>> Live from London, England, it's theCUBE covering .NEXT Conference Europe 2018, brought to you by Nutanix. (techy music) >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman with my cohost Joep Piscaer, and this is Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in London, England. Always happy to have a customer on the program, and even more when we've got a CIO, the ones that are sitting in the hot seat. Bob Brown, who's the CIO of information, communication, and technology with Manchester Gov. Thank you for having, you know, the show in your home country, and a pleasure to talk with you. >> Great, thanks for letting me be joining your panel today. >> So, Bob, you know, I've been an analyst for about, coming up on nine years now, and the role of the CIO is something that just gets, you know, looked at under a microscope. It's, you know, how's the role changing, you know, is there a future for the CIO? Does everything does just go away? Does the CMO take it, who takes your budget? So, I'm sure in your role things are, you know, nice and mellow. You kind of sit in a comfy chair, everybody comes and asks you for things nicely and throws money at you, did I get things right? >> That's completely at the different end of the scale of where my business is. >> Yeah. >> Completely untrue. >> Yeah. >> There's no comfy chair, to start with. Let's be honest, right? (chuckling) Our business is 24 by seven, so within the context of what most people think of local government, we're providing critical services that are fundamentally helping our entire 600,000 residents in Manchester to interact with our council services, and they need to do that at a time that's convenient for them. >> Yeah. >> So, it's constantly evolving, constant challenges, and inevitably public sector life, financially, hugely difficult for us to balance the books. >> You know, bring us insight to this. You've got 600,000 customers, you know. >> Yeah. >> Are they all stopping you at the, you know, local grocery and being, like, you know, "Hey, I need this done," or "This isn't working right?" What are, you know, some of the big things that are, you know, impacting you? What's happening in your space? >> Yeah, okay, well look, we've got 7,500 colleagues that work at the council, and we're supporting 600,000 people, nearly 600,000 people that live in the area, and they live in the area for all sorts of reasons, okay. Some of them are part of the digital transformation that is going on, some of them are moving to the area because of the economic buoyancy that we have within the region. I think outside of London, Manchester is the place that people want to be, and they're seeing a big explosion of new jobs and innovation, and we've got big brands, Google are there, Amazon have just launched new services that they're bringing, 600 new, high quality digital jobs into the area. We've got Microsoft there, this is an enormous digital economy that's constantly evolving, and inevitably, those people that are studying at our big universities want to live and work in an environment that is conducive for their personal development, their career direction, but they live in the city, they want to be using services in a way that is more modern than ever before, and they want to take the experiences that they perhaps had in different cities and different countries and know that they can get those, and beyond, in Manchester. >> And so, you know, if people... You know, I'm betting they have different expectations now. So, you know, it used to be you go up to an office, you get a ticket, and you ask your question, right? I'm assuming that experience has changed as well for Manchester, for the government, so servicing your customers in a more digital way, basically? >> Yeah, very much so. Look, I've been at Manchester City Council now just over three years, and in that time I think it's true to say that the services weren't quite where they needed to be. There was some element of investment that was needed, and we've had to pull, really, a good transformation approach together. We've had to up skill many of the team. We've had to look to attract some new people with some new experiences into the group, and we've had to fundamentally change the relationship between what was the technology function, and somewhat isolated from frontline business into it being a critical enabler of transformation for our entire council. That's really what we've had to do. >> I love that, Bob, you've kind of teed up the digital transformation story, which has been, you know, at the heart of a lot of the discussions we've been having for the last couple of years. I wonder if you can help us walk through that a little bit, you know, what have you done kind of on the, you know, foundational platform infrastructure layer to change-- >> Yeah. >> What's happening on the applications on top of that, and then the people side, of course, is you know, immensely-- >> Yeah, of course. >> Important that you raise. >> Look, in our world I think it's helpful, I think, to firstly, set the agenda, and our agenda is predicated on service and availability of our services being our number one priority, so therefore, any down time, any lack of availability, any service failure has a core direct relationship impact with the people who are using our services. When you work in local authority terms, some of your others may be aware of this, or maybe others that are listening to this today, we're not dealing with inconvenience factors if services fail. This isn't an ATM card not working to give you £20 from the hole in the wall. Whilst that's hugely frustrating, I get that, in my world, if certain services aren't available, we're not helping some of the most vulnerable people that need our services to work. We could be making decisions that affect their lives. We could be making decisions that are also