(techno music) >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Convention Center. It's InterBike 2018, I think it's like 20,000 people, haven't got the official count yet, but this is an amazing show, it's all about bicycles. We came because we want to learn more about eBikes, and really, this kind of last mile thing that's goin' on, mobility, and right at the center of the eBike revolution is a company that's been around forever, and that's Bosch, and we're happy to have Jonathan Weinert. He's a sales and marketing manager for the Bosch eBikes. Jonathan, great to see you. >> Great to see you, Jeff. >> So, I don't know if everybody knows, you guys power like half of all the eBikes that are out there. You guys are completely in bed with all these manufacturers with really, the industry leading system. >> Thank you, yes, the Bosch eBike system, you'll find it world wide on about 70 different bike brands throughout the world. Here in North America, we're on about 30 different brands, from Trek to Electra to Cannondale. And they power all types of bikes, so commuter bikes, cargo bikes, fat bikes, mountain bikes, any type of bike that you can think of can use the Bosch eBike system to amplify the rider's power and help you go further, higher, farther, less sweat or sweat it out, whatever you want. >> Right, it's like the magic power. >> Exactly, magic carpet ride. >> The main components are you got the drive unit, which is really the heart of the system. >> Yes. >> The battery obviously to provide the power, then the control unit that's up on top of the handlebars, so you can control it. >> Exactly. >> So we were talking before we turned the cameras on, of kind of the history, you guys have been at this for like nine years, I believe you said? >> Exactly, yeah, we invented this system nine years ago, it was a combination of technology from our automotive business. So an electric power steering motor, married with technology from our power tools business, the lithium iron battery pack. And we also had some sensors, torque sensors and electronics and we put these technologies together, and the engineers back then, what they wanted to do is create something to make cycling still feel like cycling but help you conquer hills. >> Right. >> And go farther and use the bike more. >> Right, it's pretty interesting cause there's a whole lot of data that's feeding that software and the algorithms to make those feedback loops smooth, make 'em feel like bicycling, so it's really you're riding on software. >> Exactly, you're riding on software and we have three sensors that are capturing your input. Torque sensor from the pedals, how fast you're pedaling, and wheel speed. And those three sensor measurements go into the electronics and tell the motor how much extra oomph to give you. >> Right, but you have to be pedaling right? >> You always have to be pedaling, yeah. >> That's one of the data inputs. >> Exactly, these are all pedal assist eBikes, and they only assist you when you pedal, no throttle, and they can assist you up to 20 miles per hour, or 28 miles per hour for our speed system. >> Right, we saw that last night in the gazelle, they had one of the 28 mile an hour bikes. >> Yeah, which is great for people that have long distance commutes or they want to do these huge adventure rides, so yeah, both are great. >> Now, what about the maintenance for these types of systems I mean it looks like a pretty closed system. >> It is totally closed, yeah. >> It's totally closed. >> Yeah, the maintenance, they last a long time, they're warrantied for two years, but if you have a problem with anything, you take it to the dealer, the dealer takes the component off, sends it to Bosch and gives you a new one. You don't have to open anything or solder anything. >> Right, right. >> Yeah, no. It's automotive grade, sort of service and diagnostics. >> Right, so the other thing we're seeing all over the show floor here again is all about the data. There's so much more data available to the riders. We were just at the Garmin booth and I don't know how many different data sets that they can track, in terms of your pedal pressure. >> Yes. >> Whether you're tipping back and forth, whether you're even, and you guys are actually pulling some of that external data back into your systems, right? For a unified experience for the rider. I think you said, a heart rate sensor for instance? >> Exactly, that's the newest feature that we're showcasing at InterBike today, the Kiox display. Which connects man and machine, or woman and machine. You can wear a heart rate monitor and as you're riding, you can see your heart rate on your device. Which is great if you want to train on an e-mountain bike. Sometimes you want to keep your heart rate in a certain range. Sometimes you want to make sure it doesn't go above a certain limit. >> Right. Yeah, so it's our first step into connectivity. Many more connectivity features will follow. >> Right, so I'm just curious from your perspective on the bike industry, cause you sit in kind of this, cat bird seat, since you deal with so many different kinds of bikes. And I was amazed at how much of the mountain bike adoption of the eBikes is happening here. Have you seen within your dealers, kind of this new opportunity to leverage electronics and a motor to kind of reinvigorate the brands, reinvigorate the models, and reinvigorate, you know, many of the, just a wide range of cool form factors that we're seeing all over the floor? >> Yeah, so nine years ago, Bosch coupled with Haibike. Haibike sort of created this segment of e-mountain biking by putting the motor in a unique way into the bike, and since then this e-mountain bike trend has really taken off, it's huge in Europe. You'll see e-mountain bikes all over the ski resorts there. They're allowing families to e-mountain bike together, to bike together, just like they ski together in the winter. So it's reinvigorating ski resorts and we see ski resorts here in the US, also embracing e-mountain bikes. Mammoth Mountain just allowed class one e-mountain bikes on all their bike park trails. So e-mountain biking is really spreading through this resort and other resorts, North Star, right up the road. >> Right and I wonder on the city side, again, lessons we can learn from Europe, cause it seems like the regulations are, you know, they're always a little bit behind the technology in terms of, you know, how are eBikes treated. Are they a bike, are they a motor vehicle? And I know there's some laws but it still seems a little bit confused and cities aren't quite ready to realize that an eBike is better than a car, in terms of so many things happening in the city. Are you guys involved in that, kind of industry consortium and how do you see that evolving? >> So we've been involved with several other bike companies and PeopleForBikes to create a framework, how to regulate eBikes. And we've divided eBikes into three classes. Class one, two and three, pedal assist, throttle, anyway. Setting up this definition of the three classes of eBikes, we've created this eBike law in California and nine other states throughout the country. So now they know how to regulate eBikes and these three classes and they can limit where each class can go on the roads. And with this regulation, we're seeing the eBike adoption in these states really start to pick up, now that they're easier to regulate. >> Right, well Jonathan, really a cool story and it's been really fun to watch Bosch, especially as you guys have gone from your long history in the auto parts world to this new exciting space. So thanks for taking a few minutes and congrats. >> Oh, my pleasure, Jeff, thank you. >> Alright, he's Jonathan, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at InterBike in Reno, Nevada. Thanks for watching, see you next time. (techno music)

(upbeat instrumental music) >> TheCUBE's live coverage is made possible by funding from Dell Technologies, creating technologies that drive human progress. (uplifting instrumental music) >> Hey everyone. Welcome to Barcelona, Spain. It's theCUBE Live at MWC '23. I'm Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, our co-founder, our co-CEO of theCUBE, you know him, you love him. He's here as my co-host. Dave, we have a great couple of guests here to break down day one keynote. Lots of meat. I can't wait to be part of this conversation. Chris Lewis joins us, the founder and MD of Lewis Insight. And Sarbjeet Johal, one of you know him as well. He's a Cube contributor, cloud architect. Guys, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining Dave and me today. >> Lovely to be here. >> Thank you. >> Chris, I want to start with you. You have covered all aspects of global telecoms industries over 30 years working as an analyst. Talk about the evolution of the telecom industry that you've witnessed, and what were some of the things you heard in the keynote that excite you about the direction it's going? >> Well, as ever, MWC, there's no lack of glitz and glamour, but it's the underlying issues of the industry that are really at stake here. There's not a lot of new revenue coming into the telecom providers, but there's a lot of adjustment, readjustment of the underlying operational environment. And also, really importantly, what came out of the keynotes is the willingness and the necessity to really engage with the API community, with the developer community, people who traditionally, telecoms would never have even touched. So they're sorting out their own house, they're cleaning their own stables, getting the cost base down, but they're also now realizing they've got to engage with all the other parties. There's a lot of cloud providers here, there's a lot of other people from outside so they're realizing they cannot do it all themselves. It's quite a tough lesson for a very conservative, inward looking industry, right? So should we be spending all this money and all this glitz and glamour of MWC and all be here, or should would be out there really building for the future and making sure the services are right for yours and my needs in a business and personal lives? So a lot of new changes, a lot of realization of what's going on outside, but underlying it, we've just got to get this right this time. >> And it feels like that monetization is front and center. You mentioned developers, we've got to work with developers, but I'm hearing the latest keynote from the Ericsson CEOs, we're going to monetize through those APIs, we're going to charge the developers. I mean, first of all, Chris, am I getting that right? And Sarbjeet, as somebody who's close to the developer community, is that the right way to build bridges? But Chris, are we getting that right? >> Well, let's take the first steps first. So, Ericsson, of course, acquired Vonage, which is a massive API business so they want to make money. They expect to make money by bringing that into the mainstream telecom community. Now, whether it's the developers who pay for it, or let's face it, we are moving into a situation as the telco moves into a techco model where the techco means they're going to be selling bits of the technology to developer guys and to other application developers. So when he says he needs to charge other people for it, it's the way in which people reach in and will take going through those open APIs like the open gateway announced today, but also the way they'll reach in and take things like network slicing. So we're opening up the telecom community, the treasure chest, if you like, where developers' applications and other third parties can come in and take those chunks of technology and build them into their services. This is a complete change from the old telecom industry where everybody used to come and you say, "all right, this is my product, you've got to buy it and you're going to pay me a lot of money for it." So we are looking at a more flexible environment where the other parties can take those chunks. And we know we want collectivity built into our financial applications, into our government applications, everything, into the future of the metaverse, whatever it may be. But it requires that change in attitude of the telcos. And they do need more money 'cause they've said, the baseline of revenue is pretty static, there's not a lot of growth in there so they're looking for new revenues. It's in a B2B2X time model. And it's probably the middle man's going to pay for it rather than the customer. >> But the techco model, Sarbjeet, it looks like the telcos are getting their money on their way in. The techco company model's to get them on their way out like the app store. Go build something of value, build some kind of app or data product, and then when it takes off, we'll take a piece of the action. What are your thoughts from a developer perspective about how the telcos are approaching it? >> Yeah, I think before we came here, like I said, I did some tweets on this, that we talk about all kind of developers, like there's game developers and front end, back end, and they're all talking about like what they're building on top of cloud, but nowhere you will hear the term "telco developer," there's no API from telcos given to the developers to build IoT solutions on top of it because telco as an IoT, I think is a good sort of hand in hand there. And edge computing as well. The glimmer of hope, if you will, for telcos is the edge computing, I believe. And even in edge, I predicted, I said that many times that cloud players will dominate that market with the private 5G. You know that story, right? >> We're going to talk about that. (laughs) >> The key is this, that if you see in general where the population lives, in metros, right? That's where the world population is like flocking to and we have cloud providers covering the local zones with local like heavy duty presence from the big cloud providers and then these telcos are getting sidetracked by that. Even the V2X in cars moving the autonomous cars and all that, even in that space, telcos are getting sidetracked in many ways. What telcos have to do is to join the forces, build some standards, if not standards, some consortium sort of. They're trying to do that with the open gateway here, they have only eight APIs. And it's 2023, eight APIs is nothing, right? (laughs) So they should have started this 10 years back, I think. So, yeah, I think to entice the developers, developers need the employability, we need to train them, we need to show them some light that hey, you can build a lot on top of it. If you tell developers they can develop two things or five things, nobody will come. >> So, Chris, the cloud will dominate the edge. So A, do you buy it? B, the telcos obviously are acting like that might happen. >> Do you know I love people when they've got their heads in the clouds. (all laugh) And you're right in so many ways, but if you flip it around and think about how the customers think about this, business customers and consumers, they don't care about all this background shenanigans going on, do they? >> Lisa: No. >> So I think one of the problems we have is that this is a new territory and whether you call it the edge or whatever you call it, what we need there is we need connectivity, we need security, we need storage, we need compute, we need analytics, and we need applications. And are any of those more important than the others? It's the collective that actually drives the real value there. So we need all those things together. And of course, the people who represented at this show, whether it's the cloud guys, the telcos, the Nokia, the Ericssons of this world, they all own little bits of that. So that's why they're all talking partnerships because they need the combination, they cannot do it on their own. The cloud guys can't do it on their own. >> Well, the cloud guys own all of those things that you just talked about though. (all laugh) >> Well, they don't own the last bit of connectivity, do they? They don't own the access. >> Right, exactly. That's the one thing they don't own. So, okay, we're back to pipes, right? We're back to charging for connectivity- >> Pipes are very valuable things, right? >> Yeah, for sure. >> Never underestimate pipes. I don't know about where you live, plumbers make a lot of money where I live- >> I don't underestimate them but I'm saying can the telcos charge for more than that or are the cloud guys going to mop up the storage, the analytics, the compute, and the apps? >> They may mop it up, but I think what the telcos are doing and we've seen a lot of it here already, is they are working with all those major cloud guys already. So is it an unequal relationship? The cloud guys are global, massive global scale, the telcos are fundamentally national operators. >> Yep. >> Some have a little bit of regional, nobody has global scale. So who stitches it all together? >> Dave: Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. >> Absolutely. >> I know that saying never gets old. It's true. Well, Sarbjeet, one of the things that you tweeted about, I didn't get to see the keynote but I was looking at your tweets. 46% of telcos think they won't make it to the next decade. That's a big number. Did that surprise you? >> No, actually it didn't surprise me because the competition is like closing in on them and the telcos are competing with telcos as well and the telcos are competing with cloud providers on the other side, right? So the smaller ones are getting squeezed. It's the bigger players, they can hook up the newer platforms, I think they will survive. It's like that part is like any other industry, if you will. But the key is here, I think why the pain points were sort of described on the main stage is that they're crying out loud to tell the big tech cloud providers that "hey, you pay your fair share," like we talked, right? You are not paying, you're generating so much content which reverses our networks and you are not paying for it. So they are not able to recoup the cost of laying down their networks. By the way, one thing actually I want to mention is that they said the cloud needs earth. The cloud and earth, it's like there's no physical need to cloud, you know that, right? So like, I think it's the other way around. I think the earth needs the cloud because I'm a cloud guy. (Sarbjeet and Lisa laugh) >> I think you need each other, right? >> I think so too. >> They need each other. When they said cloud needs earth, right? I think they're still in denial that the cloud is a big force. They have to partner. When you can't compete with somebody, what do you do? Partner with them. >> Chris, this is your world. Are they in denial? >> No, I think they're waking up to the pragmatism of the situation. >> Yeah. >> They're building... As we said, most of the telcos, you find have relationships with the cloud guys, I think you're right about the industry. I mean, do you think what's happened since US was '96, the big telecom act when we started breaking up all the big telcos and we had lots of competition came in, we're seeing the signs that we might start to aggregate them back up together again. So it's been an interesting experiment for like 30 years, hasn't it too? >> It made the US less competitive, I would argue, but carry on. >> Yes, I think it's true. And Europe is maybe too competitive and therefore, it's not driven the investment needed. And by the way, it's not just mobile, it's fixed as well. You saw the Orange CEO was talking about the her investment and the massive fiber investments way ahead of many other countries, way ahead of the UK or Germany. We need that fiber in the ground to carry all your cloud traffic to do this. So there is a scale issue, there is a competition issue, but the telcos are very much aware of it. They need the cloud, by the way, to improve their operational environments as well, to change that whole old IT environment to deliver you and I better service. So no, it absolutely is changing. And they're getting scale, but they're fundamentally offering the basic product, you call it pipes, I'll just say they're offering broadband to you and I and the business community. But they're stepping on dangerous ground, I think, when saying they want to charge the over the top guys for all the traffic they use. Those over the top guys now build a lot of the global networks, the backbone submarine network. They're putting a lot of money into it, and by giving us endless data for our individual usage, that cat is out the bag, I think to a large extent. >> Yeah. And Orange CEO basically said that, that they're not paying their fair share. I'm for net neutrality but the governments are going to have to fund this unless you let us charge the OTT. >> Well, I mean, we could of course renationalize. Where would that take us? (Dave laughs) That would make MWC very interesting next year, wouldn't it? To renationalize it. So, no, I think you've got to be careful what we wish for here. Creating the absolute clear product that is required to underpin all of these activities, whether it's IoT or whether it's cloud delivery or whether it's just our own communication stuff, delivering that absolutely ubiquitously high quality for business and for consumer is what we have to do. And telcos have been too conservative in the past. >> I think they need to get together and create standards around... I think they have a big opportunity. We know that the clouds are being built in silos, right? So there's Azure stack, there's AWS and there's Google. And those are three main ones and a few others, right? So that we are fighting... On the cloud side, what we are fighting is the multicloud. How do we consume that multicloud without having standards? So if these people get together and create some standards around IoT and edge computing sort of area, people will flock to them to say, "we will use you guys, your API, we don't care behind the scenes if you use AWS or Google Cloud or Azure, we will come to you." So market, actually is looking for that solution. I think it's an opportunity for these guys, for telcos. But the problem with telcos is they're nationalized, as you said Chris versus the cloud guys are still kind of national in a way, but they're global corporations. And some of the telcos are global corporations as well, BT covers so many countries and TD covers so many... DT is in US as well, so they're all over the place. >> But you know what's interesting is that the TM forum, which is one of the industry associations, they've had an open digital architecture framework for quite some years now. Google had joined that some years ago, Azure in there, AWS just joined it a couple of weeks ago. So when people said this morning, why isn't AWS on the keynote? They don't like sharing the limelight, do they? But they're getting very much in bed with the telco. So I think you'll see the marriage. And in fact, there's a really interesting statement, if you look at the IoT you mentioned, Bosch and Nokia have been working together 'cause they said, the problem we've got, you've got a connectivity network on one hand, you've got the sensor network on the other hand, you're trying to merge them together, it's a nightmare. So we are finally seeing those sort of groups talking to each other. So I think the standards are coming, the cooperation is coming, partnerships are coming, but it means that the telco can't dominate the sector like it used to. It's got to play ball with everybody else. >> I think they have to work with the regulators as well to loosen the regulation. Or you said before we started this segment, you used Chris, the analogy of sports, right? In sports, when you're playing fiercely, you commit the fouls and then ask for ref to blow the whistle. You're now looking at the ref all the time. The telcos are looking at the ref all the time. >> Dave: Yeah, can I do this? Can I do that? Is this a fair move? >> They should be looking for the space in front of the opposition. >> Yeah, they should be just on attack mode and commit these fouls, if you will, and then ask for forgiveness then- >> What do you make of that AWS not you there- >> Well, Chris just made a great point that they don't like to share the limelight 'cause I thought it was very obvious that we had Google Cloud, we had Microsoft there on day one of this 80,000 person event. A lot of people back from COVID and they weren't there. But Chris, you brought up a great point that kind of made me think, maybe you're right. Maybe they're in the afternoon keynote, they want their own time- >> You think GSMA invited them? >> I imagine so. You'd have to ask GSMA. >> I would think so. >> Get Max on here and ask that. >> I'm going to ask them, I will. >> But no, and they don't like it because I think the misconception, by the way, is that everyone says, "oh, it's AWS, it's Google Cloud and it's Azure." They're not all the same business by any stretch of the imagination. AWS has been doing loads of great work, they've been launching private network stuff over the last couple of weeks. Really interesting. Google's been playing catch up. We know that they came in readily late to the market. And Azure, they've all got slightly different angles on it. So perhaps it just wasn't right for AWS and the way they wanted to pitch things so they don't have to be there, do they? >> That's a good point. >> But the industry needs them there, that's the number one cloud. >> Dave, they're there working with the industry. >> Yeah, of course. >> They don't have to be on the keynote stage. And in fact, you think about this show and you mentioned the 80,000 people, the activity going on around in all these massive areas they're in, it's fantastic. That's where the business is done. The business isn't done up on the keynote stage. >> That's why there's the glitz and the glamour, Chris. (all laugh) >> Yeah. It's not glitz, it's espresso. It's not glamour anymore, it's just espresso. >> We need the espresso. >> Yeah. >> I think another thing is that it's interesting how an average European sees the tech market and an average North American, especially you from US, you have to see the market. Here, people are more like process oriented and they want the rules of the road already established before they can take a step- >> Chris: That's because it's your pension in the North American- >> Exactly. So unions are there and the more employee rights and everything, you can't fire people easily here or in Germany or most of the Europe is like that with the exception of UK. >> Well, but it's like I said, that Silicone Valley gets their money on the way out, you know? And that's how they do it, that's how they think it. And they don't... They ask for forgiveness. I think the east coast is more close to Europe, but in the EU, highly regulated, really focused on lifetime employment, things like that. >> But Dave, the issue is the telecom industry is brilliant, right? We keep paying every month whatever we do with it. >> It's a great business, to your point- >> It's a brilliant business model. >> Dave: It's fantastic. >> So it's about then getting the structure right behind it. And you know, we've seen a lot of stratification where people are selling off towers, Orange haven't sold their towers off, they made a big point about that. Others are selling their towers off. Some people are selling off their underlying network, Telecom Italia talking about KKR buying the whole underlying network. It's like what do you want to be in control of? It's a great business. >> But that's why they complain so much is that they're having to sell their assets because of the onerous CapEx requirements, right? >> Yeah, they've had it good, right? And dare I say, perhaps they've not planned well enough for the future. >> They're trying to protect their past from the future. I mean, that's... >> Actually, look at the... Every "n" number of years, there's a new faster network. They have to dig the ground, they have to put the fiber, they have to put this. Now, there are so many booths showing 6G now, we are not even done with 5G yet, now the next 6G you know, like then- >> 10G's coming- >> 10G, that's a different market. (Dave laughs) >> Actually, they're bogged down by the innovation, I think. >> And the generational thing is really important because we're planning for 6G in all sorts of good ways but actually what we use in our daily lives, we've gone through the barrier, we've got enough to do that. So 4G gives us enough, the fiber in the ground or even old copper gives us enough. So the question is, what are we willing to pay for more than that basic connectivity? And the answer to your point, Dave, is not a lot, right? So therefore, that's why the emphasis is on the business market on that B2B and B2B2X. >> But we'll pay for Netflix all day long. >> All day long. (all laugh) >> The one thing Chris, I don't know, I want to know your viewpoints and we have talked in the past as well, there's absence of think tanks in tech, right? So we have think tanks on the foreign policy and economic policy