>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> John: Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We're here with two great guests, Andrew Coward's the GM, Software Defined Networking at IBM and Caroline Chappel. Research Director, Cloud and Platform Services at Analysys Mason. Folks, thanks for coming on. Caroline, good to see you. Andrew, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> You're welcome, it's nice to be here. >> Thank you. >> So software defined networking, love it. Software-defined data center, software defined cloud, all that has been pointing to what is now a reality which is hybrid cloud and the Edge, and soon to be multicloud. This kind of makes networking, again, at the centerpiece. This has been this way for now, at least for five hardcore years, at the center of the value proposition discussion. And certainly networking is super relevant. Why is networking now more important than ever for IBM? >> Well, to your point, I think networking is weaved into pretty much everything we touch. From Red Hat Linux for its analytics, machine learning tools, security, cloud services, and so on. And the networking business is changing very radically at the moment. We're going through kind of massive shift. Not just to the cloud, but the desegregation of networking products that, you know, you think of being very tight and integrated are actually being separated into their constituent parts. Distribution of applications and data across multiple clouds, ensuring that the products really have industry-leading capabilities, so that networking is weaved into what they do. The other thing is the scary numbers, right? But now, there's like 15 billion network-capable devices out there with general computing capabilities. And so I don't mean like really dumb things but things that are now we call smart, like a smart car. A medical center that's got applications that even your fridge now, has general compute capabilities. And all of those are expected to connect into the public or private cloud. And so how they connect, where data moves across that really on critical concern to everything that we at IBM do. >> So I have to ask you, I love the word radical change. It gets my attention for certain. What specifically are you referring to in radical change? Because, I mean, I would, I mean, I'm pretty radical that COVID has hit everybody and I think everyone woke up and never thought 100% of the workforce would be working remotely. So, you know, there is radical kind of macro conditions. What specifically though about networking would you say is radical and how does that impact the enterprise? >> Well, right. I think it's about how compute is shifting and how network has to follow. You know, we've been speaking a lot of enterprise accounts and customers. And, you know, it's through COVID and over the last year, we've seen that the ongoing migration into, not just one cloud but many clouds. But we need to think the enterprise you can stop and say, two clouds is enough to be here and to be able to do that. That's not happening. There is no limit to the number of clouds that each enterprise is going into and it's not a coordinated decision, so the radicalism is that the network guys, the cloud architects are being left to pick up the pieces and their job now is to kind of join together applications and data that might be spread in three or four different locations. And that's really, really challenging. And nobody's thinking about things like latency or connectivity, data accountability when these decisions are made. And it is kind of like the business units are allowed to make their own decisions to get it, but corporate itself then has to figure out how all this stuff works. And that's creating a lot of headaches. >> Caroline, If you could chime in on this, because this is kind of like what we're hearing. What's your thoughts? Because I mean, the platform shifting. I mean, five years ago. Oh, go move to the cloud, lift and shift. Now, the conversation is hyper-focused on cloud integration, at scale with kind of the features that enterprise really need. That's the confusion. What's your take on all this radical change? >> Well, I'd like to, to talk about another aspect of the radical change here, which I think is part of the story which is the radical change for the network itself. So the network itself is, as Andrew said, you know becoming desegregated into hardware and software and really becoming a software application if you think about it, that runs on the cloud itself. And that means you can distribute the network in a very different way, than you could in the past. And what that's really affecting is who can provide a network, how they can provide it, what services, what network services they can provide. And I think that is changing the decision points for operators, for enterprises. They're being faced with a very big choice about who do they, who will provide their connectivity services? Will it be an SD-WAN vendor? Who's not necessarily a traditional operator? Would it be a SaSS-y player that's basically just operating after the cloud. And if you look at the services themselves, there's the opportunity for enterprises to build really kind of rich, bespoke connectivity on demand and in a way that they've never had before. And I think that choice is obviously wonderful in one sense, but in another sense, it's pretty scary. And, and as Andrew said, it's not these decisions are not being taken particularly in a coordinated way. You know, you'll have your traditional network guys often very embedded with the lines of business and then you'll have the IT guys all going to the cloud. And these two parts of an enterprise don't necessarily even talk to each other in terms of how they're procuring their network services. So lot of choice, a lot of moving parts, a lot of change. And I think that's contributing to the situation we're finding ourselves in. >> So. First of all, great insight. I want to just double down on that one point around radical change, because what you just laid out is kind of the institutional lock-in or the way they've been operating things before You mentioned lines of business being embedded with the network guys. So you have