foreign hey everyone good afternoon Lisa Martin with Dave vellante welcome back to thecube's coverage day two Dell Technologies World 2023 live from Mandalay Bay Dave and I have had some great conversations so far one of our alumni is back with us we're going to be breaking down some great topics that chuck wood and the co-co who's back with us shared yesterday on Main stage Chuck great to have you on thecube thanks for joining us I'm always happy to come by thanks uh thanks for having me so this is your as you said yesterday in your keynote second time on Main stage talk about what's new compared to last year a lot of a lot of advancements we've a lot of announcements a lot of news but compare and contrast this year with last year at this time you know I I hope that people walked out saying wow Dell delivered what we promised last year I think this was the year of you know our say do ratio proving itself so you know last year we stood on stage and said look there's an enormous number of problems that cios are facing today and we happen to sit in the middle of it we talked about multi-cloud we talked about the edge we talked about security we talked about Ai and of course you have to talk about the future of work which was evolving and I think you flash forward a year I mean we just delivered an enormous payload of of innovation particularly around the multi-cloud topic yesterday and so yeah a year down the road I felt like we delivered two years of innovation in a year you were saying yesterday that you in a year you've spoken with hundreds of customers and partners and they're articulating and you just mentioned some of them some of the same challenges that they're all facing can you walk us through in our audience some of those main challenges multi-cloud being one of them that customers are facing that Dell is saying we are here to help solve yeah absolutely so look multi-cloud is uh a reality you know if I go out and I talk to customers they will tell me I'm running anywhere between four to eight cloud infrastructures and the problem I'm trying to solve is how do I make it all act as one single Platform One unified Cloud I think super cloud coined by my friend here that's the challenge that we're in the middle of solving in multi-cloud in in security you know we're being told I have a complex ecosystem of security Partners can you help make this simpler that's what we're talking about today with project Helix and AI look the world you can't go into a board room today and not have a question about what are we doing to transform our business our business processes our products with generative AI the problem to solve is I need to apply it if I'm a company with proprietary models on my proprietary data how do I do that securely how do I do that ethically if you go to the edge we talked a lot about the edge last year we announced project Frontier which was our vision to simplify the orchestration of applications and infrastructure at the edge we sort of paid that off with our announcement today of native Edge but that was the problem we sat in the center of solving how do I make it all work in a remote and harsh condition with no I T intervention and then look the future of work is just simply we've all pivoted from working in an office to working remote and now the world has settled on hybrid maybe it's maybe in your company it's two days a week maybe it's three days a week maybe it's four days a week very few or five days a week so somebody's got to make that work in office out of office Mobile and so those are the problems are in the center of solving taco Tuesday taco Tuesday is a great way to bring back your uh your yeah 100 of the conversations you're having with customers involved some conversation around AI absolutely yeah how what was the progression like if we go back because it's clearly the year of AI if you go back a year ago how much of the conversation was Ai and was it was it open Ai and chat GPT and Microsoft Bing that catalyzed that I mean everybody says hey this is really not that much new but it sure is new to me when I asked yeah so look what was it like back then yeah I think um look AI is not new uh companies have been working with it for years we've been putting it into all of our product and solutions for years we've been applying it to our business for years so whether it's our forecasting and our supply chain our services organization I think what's happened with the chat GPT is it's upped the uh visibility and the amplitude of how companies are looking at and so it sort of made a an aware look I like to joke when my kids are asking me about AI you know we're at a certain point in the hype cycle and I think that's great but I think that the difference that's happened now is now companies are saying okay there's these large language models large unbounded uh public data models how am I going to do that on a subset of my data and I think where the evolution of the conversation is going is from ml or focused conversations inside a company about AI to okay there's these great unbounded public data models that I can use how do I get it now on my data for solving my specific business problem we have some great examples on the floor today of you know applications of AI and those environments well created massive awareness to anybody because anybody can speak a language you made a comment you talked about your end-to-end leadership and you you called it you I think I got it right Built For This Moment yeah what did you mean by that well look I think that this moment in technology is fundamentally about data right it is about uh controlling it securing it and most importantly extracting value from data we're the leader in in data storage we're bigger than number two number three number four combined we have the IP and the capabilities to solve multi-cloud but also to solve a lot of these data problems and so that's that's one thing and then I think look we're positioned as a natural partner in a very complex ecosystem and uh I think one of the things that makes us different is not just our asset position as leaders from the core PC to the core data center to the cloud and all the data that spans across it but also that we're natural Partners we partner with everybody and you've seen in the LA the announcements Microsoft Red Hat VMware data bricks because we're not confused we're not a we're not a cloud trying to compete with the other clouds we're following customers and that's kind of been the DNA that Michael's always had as he sort of evolved the company over here I feel I wonder if you can comment on this Chuck so it's all about the data absolutely I feel like most companies don't have their data act together they're not able to put data at the core I mean I was talking to Jen Feltz Felch about this like how do you deal with all the you know sassified your company well we take it out of the SAS we stick it into an Enterprise data warehouse that's how we put it in the core because that's the