in every country, and we have global think tanks, but tech is becoming a huge part of the economy, global economy as well as national economies, right? But we don't have think tanks on like policy around tech. For example, this 4G is good for a lot of use cases. Then 5G is good for smaller number of use cases. And then 6G will be like, fewer people need 6G for example. Why can't we have sort of those kind of entities dictating those kind of like, okay, is this a wiser way to go about it? >> Lina Khan wants to. She wants to break up big tech- >> You're too young to remember but the IT used to have a show every four years in Geneva, there were standards around there. So I think there are bodies. I think the balance of power obviously has gone from the telecom to the west coast to the IT markets. And it's changing the balance about, it moves more quickly, right? Telecoms has never moved quickly enough. I think there is hope by the way, that telecoms now that we are moving to more softwarized environment, and God forbid, we're moving into CICD in the telecom world, right? Which is a massive change, but I think there's hopes for it to change. The mentality is changing, the culture is changing, but to change those old structured organizations from the British telecom or the France telecom into the modern world, it's a hell of a long journey. It's not an overnight journey at all. >> Well, of course the theme of the event is velocity. >> Yeah, I know that. >> And it's been interesting sitting here with the three of you talking about from a historic perspective, how slow and molasseslike telecom has been. They don't have a choice anymore. As consumers, we have this expectation we're going to get anything we want on our mobile device, 24 by seven. We don't care about how the sausage is made, we just want the end result. So do you really think, and we're only on day one guys... And Chris we'll start with you. Is the theme really velocity? Is it disruption? Are they able to move faster? >> Actually, I think invisibility is the real answer. (Lisa laughs) We want communication to be invisible, right? >> Absolutely. >> We want it to work. When we switch our phones on, we want it to work and we want to... Well, they're not even phones anymore, are they really? I mean that's the... So no, velocity, we've got... There is momentum in the industry, there's no doubt about that. The cloud guys coming in, making telecoms think about the way they run their own business, where they meet, that collision point on the edges you talked about Sarbjeet. We do have velocity, we've got momentum. There's so many interested parties. The way I think of this is that the telecom industry used to be inward looking, just design its own technology and then expect everyone else to dance to our tune. We're now flipping that 180 degrees and we are now having to work with all the different outside forces shaping us. Whether it's devices, whether it's smart cities, governments, the hosting guys, the Equinoxis, all these things. So everyone wants a piece of this telecom world so we've got to make ourselves more open. That's why you get in a more open environment. >> But you did... I just want to bring back a point you made during COVID, which was when everybody switched to work from home, started using their landlines again, telcos had to respond and nothing broke. I mean, it was pretty amazing. >> Chris: It did a good job. >> It was kind of invisible. So, props to the telcos for making that happen. >> They did a great job. >> So it really did. Now, okay, what have you done for me lately? So now they've got to deal with the future and they're talking monetization. But to me, monetization is all about data and not necessarily just the network data. Yeah, they can sell that 'cause they own that but what kind of incremental value are they going to create for the consumers that... >> Yeah, actually that's a problem. I think the problem is that they have been strangled by the regulation for a long time and they cannot look at their data. It's a lot more similar to the FinTech world, right? I used to work at Visa. And then Visa, we did trillion dollars in transactions in '96. Like we moved so much money around, but we couldn't look at these things, right? So yeah, I think regulation is a problem that holds you back, it's the antithesis of velocity, it slows you down. >> But data means everything, doesn't it? I mean, it means everything and nothing. So I think the challenge here is what data do the telcos have that is useful, valuable to me, right? So in the home environment, the fact that my broadband provider says, oh, by the way, you've got 20 gadgets on that network and 20 on that one... That's great, tell me what's on there. I probably don't know what's taking all my valuable bandwidth up. So I think there's security wrapped around that, telling me the way I'm using it if I'm getting the best out of my service. >> You pay for that? >> No, I'm saying they don't do it yet. I think- >> But would you pay for that? >> I think I would, yeah. >> Would you pay a lot for that? I would expect it to be there as part of my dashboard for my monthly fee. They're already charging me enough. >> Well, that's fine, but you pay a lot more in North America than I do in Europe, right? >> Yeah, no, that's true. >> You're really overpaying over there, right? >> Way overpaying. >> So, actually everybody's looking at these devices, right? So this is a radio operated device basically, right? And then why couldn't they benefit from this? This is like we need to like double click on this like 10 times to find out why telcos failed to leverage this device, right? But I think the problem is their reliance on regulations and their being close to the national sort of governments and local bodies and authorities, right? And in some countries, these telcos are totally controlled in very authoritarian ways, right? It's not like open, like in the west, most of the west. Like the world is bigger than five, six countries and we know that, right? But we end up talking about the major economies most of the time. >> Dave: Always. >> Chris: We have a topic we want to hit on. >> We do have a topic. Our last topic, Chris, it's for you. You guys have done an amazing job for the last 25 minutes talking about the industry, where it's going, the evolution. But Chris, you're registered blind throughout your career. You're a leading user of assertive technologies. Talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, some of the things you're doing there. >> Well, we should have had 25 minutes on that and five minutes on- (all laugh) >> Lisa: You'll have to come back. >> Really interesting. So I've been looking at it. You're quite right, I've been using accessible technology on my iPhone and on my laptop for 10, 20 years now. It's amazing. And what I'm trying to get across to the industry is to think about inclusive design from day one. When you're designing an app or you're designing a service, make sure you... And telecom's a great example. In fact, there's quite a lot of sign language around here this week. If you look at all the events written, good to see that coming in. Obviously, no use to me whatsoever, but good for the hearing impaired, which by the way is the biggest category of disability in the world. Biggest chunk is hearing impaired, then vision impaired, and then cognitive and then physical. And therefore, whenever you're designing any service, my call to arms to people is think about how that's going to be used and how a blind person might use it or how a deaf person or someone with physical issues or any cognitive issues might use it. And a great example, the GSMA and I have been talking about the app they use for getting into the venue here. I downloaded it. I got the app downloaded and I'm calling my guys going, where's my badge? And he said, "it's top left." And because I work with a screen reader, they hadn't tagged it properly so I couldn't actually open my badge on my own. Now, they changed it overnight so it worked this morning, which is fantastic work by Trevor and the team. But it's those things that if you don't build it in from scratch, you really frustrate a whole group of users. And if you think about it, people with disabilities are excluded from so many services if they can't see the screen or they can't hear it. But it's also the elderly community who don't find it easy to get access to things. Smart speakers have been a real blessing in that respect 'cause you can now talk to that thing and it starts talking back to you. And then there's the people who can't afford it so we need to come down market. This event is about launching these thousand dollars plus devices. Come on, we need below a hundred dollars devices to get to the real mass market and get the next billion people in and then to educate people how to use it. And I think to go back to your previous point, I think governments are starting to realize how important this is about building the community within the countries. You've got some massive projects like NEOM in Saudi Arabia. If you have a look at that, if you get a chance, a fantastic development in the desert where they're building a new city from scratch and they're building it so anyone and everyone can get access to it. So in the past, it was all done very much by individual disability. So I used to use some very expensive, clunky blind tech stuff. I'm now using mostly mainstream. But my call to answer to say is, make sure when you develop an app, it's accessible, anyone can use it, you can talk to it, you can get whatever access you need and it will make all of our lives better. So as we age and hearing starts to go and sight starts to go and dexterity starts to go, then those things become very useful for everybody. >> That's a great point and what a great champion they have in you. Chris, Sarbjeet, Dave, thank you so much for kicking things off, analyzing day one keynote, the ecosystem day, talking about what velocity actually means, where we really are. We're going to have to have you guys back 'cause as you know, we can keep going, but we are out of time. But thank you. >> Pleasure. >> We had a very spirited, lively conversation. >> Thanks, Dave. >> Thank you very much. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching theCUBE live in Barcelona, Spain at MWC '23. We'll be back after a short break. See you soon. (uplifting instrumental music)

(gentle music) >> Okay, welcome back to Supercloud 2, live here in Palo Alto, California for our live stage performance. Supercloud 2 is our second Supercloud event. We're going to get these out as fast as we can every couple months. It's our second one, you'll see two and three this year. I'm John Furrier, my co-host, Dave Vellante. A panel here to break down the Supercloud momentum, the wave, and the developer impact that we bringing back Vittorio Viarengo, who's a VP for Cross-Cloud Services at VMware. Sarbjeet Johal, industry influencer and Analyst at StackPayne, his company, Cube alumni and Influencer. Sarbjeet, great to see you. Vittorio, thanks for coming back. >> Nice to be here. >> My pleasure. >> Vittorio, you just gave a keynote where we unpacked the cross-cloud services, what VMware is doing, how you guys see it, not just from VMware's perspective, but VMware looking out broadly at the industry and developers came up and you were like, "Developers, developer, developers", kind of a goof on the Steve Ballmer famous meme that everyone's seen. This is a huge star, sorry, I mean a big piece of it. The developers are the canary in the coal mines. They're the ones who are being asked to code the digital transformation, which is fully business transformation and with the market the way it is right now in terms of the accelerated technology, every enterprise grade business model's changing. The technology is evolving, the builders are kind of, they want go faster. I'm saying they're stuck in a way, but that's my opinion, but there's a lot of growth. >> Yeah. >> The impact, they got to get released up and let it go. Those developers need to accelerate faster. It's been a big part of productivity, and the conversations we've had. So developer impact is huge in Supercloud. What's your, what do you guys think about this? We'll start with you, Sarbjeet. >> Yeah, actually, developers are the masons of the digital empires I call 'em, right? They lay every brick and build all these big empires. On the left side of the SDLC, or the, you know, when you look at the system operations, developer is number one cost from economic side of things, and from technology side of things, they are tech hungry people. They are developers for that reason because developer nights are long, hours are long, they forget about when to eat, you know, like, I've been a developer, I still code. So you want to keep them happy, you want to hug your developers. We always say that, right? Vittorio said that right earlier. The key is to, in this context, in the Supercloud context, is that developers don't mind mucking around with platforms or APIs or new languages, but they hate the infrastructure part. That's a fact. They don't want to muck around with servers. It's friction for them, it is like they don't want to muck around even with the VMs. So they want the programmability to the nth degree. They want to automate everything, so that's how they think and cloud is the programmable infrastructure, industrialization of infrastructure in many ways. So they are happy with where we are going, and we need more abstraction layers for some developers. By the way, I have this sort of thinking frame for last year or so, not all developers are same, right? So if you are a developer at an ISV, you behave differently. If you are a developer at a typical enterprise, you behave differently or you are forced to behave differently because you're not writing software.- >> Well, developers, developers have changed, I mean, Vittorio, you and I were talking earlier on the keynote, and this is kind of the key point is what is a developer these days? If everything is software enabled, I mean, even hardware interviews we do with Nvidia, and Amazon and other people building silicon, they all say the same thing, "It's software on a chip." So you're seeing the role of software up and down the stack and the role of the stack is changing. The old days of full stack developer, what does that even mean? I mean, the cloud is a half a stack kind of right there. So, you know, developers are certainly more agile, but cloud native, I mean VMware is epitome of operations, IT operations, and the Tan Zoo initiative, you guys started, you went after the developers to look at them, and ask them questions, "What do you need?", "How do you transform the Ops from virtualization?" Again, back to your point, so this hardware abstraction, what is software, what is cloud native? It's kind of messy equation these days. How do you guys grokel with that? >> I would argue that developers don't want the Supercloud. I dropped that up there, so, >> Dave: Why not? >> Because developers, they, once they get comfortable in AWS or Google, because they're doing some AI stuff, which is, you know, very trendy right now, or they are in IBM, any of the IPA scaler, professional developers, system developers, they love that stuff, right? Yeah, they don't, the infrastructure gets in the way, but they're just, the problem is, and I think the Supercloud should be driven by the operators because as we discussed, the operators have been left behind because they're busy with day-to-day jobs, and in most cases IT is centralized, developers are in the business units. >> John: Yeah. >> Right? So they get the mandate from the top, say, "Our bank, they're competing against". They gave teenagers or like young people the ability to do all these new things online, and Venmo and all this integration, where are we? "Oh yeah, we can do it", and then build it, and then deploy it, "Okay, we caught up." but now the operators are back in the private cloud trying to keep the backend system running and so I think the Supercloud is needed for the primarily, initially, for the operators to get in front of the developers, fit in the workflow, but lay the foundation so it is secure.- >> So, so I love this thinking because I love the rift, because the rift points to what is the target audience for the value proposition and if you're a developer, Supercloud enables you so you shouldn't have to deal with Supercloud. >> Exactly. >> What you're saying is get the operating environment or operating system done properly, whether it's architecture, building the platform, this comes back to architecture platform conversations. What is the future platform? Is it a vendor supplied or is it customer created platform? >> Dave: So developers want best to breed, is what you just said. >> Vittorio: Yeah. >> Right and operators, they, 'cause developers don't want to deal with governance, they don't want to deal with security, >> No. >> They don't want to deal with spinning up infrastructure. That's the role of the operator, but that's where Supercloud enables, to John's point, the developer, so to your question, is it a platform where the platform vendor is responsible for the architecture, or there is it an architectural standard that spans multiple clouds that has to emerge? Based on what you just presented earlier, Vittorio, you are the determinant of the architecture. It's got to be open, but you guys determine that, whereas the nirvana is, "Oh no, it's all open, and it just kind of works." >> Yeah, so first of all, let's all level set on one thing. You cannot tell developers what to do. >> Dave: Right, great >> At least great developers, right? Cannot tell them what to do. >> Dave: So that's what, that's the way I want to sort of, >> You can tell 'em what's possible. >> There's a bottle on that >> If you tell 'em what's possible, they'll test it, they'll look at it, but if you try to jam it down their throat, >> Yeah. >> Dave: You can't tell 'em how to do it, just like your point >> Let me answer your answer the question. >> Yeah, yeah. >> So I think we need to build an architect, help them build an architecture, but it cannot be proprietary, has to be built on what works in the cloud and so what works in the cloud today is Kubernetes, is you know, number of different open source project that you need to enable and then provide, use this, but when I first got exposed to Kubernetes, I said, "Hallelujah!" We had a runtime that works the same everywhere only to realize there are 12 different distributions. So that's where we come in, right? And other vendors come in to say, "Hey, no, we can make them all look the same. So you still use Kubernetes, but we give you a place to build, to set those operation policy once so that you don't create friction for the developers because that's the last thing you want to do." >> Yeah, actually, coming back to the same point, not all developers are same, right? So if you're ISV developer, you want to go to the lowest sort of level of the infrastructure and you want to shave off the milliseconds from to get that performance, right? If you're working at AWS, you are doing that. If you're working at scale at Facebook, you're doing that. At Twitter, you're doing that, but when you go to DMV and Kansas City, you're not doing that, right? So your developers are different in nature. They are given certain parameters to work with, certain sort of constraints on the budget side. They are educated at a different level as well. Like they don't go to that end of the degree of sort of automation, if you will. So you cannot have the broad stroking of developers. We are talking about a citizen developer these days. That's a extreme low, >> You mean Low-Code. >> Yeah, Low-Code, No-code, yeah, on the extreme side. On one side, that's citizen developers. On the left side is the professional developers, when you say developers, your mind goes to the professional developers, like the hardcore developers, they love the flexibility, you know, >> John: Well app, developers too, I mean. >> App developers, yeah. >> You're right a lot of, >> Sarbjeet: Infrastructure platform developers, app developers, yes. >> But there are a lot of customers, its a spectrum, you're saying. >> Yes, it's a spectrum >> There's a lot of customers don't want deal with that muck. >> Yeah. >> You know, like you said, AWS, Twitter, the sophisticated developers do, but there's a whole suite of developers out there >> Yeah >> That just want tools that are abstracted. >> Within a company, within a company. Like how I see the Supercloud is there shouldn't be anything which blocks the developers, like their view of the world, of the future. Like if you're blocked as a developer, like something comes in front of you, you are not developer anymore, believe me, (John laughing) so you'll go somewhere else >> John: First of all, I'm, >> You'll leave the company by the way. >> Dave: Yeah, you got to quit >> Yeah, you will quit, you will go where the action is, where there's no sort of blockage there. So like if you put in front of them like a huge amount of a distraction, they don't like it, so they don't, >> Well, the idea of a developer, >> Coming back to that >> Let's get into 'cause you mentioned platform. Get year in the term platform engineering now. >> Yeah. >> Platform developer. You know, I remember back in, and I think there's still a term used today, but when I graduated my computer science degree, we were called "Software engineers," right? Do people use that term "Software engineering", or is it "Software development", or they the same, are they different? >> Well, >> I think there's a, >> So, who's engineering what? Are they engineering or are they developing? Or both? Well, I think it the, you made a great point. There is a factor of, I had the, I was blessed to work with Adam Bosworth, that is the guy that created some of the abstraction layer, like Visual Basic and Microsoft Access and he had so, he made his whole career thinking about this layer, and he always talk about the professional developers, the developers that, you know, give him a user manual, maybe just go at the APIs, he'll build anything, right, from system engine, go down there, and then through obstruction, you get the more the procedural logic type of engineers, the people that used to be able to write procedural logic and visual basic and so on and so forth. I think those developers right now are a little cut out of the picture. There's some No-code, Low-Code environment that are maybe gain some traction, I caught up with Adam Bosworth two weeks ago in New York and I asked him "What's happening to this higher level developers?" and you know what he is told me, and he is always a little bit out there, so I'm going to use his thought process here. He says, "ChapGPT", I mean, they will get to a point where this high level procedural logic will be written by, >> John: Computers. >> Computers, and so we may not need as many at the high level, but we still need the engineers down there. The point is the operation needs to get in front of them >> But, wait, wait, you seen the ChatGPT meme, I dunno if it's a Dilbert thing where it's like, "Time to tic" >> Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did that >> "Time to develop the code >> Five minutes, time to decode", you know, to debug the codes like five hours. So you know, the whole equation >> Well, this ChatGPT is a hot wave, everyone's been talking about it because I think it illustrates something that's NextGen, feels NextGen, and it's just getting started so it's going to get better. I mean people are throwing stones at it, but I think it's amazing. It's the equivalent of me seeing the browser for the first time, you know, like, "Wow, this is really compelling." This is game-changing, it's not just keyword chat bots. It's like this is real, this is next level, and I think the Supercloud wave that people are getting behind points to that and I think the question of Ops and Dev comes up because I think if you limit the infrastructure opportunity for a developer, I think they're going to be handicapped. I mean that's a general, my opinion, the thesis is you give more aperture to developers, more choice, more capabilities, more good things could happen, policy, and that's why you're seeing the convergence of networking people, virtualization talent, operational talent, get into the conversation because I think it's an infrastructure engineering opportunity. I think this is a seminal moment in a new stack that's emerging from an infrastructure, software virtualization, low-code, no-code layer that will be completely programmable by things like the next Chat GPT or something different, but yet still the mechanics and the plumbing will still need engineering. >> Sarbjeet: Oh yeah. >> So there's still going to be more stuff coming on. >> Yeah, we have, with the cloud, we have made the infrastructure programmable and you give the programmability to the programmer, they will be very creative with that and so we are being very creative with our infrastructure now and on top of that, we are being very creative with the silicone now, right? So we talk about that. That's part of it, by the way. So you write the code to the particle's silicone now, and on the flip side, the silicone is built for certain use cases for AI Inference and all that. >> You saw this at CES? >> Yeah, I saw at CES, the scenario is this, the Bosch, I spoke to Bosch, I spoke to John Deere, I spoke to AWS guys, >> Yeah. >> They were showcasing their technology there and I was spoke to Azure guys as well. So the Bosch is a good example. So they are building, they are right now using AWS. I have that interview on camera, I will put it some sometime later on there online. So they're using AWS on the back end now, but Bosch is the number one, number one or number two depending on what day it is of the year, supplier of the componentry to the auto industry, and they are creating a platform for our auto industry, so is Qualcomm actually by the way, with the Snapdragon. So they told me that customers, their customers, BMW, Audi, all the manufacturers, they demand the diversity of the backend. Like they don't want all, they, all of them don't want to go to AWS. So they want the choice on the backend. So whatever they cook in the middle has to work, they have to sprinkle the data for the data sovereign side because they have Chinese car makers as well, and for, you know, for other reasons, competitive reasons and like use. >> People don't go to, aw, people don't go to AWS either for political reasons or like competitive reasons or specific use cases, but for the most part, generally, I haven't met anyone who hasn't gone first choice with either, but that's me personally. >> No, but they're building. >> Point is the developer wants choice at the back end is what I'm hearing, but then finish that thought. >> Their developers want the choice, they want the choice on the back end, number one, because the customers are asking for, in this case, the customers are asking for it, right? But the customers requirements actually drive, their economics drives that decision making, right? So in the middle they have to, they're forced to cook up some solution which is vendor neutral on the backend or multicloud in nature. So >> Yeah, >> Every >> I mean I think that's nirvana. I don't think, I personally don't see that happening right now. I mean, I don't see the parody with clouds. So I think that's a challenge. I mean, >> Yeah, true. >> I mean the fact of the matter is if the development teams get fragmented, we had this chat with Kit Colbert last time, I think he's going to come on and I think he's going to talk about his keynote in a few, in an hour or so, development teams is this, the cloud is heterogenous, which is great. It's complex, which is challenging. You need skilled engineering to manage these clouds. So if you're a CIO and you go all in on AWS, it's hard. Then to then go out and say, "I want to be completely multi-vendor neutral" that's a tall order on many levels and this is the multicloud challenge, right? So, the question is, what's the strategy for me, the CIO or CISO, what do I do? I mean, to me, I would go all in on one and start getting hedges and start playing and then look at some >> Crystal clear. Crystal clear to me. >> Go ahead. >> If you're a CIO today, you have to build a platform engineering team, no question. 