Steve McDowell 0:04 Matt, I got virtual conference fatigue. I'm telling you what it seems like the number of people putting on virtual conferences that stretch now for weeks and weeks. Every week I get an email. I'm not going to single any out because there are multiple offenders. But Matt Kimball 0:22 it feels like every company that has done a conference today is still in the midst of that conference. Right? Steve McDowell 0:30 Yeah. Right. And it's not it's not just that it's all out there. Go stream it when you can or adding new content every week. We've seen this from almost everybody who's at conferences. It's great. Matt Kimball 0:43 I actually think it's a i get i get the idea. In a way I applaud the cleverness. I don't think it's a fact offiguring it out. Steve McDowell 0:54 Right. We're still early days and and how we do all this. But yeah, I hope somebody goes back and measures all of this and how it works. Because a lot of this stuff, right if you're not live, if it's not well, doesn't have to be if you're not interactive, let me say it that way. Yes. It's just a recorded webinar and I read somebody on on one of my channels, it might be menu saying this to me, right? is, uh, they're looking at the transcripts of these things and doing a whole conference in you know, 30 minutes. And I'll tell you, I'm guilty, right? When I go to one of these virtual conference things, first thing I do is click through to see if there's a PowerPoint because I'd much rather look at that sometimes. Matt Kimball 1:33 Yes, and that's, you know, you and I have gone back and forth on the value of in person versus, you know, does this change the way the industry this I think is demonstrating painfully possibly demonstrating the value of the in person, interaction with your customers, analysts, partners, etc, etc. This is going to refer these large companies is going to validate the fact that they need to have these in person events. Steve McDowell 2:03 Oh, for sure, for sure. Now I say what I do, like I've said this before on the podcast is I like having all of that content out there for me to consume at my leisure and because sometimes I will go and look at things that you know, when you and I go to a conference, it's a different experience from a lot of people right? Because we're locked into an analyst program guide in long story, but often there's a session I want to go you know, audit and pay attention to this allows me to go do that when I couldn't before but beyond that, Matt Kimball 2:34 well, you know, actually, you couldn't do it before you just didn't do it before. These sessions are all available on demand. Steve McDowell 2:44 You got to download an app and there's this whole but now the other thing is, you know, in the springtime, they might all be available on demand, but we're bouncing you know, pretty much every Week going to a different location. So even if they're available on demand who's got the time? Now? What it is? Yeah, virtual conference plus corn team. Matt Kimball 3:09 Yeah, I know, give me a hard time. But you're right, you know, we literally two months in a row, one conference after another, you kind of, you know, one week kind of just blends into the next and, and to what you're saying this the virtual side kind of changes your behavior a little bit with regards to the content and you know, kind of the the going in and looking at individual sessions, right, because you're Steve McDowell 3:36 you and I have a book bookmark folder on my on my browser here that says, you know, things to watch and it's full of you know, I had nothing more to say about that. The I guess two pieces of big news this week. One is the big Twitter hack. Yesterday Matt Did you lose your blue checkmark? Matt Kimball 4:07 Yeah, so disappointed. I gotta tell you I asked for Steve McDowell 4:10 it I gave it said, you know, the all the What do they call it verified users with a blue checkmark on Twitter got hacked somehow and a phishing link was sent out to donate bitcoins and they would double your money. So it was only until about the third time I clicked on that link that I realized something might not be right. But uh those guys they say 400 and some thousand dollars people fell for it for the for the tune of, you know, half a million dollars. That's crazy. I was clicking I was thinking if I give $1,000 I'll get two back, even if it's from Ilan musk Matt Kimball 4:53 for more war Yeah, you're right. I mean, it was it was Ilan was some political leaders and curious to see the breakdown of impacted accounts. Tech versus non tech in bright me like, I'd really like to know if there are any tech people out there that fall for this ruse for this sadly I'm sure there was there were a few in Steve McDowell 5:22 and I'll tell you what the coverage has been interesting because if you read the popular news, the popular press, it talks about you know, Bitcoin scam on Twitter, you read the tech news and it's like this hack is worth so much more than we would ever got out of this Bitcoin scam. This is a precursor to something else somebody is proving something to somebody Matt Kimball 5:43 well, and that's you know, it's funny you say that because I think that is the kind of that's the kind of news that often