(upbeat music) >> Welcome back to theCUBE's continuing coverage of AWS re:Invent 2021 live from Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin. We are doing one of the most important industry events, hybrid events this year with Amazon and its massive ecosystem of partners, some of which are joining me next. We've got two live sets, two remote sets, over 100 guests on the program, I'm going to be talking about the next decade in Cloud innovation. I'm pleased to welcome back Anthony Lye to the program, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of Public Cloud at NetApp. Anthony good to see you. >> Nice to see you again thanks for... >> Nice to see you in person. >> I know... >> It's been a couple of years. And Amiram Shachar is here, the VP and GM of Spot by NetApp, Amiram it's great to have you on the program, welcome. >> Likewise, thank you. >> So the acquisition, the Spot acquisition was during the pandemic mid 2020, Amiram talk to me about that why NetApp, how's it going? Give us the lay of the land. >> I think that's the, it's one of the greatest things that NetApp has done, and I think it's one of the most amazing outcomes we could have as a company. And if you think about it in a first sight, when you look at storage company and compute company, what's the connection? But the thing is that NetApp is a company that is going through a huge transformation into Cloud. And by doing this acquisition, it's really like signaling where it's going. It's going way beyond, and honestly I just wanted to be part of it. >> And what's the customer sentiment been the 18 months or so, post acquisition? >> I think NetApp has done specifically with Anthony leading that acquisition, NetApp has done a phenomenal job of keeping Spot as a business unit, independent business unit. So our customers didn't really feel that something had happened, like the only thing we told them is we're going to have more funding, so. >> I'm sure they like that. Anthony talk to us about NetApp's transformation, transition, Spot as part of that. And then of course, CloudCheckr which acquisition was just announced I believe yesterday? >> We closed on actually November 7th. >> Lisa: Okay. >> So it's almost been a month now since we closed, but I've been at NetApp my gosh, it'll be five years in February. And you know, I think that the company had a real desire to sort of, to re-imagine itself and to sort of to embrace the public Clouds and to give its customers you know, what I think it's done incredibly well is this idea of symmetry. That we wanted to build something on Amazon that was as good or maybe a little bit better than on-premise. And customers really I think appreciated, they appreciate that sort of, that desire for us to do those kinds of things. Now of course, CloudCheckr was my ninth acquisition in four years. Just to sort of, to build on what Amiram said I mean, CloudCheckr we acquired four Spot and we acquired what? Four companies in the last 12 months for Spot. So we really believe that as a company now we can address all of their potential opportunities, whether it's in a legacy application, whether it's a virtual desktop, whether it's a Cloud native application, or we just went and announced Ocean for Apache Spark. So Spot now has an optimization and automation solution for Spark on AWS which we announced, I think just yesterday. >> Correct. >> But I'd like to get both of your perspectives on keeping Spot as a brand, Anthony we'll start with you and then Amiram we'll go to you. >> Amiram is the founder, and he was the CEO of the company and built a fantastic company. And we, NetApp I think has a phenomenal brand, but a brand that's that's associated with the sort of the traditional IT organization. And as you note in the Cloud the buyers are slightly different. They're sort of the application owners, or they operate in a sort of a construct that most people call CloudOps or DevOps. And we felt that Spot represented that new buyer in ways that NetApp didn't and probably couldn't. And so we really liked the idea of having the structure of the big N supported by a little pink and a little blue and a more sort of Cloud native brand. >> And that's key, especially the dynamics in the market that we've seen the last 22 months with the rapid changes, the pivot to Cloud customers that weren't that digital needing to go in that direction to survive in the very beginning, I imagine this was really kind of core to NetApp's strategy, but also helping both of your customers to survive initially and then to be able to thrive and identify some of those key areas where they can cut costs would be a far more efficient. >> Okay I think you are in here, if you were born physical you're now digital, and if you weren't born physical you were born digital. And you know, digital is a very effective medium accelerated by the pandemic because as you said, we couldn't really get close to each other and you just look at the innovation around us here at Amazon, it's just amazing to watch. And we've just been really, really good partners with Amazon now for many, many years. And we continue to see just huge, huge opportunities. >> Well Adam Selipsky this morning in his keynote, one of the partners he called out was NetApp. >> Yeah