'Cause if we agree that we cannot tell the great developers what to do, we have to create a platform engineering team that using pieces of the Supercloud can build, and let's make this very pragmatic and give examples. First you need to be able to lay down the run time, okay? So you need a way to deploy multiple different Kubernetes environment in depending on the cloud. Okay, now we got that. The second part >> That's like table stakes. >> That are table stake, right? But now what is the advantage of having a Supercloud service to do that is that now you can put a policy in one place and it gets distributed everywhere consistently. So for example, you want to say, "If anybody in this organization across all these different buildings, all these developers don't even know, build a PCI compliant microservice, They can only talk to PCI compliant microservice." Now, I sleep tight. The developers still do that. Of course they're going to get their hands slapped if they don't encrypt some messages and say, "Oh, that should have been encrypted." So number one. The second thing I want to be able to say, "This service that this developer built over there better satisfy this SLA." So if the SLA is not satisfied, boom, I automatically spin up multiple instances to certify the SLA. Developers unencumbered, they don't even know. So this for me is like, CIO build a platform engineering team using one of the many Supercloud services that allow you to do that and lay down. >> And part of that is that the vendor behavior is such, 'cause the incentive is that they don't necessarily always work together. (John chuckling) I'll give you an example, we're going to hear today from Western Union. They're AWS shop, but they want to go to Google, they want to use some of Google's AI tools 'cause they're good and maybe they're even arguably better, but they're also a Snowflake customer and what you'll hear from them is Amazon and Snowflake are working together so that SageMaker can be integrated with Snowflake but Google said, "No, you want to use our AI tools, you got to use BigQuery." >> Yeah. >> Okay. So they say, "Ah, forget it." So if you have a platform engineering team, you can maybe solve some of that vendor friction and get competitive advantage. >> I think that the future proximity concept that I talk about is like, when you're doing one thing, you want to do another thing. Where do you go to get that thing, right? So that is very important. Like your question, John, is that your point is that AWS is ahead of the pack, which is true, right? They have the >> breadth of >> Infrastructure by a lot >> infrastructure service, right? They breadth of services, right? So, how do you, When do you bring in other cloud providers, right? So I believe that you should standardize on one cloud provider, like that's your primary, and for others, bring them in on as needed basis, in the subsection or sub portfolio of your applications or your platforms, what ever you can. >> So yeah, the Google AI example >> Yeah, I mean, >> Or the Microsoft collaboration software example. I mean there's always or the M and A. >> Yeah, but- >> You're going to get to run Windows, you can run Windows on Amazon, so. >> By the way, Supercloud doesn't mean that you cannot do that. So the perfect example is say that you're using Azure because you have a SQL server intensive workload. >> Yep >> And you're using Google for ML, great. If you are using some differentiated feature of this cloud, you'll have to go somewhere and configure this widget, but what you can abstract with the Supercloud is the lifecycle manage of the service that runs on top, right? So how does the service get deployed, right? How do you monitor performance? How do you lifecycle it? How you secure it that you can abstract and that's the value and eventually value will win. So the customers will find what is the values, obstructing in making it uniform or going deeper? >> How about identity? Like take identity for instance, you know, that's an opportunity to abstract. Whether I use Microsoft Identity or Okta, and I can abstract that. >> Yeah, and then we have APIs and standards that we can use so eventually I think where there is enough pain, the right open source will emerge to solve that problem. >> Dave: Yeah, I can use abstract things like object store, right? That's pretty simple. >> But back to the engineering question though, is that developers, developers, developers, one thing about developers psychology is if something's not right, they say, "Go get fixing. I'm not touching it until you fix it." They're very sticky about, if something's not working, they're not going to do it again, right? So you got to get it right for developers. I mean, they'll maybe tolerate something new, but is the "juice worth the squeeze" as they say, right? So you can't go to direct say, "Hey, it's, what's a work in progress? We're going to get our infrastructure together and the world's going to be great for you, but just hang tight." They're going to be like, "Get your shit together then talk to me." So I think that to me is the question. It's an Ops question, but where's that value for the developer in Supercloud where the capabilities are there, there's less friction, it's simpler, it solves the complexity problem. I don't need these high skilled labor to manage Amazon. I got services exposed. >> That's what we talked about earlier. It's like the Walmart example. They basically, they took away from the developer the need to spin up infrastructure and worry about all the governance. I mean, it's not completely there yet. So the developer could focus on what he or she wanted to do. >> But there's a big, like in our industry, there's a big sort of flaw or the contention between developers and operators. Developers want to be on the cutting edge, right? And operators want to be on the stability, you know, like we want governance. >> Yeah, totally. >> Right, so they want to control, developers are like these little bratty kids, right? And they want Legos, like they want toys, right? Some of them want toys by way. They want Legos, they want to build there and they want make a mess out of it. So you got to make sure. My number one advice in this context is that do it up your application portfolio and, or your platform portfolio if you are an ISV, right? So if you are ISV you most probably, you're building a platform these days, do it up in a way that you can say this portion of our applications and our platform will adhere to what you are saying, standardization, you know, like Kubernetes, like slam dunk, you know, it works across clouds and in your data center hybrid, you know, whole nine yards, but there is some subset on the next door systems of innovation. Everybody has, it doesn't matter if you're DMV of Kansas or you are, you know, metaverse, right? Or Meta company, right, which is Facebook, they have it, they are building something new. For that, give them some freedom to choose different things like play with non-standard things. So that is the mantra for moving forward, for any enterprise. >> Do you think developers are happy with the infrastructure now or are they wanting people to get their act together? I mean, what's your reaction, or you think. >> Developers are happy as long as they can do their stuff, which is running code. They want to write code and innovate. So to me, when Ballmer said, "Developer, develop, Developer, what he meant was, all you other people get your act together so these developers can do their thing, and to me the Supercloud is the way for IT to get there and let developer be creative and go fast. Why not, without getting in trouble. >> Okay, let's wrap up this segment with a super clip. Okay, we're going to do a sound bite that we're going to make into a short video for each of you >> All right >> On you guys summarizing why Supercloud's important, why this next wave is relevant for the practitioners, for the industry and we'll turn this into an Instagram reel, YouTube short. So we'll call it a "Super clip. >> Alright, >> Sarbjeet, you want, you want some time to think about it? You want to go first? Vittorio, you want. >> I just didn't mind. (all laughing) >> No, okay, okay. >> I'll do it again. >> Go back. No, we got a fresh one. We'll going to already got that one in the can. >> I'll go. >> Sarbjeet, you go first. >> I'll go >> What's your super clip? >> In software systems, abstraction is your friend. I always say that. Abstraction is your friend, even if you're super professional developer, abstraction is your friend. We saw from the MFC library from C++ days till today. Abstract, use abstraction. Do not try to reinvent what's already being invented. Leverage cloud, leverage the platform side of the cloud. Not just infrastructure service, but platform as a service side of the cloud as well, and Supercloud is a meta platform built on top of these infrastructure services from three or four or five cloud providers. So use that and embrace the programmability, embrace the abstraction layer. That's the key actually, and developers who are true developers or professional developers as you said, they know that. >> Awesome. Great super clip. Vittorio, another shot at the plate here for super clip. Go. >> Multicloud is awesome. There's a reason why multicloud happened, is because gave our developers the ability to innovate fast and ever before. So if you are embarking on a digital transformation journey, which I call a survival journey, if you're not innovating and transforming, you're not going to be around in business three, five years from now. You have to adopt the Supercloud so the developer can be developer and keep building great, innovating digital experiences for your customers and IT can get in front of it and not get in trouble together. >> Building those super apps with Supercloud. That was a great super clip. Vittorio, thank you for sharing. >> Thanks guys. >> Sarbjeet, thanks for coming on talking about the developer impact Supercloud 2. On our next segment, coming up right now, we're going to hear from Walmart enterprise architect, how they are building and they are continuing to innovate, to build their own Supercloud. Really informative, instructive from a practitioner doing it in real time. Be right back with Walmart here in Palo Alto. Thanks for watching. (gentle music)

>> Good afternoon from Vegas, guys and gals. We're so happy that you're with us. This is theCUBE live at AWS re:Invent '22. This is our third day of coverage. We started Monday night, so we're counting that as day one. Loads of conversations we've had already. We know that you know that 'cause you've been watching. I'm here with Dave Vellante. Dave, great to be here with you with somewhere between 50,000 and 70,000 people. And we're excited for our next conversation. We've got two folks joining us who are new to theCUBE, soon will be alumni. Milan Bhatt joins us, the president and head of Cloud at Hexaware. And Nikhil Date, the Director of Engineering and Application Services at Domestic & General. Guys, welcome to the program. >> Thank you >> Thanks for having us. >> So Domestic & General, or D&G, is a customer of Hexaware, but Milan, we want to start with you. Give the audience an overview of Hexaware. What do you do? What's the business model? >> Yeah. So, Hexaware is a technology services company. We are a global partner of AWS, and essentially, we help customers like Domestic & General, you know, accelerate their digital transformation journeys. We like to think of ourselves as a billion dollar startup. And like Amazon, it is always day one at Hexaware. And, you know, I look forward to the conversation, but any company in the world that is looking at cloud-led digital transformation, they have to put Hexaware on the consideration list. Because, you know, not only do we work with a lot of customers, analysts like Gartner, they have rated us as a visionary in helping customers become, you know, digitally enabled, bring better customer experience to their end customers. >> Excellent. Well, we're glad to feature Hexaware on the program. >> Milan: Thank you. >> Nikhil let's bring you into the conversation. Talk to the audience about Domestic & General. What kind of business is it? What's the business model? >> Sure, thank you. So we are, you know, 110-year-old business, right? I mean, we started insuring sheep in Australia, if you believe it, you know, which is quite an origin story. But at the moment, you know, the primary business is keeping our customers world running. So what do I mean by that? We protect in warranty and out-of-warranty care for domestic appliances. You know, TVs, boilers, refrigerators, washing machines, that kind of thing. But we are also a B2B company in the sense that, you know, you might think you are getting a warranty from some of our biggest customers, like Whirlpool or, you know, Bosch, Siemens, or Samsung, but actually it's D&G at the back trying to administer that for you. So, you know, we are in 13 countries. Just launched in the US last year, but big plans. >> So it's really interesting because we all have appliances, and we can relate to, especially, you know pre or post-pandemic, how difficult it is to get service. So you're kind of like, in a way, you've got to build a digital platform like Uber, connecting drivers and passengers, right? And so you've got the supply of individuals who know how to fix stuff, right? And you want to make it as easy as possible for the customer. So was that the genesis of this digital transformation? Can you talk about those business drivers? >> It was, actually, and it's a fantastic point, because trying to become a platform business is what this journey has been all about for us, right? I think, you know, we are a pioneer in what we consider the subscription model. So customers pay a small amount per month as opposed to a big lump sum amount that they have to pay at the point you buy the appliance. And importantly, you can actually buy our product to pay in installments at the point something breaks down. So it's not just something that you buy at the point of sale or at the point you try to register. You can buy it at any time. And the goal really is to have warranty in a box that you can take anywhere, you know, anywhere in the world. So, you know, but it's a great point. Digital transformation is what it is all about. >> And there is a real lack right now of qualified technicians. >> That's right. >> Is there anything within the platform to incent those individuals to participate in your business? >> You know, this is what we consider a multi-tier approach. I think at the moment, the service that we offer is largely top tier, right? So we will get you an engineer that is certified by the manufacturer with the manufacturer warranty. And it's a no fix, no fee model, you know? So, you know, we guarantee either to repair or replace the appliance, you know? That's the model. But you are right, I think in the future stage would be, you know, why wouldn't we want to have anybody who's got the right skills to come in and work off the platform? Absolutely right. >> Nikhil, talk about, you said this is a legacy business, been around for quite some time. You've been there for not quite two years. What drew you to the organization? And where were they in their digital transformation journey? Because I always think legacy companies, this a big challenge, and it's cultural challenge to really transform, but companies these days have no choice. >> Again, a fantastic point, right? I think some of the, you know, 110-year-old business, right? And some of the tech, you would be forgiven for thinking it's that old. But the assets that we had are our people, right? Who are really passionate about the business. And I think what we had to do is to find a partner that can upskill the tech, but also upskill the people at the same time and upskill the delivery model, right? So we've a very traditional left-to-right waterfall, you know, planet first, big upfront planning, and then deliver kind of organization. And by working with a partner such as Hexaware and embracing cloud, because, you know, our first and our go-to will be a SaaS or a cloud provider. And, you know, doing that was the massive agenda that drew me to the company. But I think what is also fair is, you know, digitization or digitalization, is a misunderstood and often abused term, right? Because for the most part, when companies start, and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but, you know, for the most part, when companies start on this journey, they take a journey that works in the brick and mortar world, and we were a contact center business, and just try to move it to the digital journey, right? It's not a great customer experience. I'll give you an example, right? Now, if you call our agent and say, "Yeah, I'm trying to register an appliance," they will tell you where to look for the serial number. But if you're on a digital channel, you don't know where to look. There's nobody, you know, who can help you. The model number, who remembers the model number of the washing machine they bought, right? I mean, you know, it's stuff like that, you know, which would feel, you know, for a digital native, my son, you know, for example, would think, "How can you even ask a customer for that?" But, you know, it's that change in the model, that's what this is all about. >> Yeah, it's like when you get to go, "What's your account number?" I have no idea what my account number is. So when did this whole project start? How was Hexaware involved? And where did Hexaware start? Like, how did you sort of gauge what the requirement was? Take us through that little- >> Sure. So, you know, when Nikhil and the rest of the management team came in, they came up with a competitive process where, you know, and it is refreshing to remember, I think they've stuck true to their vision. They were very clear that they were not looking for someone who can just digitize their paper processes, but who can help them completely re-imagine, you know, what the new process would look like what the new experience would look like. And, you know, remember, they were running this process at the height of the pandemic, so we couldn't meet anybody in person. We did everything virtual. And we were using cloud technology, but, you know, the way they run the process, they wanted to make sure that a provider brings in a mix of experience and engineering expertise. And that's really hard to find. But equally importantly, you remember those culture sessions that we did? They figured out some very creative ways of making sure that there is a cultural fit. So, for example, they did virtual breakout sessions where, you know, people were sort of asking each other, you know, if you want to have dinner with someone like a celebrity, who would it be? So, you know, these little things to make sure that there is a match and people can actually work. >> Relationship building too. >> The relationship building. It's hard to do in a virtual environment, but it was a competitive process. They looked at us in terms of engineering, you know, experience, our ability to transcend change and run, and, you know, really focus and align to keep their objectives first, right? Work as a true partnership. Do you agree? >> I would agree. And I think, you know, one of the biggest goals here was to make sure that, this is not an arms length vendor relationship, right? You know, this is an extension of our team. So these are our people, you know, for the people that work on D&G, you know, they work in the D&G way, you know, and that means that they can also challenge us, you know, which is quite refreshing, right? People stopping and saying, "Why are you asking me to do this?" You know, it's very refreshing, I think, you know, to work with a partner that is sold on the vision and committed to helping you achieve success. >> That synergy creates that flywheel. And like you said, at D&G, Hexaware, we're a team, we're working together. Nikhil, share with us some of the significant business outcomes that Hexaware services and AWS are helping the company to achieve? Because there's some big numbers there. >> Indeed. Yeah. So, you know, in the digital journey itself, like I said, we are also a B2B business. You know, one of the key challenges is every client wants their own brand, right? So, you know, a journey for customer X has to look like the customer X brand. And our journey for customer Y will have to do the same. You know, when you try to stretch this to a technology problem though, it means that, you know, we were trying to be too many things for too many people, and that slowed things down and increased complexity. So from our point of view, you know, when we started with the digital journey or in the middle of the digital journey, we thought, we need to have a library of reusable components. We need white labeling, right? So there was a root in branch re-engineering of the digital proposition to allow us to, you know, serve multiple clients with the same underlying technology. And that has meant that, you know, in some cases, we are going to market, you know, two, three times faster than what we were. Costs, obviously, you know, 50% cheaper. But, you know, I think the big thing here, and, you know, this is the unstated benefit, is because now there is a common underlying technology innovation that client X wants to do becomes available for client Y. You know, which means that, you know, there's a virtual circle of, you know, constant improvement. So, you know that, from my point of view, that's the big benefit. >> And would you agree that you are still only in the first quarter of a football game? >> Absolutely. >> I think a lot of ambitious plans. So, you know, this is just the beginning. And the way they have built the organization, the way they have driven the culture change, you know, I'm very hopeful for great things to come. >> Paint a picture of the tech. I'm interested in the architecture, and I'm really interested in the data component and how that's affected your business. >> So I mean, you know, multilayered tech architecture, as you can imagine. Then, you know, we still have a legacy, you know, legacy components running off our own PET mainframe, as we like to call it. But, you know, from a forward point of view, what we really want is to allow clients to self-serve, right? Not have to, you know, because at the moment, the only service we can offer is what I call the white glove, right? Which means, you know, somebody has to sit down with us, have a discussion on the requirements, but people should be able to self-serve, you know, look at the catalog of what it is we can do for them and go for it. Data is a very interesting point, right? Because not only are there, you know, geography restrictions around where customer data can go to, obviously, payments and PCI compliance is an issue. But last but not least, you know, some of this data is very, you know, unique to what the clients want to own and manage. And, you know, if you are a, you know, a typical homeowner, you will have appliance from all kinds of manufacturers, right? Many of whom would be our customers. But how much data we can share, because we recognize you as a person, but how much data we can share, there are restrictions. But, you know, building our data abstraction layer allows us to, you know, take care of that. But you're absolutely right, in terms of, But again, the potential for where the data can be mined, because, you know, the engineer also has to be local to where you live. You know, you can't come from 100 miles away. So, you know, the ability to use data to, you know, not just transform our business, but our client's business is phenomenal, you know? >> Do you actually have a mainframe? >> Yes >> We do do. (laughter) >> Adam Selinsky wants to move it into the cloud. (laughter) >> They have every possible technology that you can think of. I mean, 100-year-old business evolved over a period of time. And, you know, if I could add, you know, what has been really impressive about the decision making at D&G is that they have adopted cloud in the right way, right? So they are one of the few customers who have truly taken AWS well architected to heart. They have taken things like, you know, take the right workloads to the cloud and wait to do the right remediations before you take the rest of the workloads to the cloud. They've used native services available on AWS from apps perspective as well as a data perspective. So that's sort of a little bit more color on the technology and architecture. >> But you've essentially SaaSified your business and you basically have D&G cloud that you're delivering to your customers for self-serve. Is that fair? >> That's the vision, yes. The idea is to get there. And, you know, if we assemble what I call, you know, out-the-box solutions in a clever way, then that becomes the platform that we can replicate success on. And at the moment, our business needs what I call boots on the ground. When we are a true platform business, we should be able to operate without having, you know, any presence in country, with the partners leveraging the platform to do what what's next. >> I'm curious, Milan, you said that one of the great things that D&G has done is really adopted cloud in the right way. Do you, Nikhil, think of cloud first or cloud right approach? Because you've got a mainframe, so I'm just wondering if it's more what's right for cloud versus everything cloud first. >> Correct. I mean, I actually, you know, or we actually tend to start even two steps before that, right? I think it's really whether we need to buy or whether we need to build, right? And if we need to buy, then, you know, how easily would that thing that has been bought fit into what is a very complex architecture, as Milan said, right? I mean, any technology you can imagine we probably have it, but we want to simplify it, right? And this is a journey. So which means that, you know, we start with can SaaS product do it? And then we also want to go wherever we are building, then it has to be on the cloud. It has to be designed for scaling. It has to be designed to be in multiple geographies, multiple countries with the relevant data protection baked in. So, you know, that's the decision-thinking process. You know, that the goal is to not, I mean, you know, we had a project started 18 months ago that wanted to buy more tin, but we put a stop to that, right? And saying that, "You know, come on, you can't have that." Not in this day and age, you know, when the cloud can pretty much do everything that you need. >> Do you think of D&G, this is a question for you. We're almost out of time, but I'm just curious, I'm looking at your website, D&G, the experts who repair and replace the household products everyone relies on. Do you think about it as a repair company? Do you think about it as a tech company that delivers these repair services? >> I mean, this is the conversation we have in our teams all the time, right? That when our vision is successful, we will become a tech business. At the moment, I don't think we are, you know? At the moment, I think we are on a journey, you know, because, you know, we are multi-channel, you know, and our customers love us, you know, touch wood. But are we a true tech company? No, but we are getting there, right? I think, you know, that's the plan. >> You're on the journey? >> Yeah. >> Awesome stuff. Last question for each of you, a little bit different. Milan, question for you. You have a billboard or a bumper sticker, whichever, or maybe a sticker for your laptop and it's about Hexaware, and you want to really convey, in a compelling, but really short way, why are we so great? What would that sticker say? >> Awesome. Like I said at the beginning, if you are thinking about a digital transformation, if you are a company that has been around for a long time, you've got to think of us, you know, as a partner. So that's what I would say, because, you know, the purpose of our company is creating smiles through a combination of great people and technology. So that's what we live for. And, you know, brought a smile to me when Nikhil said that our customers love us, and somewhere, we have a small role to play in that. >> I love that. Nikhil, I'm going to ask the same question. I was going to ask you a different one, but I would love to, I mean, we talked a lot about D&G and the incredible business transformation that you've been on. What's that bumper sticker for D&G? What is that bumper sticker for D&G? >> Oh, yeah. Okay. We want keep your world running, right? I mean, you know, from our point of view, you know, you rely on the appliances to keep your home running, and we want you to rely on us to make sure your world keeps running. You know, that's what this is all about. It has to be slick. Touch wood, hopefully, you never have a problem, but if you do, we want to be there, you know, to make sure that your world keeps running. >> I love it. Awesome, guys. Thank you, Milan. Nikhil, thank you so much for joining Dave and me on the program. >> Thank you. I enjoyed the conversation. >> Great partnership. Hexaware, first time on theCUBE, now you're an alumni. You're an alumni too. We appreciate your insights, sharing the story. It's a really compelling story. Thank you. >> And thank you for all the support, Nikhil. >> Of course. >> All right. >> For our guests and for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live enterprise and emerging tech coverage.

