>> Live from Las Vegas,
it's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2018.
Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners.
>> Okay, welcome back everyone.
This is theCUBE's live coverage
in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the broadcast booth,
in the VMvillage at VMworld 2018.
This is theCUBE's ninth year covering VMworld.
Nine years theCUBE has been in exsistence.
We've been at VMworld every consecutive year.
It gets better and better.
I'm John Furrier, your host, with my co-host Dave Alante.
Our next guest is CUBE alumni Bask Iyer,
who's the General Manager of Edge IoT product line
within VMware, and also the CIO for VMware.
Welcome to theCUBE.
>> 'Cause you didn't have enough to do.
>> I guess you talked to my assistant, obviously.
>> Keep getting promoted, it's all those CUBE videos.
>> I don't know if it's promoted, I keep getting more jobs,
and my assistant says that I should stop smiling,
because if you smile, people think you're not busy.
They give you more to do.
>> So you're a CIO, not that that's not a hard enough job,
full time, you're also running the product line,
profit loss for Dell technologies IoT edge.
>> That's right. >> Across all Dell portfolios.
>> That's right.
>> All right, so what's the update.
Why is that a product line now?
We saw a little bit of taste the edge,
not that impressive, that was clear and transparent.
We're still connecting stuff.
Intelligence is coming later.
Is that where we're at?
>> I think the edge wave is coming,
People are starting to say, "When is that wave coming?"
Right now, we're just hooking up things.
We have a lot of sensors.
At home you've done this.
You hook up your Ring computer, Nest, whatever,
but these things are just sending you information.
It's not doing intelligent things.
The processing is going to get bigger and bigger
and bigger at the edge, and in enterprise, especially,
so it's a good time to be thoughtful about
how do you bring all the thing the VMware does,
and Dell does, and give a managed appliance
at the edge, if you will.
It's also good for the CIOs and IT guys
to get ahead of it, because you know it's coming.
This place already has thousands of sensors and gateways.
How do you manage it, how do you update it,
how do you run it?
It's an interesting time to look at it across the board.
The power of Dell and VMware is, we can do it both ways.
You can give it better together,
so hardware, software, everything, put it up there,
or some people choose to assemble it themselves.
I want to buy my own hardware vendor.
I want to get the VMware software.
You can choose it that way as well.
We're going to give you a simple way
to say, "Buy an appliance, completely managed, from us,"
manage all the edge, set up an architecture in place,
and get ready for the edge computing revolution.
>> Let's ask, you previously, last 12 months, roughly,
you've been CIO across all Dell technologies.
>> That's right.
>> What was that like?
What'd you learn?
Did you become a supply chain guru?
Were you doing digital transformation?
What was going on there?
>> It's a Jekyll and Hyde kind of a feeling,
because it's two different companies.
Even though people believe it's within the family,
VMware is independent, as you know,
and VMware has got all software,
hardly any supply chain, no manufacturing.
Dell is the other side.
120,000 people, a real enterprise company,
with supply chain, et cetera,
so it's two different jobs, two different audit committees,
and each audit committee would ask me
if I was spending 100% of my time in their companies,
and I had to tell them, I'm spending
37.5 hours on your company,
and that was the truth, but it is two jobs.
It was fun because--
>> VMware, also, dogfoods a lot of their stuff,
which makes it harder. >> That's right.
>> Not more hard, challenging. >> That's right.
>> In a sense, right, you've got to be on top of it.
>> It is, and the thing with VMware was,
we have done the transformation a little earlier,
so initially, I thought I'll cut and paste that in Dell.
That was the dream, but every company's different.
Every culture is different,
so first six months, I didn't make much progress in Dell,
then I had to get back to basics:
the people, the process, and then technology,
so culture always trumps all of this, right?
So you have to say, "I don't have good technical people.
"I don't have interest in technology.
"We need to hire new people,
"and we need to value people who are technical."
Then we did a process change.
We created something called the Dell Digital Way.
Just think of it as Lean Six Sigma kind of, but for digital,
where you train people that this is
the new way of operating, et cetera,
and surprisingly, the technology was the easier part.
It's a hybrid cloud, mobile computing, AI, IoT,
but if you don't have the people, you can't do much,
and most companies, as you know,
have outsourced, offshored.
They've gotten so far away from tech,
that you have to hire the people,
you have to put values.
