>>from >>around the globe. It's >>the cube >>with digital >>coverage of IBM >>Think 2021 >>brought to you by IBM. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of IBM Think 2021 virtual, I'm john for your host of the cube. We're here virtual again in real life soon is right around the corner but we got a great guest here, Cameron art managing director at A T and T for IBM. Cameron manages the A T and T global account for IBM camera. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on the cube. >>Thank you very much, john it's great to be >>Here. Uh, can almost imagine how complicated and big and large a TNT is with respect to IBM in the history and 18 very large company. What's the relationship with I B M and A T and T over the years? How has that evolved? And what, how do you approach that role as the managing director? >>Well, it's been fascinating. Um as you said, we've got to large complex companies but also to brand names that are synonymous for innovation, whether it be in in compute or technology or communications. But the most fascinating thing is if you look back at our relationship and this is two brands that have been around for well over 100 years. Our relationship actually has some fascinating backdrop to it. My favorite is in 1924, A T and T sent a picture of thomas Watson sr over a telephone wire to IBM and thomas Watson said they sent this over the telephone. We are united in a community of interest. They want to make it easier for businesses to transact as do I. We need to work together. And since then, there has been a number of advanced advances that both of us have driven collectively and individually. And it's been a it's been a long running and treasured relationship in the IBM company. >>It's such a storied relationship on both sides. I mean, the history is just amazing. They could do a whole History Channel segment on both 18 T N I B M. Uh but together, it's kind of the better together story, as you pointed out from that example, going back to sending a picture with the phone lines, like, oh my God, that's instagram on the internet um, happening. But how are they responding to the relationship now? I'll see with cloud, um Native exploding with the ability to get more access and you're seeing a lot more things evolved, more complexity is emerging. That needs to be abstracted away. You're seeing businesses saying, hey, I can do more with less, I can connect more more access. But then that also services more potential opportunities and challenges. How are you responding with a T and T? How are they responding to that dynamic with you guys? >>Yeah, I think it's fascinating because when I originally approached this relationship and I've been doing this for 12 months now, a little over 12 months and when I originally approach it as with anything else, many times, you're trying to enter something that is quite special and make it even better. And my approach at least initially with AT and T was very much one of, we're going to provide even better service. We're going to jointly grow together in the market and strengthen each of our businesses and we're gonna work for something broader than ourselves. And I'll get into a little more of the last point later. But those first two things from an A T T response perspective, and I think this is a common perspective among many clients is we'll see if your actions follow your words. And so it's been a process. We've gone through to understand that I'm a champion for A T and T inside of IBM and those interests that we share individually and collectively will be represented at the highest levels. And we will mature this relationship into one of not just kind of supply chain partners because we're very complementary to each other, but more ecosystem partners and my belief in my core. And you see this much with many of the business strategies that are out there. The ecosystem strategy, this sum is greater than the parts, it's not a zero sum game is something that's absolutely blooming in the market. >>Yeah, that ecosystem message is one of the things that's resonating and coming clearly out of IBM think 2021 this year and in the industry is seeing the success of network effects, ecosystem changes is the constant that's happening. Certainly the pandemic and now coming out of it, people want to have a growth strategy that's gonna be relevant, current and impactful. And you you pointed that out growth with each other is interesting. And you you shared some perspective on this just recently with an example of what is underway there where you heading with that? I mean talk more about this growth with each other because that really is an ecosystem dynamic. What is underway and where are you heading? >>It's a fascinating ecosystem dynamic and it's something that we've adopted wholeheartedly within AT and T in terms of not only how we work. So there are very basic examples examples like we, rather than answering our PS and responding to uh to requirements, we're co creating with our clients, we have multiple cloud garages going with a T and T. Where we identify outcomes that we believe could be possible and then we show and allow the client to experience the outcome of that rather than a power point slides. So there's this kind of base of how do you work with each other? But then much more broadly in the market, it didn't take long for us to realize that, you know, the addressable market, if if I were selling A T and T, everything I could ever sell them and at and T was selling IBM everything they could ever sell us. The addressable market is, let's say $10 billion. But the moment at which we pointed ourselves outside to the external market, we realize that that market opportunity expands by a factor of 20 or by a factor of 50, we have the opportunity to create unique value together. And I think that kind of comes from the core of how we work together. >>I'm also intrigued by your comments about working together for a greater purpose. You said you'd address that later. What do you mean by that? I mean that's a little bit very higher purpose. Um North Star and as you mentioned, you know, working together in the ecosystem that kind of seems tactical and strategic as well. But what's this greater purpose? What does that mean? >>Well, my belief and it's something I learned actually, as I got indoctrinated into the work that 18 T does the work that IBM does and how we do it. But we share many common purposes in terms of what we believe on the whole, in terms of progress in society. So for example, equality in the workplace. We hosted a women's day lunch and actually multiple women stays lunch days luncheons across the United States, where we had hundreds of female leaders from both IBM and AT and T. Collaborating together talking about how tips and tricks for how they continue to advance in the workplace. Another example is in equality and diversity and inclusion. Both A T and T and IBM have a strong commitment and if you'll see IBM just published, just published their diversity and inclusion study where we actually demonstrate here the numbers, here's our targets, here's where we want to get 18 T has exactly that same belief. Finally, in stem education for educating our future leaders in science and technology, engineering and math. Both 18 T and IBM for our future, need those skills showing up in the marketplace and Corey Anthony is just a quick spot for any of you would think cory cory Anthony who see it diversity and development Officer at AT and T is going to give a great presentation on A. T. N. T. S work in stem for younger generations. So there are many things that are, I would say societal on a broader purpose statement that we share a belief in together, >>that's awesome people and also people want to work on a team that's mission driven, has impact beyond just the profit and loss me, I love capitalism personally myself, I'm an entrepreneur but been there done that, but we're living in a cultural shift. Now we're starting to see a remote work. You're starting to see virtual teams, new use cases that have different expectations and experiences um, in the work place and also at home. So you know, with mobile that could be on the side of the soccer fields or you know, skiing or running or jogging and take a message to pull over to a chat, jump into an audio chat, listen to a podcast, engage. So we're all tethered now, this is exchanging the experiences and this is going to change the game for how you work together. >>100%. And by the way, we're all teller tethered hopefully through a T and T mobile connectivity devices, it was kind of amusing how much that has become a part of our lives and the core value, one of the core value