>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, It's the Cube. Covering AWS reInvent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services and Intel along with its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back everyone, we're live here in Las Vegas in the Cube for live coverage of Amazon reInvent 2019. I'm John Furrier here instructing the singer from the noise. We have an amazing guest here, the founder of Aviatrix, I mean the CEO of Aviatrix, Steve Mullaney. Welcome to the Cube, thanks for comin' out. >> Thank you, good to see you. >> So first of all, I want to get into your experience, because I think it's notable having you on, because you've been in the industry for years, you're CEO of a multicloud software, a new kind of company. And this is what Andy Jassy was talking about on his Keynote today, that there's new kinds of companies, there's the born in the cloud, then there's enterprises re-borning in the cloud, my word. It's actually pivoting or re-platforming, re-imagining, whatever you want to call it. This is the new game, and if you're not on that side of the street you could be out of business. >> Steve: Yeah, no we're definitely seeing that and I think that's the thing that really got me excited about a year ago, was watching enterprises make that transition and say you know what, the center of gravity has gone from architectures inside the on-prem data center, is now moved to in the cloud. That shift has happened, people talked about it five years ago, but they didn't mean it. Now when you talk to enterprises, they are actually moving into the cloud, not just talking about it. And they're saying that is the center of gravity. And what's interesting to me was, I think even just the tone of Andy Jassy today and what he was talking about was once you define what your architecture is, you push it everywhere. So cloud 1.0 and 2.0 was really more about taking my architecture that was on-prem and pushing it into the cloud. So let me take virtual clients, a virtual router, basically my hardware router, package it up, put it on the cloud. That's not cloud native, it's cloud naive as we talk, right? So the change that's happened is now everybody realizes that the center of gravity is in the cloud, and you start seeing things like outposts. You see things like wavelength, you see things like TGW network Manager and things getting pushed out. The architecture of the cloud, now actually pushing out and extending out into on premises. >> John: Well, I want to give you a prop for a couple things. One is, for the folks watching, and read my post about my interview with Andy Jassy, I said two things in there that I borrowed or stole from Steve. One was cloud native without the T is cloud naive. And T for trust, T for IT, that was clever. And we're going to get into that-- >> Well I stole that from our sales guy Harold Hilderbrand, so you know what? >> John: Harold shout out to you. The second thing that I heard used when we were talking, we were talking about transitions vs. transformations. I think that is so on point because I think that encapsulates what Jassy's saying and what the industry is feeling right now. Transitions are for incremental improvements, transformations are for flipping the script. >> Steve: Right, right. >> This is really happening. Can you share what you mean by transitions vs. transformations? >> Yeah, so when you're in a computing model, there's been really three computing models. There's mainframe, which was 50's or 60's, to 80's or 90's, there's a 20-30 year period where IBM, DAC and so forth. That was the way you did enterprise computing. Then this PC client server thing came along, which was viewed as a toy at the beginning. For print sharing and work groups and people said are you kidding me? PCs, Servers are just PCs with two power supplies. I'm not running my mission critical infrastructure on PCs. But in the 90's with the internet, IP protocol, it's shifted. That became that transformation. So incumbents never win transformations. DEC, IBM and what happens is they're never in the conversation, because it's a transformation. Incumbents always win transitions, so for the last 20 to 30 years, Cisco, great, fantastic company. Very respected company. John Jamers will talk about transitions and talk about he would pat himself on the back, and how they would win market transitions. You're supposed to win a market transition as an incumbent, don't pat yourself on the back. The customers will force you to win the transition because they don't want another leader when you're in that same model. We are now entering that third transformation, this a model of computing change. This is from the top down business transformation Andy was talking about, which is true. You have companies redefining who they are, and they are leveraging cloud technologies to do that. This is not a cost thing, this is not a bottoms up technology thing that IT guys just say ah I want to learn something new. This is top down business transformation, existential threat to the survival of my company kind of stuff, and we need to move fast, and enterprises all move together. That's now happening and transformations, that confusion creates opportunities, because it moves so fast that the legacy vendors just don't have time. They have the innovators dilemma, they can't move to the new way quick enough. >> Yeah and one of the things I want to get your thoughts on and I want to get your reaction to is as we go to all the events in cloud, in this business, we see everything, the one tell sign, for me, is the security market. Security got unbuckled out of IT, in the board conversation. The jewels are