>> How are you managing your time now,
with the P and L, which is a business unit, basically,
and CIO, which is pretty much
whitewater rapids, in and of itself.
You're paddling, the waves are crashing over the--
How do you do both?
>> I think that the edge IoT job
is a lot more listening job,
so I'm spending a lot more time
with fellow CIOs and CTOs and CSOs,
and the OT guys, the manufacturing guys,
on what would make sense at the IoT,
what would make sense at the edge.
It's a lot of listening, getting the strategy,
rather than say, "Here's the solution."
In the CIO job, it is both blocking and tackling,
and also strategically, I want to show
that edge computing and IoT works in Dell and VMware.
Otherwise, you don't have credibility,
so we're putting a lot of use cases in production.
The nice thing about it is,
I already spend a lot of time with customers
as a CIO for VMware and for Dell.
In fact, we are hosting a session tomorrow
with all the CIO friends.
They're just interested more in
what is really happening in edge, what is happening in IoT.
>> It's a nice crossover. >> That the logic,
is you're going to, as John said before, dogfood it inside,
and then bring a solution to market eventually.
>> That's right.
>> Make some mistakes, fail fast, and then--
>> I would rather make mistakes on our end,
(Dave laughs) than with the customer.
The good news for us, is with
the portfolio projects you have,
and you saw the announcements,
we got a ton of stuff to offer on the edge, and on IoT,
but we don't want to just overpower the customers.
There was a lot of announcement even today.
That is mind-boggling to people,
so you need to package it into a solution to say,
"If you do building automation, this is what you do.
"If you do robotics, this is what you do.
"If you do smart cities, this is what you do,"
so package that into a solution that's meaningful.
>> Let's talk about the IQ levels
of the current enterprises around IoT and edge,
because certainly the edge is,
not that they're not smart enough to handle it,
but it's just, they don't have enough reps in the game yet.
Where are they, are they just, toe in the water?
Are they actually deploying?
'Cause you got OT, which is a more mature market,
sensors, et cetera, we know that.
VMware's a software company,
and most hardware companies aren't
becoming software companies.
IoT has to be rendered into software, yet you've got the OT.
How is the CIOs and the CXOs dealing with this?
Where are they level-wise, progress-wise?
Early?
>> I think 50/50.
The enterprise IT, as you know,
is a little slow to the game.
The consumer gets ahead of it,
and it is going to come through OT, and other kind of places.
We did that in mobile, right?
The enterprise IT didn't jump on mobile.
People started bringing their own phones,
and they started doing things
with their Blackberries and iPhones,
and then we had to come up with MDM,
and other ways go get in.
I'm hoping that's not the case
in the IoT and edge, but it's likely,
so I'm telling my counterparts.
>> They're going to bring their sensors to the table.
>> You know, this could have thousands
of sensors and gateways, for all you know,
and the IT guys may not know about it,
so the next hacking you're going to get
is through gateways here,
not necessarily through a phishing attack.
Unfortunately, the skeptic in me says
that that's how, people are going to come screaming into it,
but the evangelist in me is saying, "Get ahead of it.
"There's an opportunity for you to look like a hero."
>> On the security side, certainly.
>> Don't wait for it. >> That's a big one.
>> Look at the number of devices that's being put on.
When it's not being done by IT,
they're going to have open passwords,
they're going to have different versions,
it's not going to be upgraded, updated, patched up,
so I'm trying to educate follow CIOs.
There's a good 30, 40% of the people who are ahead.
There's a good 70% who are going to wait till it happens.
>> What about your ecosystem?
Talk about that, what you're doing specifically.
You've got AWS; there's an edge play there.
You've got tons of Dell stuff, as you said,
and you've got a sort of ecosystem
of both traditional partners slash competitors of Dell,
and these guys, like PTC for example,
or others, that just are out there,
and the operations technology.
What are you doing to put together that ecosystem.
>> Actually, the traditional IT partnership,
you're going to rely on your strengths with VMware.
The same thing on, how do you connect
private cloud to the edge?
Same VMC software that we released, that works with Amazon,
so that one works well, and those people know us.
When you go to the other side, the OT side,
the Honeywells, the Seimens, the GEs, the Johnson Controls,
those become important partners.
We do not want to claim that we know
industrial controls better than them.
We need to establish partnership with them.
The interest that comes is, when the OT folks
get to a stage where there's a lot
of information and traffic,
then the IT guys come into play.