propositions of AT and T is obviously connecting businesses to each other, but also consumers through their mobile brand, but also then to entertainment. I will say when I was in Augusta at the Masters, you know, people that have been there know that you're not allowed to have cell phones. It was amazing just in conversations how often whoever was I was having a conversation with and myself would say, well I'd like to look that up, hold on, can I get that statistic and and we we realized we're missing a big part of our of our lives in terms of communication. But those requirements of connecting people in new ways and in their homes were remotely actually only reinforce this shared value proposition of when you have the technology and you have it securely between our company IBM and A T and T. We play a massive part in that and it's something I'm quite proud of. >>You guys have a really interesting position there with the history of with the relationship and as you pointed out, A T and T has to be in the forefront of cutting edge user experience technology bringing. I mean, they are the edge. I mean they ultimately from base station down to the device to the person to the account you're talking about a real edge there, that's a person's consumer. Um They got to provide these new services. So I gotta ask you, you mentioned at the top of this interview that your goal is to provide even better service to a T and T. A pretty big pressure point for IBM. You know, you gotta deliver step up and their expectations must be high. Can you take us through perspectives on that kind of even better service when you've got a client that's on the cutting edge of having to deliver new kinds of things like better notifications. Smarter devices, Smarter software, more fault tolerant, highly available services. These are things that, you know, there's a lot of pressure take us through that what's it like? >>There is a lot of pressure, but there's a lot of consistency in terms of expectations and it's something that both of us understand very well and I would argue that it's probably the reason we work so well together, Both 18 T and IBM for years uh namely 50 hundreds of years have understood that if we're transacting for business, were transaction transacting on something that has to get done so on both sides of the equation. Not only do we push the edge of what can be done technically or for business, but we also understand the expectations of the business clients that are, it works every time and it works in every way I needed to. So for us, when we work together, I think that healthy balance of uh part musician, part engineer uh comes out very, very strongly in both teams, >>camera great insight and great to talk to you. I love to get the perspective on, you know, the kind of challenges and opportunities that you're um seizing at IBM with A T and T. Again, the history is amazing. Um the impact of the industry at both levels you mentioned Tom Watson senior than you got Junior. That in that generation just carries forward. You got that vibe back now with hybrid cloud. Arvin loves clouds. So, you know, you got a lot of things happening and it's really strong over at IBM and the theme this year generally is better together. So awesome, awesome work. Congratulations. >>Thank you very much. I will tell you, I don't want to I don't want to miss the opportunity to talk a bit about the future because from an A T and T and IBM perspective, we're doing a load of work around private five G or five G in general. This is something that provides an absolutely low latency, huge band with with a lot of actually characteristics from a business perspective that are manageable and it will enable. What I believe is another big wave in the technology and business industry, which is new business models very similar to that of the Internet. Originally, it allows with IBM technology and 18 T technology, they have something called multi access. Such compute these are absolutely blazing fast. Five G boxes that will be in not only businesses but universities, sports stadiums, you name that, you name it, changing the experience of how people consume technology or the benefits of technology, which I couldn't be more excited about >>awesome future ahead. Great. There's a big wave certainly away we've never seen before. Cameron, art managing Director at A T and T at IBM. Great insight. Thanks for sharing. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks john >>Okay, Cube coverage of IBM think 2021. I'm John Ferrier. Thanks for watching. Mm. Mhm. Mhm.

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube presenting Cuban cloud brought to you by silicon angle. Okay, we're now going >>to explore what it's like to be the CEO of a fast paced growth company in Silicon Valley. And how the cloud, however, you wanted to find the cloud public cloud on Prem Hybrid, etcetera. How it supported that growth. And with me is Kathy Southwick, who is the CEO of pure storage. Kathy is really deep experience. Managing technology organizations spent a number of years overseeing A T and T s cloud planning and engineering and another few years overseeing a team of a Couple 1000 network and I T engineers working to break the physical stranglehold of fossilized telco networks, implementing network functions, virtualization and a software defined methodology for the company. And, of course, you spent the last couple of years is the CEO of Pure. So Cathy, it's great to see you again. Thank you for coming on the program. >>Thanks for having me. It's good to be here. >>You're very welcome. And so so >>given your >>experience with cloud, you know, dating back to really the early part of last decade. How did you look at cloud back then and how How is it evolved from your point of view? >>You know, it's Ah, it's an interesting question because I think that we've there's some things that have moved very fast and there's some some things that are very much the same as they were even a decade ago. I think that all companies are very focused on How do you think about Cloud? Do you think about it as on Prem? And when I started, we really were focused on an on Prem solution, and I'm in building an on Prem private cloud to help modernize our business. So I think that, you know, with that all companies are still in that same mindset of how do I want to think about Cloud? And how do I want to think about that on Prem versus Public versus, you know, combination or some type of hybrid solution? So I think all of us around that journey, it just seems like it's taken. It's probably a bit longer than most of us probably thought from beginning. >>So as a CEO thinking about that evolution, how has that informed the way you think about applying specifically the public cloud to pure business. >>You know, I think that we've been a for pure ourselves. I think we're in a really unique position. We were essentially born in the cloud. So we're, you know, company. That's 10 11 years old. And if I If I give the contrast of that of 18 t being, you know, 130 year old company Onda having a lot of applications that have, you know, lived historically on prim. There's very different issues and challenges that you have pure has had that. I think the advantage just like many other companies that were born in the cloud who have can see what advantages are very quickly. And we made decisions early on that said that we were gonna actually do both. We were gonna look to say, How do I put those applications in that in that data, whether it was on public or in on Prem and be able to do that both in the i t. Side as well as within the product side? So how we build our products now, >>as I mentioned up front, you have obviously a lot of experience managing large technology teams. My question is. When you first saw the emergence of the modern cloud, how did you communicate with your team members? I mean, you mentioned you were kind of building your own private cloud, so I guess that's less threatening to people. But what was it like? You know, Was there a concern? You know, with the eager to jump in? What was that dynamic like? And how did you manage >>it? You know, it's really it's a different depending on the different part of the organization. So I'll give you kind of two things I learned one of them was that our teams in the operation side, they saw it as a huge advantage. They saw it as an opportunity to really modernized to really get themselves both their own individual skill sets advanced, as well as provide a better level of service for our internal, you know, customer, so to speak. Our application in our data partners that we had to work with, um, they thought is an opportunity to bring agility