm going to 11 with how great my partnerships are with people like EMC. And I'm like a negative one on people realizing this great IP infrastructure that we have and the value that it can bring. So talk about the announcements you guys have. Let's just get the news out of the way. So I just saw someone cut the wire. I think it went out. The software to find storage for fiber channel sands. Is that out? That went out. Okay, just give a quick Viper software to find. What is the key there? So the key there, and it's a very significant move on the part of EMC, their Viper capability enables them provide a software to find network into the SAN infrastructure in a heterogeneous environment. So you can now connect using a software upgrade from EMC and now have SDN kind of leverage into none EMC environment. So for the people out there who have EMC storage, who have storage from Itachi, you know, NetApp, whatever they else they're connected to, they now have the ability using EMC to get full visibility to that infrastructure. And they utilize our our brocade network analysis tools to provide them information there too. So they now instantly have access. There are 50,000 joint brocade customers who now have access. Brocade EMC customers now have access to this tool with just a software upgrade. So it's a brilliant move on the EMC side. I like the name of it Viper. It really is one of those hidden things in the grass. I think of the car, the red sports car. Yeah. I was more in the snake. Yeah. That's it there. They now have the network leverage. Yeah. Now, Lord, I have to ask you, so the Ethernet world and the Fiber Channel worlds are still in this whole software defined discussion, still seem quite separate. Is there a bridge in the future to bring those together? Is that something that you're working on and can envision? Well, you know, I think the bridge comes from people who are doing NAS, realizing that, you know, a scale out NAS looks a lot like a SAN infrastructure. The same kind of problems you have in scaling, in adding resources, utilization of ports. Those problems were solved in the Fiber Channel SAN world 10 years ago. What we have done at Brocade is ported all that 17 years of hard labor onto our Ethernet platform. So you now have the same kind of scale, ease of use capabilities on our Ethernet platform. And so we're providing that transition. We're providing transition to say, you know, NAS has grown up. NAS is not just disparate, you know, storage network hanging off IP. Now people are, you know, doing scale out NAS. Putting, you know, enabling people to share the NAS infrastructure. Same thing with the SSD guys. The SSD guys are usually plugging cards in the back of PCs. And now they're creating SSD appliances that look like a SAN. And guess who knows more about getting storage to home than anybody else in the world? It's Brocade. And so we're leveraging all our expertise from the Fiber Channel side into the SAN, into the SSD world. So, you know, we are the storage experts. Whatever kind of source. The world couldn't have spun in a better direction for Brocade. We've been covering Brocade for four years now on theCUBE, and they've been on big partner and supporting us. So thanks to Brocade, and I know you're now new and want to make sure you knew that you guys have been some underwriting support for us. We really appreciate that and it allows us to do our mission in theCUBE. But I don't want to spoil my question by asking the following. Obviously, you're new hire. And you're the chief executive. So you had to do your own due diligence. They come knocking on the door and you say, hey, Brocade, you know, looking for CEO and you have to do your due diligence as well as they do there. So what did you look at, Brocade? You must pause and say, whoa, whoa, okay. Opportunity, recognition, kicks in. Okay, I'm going to look at a new opportunity. And what got you hooked on Brocade? What made you go? Technology. I'm an engineer. And so there's nothing that moves my dial better than technology. There's no doubt in my mind that we have superior technology here. I had a luxury of, you know, my last company was bought and I had some time on my hand. Someone actually asked me to look at fabrics. And I was chief operating officer of Juniper Networks. And so I was asked to look at the Juniper fabric because they're looking to make an acquisition. And we looked at a Juniper fabric and it was, you know, boy, this is a complicated thing. You know, you may be able to scale it out and figure out how this thing works. And so there's a bunch of us who say, well, let's look at all the fabrics. So we looked at the HP fabric, and we looked at the Cisco fabric and then we look at the Brocade fabric class just for the hell of it. Guess what? It was the best fabric available. I wasn't even offered the role yet. This was just people reaching out to me knowing I'm a networking gear head that I know networking space and I'm familiar with Juniper. You get called in like an EIR for PC and it was like, you know, here we go. This is the best fabric in the market. Why do people know about this? So I knew the fabric was rock solid. I knew that we had, you know, a significant share of the fiber channel, best of breed fiber channel products, best reliability there. And I also knew fiber channel wasn't dead because I'd seen customers who rushed from fiber channel over to the NAS side and some of them were coming back to fiber channel. And so there's no doubt in my mind that going forward 20 years from now, there'll be fiber channel, there'll be NAS or the SSD. We've been talking about this since Oracle Open World three years ago, Dave and I. And, you know, I had, because, you know, we were talking to those Q-Logic guys who were like, hey, this fiber channel thing's interesting. And what's interesting was is that what they were using it for in the past is not what they're going to be using it for in the future with Flash, with all these advancements. So what do you see as the future? We were just saying in the Cube earlier that with Flash is the undiscoverers coming, the new architectures. What do you see as a tech geek now CEO about the future? I mean, what are those new yet to be created, creative engineering solutions, operating system like mine said, software's a key part of the value proposition. You know, I think there's a bit of trying to schedule an invention here. So what we do know for certain is what I said earlier, there will be SSDs, there will be, there will be scale it and ads, there will be fiber channel. And you're exactly right. The SSD guys, as they create appliances, what do they do? They put a fiber channel connection on there. That's not what the fiber channel was originally meant to do. So you're finding people realizing that low latency that fiber channel provides really has a value add that is distinct. So you will see an architecture where you'll have multiple times of storage and you'll see Brocade be the preeminent provider connectivity to that storage. And you're going to see a software defined layer that will have virtual appliance. You'll have virtual load balances, virtual routers, virtual switches, virtual firewalls. I mean, our virtual router was tested by network world independently two weeks ago and we're 