helping people to process, unfortunately, those that have passed away. Our coroner's service, a critical service that we provide at the council. You must remember, we're dealing with, truly, the lives of the people who use our services, and those, not just that emotional connection that we therefore have as residents, it really extends beyond technology. Technology, for me, is an enabling function for us that has got to be always available, hence why we make some of the decisions that we do around the core infrastructures that we have. So, for me, the core infrastructure is our foundation level, of which we build our reputation, we build our services on, we build the reliance that we have as an organization. Our use of Nutanix as a technology enables us to be able to build greater levels of resilience, also, so that if we do have a failure, the reality is that our user base will likely never know it's happened, only my team may, but for us, that foundation level gives us the ability to then start more strategic conversations with our business. It's very difficult to have a strategic relationship about change when you fundamentally can't provide the core service, so you've got to start there. >> So, tell us a little about, you know, what is your use of Nutanix. How do you use it and how does it improve that foundational level to actually deliver those services to your customers? >> Well, for us, our journey started about six months ago, and we're already transitioning, in fact, nearly getting to the end of the first stage of our journey of transitioning into the hyperconverged infrastructure, which is critical for us for many, many different reasons. Our fundamental business case was around our ability to be able to clearly change our whole dynamics around resilience, but also reduce our carbon footprint, reduce the number of servers that we have to power so our power consumption has changed. We're already delivering on some of those business case values in a very, very short space of time, so for us, the ability to pick up our infrastructure and be able to now put that in a new environment has created, already, a significant change for our organization, and one that we can build on. >> Okay, yeah, Bob, since it's so recent, you know, give us, paint us a little picture kind of the before and after, like did it reduce the amount of people that needed to focus specifically on infrastructure? Did you have to do some rescaling? You said you've done some, you know, changes in personnel and hiring and training recently. Help us understand. >> Yeah. Yeah, look, in our case, we needed to look at technology enabling us to be able to demonstrate and deliver on our core strategic objectives. So, for me, our data center is very much about how we house and how we service with keeping our data safe and secure and always available. That enables us to be able to also support some elements of our social value, so for us, the ability to be working with a partner who are absolutely strategically aligned with where our strategic direction is as an organization is fundamental for us, and our ability to be able to therefore then no longer need some of those personnel who were providing day-to-day services around the data center, because those skills now can be used elsewhere within my service. We've got a situation where we can now be confident that the resilience of that new infrastructure is such that we no longer need to have an individual babysitting those services, now where that technology enables us to be able to do it automatically. >> All right, you mentioned that you're finishing phase one, so maybe can you step back and whatever you're allowed to share, a little bit of-- >> Sure. >> What is the phased approach, you know, where do you go with Nutanix and the surrounding solutions with it? >> Well, look, our use of Nutanix and our ability to be able to partner with what is clearly a recognized Gartner Magic Quadrant, top right organization, enables us to be able to get access to some further elements of innovation. The difficulty in the public sector of having an R&D function is frankly, it's impossible. Our relationship with our partners is how we leverage, frankly, innovation, and where we get some of that from. So, the first stage for us was very much about getting some of the core foundations there, but beyond that it's about how they can help us also unlock other elements of our strategic goals and objectives, and one of those is about how we can use our new relationships. In Manchester we have devolved budgets from central government, enabling our health colleagues and our local authority colleagues come closer together, for us to share information, share data, and for us to be able to make even greater, richer decisions about the care and support of people. In some cases, that is going to enable us to be able to use assisted living technology that's going to be housed and run in our new data center environment that is going to fundamentally change the way that we provide healthcare services in the future. That's a real strategic aim for us. >> You know, how does IoT fit into your future plans? I don't know if it's tied with, if you've talked to Nutanix about what they're doing there. >> Yeah. >> But it's been something I've found a lot of governments similar to yours are looking in that space. >> Look, I think IoT is inevitably something that people like me have to consider and think about. I guess I would say that IoT is, at one level, a whole bunch of individual devices that work on their own platforms that don't talk to each other, and in the healthcare space, that ain't going to work for us. That's just not going to be it. We're going to have to have a platform by which those that are providing the healthcare services, using technology that's deployed in a patient, and now a resident scenario, to