radical change. So that's a disruption. So what's the disruption look like from your perspective because now you've got more choice, but it's hasn't been operationalized. What are the best practices? This is net new. Is it net new? How do I do security? This is all now new questions. So I got to ask you what's the disruption and what's it mean for the enterprise networks over the next couple of years going forward? >> Well, I think that there are a lot of disruptions but I think one of the ones that I haven't even mentioned. So I think, you know a lot of things are going to go, for example, I think that the idea of the network as being something fixed, persistent with fixed persistent connections is changing. So a lot of the enterprises I've talked to have said that their corporate networks, of course, they will need corporate networks with fixed VPNs between locations. Yeah, because they've got an awful lot of legacy they've got to support. But a lot of the new stuff that's coming along of the IOT driven stuff a lot of the changes around the edge and an operation, operational process automation and that kind of thing will actually be more on demand. We'll ask for on demand connectivity. A lot of it is will the applications themselves run on the cloud and not just on one cloud but as Andrew said on many, many distributed clouds. So you've got to think about zero trust security because you are basically spinning up these connections on demand. A lot of mobile will come in 5g. We know is going to be very important to operators in the future. So I think enterprises have got to deal with those data and security and all their best practices. We've got to shift to a much more dynamic, you know connectivity world, where they've got us to the playoffs. You know, what's the terministic on what's a network. That's just going to be on demand there when they need it and shut down when they don't. >> That's a great point. Andrew, I want you to weigh in on the IBM impact because what we just heard was application driven. That's dev ops. That's programmability. That's what we had hoped. Now you've got DevSecOps, all this is now the requirements. What's the bet on IBM side.? You got to make it happen. You got to bring the customers a solution and make it scale and be responsive to those you know, new, dynamically, flexible agile networks. >> Well, that's right. So the bet is that, you know that these applications that are being spent out there in containerize and they're being separated into these clouds and connecting those is what we as IBM have to have to do. And so kind of an example of that, kind of looking at the medical world, right? You think of an application that would today, monitor a patient. What's going on with that patient and all of the senses and so on. Well, the way we see it, the monitor itself, there might be monitoring temperature and heart rate etc. That what actually happens on that device might change moments depending on the patient's condition. That's one part of the application. Another part of that application may live in private data center. A third part of that application may live in the cloud. And depending on what's going on with that patient and what's going on with the ward and everything else. Those things may shift and move around. So, where does that data? Where's that data allowed to move to inform of what are the boundary points for that? How is the reliability, resiliency of our system guaranteed, but across many disparate parts of what's going on there. All of those things end up being a very vertically integrated solution. But fundamentally we've got a very different way, new ways of being able to react, dynamically. To both the network, the application and ultimately the unusual patient in this case and that's what kind of is the advantage of the outcome if you like for moving to this new world. >> So what are the implications then of the changes? These are massive changes for the better We're seeing that kind of innovation come from this transformational quick change. Hybrid cloud and edge is coming, you mentioned. Caroline talked about that too. What do you guys think about the implications and how enterprises specifically can prepare for these changes? >> Okay, well, I can pick that up. I think what enterprises are looking for at the moment is how do they get a holistic view of everything that's underneath them? I mean, I think the cloud providers individually are abstracting away as much of the network as they possibly can. They want it to appear to developers just as some kind of plumbing. And it's very easy now for enterprises to through API is you know, we've got a very API different world so it's very easy to say, okay I want this service and I'm just going to go through their API and connect to it. And that's why you get to the situation of multiple, multiple clouds. Now you've got this situation where you've got some companies are talking about needing 50 to 10,000 micro data centers, room closet data centers if you like ,to support some of the things that they want to do, like telemetry ,pick up telemetry from rental cars, for example. So what they really need is to look at all that connectivity, just as plumbing just as we don't worry about how electricity is being delivered to us. That's kind of how they want to do connectivity. So I think they want that view. They want that. Okay. I want to treat my network as one virtual thing. No matter how many different points of plumbing there are underneath. And it's getting to that point that I think they've really got to think about a plan for. You know, how do we get that to you? What's going to provide us with that holistic way that we can put a policy into our plumbing. And it proliferates across, you know all our applications and so on. I think that's a very difficult thing to achieve at the moment but it's certainly the way enterprises need to start thinking about things. >> Andrew, you know, when Caroline's talking, I can't help but kind of throw back to my days of the telephone closet. You know, back in the analog switches. But no, we're talking about a footprint. Radical footprint change too. You know, you need plumbing. Obviously that's a network. It's distributed. We just talked