10 times faster than Cisco virtual router at the same price point. You're going to see more and more of that because you're going to see more and more people move to the virtual environment and being able to load on these virtual machines virtual appliances. So you walk in our data center instead of having these standalone device that you plug into the wall, firewalls, load balances, switches, there are going to be software apps running on top of a control plant. You need IOPS and you need latency. That's the key to the thing we're hearing. So, Lord, what are your goals? You mentioned that you're focused, but at the same time, you know, you're sure you want to grow. Is it TAM expansion? Is it partnerships? Can you talk about sort of the growth strategy and where you want to take the company and your personal goals? Well, the first thing, the personal standpoint, you're going to see us be recognized as the number one in customer satisfaction and customer advocacy. We're going to be the number one network equipment provider in the marketplace. We're going to be doubling down hard. Right now, our numbers are really very good. We're going to be exceptional in that space. Every one of our customers that we have, and we have, you know, we're talking about, we have 50,000 joint customers today with EMC. We have the who's who off the customer list in the world today. If all we did, and I told my team this many times, if all we do is satisfy those customers, provide them with their next generation of product that they require, we'll be wildly successful. If I never win one more customer, if all I did was keep the customers I have happy today, we will rock the world. And we're going to do that. So, number one thing you'll see from us, focus on customer sat, customer advocacy, and then continuing our delivery of best of breed solutions. We're going to narrow that focus into the data center, narrow that focus to ensure that we are, you know, providing best of breed default products for storage connectivity, whatever kind of storage connectivity you need. And you'll see that reflect in the customer sheer want that we get. Today, we're predominantly in the fiber channel side of most of our customers. You'll see us start to get more of their IP spend. Excellent. So, what are the things that observers should watch on that progress then? So, you just laid out kind of the high level strategy. What should we observe you only a hundred days in? So, what are the kinds of things that we should, we should be watching that we can measure as outsiders or, you know, that you'll share on earnings calls and things like that. You know, two months ago we had a thousand customers on our Ethernet fabric. Right now we have 1100 customers on Ethernet fabric. We have over 250,000 Ford shipped on our Ethernet fabric. You should measure and watch us continue to grow in Ethernet fabric space and capture margin and mines in Ethernet fabric space. It will be one of the watchwords that you should see. You should see us continue to be part of the steering force behind SDN. David Meyer and our team right now heads a technical committee for Daylight, which is the open solution set around the control plane. You can continue to see us make progress here and be a dominant player in the SDN space. Because, quite frankly, we have, you know, the least to lose the most to gain as you move towards a software-defined networking space. Our Ethernet fabric solution is purpose-built for this world. You can buy Ethernet fabric solution today knowing that you are future-proofed into the SDN space. We already have the virtual appliances that you need. You'll see more virtual appliances coming from us, either from people we partner with or we deliver directly whether it's our virtual router, our virtual firewall capability, and in a look for virtual load balance capability, you'll see us build out that stack. That is the stack of the future. That open, you know, we talk a lot about open. Open just is the changes, right? The definition of open changes. It used to be Unix was open. They have your mainframes more open. It runs Linux. So that notion of open seems to be becoming increasingly a competitive advantage. You see the open stack and open source. So how do you sort of look at open? How do you define it? How do you, maybe not a pedantic definition, but in general terms, and how do you leverage it? So there will be, to your point, multiple proprietary open solutions. That stick and that stack there. As much as we all dream of one, right? There'll be multiple versions of that. We have to ensure that our platforms are manageable, are provisionable, are flexible around these solutions. In most markets, there'll be two or three double emerge. And we're going to make sure that we have the best infrastructure to play with this open control plan. We're at Lloyd Carney, the new CEO of Brocade. My final question for you is we had a technology day prior to you coming on board in September. And one of the comments we mentioned was the SDN was really a game changer. Because what happened was, you know, everyone says, skate through where the puck's going to be. Silicon Valley kind of phrase. You guys were standing there and the puck just came to you. Right? So with the fabrics that you had mentioned. So I want to get your final answer to talk about were you guys going to take it? Obviously that's a good thing. You talked about the fabric. What's next? Where are you going to take this? You're going to see us on the SDN space. Ensure that we have the best underlying infrastructure to support the VMware initiative around NYSERA. We're working closely with that team right now. We're working also with the Daylight Open Forum which is a competing solution to the NYSERA team. But, you know, as a company, 2.3 billion a company in the space, we have to cover both our bets. And even all the major players are doing the same thing. You look at the Daylight Forum. It's everybody's in there, right? VMware themselves are in there. IBM is in there. We're all in there, right? So we're going to make sure that around those two axes that we have the best hardware infrastructure and software infrastructure to complement that play. So we're not, we're absolutely going to be leaders in the SDN space. We're going to ensure that our customers realize because the value to them is immense. You know, all of a sudden, instead of having all these disparate devices, from a hardware standpoint, most of your infrastructure is run on Intel-based, AMD-based, X86 platform. Huge benefit to our customers from a cost standpoint. And we enable the customers to realize an advantage. Well, the data center is now the operating system. We've been hearing that theme. The APIs, the data center will turn into an API. As Dave Vellante was mentioning earlier, obviously FiberChannel is a big part of that, connecting the fabrics together. Lloyd Carney, congratulations. The CEO will be watching and will be following your moves. And thanks for coming inside theCUBE. No, thanks for taking the time. Okay, we'll be right back with our next guest here for the short break. This is theCUBE at EMC World Day 1 of three days of wall-to-wall coverage. I'm John Furrier with Dave Vellante. We'll be right back after this short break.