gets under recording people like you and I get it. But I think your average Joe like Wilson Sure. Yeah. I think folks like that they don't necessarily understand that even this is a test run for a dry run or, you know, a proven capability for maybe like a nation state. And that's kind of exaggerated. But, you know, they take these as Oh, somebody just got, you know, $400,000 out of a bunch of Twitter users. That's nothing in the big picture, Steve McDowell 6:22 right now, the value of a hack like that. Yeah, it'll be interesting. But again, the other bit of news, so we should just, you know, not leave anybody in suspense. This is why I never applied for the blue checkmark. But I did want to make myself vulnerable. So there was no impact to me personally. beyond a few bitcoins, Matt Kimball 6:44 you have the following on Twitter, though, don't you? Steve McDowell 6:47 Yeah, I'm up to like 93 users or Unknown Speaker 6:53 whatever. Whatever. Matt Kimball 6:55 I know you are here. You're a humble guy. I don't know what your user your follower count is now but You feeling skyrocketed over the last few months. Steve McDowell 7:04 impressively? Well, there's this website called fiverr.com. For $5 you can get people to do anything. Anyway the other big piece of news.. Why are you laughing? I'll just read the headline this came out yesterday and and so Dell is is exploring a VMware spin off. There's two bits to this one is they're they're they're announcing a VMware spin off, they're looking into it. That would take place about a year and two months from now. It would be the fall of 2021. Because because they're so under no, it aligns to the tax penalty for selling off the company they bought in 2015, I think. So there's been a lot of different reactions across the twitterverse But you know, I think I look at this and there's a couple of things. One is, you know, Dell took on a lot of debt to buy EMC. Right. And I think at the end of the day, this is not about the value of VMware to Dell. It's, I mean, from a relationship perspective, it's about the monetary and am I smart with money? I think that's really what it's all about. But you read the coverage, in your read with Dell said, in their filing. And there's a paragraph. Let me back up a little bit, right. When you and I have talked about VMware, and we've talked about it with some Adele's competitors, there's always this fear that with Dell owning VMware that there's going to be a better together and we started to see that story right over the past two. Yes. Yeah. And, you know, that I think has allowed Nutanix inroads to places where maybe they wouldn't have been as successful and just creates kind of this aura of fear around you know, what is VMware long term future with Dell and how does that impact my business? If I'm relying on VMware So, you know, spinning them out i think is good for the broader market in terms of VMware has a lot more freedom. But then, you know, I think these thoughts and then I'm reading some excerpts from the filing that Dell did and it's this is a direct quote, further formalization of certain mutually beneficial existing commercial relationships will be put into place including go to market r&d co development, intellectual property. Matt Kimball 9:32 So even though they spin them out, they still know Steve McDowell 9:34 they spend now they're gonna formalize some of these Better Together relationships it sounds like Matt Kimball 9:40 that's very interesting. How do you do I mean, I guess you're in your you become contractually bound to, to execute on those, so you're really not getting out that better together element, even though Yeah, Steve McDowell 9:56 I guess it depends on on how much of a stake Dell continues. Holding VMware and then how much how much we look at VMware as a monopoly in their space, I guess. Matt Kimball 10:06 Well, you know, if you think about that a little more, right, I mean, you've done you've been in marketing at tech companies, you've done the go to market agreements and co routines and agreements with you know, that Amy we did with hp, we didn't go with you name it. And you always had you always had these formalized kind of agreements to do go to market activities, even though development right. But you know, those can be entered in many ways and those can be executed in many ways. My if I look at that I see okay, but then really still doesn't VMware to Dell, right, or Dell to VMware. Steve McDowell 10:50 Right, you have to go a little bit deeper. I mean, there's two aspects one is to go to market. And in somebody's coverage here is talking about you know, From VMware, his perspective, the losing all these Dell salespeople, right. But one is in the market. I think the ones that scare competitors more is let's go to market and more about co development and r&d. And, you know, maybe a formalization of those kind of things as a JV, right, which is its own separate entity. Matt Kimball 11:19 But is that an exclusive code of VMware from co developing with hp or Lenovo or Steve McDowell 11:26 Dell, but it gives Dell and VMware a head start as they move into kind of this new? Yeah, I mean, what's VMware is incentive right now, or what's Michael Dell's incentive right now let it be