>> Welcome back to the Seaport in Boston and this is theCUBE's coverage of Red Hat Summit 2022. I'm Dave Vellante with my co-host Paul Gillin. Rob Belson is here as the Developer Relations Lead at Verizon. Robbie great to see you. Thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks for having me. >> So Verizon and developer relations. Talk about your role there. Really interesting. >> Absolutely. If you think about our mobile edge computing portfolio in Verizon 5G Edge, suddenly the developer is a more important persona than ever for actually adopting the cloud itself and adopting the mobile edge. So the question then quickly became how do we go after developers and how do we tell stories that ultimately resonate with them? And so my role has been spearheading our developer relations and experience efforts, which is all about meeting developers in the channels where they actually are, building content that resonates with them. Building out architectures that showcase how do you actually use the technology in the wild? And then ultimately creating automation assets that make their lives easier in deploying to the mobile edge. >> So, you know, telcos get a bad rap, when you're thinking it's amazing what you guys do. You put out all this capital infrastructure, big outlays. You know, we use our phones to drop a call. People like, "Ah, freaking Verizon." But it's amazing what we can actually do too. You think about the pandemic, the shift that the telcos had to go through to landlines to support home, never missed a beat. And yet at the same time you're providing all this infrastructure for people to come over the top, the cost forbid is going down, right? Your cost are going up and yet now we're doing this big 5G buildup. So I feel like there's a renaissance about to occur in edge computing that the telcos are going to lead new forms of monetization new value that you're going to be able to add, new services, new applications. The future's got to be exciting for you guys and it's going to be developer-led, isn't it? >> Absolutely. I mean it's been such an exciting time to be a part of our mobile edge computing portfolio. If you think back to late 2019 we were really asking the question with the advent of high speed 5G mobile networks, how can you drive more immersive experiences from the cloud in a cloud native way without compromising on the tools you know and love? And that's ultimately what caused us to really work with the likes of AWS and others to think about what does a mobile edge computing portfolio look like? So we started with 5G Edge with AWS Wavelength. So taking the compute and storage services you know and love in AWS and bringing it to the edge of our 4G and 5G networks. But then we start to think, well, wait a minute. Why stop at public networks? Let's think about private networks. How can we bring the cloud and private networks together? So you turn back to late 2021 we announced Verizon 5G Edge with AWS Outposts but we didn't even stop there. We said, "Well, interest's cool, but what about network APIs? We've been talking about the ability and the programmability of the 5G network but what does that actually look like to the developers? And one great example is our Edge Discovery Service. So you think about the proliferation of the edge 17 Wavelength Zones today in the US. Well, what edge is the right edge? You think about maybe the airline industry if the closest exit might be behind you absolutely applies to service discovery. So we've built an API that helps answer that seemingly basic question but is the fundamental building block for everything to workload orchestration, workload distribution. A basic network building block has become so important to some of these new sources of revenue streams, as we mentioned, but also the ability to disintermediate that purpose built hardware. You think about the future of autonomous mobile robots either ground and aerial robotics. Well, you want to make those devices as cheap as possible but you don't want to compromise on performance. And that mobile edge layer is going to become so critical for that connectivity, but also the compute itself. >> So I just kind of gave my little narrative up front about telco, but that purpose built hardware that you're talking about is exceedingly reliable. I mean, it's hardened, it's fossilized and so now as you just disaggregate that and go to a more programmable infrastructure, how are you able to and what gives you confidence that you're going to be able to maintain that reliability that I joke about? Oh, but it's so reliable. The network has amazing reliability. How are you able to maintain that? Is that just the pace of technology is now caught up, I wonder if you can explain that? >> I think it's really cool as I see reliability and sort of geo distribution as inextricably linked. So in a world where to get that best in class latency you needed to go to one place and one place only. Well, now you're creating some form of single source of failure whether it's the power, whether it's the compute itself, whether it's the networking, but with a more geo distributed footprint, particularly in the mobile edge more choices for where to deliver that