Caitlin Gordon, Dell EMC & Muneyb Minhazuddin, VMware | Dell Technologies World 2019
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 30/04/2019

Caitlin Gordon, Dell EMC & Muneyb Minhazuddin, VMware, sits down with Stu Miniman & Rebecca Knight at Dell Tech World 2019 in Las Vegas, NV.

#DellTechWorld #theCUBE #WomenInTech

https://siliconangle.com/2019/05/20/qa-dellvmware-partner-improve-external-storage-cloud-native-workloads-delltechworld/

Q&A: Dell and VMware upgrade external storage for cloud-native workloads

The evolution of workloads is resulting in new data center infrastructure and design needs. Developers and operation teams are shifting strategies toward a cloud-native and hybrid-cloud application, which demands improved storage requirements. As such, Dell Technologies Inc. and VMware Inc. are strengthening external storage solutions, according to Caitlin Gordon (pictured, left), vice president of product marketing at Dell EMC. 

“A lot of our customers want to use the cloud for very specific use cases,” she said. “They want to replace tape, and they want to archive to the cloud. So that’s really the cloud-enabled infrastructure piece. It is really about getting to: How do I leverage the cloud for disaster recovery, for archiving, for analytics?”

Gordon and Muneyb Minhazuddin (pictured, right), vice president of product marketing, cloud, security and workspace solutions at VMware, spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and Stu Miniman (@stu), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Dell Technologies World event in Las Vegas. They discussed Dell EMC and VMware collaboration, as well as advancements in external cloud storage (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

[Editor’s note: The following answers have been condensed for clarity.]

Knight: Give us some examples of how you are jointly coming up with solutions?

Gordon: When we’re looking to use the cloud, external storage is an important part of the [Dell cloud] strategy. So what we’ve already done is we’ve collaborated together to validate [VMware Cloud Founcation] with both Unity and PowerMax. And that’s really the beginning of our journey together. To enable that external storage to be part of the workload domain, to have SDDC Manager not just manage the other parts of the infrastructure, but to manage external storage.

Miniman: Give us a little bit about that difference about … 2019 storage with Dell EMC and VMware versus the past.

Minhazuddin: I think … the integrations in the past were … API, interface-driven. Now — like you point out — it’s co-engineered starting with the solutions like VxRail and Cloud Foundation. The co-engineering makes a big difference because we’re sharing roadmaps.

Whether it’s Cloud Foundation, a full stack with lifecycle, SDDC Manager, that kind of integration only happens with co-engineering.

Knight: How would you describe the different cultures and how you can reflect each other and collaborate with each other in different ways?

Minhazuddin: It was tough initially to kind of figure out how do you … bring a cohesive roadmap where you’re making 12 months infrastructure investment in a roadmap to three months of software cycle. But I think it’s actually come together really well.

Gordon: That kind of legacy on Dell EMC’s side has come from the infrastructure, from the bottom up, and then the VMware has come from the top down. And bringing those two together, although our development cycles have a different kind of timespan against them, we’re trying to solve the same problems for our customers.

Miniman: There were things that needed to do the infrastructure layer, and there’s stuff that happens on the application side. I’d love to hear how this comes together, what’s in the product today, and how are you developing these together?

Gordon: Another interesting example that almost crosses those two is CloudIQ. It’s an agile-developed software application that … runs on a Dell EMC cloud. We now have that not just across our core storage portfolio, but we have that now with VM Health Insights. I think that just shows you how we do have those pieces of the culture coming together and trying to bring these solutions together.


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Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Dell Technologies World 2019 event. (* Disclosure: Dell Technologies Inc. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Dell nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)