more go off and do that with an HP or an IBM. Matt Kimball 11:42 He doesn't have any incentive for it as an incentive to not allow it Steve McDowell 11:46 could be as you know, as little as a head start. And yes, you know, the head starts and started two years ago. So yeah, I don't think anybody's in any danger here would be a more spinning out of a bell cell belt. To make it if they do it right, they're gonna they're gonna make it beneficial Matt Kimball 12:04 you know? Yeah. With that said, though, you know, I mean you and I have spoken with all Adele's competitors in the OEM space regarding vmworld particular and I have to say speaking with their competitors never wants to hear a we feel as though you know, there's favoritism given to to Dell. I've always heard kind of very, you know, that sounds kind of weird. You know, I thought that VMware was still an independent entity that was able to execute on go to market and certain programs with virtually any OEM out there. You know, I never heard you guys Lenovo guys Cisco guys talk about they feel like they're at a distinct disadvantage either product wiser, or marketing wise versus versus bell. Steve McDowell 13:00 In the short term, but I think when you look at it Matt Kimball 13:05 I think they always talk about the longer term there be, you know, Steve McDowell 13:09 longer term, it's a risk in, it's a risk. That said, I'm reading Another thing is you were talking, I wasn't listening to you I was. There's some financial analysts to say, you know, Dells never going to spin it out. It's too valuable. The business Sales Cloud and Dells future is all around cloud and software defined as the industries. And what's really happening here is Michael Dell is only 55 not ready to give any of this up, is trying to juice the stock price and remind the industry and the value. Both come to you and if you're talking about a speculative transaction, 15 months in the future. Matt Kimball 13:52 Yeah. Well, and you know, that does. That's there's a very salient point in there, right. The future is software and software defined Right. And quite frankly, from a margins perspective, the the top line is in software so or the bottom line is it's our so you know, it is a little bit hard to imagine kind of given us a cash cow Steve McDowell 14:15 and margins almost. Matt Kimball 14:17 Yeah, yeah. Should Steve McDowell 14:22 be fun to watch. Well until Dell start selling arm servers and reinvents the market there is their own news this week. Seems like this is the first week here there's been no arm news. Matt Kimball 14:31 Isn't it impressive? How much how much momentum arm is made in the industry, though quietly made in the industry. I did see some AWS on on their arm instances or Graviton instances about it was it was more on performance numbers on Steve McDowell 14:53 Amazon didn't put on any numbers before they end. They go in fairness to Amazon. They don't put our numbers on anything. Yeah. This means now that the Graviton instances are available, we're starting to see some kind of initial performance characteristics. Yeah. Matt Kimball 15:09 And be curious to watch how this plays out over time, you know, so our AWS went down this path of in house development, I mean, granted the body and Aparna, so they had, you know, they bought a silicon design team. So I get that, but, you know, if they find the success that a lot of folks anticipate they will with regard to what does that mean for the azureus? gcps? You know, some of these other cloud guys the alley cloud, guys, do they, you know, do they want to merge with Marvell or they look to do in house development? It just seems like it'd be really expensive to go develop your own silicon. Steve McDowell 15:47 Yeah, I think they're gonna go develop their own silicon. And I think there's two things to factor in here, right. Amazon didn't go to grab a ton, because arm is an inherently better architect. Extra write for Amazon. It's all about better margin. And can I deliver a solution? That's good enough? Where I'm making maybe a little more money if I'm not paying an Intel tax? Right? Yeah, that's what it's about. So if I'd say, Matt Kimball 16:13 let's let's call it x 86 cents. Steve McDowell 16:20 Yeah, too many years at AMD right talk Unknown Speaker 16:25 in the Intel Nvidia. Steve McDowell 16:29 So if I'm Azure or if I'm Google, right, I'm looking at it through the same lens and are my offerings competitive of Graviton? I don't think the architecture matters at the end of the day, quite as much people are looking to arm as a way to get out from under that x86 we're seeing in the cloud. And that's 100%. What's behind what is the most recent arm news which is Apple switch? Yeah, to arm and their PCs? Matt Kimball 16:57 Yes, yes. You know, this kind of drives the whole you we've had this discussion of million times around kind of the commoditization of computers, right. And especially when you talk about cloud, let's not talk about kind of on prem server stuff. When you talk about cloud, you won, you know, best performance at the best cost, and you don't really care what it's running. And, quite frankly, don't care if it's Intel or AMD 90% 99% of the time, right? You certainly that line between arm versus