to their applications quicker speed to market, um, or currency of their applications. So they actually got some benefits that they weren't. Actually, I'll call planning for they were they had the opportunity toe get investment in their applications without having to put the that investment on themselves. I would tell you the thing I learned from the teams, this is probably might be a little bit surprised. But often, you know, leaders believe like, you gotta have all the answers. You're gonna drive everything you're gonna let make sure everyone knows what needs to get done and what I actually found. This was actually one of my big moments, I think, was our Our individuals are employees are teams. They're so brilliant and so bright on driving change. And a lot of times leaders, I think, get in the way that so for cloud and adoption, it was really about me getting out of the way. It was really about setting that north star for where we want to go from the ability to deliver fast and quick for our business. And they get out of the way and let our teams actually drive. So it was a great, um, it was we actually actually saw the reverse. I saw more employees wanting to drive, and I needed to, like, back out and just say, Here's what we need to go. Let them drive us there. >>Alright, So I gotta ask you don't Please don't hate me for asking this question, but was your your gender and advantage was at a disadvantage. It wasn't really irrelevant in that regard. >>It was a relevant um, I think that it was I actually I truly believe it's irrelevant. I think it was literally recognizing that leaders need to set vision and what we want to achieve and let our letter of teams help us drive to get there. And I think that that is, you know, gender neutral. I think it's really about, you know, kind of checking your ego and everything else out to the side. And it's really about empowering people in our teams. Thio help drive us there. >>So thinking about that that learning specifically are there any similar tectonic shifts that you're you're seeing today where you can apply that experience? I'm just like, for instance, new modes of application development and requiring new skill sets are, or maybe another that you can think of. >>Yeah, I think I think honestly, it traverse is everything that we that we have to do as a you know, as a leader of a technology team, and whether you're in a high growth company like Pure or you're in a company that's trying to take costs out of your business or trying to, you know, do things. I think that it, um it really is a matter of leaders needing to set the stage. And so if we're trying to drive, you know, changing the business, it's really making sure that we're doing I'll calm or more empowering of our employees and they because they will see the way that we can get there. It's just a matter of, you know, letting them have that ability to do it. >>So you joined pure around two years ago and obviously growing very quickly. I love pandemic has changed the trajectory of that growth, but still good outlook. Um, but Silicon Valley fast paced company, you know, I kind of put it in the camp of the the work days, and the service now is that could have similar similar cultural patterns there. So you talked a little bit about this, but I wonder if we could come back and more specifically how you're leveraging cloud, how you're thinking about it, you know, on Prem Hybrid, Now the edge. And how did that contribute Thio Puros growth? >>Yeah, that za great question because I think that why I shared earlier, you know, we were essentially born in the cloud. I think that what it's really driven us is to be thinking more forward about where customers were going and what their challenges are. So whether it's for the I t. Teams on what we're trying to do to deliver for our business and, you know, innovation, they're obviously trying to make sure they can hit their revenue goals and all those things that important that every business deals with. But we also have that same mindset on how we develop our products. So it's really all driven by where the customer is going that they need data mobility. They need application mobility. They need really portability so that the moment that you have that ability where you can kind of control your destiny and define it, and you only could get that by having, you know, applications that are portable and data that is mobile and secure, that you have that kind of flexibility. So I think for pure we've been definitely in a great position to drive for our customers or drive where our customers are going. And so we have to find our entire product set. So not just how we operate as a business and run our business. But then how we define for our customers Same mindset is if our customers are going to the cloud that we need, have products that can help them to be in the cloud or be, you know, on print and let them decide what that looks like. Well, >>it's interesting you mentioned that and I hearken back to the The Port Works acquisition, which is an attempt to really change the way application development has done is another sort of approach Thio in a sort of modern data architecture, you, as the CEO of a technology company, most CEO, is that I know inside the tech companies that they're sort of the dog Fuding or champagne drinking, you know, testing. So So had you already started to sort of use that tech? Are you starting to, you know, Does it support that vision that you just put forth? Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. >>Yeah, It does. So we eso We had not been using port works as a za product. We were just starting down that path of looking at How do we do container ization for the applications that we do have on Prem? That's both in our engineering side as well as within I t. And so But we quickly have recognized, just like you know, And part of that acquisition is applications or companies won't have the ability to have that portability of their applications and have that flexibility that they're all striving for unless they've done things like containerized or applications made them that they're able to move them across different cloud environments, whether that's on Prem or off Prem or some hybrid eso for ourselves. You know, Port Works was a really critical acquisition, will help us on our own journey of doing the application, modernization and putting that keep those capabilities in place. But it will also enable our customers to have that same flexibility. So, again, going back to the we've adopt, these things aren't like a this is for this group, and this is for you know, this customer. It's really about how we operate both internally and then what we are providing for our customers so that portability and being able to have control of your own destiny, that's that's really to me what hybrid cloud is all about. And you can't really achieve that If you don't have some of these capabilities within your, you know, within kind of your toolbox. >>Great. Thank you for that. So I'm interested in is the head of, ah technology group at a tech company? And what are the meaningful differences? I mean, a lot of differences, but relative to CEO of a large telco or or other incumbent, you know, what are some of the good, the bad? And, uh, you know, the ugly, the differences. >>Yeah, you know, it's I meet with a lot of CEOs across Silicon Valley and we kind of joked that when you are working in a company that is a technology based company, you know, everybody knows how to dio, you know, because you do you have a brilliant engineers and and that they do know. I think the difference that you start to see is that you know, I t is, um is required to make sure that availability is their inherent in what you're doing on immediate roll out with like, you know, an application that's occurring. That's very different than how you do product lifecycle management. Um, what what we've what I've seen, actually, though, is more similarities. I know that's probably surprised to you, but coming out of a T and T, what I have been working on those last couple of years was actually doing the combination of engineering and I t into one organization and that you do have a lot of benefits for, for how you can then develop, how you can manage and the skill sets. There's a lot of similarities. So there's there's actually probably more similarities between companies and on what they're trying to achieve than than you would probably think there would be just because we're all trying to make sure that we can develop quickly. How about is >>it relates to cloud Cathy? I mean, I remember the early days of cloud, a lot of the big banks that we could build our own cloud. We can