 As Phil's coming on, Cloud is one of the major topics of even here at Dell Storage Forum. So we can talk a lot about that. Yeah, I want to hear what he has to say about Cloud, but I also am interested in this whole concept of fluid data, which complements been talking about for a long time, and sort of how that expands into the rest of the Dell portfolio. So that was sort of a compelling topic. And then we'll see what he's got to say. So he was just up, he's over there looking at us now. I think he knows he's coming. So for those of you just joining us, we are at the Dell Storage Forum. This is John MacArthur. And we are about to bring on Phil Soren. He's the President of Dell Compellants. So come on over, Phil. Yeah, Phil, great to have you here. I'm really glad you can make it. We've been talking you up. Yeah, we have. So, well, what did you say? I got to find this out here. You just got out for the keynotes. Do you get paid to do this? Yeah, this is free. We get paid in cookies. Yeah. Well, that'll be good here. So how's it going? Going great. Did you enjoy the keynotes and everything? Yeah, well, we were two years up. We were here, so we want to know what you said. Yeah, we talked, actually it was kind of a fun event here. First of all, I got to thank some of our customers that have been with us for 10 years and some of their business partners that have met their business on us and not quite 10 years, but that was really impressive. And actually, one of our business partners got up and thanked us again. That was real neat. Actually kind of emotional for me, but I'll tell you what I try to talk about is how we innovated a Compellant and how we're going to keep innovating under Dell and not lose that innovation, which is hard. When you're smaller, it's easier to innovate. So how do you keep that going? And how do you? Yeah, well, one of the biggest things that we did at Compellant was, we formed a thing called the C3, the Compellant Customer Council, and we formed it before we had a product. Yeah, I actually came to one of your first. You spoke to one, that's right. I spoke to one of your firsts. That was the second meeting we had. I came to the second one. You didn't invite me to the first, but I got to see it. The meeting was good. Oh, Alex, I hear a little bitterness there. It was good. And it's, so it was really neat because when we started the company, we got a lot of press and coverage and so a lot of people called and said, we want to know what you're doing and we'd like to participate with you and help you. And so what we said is, first we said we're in stealth mode. We can't tell you it's a secret. And then you kind of go, this is stupid. We're going to want to talk to these same customers a year from now. Let's bring them in and build the product together. So we actually brought them in and I talked about Marty Sanders ran that first one and he opened up a rack and it was empty. He said, this is our product. What do you think? And we got a lot of sighs and yawns in the audience, but they helped us fill up the rack and so we want to continue that. I also kind of talked about the innovation that's kind of occurred in the last decade in storage. You've been a storage veteran too, but I think I've been in 25 years or a little more. I started when I was 12, but the storage really, innovation has been very, very quick this last decade. And I kind of talked about that. I kind of talked about, if you look at the innovation, it hasn't come from the big legacy vendors. It's come from the innovators that like Component and Ecologic and I kind of did a little joke. I've learned in Texas that the legacy vendors kind of have big hats, but no cattle, you know, that's a... I'm from Texas, you know. I meant something new now, right? So that's what we talked about. Okay, okay. So how are you going to continue that innovation then? Well, the biggest thing, like right here, we're starting, we got breakout sessions with customers, getting the feedback, what we're doing, we're opening up kind of what we're going to do development-wise to see if that's the right stuff they want to see. We'll continue like on Sunday, we had our partner advisory council, which is our key resellers, and they were right there with us giving us a lot of feedback on the integration of the two-channel programs. What are they telling you? Because you were both pretty, I have an Ecologic and Component, very channel-friendly, right? Well, they gave us a lot of feedback on deal registration and conflicts, how to work with the Dell Salesforce. Don't take it directly. You know, work with us a little bit there. But they, I'm really glad Ecologic was first because they broke the ground with Dell on the channel front and we've been able to kind of piggyback on that. And they've been, you know, things like, you know, how we do deal registration, they've taken some of our program elements in the corporate and the Dell ones. They've been, they're open on more than just technology what they're taking from Component. So, Co-Pilots, another big one they're adopting that kind of stuff. Yeah, tell me about Co-Pilot, because Co-Pilot was, you mentioned Co-Pilot at the time of the, either at the IPO or the acquisition. I think it was at the IPO you talked about, Co-Pilot. So, tell me about Co-Pilot. Well, so everyone has to have support and with Co-Pilot what we do is we try to take it to a whole new level and we named it different because it is different. So we call it Co-Pilot because we want that customer to know that when they call in to our support line that that person is in the cockpit with them as opposed to a control tower where they're kind of ordering them around. They're in the cockpit and if they don't land, they both don't land. So, that's