Good day folks. It's Chris Gonzo Gonde here again for another NetApp newsworthy minute and today we're talking about the Microsoft Azure VMware solution. NetApp have had a strategic alliance for many years with both VMware and Microsoft and we've recently made some exciting announcements together. So to help us learn more about this three-way partnership, I'm delighted to introduce you to my two guests today. Anthony Higgins, staff cloud architect at VMware, and Sean Jacob, AVS specialist and global black belt at Microsoft. Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome, gentlemen. >> Great to be here. Thank you. >> Hey, guys. >> Anthony, I'm going to start with you. Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at VMware. >> Uh, so I've been with VMware for about 18 months now. I actually joined VMware uh to take up the opportunity of getting involved with uh the Azure VMware solution. Um I could see the opportunity uh you know in the marketplace for this solution partly having come from a managed service provider. Um I previously uh had a lot of involvement, many years of involvement as a VMware uh partner and also as a Microsoft partner and this was the opportunity to put the best of both of those companies together to uh you know meet some really uh strong needs in the market and um you know I could see a lot of opportunity with ABS and uh you know obviously happy to be here talking about ANF as the sort of a com competing oh sorry a complementing solution. um for ABS. >> Awesome. And Sean, over to you. Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Microsoft and also how does one get the coveted title of global black belt? >> Yeah, funny that. Uh yeah, global black belt. It's funny. I haven't um ever done a day of karate in my life, so I'm glad to get that sort of title [laughter] at Microsoft. But uh yes, so I've been at Microsoft for about two years now and role for about a few months now. But yeah, so theGBB role for short is really thatsort of complimentary sales arm for our specialists and the field as well because these services like ABS is it's quite a specialized solution and we've got a couple of those like um SAP andother data solutions as well. So for anyone in the field that's selling it with customers um having that you know in-depth knowledge of a product like ABS or something like that isnot something that's easy to get around. And so for us our role is basically to be thatsales specialist, the technical specialist for that product and ensure the product su success around the globe. So really complementing every other field and field seller andsolution architect as well. >> A good stuff. Um so look well thanks both of you for joining us for this newsworthy minute. Um Anthony, I'm going to start with you. Um in terms of today's session, what's your experience so far on the Azure VMware solution and in terms of uptake and activity? Uh look, the uh the growth with the product, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, uh where I'm uh most active. Uh the uptake's been really great. Um we've seen a lot of growth over a very short amount of time and uh it's keeping my sales specialists andmyself very busy. Um we, you know, there's many opportunities that we get on a weekly basis. So, uh growth has been fantastic andit continues tomove in that direction as well. >> That's brilliant. And um Sean uh you know from an AVS perspective andMicrosoft um what have you seen that's most notable from the you know VMware cloud or the Azure VMware solution uptake and activity from your end? >> Yeah it's uh it'sinteresting so in uh it depends on the market uh but we're seeing huge uptake now in Australia um and some other parts of the world like the US and Europe and other parts of Asia. Um the reason being is especially now so ifno one knows the history ABS uh started as a service which was almost like a third party service which was with another product which is then bought over by another cloud but since then in the last twoand a half years we've had to we we've made the investments and made a first party service there's a lot of engineering backing behind it we now own it sell it you know support it everything is all under the Microsoft umbrella so because of that I think there's that trust aspect with customers. So when people say ABS and we sell ABS, we're selling it as our product and our service. So what we're seeing now with customers around, you know, the more I guess the bigger market is people see that value and now are migrating their workloads fromon-prem VMware intoABS and then getting that same look and feel and same trust and support that they would normally get with any other Azure service. So it's really helped thatstory. >> Oh, brilliant. And look speaking of thirst firstparty services um I mentioned in my introduction that NetApp and VMware and NetApp and Microsoft individually we've had a strategic alliance for many years but most recently we've uh announced supporting the AS offerings by providing the ability to use the Azure NetApp files native storage service uh within Microsoft Azure for AVS. So I'm keen to get both of your thoughts collectively on what are the benefits for our partners and our customers uh with this recent announcement and um Anthony I'll start with you. >> Yeah sure. Look uh one of my roles in my position um which is a little bit different to some of my colleagues is uh to do some analysis in terms of uh cloud economics and often a key finding as part of the sizing of solutions uh with Azure VMware solution um is that you know in many cases customers require more storage in terms of nodes than they do require additional memory or CPU. So for these storagebound solutions, it's uh you know it's quite an advantage having a platform whereby data can be offloaded onto a lowerc cost storage tier rather than adding additional nodes to your hypercon converge cluster anduh Azure NetApp files is a key um ingredient in those sizings and those cloud economic studies whereby we can show additional savings with AS by leveraging additional storage tiers through Azure NetApp. files. So, it's a key ingredient at the moment in alot of opportunities that I'm working on and I think that's just only going to continue uh you know as Azure Net App files um becomes more popular with the customers and webegin to get some traction in the market with ABS and ANF. >> That's fantastic. andSean, you know, from a Microsoft and an AVS perspective, uh, you know, what are your thoughts on the announcement of the Azure NetApp files support for Azure VMware solution? Uh, and you know, the opportunities that are out there for our partner community and our customers. >> Yeah, I'll uh it'sgood actually. So, it'sreally come at a good time. Um as Anthony said, so theprice the business case for some customers that are very storage heavy and then they you know from compute perspective they just for example need 10 nodes but then from storage perspective they need 20 you know prior to this they'd have to purchase those 20 nodes just to meet that storage requirement which doesn't it kills some of the business cases. So having this as an ability to just and I've used it works really well. So, you know, attaching ANF as a data store to the privatecloud and just seeing it there and being able to use it just like any other VSAN data store ishuge and it really it's a seamless experience. The one thing that um it hasn't been talked about that much yet, but I'm sure will be isthat use case for DR. So we have a thirdparty partner uh called Jetstream for example who are now integrating or providing support for an data stores and how what that unlocks is basically from a DR perspective if customers are you know replicating data from a primary region to a secondary ABS region that data doesn't necessarily have to liveon VSAN it can live on a data store that is attached to the cluster but you know it'soff offloaded it's separate so it scales independently um and then during DR are simply it'sjust you can boot the VM up because the data store is still attached it'srunning cheaper then the only um I guess what's required at that point is scale up the no nodes or even storage votion that if you want that from uh ANF into VSAN so it gives different use cases uh the Python community with other third party ISVS can leverage ANF for other use cases as well so really there can be other things that can be uh you know provided in that sense thanks to this uh this announcementThat's brilliant. So what I'm hearing is uh you know those kind of storage intensive workloads with independent scaleout capability. I'm hearing about data protection disaster recovery. I'm hearing about hybrid cloud with replicating and storage votion. One of the most uh brilliant things I've ever seen throughout my technology career. I remember my head exploding the first time I saw votion and then storage votion. you know, completely nondisruptiveuh migration activity of workloads, especially now in a hybrid cloud world. Uh you know, some very important um features and functions. Um thank you both gentlemen for um joining me on a NetApp newsworthy minute. And uh if you're out there considering the Azure VMware solution, come speak to us uh at VMware, at Microsoft or at NetApp to learn more about how we can accelerate and simplify uh your hybrid cloud journey and your ongoing activities uh with Microsoft Azure. Sean and Anthony, I hope to um have you back at some point in the future. We'll talk about some success stories and how um customers have leveraged our combined um solution offerings. Thanks again both for your time.