well hello everybody John Wallace here on thecube he's continuing our segments here on the AWS Global startup showcase we are at day three of Reinventing irking Zhang is joining us now he is the CEO co-founder of Jupiter one um first off before we get going talking about you know security and big world for you guys I know what's your take on the show what's been going on out here at re invent yeah yeah ring event has been one of my favorite shows there's a lot of people here there's a lot of topics of course it's not just cyber security a lot of cloud infrastructure and just technology in general so you get a lot you know if you go walk the floor you see a lot of vendors you look at us go into sessions you can learn a lot but you're the Hot Topic right everybody's focused on Cyber yeah big time and with good reason right because as we know the Bad actors are getting even smarter and even faster and even more Nimble so just paint the landscape for me here in general right now as you see uh security Cloud Security in particular and and kind of where we are in that battle well we are clearly not winning so I think that in itself is a bit of a uh interesting problem right so as a it's not just Cloud security if you think about cyber security in general as an industry it has it has not been around for that long right but if you just look at the history of it uh we haven't done that while so uh pick another industry say medicine which has been around forever and if you look at the history of Medicine well I would argue you has done tremendously well because people live longer right when you get sick you get access to health care and yeah exactly you have Solutions and and you can see the trend even though there are problems in healthcare of course right but the trend is is good it's going well but not in cyber security more breaches more attacks more attackers we don't know what the hell we're doing with that many solutions and you know that's been one of my struggles as a former CSO and security practitioner for many years you know why is it that we're not getting better all right so I'm going to ask you the question yeah okay why aren't we getting better you know how come we can't stay ahead of the curve on this thing that for some reason it's like whack-a-mole times a hundred every time we think we solve one problem we have a hundred more that show up over here exactly and we have to address that and and our attention keeps floating around yeah I think you said it right so because we're taking this guacamole approach and we're looking for the painkiller of the day and you know we're looking for uh the Band-Aids right so and then we ended up well I I think to be fair to be fair to your industry the industry moves so quickly technology in general moves so quickly and security has been playing catch-up over time we're still playing catch-up so when you're playing catch-up you you can almost only uh look at you know what's the painkiller of what's the band name of the day so I can stop the bleeding right but I do think that we're we're to a point or we have enough painkillers and Band-Aids and and we need to start looking at how can we do better fundamentally with the basics and do the basics well because a lot of times the basics that get you into trouble so fundamentally the foundation I if I hear you right what you're saying is um you know quick changing industry right things are moving rapidly but we're not blocking and tackling we're not doing the X's and O's and so forget changing and we we got to get back to the basis and do those things right exactly you can only seem so simple it seems so simple but it's so hard right so you can you can think about you know uh even in case of building a starter building a company and and in order at one point right so we're blocking uh blocking tackling and then when we grow to a certain size we have to scale we have to figure out how to scale the business this is the same problem that happens in security as an industry we've been blocking happening for so long you know we're the industry is so young but we're to a point that we got to figure out how to scale this scale this in a fundamentally different way and I'll give you some example right so so what when we say the basics now it's easy to to think that say users should have MFA enabled is one of the basics right or another Basics will be you have endpoint protection on your devices you know maybe it's Cloud strike or Sentinel one or carbon black or whatever but the question being how do you know it is working 100 of the time right how do you know that how do you know right you find out too exactly that's right and how do you know that you have 100 coverage on your endpoints those Solutions are not going to tell you because they don't know what they don't know right if it's not enabled if it's not you know what what's the negative that you are not seeing so that's one of the things that you know that's in the basic state that you're now covering so the fundamentals it really goes to these five questions that I think that nobody has a really good answer for until now so the five questions goes what do I have right is it important what's important out of all the things I have you have a lot right you could have millions of things what important now for those that are important does it have a problem and if it has a problem who can fix it because the reality is in most cases security teams are not the ones fixing the problems they're they're the ones identical they're very good at recognizing but not so good exactly identifying the owner who can fix it right right could be could be business owner could be Engineers so the the asset ownership identification right so so these four questions and and then over time you know whether it's over a week or a month or a quarter or a year am I getting better right and then you just keep asking these questions in different areas in different domains with a different lens right so maybe that's endpoints maybe that's Cloud maybe that's you know users maybe that's a product and applications right but it really boils down to these five questions that's the foundation for any good security program if you can do that well I think we cover a lot of bases and we're going to be in much better shape than we have been all right so where do you come in man Jupiter one in terms of what you're providing because obviously you've identified this kind of pyramid yes this hierarchy of addressing needs and I assume obviously knowing you as I do and knowing the company as I do you've got Solutions that's exactly right right and and we precisely answer those five questions right for uh any organization uh from a asset perspective right because all the the answers to all those these five questions are based in assets it starts with knowing what I have right right so the the overall challenge of cyber security being broke broken I I believe is fundamentally that people do not understand and cannot uh probably deal with the complexity that we have within our own environments so again like you know using uh medicine as an example right so in order to come up with the right medicine for either it's a vaccine for covid-19 or whether it is a treatment for cancer or whatever that case may be you have to start with the foundations of understanding both the pathogen and to the human body like DNA sequencing right without those you cannot effectively produce the right medicine in modern uh you know Medicine sure right so that is the same thing that's happening in cyber security you know we spend a lot of times you know putting band days in patches right and then we spend a lot of time doing attacker research from the outside but we don't fundamentally understand in a complete way what's the complexity within our own environment in terms of digital assets and that's that's almost like the DNA of your own work what is that kind of mind-blowing in a way that if again hearing you what you're talking about is saying that the first step is to identify what you have that's right so it seems just so basic that that I should know what I what's under my hood I should know what is valuable and what is not I should prioritize what I really need to protect and what maybe can go on the second shelf yeah it has been a tough problem since the beginning of I.T not just the beginning of cyber security right so in the history of I.T we have this thing called cmdb configuration management database it is supposed to capture the configurations of it assets now over time that has become a lot more complex and and there's a lot more than just it asset that we have to understand from a security and attack service perspective right so we have to understand I.T environments we have to understand Cloud environments and applications and users and access and data and as and all of those things then then we have to take a different approach of sort of a modern cmdb right so what is the way that we can understand all of those complexity within all of those assets but not just independently within those silos but rather in a connected way so we can not only understand the attack surface but only but also understand the attack path that connect the dots from one thing to another right because everything in the organization is actually connected if if there's any one thing that sits on an island right so if you say you have a a a a server or a device or a user that is on an island that is not connected to the rest of the organization then why have it right and it doesn't matter so it's the understanding of that connect connected tissue this entire map where