David Goulden, the CEO for EMC Information Infrastructure, provided an update on the company’s evolution and shared his thoughts on EMC’s federation of companies in a live interview with theCUBE co-hosts John Furrier and Dave Vellante at the EMC World 2014 conference.

Those attending the conference were able to see the federation in action, Goulden explained. “You’ve got EMC, VMware, and Pivotal, each innovating individually,” noting that customers are more and more interesting in them working together.

“They are asking us to come together. That is the demonstration of the federation working. We’re all investing heavily, we’re all breaking grounds in our markets.”

Giving an update on his own role within EMC, Goulden  said he had been running the EMC Information Infrastructure (II) business for almost two years now.

“It was great to get the CEO title in January,” he recalled. “It was also part of the affirmation of the federation being three companies. Ever since I took over, I’ve had all the production teams working closely with me.  Now I spend more time on the customer side of the role,” and collaborating with the other comp in the federation.

Asked what kind of flexibility the federation offered from a financial standpoint, Goulden said “there is some real value in it. When we report to Wall Street, we report the consolidated results of the company. From the financing point of view, we can really leverage it” to make acquisitions and move people around.

Goulden detailed that EMC can attract better rates as a federation than as individual companies, making it an “efficient way to get the fire power of the federation focused on parts of the company” that need it most.

Asked if he was happy with the performance of Pivotal as part of the federation and its financial results, Goulden said that “Pivotal is on track. We did exactly what we said we’d do last year. We put some fairly specific goals on the table, Pivotal did all that. We further refined the business model this year.”

Pivotal reported 41 percent growth. The biggest challenge with Pivotal is responding to the opportunities, Goulden explained, noting the team is mostly focused on research and development, and that “the biggest challenge is spending time in the right places.”

From a bookings perspective for the EMC II business, storage product booking numbers were up, Goulden stated. “The revenue was down because of changes in backlog. We don’t report bookings, but we did tell people what the booking growth was. Our installed base has not changed over the last few quarters.”

Asked to comment on the evolution of ViPR, Goulden  said “this year is the coming of age for ViPR. We shipped everything that we said that we’d do for ViPR, on schedule. We’ve been taking that concept and turning it into Project Nile.”

Summarizing what was special about EMC World 2014, Goulden  said “this indstry is going through a huge transition from the second to the third platform. EMC is investing more in it than anyone in the industry.”