Dell Technologies World 2025 | Bob Venero, Future Tech

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Bob Venero

CEO & Founder

Future Tech Enterprise, Inc.

play_circle_outline Shift from theoretical to practical AI applications

play_circle_outline Exploring the Shift Back to On-Premises Infrastructure and the Critical Role of Edge Computing Security

play_circle_outline Revolutionizing AI and Infrastructure: Future Success Predictions and Dell's Financial Impact

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Bob Venero, Future Tech

Bob Venero

CEO & Founder Future Tech Enterprise, Inc.

Bob Venero, president and chief executive officer of Future Tech Enterprise Inc., joins theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Jackie McGuire at Dell Technologies World 2025 to reflect on a year of transformation and recognition. Their conversation highlights Future Tech’s evolution and its recent honor as Dell’s Federal Partner of the Year.

Venero shares insights on the fast-changing digital landscape, emphasizing the role of AI and the rise of strategic mega-partnerships. He also discusses how security and edge computing must go hand in hand to ensure enter... Read more

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What is the focus of this year's conference and how does it differ from the previous year's conference? add

What factors should be considered when deciding whether to keep an application on-prem or move it to the cloud? add

What recent changes has Dell made that could have a significant financial impact on software suppliers? add

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Bob Venero, Future Tech

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Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon, Dell fans and welcome back to our last interview of Dell Tech World here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. My name's Savannah Peterson. Absolutely thrilled to be joined with the one and only Jackie McGuire for this segment.

Jackie McGuire

>> What's up, twin? - I know. I'm so pumped.

Savannah Peterson

>> We get to close out the show together. We've had a great time in the analyst program all week.

Jackie McGuire

>> We have. - And this is just a fun one.

Savannah Peterson

>> You've had a lot of influence and there's literally no one else I would rather have on this desk right now for this final segment as we take it across the line then Bob. Bob, what a pleasure. Great to have you back on the show.

Jackie McGuire

>> Thank you. Great to be here.

Savannah Peterson

>> How are the boys doing? We talked about your three boys last time.

Jackie McGuire

>> Boys are doing great. I got one here. He's running around crazy.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. He was on the show last year too, right?

>> Yep. He's here. The other two are making things happen in headquarters and all over the country, so it's been great. I love having the family close to that business.

Savannah Peterson

>> It touched me. I remembered that from last year and I thought it was real sweet. We gave him a shout-out on the show last time-

>> Yes. - ...

Savannah Peterson

>> if you recall, which was really, really touching. Bob, it feels like the entire world has changed since the last time you and I were sitting on this news desk just 12 short months ago.

>> Yes. Yeah. - Talk to me about what's going on at Future

Savannah Peterson

>> Tech and in your world in the interim there.

>> Yeah. We've changed a lot too in the last year. A lot of excitement for us around this event. We were Dell's federal partner of the year.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh my gosh. Congratulations. - Thank you.

>> I didn't know that. That's a big deal.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's their top award for all the federal partners,

>> so we're really excited about that. Very well-earned. It'll be interesting to see next year based on all the geopolitical fund that's going on, how that looks.

>> That's one way to put it.

Jackie McGuire

>> What are you talking about? What are you talking about?

>> A couple of things going on. A couple of things going on.

Savannah Peterson

>> But it's been great. We've done a lot from a change perspective in the organization from last year to this year. We hired a CRO, somebody who had been at Dell for 18 years and then he brought on an entire team of folks based on Dell making some adjustments to their staff and employees, based on their embracing of AI and using AI to do a lot of the work. There were some transitions around people and those people have come to Future Tech. So I think in the last two months we've added 60 people into the Future Tech world.

>> Oh my God. Hey. - Wow. That's crazy.

Savannah Peterson

>> I'll just give you a little shout for that. You know this-

Jackie McGuire

>> Yeah.

>> A little shout. My CFO is like, "No, no.

Savannah Peterson

>> " But it's been good, but we're trying to really set ourselves up for the pace of change that's going to be coming and a lot of the enactments.

>> That's already here. - It is amazing how quickly

>> things are moving right now.

