>> Narrator: From the Cube studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a Cube conversation. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, coming to you from our Palo Alto studios today for a Cube conversation. I'm really excited to have our next guest on. You see them all over on social, a very active community member. And we have not heard from him for a little while, so I'm psyched to have him on. He's Bobby Allen. He is a tech and Cloud evangelist. Bobby, how you doing? >> I'm good, Jeff, how are you? >> Good, so, I'm just to have the obligatory check-in. So, you're getting through this madness of COVID, and family's good, everything's good? >> Yeah, everybody's good. I've got a teen and a twin. They haven't driven us crazy yet. So, so far, everybody's healthy and everybody's good. >> Good, good. So, let's jump into it, Bobby. You know, people talk about Cloud as being, there's a lot of great benefits to Cloud, you know, kind of, cost savings, and agility, and more importantly, really as a driver of innovation which I think most people are kind of late to the party there, they think really more on cost savings versus innovation, but now, it's been around, you know, AWS has been around kind of, broke open the door in terms of public Cloud, and then everything was a public Cloud and not because of public Cloud, and then we have hybrid Cloud and we have multicloud. And now, things are kind of, settling down. So, when you talk to people about Cloud, how should they think about the reality of it once they kind of, leave the trade show and they're getting back to their desk, and they actually have to start implementing some things? >> So, great question, Jeff, First of all, thank you for giving me that opportunity to answer that. This is how I think about Cloud. So, we often talk about Cloud in terms of gym memberships, right? Like going to the Cloud is like buying a gym membership. I actually argue that the Cloud is actually more like weights. If you apply weights to a good form you're going to get stronger, if you apply weights to a bad form you're going to hurt yourself. And what we found is that a lot of these companies, Jeff, are applying Cloud and automation to things that really didn't make a lot of sense. And so, they're wasting more money, they're getting more frustrated, and they're wondering why Cloud was not this magic bullet that just solved everything. It didn't fix world peace and global hunger, and now, they're worse off than they were before. There are a couple of reasons I can go into about that but hopefully, that answers the question at first. We're training the wrong way, Jeff. We're adding weight to things that don't make sense and we're hurting ourselves. >> So, it it just I picked the wrong application or are they operating it in a way as they operated it when it was on-prem? 'Cause the thing I always think of, which is interesting, right? Is everybody always talks about spinning up capacity, right? Spin up capacity. You're running a promotion on the Superbowl, and you're going to have a bunch of people hitting your coupon but they'd never talk about spinning it down. And I went to a really interesting presentation one time where a guy talked about their application. He's like, we like when you turn it off, when you turn off our application, we're not making any money, but it tells that you know, kind of how to operate this thing, which is turn it on, but don't forget to turn it off. And I think, you know, we had a situation on one of our little applications that we left open and let something run and ended up with a bill that we weren't necessarily anticipating, not because we did anything wrong, but we just didn't do the right thing, which was to turn off that particular service when we didn't need it. So, what's the wrong way, what's the wrong exercise? Why are people screwing this up? >> So, I think the problem, Jeff, is actually more upstream. So, my personal mantra for 2020 has been, tech is the easy part, data and behavior are the hard parts. And I think you nailed it, right? That Cloud is only about what you need to buy, not what you need to change, then you're going to be woefully disappointed with the results. And so, when I'm saying go upstream, what I'm finding is, missed expectations, Jeff, sink more projects than bad code broken APIs or large bills? The thing that we're missing is, we're thinking that technology replaces the need to have a conversation. So, for example, when we say we want to do something better in the Cloud, what does better actually mean? So, let's talk about food for a second. Hopefully, I don't make your people hungry 'cause it's around lunchtime. But if we think about Cloud application like a recipe, are we tryna make a mediocre recipe better or make a good recipe at scale, right? 'Cause if you take a nasty recipe and scale it out, you're just going to go broke faster. So, really the question is, which problem are we trying to solve? What is the issue that we're really wrestling with? And so, we need to have a better vocabulary, more descriptive conversations. And so, let me give you one that I often talk to customers about, right? We talk about technical debt a lot of times. And technical debt, Jeff, in my opinion, is being used as a misnomer. So, they're kind of, different sorts of debt that I see often in the C-suite. So, there's technical debt where I don't like what we're running, there's data debt where I don't know what we're running, and there's brain debt where I don't know what we want. And Jeff, I would argue that a lot of things that are masquerading as technical debt in the C-suite are really brain debt. I haven't figured out what we want to do, I haven't thought about what we're willing and able to change. And so, that's why the Cloud is a disappointment because we haven't figured out what we want for lunch. (laughs) >> So, it's a classic like people process technology program, you know, problem. And we hear about it all the time, right? And everyone loves to focus on the technology. I haven't heard it really explained that well, but that's what you're saying. It's like, we'll just jump to that part so we don't have to actually ask the hard questions, right? And the thing that makes me think of it when you talked about that is it's kind of like the whole data aggregation problem and all the big data adventures when half the time people don't know what data is where, so, even just going through the exercise of cataloging, finding, organizing, cleansing, all that kind of stuff before you really start to think about what can you do with the big data project? You got to get the baseline down before you can get into the fancy stuff. Sounds kind of like, what you're talking about. >> You nailed it, Jeff. And I'm actually going to piggyback on something you said. This is actually the problem that I think we're wrestling with in Cloud and in life. There it is, right? And we're got to put a fine point in it for the listeners. We are struggling, Jeff, with how to evaluate better versus different. And so, what Cloud has done more importantly, Cloud has shortened the amount of time that we're willing to spend on something before we just start over again. And so, the question that we wrestle with is, do I need to do the same thing a little bit differently? Do I need to tweak it or is there something better that's come along where I need to throw everything away, start all over again, and wipe the slate clean. And so, here's what ends up happening, right? The challenge that we have building on that is how we choose, Jeff, is more important than what we choose because a lot of us are making choices but we're not developing a framework to choose in a world where different things are pushed at us really every day and every night, right? Amazon and Azure are changing literally thousands of things every night. And if I feel like there's something new out there, I have to understand, is this noise, or is this something I pay attention to? Is this a size for a project or is this something that helps my value? If you don't have a way to choose, Jeff, every new option is going to just lead to more confusion and more decommitment. >> Right, well, I mean, you raised a really interesting point which is how do CIOs keep up with all this stuff? I mean, how do they possibly keep the lights on, you know, run digital transformation, kind of, keep up with the, Lord knows, how many changes like you said, get made at Amazon every single day I mean, the feature set when Andy stands on stage at re-invent and lists all the services. I think he's using like a two-and-a-half point font on a 200 foot video screen. I mean, there's so much there. So, how do you help people take a step back from, it's like driving, you know, a car with headlights through snow at night. You know, it's just like kuchu chu chu. How do you help people take a step back and be a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more intentional, a little bit more circumspect to lay a good foundation which is going to be what the rest of the house is built on. If you don't have it, it's just going to crumble, if you have it, then at least you have a chance of success. How do you help guide them and get out of that snow storm? >> So, I'm going to give you a new acronym, Jeff, but I think it starts with humility. It starts with us admitting that we don't have this all figured out yet. I often tell a lot of customers, Cloud is that best a teenager that just learned how to drive. And Cloud similar to teenagers, the ability of what it can do is, kind of, in conflict with what it can comprehend in terms of unintended consequences. And so, if Cloud is changing all the time, let's not talk about, we crushed it, we nailed it, we knocked it out of the park. Let's raise our hand and say, you know what? I humbly need some help, because here's what we do, Jeff. In this industry, we throw around acronyms and terms all the time. IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, BDaaS, DBaaS, whatever. I'm going to introduce the term CaaS, but that's not containers as a service job. I think what we're getting is confusion as a service. (laughs) There's so many things that are changing that people are overwhelmed but because we want to act so much like we're crushing it on social media, we really need to say, I need help, I can't do this in a spreadsheet anymore. Please are there solutions out there that can help me automate some of this stuff so that I'm not a victim of my own ignorance. So, humility, right? Embrace other people that have solved some of this problem before, somebody has solved this problem. There are companies out there that are taking in the data, that are automating the decision-making, and that can help you, right? Bring people in, bringing outside help. >> Right, well, the other piece you just talked on is automation, and it goes back to your earlier comment about, you know, scale, bad things at scale are not good. So, if you don't get things dialed in now, and you start applying automation, and you start applying machine speed, you know, then things can get really squirrely really quick. So, that's even another kind of, you know, danger zone coming ahead, start to plan and make sure you've got your stuff organized or now you're going to automate it at machine speed, IOT, 5G, and really run things ragged super quickly. >> Jeff, I agree a hundred percent with that. I want to go back to something you talked about before. People process technology. I want to tweak that. I think we really need to evolve into people, process, product, or people, process, problem. It's got to go back to what am I creating or what am I solving this helping someone? And the technology is something that I will use or not if that helps me meet that outcome. But as technologists, Jeff, a lot of us are getting lazy. I want to play with Kubernetes. I want to play with containers. I want to play with serverless. I want to play with IOT. Who is that actually solving a problem for? Is what we've got to come back to because if I'm not doing that, the less you submit that I'm playing with this, but I'm not really making something better for a customer or adding more value to the business. >> So, again, what are your tips and tricks? 'Cause things are not going to get less complicated, right? As we've talked about Amazon's rolling out new services all the time. Google is really starting, you know, Google Cloud is really starting to rage. Obviously, Satya has done an amazing job with Microsoft, and then there's Oracle Cloud and IBM Cloud, and all these secondary Clouds, Equinix, and that acceleration is only going up. So, how do you, you know encourage people, coach people, tell people to make sure that they're taking a step back and being organized and thoughtful, and not just racing ahead at the next bright shiny object? >> So, great question again, Jeff. I think people have to have to be careful that just because you hear about something a lot doesn't mean it's proven to scale. Social media is dangerous in the sense that we think that we hear something a hundred times then a means that is polished. And I think that as enterprises and as businesses, you know, go with something that's proven, but dip a toe in the water, if you're not sure about it. So, maybe you are experimenting with some things in DevTests, but here's some practical tips that I'll give. Three things, right? I recommend that people typically start here with Cloud strategy, the three D's of data are what I recommend people begin with. Don't begin with the widgets, the shiny objects, begin with data storage, begin with data transport and begin with data organization. We know that data is the lifeblood of the enterprise, right? That's what all of us are focused on right now, right? Data is collected from watches, from websites, from things like self-driving cars, eventually. So, how is my data going to be stored? 'Cause that's the most important part of likely what we're doing as a corporation. How is it going to be transported? Am I okay with spending X amount of dollars on Egress? Do I have latency issues? And then when it comes to data organization, databases, data warehouses, data lakes, I would start with my philosophy, Jeff, on how I plan to leverage that information across any of the multi or hybrid providers that I plan to spin up, because if I start with the data that connects me better to the customer, how am I going to leverage this data then make something better for them? And then any venue honestly, Jeff, that I choose to execute in we'll have tools and utilities and packages that I can leverage to make something better for someone. >> The piece you didn't mention though, was the application. So, where's the application? Say you still start with the data foundationally, and then go to the application or? >> Yes. >> But most of the initiatives driven kind of, at the application level layer? >> They are, and I'm glad you mentioned that. So, practically speaking, let me go down a level to double-click on stuff. Well, people want to be Cloud native, right? 