 Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Dell Technologies World 2018. The inaugural Dell Technologies World event have two sets, side by side, three days of broadcast. I'm Stu Minun, joined as my co-host for this segment by John Troyer. Happy to welcome back to the program, John Byrne, who since the last time we caught up with, has a new title now, the North American Commercial Sales at Dell EMC. John, thanks for joining us. Pleasure. Good to see you, John. Hey, John, it's Stu. Thank you. All right, John, what are you doing here? Isn't it almost like the end of financial sales on the road, everything like that? But yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of the change in role, what that meant for you. Yeah, it's kind of amazing. I was only here a year ago and here I was talking about bringing together Dell EMC's brand new channel. And we're very proud that when we're talking about Dell, it was a $35 billion organization. Here we are 12 months later, $35 billion to $43 billion channel organization, which is spectacular. And it's all thanks to our wonderful partner community and what they did. They were the ones that helped us with our vision, our strategy, the wonderful program that the team has developed, and we're seeing it unfold. So that's been an incredible journey. Now, one of the good things is, obviously when we're building this initiative, it was a power of and. We wanted both motions to continue to go direct and channel. And you saw the results, both are growing. So obviously my new role, and I've been asked to run North America commercial sales under Marys, asked by Michael and Marys. Yeah, great, I'd like to dig into it a little bit. You know, I spoke to Marys on Monday, we actually in our kickoff this morning, talking about kind of EMC channel and sales and Dell channel and sales a little bit different. I mean, EMC had a great channel, has a great channel continuing, but very much considered belly to belly as how they do that. Dell has been a little bit more partner and channel focus for longer. So I'm wondering, gives a little bit of insight. So you have the channel piece, you've had the sales piece. We hear things like, oh, there's, turning a direct rep into now he's more of an overlay. Walk us through a little bit of those dynamics, what's happening from the sales standpoint, the impact on the channel? I think we've got to remember, like the channel is an important wheel to everything we're doing here. Look at Dell technologies, we have 40,000 sales makers. Within our channel ecosystem, we have 140,000 people. That is a sales army that go after the market with the portfolio that we have, with the capability that we have, frankly done properly is unstoppable. And actually educating how both rights to market, how we want to play with one another. Look, it is the power of art. And especially as we go through these transformational journeys, and we're talking about digital and IT, more for security, but we need everyone to play here. The wonderful news is, you saw, and I'm sure you have from Michael, rewind a year ago, we're a 73 billion dollar organization. Within a year, we're 80 billion dollar organization. Phenomenal growth, however the exciting thing for me, it's in a three trillion dollar market. So 2.66%, that is so much upside for us for all of us that look done properly. We're going to win, is the general feeling. It's a pretty remarkable transformation. I mean, transformation has been a theme of the whole show here, right? Digital transformation, make it real. You've been both involved with both channels and Dell sale at Dell EMC sales. The role of the technology trusted advisor has changed over the last few decades. How are you approaching both your field force and the channel and your partners there about this new role? How do we make digital transformation real in the field? What kind of upskilling do you need to be doing and competencies do we need to be working on for folks that are listening that might be out in the field working directly with customers? We've all been in the industry for a long time. You think, rewind 10 years ago, you talk about technology, you talk about IT, it was viewed upon as a cost center. You fast forward to now, it's a business imperative. You know, when we're talking to our customers, they clearly, they want to get ahead of this transformational journey. However we know, then the less than half of them have already begun the journey. Here's the good news. Those that have begun the journey, here's what we know. They're moving faster. Their customer satisfactions are up. They're driving incremental revenue. Their costs are going down. They're driving greater incremental operating income. And I think what you're seeing here, right here right now, it is no longer just discussion around the transformational journeys. Making it real is here. You're saying like, aero farms. You're seeing McLaren on stage, talking about bringing formula one all the way through to medical. You're seeing T-Gen and a wonderful one of a company with the capability of using technology to identify cancer early on in children. I mean, that is what our purpose is all about. Now with that, of course, you have to evolve your own sales organization as well as your partner ecosystem. And we're treating our partners and their sales team as exactly one and the same. So the way the training and all the competencies that we'd expect of our own sales team is exactly what I'm expecting from our partner community. Look, it's an evolution we're going through here. Our sales team with training among these transformations were showing them a purpose, how we're going to do it. But the other thing that's more exciting for myself we're also targeting the next generation of sales leaders, you know, working with universities. We want these top graduates to come here to enjoy this wonderful company and what we're doing here. So now we're investing in people where I set up sales universities here in the US. They can be a three month program. It can be a two year program spending anywhere between up to almost 400,000 on a graduate coming through so that they understand exactly like the transformations are just natural in their DNA. That's what we're looking for right now. Yeah, I like that. I love that. And Stu, I love, I mean, we both have a history of with the Dell technologies organizations over the years and I'm impressed by how many people I have met that are either long term employees or have left and come back, right? And that investment in the people is got to be critical for your growth especially at this size. Yeah, I think John we've gone beyond the hey, what do you do and how do you do it, right? And now it's like, what is your purpose? Our purpose is to impact human life each and every single day. And I gave you some examples our ability using technology to connect more people around the world our ability to actually use technology to live longer for us to identify, again, cancer earlier in people that purpose is inspiring. And Emily, then later on, we're spending four and a half billion dollars on R&D to bring world-class products and capabilities to the market done properly and with that true transformational