I know I mean, I'll talk a little bit later on maybe with Yancey and I but you know, Amazon now sells our product. They haven't done that with anybody. So ONTAP is now a product that Amazon sells. >> Lisa: Okay. >> Amazon supports, Amazon bills, Amazon runs. So we've really, really demonstrated I think not just to our customers, that sort of a high rate of innovation and an opportunity to sort of accelerate their businesses, but we've demonstrated it to Amazon themselves, that we can operate like them. And we can develop with them at a speed that they are comfortable with. That maybe a few years ago many people would have doubted that a legacy company could operate this way. >> Right, one of the things we know about Amazon is the speed, but also their focus on the customer it's laser-focused, that whole flywheel of Amazon everything that was being announced this morning was exciting to your point Anthony, but it's also showing how involved the customers and the partners are in the ecosystem and that flywheel. Amiram talk to me from your perspective what are some of the, from a visionary standpoint what are some of the things that you're looking forward to going forward with CloudCheckr, but also knowing how deeply connected and integrated NetApp is with a big powerhouse like AWS? >> Yeah, so a few things about that. I think the first thing is also my take from today, like listening to the keynote and looking at all the new announcements. I think the trend is that deployment to the Cloud is becoming easier, but operations is becoming messier. And I think when we look at our category and where we aspire, where we want to be and where we're going. So I think with the CloudCheckr acquisition. So we're expanding into an area that we haven't been to because there are two categories in Cloud cost, there is optimization and there is cost management. What we've done, what we've built, what we've, the business we had is in the optimization space. It's actively reducing and optimizing resources for customers. And there are very few companies in that category as I can say. But right now we're expanding into that area of cost management, so we can meet our customers sooner and you can see us doing it in multiple areas, not only here, but also if we look at a customer journey in the Cloud, it starts with bring workloads in the Cloud, deploy them, and then secure them, and then automate them and then optimize them. Nobody moves to the Cloud and optimizes. So we're typically meeting customers at the end of their journey, we're meeting customers where they need an optimization and they have everything already set up. And right now with Ocean for Apache Spark, Ocean continuous delivery, Spot security, we're meeting customers sooner in their journey so we can provide a much more holistic solution and platform to customers wherever they are in their migration to the Cloud and scaling into Cloud. And with CloudCheckr also taking us to a whole new world of cost management. So, I think we're scaling and ramping and doing all these things, and it's so amazing to realize that we haven't unleashed even 1% of what we can do. >> Really, so there's much more under the covers that we're still waiting for? >> I think the good news is you know, to comment more on what you said, our roadmaps are now largely being driven by customers. And that's just so refreshing to know that you've not only solved a problem for a particular customer, but the customer wants you to solve more problems and that they trust us to be that sort of organization that can help them. So, we're full steam ahead. You know, we're going to continue to acquire in areas where we think we can get acceleration. But our acquisition of Spot was very much about as Amiram said, bringing not just a great company into the business, but to invest significantly in it. And that's really proven I think to me, as Amiram said, one of the most if not the most successful acquisition NetApp has ever done. >> Well congratulations, that's fantastic. But it also sounds like from that customer focus there's clear, strong alignment with how AWS operates, how it values its customers from NetApp's perspective and I imagine from Spots as well. >> You know, if there's one thing I was really proud of during the acquisition, is I got a phone call from a customer, it's the largest food delivery company in South America, and they were very worried about this acquisition and I asked them why? And they told me, "Because your customer service, Spot's customer service is the best customer service I've ever gotten, and if I'm not going to continue to get this customer service, I need to look how I'm finding another vendor." And they told me that, when they want to even tell AWS like which company they can learn from, they're always pointing at Spot. So, and that was a very refreshing moment for me to realize how much also at Spot we care about our customers, but not only as a gimmick, as something that customer obsession, as something that we really live. And that was interesting to see that, that was a concern by our customers when we got acquired. >> Well that's proof in the pudding, because you're right it's one thing to say, companies can always say, "We're customer obsessed, we're