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Joe Baguley, VMware | WMware Radio 2019


 

>> Announcer: From San Francisco, it's theCUBE. Covering VMware Radio 2019. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hi, welcome to theCUBE's exclusive coverage of VMware Radio 2019. Lisa Martin with John Furrier, in San Francisco. This is an internal R&D innovation off site that VMware does, lots of innovation going on here from engineers from all over the globe. We're pleased to welcome Joe Baguley, the CTO from EMEA, from VMware. Joe, welcome to theCUBE. >> Hi. >> So we've been having some great conversations this morning about this tremendous amount of innovation, I mean the potential is massive. Not just from Radio, but from all the other innovation programs that VMware has, really speaks very strongly to the culture of innovation that VMware has had. But of course all this innovation has to be able to be harnessed to deliver what customers need. Talk to us about that, you're in the field, field CTO. What is that connection with the innovation that happens within VMware? How do customers help influence that and vice versa? >> Yeah, I think we're very unique in the structure that we've put around that to drive that innovation over the years. So my job as field CTO is, I call it sort of 50, 50. So 50% is Chief Technology Officer, which is this kind of stuff for Radio and 50% is Chief Talking Officer, which is out with our customers and presenting at conferences, et cetera. But the general remit is connecting R&D in the field. And so for eight years now I've been connecting R&D in the field at VMware, I actually did at my previous company as well. And what we've done is, we've built a series of programs over the years to do that, and one of the biggest ones is the CTO Ambassadors. And so that was, you know, you get to a point, you get to a growth size, I've been here eight years, and suddenly you need someone else to help you because I can't be everywhere. And the original role was, back in the day I was hired to scale Steve Herrod, because Steve Herrod couldn't be in Europe all the time, I was like mini Steve Herrod that could be there when needed. But then eventually I can't be in every European country and our major regions as we get bigger and bigger, and we've grown dramatically. So the CTO Ambassadors is to support that. And that's really, we've got 140 of our top customer facing techies from around the globe in this program called the Ambassadors. And they have to be customer facing, and they have to be individual contributors, so like a pre-sales manager or something doesn't count. They're a massively active community, there's a whole bunch of them here at Radio as well. And their job is really that conduit, that source of information, and also a sounding board, a much shorter range sounding board for R&D. So if R&D want to get a feel of what's going on, they don't have to ask everyone they can bounce off the Ambassadors, which is part of what we do, and that makes it easier. >> So like a filter too, they're also also filtering input from the field, packaging it up for R&D. >> Totally. Yeah, and when you're at an organization of our scale, filtering is really important. Because obviously, you can't have every customer directly talking to every engineer, it's never going to work. (laughs) >> I mean another radio project stay right there, a machine learning based champion CTO to go through all the feedback. >> Yeah, so I started my career, with my previous company doing that, I was the filter. So I'd get a hundred questions a day from various people in the field, and 99 of those I'd bounce right back because I knew the answer. But there was the one that I was like, uh. Then I'd turn around to R&D and ask them. But the great thing was that R&D knew that if I was asking then it was a real question, it wasn't the 99. So the CTO Ambassadors, and what we do in Octo Global field is really a method of scaling that. >> I want to ask you about that because that's a great example of here reputation comes in. Because your reputation is on the line if you go back and pull the fire alarm, if you will, send too many lame requests back, you're going to be lame. So you've got to kind of check, balance there. So that begs the question, how do you do the filtering for the champions that work for you? Is there a high bar? Is there a certain line? Like being a kid, you've got to be this tall to ride the roller coaster. Is there criteria? Is there certification? Take us through the filtering there. >> The Ambassador program is a rotating nomination system. So essentially there's a two year tenure. So what happens is, if you're in the field and you want to be an ambassador, which is a really prestigious thing, then you nominate yourself or get nominated and then people vote on you and you put forward your case, et cetera. Essentially it's a democratic process based on your peers and other people in the company. And then after you're allowed a maximum of two years. Sorry, two tenures so you get four years, if that makes sense, I'm not confusing you. >> John: So term limits? >> Yeah there's term limits, right, we have term limits. And after two terms you have to go out for a year to give someone else a chance because otherwise it will just glub- >> It'll turn into the US government. (laughs) >> But no, it's important to maintain freshness, maintain diversity and all those kind of things. And so it comes back to that filter piece we were talking about before. The reputation is massive, of the CTO Ambassadors. I mean when we started this six years ago as a program, most of R&D were like, who are these Ambassador guys? What value are they going to add? Now, if you're in R&D, one of the best things you can say, if you want to get something done, is what the CTO Ambassador said. I mean, literally it is, you can go and we have- >> John: The routine approach to that. Talk about how you guys add in a new category. So, for instance kubernetes, we saw this years ago when KubeCon was started, theCUBE was there present at the creation of that trend we kind of got it right away. Now Gelsinger and the team sees this as a massive traction layer. So that would be an example, where we need an Ambassador. So do you like just create one or how does that work? >> They create themselves, that's the best thing. So we have an annual conference which is in February, held in Paolo Alto where we all get together along with all the chief technologists, which is the level below me. And the principles, which the most senior field people. So literally the best of the best get together. It's about 200 plus get together for a week. And we are an hour and a half on on one with Pat for example, so Pat's there with all of us in a room. But one of the sessions we do is the shark tank, and there's two of them. One of them is, come up with your really cool, crazy, wacky ideas, and the other one is the acquisition shark tank. So there we get the MNA team, include our E-staff sit in, and the Ambassadors, as teams, will come in and present. We think we should acquire, uh because that's making a big difference. The great thing is, not nine times out of 10 but probably seven times out of 10, the E-staff are going, yeah we know about that, when actually we can't really tell you what's going on but yeah we know about them. But there's the two or three times out of 10 that people are like, oh yeah, so tell me more about them. And it might be a company that's just coming up, it might be 2013 and there's this company called Docker that no one's heard of, but the Ambassadors are shouting about Docker, and saying it's a big, you know. So there's that- >> So white space is too emerging you can see it's a telemetry, literally feedback from the field to direct management on business strategy. >> And our customers are pushing our field in directions faster than maybe R&D get pushed if you know what I mean. >> You guys deserve a lot of credit because Pat Gelsinger was just on this morning with Lisa and me, and we were talking about that. He just came back from the Sales President's club cruise, and one of the comments he said was the sales executive said, hey, who does strategy? Because everything's fitting together beautifully. Which kind of highlights how radiance this all progresses, not like magic, there's a process here, and this kind of points to your job is to fit that pieces in, is that correct? >> Yeah. People always say, as a CTO do you all sit down once a week and talk about strategy? And that's not what you do. There's a hive mind, there's a continual interaction, there's conference calls, there's phone calls, there's meetings, there's get togethers of various different types, groups, and levels. And what happens is there's themes that emerge over that. And so my role specifically, as the EMEA CTO is to represent Europe, Middle East, and Africa's voice in those conversations. And maybe the nuances that we might have around particular product requirements or whatever, to remind people that maybe sit in a bubble in Silicon Valley. >> John: I'm sure you raised your hand on privacy and GDPR? (laughs) >> Just a couple of times, yeah. Yeah, now and again. >> The canary in the coal mine is a really big point that helps companies, if they're not listening to the signals coming in. >> Well you do, and you see a lot. There's a lot of the tech companies that I see, it's often defined as the three bubbles, or your Massimo Re Ferrè, who's now at Amazon. When he was here, did this fantastic blog post talking about the first bubble is Silicon Valley, and the second bubble is North America, and the third bubble is everywhere else. And so you kind of watch these things emerge. And my job is to jump over that pop into the Silicon Valley bubble before something happens and say, no you should be thinking about X, you should think about Y. At an event like Radio I've got a force multiplier because I've got 40 plus Ambassadors with me all popping up at all these little booths you see behind you, and the shows, and the talks. >> And the goal here is not to be a bubble, but to be completely one hive mind. >> And the diversity at VMware just blows my mind, it really does. I think a lot of people comment on it quite often, and in fact I've been asked to be a non-exec director of other companies, to help them advise on their culture. Which is not in tech, in culture, which is quite interesting. And so the diversity that we have here is really infusing people to innovate in a way that they've not done before. It's that diverse set of opinions really helps. >> Well it does. And this, from what we've heard, Radio is a very, there's a lot of internal competition, it's like a badge of honor to be able to respond to the call for papers, let alone get selected. Touch on the synergies, the symbiosis that I feel like I'm hearing between the things that are presented here, the CTO Ambassadors and the customers. Like maybe a favorite example of a product or service that came from, maybe a CTO Ambassador, to Radio, to market. >> Yeah, I'm just trying to think of any one specific one. There are always bits and pieces, and things here and there. I think I should have thought of that before I came on really. I think what you're looking at here is, it's much more about an informed conversation and so it's those ideas around the fact. And also, quite often someone will have a cool idea, and they'll go to the Ambassadors, can you find me five customers that want to try this? Bang, we've got it. So if you're out there on a customer, and someone comes to you as an ambassador and says, I've got a really cool thing I'd like you to try. It might be before, we have a thing called Fling, so it might even be before it's made a fling. You probably heard from Morney how that process goes. Then engage fast, because you're probably getting that conduit direct into the core of R&D. So