essentially compete at scale with with Amazon, where you know the big bank on. Then I think they quickly realized well, the economics actually don't favor us necessarily. Do you think there's a different perception about the use of cloud between sort of traditional incumbents and a tech company in Silicon Valley? And if so, how? >>So now I think that the if you are, you know, a bank is you refer to, and having it really is where you're starting from. If you have a very large infrastructure footprint and application footprint, your applications probably not born in the cloud. There's a lot of modernization that has to be done with those applications so that they could operate as efficiently in a public cloud as an example. And I think that's something that sometimes gets overlooked is there are enormous benefits going to public cloud. But there's also cost if your applications or your data doesn't really fit as well in that type of environment. So I think that for large enterprises like the banks, some of the telcos they've got very large footprints of infrastructure. Already, those investments have been made, and what they're really looking for is how doe I increase my ability to, you know, whether it's agility or its speed, or it's lower cost or it's all those things, and I think that's the That's a different path of different journey that they're on. So they're trying to balance all those equations of, you know, the economics as well as the ability to have, you know, no more investment or minimal investment in that infrastructure. For companies like Pure, where we started off of those investments are decision and kind of. The decision tree that we use is if it makes sense. And I don't have to make that investment on Prem for whatever reason, that I should go ahead and make that investment in a public cloud strategy or a hybrid cloud strategy kind. Differentiate that because I think that it's different depending on the company. You are, um, and so it really kind of depends on where you're starting from then. It also depends on what you're trying to achieve if you're just trying to achieve an economic solution. If you're trying to achieve a strategic solution, if you're trying to get agility. Andi, I think it is different for companies, and it's different depending where you're at in your kind of journey. So for a Silicon Valley company whose you know hyper growth, you know, one. We're very focused on abilities. You know everything from scale, because we've got to scale quickly. And those are things that we don't wanna have to start going and building all these data centers to go do that. We don't have those embedded investments. So it's Ah, it's a real difference in where your starting point is. And I think there I think there's value in in all those different type of approaches, >>right? And it's a real advantage for you that you don't have to shell out all that cap ex on Data Center. >>That's right. Um, as you look >>back at the last 10 years of cloud, you know, it was largely about eliminating the heavy lift of infrastructure deployment and SAS if I ng you know the business, what do you see? Going forward? What do you think the was gonna unfold in the 2020 is? Is it gonna be more of the same? Or do you expect meaningful differences? >>I think that we're going to get better as, um as you know, technology leaders on how to quickly make decisions. Um, and not its have it less political. And I think Kobe is actually taught us a lot about that around companies more willing to make. I'll call it a A you know, a faster decision and remove some of the red tape. I've heard this from many of my peers that things that might have taken them months and months to get approved. Um, it's nowadays if even if they even have to go get approval. So I think that what we're going to see is we'll see the continuance of, um, you know, a public and I'll call really hybrid cloud type of solutions. And I think it will be more purposeful about what goes there and how. How that can help us toe, you know, I'll call it enable us much faster than we've been able to do it before. I think that's been our challenges. We've, you know, we get mired into some of the you know, the details of some of these things that maybe it would be easier for us to just make the decision to move forward than Thio. Keep going around around on what's the right way to do it. Yeah, >>so that's interesting. You're saying about the fast decisions? I felt like, ah, lot of 2020 was very tactical. Okay, go deal with the work from home, etcetera. Although you you definitely see I t spending, uh, suppressed in 2020. Our forecast was minus 4% but we're saying it's gonna grow. We actually see a decent snapback. You know, what are you seeing? Generally, Not even necessarily pure. But when you talk to some of your colleagues, you obviously in the technology business, it's good to be in the technology business these days. But to use do you see spending, you know, generally coming back And maybe the timing first half, maybe a little soft second. What are you seeing >>there? Yeah, almost identical wage that. I think that we'll see, you know, a little bit of, ah tendency toe, not really hold back, but really kind of see what's happening in the first quarter of the year. There's a lot, you know, going on with companies and everyone's having to kind of balance at what that looks like. I do see. And what I'm hearing from several of my peers is that, you know, it's not necessarily budget cuts. It might be budget re directions. It might be rude prioritization, but definitely technology investments are still there, and it's still important for businesses to keep on their journeys on. But we do see that even at pure as a way to differentiate ourselves in the market as well, do you? What >>about the work from home piece? I mean, prior to co vid, I think the average was about 15 or 16% of employees work from home. You know, now it's gotta be, you know, well, over in the high seventies, Onda CEO is that we've talked to suggest that, you know, that's gonna come down in the first half, maybe down toe, still pretty high 50 60%. But then eventually is gonna settle at a higher rate than it was pre pre covert. Maybe double that rate may be in the 30 35 maybe even 40%. You know? What are you expecting >>Something probably very similar. I think that what companies have recognized and I actually tell you CEO have thought this many of them for many years that there is a huge value value and having some type of hybrid model. There's value in having, you know, both from a business perspective as well as a personal perspective. So employees work life balance and trying to balance that. So I think that, you know, we a pure and myself, As you know the CEO hugely expect that we will see some type of you know, I'll call leveling off, figure out what's the right for the right group. And I think what we don't want to get into is, you know, Chris prescriptive that says, You know, this is what the company will look like as a whole. I think it really is going to come down to certain certain types of work are more conducive to a more work, remote environment others need to have. And I always kind of uses term of individual, you know, productivity versus team. You know, productivity. We've seen, you know, great advances and or individual productivity. A team productivity is still a challenge when you're still trying to do very collaborative, you know, brainstorming sessions. And so we are looking at capabilities to be able to enable our employees to do that. But there there's some things you just can't replace. The human interaction and ability to very quickly inter actively, you know, five minutes catch someone to do that. So I think we'll see. We'll see both. We'll see some leveling off, and I think we'll see some areas of businesses that have once thought You can't do that remote. They might actually say, Hey, that is work that commute remote So I think we'll see a combination of both. That's an >>interesting perspective on productivity. And what's the What's the old saying is You could go go faster alone. But further as a team and and not a lot of folks have been talking about that team productivity, we we clearly saw the hit the positive hit on productivity, especially in the in the technology business. So So my question then is so you expect? You know H Q doesn't go away. Maybe it gets, you know, maybe it gets smaller, Uh, but so is their pent up demand for technology spending at the headquarters. Because you've been you've been, you know, pushing tech out out to the edge out to the remote workers. Securing those remote workers figuring out better ways to collaborate is their pent up demand at H. Q. >>Um, absolutely. We've been, you know, we've been actually exploring different technologies. We've been uh, looking at what are things that you know could help create a different kind of experience, eh? So I do think it will be some different types of technology. Those would be the things that maybe aren't even out there developed yet on Have you create some of those comparable experiences. So I think that the notion of you know individuals will continue to thrive, but we've got to start working on How do we continue to enhance that? That team, um, collaborative productivity environment that looks and feels different than what it might look like today. Yeah. >>They got to leave it there. Great as always. Having you in the Cube. Thanks so much for participating in Cuban Cloud. >>Great. It's great to be here. Thank you. >>Keep it right there. Back more content right after this short break. >>Yeah.

