Futurum Research Senior Analyst and VP of Sales Steven Dickens talks with Michael Daubman, Director of Product Management, Broadcom Mainframe Software at Broadcom, about the company’s MRI software and how it gives clients a look at the health of their system.
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Transcript:
Steven Dickens: Hello and welcome. My name’s Steven Dickens and we’re here at Share for Futurum Research, live from the show floor, and I’m joined by my good friend, Mike, thanks for joining us.
Mike Daubman: Oh, thanks. One of my favorite things to do is talk about myself. So this should be good.
Steven Dickens: I’m looking forward to this. I’m looking forward to it. It’s great to be in person. You can feel the buzz on the floor; people starting to get back, see each other, this community thrives off this. It’s really good.
Mike Daubman: Yeah, you really feel an energy. And once you get past the 10 minutes of mandatory discussion about, “What did you do for the past two years?” It’s been really, really exciting.
Steven Dickens: So let’s tell the listeners and watchers here what you do for Broadcom.
Mike Daubman: Sure. So I’m the director of product management for what we call core infrastructure. So that’s a lot of products that our clients are using to manage their enterprise; things like XCOM or some session manager tools, like TPX. Also, MRI is in that portfolio.
Steven Dickens: So Mike, tell us a little bit about… Broadcom’s got a lot of sessions at the show. What are the big things you’re talking about whilst you’re here?
Mike Daubman: Sure. There’s a really cool theme, I don’t know if you can tell my shirt, of us talking about a sort of a Matrix theme. And as part of that, we’re really uncovering the mainframe and showing where it really is. So some of the stuff we’re doing on the expo floor actually is our MRI software, just like MRI doctor software; can look at the health of your machine. We can do live demos, if you’re brave of your own data and show you how your system could be better optimized, what software you could be taking better advantage of, new features you could be doing, security that you could be getting an advantage of. So it’s one of the cool things we’re showing.
Steven Dickens: So really a health check of kind of your current system and how you could be improving that?
Mike Daubman: Exactly. One of the cool things about MRI, and if you do, Ashesh on the show floor, people get to talk to him, we have these software solution reports, these SSRS, which you’re entitled to just by having the pieces of Broadcom software. So there’s no cost for being able to do that.
Steven Dickens: Also, this is a free value add to your customers to help them sort of check the health of their mainframe and see where they are?
Greg Lotko: Hey guys. And I got to tell you, at Broadcom, we’re all about investment and driving more value to our customers. That comes from doing things like these no cost analysis to the environment, investing in skills, and investing and adding great new people to our team.
Steven Dickens: So Greg you’ve joined us. Tell us a little bit about what you are seeing from the executives that you are talking to at the show.
Greg Lotko: A lot of excitement. I mean, as Mike said, everybody has been eager to get back together in person, but people really have this new realization and appreciation for the platform. They’ve seen how it was able to handle and expand and be flexible, all the upticks on everything going on online digitally, with COVID the pandemic, everything that was driving more of an online presence. And the reality is that’s the new norm. It’s with us going forward, everybody’s interacting digitally, people aren’t using cash so much, people aren’t going to the store; they’re having everything come to them.
Steven Dickens: We’ve seen this digital transformation. I think we’ve seen probably the last five… We’ve seen five or six years’ worth of digital transformation, it happened in the last couple of years. We’ve seen that consistently as we get briefings. Is that what you are seeing when you hear and speak to your customers?
Greg Lotko: So to really make sure you get to see this investment, I’m going to leave you in his real capable hands.
Steven Dickens: Fantastic.
Greg Lotko: Good to be seeing you guys.
Steven Dickens: Thanks for joining us, Greg.
Greg Lotko: Love the interaction. Love being able to see everybody out there. Go get them Mike.
Mike Daubman: Thanks Greg. Nice to see you.
Steven Dickens: So the boss man comes in; no pressure.
Mike Daubman: I know. See, nothing.
Steven Dickens: So Mike, what else are you seeing whilst you here? There are lots of clients here for the first time in a couple of years, chance to get that feedback in the hallways. What else are you hearing?
Mike Daubman: One of the consistent topics that we’ve been talking about. And, and I think all of us in the mainframe ecosystem has been this idea that the mainframe is a part of everything we do in business, right? It’s there it’s the most secure platform. It used to be this platform that our customers considered their competitive advantage, right? They would advertise the fact that they were running a mainframe.
So we did a lot of investment. And I think our clients have done a lot of investment using the APIs that we’ve released, the openness to this platform, and I’m absolutely starting to see the fruits of that, right? So we’re seeing partners who are integrating better with our software. We’re seeing brand new skills, newer people to the mainframe coming, sometimes not even knowing that they’re reaching in and attaching their cloud software to mainframe software. It’s very cool stuff.
Steven Dickens: Seeing those APIs and a lot of that openness come through to the mainframe and that’s been a consistent theme from some of our conversations. What would be the three key takeaways from people, either watching online, or here at the show that they should be taking from Broadcom’s presence?
Mike Daubman: So I think we talked a lot about it. So I’ll start with Open First strategy that we have at Broadcom. I think we have a lot of strong evidence with some of work that our clients are doing, some of the partnerships that are coming out of our partners that are presenting here, utilizing things like our restful APIs of our software. So I think the sort of the proof is in the pudding that our investment in the last three years has been worthwhile. So we’re seeing clients take advantage of this Open First strategy and expose this value of the mainframe much further in their enterprise. So, that would be one.
Since I covered MRI, I’d like to talk about it again, and especially because we have a presence here at the actual conference; that is a really cool cloud hybrid cloud solution that we’re actually using to give value to the mainframe, right?
So we’re sort of demonstrating that ability to connect what is the cloud world with the mainframe world. And so to living that service, as a service. It’s continuously improving. More and more reports are coming out all the time. I would love people to take this as a chance to go learn more about it. And there’s plenty more out there, and if they’re here, they can talk to Ashesh on the show floor, and if they’re brave, run their own report with their own data.
And then last there’s been a lot of good DevOps content. So really a modern DevOps approach to developing on the mainframe, to developing with the mainframe. Definitely take a look at that stuff.
Steven Dickens: Mike, great conversation. Loads going on with Broadcom this week. Really great to see you again in purpose.
Mike Daubman: Great to see you too.
Steven Dickens: So thanks for joining us on this episode of Futurum Research, live from the show floor. We’ll see you again next time.
Author Information
Regarded as a luminary at the intersection of technology and business transformation, Steven Dickens is the Vice President and Practice Leader for Hybrid Cloud, Infrastructure, and Operations at The Futurum Group. With a distinguished track record as a Forbes contributor and a ranking among the Top 10 Analysts by ARInsights, Steven's unique vantage point enables him to chart the nexus between emergent technologies and disruptive innovation, offering unparalleled insights for global enterprises.
Steven's expertise spans a broad spectrum of technologies that drive modern enterprises. Notable among these are open source, hybrid cloud, mission-critical infrastructure, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and FinTech innovation. His work is foundational in aligning the strategic imperatives of C-suite executives with the practical needs of end users and technology practitioners, serving as a catalyst for optimizing the return on technology investments.
Over the years, Steven has been an integral part of industry behemoths including Broadcom, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and IBM. His exceptional ability to pioneer multi-hundred-million-dollar products and to lead global sales teams with revenues in the same echelon has consistently demonstrated his capability for high-impact leadership.
Steven serves as a thought leader in various technology consortiums. He was a founding board member and former Chairperson of the Open Mainframe Project, under the aegis of the Linux Foundation. His role as a Board Advisor continues to shape the advocacy for open source implementations of mainframe technologies.