a lot of the features that people see and functions and products et cetera, that people see. A lot of the work you see, we're doing with the next version if you realized our management platform, a lot of that has been driven by work that's been done by Ambassadors in the field, and what we're doing there. All the stuff you'll see, I've got my jacket over there with NANO EDGE written on it. A lot of the EDGE stuff that you see, a lot of the stuff around ESXi on Arm, a lot of the stuff around that is driven specifically around a particular product range. So a really good example is, a few years ago, probably around four, myself and Ray sat down and had a meeting in VMware Barcelona, with a retail customer, and the retail customer was talking about could we get them an STDC, but small enough to fit in every store. They didn't say that at the time, but that's how we kind of got to it. So that started off a whole process in our minds, and then I went back and we, the easiest actual way for me to do it was to then get a bunch of the Ambassadors to present that as one of their innovation ideas, which became NANO EDGE. I originally called it VX Nook, because we were going to do it on intel Nooks. (laughs) Unfortunately the naming committee wouldn't allow VX Nook, so it became NANO EDGE. And that drove a whole change within the company, I think within R&D. So if you think up until that point, four years ago, most of what we were doing was, how do we run things bigger and faster? It was all like Monster VM, remember that? All those kinds of things, right? How do we get these SAP HANA 12 terabyte VMs running? And really NANO EDGE was not necessarily a product, per se but it was more of a movement driven by a particular individual, Simon Richardson, who had got promoted to Principle as a result, through the Ambassador program. That was driven through our R&D to get them to think small as well as big, you know. So next time you're building that thing, how small can you run your SX, how small can we get an SX? >> John: Small, at scale. Which is EDGE, right? >> And, you know, so get small, at scale, which was EDGE. And so suddenly everyone starts talking about EDGE, and I'm like, hang on I've been talking about this for a while now, but we just didn't really call it that. And then along comes technology like Kubernetes, which is how do you manage thousands of small things. And it's kind of, these things come together. But yes, totally, you can almost say our EDGE strategy, and a lot of the early EDGE work was done and driven out of stuff that was done from CTO Ambassadors. It's just one of the examples. >> What are some of the Kubernetes service mesh? Because one of the things we heard from Pat, and we've heard this before, but most recently at Dell Technologies World, in the last couple of weeks, was don't look down, look up. Which basically means we're automating the infrastructure. I get that, I've covered ad nauseam. But looking up the stack means you're talking about kubernetes app developers, you've got cloud native, you've got services meshes, microservices, new kinds of challenges around instrumentation. How are you guys inside Radio looking at that trend? Because there's some commercial impact, You've got Heptio, you've got Craig and the team, some of the original guys. >> Yeah, yeah. >> As well as you have a future state coming out, with state, pun intended, data, stateless. (laughs) These are new dynamics. >> Yeah, yeah. >> What's the R&D take on this? >> So there's two ways that I really talk to people about this. The first one is, I've got a concept that I talk about called application chromatography. Which sounds mental, but you remember from high school probably, chromatography was where you had that really special paper and you put the dot of liquid on and it spread it to all it's constituent parts. That's actually what's happening with our applications right now. So, we've gone through a history of re-platform. You know, mainframe, blah blah blah blah blah. So then when we got to x86, everything's on x86, along comes cloud, and as you know John, for the last 10 years it's been everything's going to cloud because we think that's the next platform. It's not, but then everything's not going to SAS, it's not all going to paths, it's not all going to Functions, it's not all going to containers. What you're seeing is those applications are coming off that one big server, and they're spreading themselves out to the right places. So I talk to customers now and they say, okay, well actually I need a management plan, and a strategy and an architecture for infrastructure as a service, containers as a service, functions as a service platform as a service and SAS, and I need a structure for that on premises and off premises. So that's truly driving R&D thinking is not how do we help our customers get from one of those to the other? They're going to all of them. >> It sounds like a green screen for media. >> It is, and then the other side of that is I've just had a conversation with some of the best, you know, what these events are like? Some of the best conversations in the water cooler, in the- >> In the hallway, yup exactly. >> I've just had a fascinating conversation with one of our guys has been talking about, oh it's really cool if we got kubernetes cause I could use it right down at the edge. I could use it to manage thousands as a tiny EDGE things. And as I'm talking to him and sort of saying, you know what he's doing, I suddenly went, hang on a second, how does a developer talk to that? He's like, well I've not really thought about that. I said, well that's your problem. We need to stop thinking about things from how can that framework help me? But how can I extend that framework? And so a lot of that- >> Moving beyond just standing up kubernetes, for what purpose? Or is that what you know, the why, what? >> So if the developers there, it shouldn't be all. I'm going to use this new framework to solve my problem or the EDGE if an R&D person would, but people like myself are there to drive them to think of the bigger picture. So ultimately at some point a developer in the future is going to want to sit there and through an API, push out software SQL server, a bit of Mongo over here, some stuff on AWS, go and use the service on our Azure at the same time pushing stuff into their own data center and maybe push a container to every store if they're a retailer and they want to do that through one place. That's what we're building. And you know, driving that, all these bits and pieces you see behind you pulling those all together into this sort of consistent operations model. As I'm sure you've heard many of- >> And it's dynamics not static, so it's not like provisioning the old way. You got to track what's being turned on and off because how do you log off? What goes turns on? What services get turned on? Turned off, turned on. >> If you don't get a theme of really, I suppose not only Radio, but our industry of the last few years, people have always said if that cliche change is constant, right? Oh, change is constant. Yet still architects build systems that are static, right? You guys that just, I'm designing an architect in this new system for the next three years. I'm like, that's stupid. What you need to do is design a system that you know is going to change before you've even finished starting it. More or less started going half way through it. So actually, as I see, I was in a fantastic session yesterday with the Architects around ESXi and VCenter, which might be boring to most, but where we architecting that for scale at a huge way. >> Well, I think that's the key thing I mean this is, first of all, we'd love this conversation because, if you can make it programmable with API and have data available, that's the architecture because it's programmable, it's not static. So you let it morph into however the application, because I think I mentioned green screen, you know chroma keys as we have those concepts here, but that's what you're saying. The apps are going to have this notion of, I need an app right now and then it goes away. Services are going to be provisioning and turning on and off. >> There is a transience, there's a transience to infrastructure, there's a transience to applications, there's a transience to components that traditional mechanisms aren't built to do. So if you look at actually, what are we building here? And what's that sort of hive mind message? It's how do we provide that platform going forward that supports transience? that allows customers to come, I mean people used to use the term agile, but it's been over years and it's not right. It's the fact that literally it's a situation of constant change. And what your deploying onto, it's constantly changing and what you're deploying is constantly changing. So we're trying to work out how do we put that piece in the middle, that is also changing but allows you some kind of constancy in what you're doing, right? So we can plug new things in the bottom, a new cloud here, a new piece of software there, a new piece of hardware there or whatever. And at the same time, there's new ways of doing architecture coming on top. That's the challenge of this, the software defined data centers, almost like an operating system for clouds or the future operating system for all apps on all clouds and all of- >> It's a systems thinking for sure, absolutely. >> Let's put your Chief Talking Officer hat on for a second as we look- >> I thought I've been doing that for the last fifteen minutes. (laughs) >> At VMWorld 2019, which is just around the corner. Any cool ANEA customers that are going to be on stage that we should be excited to hear about it? >> Actually, I was having a meeting yesterday morning about that, so I can't really say, but there's some exciting stuff we're lining up right now. We're obviously now is the time we start thinking about the keynotes, now at the time you start thinking about who's on stage. Myself and a few others are responsible for what those demos are, you know the cool demos you see on stage every year. So we literally had the meeting yesterday morning at Radio to discuss what's going to be the wow at VMWorld this year. So I'm not going to give anything away to you. I'll just say make sure you're there to watch it because it's going to be good. And we're also making sure there's a big difference between what we're doing in Moscone now and what we're going to be doing it in Barcelona when we- >> And when expand theCUBE outside of the United States certainly, we'd love to have you guys plug in and localize some of these unique challenges. Like you said, I agree bubble now the west of the world has different challenges content different. >> Definitely, I think to that end, multicloud is probably more of a thing in Europe than it was necessarily in, in North America for a longer time because those privacy laws you talked about before, people have always been looking at the fact that maybe they had to use a local cloud for some things. You know, a German cloud run by German people in a German data center and they could use another cloud like Amazon for other things. And you know, we have UK cloud who provide a specific government based cloud, et cetera. Whereas in America there was, you could use an American cloud and that was fine. So I think actually in Europe we've already been at the forefront of that multicloud thinking for a while. So it's worth watching. >> It is worth watching, I wish we had more time to, so you're just going to have to come back. >> Definitely, anytime tell me when. >> We look forward to seeing you at VMWorld. We thank you for sharing some insights with John and me on theCUBE today. >> Cool, thank you. >> For John Ferrier, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's exclusive coverage of VMware Radio 2019, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