We bring credibility to the IT side.
We know CIOs and CSOs well,
so when you assure them that this box
that is running your factory is really
a VMware software running Dell,
there's a lot more credibility,
so I think there's a partnership.
In fact, when I talked last to the industrial event vendors,
they want us to bring this cloud in a box.
They say, "We don't understand all these things
"that we are to put together on how do you manage
"private cloud, public cloud, et cetera.
"We expect you to bring that expertise together,"
so that ecosystem partnership has to be developed.
Things like automobiles,
I mean everybody initially resisted
this autonomous driving and smart cars.
I'm a big car guy, which I'm sure you are.
Turbo chargers and super chargers, those are important.
All of a sudden, you're looking,
"Oh, it's a computer on wheels.
"It's more than an internal combustion engine."
All those folks want partners,
and they want a partner credible like Dell technology.
This is where the partnership of Dell tech,
not just VMware, comes in pretty handy.
They want a partner end to end.
>> It's interesting, we had Andy Bechtolsheim on earlier.
We were talking about Arista's relationship to VMware,
and he said, quote on theCUBE,
a great testimonial, especially coming from a guy like him,
NSX is perfectly positioned,
with the the security model around closest to the app,
that allows the decoupling of security teams,
where there's the security team here,
and there's networking team. >> Exactly.
>> There's no cross-pollination,
there's no problem there. >> Right.
>> Similar across the other technologies,
people can be highly cohesive in their work effort,
and bring it all together. >> It's going to start on the--
>> That fly wheel you talked about.
>> Exactly, it's going to start on the OT,
so my head of facilities is going to bring
building management solutions.
She's not going to tell me
that it's actually a computer systems.
I wouldn't even know, I'll be signing it
without knowing it's a computer system,
but you sooner or later you look and say,
"That's a massive computer system.
"What version of Linux does it run?
"How do I manage it, how to I patch it?"
>> Of course you've got to get a Tesla S Model, and the SUV,
just to do the R and D. >> Yeah, I need to, absolutely.
>> It's a computer on wheels, you need to have it.
>> You heard it folks, I need one.
(John laughs) Please tell Micheal Dell now,
that I need a Tesla, both models, and the new--
>> I'll put in a good word for you with Micheal.
>> Thank you. >> Take a step back.
You've got a great reputation
as a great leader within VMware and Dell Technologies.
Take us through a day in the life of what you do.
You say you talk to a lot of customers.
How are you organizing your teams?
Obviously, you've got a very emerging,
and no doubt relevant edge piece to it, IoT obviously.
We know what IoT is, but the edge is coming really fast.
5G, Pat kind of referenced it, again, in the keynote.
Telco opportunity's massive.
He wanted to tease that out further,
but there's not enough time, it seemed like,
but we've got a massive networking game on.
It's going to go up, crazy.
How are you running the team?
What's your management style?
Take us through some of the day to day life of--
>> This is what helped me, even managing Dell,
and then VMware, is you need to have an empowered team,
but you should empower, but not abdicate.
They need to know that you're there.
You can't just dump it on them,
but they run fairly empowered way,
and in IT, my batting average would be 80,
because I've done it for a long time,
so if you ask me what firewall to pick, I can tell you.
I can tell you what network to pick,
and I'll be 80% correct,
so it's almost resisting the temptation
to give the answers.
Let the team come back with a decision,
so VMware acted fairly independently,
but they need to know you're there to back them up,
especially political issues,
and other things you have to fight,
so it's a similar model of empowering the teams.
The only thing in IoT is,
you've got to bring Dell and VMware together,
and even though they're a family of companies,
sometimes it's difficult within the families
to raise relationships.
Luckily I worked on both sides.
I've been a leadership team member on both sides,
so part of my job is to make sure people understand.
>> You get along with everybody.
(John laughs) >> I get along.
As I get older, I believe that with a beer,
you can solve every problem.
>> All right, so I'll ask you
the same question I asked Andy Bechtolsheim.
What is the one enabling technology
that you see coming in this new era
that's upon us with cloud.
That will have the same kind of impact
that TCP/IP did on networking,
which created massive amount of interoperability,
created massive internetworking boom.
It created a ton of value,
that became what we are today.
What's the one thing in the cloud that people--
>> I think I'm going to give two things, sorry,
because sometimes we miss the combination
when you pick one thing.
