(soft joyful music)
>> Welcome back everyone to the live CUBE coverage here
in San Francisco for VMware Explore '22.
I'm John Furrier with my host Dave Vellante.
Three days of wall to wall live coverage.
Two sets here at the CUBE,
here on the ground floor in Moscone,
and we got VMware and HPE back on the CUBE.
Paul Turner, VP of products
at vSphere and cloud infrastructure at VMware.
Great to see you.
And Mark Nickerson,
Director of Go to Mark for Compute Solutions
at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
Great to see you guys.
Thanks for coming on.
>> Yeah.
>> Thank you for having us.
>> So we, we are seeing a lot of traction with GreenLake,
congratulations over there at HPE.
The customers changing their business model consumption,
starting to see that accelerate.
You guys have the deep partnership,
we've had you guys on earlier yesterday.
Talked about the technology partnership.
Now, on the business side, where's the action
at with the HP and you guys with the customer?
Because, now as they go cloud native,
third phase of the inflection point,
>> Yep.
>> Multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, steady state.
Where's the action at?
>> So I think the action comes in a couple of places.
Um, one, we see increased scrutiny around,
kind of not only the cost model and the reasons
for moving to GreenLake that we've all talked about there,
but it's really the operational efficiencies as well.
And, this is an area where the long term partnership
with VMware has really been a huge benefit.
We've actually done a lot
of joint engineering over the years,
continuing to do that co-development as we bring products
like Project Monterey, or next generations
of VCF solutions, to live in a GreenLake environment.
That's an area where customers not only see
the benefits of GreenLake from a business standpoint,
um, on a consumption model,
but also around the efficiency operationally as well.
>> Paul, I want to, I want to bring up something
that we always talk about on the CUBE,
which is experience in the enterprise.
Usually it's around, you know,
technology strategy, making the right product market fit,
but HPE and VMware,
I mean, have exceptional depth
and experience in the enterprise.
You guys have a huge customer base,
doesn't churn much,
steady state there,
you got vSphere, killer product,
with a new release coming out,
HP, unprecedented, great sales force.
Everyone knows that you guys
have great experience serving customers.
And, it seems like now the fog is clearing,
we're seeing clear line of sight into value proposition,
you know, what it's worth, how do you make money with it,
how do partners make money?
So, it seems like the puzzle's coming together right now
with consumption, self-service, developer focus.
It just seems to be clicking.
What's your take on all this because...
>> Oh, absolutely.
>> you got that engine there at VMware.
>> Yeah. I think what customers are looking for,
customers want that cloud kind of experience,
but they want it on their terms.
So, the work that we're actually doing
with the GreenLake offerings that we've done,
we've released, of course,
our subscription offerings that go along with that.
But, so, customers can now get cloud on their terms.
They can get systems services.
They know that they've got the confidence
that we have integrated those services really well.
We look at something like vSphere 8,
we just released it, right?
Well, immediately, day zero,
we come out,
we've got trusted integrated servers
from HPE, Mark and his team have done a phenomenal job.
We make sure that it's not just the vSphere releases
but VSAN and we get VSAN ready nodes available.
So, the customers get that trusted side of things.
And, you know, just think about it.
We've... 200,000 joined customers.
>> Yeah, that's a lot.
>> We've a hundred thousand
kind of enabled partners out there.
We've an enormous kind of install base of customers.
But also, those customers want us to modernize.
And, you know, the fact that we can do that with GreenLake,
and then of course with our new features,
and our new releases.
>> Yeah. And it's nice that
the products market fits going well on both sides.
But can you guys share,
both of you share,
the cadence of the relationship?
I mean, we're talking about vSphere,
every two years, a major release.
Now since 6, vSphere 6,
you guys are doing three months' releases,
which is amazing.
So you guys got your act together there, doing great.
But, you guys, so many joint customers,
what's the cadence?
As stuff comes out,
how do you guys put that together?