fundamentally change that dial from it's providing what is a reactionary healthcare service and being much more proactive, so those data sets have got to come together, and that ability for us, then, to be able to use that data to help us do predictive analytics in the future, and for us to be able to stop the ability for somebody to get so ill they have to go back into the acute care scenario is crucial, and that's, again, for us is how we think IoT has to, for us, develop a relationship with our various partners who discretely provide those services by bringing those things together, and that's where I think our relationship with Nutanix will help us unlock, and really discover, how we might be able to manage that and deliver some of those things quickly. >> So, one of the things that you do as a CIO is, you know, think about the hybrid cloud strategies, right? So, you're talking about these separate data silos that you and your partners have now, so what is your strategy to, you know, combine those data sets, or open them up so that you as a government can actually leverage that data from, you know, no matter where it runs, no matter where it is stored? >> Yeah, I think we're at early stages of our data strategy for the council. We certainly have a federated business model that is evident for all to see, and most local authorities are somewhat similar. I think the challenge for us in the future's going to be how we unlock the power of the data that we capture and the relationships that we have today. At the council, one of the key strategic objectives over the next few years is for us to deliver a new customer relationship management function. That will fundamentally enable us to change the way that we are structured internally, the way our organization responds to the way that the different interactions are going to come. Roughly, today, about 50% of our interactions with our customers, with our residents of Manchester, are through a digital channel. That means there's about 50% that have a different experience, and we know we need to change that. So, you know, for us, by really having a strategic vision in terms of where our data strategy needs to be is it enables us to think about that technology that's going to enable us to get there in the future. >> All right, Bob, last thing I want to ask you is it sounds like you've got a lot of moving pieces. If you could go to kind of the vendor ecosystem, so not just Nutanix, but you know, other companies you work with, you know, what could they be doing to make your life easier? >> Look, I think that's a double-edged sword, right? I think the first thing as a public sector, we've got to learn how to get the best from our partners. I think we've got to also create that situation where our partners meet with leadership on a regular basis, and that they've got the opportunity to then talk about, not just the contracts and the SLA and the regular series performance stuff, but much more beyond that. I think as a public sector we've got to open ourselves up to having those conversations more, and I would like our partners to push us to deliver that, if I'm honest. I had our partner event yesterday. We shared a lot about what's going on in the city, a lot about the challenges, but it's true to say today that I'm probably one of, if not the only, local authority doing that. I think I'd like more local authorities to be doing that, and I'd like our partners to be pushing us. It's true in that environment I saw yesterday Nutanix mixing with people from Google, mixing with people from Dell, mixing with people from other brands, for them to be able to also recognize how they can collaborate to bring solutions through to us. >> Well, Bob, really appreciate you sharing with our community what's going on. Congratulations on what you're doing, and wish you the best of luck. >> Many thanks, great tea time, thank you. >> All right, for Joep Piscaer, I'm Stu Miniman. We'll be back with more coverage here from Nutanix .NEXT 2018 in London, thanks for watching theCUBE. (techy music)

>>mhm Yes. Welcome back to the cubes coverage of red hat summit 2021 virtual john for your host of the cube paul. Comey who's here is the president and Ceo of red hat cube alumni paul always great to have you on the leader of red hat now President and Ceo for a year I think about a year now we're looking at under your belt now part of IBM Great to see you. >>You too nice to see you again john. >>So we've talked many times on the Cuban now. It's kind of playing out in real time. The software world with open source has gone mainstream. The conversation was moved to the cloud. Okay. People move to the cloud. Cloud native emerges devil has been around for a while. But now the conversation is cloud for the enterprise that uh, the enterprises, it's a tough world. You gotta, it's complicated is a lot of legacies, a lot of value and you want the new stuff. This is what the conversation is now. It's shifted to I got cloud, it's hybrid. What's your reaction to that? >>Well, you know, it really is, as you say, it's complicated but it's evolving and really, really fast. I mean, you know, I think you remember we've been here a lot. You first remember first software is eating the world and open source software is eating the world and in every every company is becoming a software company. All true. But that evolution continues today with the proliferation of hybrid cloud environments that it encompasses everything from data centers to public cloud services to And even now we'll talk about two for far flung edge deployments. That's all now part of the cloud. I mean, this is all what makes up hybrid. I like to always say that Hybrid really is the new data centers but now see IOS and I thi leaders, they need to reconsider what their roles, what their role here is and the way we look at it as every C I O now needs to be