this you know DNA sequencing equivalent of a digital organization is what Jupiter one provides right so that visibility of the fundamental you know very granular uh level of assets and resources to answer those five questions and how does that how do I get better at that then I mean I have you to help me but but internally within our organization um I mean I don't want to be rude but I mean do I have do I have the skill for that do I have um do I have the the internal horsepower for that or or is there some need to close that Gap and how do I do it you know I'll tell you two things right so so one you mentioned the worst skills right so let me start there so because this one is very interesting we also have a huge skills shortage in cyber security we will we've all heard that for years and and and and for a long time but if you dig deeper into it why is that why is that and you know we have a lot of you know talented people right so why do we still have a skills shortage now what's interesting is if you think about what we're asking security people to do is mind-boggling so if you if you get a security analyst to say hey I want to understand how to protect something or or how to deal with an incident and what you're asking the person to do is not only to understand the security concept and be a domain expert in security you're also asking the person to and understand at the same time AWS or other clouds or endpoints or code or applications so that you can properly do the analysis and the in the response it's it's impossible it's like you know if you have you have to have a person who's an expert in everything know everything about everything that's right it's impossible so so so that's that's one thing that we have to to resolve is how do we use technology like Jupiter one to provide an abstraction so that there's Automation in place to help the security teams be better at their jobs without having to be an expert in deep technology right just add the abstract level of understanding because you know we can we can model the data and and provide the analysis and visual visualization out of the box for them so they can focus on just the security practices so that's one and the second thing is we have to change the mindset like take vulnerability management as an example right so the mindset for vulnerability management has been how do I manage findings now we have to change it to the concept of more proactive and how to manage assets so let's think about uh you know say log4j right that that happened and uh you know when it happened everybody scrambles and said hey which which devices or which you know uh systems have log4j and you know it doesn't matter what's the impact we can fix it right going back to those questions that that I mentioned before right and then um and then they try to look for a solution at a time say well where's that silver bullet that can give me the answers now what what what we struggle with though is that you know I want to maybe ask the question where were you six months ago where were you six months ago where you could have done the due diligence and put something in place that help you understand all of these assets and connections so you can go to one place and just ask for that question when something like that you know hit the fan so so if we do not fundamentally change the mindset to say I have to look at things not from a reactive findings perspective but really starting from an asset-centric you know day one perspective to look at that and have this Foundation have this map build we can't get there right so it's like you know if I need direction I go to Google Maps right but the the reason that it works is because somebody has done the work of creating the map right right if you haven't if you don't have the map and you just at you know when the time you say I gotta go somewhere and you expect the map to magically happen to show you the direction it's not going to work right right I imagine there are a lot of people out there right now are listening to thinking oh boy you know and that's what Jupiter one's all about they're there to answer your oh boy thanks for the time of course I appreciate the insights as well it's nice to know that uh at least somebody is reminding us to keep the front door locked too that's just the back door the side doors keep that front door and that garage locked up too definitely um all right we'll continue our coverage here at AWS re invent 22 this is part of the AWS Global startup showcase and you're watching the cube the leader in high-tech coverage foreign

(upbeat music) (logo shimmers) >> Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back to AWS re Invent 2022. We are live here from the show floor in Las Vegas, Nevada, we're theCUBE, my name is Savannah Peterson, joined by John Furrier, John, are you excited for the next segment? >> I love the innovation story, this next segment's going to be really interesting, an example of ecosystem innovation in action, it'll be great. >> Yeah, our next guests are actually award-winning, I am very excited about that, please welcome Alan and Becky from IBM. Thank you both so much for being here, how's the show going for ya? Becky you got a, just a platinum smile, I'm going to go to you first, how's the show so far? >> No, it's going great. There's lots of buzz, lots of excitement this year, of course, three times the number of people, but it's fantastic. >> Three times the number of people- >> (indistinct) for last year. >> That is so exciting, so what is that... Do you know what the total is then? >> I think it's over 55,000. >> Ooh, loving that. >> John: A lot. >> It's a lot, you can tell by the hallways- >> Becky: It's a lot. >> John: It's crowded, right. >> Yeah, you can tell by just the energy and the, honestly the heat in here right now is pretty good. Alan, how are you feeling on the show floor this year? >> Awesome, awesome, we're meeting a lot of partners, talking to a lot of clients. We're really kind of showing them what the new IBM, AWS relationship is all about, so, beautiful time to be here. >> Well Alan, why don't you tell us what that partnership is about, to start us off? >> Sure, sure. So the partnership started with the relationship in our consulting services, and Becky's going to talk more about that, right? And it grew, this year it grew into the IBM software realm where we signed an agreement with AWS around May timeframe this year. >> I love it, so, like you said, you're just getting started- >> Just getting started. >> This is the beginning of something magic. >> We're just scratching the surface with this right? >> Savannah: Yeah. >> But it represents a huge move for IBM to meet our clients where they are, right? Meet 'em where they are with IBM technology, enterprise technology they're used to, but with the look and feel and usage model that they're used to with AWS. >> Absolutely and so to build on that, you know, we're really excited to be an AWS Premier Consulting Partner. We've had this relationship for a little over five years with AWS, I'd say it's really gone up a notch over the last year or two as we've been working more and more closely, doubling down on our investments, doubling down on our certifications, we've got over 15,000 people certified now, almost 16,000 actually- >> Savannah: Wow. >> 14 competencies, 16 service deliveries and counting. We cover a mass of information and services from Data Analytics, IoT, AI, all the way to Modernization, SAP, Security Services, right. So it's pretty comprehensive relationship, but in addition to the fantastic clients that we both share, we're doing some really great things around joint industry solutions, which I'll talk about in a few minutes and some of those are being launched at the conference this year, so that's even better. But the most exciting thing to me right now is that we just found out that we won the Global Innovator Partner of the Year award, and a LATAM Partner of the Year award. >> Savannah: Wow. >> John: That's (indistinct) >> So, super excited for IBM Consulting to win this, we're honored and it's just a great, exciting part to the conference. >> The news coming out of this event, we know tomorrow's going to be the big keynote for the new Head of the ecosystem, Ruba. We're hearing that it's going to be all about the ecosystem, enabling value creation, enabling new kinds of solutions. We heard from the CEO of AWS, this nextGen environment's upon us, it's very solution-oriented- >> Becky: Absolutely. >> A lot of technology, it's not an either or, it's an and equation, this is a huge new shift, I won't say shift, a continuation for AWS, and you guys, we've been covering, so you got the and situation going on... Innovation solutions and innovation technology and customers can choose, build a foundation or have it out of the box. What's your reaction to that? Do you think it's going to go well for AWS and IBM? >> I think it fits well into our partnership, right? The the thing you mentioned that I gravitate to the most is the customer gets to choose and the thing that's been most amazing about the partnership, both of these companies are maniacally focused on the customer, right? And so we've seen that come about as we work on ways the customer to access our technology, consume the technology, right? We've sold software on-prem to customers before, right, now we're going to be selling SaaS on AWS because we had customers that were on AWS, we're making it so that they can more easily purchase it by being in the marketplace, making it so they can draw down their committed spin with AWS, their customers like that a