customer first, we're customer focused." It's one thing to say it as a marketing term it's a whole other thing to actually live it and demonstrate it, and actually have people coming to you saying that, "We want to model that." I'm curious Anthony, what did you pull over from that? What has NetApp learned from this? >> I always tell Amiram that the idea was that they would essentially take us over. That you know, we sort of loved their culture, we loved their people and their process. And we literally changed a lot of how NetApp operated to operate along the Spot model. So we really did, as Amiram said earlier on, we let them not just sort of exist, but we let them thrive. And we encourage them to point at other areas that NetApp, that they thought we should change to be more like them. And it's raised the bar across everything we do now. And so, we now have a lot of the Spot business processes, a lot of the Spot cultures sort of seeping into the whole of the company. >> That's a very empathetic approach, and that's one of the things that we've learned in the last year and a half that's been, it's key to leadership, it's key to anything is that empathy. But the ability to recognize where there are things within an organization that can be improved and looking at leaders like Spot to go, "Let's actually make this really symbiotic and bi-directional." And I imagine with CloudCheckr it's going to be the same type of influence? >> Well as I've always said, and I say this to the employees and to the acquisitions that we make, what we are acquiring is people. You know the logo, the software, even in many ways the customer base is really very much I think a function of the people. And we work incredibly hard to retain the people, but we do so by sort of empowering them and encouraging them to lead. We really don't want to have the historical perspective of acquisitions, where big company swamps the little company. And I think we've tried very hard to make that a part of our acquisition strategy. And so CloudCheckr is very early in the process but very much, we're following those things, even Amiram and his team are learning from them. If they're doing something a little better than Spot is, then that's something we'll pick up from them. >> And that's just from a very open cultural perspective, that's a big change for NetApp but it's also a smart way to go, 'cause you're right it's, you're acquiring people. And we often talk about people, process, technology. But it's, sometimes to be honest with you it's rare that we hear companies talking about the people focus as being that's critical. It's because of our people that we have successful support, happy successful customers. So that people focus is (inaudible). >> You know, it's the company and culture is not something you can manufacture. It's something that happens and it happens I think through people. And it's an important thing is, if you can establish an organization with the right kinds of people and again, all credit goes to Amiram as the founder and CEO of the company. I think you sort of demanded a kind of person and a kind of culture that set you apart from so many other companies. >> I think the focus on culture was, I was very obsessed with it from very early on in the process that even Spot investors were very, they were questioning like, how come that you are so much obsessed with culture so early on? And I think it paid off big time. There was a book I read while being a CEO that really helped me to scale from quarter to quarter, because I really believe that as a CEO of a startup, every quarter you're basically applying again to your job because you're getting a new company every quarter. And about people, processes, technology, so at Spot it was a little bit different through the book I read, which is "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz, it's people, product, revenue, PPR. And you need to take care of the people, and if you don't take care of the people, so nothing else matter, like it's nothing else just... >> Right. >> And if the people and the product are not working well, so the revenue are not going to come. So revenue was always for us as something that is coming, it's trailing after a good product and good people. >> I love that, what a great, honest focus and vision you guys both have congratulations on the acquisition, CloudCheckr. But also just the cultural alignment that you've done that's really driven by your people and the customers, it's really refreshing to hear that and congrats on NetApp's continued partnership with AWS. We look forward to having you on again next time we can see you in person and talk more about customer successes. >> Thank you very much for hosting us. >> My pleasure guys. >> Thank you. >> For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the global leader in live tech coverage. (upbeat music)