'Cause we don't want to run servers. We don't want to run boxes, we don't even really want to do VMS anymore. One thing that I recommend, that I believe is high reward and low risk is that people strongly consider adopting database as a service, and this is the reason why. It gives us a format to go to something that's Cloud native that doesn't have to be totally rewritten. So, the juice is worth the squeeze there because I'm reducing labor, I'm reducing maintenance, I'm reducing cycles, the DBaaS that people like that have to do, but I'm not paying to refactor an application. Where we struggle, Jeff, and maybe this is another topic, we really struggle with the value of applications, and because we don't know the value of an app, we're using the cost of an app as a proxy. And so, if you don't know the value of something, you're always going to be at risk of over or under improving it. This is why I like database as a service. I can be more nimble, I can reduce labor, and I'm not rewriting an application and spending more to rewrite it than the app is worth. If I totally refactor, or if I totally replatform, the cost may outstrip the value. DBaaS is almost always a slam dunk, 'cause I'm going to reduce manual things that my people are doing that freeze them up, to focus more on customers and evolve in the end. That's what I see pretty consistently in the enterprise. >> That is really scary. That statement that you said that people don't necessarily know the value of the app and using cost as a proxy is not good. You know, I had Butch Rizzo on recently, and he did a study on, you know, trying to figure out the value of data, versus the the value of an app. And he did some research of that UCSF, and what they did is they basically said the value of the data is dependent on the business process that you can improve, or the business project that you want to do. You make an estimate as to what the ROI in that process is, and then you basically see if it's worthwhile to do. And that case and point was, you know, running a promotion at Chipola 'cause bill loves Chipola, but he had a real concrete way that, you know, if we can increase sales at the target stores by, you know, 10%, or we can increase the average ticket by 20 cents or we can increase the average number of items ordered by 0.5 or whatever. So, you know, real far metrics that tie back to real numbers, that tie back to value that you can make an assessment of that project, and that project is enabled by data. So, I hope people are doing that far applications 'cause cost is not the way to figure out value >> The challenge that we have, Jeff, when we look at a lot of the things in the Cloud, there's a big difference between if I have "big C" customers, someone who's literally pulling out a wallet or a credit card to pay for my service or product versus "little C" customers like internally. If I'm paying for a streaming service, and the cost of the streaming service goes up the value of that's likely also going up because I'm serving more big C customers. If the cost of a password reset manager goes up and internal application that nobody was likely paying for, and that's really the dilemma that a lot of folks have in the enterprise, Jeff. Am I going to take something that has limited value like a password application, and put it in a place that can have unlimited spend. Now, if I'm a Netflix or Disney plus, if my spend is going up, my value is going up because I'm serving more big C people that are going to pull out their credit card and give me money. So, a lot of the struggle is when we drill down into this in the enterprise is the people that have the little C customers that don't have anybody paying them 'cause they're tryna understand this is like funny money in our houses job. My kids are teenagers. If I was to charge them, right? For room and board or for dinner, they don't have any money. So, the value of what they think about my cooking on the weekend, right? It's hard to put a value on that because they're not paying me, but if I had a food truck, it's easy to put a value on that, are people buying it or not? So, again, the challenges between internal or external customers and asked me to get any things I charged back and show back, we need a model to understand, is this something that you're tolerating or something that you're actually choosing and are you willing to spend money on it? >> Yeah, and it's a complicated issue, right? Because the other thing is you'd say, you take this conversation over to the security space, which I always find fascinating 'cause investigating security is kind of like investing in insurance and you can't use all your money to insure everything a hundred percent or else you just, why would you even do it? But you have to have some, and it's not a real clear ROI, but the potential downside is pretty huge. So, it's this kind of, balancing act, as you said, it's not really clean as to what the true value of that is unless you tie it back to some specific event, a breach, you know, some type of pins getting stolen, et cetera. So, these are not hard questions, but it's funny 'cause they're not technology questions, right? They're business value questions, and they're priority questions, and they're trade off questions. That's the other thing, right? You don't have infinite resources. So, even if you solve the model here you need to solve it within a portfolio of challenges, opportunities to then, as you said, you know, kind of rank order, where do you spend that next version of dollar? 'Cause it really can have a very a huge difference on the return. >> Okay, I think if I was going to give a, maybe a final piece of advice to the audience, Jeff, it would be to not confuse planning and analysis. That's something that I've talked about before. There's a big difference between those two things, and I often use the analogy of tax planning versus tax preparation. Jeff, when we collect our receipts, and our W-2s and 1099s, and go to our CPA at the beginning of the next year, we can't call that tax planning. That's tax preparation. It's already kind of done and dusted as long as you don't mess it up, it's pretty much a foregone conclusion. And the enterprise is doing a lot of analysis and a lot of preparation, but really we need to do more planning. We need to look at the tools and the companies that are helping us simulate and plan for the future that's coming because then when we're talking about it, right? When you're sitting with your CPA and you're saying, what if I do this with my retirement or 401k, or real estate assets, when they can talk to you about what might happen, right? You're not in crisis, it's not a fire drill, it's not a dumpster fire, you can have a very easy conversation around the pros and cons of that. So, I think that's one thing we really have to embrace is press ahead, talk to those consultants and those solution providers, is this really planning or is this just analysis? Is this looking backwards or is it really looking forward and giving me some insight into the things that are coming so that I feel smarter going into the next season? >> And the opportunity to make a change before you hit December 31st. I mean, I think that's a really great analogy. Well, Bobby, a lot of great stuff squeezed in in a few short minutes, it's super fun to catch up, and I just love all your analogies and your stories because at the end of the day, it is about people, and it's about priorities, and it's about business, it's not about the technology. So, thank you so much for sharing your insight. >> Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. >> Oh, absolutely, all right. He's Bobby Allen, I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching theCUBE from our Palo Alto studio. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time. (bright music)

>>long from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering a ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back to the Cube. We are in Las Vegas, Lisa Martin with John Wall's. I'm very excited that we're kind of color coordinated >>way. Didn't compare notes to begin with, but certainly the pink thing. It's worth it if >>you like. You complete me. >>Oh, thank you. Really, Joe, I don't hear that very often. My wife says that >>you tell that we're at the end of day one of the coverage of A W s three in bed. Good day, though. Yes, it has been very excited. We have a couple of guests joining us for our final segment on this. Please welcome. We have Bill Gerard CTO of Digital Transformation and Scale solutions at Intel Bill, welcome to our show. >>Thank you very much. Happy to be here >>And one of our friends. That's no stranger to the Cube. One of our former host, Bobby Allyn, the CEO of Cloud Generate. Bobby. >>Thank you. Thank you for having us. >>Guys, here we are. This there has not been a lull in the background noise all day. Not reinvent day one. But Bobby want to start with you. Talk to her audience about cloud genera. Who are you guys? What do you do? And what's different about what you're delivering? >>One of the first things is different about Claude Generous where we're located. So we're in Charlotte, which I call Silicon South. So we're kind of representing the East Coast, and we're a company that focuses, focuses on helping with workload, placement and transformation. So where you don't know whether something should go on from off grim. If you put it in Amazon, which service's should have consumed licensing models? Pricing models way help you make data driven decisions, right? So you're not just going based on opinion, you're going based on fact. >>And that's challenging because, you know, in the as, as John Ferrier would say, No Cloud Wanda Otto, which was compute network storage, it was the easy I shouldn't say easy, but the lift and shit applications that enterprises do are these workloads should go to the cloud. Now we have you know what's left over, and that's challenging for organization. Some of the legacy once can't move. How do you help from a Consul Tatum's down point that customers evaluate workloads? What data are they running? What the value that data has and if they are able to move some of those more challenging applications. >>So part of the framework for us, Lisa, is we want to make sure we understand what people are willing and able to change right, because sometimes it's not just about lower costs. Sometimes it's about agility, flexibility, deploying a different region. So what we often start with his wit is better look like you would assist us with life for your organization. And so then, based on that, we analyze the applications with an objective, data driven framework and then make sure the apse land where they're supposed to go. We're not selling any skewer product. We're selling advice to give you inside about what you should do, >>Bobby, I think. And maybe Bill to you could chime in here on this. If you give people a choice, What does this look like? What you know, What do you want? I don't want to do anything right. I want to stay put, right? But that obviously that's not an option, But you I'm sure you do get pushed back quite a bit from these almost the legacy mindset. And we've talked a lot about this whole transformation versus transition. Some people don't want to go, period. So how do you cajole them? Persuade them bring them along on this journey? Because it's gonna be a long trip. Yeah, I think you gotta pack a lunch. >>It's a good point. I think what we've seen, most of them have data experience that this is a tried and elements didn't get the results that they expected. This is where you know, the partnership that we have with call General. Really? You know that data driven, intelligent, based planning is super important, right? We want to really fundamentally health organizations move the right workloads, make sure they get the right results and not have to redo it. Right? And so part of that, you know, move when you're either past scars or not used to what you're doing. Give him the data and the information to be able to do that intelligently and make that as fast as they can. And you know, at the right, you know, experience in performance from a capability perspective. >>So so many businesses these days, if they're not legacy if they're not looking in the rear view mirror, what is the side mirror site? Objects are closer than they appear, even for Amazon. Right? For all of these companies, there are smaller organizations that might be born in a cloud compared to the legacy two words. And if they're not looking at, we have to transform from the top down digitally, truly transform. Their business may not be here in a year or two, so the choice and I think they need to pack a lunch and a hip flask for this because it's quite the journey. But I'm curious with the opportunity that cloud provides. When you have these consultation conversations, what are This? Could be so transformative not just to a business, but to a do an entire industry. Bill talked to us from your perspective about some of the things that you've seen and how this next generation of cloud with a I machine learning, for example, can can really transfer like what's the next industry that you think is prime to be really flipped upside down? >>Well, the good news is I think most of the industries in the segment that we talked to have realized they need to some level of transformation. So doing the business as usual really isn't an option to really grow and drive in the future. But I do think the next evolution really does center on what's happening in a I and analytics. Whether it's, you know, moving manufacturing from video based defect detection, supply chain integrity. You know what's happening from a retail was really the first in that evolution, but we see it in health care in Federal Data Center modernization, and it's really moving at a faster pace and adopting those cloud technologies wherever they needed, both in their data center in the public, cloud out of the edge. And we'll start to see a real shift from really consolidation in tow. Large hyper converts, data centers to distributed computing where everything again. And that's where we're excited about the work we're doing with the Amazon, the work we're doing with Eyes V partners to be at the capability where they need it, but I think it will be really the next. Evolution of service is everywhere. >>Never talk us through an example or use case of a customer that you're working with, a cloud genera with intel and and a W S. What does that trifecta look like for, say, a retailer or financial service is organization >>so that that looks like this? ELISA. When we when we talk about workload placement, we think that most companies look at that as a single question. It's at least a five fold question. Right there is the venue. There's the service. There's the configuration, the licensing model and the pricing model. You need to look at all five of those things. So even if you decided on a DBS is your strategic partner, we're not done yet. So we have a very large financialservices customer that I can't name publicly. But we've collaborated with them to analyze tens of thousands of workloads, some that go best off from some that go best on for him. And they need guidance and coaching on things like, Are you paying for redhead twice your pay for licensing on him? Are you also paying for that in the cloud? There are things that maybe should be running an RT s database as a service. Here's your opportunity to cut down on labor and shift some of the relationships tohave, toe re index and databases is not glamorous or differential to value for your business. Let's take advantage of what a TBS does well and make this better for your company. One of the things that I want to kind of introduce to piggyback on your question. We lean on people process technology as kind of the three, the three legged horse in the Enterprise. I want to change that people process product or people process problem. We're falling in love with the tech and getting lazy. Technology should be almost ubiquitous or under the covers to make a product better or to solve a problem for the customer. >>Well, maybe on that, I mean automation concern to come in and make a big play here because we're taking all these new tasks if you could automate them that you free your people, your developers to do their thing right. So you raise an interesting point on that about being lazy and relying on things. But yet you do want off put our offload some of these nasty not to free up that creativity and free up the people to do what they're supposed to be doing. It's a delicate balance, though, isn't it? It is. It is. This >>is where I think the data driven, you know, informed decisions important. We did a lot of research with Cloud Jenner and our customers, and there's really four key technical characteristics when evaluating workload. The 1st 1 of course, is the size of the data. Where is the created words They use Words that consumed the 2nd 1? Is the performance right? Either performance not only to other systems around it or the end user, but the performance of the infrastructure. What do you need out of the capability? The level of integration with other systems? And then, of course, security. We hear that time and again, right? Regulatory needs. What are we having from top secret data to company sensitive data? Really Getting that type of information to drive those workload placement decision becomes at the forefront of that on getting, you know, using cloud gender to help understand the number of interfaces in and out the sides of the data. The performance