When you do Internet of things,
when you're just hooking up the sensors, that's interesting,
but you put AI and machine learning with it,
then it becomes really useful.
Right now, we are kind of sensor enabling everything,
so the thermostat is telling you what it's doing.
Ring is telling you there's somebody in front of your house.
After a while it's just a lot of false negatives.
I shut those apps off, but if the house comes and tells you,
"There's an FBI most wanted person outside your home,
"I've already notified FBI.
"Don't go home, this is just for your information."
That's powerful, that's like magic.
I think the combination of the sensory enabling IoT and AI,
I think those two are fabulous.
Then you through blockchain on top of it,
where you don't have to really govern it,
I think those combination of things
that we are getting right now is just fascinating.
That's where I see gold mine is,
people are going to IoT, people are going to AI.
When you look at a combination--
Things cannot be managed with people.
Things have to be managed with intelligence.
>> To highlight that point on the IoT.
If you think about notifications,
if all the alarms are coming, it's like a hospital.
What do you pay attention to?
You got to have some AI assisting you
to understand what's important in context at the moment.
All these alarms going off, what do you do?
>> You shut it off (they laugh).
>> Now, actually, you've got that substrate,
which is the IoT and the instrumentation,
and you've got the AI, ML, and blockchain layer.
That's about automation.
What you described was,
"I don't have to go do anything.
"It's telling me what to do, or what not to do."
>> Luckily, I'm a lazy person.
I want things to do things for me.
I don't want things to tell me what to do.
I don't want anything to tell me what to do.
I want the things to do the job, right?
We're not there yet.
We're installing all these software and gadgets.
It is telling me too many things to do.
I want my house to tell me,
"Would you like to save $400 a month, or $40 a month?"
I don't want to even know how.
Just say yes. >> Push this button.
>> Push this button, yes, right?
I think you're getting to a stage
where these things can be intelligently put together,
where you can actually do useful things.
I believe that the mundane has to be automated,
and it's still not being done.
>> We found a better route, six minutes faster.
>> Don't even tell me, just go (they laugh).
>> We could automate theCUBE.
Send us the best guess, please, yes.
Bask, I want to ask you one final question.
I know you're tight on time.
We want to wrap up, but I've got to get this
out of your head, is that, you talk to a lot of CIOs.
In this digital transformation journey with the cloud,
some things that are going on,
you're starting to see visibility
in what multicloud looks like, what hypercloud is.
It's pretty obvious, and then you've got
the edge, which you're managing.
What's the top couple things
that are ranked up on order, the patterns that emerge,
top order of conversations you're involved in with CIOs.
What are the biggest challenges, opportunities?
>> Most CIOs, the CEOs and the board
is asking them about digital transformation.
Sometimes they don't even know what that means,
but they are asking that question,
so the CIOs have to be clever enough to answer,
"How do you do digital transformation?"
It's not all about technology.
It's business change, business agility and so on.
Unfortunately, the press always says the CIO role is dead.
It is true, every year the job is dead,
because there's a new road that is getting paved.
>> Kind of like storage was supposed to be dead 10 years ago.
(Bask laughs) It never dies. >> It never dies,
but you have to reinvent yourself,
so the the next reinvention is,
you have to be the digital transformation
person for the company,
so a lot of people, we all want to learn on,
what does it mean, how do you do it,
where do you get the people.
You see a lot of reversing of trend,
outsourcing, offshoring,
now all of a sudden you want to do digital,
you want people sitting in the room,
in house to do those work, so that is happening,
and also several jobs, there's a chief digital officer,
chief information security officer, chief data officer.
A CEO doesn't want to have five different people
managing information assets,
so the role of the CIO is going to evolve even further,
to be, "You got to manage the whole thing for me."
>> {John] For the new P and L job, what's the big thing
that keeps you up at night?
>> How to make money (John and Bask laugh).
>> That's the thing.
People talk about, CIOs got to be more business savvy.
That'll make you business savvy.
Here you go, here's a nut, hit it.
>> One of my colleagues, Raghu said,
"Revenue is very strategic,"
so I'm very focused on revenue.
>> An old expression we learned in the startup business,
if you want to have success with this,
don't run out of money.
>> That's right, so that is my goal.
>> Bask, thanks for coming on theCUBE.
We really appreciate this, thank you.
theCUBE live here at Vmworld 2018.
I'm John Furrier.
Stay with us, live coverage continues three days.
We're in day one.
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