the concept. But it incorporates a lot of software. We do a lot of real sophisticated call home and then we use that data once we get that call home data to predict and prevent problems for customers. And then we have a, this is the whole concept. We don't believe in callbacks. The person on the phone, the first person they talk to is going to be very technical. He's going to be going to answer questions. We encourage how to, you know, how do I do questions as opposed to I'm broke and you know, the way you do it. And then also we follow up. We help, you know, we call them when they don't have a problem just to see how things are going. So it's just a lot of things, but ultimately it's people. And we just got the best people in the world actually working it. We've been trying to incorporate that into the products. That's a good thing to focus on as the people. Let's talk about fluid data for a moment. I'd kind of like to hear your thoughts on that and where you think it is and where it's going. You hit it right in the nose, which is, it's got so much possibility. So it's, we're not done with it, but there's no one compelling, did kind of coin the term fluid data. And it just kind of, it described our whole product. You know, it described how we manage data, get the right data at the right, you know, this drive at the right time at the right price. And we do it automatically and very fluidly. I mean, it just described what we do. It described our support. It described our hardware architecture where they can, you know, fluidly move with new technology without having to start over or throw things away. So we have this persistent architecture. And then when Dell acquired us, they started looking at their product portfolio and they go, you know what? A lot of this fits in there. You know, Equalogic doesn't have forklift upgrades either. It fit right in there. They manage data real fluidly and dynamically. They have the peer scaling that fit there also. It managed some of the things we're going to do with the, you know, the fluid file system that they have. It just, I don't know, it describes what we do. You're running right now, you're running Equalogic. So you're running Compellant as a separate sort of group within the server storage division, is that right? Yeah, we're working, you know, we're pretty key to Dell's future. So it's a very integrated effort. Now Compellant right now is, you know, in Minnesota, they're investing in Minnesota. We'll add hundreds of jobs up there. I already have added hundreds that we're doing there. The development team, the Compellant development team is working on the Compellant product, but there's also a portion of it that's working on integrating these other technologies too, like the scalable file system. Okay, that's from X and A. Yep, and then the, you know, compression and deduplication technology kind of on top of it. So there's, it's separate, but it's pretty integrated, frankly, though, too, in the day-to-day efforts. Okay. So you don't really see, you know, Dell teaching Compellant or Compellant teaching Dell one way or the other. You really see yourselves as teams. It really is that way. I thought, you know, frankly, engineering would be one of the tougher ones to, you know, we got our way, you got your way, but that's actually gone really smoothly. Good. They've met, they kind of quickly got respect. One thing that was really good too, that Dell has a lot more technical talent than they might have had years ago. And so when these engineers see technically competent people to work with, they get respect, and then they work together, and that's happened. So, yeah. Engineers usually get along pretty well. It's the next level up that's where fights start to take place. So I'm the fighter of them. I guess apparently not, apparently not. Apparently you're getting along, or you're playing well with others. That's good. Mom taught you well. That's a Catholic school education, I guess. That's a Catholic school, and you were a teacher too, right? I was a school teacher, yeah. Junior high math teacher, yeah. We're back when, yeah, so. So why the move, and did that teach you anything coming from those roots? It taught me a lot here. How to handle injuries like handling junior high math? No, don't put that one on those. It's too late, man. It's live, it's live. No, it does teach you a lot. How to be dynamic and fluid. You gotta do that if you're a junior high math teacher. Definitely. And it's a lot of it's presenting, and being on your feet, and being able to adjust. Good background. This is paid off well for you. This is your second storage company, right? This is paid a little better than school teaching did, yeah. Yeah, the second one we did, the three of us founded another company, 95. The same three. The same three. It was that company, we had the first sand in the industry in 1995, first virtual sand. So I think we have a lot of innovation. A lot of tight VMware integration, I think at the time. Well, VMware really wasn't kind of going there. But now we've virtualized all the physical drives. That's really a lot of the innovation. And yeah, VMware, you can't look at it. VMware has kind of done what we did the storage early on, and now we're expanding on that. OK, that's good. Well, we know we have to let you go because you have a very busy schedule. I really appreciate you stopping by, and it was great to chat with you. Well, this is fun here. So who do you got next? Darren. Oh, we're going to talk to your classmate, Darren. OK, we're going to get along well together now, right? All right, yeah. Well, thank you so much, Bill. This is fun to have you guys here, and thanks for supporting me. Thanks for coming. All right, good to see you. Bye-bye, take care.