utilization of the system's really helps customers understand how to move the right workload. What's involved and then how to put that in the right eight of us instance, and use the right ideas capabilities, >>and you and you both have hit on something here because the complexity of this decision, because it's multi dimensional, you talked about the five points a little bit ago. Now you talked about four other factors. Sue, this is not a static environment, No, and to me that as you're making a decision, that point is what's very difficult for, I would assume for the people that you're interfacing with on the company level. Yes, because it's a moving target for them, right? They just it's it's dynamic and changing your data flows exponentially. Increasing capabilities are changing. How do you keep them from just breaking down? >>I don't want to jump in on that, because again, I'm going to repeat this again. That my thesis is often technology is the easy part. We need to have conversations about what we want to do. And so I had a conversation earlier today. Think of Amazon like a chef. They could make anything I want, but I need to decide what I want to eat. If I'm a vegan and he wants steak. That's not Amazons fault. If they can't cook something, that's a mismatch of a bad conversation. We need to communicate. So what I'm finding is a lot of executives are worried about this. There were Then you're going to give me the right the wrong answer to the right question. The reality is you may have the wrong question. First of all right, the question is usually further upstream, so the worry that you're gonna give me the wrong answer to the right question. But often you need to worry that you're getting your starting with the wrong question. You're gonna get the right answer asked the right question first. And then you got a chance to get to the final destination. But >>and then he in this multi cloud world that many organizations live in, mostly not My strategy could be by Emma A could be bi developer preference for different solutions. A lot of Serios air telling us we've inherited a lot of this multi cloud and technical debt. Exactly. So does not just compound the problem because to your point, I mean you think of one way we hear so many different stats about the number of clouds that on average enterprises using is like 5 to 9. That whole world. That's a reality for organizations. So in terms of how the business can be transformed by what you guys are doing together, it seems like there's a tremendous opportunity there. But to your point, Bobby, where do you start? How do you help them understand what? That right first question is at the executive level so that those four technical points that Bill talked about Tek thee you know, the executive staff is all on board with Yes, this is the question we're asking then will understand it. The technology is right. Sold >>it. It's got to start with, Really? What? The company's business imperatives, right? It can't start with an I t objective. It's it's Are we moving into new markets? Do we need thio deploy capabilities faster? Are we doing a digital customer experience? Transformation? Are we deploying new factories, new products into new regions, and so really the first areas? What's the core company strategy, imperatives of the business objectives? And >>then how >>does I t really help them achieve that? In some cases, it may be we have to shift and reduce our data center footprints way have to move capabilities to where we have a new region. Deployments, right? We've got to get him over to Europe. We don't have capabilities in Europe. We're going to Asia. I've got a mobile sales force now where I need to get that customer, meet the customer where they're doing, you know, in the retail store, and >>that >>really then leads quite simply, too. What are the capabilities that we have in house that we're using? >>How are >>they being utilized? And he's using them, and then how do we get them to where they need to be? Some cases accost, imperative. Some cases and agility, Time to market and another's and we're seeing this more often is really what are the new sets of technologies? A. I service is training in forgetting that we're not experience to do and set up, and we don't want to spend the time to go train our infrastructure teams on the technology. So we'll put our data scientists in there figuring out the right set of workloads, the right set of technology, that we can then transform and move our applications to utilize it really starts, I think with the business conversation, or what's the key inflection point that they're experiencing? >>And have you seen that change in the last few years that now it's where you know, cloud not cloud. What goes on Cloud was an I t conversation to your point, Bill. And then the CEO got involved in a little bit later. But now we're we're seeing and hearing the CEO has got to be involved from a business imperative perspective. >>Share some data, right? Uh, so, you know, a couple of years ago, everybody was pursuing cloud largely for cost. Agility started to become primary, and that's still very important. A lot of the internal enterprise data modernizations were essentially stalled a bit because they were trying to figure how much do we move to the the public cloud, right. We want to take advantage of those modern service is at that time, we did a lot of research with our partners. He was roughly 56% of enterprise workload for in their own data center. You know, the rest of them Republic Cloud. And then we saw really the work, the intelligent workload discussion that says we've had some false starts. Organizations now really consistently realize they need both, you know, their own infrastructure and public cloud, and we've actually seen on increase of infrastructure modernization. While they're moving more and more stuff to the cloud, they're actually growing there on centre. It's now roughly 59% on Prem today for that same business, and that's largely because they're using more. Cloud service is that they're also even using Maur on premise, and they're realizing it's a balance and not stalling one or starving one and then committing to the other the committing to both and really just growing the business where it needs to go. >>Strategic reasons. All right? >>Yes, well, there should be four strategic reasons. There aren't always back to your question about which question asked. One of the questions I often ask is, What do you think the benefits will be if you go to cloud? And part of what happens is is not a cloud capability? Problem is an expectation problem. You're not gonna put your GOP system in the cloud and dropped 30% costs in a month, and so that's where we need to have a conversation on, You know, let's iterating on what this is actually gonna look like. Let's evolve the organization. Let's change our thinking. And then the other part of this and this were clouded or an intel come in. Let's model with simulation looks like. So we're gonna take those legacy work clothes unless model containers. Let's model Micro Service is so before you have to invest in transformation to may not make sense. Let's see what the outcome's look like through simulation through a through M l and understand. Where does it make sense to apply? The resource is, you know, to double click on that solution that will help the business. >>I was gonna finish my last question, Bobby, with you saying, Why, Cloud General? But I think you just answered that. So last question for you, though, from from an expectation perspective, give me one of your favorite examples of customer whatever kind of industry there and that you've come in and helped them really level, set their expectations and kick that door wide open. >>That's tough, many >>to choose from. >>Yeah, let me let me try to tackle that one quickly. Store's computer databases. Those are all things that people look at I think what people are struggling with the most in terms of kind of expectations is what they're willing and able to change. So this is kind of what I leave on. Bill and I talked about this earlier today. A product is good, a plan is better. A partnership is best. Because with the enterprises of saying is, we're overwhelmed. Either fix it for me or get in there with me and do it right. Be in this together. So what we've learned is it's not about were close applications. It's all kind of the same. We need help. We're overwhelmed. I want a partner in telling Claude Juncker the get in this thing with me. Help me figure this out because I told you this cloud is at best a teenager. They just learned how to drive is very capable, but it needs some guard rails. >>I love that. Thanks you guys So much for explaining with Johnny what you guys are doing together and how you're really flipping the model for what customers need to be evaluated and what they need to be asking. We appreciate your time. >>Thank you for having us >>our pleasure. Thank you. for John Wall's I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching the Cube at Reinvent 19 from Vegas. Wants to go tomorrow.

>> Speaker: From the SiliconANGLE Media Office in Boston, Massachusetts, it's TheCube. Now, here's your host, Stu Miniman. >> I'm Stu Miniman, and this is a special Cube conversation here in our Boston area studio. Happy to welcome to the program Bobby Allen, who's the chief technology officer and chief evangelist at CloudGenera. Bobby thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you Stu, thanks for having us. >> Alright so Bobby we had a great conversation with your CEO Brian Kelly talking about CloudGenera, helping customers if, in my own words I'll say, there's this great mess of the cloud and service providers and data centers and things are changing all the time. And here's a great tool to help people understand this. Now, I've had people asking me for years, it's like "Hey, I've got my app, "or I'm building a new app, where do I do this?" And I've always said well, there are certain things that are really easy. If it's going to be up for a really short period of time, and it's something there, it's like you're not going to spend the time to rack and stack and build and do this. hey, Cloud was great for that. And on the other end of the spectrum now, the public clouds might disagree, but if I have something that's just like it's going to be cooking along and it's not changing and it's there, the rent versus buy analogy once again goes towards kind of doing it in a hosted or my own data center. But there's a whole lot of stuff in the middle, That is, well, it depends. There's there's this uncertainty in the world and that's where you live, so bring us in a little bit as to some of the thinking as to how CloudGenera helps and where let's get into it. >> That's a great question Stu. So, we feel like the market is actually changed, in the sense that information is coming faster and faster, there's more and more information that people are inundated and honestly overwhelmed by. And so when people ask us for more information, we typically tell them you don't need more information in our opinion, you really want to move from information to clarity to insight, "What should I actually do?" And so to go back to the real estate analogy you talked about, I think people think of cloud as a house. Cloud is at least a neighborhood if not a state, and you need to figure out where should I live within that state or that neighborhood. So, let's take AWS for example. AWS is a vendor that has many, many, many services, but also different flavors of how you can run things. So before people would look at CloudGenera as a company that can compare different execution venues. Do I want to run this in Amazon or Azure or Google? Still we increasingly get people that want to understand which flavor of Amazon should I do? Do I do the multi-tenant, do I do the dedicated, do I do the VMware cloud on AWS? And those are all valid choices for us. And so for us, we don't really care where a customer wants to evaluate. Let's define what you need and map that to the relevant or interesting options in the marketplace, and then take the guesswork out of it so you have some data-driven decision making. >> Yeah, I love that because I have been covering Amazon for many years, and boy I go to the show and it was like "Alright, I thought I got my arms around Aurora and now there's the serverless based Aurora, and there's 17 different database options inside of Amazon so, oh boy," and then, right. Let's not even talk about all the compute instances. I think it's more complicated to pick a compute instance in the public cloud than it is if I was going to put something in my own rack these days. >> Bobby: Yes, yes it is. >> So, but that being said I want to for a second before we talk about the public cloud, talk to your viewpoint, how are you helping customers in kind of the service provider to data center world. And because that's a complicated and very I have to say fragmented space. >> It is. >> How does CloudGenera help there? >> So CloudGenera deals with the consumers, so ones who actually want to benefit from the technology themselves, but also from the service provider side. So if you're Joe's Cloud Shack, or regional cloud provider or Vmware service provider, anyone who is offering technology services, you may want to know number one, how do you compare with the large hyperscale providers, and then number two, how can you showcase your valued proposition next to those. So maybe Amazon and Azure and Google are on the top of peoples' minds, but how do your services compare to those? So in our platform you can actually show a Joe's Cloud Shack next to an Amazon next to something like a Synergy or SimpliVity. So options inside and outside the data center that you thought about and then ones that you didn't can all be kind of presented in a fair way, so you take the guesswork out of how they compare to each other. >> Yeah, it's interesting. One of the big raging debates we've had out there is, "Oh I wish I had a cloud concierge." And it's like well, it's not a utility, and therefore, I could stand up something in my data center or I could put a Paz in my environment or there's so many layers in the stack and so much nuance that it's the paradox of choice I think that most people have. So, maybe walk us through a customer. When do they tend to come to you, what are some of those patterns, and what are the things that really help get accelerated when they use a platform like yours? >> So, some of the things that people think about are they have workloads that they want to move maybe they want to exit a data center, or what really happens commonly is there's a new leader in town. New CIO comes in, "We're going to have a cloud-first strategy." And we're not opposed to that. The biggest principle for us is do you understand why you're doing, and whether this is the right time, the when? Because if you don't do the right thing at the right time for the right reason there's a hole in your strategy. And so what we look at is, okay what is it that you're trying to move or change or transform, What are the things that are interesting to you or strategic, and then let's look at putting those things together. Now when you define what you need, you shouldn't define what you need in terms of where you're going, right. I don't decide my venue based on the airline I want to get on, I decide I need to be in Vegas for this conference at this time, and then I see the airline that can get me there on time for the best price, hopefully. And we take that same approach when it comes to helping customers. Let's talk about what you need in a vendor agnostic way that's divorced from the options in the market. Because your needs are not impacted by Amazon or Azure or HPE or Dell. And so then, after we define your expectations and your requirements let's map those to the things that you're curious about, or that your leadership says are strategic, and then let's make sure that we understand what we call the concept of logical equivalence. The spirit of your requirement may be called x in one provider and y in a different one, are they really the same as a tomato to-mah-to, or are they really two different types of, excuse me, services or entities altogether? So let's, let's evaluate then, how well your needs are met by these different vendors. Is it just a semantics