>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE,
covering Dell EMC World 2017
brought to you by Dell EMC
(upbeat techno music)
>> Welcome back everyone
We are wrapping up three days
of Dell EMC World here in Las Vegas.
I'm your host, Rebecca Knight
along with my cohost Keith Townsend.
We are joined by Gil Shneorson.
He is the Senior Vice President
at VxRail Dell EMC.
Thanks so much for joining us, Gil.
>> Thank you for having me.
>> Keith: Good seeing you again Gil.
>> Yeah, good to see you again.
>> A CUBE veteran.
We are always happy to have repeat guys on the show.
>> Yeah
>> So, talk to me about VxRail.
It's a massive success story.
What is the secret? What is the secret of your success?
>> Well, it's a combination of a few things.
First of all, it's an HCI appliance,
hyper-converged appliance
And, as you may know,
and I'm sure it's been discussed before
we are seeing a massive transition
from traditional architectures to HCI
and that's basically driven
because the economics of HCI are so
enticing, that people really can't resist
at least looking at them.
And we know that 60% of them
either have it or will have it soon.
And within that HCI transition
and within those economical benefits we focus on VMware,
which is a larger portion of the market.
And, we have a product that's solely focused on VMware,
it automates the deployment and lifecycle management
of, essentially, a VCR cluster.
So, it's a very simple message.
If you are a VMware customer, instead of going
and changing every three years
to your traditional three tier architecture,
what if we could give you the economical benefits
of hyper-convergence, which is start small,
grow in very small increments, and never migrate data,
but without ever leaving your VMware ecosystem.
And so, if I ask you as a VMware user,
you'd always say yes.
Because it's so focused on that user
and so optimized to them, we're seeing a great success
with the product these days.
>> Before the cameras were rolling,
you made a comment,
you said hyper-convergence is not really about the tech.
Talk about that a little bit.
I mean, that's an insight
(laughing)
>> That's actually very true.
We can do things today that could not be done
in a three tier architecture.
But there are many hyper-converged products
and all of them are doing very well.
In fact, even in our portfolio, we at VxRail,
we also have the Dell XC,
which is a Nutanix-based technology.
So, why they are all doing well is because
when I buy hyper-converged, I can start small.
Which means that essentially, I do not need to plan.
And planning is dangerous
because with traditional storage,
you either buy too much or you buy too little.
And even if you plan properly,
you use only part of it until you migrate that data in
and then, you use all of it,
and then when you have the new one,
you also use part of it until you finish.
>> Rebecca: Right, right.
>> And so, you are never really using what you're buying.
And so, now you have this technology where you buy small.
You don't have to plan at all.
You can automatically increment
and you don't have to migrate.
And you know that migrate is a very traumatic experience
(laughing)
In large environments.
And so those benefits are what's driving all of this.
It's now enabled by technology, but it's not about that.
But what I also think that is happening,
is that we've combined the skillset,
or the technology for storage and server,
and we deploy it within a customer's network
so we've made it much simpler,
but it's not ultimate simplicity.
People have to remember
that they still bought a data-centered solution
and so now, troubleshooting your hyper-converged solution
means that you have to know storage principles
and network principles and hypervergence principles.
>> So, let's explode that out a little bit.
Because this is really an exciting topic for me.
When you take that load off of your customers,
The planning, the pre-engineering, the test,
the integration work, that frees up a lot
of opex hours for customers to redirect their energies
to do something else.
Let's talk about those something else.
What has been the transformation within customers
once they're freed up from that responsibility?
>> I don't know.
Look, if you look at hyper-converge,
while it's growing dramatically
it hasn't taken a massive share of the industry yet.
We have to be humble at the same time.
We see growth.
So I don't know that people free up a lot of time,
but what they can do is they can focus
on the higher level outcomes,
Which is ultimately what they want.
People want a cloud experience.
Either it's completely private or it's a hybrid cloud.
They want the ability to deliver
by self-service to their own internal users.
They want a cloud outcome and regardless of HCI,
you still need to do that work.
And so now they can forget about the infrastructure,
because it's mostly automated,
and focus at the next level of outcome.
And, as you know, within CPSD, we also do that.
So if a customer wanted the full experience,
we would actually put the infrastructure aside,
we would talk about that hybrid cloud experience end-to-end,
we would consult or deliver,
but if they want to do it on their own,
which many of them want,
we would then provide them the infrastructure,
but I think that's where they are going.
They are looking at the next level of outcomes
beyond what the infrastructure brings.
>> But you also said,
which is also an astute comment,
about how it is actually a traumatic experience
for these customers to do the migration.
Do you face a lot of resistance?
I mean, how do you get the organizational buy-in
to initiate this change?
>> Yeah, when I said traumatic,
I mean that in a three tier architecture
that migration happens every three years.
So I think people are pretty much willing
to do it one last time.
(laughing)
Because they know it's not going to happen again.
And so, migration into hyper-convergence
is certainly not resistance.
Where we see resistance, is not even customers objecting,
but some customers are unable.
For example, if my storage buying cycle
and my network buying cycle and my server buying cycle
are not aligned, I will always have
some access capacity somewhere,
so even though I could have
a much better solution going forward,
I can't afford it because I have capacity somewhere.
For that reason, by the way, we introduced Cloud Flex,
because if you could buy VxRail or Dell XC
with zero down payment and pay month by month by month,
and have no commitment which means
you can return all of it in 12 months,
we are trying to break that cycle
and allow people to get into it
because they want to do this.
Sometimes they simply can't.
>> So day three of Dell EMC World,
you've talked to what something like 30 customers?
Give us a snapshot of the range of conversations.
Is there a dominating theme or are customers just on,
are all 30 customers on 30 different phases of this journey?
>> So I talked to a lot of customers,
but I also talked to a lot of partners.
Partners are still figuring out
how much they need to go into hyper-converged.
Most of those conversations,
both with customers and partners
were about, not the technology so much,
but rather is it time to consolidate practice?.
Is it really still the time
to keep a storage practice separate?
And that's both for the seller,
us and the partners, and for the end-users, right?
Is it really true that you need to all budget for storage,
budget for network, budget,
and do you have the right people
that know all of those disciplines that could,
you know, then you might need fewer of them,
because others will be focusing on other things.
But, those that support this
and understand this must have a broader skillset
than they did before.
So, most of the conversation were around,
you know, around that.
People were interested whether hyper-converged
is ready for primetime.
They don't know if it's ready for mission-critical,
and I tell them that VxRail today is used for radiology,
and unified communication phone and email,
and SMS traffic between carriers,
and trading applications, believe it or not, already.
>> Keith: Wow!
>> And so, I think as I said,
because it's not so much about technology,
because we assume that technology
from any large vendor will work,
and if it doesn't any large vendor will make it work,
and stand by the customer.
But those economical benefits are driving everybody
to go there very, very fast.
So, most of the conversations about can it be done,
is it ready for it,
should we do it right now, should we wait.
I think those are the themes right now.
>> And that's what we will be talking about
at next year's Dell EMC.
>> I think by next year we will talk less
about hyper-converged because it's almost going to be.
>> It will be the reality.
>> Keith: Yeah, table steaks.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> It's going to be table steaks at that point.
I actually don't know what we are going to be talking about.
(laughing)
>> Well, we will just have to wait and see.
>> Yes.
>> Gil, thanks so much for joining us.
>> Yeah, thank you.
>> It's been a pleasure having you on the show.
>> Thank you very much.
>> That wraps it up for theCUBE's coverage
of Dell EMC World 2017.
I'm Rebecca Knight along with Keith Townsend.
Thanks for joining us and we will see you next time.
(upbeat techno music)