x86 or power matter goes away. Steve McDowell 17:32 Yeah, right. And the old people in the audience are gonna be fooled with a sense of deja vu because in 19, let's just say the mid to late 90s. We saw exactly the same thing happen as all of these RISC architectures from name your favorite computer vendor, all collapsed on this little you know, I think I can 46 chip or Pentium chip from NFL. Right, let's get out from under the big tax. We're paying ourselves for developing, you know, pa risk or whatever, this you know, it's a repeat of that a little bit right for the same reasons. Matt Kimball 18:08 See, and this is where I think I know I'm alone in thinking this but this is where my head goes on on this whole arm thing it see and you just hit it on the head. When you know this, this Intel thing came out in the mid 90s. Right? You saw the start to take hold in the data center. It was a they had a very specific use case for for deployment model for those Intel servers, right. It was filing print and that was it and directory services. And that was it. Right? I was never going to trust my database environment or my big enterprise environment to to the Wintel story, right. It was all you know whether it was HP UX, or a Solaris, it was all Unix derivatives in those chips that came from those vendors. And ROM is kind of seller you know, they they actually have about 25% market share. In the data center, it's routers, it's all equipment, right? It's not servers, it's very few servers, it's all it's all the equipment. You know, they're finding these kind of fixed function use cases that are working for them. And as these kind of gain more prominence in the data center, this is going to be that moment where collectively the market wakes up and goes, wait a minute, why, honestly? Steve McDowell 19:22 Right. And with things like Graviton, you're seeing whole tool chains evolving and saying, arm is fantastic for kind of lambda functions and things that aren't high performance, right? You know, same conversations we had about Intel again, you know, in 1997, it's am I going to trust my data center to this 46 chip that needs a floating point, whatever. And Matt Kimball 19:49 I think it truly is this evolution of compute and you know, the kind of further go along, you see these companies. You know, Marvell, is there more than traditional The current kind of deployment or development and deployment, and sell through bases, rack cores, and these very specific silicon functions coming out, that are turning these, you know, it's turning the data center into almost like an amalgamation of black boxes where you know, digital, remember when digital electronics first came out, and it was like, you know, you never had to go in with your own scope and kind of look at, you know, testing a resistor capacitor was just discard or replace it. That's kind of how it feels compute is starting to move with all these new specialized architectures that are very fixed in their function, whether it's for, you know, in France, or whether it's for, you know, NFV or you know, but it's very, Steve McDowell 20:46 very, very specialized and very specialized characteristics. Oh, yeah. And arms business model keeps the bar very low for doing that. Matt Kimball 20:55 Yeah, sorry. Go off on it's just, it's Interesting, good, good. So you Steve McDowell 21:01 know, Intel and AMD are in no danger of going away. But this forced them to take a harder look at their business model around more kind of the entry level today but aren't sitting still and their whole ecosystem benefits from something like Graviton is released. And we haven't seen yet what Apple's going to do on the desktop. Right? Yeah, we've, we've seen what they can do in a very kind of power thermal constrained iPad environment. You take those constraints out and I'm expecting right we're gonna see some competitive stuff at least at the high end of the client. Matt Kimball 21:38 Let me ask you so you know, you're an apple guy and you're in I know we're kind of data center guys, but you know, your turn all around kind of nervous. What do you what do you what do you think about Apple coming to Harmon in the in the client? I mean, this is do you look at that and think heresy or, or oh my gosh, Well, I'll tell you. Steve McDowell 21:59 My fear is The same knee jerk fear we were talking about, right? I'm using I'm talking about an iMac right now, I do a lot of work on this thing. And it's only a three year old iMac. But I can stress it. So when I think about arm in this platform I'm thinking about it doesn't have enough. I don't care about the architecture, right? If the software can can if the software can support it and give me the performance, I really don't care. What's in my in my client, Matt Kimball 22:30 and they do have that initial knee jerk reaction. All right, and of Steve McDowell 22:33 course I did, right. Because you know, I was hoping that Apple would go on announced you know, 24 core ryzen a, in the other direction. So we'll see, right I'm I still have that fear. I can't I can't overcome that. And we're gonna have to see what they what they come out with. Have as I say, I do like the approach they're taking with the software because they x86 software, they're