issue or are these really two different things? Yes, they're both different types of block storage but the requirements are different. The latency is different, the redundancy is different, the pricing is certainly different. How close are these things to meeting the spirit of what you asked for? And the other parts too that I'll just offer that we see a lot is people are concerned overly about cost. How much does it cost? And we feel like the problem is not a problem of cost, it's a problem of value. People go to look for cost calculators but really what they need are value calculators, right? I take a Porsche and an F-150. An F-150 is a bigger vehicle but the Porsche is more expensive for a reason. There's a different experience than just space. And so the reality is people don't mind paying more if they know what they're paying for. Transparency is really the key. >> On that cost piece though, how much of the total equation do you look at? So I think about, my data center there's everything like the power, space, and all those pieces, if I go to a service provider, if it's my stuff, if I still have to manage it, versus some of the operational expenses. How much of kind of the, I hate to say total cost, but how much of that spread do you look at? >> We try to be pretty comprehensive, Stu. So, if you go to a public provider for example you're not paying for power but you're paying for a certainly hourly charge typically on an (mumbling) basis that accommodates a lot of the things that I'll say are platform or hypervisor and below. Now where I think a lot of the other people that are in this space maybe fall short, and our opinion is that they don't look at things above the hypervisor. If I move a workload to an AWS, they may have some great services I can take advantage of. The labor and the licensing and the other considerations that we consider to be carryover costs are things that I still need to accommodate. If I put a workload in Amazon, someone still needs to patch the OS, maybe manage the database, maybe audit security. Those are things that have labor and licensing and software considerations that we try to look at. So we try to be as comprehensive as possible, but we also look at SLA, we also look at security, so you may need to bring another manage services or consulting or software packages to fill those other gaps, so we try to be as holistic and comprehensive as possible. >> What other kind of patterns and data do you bring for CloudGenera? So thinking things either from a vertical standpoint or kind of size of company. I just think there's been certain movements in virtualization and containers and the like where there's been kind of that data and how do I understand what's going to make sense for me, so. Does CloudGenera get into any of that? >> We do get into some of that. So we try again not to force anything down someone's throat. We try to look at where you are, but also understand that there are some patterns. So for example, when we talk about different industry verticals it's very aligned to security and compliance for example. So we know that there are certain providers that are interesting but not ready for primetime because they don't have HIPAA, high tech, high trust, things that are typically relevant for the healthcare industry, so we're very quickly able to say this is something that may not be right for you just yet. Or if you have certain regional concerns, maybe you're looking at GDPR in Europe, you're looking at IRAP in Australia, we can, again, typically guide them to, this provider has some very interesting services but they don't have the security or the SLA that you need. So we try to do that to kind of whittle it down. The other thing that we're seeing though, Stu, is that honestly, many enterprises are biting off more than they can chew. They try to do too much at once, and so some of the things that we talked about, even off camera, is I would ask the question "Does the industry have a POT problem? "Are we trying to do too much at once?" And when I say POT I'm using that to represent the acronym of, to me, three pieces that we need to break this down to. Number one is parity, number two is optimization, and then number three is transformation. Many enterprises in our opinion are trying to eat an elephant with a spoon. They have no idea how to get there and they really don't understand what is too much in terms of the cost, and so when they're evaluating how much they can handle, how much change is too much, in terms of people, process, and technology, the thing to us is, what does parity look like? And that may mean a lift and shift in some cases, it may not, but you at least have to define what success looks like if you take what you're doing in your data center and move that somewhere else. But then, the middle ground is optimization. How do I take the spirit of what I'm doing, move it to that venue and then kind of clean it up or optimize it a little bit, and then once I'm there and I can evaluate the unintended consequences of change, what are the things that I didn't think about? The impacts to my people, the retraining, the other software package I need to put in place for monitoring and management, and so forth. Once I have a handle on that, then I can finally move from optimization to transformation, but that's not, that's not glamorous. That's not interesting. People don't want to talk about that. They want to go whole hog and change everything all at once and we get into trouble doing that. >> Bobby you've given me flashbacks. I worked in the storage industry for a decade, and migrations, you still kind of wake up in the middle of the night, screaming a little bit because it's always challenging, there's always all of those things to work through. You think you've gone through all of your checklists and then, oh wait, something didn't work. Database migrations, big discussion going on there. From Wikibon David Floyer has just been like, it's so many horror stories. People get there but it's, if you don't have to, maybe you don't want to, but there's so many reasons why you want to, so, I guess I want to highlight, we're not telling people not to change, and moving faster and getting on board, some modernization's a good thing, everywhere. You've got a virtualization environment, there's lots you can do today that we couldn't do two or four years ago. So, how do we get over this POT problem then? >> I think part of it is, so again going back to the moving analogy, if I'm going to move, Stu, it would be foolish for me to move without getting an estimate. And there are times when an estimate should be able to come in my house and tell me "It's actually better for you to sell that piano "than to try to move it, 'cause it's not worth it." I would want someone, if I were CIO in an enterprise today, to tell me, "Don't waste your time focusing on this, "this is really where you need to focus your time "because this is going to be the Pareto principle "that saves you the time and the money." The reality is bringing someone who's benefited from the land mines and the pitfalls, so in our opinion, bringing whether that's an SI, consultancy, a data service company like CloudGenera that's benefited from a lot of the things we've seen in the industry, don't hit things on your own that other people have stumbled on, right? Benefit from others' mistakes to allow you to take a look at the whole thing. So the challenge that I think we're having, Stu, is that we're proficient in talking about these things, there aren't enough use cases in terms of mature of cloud transformations to really look back at anecdotal data this comprehensive. We're still figuring a lot of this stuff out, and I know people don't want to hear that, but that's my opinion. >> So, Bobby, is there some place when I'm filling out these forms that I put in here's the skill set my team has, and a little alarm goes off and says, "Hey, time to do some retraining, some reskilling, "maybe bringing on some new people "to handle some of these new areas." How do you handle that side of it? >> I think part of it is honestly, and this may sound a little trite, I think people that are willing to raise their hand and say that we need some help or that "We don't have this all figured out," or that "There are some things that we need to bring in "a little bit of help to help us get that estimate "before we look to move everything," that's really the skill set you want to have. People that are not saying, "I'm the (mumbles) "juggernaut of everything cloud," because those people don't exist yet in my opinion. There are people that have pockets of expertise in things that they have really deep knowledge about, but we need to mix that with, I think, a healthy appreciation for the fact that there's still a lot of things that we're learning about together. The other part of that, Stu, is it's a community and it's a network. You may know storage migrations, I may know database migrations, let's put our heads together about how we can work together as an enterprise and make sure that we minimize impact to the users, because at the end of the day, that's really the challenge, is not to do a cool project, it's to deliver value to the business, and that's what I think we're loosing sight of with all this cool technology sometimes. >> Alright, so Bobby you've got over a thousand people using the tool. What are some of the big areas that people are like, "Oh wow, this is the stuff that's saving me "either lots of time, lots of money, saving my business, "and heck if I'm running the show, keeps my job"? >> I think storage is a big one. So people are oftentimes unaware that there are so many different ways that you can run storage in a given provider. So Amazon for example has four to six different ways you can just run block storage in their particular multi-tenant cloud, and people aren't aware of that. So there's a case that we did for a major bank. We showed them that a terabyte of storage in Amazon can run from 300 dollars up to 26 thousand dollars depending on the level or performance that you want to hit. Egress is another one, so what does the network behavior look like in those applications? Because people often will estimate the resources but not the traffic. What are the estimates to have a level of parity around security. So I don't have HIPAA compliance or SOP compliance in this particular provider. What is it going to take me to get to that level of parity that I need to have, because if I save money, Stu, but I have to spend all that on my lawyer because my data got accessed, then I've still got a problem, I've just kind of moved that down the road. So lots of things out there that I believe we're hiding in plain sight. Again, information is out there that we just don't have the filters to find. What I would say is a lot of people think that cloud is a commodity, we're not there yet. There're providers to this day, I can't give any names to protect the innocent, but the same service is literally triple in one provider what it costs in another one for almost exactly the same service. And there're examples like that that have been out there for years, we just can't see them. >> So, Bobby, last question, if somebody wanted to get started with CloudGenera, is there like a trial version, or how would somebody get involved? >> Yeah, so a couple things that are really interesting. So there's a try now button on our website that lets you kind of answer a few questions and actually get a sample mini-assessment, download a sample report, and actually see the type of analysis that we provide, number one. Number two, CloudGenera is a software company but also a services company. If you want to purchase the software, great, and we actually have trials that we can set up for you to do that. We also do what we call proofs of value. If you want to engage our team to come in and do five to ten applications to see how those might look with our analysis, and then they go at scale and look at your whole CMDB. We want to make sure we're meeting the needs of the business and not trying to boil the ocean if they're not ready for that yet. >> Bobby Allen, CTO and chief evangelist to CloudGenerate, thanks so much for joining me. So much happening in the cloud world. Be sure to check out thecube.net for all of our coverage, as well as wikibon.com for all the research. Thanks for watching theCUBE, I'm Stu Miniman.

>> Announcer: Live, from San Francisco celebrating 10 years of high-tech coverage it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2019. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, this is theCUBE two stages, three days of coverage, our tenth year here at the VMworld show. I'm Stu Miniman and my co-host for this segment is Bobby Allan. And welcome back, two of our CUBE alumni. >> How are you? >> As I said back in 2010 we didn't even know what a CUBE alumni was. People were trying to figure out what we're doing but now we have thousands of them and both of these gentlemen have been on the program, a few times. >> Thanks for having us back. >> You're welcome. So, first, over we have Ajay Patel, who I believe was doing another filming evening with our crew-- >> Absolutely >> Earlier today. >> The Accenture Innovation Center. >> Ah, excellent. Beautiful building Accenture has here in San Francisco. >> Ajay: Beautiful (mumbles) >> One of the other benefits of being back in San Francisco is we brought in people and it's really easy to get in and out and do other things in the Valley. But Ajay is the senior vice president and general manager of the cloud provider software business unit inside VMware. And one of his partners is Rackspace. We have Peter FitzGibbon who is the vice president of Product Alliances, with for mentioned Rackspace. >> Yeah, super to be back in San Francisco. It's a great change from Vegas. >> Yeah, you know, there is some debate in the community of course it's a little more expensive here in San Francisco and there are other logistic challenges. We're excited to be back here and yeah, really excited to be talking with both of you. Peter, let's start, you know Rackspace has had a long, long partnership with VMware. When I remember back to like VMware Environments Hosted it's like, Rackspace was the one with the lion's share in that market. And, you know, Rackspace has gone through a lot of changes in the last 10 years that we've been doing this coverage. When I think about multi cloud, all of these environments you've got a nice perspective on this and lots of customers you've worked with. So, give us the update on what you're hearing from customers and your relationship with VMware. >> Yeah, so, 20-year history with VMware that we're very proud of. I would say it's almost being re-birthed in the last two years though. Two years ago, we were one of the first VMware Cloud Verified partners. We launched our VMware Cloud VMware Cloud Foundation Private Cloud. We added that about six months later in customer data centers. We're now one of the major partners of VMware Cloud AWS >> Ajay: VMware Cloud AWS yep. >> And that's one of the areas that we're continuing to expand upon. We announced some new services this week, specifically around VMware Cloud AWS or support of HDX, both for migrations for ongoing support as well as a number of, what we call Rackspace service blocks. Which are additional manage services that we are applying, specifically for VMware Cloud and AWS. So, exciting times at Rackspace and VMware continues to be a look, a major part of our portfolio. >> Ajay: And thank you for all the support, Peter. >> Yeah, so Ajay, bring us up to speed of what's happening in your space you know, a lot of attention gets paid, you know Every time, you know, I saw Sanjay Poon, up on stage at the Goolge clould event, and of course the AWS partnership has been one of the biggest stories in all of tech, for the last couple of years. And that's been extending to, you know first it was like, wait, you know Rackspace has data centers and many of your other partners have data centers, but how did these all, play together and how does the VMware software pull them all together. >> So Stu, I think, you and I have been talking about this world of hybrid multi and we've been arguing, whether it's just a transitionary stage, or here to stay. Hopefully that debate's over, right? Hybrid's a new reality, multi