best you can do today and so do companies have to get figure out their data architecture in order to solve for AI or is AI going to solve that for them yeah I think it's both right I think the reality of it is is you have to start with the business problem what am I trying to solve and what data I do I need to solve it because we are generating data so fast and so distributed as you said well Dave that you have to make choices right you have to make choices in your infrastructure you have to make choices so certainly the the object is not put all of the data in a single unified Lake Warehouse not practical not cost effective the art is going to be how do I get the right data in the right place at the right time that's what we're solving with you know our multi-cloud architectures we're talking about talk a little bit about that from the multi-cloud by Design from that lens you know for customers to be able to get value out of data they've got to know where it is every company is a data company every company has to have intelligence how is Dell obviously positioned now with the announcements to solve that problem but maybe a favorite example of a customer that was multi-cloud by default last year sure and this year has really gotten that much more strategic by Design yeah absolutely well the um you know the announcements yesterday what we've effectively given is the core building blocks to make your multi-cloud work and so today you wake up you have for my four to eight clouds spread across now you look at what we announced yesterday are Apex cloud storage offers that was originally called project Alpine are putting file block an object in the public clouds now let's just stay in an Azure environment for a minute say you have Apex block storage in Azure and on premise now you have our Apex block our excuse me our Apex Cloud platform for Azure what we've created with rip is a common data layer right it's a common storage layer it is our underlying software and storage assets in the public cloud and on premise and that will let me enable Mobility put the data in the right place now we did something extra that I think is really exciting and maybe got a little bit underplayed yesterday which is Apex Navigator that's I called it our air traffic control if you're in the cloud and you're on the ground you need air traffic control well what Navigator allows you to do is now see where is all of that data across my multi-cloud estate which is exactly what you need to unlock that data mobility and over time we can imagine putting lots of capabilities into Navigator finops AI Ops things to allow you to truly optimize cost performance whatever you're solving for across multi-cloud so that's that's we've basically given the tools to customers now to take this sprawl of clouds and start to make them coherent around our storage IP if actually Chuck I understand you've been Dell companies like Dell been using AI for years customers don't even necessarily know about it or maybe they do because you talk about it but it's it's it's it's there just by by default um by default okay sure so that's cool but when I look at the data in terms of where customers are spending on AI uh it's or even deploying spending resources it's the big three clouds it's data bricks and now of course open AI pops up yep in a big way do you see that Dynamic changing where you guys large language models as a service inside of Apex where you're actually selling AI well yeah and let's start with the announcement today because I think the first thing customers want to do I agree with you today their choice is build my own large data center or go to a public Cloud today I think we're trying to make it simpler inside their data center with project Helix and Nvidia right we bring the infrastructure and the services they bring obviously the accelerators but also the AI models and the software in an integrated stack make it very simple for a customer who wants to apply a large language model to their in their proprietary data that's my proprietary data in a proprietary setting now over time could you imagine us uh offering that as a service as part of Apex we'll follow the customers I think if you look at where we've built out Apex over the last year it's been through customer pull right saying hey look I want I want Apex PC as a service included in my console experience I want bare metal compute Apex compute we announced yesterday so do we do we go there I think there's a lot of companies offering AI as a service out there you know certainly we're in the business of you can you can buy our infrastructure you can subscribe to our infrastructure and increasingly you can subscribe with a managed service I could certainly see AI going there but your strategy is not to build a large language model that's you know Dell's large language model and and sell that maybe along with ecosystem Partners or is it it's clearly got to be ecosystem Partners ecosystem partners and I think if you listen to Jensen today say look they know a lot about these large language models the open source models that are out there you know what you want to be able to do is give it to a company maybe that doesn't have the skill set to write their own large language model which is most companies in the world right they want to be able to take a reference model uh and and put it on sort of a standard stack and you know that's what we're really good at doing so you got two children right two two boys and and they're you know teenage years um I got kids a little bit older but do you you know the last a lot of schools are saying you can't use GPT you can't do that yeah do you agree with that or do you think we should be teaching how to prompt GPT I don't I don't agree with it um this is not a Dell position this is a yeah I think this is a thoughtful dialogue society's having but look it would be like telling me don't use the internet for research right when it when it when it came out I think anytime there's a new tool you can use the tool for good you can use the tool for bad so um you know my boys that when I talk to them about this is this is an amazing instrument don't cheat with it but use it to enhance your creativity enhance your productivity that's the AI conversation the world's having I think you know the conversation about our our swaths of jobs going to be eliminated some jobs will probably be eliminated the cost of cognitive labor is coming down but what's really happening is we're putting a force multiplier on productivity with AI and that's that's how I think you have to think about it well I mean you I was watching Michael on CNBC too and they got to keep coming back but I don't I don't understand what people want to say yes it's going to affect jobs but she's have always replaced humans now it's cognitive so I think that's why people a little bit more scared but you see there's a big discussion around you know the debt levels of course I talk about all the time 120 of GDP some people