mindset as well as not forgetting there is a massive market on IT infrastructure and the consolidation and winning in that space. Look, I think we as a collective community along with our customers, we're trying to do wonderful things. So I want you to bring us inside your customers. So you've got North American Versus sales, big market, probably one of the most dynamic changing markets in the globe these days. What are some of the biggest challenges you're hearing from your customers who talk about digital transformation, make it real? What are your, what's your organization hearing? Well, actually, you talked about North American commercial so I didn't frame it. We're $19, $20 billion of the organization. Just a small piece. But of course, within that, look out, we have state and local, we have education, we have federal government, we have the medium business space. Each of them all realize this digital transformation is here. And the conversation they're having with us is how do we get ahead of this, right? What experiences have you enjoyed yourself as an organization or with your partner ecosystem to make it real to them? So we're spending a lot of time with them in our executive briefing centers with our solution architects, showing how do we enable the AeroFarms that we just spoke about. It's really making a real lesson in this conversation we're having with them. Now there's other aspects from our customers, which is, look, we want to continue to sell an unbelievable amount of PCs, an unbelievable amount of servers and storage and hyper-convert and backup. So we have the wide spectrum. The good news is the conversation normally goes to, let me tell you about Dell Technologies Advantage. Why did Michael spend 24 billion taken as private? 67 billion given his all this wonderful array of assets. And as you walk them through these transformational journeys, the normal response is, oh my goodness, I did not know you did all of that. And then, okay, I'm not ready yet to go all the way there, but the comfort that you have it, look here, let's begin the discussion. And that's what we're finding with a lot of our customers right now. All right, one of the things, look, you mentioned some of the verticals there, and the commonality amongst most of them is change. Talk a little bit about the training competencies, you know, your organization. How do you keep up? How do you help your customers keep up? Yeah, look, what is it here? Change or die? It's going to be the mantra right now. We are spending an unbelievable amount of time on training. But with training, also, you're quite a lot of consistency. It's interesting, we were here only two months ago for a field-ready seminar, our sales kickoff. The feedback from our sales team was, wow, this feels very similar to last year. The message is good. You got to learn these transformational journeys. Go on to the days of just going in and selling a single unit of products. You have to become the trusted advisor. So with that, all of our training, all of our competencies are around understanding each of the transformations. How do you layer in Pivotal, and Virtus.Treme, and VMware, and RSA, and SecureWords, and obviously Dell Ems, how do you bring all of this together? And then also making it very clear to our sales team and our Ease, this is my expectation of your role. This is what I expect you to do, and here's a specialty that's teams that are around there, around you, to make you successful. So we have this training, it goes on every, actually it's consistent training, but two big ones per year, and with the good news is that our partners, they got to do exactly the same thing. That's what we're saying. John, as you and your sales leaders go out and talk to IT, and you're not, again in the field, you're way beyond, oh, check the box to order a new round of laptops or a new round of servers, right, or server refresh. As you talk to the CIOs out there and the senior IT leaders, where are we in this transition? Are they getting it? I guess it's quite a range of responses. It really is, some are already there, but are we there? Absolutely not, I think we're more or less single, did you? But again, when those CIOs, when they see, are you telling me, look, I can not only have a modern infrastructure, I can actually save money by getting to the modern infrastructure, and I can layer insights into my business using your technology, be it big data, be it AI, and I can yield more profitability at the end of it. You're finding them all in, but they're all in different levels obviously of expectation. Are there any characteristics of an organization that is either, is going or is ready to go, that you see? I wouldn't say so, here's what I will say. If you look across all of our transformations, VMware is always consistent. I will tell you, security remains a big thing. The other thing we've found is, again, as we get through these transformational discussions, the starting point still tends to be client. That client still seems to be the gateway to the data center for us, and I think we're also seeing, the one thing we're also seeing, everyone's recognizing the workforce, the workforce has changed forever. Gone are the days when we remember sitting at a desk from nine to five, where people are working remotely, people want to be productive, they want to always be on, and I think that's why you're seeing this in substance in the PC, Mark. If you look now, we've put 21 quotas on consecutive shirking, number one in the world on units, on revenue, number one in profitability, number one on server, number one on storage, obviously number one with VMware. That's consistent, is they want to be dealing without technologies. John, I want to give you the final word on key takeaways from the show, but I have to take away a couple things. Yes, it does rain in Vegas, and, you know, people play at an event, so, you know, other than those two things, you know, what do you hope that people come away from Dell Technologies World 20? Look, I hope people, a few things. One, I hope they understand our purpose. We are, and we have a desire to impact human life each and every day by being the essential infrastructure. It is no longer buzzwords around these transformational journeys. It's here. You can feel it, you can see it, those real proof points. I think it's also clear these two motions are happening, mass consolidation of IT infrastructure. We want our customers, our partners, to lead with Dell Technologies, and as you go through this transformational journey, that is only one company who has all of the portfolio to satisfy all the needs, and it's Dell Technology that's the support of our customers and our partners, and I'd be remiss if I don't always end by just saying, look, thank you. None of this is possible without wonderful customer supporting us on this journey. So, that's what I'd like to remain. All right. John Byrne, really appreciate catching up with you. I look forward to catching up with you in the future. Hope you keep this job a little more than a year this time. Yeah, me too. John, thank you as well. Thank you. All right. I'm Stu Miniman with John Troyer. We'll be back with lots more coverage. Thanks for watching theCUBE.