immersive experience you're naturally driving an increase in reliability. But again, infra alone it's not going to do the job. You need the network APIs. So it's the convergence of the cloud and network and infra and the automation behind it that's been incredibly powerful. And as a great example, the work we've been doing in hybrid MEC the ability to converge within one single architecture, the private network, the public network, the AWS Outposts, the AWS Wavelength all in one has been such a fantastic journey and Red Hat has been a really important part in that journey. >> From the perspective of the developer when they're building a full cloud to edge application, where does Verizon pick up? Where do they start working primarily with you versus with their cloud provider? >> Absolutely. And I think you touched on a really important point. I think when you often think about the edge it's thought of as an either, or. Is it the edge? Is it the cloud? Is it both? It's an and I can't emphasize that enough. What we've seen from the customers greenfield or otherwise it's about extending an application or services that were never intended to live at the edge, to the edge itself, to deliver a more performant experience. And for certain control plane operations, metadata, backend operations analytics that can absolutely stay in the cloud itself. And so our role is to be a trusted partner in some of our enterprise customers' journeys. Of course, they can lean on the cloud provider in select cases, but we're an absolutely critical mode of support as you think about what are those architectures? How do you integrate the network APIs? And through our developer relations efforts, we've put a major role in helping to shape what those patterns really look like in the wild. >> When they're developing for 5G I mean, the availability of 5G of particularly you know, the high bandwidth 5G is pretty spotty right now. Mostly urban areas. How should they be thinking in the future developing an application roll out two years from now about where 5G will be at that point? >> Absolutely. I think one of the most important things in this case is the interoperability of our edge computing portfolio with both 4G and 5G. Whenever somebody asks me about the performance of 5G they ask how fast? Or for edge computing. It's always about benchmark. It's not an absolute value. It's always about benchmarking the performance to that next best alternative. What were you going to get if you didn't have edge computing in your back pocket? And so along that line of thought having the option to go either through 4G or 5G, having a mobile edge computing portfolio that works for both modes of connectivity even CAN-AM IoT is incredibly powerful. >> So it sounds like 4G is going to be with us for quite a while still? >> And I think it's an important part of the architecture. >> Yeah. >> Robert, tell us about the developer that's building these applications. Where does that individual come from? What's their persona? >> Oh, boy I think there's a number of different personas and flavors. I've seen everything from the startup in the back of a garage working hard to try to figure out what could I do for a next generation media and entertainment experience but also large enterprises. And I think a great area where we saw this was our 5G Edge Computing Challenge that we hosted last year. Believe it or not 100 submissions from over 22 countries, all building on Verizon 5G Edge. It was so exciting to see because so many different use cases across public safety, healthcare, media and entertainment. And what we found was that education is so important. A lot of developers have great ideas but if you don't understand the fundamentals of the infrastructure you get bogged down in networking and setting up your environment. And that's why we think that developer education is so important. We want to make it easy and in fact, the 5G Edge portfolio was designed in such a way that we'll abstract the complexities of the network away so you can focus on building your application and that's such a central theme and focus for how we approach the development. >> So what kind of services are you exposing via APIs? >> Absolutely, so first and foremost, as you think about 5G Edge with say AWS Wavelength, the infra there are APIs that are exposed by AWS to launch your infra, to patch your infrastructure, to automate your infrastructure. Specifically that Verizon has developed that's our network APIs. And a great example is our Edge Discovery Service. So think of this as like a service registry you've launched an application in all 17 edge zones. You would take that information, you would send it via API to the Edge Discovery Service so that for any mobile client say, you wake up one morning in Boston, you can ask the API or query, "Hey, what's the closest edge zone?" DNS isn't going to be able to figure it out. You need knowledge of the actual topology of the mobile network itself. So the API will answer. Let's say you take a little road trip 1,000 miles south to say Miami, Florida you ask that question again. It could change. So that's the workflow and how you would use the network API today. >> How'd you get into