lot- [John] Yeah. >> Right. We've even gone further to enable our distributor network and our resellers, 'cause a lot of our customers have those relationships, so they can buy through them. And recently we've enabled the customer to leverage their EDP, their committed spend with AWS against IBM's ELA and structure, right, so you kind of get a double commit value from a customer point of view, so the amazing part is just been all about the customers. >> Well, that's interesting, you got the technology relationship with AWS, you mentioned how they're engaging with the software consumption in marketplace, licensed deals, there's all kinds of new business model innovations on top of the consumption and building. Then you got the consulting piece, which is again, a big part of, Adam calls it "Business transformation," which is the result of digital transformation. So digital transformation is the process, the outcome is the business transformation, that's kind of where it all kind of connects. Becky, what's your thoughts on the Amazon consulting relationships? Obviously the awards are great but- >> They are, no- >> What's the next step? Where does it go from here? >> I think the best way for me to describe it is to give you some rapid flyer client examples, you know, real customer stories and I think that's where it really, rubber meets the road, right? So one of the most recent examples are IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, in his three key results actually mentioned one of our big clients with AWS which is the Department of Veterans Affairs in the US and is an AI solution that's helped automate claims processing. So the veterans are trying to get their benefits, they submit the claims, snail mail, phone calls, you know, some in person, some over email- >> Savannah: Oh, it gives me all the feels hearing you talk about this- >> It's a process that used to take 25 to 30 days depending on the complexity of the claims, we've gotten it down with AWS down to within 24 hours we can get the veterans what they need really quickly so, I mean, that's just huge. And it's an exciting story that includes data analytics, AI and automation, so that's just one example. You know, we've got examples around SAP where we've developed a next generation SAP for HANA Platform for Phillips Carbon Black hosted on AWS, right? For them, it created an integrated, scalable, digital business, that cut out a hundred percent the capital cost from on-prem solutions. We've got security solutions around architectures for telecommunications advisors and of course we have lots of examples of migration and modernization and moving workloads using Red Hat to do that. So there's a lot of great client examples, so to me, this is the heart of what we do, like you said, both companies are really focused on clients, Amazon's customer-obsessed, and doing what we can for our clients together is where we get the impact. >> Yeah, that's one of the things that, it sounds kind of cliche, "Oh we're going to work backwards from the customer," I know Amazon says that, they do, you guys are also very customer-focused but the customers are changing. So I'd love to get your reaction because we're now in that cloud 2.0, I call that 2.0 or you got the Amazon Classic, my word, and then Next Gen Cloud coming, the customers are different, they're transforming because IT's not a department anymore, it's in the DevOps pipeline. The developers are driving a lot of IT but security and on DataOps, it's the structural change happening at the customer, how do you guys see that at IBM? I know we cover a lot of Red Hat and Arvind talks to us all the time, meeting the customer where they are, where are they? Where are the customers? Can you share your perspective on where they are? >> It's an astute observation, right, the customer is changing. We have both of those sets of customers, right, we still have the traditional customer, our relationship with Central IT, right, and driving governance and all of those things. But the folks that are innovating many times they're in the line of business, they're discovering solutions, they're building new things. And so we need our offerings to be available to them. We need them to understand how to use them and be convenient for these guys and take them through that process. So that change in the customer is one that we are embracing by making our offerings easy to consume, easy to use, and easy to build into solutions and then easy to parlay into what central IT needs to do for governance, compliance, and these types of things, it's becoming our new bread and butter. >> And what's really cool is- >> Is that easy button- >> We've been talking about- >> It's the easy button. >> The easy button a lot on the show this week and if you just, you just described it it's exactly what people want, go on Becky. >> Sorry about that, I was going to say, the cool part is that we're co-creating these things with our clients. So we're using things like the Amazon Working Backward that you just mentioned.` We're using the IBM garage methodology to get innovative to do design working, design thinking workshops, and think about where is that end user?, Where is that stakeholder? Where are they, they thinking, feeling, doing, saying how do we make the easier? How do we get the easy button for them so that they can have the right solutions for their businesses. We work mostly with lines of business in my part of the organization, and they're hungry for that. >> You know, we had a quote on theCUBE yesterday, Savannah remember one of our guests said, you know, back in the, you know, 1990s or two 2000s, if you had four production apps, it was considered complex >> Savannah: Yeah. >> You know, now you got hundreds of workloads, thousands of workloads, so, you know, this end-to-end vision that we heard that's playing out is getting more complex, but the easy button is where these abstraction layers and technology could come in. So it's getting more complex because there's more stuff but it's getting easier because- >> Savannah: What is the magnitude? >> You can make it easier. This is a dynamic, share your thoughts on that. >> It's getting more complex because our clients need to move faster, right, they need to be more agile, right, so not only are there thousands of applications there are hundreds of thousands microservices that are composing those applications. So they need capabilities that help them not just build but govern that structure and put the right compliance over that structure. So this relationship- >> Savannah: Lines of governance, yeah- >> This relationship we built with AWS is in our key areas, it's a strategic move, not a small thing for us, it covers things like automation and integration where you need to build that way. It covers things like data and AI where you need to do the analytics, even things like sustainability where we're totally aligned with what AWS is talking about and trying to do, right, so it's really a good match made there. >> John: It really sounds awesome. >> Yeah, it's clear. I want to dig in a little bit, I love the term, and I saw it in my, it stuck out to me in the notes right away, getting ready for you all, "maniacal", maniacal about the customer, maniacal about the community, I think that's really clear when we're talking about 24 days to 24 hours, like the veteran example that you gave right there, which I genuinely felt in my heart. These are the types of collaborations that really impact people's lives, tell me about some of the other trends or maybe a couple other examples you might have because I think sometimes when our head's in the clouds, we talk a lot about the tech and the functionality, we forget it's touching every single person walking around us, probably in a different way right now than we may even be aware- >> I think one of the things that's been, and our clients have been asking us for, is to help coming into this new era, right, so we've come out of a pandemic where a lot of them had to do some really, really basic quick decisions. Okay, "Contact Center, everyone work from home now." Okay, how do we do that? Okay, so we cobbled something together, now we're back, so what do we do? How do we create digital transformation around that so that we are going forward in a really positive way that works for our clients or for our contact center reps who are maybe used to working from home now versus what our clients need, the response times they need, and AWS has all the technology that we're working with like Amazon Connect to be able to pull those things together with some of our software like Watson Assistant. So those types of solutions are coming together out of that need and now we're moving into the trend where economy's getting tougher, right? More cost cutting potentially is coming, right, better efficiencies, how do we leverage our solutions and help our clients and customers do that? So I think that's what the customer obsession's about, is making sure we really understand where their pain points are, and not just solve them but maybe get rid of 'em. >> John: Yeah, great one. >> Yeah. And not developing in a silo, I mean, it's a classic subway problem, you got to be communicating with your community if you want to continue to serve them. And IBM's been serving their community for a very long time, which is super impressive, do you think they're ready for the challenge? >> Let's do it. >> So we have a new thing on theCUBE. >> Becky: Oh boy. >> We didn't warn you about this, but here we go. Although you told, Alan, you've mentioned you're feeling very cool with the microphone on, so I feel