>> voiceover: live from austin, texas. (bouncy techno music) it's thecube. covering dell emc world 2016. brought to you by dell emc. now, here are your hosts, dave vellante and stu miniman. >> welcome back toaustin, texas, everybody. this is thecube, the worldwideleader in live tech coverage.
stu miniman, my co-host andi are going to be wrapping up two days of coveragehere at dell emc world. used to be dell world, theycombined it dell emc world. we'll talk a little bit aboutwhat's going to happen next. actually, let's talk about it now. there will be a dell emcworld which will replace the former emc world in the spring. typically it's in may in las vegas. >> second week in may, at thevenetian, just like before,
so, emc world plus the dell stuff, so probably>> and i think, >> 15,000 plus people. >> and we got a flavor for what that was going to be likelast year, cuz michael was very prominent onstage,and so that's cool. and you know it's going tobe a zillion announcements, and you know, more of the same. >> stu: mega, mega.
>> so that's good,(stu chuckles) mega, mega, right. so what's going to be interesting is what happens to this event, right. the austin vibe is unique, inmy opinion, in this industry. it's not vegas, it's not casinos. you got a great music scenehere, cool people, great food. people really enjoy beinghere, so it's a laid-back environment, but it's good.
it's a good qualityaudience and a lot of fun. >> stu: yeah.>> and so i hope somehow, some way, that's preserved.>> yeah, and dave what we heard is, an executive event, they have what, 400 or 500executives that are here. that will probably continue. it won't be dell world. it'll be somethin' else.
and that was reallywhat started this event. they added in what wasthe dell storage forum, dell enterprise forum, and grew this from, when we first came in 2012,bill clinton and you know, what was it, 2,000 people. now it's what, 7,000, 8,000people here this year, so, this one's grown and nowwe'll spin into the other one, and this goes back to kind of its roots. so, full circle.
>> stu, one of the thingsthat we didn't talk about this morning, and i had toleave the keynote early. you stayed, to listen to david goulden's litany of announcements, that emc made, many of them they madelast week, some today, like the scaleio poweredge announcement, which you can see on the floor here. but take us through what was announced, and what the significanceof those announcements is.
>> yeah, so right, there'sprobably more announcements than we can go through all of 'em. at a high level, right,number one is dell. actually dave, those poweredge servers, they're actually branded dell emc now, which was something that was like, wow. when they first toldus that, i'm like, wow, all those dell bezels will go dell emc. so, you're going to see thosefit in a lot of environments.
so, in the what used to becalled vce product line, you know, there's a lot of those, so, in the racks and therails, not the blocks, there's the dell emc poweredge servers. for scaleio, they have-- >> dave: not the blocksbecause that's still ucs. >> they're still ucs, absolutely. in scaleio, which youcan buy in the vxrack flex configuration, youcan have dell servers,
or if i just want to do scaleio,i can get the ready node, which is the poweredge server. so, i want to go buy ahundred or a thousand of 'em, a highly scalable type configurations. here's some configurationsthat we have in there. so there's the server roll-out, which is what we all expected. secondly, year of all-flash, the yoaf, as emc, #yoaf, put out there.
we saw a lot of that. so we talked to cj desai earlier today about isilon, how that's getting it. ecs, how it's getting it. so, all of the differentpieces where i had a little bit of flash, we have a lotmore flash, or all-flash. so lots more flexibility there,and, one of the big pieces, you know, an area i lookat a lot, is vxrail. so it's, you know, the dellemc server inside vxrail,
and it has a lot ofconfigurations and they think that this is the platformthat can lead them to become the marketleader in the hyperconverge infrastructure race.>> let me stop you there. so just for those in the audience that don't follow this closely, so, nutanix was one of the firstto do this hyperconverge. there are others,simplivity's another one, then many others, right.
and then the whole, many ofthe software-defined companies are in there as well. but nutanix recent ipo, super successful. they're a good referencemodel for hyperconverge. a couple years ago at vmworld, vmware announced rails technology, right. >> stu: correct. >> which essentiallywas software-defined... what?>> it was, it was,
one of the packages though, and vmware announced virtual san. it was actually the thingthat got everybody talking about this word of hyperconverge, so, vsan is the software layer that can run on a lot of different configurations. so they put out somethingthey called evo:rail, which was, here is a very prescriptive, this is the configuration you will run.