cloud's a new reality and we talk about these hyper scales but you know, Rackspace and many of my VCP partners they've been longstanding in this journey with us. I don't know if you caught Pat's keynote? We demonstrated, that we have over 10 000 data centers through our VCPP network and Rackspace being one of our top 10 partners. So you start, to start seeing this mix of VMware everywhere. Whether it's trough our service provider cloud the customer manage cloud or even a hyper scale VMware cloud. You now have the ubiquitous VMware infrastructure to play with. >> At some point it's just cloud. (chattering) >> That is a great point, when I talk to customers most of them, they have a cloud strategy it's usually not a hybrid or a multi or all these things. Here's the nuance I want to, you know, ask for a second then I definitely want Bobby to jump in with what he's been talking to customers about. You know, hybrid cloud is a reality because customers have their own data centers and they have public cloud. The ideal of multi cloud, customers have multiple clouds, but, you know, one of the definitions I put out there is, multi cloud exists when the multi cloud solution is more valuable than the sum of the pieces. And I'm not sure that we're quite there yet. I think we're starting to move down that path. But what are you both seeing? And does that resonate with what you see today? >> Yeah like, all of our customers have workloads in multiple locations and trying to provide the assessments of where to put the right workloads at the right time is one of the key values that we hold dear. And before we ever talk about where we're going to but a workload we assess whether, what our clients environments is and determine, maybe this is an AWS workload maybe this is a WMS workload maybe this workload really belongs in the data center for, due to laws of the lands laws of gravity and physics. >> And I think, what's happening, really is any application, typically choosing a platform or the cloud service that's driving the decision. Collectively what ends up happening because of that, you are in multiple clouds. So, I think what's it's a result of the reality that applications are driving location and platform choices and the way to drive consistency is trying to pick a few common things whether it's kubernetes as a platform or VMware, right? Those are a way to, kind of, unify these desperate choices that are made individually. That are collectively making each of our customers multi cloud, right? >> Ajay, I want to piggyback on that because you talked about the applications driving a lot of the choices, when applications teams in my experience are, kind of, making the choices they don't care about a centralized strategy and obviously, this very powerful partnership can support multiple places and ways around your workloads. How do you lead the witness, a little bit towards simplification and just because you can do it doesn't mean you should do it. >> Yes, so I think what's happening from our perspective is depending on which side of the IT house you're at if you're part of the core IT that's running and maintaining mission critical systems you're really looking for something that's reliable, performance scalable, secure. And you, maybe, looking at a hardware refresher looking at your data center strategy and you're looking to migrate that workload. You're not really looking to re-change the app just because it's cool. >> Bobby: Right. >> If you're part of digital transformation effort you're looking to say, okay how do I get something out there quickly? >> Bobby: Right. >> How do I integrate on the average my data and application assets while leveraging cloud services? >> Bobby: Right. So, we're seeing this tension in some ways where the, kind of, net new is really pushing the envelope of cloud with self service elasticity, new capability while as the old guard is like I got to keep my running business, running keep it secure. And how do you bridge these two worlds and bring them together? We call it DevOps and, you know, ITA and the traditional, kind of new developer. Reality is, you're trying to bring the two worlds on a common platform. Whether it's VM's or containers and so the exciting part for us is, how do we unify? How do we deliver this experience and give them the choice, where it makes more sense. And blur the lines between public and private. Those are just locations and makes more sense for your customer or your application that you can drive. >> Bobby: Right, excellent. >> We find ourselves in those conversations, all the time trying to bridge two sides of the equation at a customer and trying to get them together on a uniformed strategy and weighing the pros and cons of different locations or different workloads. So, it's not easy, it's not a challenge of course. >> Peter, I'd love you to bring us inside some of those VMware on AWS customers because, you know, some of the first customers I talked to, it was, you know, I'm a VMware shop and there's a part of your group that's like oh my gosh, I can't change and this was a driver saying hey, you don't need to, we can bring you along. But, the value, once again needs to be Oh hey, I need to do some innovative things I want to be able to access some of those cool amazing services that, you know everybody is providing on a daily basis. So, you know, are you seeing that progression are there any interesting use cases that are coming out? >> Progression is the word, we could call it progressive transformation inside Rackspace. Like, you're a VMware customer let's bring you ion the journey towards public cloud. And let's help you leverage those address services. So, we find ourselves in a great position where a very large number of engineers, that support our native AWS workloads, we've brought those two groups together from our VMware expertise and address expertise. So when a customer lands on a VMware address I consider it a failure, if they haven't transformed part of the application in three months. If they're not really consuming those native AWS services. And that's what we really try inject. It's like, get our AWS engineers looking at those workloads let's start consuming those native services and that's what we're finding really exciting about how customers are starting to adopt and starting to plug and play into some of those services. >> Oh I look at it, as you know, you'll see a team Sanjay called it M&MS, migrate and modernize but a part of the migrate is often modernize your infrastructure first by putting on a modern cloud platform. And then modernize your application using cloud services. How it says, it's M-M and M, right, to follow through because it's not just about lifting and shifting keeping the old crap as it is. You got to really start to look at how do you drive innovation drive your Cube to a better place. So that you can operate it more affectively and then modernize for application results. And your service blocks, are really catered to helping that customers. So you can talk a little bit about how they're building the services that compliment our offer. >> Yeah, so our service blocks is... In the past, we offered them one big block manage service to a customer. We realized, let's decompose that and offer the customer what they need at a specific point in time. So we, think about Lego blocks, where at some point you may need, just some support or at some point you might need some architectural services and design and other times you might say cost optimization. That sort of stuff. So over time, we're adding on these Lego blocks if you will, to add a customer, to give them what they need at the point they need it, and not more. So, it's an exciting concept that every month, we're adding more services. We launched a Rackspace manage security service block today specifically for VMware cloud. So, we continue to add these and provide incremental value. >> I want to ask you a little bit of a controversial question. There's a saying, pioneers take the arrows but settlers take the land. >> Right >> So, if I'm a technology leader how do I embrace all this newness without getting shot, partnering with your firms. >> So, you know, we always say lock-ins bad but reality is, we always choose to reject technology platforms. And if you're a VMware customer I hate to say it, you're running on VMware infrastructure you have VMware ecosystem, you have VMware run books you have VMware partners, managing your on-prem assets what if I could you a path forward on any cloud of your choice without having to change any of your day-tot-day operation while leveraging the innovation future. What is the safest path for you, Mr Customer? And so, in this world, you can think of us being laggard in some sense. Because we're not pushing them to a single destination. We're giving them that choice, leveraging the strength. I think the innovative part that we've done today has really brought containers and VM'S in a single solution. We talked about containers killing VM'S two years ago, right? You know, VMware was getting trouble with docker VMware was going to be trouble with Openstack. Where are those two companies today and where is VMware? It's about simplifying for the customer a common solution. And we're taking those choices away and making this easy. Giving partners who can help them on their journey. So, I would say we're the safer choice. >> Okay >> That will be my response. >> Peter, we're not going to ask you about Openstack. (Giggles) >> I'm really back to VMware, it's working progress. (Giggles) >> Interesting point, the settlers right? At this point VMSware and AWS is two years old I think that first year, what was definitely some pioneers our there. But now I think we're really in there where the settlers are coming on and we're seeing large-scale adoption in the platform and now that VMware is offering more and more services, natively we can add more those managed services and help those customers really transform and not worry about the underlying IS that's rock-solid at this point. >> Peter, I would like you to get into it a little bit, kind of, the containerization and the kubernetes, you know, Docker, obviously a lot of hype, but containerization that's hugely important, you know a lot of the keynote this morning was talking about cloud native. I talked to lots of customers, you know there's some that, yes, they will want the VMware journey but many of them say, well, If I'm going to cloud I can just use containers. Why would I have the overhead of VM's? when cloud founders was originally created it was not for that type of environment. So where does that fit into, you know your world containers? >> Yeah, we actually launched some more services on that today as well, some more professional services and manage services, so safely around advanced kubernetes support, across all our platforms so this isn't just a VMware announcement this is on AWS, Microsoft, Badger and Google. So, another exciting progression, or hybrid could story and making investments in those resources to deliver kubernetes. We also launched a cloud native service block today, as well, that is really giving customers access to deep engineering skills and giving them cloud reliability engineers that can help them transform their workloads and get them ready for the cloud. >> I think, for us, if you... Project (mumbles) sorry tan zoo as a solution, and project pacific. Our two marquee announcements we made this week and if you look at the way we're focusing on the bull run manage aspects of the full life cycle and our active participation in the kubernetes community we're starting the beginnings of what I felt, like Java in 2000 when I was at BA, right? Where Weblogic and Java was the runtime for rolling and building new apps. Kubernetes and containers are the new runtime for building distributed apps across Cal platforms. And we're in this early journey and we are uniquely in opposition with the combination of pivotal for build. With project Pacific we're bringing containers into V&V-sphere, so VM's and containers become first class. Trough your point, we demonstrated eight percent performance improvement over bare metal on a V-sphere container based solution. Starting to engineer, based on a key scheduling work that we do in the kernel and in the hypervisor we're driving that deep into the kubernetes platform into the core platform itself. And then manage is going to be the new interesting bit. What is that control panel that everyone is going to fight over? And the manage services partner can help them choose. So, I think the battleground is more and more going to manage I think we secured our base with the runtime. And the bill will be about choice. (Mumbles) >> And Tan zoo is music to our ears we can now, again, focus on what's the additional manage services and service-- >> How do you help customers build apps? And change the engineering culture is what you provide. We just give you the runtime across any of these clouds. >> We want to help everyone, transform applications also transform the culture and how they do their business all that rapport-- >> Engineering transformation is a big one. Sajay transformation we talked about, internally for us VMware, same with our customers. You got to change the mindset of how you build the applications. In this container service based architecture >> Agree, agree >> What else is keeping folks up at night? That you talk to? Love to know that, just hot tail. >> Nothing keeps me up at night it's an exciting world we live in so loaded question, what excites me? What excites me is the progression, that VMware is making and the announcement Lydon video and GPU access link I think, early next year. I think that can be another wave of VMC adoptions. So, not keep me up at night but keep me interesting and excited. >> I think to that point I can build on what Pat said about tech for good, I mean we have a joined customer feeding America, right? We're now taking technology and making it available so that, you know, the 60 000 plus distribution centers they have, are up all the time. They're not even worried about infrastructure. They can focus on feeding the cause which is, I think 47 million people being fed. It's scary, right? >> Well, we want to bring it back to the organization of the discussion, you said you're helping customers with because we are worried you know, about how racking, stacking, configuring how doing all of those things, you know how do you help them? I talked to a number of customers at this show and they said look, my roles in my organization is still hardware to find And it's tough to move into a software role but if I want to get into the6 tech for good I need to be able to uplift my skills uplift my organizations, yeah. >> It's difficult, right? Organizational changes differ for every company but as part of the digital transformation there is also organizational transformation so we're having customers think about what is the progression form a VMware administrator to a DevOps-- >> Or cloud, I bet. (Giggles) >> It's not easy, it's your short answer on that. >> I think for us, is really starting to drive the cultural chance providing the tools and bring the self service in where they can be a coach, right? Be the trailblazer, who can come in and help change your organization. Teach them how to do it right. Not everyone will get there, hopefully bulk of the organization can shift right. >> Peter, I want to give you the final word you know, your partners and customers to understand. Take aways from VMware 2019. >> Yeah, it's great to be here, as usual thanks for having us. I think, Tan Zoo is really exciting. The progression that we're making with adding service blocks on top of VMware and AWS and or other hybrid cloud announcements. So, great to be here, but the Tan Zoo is kind of the story of the show. >> For me, it's a VMware is here to stay. We want to be, be have been, your strategic partner for the last decade. We're here to stay for the next decade. We're going to help you solve these hard complex problems and give you the choice you need. Across a broader ecosystem of partners and solutions. so, very excited to be here and to deliver that value. >> And Peter, thank you so much for joining us again, Bobby Allen, thank you for co-hosting. I'm Stu Miniman and as always thank you for watching theCUBE.