How tightly integrated?
Can you share
a quick...
insight into that dynamic?
>> Yeah, sure.
So, I mean Mark can and add to this too,
but the teams actually work very closely,
where it's every release that we do is jointly qualified.
So that's a really, really important thing.
But it's more interesting is this...
the innovation side of things.
Right? If you just think about it,
'cause it's no use to just qualify.
That's not that interesting.
But, like I said,
we've released with vSphere 8
you know...
the new enhanced storage architecture.
All right?
The new, next generation of vSphere.
We've got that immediately qualified,
ready on HPE equipment.
We built out new AI servers,
actually with Invidia and with HPE.
And, we're able to actually push the extremes
of...
AI and intelligence...
on systems.
So that's kind of work.
And then, of course,
our Project Monterey work.
Project Monterey Distributed Services Engine.
That's something we're really excited about,
because we're not just building a new server anymore,
we're actually going to change the way servers are built.
Monterey gives us a new platform
to build from that we're actually jointly working.
>> So double click on that,
and then to explain how HPE is taking advantage of it.
I mean, obvious you have more diversity of XPU's,
you've got isolation,
you've got now better security,
and confidential computing,
all that stuff.
Explain that in some detail,
and how does HPE take advantage of that?
>> Yeah, definitely.
So, if you think about vSphere 8,
vSphere 8 I can now virtualize anything.
I can virtualize your CPU's, your GPU's,
and now what we call DPU's,
or data processing units.
A data processing unit,
it's... think of it as
we're running, actually,
effectively another version of ESX,
sitting down on this processor.
But, that gives us an ability
to run applications,
and some of the virtualization services,
actually down on that DPU.
It's separated away from where you run your application.
So, all your applications get to consume all your CPU.
It's all available to you.
Your DPU is used for that virtualization
and virtualization services.
And that's what we've done.
We've been working with HPE and HPE and Pensando.
Maybe you can talk some of the new systems
that we've built around this too.
>> Yeah. So, I mean, that's one of the...
you talked about the cadence and that...
back to the cadence question real briefly.
Paul hit on it.
Yeah, there's a certain element of,
"Let's make sure that we're certified,
we're qualified, we're there day zero."
But, that cadence goes a lot beyond it.
And, I think Project Monterey is a great example
of where that cadence expands
into really understanding the solutioning
that goes into what the customer's expecting from us.
So, to Paul's point,
yeah, we could have just qualified
the ESX version
to go run on a DPU
and put that in the market and said,
"Okay, great. Customers, We know that it works."
We've actually worked very tightly with VMware
to really understand the use case,
what the customer needs
out of that operating environment,
and then provide, in the first instantiation,
three very discrete product solutions aimed
at different use cases,
whether that's a more robust use case
for customers who are looking
at data intensive, analytic intensive, environments,
other customers might be looking
at VDI or even edge applications.
And so, we've worked really closely with VMware
to engineer solutions specific to those use cases,
not just to a qualification of an operating environment,
not just a qualification of certain software stack,
but really into an understanding of the use case,
the customer solution,
and how we take that to market
with a very distinct point of view alongside our partners.
>> And you can configure
the processors based on that workload.
Is that right?
And match the workload characteristics
with the infrastructure is that what I'm getting?
>> You do, and actually, well,
you've got the same flexibility that we've actually built
in why you love virtualization,
why people love it, right?
You've got the ability to kind of bring harness hardware
towards your application needs in a very dynamic way.
Right? So if you even think about what we built
in vSphere 8 from an AI point of view,
we're able to scale.
We built the ability to actually take network device cards,
and GPU cards, you're to able to build those
into a kind of composed device.
And, you're able to provision those
as you're provisioning out VM's.
And, the cool thing about that,
is you want to be able to get extreme
IO performance when you're doing deep learning applications,
and you can now do that,
and you can do it very dynamically,
as part of the provisioning.
So, that's the kind of stuff.