Published Date : May 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by VMware. the CTO from EMEA, from VMware. But of course all this innovation has to be able So the CTO Ambassadors is to support that. So like a filter too, Because obviously, you can't have every customer to go through all the feedback. So the CTO Ambassadors, and what we do in Octo Global field So that begs the question, how do you do the filtering and you put forward your case, et cetera. And after two terms you have to go out for a year (laughs) And so it comes back to that filter piece Now Gelsinger and the team sees this So literally the best of the best get together. literally feedback from the field if you know what I mean. and one of the comments he said was And maybe the nuances that we might have around particular Just a couple of times, yeah. The canary in the coal mine is a really big point There's a lot of the tech companies that I see, And the goal here is not to be a bubble, And so the diversity that we have here it's like a badge of honor to be able to respond to the call A lot of the EDGE stuff that you see, Which is EDGE, right? and a lot of the early EDGE work was done and driven Because one of the things we heard from Pat, As well as you have a future state coming out, that really special paper and you put And as I'm talking to him and sort of saying, So if the developers there, it shouldn't be all. so it's not like provisioning the old way. that you know is going to change So you let it morph into however the application, And at the same time, there's new ways for the last fifteen minutes. Any cool ANEA customers that are going to be on stage about the keynotes, now at the time you start thinking Like you said, I agree bubble now the west of the world And you know, we have UK cloud who provide so you're just going to have to come back. We look forward to seeing you at VMWorld. of VMware Radio 2019, thanks for watching.

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Anna Chu & Shona Chee, Microsoft | Microsoft Ignite 2018


 