>>from >>around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020 sponsored by Intel, AWS and our community partners. >>Welcome to the Cube virtual and our coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. I'm your host, Lisa Martin, and with me today is Amiram Shachar, the V P and GM of Spot by Netapp program. It's great to have you on the program. >>Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >>So here we are in this virtual world that we're all living in great that we can still connected you. But I wanted to understand you're the founder and CEO of Spot, which was acquired by net up earlier this year. Talk to me a little bit about spot about the technology and what's going on since the Net acquisition. >>Absolutely so Spot is the company that was founded in late 2015 on was centered and concentrated about helping companies thio optimize their cloud infrastructure costs through automation off software of how customers air provisioning their compute so we could possibly help customers to choose their best price off server infrastructure in the price and the best size off server infrastructure in the cloud on, You know, since we launched the company. So we help over 1500 customers worldwide. Thio use our technology scale that revenues to tens of millions of dollars of revenue raised money from top VCs, including Intel Capital, Vertex and Highland on just recently, four months ago, we got acquired by buying it up. >>Excellent. So that's a pretty fast from launch to acquisition, You know, less than five years. Must have a neck brace collar on from the whiplash. That and covert, right with flash. So talk to me about acquisition a few months ago. What's going on with the technologies, aunt? How is the netapp, um, customer base helping to expand your market penetration? >>Yeah. So it was clear, uh, during the rationality. You know, when we did the rationale of the acquisition, So it was clear that spot is going to remain a an entity with the netapp. So, for example, we preserved our brand, so it's spot by net up. It's not gonna be just integrated, and that's it. So we're not gonna see spot disappearing. It's actually the opposite. So we're gonna leveraged a market credibility. That net up is 27 years. You know storage leading storage provider has in the market, and we're gonna use spot as a brand to lean forward and lead with cloud native applications on Do. What we're gonna do is we're gonna help to netapp transform, like, you know, net up existing customers. They're moving to the cloud so not only they can use netapp storage in the cloud. They can also use thesaurus fair and automation and optimization layers that sport provides. Actually. >>So talk to me about what's going on in the market today. We've been talking for months now about this acceleration of digital transformation, acceleration of cloud adoption given businesses now are working so differently. Talk to me about what you are seeing, what your customers just seeing how you're helping them to manage and not just keep the lights on right now. But be able to be successful in going positions Well, in the future. >>Mhm. So I'm seeing like to two main trends. The first trend is like more cloud usage, but that's very general, very vague. But what I do see in in addition to that is actually like priorities have been changed. And when I talk about priority like priority is not only moving to the cloud but doing it efficiently. So customers who already using cloud we're moving to the cloud they really need Thio, you know, planned this in the most efficient way. So I can tell you, for example, a lot of customers that actually we were talking to them to use us at the beginning of 2020. So they intended to use us in, like, you know, third quarter, fourth quarter of the year, like it all got accelerated and they started to use our platform because they put their priorities have changed and they wanna have, like, optimization of cost, right? Right now, >>yeah, That's been something that a lot of folks have been wanting and needing even to just keep the lights on, get their eyes on visibility where we spending costs. Are we using cloud efficiently? If not, how can we work with technology vendors to help us get that visibility and optimize our costs and spend so tell me about from a conversation perspective, uh, post, you know, during this interesting year, the acquisition occurred. Are your conversations with customers changing? Are we seeing now? Is cloud rising even up that the C suite stacked to the board in terms of the conversations that you're having, >>you know, and I'm seeing this like for five years. Like how our conversations are changing the year over year and year over year, we're seeing like improvement in our type of conversations because people living in, like, you know, to the Cloud Mawr people thinking about about optimization is becoming a priority. As I mentioned, like, you know, four years ago like it's not about optimizing cloud. It's about moving to the cloud. And right now I have so many things in the cloud. I just need to run it well, I need to understand why them thio bring in the cloud. So our conversation has gotten a lot better on, especially in 2020 on. Do you think about cloud expenditure like this is probably the second biggest line item off every company's expenses. So it goes directly to the cause, which is the cost of good salt of every company. So it goes directly go off the margin off cos so Cloud is definitely becoming a board discussion thing. >>So talk to me about some of the new products and capabilities that you guys have now that you're part of that. >>So first