about that at the top of this interview. Now you have the plumbing, you got the footprint and data center could be in a closet, AKA, you know a couple of devices powering an edge. And the edge could be big, small, medium, extra large right? I mean, it's all now radically changed. This is reality now. what's your take on these implications and how do people prepare? >> Well, that's right. It's really the computer's generalized and it's everywhere and yes, it's in the closet. But as I say, it's also in your fridge, it's also in your medical censor and what loads and what runs on that is it's very intertwined with the network. And the lament, if you like, that network architects, the card architects have today is that they feel like they've lost control. They feel they've lost control of exactly what different business groups are doing, how these applications are playing out. And shout out to them, I guess for them is really that they need to be involved from a very early date on how these services are supposed to look. Just the latency of the patients, the data and where the data's supposed to live, where it's allowed to move to. All of those are deeply regulated and deeply controlled. And so making sure that that's aligned with how these applications will actually live and work. Even on a regular basis, sooner there has to be thought about now. An unplanned for so that we can get to the there and not trip up along the way. And then if it's bad enough now with all the different clouds, it's going to be much worse when everything can run a different workload on a minute by minute basis. Right. But that's cool. That's the world we have to find for. >> Okay. Andrew. Caroline. Thank you for your insight. Really appreciated coming on theCUBE. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you >> Okay. This is the cube coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (cheerful music playing)

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE. With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021. Brought to you by IBM. >> John: Hello and welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of IBM Think 2021 Virtual. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. We're here with two great guests, Andrew Coward's the GM, Software Defined Networking at IBM and Caroline Chappel. Research Director, Cloud and Platform Services at Analysys Mason. Folks, thanks for coming on. Caroline, good to see you. Andrew, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> You're welcome, it's nice to be here. >> Thank you. >> So software defined networking, love it. Software-defined data center, software defined cloud, all that has been pointing to what is now a reality which is hybrid cloud and the Edge, and soon to be multicloud. This kind of makes networking, again, at the centerpiece. This has been this way for now, at least for five hardcore years, at the center of the value proposition discussion. And certainly networking is super relevant. Why is networking now more important than ever for IBM? >> Well, to your point, I think networking is weaved into pretty much everything we touch. From Red Hat Linux for its analytics, machine learning tools, security, cloud services, and so on. And the networking business is changing very radically at the moment. We're going through kind of massive shift. Not just to the cloud, but the desegregation of networking products that, you know, you think of being very tight and integrated are actually being separated into their constituent parts. Distribution of applications and data across multiple clouds, ensuring that the products really have industry-leading capabilities, so that networking is weaved into what they do. The other thing is the scary numbers, right? But now, there's like 15 billion network-capable devices out there with general computing capabilities. And so I don't mean like really dumb things but things that are now we call smart, like a smart car. A medical center that's got applications that even your fridge now, has general compute capabilities. And all of those are expected to connect into the public or private cloud. And so how they connect, where data moves across that really on critical concern to everything that we at IBM do. >> So I have to ask you, I love the word radical change. It gets my attention for certain. What specifically are you referring to in radical change? Because, I mean, I would, I mean, I'm pretty radical that COVID has hit everybody and I think everyone woke up and never thought 100% of the workforce would be working remotely. So, you know, there is radical kind of macro conditions. What specifically though about networking would you say is radical and how does that impact the enterprise? >> Well, right. I think it's about how compute is shifting and how network has to follow. You know, we've been speaking a lot of enterprise accounts and customers. And, you know, it's through COVID and over the last year, we've seen that the ongoing migration into, not just one cloud but many clouds. But we need to think the enterprise you can stop and say, two clouds is enough to be here and to be able to do that. That's not happening. There is no limit to the number of clouds that each enterprise is going into and it's not a coordinated decision, so the radicalism is that the network guys, the cloud architects are being left to pick up the pieces and their job now is to kind of join together applications and data that might be spread in three or four different locations. And that's really, really challenging. And nobody's thinking about things like latency or connectivity, data accountability when these decisions are made. And it is kind of like the business units are allowed to make their own decisions to get it, but corporate itself then has to figure out how all this stuff works. And that's creating a lot of headaches. >> Caroline, If you could chime in on this, because this is kind of like what we're hearing. What's your thoughts? Because I mean, the platform shifting. I mean, five years ago. Oh, go move to the cloud, lift and shift. Now, the conversation is hyper-focused on cloud integration, at scale with kind of the features that enterprise really need. That's the confusion. What's