Unknown Speaker 0:00 Let's do it. Unknown Speaker 0:08 Hey man, welcome to 2021 Matt Kimball 0:11 What's up? Stevie Ray, another data center Steve McDowell 0:13 podcast, a new season a new year. We all survived. I guess we're seeing it for surviving the New Year. Matt Kimball 0:21 We'll see man. We'll see. Are you back from DC yet? Steve McDowell 0:26 I can't talk about that on the podcast. You know that advice of counsel? Oh, Matt Kimball 0:30 holy hell, man. world is going crazy. Steve McDowell 0:34 It's crazy. And you know what, I don't care which side of the crazy we line up on I just want some stability and predictability. Matt Kimball 0:39 I like you know, waking Steve McDowell 0:40 up in the morning and not having to think about the world too hard. Matt Kimball 0:44 Amen. And Amen. I want to think about my world, not the world. Steve McDowell 0:49 Right. Right. I am with you. Matt Kimball 0:52 So what's going on? Man? You had a good New Year. Steve McDowell 0:55 I had a good new year I could Christmas good holiday break. I tried not to not to engage too much on social media or pay attention to anything. That's some chores around the property here and some barn stuff. Unknown Speaker 1:07 What about you? Matt Kimball 1:09 I sat around and boxers eating Cheetos for two weeks. And Steve McDowell 1:16 the high point of my high point of my Christmas was we had grandpa jack coming in on the zoom. Ooh, we had him propped up in a chair on an iPad. Matt Kimball 1:28 Nice. Did he eat Christmas dinner with you? Steve McDowell 1:32 No, no, we didn't see much of him. We saw a lot of the ceiling. I'm hoping hope I'm trying to get live for this vaccine cuz I'm ready to travel. I'm ready to see people again. Matt Kimball 1:45 You're not old enough for it? Dude. You're not a frontline worker. No, I know. Steve McDowell 1:52 But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. And I think the world is hopeful because I was going through the event calendar for the year and everything's marked virtual for about the first six months and after that, it's undefined. So I'm ready to apply now and 14 months. That's the longest I think in 25 years. I'm the same way dude. It's crazy, isn't it? Yeah. But 14 months for you. Yeah, the last airplane I took was the Dell analyst event just before Thanksgiving. 2019. Awesome. Yeah. Not my last trip to Austin cuz I did a road trip there a couple months ago, but I saw you Matt Kimball 2:34 and Lockhart, Unknown Speaker 2:35 yes. Hey, let's do some, you know, Matt Kimball 2:40 let's do some predictions. Steve, you know? Steve McDowell 2:42 Yeah, you know, I think last year should have taught us that we shouldn't do predictions, but we can try. Matt Kimball 2:49 We're gonna do it anyway. Steve McDowell 2:50 Yeah. I'm gonna give you this. I'm gonna start my favorite prediction. And the one we've done now every year for three years and maybe this year we'll see cuz arm arm and server. arm? What? Unknown Speaker 3:05 Go ahead laughing Steve McDowell 3:10 now let me say it a different way. I don't know that arm. Say yet a third way. I think arm is going to gonna take a tremendous amount of share in cloud computing. That's my prediction. My my contrary prediction is it's not going to make a dent and on prem in 2021, yes. Matt Kimball 3:31 Yeah. So what's your basis for the first I agree with you, by the way on both with your there's a couple, Steve McDowell 3:37 there's a couple of things. So AWS rolled out Graviton to this year. And I have in my hand, I can't show you the front. But a share report in terms of a share of configurations across the top five public companies. Well, you just Matt Kimball 3:56 pulled up a blank piece of paper, by the way, for those not watching it. Steve McDowell 4:01 In two weeks, I'll release the details. I'm gonna throw this statistic out. Max, this might surprise you. Do you know that exiting December exiting 2020. AWS Graviton accounted for 3.9% of cloud configurations worldwide. Across the top. I'm actually not surprised across the top five cloud providers. Intel has 82 point almost 83% of the configurations. AMD sitting it at almost 12% but AWS is pushing. Sorry, gravitron is pushing 4%. And that's just based on Amazon deployment. That's a data point one data point to is there was a report that came out just before Christmas. That said that Microsoft is working on their own their own arm part for server monitor. Microsoft didn't confirm it. But they also didn't deny it. They issued a intriguing No comment. And we have ampere who's very close to having a competitive part. Who knows they are targeting hyperscalers. Right. I think, you know, we've talked about this