a cloud operator because because Hybrid is what their environment is now today, that used to be all in their data center. So, so but one of the things that really makes a choice even more important and its leaders, they need to address address specific needs, um not only to the organization, but even as they change and evolve in this because it really is a dynamic environment, I mean think about it and just mentioned edge and how how important that is to see IOS, we weren't even talking about that two years ago, so, so it's not a single answer here, right? Um and and you know, and there as there wasn't a single answer when it was all in one building or in one data center, but now it's even it's even more complex. So, so we need to enable really a new wave of cloud operators here with technologies that can be deployed as cloud services as well as on premises. We'll talk more about this too, but and we'll talk about this at the summit. We talked about the summit. Cloud services become really important, especially managed services, for example, because, um because we're so complex, Hybrid brings so much power, but it is complex. You know, see I need help with this, they need help managing this now. And so that's really where a lot of our focus is today. >>It's interesting you say there's no single answer. I would agree with you because it's now you can actually do a lot more customization with cloud and Hybrid. I think there's a general sentiment and directionally correct answer uh in the industry is that hybrid is operating model right? And I think you guys are have a whole division of SRS google talks about this all the time and their cloud site reliability engineers. And I think you're seeing that in educational institutions which we'll talk about. But I think this idea of cloud scale as the new I. T. And you mentioned hybrids, the new data center. You know, I don't I don't want to offend my I. T. Friends out there but they're kind of all realizing it to that if they don't understand how to operate cloud scale they'll be irrelevant and they're and they understand that their jobs are not just provisioning storage, networking and servers. Those are now involved in a hybrid architecture. And by the way, there is no one recipe, it's dependent. Each enterprise can have its own set of architecture based on their workloads again. So I buy that no single answer, but there is hybrid and I think it's pretty well understood. I mean, do you agree with that? >>I absolutely agree with that. But let's take a look at this, unpack it a little bit and take a look at the building blocks a bit. Right. Um, you know, we talked about open sources, what's driving all of this now and and everything we're talking about here is built in and around Lennox and it was only possible because Lennox was so open, so available and became so powerful, that's now been the platform that all this new innovation is built around. I mean, I oftentimes saying it's true the cloud just wouldn't be here had Lennox not only made its way in the open source development environment, but made its way into the enterprise to enable it to companies like us that make it enterprise ready, secure etcetera. So I think that's really an important thing to understand here. So when you talk about skills that the Ceos need certainly SRE skills, operation skills etcetera, but they also need Lennox skills and even open source skills. So so I think I think that's important, everything that's coming down the road and in in this space in um in his open source based and built in and around Lennox things like ai quantum computing, autonomous vehicles um IOT in and out to the edge all built on a foundation of Lennox and open source. So we see it in the enterprise everywhere now. I mean a survey where you know we did a survey out there and looking at the survey of C I O s out there, open is predominant out there, Lennox is predominant out there in hybrid is predominant and growing in a pretty big clip every year. >>You know, paul, I want to get your reaction to something because this may be kind of a dot connecting moment for me because I want to get your thoughts on this because it's a it's a pattern I'm seeing emerging now multiple times and usually I thought this was kind of a one off, but I'm starting to see it. So I'm going to get your thoughts on this. You guys have been super successful with open source in the enterprise, Super successful over decades, building a community and an ecosystem now with open source with with cloud Native, specifically we're seeing end users participating more in the, in the contribution starts out with the hyper scale ear's but now you're seeing kind of, I would call general purpose mainstream enterprises contributing projects, not necessarily their expertise, but they've been participating in taking the goodness of open source and bringing that into the into the enterprise. And I'll see you relying on you guys as well. But now I'm starting to see the pattern where people are relying on you to bring your community to them and they merge their communities with you guys and being kind of a steward there, is that a pattern? Do you see that evolving? Because we've heard that on multiple interviews on the cube where we've heard end users say we love the red hat ecosystem and and that seems to be more and more about they want to be building their ecosystem. So you did it for yourselves, you did it for the industry. Now, enterprises want this service is this is this is a pattern. And what's your reaction to that? >>It actually is a pattern because it's actually one of the reasons why innovation is moving so quickly right now. As I just said, you know, you know, this whole area here in infrastructure and cloud and development environments, Hybrid included. It's all built in and around, it's all built in and around Lennox. And in the past, what's