your take on all this radical change? >> Well, I'd like to, to talk about another aspect of the radical change here, which I think is part of the story which is the radical change for the network itself. So the network itself is, as Andrew said, you know becoming desegregated into hardware and software and really becoming a software application if you think about it, that runs on the cloud itself. And that means you can distribute the network in a very different way, than you could in the past. And what that's really affecting is who can provide a network, how they can provide it, what services, what network services they can provide. And I think that is changing the decision points for operators, for enterprises. They're being faced with a very big choice about who do they, who will provide their connectivity services? Will it be an SD-WAN vendor? Who's not necessarily a traditional operator? Would it be a SaSS-y player that's basically just operating after the cloud. And if you look at the services themselves, there's the opportunity for enterprises to build really kind of rich, bespoke connectivity on demand and in a way that they've never had before. And I think that choice is obviously wonderful in one sense, but in another sense, it's pretty scary. And, and as Andrew said, it's not these decisions are not being taken particularly in a coordinated way. You know, you'll have your traditional network guys often very embedded with the lines of business and then you'll have the IT guys all going to the cloud. And these two parts of an enterprise don't necessarily even talk to each other in terms of how they're procuring their network services. So lot of choice, a lot of moving parts, a lot of change. And I think that's contributing to the situation we're finding ourselves in. >> So. First of all, great insight. I want to just double down on that one point around radical change, because what you just laid out is kind of the institutional lock-in or the way they've been operating things before You mentioned lines of business being embedded with the network guys. So you have radical change. So that's a disruption. So what's the disruption look like from your perspective because now you've got more choice, but it's hasn't been operationalized. What are the best practices? This is net new. Is it net new? How do I do security? This is all now new questions. So I got to ask you what's the disruption and what's it mean for the enterprise networks over the next couple of years going forward? >> Well, I think that there are a lot of disruptions but I think one of the ones that I haven't even mentioned. So I think, you know a lot of things are going to go, for example, I think that the idea of the network as being something fixed, persistent with fixed persistent connections is changing. So a lot of the enterprises I've talked to have said that their corporate networks, of course, they will need corporate networks with fixed VPNs between locations. Yeah, because they've got an awful lot of legacy they've got to support. But a lot of the new stuff that's coming along of the IOT driven stuff a lot of the changes around the edge and an operation, operational process automation and that kind of thing will actually be more on demand. We'll ask for on demand connectivity. A lot of it is will the applications themselves run on the cloud and not just on one cloud but as Andrew said on many, many distributed clouds. So you've got to think about zero trust security because you are basically spinning up these connections on demand. A lot of mobile will come in 5g. We know is going to be very important to operators in the future. So I think enterprises have got to deal with those data and security and all their best practices. We've got to shift to a much more dynamic, you know connectivity world, where they've got us to the playoffs. You know, what's the terministic on what's a network. That's just going to be on demand there when they need it and shut down when they don't. >> That's a great point. Andrew, I want you to weigh in on the IBM impact because what we just heard was application driven. That's dev ops. That's programmability. That's what we had hoped. Now you've got DevSecOps, all this is now the requirements. What's the bet on IBM side.? You got to make it happen. You got to bring the customers a solution and make it scale and be responsive to those you know, new, dynamically, flexible agile networks. >> Well, that's right. So the bet is that, you know that these applications that are being spent out there in containerize and they're being separated into these clouds and connecting those is what we as IBM have to have to do. And so kind of an example of that, kind of looking at the medical world, right? You think of an application that would today, monitor a patient. What's going on with that patient and all of the senses and so on. Well, the way we see it, the monitor itself, there might be monitoring temperature and heart rate etc. That what actually happens on that device might change moments depending on the patient's condition. That's one part of the application. Another part of that application may live in private data center. A third part of that application may live in the cloud. And depending on what's going on with that patient and what's going on with the ward and everything else. Those things may shift and move around. So, where does that data? Where's that data allowed to move to inform of what are the boundary points for that? How is the reliability, resiliency of our system guaranteed, but across many disparate parts of what's going on there. All of those things end up being a very vertically integrated solution. But fundamentally we've got a very different way, new ways of being able to react, dynamically. To both the network, the application and ultimately the unusual patient in this case and that's what kind of is the advantage of the outcome if you like for moving to this new world. >> So what are the implications then of the changes? These are massive changes for the better We're seeing that kind of innovation come from this transformational quick change. Hybrid cloud and edge is coming, you mentioned. Caroline talked about that too. What do you guys think