time and again, but as we look at public, cloud, Native people don't care and the price performance, and that's what it's all about. I don't think I don't think this is an argument over whose instruction set is better. It's about price performance. And, yeah, Matt Kimball 5:34 I agree. I mean, for the vast majority of workloads that you're throwing up into, into the cloud, right. And think about like this, from an IT perspective, I am, you know, I need this low level workload to run, I want this low level workload to run the cloud. Some function, I'm looking for the lowest price instance, I can get, I call up my rep, or I go onto AWS. And you know, that's the first thing that pops up. So AWS is aggressively pushing it. Price leader, easily the price leader, it makes, to me, it makes perfect sense for those, you know, and I'm not gonna say non critical, but for those non like performance intensive, and by the way that's gravitate to is very performance. But you know, if it's just a quick, you know, I want to go grab an instance, I get it, it makes perfect sense. Steve McDowell 6:25 Yeah. And I'm not sure that you know, the value play right, the bucket, you just put that in, I think that's a short term bucket. Yeah. You know, Apple is showing us what you can do with one of these parts and and what we're reading about their second generation, which will power their MacBook Pro second half, right, it's not a leap to say these could be compelling compute engines. Matt Kimball 6:50 They're not, by the way, I'm talking about how AWS is positioning it now to gain share. But when you look at the performance profile of neoverse, versus its x86 brother, it's not a second class citizen, and even those Graviton two instances, they are highly performance parts. There's, there's how they position them and there's how they perform, right. And those are Steve McDowell 7:17 in the in the interest in economics here, right? I mean, to compete with Avatar, it's not a surprise to me that Microsoft is considering building its own part because to compete on a price performance basis with Graviton, with your own arm part, and not give up all the margins I'm currently given to Intel and AMD, right, it requires you have to go vertical, but you have to build it or you have to find Matt Kimball 7:43 extremely value driven supplier, where you have to go acquire somebody, Steve McDowell 7:50 or you have to go acquire somebody, right? You want to make a prediction that Microsoft will firing up here. Matt Kimball 7:55 I didn't say I did not say Steve McDowell 7:57 that. You're not gonna you're not gonna be bold, be bold, man. Matt Kimball 8:01 But if you think about it, right, the whole build versus buy argument is a it's a legitimate phrase that build versus buy to build argument, right? It's a legitimate, it's a legitimate and valid kind of approach II think, like doing a starting a silicon group from scratch. Yeah, in house development. I mean, all the words that come with that all the pain that comes with Steve McDowell 8:29 economics are crazy. You know, Amazon, always the great disrupter is, you know, you see that. I like to think about AWS and, you know, and compare it to how Amazon walked in and dominated the retail industry. Right. And it's all about taking margin out because they're selling things at unbelievably low prices. And that includes cloud computing instances, to make money competing against them. Right. You have to sort of mimic them. Yeah. You know, Amazon is crazy company, they build their own chips. And they just bought, you know, 27 airplanes. integration, they're squeezed margin out, and that's something new, and that's something we haven't seen in the tech industry and you know, 30 years, that level of vertical integration, Matt Kimball 9:18 right. And by the way, that, that, you know, that Graviton ship comes from a group called Annapurna, which was a company that Amazon bought, right, Chip was already in development, when they bought the company, and the processes and the whole, you know, everything was already established. So it wasn't like, you know, they went and bought a shop that was already set up. They Steve McDowell 9:42 wouldn't surprise me at Microsoft. If Microsoft goes down this path. They wouldn't do the same thing or down the road doing the same thing. Or in a deep JV. We're not hearing anything from Microsoft. Yeah, so it's also worth noting that Microsoft did do their own arm ship for their surface. Matt Kimball 10:00 Yeah, well, did you see what did you ever own a surface? No. Okay. Steve McDowell 10:09 I own I own a couple of Macs. And I have one Windows machine that I use for some software that doesn't