ZKast with Chris Preimesberger

0:00 [Music]

0:04 hello everybody i'm diaz caravallo from

0:06 zk research and i'm here for another

0:08 episode of z cast and i'm here with uh

0:11 my co-uh i guess my co-host here

0:14 chris ramsburger from uh uh

0:18 editor emeritus of eweek still so chris

0:21 how you doing

0:22 okay thanks i'm i'm feeling kind of

0:24 collegial or

0:25 academic with that title so anyway

0:28 editor emeritus yeah you

0:30 just need the hat or something like that

0:31 yeah sure yeah so as soon as you

0:33 do you have tenure oh well let me tell

0:36 you

0:37 so this was uh this week was kind of a

0:40 big week in

0:41 you know in uh in the world of device

0:43 because dell technology world and

0:45 uh the digital version of it and dell

0:47 tech week is always a big week because

0:48 you always get to hear

0:50 uh the latest and greatest from dell

0:51 this is the first one

0:53 after the vmware split though and uh i

0:56 want to start off talking a little bit

0:57 about

0:58 michael's you know to michael dale's

1:00 keynote

1:01 um it was kind of an odd you know

1:04 it didn't have a lot of new products to

1:07 it i do think he talked

1:08 a lot about societal trends though and

1:11 he sort of gave

1:12 the whole tech industry a pen on the pad

1:13 on the back saying that

1:15 uh how the tech industry like companies

1:17 like dell

1:18 helped avoid a complete societal

1:20 economic meltdown

1:22 and that's that's a little strong but i

1:25 do think

1:26 it was technology that helped us kind of

1:28 get through the pandemic and it's gonna

1:30 uh help you know help us get uh you know

1:34 come out the other side of this so

1:35 no question about it no question michael

1:38 gave us some good examples of use cases

1:40 too of this new tech

1:42 yeah use cases are great examples

1:46 you know uh real world examples of how

1:48 this stuff works

1:49 and he was able to explain jeff clark

1:51 too they were able to explain it pretty

1:53 well

1:55 yeah i think one of the uh one of the

1:58 interesting things he talked about was

1:59 the evolution of the iot department and

2:01 i have a quote here where he said uh

2:03 technology is no longer the i.t

2:05 department it's not the entire

2:06 organizations how you enable everything

2:08 and we've never been more central or

2:10 more relevant and i couldn't be

2:12 prouder uh to be part of this community

2:14 and i thought that was sort of a press

2:16 endpoint in that

2:17 uh you know we've been saying for a long

2:18 time that every company is a tech

2:19 company

2:20 but that you know certainly um you know

2:23 that's a pretty

2:24 that's a pretty general term you know it

2:26 is

2:27 yeah it is every company is tech because

2:29 people use computers and smart phones

2:31 and

2:32 you know that all that but um michael is

2:35 right in that

2:36 um you know line of business employees

2:39 now are helping design their own

2:40 applications they're adding features

2:43 they're

2:43 you know they're you don't have to

2:45 always go to the it department to get

2:46 something done so the whole company is

2:48 really participating

2:50 in in the i.t system of the company

2:53 whether you like it or not

2:54 that's what it is the way it is now yeah

2:56 one of the parts that techie did talk a

2:57 lot about though was the edge and

2:59 certainly edges become this edge is a

3:01 bit of a weird turn because it means

3:02 everything now frankly that's not cloud

3:04 but

3:05 uh he did set a gartner stat saying that

3:07 only 10 percent of data today

3:09 is processed outside the data center

3:11 however by 75 percent

3:13 um or by 2025 that will be 75 with much

3:16 of that being

3:17 out at the edge and so dell's been very

3:19 busy integrating and creating new

3:21 edge solutions with you know with vmware

3:24 and actually he

3:24 i thought he did a good job of of

3:26 actually explaining the dell vmware

3:29 split with because it wasn't the two

3:32 companies are still going to work

3:33 together

3:34 but post breakup they'll actually

3:36 formalize a lot of the things they put

3:38 in place and so

3:39 i think that's important for customers