happening and driven by open source development in the past? What happened? Look at the old fashioned way, right, where a company like us would be in a company, software company, not like us, but any old software company would be, you know, in their stovepipe, talking to their customers, getting their requirements and then bringing those requirements back from the customer base and then trying to work that into their products over time, get that back out to the customer to test it and try it, see it as it works. That's probably a five year, there's probably a five year journey, uh, for big, big requirements for big change requirements you look at now with, with actually end users now participating in upstream development, they're building their requirements into that upstream, which is our development environment. And actually that's what feeds our products. And so we've cut out the middleman, if you will completely in there now when we're building those requirements into our future future, R and D work in the upstream and then we bring that down into a product back into their enterprise for them to use in production. So it cuts out years of time for that innovation to get from concept to building to product, rising to production. And, and I think, you know, john, that's one of the big reasons why that customer base participating is one of the big reason why we're seeing innovation move like we've never seen it before in the enterprise, which in the old days that was a stodgy place where they didn't want to move very quickly. >>Yeah. And the values there, I mean I think it's clear what the pandemic we get to this towards the the last last talking track here. But with the pandemic I think it's pretty clear what the value is and the speed to capture opportunities and growth. I think enterprises are realizing that I think the power of the ecosystem is a modern error kind of phenomenon that is now kind of showing its its value and clearly in the market. And I think people who harness communities and ecosystems not try to fork them but connect them and and intersect them and kind of played well together. So again this is an open source concept kind of re imagined so we'll keep an eye on that. So, um, I want to get to your comment in the kino you mentioned at the top here every C I. O. It has to be a cloud operator. You know, that reminds me of all the start ups and all the positioning statements. Every company needs to be a software company. Every company needs to be a media company. Every company needs to be a cloud operator. So I love that. What does it mean? Because I could say, hey paul, I have a cloud, I'm working on amazon Or is that it? Or wait a minute as yours got, I got 365 over here and I'm using big query over here. I might use oracle over here. I mean all these multi cloud conversations. So it's confusing. >>Yeah. Tell me what, you know, if you look at, if you look at it, we were really one of the first ones to really build around this hybrid, this hybrid concept. And the reason why we were one of the first ones is because what amazon hit the world 12 or 13 years ago or something like that, They were the first major cloud and at the time that the narrative was that, you know, every application was going to move to the cloud tomorrow. Right well, because as I said earlier, everything is built in and in and around open source. And legs were very involved with our customers as they tried to move those first applications to the cloud. So certainly is a lot of value and moving to the cloud. But our customers quickly realized with us helping them, quickly realized that you know what, this is great. But not every application suited for the cloud, um for any cloud, but also I may want to run multiple clouds because another cloud provider over here might have a better service than this particular service over here, vice versa. And so we were in the middle of that. So one of the decisions we made seven or eight years ago, everything we did in that last seven or eight years around the portfolio, whether it was building products, m and A, requiring new companies etcetera, was built around that hybrid portfolio. What that means is a common platform that sits both on premise and bare metal machines. Virtual machines, private clouds on premise multiple clouds across out in the enterprise, that common platform so that developers, operators and the security people have that common platform to build with because just like in Lenox, even though they are all derived from open source upstream, they're all different, they all make different choices and how they're going to configure themselves. So, so that's important. So now we're out there with these multiple clouds. One of our surveys we see our Ceo is telling us now that You're using on the average I think six Clouds today and they expect that to go 8-10 over the next 3-5 years. So how are they going to manage that? How are they going to secure that? How are their operations people going to operate with that? That's all the things that we've been working on over the last number of years. So from that common platform, which is sort of the basis which is open shift to underneath it, which is the Linux operating system, which is well that spans all those footprints that I talked about. And then also you look at one of the latest trends is as well as manage services because what customers are now telling us is okay I got this environment that this hybrid is now my data center. It means I have to worry about these apps all in different footprints. Um I want to the platform to act like a cloud in some cases I don't want to I don't want to even manage it. I want you to manage it for me because for many reasons I want great up time. I might not have the right skill sets in my organization and so I want you to manage it. And so that's where we develop managed services