about the implications and how enterprises specifically can prepare for these changes? >> Okay, well, I can pick that up. I think what enterprises are looking for at the moment is how do they get a holistic view of everything that's underneath them? I mean, I think the cloud providers individually are abstracting away as much of the network as they possibly can. They want it to appear to developers just as some kind of plumbing. And it's very easy now for enterprises to through API is you know, we've got a very API different world so it's very easy to say, okay I want this service and I'm just going to go through their API and connect to it. And that's why you get to the situation of multiple, multiple clouds. Now you've got this situation where you've got some companies are talking about needing 50 to 10,000 micro data centers, room closet data centers if you like ,to support some of the things that they want to do, like telemetry ,pick up telemetry from rental cars, for example. So what they really need is to look at all that connectivity, just as plumbing just as we don't worry about how electricity is being delivered to us. That's kind of how they want to do connectivity. So I think they want that view. They want that. Okay. I want to treat my network as one virtual thing. No matter how many different points of plumbing there are underneath. And it's getting to that point that I think they've really got to think about a plan for. You know, how do we get that to you? What's going to provide us with that holistic way that we can put a policy into our plumbing. And it proliferates across, you know all our applications and so on. I think that's a very difficult thing to achieve at the moment but it's certainly the way enterprises need to start thinking about things. >> Andrew, you know, when Caroline's talking, I can't help but kind of throw back to my days of the telephone closet. You know, back in the analog switches. But no, we're talking about a footprint. Radical footprint change too. You know, you need plumbing. Obviously that's a network. It's distributed. We just talked about that at the top of this interview. Now you have the plumbing, you got the footprint and data center could be in a closet, AKA, you know a couple of devices powering an edge. And the edge could be big, small, medium, extra large right? I mean, it's all now radically changed. This is reality now. what's your take on these implications and how do people prepare? >> Well, that's right. It's really the computer's generalized and it's everywhere and yes, it's in the closet. But as I say, it's also in your fridge, it's also in your medical censor and what loads and what runs on that is it's very intertwined with the network. And the lament, if you like, that network architects, the card architects have today is that they feel like they've lost control. They feel they've lost control of exactly what different business groups are doing, how these applications are playing out. And shout out to them, I guess for them is really that they need to be involved from a very early date on how these services are supposed to look. Just the latency of the patients, the data and where the data's supposed to live, where it's allowed to move to. All of those are deeply regulated and deeply controlled. And so making sure that that's aligned with how these applications will actually live and work. Even on a regular basis, sooner there has to be thought about now. An unplanned for so that we can get to the there and not trip up along the way. And then if it's bad enough now with all the different clouds, it's going to be much worse when everything can run a different workload on a minute by minute basis. Right. But that's cool. That's the world we have to find for. >> Okay. Andrew. Caroline. Thank you for your insight. Really appreciated coming on theCUBE. Thanks for coming. I really appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you >> Okay. This is the cube coverage of IBM Think 2021. I'm John Furrier, your host. Thanks for watching. (cheerful music playing)

>> Narrator: theCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (upbeat music) >> Welcome back to the Fira in Barcelona. This is Dave Vellante with David Nicholson. Lisa Martin is also here. This is day two of our coverage of MWC 23 on theCUBE. We're super excited. We're in between hall four and five. Stop by if you're here. Dennis Hoffman is here. He's the senior vice president and general manager of the Telecom systems business at Dell Technologies, and he's joined by Yousef Khalidi, who's the corporate vice president of Azure for Operators from Microsoft. Gents, Welcome. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you. >> So we saw Satya in the keynote. He wired in. We saw T.K. came in. No AWS. I don't know. They're maybe not part of the show, but maybe next year they'll figure it out. >> Indeed, indeed. >> Lots of stuff happened in the Telecom, but the Azure operator distributed service is the big news, you guys got here. What's that all about? >> Oh, first of all, we changed the name. >> Oh, you did? >> You did? >> Oh, yeah. We have a real name now. It's called the Azure Operator Nexus. >> Oh, I like Nexus better than that. >> David: That's much better, much better. >> Dave: The engineers named it first time around. >> I wish, long story, but thank you for our marketing team. But seriously, not only did we rename the platform, we expanded the platform. >> Dave: Yeah. >> So it now covers the whole spectrum from the far-edge to the public cloud as well, including the near-edge as well. So essentially, it's a hybrid platform that can also run network functions. So all these operators around you, they now have a platform which combines cloud technologies with the choice where they want to run, optimized for the network. >> Okay and so, you know, we've talked about the disaggregation of the network and how you're bringing kind of engineered systems to the table. We've seen this movie before, but Dennis, there are differences, right? I mean, you didn't really have engineered systems in the 90s. You didn't have those integration points. You really didn't have the public cloud, you didn't have AI. >> Right. >> So you have all those new