not only, here's the cores,here's the exact, you know, disk and flash configurationsthat they have-- >> dave: they had areference architecture, is that right?>> it was a reference architecture.>> not a solution. >> not a solution, butit was very rigid, dave. so that meant thatthere was, i think about a dozen companies, servercompanies, like lenovo and dell and hewlett-packard, before it was hpe,
and storage vendors like hitachi, and netapp also got onboard for this. >> dave: and of course, emc. >> and emc launched onethat they called vspex blue. and overall, evo:rail,tiny, tiny, tiny sales. >> dave: they were hard to find. >> yeah, it was hard to find. to put it into context, i thinkit was like 30 or 60 days, of the new vxrail, which is amore flexible configuration.
the vce group putting together what was first with quanta servers, plus vsan in thathyperconverge deployment, you know, outsold like the entire evo:rail market.>> there's no install base. >> yeah, yeah, no install base. >> okay, and in the bignews now, is we're seeing the dell server technologymigrate into that platform. >> yeah, and once again,it's not one configuration.
there's a bunch of different node types that can start everything from three-node, going up to vmwarescalability for, you know, what a cluster is, which is what vsan is. but they've had, chad's coin' in kind of chest beating withhow many sales they've had. they've had real good adoption. we talked to scott winslowsaying a dell channel partner that's already sold some of these.
so, definitely they've launched and are makin' a big play here. >> but this is, to me,this is a huge deal. and i guess people aren'tmakin' a big deal about it. i've got ashley on before,and he didn't pooh-pooh it, but he was like, yeah, okay. but, the fact that now dellhas a pipeline into emc, who consumes a lot ofservers, and will continue to consume a lot of servers,it's a captive base.
in the same way thatibm can dictate sort of what technologies theyuse for when they do in a big global services deal. if the customer doesn't care, ibm's going to use ibm technologies. that's kept afloat alot of ibm's businesses. in the same way, dell now hasa captive base at the emc. now maybe it's not asbig, but it's meaningful. that's a brand new oemcustomer, that's pretty huge.
>> absolutely. so dave, people always, we at wikibon, we came up with the term server san. and everybody's like, aw, it'sa horrible name, whatever. but here's what it is. before i bought a san, and it was, i bought a server from somebody, i bought storage from somebody else, and i bought a network from somebody else,
and i put that whole thing together. what i get in a hyperconverge environment, is that entire san in a server. and i buy multiples of them and there's a softwarelayer that does that. so i have a vmware option,i have a nutanix option, simplivity has an option. you've got maxta, a wholelot of other companies that are competing in this space.
but right, dell haspositioned themselves with, they've got the vmware assets, they've got the emc salesforce, they oem nutanix, they are the default configuration for customers like pivot3 and simplivity. so, michael wants to makesure that, whichever one of those software optionswin, he's hoping that the underlying serverhardware is going to be his. so i think he's done a great job there,
really understanding thismarket, because cisco, with ucs, really nailed it with converged, with what they did withvblock, and flexpod, and about 30 storage partnerships, and dell has taken the leadershipposition by making sure that, whether you're choosingnumber one, two, three, four, they've got a play acrossthe board in all of these, and not just a play buta leadership position across the board.
>> so the other dynamic thatsometimes gets lost here, stu, is when ibm chose to sell itsx86 business, server business, to lenovo, it basically created a vacuum. and dell emc is going tofill, is filling that vacuum. i mean hpe has an opportunityto, as well, maybe do some of the odms, but somecompanies with server and storage are in the best position to take advantage of that pendulum swinging,what you called server san, back to the server.