and that's where we have set a large group today large SRE group that's providing those managed services no matter where our platform runs for our customers. Also, what I talked about in my keynote today is that to support that thought process is that we're doing a lot of research in this and so, you know, in a typical computer science research world, you know, of the past, you might really be into the into the real computer science of Research. We with the consortium around mass Open cloud with Boston University, MIT, Harvard Northeastern with this consortium. We're running mass Open cloud on all Red Hat with the collaboration of these universities and we're really focusing on the sorry aspect of it. What do we need to manage it? What do we need around automation to manage it? What do we need around ai to manage it? What do we need for tools to manage it? And and that's really goes down to what I fully briefly said in the beginning, is that every C I O N I T uh executive now has to be their own cloud operator because they are effectively stitching all these disparate clouds together. So that's where a big part of our focus takes us all the way from, You know, upstream development to product to the research we're doing for the next 3-5 plus years. >>You know, I gotta say the hybrid cloud is a new data center which is implying I T in the cloud operators with C X O S and C IOS is interesting because it's validated by Mckinsey's recent report that came out that said there's a trillion dollars of untapped value in one retrofitting existing infrastructure and operations and to net new operate use cases that the cloud enables. So there's clearly not two categories of value proposition that businesses are facing. One is, you know, kind of take care of the existing and then also bring in the new that cloud enables. So, you know, I think that's really key and that will drive the business leaders to foresight, if you will to be agile and adaptive to that. So so totally agree on that. I love this open cloud initiative, you mentioned the mass open cloud which I know is kind of like this beanpot for techies, um people who know what that means, uh it's in the boston area these institutions um this is gonna be a training and an opportunity to train the next generation and if you take it to the next level cybersecurity is also in this kind of net new novelty, interdisciplinary components. So you got engineering which is like devops engineering and then Systems Engineering and Computer Science intersecting together with kind of this data discipline. So it hits cybersecurity which is a board level conversation, it hits the new business model opportunities which is a driver, this is new, this is there's no pre existing curriculum. What how do you explain that to heads of the departments and the deans of these institutions saying, you know, it's an engineering thing. No, it's computer science thing. No, it's a it's a business school thing with data science. What's your what's your conversation with folks in the industry when you say this is a different thing? >>Uh you know, the university, you know, the university is getting, it was actually one of the one of the first things this is you know what you'll see. You know, I talked to uh dr bob Brown from President bu earlier in an interview and and this is what we imagined with them early on and even they brought those disciplines together now in in in what they call a harry institute, where to bring data, computer science engineering as you say. And now even operations, it's almost like, you know, systems engineering on steroids, it's a really big spanning system. And so so the universities are starting understand that's why these universities in the consortium, that's why we're working here. But also, you know, the industry's kind of learning it the hard way because now that they get some of their developers starting to move some of their application developments out into one, maybe two clouds and having the now they have to figure out how they're going to do all those things that we talked about, develop, secure operated. So they're they're learning the hard way that this is the new discipline because that's reality. I also think that, you know, as I said, like anything in tech, we always say this is going to happen tomorrow. I also think, like I said, when when cloud first came came out, everybody saying, I'm moving every app to the cloud tomorrow. We even had customers that bought into that said we're moving going full board but they realized once they get into it it wasn't practical. Don't take me wrong. Cloud brings a ton of value here but from a practical perspective it's going to be some apps and across many clouds and and so now they're having to deal with the I. T. Execs and the C. I. Was having to deal with it. So they're learning really fast because of the reality that they have to deal with. Now having said all that to it also brings up why managed services you're seeing so popular right now because as that's moving so fast they just don't have the skills necessary in many cases to really operate and run in this in this type of environment. It brings so much power but the skills aren't necessarily there in the industry. So that now you see the connection between the industry where we sit and even the university now looking at this whole big problem as as you put said, john, actually a new discipline, >>I think, I think, and I think one final leg of a three legged stool is at the business schools because when you think about systems programming, you mentioned that and you know, I love to go back in history and look at the history of operating systems. And you know, paul, we've talked us in the past and you guys know a lot about operating systems from a technology standpoint, it's not just about a productivity suite for a user or a department with the system, it's