of all, is the company we really believe in, like listening to customers, seeing what they need and innovating on their behalf. I think this is like our mission, and I'm always like saying that like customers always want, like cheaper cloud and more simple cloud. This is like a strategy to build a long term business like, I don't know if customers will not need, like, cheaper cloud in 10 years from now. And I don't know if customers would want more complicated cloud in 10 years from cloud in 10 years from now. Um so in order to keep that momentum So we're doubling down like our existing technology, which helping customers to optimize their pricing purchasing. As you know, we're helping companies to purchase across the three pricing models in the cloud and the first pricing model being on demand, which is you pay by the hour the second pricing model being reserved instances or savings plans, which is you basically reserve capacity for longer time, and then you get a discount. And the third pricing model, called Spot and Spot, basically is like either the resource is idle. Compute resource is that cloud providers have and they're willing to sell you that in a low rate, but they can take it away from you at any moment. So what our technology does it actually balancing in the most economical way across these three pricing models that we basically push the savings to the maximum while we also keep the S. L. A and the SLOC over the customers. So what we're releasing now doubling down on the technology is we're introducing something called predictive re balancing, which is basically customers who are launching spot instances and they want to migrate between spot instances, two different spot instances or two reserved instances so we could do it much more proactively than ever before. We've been investing a lot of machine learning engineers on that problem. We've put a lot of brain power toe work on this, and we're gladly happy to release a new, updated version of that. It can help customers to get warnings off almost an hour before an interruption might happen. >>Predictive re balancing, You said it's called one of the things I was thinking when you were talking about the three pricing tiers and what you guys help businesses do. It sounds very dynamic and iterative in the moment. So based on what's it based on usage data volumes, how do you help customers make that? How does the technology actually help customers with that dynamic, that predictive re balancing? >>So it's a great question, because the way that it works, it really matches the technology stack of the customer. So if we understand that this is like a Web service running behind an elastic load balancer, so the predictive rebalancing will have Behavior X. And if we realize that this is a big data workload that requires, um, some other type of compute provisioning. So the predictive rebalancing will behave like why. And there is also the new wave of APS, which are cloud native containers and micro services so actually predictor of balancing notes to identify that. So, basically, if you think about that, what happens behind the scenes is that we migrate between different pricing models and we just move containers around. The customers don't really know what happened behind the scenes, but they that the output of everything is the most optimized and high available capacity they could possibly get from the cloud. >>So what sort of cost savings are we talking about? Can you share an examples of some what some of your customers has have achieved? >>Mhm. So, yeah, we're talking about like, I think the benchmark is anywhere between 70 to 90%. We have a lot of public use cases with our customers and some of our really valuable customers like check, which is an education tech technology company which are running with us. The entire fleet off containers reported like over 65% off cost reduction of the under compute also, ah, gum gum, which is computer vision company that analyzes, um ads in real time. They also reported over 70% off cost reduction of their off their cloud infrastructure a swell as the well known Ticketmaster, which is also a very large customer virus and using us and all of their production communities clusters and also saved, um, over 60 to 70% off their containers infrastructure. >>So big savings. I think the lowest number heard you say, with 60% so big impact that the technology is able to make talk to me about the existing customers that and you've got some big brand. You mentioned Ticketmaster? Um, how How have things changed for them or not changed for them with the net acquisition, you talked about maintaining the spot brand. But talk to me about kind of that transition for your existing customers. >>So, you know, it's actually a very, um, you know, e felt lucky, like going through this process of an acquisition, you know, is the founder of a company. And it's, uh it's very, uh, very pleasing. Calls to have with customers is when you call customers and you tell them about the acquisition. And I was lucky enough to tell them like, Hey, guys, nothing is gonna change Like our road map is going to continue in the same way our name is going to remain the same way. The only thing we're gonna bother you with, quote unquote as we're