3:40 because on our last you know z

3:42 cast we did talk about the implications

3:44 to dell and that maybe without vmware

3:47 they they get out of lockstep with them

3:48 but

3:49 that doesn't appear to be the case and

3:50 obviously michael's the chairman of both

3:52 right so you know that's going to

3:54 continue mike michael's still going to

3:56 own 41

3:57 of vmware too that's pretty healthy cut

3:59 yeah

4:00 yeah especially when they're paying out

4:01 that uh multi-billion dollar dividend so

4:03 you'll get a good piece of that so

4:05 um he also talked about night and i

4:07 wasn't sure you know you're

4:09 you've been around for a while he you

4:11 know what you think

4:12 statement he talked about the pc uh

4:15 being our lifeline and you know he did

4:18 talk

4:19 he did talk about how i think in 2020

4:21 they shipped it almost 143 000 pcs every

4:24 day

4:25 uh that worked out to 99 every minute

4:28 and so you know a lot of people look at

4:31 pcs as being kind of the old device

4:32 because we're now more on these mobiles

4:34 and tablets and things

4:36 but you know they're it's although

4:39 the downside of that though there's kind

4:42 of a commodity it's hard to really

4:43 differentiate one pc from another unless

4:45 you're really willing to pay

4:46 you know i've got a macbook pro here

4:48 which was you know yeah

4:50 so yeah i've i've tested enough pcs to

4:52 know that they're very very similar in

4:54 what they do

4:55 some are better at at certain aspects of

4:58 the pc than others

5:00 some are lighter some are heavier you

5:02 know that you know all that

5:03 but i still think the pc is kind of like

5:06 email it won't go away

5:08 you know um yeah email email is an

5:10 important business tool and a personal

5:12 tool

5:13 and so is a pc you know uh sometimes you

5:16 just need to have a bigger screen to

5:17 look at something to look at something

5:18 closely

5:19 or to do a video conference rather than

5:22 a cell phone so

5:23 or a tablet so i think there's still a

5:26 big mark i think michael's right there's

5:27 still a big market for pcs and i think

5:29 there will be for a while yet

5:31 one of the issues he did bring up which

5:33 i'm not sure how we

5:35 uh solve this is um

5:38 you know he he didn't talk about how in

5:39 the us alone there's 10 million students

5:41 without a pc uh 10 million in japan and

5:44 over 40 million in western europe

5:46 without a pc so

5:47 if it is that important and we're trying

5:49 to democratize opportunity in the world

5:52 um how do we close that gap and how do

5:54 we get the millions of people out there

5:55 without pcs to have pcs and

5:57 that's something i think dealt with

5:58 their supply chain you know

6:00 nobody manages supply chain and things

6:02 better than dell

6:04 and uh you know perhaps they should be

6:06 looking at how you create an ultra

6:08 an ultra low cost pc to be able to go

6:10 get to those so

6:11 you know because a lot of those people

6:13 uh you know in the underserved

6:14 communities tend to have mobile only and

6:16 so that's

6:16 that is a big opportunity for somebody

6:18 to solve google tried to do that with

6:20 chromebook

6:21 not really that successful but that

6:23 that's certainly a gap in

6:25 in the tech industry that hasn't been

6:26 solved yet i think it's a huge

6:27 opportunity i'm sure michael knows about

6:29 he's probably working on it right now

6:31 but you're right an ultra low cost for

6:34 underserved and for

6:35 you know people who don't really have

6:36 the money to buy a pc

6:38 great idea and it can only help dell's

6:42 image and business going forward yeah

6:44 well maybe you and i can start up a

6:46 company that'll do that so

6:47 okay um the big news from the event

6:49 though is project apex

6:50 right so uh officially known as apex now

6:54 which is really dell as a service i know

6:57 chris you wrote

6:58 a pretty comprehensive article on e-week

7:01 why don't you tell us what apex is

7:04 yeah they introduced it last year but

7:05 they've been working on this for quite a

7:07 long time i don't exactly know how long

7:10 but um you know every company now seems