this? You're an engineer it's obvious how'd you stumble into this role? >> Well, yeah, I have a background in networks and distributed systems so I always knew I wanted to stay in the cloud somewhere. And there was a really unique opportunity at Verizon as the portfolio was being developed to really think about what this developer community looked like. And we built this all from scratch. If you look at say our Verizon 5G Edge Blog we launched it just along the timing of the actual GA of Wavelength. You look at our developer newsletter also around the time of the launch of Wavelength. So we've done a lot in such a short period and it's all been sort of organic, interacting with developers, working backwards from the customer. And so it's been a fairly new, but incredibly exciting journey. >> How will your data, architecture, data flow what will that look like in the future? How will that be different than it is sort of historically? >> When I think about customer workloads real time data architecture is an incredibly difficult thing to do. When you overlay the edge, admittedly, it gets more complicated. More places that produce the data, more places that consume data. How do you reconcile all of these environments? Maintain consistency? This is absolutely something we've been working on with the ecosystem at large. We're not going to solve this alone. We've looked at architecture patterns that we think are successful. And some of the things that we found that we believe are pretty cool this idea of taking that embedded mobile database, virtualizing it to the edge, even making it multi-tenant. And then you're producing data to one single source and simplifying how you organize and share data because all of the data being produced to that one location will be relevant to that topology. So Boston, as an example, Boston data being produced to that edge zone will only service Boston clients. So having a geo distributed footprint really does help data architectures, but at the core of all of this database, architectures, you need a compute environment that actually makes sense. That's performant, that's reliable. That's easy to use that you understand how to manage and that the edge doesn't make it any more difficult to manage. >> So are you building that? >> That's exactly what we're doing. So here at Red Hat Summit we've had the unique opportunity to continue to collaborate with our partners at Red Hat to think about how you actually use OpenShift in the context of hybrid MEC. So what have done is we've used OpenShift as is to extend what already exists to some of these new edge zones without adding in an additional layer of complexity that was unmanageable. >> So you use OpenShift so you don't have to cobble this together on your own as a full development environment and that's the role really that OpenShift plays here? >> That's exactly right. And we presented pieces of this at our re:Invent this past year and what we basically did is we said the edge needs to be inextricably linked with the cloud. And you want to be able to manage it from some seamless central pane of glass and using that OpenShift console is a great way. So what we did is we wanted to show a really geo-distributed footprint in action. We started with a Wavelength zone in Boston, the region in Northern Virginia, an outpost in the Texas area. We cobbled it all together in one cluster. So you had a whole compute mesh separated by thousands of miles all within a single cluster, single pane of glass. We take that and are starting to expand on the complexity of these architectures to overlay the network APIs we mentioned, to overlay multi-region support. So when we say you can use all 17 zones at once you actually can. >> So you've been talking about Wavelength and Outposts which are AWS products, but Microsoft and Google both have their distributed architectures as well. Where do you stand with those? Will you support those? Are you working with them? >> That's a great question. We have made announcements with Microsoft and Google but today I focus a lot on the work we do with AWS Wavelength and Outposts and continuing to work backwards from the customer and ultimately meet their needs. >> Yeah I mean, you got to start with an environment that the developers know that obviously a great developer community, you know, you see it at re:Invent. What was the reaction at re:Invent when you showed this from a developer community? >> Absolutely. Developers are excited and I think the best part is we're not the only ones talking about Wavelength not even AWS are the only ones talking about Wavelength. And to me from a developer ecosystem perspective that's when you know it's working. When you're not the one telling the best stories when others are evangelizing the power of your technology on your behalf that's when the ecosystem's starting to pick up. >> Speaking of making a bet on Outposts you know, it's somewhat limited today. I'll say it it's limited today in terms of we think it supports RDS and there's a few storage players. Is it your expectation that Outposts is going to be this essentially the cloud environment on your premises is that? >> That's a great question. I see it more as we want