doing two things. One is there's a tool that runs that did transpiled that ahead of executions, you're not doing kind of real time transposition, from x86 to arm. And I like I like to I like how they're talking about it, but the proof is going to be in the pudding. So until we see these boxes. Matt Kimball 23:22 So there are two there is one point I want to make one question. I'm sorry, the point is understanding, you know, the kind of the the wisdom, if you will, of apple and kind of, you know, they, they certainly feel as though they wouldn't be making such pronouncements if there was not a certain level of certainty around what we're going to see from a performance perspective, right. Unknown Speaker 23:51 I find it hard to believe Matt Kimball 23:51 that I would kind of make such a big bet, not knowing what the outcome was gonna look like. Steve McDowell 23:56 Yeah, no, I'm there. And when the point to make about Apple and the arm transition is they've said that's their direction. They haven't tied up any products. So yeah, you know, look at the strategy of Apple products, you know, I would have no problem. I think if if I were an I, if I were a MacBook Air user, right, the thousand dollar entry level I'm doing web browsing and office with the thought wouldn't even come to me. It's when you start moving up into power user and I'll put myself there because you know, I'm doing videos and other things. You know, maybe that's not an arm part for five years. Yeah, it's evolutionary. And all of that started to go down a software path earlier and the reason for that was you look at when Microsoft tried to get into the arm space with Windows RT, I guess whatever it was a few years back. In that failed not because it was well fit because it failed largely because the software experience was subpar. Right? Six I had to have arm. There was no portability. It was a different kind of experience, even between the two. I think Apple is taking a software first approach and by making all of that invisible that comes it shouldn't matter. Right? Yeah. And that's where they're going to be strong. Matt Kimball 25:18 So is that is that part is that's a? I'm assuming that's an apple design and piece of silicon. Right? They have their own design team that's working on. Yeah. Okay. Steve McDowell 25:28 All right. Yeah, they've been doing this for years, right. And they put it in the iPhone first and the iPad. And now they're scaling it up. Unknown Speaker 25:36 But, you know, there's Steve McDowell 25:39 there's a lot of movement between the engineers working on these products across the ecosystem want to say it that way? So there's, I think informal, informal IP sharing going on. That's I think helping the entire industry arm we've seen that in x86 forever. Yes. So so you know, and I say Graviton help. Apple Apple's gonna help Graviton all these guys are helping Marvell and whomever else? Yeah. So it's a good time to be in that world. And the x86 guys are trying to figure out how they can continue to to get the the margins and ASP that they're getting. Matt Kimball 26:18 Yeah, enjoy your day saying, I mean, I don't see. Well, that's a good point. I was gonna say, I don't see Intel and AMD going away anytime, ever. I don't want to freeze. But to what you're saying about the human the ASAPs and margins where they were, that's the biggest challenge, right? Because the arm ecosystem is, you know, arm based solutions are vastly less expensive. Steve McDowell 26:45 And one of the most interesting pieces of the whole Apple arm thing, this didn't make news anywhere, but in one of the technical sessions at the apple developer conference, we were talking about how to be ready for this. They put up a slide that talks about GPU support Unknown Speaker 26:59 and it's like arm is only going to support Unknown Speaker 27:03 the apple GPU which we've heard almost nothing about. Steve McDowell 27:08 Really, so they're not in at least as of now right? They're not talking about drivers for an AMD and trying to marry the AMD graphics parts to the to their a 16. Matt Kimball 27:18 Okay, sure is about that play as well. I mean, GPUs more than CPU seem to have a certain amount of religion associated with that, right? Steve McDowell 27:29 You have religion and especially as you move up the chain. Yes, and this is one of the reasons my iMac is a little bit underpowered because I did not opt for a good GPU, but now, if you're doing video or even photo editing, everything is GPU accelerated now, and it's frustrating because I also play a little bit around with AI and machine learning. It's my hobby. As an Nvidia thing and Apple gave up in video support Unknown Speaker 28:04 I love your house Matt Kimball 28:08 earlier. That's funny any Steve McDowell 28:10 other machine behind me there that's a Windows machine running Windows w wsl windows services for Linux. Which is amazing too because I can run a full Ubuntu kernel on a Windows machine with direct access to my GPU so I can run my the reasons I'm doing some special image recognition man I can't talk about Matt Kimball 28:34 it's just a little bit disconcerting to see myself pop up on your screen behind you. Speaking of Steve McDowell 28:41 video recognition, so here's the