>>Welcome to this Q conversation. I'm Dave Nicholson. And today we are joined by Andrew ish and Chris Y Moran, both from Gentech. Andrew is the vice president of marketing. Chris John is the, uh, vice president of product engineering, gentlemen, welcome to the cube. >>Welcome David. Thanks for having us. Hey, >>David, thanks for having us on your show. >>Absolutely. Give us just, let's start out by, uh, giving us some background on, on Gentech. How would you describe to a relative coming over and asking you what you do for a living? What Genotech does? >>Well, I'll take a shot at that. I'm the marketing guy, David, but, uh, I think the best way to think of Genotech first and foremost is a software company. We, uh, we do a really good job of bringing together all of that physical security sensor network onto a platform. So people can make sense out of the data that comes from video surveillance, cameras, access control, reads, license plate recognition, cameras, and from a whole host of different sensors that can live out there in the world. Temperature, sensors, microwaves, all sorts of stuff. So we're a company that's really good at making sense of complex data from sensors. That's kind of, I think that's kind of what we >>Do and, and, and we focus specifically on like larger, complex, critical infrastructure type projects, whether they be airports, uh, large enterprise campuses and whatnot. So we're not necessarily your well known consumer type brand. >>So you mentioned physical, you mentioned physical security. Um, what about the intersection between physical security and, and cyber security who are, who are the folks that you work with directly as customers and where do they, where do they sit in that spectrum of cyber versus physical? >>So we predominantly work with physical security professionals and, uh, they typically are responsible for the security of a facility, a campus, a certain area. And we'll talk about security cameras. We'll talk about access control devices with card readers and, and, and locks, uh, intrusion detection, systems, fences, and whatnot. So anything that you would see that physically protects a facility. And, uh, what's actually quite interesting is that, you know, cybersecurity, we, we hear about cybersecurity and depressed all the time, right. And who's been hacked this week is typically like, uh, a headline that we're all like looking at, uh, we're looking for in the news. Um, so we actually do quite a lot of, I would say education work with the physical security professional as it pertains to the importance of cyber security in the physical security system, which in and of itself is an information system. Right. Um, so you don't wanna put a system in place to protect your facility that is full of cybersecurity holes because at that point, you know, your physical security systems becomes, uh, your weakest link in your security chain. Uh, the way I like to say it is, you know, there's no such thing as physical security versus cyber security, it's just security. Uh, really just the concept or a context of what threat vectors does this specific control or mechanism actually protects against >>Those seem to be words to live by, but are, are they aspirational? I mean, do you, do you see gaps today, uh, between the worlds of cyber and physical security? >>I mean, for sure, right? Like we, physical security evolved from a different part of the enterprise, uh, structure then did it or cyber security. So they, they come at things from a different angle. Um, so, you know, for a long time, the two worlds didn't really meet. Uh, but now what we're seeing, I would say in the last 10 years, Christian, about that, there's a huge convergence of cyber security with physical security. It, so information technology with operation technology really coming together quite tightly in the industry. And I think leading companies and sophisticated CISOs are really giving a big pitcher thought to what's going on across the organization, not just in cybersecurity. >>Yeah. I think we've come a long way from CCTV, which stands for closed circuit television, uh, which was typically like literally separated from the rest of the organization, often managed by the facilities, uh, part of any organization. Uh, and now we're seeing more and more organizations where this is converging together, but there's still ways to go, uh, to get this proper convergence in place. But, you know, we're getting there. >>How, how does Gentech approach its addressable market? Is this, is this a direct model? Uh, do you work with partners? What, what does that look like in your world? >>Well, we're a, we're a partner led company Gentech, you know, model on many friends is all about our partners. So we go to market through our integration channel. So we work with really great integrators all around the world. Um, and they bring together our software platform, which is usually forms the nucleus of sort of any O T security network. Uh, they bring that together with all sorts of other things, such as the sensor network, the cabling, all of that. It's a very complex multiplayer world. And also in that, you know, partnership ecosystem and Christian, this is more your world. We have to build deep integrations with all of these companies that build sensors, whether that's access, Bosch, Canon, uh, Hanoi, you know, we're, we're really working with them them. And of course with our storage and server partners >>Like Dell >>Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Yeah. So we have, we have like hundreds of, I would say ecosystem partners, right? Camera manufacturers, uh, access control reader, controller manufacturers, intrusion detection, manufacturers, late LIDAR radar, you know, the list goes on and on and on. And, and basically we bring this all together. The system integrator really is going to pick best of breed based on a specific end customer's I would say requirements and then roll out the system. According >>That's very interesting, you know, at, at Silicon angle on the cube, um, we've initiated coverage of this subject of the question, does hardware still matter? And, and you know, of course we're, we're approaching that primarily from kind of the traditional it, uh, perspective, but you said at the outset, you you're a software company mm-hmm <affirmative>, but clearly correct me if I'm wrong, your software depends upon all of these hardware components and as they improve, I imagine you can do things that maybe you couldn't do before those improvements. The first thing that comes to mind is just camera resolution. Um, you know, sort of default today is 4k, uh, go back five years, 10 years. I imagine that some of the sophisticated things that you can do today weren't possible because the hardware was lagging. Is that, is that a, is that a fair assessment? >>Oh, that's a fair assessment. Just going back 20 years ago. Uh, just VGA resolution on a security camera was like out of this world resolution, uh, even more so if it was like full motion, 30 images per second. So you typically have like, probably even like three 20 by 2 44 images per second, like really lousy resolution, just from a resolution perspective, the, the imagery sensors have, have really increased in terms of what they can provide, but even more so is the horsepower of these devices. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> now it's not uncommon to have, uh, pretty, pretty powerful Silicon in those devices now that can actually run machine learning models and you can actually do computer vision and analytics straight into the device. Uh, as you know, in some of the initial years, you would actually run this on kind of racks of servers in this data center. >>Now you can actually distribute those workloads across on the edge. And what we're seeing is, you know, the power that the edge provides is us as a software company, we have the opportunity to actually bring our workloads where it makes most sense. And in some cases we'll actually also have a ground station kind of in between the sensors and potentially the cloud, uh, because the use case just, uh, calls for it. Uh, just looking from a, from a, from a video security perspective, you know, when you have hundreds or thousands of cameras on an airport, it's just not economical or not even feasible in some cases to bring all that footage to the cloud even more so when 99% of that footage is never watched by anybody. So what's the point. Uh, so you just wanna provide the clips that, that actually do matter to the cloud and for longer term retention, you also want to be able to have sometimes more resilient systems, right? So what happens if the cloud disconnects, you can stop the operations of that airport or stop that operations of that, of that prison, right? It needs to continue to operate and therefore you need higher levels of resiliency. So you do need that hardware. So it's really a question of what it calls for and having the right size type of hardware so that you don't overly complexify the installation, uh, and, and actually get the job done. Are >>You comparing airports to prisons >>Christian? Well, nowadays they're pretty much prepared <laugh>, >>But I mean, this is exactly it, David, but I mean, this payload, especially from the video surveillance, like the, the workload that's going through to the, these ground stations really demands flexible deployment, right? So like we think about it as edge to cloud and, uh, you know, that's, what's really getting us excited because it, it gives so much more flexibility to the, you know, the C I S O and security professionals in places like prisons, airports, also large scale retail and banking, and, uh, other places, >>Universities, the list goes on and on and on, and >>On the flexibility of deployment just becomes so much easier because these are lightweight, you usually word deploying on a Linux box and it can connect seamlessly with like large scale head end storage or directly to, uh, cloud providers. It's, it's really a sophisticated new way of looking at how you architect out these networks. >>You've just given, you've just given a textbook example of why, uh, folks in the it world have been talking about hybrid cloud for, for, for such a long time, and some have scoffed at the idea, but you just, you just present a perfect use case for that combination of leveraging cloud with, uh, on-premises hardware and tracking with hardware advances, um, uh, on, on the subject of camera resolution. I don't know if you've seen this meme, but there's a great one with the, the first deep field image from the, from the, I was gonna say humble, the James web space telescope, uh, in contrast with a security camera F photo, which is really blurry of someone in your driveway <laugh>, uh, which is, which is, uh, sort of funny. The reality though, is I've seen some of these latest generation security cameras, uh, you know, beyond 4k resolution. And it's amazing just, you know, the kind of detail that you can get into, but talk about what what's, what's exciting in your world. What's, what's Gentech doing, you know, over the next, uh, several quarters that's, uh, particularly interesting what's on the leading edge of your, of your world. >>Well, I think right now what's on the leading edges is being driven by our end users. So the, so the, the companies, the governments, the organizations that are implementing our software into these complex IOT networks, they wanna do more with that data, right? It's not just about, you know, monitoring surveillance. It's not just about opening and closing doors or reading license plates, but more and more we're seeing organizations taking this bigger picture view of the data that is generated in their organizations and how they can take value out of existing investments that they've made in sensor networks, uh, and to take greater insight into operations, whether that can be asset utilization, customer service efficiency, it becomes about way more than just, you know, either physical security or cyber security. It becomes really an enterprise shaping O T network. And to us, that is like a massive, massive opportunity, uh, in the, in the industry today. >>Yeah. >>Now you're you're you're oh, go ahead. I'm sorry, Christian, go ahead. Yeah, >>No, it's, it's, it's good. But, you know, going back to a comment that I mentioned earlier about how it was initially siloed and now, you know, we're kind of discovering this diamond in the rough, in terms of all these sensors that are out there, which a lot of organizations didn't even know existed or didn't even know they had. And how can you bring that on kind of across the organizations for non-security related applications? So that's kind of one very interesting kind of, uh, direction that we're, that we've been undergoing for the last few years, and then, you know, security, uh, and physical security for that matter often is kind of the bastard step child. Doesn't get all the budget and, you know, there's lots of opportunities for, to help them increase and improve their operations, uh, as, as Andrew pointed out and really help bringing them into the 21st century. >>Yeah. >>And you're, you're headquartered in Montreal, correct? >>Yes. >>Yeah. So, so the reason, the reason why that's interesting is because, um, and, you know, correct me if I'm, if I'm off base here, but, but you're sort of the bridge between north America and Europe. Uh, and, and, uh, and so you sit at that nexus where, uh, you probably have more of an awareness of, uh, trends in security, which overlap with issues of privacy. Yeah. Where Europe has led in a lot of cases. Um, some of those European like rules are coming to north America. Um, is there anything in your world that is particularly relevant or that concerns you about north America catching up, um, or, or do those worlds of privacy and security not overlap as much as I might think they do? >>Ah, thank you. Any >>Thoughts? >>Absolutely not. No, no. <laugh> joking aside. This is, this is, this is, >>Leave me hanging >><laugh>, uh, this is actually core to our DNA. And, and, and we, we often say out loud how, like Europe has really paved the way for a different way, uh, of, of looking at privacy from a security setting, right. And they're not mutually exclusive. Right. You can have high security all while protecting people's privacy. And it's all of a question of ensuring that, you know, how you kind of, I would say, uh, ethically, uh, use said technology and we can actually put some safeguards in it. So to minimize the likelihood of there being abuse, right? There's, there's something that we do, which we call the privacy protector, which, you know, for all intents and purposes, it's not that complex of an idea. It's, it's really the concept of you have security cameras in a public space or a more sensitive location. And you have your security guards that can actually watch that footage when nothing really happens. >>You, you want to protect people's privacy in these situations. Uh, however, you still want to be able to provide a view to the security guard so they can still make out that, you know, there there's actually people walking around or there's a fight that broke out. And in the likelihood that something did happen, then you can actually view the overall footage. So, and with, with the details that the cameras that you had, you know, the super high mega pixel cameras that you have will provide. So we blur the images of the individuals. We still keep the background. And once you have the proper authorization, and this is based on the governance of the organization, so it can be a four I principle where it could be the chief security officer with the chief privacy officer need to authorize this footage to be kind of UN blurred. And at that point you can UN blur the footage and provide it to law enforcement for the investigation, for example. >>Excellent. I've got Andrew, if you wanted, then I, then I'm. Well, so I, I've a, I have a final question for you. And this comes out of a game that, uh, some friends and I, some friends of mine and I devised over the years, primarily this is played with strangers that you meet on airplanes as you're traveling. But the question you ask is in your career, what you're doing now and over the course of your careers, um, what's the most shocking thing <laugh> that people would learn from what, you know, what do you, what do you find? What's the craziest thing. When you go in to look at these environments that you see that people should maybe address, um, well, go ahead and start with you, Andrew. >>I, >>The most shocking thing you see every day in your world, >>It's very interesting. The most shocking thing I think we've seen in the industry is how willing, uh, some professionals are in our industry to install any kind of device on their networks without actually taking the time to do due diligence on what kind of security risks these devices can have on a network. Because I think a lot of people don't think about a security camera as first and foremost, a computer, and it's a computer with an IP address on a network, and it has a visual sensor, but we always get pulled in by that visual sensor. Right. And it's like, oh, it's a camera. No, it's a computer. And, you know, over the last, I would say eight years in the industry, we've spent a lot of time trying to sensitize the industry to the fact that, you know, you can't just put devices on your, your network without understanding the supply chain, without understanding the motives behind who's put these together and their track record of cybersecurity. So probably the weirdest thing that I've seen in my, um, you know, career in this industry is just the willingness of people not to take time to do due diligence before they hook something up on onto their corporate network where, you know, data can start leaking out, being exfiltrated by those devices and malevolent actors behind them. So gotta ask questions about what you put on your network. >>Christian, did he steal your, did he steal your thunder? Do you have any other, any other thoughts? >>Well, so first of all, there's things I just cannot say on TV. Okay. But you can't OK. >>You can't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Saying that you're shocked that not everyone speaks French doesn't count. Okay. Let's just get, let's get past that, but, but go, but yeah, go ahead. Any thoughts? >>So, uh, you know, I, I would say something that I I've seen a lot and, and specifically with customers sometimes that were starting to shop for a new system is you'd be surprised by first of all, there's a camera, the likelihood of actually somebody watching it live while you're actually in the field of view of that camera is close to Neil first and foremost, second, there's also a good likelihood that that camera doesn't even record. It actually is not even functional. And, and I would say a lot of organizations often realize that, you know, that camera was not functioning when they actually knew do need to get the footage. And we've seen this with some large incidents, uh, very, uh, bad incidents that happened, uh, whether in the UK or in Boston or whatnot, uh, when they're, when law enforcement is trying to get footage and they realize that a lot of cameras actually weren't recording and, and, and goes back to Andrew's point in terms of the selection process of these devices. >>Yeah. Image resolution is important, like, because you need an, an image that it actually usable so that you can actually do something with it forensically, but you know, these cameras need to be recorded by a reliable system and, and should something happen with the device. And there's always going to be something, you know, power, uh, uh, a bird ate the lens. I don't know what it might be, or squirrel ate the wire. Um, and the camera doesn't work anymore. So you have to replace it. So having a system that provides, you know, you with like health insights in terms of, of, of if it's working or not is, is actually quite important. It needs to be managed like any it environment, right? Yeah. You have all these devices and if one of them goes down, you need to manage it. And most organizations it's fire and forget, I sign a purchase order. I bought my security system, I installed it. It's done. We move on to the next one and seven years later, something bad happens. And like, uhoh, >>It's not a CCTV system. It's a network. Yeah. Life cycle management counts. >>Well, uh, I have to say on that, uh, I'm gonna be doing some research on Canadian birds and squirrels. I, I had no idea, >>Very hungry. >>Andrew, Chris, John, thank you so much. Great conversation, uh, from all of us here at the cube. Thanks for tuning in. Stay tuned. The cube from Silicon angle media, we are your leader in tech coverage.

>>Welcome everyone. Good morning. Good evening to all of you around the world. I am so excited to welcome you to launch bad our annual conference for customers, for partners, for our own colleagues here at Mirandes. This is meant to be a forum for learning, for sharing for discovery. One of openness. We're incredibly excited. Do you have you here with us? I want to take a few minutes this morning and opened the conference and share with you first and foremost where we're going as a company. What is our vision then? I also want to share with you on update on what we have been up to you for the past year. Especially with two important acquisitions, Doc Enterprise and then container and lens. And what are some of the latest developments at Mirandes? And then I'll close also with an exciting announcement that we have today, which we hope is going to be interesting and valuable for all of you. But let me start with our mission. What are we here to Dio? It's very simple. We want to help you the ship code faster. This is something that we're very excited about, something that we have achieved for many of you around the world. And we just want thio double down on. We feel this is a mission that's very much worthwhile and relevant and important to you. Now, how do we do that? How do we help you ship code faster? There are three things we believe in. We believe in this world of cloud. Um, choice is incredibly important. We all know that developers want to use the latest tools. We all know that cloud technology is evolving very quickly and new innovations appear, um, very, very quickly, and we want to make them available to you. So choice is very important. At the same time, consuming choice can be difficult. So our mission is to make choice simple for you to give developers and operators simplicity and then finally underpinning everything that we dio is security. These are the three big things that we invest in and that we believe that choice, simplicity and security and the foundation technology that we're betting on to make that happen for you is kubernetes many of you, many of our customers use kubernetes from your aunties today and they use it at scale. And this is something we want to double down on the fundamental benefit. The our key promise we want to deliver for you is Speed. And we feel this is very relevant and important and and valuable in the world that we are in today. So you might also be interested in what have been our priorities since we acquired Doc Enterprise. What has happened for the past year at Miranda's And there are three very important things we focused on as a company. The first one is customer success. Um, when we acquired Doc Enterprise, the first thing we did is listen to you connect with the most important customers and find out what was your sentiment. What did you like? What were you concerned about? What needed to improve? How can we create more value and a better experience for you? So, customers success has been a top of our list of priorities ever since. And here is what we've heard here is what you've told us. You've told us that you very much appreciated the technology that you got a lot of value out of the technology, but that at the same time, there are some things that we can do better. Specifically, you wanted better. Sele's better support experience. You also wanted more clarity on the road map. You also wanted to have a deeper alignment and a deeper relationship between your needs and your requirements and our our technical development that keep people in our development organization are most important engineers. So those three things are were very, very important to you and they were very important to us here. So we've taken that to heart and over the past 12 months, we believe, as a team, we have dramatically improved the customer support experience. We introduced new SLS with prod care. We've rolled out a roadmap to many many of our customers. We've taken your requirements of the consideration and we've built better and deeper relationships with so many of you. And the evidence for that that we've actually made some progress is in a significant increase off the work clothes and in usage of all platforms. I was so fortunate that we were able to build better and stronger relationships and take you to the next level of growth for companies like Visa like soc T general, like nationwide, like Bosch, like Axa X l like GlaxoSmithKline, like standard and Poor's, like Apple A TNT. So many, many off you, Many of all customers around the world, I believe over the past 12 months have experienced better, better, better support strong s L. A s a deeper relationship and a lot more clarity on our roadmap and our vision forward. The second very big priority for us over the last year has been product innovation. This is something that we are very excited about that we've invested. Most of our resource is in, and we've delivered some strong proof points. Doc Enterprise 3.1 has been the first release that we have shipped. Um, as Mirant is as the unified company, Um, it's had some big innovative features or Windows support or a I and machine learning use cases and a significant number off improvements in stability and scalability earlier this year. We're very excited to have a quiet lens and container team, which is by far the most popular kubernetes. I'd, um, in the world today and every day, 600 new users are starting to use lens to manage the community's clusters to deploy applications on top of communities and to dramatically simplify the experience for communities for operators and developers alike. That is a very big step forward for us as a company. And then finally, this week at this conference, we announcing our latest product, which we believe is a huge step forward for Doc Enterprise and which we call Doc Enterprise, Container Cloud, and you will hear a lot more about that during this conference. The third vector of development, the third priority for us as a company over the past year was to become mawr and Mawr developer centric. As we've seen over the past 10 years, developers really move the world forward. They create innovation, they create new software. And while our platform is often managed and run and maybe even purchased by RT architects and operators and I T departments, the actual end users are developers. And we made it our mission a za company, to become closer and closer to developers to better understand their needs and to make our technology as easy and fast to consume as possible for developers. So as a company, we're becoming more and more developers centric, really. The two core products which fit together extremely well to make that happen, or lens, which is targeted squarely at a new breed off kubernetes developers sitting on the desktop and managing communities, environments and the applications on top on any cloud platform anywhere and then DACA enterprise contain a cloud which is a new and radically innovative, contain a platform which we're bringing to market this week. So with this a za background, what is the fundamental problem which we solve for you, for our customers? What is it that we feel are are your pain points that can help you resolve? We see too very, very big trends in the world today, which you are experiencing. On one side, we see the power of cloud emerging with more features mawr innovation, more capabilities coming to market every day. But with those new features and new innovations, there is also an exponential growth in cloud complexity and that cloud complexity is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate for developers and operators alike. And at the same time, we see the pace of change in the economy continuing to accelerate on bits in the economy and in the technology as well. So when you put these two things together on one hand, you have MAWR and Mawr complexity. On the other hand, you have fast and faster change. This makes for a very, very daunting task for enterprises, developers and operators to actually keep up and move with speed. And this is exactly the central problem that we want to solve for you. We want to empower you to move with speed in the middle off rising complexity and change and do it successfully and with confidence. So with that in mind, we are announcing this week at LAUNCHPAD a big and new concept to take the company forward and take you with us to create value for you. And we call this your cloud everywhere, which empowers you to ship code faster. Dr. Enterprise Container Cloud is a lynch bit off your cloud everywhere. It's a radical and new container platform, which gives you our customers a consistent experience on public clouds and private clouds alike, which enables you to ship code faster on any infrastructure, anywhere with a cohesive cloud fabric that meets your security standards that offers a choice or private and public clouds and offer you a offers you a simple, an extremely easy and powerful to use experience. for developers. All of this is, um, underpinned by kubernetes as the foundation technology we're betting on forward to help you achieve your goals at the same time. Lens kubernetes e. It's also very, very well into the real cloud. Every concept, and it's a second very strong linchpin to take us forward because it creates the developing experience. It supports developers directly on their desktop, enabling them Thio manage communities workloads to test, develop and run communities applications on any infrastructure anywhere. So Doc, Enterprise, Container, Cloud and Lens complement each other perfectly. So I'm very, very excited to share this with you today and opened the conference for you. And with this I want to turn it over to my colleague Adam Parker, who runs product development at Mirandes to share a lot more detail about Doc Enterprise Container Cloud. Why we're excited about it. Why we feel is a radical step forward to you and why we feel it can add so much value to your developers and operators who want to embrace the latest kubernetes technology and the latest container technology on any platform anywhere. I look forward to connecting with you during the conference and we should all the best. Bye bye. >>Thanks, Adrian. My name is Adam Parco, and I am vice president of engineering and product development at Mirant ISS. I'm extremely excited to be here today And to present to you Dr Enterprise Container Cloud Doc Enterprise Container Cloud is a major leap forward. It Turpal charges are platform. It is your cloud everywhere. It has been completely designed and built around helping you to ship code faster. The world is moving incredibly quick. We have seen unpredictable and rapid changes. It is the goal of Docker Enterprise Container Cloud to help navigate this insanity by focusing on speed and efficiency. To do this requires three major pillars choice, simplicity and security. The less time between a line of code being written and that line of code running in production the better. When you decrease that cycle, time developers are more productive, efficient and happy. The code is higher, quality contains less defects, and when bugs are found are fixed quicker and more easily. And in turn, your customers get more value sooner and more often. Increasing speed and improving developer efficiency is paramount. To do this, you need to be able to cycle through coding, running, testing, releasing and monitoring all without friction. We enabled us by offering containers as a service through a consistent, cloudlike experience. Developers can log into Dr Enterprise Container Cloud and, through self service, create a cluster No I T. Tickets. No industry specific experience required. Need a place to run. A workload simply created nothing quicker than that. The clusters air presented consistently no matter where they're created, integrate your pipelines and start deploying secure images everywhere. Instantly. You can't have cloud speed if you start to get bogged down by managing, so we offer fully automated lifecycle management. Let's jump into the details of how we achieve cloud speed. The first is cloud choice developers. Operators add mons users they all want. In fact, mandate choice choice is extremely important in efficiency, speed and ultimately the value created. You have cloud choice throughout the full stack. Choice allows developers and operators to use the tooling and services their most familiar with most efficient with or perhaps simply allows them to integrate with any existing tools and services already in use, allowing them to integrate and move on. Doc Enterprise Container Cloud isn't constructive. It's open and flexible. The next important choice we offer is an orchestration. We hear time and time again from our customers that they love swarm. That's simply enough for the majority of their applications. And that just works that they have skills and knowledge to effectively use it. They don't need to be or find coop experts to get immediate value, so we will absolutely continue to offer this choice and orchestration. Our existing customers could rest assure their workloads will continue to run. Great as always. On the other hand, we can't ignore the popularity that growth, the enthusiasm and community ecosystem that has exploded with communities. So we will also be including a fully conforming, tested and certified kubernetes going down the stock. You can't have choice or speed without your choice and operating system. This ties back to developer efficiency. We want developers to be able to leverage their operating system of choice, were initially supporting full stack lifecycle management for a bun, too, with other operating systems like red hat to follow shortly. Lastly, all the way down at the bottom of stack is your choice in infrastructure choice and infrastructure is in our DNA. We have always promoted no locking and flexibility to run where needed initially were supporting open stock AWS and full life cycle management of bare metal. We also have a road map for VM Ware and other public cloud providers. We know there's no single solution for the unique and complex requirements our customers have. This is why we're doubling down on being the most open platform. We want you to truly make this your cloud. If done wrong, all this choice at speed could have been extremely complex. This is where cloud simplification comes in. We offer a simple and consistent as a service cloud experience, from installation to day to ops clusters Air created using a single pane of glass no matter where they're created, giving a simple and consistent interface. Clusters can be created on bare metal and private data centers and, of course, on public cloud applications will always have specific operating requirements. For example, data protection, security, cost efficiency edge or leveraging specific services on public infrastructure. Being able to create a cluster on the infrastructure that makes the most sense while maintaining a consistent experience is incredibly powerful to developers and operators. This helps developers move quick by being able to leverage the infra and services of their choice and operators by leveraging, available, compute with the most efficient and for available. Now that we have users self creating clusters, we need centralized management to support this increase in scale. Doc Enterprise Container cloud use is the single pane of glass for observe ability and management of all your clusters. We have day to ops covered to keep things simple and new. Moving fast from this single pane of glass, you can manage the full stack lifecycle of your clusters from the infra up, including Dr Enterprise, as well as the fully automated deployment and management of all components deployed through it. What I'm most excited about is Doc Enterprise Container Cloud as a service. What do I mean by as a service doctor? Enterprise continue. Cloud is fully self managed and continuously delivered. It is always up to date, always security patched, always available new features and capabilities pushed often and directly to you truly as a service experience anywhere you want, it run. Security is of utmost importance to Miranda's and our customers. Security can't be an afterthought, and it can't be added later with Doctor and a price continued cloud, we're maintaining our leadership and security. We're doing this by leveraging the proven security and Dr Enterprise. Dr. Enterprise has the best and the most complete security certifications and compliance, such as Stig Oscar, How and Phipps 1 $40 to thes security certifications allows us to run in the world's most secure locations. We are proud and honored to have some of the most security conscious customers in the world from all industries into. She's like insurance, finance, health care as well as public, federal and government agencies. With Dr Enterprise Container Cloud. We put security as our top concern, but importantly, we do it with speed. You can't move fast with security in the way so they solve this. We've added what we're calling invisible security security enabled by default and configured for you as part of the platform. Dr Price Container Cloud is multi tenant with granular are back throughout. In conjunction with Doc Enterprise, Docker Trusted Registry and Dr Content Trust. We have a complete end to end secured software supply chain Onley run the images that have gone through the appropriate channels that you have authorized to run on the most secure container engine in the >>industry. >>Lastly, I want to quickly touch on scale. Today. Cluster sprawl is a very real thing. There are test clusters, staging clusters and, of course, production clusters. There's also different availability zones, different business units and so on. There's clusters everywhere. These clusters are also running all over the place. We have customers running Doc Enterprise on premise there, embracing public cloud and not just one cloud that might also have some bare metal. So cloud sprawl is also a very real thing. All these clusters on all these clouds is a maintenance and observe ability. Nightmare. This is a huge friction point to scaling Dr Price. Container Cloud solves these issues, lets you scale quicker and more easily. Little recap. What's new. We've added multi cluster management. Deploy and attach all your clusters wherever they are. Multi cloud, including public private and bare metal. Deploy your clusters to any infra self service cluster creation. No more I T. Tickets to get resources. Incredible speed. Automated Full stack Lifecycle management, including Dr Enterprise Container, cloud itself as a service from the in for up centralized observe ability with a single pane of glass for your clusters, their health, your APs and most importantly to our existing doc enterprise customers. You can, of course, add your existing D clusters to Dr Enterprise Container Cloud and start leveraging the many benefits it offers immediately. So that's it. Thank you so much for attending today's keynote. This was very much just a high level introduction to our exciting release. There is so much more to learn about and try out. I hope you are as excited as I am to get started today with Doc Enterprise. Continue, Cloud, please attend the tutorial tracks up Next is Miska, with the world's most popular Kubernetes E Lens. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy the rest of our conference.