You've got to really think, like,
what's the use case?
What's the applications?
How do we build it?
And, for the DPU side of things, yes,
we've looked at how do we take
some of our security services,
some of our networking services,
and we push those services down onto the SmartNIC.
It frees up processors.
I think the most interesting thing,
that you probably saw on the keynote,
was we did benchmarks with Reddit databases.
We were seeing 20 plus, I'm sure the exact number,
I think it was 27%,
I have to get exact number,
but a 27% latency improvement,
to me...
I came from the database background,
latency's everything.
Latency's king.
It's not just...
>> Well it's... it's number one conversation.
>> I mean, we talk about multi-cloud,
and as you start getting into hybrid.
>> Right.
>> Latency, data movement, efficiency,
I mean, this is all in the workload mindset
that the workhorses that you guys have been working
at HPE with the compute, vSphere,
this is heart center of the discussion.
I mean, it is under the hood,
and we're talking about the engine here, right?
>> Sure.
>> And people care about this stuff, Mark.
This is like...
Kubernetes only helps this better with containers.
I mean, it's all kind of coming together.
Where's that developer piece?
'Cause remember,
infrastructure is code, what everybody wants.
That's the reality.
>> Right.
Well, I think if you take a look at...
at where the Genesis of the desire
to have this capability came from,
it came directly out of the fact
that you take a look at the big cloud providers,
and sure,
the ability to have a part of that operating environment,
separated out of the CPU,
free up as much processing as you possibly can,
but it was all in this very lockdown proprietary,
can't touch it,
can't develop on it.
The big cloud guys owned it.
VMware has come along and said,
"Okay, we're going to democratize that.
We're going to make this available for the masses.
We're opening this up
so that developers can optimize workloads,
can optimize applications
to run in this kind of environment."
And so, really it's about bringing that cloud experience,
that demand that customers have for that simplicity,
that flexibility,
that efficiency,
and then marrying it with the agility and security
of having your on premises or hybrid cloud environment.
And VMware is kind of helping with that...
>> That's resonating with the customer, I got to imagine.
>> Yeah.
>> What's the feedback you're hearing?
When you talk to customers about that,
the like, "Wait a minute, we'd have to like...
How long is that going to take?
'Cause that sounds like a one off."
>> Yeah. I'll tell you what...
>> Everything is a one off now.
You could do a one off.
It scales.
>> What I hear is give me more.
We love where we're going in the first instantiation
of what we can do with the Distributed Services Engine.
We love what we're seeing.
How do we do more?
How do we drive more workloads in here?
How do we get more efficiency?
How can we take more of the overhead out of the CPU,
free up more cores.
And so, it's a tremendously positive response.
And then, it's a response that's resonating with,
"Love it. Give me more."
>> Oh, if you're democratizing,
I love that word because it means democratization,
but someone's being democratized.
Who's... What's...
Something when...
that means good things are happening,
which means someone's not going to be winning out.
Who's that? What...
>> Well it, it's not necessarily
that someone's not winning out.
(laughs)
What you read,
it comes down to...
Democratizing means you've got to look at it,
making it widely available.
It's available to all.
And these things...
>> No silos. No gatekeepers.
Kind of that kind of thing.
>> It's a little operationally difficult to use.
You've got... Think about the DPU market.
It was a divergent market
with different vendors going into that market
with different kind of operating systems,
and that doesn't work.
Right?
You've got to actually go and virtualize those DPU's.
So then, we can actually bring
application innovation onto those DPU's.
We can actually start using them in smart ways.
We did the same thing with GPU's.
We made them incredibly easy to use.
We virtualized those GPU's,
we're able to, you know,
you can provision them in a very simple way.
And, we did the same thing with Kubernetes.
You mentioned about container based applications
and modern apps in the one platform now,
you can just set a cluster and you can just say,
"Hey I want that as a modern apps enabled cluster."
And boom. It's done.