like, I'm going to put you in the hot seat first on this one. Not that I don't think Becky's going to smash it, but I feel like you're channeling the power of the microphone. New challenges, treat it like a 32nd Instagram reel-style story, a hot take, your thought leadership, money clip, you know, this is your moment. What is the biggest takeaway, most important thing happening at the show this year? >> Most important thing happening at the show? Well, I'm glad you mentioned it that way, because earlier you said we may have to sing (presenters and guests all laughing) >> So this is much better than- >> That's actually part of the close. >> John: Hey, hey. >> Don't worry, don't worry, I haven't forgotten that, it's your Instagram reel, go. (Savannah laughs) >> Original audio happening here on theCUBE, courtesy of Alan and IBM, I am so here for it. >> So what my takeaway and what I would like for the audience to take away, out of this conversation especially, but even broadly, the IBM AWS relationship is really like a landmark type of relationship, right? It's one of the biggest that we've established on both sides, right- >> Savannah: It seems huge, okay you are too monolith in the world of companies, like, yeah- >> Becky: Totally. >> It's huge. And it represents a strategic change on both sides, right? With that customer- >> Savannah: Fundamentally- >> In the middle right? >> Savannah: Yeah. >> So we're seeing things like, you know, AWS is working with us to make sure we're building products the way that a AWS client likes to consume them, right, so that we have the right integration, so they get that right look and feel, but they still get the enterprise level capabilities they're used to from IBM, right? So the big takeaway I like for people to take, is this is a new IBM, it's a new AWS and IBM relationship, and so expect more of that goodness, more of those new things coming out of it. [John] Excellent, wow. >> That was great, well done, you nailed it. and you're going to finish with some acapella, right? (Alan laughs) >> You got a pitch pipe ready? (everyone laughs) >> All right Becky, what about you? Give us your hot take. >> Well, so for me, the biggest takeaway is just the way this relationship has grown so much, so, like you said, it's the new IBM it's the new AWS, we were here last year, we had some good things, this year we're back at the show with joint solutions, have been jointly funded and co-created by AWS and IBM. This is huge, this is a really big opportunity and a really big deal that these two companies have come together, identified joint customer needs and we're going after 'em together and we're putting 'em in the booth. >> Savannah: So cool. And there's things like smart edge for welding solutions that are out there. >> Savannah: Yes. >> You know, I talked about, and it's, you know you wouldn't think, "Okay, well what's that?" There's a lot to that, a lot of saving when you look at how you do welding and if you apply things like visual AI and auditory AI to make sure a weld is good. I mean, I think these are, these things are cool, I geek out on these things- >> John: Every vertical. >> I'm geeking out with you right now, just geeking- >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, so- >> Every vertical is infected. >> They are and it's so impactful to have AWS just in lockstep with us, doing these solutions, it's so different from, you know, you kind of create something that you think your customers like and then you put it out there. >> Yeah, versus this moment. >> Yeah, they're better together. >> It's strategic partnership- >> It's truly a strategic partnership. and we're really bringing that this year to reinvent and so I'm super excited about that. >> Congratulations. >> Wow, well, congratulations again on your awards, on your new partnership, I can't wait to hear, I mean, we're seven months in, eight months in to this this SaaS side of the partnership, can't wait to see what we're going to be talking about next year when we have you back on theCUBE. >> I know. >> and maybe again in between now and then. Alan, Becky, thank you both so much for being here, this was truly a joy and I'm sure you gave folks a taste of the new IBM, practicing what you preach. >> John: Great momentum. >> And I'm just, I'm so impressed with the two companies collaborating, for those of us OGs in tech, the big companies never collaborated before- >> Yeah. >> John: Yeah. Joint, co-created solutions. >> And you have friction between products and everything else. I mean's it's really, co-collaboration is, it's a big theme for us at all the shows we've been doing this year but it's just nice to see it in practice too, it's an entirely different thing, so well done. >> Well it's what gets me out of the bed in the morning. >> All right, congratulations. >> Very clearly, your energy is contagious and I love it and yeah, this has been great. Thank all of you at home or at work or on the International Space Station or wherever you might be tuning in from today for joining us, here in Las Vegas at AWS re Invent where we are live from the show floor, wall-to-wall coverage for three days with John Furrier. My name is Savannah Peterson, we're theCUBE, the source for high tech coverage. (cheerful upbeat music)

(bright upbeat music) >> Hello everyone. And we're back at AWS Re:Invent. You're watching theCUBE and we're here, day two. Actually we started Monday night and we got wall-to-wall coverage. We going all the way through Thursday, myself. I'm Dave Volante with the co-host, David Nicholson. Lisa Martin is also here. Of course, John Furrier. Partners, technologists, customers, the whole ecosystem. It's good to be back in the live event. Of course we have hybrid event as well a lot of people watching online. Anshu Sharma is here. He is the co-founder and CEO of Skyflow, new type of privacy company, really interested in this topic. Great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, thanks for bringing me here. >> It's timely, you know. Privacy, security, they're kind of two sides of the same coin. >> Yes. >> Why did you found Skyflow? >> Well, the idea for Skyflow really comes from my background in some ways. I spent my first nine years at Oracle, six years at Salesforce. And whether we were building databases or CRM products, customers would come to us and say, "Hey, you know, I have this very different type of data. It's things like social security numbers, frequent flyer card numbers, card numbers. You know, can you secure it better? Can you help me manage things like GDPR?" And to be honest, there was never a clear answer. There's a lot of technology solutions out there that do one thing at a time, you can walk around the booths here, there's like a hundred companies. And if you use all those hundred things correctly, maybe you could go tell your board that maybe a social security number is not going to be lost anymore. And I was like, "You know, we've simplified everything else. Why is it so hard to protect my social security number? It should be easy. It should be as easy as using Stripe or Twilio." And this idea just never went away and kept coming back till a few years ago, we learned about the Facebook privacy challenges, the Equifax challenges. And I was like, boy, it's the time. It's time to go do it now. >> You started the company in 2019. Right? >> Yes. >> I mean, your timing was pretty good, right? So what are the big sort of Uber trends that you're seeing? Obviously GDPR, the California Consumer Privacy Act. I heard this morning. Did you hear this? That like, if you post a picture on social media now without somebody's permission, you're now violating their privacy. It's like, you can see the smiles on Anshu's face. >> Its like every week, we're like every week, there's a new story that could be like, well, Skyflow. The new story is the question, the answer is Skyflow. But honestly I think what's happened is, the issue is put very simple. You know all we're trying to do is protect people's social security numbers, phone numbers, credit card numbers, things we hold dear. At the same time, it's complex. Like what does it mean to protect your social security number let's say? Does that mean I don't get to use it for filing your taxes? Well, I need your credit card number to process a payment. And we were like, this is just too complicated. Why, how do companies like Apple do it? How do companies like Netflix manage not have as many breaches as my hotel that barely has any data. And the answer is those companies actually have evolved to a completely different architecture, the zero trust data architecture. And that was our inspiration for starting this company. >> Yeah. I mean. How many times have you been asked to give your social security number? And you're like, why? why do you want it? What are you going to do with it? How do you protect it? And they go, "I don't know." >> You know, what's even, my favorite is like, you give your social security number to say TurboTax, how many days of the year do they need to use it? One. How many days of the year do they have it? And the thing is, it's a liability for those CTOs too. >> Yeah right. >> The CTO of Walgreens, the CTO of Intuit. They don't really want that social security number just so they can process your card once a year, or your social security number once a year. It's almost like we're forcing them to hold onto data. And then they have to bear the burden of having these stories. Like, you know, everybody wants to prevent a New York Times story that says, what Robin Hood had a breach, Twitter had a breach. >> So walk us through how Skyflow