to expand customer choice more than ever and ultimately let the developers and architects decide. That's why I'm so bullish on this idea of hybrid MEC. Let's provide all of the options the most complicated geo distributed hybrid deployment you can imagine and automate it, make it easy. That way if you want to take away components of this architecture all you're doing is simplifying something that's already automated and fairly simple to begin with. So start with the largest problem to solve and then provide customers choice for what exactly meets their requirements their SLAs, their footprint, their network and work backwards from the customer. >> Exciting times ahead. Rob, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. It's great to have you. >> Appreciate it, thanks for your time. >> Good luck. All right, thank you for watching. Keep it right there. This is Dave Vellante for Paul Gillin. We're live at Red Hat Summit 2022 from the Seaport in Boston. We'll be right back.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering AWS re:Invent 2019, brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel along with its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, live from AWS re:Invent 19 in Vegas. I am Lisa Martin with John Furrier and we're going to be taking something that was an exclusive from John's interview with Andy Jassy from a couple days ago, something that he told John. We're going to be talking about it here with Verizon. Please welcome Steve Szabo, Head of Global Products and Solutions IOT and 5G Edge. Welcome, Steve. >> Thank you, thanks for having me. This is an exciting day. >> It is an exciting day. So one of the things that Andy Jassy told John in that exclusive interview that went viral, if you haven't read it check it out, was that companies are going to want to eliminate network hops and find a way to have the compute in the storage much more local to the 5G network edge. Tell us, what did AWS and Verizon just unveil this morning? >> Yeah. So today it's all about Verizon's network in AWS cloud, right? So we've taken what they're calling Wavelength, their centralized cloud platform. We're moving it into Verizon's network, fully integrated. This is 18 months of engineering effort so this isn't something that you just wake up and you have access to. This is a lot of blood, sweat and tears that the companies have put in together to get this opportunity. What this does is it takes their cloud capabilities, it puts them on our network, fully integrated with the radio access layer so that customers will have access to everything that they were using from an AWS perspective but then also be able to leverage Verizon's network capability. So all the API's, the Eight Currencies that Hans talked about on stage today, giving developers and businesses alike the opportunity to leverage the best of those and go ahead and leverage the bandwidth, the latency type use cases and really transform the way that folks are thinking about leveraging the network. >> You know Steve, one of the things in the networking the computer industry, everyone always talks about trade-offs, hops on the network spectrum. I got a longer range or shorter throughput. 5G's got some pretty significant bandwidth up to 10G's >> Yeah. >> Gigs on that. That's phenomenal but the foot press is a little bit different. So that begs the question for high bandwidth needs whether it's gaming, immersive experiences, whatever, you got to bring the compute. This is the whole thesis of Amazon's shift. They're bringing Amazon to the Edge, you guys are providing it. What's different about the Verizon 5G that makes this a unique opportunities? Is it the throughput, is it the topology, is that the-- >> We'd like to think it's a little bit of everything, right? >> John: Tell us how it works. >> Yeah, I mean listen at the end of the day, we have 5G. It's opening up the Eight Currencies. When you factor in 5G Edge, that's when you really see the power of 5G and then when you layer on the AWS Wavelength stack, integrate it into the network, it just gives an opportunity for folks to take advantage of these Eight Currencies. A hundred feet behind me at our booth, we have Bethesda gaming and that was one of the things that we talked about. But if you think about it, they have an Orion gaming platform. They leverage AWS today, they want to reach out and have the ability to have their gaming platform stream to Verizon customers using mobile devices. If you think about the fact that you can almost take the console out of the home, folks are literally leveraging GPU/CPU intensive graphic and gaming streaming content and they're using a Bluetooth controller and they're doing it on a Verizon 5G device. I mean who would have thought that you'd be able to do that and you could see it and that's live in Chicago now, they're piloting it on our network. >> Talk about the partnership with Amazon. You mentioned it wasn't just an overnight thing. Multiple months in the making announced on a statutory wave length, was their product, that's the stack. It's essentially an outpost for Telco that's where I'm going. >> Steve: Yeah. >> There's some things in there but they still got to deploy