>> That's sort of what I bring, is an ability to catalyze the conversation, and share that knowledge with others in the community. Our philosophy is everybody expert in something, everybody is passionate about something, and has real deep knowledge about that something. What we want to focus in on that area and extract that knowledge and share it with our communities. This is Dave Vellante, thanks for watching theCUBE. (smooth music) >> Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite. Brought to you by Cohesity, and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment, we have Anna Chu, who is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft and Shona Chee, Product Marketing Manager Diversity and Tech Community Lead. Thank you so much for joining us. >> Happy to be here! >> So, you are dressed very similarly. (laughs) >> Yes, we are. >> Yes, so we're going to get into diversity, because I want to go there, but let me start with you, Anna. So, you are really in charge of the community within the vast ecosystem of Microsoft. That's a big job. So how do you go about it? What's your approach to the Microsoft Community? >> Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. I've been leading the community efforts at Microsoft Ignite for the past two and a half, three years. And ultimately, it's all about the people in the room. These are IT pros, these are developers; people who care about technology. It's also end users as well; people who are business-focused. So we really want to make sure that we're delivering content that is going to help them go back to their communities, go back to their offices and be able to share all that knowledge back into the workplace. >> And Shona, so then you are within a slice of that community. So focusing on diversity and tech. So, what is your, how do you operate? >> So we see diversity as really closely integrated with technology. So we are a community that lives on the tech community. So there's a direct link, AKA dot MS Life Diversity and Tech, but what we're pretty much doing is bringing people together. All the tech communities to talk about important topics of diversity inclusion. So, traditionally, it's always been very HR driven, a lot about talent and acquisition and recruitment, but for us its really about what about the people in career, how do we help them feel like they belong, and they're apart of this ecosystem. So that's where we see the symbiotic relationship. >> And I have to say that it's my first time to the show. I've watched it from afar, I knew lots of people that were Microsoft MVPs over the years, very impressed. Maybe give our audience a little bit about what goes on in the show. You got all the podcasts going, there's meet-ups, there, you know, lots of good flare you're giving out at the show, and everything else like that. So, what's everybody missing that didn't come to this community gathering? >> Gosh, I hope I didn't miss out on anything, really. I really hope that we were as inclusive as possible. But every year we try and make the event more community infused than ever before. In previous years, we just really focused on content that would be live on a stage, such as at a theater or a breakout, but we really want to add a little bit more of the networking side of things too this year. So we've invested in the meetups, which are more formalized ways for the community to find their people. But we've also invested in idea swaps, such as a brand new concept that we've landed here in Microsoft Ignite, where we have group idea swaps where people are putting together topics that they want to meet with others about. And we also want to facilitate more one on one networking because personal relationships are such a critical part to being professionally strong in your career. You can't be successful without other people. So we really want to enable Ignite to be that platform. We've got people from all around the world. Shona's got this amazing pin wall in the Diversity and Tech area that showcases where everyone is coming from. There are people coming from really remote areas, to people all parts of Western Europe and the US, and I think there's a lot to be gained from people being able to find each other through Ignite. >> And what we always tell attendees is everything is live-streamed or recorded in terms of sessions, so the biggest take away here is really people and communities, so we really encourage people to meet-up, build valuable connections, just talk about topics that might be uncomfortable so that we can learn from it. >> Such a great point there. It's funny it is one of those pro tips out there. First of all, when there's a really big convention center, and there's a lot of people, there's certain sessions that you want to be at. Maybe you want to talk to the speaker in due but, when you find time on the plane ride back or spend a little time in that suite, you can go re-watch some of it, the people is really what drives everybody to the event. >> Where else would you meet 25,000 people in one venue, right? So it's really exciting. >> Shona you said talk about topics that are a little uncomfortable, those are the hardest things to talk about, particularly with a group of strangers. So what has been your experience at this conference, what are people saying that might count as that? >> Right, so the recent inclusion has really come front and center in terms of topics that's hot in the IT industry in particular. So traditionally people think about diverse inclusion as gender, right? Men and women. But, we're seeing that it's a lot more multi faceted than that. We're talking really about intersectionality of identities, all of us hold multiple identities, I'm a woman in tech, I'm an IT professional, I'm a millennial. So there's multi areas that we deal with, but we need to address each and every one of them. So for example, this year we have a lot of sessions focused on LGBTQ, and we also have our partners talking about this topic as well, and just really getting people in a room to say help me learn more about this area that I'm not that familiar with, or let's talk about race and culture. What do people in your culture do? What is the norm, what is acceptable? And that's why we also partnered with Tech Women, it's a US department of state initiative where we invite women from developing countries to come share their experience being an IT pro in those countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon. So we really want to give them platform to interact with attendees, but also giving mostly North American and European customers a chance to hear from someone in a completely different cultural setting. >> And just talking about all the various identities that we all encapsulate. Is the workplace the right place to talk about those things? That is another question too, in the sense of we are bringing our full self to work and we are spending so many hours at work. But at the same time, what is the right balance, do you think? >> Yeah, I think that's a great point. On the Monday leadership panel, we actually talk about leadership and building inclusive work cultures. Like you said, we spend so much time in the office, sometimes our coworkers become our family almost, right? How do we create and environment where people feel like they belong, where they feel like they can be genuine and not feel like they have to hide something, because in-authenticity really shows, and we want to encourage people to just feel like they have a safe place to express themselves. >> So in terms of advocating for yourself at work, I know that's another big theme that is in the diversity and tech workshops, what is some advice that you have for women, for underrepresented minorities, for people of various sexual orientations to make sure that they are having there careers that they are capable of having, and not being and not coming up against other biases and challenges. >> So in the Tuesday session, Donna Secaur actually talked about this, which was a great point, she said, you can write your own story, you can't control what people say about you, but you can control what's out there in the media, you can control how you do your social media profiles, and I think it's really encouraging people to take a look at what's online. Brand yourself how you want people to see you, and be proud of it, I think that's one of the biggest points. >> I also think that Microsoft Ignite brings so many people together, but they all have a common mutual passion which is about technology, and if that manages to bridge build bridges between people who may not necessarily get to know each other, so people from different religions or from different ethnic backgrounds, who don't really have that opportunity to get to know each other, and then they find a common passion, or they also face the same challenge on how to govern teams or things like that then suddenly we're doing a lot to help, build bridges and just drive that human connection so we can get beyond some of those challenges that we're facing in 2018. >> One of the ideas that bridges both community and diversity is career paths. I know a lot of the shows they go is how're we taking somebody from a certain world that growth mindset that we hear Sasha talking about how're you looking to address that and how is that discussed in the communities? >> Gosh, we've just launch a completely new Microsoft learned platform as well, one of the things that is really important ab6out learning is actually learning through community too. And if we can enable people to find their own people by helping them share best practices and tips, and we've made huge in roads there. So one of the things we've run as part of Microsoft Ignite, are community socials. So community socials are a way for people to find their people. So we've hosted ones for Microsoft Exchange an6d Outlook and we can make an element of fun out of that too, so there seems to be a certain personality in that community called squeaky lobster, I don't know if you've heard of squeaky lobster. It's some sort of inside joke that even I don't understand, but apparently he's a personality, and he's here to unite the community together, and then people will come together, and they'll talk about Exchange 2019, and they'll talk about how that impacts other parts of Office 365 and Microsoft 365, and then they'll talk about all the different ways that they can connect with each other as well. So it's a very amorphous thing. From a learning perspective, we have a lot of things that we can do to create platforms for learning, which is really awesome, but at the end of the day we have to learn through community because it's just IT professionals and developers are having to learn at a crazy pace, faster than they've ever had before. So that's a really big part. >> And I like that you mentioned career paths, because we just partnered with the MVP community to launch a community mentors program, and that's where we partner with over 700 participants all around the world from 65 countries, and over 800 years of combined industry experience, to have mentors work with mentees from other countries, and do a lot of cross sharing, just sharing expertise and best practices. >> And you have your student ambassadors here too. >> So that's a new thing that we've also rolled out at Ignite this year, we've invited seven student ambassadors from three local colleges here, and we invited them to work with our community reporters to push out some exciting video content. So that helps them to get a flavor of what kind of roles are out there in tech. We want to debunk the myth that you have to learn coding to work in technology and that is not true. There are so many amazing IT pro roles out there that we really want to educate people on. >> So the technology industry at this point in time has a very bad reputation in terms of diversity, there's not enough women, there's not enough minorities, there's not enough sexual orientation diversity. Coupled with this real bro culture, what's your best advice for technology companies today to be more inclusive, that's one of Satya Nadella's real guiding principles is embracing diversity, different perspectives, and being inclusive. How do you do it? >> I would say the first thing is really, just take the first step. We're all on a journey, this is a really big hairy issue that we're all working to tackle, and we cannot do this alone, and that's something we've heard consistently with all our partners. We are working together to tackle this as an industry, and I can't speak for other companies, but at Microsoft we have a strong culture of empathy, and as you know from Sasha's key note we're all about empowering people to be the best that they can be, and that is why we've developed code of conduct, we make sure people know what's acceptable, what are the boundaries that we can talk with, but still push the limit and say, hey I want to learn more about your culture, I want to know more about the LGBTQ community, I want to know about inclusive design and accessibility, how do I build technology that is accessible for everybody. So I think it's not easy for sure, even for Microsoft, we are still trying a lot of things for the first time. We learn and we grow from it, and we just keep improving it every year, so we hope that in future Ignites it will be even better. >> And having community members, even individually own being a champion for diversity too, whether it be in their own organization, or in their own user groups that they run, we really want to make sure that they are feeling like I can be an ally for diversity, whether you are someone who is the the typical persona in the IT pro world, which is a white male, and I'm really glad to hear a lot of these stories of people saying you know what, I am going to be that person that's going to step in and say something when I don't think things are right. >> And there are topics that everybody can relate to as well like mental health and wellness, that's an issue that's really come in the spotlight with a lot of stress in the industry. So it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, your gender identity, all of us are human beings. We all feel the same pressures and stress, and we just had that lunch session where literally tears were shed because people felt like I now have space to say I'm struggling with this, can you help me? And I think that's a really powerful thing to even just get started. >> It does require a lot of bravery, I think. Because for me even, I like to be able to find other people that I can relate to, who also share some of the same challenges that I have, and so I think that's the first step really, basically opening the doors and letting people express themselves and then other people are also going to feel like they're included. I think that's really one of the first steps. >> And where better to do it than a community. Finding your people in this space so yeah. >> And I want to ask about the buttons you have on so, yours, Anna's says Ringleader, Shona, game changer. >> Networking ninja >> And Networking ninja! I love it. So can you explain what these mean? >> Yeah so this year we want to try to really interactive button wall and we want people to come, and feel like they can share what's there diversity super powers, so all of us play a really important role, we where many hats from a day to day basis, but we want to know, what do people feel like is there ultimate strength, whether you're a mentor, are you an enabler, are you a supporter, what is it? And these were just great conversation topics, so if I saw that Anna's a Ringleader, I might come up to her and be like, oh that's me too, can we talk and schedule and idea slot? So we just want to create a fun way for people to interact, but another important thing we've launched this year is the pronoun buttons, so we want everybody to feel like they can be comfortable telling people what is the pronoun that they prefer rather than what visually people think they are, so that is something that we've launched this year as well. >> Very cool, very cool. Well thank you both so much for coming on theCube, it was really fun talking to you. >> Thank you for having us. >> I'm Rebecca Knight, for Stu Miniman we will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit. (smooth music)