would address something like that. So take the, you know, take the make a generic version of TurboTax, social security members. There they are right now, they're sitting in a database somewhere. Hopefully there's some security wrapped around it in some way or another. What would you advise a customer like that to do? And what are you actually doing for them? >> So, look, it's very simple. You are not going to put your username passwords in a generic database. You're going to use something like OD Zero or Octa to do it. We're living in a world where we have polyglot data stores. Like there's a key value store. There's a time series database. There is a search database like Elastic. There's a log database like Splunk. But PII data, Somehow we think just fine. If it's in a hundred places and our answer is that we should do the same thing that companies like Apple, Netflix, Google, everybody, does. They take this data. They completely isolate it from the databases. And it gets stored in a custom data store in our case, that would be Skyflow. And essentially we'd give you encrypted tokens back and you can use these encrypted tokens that look like fake social security number. It's called a Format Preserving Encryption. So if you think about all the breakthroughs we've had in homomorphic encryption, on secure elements, like the way your phone works, the credit card number is stored in a secure element. So it's the same idea. There's a secure part of your data stack, which is Skyflow. That basically keeps the data always protected. And because we can compute and search on encrypted data, this is important, everybody can encrypt data at rest. Skyflow is the first company that's come out and said, "Look, you can keep your phone number and social security number, encrypted while I can run an aggregation query." So I can tell you what's the balance of your customer's account balance. And i can run that query without decrypting, a single row of data. The only other company I know that can do that internally is a certain Cupertino based company. >> So think about it. Anybody can walk something up to a certain degree, but allowing frictionless access at the same time. >> While it's encrypted. So how do you make that? Are you, is a strategy to make that a horizontal service? That I can put into my data protection service or my E-commerce service or whatever. >> It's a cloud-based service that runs on AWS and other clouds. We basically given instance just like, you'll get an instance of a post-grad store or you get an API handled to OD Zero. You basically instantiate Skyflow of what gets created. It can be in your AWS environment, dedicated VPC. So it's private to you and then you have a handle and then basically you just start using it. >> So how, how do you, what's the secret sauce? How do you do that? >> The secret source. Well, now that we filed the patents on it, I can reveal the secret sauce. So the holy grail of encryption right now, if you go talk to people at a leading company, is there's something called Fully Homomorphic Encryption. That's fundamentally the foundation on which things like Bitcoin are built actually. But the hard part about Fully Homomorphic Encryption is it works. You can actually do mathematical computations on it without decrypting the data, but it's about a million times slower. >> Yes slower, right. >> So nobody uses it. My insight was that we don't need to do multiplications and additions on phone numbers. You never take my phone number and divide by your social security number. (Dave laughing) These numbers are not numbers, they are data structures. So our insight was if you treat them as specialized data structures, we're all talking about basically about 80 different types of data across the globe. Every human being has an ID, date of birth, height, color of eyes. There's not that many fields. What we can do then is create specialized encryption schemes for each data type. We call this polymorphic data encryption. Poly means multiple. As a result of that, we can actually store the data encrypted and build indexes on it. Since we can index interpret data, it's kind of like, imagine you can run real-time queries on data that's encrypted. Every other data store, When you encrypt the data, it becomes invisible to database. And that's why we had to build this as a full stacked service. Just like the Snowflake guys had to start with the foundation of storage, rethink indexing, and build Snowflake. We did the same thing, except we built it for encrypted indexes Whereas they built it for encrypted, for regular data stores. >> So thinking, if you think about today's tech stack, it's evolving, right? The data protection and security are coming together. Where does this fit? Is it sort of now becoming a fundamental part of the-- >> We think every leading company, whether you're building a new brokerage application or you are the largest bank in the world, and we're talking to some of them right now. They're all going to have an internal service called a PII wall. This wall just like Apple and Google have their own internal walls. You're going to have a wall service in your service oriented architecture, essentially. And it's going to basically be the API. Every other application and database in your company is not going to store my social security number. The SSNs don't belong in 600 databases at a leading bank. They don't belong inside your customer support system. Think about what happened with Robinhood two weeks ago, right? Someone tricked one call center guy into giving the keys up, which is fine happens. But why did the call center guy have access to like a million email addresses? He's never used going to use that. So we think if you isolate the PII, every leading company is going to end up with a PII Wall, as part of their core architecture. Just like today, we have an Alt API, you have a Search API, you have a Logging API, you're going to have a PII API. And that's going to be part of your modern data stack. >> So okay. So this is definitely not a bolt on, right? It's going to be a fundamental company, just like security is, just like backup is. It's now, you got to have it. It's-- >> Yes. I mean, if you think about it, it just logically makes sense. Like you should be isolating this data. You don't keep your money and gold around at home. You put it either in a locker or a bank. I think the same applies for PII. We just haven't done it because companies would pay off a fine for $10,000 or a million dollars. And. >> Yeah. So you've recently raised $45 million to expand your efforts. Obviously that means that people are looking at this and saying there's opportunity, right? What does that look like when you think of growth, where during your go to market strategy at first you're convincing people that it's a good idea to do it. Do you think or hope for, hope one day that there's an inflection point where it's not that people are thinking, you know, let's do this because it's a good idea, but people are like, I have to do this because if I don't, it's irresponsible and I'm going to be penalized for not having it. It becomes something that isn't really a choice. It's something where you just do it. >> So, you know, when we were starting the company, we didn't even have a word to explain what we were trying to do. We would say things like what if there was a cloud service for XYZ. And, but over the last one year, I don't want to take credit for creating this market, but this market has been created in the last year and a half. And you know, we get tons of people, including some of the largest institutions emailing us, saying, "I'm looking to build a PII wall, API service inside my company. Can you tell me why your product meets that need?" And I thought that would take us three to five years to get there. And, you know, we've ended up creating a category, basically just like other companies have. And I think, you know, you don't get, I believe in market permission. You don't get to create a category. The market gives somebody the permission to create a category. Saying, "Look, this makes sense. Something like this should emerge." And if you're there at the right time, like you said. >> Yep. >> You get to take the opportunity. >> So where are you at as a company say for some, some capital is great. When do you scale? >> We're scaling now? So we just doubled our headcount in the last nine to 10 months. We're now 75 people. We think we'll be about 150 to 200 people in the next year. We are hiring across all regions. We just hired a head of Asia pack from segment.com. We just hired our first, you know, lead on international expansion. And in the US, we have an office in Palo Alto. We have an office in Bangalore. We just announced a data residency solution for Europe, data residency solution for India and emerging markets. Because data residency is another one of those things that's just emerging right now. And irrespective of whether you believe in security and privacy. Data residency is one of those things that you are mandated to implement. >> And where are you hiring? Is it combination to go to market? Tell me about your go to market. >> The go to market. We are direct sales organization, but we work with partners. So we haven't announced some of these partnerships, but you're working with some of the companies here who either are large database companies, large security companies. We think there is a win-win relationship between us and some of the partner. >> You're a partner model, partner channel model. >> So, direct sales but partner assisted. >> Yeah. Right. All right. We got to go. Hey, awesome story. Congratulations. Best of luck. >> Very interesting. >> Love to have you back and track the progress. >> Thank you, thank you so much. >> Okay. Thank you for watching theCUBE, the leader in and high-tech coverage. We're at Re-Invent 2021. Be right back (upbeat music)