work on Mac, Matt Kimball 10:20 about one of the first arm based surfaces, and Steve McDowell 10:23 I will never buy another service, because I will say that 10 years ago, I was with a startup and I did a project with Dell. And we had one of the first Microsoft arty things their first venture into arm. Matt Kimball 10:34 Yeah, yeah, that was the Surface RT. Yes. Steve McDowell 10:38 Yeah. It was not a pleasant experience. But, yeah. So you look at those things that I don't know, that go down a rabbit hole on Microsoft's ability to do something, right, because I think they do plenty, right. I think some of the instabilities with Microsoft in arms, a software problem is not about the chip. There are plenty of people using arm. Matt Kimball 11:03 Oh, it's not about arm itself. It's about it's about a company's ability to start up an entire organization designing or building any processor, whether it's our eighth or some other architecture, right? Steve McDowell 11:16 There been so many START STOP failures in arm server space over the past decade. Right? Amazon's really the first successful one that there's lots of expertise out on the street. So if Microsoft wants to put something together, and maybe there's a you know, a start up someplace that we don't know about that they're working. Matt Kimball 11:33 But again, remember, I'm sorry, to close with one last thing, Amazon bought their way into being the first successful. Steve McDowell 11:45 And Microsoft has lots of money. Right? Right. Yeah, there's nothing wrong, there's nothing wrong with that strategy and building like you said, a silicon group from zero. Matt Kimball 11:58 so on, so your second party prediction, they will not make a dent in the, in the onprem. Steve McDowell 12:04 I don't see I'm not seeing not 2021 Mustang won't come. But I think for arm to impact on prem server in 2021, we would have seen or at least heard rumors of, you know, an OEM play in the arm space. Now, it's not to say Dells not gonna surprise us with an arm server for cloud native on prem, you know, it deltec world. But I don't see it. Matt Kimball 12:30 I don't either every every arm silicon vendor I talked to whether it's KVM, or I'm sorry, Marvell, or ampere. Steve McDowell 12:42 And even on themselves, they will tell you that the Enterprise Server market is not where they're focused. Right now. And and really, it comes down to the question. And the public cloud space. It's a cost question. Yes, ma'am. It's, it's a why, right, I have all of these validated configurations and have to start from scratch, same thing we've talked about protected, you know, starting from scratch with a whole new set of platforms and architectures, and in an environment that, you know, is still trying to maintain windows 98. So they can keep their VPN working. You know, I don't see, Matt Kimball 13:18 well, you know, they're there. They're good 20 to 25%, comfortably 20 to 25% of the data center footprint right now through, you know, other equipment that, you know, comprises infrastructure. They're, they're doing okay. Right now, they don't need to go capture that server space, an absent Steve McDowell 13:36 a compelling reason, a compelling pull right from it, and enterprise IT? What's the motivation for a Dell or an HP? Or is not to go and do this? Right. That's not saying that there won't be experiments and, you know, furnish applications, but it's not going to be mainstream in 2021. Now, agree. Right. Steve? That's my prediction. Maddie, do you have about anything? You have a prediction about anything? Matt Kimball 14:13 I do. So where do I start? So my first is, I believe that as we exit 2021 AMD will reach 15% market share in the server space. They're sitting at about 5% right now. I think they're gonna gain about 10% share in the upcoming year. They've hit market velocity, adoption velocity. They, you know, when you look at Naples have initially chased the cloud, when you looked at Rome was kind of validation for the enterprise. That was their v2 of epic, and I think their upcoming release is really going to solidify them and accelerate adoption within The Enterprise, and they're going to continue to to grow cloud presence as well. Steve McDowell 15:04 I think you're right. I mean, they're sitting in close to 12% of cloud today. Epic is I mean, the price performance, they come back to this, but the bang for your buck on an AMD part, and you're not sacrificing performance for the value. I would love to have, you know, an epic in my workstation in there. Matt Kimball 15:26 Yeah, I think there there's, I think when you look at today's it, though, they they're, they're a little bit less concerned with