thing right I'm using a piece of software called v mix to record us and it doesn't run on Mac. We're using Skype to record this Skype outputs this soft, soft camera singles called n di It's available on the network. So my Windows machine sees your camera. Matt Kimball 29:06 It's interesting that I don't want to call it a video editing but a video related piece of software would not be supported on Mac, I guess Skype being on but Microsoft is already operating. It's not Steve McDowell 29:18 it's a third party app. And I'll tell you why this piece of software actually comes out of the professional production world which is not an apple world at all. And if you go into production van anywhere, all of these tools are built on Windows. Matt Kimball 29:35 Sir, we went way off the rails on this but it's been an interesting conversation on how we got from VMware to arm and mass and it was fascinating nonetheless. Steve McDowell 29:51 get anything else to say about spin Matt Kimball 29:57 know so kind of in a rush This up a little bit earlier before we started recording. You know, I think one of the things that's interesting as it relates to Dell, as it relates to HP, as relates to Lenovo brand, even in the software side, the VMware is that Nutanix is it's on and so forth. We actually hit on this a little bit, but it's the it's the always and I know we again, I know, we talked a lot, I'm fascinated by the blurring of the lines that exist in the data center. And from a go to market perspective of the OEMs. The distinct products is products that get sold as servers and as storage boxes, as you know, routers, switches, so on and so forth. And there's a convergence that's going on and then blurring of lines, right. I mean, is an HCI solution. Is it a server or is it a storage solution? You know, analytics boxes, you know, are they are they really high end storage? analytic servers, are there solutions are they really high end storage boxes are they That has storage and it feels like this. This traditional racking stacking world isn't just continues, there's an acceleration in the kind of blurring of what we mean when we talk about servers and storage and all that. What are your thoughts? Think right? You don't care. We Steve McDowell 31:22 know we've we've seen this. I mean, this is this has been, I'm gonna say this start it in the started in 2006 with the introduction of the hypervisor, let me say differently. So it's not the injection hypervisor, where we really started to see the hypervisor. Matt Kimball 31:45 We started seeing Steve McDowell 31:48 whenever service advisor become the bare metal server, and all of a sudden I'm not deploying against bare metal, I'm deploying against hypervisors and then that introduced the idea of, you know, workload vocality portability right now. Now that's now I can be motion. And it was painful, painful growing, going through those those those times, right when you couldn't you could only be motion, like steppings on your CPU and things like that. Right. But we saw that, you know, fast forward. And I think we're seeing the same thing, as you said, right with storage was server with networking. You know, we just saw HP buy another Software Defined LAN company this week, right is part of their edge strategy. It's not about Cisco routers, it's about you know, it's about building my networks on software bits that can run on whatever infrastructure happens to be underneath me. Yeah. And, and that resonates with it buyers, you and I, we had a call the you know, two days ago with with one of the big OEMs who said we do our messaging and the stuff that really is sticky. Is the stuff around solutions because that's what the guys are asking for. All right, yeah asking for, you know, we're at a point in the history of technology where pretty much everything is good enough. Yeah, there are no bad choices. There simply aren't. If I look at the storage world, and if I'm buying an all flash array, there's not a bad choice. I could buy it from anybody, and it's going to over serve my needs. But if I want to do storage for AI, right, it's maybe a collection of things. And it's not a box. It's a box running six different pieces of software. So again, validating what you said, I think, but I think it is very real trend. And I think it's driven by, you know, the up leveling of how it is approaching problems, right, the age of the specialist is over. Matt Kimball 33:44 Yeah, I think you've seen a classification of it, right? Where they become service providers to the business. You're just giving out instances and you got to manage it in such a way. So it kind of you know, he's so what do you get measured on cost your manager pressure On agility, reliability, right? And that moves you, that kind of shifts the way you think as as an IT service provider, if you will. But what's, what's interesting about all that, though, is and you hit on it is, even though there's this kind of this thinking around the commoditization of all these bits and bytes and components, in some ways, infrastructure has ever been more important than rice. So I think about standing up an AI cluster, right? Or some of these new these nascent kind of trends that are starting to move out of decency into kind of