live from San Francisco celebrating ten years of high-tech coverage it's the cube covering vmworld 2019 brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners welcome to day two of the cubes coverage of VMworld 2019 double vowels two sets going on on our other set day Volante and John Fourier they're talking to Michael Dell they're talking to passenger but over here we know where the hot action is talking about even Steve Young you know the Hall of Fame quarterback from the 49ers knows what hyper-converged infrastructure is and they're from well I'm excited to welcome back to the program Chad Dunn who is the vice president of product management and hyper-converged infrastructure for Delly MC Chad great to see you great to be back soon and also I want to also welcome my guest host for this segment who is Bobby Allen coming up to us from Charlotte North Carolina a cube alum now flipping the desk and gonna be asking some questions with me so Chad well my first question is why did you put me up against Michael and Pat well because we knew you could take it you know some people would be like oh that's the other Chad even but Ron you know HCI you know still a big story it's a big piece of what goes into VMware's vfc yeah story there you know VMware's talking about there's 20,000 deployments that they have a v san and i believe you might know who the number one partner is in the number one solution set out of those 20 thousands I think I might and I think that's also the leading product in terms of volume and the leading product in terms of revenue in the hyper-converged market as a blast so I will give you a second you know give us some of the you know you know the the drum beat the chest thumping of how the VX RL product line and and your portfolio is doing the the portfolio is doing great and the integration of V CF on VX rail is just throwing gasoline on to the fire in terms of adoption you know we see hyper-converged now mainstream moving into the data center mission-critical applications are being run on it infrastructure as a service right alongside container as a service so a few things that we announced this week in addition to you know the latest update of VCF on rail we added fibre channel 2 to V X rail a move that people are very is very polarizing move for people to chat why we have people who continue to love their primary storage arrays that are fiber channel connected and very often we're selling to someone who's refreshing servers but they have life left on the the array they want to preserve it they want to migrate data so they demanded fiber channel we gave them fiber right so if I understand this though it's that I've seen certain HD eyes where there's like you know a faucet on the side that I can plug in I scuzzy now you're just saying there's that it's not like you haven't a V X rail that is you know fiber dole baked in through and through so there's a server architect there's still v Santa at the core of VX rail but we give you the option now attaching primary storage either in the context of VCF or or in standalone other big news is we've recently refreshed a product line to the next generation of Xeon processor the cascade Lake version that gives us about a 28 to 30 percent performance increase and Intel opt in cache drives so there are lots of hardware updates along with software updates that that accelerate our LCM or lifecycle management process so Chad thank you for the update but I've got a different question I want to go in a different direction I talk to customers all the time cxos what would you tell the ciock so who's who's scared to invest more in the data center because public cloud seems like the one is in its sales but obviously Dell has a story to tell how do you help them defend their their turf well III I don't think they should get territorial about that every customer that I engaged with has a hybrid cloud strategy and very often it's more than one public cloud there's always a champion challenger relationship right we as CX know you want to keep your vendors honest correct right so you may have multiple public clouds you may have multiple infrastructure providers but VMware and in VCF on the X rail can be that common thread between the two so I can use tools like VMware Cloud Health to determine where it makes sense to run the workload I think very seamlessly move that workload from a VCF on VX rail deployment into a public cloud when it makes sense I can bring it back when it makes sense I can move it to Amazon to Azure to Google to any one of the VMware cloud providers and really hedge my bets right in terms of where it's best to run that workload so we encourage public cloud are you seeing customers actually take advantage of those capabilities yet or is it something they're still kind of waiting to see how that develops in terms of hybrid multi-cloud we see customers taking advantage of it right away so I'll give you an example I have a large retail customer right now and they've got about 900 different workloads that are existing virtual machines so they're looking at how they either refactor those into cloud native and move them into the cloud or whether they rationalize some of those away which is sort of a natural process with the Dell technologies cloud platform which is based on VCF on the X rail they can effectively put off that decision and they can move those workloads into the public cloud as virtual machines and start to enjoy those economics while they decide which ones to refactor while they decide which ones to rationalize away yeah so chata tell tech world we talked a bunch about how I have you know V X rel is the underpinning for the VMware cloud on Dell EMC right here at the show you know we talk a lot about cloud and even you know kubernetes was mentioned just a few times a couple of times in the keynote there was some guy in the audience you know Hootin Hollerin about some of that but you know help us you know draw the line you know where your customers today what are they starting to do and you know where does that put this portfolio extend to in the future great well first of all I'm gonna do a session tomorrow morning at 9:30 and we're gonna be talking about the business aspect of containers of service and kubernetes to customers so a good session to check out if if the viewers can but from our perspective we see customers at different points in that journey toward container as a service or cloud native on their premises or in a hybrid cloud scenario and it's funny one of the slides that I'll do tomorrow says that about 71 percent of customers are spending their budgets on operating their infrastructures and services are traditional VMs when they want to be able to reinvest some of that money and move to cloud native now this is almost the exact same slide and same percentage that we use you know five six eight years ago to talk about keeping the lights on with 70 percent of IT budgets it was 8020 back then so it's the exact same dynamic we're seeing it really be mainstreamed now every dtw or EMC world that I would go to I would always ask how much of your workload is cloud native they would always say 1% how much is it going to be in five years they say we have no idea now they're telling us about what those projects are and and they're rapidly adopting them but the nice thing about the VCF on rail is you can create workload domains that are traditional infrastructure as a service with virtual machines but you can also spin up container as a service workload domain with d KS and NS xt and so as you start to refactor those applications and there's that balance changes you simply increase the number and the size of your cloud native workload domains and you shrink your infrastructure as a service so you're in an ideal spot to be able to run virtual infrastructure workload domains virtual desktop workload domains cloud native workload domains consistent operating model across-the-board consistent hardware layer which is VX rail so you get those economics and as your business demands change you as an IT operator are able to serve those DevOps organizations within your company because if you're not providing them a kubernetes dial-tone they're gonna find it right and you're gonna see shadow IT spring up and they're gonna be in the public cloud before you know what happens so Chad want one of the things that I'm curious about so this is a software conference obviously right we're talking about a lot of the goodness that's hypervisor and above yep what would you say to the person who says doesn't matter what sort of hardware I'm running is that a commodity what is Dells differentiate a value in this software-defined world if I wanted to be a smart aleck I would tell you to look at some of the other hyper-converged competitors who went software only and then go take a look at their market cap but if I wanted to be serious I would say that hardware really does matter and when you look at you know how we need to lifecycle manage that infrastructure and make it seamless and effortless for the customer it means that you need to think about that hardware layer so if I look inside a PowerEdge server for example there are between nine and twelve different programmable parts from BIOS to HBAs to drive firmware backplane power supply you name it all those things have dependencies on the software drivers that you use being able to look at that all in context and be able to update that all at once so users don't have to worry about the bits and bytes of drivers and and firmware compatibility really saves them money saves them time and effort and lets them concentrate on things they're gonna differentiate their business and we see customers making that switch daily now and understanding that they can now redeploy some of that cost and resources toward things that are more differentiated like you know moving to cloud native so Chad what about the folks that have a they've got a Dell footprint they've got some other competitors and that how do you help them where there may be in the midst of changing over right they've got some other manufacturers that provided hardware before some of that story may not be as consistent so what can they do when they may be in the midst of a change over so you really need to look at what that operating expense savings is gonna be so we we certainly want to get as much life out of that existing infrastructure as we can and then provide migration fibre channel and and IP attached storage is an example of that right where people are not necessarily ready to move away from those arrays so say great right continue to leverage those assets but also if it's an existing VC on infrastructure based on bare metal servers the migration from one VC on environment to another is a pretty seamless one right because you preserve that storage policy based management as you make the migration so you know it typically is a pretty easy migration for customers to move on to hyper conversion they think and obviously we'll provide whatever professional services are necessary right if you look it by the way and I'll plug VMware since I'm at at VMworld if you look at VMware HDX if we're doing migration across these environments either to or from a public cloud or from a legacy environment to a next-generation HCI environment that's one of the coolest tools out there for doing that migration and preserving all the policies security and Software Defined Networking policies and micro segmentation from one environment to the other so really impressed with with what VMware has done there yeah definitely a theme we've heard it this show is you know VMware talk to their install base and says oh my gosh you look at all these cloud native things out there and kubernetes is super hard so you know we're gonna build it enable it in there um when I've looked at the you know Dell and VMware family there's been a few different kubernetes options out there help gives a little clarity where that fits into your world and you know where we are today where it's going kind of yeah future yeah there has been a sort of a dichotomy of you know cloud native ins inside VMware and cloud native inside pivotal for example and we've worked with with both of those organizations in fact we've been very successful with what platform and container as a service on the x rail going to market with pivotal but now that PKS is moving into VMware and really all of pivotal is moving into VMware it sort of unifies that strategy and if you look at the acquisitions that VMware is making with hep tio and others and actually embedding kubernetes into ESX I I mean that's a game changer an absolutely game-changer so now we have all of the the software assets to you know build run and manage cloud native were closed all within the VMware portfolio now the great thing about VX rail is we inherit all that work natively and build that natively into our hyper-converged platform so you know we sort of get that for free so you know not only can we now be the the leading hyper-converged infrastructure player for infrastructure as a service of traditional VMs we now can expand that and be the number one player in the new container world and you know as you saw with the the performance discussion that Pat had yesterday they actually see these things running faster in a virtualized ESXi environment than we do on bare metal only single digits but that's pretty impressive right it's very counter intuitive right so we're really happy to be able to take advantage of that and we have still have the pivotal labs team which really gets engaged with these customers to make it more transformational in terms of how they develop and how they deliver applications to their end users and by the way I mean not to preview something that's pretty far down the road we're looking at how we change up how we deliver software updates in VX rail and how we architect the software to make it a continuous integration continuous delivery pipeline because we need to make the infrastructure more intelligent and more agile and products like VX rail ace which we just announced a dtw does exactly that right it gives us the ability to pull back telemetry from VX rail apply machine learning and in an artificial intelligence to it in our own cloud and then push that data back out to our VX rail users to Auto remediating problems so the infrastructure is going to get more agile and it's going to get more intelligent as we go yeah um we've been talking a bit about some of the future stuff before we go but want to bring back to you know one of the core things that we wanted to do in this space it was simplification how do we make it super easy when I talk to most people that do HCI it's like you know where is that it's like I don't know it got installed and I've never touched it since then my understanding you're doing some things even on the management side to make things even easier there's some virtual reality in there too no we like to think everything is real reality yeah we are doing things to to even further simplify our lifecycle management process to make that that infrastructure something that that operators don't need to worry about so we're now doing pre staging of updates future scheduling of updates pause and resume of updates to fit within customers maintenance windows more effectively we'll be doing updates that are delivered via the cloud through the ACE platform coming up in in a release that's that's about to ship so again the idea is to you know simultaneously make the the product more flexible but maintain the simplicity because as I said we've moved into these core data center deployments where people are buying you know six hundred eight hundred thousand units at a time and deploying its scale and they expect flexibility you know all the flexibility you would get with an ESXi server with all the simplification and and day 2 operations that you get from HDI so we're in a constant state of trying to balance those two things and optimize for both use cases and by the way at the same time software-defined networking containers are coming at us at light speed the VMware has acquired more more companies in the last three months and then I can name I can name them all so it's a very fast-moving space yeah I don't think I can keep over the last week all right Bobby final question I guess quick sound bite what should people know about VMware cloud on Dale that they don't know VMware cloud on Dell EMC formerly project to mention right the extension of the MC on the customer premises I think this is incredibly strategic for us and for VMware because it gives you that cloud consumption model on-premises in an operating expense model so just into two initial access with that beta customers are turned up and the feedback has been extremely positive vmware dell technologies cloud platform which is VCF on VX rail really off to the races on that right we've had huge uptake in that we're seeing deals of literally hundreds of nodes at a time data centers at a time are consuming this deploying it we're demoing it here at the show if you go to the nvidia booth all the VDI demos are being run on VCF on VX rail that's sitting over in a hotel across the street it's a very hot hotel room cuz we get a lot of GPUs in those but it's also something that users can actually go see it live and working nice alright and just a quick tip for you if you haven't made it to VM world or even if you came here Chad mentioned he's doing a session this week they do make all of those available to people out there and of course all of our content is always available on the cube net Chad Dunn always great to catch up with you Bobby Allen thanks so much for joining me for this segment and my audience as always thanks for watching the Q