price performance than they were when you and I were right, on the story. And the key to AMD success and doing all this is continuing to build out their portfolios with the OEMs, around all up solutions, right. So you've seen them get into VX rail, you've seen them to get it get into HP Nutanix, their next step into more converged infrastructure, getting into all those ready solutions or reference architectures, that's what's going to really, I think, push their performance, Steve McDowell 16:05 for sure. And I think you know, now that we're I don't know how many generations of epic we're in now. But you know, it's been at least five years, right? When did they launch the first Matt Kimball 16:13 epic? e? 17? Steve McDowell 16:14 I think we're well past the point where, you know, I think initially, there were there was a question of, you know, is this a one hit wonder, as Andy got their stuff together? I don't think it's a question at this point, right. It'd be a compelling alternative for some time to come. And Intel helps make it very easy for the Intel's making it easy for them right now. You know, but don't count out Intel that that's every time somebody tries to count it until they come back and surprise you. So they're, you know, going through a rough patch, but they still dominate the market. Matt Kimball 16:48 They do in their portfolio is so broad and deep. You know, I'd say people forget, you know, you think CPUs, but you know this because you're smarter than I am. But when you're looking for a solution for AI for HPC for some performance workload, it's more than just a CPU, it's accelerators. It's, it's all of that other stuff. And that's where Intel has a distinct advantage, despite, Steve McDowell 17:17 yes, well, and that's another area where AMD has has growing strength and credibility, which is in when you talk about the accelerator. You know, they're in the process of acquiring Xilinx. And we're seeing an uptick in FPGA driven acceleration, both in cloud and on prem, their GPU story from an enterprise perspective, I mean, they've always been, you know, right there, within video on the consumer side of it in videos always dominate the data center space, they still do, but they're sure they're in sheets remaining, but the enterprise GPUs that they're putting out from a render remote workstation, that sort of thing. They're getting traction, right, the M 150. And the other parts. So their story is coming together. So I'm bullish on AMD, 15 percents the right number, but I think we're gonna see, I think I agree with you, it'll be non trivial growth this year. My other AMD prediction to help kind of fuel or fuel that growth, I think we're gonna see collaboration between micron and AMD, to bring 3d crosspoint to the market. To do business with both these companies, and I'll say that I've never had a conversation right about this with any of them. And I don't know anything. But 3d crosspoint is entering its second generation, you know, micron owns the fabs which have capacity, they're selling it until it's starting to gain traction, and, you know, HPC, and big in memory kind of kind of applications, right? It's not mainstream technology. But at the high end, for some of the performance, or I need the persistence, it's gaining traction. That's a big gap that AMD can't compete in today. And micron has this capability. And I'm making money on it. Because today, they could only sell until the Intel market, and Intel's got thrown off chain parts. So my prediction is we'll see a collaboration from them by mid year that's at least public. Matt Kimball 19:21 It only makes sense, right? I mean, if Microsoft or Microsoft micron really wants to capitalize on this, right? They don't have a choice. I shouldn't say that, that came out the wrong way. Steve McDowell 19:35 They have a choice. They could just sell wafers to Intel, but they've invested so much money. They sat out the first round of 3d crosspoint adoption, which I think was smart on their part, let info go build this market. Because, you know, everything we've heard is you know, these are not high margin parts and the first generation are expensive. yields are so so but they're shaking it out in the Second generation stuff is compelling. And Intel made a slew of announcements just before the break of the holiday. That's why I mean, though, if you want to expand your market, you've got to go beyond just having one customer or one partner, right? Yes. logical choice. AMD doesn't have a doesn't have an answer. Right? AMD can't sell outdoor OEMs can't build obtain into AMD based systems because it requires special memory bus configuration that AMD has just