Published Date : Sep 26 2018

SUMMARY :

and share that knowledge Brought to you by Cohesity, to theCUBE's live coverage So, you are dressed very similarly. charge of the community So we really want to make sure And Shona, so then All the tech communities to that didn't come to this I really hope that we were so that we can learn from it. that you want to be at. So it's really exciting. things to talk about, So we really want to give them platform to in the sense of we are and we want to encourage that they are capable of having, So in the Tuesday session, and if that manages to bridge I know a lot of the shows they go is but at the end of the day we And I like that you And you have your student So that helps them to get a flavor of what So the technology industry that we can talk with, and I'm really glad to and we just had that lunch session where and so I think that's And where better to the buttons you have on so, So can you explain what these mean? So we just want to create a Well thank you both so Stu Miniman we will have

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Margot Gerritsen, Stanford University | WiDS 2018


 

>> Narrator: Alumni. (upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE. Covering Women in Data Science Conference 2018. Brought to you by Stanford. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live at Stanford University for the third annual Women in Data Science Conference, WiDS. I'm Lisa Martin, very honored to be joined by one of the co-founders of this incredible WiDS movement and phenomenon, Dr. Margot Gerritsen. Welcome to theCUBE! >> It's great to be here, thanks so much for being at our conference. >> Oh, likewise. You were the senior associate dean and director of the Institute for Computational Mathematics and Engineering at Stanford. >> Gerritsen: That's right, yep. >> Wow, that's a mouthful and I'm glad I could actually pronounce that. So you have been, well, I would love to give our audience a sense of the history of WiDS, which is very short. You've been on this incredible growth and scale trajectory. But you've been in this field of computational science for what, 30, over 30 years? >> Yeah, probably since I was 16, so that was 35 years ago. >> Yeah, and you were used to being one of few, or if not the only woman >> That's right. >> In a meeting, in a room. You were okay with that but you realized, you know what? There are probably women who are not comfortable with this and it's probably going to be a barrier. Tell us about the conception of WiDS that you and your co-founders had. >> So, May, 2015, Esteban from Walmart Labs, now at Facebook, and Karen Matthys, who's still very active, you know, one of the organizers of the conference, and I were having coffee at a cafe in Stanford and we were lamenting the fact that at another data science conference that we had been to had only had male speakers. And so we connected with the organizers and asked them why? Did you notice? Because very often people are not even aware, it's just such the norm to only have male speakers, >> Right, right. >> That people don't even notice. And so we asked why is that? And they said, "Well, you know we really tried to find "speakers but we couldn't find any." And that really was, for me, the last straw. I've been in so many of these situations and I thought, you know, we're going to show them. So we joke sometimes, a little bit, we say it's sort of a revenge conference. (laughs) We said, let's show them we can get some really outstanding women, and in fact only women. And that's how it started. Now we were sitting at this coffee shop and I said, "Let's do a conference." And they said, "Well, that would be great, next year." And I said, "No, this year. "Let's just do it. "Let's do it in November." We had six months to put it together. It was just a local conference here. We got outstanding speakers, which were really great. Mostly from the area. And then we started live-streaming because we thought it would be fun to do. And to our big surprise, we had 6,000 people on the livestream just without really advertising. That made us realize, in November 2015, my goodness, we're onto something. And we had such amazing responses. We wanted to then scale up the conference and then you can hire a fantastic conference center in San Francisco and get 10,000 people in like they do, for example, at Grace Hopper. But we thought, why not use online technology and scale it up virtually and make this a global event using the livestream, that we will then provide to people, and asking for regional events, local events to be set up all around the world. And we created this ambassador program, that is now in its second year. the first year the responses were actually overwhelming to us already then. We got 75 ambassadors who set up 75 events around the world >> In about 40 countries. >> This was last year, 2017? >> Yeah, almost exactly 13 months ago, and then this year now we have over 200 ambassadors. We have 177 events in 155 cities in 53 countries. >> That's incredible. >> So we're on every continent apart from Antarctica but we're working on that one. >> Martin: I was going to say, that's probably next year. >> Yeah, that's right. >> The scale, though, that you've achieved in such a short time period, I think, not only speaks to the power, like you said, of using technology and using live-streaming, but also, there is a massive demand. >> Gerritsen: There is a great need, yeah. >> For not only supporting, like from the perspective of the conference, you want to support and inspire and educate data scientists worldwide and support females in the field, but it really, I think, underscores, there is still in 2018, a massive need to start raising more profiles and not just inspiring undergrad females, but also reinvigorating those of us that have been in the STEM field and technology for a while. >> Gerritsen: That's right. >> So, what are some of the things, so, this year, not only are you reaching, hopefully about 100,000 people, you mentioned some of the countries involved today, but you also have a new first this year with the WiDS Datathon. >> That's right. >> Tell us about the WiDS Datathon, what was the idea behind it? You announced some winners today? >> Yeah. Yeah, so with WiDS last year, we really felt that we hit a nerve. Now there is an incredible need for women to see other women perform so well in this field. And, you know, that's why we do it, to inspire. But it's a one-time event, it's once a year. And we started to think about, what are some of the ways that we can make this movement, because it's really become a movement, into something more than just an annual, once-a-year conference? And so, Datathon is a fantastic way to do that. You can engage people for several months before the conference, and you can announce the winner at the conference. It is something that can be done really easily worldwide if it is supported again by the ambassadors, so the local WiDS organizations. So we thought we'd just try. But again, it's one of those things we say, "Oh, let's do it." We, I think, thought about this about six months ago. Finding a good data set is always a challenge but we found a wonderful data set, and we had a great response with 1100, almost 1200 people in the world participating. >> That's incredible. >> Several hundred teams. Yeah, and what we said at the time was, well, let's have the teams be 50% female at least, so that was the requirement, we have a lot of mixed teams. And ultimately, of course, that's what we want. We want 50-50, men-women, have them both at the table, to participate in data science activities, to do data science research, and answer a lot of these data questions that are now driving so many decisions. Now we want everybody around the table. So with this Datathon, it was just a very small event in the sense, and I'm sure next year it will be bigger, but it was a great success now. >> Well, congratulations on that. One of the things I saw you on a Youtube video talking about over the weekend when I was doing some prep was that you wanted this Datathon to be fun, creative, and I think those are two incredibly important ways to describe careers, not just in STEM but in data science, that yes, this can be fun. >> Yep. >> Should be if you're spending so much time every day, right, doing something for a living. But I love the creativity descriptor. Tell us a little bit about the room for interpretation and creativity to start removing some of the bias that is clearly there in data interpretation? >> Oh. (laughs) You're hitting the biggest sore point in data science. And you could even turn it around, you say, because of creativity, we have a problem too. Because you can be very creative in how you interpret the data, and unfortunately, for most of us, whenever we look at news, whenever we look at data or other information given to us, we never see this through an objective lens. We always see this through our own filters. And that, of course, when you're doing data analysis is risky, and it's tricky. 