going to add storage capabilities into our computer capabilities, >>that must have been music to their ears. But I gotta ask you, what's it like doing an acquisition in the middle of a global pandemic? And we're completely remote, right? >>You know, this is an experience I will never forget. Uh, you know it, Z, you're just You're at home. You know, I was also I was really lucky to become a father for the first time. And I know earlier this year s Oh, it's like you're with your baby wife, family and just all day calls on going and you know it, Z it's It's a really amazing experience that I think I will never forget. >>Yeah, I think I'm with you on that unique experiences. Well, congratulations for being a new father, but that also makes it challenging, right? You're you're CEO of a startup. It's about to get acquired. And you've got a newborn as, ah coworker. So all of a sudden, all these challenges that just add, um ADM or challenges to the mix. So I'm sure it was great to be able to have the conversation with your existing customers about what little is changing, but also for them. What's the opportunity for those existing customers to really start taking advantage of all of net tax net ops capabilities? >>So that's exactly the intersection between spot and ETA, which I feel like super excited about, because if you think about that like we've built a technology of computer optimization over the last five years. That up is a big, brand, credible company. Going for 27 years, more than 27 years. The last seven years get up has has been doing like a massive shift to the cloud supporting their customers were moving from on Prem to the cloud. So net up what never actually did. And I was very amazed by that, which is the imported >>all of their own >>premise t technology and put it in the cloud in the platform that they call cloud volumes, which is you. Basically, you can get >>all the >>features that Netapp provides, like advanced snap shooting and back up and fast restored and compression D duplication, which I remember managing data centers myself from my military days. I was using a lot of netapp stuff >>on. They took all of these great things and put it in the ground. And now what we can >>actually do for our customers is that we can actually attach like the computer they're buying from us and optimizing with us with the storage, the great storage that offers in the cloud in the cloud volume platform. >>It's a lot of opportunities there. In fact, Netapp has We've been talking about this on the Cube for a while. For years, Netapp has gone, undergone a big transformation, a big evolution, and it sounds like what they're doing with spot and also the opportunities that it's providing. So not just your existing customers, but you're prospective customers. And your new customers is just kind of keeping that door wide open. Which right now in this interesting time is is essential is businesses are continuing to pivot as this time unfold, and we know something's going to remain permanent, but that got to be able to pivot quickly. Otherwise, the competition is probably in the rear view mirror, maybe smaller, more agile and ready to take over. >>That's so true and like, you know, generally speaking about, like transformation, like modernization of application. So, like huge trend that we're seeing. And this is also a huge intersection between netapp and spot. Um, is everything kubernetes and everything containers eso we're seeing organizations moving to the cloud, but they're they're not, like, no, not anymore looking at, like just lift and ship their like, lift modernized ship like people want to modernize our application for various reasons. And we see containers. Technology is just becoming like the de facto technology for shipping applications in the cloud, and we're seeing kubernetes on the rise and one of our products. That spot, called Ocean Eyes, is a product that manages compute for kubernetes. So our our tagline is basically serverless containers, which is customers deploy their containers and then we manage the infrastructure underneath. They don't need to define their infrastructure, think about their infrastructure, just like it's a really a near Vanna for for develops, people responsible for communities. And then when we actually, you know, got into Nana and we saw all of, like, the cloud volumes technology that I was telling you about, we said it like, Hey, what if we can take this service, compute off containers and we can actually make it for storage as well? And we basically you can take all the good things that you get from service, which is, you know, no infrastructure management building Mike utility building, you know, scale to zero scale to like, you know, infinite. If you need >>Andi with no infrastructure management and this is actually possible with the netapp cloud >>volumes technology. So, actually, right now we're launching with net up, something will recall storage less volumes, which is basically for containers were going to allow that directly from our ocean product that you will be able to get storage list volumes that are going to be completely Hence we management of storage. And just to set the tone like, what is storage is like, Is there no storage like, what is