(bright music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We have Michael D´aniello, platform architect at VMware's Carbon Black. Michael, great to see you. We're here at re-Invent virtual hybrid in person. Great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Glad to be here. >> So one of the big stories that we're tracking, obviously, is workloads. All cloud for all workloads. Obviously the data is a big part of things, but under the covers and optimizing cloud for the application developers, this modern application movement is more and more at the top of the stack. People just wanting to code. Infrastructure as code. You've seen DevSecOps is a big trend that's driving all new microservices, all new greatness for developers, but still, there's an optimization question. I want to get your thoughts on this, is what you do. Take a minute to explain what your role is at Carbon Black around this cloud optimization. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so my name is Michael D'aniello. I am a platform architect of VMware Carbon Black. I work across all the different engineering teams. And our main objective is to develop scalable platform tools and that includes, yeah, cloud security, automation pieces, pipelines, cost optimization, like we'll be talking about today, developer enablement tooling and observability tooling. >> One of the big things about instances is that, you know, do I have enough instances? 'Cause honestly, the elastic cloud is amazing, all kinds of new resources there, but talk about the AMD portion of the instances. How do we identify these instances? How to developers understand it, what's in them, and what's the selection criteria? Take us through that whole process of the Amazon web service and the AMD instances. >> Yeah, sure. So essentially, we're leveraging a lot of our instances to run our EKS clusters, which is a managed service for me and for us to run our Kubernetes clusters. And we identify that we can take a bunch of those instances and gain some cost optimization benefits by selecting from Intel to AMD processors. And, you know, initially, we had measured out to be roughly a 10% reduction in cost just for selecting that instance type. But yeah, we actually learned we gained quite a bit more, so. >> John: You know, developers are always like, I want more power, and this is what, you know, the whole idea of Cloud is. Cloud scale has been a big competitive advantage, but also the cost aspect of it. What's the balance between maximizing performance and cost optimization? Because now, you know, people don't want to, you know, they want more power. They also don't want to have a lot of extra spend. And this is kind of one of those things they talk about in Cloud where it's been so successful, cost is important. >> Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's got to be easy, too, to get that cost optimization benefit. Otherwise, you're spending all your cycles and burning that money there in the human capital and the team and the engineering effort. So luckily, this change is a one-line change. We use Terraform for our automated provisioning, a layer, and we were able to make that one line change and then developers didn't have to make any application changes, which was great. So it was a no-brainer for us to pursue this. >> Talk about the EC2 instances that leverage AMD based process for the EKS, you mentioned that earlier, what is that all about? What's the benefits, what's in it for you guys? >> Yeah, for sure. So essentially, the workloads that are running on these instance types are actual Carbon Black Cloud application. So, all the backend systems that support our customers. And so in that use case, we're, you know, we're spinning up all of our containers that are running our applications and essentially, that's our use case for those instance types. >> How did you come to use the AWS EC2 instances on the AMD? Did you have an evaluation process? Did you just go select it? I mean, take us through that migration aspect of it. >> Yeah, sure, yeah. So originally, we're looking across the board. How can we do better cost optimization, right? And that goes across every different AWS resource, but we targeted this one specifically. We worked alongside with their AWS TAMs and representatives to basically find out, "Hey, is this financially worth the effort?" And we did reach that conclusion with some analysis, basically targeting these instance types and doing some analysis on that cost optimization specifically. And it ended up, you know, being the right thing to target. >> What was the ease of use of the switch? Take us through that. Was it a heavy lift? Was it seamless? Take us through the impact, there, on the move over and what were the results of that? >> Yeah, so I mean, that's the greatest thing. Like I said before, I mean, we had to make just a single line change just to change that instance type in our config and then roll that out across our regions. We did slow roll that in order to make sure that those changes in our development environments didn't make any, you know, performance hits or we didn't run into any snags with the applications themselves. But yeah, I mean, that's the greatest part about the story from my perspective is the ease to migrate over and to switch to these instance types, and then you just immediately gain that cost optimization benefit. >> You know what I love about what your job is, platform architect, that word kind of had a lot of meaning even 10, 15 years ago, but now with the Cloud, it's almost like you're always finagling and managing and massaging and nurturing the infrastructure to enable it. More new things are coming online as well, more high level services. So you've got a fun job and it's always evolving. How do you stay on top of it? What's the impact been for your customers, too, as you start deploying some of these new instance capabilities? Take us through kind of a day in the life of what you do and then what's the impact of customers? >> Yeah, sure. So, you know, like you said, there's quite a bit now to look at. You know, you got to stay on top of different blogs and keep connected with your network to see what your other colleagues are doing across different companies. You know, you can go into conferences like AWS re:Invent, right, to keep on the cutting edge here. But yeah, that's essentially, you know, one of the key aspects is just trying to look at all the different aspects, all the new technologies that are coming out, making sure you're making the right choices there and trying to get the most bang for your buck while you're at it. >> What are some of the big factors that you see in cloud native as you start to look at what customers are doing? Obviously with Kubernetes, you're starting to see that platform develop inside the industry as well as de facto, kind of orchestration layer. But now as customers start to look at it, they want to have more ease of use there, too. At the same time, they don't want to have to do a lot of front end work. They want to get instant benefits in the Cloud, obviously, whether it's from a security standpoint or just rolling out a modern application. Okay, so as having all this infrastructure under the covers, how do you look at that problem and how do you capture that opportunity? >> Yeah, and I think that's why we're seeing a movement here on platform teams. It's kind of a newer terminology, usually a band of developers and SREs come together and say, "Well, we've got a lot of different things to look at. We're onboarding applications to Kubernetes, and we need to make tools so that developers don't have to think much about the transition and the underlying platform." And so that's one of our success metrics on the platform engineering team is just to almost, you know, be non-existent, right? To just have everything flow through our systems and then have just a high ease of use to onboard the applications to the new platform. >> You know, it looks like you have some great success with the AMD based instances. Can I ask you a question? 'Cause I wanted figure this out. How do you identify an AMD based instance when you're making the selections? >> Yeah, sure. It's as easy as just the A after the name. So for us, it was the C5.4XL. And if you want the AMD one, it's just the C5A.4XL. So I guess technically, instead of a one line change, it's actually a one letter change. So, quite easy there. >> Yeah, it's almost like back in the old glory days of command line, one quick update. The customer aspect of this is also important, too. If you don't mind, while I got you here, what are some of the things that you're hearing from your customers, from a performance standpoint, that they're looking for? Obviously, the cost optimization is key, but as they look to deploy more power and more performance, what are some of the things that your customers are looking for from Carbon Black? >> Yeah, so I mean, we are a security company, but we're really a data company because we have, you know, 8,000 customers, we processed over a trillion events per day, we ingress over a hundred terabytes of data per day. And so, our customers need high level performance. And if we can't provide that with low latency, we're not successful. So that's why, you know, performance on the underlying systems that are running our applications is super critical. >> Yeah, you're looking at trailblazer over there. I mean, the work that you guys are doing with the data is amazing. And that's a big theme at re:Invent this year is that data is a huge part. We look at the success of the cloud growth on this, I call gen-two cloud, happening. This whole modern movement is all about how people handle the data at scale, 'cause cloud scales here and now you've got processing all that data, The trailblazing that's going on, there's like this new wave of, I almost called it first-generation trailblazers, but you guys are doing that. What advice would you have for other architects out there and kind of the mainstream enterprises who are like, "Hey, I want to take advantage of the path that you guys have plowed through." What's your advice? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things in a place where we've had a lot of success is creating standards, making sure that we're choosing technology wisely, and making sure that your company isn't building the same solution in silos. And you know, that's a huge pattern that I've seen in my career. And if you can negate that, you're going to be in a great place. So, you know, choose the right technology, container first, cloud native first, push forward, and then make sure that everybody's kind of on that same ship running in the same direction. >> Well, great case study on this AMD based instance migration. Was there any uplift and experience that you've seen on the switch and the performance? Can you just talk about that? What does it mean to upgrade? What benefits are you seeing on the performance you have? >> Yeah, so I didn't hit on this yet and I really wanted to. Yeah, so upfront, the instance itself is 10% cheaper. However, we found out that we had to run far less instances because of that performance increase. So we ended up saving roughly 30% and we've continued to scale out. So at first, it was a couple of hundred instances. Now we're in the thousands and we're going to keep ramping up to over 10 thousands, tens of that. >> John: Let me get this right. So single line change, letter change, instance change. So you get not as many instances, and you save money, so you get cost optimization and higher performance. >> Yep. They say, if it's too good to be true, it's not. But in this case, it actually is. >> So why is it so good in your opinion? What did you discover? What was the big revelation that went down this path? Because that's good value proposition. >> Yeah, for sure. I mean, so initially, we were just chasing that initial BC to 10% and then as we kind of push it forward, we're looking at the metrics, month to month costs and we're actually saying, well, as we kind of swap over from one instance type to another, we're actually paying less. And then once we fully swapped over, it took five or six months to get to the same amount of costs as we continued to scale upward. So it's been a great story. >> It is a great story. It's super nuanced, but it's super important to know these platform benefits. I got to ask you on a personal question, if you don't mind. We love covering Cloud. We've been covering Amazon, it's our ninth year at re:Invent. Just love covering all the action and tech as this just total awesomeness environment. Cloud scale, innovation, capabilities, it's like surfing a big wave. But there's a bigger wave coming and we're seeing it now. I want to get your thoughts on this. As you look to the next big wave, beyond Cloud now, Cloud scale, data, new architecture is rolling out with Edge, basically distributing computing at large scale, and tons of security challenges, right? How do you look at this next big wave coming? Are you staring at it saying, wow, this is going to be huge? And how do you ride that wave? What's your mindset and how do you look at that? >> Well first of all, I'm extremely excited about it. Just the further this thing grows out, there's definitely more complexity, but just a whole slew of fun problems to solve. But when we look at these different problems and solving them at scale across multiple regions, it gets pretty exciting, right? So I can say one example of this is our security of our Cloud, not the security product, and we've developed automation for prevention and auto-remediation in our pipelines. It's been such a success story. And these type of technologies did not exist even a couple of years ago and we've been able to take advantage of them. So, there's going to be a lot more of that where that came from. So, yeah. >> Michael, great work. And again, you're truly a trailblazer, and this is, again, you got to do it. You got to screw your own cloud and stay on the cutting edge and ride that wave. Congratulations on the CostOp cloud optimization and the success with AMD based instances. Congratulations. Thanks. >> Thanks. >> Okay, this is theCUBEs coverage of AWS's re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (inspirational music)

(bright music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We have Michael D´aniello, platform architect at VMware's Carbon Black. Michael, great to see you. We're here at re-Invent virtual hybrid in person. Great to have you on theCUBE. Thanks for coming on. >> Yeah, thanks a lot. Glad to be here. >> So one of the big stories that we're tracking, obviously, is workloads. All cloud for all workloads. Obviously the data is a big part of things, but under the covers and optimizing cloud for the application developers, this modern application movement is more and more at the top of the stack. People just wanting to code. Infrastructure as code. You've seen DevSecOps is a big trend that's driving all new microservices, all new greatness for developers, but still, there's an optimization question. I want to get your thoughts on this, is what you do. Take a minute to explain what your role is at Carbon Black around this cloud optimization. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so my name is Michael D'aniello. I am a platform architect of VMware Carbon Black. I work across all the different engineering teams. And our main objective is to develop scalable platform tools and that includes, yeah, cloud security, automation pieces, pipelines, cost optimization, like we'll be talking about today, developer enablement tooling and observability tooling. >> One of the big things about instances is that, you know, do I have enough instances? 'Cause honestly, the elastic cloud is amazing, all kinds of new resources there, but talk about the AMD portion of the instances. How do we identify these instances? How to developers understand it, what's in them, and what's the selection criteria? Take us through that whole process of the Amazon web service and the AMD instances. >> Yeah, sure. So essentially, we're leveraging a lot of our instances to run our EKS clusters, which is a managed service for me and for us to run our Kubernetes clusters. And we identify that we can take a bunch of those instances and gain some cost optimization benefits by selecting from Intel to AMD processors. And, you know, initially, we had measured out to be roughly a 10% reduction in cost just for selecting that instance type. But yeah, we actually learned we gained quite a bit more, so. >> John: You know, developers are always like, I want more power, and this is what, you know, the whole idea of Cloud is. Cloud scale has been a big competitive advantage, but also the cost aspect of it. What's the balance between maximizing performance and cost optimization? Because now, you know, people don't want to, you know, they want more power. They also don't want to have a lot of extra spend. And this is kind of one of those things they talk about in Cloud where it's been so successful, cost is important. >> Yeah, yeah, for sure. And it's got to be easy, too, to get that cost optimization benefit. Otherwise, you're spending all your cycles and burning that money there in the human capital and the team and the engineering effort. So luckily, this change is a one-line change. We use Terraform for our automated provisioning, a layer, and we were able to make that one line change and then developers didn't have to make any application changes, which was great. So it was a no-brainer for us to pursue this. >> Talk about the EC2 instances that leverage AMD based process for the EKS, you mentioned that earlier, what is that all about? What's the benefits, what's in it for you guys? >> Yeah, for sure. So essentially, the workloads that are running on these instance types are actual Carbon Black Cloud application. So, all the backend systems that support our customers. And so in that use case, we're, you know, we're spinning up all of our containers that are running our applications and essentially, that's our use case for those instance types. >> How did you come to use the AWS EC2 instances on the AMD? Did you have an evaluation process? Did you just go select it? I mean, take us through that migration aspect of it. >> Yeah, sure, yeah. So originally, we're looking across the board. How can we do better cost optimization, right? And that goes across every different AWS resource, but we targeted this one specifically. We worked alongside with their AWS TAMs and representatives to basically find out, "Hey, is this financially worth the effort?" And we did reach that conclusion with some analysis, basically targeting these instance types and doing some analysis on that cost optimization specifically. And it ended up, you know, being the right thing to target. >> What was the ease of use of the switch? Take us through that. Was it a heavy lift? Was it seamless? Take