'cause you're often not even aware that you're doing it. So that's one thing, you have this bias coming in just as a data scientist and engineer. Even though we always say we do objective work and we're building neutral software programs, we're not. We're not. Everything that we do in machine learning, data mining, we're looking for patterns that we think may be in the data because we have to program this data. And then even looking at some of the results, the way we visualize them, present them, can really introduce bias as well. And then we don't control the perception of people of this data. So we can present it the way we think is fair, but other people can interpret or use little bits of that data in other ways. So it's an incredibly difficult problem and the more we use data to address and answer critical challenges, the more data is influencing decisions made by politicians, made in industry, made by government, the more important it is that we are at least aware. One of the really interesting things this conference, is that many of the speakers are talking to that. We just had Latanya Sweeney give an outstanding keynote really about this, raising this awareness. We had Daniela Witten saying this, and various other speakers. And in the first year that we had this conference, you would not have heard this. >> Martin: Really? Only two years ago? >> Yeah. So even two years ago, some people were bringing it up, but now it is right at the forefront of almost everybody's thinking. Data ethics, the issue of reproducibility, confirmations bias, now at least people now are aware. And I'm always a great optimist, thinking if people are aware, and they see the need to really work on this, something will happen. But it is incredibly important for the new data scientists that come into the field to really have this awareness, and to have the skill sets to actually work with that. So as a data scientist, one of the reasons why I think it's so fun, you're not just a mathematician or statistician or computer scientist, you are somebody who needs to look at things taking into account ethics, and fairness. You need to understand human behavior. You need to understand the social sciences. And we're seeing that awareness now grow. The new generation of data scientists is picking that up now much more. Educational programs like ours too have embedded these sort of aspects into the education and I think there is a lot of hope for the future. But we're just starting. >> Right. But you hit the nail on the head. You've got to start with that awareness. And it sounds like, another thing that you just described is we often hear, the top skills that a data scientist needs to have is statistical analysis, data mining. But there's also now some of these other skills you just mentioned, maybe more on the softer side, that seem to be, from what we hear on theCUBE, as important, >> Gerritsen: That's right. >> As really that technical training. To be more well-rounded and to also, as you mentioned earlier, to have to the chance to influence every single sector, every single industry, in our world today. >> And it's a pity that they're called softer skills. (laughs) >> It is. >> Because they're very very hard skills to really master. >> A lot of them are probably you're born with it, right? It's innate, certain things that you can't necessarily teach? >> Well, I don't believe that you cannot do this without innate ability. Of course if you have this innate ability it helps a little, but there's a growth mindset of course, in this, and everybody can be taught. And that's what we try to do. Now, it may take a little bit of time, but you have to confront this and you have to give the people the skills and really integrate this in your education, integrate this at companies. Company culture plays a big role. >> Absolutely. >> This is one of the reasons why we want way more diversity in these companies, right. It's not just to have people in decision-making teams that are more diverse, but the whole culture of the company needs to change so that these sort of skills, communication, empathy, big one, communication skills, presentation skills, visualization skills, negotiation skills, that they really are developed everywhere, in the companies, at the universities. >> Absolutely. We speak with some companies, and some today, even, on theCUBE, where they really talk about how they're shifting, and SAP is one of them, their corporate culture to say we've got a goal by 2020 to have 30% of our workforce be female. You've got some great partners, you mentioned Walmart Labs, how challenging was it to go to some of these companies here in Silicon Valley and beyond and say, hey we have this idea for a conference, we want to do this in six months so strap on your seatbelts, what were those conversations like to get some of those partners onboard? >> We wouldn't have been able to do it in six months if the response had not been fantastic right from the get-go. I think we started the conference just at the right time. There was a lot of talk about diversity. Several of the companies were starting really big diversity initiatives. Intel is one of them, SAP is another one of them. We were connected with these companies. Walmart Labs, for example, one of the founders of the company was from Walmart Labs. And so when we said, look, we want to put this together, they said great. This is a fantastic venue for us also. You see this with some of these companies, they don't just come and give us money for this conference. They build their own WiDS events around the world. Like SAP built 30 WiDS events around the world. So they're very active everywhere. They see the need, of course, too. They do this because they really believe that a changed culture is for the best of everybody. But they also believe that because they need the women. There is a great shortage of really excellent data scientists right now, so why not look at 50% of your population? >> Martin: Exactly. >> You know, there's fantastic talent in that pool and they want to track that also. So I think that within the companies, there is more awareness, there is an economic need to do so, a real need, if they want to grow, they need those people. There is an awareness that for their future, the long term benefit of the company, they need this diversity in opinions, they need the diversity in the questions that are being asked, and the way that the companies look at the data. And so, I think we're at a golden age for that now. Now am I a little bit frustrated that it's 2018 and we're doing this? Yes. When I was a student 30 some years ago, I was one of the very few women, and I thought, by the time I'm old, and now I'm old, you know, as far as my 18-year-old self, right, I mean in your 50s, you're old. I thought everything would be better. And we certainly would be at critical mass, which is 30% or higher, and it's actually gone down since the 80s, in computer science and in data science and statistics, so it is really very frustrating in that sense that we're really starting again from quite a low level. >> Right. Right. >> But I see much more enthusiasm and now the difference is the economical need. So this is going to be driven by business sense as well as any other sense. >> Well I think you definitely, with WiDS, you are beyond onto something with what you've achieved in such a short time period. So I can only imagine, WiDS 2018 reaching up to 100,000 people over these events, what do you do next year? Where do you go from here? (laughs) >> Well, it's becoming a little bit of a challenge actually to organize and help and support all of these international events, so we're going to be thinking about how to organize ourselves, maybe on every continent. >> Getting to Antarctica in 2019? >> Yeah, but have a little bit more of a local or regional organization, so that's one thing. The main thing that we'd like to do is have even more events during the year. There are some specific needs that we cannot address right now. One need, for example, is for high school students. We have two high school students here today, which is wonderful, and quite a few of them are looking at the live-stream of the conference. But if you want to really reach out to high school students and tell them about this and the sort of skill sets that they should be thinking about developing when they are at university, you have to really do a special event. The same with undergraduate students, graduate students. So there are some markets there, some subgroups of people that we would really like to tailor to. The other thing is a lot of people are very very eager to self-educate, and so what we are going to be putting together, at least that's the plan now, we'll see, if we can make this, is educational tools, and really have a repository of educational tools that people can use to educate themselves and to learn more. We're going to start a podcast series of women, which will be very, very interesting. We'll start this next month, and so every week or every two weeks we'll have a new podcast out there. And then we'll keep the momentum going. But really the idea is to not provide just this one day of inspiration, but to provide throughout the year, >> Sustained inspiration. >> Sustained inspiration and resources. >> Wow, well, congratulations, Margot, to you and your co-founders. This is a movement, and we are very excited for the opportunity to have you on theCUBE as well as some of the speakers and the attendeees from the event today. And we look forward to seeing all the great things that I think are going to come for sure, the rest of this year and beyond. So thank you for giving us some of your time. >> Thank you so much, we're a big fan of theCUBE. >> Oh, we're lucky, thank you, thank you. We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin, we are live at the third annual Women in Data Science Conference coming to you from Stanford University, #WiDS2018, join the conversation. I'll be back with my next guest after a short break. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Mar 5 2018