Savannah Peterson

>> Isn't it wild? We've never moved faster.

Savannah Peterson

>> I feel like it's such a cool time to have our jobs.

>> Absolutely, a hundred percent. It's cool. But we definitely are going to be on for the next-

>> Yeah, baby. - ...

Savannah Peterson

>> probably two, three years on making these things work

>> and happen that are out there.

>> I think as my friend Joe Hall puts it,

Jackie McGuire

>> we fly very close to the sun.

Savannah Peterson

>> That is my truth.

>> Oh, yeah. My ass only gets burnt sometimes.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> I felt a little burnt this morning. I'm just going to...

>> I wanted no comment on that one, folks. I'm just going to

Savannah Peterson

>> no comment.

>> And I'm in Fort Lauderdale, so it takes a lot to burn.

>> Yeah. So you get to see a lot of different tech

Savannah Peterson

>> and work with a lot of different companies which you all do. What are some of the trends that you're seeing right now?

Jackie McGuire

>> Well, I mean look, obviously, and I think we said this a little bit last year, AI is the theme of the conference.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. - Last year was a little bit more theoretical.

Savannah Peterson

>> Agree. - This year, it's practice. It is absolutely here.

>> It's happening. We're seeing it in all of the things

>> as it relates to chat, automation, the driving of the technology that's happening across the entire globe from an AI perspective, GPUs, large language. It's crazy. So last year was theory, now it's in practice, and now it's how do we make those things work within the organizations that we support and really trying to identify what AI actually is.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. - Because it's kind of like that, you know what.

>> It's KITT from Knight Rider, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah. - That's what I want.

Jackie McGuire

>> Exactly. Well, literally, I have a Tesla or Cybertruck

>> and I don't drive anymore.

Jackie McGuire

>> The AI is so good.

>> Right. - I put in the address and I just sit back.

>> This is really, really cool

Savannah Peterson

>> and that's tied to a lot of the technology that we're doing and supporting and even NVIDIA and Dell and the GPUs, but the ecosystem is growing amazingly of these partners.

>> That's what I think has been one of the...

Savannah Peterson

>> I'm glad you brought that up, Bob, because one of the things that's been remarkable that I've noticed is the ecosystem play here, and I feel like with the Dell AI factory, Dell was really going out in front. I mean, I remember I was joking with Michael last year. He had Jensen and Bill McDermott on stage with him.

>> Yeah, I was saying. - And I was like, oh yeah, it's just

Savannah Peterson

>> you and all your billionaire friends coming up with a solution to the future. But we're seeing a level of co-innovation and collaboration that we haven't seen historically, and it's actually creating far better solutions. It's very interesting.

>> And it's a better model because I think historically-

Jackie McGuire

>> It is. - ...

Jackie McGuire

>> the partner model has always been very

Savannah Peterson

>> like you have to pick one. And I think Dell is in this really amazing position where they can say, "No, we're going to work with everybody."

>> Yeah.

Jackie McGuire

>> And because almost nobody can keep up

Savannah Peterson

>> with Dell on the hardware side, they get to choose that. And I think I always talk about the art of war and if we want to beat our enemies, we need to think like our enemies. And I don't see a lot of hackers and threat actors out there gatekeeping information. They open source everything. They share everything in forums, and if we want to beat them, we have to stop this whole, the ecosystem can only be you and your two favorite partners. It can't be like that.

>> Right. - Yeah. Agreed. It's a game changer,

>> the announcements that Dell made right around the,

Savannah Peterson

>> we'll call it the hypervisor hell that is out there that our customers are all experiencing right now, where we won't name the company is strong arming a lot of the individuals, corporations and Dell's approach on making that open and giving choice is tremendous for the partners, but also for the customers that are served. And I think that's going to be key to Dell's and continued growth and success in the environment. The AI factory is genius, right? Because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of what people need to do and we're adopting that. So we're working with Dell on taking an AI factory and considering... Not considering, but making it a AI proving ground. So we're going to take the AI factory. We're going to then go to our customer and we're going to say, "What are the use cases you're trying to do? What are the success criteria you want? I'm going to give you the factory for free. " We're going to test it, we're going to vet it, and then based on the success of what we do, then you're going to consume it. So it helps them in driving the direction they want to go from an AI perspective because AI could have been like when it was cloud, well, what's cloud and what's cloud to you? And

>> Oh my gosh. Yeah.