us through the impact, there, on the move over and what were the results of that? >> Yeah, so I mean, that's the greatest thing. Like I said before, I mean, we had to make just a single line change just to change that instance type in our config and then roll that out across our regions. We did slow roll that in order to make sure that those changes in our development environments didn't make any, you know, performance hits or we didn't run into any snags with the applications themselves. But yeah, I mean, that's the greatest part about the story from my perspective is the ease to migrate over and to switch to these instance types, and then you just immediately gain that cost optimization benefit. >> You know what I love about what your job is, platform architect, that word kind of had a lot of meaning even 10, 15 years ago, but now with the Cloud, it's almost like you're always finagling and managing and massaging and nurturing the infrastructure to enable it. More new things are coming online as well, more high level services. So you've got a fun job and it's always evolving. How do you stay on top of it? What's the impact been for your customers, too, as you start deploying some of these new instance capabilities? Take us through kind of a day in the life of what you do and then what's the impact of customers? >> Yeah, sure. So, you know, like you said, there's quite a bit now to look at. You know, you got to stay on top of different blogs and keep connected with your network to see what your other colleagues are doing across different companies. You know, you can go into conferences like AWS re:Invent, right, to keep on the cutting edge here. But yeah, that's essentially, you know, one of the key aspects is just trying to look at all the different aspects, all the new technologies that are coming out, making sure you're making the right choices there and trying to get the most bang for your buck while you're at it. >> What are some of the big factors that you see in cloud native as you start to look at what customers are doing? Obviously with Kubernetes, your starting to see that platform develop inside the industry as well as defacto, kind of orchestration layer. But now as customers start to look at it, they want to have more ease of use there, too. At the same time, they don't want to have to do a lot of front end work. They want to get instant benefits in the Cloud, obviously, whether it's from a security standpoint or just rolling out a modern application. Okay, so as having all this infrastructure under the covers, how do you look at that problem and how do you capture that opportunity? >> Yeah, and I think that's why we're seeing a movement here on platform teams. It's kind of a newer terminology, usually a band of developers and SREs come together and say, "Well, we've got a lot of different things to look at. We're onboarding applications to Kubernetes, and we need to make tools so that developers don't have to think much about the transition and the underlying platform." And so that's one of our success metrics on the platform engineering team is just to almost, you know, be non-existent, right? To just have everything flow through our systems and then have just a high ease of use to onboard the applications to the new platform. >> You know, it looks like you have some great success with the AMD based instances. Can I ask you a question? 'Cause I wanted figure this out. How do you identify an AMD based instance when you're making the selections? >> Yeah, sure. It's as easy as just the A after the name. So for us, it was the C5.4XL. And if you want the AMD one, it's just the C5A.4XL. So I guess technically, instead of a one line change, it's actually a one letter change. So, quite easy there. >> Yeah, it's almost like back in the old glory days of command line, one quick update. The customer aspect of this is also important, too. If you don't mind, while I got you here, what are some of the things that you're hearing from your customers, from a performance standpoint, that they're looking for? Obviously, the cost optimization is key, but as they look to deploy more power and more performance, what are some of the things that your customers are looking for from Carbon Black? >> Yeah, so I mean, we are a security company, but we're really a data company because we have, you know, 8,000 customers, we processed over a trillion events per day, we ingress over a hundred terabytes of data per day. And so, our customers need high level performance. And if we can't provide that with low latency, we're not successful. So that's why, you know, performance on the underlying systems that are running our applications is super critical. >> Yeah, you're looking at trailblazer over there. I mean, the work that you guys are doing with the data is amazing. And that's a big theme at re:Invent this year is that data is a huge part. We look at the success of the cloud growth on this, I call gen-two cloud, happening. This whole modern movement is all about how people handle the data at scale, 'cause cloud scales here and now you've got processing all that data, The trailblazing that's going on, there's like this new wave of, I almost called it first-generation trailblazers, but you guys are doing that. What advice would you have for other architects out there and kind of the mainstream enterprises who are like, "Hey, I want to take advantage of the path that you guys have plowed through." What's your advice? >> Yeah, I think one of the key things in a place where we've had a lot of success is creating standards, making sure that we're choosing technology wisely, and making sure that your company isn't building the same solution in silos. And you know, that's a huge pattern that I've seen in my career. And if you can negate that, you're going to be in a great place. So, you know, choose the right technology, container first, cloud native first, push forward, and then make sure that everybody's kind of on that same ship running in the same direction. >> Well, great case study on this AMD based instance migration. Was there any uplift and experience that you've seen on the switch and the performance? Can you just talk about that? What does it mean to upgrade? What benefits are you seeing on the performance you have? >> Yeah, so I didn't hit on this yet and I really wanted to. Yeah, so upfront, the instance itself is 10% cheaper. However, we found out that we had to run far less instances because of that performance increase. So we ended up saving roughly 30% and we've continued to scale out. So at first, it was a couple of hundred instances. Now we're in the thousands and we're going to keep ramping up to over 10 thousands, tens of that. >> John: Let me get this right. So single line change, letter change, instance change. So you get not as many instances, and you save money, so you get cost optimization and higher performance. >> Yep. They say, if it's too good to be true, it's not. But in this case, it actually is. >> So why is it so good in your opinion? What did you discover? What was the big revelation that went down this path? Because that's good value proposition. >> Yeah, for sure. I mean, so initially, we were just chasing that initial BC to 10% and then as we kind of push it forward, we're looking at the metrics, month to month costs and we're actually saying, well, as we kind of swap over from one instance type to another, we're actually paying less. And then once we fully swapped over, it took five or six months to get to the same amount of costs as we continued to scale upward. So it's been a great story. >> It is a great story. It's super nuanced, but it's super important to know these platform benefits. I got to ask you on a personal question, if you don't mind. We love covering Cloud. We've been covering Amazon, it's our ninth year at re:Invent. Just love covering all the action and tech as this just total awesomeness environment. Cloud scale, innovation, capabilities, it's like surfing a big wave. But there's a bigger wave coming and we're seeing it now. I want to get your thoughts on this. As you look to the next big wave, beyond Cloud now, Cloud scale, data, new architecture is rolling out with Edge, basically distributing computing at large scale, and tons of security challenges, right? How do you look at this next big wave coming? Are you staring at it saying, wow, this is going to be huge? And how do you ride that wave? What's your mindset and how do you look at that? >> Well first of all, I'm extremely excited about it. Just the further this thing grows out, there's definitely more complexity, but just a whole slew of fun problems to solve. But when we look at these different problems and solving them at scale across multiple regions, it gets pretty exciting, right? So I can say one example of this is our security of our Cloud, not the security product, and we've developed automation for prevention and auto-remediation in our pipelines. It's been such a success story. And these type of technologies did not exist even a couple of years ago and we've been able to take advantage of them. So, there's going to be a lot more of that where that came from. So, yeah. >> Michael, great work. And again, you're truly a trailblazer, and this is, again, you got to do it. You got to screw your own cloud and stay on the cutting edge and ride that wave. Congratulations on the CostOp cloud optimization and the success with AMD based instances. Congratulations. Thanks. >> Thanks. >> Okay, this is theCUBEs coverage of AWS's re:Invent 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Thanks for watching. (inspirational music)