7:12 to have its own platform

7:13 it's a general data management platform

7:15 that can do lots of things

7:18 this is theirs and what it does is it

7:21 really kind of combines control

7:25 of data storage services in the cloud

7:29 and on-premises so if you're a company

7:32 and you've got a data center or

7:34 just some servers you know housing data

7:38 and company documents you can hook that

7:41 in

7:42 to this management uh console and then

7:44 you can also hook in your you know

7:46 aws or azure or whatever

7:50 deployment in the cloud and see them

7:51 both and be able to uh

7:53 to use them mix and match whatever you

7:55 need

7:56 that's a good thing uh what else they

7:59 also have

8:00 a custom solutions um

8:03 uh thing that that dell will work with

8:06 you to figure out what your use case is

8:08 or what other services you might need

8:10 to get that done through their platform

8:12 and the platform itself apex

8:15 is managed totally by dell so you don't

8:17 have to worry about

8:18 you know an instance in your data center

8:20 or anywhere else

8:22 they will handle it it's a like a

8:25 virtual party or data center

8:27 if you don't have a data center um so it

8:30 looks and also the other thing the other

8:32 news from the

8:33 from the from the first day of dell

8:36 technologies world that was important is

8:39 that dell

8:40 and equinix are getting together to

8:43 do a big partnership and that's

8:44 significant because

8:46 equinix is the world's largest

8:48 independent data center owner

8:51 and operator so they've got in 20

8:53 countries

8:54 data centers and they're big modern and

8:57 very powerful data centers

8:59 that they use they rent out for

9:01 publication services

9:03 they also have inter interconnection

9:06 services too

9:08 for um for data for customers that don't

9:11 really need to store their data in the

9:13 data center they just want

9:14 powerful connectors to different levels

9:17 of the internet

9:19 and they provide that to equinix is

9:22 really really

9:22 far ahead of its time right now as a

9:26 data center

9:27 builder owner operator and doing a deal

9:30 with dell means

9:31 that people in various countries

9:35 can have their data close by if

9:37 necessary

9:38 in one of the dell or equinix data

9:41 centers and that's important to

9:44 uh you know the new gdpr rules

9:47 yeah and so this is very very

9:50 good news for a lot of companies uh who

9:53 are dell customers

9:55 or who are potential dell customers yeah

9:58 well nobody does things in scale like

9:59 dell does i know

10:00 hp took a little polkadel by saying

10:02 welcome to the managed services game

10:04 um i do think it's well timed though

10:06 when you look at the trends in the

10:07 industry because the

10:08 you know around data growth and things i

10:10 read a stat somewhere that's in 90

10:12 of all the data created has been created

10:14 in the last two years so

10:15 i t departments have kind of a tough

10:18 task if you're trying to do things the

10:19 traditional way

10:20 i can buy for today which means i'm

10:22 going to run a capacity in a month

10:24 or i can buy for two years from now and

10:27 so i'm going to significantly overpay

10:29 today

10:30 right but i'll be able to grow into that

10:31 and who knows i might run into that

10:33 capacity sooner or later

10:35 but what apex does it lets customers buy

10:37 their storage to compute things like

10:38 that

10:39 what they need today and then as they

10:41 grow they can continue to pay for it

10:43 like a service and so i think this whole

10:45 everything is a service is becoming real

10:47 uh you know cisco earlier this year

10:49 announced network as a service right

10:50 we've had

10:51 you know amazon with your compute

10:52 services so it makes sense that dell

10:54 would want to get into the service game

10:55 i think one of the more important

10:57 aspects of it would g

10:59 touchdown on your story was the apex

11:00 console where

11:02 it is a single pane of glass of

11:04 customers can make the entire life cycle

11:05 of all their

11:06 apex offering through through one place