on the table, the security, if you get hacked you're out of business. Talk about threats to the business, security is the leading indicator. What's going on in security? They're building their own staff, they're hiring developers in house. They are really changing the game on how they use technology. That's just in one area. You're talking about a complete reset, or reconsideration of everything that Jassy said. >> Everything, yeah, it's the business, right? Your applications are your business, right? And then all the infrastructure underneath that is there to service the applications and the data, that's why it's there. When you talk to different people, and you talk to customers like NBC and CBS, and content people, they're moving to the cloud. They're now having channels that are 100% hosted on AWS for the first time. Why are you doing that? I asked this of CBS. Because we need to move faster. Guess what, they're competing with Netflix and Amazon. They can't do it the old way, they're going to die. So they're moving all of their channels, hundreds of channels to be now cloud enabled. Because it allows them to deliver it in months as opposed to years. >> Your really interesting background, I'll share with the audience, you have a networking background, the old WellFleet became Bay Networks. Early employee at Cisco, then went to early employee at Palo Alto Networks security company. CEO Of Nicira, which is a big pioneer in software-defined networking. Which, at the time, evolved into the crown jewels of AVMWare. >> Yep, in a sense. >> You would say I would agree with that. And now you're on Aviatrix where it's got a multi-cloud abstraction, so you're kind of riding this new wave. So the question I have for you is, I coined the term being reborn in the cloud. Not born in the cloud. People who are born in the cloud, clean sheet of paper, they can scale up. But an enterprise has got to transform. Has to become reborn with cloud architecture. >> Steve: Yes, yes. >> This is a fundamental, almost look in the mirror moment as an enterprise executive, saying are we being reborn? >> Yes. >> How do companies do that? >> So we have a number of companies, enterprise companies, that are 30 year old, 40 year old enterprise software companies that, honestly, were left for dead. Where people thought, they weren't SaaS. They missed out on the whole Benny Hoff SaaS movement and they were on-prem. They had all the features, all the functionality, but they didn't have the delivery model of SaaS. They were hurting, they were going to die. People left them for dead. Now what they are doing is they've reborn themselves, in the cloud. They are pushing themselves in the cloud. Informatic, Variant, Epsolon, Eluysian, Teradata. We've got tens of these companies, that are, have reinvented themselves and now they're actually doing really, really, well. Because they had the functionality that they've always had, but now they have the delivery mechanism. There not SaaS actually, and the customers like that. Because I get my own three or four VPCs, it's my own network, it's not multi-tenant. It's hosted within AWS and now they're just migrating as fast as they can, all of their on-prem applications of customers into AWS and other clouds. >> John: All right, so I want to ask you about multi-cloud. Jassy didn't use the word multi-cloud, the critics are tweeting away on that. But, of course he's going to say multi-cloud, he's the cloud. He's the one cloud, he wants to be. >> Yeah. >> Multi-cloud is a reality. He did point out in my interview, and I think he might have mentioned on stage, that people are picking up primary and secondary. And then it's not 50/50 it's 70/30, 90/10. Whatever the ratio is then just pick one. Amazon gets picked a lot for the leader. What's your vision and how do you see the multi-cloud playing out? As people start becoming more cloud operations based. >> My view, and people, we are in the first pitch in the first inning of this cloud and people say AWS is a 40 billion dollar run rate, how can that be? Because the money has always been and always will be with large enterprise. They are now just starting to move into the cloud. There's trillions of dollars of spend that's coming into public cloud. So, first off, it's very beginning, early days. Second thing is AWS has done incredibly well with the developers and the born in the cloud people. Enterprises, not so much. And, you know what? Microsoft kind of understands enterprises. So I think we're going to be set up for a little bit of battle here, and it's, by no means, over. So I think AWS recognizes that and every single enterprise that I have talked to says I may not be a third, a third, a third across all three of the big clouds. Maybe I'll have one primary, and I think Andy Jassy says that, which I kind of agree with. I think people will have a primary, but I don't think everyone's primary is going to be AWS. I think there's going to be a lot of Azure primaries. And even some Google primaries, probably more, and I think it will be a two horse race for that. But then they're going to use the other clouds because, I was just talking to a customer today. The signature recognition software runs better in Azure. They're an AWS customer, they're moving to Azure for this. Why, because that app runs better in Azure for some reason. I think people, particularly enterprises, will make that decision. >> All right, so I want to get your take on two things, first of all I agree with you. >> I think that's what will happen. >> I would agree with that, so let's just take this scenario. Amazon wins on capabilities, they're constantly adding new stuff everyday. So, if you're a