>> From Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Massachusetts, if the queue covering Vita Winter warmer, twenty nineteen brought to you by Silicon Angle media. >> Hi, I'm stew Minutemen. And this is the Cube Worldwide Leader and live tech coverage. >> We're on the ground here at the V Tug winter warmer, and it is twenty nineteen. It's actually, the thirteenth year of this event was one of the original, if not the original Veum, where user groups covers virtual ization, cloud computing and even Mohr, always great to be able to get back to the community, get some good interviews and no better person helped me start with my first interview at a show of the year. But good friend of the program, Keith Towns and he is the CTO advisor. And he's also now a slew front architect with the M. Where Keith. Thanks for joining >> us. Thanks for having me on the cute. >> Yeah. So, Keith, I mean, you were host of our program for a number of years. You're now, you know, back working on the vendor side. But you know, you know this community. You know what I always say in my career, There, certain communities, an ecosystem where there's just love to be a part of it. And the virtual ization group. You know, I've been part of it for a long time. You know, Veum, wear and beyond, though, you know people that you know, they get excited, They geek out on the technology and they love to share. And that's why we come to events like this. >> Yeah, it is amazing. Just, you know, the every every show is getting smaller, but maybe with the session of a Ws re event, but I don't think the intensity has shrunk at all. You get around friends, you know, we're just at a desk and one of the ten days, actually, how did I get a job doing X? And the community was like, Oh, you just talk to the people at this table. So it is. It is a great, great commute. >> Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic you talk about. You know, we've seen the huge growth in Meetups in user groups and regional shows. You know, vm Where does Veum World but the VM world being where forums around the globe. I'm sure you probably have to go for a few of those they've been doing well. I'm right back in my emcee Daisy M. C. Did a number of those. So we see you. Amazon Reinvent is growing, but oh, my God, they're regional shows are ridiculous. I I've said some of those regional shows either different communities or different localities can actually be even better than some of the big shows on. You know, we love Keith. We're happy to welcome you here to the home of the NFC Championship. New England Patriots ur >> First off, Congratulations. The wait went a little better for you to bare sand and say, You know what? Tom Brady won't play forever, so enjoy it. This is amazing backdrop through him. Little finish that you've not involved. Invited me to a veto before now. >> Oh. Oh, I'm sorry, Keith. It's It's a community thing that absolutely got to come. Absolutely. I've had friends. Most of them. It is local. I'm talking to users from Maine and Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut and like so you gave a keynote this morning and you didn't True fashion. You did a block post about reality check leading in, and I thought it was a great way for us to start is, You know, there's so much change in the industry, uh, those of us that are technologies that you know, we're super excited because there's so much new stuff. It's not like Oh, jeez, you know, twenty nineteen is probably going to be just like twenty eighteen. It's like, Oh, my gosh, what did I do in twenty eighteen? What do I have to change? How do I keep up? How do I manage it? I would love to get your viewpoint. You know what's going on with Keith? And you're talking about a lot of users, so you know how help share, You know, what is the reality? Check that everybody's going >> to know. We're talking about a pre recording in the banter. Just, you know, whether it's, you know, Vienna where we're hip Theo and all the stuff that Casey Kelsey Hightower is going out with Cooper Netease. Then as you spent spent out to serve earless, uh, infrastructures Cole scripting it centre. There's much to learn that you're a bit overwhelmed and we're seeing this out. You know, as I'm talking to executive CTO CEOs, VP of infrastructure, they're filling the same kind of excitement at the same time. Overwhelmed this Like what? What's what's really You know, we had the big cloud movements over a few years ago where I think we're at the height cycle where organizations are starting to understand that. You know, Cloud isn't the destination is part of a strategy, and everyone seems to be in the throes of figuring out what that means for us. We're just on the crowd chat, talking about multi Cloud and the drivers around. Multi Cloud. You guys did a great job hosting that cloud shit chat, nothing. We saw the gambit off where people are. You know, uh, there's not really a business rationality people who are really in the throes of trying to figure it out. >> Yeah, actually, I love to comment friend of ours that we've had on the program before, Bobby Allen from Cloud General said when he's working with companies, if they ask for a three year strategy plan, he said, I will not do it unless we guarantee that we will go revisit it every six months because I looked back. You know, Clay Christensen, you no way talks about strategy is strategy is a point in time thing, not something that you write it in stone. I've been saying for a couple of years cloud strategies that companies today is, they wrote it in ink and the ink still drying. And, you know, you're probably going to need toe, you know, go through it and change it because it is changing fast and therefore, you know, huge. Out I started Deploy something. Oh, wait, what about the next thing? Or there's some new practice or something to do it. So it is challenging because I need to run my business. Today. I got to set my budget for the year, usually, um and it's I need to be agile. But, you know, I can't constantly be tearing everything up and you're not going to be throwing it out or re training and skills. I mean, there's so many challenges. >> So still, you might remember when when I was on the other side of the the table. I, uh it was meant at somewhat of a D that Veum where moves at the speed of the aisle, and it was picked up as Maury compliment. But >> it was a >> big I'll be honest that it was a dig. And what I've learned the past few months is that Veum, where has to move at the speed of the CIA, is no longer and It's not just being wherever the community has and the CIA always faced with that we could do a few years ago. A cloud strategy, and that thing can sit on the desk for a year, and it would still be valid. But the bobbies point, if you're going to do a strategy and three year strategy, got to revisit that every six months and this agility that were not accustomed to previously in the industry, we have to now become super agile and figure out how do we keep the lights on and innovate at the pace That business, these witches? Pretty good chance. >> Yeah, it's attorney were beginning the year I made a comment personally said, You know, I'm not a big believer in, you know, setting. You know, Resolutions. Mohr. You know, let's set goals Your runner, I do some biking and it's like, Okay, you know, I've got a big race I want to do this year. I'm gonna work myself, you know, towards that goal and raise the money. You've got a certain target and something that you could do over the year. It's and there's no way that you do that, cos you know they've got goals that they need to accomplish and business. And it's great to say, Oh, well, we need to be more efficient. We need to do some down something different. But, you know, reality is, you know, it's not just digital transformation of modernizing. It was, you know. Oh, okay. Do I need to transform my backup? You know, data protection, you know, huge activity going on in the marketplace right now, you know? So, what >> is sixty million noon investment in one >> week? Exactly. You know, the wave of hyper convergence is one that really changed a lot of architectures and had people change. You know, we've talked cloud computing. They're what are some of the, You know, some of the big, you know, movements that you see, you know, will you? Tracking the industry? It was kind of the the intel refunds for a cycle, and, you know, Oh, well, it's the next version of Microsoft or, you know, Veum, where operating system would be one of those big, you know, kind of ticked. Talks of what? What are some of the big commonalities that you're seeing Al? So they're actually moving people to >> new things without a doubt. There is one conversation that customers cannot get the enough of. And I had Ah, on my little vlog. I had game being from Vienna, where V P off the Storch and Business availability unit and I challenged her on the via Where? Vision around this. But customers cannot get enough of having a conversation around data. What they What do they do with data? And how does a move data? How did they get compute closest to data? How did we get data they're closest to? They're re sources. We talked about it on the multi cloud conversation, but by far conversations are around. Howto they extract value from data had really protect data, and howto they make sure their compliant with the data is something that that's driving a lot of innovation and a lot of conversation. A lot of interest. >> Yeah, Keith, it's a great one. When I look at you know, our research team, that wicked bond data is that the center of everything. In many ways, the failings of big data was talking about, You know, the challenges. I have infrastructure. No, the growth and the variety and blah, blah, blah and everything that's not what important to the business they don't care about, You know, it's like, Oh, well, there's a storage problem in a network problem. It's the business says there's data, you know? Do I protect my bird business to make sure that I'm not a risk? You know, all the things like DDP are coming And can I livered value? Do I Can I get new lines of business? Can I generate revenue out of that? And I've seen early signs that we've learned this whole, You know, a I m l movement. You know, data, Really? At the center. All right, we've seen enough storage. We went from talking about storing data to about, you know, that data ecosystem, Andi, even computing and I ot data where data needs to be, how I work it. Absolutely a center. So, yeah, it's great to hear that. Customers are identifying that. We've been doing like, chief data officer events for many years. You know, where does data live? Is that a CEO Thing? Is that a different part of the business? I don't know if you've got anything you're seeing from, you know, your customers is Tau, >> who owns the Data initiative, So it's really interesting. I had a conversation with a major bank, and it was a one on one with the CDO and what I thought was the most tricky part of the conversation is that here, Not only does he report directly into the CIA, which you know is to be expected, but he meets regularly with the board of directors. So data were seen. I've seen these seedy old rolls being popped up, and it's not just about the technology as you mentioned. It's about the whole approach about this asset that we have. It's so critical that worth creating a sea level position that today might reporting to the CEO but is most definitely accountable to the border director. >> Well, yeah, Keith, it's that the trend we've been watching for a while, as it used to be, it was a cost center. And, you know, it's kind of, you know, that's what it was considered today. If it isn't in, you know, direct relationship, working with the business, the business will go find somebody else to do it. The whole stealthy movement. You know, I can go find an answer for what I'm doing. I think about project I've worked on in my career and been like, I wish it was easy. You know, fifteen years ago, it was today to do those. But we see security's a board level discussion data as a board level discussion is excellent. And all of those things that traditionally you would think that own them. Having awareness and visibility and information communication flow between the board in the C suite is great progress. You >> know, it's interesting. I was a big proponent of this prior to coming on The vendor side is that vendors have to start having conversations outside of it. So traditional infrastructure of injustice, his goal. Hurry, right saw and where the whole the Dale emcee Dale Technologies they have to skill up and have conversations with CIA moles. Seo's CEO Ole's H R directors because the these buying centers now have power to go out and buy solutions. You know, talked about in my no keynote this morning. You know how many people have worked day? How many people have salesforce applications? They had nothing to do when I had no nothing to do with the procurement of off these solutions. The ball is moving outside of just traditional for court technology is starting to get to the point where regular users can consume business users can consume these massive, massive solutions based on technology and just happens to be a label. The technology, whether sales Force worked in >> Sochi, thought on this this whole point there want to ask you, In my career, there's often been groups inside a business that didn't get along. And we, you know, built silos. You know, the storage in the network team don't get along cloud and traditional I t You know what we're fighting? You know who owns it? Turf wars Managing that, You know, have we built silos in multi cloud today? Is everybody holding hands and, you know, pointing the business in the same direction, you could kind of give us the good the bad. So what? We need to work on going forward. >> I think the good is that you know that the umbrella of infrastructure starting to work as a single. Uh, you So you have storage, compu networking, even configuration man groups that were kind of confrontational before and territorial. Those groups are starting. Tio. Come on. Their one senior manager or one senior executive looking at? How do you provide services as a group and providing those services? I think we're we're starting to see Silos is actually the developer versus the infrastructure group is developers just wantto FBI, too. A set of services. They want infrastructure to get away. Developers themselves. Haven't you know, kind of katende enough of the scars from heaven have to do operations, So there's a different view off the world. And, uh, today I think developers haven't yet getting the budget power off operations. But the business wants solutions, and they're going out there competing with traditional Teo get the dollars to run the services in the cloud or or wherever, however they consumed them, whether it's, you know, just saw Chick fil a's deploying two thousand ten points to run six thousand containers at the edge. Is that something that's run by tears? That something wrong? Run by developers? I don't know. Check feeling well enough to know about. This is what we're seeing in >> industry. Yeah. All right. Well, keep towns. And always a pleasure to catch up with you. Thanks so much for joining us. Be sure to check him out see Teo advisor on Twitter, check out his blogged. And of course, thank you so much for watching. We'll be back. Uh, lots more coverage here at V tug. Winter warmer, twenty nineteen. Thanks for watching.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018 brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel and, their Ecosystem Partners. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. Day three, we're live in Las Vegas for AWS re:Invent 2018. It's our sixth year covering Amazon re:Invent and AWS, Amazon Web Services meteoric rise in value, profitability, market share, just a rising tide floating all boats. I'm here with Dave Vellante. We're kicking off day three analyzing, you know, Vernon's keynote. Things start to wind down. Yesterday was kind of the big day with Andy Jassy. Dave, after yesterday it's pretty clear that there's a couple big mega trends that people are talking about. One AWS Outpost, okay, that is going to be a one year conversation about what that means, what implications. I mean basically if you're a Cloud-native company you order a data center and Amazon Prime will deliver it in two days, why would anyone want to buy hardware again from HPE or other companies? This is a huge risk, huge challenge, a huge shot across the bow to the industry because this essentially the thing. This is essentially Cloud in a box. Put it in, plug it in, we'll service, turn it on and it works and developers can just do their thing, that's amazing. So I think that's going to be a very hotly-contested topic throughout, at least one year until they ship that and all the posturing and jockeying's going to go on there. And then the other thing that was interesting was there was a lot of coolness, the F1, Racing car with analytics. You had Lockheed Martin with space satellite provisioning, that was pretty cool. And, you know, you got robots and IoT. That's cool, you got space, you got robots, you got, you know, sports cars all using analytics, all using AI, all using large-scale compute storage and networking, very elastic, all with all kinds of new tools and reference engines, but Jerry Chen laid it out from Greylock yesterday around the strategy. Amazon drives the cost down on the infrastructure side and bring the API concept up to AI and bring the marketplace together. So, a lot of action. Today we're going to see the impact and the fallout of that. What's your thoughts? >> Well, first of all John, there's so much to talk about. I want to say, so Werner Vogels this morning gave the keynote. When, when I first joined, you know this industry, we, IBM was everything, IBM was the dominant player. So we used to pour over IBM system and technology guides, and IBM white papers, because they set the technical standard for the industry and they shared that knowledge obviously with their customers to inspire them to buy more stuff, but they were giving back to the community as well to help people understand architectures and core computer science. Listening to Werner Vogels today, Amazon is now the beacon of technology in the industry. He went through the worse day of his life, which was December 12, 2004 when their Oracle Database went down for 12 hours because of a bug in the code and because they were pushing it beyond its limits. And so he described how they solved that problem over a multi-year effort and really got heavy into the technology of database, and recovery, and it was actually quite fascinating. But my takeaway was Amazon is now the company that is setting the technical direction of the industry for the next wave of Cloud-based applications. So that was actually really fascinating. We heard similar things on S3 and S3 recovery, even though they're still using some Oracle stuff it was really, really fascinating to see and very, very impressive. So that's one. As you say, there's so much to talk about. The IoT pieces, John, I really like what Amazon is doing with IoT. They're coming at it from a bottoms up approach, what do I mean by that? Do you remember when mobile first came out Microsoft basically said, hey we're going to put Windows on a phone, top down. We're going to take our existing IT Desktop standards, we're going to push 'em down to mobile, didn't work. And I see a lot of IT companies trying to do that with IoT today, not Amazon. Amazon's saying, look we're going to go bottoms up and serve the operation's technology people with a software development platform that's secure, that allows it, that's fully managed and allows them to build applications for IoT. I think it's the right approach. >> I think the other thing that's coming out is a Tweet here from Bobby Allen who we know from theCUBE days. I, you know, when we, I shared a Tweet about, you know, the future of the converged infrastructure on the outpost he says, software should be where tech companies differentiation value lies. This is back to our beating of the drum about software, software, software, you know. Andy Bechtolsheim, the Rembrandt of motherboards, Pat Gelsinger calls him, said, he's the founder of Arista, hardware's easy, software's hard. Software's where the action is. What Amazon's doing is essentially pushing large-scale platform capabilities and trying to make that as cheap and affordable as possible, the range of services, while creating a new shim layer around API concepts and microservices up the stack to enable people to write software faster, more compelling, more meaningful, and to iterate, and this is resonating with customers, Dave, because if I'm a business I got to write software, okay. I don't want to be in the running data center business because the data center powers the business. So the end doesn't justify the means in that regard. You say, hey, I need a data center to power my top-line revenue which is either going to be software-based or some sort of Edge network scenario, or even a human interface wearable or whatever. Software is the key. So if Amazon can continue to push the cost structure the lock-in spec is locked in because the better value so if it's going to be 80% less cost, and you call that a lock-in spec? A lot of lock-in spec, it's not like a technical lock-in spec, that's just called value. >> I'm locked in to Google Search. I mean, you know, I don't know what to tell ya. I'm not going to use any alternative search I'm just familiar with it, I like it, it's better. >> But software's the key, your thoughts. >> Okay, so, my thoughts on lock-in are, lock-in is one of the most overstated concepts in the business. I'm not saying that lock-in doesn't happen, it does happen, it happens everywhere. It happens across open-source. You do open-source you're locked-in to your developers. I've done research on this John and my research shows that 15% of the buyers really make primary decisions based on whether or not they're going to be locked-in. 85% look at the business value and they trade that off against lock-in so, you know, yeah, buyer beware, blah, blah, blah, but I think it's just really overstated. Yes, it's a Cloud, mother of all lock-ins, but what's the value that you get out of it? Speaking about another lock-in. I want to talk about Intel a little bit because the press has been like chirping about, about Intel and alternative processors, and the arm-based stuff that Amazon is doing. >> Well hold on, let's just set the table on this conversation. Intel announced a series of proprietary processors, their own silicon, you know the-- >> Amazon you mean. >> I mean Amazon, yeah, proprietary processors that are specific to certain workloads, inference engines, and other things around network-- >> Based on the Annapurna acquisition of 2015, a small Israeli-based company that they acquired. >> Yeah, so the press, I've been sharing on, oh, chips must be confronting Intel, your thoughts. >> Yeah, so here's the deal. Look it, Intel is massive and they do a huge amount of business with the Cloud players. Now, here's the thing about Intel, it's really, I've observed Intel for decades. Intel wants a level playing field amongst its customer base and so it wants a lot of different Cloud suppliers even though there's three, four, five, you know, worldwide, there's, there's many dozens, and hundreds of Cloud players out there. Intel wants to support them all. They're an arms dealer, right? They love all their customers and so, so what they do is they sprinkle around the innovation in the industry, they try to open up their architecture such that people can, you know, write software to their architecture and they try to support all their customers. We see it at all the shows. You see it at Lenovo, you see it at Dell, you see it here at AWS, you see at Google, Intel is everywhere and they are by far the biggest supplier. Now, Amazon, of course, has to have alternatives, right? They care about data-center power, you know, they do buy some stuff AMD, why not, why wouldn't you second-source some of this stuff? They do a lot of work with Invidia, ARM has its place, and so, but it's a rounding error in the grand scheme in the market. Now why people get excited is they say, okay, ARM now has a foot in the door, oh, Intel's in trouble. Intel obviously still a dominant player. I think it's, you know-- >> Is Intel in trouble? >> The press likes to glom onto that. Intel's like the dominant player in the microprocessor business and it has to move, and it has to move fast. I would not say Intel is in trouble, I'd say it continues to be the dominant player in the data center. It's got opportunities for alternative processors like Invidia. Intel strategy is to put as much function on the DI as possible and to grab that function, it's always the way it's behaved. You see people like Invidia trying to create opportunities, and doing a very good job of it, and so, there's white space there. It's competition, we love competition, right? >> Here's my, here's my. >> Intel needs some competition frankly. >> Here's my take. One, Intel pays, Amazon pays Intel a lot of money. >> Huge amount of money. >> So it's not like Intel's hurting, Intel's not in trouble. Here's why Intel's not in trouble. One, the Cloud service provider business that Raejeanne runs, she was on theCube yesterday, is growing significantly. A new total adjustable market, they call TAM expansion, is happening. >> So, you know, if you're looking at microprocessors it's not a one, or few, suppliers, it's a total TAM expansion and of course with that expansion of the market Intel's going to take a big chunk of the shares, so they are not in trouble, Amazon pays them a lot of money, they're a big-time supplier to AWS, check. Two, Intel is on a cadence on processor design that spans years. And Raejeanne and other Intel executives have spoken to us off the record, and here on theCUBE that hey, you know, sometimes there's use cases where they're not responding fast enough that are outside they're operating cycles, but as Raejeanne said, Amazon makes them get better, okay? So, they have to manage that, but there's no way Intel's in trouble. I think the press are using this as, to create link bait, for news that is sensational. But, yeah, I mean, on the surface you go, oh, chip, Intel, oh that's Intel's business, it must be bad for Intel. So, yeah, Amazon made their own processor. They got some specific things they want to build specialized processors for like GP Alternative, or inference engines that are tied to the stack, why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? >> What Intel will do, what Intel will do is they'll learn from that and they'll respond with functionality for maybe others, or maybe they'll earn Amazon's business, we'll see, but yield to your point, you know, Intel's exposure to the desktop and the laptop, a lot of people wrote about that, that Intel is, the (mumbles) entry is Intel's business, they're so huge, the cost of doing what they do, Intel's such a strategic supplier to so many companies and as we talked to Raejeanne about yesterday the Cloud has completely changed that dynamic and actually brought more suppliers. The data center consolidation that you've seen has been offset by the Cloud explosions, that's a good trend for Intel. And of course the mobile dynamic, you know more about that then I do, but, everybody said mobile's going to kill Intel, it obviously didn't happen. >> Look it, Intel, Intel's smart, they've been around, they're going to not miss the ball. They got a big team that services a lot of these big players. >> Are they still paranoid in your opinion? >> I think they are. >> I do too. >> I do too, I mean I, look it, Intel is, have a cadence of Moore's law. They have a execution style that's somewhat similar to AWS, they've very strict about how they execute and they have a great execution engine. So I would bet the farm that Intel's talking to Amazon and saying, what do you need for us to be better? And if Amazon does what they do best, which is tell them what they need, Intel will deliver. So I'm kind of not worried about Intel on that front. I think in the short term maybe this processor doesn't fit for that, but, that's why GPUs became popular, floating point was a unique thing that CPUs didn't do well on so a GPU comes out, there it is. And we're going to see processors like data-processing units, Pradeep Sindu, former founder of Juniper's, got a venture called, Fungible, that's building a data-processing unit. It's a dedicated chip to serve analytic workloads. These are specialized silicon chips that are going to come on faster, and, to the marketplace. So , just because there's more chips doesn't mean Intel dies 'cause if the TAM expands it's a, it's an overall bigger market so their share might not be as dominant on a smaller market, but it's-- >> You know, I got a, I got to come back to your John Chambers interview. I've watched it a couple times now and I would recommend people would go to, thecube.net, and see John Furrier's interview with John Chambers. The great companies of this industry have survived, you know, I talked about paranoia, Andy Grove, they've survived because they were not dogmatic about the past. So for the past several decades this industry has marched to the cadence of Moore's law and that was obviously very favorable to Intel. Well, that's changing, and it's changed, the innovation engine now, you've called it the innovation sandwich, which is data, machine intelligence applied to that data, in the scale of Cloud. So Intel has to pivot to that to take advantage of that and that's exactly what they're doing. So the great companies of the future, the Microsoft's, the Intel's, the AWS's, they survive because they can evolve. It's the Wang's that didn't, they denied, it was the PC-- >> They were entitled. >> The digital, right. They thought they were entitled and the point that John Chambers made is there's no entitlement and he kept referring to Boston 128, it used to be the Silicon Valley. And the leading executives today, of companies like, like Cisco, like Intel, like Microsoft, can see a vision to the future and they change when they have to change. >> So companies that are entitled, who are they (chuckling)? >> Wow, that' a really-- >> Is Oracle entitled? >> A good question. >> HPE, Dell? >> I think Oracle absolutely acts as though they're entitled and they're bunkering down into their red stack. Now, you know I've often said, don't bet against Larry Ellison, and I wouldn't make that bet against Larry Ellison, but his TAM is confined to Oracle customers. He's not currently going after, non-Oracle customers in my opinion at least not with a strategy that's obvious to me. And I think that's part of the reason why Thomas Kurian left the company is I think they had a battle about that, at least that's what my sources tell me. I haven't talked to him directly, I actually don't know him, but I know people who know him and have worked with him. HPE, I think HPE is more confused as to what the next step is. When they split the company apart they kind of gave up on software, they gave up on an integrated-supply chain. Mike Odell took the other approach, and thanks to VMware he's got a wining strategy. So, I think today's leading executives realize that they have to change. Look at Ginni Rometty, remember IBM was in trouble in my opinion because Watson failed, and their Cloud strategy essentially failed. So they just made a 34 billion dollar acquisition, a Red Hat, which is a bold move. And that, again, demonstrated a company who said, okay, hey it's not working, we have to pivot and we have to invest and go forward. >> Alright Dave, great kickoff day three. Andy Jassy coming up at the end of the day and he's going to do his annual, kind of, end of the last day roundup on theCUBE, kind of lean back, talk about what's going on and how he feels from the quotes, what people missed, what people got, and do a full review of re:Invent 2018. Day three kicks off here, CUBE, two sets on the floor gettin' all the content. We already have over a hundred videos. We'll have 500 total video assets, go to siliconangle.com and check out the blog there. A lot of stories flowing, a lot of flow, a lot of demand for the content. Stay with us for more after this short break.