11:08 so um

11:09 that was that was you know this has been

11:11 a long time coming for dell

11:12 michael's talked about you know dell as

11:14 a service for a while so

11:16 it's finally here yeah yeah they've

11:19 needed this

11:19 uh like i said they've been working on

11:21 this for a while it's very complicated

11:23 to do under the

11:24 under the hood yeah but it remains to be

11:26 seen now it's going to get out there

11:28 people are going to use it

11:29 we're going to get reviews of it we'll

11:30 see what happens all right indiana's

11:32 asking the event

11:33 no those are the main those are the main

11:35 things michael's keynote

11:37 alison dew who was one of the executives

11:40 there explained apex

11:42 very well and uh no that was pretty much

11:44 it you can

11:45 read the detail in e-week yeah that's

11:48 true so check that out b-week

11:50 uh next thing i want to talk about is

11:51 arista networks

11:53 uh they announced earnings this quarter

11:55 and like we talked about with juniper

11:57 and extreme last quarter they posted

11:59 good numbers they did issue a cautionary

12:02 statement about the chip shortage though

12:04 and uh that does seem like like uh it

12:07 hasn't been an issue yet but i think

12:09 we have not yet seen the impact of the

12:11 chip storage but i think it's coming

12:12 so uh i thought um as far as this port

12:15 goes though

12:16 aristosaw continued strengthened their

12:18 business they had strong beats across

12:20 the board

12:21 uh their revenue grew 28 eps grew 24

12:24 year-over-year albeit off they had

12:26 pretty easy comps before

12:28 uh i think um the big thing for our

12:31 roots though is everybody knows a risk

12:32 is the company that serves the cloud

12:34 titans

12:35 uh they grew their enterprise business

12:37 quite nicely too and i think

12:39 arista has finally over the hurdle

12:42 of understanding how to sell the

12:44 enterprises and so when you look at a

12:46 lot of the marketing that used to come

12:47 out of arista

12:48 it used to be about big you know b

12:50 buffers and elephant flows and things

12:53 like that

12:54 things that mean a lot to the cloud

12:56 titans but frankly don't mean a lot to

12:58 enterprises

12:59 and so they've invested a lot of money

13:01 into enterprise uh you know they've

13:03 acquired some companies mojo networks

13:05 things like that

13:06 um they are paying last week to manage

13:10 the aristo network through

13:11 um through a cloud portal uh it actually

13:14 you can manage their entire portfolio

13:16 from wi-fi

13:17 switching the data center um and um

13:21 i think arista has done um you know like

13:24 i said a nice job of making the pivot to

13:26 a company

13:27 that's enterprise i want to say

13:29 enterprise first they'll always be

13:30 noticed that they come to the service of

13:31 cloud plans but certainly the enterprise

13:33 is a much bigger part of that

13:34 and i think you know we will start to

13:36 see arista as a major enterprise

13:39 player in the networking world and

13:40 that's certainly good for everybody

13:42 i have a lot of respect for the company

13:44 i know jay shree allowed their ceo very

13:46 well

13:46 um they have been one of the most

13:48 innovative companies uh since they

13:50 launched over

13:51 you know 15 years ago now i think so

13:53 yeah yeah i knew andy

13:54 andy bechtelsheim who was one of the

13:56 founders uh

13:58 and uh andy was one of my favorite

14:00 people

14:02 he was one of the four founders of sun

14:05 brilliant guy and a man who talks so

14:08 fast you have to really

14:10 take fast notes to catch up with him

14:12 because he thinks so fast but he really

14:14 did a fabulous job

14:15 starting the company

14:20 yeah well it was andy's uh influence

14:22 there i think that really put that

14:23 company in the map when

14:24 you know when he does things people

14:26 notice and so i think the fact that he

14:28 managed to hire jay shreely from cisco

14:30 he was one of the founders that really

14:31 put the company on the map and they

14:33 stayed that way

14:34 absolutely um next thing i want to talk

14:36 about is uh