it. What does that look like? How long have you guys been over at Amazon? And you shared some details on the relationship. Where is it located? Is it under, in your network close to the Edge? How close is it? Has it all all worked? >> Yeah. So we'll touch on what we can here but it's live in Chicago, so that's our first market. We'll take an approach to announce it similar to what we've done with our 5G city announcements which is we'll work with our partners. We'll talk internally and then we'll announce those, does it make sense into other markets and cities. Currently, the way that it works is that our SAP sites or our service access points, AWS will have their equipment. It'll be tightly integrated with our radio access network which is when you could see the benefits of the low latency and the computer are all kind of working together. The way for folks to procure that is they would go through. If you're an AWS customer today and you're getting storage and compute, you would be able to access that through AWS's portal environment. It'd just be labeled as Verizon 5G Edge capabilities. If you're buying bandwidth, if you need pro services help or other network service capabilities, you'd work with the Verizon just like you do today. It's a true partnership opportunity and it allows us to kind of work together and kind of head on this journey. >> So the key thing is here, Amazon console, access, click, provisioning? >> They're in, yeah. We did all the hard work and engineering between the two of us to make it as easy as possible for the developers and the businesses, quite honestly. We want what they're familiar with today both on our network and in the tools that they're using in the cloud to be the same experience that they have only just with the benefits of Wavelength and with Verizon. >> Any feedback you can share on the early returns or early engagements or early tinkering and playing around that you could share? >> You know, I would tell you that it's operating as we would expect it to and that's why I would encourage people to go over to our booth and see what's happening over there because when I say that it's live and it's working, it isn't a video, it isn't anything that folks are talking about. This is on our production network. Bethesda is actually gaming with it, leveraging AWS Wavelength and we've got other customers that are all working with it as well. >> And if they're not on here on site, can they go to the website? Is it online now or-- >> Yeah, you'll be able to see whether you go through Verizon's web experiences or AWS portal, it will redirect you either way to learn more. So if you want to learn more about the capabilities on Verizon's side, you'll punch into our site. If you want to go learn more about Wavelength, and what Amazon is doing, we'll punch it back to them. >> So let's talk about benefits. You gave a great example of somebody gaming and that they're accessing live streaming content from wherever they are from the Bluetooth device. So I can understand it from that perspective. But from a business perspective, business apps to business apps, what are some of the projected benefits that enterprises are going to see with that respect? >> Well, I think a couple of things. One, it's going to open up used cases for latency intensive so I brought up Bethseda for a reason. Their cloud gaming to actually stream DOOM which is the game that the demoing in our booth. They couldn't do it without the Edge, right? They would not have the real time gaming capabilities to actually work without it. When you start thinking about retail environments and getting into AR/VR, these immersive experiences to get customers to come into the four walls of your retail building, the ability to have application services that will reach out and engage with consumers for a variety of things whether that's helping them with their buying experience or just for the benefit of your business, gathering intensive sensory data and kind of getting into the AI NML of how your business is operating on a day to day basis, it opens up a variety of things. It's really an ecosystem which is what I think the power of this partnership is all about, right. We're bringing our customers in our network, combine that with AWS services and their developer community and I think you know it's a tool in the developer toolbox that whether you're a developer at a large enterprise, a small business, public sector, et cetera, it's something that you can use your imagination to go out and do something with and kind of test the balance of-- >> You think about the headroom available in terms of future proofing. You got optimization closer to the Edge Edge >> Steve: Yeah. >> You got inside the network capabilities to manage software, to manage resources kind of a new architecture. >> Steve: Yeah. >> A new way to think about resources allocation from bandwidth to compute to data. >> You bring up a great point because that's something you had mentioned earlier about the difference between what we've done versus cola or something like that and this is a full integration. So the ability to architect something that did not actually exist before. A Wavelength is new for AWS, our 5G Edge