SUMMARY :

(upbeat music) Brought to you by Stanford. Welcome back to theCUBE, we are live It's great to be here, thanks so much and director of the Institute for Computational a sense of the history of WiDS, which is very short. and it's probably going to be a barrier. And so we connected with the organizers and asked them why? And to our big surprise, we had 6,000 people now we have over 200 ambassadors. So we're on every continent apart from Antarctica not only speaks to the power, like you said, that have been in the STEM field and technology for a while. so, this year, not only are you reaching, before the conference, and you can announce so that was the requirement, we have a lot of mixed teams. One of the things I saw you on a Youtube video talking about and creativity to start removing some of the bias is that many of the speakers are talking to that. that come into the field to really have this awareness, that seem to be, from what we hear on theCUBE, as you mentioned earlier, to have to the chance to influence And it's a pity that they're called softer skills. and you have to give the people the skills that are more diverse, but the whole culture of the company You've got some great partners, you mentioned Walmart Labs, of the company was from Walmart Labs. by the time I'm old, and now I'm old, you know, Right. and now the difference is the economical need. what do you do next year? how to organize ourselves, maybe on every continent. But really the idea is to not provide for the opportunity to have you on theCUBE coming to you from Stanford University,

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Day Three Wrap - OpenStack Summit 2017 - #OpenStackSummit - #theCUBE


 