>> from Austin, Texas. It's Theo Cube, covering your storage. Accelerate 2019. Brought to you by pure storage. >> Hey, welcome back to the cubes. Coverage day to appear. Storage your accelerate 2019. I'm Lisa Martin Day. Volante is my co host, and we're very pleased to welcome for the first time to the Cube. Kathy Southwark. This C I O at pure Cathy. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here. You have a great story. This is not only your fear. Your first your accelerate. You been at the company less than a year. You were not only a pure customer before, but in a completely different industry. So your first your accelerate. Here we are in Delhi Technologies backyard. Give us your perspective on appears business from your previous customer role. >> Yes. So I spent. I've been here just under a year, she said, and I spent the almost 22 years 18 t and coming into a company. It's completely different. Different size company, different size technology issues. Everything we do is looks very different. But there's a lot of similarities that, you know, you're trying to as any company trying to innovate and trying to stay on the cutting edge and you're trying to make sure you have the right teams in place and all that, so it's a lot of fun. It's great to see the energy and the excitement here, so that's been a lot of fun to come in and to see orange everywhere painted or so it's been a lot of fun coming on >> and you're complying with your orders. >> I got the memo. I said, You know, it's hard because orange is not one of my better colors toe where but no happy toe, happy to wear orange and proud to be part of such a company who's really looking at? How do we take care of the customer? >> Right. So you were sold on pure as a customer when you were with age and T. What was it about the technology that when you were in that prayer roll that really differentiated it from its competition? It was really >> interesting. I was sharing folks earlier today that here was very different, smaller company coming into a very large organization. We started working with them back in 18 t in 2013 so they were a very small company, very early on, but they were so bullish they had this completely different attitude about storage. And it wasn't really necessarily about this storage. It's about what we're gonna do to help you change your business. So for us, you know, I really looked at when you're in a very large company, you tend to not look so much at the particular like storage or computer or what you're really looking at, How many enabling my business and with the limited dollars that you have. And resource is etcetera, you're always trying to balance and prioritize. So for us when they came in, they made this proposition and said, Hey, we can show you this in two weeks and it'll, um And you know, when you're also big enterprise, you don't have time. Thio look a technology for weeks and months on end and then have to test it. And so we brought pure end. They they were tested out the products within two weeks, and we saw more than what we're expecting. And I think that was what changed for us is it wasn't just about we could do, you know, compression. We could do the deed if we could do. It was that all of a sudden was all these other capabilities been planned for So it really was. It was pretty pretty dramatic for us because we hadn't seen other providers to come in with a story that sounded different and not just the technology. Like I'm gonna save you a dollar. It's about now I'm going to enable your business to do something different faster. And we saw it firsthand. >> I was the role of C i o at a technology company. Different from you were in a c i o N a t. But you you had kind of an engineering roll. If I think it's a solution Engineering, how is the role different in terms of how you spend your time and what you care about? >> Yeah. So, you know, in 18 t, the CEOs were focused on the application delivery sites of specific applications at pure and so an 82. My role is centered around all the infrastructure for I t. As well as our network engineering. So what we did for the Service Writer network coming into pure, you have, you know, the whole spectrum. But we're a different kind of company. and that really 10 years old. Our technical debt looks very different. We use a lot of sass products, so we use a lot of hosted solutions from our partners and providers, and we do someone premise well. But it's a very different kind of landscape, so the opportunity is you don't have as much technical debt. You also have the ability to to try things because you are smaller and you can try things much quicker and be able to say, Well, this working isn't good enough and not have to have maybe things as gold plated. As you know, a regulated telecom would have versus a product technology product company that it's trying to be very agile to produce things and change for their customers. >> So essentially you were. I'll call you the C i o of of infrastructure at AT and T with infrastructure that had to support, like you said, highly regulated in a very diverse I'm sure application portfolio. Extremely there. Thousands of systems, probably >> thousands of applications and very complex business models. They, you know, they're ah, it's not a one. So the interesting is 80. >> She's >> not a one entity business, you know they've got their media business. They've got there mobility business. We've got their wireline business. So when you have people often think of 18 t as a company, But there's actually it's a very complex business model supporting multiple products. So it's just that those air, you know, multi $1,000,000,000 product portfolios versus coming into pure where you know we're still, you know, 1,000,000,000 have company building and growing our product portfolio. >> So what's your technology strategy of pure and how are you enabling business outcomes for the company? >> That's a great, great question. So, you know, really, a business strategy here has been that I t has to really evolve and scale differently than it had in the past. The organization before was really centered around Some of the end user capabilities wasn't as centered around business outcomes, and we've taken on a different role. So as I've come on to the organization, our opportunity and our challenge is that we now have different responsibilities, were taking on things like, How do we want to think about data across the enterprise, not just within each individual domain, and so as a start up company, you often are very focused on your R and D investments in your sales and marketing investments, and you do a lot of things to get it done. And that means that individual teams will do work. But you tend to not think about what the full life cycle is of, you know, of something that you're working on. So for our opportunity now this is take a step back, be able to look across and say it worked great for that period of time. Now we have the opportunity to rethink how we want to think about the customer experience from the time product is developed all the way through and, you know, a quote to a customer through its life cycle through delivery and then the support for that customer >> so so technology, the support that sort of workflow >> the ecosystem instead of within individual areas. And so that's really there are focuses. How do we help our business to become even faster? How do we get more focused on the customer from ah whole ecosystem? And that we think about the customer from the whole ecosystem instead of each individual area? >> Sounds like that horizontal view that Charlie Giancarlo talks about you know, with storage being so vertical in the past and cures wanting to revolutionize that and make that horizontal, ensuring that any