and our 5G network capabilities. Integrating that seamlessly so that the developer and the enterprise business can have access to that with having a minimal impact of their user experience is really important and then you figure on the layering of possibilities as they start getting more familiar with it. >> Andy Jassy mentioned on Steve with your chairman and CEO a comment. I don't know if it was just a preambling of the intro but he said Verizon, the leader in 5G. I'm sure he meant that. For the folks that aren't following the 5G situation, are you guys the leader and in what way are you leading compared to the others? How should consumers think about 5G? It's almost like this magic pixie that's almost a magic, wait a minute we can't have those speeds, some say hype. What is the reality of the 5G and why are you guys being called the leader? >> Yeah, well we were the first to market with 5G so by default, I think that makes us the leader. But we'll be in 30 cities by the end of the year. The fact that we're the first to have 5G Mobile Edge Computing capabilities, it's integrated with AWS Wavelength, that's to my knowledge not out there in the market yet today. The ability is the fact that we have this live in Chicago, we have customers using it, it's demonstrating real world views cases on a live production network. I mean we're excited about it, it's something we're proud of and it's something that we expect to watch grow and actually ID it with the customers in mind. >> Congratulations. >> Thank you. >> One of the things that Andy and John talked about, and with this whole not just the notion of transformation and there's a lot of talk about transformation today, but also the fact that businesses you know, the vast majority that are around today, if they're not already iterating and moving towards digitalization and modernization that there are a million companies probably doing the same thing or very similar that are going to be able to take them over. But that's a hard change for an legacy enterprise to be able to do. This new ecosystem that Verizon and AWS are building and delivering, what do you guys see together as its ability to be an enabler to transform businesses such that we don't see a business doesn't go by way of Toys R Us, for example? >> Yeah. Well, I think the fact that 5G and the Edge, it offers you to touch out and reach the customers in a way that you couldn't before for your business, that's one. Two, this is geared around 5G and Edge and that's when you really see the power of what we're doing between Verizon and AWS. But one thing that I'd like to highlight is wherever you're at on your digital transformation, some people are going to be starting from zero and some are going to be more advanced. I mean that's a reality of kind of the technology and business alike. We actually have solutions today. AWS has products today. They're already in the cloud. We have LTE capabilities and other network services capabilities, virtualized network, software-defined network capabilities. We can work with customers and help them kind of grow into where they want to be. We did not want somebody to feel like they're buying in and almost isolating themselves into a technology. What we're all about is helping them build the solution that's right for them at whatever point in the journey they're at and then helping them grow into where they can be with 5G and Edge compute. >> Yeah, and I think this is also instructive for the industry structures. You look at the landscape of everyone thinking about re platforming their business in the modern era. You guys have a great footprint, great leadership. Just the idea of this win-win, it makes you guys so much more powerful for future applications. I mean, I can almost see if the Edge is just becoming a very fertile ground for entrepreneurial activity, applications that you guys are going to be powering. I mean "Born on the Edge" might be the new phrase, not "Born in the cloud". >> It could be yeah. >> Born on the Edge. >> You can trademark that. (laughing) >> Now, we're excited. I mean listen, it could be anyone from two people in a garage developing something to developers at a small, medium or large business, taking advantage of use cases and things that might not been achievable. >> We'll go for it. >> Global education. >> Yeah. >> I mean it's endless opportunity there. >> There are opportunities in energy management sustainability we're very proud of. Education, health care, are going to be areas that we'll focus on so there's a lot of opportunity out there. We're at the forefront in our opinion at helping just jumpstart that ecosystem and we're excited about it. >> Congratulations. Really, really great. >> I'll echo that, congratulations and thank you for sharing with John and me more detail about AWS and Verizon, this new ecosystem that opens up tremendous amount of opportunity. We appreciate your time, Steve. >> Thank you. >> Thank you very much for the time and we're excited, it's a big day. >> It is a big day. >> Big announcement. >> For Steve and John Furrier, I'm Lisa Martin and you're watching theCUBE from re:Invent 19 from Vegas. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)