proposed. perfect Matt Kimball 20:29 sense. It'll be it'll be fun to watch. And it certainly helps open up certain opportunities for India as well. Yeah. Well, that was a good one. Unknown Speaker 20:44 You have another one. Matt Kimball 20:45 I do have another one. This is a this is a bold one. You ready? Yeah. Go for walking into your territory. Nutanix gets acquired by hp. Steve McDowell 20:59 Now I read I read a as somebody else's prediction. I don't remember who I give metrication right now on Twitter yesterday, who said that Nutanix and pure merge? Matt Kimball 21:10 That could be interesting, huh? Unknown Speaker 21:15 Don't with Nutanix and HP? I think that that one makes the most sense. Steve McDowell 21:21 I think, you know, mergers are always hard, especially with companies like that. So the second half of last year, right? We saw private equity investment in Nutanix. And they their CEO stepped down and they brought a new CEO in, which has its own drama. Did you see the news on this? It was just before New Year's, their new Nutanix is new CEO. I'm gonna butcher his name. Rajeev. Ramaswamy was the COO at VMware. Three days after he left VMware, he went on to Nutanix. And VMware does not sue anybody. They made the statement of freshly someone looked it up. And they've they've had like six laws since they've initiated one of them for harassment, interestingly enough, but the paperwork was not. They're not a litigious company. But they're going they're going after they're going after him. But all of that to say not not the drama around the new CEO, but Nutanix. You know, private equity doesn't come in unless they see an exit and the exit is not I mean, Nutanix is already public. Right? So the exit is going to be a sale to somebody. Or merger. Right? Right. And HP is aggressive on the cloud native front. And we've seen a lot of experiments there. And they don't have a compelling HCI story. They've you know, I don't want to say they've abandoned simplivity, but they're largely selling to the base. Matt Kimball 22:53 Well, when you when you look at HP growth in the last year, in HCI, it's all it all, it all directly follows that Nutanix partnership that they that they I wouldn't say signed, but you know, the partnership that they established with Nutanix. Yeah, your numbers have gone up. When you enter what you're saying on the cloud native side on the hybrid cloud side, you know, a when you look for a viable competitor, that VCF, VMware cloud Foundation, you know, you know, you've got something in Nutanix that HP could leverage. HP doesn't have a strong of a story there. And their azmol stuff is good. But it could be certainly better with with some of the IP from from the Nutanix portfolio. So yeah, I Steve McDowell 23:43 mean, you mentioned VMware, I mean, the other the other motivator, there is, you know, Dell and VMware separate companies, though they be it's, it's a we're better together story. And they, you know, they eased into that, but now they don't hide it, right. This is a different arms of one entity. And that's how they're playing. And that's to the detriment I think of HP and the other OEMs. Matt Kimball 24:10 I mean, I I firmly believe when you look at Dells growth in the server market over the last couple of years, it's tied to a couple of things. One is the EMC partnership, you know, they go in to every EMC customer or to Dell, the other mark, you think of VMware is going and VMware is going into any large opportunity without a Dell person right next to them Steve McDowell 24:30 right? away way, right. And if I'm an IT buyer, right, I'm reading this and if I want the best VMware experience, I'm naturally going to think Matt Kimball 24:43 he's done well to combat that and, you know, still embrace VMware. But I have to believe that there's no kind of as they look at the market, they, to me this could be looked at as a very necessary acquisition for them. If they want to make viability. Steve McDowell 25:02 Hey, so, I haven't written my predictions piece yet. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna steal your line. I'm not gonna say HP buys them, but I'm gonna say they get absorbed. Okay? I'm not gonna give attribution. Alright, that's fine. You hear on the podcast, we have witnesses. Matt Kimball 25:18 But this is your legal disclaimer. Steve McDowell 25:26 What else? My prediction is, is as a service is going to grow by double digits in 2021. And, and become extremely competitive prediction. Dude, what Matt Kimball 25:40 kind of a lame prediction? Steve McDowell 25:41 Is that a lame prediction? All right. I'll edit this out. Matt Kimball 25:44 It's like saying water is wet. Steve McDowell 25:48 Now, go ahead. I'm only good. My prediction, nobody's gonna buy services, you're mad 98% of service sales in the enterprise can be as a service. Oh, I love that. I love that. And as a service. That includes things like Amazon outpost and Azure. Yeah. Matt Kimball 26:07 98%. Unknown Speaker 26:09 Yeah, yeah, I'm not good with numbers. But 90.2%. Matt Kimball 26:15 I agree with you, I think as a service dominates greenlake, Dell tech on demand true scale, outpost and those Steve McDowell 26:24 Azure Stack. And on the storage side where I cover, right NetApp Itachi, Pure Storage. There's not anyone who sells infrastructure right now and does not have another service offering. And nobody's breaking out their numbers yet. I only talk about on earnings calls, you know how it's easy to achieve triple digit growth when you've got four customers going to eight. But, you know, the anecdotal evidence and the investment that we're seeing tells me right, there's significant traction in this model. And if we learned anything from the first half of 2020, is that it organizations need flexibility. And this gives them that right? I mean, it gives them an on prem experience of cloud economics. It does. Matt Kimball 27:11 Yeah, and it's a you know, that everybody focuses on the on the cost side of the equation, which is legitimate, it's very legitimate. But there's another and that is the, you know, you're getting pre packaged solutions that you take, you literally take plug in, you know, assign an IP address and where you go, right. I mean, it's, it's that it's operational efficiencies, again, as well, there's so many benefits to this consumption based model that the OEMs are pushing. I don't see how companies, you know, resist, if you will, or don't take advantage of this. Right. Steve McDowell 27:50 Now, the question mark, in my mind, and this is not a prediction, maybe this is something for a future podcast, is, you know, this is not a market that the public cloud guys are ignoring? And what's that fight going to look like? Right? I mean, if I'm buying from HP or from from buying from the OEMs, you know, getting an on prem management experience, I still have a bridge to my cloud stuff. And I'm a cloud provider, I've got my native cloud experience without all of the, you know, pain of having an off site. So there's two competing models. It's going to be fascinating, I think, and I don't know enough yet to make predictions. Matt Kimball 28:30 Well, I think that's where the the, the ability for VMware to drive VCF adoption, cloud foundation adoption in the public cloud, and to drive it through the OEMs is so darn critical, Steve McDowell 28:45 right? And soon HP and Nutanix their cloud Matt Kimball 28:51 they'll be a wiseguy. Unknown Speaker 28:53 But seriously, I mean, that's, you know, Nutanix is focusing all their efforts on cloud stuff right now. Matt Kimball 29:00 That's what counts do. That's where it matters. And, you know, I think the I think we're, we're a where the OEMs have an advantage with the BCF or carbon or an open shift is that multi cloud capability, right, multi cloud seamless integration versus, you know, you bring out posts on and that gives you a, that gives you a seamless integration from on prem to AWS, not Azure, not in force, or not GCP rather write us I think it's the multicloud element that makes me think that the OEMs are going to have a little bit more success than I shouldn't say more success, but have success. Steve McDowell 29:44 Oh, I think they will. I think they will, I mean, you know, for for all the talk around public cloud and all the money that we see flowing there, right, the fortune 500 are still running around data centers by and large. Right and the OEM driven as a service as an extension of that. So You know, SMB may be a different story, right? If I'm a startup or if I got Greenfield stuff, or I don't have significant amount of infrastructure, it's easy to lift and shift. Yeah. That's it for my predictions. It's gonna be a boring year. Matt Kimball 30:18 Let me give you one more. Unknown Speaker 30:19 I'll give you one more. Love me. Matt Kimball 30:22 This whole Nvidia arm deal. Unknown Speaker 30:26 Yeah. Matt Kimball 30:28 I'm gonna, this is less of a prediction. Now it's a prediction, I don't think it's as certain a deal is as, as in video would have you believe or as was reported, I don't know if you saw this, but just just in the last few days, Britain's regulator, or what they call the CMA or something like that. That said, You know what, we're not as comfortable with this as, as you folks in the US maybe, Steve McDowell 31:00 and they're pretty bad. And arm is headquartered