14:37 is juniper and we talked about their

14:39 earnings last week but they they came up

14:40 with kind of an interesting announcement

14:42 everybody talks about sassy today right

14:44 secure access service edge

14:45 which is the coming together of

14:46 networking and security

14:49 um they came they're taking a bit of a

14:51 different approach

14:53 to sassy so instead of rolling out a

14:56 whole bunch of new cloud-based security

14:59 services we're announcing a whole bunch

15:01 of partnerships to fill the apps

15:03 um what jupiter has done is they've

15:05 started the journey for their customers

15:07 getting it to sassy

15:10 with management right so they announced

15:12 this product called the juniper security

15:14 director cloud

15:15 and it's designed to provide customers

15:17 with that

15:18 input single pane of glass which

15:20 everybody has today for managing

15:22 security policies regardless of whether

15:24 the service is running on-prem or in the

15:26 cloud and i think

15:27 when i talk to customers about sassy

15:29 there's a lot of confusion of

15:31 do i need to have everything in the

15:32 cloud do i need to have it on-prem i

15:34 might have a big investment of stuff

15:36 on-prem

15:36 but i might want to move some stuff to

15:38 the cloud and so what juniper's done is

15:40 they've

15:40 thought about this today and i kind of

15:41 like to bring this up and there's lots

15:43 of sassy announcements that we don't

15:44 talk about but i thought this was kind

15:46 of unique

15:47 because they looked at sassy from the

15:49 operational standpoint

15:51 versus the technology and this shift is

15:54 going to be

15:54 take you know this is going to be a long

15:56 shift right we're not moving to sassy

15:58 overnight

15:58 but i do think from a junior perspective

16:02 the ability to have that end-to-end

16:04 visibility

16:06 be able to look at policies across the

16:07 board and be able to manage things

16:09 becomes important

16:10 versus having everything just be you

16:12 know here's more and more security

16:13 services which

16:14 has played enterprises in the past with

16:17 a lot of inefficiencies so

16:18 yeah you know close to them for that

16:20 yeah it's good to see the way companies

16:22 are embracing this

16:23 this trend and it's definitely a trend

16:25 but you're right it's it's just

16:27 in this nascent uh nascent days and

16:30 we'll see how sassy develops going

16:32 forward

16:34 yeah thanks i don't like the term sassy

16:35 but you know it looks like it's your

16:37 state yeah

16:38 yeah right uh next up on the docket

16:42 uh i know this is something you brought

16:43 up was the ibm

16:45 right they're doing something in the

16:46 silicon space right so two nanometer

16:48 silicon yeah can you imagine that i mean

16:51 how much

16:52 come on how much how small can you get i

16:54 mean

16:55 two nanometers is it's like smaller than

16:58 from what i understand

17:00 smaller than a human dna

17:03 molecule you know it's like what

17:06 and this um this blueprint that um

17:10 um ibm announced just today as a matter

17:13 of fact

17:14 will be eagerly looked at by all the

17:18 the chip manufacturers for sure

17:22 and just this i think house how

17:25 small these little these little chips or

17:29 these little um

17:31 processors are you can get 50 billion

17:34 that's with a b transistors on a

17:37 fingernail sized chip

17:39 50 billion uh how in the world that they

17:42 do that i don't know but two nanometers

17:44 there's not much

17:44 else there's not much left before going

17:46 virtual you know

17:48 but um these chips when they start being

17:51 manufactured later this year early next

17:53 year they're going to be

17:54 in everything if they work correctly

17:56 which

17:57 they probably will ibm's got quite a

17:59 history

18:00 of designing chips they don't make chips

18:03 of course but they design them and they

18:05 keep the

18:06 they license them and license out the

18:07 blueprints

18:09 they were they were among the first to

18:11 implement the seven nanometer and the

18:13 five

18:14 nanometer process uh they've also