type of business, whether we're talking about yours, business or ah retailer or our airline, every function in an organization has access to share. That data exactly struck business value to lower costs to find new revenue streams, new routes to market, et cetera. >> And we're no different as a business. We need to do those same things to make sure that we can. We can deliver those for business, so that's a big part of a lot of >> times we'll talk to C. I ose that technology companies and their large established technology companies that I think Cisco S A P. They've been around a long time. They have a lot of technical debt. They look a lot like your customers, frankly, many of your customers yours ever. But my question is a lot of these c I ose that I've just mentioned, sort of generically there come wine tasters, right? You know, they used to be dog food or his drink your own champagne, but But they they are like the first line of defense verse beta customer, and they give feedback to the product groups. Do you play that role as well? >> Way do we not probably to the extent, because we're a smaller company. So we tend Thio, as with our product announcements we've made will go out to a wide set of our customers, you know? So I think we had 16 1 of the bait is that was just done. What we do with an I T. Is because we have a smaller footprint just the size we do have flash ray with a flash blade with you do use pure one. We do it Maur of ah, from how would a a smaller customer look at it, Think about it and use it. And so that's tends to be the I'll say, the lens that we look through. I think that the role I've played coming in is the bringing a perspective from a larger enterprise on how does a larger enterprise an I t. Think about it and it's again. It's not just your helping me with storage. You're actually helping me to solve a business problem. So there's s oh, there's some other and some of the leaders that we've brought in. They also come from outside industry. Some have used pure, some have not, and so have that different kind of lens of what you know we would expect to see from our product seems, but they're also extremely open. Thio. What do you think? What is I t thinking about how you were thinking about these product ideas? What what's the input from I T. So there's a lot of what we're very small from a nightie organization. I think that the two way communication is what it's gonna you know, what will help, >> what are some of the innovations? And I know you've only had a short tenure there, but one of the things I read in the Q two earnings but that we're just released last month in August was seven. That new customers added per business safer pierce of 450 or so, plus customers at it in that quarter but also a 50% increase in multimillion dollar deals. So, enterprise, any innovations that you can share since you've been on board that your team has helped cure, understood to be able to go after those large enterprise multimillion dollar deals directly. >> Well, certainly from, um, you know, from a you know, a personal understanding of the product and what here could do it scale is, you know, I certainly have that perspective to share with our customers and bringing that confidence and credibility that, you know, if you are looking at a large enterprise customer in the opportunity, they have a lot of questions about. So how exactly did 18 t do it? It's not like they run a few arrays. They run hundreds and hundreds of rays and hundreds and hundreds of petabytes. So there's It's not like it's a proof of concept or a pilot. And it's been years of doing upgrades, non disruptive Lee over the years, with all the pure upgrades that have come into play. So I can certainly bring that to the table with helping the customers to get it, you know, a little bit of confidence, but also just an understanding about how pure is approaching it with these other large customers. So and as you've talked to other customers, there's there's enough customers out there that are, you know, very, >> very eager to >> share because they're so excited about what it's done for their business. We've >> heard. Sorry, David, I was going to say on the customer front we've, what 6600 plus customers pure now has in its 1st 10 years. And the customers we've spoken to the last two days, Dave and I have noticed that a common theme is they're talking about their overall experience with the technology. They're not talking about boxes and array names, and all these specifics are talking about how they are able to one customer from, ah, legal firm, I think in Florida didn't even do a PC had appear. That was a pure customer. And from that piers advice. I got it right on board and was really talking about the experience and all of the things to your point on the business side that they're able to to influence with the technology, not talking about speeds and feeds and arrange drives and things like that. So it's very, very different conversation. >> It's S O. It's interesting because and the role that I had, I had the teams that did the architecture, planning, design and through implementation. So the operation teams one of the most unique things I've said I share with customers is when you are in a technology and you're in a large enterprise, you tend to have a challenge with introducing new technology because you don't want more technical debt. It doesn't matter what you just don't want more technical debt. So typically your operation teams are >> doing a little >> bit of pushback on you. No, no, we don't need something new. No, we don't need unless they're having significant outages or incidents that they're trying to solve for what I found. And even to this day, there is some of the folks there actually around the floor here. The folks that were in operations, they were literally coming and saying, We want more pure And so when you're in a technology organisation that typically doesn't happen. It's S o it wasn't And it wasn't like we want more of like you said the array, it was we just want we don't wanna have to worry about. And I just took a reduction of my head count. So I want I find you have to take on more data and I am. You take on more support for the business. I don't have to worry about it. And so to have that. That's a very different. And we had the same experience of their application team saying, Hey, I just got lower latents. So they didn't actually know why. They just knew that when I was trying to do my work on the application side, working within a database, all the sudden I had all this improvement and, um and so what? We allowed them to sit. Okay, well, we'll give you more capabilities, more future functionality. And that doesn't happen. Before, those were things were like, really like operations and application teams are gonna work as a team together. Very different. I'm experience. >> So if I were a pure sales rep, I would say, >> Kathy, can you come tell my customers my prospect that >> story to the sales reps have access to your calendar? How much of your time? How much time you spend, you know, sales folks wanting you to tell stories like I got >> so the I have no the company that long. So I have I have spent a fair amount of my time talking to customers. But, you know, we also have a lot of work with an I t. And so are you know it's there just is incentive to have me work with an i. T. Because I can understand what we need to do to help our field as well. And that's one of our objectives is what are we gonna do an I t. To make it that much easier and better for not just our sales teams but the manufacturing teams. The support teams are hardware, teams, all the teams that takes a deliver. And so, you know, in fairness, I have joked with some that have stopped me and said, Hey, we need to I said, Remember, we also want to deliver for you so that to make your jobs easier So there's a balance >> that it's different. A technology company writes kind of encouraged that the C I. O goes out and evangelize is >> Yeah, it's actually a lot of fun. I, uh I I do joke that when I go out to talkto the other CEOs, I mean, they're my people there, too. I know it's It's the challenges that we have to deal with. The you know, you're dealing with the technology, those very specific items, then you're dealing with that. How do we help my business and then you're dealing with. I want to make sure I'm doing the right things for people development and all those so and you have a lens across the entire enterprise. So it's not like you're just looking at sales or you're just looking at ops for your You're kind of looking at everything to say, Well, how do I help all the teams to be that much better? Because the better