surveillance are their storage? Are their service there? Of course there are, but you don't manage them. So what storage is? Is there a storage underneath? Of course there is, but you don't need to manage it. And >>is that something that your customers can take advantage of? Now, is that coming in the next quarter or so? What's the timing on that? >>But this is, um this is right now already in preview. So we already opened that to some of our, you know, advanced customers that are using, like all of our latest and greatest you know, features. So it's already with customers validation working with them. They're actually actually love it and love the fact that they don't need to manage storage, because when you move to the cloud. You actually don't really care about storage anymore because it's becoming just oil for your applications. Eso and it's gonna be generally available. Hopefully, in the first half of 2021. >>Exciting. Something positive to look forward to. You'll have to come back and share with us. Some of the results. Mm. It's been great to have you on the Cube. Thanks for spending some time with me >>today. Likewise. Lisa, thank you very much. >>I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube.

(upbeat music) >> Hey welcome back here, buddy. Jeff Frick here from theCube. We're in our Palo Alto studios for a Cube Conversation and we've talked about it time and time again, right? It's the big companies that have the big shows. We do a lot of those big shows, but it's really the startups that really makes Silicon Valley Silicon Valley. They're constantly starting, people are leaving companies, starting new companies, and this is a great story, a company who actually visited in 2016 or had a quick catch up at RSA and we're excited to get an update two years later. And so to welcome to the studio, Amiram Shachar, he's the founder and CEO of Spotinst. Amiram, great to see you again. >> Absolutely, great seeing you again, as well. >> I couldn't believe it's been since 2016 when I looked it up and that was in spring, I guess, so a lot of stuff has happened in the last two years. Give us an update on Spotinst. >> Woah, how do I summarize two years of a startup? Every quarter is like a year for a startup, right? So, I think, right now, we're just... We've been like three employees when we talked last in 2016 and now we're over 100. Grew the company from like... Today we're headquarters in San Francisco, office in New York, office in Tel Aviv. Grew our customer base to like over a thousand today. >> Over a thousand customers. >> Over a thousand customers today and just keeping on, trying to keep the growth on. >> Right. Well you made a smart move early on as you connected your... Your train to the rocket ship that is public cloud and I think when we first talked a couple years ago, you were participating in the AWS marketplace and now you've since added, I think you said Google and obviously Microsoft Du Jour. So again for the people that don't know Spotinst, give 'em kind of the quick 101. >> Yeah, so, if you look about a cloud infrastructure space so Amazon was like the leader since we all knew what is cloud infrastructure, and cloud infrastructure, by definition, they have excess compute capacity. Excess compute capacity is there for support natural growth and support spikes in demand of AWS customers so Amazon always want to take these excess compute capacity and have it available for customers to purchase it. >> Right. >> But still, they want to have some access to that capacity whenever they need that so there is no guarantee, there is no SLA. So what we wanted to do to enable customers to use that excess compute capacity, because they can buy it in very cheap price, and we are the software that helps them to get the SLA. So that's what Spotinst does, enabling companies to unlock more compute for a reasonable price. >> So do you buy it and then resell it back to them so that you can control the management and or apply kind of your SLA type of tools or does your software sit there and the customer, they're still making that purchase directly through Amazon, but the softwares executing those details on their behalf? >> So that's the ladder. >> Okay. >> We're not like sitting between the customer and the cloud and buying and selling. We're just providing our software to the customers, enabling the customers to use that smart software so they can leverage compute more easily. >> Right. So what are they key components that take the Spot instance that doesn't have an SLA and makes it kind of SLA-worthy for your customers? >> That's a great point. A key component is statistical analysis that we're doing behind the scenes, is an AI-based platform that basically, we're always looking at the trends that AWS terminates capacity, so that basically tells us, alright, on Mondays, AWS reacts like this and on these hours, this is how you can get capacity, so basically our statistical model can tell the customer, hey, on 7:00 a.m. you should switch from one server to another before AWS takes it away from you. So that's how we bring SLA to a non-SLA compute. >> Right. >> Because we know what's probably going to happen. >> So how does Amazon sell that spot? Is there some, you buy it by a time duration