(upbeat music) >> Narrator: From around the globe it's theCUBE, with coverage of SUSECON Digital. Brought to you by SUSE. >> Stu: Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman and this is theCUBE's coverage of SUSECON Digital '20. Apeda Welcome to the program Vincente Moranta, who is the Vice President of Offer Management of Enterprise Linux Workloads on Power. Vincente, pleasure to see you, thanks for joining us. >> Vincente: Hey Stu and thank you for having me. >> All right, so we know that SUSE lives on a lot of platforms. We're going to talk a bit about applications specifically, primarily SAP. Give us a little bit, Vincente, about what you're working on, and the relevance to the partnership with SUSE. >> Sure, absolutely. So, the last five years I've been responsible for offering management at IBM. Focused on solutions that live on IBM powered systems. In particular, we started with SAP HANA, and obviously SAP and SUSE, with their fantastic relationship, was a big part of that and continues to be as we have grown the platform for the last five years. >> Excellent. So, SAP of course, critical workload, we've been seeing SAP go through those transformation. So, help us understand what work needs to be done to integrate these things? Make sure that companies can run their business. >> Yeah, I think primarily as clients are making their transition from a traditional type of an ERP, CRM, and even BW type workloads, they're looking for a way to make those transitions. Really get in to the whole digital transformation and all of the spaces of being able to leverage technology in a way that creates value to the client, in almost real time. But they want to do it with technology partners that are going to enable the client to do it with minimal risk, with high flexibility and with partners who are there for them to, in some cases, do things that are not necessarily all too forwarded or ready to go yet. But really giving the customer the ability to adapt to things. And when we started with SAP HANA, as I mentioned, the customers in the market who were doing HANA on X86 platforms were limited to certain set of capabilities, certain set of support statements, and things like that. And a big part of that was bare metal implementations which still to this day remain the most popular way to deploy HANA in an X86 environment. But when we got together with SUSE and with SAP and we started the partnership around HANA, the thing that became very clear was that customers needed flexibility. They needed to be able to adapt to changing environments, very interesting challenges that they were trying to tackle with these HANA projects. But the capabilities of the servers that they were using, were not allowing them to have that flexibility. And then, even if SUSE was trying to do certain things and give some flexibility to those clients, if the infrastructure cannot handle it, or vice verse, it really just is a one-party trick and it doesn't work. So the focus with SUSE, almost from the beginning, has been on tool innovation. And we've been able to accomplish really amazing things together with them and SAP. Things that could not have been possible without that very strong collaboration. And one of them that is very recent, is shared processor pool. Right? In a world where HANA is deployed bare-metal systems, IBM Power is always doing virtualization, and together with SUSE, we were able to come up with a solution. And with SAP, obviously. That allowed customers to share source in a virtual way across many HANA instances. So completely revolutionizing the DCO and the ROI for clients working with HANA. Without trading out any of the resiliency, any of the performance, and everything else. So, that's the balance that a lot of these customers are looking for is flexibility, and better returns, especially now more than ever. Without trading out all of the things that they need for an S/4 HANA project or an ERP or a BW project. >> You talked about the flexibility and the returns that customers get on this. I wonder if you step back for a second, where is this hitting on a CIO's priority list? What has changed in today's Cloud era? Couple weeks ago, IBM Think was going on, heard a lot about customers, how they're going through their journey in the cloud. We know there's a lot of options there so. SAP solutions specifically, there's a lot of ways that we can do this. So how does a CIO figure out what the best solution for their skill-set and the technology partner that they work with. >> Yeah, I think at a high-level where the CIO's are basing nowadays, is kind of, it's a good time to be a CIO, I think, because you get a chance to have a broad range of deployment options. Without having to trade out from the features. I'm sure some CIO's will disagree and will say there's plenty of other challenges that are making their lives complicated. But if we just focus on the fact that you can deploy HANA - you can deploy it in the cloud, you can deploy it in hybrid, you can deploy it on premises. And the largest then, and especially with our capabilities, and together with SUSE, the CIO doesn't have to make a choice on trade out of things that they have to lose if they make one of the other. I think that is what helps them to feel comfortable to go in to SAP and being able to adapt. If a project becomes too large or the data transfer requirements become too complicated or too expensive, it's easy enough to bring it back and to maybe leave dev test in a cloud and move the rest of the production environment to on premise. Through a number of partnerships that we have done over the last few years, there's a number of very large MSP's and CSP's including SAP HANA Enterprise Crowd - HEC - and very soon IBM cloud as well. Who can provide all of these capabilities that SUSE and Empower allow for a HANA deployment to be done in a Cloud. So from our perspective, even though I'm a hardware guy, and some people may think I only care about on premises business, the reality is when a customer says, or a CIO as you were asking. When a CIO is trying to make a decision we don't want that CIO to be thinking they have to make a decision between IBM supporting them only if it's on premises or only if it's on Cloud. We can do both. And they don't have to do, it's not a hard trade off to decide. You can start with one, you can go to the other one. We can have capacity for them like we're doing with SAP HEC today, SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud. They're using Power9 technology. The customers benefit in regardless of which deployment option they choose. Both with SUSE underneath it. I think we're trying to make it simpler for them to make those choices without infrastructure becoming the sticky point. >> Yeah, and you talked about the support that users can get, of course, from IBM. At SUSECON, a lot of the discussion about the community there. >> Absolutely. >> So, what can you tell us about, you've got thousands of customers that are running SAP HANA on Power, how do you help them rally together and be part of (muted). >> Yeah, so, you and I have known each other for a while and I think when we started working together at a prior company it was around communities practice. And the organizational network and social network. A big part of what we have done is just going to that same approach. Of just connecting people with people. Right? Connecting people from SUSE with people from IBM, with clients and trying to foster valuable interaction between those clients. Whether it's TechU, IBM TechU Conferences, SAP TechEd, SUSECON, you name it. We're always kind of looking for ways to bring people together. And I'll put in a plug for a client entity, a client council called the SAP Power Customer Council, which is a group of clients that decided on their own to get together and bring other customers who are doing SAP deployments on AIX, on Linux, obviously with SUSE and HANA, and come together once a year. We also have almost monthly interlock and workshops with them. But that is one way where the SUSE folks, IBM Power, SAP Development, all come together with a whole bunch of clients and they're giving us feedback. But also identifying things for us to work on next. From a support perspective, as you said, we have thousands of clients nowadays, and the really fantastic thing has been very few issues and the issues that we have had, SUSE, SAP and IBM, all three of us together, have been able to resolve them to the customers satisfaction. So it just kind of demonstrates that regardless of where something is invented SUSE with SLES, SAP with HANA, us with our hardware and our hypervisors, when it comes to the clients we all work very closely together for their success. >> Great. Those feedback loops are so critically important to everyone involved. I guess last thing, maybe if you've got a customer example that might highlight the partnership between IBM and SUSE? >> Yeah, there's a number of them and we have, I think it's over 60 public references together with SUSE of clients who are doing an SAP HANA with SUSE Empower. But a couple that come to mind, obviously Robert Bosch is a fantastic client for all of us. A fantastic partner. And they've been with us almost from the very beginning, together with SUSE and together with us. And they helped us to identify early on some things that they would like to be able to see supported. Some capabilities that they expected to be able to have, especially given that Bosch had a strong knowledge of IBM technology, IBM product. And they wanted to be able to apply some of the same capabilities around Live Partition Mobility and large size L-bars for HANA and things like that. And they worked very closely with SUSE and with us, and with SAP, to not just give us the requirement, but really help us to identify okay, how should this work? Right, it's not just creating the technology and adding more and more features but how do we integrate it, how do we integrate it in to Bosch, who had created a fantastic self-provisioning type of a portal for all of their clients, all of their internal entities around the world. That was really cool and it really kind of helped us to highlight how we could integrate into tools, monetary, and reporting, etc that our clients have. Another example if I can, is Richemont. Richemont International is based in Geneva. Luxury brand. And Helga Delterad who was the Director of Idea at the time, kind of came to me and gave me a challenge. He said, "Look, I love HANA Power. I love that we can do all of these things with it. But I really would like be able to share processors across multiple HANA instances. That would really reduce the bill. It would really reduce the cost. And Richemont would be able to achieve a much quicker return on investment than we had anticipated." So, he gave us a challenge. The challenge went to everybody. It went to SUSE, to us and to SAP, we all got together and again with Helga being the executive sponsor on the client side, he really kind of worked with all of us. Brought us together and it was a power of the possible type of situation that now is generally available to all clients. And it's thanks to Helga, thanks to Richemont, who brought us together and gave us that challenge. >> Excellent. Well Vincenta Morante, great to catch up with you. Thanks so much for sharing the update on IBM Power and the partnership with SUSE. >> Thanks Stu. >> All right, we'll be back with more coverage from SUSECON Digital '20. I'm Stu Miniman and as always, thank you for watching theCUBE. (upbeat music plays)

(uplifting orchestral music) >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Palo Alto studios, having theCUBE Conversation, a little break in the action of the conference season before things heat up, before we kind of come to the close of 2018. It's been quite a year. But it's nice to be back in the studio. Things are a little bit less crazy, and we're excited to talk about one of the really hot topics right now, which is edge computing, fog computing, cloud computing. What do all these things mean, how do they all intersect, and we've got with us today David King. He's the CEO of FogHorn Systems. David, first off, welcome. >> Thank you, Jeff. >> So, FogHorn Systems, I guess by the fog, you guys are all about the fog, and for those that don't know, fog is kind of this intersection between cloud, and on prem, and... So first off, give us a little bit of the background of the company and then let's jump into what this fog thing is all about. >> Sure, actually, it all dovetails together. So yeah, you're right, FogHorn, the name itself, came from Cisco's invented term, called fog computing, from almost a decade ago, and it connoted this idea of computing at the edge, but didn't really have a lot of definition early on. And so, FogHorn was started actually by a Palo Alto Incubator, just nearby here, that had the idea that hey, we got to put some real meaning and some real meat on the bones here, with fog computing. And what we think FogHorn has become over the last three and a half years, since we took it out of the incubator, since I joined, was to put some real purpose, meaning, and value in that term. And so, it's more than just edge computing. Edge computing is a related term. In the industrial world, people would say, hey, I've had edge computing for three, 40, 50 years with my production line control and also my distributed control systems. I've got hard wired compute. I run, they call them, industrial PCs in the factory. That's edge compute. The IT roles come along and said, no, no, no, fog compute is a more advanced form of it. Well, the real purpose of fog computing and edge computing, in our view, in the modern world, is to apply what has traditionally been thought of as cloud computing functions, big, big data, but running in an industrial environment, or running on a machine. And so, we call it as really big data operating in the world's smallest footprint, okay, and the real point of this for industrial customers, which is our primary focus, industrial IoT, is to deliver as much analytic machine learning, deep learning AI capability on live-streaming sensor data, okay, and what that means is rather than persisting a lot of data either on prem, and then sending it to the cloud, or trying to stream all this to the cloud to make sense of terabytes or petabytes a day, per machine sometimes, right, think about a jet engine, a petabyte every flight. You want to do the compute as close to the source as possible, and if possible, on the live streaming data, not after you've persisted it on a big storage system. So that's the idea. >> So you touch on all kinds of stuff there. So we'll break it down. >> Unpack it, yeah. >> Unpack it. So first off, just kind of the OT/IT thing, and I think that's really important, and we talked before turning the cameras on about Dr. Tom from HP, he loves to make a big symbolic handshake of the operations technology, >> One of our partners. >> Right, and IT, and the marriage of these two things, where before, as you said, the OT guys, the guys that have been running factories, you know, they've been doing this for a long time, and now suddenly, the IT folks are butting in and want to get access to that data to provide more control. So, you know, as you see the marriage of those two things coming together, what are the biggest points of friction, and really, what's the biggest opportunity? >> Great set of questions. So, quite right, the OT folks are inherently suspicious of IT, right? I mean, if you don't know the history, 40 plus years ago, there was a fork in the road, where in factory operations, were they going to embrace things like ethernet, the internet, connected systems? In fact, they purposely air gapped an island of those systems 'cause they was all about machine control, real-time, for safety, productivity, and uptime of the machine. They don't want any, you can't use kind of standard ethernet, it has to be industrial ethernet, right? It has to have time bound and deterministic. It can't be a retry kind of a system, right? So different MAC layer for a reason, for example. What did the physical wiring look like? It's also different cabling, because you can't have cuts, jumps in the cable, right? So it's a different environment entirely that OT grew up in, and so, FogHorn is trying to really bring the value of what people are delivering for AI, essentially, into that environment in a way that's non-threatening to, it's supplemental to, and adds value in the OT world. So Dr. Tom is right, this idea of bringing IT and OT together is inherently challenging, because these were kind of fork in the road, island-ed in the networks, if you will, different systems, different nomenclature, different protocols, and so, there's a real education curve that IT companies are going through, and the idea of taking all this OT data that's already been produced in tremendous volumes already before you add new kinds of sensing, and sending it across a LAN which it's never talked to before, then across a WAN to go to a cloud, to get some insight doesn't make any sense, right? So you want to leverage the cloud, you want to leverage data centers, you want to leverage the LAN, you want to leverage 5G, you want to leverage all the new IT technologies, but you have to do it in a way that makes sense for it and adds value in the OT context. >> I'm just curious, you talked about the air gapping, the two systems, which means they are not connected, right? >> No, they're connected with a duct, they're connected to themselves, in the industrial-- >> Right, right, but before, the OT system was air gapped from the IT system, so thinking about security and those types of threats, now, if those things are connected, that security measure has gone away, so what is the excitement, adoption scare when now, suddenly, these things that were separate, especially in the age of breaches that we know happen all the time as you bring those things together? >> Well, in fact, there have been cyber breaches in the OT context. Think about Stuxnet, think about things that have happened, think about the utilities back keys that were found to have malwares implanted in them. And so, this idea of industrial IoT is very exciting, the ability to get real-time kind of game changing insights about your production. A huge amount of economic activity in the world could be dramatically improved. You can talk about trillions of dollars of value which the McKenzie, and BCG, and Bain talk about, right, by bringing kind of AI, ML into the plant environment. But the inherent problem is that by connecting the systems, you introduce security problems. You're talking about a huge amount of cost to move this data around, persist it then add value, and it's not real-time, right? So, it's not that cloud is not relevant, it's not that it's not used, it's that you want to do the compute where it makes sense, and for industrial, the more industrialized the environment, the more high frequency, high volume data, the closer to the system that you can do the compute, the better, and again, it's multi-layer of compute. You probably have something on the machine, something in the plant, and something in the cloud, right? But rather than send raw OT data to the cloud, you're going to send processed intelligent metadata insights that have already been derived at the edge, update what they call the fleet-wide digital twin, right? The digital twin for that whole fleet of assets should sit in the cloud, but the digital twin of the specific asset should probably be on the asset. >> So let's break that down a little bit. There's so much good stuff here. So, we talked about OT/IT and that marriage. Next, I just want to touch on cloud, 'cause a lot of people know cloud, it's very hot right now, and the ultimate promise of cloud, right, is you have infinite capacity >> Right, infinite compute. >> Available on demand, and you have infinite compute, and hopefully you have some big fat pipes to get your stuff in and out. But the OT challenge is, and as you said, the device challenge is very, very different. They've got proprietary operating systems, they've been running for a very, very long time. As you said, they put off boatloads, and boatloads, and boatloads of data that was never really designed to feed necessarily a machine learning algorithm, or an artificial intelligence algorithm when these things were designed. It wasn't really part of the equation. And we talk all the time about you know, do you move the compute to the data, you move the data to the compute, and really, what you're talking about in this fog computing world is kind of a hybrid, if you will, of trying to figure out which data you want to process locally, and then which data you have time, relevance, and other factors that just go ahead and pump it upstream. >> Right, that's a great way to describe it. Actually, we're trying to move as much of the compute as possible to the data. That's really the point of, that's why we say fog computing is a nebulous term about edge compute. It doesn't have any value until you actually decide what you're trying to do with it, and what we're trying to do is to take as much of the harder compute challenges, like analytics, machine learning, deep learning, AI, and bring it down to the source, as close to the source as you can, because you can essentially streamline or make more efficient every layer of the stack. Your models will get much better, right? You might have built them in the cloud initially, think about a deep learning model, but it may only be 60, 70% accurate. How do you do the improvement of the model to get it closer to perfect? I can't go send all the data up to keep trying to improve it. Well, typically, what happens is I down sample the data, I average it and I send it up, and I don't see any changes in the average data. Guess what? We should do is inference all the time and all the data, run it in our stack, and then send the metadata up, and then have the cloud look across all the assets of a similar type, and say, oh, the global fleet-wide model needs to be updated, and then to push it down. So, with Google just about a month ago, in Barcelona, at the IoT show, what we demonstrated was the world's first instance of AI for industrial, which is closed loop machine learning. We were taking a model, a TensorFlow model, trained in the cloud in the data center, brought into our stack and referring 100% inference-ing in all the live data, pushing the insights back up into Google Cloud, and then automatically updating the model without a human or data scientist having to look at it. Because essentially, it's ML on ML. And that to us, ML on ML is the foundation of AI for industrial. >> I just love that something comes up all the time, right? We used to make decisions based on the sampling of historical data after the fact. >> That's right, that's how we've all been doing it. >> Now, right, right now, the promise of streaming is you can make it based on all the data, >> All the time. >> All the time in real time. >> Permanently. >> This is a very different thing. So, but as you talked about, you know, running some complex models, and running ML, and retraining these things. You know, when you think of edge, you think of some little hockey puck that's out on the edge of a field, with limited power, limited connectivity, so you know, what's the reality of, how much power do you have at some of these more remote edges, or we always talk about the field of turbines, oil platforms, and how much power do you need, and how much compute that it actually starts to be meaningful in terms of the platform for the software? >> Right, there's definitely use cases, like you think about the smart meters, right, in the home. The older generation of those meters may have had very limited compute, right, like you know, talking about single megabyte of memory maybe, or less, right, kilobytes of memory. Very hard to run a stack on that kind of footprint. The latest generation of smart meters have about 250 megabytes of memory. A Raspberry Pi today is anywhere from a half a gig to a gig of memory, and we're fundamentally memory-bound, and obviously, CPU if it's trying to really fast compute, like vibration analysis, or acoustic, or video. But if you're just trying to take digital sensing data, like temperature, pressure, velocity, torque, we can take humidity, we can take all of that, believe it or not, run literally dozens and dozens of models, even train the models in something as small as a Raspberry Pi, or a low end x86. So our stack can run in any hardware, we're completely OS independent. It's a full up software layer. But the whole stack is about 100 megabytes of memory, with all the components, including Docker containerization, right, which compares to about 10 gigs of running a stream processing stack like Spark in the Cloud. So it's that order of magnitude of footprint reduction and speed of execution improvement. So as I said, world's smallest fastest compute engine. You need to do that if you're going to talk about, like a wind turbine, it's generating data, right, every millisecond, right. So you have high frequency data, like turbine pitch, and you have other conceptual data you're trying to bring in, like wind conditions, reference information about how the turbine is supposed to operate. You're bringing in a torrential amount of data to do this computation on the fly. And so, the challenge for a lot of the companies that have really started to move into the space, the cloud companies, like our partners, Google, and Amazon, and Microsoft, is they have great cloud capabilities for AI, ML. They're trying to move down to the edge by just transporting the whole stack to there. So in a plant environment, okay, that might work if you have massive data centers that can run it. Now I still got to stream all my assets, all the data from all of my assets to that central point. What we're trying to do is come out the opposite way, which is by having the world's smallest, fastest engine, we can run it in a small compute, very limited compute on the asset, or near the asset, or you can run this in a big compute and we can take on lots and lots of use cases for models simultaneously. >> I'm just curious on the small compute case, and again, you want all the data-- >> You want to inference another thing, right? >> Does it eventually go back, or is there a lot of cases where you can get the information you need off the stream and you don't necessarily have to save or send that upstream? >> So fundamentally today, in the OT world, the data usually gets, if the PLC, the production line controller, that has simple KPIs, if temperature goes to X or pressure goes to Y, do this. Those simple KPIs, if nothing is executed, it gets dumped into a local protocol server, and then about every 30, 60, 90 days, it gets written over. Nobody ever looks at it, right? That's why I say, 99% of the brown field data in OT has never really been-- >> Almost like a security-- >> Has never been mined for insight. Right, it just gets-- >> It runs, and runs, and runs, and every so often-- >> Exactly, and so, if you're doing inference-ing, and doing real time decision making, real time actual with our stack, what you would then persist is metadata insights, right? Here is an event, or here is an outcome, and oh, by the way, if you're doing deep learning or machine learning, and you're seeing deviation or drift from the model's prediction, you probably want to keep that and some of the raw data packets from that moment in time, and send that to the cloud or data center to say, oh, our fleet-wide model may not be accurate, or may be drifting, right? And so, what you want to do, again, different horses for different courses. Use our stack to do the lion's share of the heavy duty real time compute, produce metadata that you can send to either a data center or a cloud environment for further learning. >> Right, so your piece is really the gathering and the ML, and then if it needs to go back out for more heavy lifting, you'll send it back up, or do you have the cloud application as well that connects if you need? >> Yeah, so we build connectors to you know, Google Cloud Platform, Google IoT Core, to AWS S3, to Microsoft Azure, virtually any, Kafka, Hadoop. We can send the data wherever you want, either on plant, right back into the existing control systems, we can send it to OSIsoft PI, which is a great time series database that a lot of process industries use. You could of course send it to any public cloud or a Hadoop data lake private cloud. You can send the data wherever you want. Now, we also have, one of our components is a time series database. You can also persist it in memory in our stack, just for buffering, or if you have high value data that you want to take a measurement, a value from a previous calculation and bring it into another calculation during later, right, so, it's a very flexible system. >> Yeah, we were at OSIsoft PI World earlier this year. Some fascinating stories that came out of-- >> 30 year company. >> The building maintenance, and all kinds of stuff. So I'm just curious, some of the easy to understand applications that you've seen in the field, and maybe some of the ones that were a surprise on the OT side. I mean, obviously, preventative maintenance is always towards the top of the list. >> Yeah, I call it the layer cake, right? Especially when you get to remote assets that are either not monitored or lightly monitored. They call it drive-by monitoring. Somebody shows up and listens or looks at a valve or gauge and leaves. Condition-based monitoring, right? That is actually a big breakthrough for some, you know, think about fracking sites, or remote oil fields, or mining sites. The second layer is predictive maintenance, which the next generation is kind of predictive, prescriptive, even preventive maintenance, right? You're making predictions or you're helping to avoid downtime. The third layer, which is really where our stack is sort of unique today in delivering is asset performance optimization. How do I increase throughput, how do I reduce scrap, how do I improve worker safety, how do I get better processing of the data that my PLC can't give me, so I can actually improve the performance of the machine? Now, ultimately, what we're finding is a couple of things. One is, you can look at individual asset optimization, process optimization, but there's another layer. So often, we're deployed to two layers on premise. There's also the plant-wide optimization. We talked about wind farm before, off camera. So you've got the wind turbine. You can do a lot of things about turbine health, the blade pitch and condition of the blade, you can do things on the battery, all the systems on the turbine, but you also need a stack running, like ours, at that concentration point where there's 200 plus turbines that come together, 'cause the optimization of the whole farm, every turbine affects the other turbine, so a single turbine can't tell you speed, rotation, things that need to change, if you want to adjust the speed of one turbine, versus the one next to it. So there's also kind of a plant-wide optimization. Talking about time that's driving, there's going to be five layers of compute, right? You're going to have the, almost what I call the ECU level, the individual sub-system in the car that, the engine, how it's performing. You're going to have the gateway in the car to talk about things that are happening across systems in the car. You're going to have the peer to peer connection over 5G to talk about optimization right between vehicles. You're going to have the base station algorithms looking at a micro soil or macro soil within a geographic area, and of course, you'll have the ultimate cloud, 'cause you want to have the data on all the assets, right, but you don't want to send all that data to the cloud, you want to send the right metadata to the cloud. >> That's why there are big trucks full of compute now. >> By the way, you mentioned one thing that I should really touch on, which is, we've talked a lot about what I call traditional brown field automation and control type analytics and machine learning, and that's kind of where we started in discrete manufacturing a few years ago. What we found is that in that domain, and in oil and gas, and in mining, and in agriculture, transportation, in all those places, the most exciting new development this year is the movement towards video, 3D imaging and audio sensing, 'cause those sensors are now becoming very economical, and people have never thought about, well, if I put a camera and apply it to a certain application, what can I learn, what can I do that I never did before? And often, they even have cameras today, they haven't made use of any of the data. So there's a very large customer of ours who has literally video inspection data every product they produce everyday around the world, and this is in hundreds of plants. And that data never gets looked at, right, other than training operators like, hey, you missed the defects this day. The system, as you said, they just write over that data after 30 days. Well, guess what, you can apply deep learning tensor flow algorithms to build a convolutional neural network model and essentially do the human visioning, rather than an operator staring at a camera, or trying to look at training tapes. 