powers that you can tap, so give us the update from your perspective, having now spent a day and a half here. What's the vibe, what's the buzz, and what's your take on everything? >> Yeah, I think to build on what Yousef said, there's a lot going on with people still trying to figure out exactly how to architect the Telecom network of the future. They know it's got to have a lot to do with cloud. It does have some pretty significant differences, one of those being, there's definitely got to be a hybrid component because there are pieces of the Telecom network that even when modernized will not end up centralized, right? They're going to be highly distributed. I would say though, you know, we took away two things, yesterday, from all the meetings. One, people are done, I think the network operators are done, questioning technology readiness. They're now beginning to wrestle with operationalization of it all, right? So it's like, okay, it's here. I can in fact build a modern network in a very cloud native way, but I've got to figure out how to do that all. And another big part of it is the ecosystem and certainly the partnership long standing between Dell and Microsoft which we're extending into this space is part of that, making it easier on people to actually acquire, deploy, and importantly, support these new technologies. >> So a lot of the traditional carriers, like you said, they're sort of beyond the technology readiness. Jose Maria Alvarez in the keynote said there are three pillars to the future Telecom network. He said low latency, programmable networks, and then cloud and edge, kind of threw that in. You agree with that, Yousef? (Dave and Yousef speaking altogether) >> I mean, we've been for years talking about the cloud and edge. >> Yeah. >> Satya for years had the same graphic. We still have it. Today, we have expanded the graphic a bit to include the network as one, because you can have a cloud without connectivity as well but this is very, very, very, very much true. >> And so the question then, Dennis, is okay, you've got disruptors, we had Dish on yesterday. >> Oh, did you? Good. >> Yeah, yeah, and they're talking about what they're doing with, you know, ORAN and all the applications, really taking account of it. What I see is a developer friendly, you know, environment. You got the carriers talking about how they're going to charge developers for APIs. I think they've published eight APIs which is nowhere near enough. So you've got that sort of, you know, inertia and yet, you have the disruptors that are going to potentially be a catalyst to, you know, cross the chasm, if you will. So, you know, put on your strategy hat. >> Yeah. >> Dave: How do you see that playing out? >> Well, they're trying to tap into three things, the disruptors. You know, I think the thesis is, "If I get to a truly cloud native, communications network first, I ought to have greater agility so that I can launch more services and create more revenue streams. I ought to be lower cost in terms of both acquisition cost and operating cost, right, and I ought to be able to create scale between my IT organization, everything I know how to do there and my Telecom network." You know, classic, right? Better, faster, cheaper if I embrace cloud early on. And people like Dish, you know, they have a clean sheet of paper with which to do that. So innovation and rate of innovation is huge for them. >> So what would you do? We put your Clay Christensen hat on, now. What if you were at a traditional Telco who's like, complaining about- >> You're going to get me in trouble. >> Dave: Come on, come on. >> Don't do it. >> Dave: Help him out. Help him out, help him out. So if, you know, they're complaining about CapEx, they're highly regulated, right, they want net neutrality but they want to be able to sort of dial up the cost of those using the network. So what would you do? Would you try to disrupt yourself? Would you create a skunkworks? Would you kind of spin off a disruptor? That's a real dilemma for those guys. >> Well for mobile network operators, the beauty of 5G is it's the first cloud native cellular standard. So I don't know if anybody's throwing these terms around, but 5G SA is standalone, right? >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So a lot of 'em, it's not a skunkworks. They're just literally saying, "I've got to have a 5G network." And some of 'em are deciding, "I'm going to stand it up all by itself." Now, that's duplicative expense in a lot of ways, but it creates isolation from the two networks. Others are saying, "No, it's got to be NSA. I've got to be able to combine 4G and 5G." And then you're into the brownfield thing. >> That's the hybrid. >> Not hybrid as in cloud, but hybrid as in, you know. >> Yeah, yeah. >> It's a converge network. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah. >> So, you know, I would say for a lot of them, they're adopting, probably rightly so, a wait and see attitude. One thing we haven't talked about and you got to get on the table, their high order bit is resilience. >> Dave: Yeah, totally. >> David: Yeah. >> Right? Can't go down. It's national, secure infrastructure, first responder. >> Indeed. >> Anytime you ask them to embrace any new technology, the first thing that they have to work through in their minds is, you know, "Is the juice worth the squeeze? Like, can I handle the risk?" >> But you're saying they're not questioning the technology. Aren't they questioning ORAN in terms of the quality of service, or are they beyond that? >> Dennis: They're questioning the timing, not the inevitability. >> Okay, so they agree that ORAN is going to be open over time. >> At some point, RAN will be cloud native, whether it's ORAN the spec, open RAN the concept, (Yousef speaking indistinctly) >> Yeah. >> Virtual RAN. But yeah, I mean I think it seems pretty evident at this point that the mainframe will give way to open systems once again. >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, yeah. >> ERAN, ecosystem RAN. >> Any RAN. (Dave laughing) >> You don't have to start with the ORAN where they're inside the house. So as you probably know, our partner AT&T started with the core. >> Dennis: They almost all have. >> And they've