builder, it's the ultimate tool shed for technology. Azure isn't there yet, they're trying to catch up as fast as they can, they're pedaling as fast as they can. But there's a build out level and then there's a consumption level. So there's having all that capability, but also the customer's consumption has to be addressed. Solutions packaging, ease of use. So delivery mechanisms for infrastructure in the cloud. The consumption, how I buy and use, is now a consideration. Or consumer experience or whatever you want to call it. What's your take on those two dynamics? >> I think you'll see, from AWS, I don't know this, but it has to be, because this is what enterprises want. The phrase 'Go Build' is great for an early adopter. You go tell that to an enterprise, here's the power tools, go build your house. They go, I'm going to cut my hand off. I don't want to go build anything, I want to consume. So I think you're going to see them changing their tune a little bit, because the markets evolved, and I think it's caught them a little bit by surprise as well. I think Microsoft, because they know the enterprise, they won't say 'Go Build'. They're going to say 'Come Consume'. And I think that's going to resonate with enterprises. Because, at the end of the day, they don't really want to do that. Now, either way, I think it's going to be a battle. That's where Aviatrix comes into play. We help enterprises, no matter what cloud you're on, across multiple clouds or one, actually consume services. So we abstract away all the details of those native services. >> Well, I would say, if you got to transform, you have to do some building, but it would have to be the easy kit. >> Steve: Yeah, I want the easy button, I mean. >> John: Paint by numbers. >> Yeah. >> John: Self-installing house. So I got your take on that. So you got a lot of buzz in the analyst community around a phrase I've heard you say. >> Steve: Which one is that? >> There's no more food left in the data center. >> Oh, okay, yeah. >> John: And the animals are leaving the data center. >> And that's right. >> John: Food being the supplier. >> The on-prem data center. >> John: The on-prem are money and the animals being the vendors. So if there's no food in the data center, what's happening? What does that mean? >> Steve: They're goin' through, the center of gravity has moved into the cloud, that's where the food is. So you're going to see a lot of cloud naive legacy vendors put cloud on things, right? It's the same crap they had, they're just going to put cloud on it because, like I said, what do animals do when they run out of food? They go find where the food is, right? If people get mad when I say that because data centers are not going away. I know that data centers aren't goin' away, but they're going to get quarantined like mainframes got quarantined. It's going to be an expense area, it's not going to be an investment. And what do you do with an expense? You quarantine it, you cap it, you hopefully keep it flat, or your reduce it. But, sure, the data centers are going to be around for a long time but all their market caps are based on big growth. And, where people are confused is, for the last five years, everybody said we are moving to cloud. But they were talking. So if you look over the last five years, all the people selling the on-prem have done very well. So, clearly, this whole cloud thing was a hoax, right? Because, for five years, you said it was coming and it hasn't, so therefore I'm good. The problem is you're good right up until you're not good and that just happened. >> And that's happening now in your opinion? >> That's happening now and your seeing it in peoples results, publicly. And they're washing it over. They're saying it's a temporary problem. I compensated the field wrong. Bullshit, I know what's going on and, you know what? There's going to be no hiding from that. >> Yeah, and the expansion's going to be in the cloud where the developers are building apps that drive top line. >> Steve: That's where all the investment's going. >> Okay so, there's a couple of major areas developing with the cloud dynamic. The cloud scale and now data tsunami and data scale. Diversity of data and all those things are happening. You can see that in the announcements. Large scale data, the data layer network, data ops, data as code, infrastructure as code, large scale, all that's great. But networking still becomes the fundamental problem. Jassy talked about it on stage. Hops to the network, they got this wavelength thing for 5G. That's really cool. All the kind of important things that are going on, is going on at the network. Same concepts being applied to a new architecture. >> Yeah. >> Your thoughts? >> Exactly right. One of our customers, I forget who it was, said a phrase to me that I love. Again I steal everything John. >> John: I steal from you. >> Yeah, he said the network comes first. I go that is perfect, I'm going to use that. In fact, actually it's on our website. The network comes first. Because when you're building up that infrastructure, in all of computing. Compute network and storage, what's the most important? Network by far. Why, because if the network isn't architected correctly, you're screwed for life. So you've got to get that right. So that's what everybody is doing right now. Is they look and they say strategically, we're going to go build a city. First thing I got to go and do is get the basic infrastructure, and the network comes first. That is the core of my basic infrastructure. If you get that wrong, life is bad for a long long time. That's what's going on right now. >> Okay, so you've had a great career, you got the CEO of Aviatrix