we are, you know, be cliche. You know, collectively, that just got is gonna enable pure toe to do more fun. >> So what's on the minds of your peers in these days? >> You know, I feel so fortunate to be in the Bay Area, and there are amazing CEOs that get together, talk very openly, share strategies, actually eagerly and openly reach out to say, How can I help you? Um, and that's I think that's a unique as part of the CIA, a community that there's this willingness to say, Look, we're all in this together from a technology perspective. I mean, look, we all want to do well for our companies, but you're also trying to figure out how to make technology team stronger and you know it's a lot of the the same issues. It's how do I change the focus of and the perception of where I t fits into a business that it's not just a back office? It's not these systems, but it's actually becoming a very strategic, you know, Enabler, advisor, participant Helping to help, you know, can provide input. You can be that one of the first you know, Betas for your company if you're in a technology area and that's a change. There's a lot of companies who have always fascinated where it's like if you're a product and you have an I T. You're selling to those people, so pitch to them. If you can't sell to them, you're not gonna be successful. So I think it's just changing, evolving. You know some of those relationships and and that's a big deal and and you know, that's from the how you run your organization. There's that, you know, how do we make sure that the technologies were were all investing in our somewhat future proof and that they can evolve with us, not become inhibitors or, you know, box you into something that you can't kind of navigate through >> well, actually deliver on future proof. It's one of those marketing terms that is used by so many organizations delivering whatever kind of product. Same is with simple and seamless says We talk about this all the time. We did hear from customers wherever Green is concerned. You know, I said, non disruptive is how much of that goes from a marketing to reality and consistently heard about Piers ability to deliver their. But it's interesting and it's a refreshing, I think, to hear that you've experienced the changing role of the CEO to be collaborative versus he knows a lot of competition. And in tech, that's a refreshing The deer And I have an idea for you since you're so you're in such a habit to D'oh, it's good. What? You're gonna like this. I have an idea. Hash tag. Help Cathy Scale. Give them this video. Just so many pure customers all across the globe. >> Thank you. I will do that. I would. That's great advice. >> That's it. Easy to d'oh! D'oh! Well, Cathy's been great having you on the Cube. Thank you for sharing your perspective as there newish. See Io and how you went from here customer to running their i t. And congratulations on being part of the next decade of pure success. Thank you. Thank you for having our pleasure for day. Volante. I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube.

live from Vancouver Canada it's the cube OpenStack summit North America 2018 brought to you by Red Hat the OpenStack foundation and its ecosystem partners welcome back I'm Stu minimun here at the OpenStack summit 2018 in Vancouver with my co-host John Troyer happy to welcome to the program a first-time guest Charles Ferlin who's the vice president of business development at nuage networks thanks for joining us thank you for having me all right so the OpenStack show we're always talking about the maturity of it where customers are going with it you're in business development so what one of the one of the things we were discussing from the keynote this morning is the telcos and the service providers and who's doing what and you know who makes up that environment so it gives us your free point what you're seeing as to you know where some of the real action is in this in this marketplace fair enough we've been talking about nav for example for many years as you know but I would say probably since the second half of 2016 that we've started to see some significant large deployment and the service provider service provider paying attention to building up a telco cloud to host their VN nav applications right so so really from the second half of 26 16 2017 we've seen massive deployments of OpenStack with a service provider and a lot of them to host applications to serve their branch office customers yeah that's that's an another motivation for them to deploy this yes so Charles you know we've talked to the 18 t Verizon you know Deutsche Telekom's up there all these big ones but I look at it and say is this an opportunity of 20 global you know you know you know telcos or is do we go down to some of the MSP CSPs however you want to call those service providers a regional one you know they're some of the regional ones that maybe aren't as much telcos or are they where's that line what do you see is kind of the TAM if you will for this space obviously the large service provider will have a piece there but we see a lot of regional customer consuming services from a local provider right they do have either for language reasons for regulation and in governance so we see a lot of them consuming services from a local service provider so an openstack sort of became the building block of these and if the infrastructure for the service provider yeah it's interesting we actually just had a infrastructure as a service company from Australia okay on and I said you know you look at their website it doesn't say OpenStack anywhere they provide cloud offerings so it's one of the things there's all these telcos and service fighters that use it but it's not like they're like we're your preferred distribution of OpenStack it's just part of the plumbing underneath the use cases that that are address buh-bye OpenStack and served by OpenStack really fits well and a lot of the telco space right now yeah so we've seen a lot of growth for virtual private cloud we see a lot of growth for a dynamically deploying application having application residing in the data center or moving closer to the users at the edge for example and these are sort of the use cases that nuage and OpenStack address pretty well well that's an interesting pivot point right I understand as an enterprise technologist why software-defined networking is important right it's important in your stack it's got to be important inside of an open OpenStack but can you talk a little bit about some of these use cases like I hadn't really thought about SD win and how that that really and what architectures and deployments would really kind of mean that they would need to deploy that with some and that's a good point because really NT as the win served as the catalyst for the service providers who start paying attention to deploying an NFV infrastructure before that there was an interest it was a motivation however SD wins be offered of dynamic flexible agile branch office connectivity that allows them to dynamically insert value-added services so yes as the one provided connectivity between the branch office but really where is the service provider are going after is offering Application Firewall DDoS services or URL filtering in all of these applications residing in the data center and all of a sudden as I hold on I cannot have it as the one solution disjoint from my data center OpenStack deployment and this is where the nuage actually served as a connecting to both environment but also this is what served as a catalyst the sd1 deployment sort of a catalyst for for them to start deploying a dynamic infrastructure in today's yes so Charles just on the SD way in piece itself we've seen a lot of activity that bunch of acquisitions in that market what what differentiates nuage in in this space well fair enough we've seen these acquisition as a complement to the strategy that we have taken over the past five years paying off we are from the get-go started to have an end-to-end as the in solution so it's not just about connecting branch office together it's not about just connecting application in the data center it's actually connecting the users in the branch office with the applications in the data center or in the public cloud and what differentiate us the most is that we have the exact same platform the same as the n solution and 2n to connect branch office programming branch routers or programming virtual switches in the data center or bare metal physical service so that is perhaps new our single most biggest differentiator is the capability to have that single policy that singled as the n framework from the users and branch to the data center or