30 days later, I'm doing inference-ing of the video image on the fly. >> So, do your systems close loop back to the control systems now, or is it more of a tuning mechanism for someone to go back and do it later? >> Great question, I just got asked that this morning by a large oil and gas super major that Intel just introduced us to. The short answer is, our stack can absolutely go right back into the control loop. In fact, one of our investors and partners, I should mention, our investors for series A was GE, Bosch, Yokogawa, Dell EMC, and our series debuted a year ago was Intel, Saudi Aramco, and Honeywell. So we have one foot in tech, one foot in industrial, and really, what we're really trying to bring is, you said, IT, OT together. The short answer is, you can do that, but typically in the industrial environment, there's a conservatism about, hey, I don't want to touch, you know, affect the machine until I've proven it out. So initially, people tend to start with alerting, so we send an automatic alert back into the control system to say, hey, the machine needs to be re-tuned. Very quickly, though, certainly for things that are not so time-sensitive, they will just have us, now, Yokogawa, one of our investors, I pointed out our investors, actually is putting us in PLCs. So rather than sending the data off the PLC to another gateway running our stack, like an x86 or ARM gateway, we're actually, those PLCs now have Raspberry Pi plus capabilities. A lot of them are-- >> To what types of mechanism? >> Well, right now, they're doing the IO and the control of the machine, but they have enough compute now that you can run us in a separate module, like the little brain sitting right next to the control room, and then do the AI on the fly, and there, you actually don't even need to send the data off the PLC. We just re-program the actuator. So that's where it's heading. It's eventually, and it could take years before people get comfortable doing this automatically, but what you'll see is that what AI represents in industrial is the self-healing machine, the self-improving process, and this is where it starts. >> Well, the other thing I think is so interesting is what are you optimizing for, and there is no right answer, right? It could be you're optimizing for, like you said, a machine. You could be optimizing for the field. You could be optimizing for maintenance, but if there is a spike in pricing, you may say, eh, we're not optimizing now for maintenance, we're actually optimizing for output, because we have this temporary condition and it's worth the trade-off. So I mean, there's so many ways that you can skin the cat when you have a lot more information and a lot more data. >> No, that's right, and I think what we typically like to do is start out with what's the business value, right? We don't want to go do a science project. Oh, I can make that machine work 50% better, but if it doesn't make any difference to your business operations, so what? So we always start the investigation with what is a high value business problem where you have sufficient data where applying this kind of AI and the edge concept will actually make a difference? And that's the kind of proof of concept we like to start with. >> So again, just to come full circle, what's the craziest thing an OT guy said, oh my goodness, you IT guys actually brought some value here that I didn't know. >> Well, I touched on video, right, so without going into the whole details of the story, one of our big investors, a very large oil and gas company, we said, look, you guys have done some great work with I call it software defined SCADA, which is a term, SCADA is the network environment for OT, right, and so, SCADA is what the PLCs and DCSes connect over these SCADA networks. That's the control automation role. And this investor said, look, you can come in, you've already shown us, that's why they invested, that you've gone into brown field SCADA environments, done deep mining of the existing data and shown value by reducing scrap and improving output, improving worker safety, all the great business outcomes for industrial. If you come into our operation, our plant people are going to say, no, you're not touching my PLC. You're not touching my SCADA network. So come in and do something that's non-invasive to that world, and so that's where we actually got started with video about 18 months ago. They said, hey, we've got all these video cameras, and we're not doing anything. We just have human operators writing down, oh, I had a bad event. It's a totally non-automated system. So we went in and did a video use case around, we call it, flare monitoring. You know, hundreds of stacks of burning of oil and gas in a production plant. 24 by seven team of operators just staring at it, writing down, oh, I think I had a bad flare. I mean, it's a very interesting old world process. So by automating that and giving them an AI dashboard essentially. Oh, I've got a permanent record of exactly how high the flare was, how smoky was it, what was the angle, and then you can then fuse that data back into plant data, what caused that, and also OSIsoft data, what was the gas composition? Was it in fact a safety violation? Was it in fact an environmental violation? So, by starting with video, and doing that use case, we've now got dozens of use cases all around video. Oh, I could put a camera on this. I could put a camera on a rig. I could've put a camera down the hole. I could put the camera on the pipeline, on a drone. There's just a million places that video can show up, or audio sensing, right, acoustic. So, video is great if you can see the event, like I'm flying over the pipe, I can see corrosion, right, but sometimes, like you know, a burner or an oven, I can't look inside the oven with a camera. There's no camera that could survive 600 degrees. So what do you do? Well, that's probably, you can do something like either vibration or acoustic. Like, inside the pipe, you got to go with sound. Outside the pipe, you go video. But these are the kind of things that people, traditionally, how did they inspect pipe? Drive by. >> Yes, fascinating story. Even again, I think at the end of the day, it's again, you can make real decisions based on all the data in real time, versus some of the data after the fact. All right, well, great conversation, and look forward to watching the continued success of FogHorn. >> Thank you very much. >> All right. >> Appreciate it. >> He's David King, I'm Jeff Frick, you're watching theCUBE. We're having a CUBE conversation at our Palo Alto studio. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (uplifting symphonic music)

. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeffrey here with the cube. We're in Reno, Nevada at the Interbike show. It's a big industry gathering, talking all about bikes, but today we're at a, a little side event is put on by the Royal Dutch, a gazelle bike company, 125 year old bike company that's all in on eBikes. And when we wanted to come check it out, really learn how the bike phenomenon is impacting smart cities and last bile. And there's so much cool stuff going on with big batteries and small motors, but it's really a lot more than that. And we're excited to be here with someone who's been writing about the industry for over 25 years as Patrick Brady, the publisher of the red kite prayer. Great to see you. Thanks. Nice to be here. Yeah. So you've been doing this for a long time and I just love to get your perspective on this e-bike phenomenon because you know, used to be, it's cheating and you know, these are not real bikes and you know, we're tough and we climbed the mountain and these things, that upset bubble, but they're, they're getting a ton of adoption. We just heard from the, the teammate goes up, they're going to sell a third of the bikes they sell this year or e-bike. >>That's amazing to me. Yay. I'm glad. I mean, this thing where, yeah, it's cheating. It's like, no, a good time is never cheating. Why? This is a problem for people. I don't understand. The thing is the very first time I ever got on an E bike, I grinned so hard. My cheeks hurt. It's a good time. And you know, the thing is, it's so effective for transportation. I'm cyclophilin. Okay. I love rode bikes. I love mountain bikes, but I just like bikes. And so if I can keep my car parked and use a bike to get around, I bought an I-CAR go bike, different company. But I love these. They're stylish, you know, and it's such a great way to get around. It's easy to park, easy to lock. They've got an integrated lock on them. You know, why wouldn't you use that as a way to get around, you know, gas guzzling cars. >>This is not what our future will be. We've got to be intelligent about what the future is. Another problem that we face as cyclists is that we're getting run over. People are on the smart phones and every time somebody gets out of an SUV and starts riding a bike, what happens? It's in the brain. We recognize that which we are. And so a chance to cause someone to recognize us out on the road. Oh look, somebody on a bike like I have. Right, right. Maybe they're not going to run us over. Right. So it's a, it's a way to decrease congestion on our roads. It's a nice way to see the world. I mean I don't care what bike you're on, if you're on a bike, it's a better way to see the world. Right? >>Well, 15 miles an hour. That's going to be a my blogger 14 cause it is. It's nice to be outside. You know, you're, you're in the fresh air. What's amazing to me though is I really came into this with a hypothesis around last mile. This is not last mile at all. These things are just substituting out for people's car. I just heard about a ride that people are doing, the Googlers are doing from San Francisco to mountain view every day. That's not an insignificant ride. Yeah. So it's really a game >>changer. Oh yeah. I take my kids to school on my e-bike pick them up in the afternoon, we'll go to the grocery store, pick up a pizza. No, it's so nice and it's easy to get my boys out the door. Can we take the green bike? You know, they get excited about it. Right. So it's, it's a big difference. Let's talk a little bit about regulations. So it's pretty interesting to see kind of, you know, regulation is usually always behind the technology. You know, how do we treat these things? Are they, are they scooters? Are they like a motor vehicle, but as defined by DMV, are they, are they bikes? And, and, and obviously the danger comes on yet, disparity of speeds. So you know, we're seeing on, I see it a lot of bike paths, no heat, no motor vehicles, which I think they mean scooters and then no eBikes. >>So how do you see kind of the regulation gonna change cause to your bed, to your point, it's always better to have somebody on a bike in a car in general in terms of space and congestion and all the reasons that you went through. So what is it going to take for the legislation and kind of the laws to kinda catch up to what these really represent and transforming really cities well, things have evolved a lot already. There's been a working group within the industry that helped define the three different classifications that are being used. Uh, not being able to use them on a bike path I don't think is a really big deal. You know, as, as the infrastructure improves for cycling, uh, out on roads, you know, bike lanes, that sort of thing. I think that's gonna help. But you know, one of the great things about an e-bike is you roll up to a red light and you pop it and turbo, you know, and the moment the light turns green, you're through the intersection instantly. >>So being out on the road where I live in Santa Rosa, I don't have any problems. And because the bike's big, I've got two other people with bright helmets on, people are cheering me, you know, I get waved at people like, you know, they're not pedaling, cracking jokes. So it's, it's become a very different way to present cycling to people who aren't on bikes and they look at it and they get excited. But you know, back to the legislation, I don't see that we're really having a big problem. There've been issues in some other places where, you know, they're just flat out not legal and it's like, well, you know, they're going to, they're going to see the light on that sooner or later. Right, right. We need to provide other options to get people around and it's just too intelligent and really all it takes for anybody to see. >>The light usually is one ride. Give them a half a mile, they'll get it. Right. It's funny because right at the end of the day we all like to be like that eight year old, they got their first thing Ray and you get out on the road and there's really just nothing like that. But now we're a little older, a little heavier and don't quite have that agility that we had as an eight year old. So you can see it bring it back. Yeah, it's crazy. So I'm just curious to your perspective, even within the bike industry, how it's evolved over the years. You know, there's so much stuff going on with batteries and motors. I think they could sell bikes. Are you using a Bosch system? Obviously Bosch is a huge car components company with giant, giant scale. >>Um, so as you've seen that evolve, you know, kind of what are some of your takes in terms of the longer capacity, the longer batteries, the better. >>Oh, you know, the biggest single thing. Sure. The batteries last longer. The motors provide torque on a more even basis. So they don't just take off or do anything crazy, but the units themselves, the biggest single thing that I see, because a motor is a motor at a certain level, the reliability has gone through the roof. You know, BOSH, yet they understand what reliability is. All the companies doing this now are so much better. I remember being at a magazine in 1998 and a guy just begging me to cover his bike and his Lake. It looked like a piece of junk and I had to communicate to them, but well, our reader is it who you're trying to sell to. Our reader. We actually liked going home. We liked the whole sweaty thing. Uh, and so that was, that was an issue, but I remember what that bike was and yeah, they're just so much more reliable. There's so much easier to use. The batteries lasts so much longer. Everything is, you know, it's ready for you. >>Right, right. It's funny, a lot of, a lot of the conversations earlier today, we're, we're talking about kind of those early days and it's fascinates me, all the Kickstarter projects around all these kinds of alternative vehicles, whether they're scooters or skateboards or one wheels and all these different variations of, of personal mobility. Um, but this is an old company. These guys have been added for awhile and I cannot believe that a third of their sales this year are going to be e-bike. So when a big, the big traditional powerhouses come into the market, that changes everything. >>Yeah. Well, when you look at the population of cyclists in the world, and then you look at the population of the world, who do you want to sell to? If you want to grow your company? I don't, let's sell to all the people who aren't currently riding bikes, you know, and think about what that's gonna do for the world. Fewer emissions, happier people. Holy cow. You know, that's crazy talk. >>Right, right, right. All right, Pat. Well, thanks for, uh, for sharing your perspective. It's, it's a really exciting time. We're happy to be here and, uh, I'm sure it's a whole breath of fresh air in your coverage area to be able to get into this space. Yeah, I really welcome it. I love it. I love it. Oh, I love these, said I'm over the, I'm over the cheating. All right. Well, he's Patrick. I'm Jeff. You're watching the cube. We're at Interbike and actually a little side event here with Royal Dutch gazelle. Thanks for watching.

. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with the cube. We're in Reno, Nevada. Interbike is happening uh, this week in Reno. It's a big huge bike show. They have stuff up at the mountains. They've got stuff at the convention center. This is a small side of it put on by Royal Dutch gazelle, a bikes, 125 year old bike company that is all in on electric bikes. We came because this e-bikes story and part of the big motors, or excuse me, a little motors, big battery kind of last mile thing has really taken off. So we want to come get a better feel for what's going on and we're excited to have a dealer from Portland, one of the most bike friendly towns in all the U S he's wait, Greg. And he runs e-bike store weight. Great to see you. Thank you very much. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me. >>So you said you've had your store open for 10 years. 10 years. We were the first all I looked at short store to open in Portland. Actually it was part of an MBA project. I was in China taking a class, saw electric bikes for the first time, gas had just spiked and realize these are the most efficient form of motorized transportation known. Right. And nobody was doing it. And so next class I had wrote a business plan, launched it 10 years ago by putting 25,000 on a credit card and borrowed 10,000 from a friend and 10 years later we're still here. Love it, love the story. It's been, it's been a fun ride. So it's just, you know, you're the second retailer we've had on and they were also exclusive e-bikes in the Bay area. So you know, was the kind of existing bike infrastructure attitude, you know, industry just looking down to these only things where they just too weird to new Y, you know, kind of the early ones are e-bikes only. >>What's interesting, if you come to the market right now, what you see is you see some of the largest companies in the world putting a lot of resources, engineering resources, manufacturing resources, testing resources behind e-bikes. Back in the day, it wasn't such you, these manufacturers make them in the kind of, the customer was a test person. Right. And so it's been a very bumpy road to get to this point. But at this point they're very reliable. And so at first when caught, when shops were brought these things, they said, why would I ever carry that? Who can keep it running? You know? And now it's at the point where they're very easy to keep her on. They have log files, you plug it into the computer if you have a problem with it and it tells you, Oh error code, fix this one thing and off you're going again. >>But it hasn't always been such. And so the Rick older bike shops in particular avoided them because you make your money in a bike shop by having a customer for life and they couldn't keep them running. So they were nervous. They would not be able to keep the customer. Right. And there was a, it was wise, you know, now it's at the point where all the IBDs are coming in in Portland right now we have seven electrical only bike shops. All the big IBDs are carrying it with IBD, independent bike dealers. Okay. And on top of that, half the people that are looking for any bike will not buy from a traditional bike shop. It only come to an e-bike specialist. And so that's kind of our niche is the people and we really focus on that. So we try to have all of our, how we explain things, not to use big bike terms. >>We talk about how it would value the customer and use a whole different lingo than a traditional shop. Right. So it is a lot of different things going on with bikes. So one of them, right, is the speed, um, and then, and how it's classified. So yes, you know, there's the kind of the 20 mile an hour limit and we see that in the scooters and all these electric vehicles that keep it not a motor vehicle. And then they've got one here. I think it was 27 or 28 miles across three class three. So the laws seem to be kind of trying to catch up, like how do we classify these things? Are they bikes? Are they allowed on the bike path? Are they not allowed on the bike? Pass the hop. It's funny you bring that up tonight. Evolve. Well, it's funny you bring that up today because just today by Portland, which is one of the biggest bike blogs in the nation, um, came out with an article saying they were relatively in the fine print of or Portland code, my city's code and found out you can't ride your bike on the city paths and the city parks, and I didn't know this, I've been in business 10 years, but the very fine print and under dissertation you can't do it. >>Um, so it is, it's a gray space. Um, the 20th mile an hour bikes. Well it seems crazy fast when you and I are standing here. When you're on a road and there is a backup of cars behind you, where's the 20 mile an hour speed limit and they're driving 25 right. You know, it feels kind of safer to be able to go 25 with them and not hold them up and be able to get away from the door and, and zone. We're in a car doesn't go over to the store and you by taking the lane it feels much safer. So I actually, you know, I ride a class one most of the time but I, I do like riding class three bikes. Right. Just curious in terms of of the change of experience on an E bike versus a regular bike, some of the customers that you have, how is it fundamentally different? >>Cause I, you know I came to here today thing and this was really a last mile play. It's not a last mile play at all. For us, about 35% of our customers, their e-bike is their main mode of transportation. It is their car. It is how they get around and about 20% historically from our shop having people with physical disabilities or limitations in some way, shape or form 20%, 20%. So it's people who can no longer make it up the Hill to their house. It's people who can't arrive at work sweaty. It's people with ms, people who are missing along, people who have CLPD, um, you name it. These are people who now can ride again and getting them active again. And so it's a whole different mindset. Um, historically the bike industry has really gone after kinda the elite athlete, right? And this is something different. >>It's people who have, may haven't written a bike for oftentimes 20 plus years, right. Are now able to get out and go on a Hill. And the most interesting thing, they did a study in Australia where they put on, they worked with psycho stupid, been injured and they hooked him up to exercise bikes in front of a video screen showing them as they're paddling down the road essentially. And they change the video to climb a Hill, but they didn't change the settings on the exercise bike. They're sitting on the cyclist reported a higher level of pain when the visual show them climbing the Hill. So e-bikes do the exact reverse of that. And you're actually rewiring your brain so that bikes don't add pain and you can get where you need to go easily and efficiently. Right. So it's their primary, their primary methods. So you talked about the connectivity, um, you know, an app, integrated experience with all these devices we see over and over. >>So how has that changed your experience? Are you, is it, is it app for the consumer in terms of they're keeping track of their miles? Is it just for you and the maintenance or how's the integration of an app working through different ways for the app? So there's a mechanics app, we can plug it in and see the error codes. And that's important because being back in the day, someone will come in and say, I wrote this thing at mile 25 it cut out and stopped working. So after work, you know, or we go out and ride 25 miles and try to see if we could recreate the issue. And it was a pain. Now wait, you just told me it wasn't a pain to ride 25 buses. This is back in the day. It was a pain to try falls off. Intermittent issues are the bane of our existence. >>Yes, yes. But the uh, having a log file, we just plug it in and says, Oh, it cut out because of this error code, you know, and boom. Okay. Replaced the speed sensor. Good. You're back up and rolling. Right. Especially with people who commute. They don't want to leave their bike in the shop. They want ready within 24 hours or less. And so it's gotta be turned right. And so it's a whole different form of mechanics and a whole different level of support from the bike dealer. And that's why we choose the bike lines we choose like gazelle. Right. Who support their products very well. So it's pretty interesting that you said, you know, we talked about the scooter space and one wheels and all that fun stuff. So many deals, companies were started with Kickstarter. It's amazing to me how many kind of Kickstarter projects actually turned into real companies. >>Boosted future motion being a couple of my favorites. Future motion. Actually the design behind it was the guy who first invented the cell and unicycle unicycles Daniel Wood, he's actually from clock, I remember from Clackamas right across the river from Portland. And so I tried as original version of the self-balancing unicycle, which they made their first one wheels from and that, you know, it's come a long way and there's the one wheel, but it's been fascinating progression to watch him write and bring that out too. But that's very different than 125 year old Dutch company that's been making Mike making these bikes for a hundred plus years. Really? It's funny, we have, I think there's seven models here that they're showing today. I asked the exact guys how many regular bikes models they have and they're like one. Yeah. So, so they're all in. I mean this is significant. >>You think about some of the biggest companies in the world market cap. Bosch has always worn the top five or 10 market companies in the world. They make the largest set of best selling system in the United States and in Europe. Right? And they're behind it. They have millions of lithium batteries and people's homes already through their power tool division. They're the kind of engineering they're bringing is staggering and it's been really fun to be part of an industry that has been so nascent and yet just boom. Right. You just comes up with fright before you write for your eyes. Okay, so I got to ask you about the, whether you're from Portland, Portland rains a lot in, in, in Holland. How does the rain impact these things? Obviously you just send us their primary vehicle. Is it, is it more dangerous? Is there more spray? >>Is it, is it a factor? Not a factor. This is where the lines you carry make a huge difference. So when you, if you carry it, if you buy one off the internet that hasn't been product tested, you are the product tester. If you buy one like this, they literally have like a saltwater steam bath. They put the bikes in for weeks to stimulate Marine corrosion. They have hydraulic machines that the tar out of them. And so when you get a product, it just works. Um, and so we've had a, we had a Bosch system go completely underwater. Now, I'm not saying this is going to happen for everybody's experience. We had a guy literally put the bike in a river. He went one way. The bike went another, not on purpose, not on purpose. It was underwater for a few minutes. Right? Right. At work and rode home. >>And about a week later it made some noises and we told Bosch what happened, it was not a warranty issue with it was a collision. And Bosch said, you know, we haven't had enough warranty claims. You have some extra motors, we're going to send you a new one. And the guy said, it uses daily commuter. Right? Um, and it works great. Right? So, so w rain does not affect them, but it really depends on the model you have and how much product testing and how much engineering has gone in behind it to make sure you have the experience. Cause lithium and water are not generally friends. No. So, so just, I'll give you the last word. When you talk to people that are new to the space, maybe they just stumbled into the store, they heard about these e-bike things. What's kind of the biggest surprise that you see time and time again when people get one of these things and bring it home. >>Number one is that it rides like a bike. You can just go further. Um, th how well integrated they are. Um, on average the Baker's written 75% more than a traditional bike, 75% more, 75% more. Um, on average you can go about, well, the average speed wise on it. Um, I just study on this today. You know, you can increase your time by an average cycles average 11 miles an hour average e-bike average is about 13 to 1415 around there. And I forget the exact number. So I'm giving a bit of a gray area there. A little bit faster. Yeah. And so it gets you where you're going faster with less sweat. Right. We'll wake. Thanks for, uh, for taking a minute. What a, it's a, it's a cool story. And you know, Portland obviously is leading the charge in this, in this whole transformation. It's been a fun place to be and our customers are just awesome and no two ways about it. Super. Well, thanks again. He's waking. Jeff, you're watching the cube. We're at the Royal Dutch gazelle bike event at Interbike. Thanks for watching. Thank you.