mainstream, those require a different set of characteristics underneath from a hardware perspective, to make them effective and make them worthwhile, right. So in some ways, even though you as an IT guy, don't care about what's sitting underneath it. It does matter. Steve McDowell 35:00 two things. Number one is this is where we're I think we're seeing increased value from the channel, the system integrators and especially as we start looking toward applications like Unknown Speaker 35:13 applications where we start looking at the general classes, forklifts like edge, right. Steve McDowell 35:20 or hybrid cloud. There's a lot of this going on. It's been a lot of time lately talking to the meeting entertainment guys in Hollywood for project. You know, that's a CIA driven world. Yeah, they care about latency, they care about performance, but at the end of the day, the customer doesn't know anything, except I need files, and I need to run these workloads. Right. So I think the age of the specialist for it, guys, yes, shrinking. We still need that guy somewhere. But at the end of the day, I want to you call it a cloud application? I think it's and maybe we're saying the same thing, but I think we're in the age of everything as a service. Matt Kimball 35:56 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Service It's not Steve McDowell 36:02 just the the the channel guys that are that are helping and benefiting from this. We're also seeing the OEMs that have tools to drive this right. I think everybody now is at least in you know, around storage and server, you know, running predictive analytics somewhere in their infrastructure. Right. We're making sizing recommendations. So I think the intelligence starts to become a we talked about the autonomous data center forever. But that's I think what we're seeing, we're seeing some real activity and trending is. Let's put some intelligence software that's watching operations that can make the recommendations about Do I need to upgrade my controller? less about what are the speeds and feeds of that CPU? Matt Kimball 36:47 Yeah, and I think from monitoring and management perspective, this goes back to what we're talking about earlier and that we've gone from, you know, kind of going in and you know, all kinds of doing very low level diagnostics and, and maintenance on servers to a, this box is dead, you know, bringing your shopping cart shopping, plug in the new one powered on and it'll automatically, you know, provision itself and, you know, configure and provision itself. Steve McDowell 37:18 And that's where, you know, hyper. That's for virtualization and hyperconvergence, and things like that are, they're hiding that from you. And, and, you know, this is a natural evolution, not just not just because it doesn't matter so much in the data center, and we want solutions, but you use the word cloudification. Again, and it's, you know, just as, just as you know, ESX brought us this idea of V motion and workload portability within my data center within a rack and the cloud gives us that ability to move that workload anywhere, right, it's either in my data center, maybe it's running on HP greenlake, which is sort of in my data center, or it's up on Amazon. Yeah, you guys don't need don't want to learn three different technologies or three fire mints? Or do you want to push a button to get Database as a Service? And it's interesting. I've said databases a service, one of the things that's been announced since we talked last time. You know, Amazon has had this outpost thing where they're kind of bringing cloud services on prem to solve some latency problems, you know, being cloud centric. They're moving their databases, a service RDS into that environment as well. So the lines are blurred. So if you want to live in that world, it's an IT guy, you need to learn about databases wherever they live, right, or AI, or ml, or edge or software defined, whatever. Yes, Matt Kimball 38:41 yes, yes. And he has to be prepared for a business unit that is far more intelligent when it comes to these technologies than they were five or 10 years ago as well. Right? No one really looking for you to stand up a database Unknown Speaker 38:57 or an analytics environment for them or they're looking to Do it themselves. Yeah. Steve McDowell 39:05 I recognize Matt Kimball 39:08 that Well, that was fun. Thanks for the thanks for indulging me, Steve. I appreciate it. Steve McDowell 39:12 What do you think about Citrix and Microsoft getting together and saying Citrix is the right solution for remote desktop on Azure? Matt Kimball 39:23 And how long have Citrix in Microsoft been partnering and saying that Citrix is the right environment Steve McDowell 39:30 desktop, Matt Kimball 39:32 desktop environment for insert the latest? Steve McDowell 39:36 Next takeover target from Microsoft, we've been seeing now I think for exactly 24 years. Matt Kimball 39:41 Since they've been since the referral Farndale. Yeah. Unknown Speaker 39:46 Yeah, that's great. Matt Kimball 39:48 That's great. Yeah, you know, it's funny is Citrix is one of those companies that has they have been around forever, right. And you're they here and they have their the original location. Remote Desktop guys from