And, all of the configurations,
set up, Kubernetes,
it's done for you.
>> But the thing that just GreenLake too,
the democratization aspect of how that changed
the business model unleashes...
>> Right.
>> ...efficiency and just simplicity.
>> Oh yeah, absolutely.
>> But the other thing was the 20% savings
on the Reddit's benchmark,
with no change required at the application level, correct?
>> No change at the application level.
In the vCenter, you have to set a little flag.
>> Okay. You got to tick a box.
>> You got to tick a little box...
>> So I can live with that.
But the point I'm making is that traditionally,
we've had...
We have an increasing amount of waste
to do offloads,
and now you're doing them much more efficiently, right?
>> Yes.
>> Instead of using the traditional
x86 way of doing stuff,
you're now doing purpose built,
applying that to be much more efficient
>> Totally agree.
And I think it's becoming,
it's going to become even more important.
Look at, we are...
our run times for our applications,
We've got to move to a world
where we're building completely confidential applications
at all time.
And that means that they are secured, encrypted,
all traffic is encrypted, whether it's storage traffic,
whether it's IO traffic,
we've got to make sure we've got complete route
of trust of the applications.
And so, to do all of that
is actually a...
compute intensive.
It just is.
And so, I think as we move forward
and people build much more complete, confidential,
compute secured environments,
you're going to be encrypting all traffic all the time.
You're going to be doing micro-zoning
and firewalling down at the VM level
so that you've got the protection.
You can take a VM, you can move it up to the cloud,
it will inherit all of its policies, will move with it.
All of that will take compute capacity.
>> Yup.
>> The great thing is that the DPU's give us this ability
to offload and to use some of that spare compute capacity.
>> And isolate so the application chance
can't just tunnel in and get access to that
>> You guys got so much going on.
You can have your own CUBE show,
just on the updating,
what's going on between the two companies,
and then the innovation.
We got one minute left.
Just quickly,
what's the goal in the partnership?
What's next?
You guys going to be in the field together,
doing joint customer work?
Is there bigger plans?
Is there events out there?
What are some of your plans together in the marketplace?
>> That's you.
>> Yup. So, I think,
Paul kind of alluded to it.
Talk about the fact that you've
got a hundred thousand partners in common.
The venn diagram of looking at the HPE channel
and the VMware channel,
clearly there's an opportunity there to continue
to drive a joint, go to market message,
through both of our sales organizations,
and through our shared channel.
We have a 25,000 strong...
solution architect...
force that we can leverage.
So as we get these exciting things to talk about,
I mean, you talk about Project Monterey,
the Distributed Services Engine.
That's big news.
There's big news around vSphere 8.
And so, having those great things
to go talk about with that strong sales team,
with that strong channel organization,
I think you're going to see
a lot stronger partnership between VMware and HPE
as we continue to do this joint development
and joint selling
>> Lots to get enthused about,
pretty much there.
>> Oh yeah!
>> Yeah, I would just add in that
we're actually in a very interesting point as well,
where Intel's just coming out with Next Rev systems,
we're building the next gen of these systems.
I think this is a great time for customers to look
at that aging infrastructure that they have in place.
Now is a time we can look at upgrading it,
but when they're moving it,
they can move it also to a cloud subscription based model,
you know can modernize not just what you have
in terms of the capabilities and densify
and get much better efficiency,
but you can also modernize
the way you buy from us and actually move to...
>> Real positive change transformation.
Checks the boxes there.
And put some position for...
>> You got it.
>> ... cloud native development.
>> Absolutely.
>> Guys, thanks for coming on the CUBE.
Really appreciate you coming out
of that busy schedule
and coming on and give us the up...
But again, we can do a whole show some...
all the moving parts
and innovation going on with you guys.
So thanks for coming on.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
I'm John Dave Vellante we're back with more live coverage
day two, two sets, three days of wall to wall coverage.
This is the CUBE at VMware Explorer.
We'll be right back.