been on the virtualization path since 2014 and 15. And what we are working with them on is the hybrid cloud model to expand all the way, if you will, as I mentioned to the far-edge or the public cloud. So there's a way to be in the brownfield environment, yet jump on the new bandwagon of technology without necessarily taking too much risk, because you're quite right. I mean, resiliency, security, service assurance, I mean, for example, AT&T runs the first responder network for the US on their network, on our platform, and I'm personally very familiar of how high the bar is. So it's doable, but you need to go in stages, of course. >> And they've got to do that integration. >> Yes. >> They do. >> And Yousef made a great point. Like, out of the top 30 largest Telcos by CapEx outside of China, three quarters of them have virtualized their core. So the cloudification, if you will, software definition run on industry standard hardware, embraced cloud native principles, containerized apps, that's happened in the core. It's well accepted. Now it's just a ripple-down through the network which will happen as and when things are faster, better, cheaper. >> Right. >> So as implemented, what does this look like? Is it essentially what we used to loosely refer to as Azure stacked software, running with Dell optimized Telecom infrastructure together, sometimes within a BBU, out in a hybrid cloud model communicating back to Azure locations in some cases? Is that what we're looking at? >> Approximately. So you start with the near-edge, okay? So the near-edge lives in the operator's data centers, edges, whatever the case may be, built out of off the shelf hardware. Dell is our great partner there but in principle, it could be different mix and match. So once you have that true near-edge, then you can think of, "Okay, how can I make sure this environment is as uniform, same APIs, same everything, regardless what the physical location is?" And this is key, key for the network function providers and the NEPs because they need to be able to port once, run everywhere, and it's key for the operator to reduce their costs. You want to teach your workforce, your operations folks, if you will, how to manage this system one time, to automation and so forth. So, and that is actually an expansion of the Azure capabilities that people are familiar with in a public cloud, projected into different locations. And we have technology called Arc which basically models everything. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So if you have trained your IT side, you are halfway there, how to manage your new network. Even though of course the network is carrier graded, there's different gear. So yes, what you said, a lot of it is true but the actual components, whatever they might be running, are carrier grade, highly optimized, the next images and our solution is not a DIY solution, okay? I know you cater to a wide spectrum here but for us, we don't believe in the TCO. The proper TCO can be achieved by just putting stuff by yourself. We just published a report with Analysys Mason that shows that our approach will save 36 percent of the cost compared to a DIY approach. >> Dave: What percent? >> 36 percent. >> Dave: Of the cost? >> Of, compared to DIY, which is already cheaper than classical models. >> And there's a long history of fairly failed DIY, right, >> Yeah. >> That preceded this. As in the early days of public cloud, the network operators wrestled with, "Do I have to become one to survive?" >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> So they all ended up having cloud projects and by and large, they've all dematerialized in favor of this. >> Yeah, and it's hard for them to really invest at scale. Let me give you an example. So, your biggest tier one operator, without naming anybody, okay, how many developers do they have that can build and maintain an OS image, or can keep track of container technology, or build monitoring at scale? In our company, we have literally thousands of developers doing it already for the cloud and all we're doing for the operator segment is customizing it and focusing it at the carrier grade aspects of it. But so, I don't have half a dozen exterior experts. I literally have a building of developers who can do that and I'm being literal, here. So it's a scale thing. Once you have a product that you can give to multiple people, everybody benefits. >> Dave: Yeah, and the carriers are largely, they're equipment engineers in a large setting. >> Oh, they have a tough job. I always have total respect what they do. >> Oh totally, and a lot of the work happens, you know, kind of underground and here they are. >> They are network operators. >> They don't touch. >> It's their business. >> Right, absolutely, and they're good at it. They're really good at it. That's right. You know, you think about it, we love to, you know, poke fun at the big carriers, but think about what happened during the pandemic. When they had us shift everything to remote work, >> Dennis: Yes. >> Landline traffic went through the roof. You didn't even notice. >> Yep. That's very true. >> I mean, that's the example. >> That's very true. >> However, in the future where there's innovation and it's going to be driven by developers, right, that's where the open ecosystem comes in. >> Yousef: Indeed. >> And that's the hard transition for a lot of these folks because the developers are going to win that with new workloads, new applications that we can't even think of. >> Dennis: Right. And a lot of it is because if you look at it, there's the fundamental back strategy hat back on, fundamental dynamics of the industry, forced investment, flat revenues. >> Dave: Yeah. Right. >> Very true. >> Right? Every few years, a new G comes out. "Man, I got to retool this massive thing and where I can't do towers, I'm dropping fiber or vice a versa." And meanwhile, most diversification efforts into media have failed. They've had to unwind them and resell them. There's a lot of debt in the industry. >> Yousef: Yeah. >> Dennis: And so, they're looking for that next big, adjacent revenue stream and increasingly deciding, "If I don't modernize my network, I can't get it." >> Can't do it. >> Right, and again, what I