in England, so they get a voice. Yeah, yeah. Or in the UK, somewhere over there, Matt Kimball 31:11 somewhere over the pipe. So be kinda curious. I, my only prediction on that is this is not as done of a deal as folks in the market have you believe maybe it's not a prediction. Steve McDowell 31:23 It's not as done at the end of the day, I think Nvidia is gonna gonna win. You think they're gonna win? They're gonna win the the acquisition is gonna go through You may be right, it may be painful. Matt Kimball 31:36 I think it's going to go through but it's not going to go through at the strike price that Nvidia has in mind. Oh, that's Steve McDowell 31:42 possible. Yeah, that's possible. But I think next year, when we do this predictions piece, we'll be talking about Nvidia's new server parts and options. Oh, yeah, they are aggressively moving into the data center space while moving in. They're aggressively accelerating in the data center space, not just GPU. But this whole dpu and smart adapters and smart fabrics. I mean, they're taking arm and mellanox in their GPU technology and merging all those things into one. It's, it's no longer no longer the CPU is buying care about right, um, it's a it's a compute platform, and that it's comprised of different compute engines, right, and it's all about feeding those those GPU shader, which is all based on CUDA. And that's a story that nobody else in the industry can tell. So to the degree that Nvidia can can push workloads that direction, man, that's good for them. Matt Kimball 32:36 So how does AMD compete in their server GPUs? Ah, you Steve McDowell 32:41 know, I think, how did they compete? I think it's a it's a story to tell less than a technology to sell? Matt Kimball 32:51 Well, a couple things. I Steve McDowell 32:52 mean, you know, they're getting better around abstracting up the GPU layer, right? It's not all about CUDA anymore. You know, they went down this path where it's open CL for 10 years. It's not open CL, right, but it's other things like that. I'm just rambling. Next, I have no idea what I'm saying. If you go down this path with Nvidia, it's, you know, it's it's a lock in path for a lot of people, right? And do you want to lock yourself into that sort of architecture? Matt Kimball 33:20 And so you're right, it is? I don't I don't know that people are looking at it. It folks look at it quite as locked in as they look at it as as performance. I mean, that is it. You could say the same thing for VMware and Dell and EMC, EMC. I mean, all of these companies are going toward trying to lock customers in, right? Steve McDowell 33:46 I mean, that's what you want to do. Yeah, I don't know. I don't have an opinion here. Matt Kimball 33:54 Anyway, sorry. Unknown Speaker 33:56 Cut that whole section out. Matt Kimball 34:02 You don't like to be flummoxed? Unknown Speaker 34:05 Not by you. Matt Kimball 34:09 That's all right. I recorded it. I'm putting up my own YouTube video. So Alright, so no other predictions, Stevie Ray. Steve McDowell 34:17 No, I really don't. I think this is a year where we're kind of redefining normalcy. And normal t, which is the word. We're redefining normal, in 2021. That's my prediction. And all of the experiments of 2020. We're gonna digest and decide what the future looks like. And whether that's more as a service or consumption base, or, you know, pick anything we've talked about. Yeah, this this is a year of understanding the environment. I don't expect I don't see anything on roadmaps that would say there's a huge disruptive technology that's going to happen this year. Why would we be surprised? I think it's a lot of status quo and people getting back and trying to And, you know, everybody's sitting on really healthy portfolios right now there's not a week, server storage portfolio on the market. Many guys, right, and I think their sales guys are chomping at the bit trying to jump the line to get these vaccines, I think you'll get some face time with our customers. Yep. That's my prediction. Nothing changes, nothing changes on the hardware side, or the infrastructure side, except, you know, more aggressive sales. Matt Kimball 35:29 I think you one thing you're right on that it's not a technology prediction. But it's the, you know, I keep hearing all the pundits talk about, you know, as we even as we vaccinate and kind of get back to, quote unquote, normal, that, you know, the day of, we're now in the era of zoom and, and, you know, everything is going to be more virtual. And I just, I don't believe that. I, you know, you and I have experienced it through conferences and summits and not being able to do those face to face and not being able to