>> Announcer: Live, from Boston, Massachusetts, it's theCUBE, covering OpenStack Summit 2017. Brought to you by The OpenStack Foundation, Red Hat, and additional ecosystems support. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman, and my cohost this week has been John Troyer. This is SiliconANGLE Media's production of theCUBE, worldwide leader in live tech coverage. And this has been OpenStack Summit 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts. John, we came in with a lot of questions. One of my premises, coming into the event was that we needed to reset expectations, a little bit. I know I learned a lot this week. Still one of my favorite communities. A lot of really smart people. Really interesting things going on. Open source infrastructure is really the focus here. Start with you, big meta takeaways from the show so far. >> Big picture, my first summit, my first summit here. Didn't quite know what to expect. I love the community, a lot of activity. A lot of real world activity going on. People building clouds today. So that was very insightful and very, that's a great data point. As far as the ecosystem goes, a lot more talk about integrating with the rest of the open source ecosystem, about integrating with other public and private clouds. So I thought that there was also a lot of self awareness here about where OpenStack is on it's journey and how it might proceed into the future. So overall, I think, you know, a really practical, focused, and grounded week. >> Yeah, came in with the whole concept of big tent. I think which we said, there's a big hole poked in that. There's the core is doing well, there's a number of projects, I forget the user survey, whether you know, there's the kind of the six core pieces and then there's like 9 or 10 in the average configuration. So there's more than the core, there's interesting things going into it and last year I felt that OpenStack kind of understood where it fit into that hybrid cloud environment. As you pointed out this year, some of those upper layer things, I feel like I understand them a little more. So, of course, containers and Kubernetes, a big piece of the discussion this week. Containers definitely transforming the way we build our applications. It seems a given now, that containers will be a big part of the future and OpenStack's ready for it. We had yesterday, we had the people that did the demo in the keynote, but containers doing well. Kubernetes fits in pretty well, even though, I think it was Randy Bias that said, "Well, OpenStack needs Kubernetes." My paraphrase is Kubernetes doesn't need OpenStack. KubeCon is going to be in Austin at the end of the year and that show could be bigger than this show was here in Boston. Year over year, for the North American show, attendance is down a little bit, but still robust attendance, lots of different pieces. Containers, Kubernetes, you mentioned some of the other pieces, any other add-ons on that? >> Well now, I mean other than its worth saying that these are not either or, this is all and. If you look at the total addressable market, every place that containers and Kubernetes can play, that's every cloud in the world, right? It's up there at the application layer. If you look at where OpenStack belongs, it is in these private clouds that have special needs, that have, either from privacy, security or functionality latency, just data gravity, right. There's all these reasons why you might want to build out a public cloud and we see that with Telco. Telecomm is building out their own infrastructure, because they need it, because they run the network core. So that's not going away. As far as containers go, again the story was not either or, it's and. You can containerize the infrastructure. That's super useful. Sometimes being bare metal is useful. Separately, you can put containers on top, because that's increasingly becoming the application packaging and interface format. So, I didn't see a lot of ideology here, Stu, and that was refreshing to me. People were not saying there is one true way. This is a modular system that, at this point in it's life cycle, it has to become very pragmatic. >> John, I think that's a great point, because we knock on, and everybody knocks on, OpenStack's not simple and the reason is because IT is not simple. Everybody has different challenges, therefore, it's not a Lego brick, it's lots of ways we put it together. Had some really interesting deep dives with a customer, couple of users today. The Adobe advertising cloud, Paddy Power Betfair, both of those gave us real concrete examples of how and why they build things the way they do. How OpenStack and Kubernetes go together. How acquiring another company, or switching your storage vendors is made easier by OpenStack. So, we've talked to a number of practitioners, they like OpenStack, reminds me of VMware. People like being able to build it and tweak it. Very different scale for some of these environments, but people are building clouds. The Telecom's are doing some good things. All the Linux companies are super excited about the future, that it helps them kind of move up the stack and become more critical environments and how it all ties into this multi-hybrid cloud world. Digital transformation, many of these pieces, I need that modern infrastructure and the open infrastructure coming from OpenStack and related pieces pull it all together. >> Well, where is the innovation going to come from in this next generation of cloud? I thought our segment with Orran, talking about the Massachusetts open cloud, was great, because he's there as a computer science professor, somebody who's been intimately involved with virtualization, with IBM, with VMware, saying, "Okay, we need to build this next generation. "Where can we innovate? We have to own the stack "and OpenStack is a great way for us to innovate "with those different components." One of the challenges, because OpenStack as a set of technologies, is so modular, is where's the knowledge come from? Where's the knowledge transfer? Can you find an OpenStack expert? Do you have to grow them? So, I see that as one challenge going forward for the OpenStack community, is how do we grow the knowledge base? How do we make sure that people are trained up and able to architect and operate OpenStack based clouds? >> Yeah, John, how about the individuals themselves? We talked to Lisa-Marie Namphy about the Ambassadors Program. We talked to a number of our guests throughout the week about training everything, from Orran Krieger, talking about how his students are helping to build this, to engagement contribution. I mean it's nuance, when I look at the future of jobs. A lot of companies here are hiring. Which is always heartening to me. What's your take on that aspect? >> Well, it's still a very vibrant community. You look at these different camps, a lot of them are vendor affiliated these days. There are very few communities that are outside of a vendor and these open source foundations are one source of those. I think, look there's still 5 or 6,000 people here, right? This is not a small event and these people are active, hands on operators, for the most part. So-- >> Yeah and the thing I'd point out, there are lots of companies that have contributors here. The other category is still really big here. A point Lisa-Marie made, many of the people that have contributed here have switched jobs a number of times. NASA helped start it. They kind of left, they came back. Some of the big Telecom companies, they're not selling OpenStack, they're using it to help build their services. So, it's like wait, which are vendors, which are providers? I think we know everybody's becoming a software company. Wait John, TechReckoning, are you a software company yet? >> We use a lot of soft, we use a lot of cloud, mostly on SaaS side. >> At SiliconANGLE Media we actually have a part of our business that is software. We've got a full development team, you know open source plays into somewhat we do, but I guess what I'm saying is, the traditional demarcation between the vendor and the consumer in open source tends to be blurring. I don't remember in the keynote if they had, hey how many people have contributed to the code. That's something that we used to get, partially because we have splintered out this event a little as to, the goals, it's no longer the people building it. They've got lots of ways to do that and a lot of the drama's gone. We had for many years in OpenStack, it was who's going to own what distribution and who's driving what project and a lot of that's come out. We talked about the last couple of years, has it become boring in certain ways? But it's important, it's driving a lot of pieces and OpenStack should be here to stay for awhile. >> Yeah, it's part of the conversation. I love the term open infrastructure. We heard it once or twice. We'll see if that becomes a topic of conversation. Going back to Lisa-Marie Namphy's segment, I encourage people to check out your local OpenStack meet-up right? You'll find that other conversations are going on there, other than just OpenStack. This is an ecosystem, it interacts with the rest of the world. >> Yeah, and talk about that next generation, edge is really interesting, the conversation we had with Beth Cohen. Also talked to Lee Doyle from the analysts perspective. Lots of cool things happening with that next generation of technology. 5G's going to play into it. So, there's always the next next thing and OpenStack's doing a good job to, as a community, to be open, working with it and understanding that they don't need to be all things to all people, certain other pieces will pull in and we have that broad diverse ecosystem. >> Looks a, I'll go out and make a prediction, I think in five years, we're going to look back and we're going to say, actually, OpenStack driven plumbing is going to be driving a lot of the next generation to the internet. >> Yeah, I love that, actually I forget if it's two or three years ago, what I said was that, as Linux took a long time to kind of work its way into all the environments, OpenStack pieces will find its way there. Brian Stevens from Google said, "If it wasn't for open source, in general, "Linux specifically, we wouldn't have "any of the hyperscale guys today." All those companies leverage open source a bunch. We've heard whisperings that, not just the telecommunications, some very large global companies that are trying to figure out how OpenStack fit into it. Coming into the show, it was all the talk about, oh, Intel stopped its joint lab with Rackspace, HPE pulled its cloud out, there's some other hyperscale companies that are looking at OpenStack. It's reached a certain maturity and it will fit in a number of places. All right, well, hey John, we started the beginning of the week, it was cloudy and overcast, a little cool in Boston. The skies opened up, it's blue. I've loved having two weeks here in Boston. Really appreciate you joining me for the journey here. Here for the OpenStack Summit. >> Thanks for having me, it was fascinating. >> Thank you John. Want to thank our audience, and thank the whole team here in Boston, and the broad SiliconANGLE media team. This is our biggest week that we've ever had, as to how much content we're creating. So, thanks so much to everyone. Thanks for our community for watching. As anything, when they scale, let us know if there's things we need to fix or feedback that you have for us. For Stu Miniman, John Troyer, the whole team here in Boston and beyond, I want to thank you so much for watching theCUBE. Be sure to check out SiliconANGLE TV for all the upcoming events. Let us know where we should be at and feel free to reach to us with any comments, and thank you for watching theCUBE. (light techno music)

Published Date : May 10 2017

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by The OpenStack Foundation, One of my premises, coming into the event and how it might proceed into the future. of the future and OpenStack's ready for it. and that was refreshing to me. and the open infrastructure coming from OpenStack One of the challenges, because OpenStack Yeah, John, how about the individuals themselves? are active, hands on operators, for the most part. Yeah and the thing I'd point out, We use a lot of soft, we use a lot of cloud, and the consumer in open source tends to be blurring. I love the term open infrastructure. the conversation we had with Beth Cohen. a lot of the next generation to the internet. "any of the hyperscale guys today." and thank the whole team here in Boston,

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