a company that needs to be programmed. So when people want to globally operate their business, that software defined this isn't now and this is now happening, right? So this the new leaders in these companies that want to run these global companies that scale operate them, just like operating the business not necessary. Operating a tech or shiny new toy, have to build the operating system for the business. To me, I think that's where I see IBM looking at cloud differently and saying, hey, this is an operating system under the covers for the business. The applications are multi fold from, you know, an application for productivity to an edge device, industrial or consumer user work at home. I mean it's a plethora of applications. What's your reaction to that? And you you see the same thing? >>I mean frankly, I think this is an area that a lot of the infrastructure players missed in the past. And I think I think this is what IBM saw with with bringing us in as well. It's all about the application. You know, I said earlier that, you know, we said every every company was a software company is true. And so that means the companies are running their businesses on these applications. So it's all about the app and I think a lot of infrastructure companies miss that. And and so with Hybrid now you have that ability to run the app wherever makes the most sense for for a whole host of reasons. And so now, but now comes the complexity of all of that. I think, I think IBM with bringing us in saw that that Hybrid was maybe as big, if not a bigger opportunity than cloud itself because of of the complexity it's going to bring, the power is going to bring. But also the complexity is gonna bring. I see that's why, you see Arvind, I sort of doubling down the entire IBM company on on hybrid services that are that are going to be really important here, that they provide these applications on top that are going to be really important, but that have to be architected in such a way that they can run in a hybrid environment. And finally there's all the infrastructure and tools and development pieces that we bring to the table. So, So yeah, I think I think are really, really understood that as they made the decision to bring redheaded, >>I talked to a center all the time and they also have this kind of concept of re factoring and reprogramming your business. Uh, it's not, it's a holistic view. This is kind of what's happening. So my final question for you is as as that becomes software enabled and programmed if you will with applications the business with many different subsystems in there. Um a lot of companies now looking at the light at the end of the tunnel with the pandemic and they're seeing vaccines coming out. Some say vaccines will be pretty much everywhere, everyone over 12 by the fall. So we're back to real life. There's gonna be a pullback of some projects on doubling down on others. As you as you mentioned, what are we doing? We're starting to see hybrid as companies come out of the pandemic, they're all jockeying to make sure that they have either done their work to re factor or reposition, reprogrammed their business and be set up for net new opportunities. >>What >>do you see as a growth model or growth opportunities for companies? You want to come out with a growth strategy out of the gate of the pandemic. What's your thoughts? >>Well, I mean, I think you have to plan for companies have to plan for your workforce to be anywhere, but in order to be anywhere in and to be productive, you need you need services like we're on right now for example, but you need the infrastructure to be able to do that. You need you need a way for your customers if you buy the fact that every company is a software company, you're running a business through their applications either way for your customers to be able to interact with you anywhere from where they are anywhere in a real time way. And so I think that's why from our perspective, things like that we're pushing a lot on the edge. Now, that's why you're seeing the hybrid cloud moved all the way out into the edge and you can see it in every vertical, you know, in the telco space. The edge means you gotta do, you have data and compute that needs to be done on the set on the cell tower in the manufacturing world. You have the state and compute that needs to be done on the factory floor, in the retail vertical. We see the edge really being significant in all these verticals, but but that edge is now extends that hybrid data center that we've been talking so much about. So even though you have all these edge devices way out there on the edge, it's a critical part of the business. So you have to have, your developers need need to be able to develop for it, you need to secure it, you need to and you need to operate it and manage it. So now, you know, in a very short period of time, hybrids taken on another dimension, bringing you out to all these points on the edge which is the same but slightly different in every vertical. Now comes complexity and that's why automation is so important because with that power comes complexity but it's going to take automation to keep it all running, >>paul. Great insight. Thanks for coming on the cube. Open innovation out in the open with with you guys again continue. And the focus of the evolution of software and the cloud with enterprise I. T. Clearly a lot of innovation and your contribution to academia and the mass open cloud and all the open cloud initiatives, phenomenal. The world's going. Open source and continues and continues. Doesn't stop. The operating system of businesses is coming and you guys are well positioned. Thanks for coming on. >>Thanks again john. Always a pleasure. >>Okay paul, Cormier, President Ceo of Red Hat here on the Cuban, john for your host. Thanks for watching. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm mm.