>> And then AI, now what's AI to you?

>> And so really understanding

Savannah Peterson

>> and defining that is key to driving some of these things that we're doing.

Savannah Peterson

>> No, it is. I actually love that you brought up the cloud analogy. Actually, I threw a party many years ago titled F the Cloud because I was like, it's just a rack of servers in the middle of Kansas, like somebody else's computer.

Jackie McGuire

>> Was Dell- - This isn't a thing, but I do.

Savannah Peterson

>> This is actually... It's so relevant that you brought that up because to your point, we were talking about all this hype and all this hypothetical, and that's sort of why that term cloud was invented is we needed something to attach to this different type of storage, which was a little bit different. So I'm pumped because you have such a great lens on the landscape. What are some of the really exciting use cases or success stories that you've been seeing recently?

Savannah Peterson

>> So I think when we look at things, edge is becoming very, very important, right?

>> Yes. - And we always talk about, PC is so important to us

>> and we've always been on that bandwagon

Savannah Peterson

>> of PC is probably one of the most important tools outside of your employees. And people are like, "How could you say that? Why would you say that?" I'm like, "Well, how do you access the most important information you have in your company? How do you access your ERP? How do you access your factory floor systems?

>> Right. - Everything's done via a PC.

>> Now, taking that PC

Savannah Peterson

>> and enabling it to do more, to being intelligent, to having a GPU, an NPU and a CPU, and having the ability to do more of those things at the edge and empower the people to be even better and stronger, it's just amazing. So we're seeing a lot of thought and adoption around how do we empower at the edge? How do we leverage the models that we do? But security is key to that, right?

>> Yes. - And the security around

>> how do we protect the data?

Savannah Peterson

>> You brought up bad actors, right? The bad actors don't give a crap, right?

>> Yeah. - They're going to do whatever they need to do.

>> There are not going to be any guardrails

Savannah Peterson

>> around what they're going to do. We need to be able to air gap, to firewall and to make sure that your data is protected and safe. And if you don't do that as an organization, then you're putting yourself at risk. So many companies are just letting their employees go out on chat and putting their data and their information, "Hey, does this Word document look good? " That has proprietary... And that becomes available.

Savannah Peterson

>> A conversation Jackie and I have all the time.

>> I had a marketing manager tell me one

Jackie McGuire

>> time that it was okay. They were using ChatGPT, their own personal account to sort through a contact list for customers because they told it to only return the ones that said yes.

>> Oh my God. - Oh, I just felt that in my heart.

Jackie McGuire

>> He's like, "But I told it to filter only by the ones

Savannah Peterson

>> who said yes, we could contact them.

>> " And I'm like, "But you still put all the ones that said no into ChatGPT. " Yeah, I think... So let me ask you though. We spent the last 10 years in hundreds of billions of dollars because everything was going to live in the cloud. Are you seeing pushback to the, "Hey, guess what? Now we're going to move back to the edge"? Does it make sense to customers? Are they salty about it? Because I'm a little salty about it.

Savannah Peterson

>> So here's how we look at it. We have always maintained that on- prem was the best way to go. Now with some caveats. So we'll do a business analysis and we'll say, okay, how much does it cost you if that application is down per minute?

Jackie McGuire

>> Right. - If it's $2, put it in the cloud.

>> If it's a million dollars a minute, keep it on-prem. Build your guardrails around it. Secure your data and your information because if that goes down and it will, in the cloud, there will be an outage, then what are you going to do? How do you answer to it? How do you control it? There will be, and I say this to everybody I've talked to here at the show, all of our customers and we have over a hundred customers here.

Jackie McGuire

>> Oh, fun. - What is...