way way back from Terminal Services and kind of wrapping their heads around it. And I'm actually a little bit surprised that they are not more dominant in the in the market from a buyer from a visibility perspective than they are when you when you think of remote desktop today as an IT person, you know a lot of a lot of folks I speak to that immediately go to horizon VMware horizon. It's like, what about these guys that kind of a reunion for the original theologies and then Remote Desktop space? And they're almost thought of in a legacy way. Steve McDowell 40:45 Yeah. Well, yeah. And I think part of this, and we've seen this not just with Citrix, right, I think he looked at the HCI space scale computing kind of fits into this bucket, right. Very solid technology, one of the if not the first player out there. But you know what, these guys aren't Silicon Valley companies. And yeah, they don't live in that hype bubble out there. People don't pay attention to them as much Citrix, as you said was a fort lauderdale company, you know, sales in Indiana. It's it's a different mindset and way of looking at these guys, and they're plodding along making plenty of money giving value to their customers. Matt Kimball 41:24 Citrix, in particular, Citrix, in particular, kind of like AMD, and they may be based in Fort Lauderdale, but their center of gravity has moved out into the valley now. charlo points out there. They had a they had a big name at one point. I mean, in the early days of work, they were they're very, very well known. Steve McDowell 41:47 Maybe they just peaked early man because in 1999, you're right if you want to remote desktop, then flash forward a decade and the way Remote Desktop is Man that hurts. Bd BD. Bd Matt Kimball 42:05 that's her that's hurtful man. You're right though. Your Microsoft had their run out it you know, they they they had some really good clearly they would put some really good solutions. They're in the mid 2000s, around virtual desktop, Steve McDowell 42:23 Citrix and think about the Citrix story and I said nothing to do with the news this week. What boggles my mind is that Microsoft didn't jump on this thing. 25 years ago, it doesn't dominate the space. How do they let us Citrix grow and live? And we talked about remote desktop, especially right now when the whole world has gone Remote Desktop. And the word Microsoft doesn't come up. Right does what I need to deliver. Yeah. Matt Kimball 42:53 Yeah, that makes no sense. Right? Steve McDowell 42:56 Right. Right. You look at the early days of Citrix and I was working on things that were close to that in the late 90s. They had co engineering relationships with Microsoft, right? These guys were sharing IP, Microsoft had to let Citrix get into the stack in a way other partners weren't allowed in at the time to make their solution work, which is why the, you know, acquisition rumors were ever present. Matt Kimball 43:24 They were and those that relationship was, you know, was tighter than kissing cousins. I mean, they into what you're saying they had, they had access into source code that other other companies did not. We just what makes this so interesting, and I talked about, you know, I almost look at that as legacy now. And I speak to a lot of folks, they look at them more in a legacy way. It's like, you kind of draw a parallel to some of these tech giants of years past even like an IBM you know, it's like, yeah, we still have that Oracle, right. We have that presence. So we still use them, but you know, you use same with the stranglehold they had on the market that either Yeah, Microsoft would come in and swoop them up and integrate everything into into Windows desktop or Windows Server or they would have found ways to establish to ensure they had leadership in you know, these kind of remote desktop like VMware it's just weird that they don't and it just makes no sense to me So Unknown Speaker 44:34 anyway, what else you got? That's all I had a long time I don't know we've said anything useful anybody know Unknown Speaker 44:43 it's always good to see your turkey Matt Kimball 44:45 Thank you. Steve McDowell 44:47 Very certain angles and sticks right out of the corner your head like a Matt Kimball 44:53 like it's either attacking me or flying another Exactly. That's funny. Steve McDowell 45:02 We got on deck. So it's July and there's not a lot of news right spinning out in July everybody's on vacation is dead product announcements. Nothing earth shattering Matt Kimball 45:16 no nothing coming up in the near future there is just a very Steve McDowell 45:24 very wide selection up on work how you how you survive in the the lockdown quarantine you get in torches delivered to your house. Matt Kimball 45:33 You know we deliver the other night actually and my oldest story got food poisoning from it. Steve McDowell 45:42 We're not sponsored by tortoises. Matt Kimball 45:44 Now we're sponsored by Yeti. I think I'm calling bs on them, I think. No, I'm just my son. Yeah. How you survived. Steve McDowell 45:59 We're great. Man I get lonely I don't see people so you know play back our old podcast and alright that's it that's it here from from data center central torches here, food poisoning and torches getting me hungry