. >>Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff, Rick here with the cube Worthen Nevada museum of art in Reno, Nevada for the Interbike show. Just happening down the street at the convention center. But we're actually at a side of it put on by Royal Dutch, a gazelle bikes, 125 year old, a bike company who is all in on electric bikes. We wanted to come in, see what's going on, really how the e-bike phenomenon is kind of intermingling with all these alternative scooters and, and all these alternative ways of getting around cities especially and, and get a feel for it. So we're excited to have a retailer who's been in the business for a long time. He's Davey oil. He is a founder a and, and cone or of GNO family. Cyclery David. Great. See you. Thanks. It's really happy to be here. Yeah. So first off, uh, just impressions of this event tonight. Um, cause I was rolling eyes. There's six or seven new bikes out here tonight. What do you think? >>It's very exciting because that was an extremely high quality brand of electric bicycle. And like you said, they have a uh, like a very long history in, in bicycle design. Right. And what they're doing now is they're, they're riding this wave of new technology that's coming through e-bikes and it's phenomenal. It's so funny cause >>some of these things I was talking about earlier, you know, so many Kickstarters, right, that have started and actually a lot of the companies have been pretty successful on the Kickstarter basis, but this is an old line company. They'd been making these things, I think I heard earlier, they're still making them at the same factory that they've been making them for 125 years. And surprisingly to me a third of this year's bike sales will be eBikes. So clearly there's something going on here. Yeah, there is that. What do you think in terms of the adoption Seattle, cause what I've heard as well is that the U S is about 10 years behind >>and Kennedy bike adoption. Yeah. I think that's probably the case in Seattle. We're very fortunate that there are a lot of factors at play that are, that are driving your bike adoption a happening a little faster than it is in some other parts of the country. But I think that all around the country and in cities and suburbs and also in rural areas, people are gonna find that adding an electric mobility to your bicycle, it takes away the barriers to cycling that so many people experienced that are totally rational. Like when I arrived at my destination, I don't want to be sweaty or I want to be able to use a bicycle, but I want to be able to carry more things or my children. Right. And when you add the mobility to your bicycle, those kind of barriers are just eliminated. You can see you're still getting exercise, but you can choose to make the bicycle ride more of what you'd expect from other forms of transportation, which is convenient and not sweaty and difficult. >>So how many of your customers aren't really bicyclists that that they're coming at this as a, as kind of a new opportunity? Maybe they just, they cycled before, but they're not kind of hardcore cyclists. You see this as the right foot. What's amazing to me is you have all these form factors, but this is a form factor that people are very familiar with and that's where I think there's a real opportunity bike that's not the same as scooters and some of these other things. Yeah, that's a really good question. Um, what we experience is that probably two thirds of our customers don't previously identified themselves as bicyclists. Um, they're probably somewhat friendly with the idea bicycles so they wouldn't have walked into a bicycle store. But what we see is that that transformation that happens to people when they adopt cycling as a, as a major part of their life and a major part of their transportation that still occurs, but it occurs all at once when they leapfrog over so many of these barriers and just have the opportunity to use a bicycle so much more than they would have otherwise. And the same thing happens to people who are already interested in cycling. People who only ride recreationally often find that with the addition of any bike into their life, they can use a bicycle for many, many, or most of their transportation needs, uh, over the course of their life. And that's profound, right. Transforms people. >>So there's a lot of special kind of characteristics of Seattle. Yeah. Obviously the weather is not great. Of course it's not great in, in Holland either. And they got a lot of bikes. They're got Hills and bridges and some nasty traffic. Not that everybody else does them, Massey traveling, but Seattle's got some crazy traffic. So you guys are seeing not only the adoption of the bikes for commuting and for fun and all those things, but you're selling a lot of cargo bikes for commercial purposes in this tight urban center. So I wonder if you can give us a little bit more color on how you're seeing the penetration in cargo bikes. Sure. >>Well, I think that cargo bikes when used for like freight purposes and delivery purposes and enterprise purposes in general, they benefit from the same things that bicyclists benefit from in urban environments in general, which is just greater mobility, freedom from the restrictions of traffic. I'm not trying to say that bicycles aren't on the road and that they don't sometimes find themselves behind a long line of stopped cars, but we have so much more flexibility in those situations and we can park safely and reasonably on a sidewalk. And so, so many things that happen, uh, that people suffer through due to congestion or alleviated when they're riding a bicycle in general. And business has experienced that when they use them for freight for sure. >>And it's not just a cargo bike, it's any cargo bikes. So now I've got the superhuman skills so I can, I can carry that load. I can replace a truck. I mean we have, we have bicycles in operation in Seattle for some, some of our customers use that. Our daily carrying 400 500 pounds of weight in there and they're traveling, you know, 60 70 miles in a day. Right. So how are you seeing the integration of the eBikes with the regular bikes, the hardcore bikers, the recreational bikers, and then of course you've got the slow move in pedestrians, right? And the, the dangerous stuff occurs when you've got all these disparity in, in, in velocity. And it's going to be interesting to see kind of how the regs kind of catch up and eventually probably, you know, discriminate. So these PO, these paths are for, you know, 20 miles or more of these paths are for, you know, 10 miles an hour or less. So how are you seeing that kind of work itself out in the streets of the city? Cause absolutely get a little rough sometimes out there. I think it has the potential to get a little rough. I think that honestly, um, yeah, >>the situation, the opportunities for conflict between pedestrians and electric bicyclists is not an issue or not any more significant than the opportunities for conflict between pedestrians and conventional bicyclists. I think that while an electric bicycle can travel up to 20 miles an hour or in some cases faster, they don't ordinarily travel that fast. That's a peak speed. Um, and so I don't really think that sidewalks are being menaced by electric bicyclists. I don't think that's really occurring, although I do think that the kind of regulations that you're talking about that classify type II bikes into types so that we can then, um, uh, empower people who have jurisdiction over different pieces of infrastructure to, um, to determine for themselves and for their users what bikes are allowed in which ones are, are, are forbidden, um, or restricted. I think that's really positive. Right? I think it's extremely important that we define what these vehicle types are because of course there are some vehicles which are more appropriate for some environments than others. >>Right. But I think the real thing is that bicyclists and III bicyclists are not the enemy of pedestrians. I think that together we're all making smart choices and we're in the safe spot. And I think that if it feels like there's too many bicycles on the sidewalk in your town, it's probably because you haven't made any room for bicyclists in the streets of your town. Right. And I think we all need to work together to make cycling a safe and viable option across all of our communities that will help congestion when we remove people from cars, we improve traffic for everybody. >>Right, right. And bikes should not be on sidewalks, period. Right. That's not really not the bike, not the bike place unless the, the street is just so, so tragic. >>I think. I think that if you're talking about it in a situational like daily life active, uh, situation, I think, um, there are a lot of conditions where bicycles are going to be on the sidewalk and there are many of them that I think are reasonable. I think it's totally reasonable to decide as a city we don't want bicycles, bicycles to primarily ride on sidewalks or when bicycles are on sidewalks. I don't think there's any city in the country that allows bicycles on sidewalks. It doesn't also stipulate as long as they're traveling safely. So if somebody has a problem with how somebody is behaving, that's still a problem either way. >>Right, right, right. So I'm just curious to get your take as, as you've seen this market evolved. Again, we've got big players involved. Bosch is doing all the, all the electronics on these bikes. Yeah. Capacity's got bigger on the battery speeds have gotten better. Dependability. Yeah. So how are you seeing kind of the evolution of the eBikes impacting the total market for bikes? Again, I can't believe that that gives out. Guys said they're going to sell a third of their bikes. Are e-bikes. Yeah. You see in the same thing in your business. >>Yeah. Well, I mean my business is focused on eBikes. Um, but what I will say is that I think that um, one of the challenges for bicycle advocacy and bicycle marketing and retail has always been a how to appeal to people who are somewhat friendly towards bicycling but aren't doing it that called interested but concerned. And it, I think it turns out that e-bikes are the key here, that we can help transform people from someone who is friendly towards bicycling to somebody who uses a bicycle as a big part of their life simply by making bicycles easier. And as you identified right now, finally, we're at a point in the development of this technology where the bikes really are reliable as a vehicle. And that's significant, right? It's not just a hobbyist activity at this point. These are, these are legitimate, uh, reliable vehicles >>in transportation. I mean, legitimate trans, it's not just your last mile vehicle anyway. >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, at our shop at least we're talking about people who are, who have given up a car. Um, almost almost every one of our customers who's getting an electric cargo bag is doing this as part of their family transportation budget. And that includes driving less or removing a car from their life, right? And that could only work if the e-bike was at least as reliable as driving lists. And so maybe a flat tire is still a pretty annoying problem, but that should be the worst problem. Right? And I think we're finally there in terms of the quality of technology that's out >>and now it's only upward. We're like at year zero now. Right. Amazing. Even with the weather and the Hills and everything else, it's profound, man. It's really, and then it's a, it's a cultural shift, so it's just, it's just spreads across our community. Right. One person who inspires somebody else and inspires somebody else. Well, David, thanks for taking a few minutes and sharing your story. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. He's Dave young. Jeff. We are at Interbike Reno, but we're actually at the gazelle, uh, event looking at their e-bikes and they're really, really cool. Thanks for watching. Catch you next time.

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE! Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to VMworld day three, continuing coverage for theCUBE, I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante sporting this fantastic salmon tie, and what you can't see is the matching salmon pants. Dave- >> There ya go. I still have my voice. (laughs) >> The outfit game is on point, Dave. >> Thank you. >> So we've been here, this is our third day, this is a huge event, 25,000 or so people here, lots of great announcements. We're excited to welcome to theCUBE for the first time Mimi Spier the Vice President of the Internet of Things Business at Vmware, Mimi, it's great to have you! >> Thank you! I'm so happy to be here. >> Thanks for comin' on. >> Yeah, it's great. >> So, three action packed days, lot's of announcements, lots of momentum. You lead a team at VMware that launched the VMware IoT business about a year and a half ago, including, launching the product, the GTM strategy, the partner in marketing strategy. In the last year and a half, talk to us about the evolution of VMware IoT, the business challenges that you're helping customers to solve. >> Absolutely, so, this has been a journey for almost a couple years now, and, VMware saw a need to really start to look at what we'll call the edge or IoT use cases. Our customers started coming to us saying "Wait a minute, this is coming, I know my business units are starting to invest in IoT, I have no control over it, I have no exposure to it, what should I do?" And, we are really committed to being an infrastructure company, we knew that when started this journey, and we said "We really want to focus on infrastructure, but we want to help our customers go to the edge, really start to embrace this new opportunity in the industry, to be able to take advantage of this data." We call it, the data is the gold, how do you actually be able to take advantage of it? So, we're really excited, we just started the journey and now we've really this VMworld is where the momentum is starting to take off. >> How do you look at that opportunity? Because it's complicated, especially for a bunch of IT people, right? And now you're entering this world of operations technology. But how do you sort of look at the landscape of the market? >> I'm really glad you asked that, 'cause that's one of my favorite topics, so. I want our customers to think about, first of all, what are the mission critical objectives of their business? They shouldn't do IoT just to do IoT, they need to do what's right for their business; but I also think it's important that they look beyond that. So, if you look at some of the macro trends happening in the world today, there will need to be 70% more food that's created, and there's only 5% more land that it can be built on. There's going to be 300 million connected cars out on the roads There was a statistic that there will be two thirds of energy is consumed by cities, yet we still have very old ways of doing it, but it's in this very consolidated area; why would we not take advantage of that? So I think industries, whether you're in energy or you're in smart cities or you're in automotive, you have to really think about where is your industry going? And even IT people need to think about this, I think, and I'll explain why in a minute but, how can I actually create an industry and a company that can sustain in this future world, and also contribute to the future of what our world's going to be like. So I think, and the technology, and the way we set this up, and the architecture, is really the foundation to do that. So, that's where VMware comes in. >> Okay. And talk a little bit more about VMware's specific strategy as it relates to IoT. I mean I was at the big Dell announcement last fall. Okay, so you've got Dell sort of with existing relationships actually with a lot of the industrial giants. But now enter VMware, what's your strategy? >> So, first I want to say that Dell and VMware have come together into one big business unit to solve IoT and edge. And the beauty of that is we believe that our customers can really have a more simplistic way of achieving this infrastructure foundation, if we can offer these end-to-end solutions together; so I'll talk about how the Dell piece fits into the VMware strategy. But what VMware's trying to do is drastically simplify the complexity of the infrastructure and the foundation you'll need for IoT. So we want to extend what we're doing in the cloud and the multi-cloud, because we fundamentally believe most of our customers are actually in multiple clouds, private, public, multiple public, and actually be able to extend that down to whatever edge they need as well. Because of the amount of data that will be generated at the edge, there's going to be, I don't know, analysts say 50 to 75% of data will be generated at the edges of our business by 2020. And think about it, all of our applications today are in the cloud, so there must be edge computing that is local to be able to process that data. And there also needs to be, there's this heterogeneous set of devices that will need to be managed, monitored, secure, and collect that data; so this requires, it's complex, so we want to drastically simplify that and that's the overarching part of our strategy. But we also want to allow our customers to do it in a way that's secure, that's scalable, and that's manageable over time, so. >> So does that mean putting some, first of all the Dell partnership is interesting, and Alan Cohen one of our guest analysts this week said "Partnerships used to be like tennis, one-on-one, and now partnerships are like soccer." There's just so many parts of the ecosystem so that's sort of one observation, but. Are you sort of bringing VMware to the edge? Is that? >> We are, so we're bringing VMware to the edge, we announced a new portfolio of solutions called VMware Edge it will take advantage of the ability to do the compute edge which is the processing at the edge, and really extending our hyper-converge technology as a service, like we're doing for VMC on AWS, to the edge; and it includes our device edge, and there's a lot of things that is happening on the device edge, which is like gateways and things, that we want to help provide a more software-defined approach, as well as ensure that those can be managed, monitored, secure, across all the diverse set of devices. Now, you can't do that alone. The ecosystem you mentioned, I've never seen any in my history of my career the amount of collaboration that's going on across the ecosystem, because IoT is so hard; so, you really do need to collaborate. And we are collaborating with the IoT platform providers, the gateway and the thing providers, the hardware providers, the system integrators; it requires that to be successful. But what we want to do with Dell is do it in a way that we offer these end-to-end solutions so that it's just more simple, you can go to one place to consume it, to ensure that it gets deployed, and to actually support that solution, but offering it from a multitude of our partners, typically so. >> So let's dig into to simplicity because we hear that, Mimi, all the time, as you do too. Customers want choice, they want simplicity, right Dave? They want flexibility. >> They want it all! >> They want it all! We all want it all. But how is the VMware edge computing strategy, the technology level, actually facilitating simplicity, in what is inherently a complex world of multiple devices, multiple clouds, et cetera? Talk to us about the technology and the actual enablers of that simple approach they need. >> I'm so glad you asked me that! So, we've been saying very consistently, that we want to offer consistent infrastructure, consistent operations, but we want to give you the choice of your application platform or development platform. We're going to do the exact same thing at the edge. So everything that VMware customers experience in their private cloud, their SDDC solution, private cloud, public cloud, we are now going to offer as a service at the edge same infrastructure, same operational model as the HyperCloud model, but at the edge; with the choice of the application development tools that they would like, because, they might want Greengrass from Amazon, they might want the Azure, they might IoT Watson, whatever they want at the edge we want to be able to support that on our infrastructure, but still maintaining that simplicity of a consistent infrastructure no matter where you choose to run your applications. We want to just eliminate the even thought process, run your applications anywhere, on a consistent infrastructure, with the same management, the same operations, and move 'em around as much as you like. >> So is there an abstraction layer almost that this can enable so that that management of all of these different applications and development platforms can be really done seamlessly? >> Yeah, so Project Dimension we announced a tech preview, and, well we'll be launching it later this year, and it will have a management layer that allows you to move your infrastructure and be able to actually, actually it's a VMware managed solution, so we will do it for you, it's even more simple; but be able to choose where you want to run that appliance as a service or infrastructure, whether it be the public cloud, the private cloud or the data center, and the edge. So that is the new what you call extraction, it's almost a new dimension, no pun intended. >> Hence the name. >> Hence the name, of, across all of your different clouds, or edge. >> So the notes I had on dimension, a hybrid cloud control plane, and the end-to-end VMware stack, on-prem cloud at the edge. And I think I heard Lenovo, VMware, and Dell are the initial sort of platform providers. >> That's right, Lenovo, Dell is the hardware. >> And that, what's the consumption model, is that an as a service consumption model? >> So we'll start with as a service, and what that means is VMware will actually manage your hardware, your infrastructure, and your software, we will do it for you. Obviously with the collaboration of when to do it and if everything, because this could be at the edge running mission critical applications. We want to make sure the OT, it's really an opportunity for OT and IT to collaborate and ensure that it's meeting the OT needs as well. >> So it's bringing a cloud-like consumption model to the edge, which of course is huge for VMware, I think probably 10% of your business today is SaaS-based, and the trend is clear; and the trend is your friend as they say, but, it's not easy to necessarily get there. So that's exciting I think that you're delivering as a service. >> I think we got really lucky. We ended up with this hybrid cloud strategy, it was the right thing to do, it's absolutely where the market's gone, and we're now almost at a multi-cloud strategy. And that puts us at the perfect position because we have set up our customers to be flexible and be able to choose whatever cloud or private they want in a cloud, we are very easily able to extend that to the edge, so it puts us in a very good position. >> Talking about the ecosystem again, I mean IoT it's every industry, every sector, every size of company, and I want you to discuss an ISV piece of this it's a very complex situation. >> I would love to talk with ISVs. >> But there's so many ISVs it makes your eyes bleed when you look at the list of ISVs, hard to figure out, okay who's real, who's not, and who to partner with; how are you guys sorting all that out? >> Okay. So, we are the infrastructure, what is beautiful about that is we are not competing with ISVs at all, so they all want to work with us. And the ISVs in the IoT world consist of not only specific application providers, but also IoT platform providers. So it's the SAPs of the world, it's Microsoft, it's also the Bosch, the GE, everybody that wants to do something with that data and build applications it. Most of those are doing industry-specific things, so what we're going to do is take Project Dimension and we're going to offer appliances as a service for industry-specific use cases, and sometimes they're horizontal like building management, but we're going to pick the best ones that we think have the right solution that can scale to the level our customers need in a secure way, and doing the most rich experience with our data. In fact we have 15 different partners in our zone right now really showing what they can do across six different industries, and that's what we're going to do with them. We're also, with Pulse, so I need to talk a little bit about Pulse because it's my baby, we announced Pulse IoT Center 2.0. And what that is, is it's the ability to manage, monitor, and secure things, or IoT gateways. So, one example of that is surveillance, we are partnering with camera companies that also offer analytic applications for visualization and surveillance, and we offering an end-to-end solution. In fact we announced the Dell Technologies surveillance solution partnering with companies like Access Communications owned by Cannon, Pulse runs on the camera to ensure that that camera is working properly, hasn't been hacked into, can get patched, can get isolated, God forbid something happens; and we're doing the same thing across many of the device and thing providers as well, which really falls into that. >> Let's talk about- Sorry Mimi, let's talk about an actual customer. Where do they start in this conversation? Because as you were saying in the beginning, the world is going IoT, there's this proliferation of devices, companies are moving in this direction because they have no choice. We were talking with a school district yesterday and the proliferation of BYOD, all of the things. So where does the conversation start with a customer about VMware edge? Does it start with the business level leadership who need to be able to get a handle on this, and identify new revenue streams, new business models? Does it start with the technology folks who have to have the infrastructure to support it? What is that sort of, I'm a customer, maybe a hospital or what not, where do I start? >> Great question. So, it starts, it depends is the answer, it can start either way, even if it starts on the infrastructure side. What we always tell IT is that you really need to have a reason to do this. You need to work with your business, you need to prioritize, you need to understand the mission critical objectives of your business, the outcome you're trying to achieve; and then let's work together on a use case, and we can help solve it with your business. So, whether we go through IT and we really educate them on the importance of this digital foundation at the edge, and then we work with one of their businesses, maybe in security and surveillance, or maybe it's with a bank, the ATM group; actually there is a group that runs the ATMs and we're working with that group. It might be the bank of the future retail bank, and they're all different organizations with many different use cases, we'll work with all of them. The nice thing about starting with IT is IT understands the challenge that they're faced with, and they really want to have the impact that they've had on the IT organization now on the OT, OT's very siloed. So, anyway, it starts there, but, with our partners, and the beauty about working with partners like ISVs, it will start on the OT side, and it will start with a use case; and then they'll go to the IT side and say "Hey, what about VMware to solve this?" And the IT will say are you serious? That's a dream. So, it absolutely is both, but it has to have a business outcome. >> Mimi, how about the data model? I mean, we know from talking to IT people they understand data, they've lived data their whole lives. A lot of the operations side of the business is analog today, and it's becoming digital. What's the conversation like around data? >> So, okay, so my whole background is data, I started business intelligence and then analytics, and then big data, now IoT. The purpose of the data, so first of all it depends on the use case, so the one thing we like to educate our anyone we're talking to is that you are going to need deep learning, and you're going to need real-time analytics. And each use case will be unique, and depending on the use case, you will need a slightly different architecture. So we'll help support this foundation based on the data, it's always about the data, or actually even more importantly the insights you're trying to get from the data. Once you know your use case, then you can determine where am I getting this data? Although sometimes you already know. And what's the right analytic process? Am I doing machine learning, am I doing AI, am I doing just predictive analytics, do I want to do something quickly at the edge to determine something in real-time and then send it back to make that process smarter, that's actually what I think will ultimately happen, it will be a decision making loop that goes from the edge to the cloud and back. But that's the data conversation we have, and I could talk all day, just in that topic. (laughs) >> And I mean I know we're tight on time but, how prominent is the discussion around data ownership? I mean, does the factory own the data? Does the device manufacturer own the data? I mean yes and yes? I don't know. >> I mean, there is controversy there, but typically, I know the device manufacturers want to own the data, and often times they have access to that data. Every industry's slightly different, but at the end of the day, the customer should own the data, I mean they should at least have access to that data. And we will always say in our situation the customer, the data is yours. And we will work with the both of those organizations 'cause those will be our constituents to a use case, and we will do what's right for that use case, and hopefully everybody wins. It really does depend. If it's car manufacturer, they have to own the data, because they have to make sure that car's safe and secure, but there might need to be level of access that the consumers get as well, so. >> Mimi, thanks so much for stopping by. I can tell by your energy and your genuine passion for this, we're going to hear a lot more, Dave, about what VMware edge is doing and helping customers embrace the superpowers that Pat Gelsinger was talking about on Monday. Great to have you on the show, Mimi. >> Thank you for having me, have a great day. >> Thank you, for Dave Vellante, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watch theCUBE, continuing coverage of VMworld 2018, this is our third day, stick around, we'll be right back with our next guest. (bubbly music)

>> From Santa Clara, California, in the heart of silicone valley, it's The Cube, covering Technovations, World Pitch 2018. Now, here's Sonia Tegare. >> Hi, welcome back. I'm Sonia Tegare, here with The Cube in Santa Clara, California covering Technovation's World Pitch Summit 2018, a pitch competition for girls to develop applications in order to create positive change in the world. This week 12 finalist teams are competing for their chance to win the gold and silver scholarships. With us today, we have Team Join Us from Spain. We have Andrea Escortell, Ines Mut, and Amelia Gonzalez and with them we have their mentors. So, we have Josefa Ribes and we have Rosa Maria Bosch. Thank you for being on The Cube. >> Thanks to you. Thanks. >> So, I wanted to ask you, what is your app Join Us? >> It's for join old people and the young people because the old people live alone so he needs help and the young people need travel and visit new places, so the app, the app connect the people. >> Are there any personal connections or reasons why you decided to make this app? >> (speaking in foreign language) >> It's a problem. >> Because it's a general problem in the world. >> What made you decide to join Technovation? >> I showed the teacher the Technovation challenge and they are very excited they were very excited to participate because it's a very, very best thing for us because seeing how there are a lot of people that is alone in their house, and it's opportunity to solve a real problem. >> So how does the app work? How do you use it? >> (speaking in foreign language) >> The link is different for the interested parties. We did survey and that is necessary service of the local consul to guarantee and they will play our own for both parties. >> That's amazing. It's so inspiring to see you all work on this. Is this your first time to America? >> Yes. >> How are you liking it so far? >> Yes. >> Really like it? >> Yes. >> Well I want to thank you so much for being on the Cube, this app seems amazing and we hope you come on some other time. I'm Sonia Tegare, here with the Cube at Technovations World Pitch Summit 2018. Stay tuned for more.