Savannah Peterson

>> Do you believe that there will be an outage, that there will be a major event? Yes. And there will be. Because if you look at the bad actors, are they going after the small on-prem company or environment? No, they're trying the hyperscalers. They're attacking AWS. They're attacking Azure. They're talking Google Cloud, right? They're hitting all these things. And when there is an example of a major outage, CrowdStrike.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, I was going to say elephant in the room there.

Jackie McGuire

>> Yeah, you're going to be down and when you're down, are you going to be able to recover?

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. - No. Because I was sleeping on the floor

Jackie McGuire

>> of the Raleigh Airport.

>> Yeah. Right. And so those are the things that-

>> Right.

>> Exactly. - ... that companies have to look at

Savannah Peterson

>> and look what we've done and Dell has done to empower that is the consumption models to be able to do on-prem, but consume it by the drink because that's what customers want. Why did you go to the cloud? It was easier, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Right. - Number one, it was less expensive

>> and they realized it wasn't.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, that backfired. - Until you move that data back

Jackie McGuire

>> and forth or between clouds.

Jackie McGuire

>> Bingo. - Yeah. I wrote three years ago, I was like,

Jackie McGuire

>> we have over-rotated to the cloud. We're doing regex and data processing in the cloud. That can all happen at the edge with a little bit of observability and redundancy. This makes no sense to me.

>> It's insane. And customers that put development in the cloud, so dev and what is dev? Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Savannah Peterson

>> A hundred percent. - Cha-ching, cha-ching, cha-

>> ching each time. So on-prem, we're seeing a big move back. We're seeing a lot of companies and CIOs saying, "Hey, we need to figure out how to get off cloud and be less reliant on cloud and deciding what applications that need to go that direction. " So that's a big piece of what we're doing.

Savannah Peterson

>> From the research I've seen, it's between 75 and 85% of executives saying that they're moving things back on-prem which is so interesting. And I mean on-prem can be an edge device depending on the situation as well, which makes so much sense, an interesting intersection of the AI, PC right now. Bob, I got one final question for you because I... And I'm so keen to hear your answer.

>> All right. - Because so much has changed since the last

Savannah Peterson

>> time you and I sat here.

>> What do you hope to be able to say when we're at Dell Tech World 2026, that you can't yet say today?

>> That was federal partner four years in a row because it's three. That would be cool. I think what I'd love to be able to say is that the actions that we took in designing from an infrastructure, from a support perspective, from an AI enablement have actually happened, and customers are seeing the ROI that they expected, and we're in a much safer place as it relates to that. And the diversity around the hypervisors has been able to scale. And I think if we can pull those things together, the ramp is going to be insane. The other thing I will mention I know is that what Dell has done recently with creating the opportunity where you have a seven to one ratio right around the old infrastructure to the new, can make a huge financial impact to the cost that the software suppliers are providing at the core level, right? Everybody's moved to how many cores, okay, we're going to charge you per core. We have a customer that has 300,000 cores, right? So if they have 300,000 cores, and let's say VMware does $300 a core, that's a reoccurring major cost.

>> That is a fat X. - If we can take seven to one ratio,

>> bring those 300 down by seven times x, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> What does that mean from a cost savings perspective? And then Dell will be the de facto. That's who we're going to as a company. So I'm really jazzed to see how that's going to be and we should hit a billion dollars by next year.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh my gosh. So many fun predictions. Bob, I knew I could count on you for a great answer to that one. Wow. Thank you so much for coming on today and for every time you come on.

>> Of course. - It is truly a joy.

Savannah Peterson

>> And I got to say thank you to our fabulous

>> production team over there. Thank you all so much, gentlemen.

>> Our production crew is the best in the business.

Savannah Peterson

>> Including the friends that we have.

Jackie McGuire

>> Girly, I'm looking at you. You saved my voice today.

>> Yes. - And to the whole team that was here,

Savannah Peterson

>> Dave Vellante, who has been sitting on the desk

Jackie McGuire

>> with me all week, and to everyone at Dell who has done such a fantastic job of curating our guests and the analyst program for us, it's really just been an absolutely banner week. We hope you've had as much fun as we've had this week, wherever you might be. We're here in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, signing off for the last time at Dell Tech World. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.