18:17 been um leaders uh by designing single

18:20 cell dram

18:22 and a lot of other uh you know planning

18:25 so they plan and design things pretty

18:28 darn well

18:28 okay so guys where will we see these

18:30 being used yeah

18:32 well we won't see them on you know being

18:35 built or or manufactured until later

18:37 this year probably

18:39 around christmas and then after that

18:40 early next year but

18:42 these things will probably follow just

18:44 like the five nanometers and the seven

18:45 nanometer ones

18:47 they'll go into everything they'll go

18:48 into your laptop your desktop your phone

18:51 cars satellites and wherever they're

18:53 needed as long as they work

18:55 they will be powerful they'll be low

18:57 power

18:58 and uh they should be uh at least

19:01 according to the blueprints they should

19:02 be successful we'll see

19:05 yeah and from what i understand uh it's

19:07 been well documented that moore's law is

19:08 running out of steam

19:10 so obviously being able to get down to

19:12 two millimeters is important and it was

19:13 the

19:14 arrival of something called extreme

19:16 ultraviolet technology

19:18 that allows us to get this kind of

19:20 density and they're

19:21 from what i said they're doing it by uh

19:24 overlapping

19:25 um waves of light basically corrected

19:30 they've they've meaning intel and micron

19:33 for one example

19:34 um about six years seven years ago came

19:36 out with a thing called

19:38 3d cross point x cross point

19:41 in which you were trying to go

19:43 vertically with uh

19:45 with the chips to try to get more power

19:47 into them but that didn't really work

19:49 very well

19:49 and we're not seeing the results there

19:51 but they keep going smaller with these

19:53 um you know with these um processors and

19:57 uh

19:57 smaller seems to be okay so far we'll

19:59 see yeah

20:00 pretty soon uh you're right we'll just

20:02 have virtual processors there'll be

20:04 nothing in there so

20:05 um all right anyways this brings us to

20:07 the end of our show i do want to

20:09 touch on one more point um and it's a

20:11 sad one um

20:13 i found out last weekend that uh one of

20:15 my good friends lee doyle who most

20:17 people would know

20:18 as the president and founder of doyle

20:20 research uh formerly of idc he was one

20:22 of those

20:23 svps there uh passed away he uh from

20:26 what i understand he was kayaking and

20:28 he had a heart attack which is shocking

20:29 to me because

20:31 the guy was an extreme sports person he

20:33 was in better shape than almost anybody

20:34 i knew

20:35 so um you know but uh lee um

20:39 not a lot of people know this i actually

20:40 leave tried to hire me one time when i

20:42 was a yankee group but

20:43 i couldn't work on my non-compete issue

20:44 there so i'll end up staying at yankee

20:46 group but i always likely he was

20:48 genuinely

20:49 a very nice person and i think uh

20:52 you know chris you've worked with a lot

20:54 of analysts in the space and

20:56 some are nice people some are nice

20:57 people but but lee was just a genuinely

21:00 nice guy he always took time to say

21:01 hello

21:02 um you know he he certainly enjoyed

21:04 living life as well and so

21:06 um you know lee um uh goodbye uh

21:09 you'll be uh you're gone but you won't

21:12 be uh forgotten you there's a whole

21:14 bunch of analysts in this industry

21:16 that work for lee um you know and other

21:18 product people that

21:19 uh you know so in a lot of ways he lives

21:21 on so

21:22 yeah yeah you know we all work with a

21:24 lot of different people but i'll tell

21:26 you

21:26 it's so much more satisfying worthwhile

21:29 and fun to work with people who are

21:31 good people who are good to you and kind

21:35 and thoughtful and i'm sure he sounds

21:37 like he was one of those

21:39 yeah he was and so uh i'm going to wrap

21:41 up this episode of z

21:42 cast uh with a moment of silence for lee

21:45 so

21:45 his picture come up and then we'll fade

21:47 away so anyways chris thanks for joining

21:49 me i'll see you next week

21:50 uh but for now uh let's just have a

21:56 moment

22:24 you