heard from some of the carriers in the keynote was, "We're going to charge for API access 'cause we have data in the network." Okay, but I feel like there's a lot more innovation beyond that that's going to come from the disruptors. >> Dennis: Oh yeah. >> Yousef: Yes. >> You know, that's going to blow that away, right? And then that may not be the right model. We'll see, you know? I mean, what would Microsoft do? They would say, "Here, here's a platform. Go develop." >> No, I'll tell you. We are actually working with CAMARA and GSMA on the whole API layer. We actually announced a service as well as (indistinct). >> Dave: Yeah, yeah, right. >> And the key there, frankly, in my opinion, are not the disruptors as in operators. It's the ISV community. You want to get developers that can write to a global set of APIs, not per Telco APIs, such that they can do the innovation. I mean, this is what we've seen in other industries, >> Absolutely. >> That I critically can think of. >> This is the way they get a slice of that pie, right? The recent history of this industry is one where 4G LTE begot the smartphone and app store era, a bevy of consumer services, and almost every single profit stream went somewhere other than the operator, right? >> Yousef: Someone else. So they're looking at this saying, "Okay, 5G is the enterprise G and there's going to be a bevy of applications that are business service related, based on 5G capability and I can't let the OTT, over the top, thing happen again." >> Right. >> They'll say that. "We cannot let this happen." >> "We can't let this happen again." >> Okay, but how do they, >> Yeah, how do they make that not happen? >> Not let it happen again? >> Eight APIs, Dave. The answer is eight APIs. No, I mean, it's this approach. They need to make it easy to work with people like Yousef and more importantly, the developer community that people like Yousef and his company have found a way to harness. And by the way, they need to be part of that developer community themselves. >> And they're not, today. They're not speaking that developer language. >> Right. >> It's hard. You know, hey. >> Dennis: Hey, what's the fastest way to sell an enterprise, a business service? Resell Azure, Teams, something, right? But that's a resale. >> Yeah, that's a resale thing. >> See, >> That's not their service. >> They also need to free their resources from all the plumbing they do and leave it to us. We are plumbers, okay? >> Dennis: We are proud plumbers. >> We are proud plumbers. I'm a plumber. I keep telling people this thing. We had the same discussion with banks and enterprises 10 years ago, by the way. Don't do the plumbing. Go add value on the top. Retool your workforce to do applications and work with ISVs to the verticals, as opposed to either reselling, which many do, or do the plumbing. You'd be surprised. Traditionally, many operators do around, "I want to plumb this thing to get this small interrupt per second." Like, who cares? >> Well, 'cause they made money on connectivity. >> Yes. >> And we've seen this before. >> And in a world without telephone poles and your cables- >> Hey, if what you have is a hammer, everything's a nail, right? And we sell connectivity services and that's what we know how to do, and that both build and sell. And if that's no longer driving a revenue stream sufficient to cover this forced investment march, not to mention Huawei rip and government initiatives to pull infrastructure out and accelerate investment, they got to find new ways. >> I mean, the regulations have been tough, right? They don't go forward and ask for permission. They really can't, right? They have to be much more careful. >> Dennis: It is tough. >> So, we don't mean to sound like it's easy for these guys. >> Dennis: No, it's not. >> But it does require a new mindset, new skillsets, and I think some of 'em are going to figure it out and then pff, the wave, and you guys are going to be riding that wave. >> We're going to try. >> Definitely. Definitely. >> As a veteran of working with both Dell and Microsoft, specifically Azure on things, I am struck by how you're very well positioned in this with Microsoft in particular. Because of Azure's history, coming out of the on-premises world that Microsoft knows so well, there's a natural affinity to the hybrid nature of Telecom. We talk about edge, we talk about hybrid, this is it, absolutely the center of it. So it seems like a- >> Yousef: Indeed. Actually, if you look at the history of Azure, from day one, and I was there from day one, we always spoke of the hybrid model. >> Yeah. >> The third point, we came from the on-premises world. >> David: Right. >> And don't get me wrong, I want people to use the public cloud, but I also know due to physics, regulation, geopolitical boundaries, there's something called on-prem, something called an edge here. I want to add something else. Remember our deal on how we are partner-centric? We're applying the same playbook, here. So, you know, for every dollar we make, so many of it's been done by the ecosystem. Same applies here. So we have announced partnerships with Ericson, Nokia, (indistinct), all the names, and of course with Dell and many others. The ecosystem has to come together and customers must retain their optionality to drum up whatever they are on. So it's the same playbook, with this. >> And enterprise technology companies are, actually, really good at, you know, decoding the customer, figuring out specific requirements, making some mistakes the first time through and then eventually getting it right. And as these trends unfold, you know, you're in a good position, I think, as are others and it's an exciting time for enterprise tech in this industry, you know? >> It really is. >> Indeed. >> Dave: Guys, thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you. >> Dave: It's great to see you. Have a great rest of the show. >> Thank you. >> Thanks, Dave. Thank you, Dave. >> All right, keep it right there. John Furrier is live in our studio. He's breaking down all the news. Go to siliconangle.com to go to theCUBE.net. Dave Vellante, David Nicholson and Lisa Martin, we'll be right back from the theater in Barcelona, MWC 23 right after this short break. (relaxing music)