so you know you at least can run a job without worrying about it suddenly going away in the middle of your job? Or how is it actually priced and bundled? >> So there are several ways. The most common way is just get spot capacity and whenever AWS needs that capacity back, they will take it away. And then you are >> So what happens if you're running a job? >> So you are as a customer, you need to take care of that. >> Okay >> You need to make sure that >> Does he get a warning flag or something? Hey we're taking this away in >> You get two minutes notification >> You get two minutes, okay. >> So sometimes, yeah, it's more than enough and sometimes, just you cannot handle with two minutes. >> Right. >> That's why you really need to choose which type of app you would probably want to use for a spot, but the good thing is that with our software, you don't have to worry about that, because you basically tell the software, my app runs and we need X amount of minutes, we need X amount of compute to complete our job and then we make it happen. >> Right, right. So do most of the customers then use this for specific jobs that they want to run, that they know are going to take X amount of compute power and run for an approximate level of time so they can schedule it, whether it's some type of a batch job or an end of quarter run or those types of things or can they actually start to integrate it into their actual operational software that's running pretty much all the time and it's really more just a resource shift, based on economics? >> Yeah, that's a great point because historically, if you look at Spot, Spot was exactly for what you've mentioned, which is badge jobs, things you need to schedule, you know that it's going to take you X amount of time to complete specific workload. >> Right. >> And that's what people did with Spot and the way we're looking at it is like the next generation of even new applications like web services, like containers, like any type of an application layer can use Spot just because we take... We leverage the fact that these applications that we're building today are all highly available, highly resilient, full tolerant by definition, so we know if you know to orchestrate Spot replacement in a very, very accurate way, you'll be able to run workload forever on Spot Instances without even noticing a single interruption. >> Interesting. 'Cause you're just kind of shifting, you're reacting to the Spot market dynamically, >> Correct. >> using your software. >> Correct. >> Very cool Now another thing we talked about before we turned the cameras on, you've got some good visibility, based on the software, as to what people are doing, and you made a really interesting comment on the rise of Kubernetes. We first heard about Kubernetes, I think it... Well, actually, we got the story from Craig at... It was a thing called Google Cloud Platforms. >> Yeah. >> Like Google Live or... In 2014, in the story of the naming, but you said that you've really seen a significant change in the landscape over the last year or so. Give us a little more color on that. >> Yeah, that's correct and the funny thing here is that we didn't see it coming like two years ago. When we've discussed, we didn't even know what's Kubernetes is. We know that containers are going to be the big next thing because it's so easy to deploy applications with containers, but then you had so many different options, right? You had Kubernetes and Amazon had their own stuff and Docker released their own stuff. But then in the past year, we just seeing something phenomenal that we've never seen before or never seen in any other area in our company, which is everybody just consolidating around Kubernetes as an orchestration layer for containers. >> Right, right. And we've... We hear that all the time but it's interesting, you're actually seeing it in the execution of what people are purchasing. Well, exciting. So another big part of the news, you said you got some new funding so give us kind of the details there and what are you going to do with some of this capital? What are... Hopefully it won't be two years till we see each other again. What are some of your priorities looking forward? How are you going to deploy some of this capital? >> Yeah, so, yeah. Gladly, we were able to secure another funding round and it's just because there is such a big opportunity in front of us to capture. The growth has been phenomenal in the past two years. Deloitte has crowned us as the fastest growing startup in Israel last year, in 2017. We grew more than 1400%, year over year and just seeing the opportunity in front of us, like replicating the same thing we did for AWS customers and doing it in other clouds as well, like Google and Azure, and seeing all this rocket ship, as you said, cloud infrastructure space, just continuing to grow in such pace year over year, we're just going to deploy all that capital into growth. >> Right. Well, very exciting and congratulations and thanks for coming and giving us the update. >> Absolutely, thank you. >> Alright. He's Amiram, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCube. We're in our Palo Alto studios having a Cube Conversation. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (upbeat music)