going on. You're also looking at startups, you advise, been on boards. What's your view of the startup landscape if you're advising startups to go at this market, this trillion dollar enterprise market, the money's being thrown in the air and the money's in the middle of the table. How do they attack that money, how do they attack the marketplace? >> First thing, number one, you got to be cloud native. You have got to understand the basic native constructs of Azure, Google, AWS. You cannot be just this thing that plops on top of it, you got to be able to programmatically, program that infrastructure and leverage it. Because all of the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent, you want to use that, right. You don't want to have to go recreate that. So that, to me, is number one. And then number two, I think there's a lot of opportunity in the cloud. Everybody thinks AWS will do anything and everything you need in networking. That is a bunch of crap. There is so many limitations that they have for enterprises. Like hundreds of limitations. The beautiful thing with networking is you push one area, and ten other problems happen. So we've got 20 years of things to do to make networking better. So that's what we're going to do. But also at the edges, right? I would say where the interesting thing happens, is the interface between on-prem and cloud. So BGP, IOS, Cisco IOS, all the things that, because it's kind of like the virtual, the physical interface. It's the cloud to on-prem interface. There's still going to be an interface. >> John: You still need plumbing. >> Then there's still going to be an interface. That interface is where a lot of the complexity and friction comes. So whether it's IoT, edge computing type things, or things that we do of bringing that cloud in a seamless, kind of simple, automated way. Bringing on the on-prem into the cloud world in a very seamless way. >> John: So, I'm got to ask you a final question. You came out of retirement. You had the good life on boards, golfing, clipping coupons, going to the beach every day. Now you're the CEO of a company going grinding it out again. A lot of older ageism coming back into the biz. A lot of people who have been in the systems business. >> Steve: Oh yeah. >> A lot of people coming back into the game. Why did you come back, what was the main driver for you to come back out of retirement? >> 'Cause this is a thousand foot wave and it's ten times bigger than what I saw in client server. It's the biggest opportunity of value creation and innovation that I have ever seen and ever will see in my life. What's also fun is every single one of the customers that we are dealing with are all old guys like me. They're all 40s, 50s, 60s, it's the IT guys from 30 years ago that everyone left for dead. Everyone thought, oh it's the developer-led infrastructure, the developers are going to do everything, uh uh. This is IT, IT is coming back and saying thank you very much developer, we got it from here. This is serious business now. This isn't fun and games anymore. We're taking over. >> But it's serious IT, it's reborn IT, it's not the old IT. >> Not the old IT, they want to do it. It's the old guys. But they're enlightened guys and gals and they want to do it in the cloud way, with the simplicity and the automation. But yet I want to bring the functionality, visibility, and control that I had on-prem. I don't want to do it the old way. I want to do it the new way. Guy today I was just talking to a customer who said, I don't want to build my Dad's network. But he's 50 years old, he's my age, you know. And so, but I think that's the key, they're enlightened networking people, yet they have the 30 years of history of understanding the subtleties of BGP and networking. >> This was our chance to hear you in the Cube, we had such a great time, our team's awesome. It's our seventh year doing reInvent, eight years total of this conference. What's your take of Jassy's Keynote this year? Is this an inflection point? Is this one of those moments where you're going to look back and say this was a time that Amazon made a change, or gassed it extra hard? >> I think, my take is, look every year he says amazing things and every year is another step function. But I think this year will go down as the year that people will look back a couple of years from now and say that was the point, that it got serious, like really serious in terms of big enterprises coming in and I think it's going to send a message to the other public clouds, and a message to all the other enterprises that say hey, maybe I'm falling behind. When you see Goldman Sachs and you see banks are laggers to the cloud. They're not early adopters, they're laggers. You see that and you go well, wait a minute, maybe I'm missing out. I think it's going to actually accelerate because he's seeing it, you know. So I think it will go down as a big inflection point. >> John: Steve Mullaney, President and CEO of Aviatrix, who's going to, you'll be on Thursday to go over some of the stuff you guys do as a company. Appreciate the commentary, and great experience riding the wave. How high was that wave? >> A thousand foot. >> Thousand foot wave. We've been riding this wave for years. What a great time it is to be here at reInvent. Keep coverage, I'm John Furrier. We will be back with more coverage after this short break. Here in the Cube Intel Studios sponsored by Intel. Thanks to Intel for your generous contributions to making the Cube and supporting our mission. We really appreciate it. Thanks for watching, we've got the more coverage after this short break. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)