think it's going to 200 before it goes to 100 it's probably true but if you look at the productivity there's been a productivity lag in the U.S you know for the last 10 years Cloud didn't change that it's probably because people on social media Cloud mobile social distracted us maybe from being more productive you know this is the Dave vellante Theory how do you think AI is going to affect that and can that get us out of sort of whatever the debt issue the the the concerns about interest rates and discussion and recession or is it just too early in your view I know it's hard yeah and I that's uh without stepping into the grand unified theory of economics and interest rates and what it does it does I think fundamentally this is a productivity accelerator and it will be for society and I think we're just starting to scratch the service on you know what we can imagine AI is going to do and so you know whenever I look at pessimistic forecasts is about our productivity or the world's productivity and then you look at the capability of these tools I think you start to sleep easy at night and think it's going to be an acceleration do you think it can exceed I mean obviously the Industrial Revolution was sort of you know the the goat of productivity improvements uh but the but you know the PCS that did pretty well yeah internet did okay you think this will exceed that I do I think it's a massive I mean I think it's a massive transformation again I think like all new things and I mentioned the hype cycle earlier we will probably overstate the near term and we'll underestimate the long term that's sort of my my view of where it's I gotta get my security question in too because you said uh don't be a customers are telling you don't be a security vendor change the security of the tech industry what did you mean by that yeah that seemed to provoke a bit of a reaction I think I also called the security industry broken um I called it a do-over but but look I think uh look the world is out there with lots of layer upon layer of security right that is the way the security industry has been built and that is not to take away from we have many great Partners you need good endpoint security you need all of these security assets out there but they are in individual silos and um what the power of the concept of zero trust is zero trust is not something you can buy but we think it is the gold standard framework around which the world is going to organize to build security into infrastructure that's what I think customers want and so when you hear us today announce Project Fort zero you know what we're effectively doing is taking a customer zero a very sophisticated customer zero the Department of Defense and saying we're going to work with you and 30 other partners to create a full stack zero trust infrastructure and then we're going to industrialize it for the world that's what the that's what the world needs they don't need more Point specific uh Security Solutions that's not working today and so that's what I mean by we've positioned ourselves uniquely given our position in infrastructure our position with the US government to be at the center of those those conversations it can be made simpler it's never going to be made foolproof there's always going to be a security challenge that's why we offer uh you know our data our data protection business our cyber vaults all of that is to help you recover but it can be done better and that's what we're off track and where do security ecosystem Partners play is it bring your own identity I know you have preferred Partners presumably like you can ask a a deal with crowdstrike you know for small business which is really I think really interesting where does the where do those guys play are they part of that ecosystem they can't get to that they absolutely have to be look but uh zero trust is simply going to organize all of us around what are the common Frameworks that are going to if you if you sort of approach Security today as a trust but verify zero trust is saying never trust always verify and what is the framework around which we're going to do that and of course there's you know you know whether it's identity whether it's endpoints security whether it's network security we all have to play together to be able to do that but it needs to be organized around you know around a sort of a single principle that's zero trust that's what we're trying to do in Project Fort Knox so Chuck take us home with so much momentum so much has gone on in the last year alone it next year you're sitting in this seat or you're on the main stage what are some of the things you think are going to be reflecting on in the next era of Dell I love being here every year and saying we paid off what we told you last year so look I think the work is never done on multi-cloud you've heard us announce big announcements with uh open hat redshift um with uh VMware with Azure I would expect us to be making more announcements next year I would like to see us standing here next year saying wow uh project 40 paid paid off we can see fully integrated zero trust industrialized solutions that customers are applying I think next year we'll be sitting here talking about an AI business that isn't just oriented at the largest most sophisticated large language models but this spectrum of opportunity that we start started talking about over the last couple days from a Precision workstation which can do a lot to our standard servers all the the way to that at 96.88 way GPU that we're offering today so I think we're going to continue to chip away at those big problems I called out on stage yesterday product product product Helix if you can get gpus project projects look I think the the conversation on uh on gpus and and project Helix really important but again what we're trying to remind the world is there is a spectrum of applications and and uh Nai and you know you can do a lot with a standard server you know it's it's it's it's all compute sometimes it's latency and time but you know as an example we have a an offering over here or an example running of take all of our proprietary data on apex and put it into a virtual human interface that's running back in our Parmer Labs being orchestrated by a standard server right can you cut the latency down if you added it on a 9680 sure you can but there's look there's a lot of room for AI you know across the infrastructure stack not just GP we will be watching this space closely as the Silicon angle and the cube does Chuck thank you so much for joining us well thank you very much pleasure all of the exciting things the challenges you're helping customers solve we can't wait to see next year I look forward to it we'll see you there all right for Chuck Whitten and Dave vellante I'm Lisa Martin up next Varun Chopra and Carrie Briskey join us talking about generative Ai and some great news that came from Dell and Nvidia this morning stick around we'll see you in a minute foreign thank you
2023-05-29