storage, which used to be separate, for good reasons, now it's swinging back. dell emc is in as gooda position as anybody to take advantage of that. arguably, actually, it'sinarguable, the best position. so, ibm gave that up. lenovo has to figure out, okay, how do we partner with storage to do that? now maybe at some point they'llgo buy a storage company
and that part comes together,but there's still some deep engineering that can take place, some integration thatcreates some value there. so ibm decided, because they said, we don't want to be in that business. that's a low-margin business. it's fine for some people like dell emc. that's not our gig. but from a tam standpoint,
they walked away from a lot of tam. dell emc are embracing that tam, in a margin model that michaeldell's comfortable with. >> yeah dave, you're absolutely right. we poked at this when we were at ibm edge, and ibm has, if i want to lookat that kind of scale-out, what we call server san architecture, well they have somethingsimilar in softlayer, so if i want to consume it thatway, not in my data center,
not want to own that piece of the stack, softlayer offers that. but they're not having anon-prem stack solution. lenovo, also oems with nutanix, also works with vmware, vsan. they're absolutely doing that. hpe has a number ofsolutions that poke at it, but yeah, dave, i agree. dell is in a pole positionhere for this solution
and is trying to muscle their way to the front of this fast-growing pack. >> it's a good business, right. it's going to throw off a lot of cash. i guess let's talk aboutthe financials for a second. so it's hard to tell. we knew what emc financials were, very recently became a privatecompany so we have all that. slow growth, but growth.
throwin' off cash, but not as much cash as they were three or four years ago. dell, as a company now,dell emc, dell technologies, let's call it, probably growing. we think, we're not reallysure, but i would say probably, growing in the low single digits. certainly throwing off cash, enough cash to pay off the debt. not burdened by dividendpayments and stock buybacks,
which of course, by theway, are not tax-deductible. dividend payments are not tax-deductible. so that's reduced, in theory anyway, the tax rate at dell emc. so some interesting dynamics there, but you don't really know, right. the profitability of the company,the growth of the company is whatever they say it is. okay, that's the way itis until we find out more.
now there is some level of reporting that has to get done becauseof the tracking stock, so we're going to get someinformation dell files with the sec, so there's bits and pieces. you've seen 8-ks come out. so you know, pay attention to sec.gov, there's some good tidbits there. but generally speaking,the point here, stu, is that michael dell can writewhatever narrative he wants,
and it's not a bunchof wall street analysts writing the narrative. so that, to me, from amarketing standpoint, is a big advantage becauseit removes a distraction that others may not have. >> you know, it's interesting, dave. i think back when dell went private, i heard a lot more rumbles. i had a lot of friends thatkind of had been at dell
a long time, and kind of cashedout when the deal closed, and went on to do the next thing. now, there's been some changes at emc, some people have left. some people there have beensome small layoffs right now. i mean, what was it, 3,000, ithink, was announced before. it's expected that as somegroups get consolidated that there will be more,but at least i haven't heard nearly as many rumbles now, onkind of the heritage emc side
as i did on dell. but there's still a lot to play out, but i'm pleasantly surprisedat the energy everybody has. there's a lot of the heritageemc people that showed up here for the first time ata heritage dell show. so that's kind of interestingfor me on the people side inside a very large company. >> well, you wouldexpect, there's got to be some rationalization of the headcount.
i mean, there has to be, right. again, we've talked aboutthis a lot on thecube. we've had, david goulden disagreed, but i'm not going to arguewith him on thecube but, there has been a 10 yearcollapse in infrastructure, hardware and software pricing. emc's been certainly fightingthat, in a variety of ways, and done a fantastic job. credit to them.
but at the macro level,there has been a collapse and there continues to be a collapse. and there will be a further collapse. the good news again fordell emc is it's hidden inside of a private company. the point is, you have to have a cost structure to compete with cloud. because it was cloud and open source that are driving those pressures.
and so dell's cost structureand its supply chain, in our view anyway, allow,i think you'd agree, allow dell to compete effectively with, today anyway, the cloud providers. >> yeah, so dave, last year,satya nadella was onstage. we talked a lot about azure,and the future of azure stack. at least, in the keynote, ididn't hear a lot about it. we poked around the vmware on, aws stuff. i was a little disappointed
at the overall cloud discussion here. kind of poke that a little bit to, how dell sees the multi-cloud world living and some of the pieces that they think will help manage themaround there, whether. i'm curious, you know we talked to a lot of the executives and people around here. did you have any updatesas you were thinking on the vmware and amazonpiece after talkin'
to michael and everybody? (crowd chatters in background) >> i think, i'll repeatwhat i said before. my opinion, vmware absolutely,100% capitulated in its position on aws generally inpublic clouds specifically. point number one. point number two was ithink it was the right move. to fight that trend wouldhave been a huge mistake. so the trend is your friend.