be as engaged because of that. And as a result of that, but two sales reps to I mean, there is Steve McDowell 36:10 right now, when it buyers are sitting at home making decisions, they're making rational decisions that are good for their business, and that's not good for the OEMs. Right, it's all about that FaceTime, the wining and dining, the influence. You know, we don't spend any money and we get wined and dined to try and you know, spin the story. You know? So maybe it's good for it buyers that we're all locked in. But the OEMs, right, they need that FaceTime. So the world is not going virtual, you know, maybe it gets slimmed down a little bit. And it looks different, but not much value in the face to face and everybody right now suffering from virtual conference fatigue. Matt Kimball 36:52 I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, man, I have not every single person 100% of the people I've spoken to across different industries, across different job functions, not just it, but across the board. They've all said the same thing. The first few weeks of that, you know, work from home was fabulous. And then it was not so fabulous. And now they're just going stir crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, just Steve McDowell 37:19 yeah. I mean, we're not we're not gonna look like we did in 2019. But we're not gonna look like we did. 2020 either. Yeah, it'll be somewhere between but conferences and in person events are coming back. They're too valuable to the OEMs. Alright, and to us, I mean, you know, when we're at these cocktail parties with Michael Dell, if you can't get drunk with Michael Dell, you're not going to get the good Gossip. Matt Kimball 37:47 Gossip. You got it from Michael Dell. Steve McDowell 37:49 No, Michael Dell looked at me once from across the room. I think you kind of squint it and not it's a security for them not. But I was in the same room, man. Matt Kimball 38:04 I've just been in those summits with Jeff Clark. You know, he's such a dynamic personality. And these Steve McDowell 38:10 guys. Yeah. And they do these on the zoom, but the dynamic and the chemistry, it's just, you know, again, he can't read the room. Right? And he's not gonna say anything he's not supposed to because it's being recorded. I'm not singling out Jeff Clark, right. And we do this with it with every company. Matt Kimball 38:28 Jeff Clark, in particular is like the king of reading the room and he is so good at that and like playing to his audience or speaking to his audience. He's so good at that. And that gets lost when you know when Yeah, when you're over a video camera. Steve McDowell 38:42 I know. It's kind of like our podcast. We got to do some of these together. Matt Kimball 38:45 I know. We should have done one down a lot card over barbecue, because Steve McDowell 38:49 I just don't feel the chemistry with you, man over this. I'm looking at a green light you. So what? Matt Kimball 38:55 Whatever. Whatever. Steve McDowell 38:57 Are we done? We're done, buddy. Are you going to CES this week? Yeah, yeah. Matt Kimball 39:02 flying out tonight. Steve McDowell 39:04 will be the first virtual CES which is great. Matt Kimball 39:09 All right. Yes. Steven, Unknown Speaker 39:10 what's him? Matt Kimball 39:11 Have you ever been to a CES? Yeah, Steve McDowell 39:13 I went to a couple in during our it's been a decade. Last one I went to is 20. I want to say January 2011. Maybe you can extend Matt Kimball 39:23 that to CES like takeover Las Vegas and like that's Steve McDowell 39:30 the only thing going on that time of year. It is it is back then they had another conference in the same hotel which you're right the ABN the adult Video Awards, which is interesting, Sharon hallways with those guys. But they do take over Las Vegas that I will say hands down CES, the biggest event that I've ever attended, with the exception of maybe Mobile World Congress in Barcelona jackets pretty big. Matt Kimball 39:56 Have you been you've been to the COMDEX? It's right back in the day? Steve McDowell 39:58 Yeah, yeah. My memory is fuzzy. But it's you know, it's that scale. Are you taking a bus everywhere? Yeah, taxis are sold out lines. You know, it's just insane. Yeah. All right. I think we're done. Matt Kimball 40:16 That was a fun one. Steve. Good to be back. Steve McDowell 40:20 We got some guests coming up. I don't want to pre announce them. But I think my new year's resolution matters to do far fewer of these one on ones just you and me. I think people are far more interested in hearing what to say. Right. So let's endeavor let's proceed. Matt Kimball 40:39 That's all hurtful. Unknown Speaker 40:41 Whatever right.