public cloud alright you've mentioned bare metal I remember it was funny when the project came out for bare metal of course it's called ironic because most people can't win OpenStack started it was it's a good name in that it was virtualized environment of course today we've got containers starting to go up the stack with kubernetes so we understand why bare metals there what are you seeing in that space and and what what kind of what do you hear from your customers so we we have a lot of traction with ironic actually it's ironic but we do and we did that actually in open Saxony in November we did a Coe presentation with Fujitsu who deployed our k5 infrastructure using nagy networks and ironic integration to roll out on top of that is flexible you can put a platform as a service they can do whatever they want on top of it but the bare amount of provisioning is somewhere we is a we have a couple of large accounts that they have deployed this globally yeah okay are you working with the cotta containers that they have here and whether you are not would love to hear kind of the security story when we talk things everything for bare metal in containers and what you're doing with OpenStack and that's that's perhaps the other the biggest differentiator we have is because we're able to have the single networking policies from a container to or programming the network of a container or a KVM VM or hyper-v or the we have the symbol their single as the end platform and we're able we see all the therefore we see all the traffic in the data pack and we're able to index this into a elasticsearch database right and and in creating an index and set a lot of users to create some thresholds and that is what is perhaps the newest thing at knowledge is the capability now to say hey once those thresholds or cross why don't we reprogram the network dynamically so near realtor in real near-real-time we're actually able to take an action to reprogram the network based on some live feed that's what can information that we're receiving from the the various element that we have program either in the branch office or in a container level okay so today cotta containers is not something you're involved with or I didn't quite that cotta containers from the new high-level project from the the OpenStack foundation I don't know right now but but your customers are using container technology docker and various others we have an integration with kubernetes so we provide CNI they're absolutely involved there and this is how a lot of our customers are using us right now and the customers we're talking about these would often be service providers is that is that correct in the context of containers and kubernetes it would mainly be on the enterprise okay out of an agile type of development where they want to have a there's a lot of developer and they want to have the networking program and the same life cycle as the application project is rolling out and having the micro segmentation meaning that we are able to isolate each one of the project from one another so in if one gets contaminated the other one doesn't and so this is where a lot of the kubernetes and deployment has been on the on the large enterprise okay that makes sense because I'm trying to as a as a person outside the telecom industry but but following kind of the enterprise and OpenStack it's interesting to see this vision of the service providers who are not dumb pipes certainly but through OpenStack and these these the nfe and the services they are able to provision with folks like nuage you know able to provide services so just trying to figure out where the line you know maybe you could draw us a picture of you know what what the modern service provider will be able to provide versus what's still left then for the at the enterprise level depending on which market size analysis analyst you're looking at you know is depends VPN connectivity will be it it varies between two to six to eight to twelve it's a relatively contained small market compared to the applicator to manage applications right manage security that's tenfold that that market race so really as you said the the objective here if the service provider is not to to become a dumb virtual pipe and the ability to dynamically insert some value-added services over the top and this is what having an agile as the when now gives them the capability to say hold on a second I can now start serving a value-added application because my dynamic network is available now and this is this is what is fueling a lot of the OpenStack deployment right now in the datacenter yeah Charles one of discussions we've been looking at the last couple of years is there's OpenStack and then there's containers and kubernetes everything how do you see those go together what are you hearing from customers general discussion here but I'd love to hear some real-world so yeah in the context of ironic as we just mentioned a lot of the time the bare metal servers are actually deployed using OpenStack and what goes on top of it is actually kubernetes right and this is very common and it gives that isolation or its deploying a virtual machine running a pass platform in there right so so actually we do see the OpenStack to be used often to deploy the the infrastructure and program and provision I should say the infrastructure and whatever goes on top it could be kubernetes and work just a very nicely Charles you've been involved with OpenStack for many years I had this is how many OpenStack summits well probably eight and a weight or more yeah how are you seeing the OpenStack community evolved what do you I know you've just arrived which day one here at this summit you know beautiful Vancouver but in terms of the energy of the community the the people who are here it's a little bit smaller this year but it you know we've got people here are actual users and actual deployers so exactly yeah thoughts there so this is perhaps the well we went through a marketing height which is great however what I would say regardless of the event today in general the OpenStack community is a lot more mature it's a lot more stable as well and in the product and the product the technology at the community is more focused around solving real use cases and real problem couple years ago there was a lot of interest a lot of hype you know but it would have solve world world hunger as well right now I think it's very pointed very precise and I'm actually new I was quite proud to be participating in contributing in that community because we're starting to see the technology really addressing key key problems here all right Charles last thing I wanted to ask is the network sits in a very special place when you talk about really the multi cloud world that customers are talking about what are you seeing when it comes to that environment you know how do customers figure out where they put their applications are they moving you know things or is it just kind of a heterogeneous but still complicated world they're still figuring out that's right I mean that it's a very dynamic environment but I would say if I had to draw a conclusion most of the customers are deploying the application on-premise they like to have either for storage either for some of the governance they do I like to have applications on-premise however the multi cloud scenario is often used in large banks to compute or a large organization to compute on a burst capability right the capability to say hey I need to have X compute power available for X time is very appealing for them and this is how most of the deployment of nuage are used right now is having doing the plumbing the virtual plumbing inside a data center and dynamically based on demand the capability to do the same networking policy the same networking extension to one of the public cloud offering is very appealing because it sporadic it's a burst type of scenario yeah especially a lot of those service providers have that direct ability right as well correct correct and it you're right that it can become a little bit complex when you have when you want to to deploy nets with the same that's working policies across on-premise and multiple cloud provider and if you have interim service provider then it becomes a little bit complicated to have to orchestrate all of it and this is where Sdn gives them that hardware abstraction and and maintain the same networking policy well Charles Berlin appreciate the update on nuage and all of your viewpoints from from the customers that you're seeing my pleasure very very much for John Troyer I'm Stu Mittleman back with more coverage here at the open sex I'm at 2018 in Vancouver thanks for watching the Q [Music]