that said, it's unclearto me that that solves the cloud challengesthat this company has. it maybe staves it off for a bit. but specifically as it relates to vmware, i think it's business as usual. they've extended their tam somewhat. they've made it more convenientto run vms in amazon, instead of waiting whatever,seven days for infrastructure. they can spin it upvirtually instantaneously.
i think that's good. i think that's good for,customers did not lose on this. great. so if customers don't lose, that's good short-term for vmware. the bigger picture is dell and dell emc. how do they compete in the cloud? and to me, the way theycompete in the cloud, is they sell solutions to cloud providers.
i don't expect them to sell a lot to amazon, google, and microsoft. i just don't, unless it'spart of a quid pro quo. i don't think that'sgoing to be the dominant, dominant way.>> yeah, and the china hyperscale guys, that some people with closer ties tochina are likely to win. >> but the other piece to your point is, i think azure stack is a great strategy
and i think it's the correct strategy. i think it's a gap in amazon's portfolio. i think dell can do very, very well there. because i think a lot of companies want to mimic as closely aspossible what they're doing in the public cloud, on-prem. because as michael said, it'snot about where you put it. it's an operating model. i mean, it is about where youput it in terms of who wins.
(stu laughs) but from a customer standpoint, it's about the operating model. and the azure stack allowsyou to have a mimic, to a great degree as possible,that operating model. and the only othercompany, besides microsoft, doing that is really oracle. and oracle's a little nichewithin their red stack. so to me, dell is in a good position.
i'm surprised they didn'ttalk about it more. maybe they didn't out of deference to aws. they didn't want torub salt in that wound, just that fresh off a deal. but i think, listen, if youlisten to andy jassy's narrative and compare it tomichael dell's narrative, even though they'reslightly coin' together, they're still differentends of the spectrum. and those guys are stillbattling for market share.
and i think that dell is going to use its choice card where it needs to to compete effectivelylong-term with amazon. that's my take. what do you think? >> yeah, no dave, i think. yes.(chuckles) i agree with you on a lot of that. if i ask michael, it's like okay,
i understand how itopens up, it can prevent some bleeding from vmware inover the next couple of years, give them some opportunitypotential for some growth. absolutely i understand foramazon, it's a big straw that they stick into500,000 potential customers and say, we want to pullas much of our stuff into our environment and look at all these other great services we've got here. wouldn't you like to use them?
isn't this great? the macro thing i look at is microsoft has told every customer, ssas is awesome. you're all signing up for office 365, and once you get ssas, it's like, wait, maybe i might want tochoose other environments. vmware has told everybody,public cloud is a great place to hold your workloads. look, here's vmware inan amazon data center,
it's in a softlayer data center from ibm. so, where it lives, shouldn'tmatter to you as much anymore. i mean, great. dave, we've been screamin'at the top of our lungs how, owning your data center issomethin' you need to get out of. hopefully this'll move the needle. it's interesting. i still, after everything i hear, i still think this is a much better deal
for amazon in the long-term. >> oh, i would agree with that. and the other thing,again at the macro level, ssas is becoming the new controlpoint in the organization. the applications continueto drive business value. it's the infrastructure is the plumbing. but you know what? infrastructure's still a good business. to participate in that business,
you've got to have theright cost structure. dell understands that. it's got the best supplychain in the business. this is not a complacent company. it is not, in my opinion,a vulnerable company. (chuckles)it's a winner. right? michael dell is a winner. >> i mean, dave, i lovethe point from michael
when he talked about thescope of his organization. he's like, we're much bigger than amazon. i mean, just the purchasingpower and you know what, their supply chain is, despite that amazon has pretty impressive supplychain, for all of amazon. >> alright listen, we got to wrap. stu, thanks very much. great pleasure workin' with you. check out wikibon.comfor all the research.
siliconangle.com has all thenews and all the write-ups of these videos, siliconangle.tv. check out our new site,cube365.net/dellworld. >> stu: dell emc world. >> sorry, check that. sixth time i've done that. cube365.net/dellemcworld it's our new platform. we've also got that /womenandtech.
check that out from grace hopper. uh, this is a wrap. jay, patrick, ava, alicia, greg, awesome. thanks to heather,appreciate all your support. we will see you next time, everybody. this is a wrap from dell emc world 2016. thanks for watching. (techno beat)
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