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering Dell Technologies World, 2018. Brought to you by Dell EMC and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Vegas, everybody. We're rocking. We are rocking. Dave Vellante here with Keith Townsend. This is theCUBE, the leader, get into it! Live tech coverage. (laughing) >> We in the club! >> We are in the club. The Chads are here, Chad Dunn, Chad Sakac. Chad Dunn is VP of Product Management and Marketing at Dell EMC, and Chad Sakac, needs no introduction, although new role with Pivotal. >> Sakac: Yeah. >> Awesome. >> It's exciting man, it's great to be back, like come on, some things change, some things stay the same. It's always good to be on theCUBE. >> So tell us about the new role, let's start there. I know you've talked a lot about it, but you haven't with me, so. >> Yeah, so, in a nutshell, as I was trying to think what do I do next in my career? You know, we had built amazing things in the converged platform and solutions division, VxRail, massive success. >> Dunn: Yep. >> Those things moving into the parts of Dell EMC for more scale and velocity, which is simple. If you imagine the future of tomorrow, you'd go and say, what percentage of infrastructure going to be hyper-converged? Answer, a lot, and it's going to need to have a velocity that's very similar to a server, because what percentage of servers are going to be HCI? Answer, a lot. And so it was a very natural kind of, time to go and say, how do we optimize this thing? And then that gave me a weird, unique, once in a lifetime moment, where I could go and say, what do I want to do? My wife said, I'm telling you a long answer, and you probably want the short one. My wife said-- >> Dunn: You don't know any other kind. (laughing) >> This is Chad skills. >> "Chad, you've been on the road for 13 years, "your children are now 12 and 14, "they're going to be here in the nest "for like another four years, "take time off, I'll go out to work, "you be a stay-at-home dad." That was actually, like, option A. Option B was, there's so much cool stuff going on in the ecosystem, join a startup, do a CEO gig, whatever, and then stay in the family and a ton of support from Michael and from Jeff Clarke and from Pat Gelsinger and Rob Mee, and there was, like, do this at Dell EMC, do this at VMware, do this at Pivotal. And what I realized was the Pivotal thing gave me the opportunity to do the startup-like thing, discover some new parts of my own career, so move up the stack, and do one thing that I've always done, which is be at the intersection of the companies. Because PKS is, fundamentally, an effort that is 50/50, VMware and Pivotal, just like VxRail is a 50/50, VMware, Dell EMC effort. >> Right, right. >> So it was the obvious choice and then I had to have that uncomfortable discussion with my wife that said, "Unfortunately, sweetheart, "I'm back on the road." She said, "Fine! "But at least take one month off "before you go from one thing to the other." We went to Hawaii, surfed. >> Oh nice. >> It was awesome. >> You bring the kids? >> Oh, yeah. >> Beautiful. >> It was awesome. But in any case, it's a, you know, in the same way that when we started VxRail, we were like, how do we go from a market where we're currently not the leader, and quickly accelerate, become number one, in a two-year period? And that requires running fast and iterating. The same thing goes with PKS, PCF and PAS is number one for that universe, but we're not currently number one for the enterprise container distribution. So, that's OK, I like that, now I'm determined and stubborn to make sure that PKS is the best enterprise Kubernetes and container platform. >> Chad D, you were talking off camera about the interest in VxRail, sounds like it's off the charts. >> Absolutely. I mean a ridiculous number of customer meetings that we have here at the show this week. I think it's over 200 customer meetings, just on VxRail, and VxRack SDDC, you know, the VMware hyper-converged stack. And, you know, more and more on Pivotal PCF and PKS. >> Yeah so let's talk about that. You got the guys that are sort of, born Cloud-native and the guys that are trying to transform, they need infrastructure to help them do both, they need partnerships, so lay it out for us. >> So, Keith, you and I have gone on Twitter and talked about this, there's this nature amongst the IT ecosystem, where everybody wants the answer to be A or B. >> Keith: Yes, we do. >> Right, A or B. >> Keith: Yes. >> Yeah A sucks, B is awesome. And you know, debates raged about, you remember like, the era of Doka is going to destroy VMware, you remember that? >> I remember that, seems like just yesterday. >> Because it was just yesterday. (laughing) But what's happened now is everyone's realized that's stupid, that the reality is that Kernel-Mode VMs and containers are going to co-exist, and in fact, the majority of containers are actually going to be deployed on Kernel-Mode hypervisors. >> Netflix's biggest story is optimizations from AWS. They're able to save tons of money by running containers inside of VMs. >> Sakac: Yeah. >> Dunn: Absolutely. >> And, you know, I was laughed at a couple of years ago, when I said, you know what, containers and VMs go together, like peanut-butter and jelly, and it does. >> It does and so, look, does it change what people want from the Kernel-Mode virtualization layer? Yeah. So, things like DRS, that are really important if all you do is a Kernel-Mode VM is less important, when resource management is done by something like Kubernetes, but that's a refinement. And so, what we're trying to do now is now that everyone's gotten over the emotion, and what I call the bar-fights, where we're getting into stupid arguments, you know, that are not about something that matters, and now people are getting down to the brass tacks of, how do I make this go? They're realizing, I'm going to use off-prem and on-prem, I'm going to have Kernel Mode VM's and I'm going to have containers, how do I make that work, how do I build a hybrid model that will work for both of those scenarios? And then, frankly, our job as IT practitioners and the vendor ecosystem is to make this as easy as we can. >> Well, you guys know this better than I do, people want to use existing processes and procedures, they don't want to throw that stuff out, I mean I think of it, I remember Big Data and Hadoop that the killer application was sequel. Right, I mean even in the Blockchain world now. >> Sakac: Yep. >> Everybody's talking about writing in JavaScript, right, you've got expertise built up, you don't throw that away. >> No, and I think when you look at the people who are trying to deploy containers on premises, they don't want to worry about the infrastructure, right, they want to look at the new, play with the new, cool things, they want to play with Kubernetes, they want to play with containers as service. They don't want to talk about, OK, well what infrastructure do I need, how do I make those choices? They want something that is very much automated and very much scale-out so it can react the same way that their application does. >> So let's talk about that, let's talk about VxRail, Kubernetes, PKS. If I'm a Cloud-Native guy, I don't care about infrastructure but there has to be infrastructure. So where's the meeting of that conversation? Dell technologies run best on Dell technologies. >> So, again, I'm going to try and force myself to give short answers, because it's so not natural for me. I'm sorry, fellas. When Pivotal engages with the customer, we go and we say, "We give you a platform, PaaS, PKS "and the Function Service," and they say, "What should I run it on?" And the first answer that comes out of someone's mouth is it doesn't matter, you can run it on any cloud you want, which is true on one level. But then if you look at our on-premises projects, the thing that's the biggest holdup is infrastructure that is too rigid, too slow, doesn't work right, is busted. And they're like, damn it, if I want to focus my energies elsewhere, I have to have a base-stack that is just easy and done, right? >> So, help break up the long chat answers. One argument is, you know what, just give someone 128 gig VM, a bunch of vCPUs, and that simplifies the infrastructure. Where does that break? >> It breaks immediately when someone says, I need to add more total compute, or storage, or network, or memory, to my Kubernetes pot. Kubernetes goes, great, I'd like to basically make the cluster bigger, because I've got this resource demand. Then it looks down and says, infrastructure, are you there? And if the answer is, no, it's like, wah wah. Right? (laughing) So what we've managed to do is we've managed with VxRail to go and say, we've made an easy button based off of the customer-standard which is the VMware stack, it's not only something they can count on, they can easily add it, so if they want to add raw compute, storage, or network. It also adds in small increments, so you don't have to have a giant block of infrastructure to go in, you know, so you can grow your Kubernetes cluster, you can grow your physical infrastructure, simple, easy, done. And the biggest part is that Kubernetes makes deploying containers easy, however, PKS makes deploying and versioning Kubernetes easy, VxRail makes deploying and versioning the vSphere stack easy. Easy, plus easy, plus easy, equals easy. >> So is it like a quasi-elastic-beanstalk here? >> Elastic beanstalk, OK. (laughs) >> Is that fair? >> Or maybe a plastic beanstalk, where, you know, it could hold its shape. >> You know, elastic beanstalk is a PaaS, right, but the long and the short of it is is that if you get the abstraction that you need, Kernel Mode VM or container, the container is in a VM, if the whole stack is prescriptive and easy and works, then you can redeploy time, money, and resources, on the things that matter. And that Pivotal ready architecture, which is PCF, on VxRail, is that easy button on-prem. >> So, Chad, the production staff may regret me asking this question, but I have to know this. You're known in the industry for these blog polls talking about face-melting technologies. (laughing) What is face-melting about PKS, and VxRail, gimme some classic Chad. >> I'll give you face-melting. Facemelting to someone who's looking at a container platform and you're looking at Kubernetes is that without them knowing, without them knowing or doing anything, the Bosch part of what PKS does- >> Keith: Oh, Bosch. >> Is basically doing updates, like four times a day, blowing up the entire environment and recreating it and no-one has touched a damn thing, step one. The next thing that's face-melting is that their ability to update the infrastructure, can be done at tens of thousands of sites via API calls. So I'll give you another fascinating example. Kubernetes is generally thought-of as mostly a data-center thing, we've had fascinating interest from retail and other use cases, where they're like, look I get it, I want a Kubernetes, that I could deploy in a store. >> Keith: Yeah. >> And then you go and say, well, do you have a great DevOps practice in the store, in Topeka, Kansas? The answer is, no. But if I say I can basically drive all of the platform updates, including the infrastructure, at thousands of stores around the globe, that's pretty face-melting, no-one else can do that. >> Exactly, and look we see, you know, lots of pockets of Cloud Native popping up in accounts, and a lot of times IT doesn't even know where they're at. You know, these are things that are going to go from a line of business, and all of a sudden become production, have to become production, and IT needs a way to manage that. Rail gives them a way to go in and manage that infrastructure, at a scalable way, and move it from a line of business, into production. >> I'll give you another face-melting, do you mind? >> I'm not calling the shots. >> Bring it on. >> Is your face OK? >> My face is getting there. >> I want to see it like, melted Keith, just melted. People have asked me is that a good thing? And, yeah, it's a great thing. (laughing) So, we were talking about a particular customer, I dunno whether we can name them, can we name them? >> I don't know if we could, I haven't asked. >> OK so-- >> What industry? >> Financial Services. >> And, basically, they use the PCF stack on VxRail, and they're currently using it, for pre-prod. >> Exactly, so they're building all the testing applications to test their classic applications, that are running on VxBlock. >> So they've got a production environment that's like, big, classic, VxBlock, also my former baby, so and I love all my children equally, right. What they are finding is that the simplicity of the PCF on the VxRail Model, is so wonderful and fast and great. But when they want to try and do a capacity add on a VxBlock, or to do an update, like an RCM, it's a lot harder here than it is over here, right. I guarantee at that customer, what they're eventually going to discover is this has been awesome, we're going to keep using VxBlock for something else, but we're not going to deploy PCF, PaaS and PKS, on a VxBlock. >> Exactly, and this is going to trigger refactoring of all those workloads, that say, can I refactor these to be Cloud Native, right. If I can iterate my testing that quickly, can I iterate my production applications that quickly. >> And the ROI on that refactoring is? Fill in the blank. >> No, no it is like a thousand to one. So, again, this is a very hard thing to imagine. >> Talk about business impact. Not financial, but-- >> I'll give you one example that I'm so happy that they actually posted this to YouTube, because the customer's voice in this is incredible. If you YouTube, From zero to 12 million, T-mobile. OK, so this is not me saying it, you can go and you can see it themselves. T-mobile basically, and to all of you T-mobile, you know, subscribers out there, anyone of you guys use T-mobile? I use T-mobile, so, in any case, they have a single, giant, Java app that has a thousand functions in it, right. So, just imagine one app, sitting on a app server, like web-sphere or whatever, and inside that app, there's a thousand API calls, functions, and purposes, right. And because it's so big and monolithic, but this is critical, this is like the thing that runs their ordering systems and like, subscriber functions. It's the heart of the business that any time they needed to update it, to do like a patch, would take seven months. If they wanted to scale it, so like the iPhone launch is coming up, we need to get like three times as much capacity to handle all these iPhone orders in September, it would take them seven months of planning, work et cetera et cetera. >> Sure. >> Sakac: Everyone goes, I could visualize that. Right? >> Right. >> They took one function, just one, and pulled it out, and they said, we're going to do a project, we're going to take this function called, Get Usage, which, as you can imagine, basically pulls up the subscriber's usage data, and we're going to make it into a small micro-service, and we're going to run it on a PaaS, OK. Within five months, that function was getting used 12 million times a day, and they were able to do three CVE updates, so in other words, a Critical Vulnerability Patch, comes out, they were able to do it in real-time. They have eight platform operators, just eight, that are supporting 5,000 developers, sorry 500 developers. Eight, 500. Now, if you look at that and go, what does it mean for them? Well, they reduced the number of outages by almost 90%, the time for an outage went down by 63%, the developers and the dev-ops team are now happy, because this thing auto-scales itself. >> Dave: Ching ching. >> Ching ching, ching, right? >> Right, dudes, we got to go. Chad squared, thank you so much for coming on. >> Thank you, Guys. >> You OK? >> I'm good. >> Your face is melted. >> Your face melted? >> I have water. >> Splash it on your face to bring it back. >> Really, always great seeing you guys, thank you so much. >> Thanks, Dave, it's always good to be on here. >> Thanks very much. Keep right there, everybody, we'll be right back to wrap, right after this short break. (soft music)

>> Announcer: Live from San Jose, it's The Cube. Presenting Big Data, Silicon Valley. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to The Cube, we are live in San Jose at Forager Eatery, a really cool place down the street from the Strata Data Conference. This is our 10th big data event, we call this BigData SV, we've done five here, five in New York, and this is our day one of coverage, I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host George Gilbert, and we're joined by a Cube alumni, Jacque Istok, the head of data from Pivotal. Welcome back to the cube, Jacque. >> Thank you, it's great to be here. >> So, just recently you guys announced, Pivotal announced, the GA of your Kubernetes-based Pivotal container service, PKS following this initial beta that you guys released last year, tell us about that, what's the main idea behind PKS? >> So, as we were talking about earlier, we've had this opinionated platform as a service for the last couple of years, it's taken off, but it really requires a very specific methodology for deploying microservices and kind of next gen applications, and what we've seen with the ground swell behind Kubernetes is a very seamless way where we can not just do our opinionated applications, we can do any applications leveraging Kubernetes. In addition, it actually allows us to again, kind of have an opinionated way to work with stateful, stateful data, if you will. And so, what you'll see is two of the main things we have going on, again, if you look at both of those products they're all managed by a thing we call Bosch and Bosch allows for not just the ease of installation, but also the actual operation of the entire platform. And so, what we're seeing is the ability to do day two operations not just around just the apps, not just the platform, but also the data products that run within it. And you'll see later this year as we continue to evolve our data products running on top of either the PKS product or the PCF product. >> Quick question before you jump in George, so you talk about some of the technology benefits and reasoning for that, from a customer perspective, what are some of the key benefits that you've designed this for, or challenges to solve? >> I'd say the key benefits, one is convenience and ease of installation, and operationalization. Kubernetes seems to have basically become the standard for being able to deploy containers, whether its on Pram or off Pram, and having an enterprise solution to do that is something that customers are actually really looking towards, in fact, we had sold about a dozen of these products even before it was GA there was so much excitement around it. But, beyond that, I think we've been really focused on this idea of digital transformation. So Pivotal's whole talk track really is changing how companies build software. And I think the introduction of PKS really takes us to the next level, which is that there's no digital transformation without data, and basically Kubernetes and PKS allow us to implement that and perform for our customers. >> This is really a facilitator of a company's digital transformation journey. >> Correct. In a very easy and convenient way, and I think, you know, whether it's our generation, or, you know, what's going on in just technology, but everybody is so focused on convenience, push button, I just want it to work. I don't want to have to dig into the details. >> So this picks up on a theme we've been pounding on for a couple of years on our side, which is the infrastructure was too hard to stand up and operate >> Male Speaker: Yeah. >> But now that we're beginning to solve some of those problems, talk about some of the use case. Let's pick GE because that's a flagship customer, start with some of the big outcomes, some of the big business outcomes they're shooting for and then how some of the pivotal products map into that. >> Sure, so there's a lot of use cases. Obviously, GE is both a large organization, as well as an investor inside of Pivotal. A lot of different things we can talk about one that comes to mind out of the gate is we've got a data suite we sell in addition to PKS and PCF, and within that data suite there are a couple of products, green plum being one of them. Green plum is this open source MPP data platform. Probably one of the most successful implementations within GE is this ability to actually consolidate a bunch of different ERP data and have people be able to querey it, again, cheaply, easily, effectively and there are a lot of different ways you can implement a solution like that. I think what's attractive to these guys specifically around green plum is that it leverages, you know, standard ANSI SQL, it scales to pedobytes of data, we have this ability to do on pram and off pram I was actually at the Gartner Conference earlier this week and walking around the show it was actually somewhat eye opening to me to be able to see that if you look at just that one product, there really isn't a competitive product that was being showcased that was open source, multi cloud, analytical in nature, et cetera. And so I think, again, to get back to the GE scenario, what was attractive to them was everything they're doing on pram can move to the cloud, whether it's Google, Azure, Amazon they can literally run the exact same product and the exact same queries. If you extend it beyond that particular use case, there are other use cases that are more real time, and again, inside of the data suite, we've got another product called gem fire, which is an in-memory data grid that allows for this rapid ingest, so you can kind of think and imagine whether it's jet engines, or whether it's wind turbines data is constantly being generated, and our ability to take that data in real time, ingest it, actually perform analytics on it as it comes in, so, again, kind of a loose example would be if you know the heat tolerance of a wind turbine is between this temperature and this temperature, do something: send an alarm, shut it down, et cetera. If you can do that in real time, you can actually save millions of dollars by not letting that turbine fail. >> Okay, it sounds here like the gem fire product and the green plum DBMS are very complimentary. You know, one is speed, and one is sort of throughput. And we've seen almost like with Hadupen overreaction in turning a coherent platform into a bunch of building blocks. >> Male Speaker: Yes. >> And with green plum you have everything packaged together. Would it be proper to think of green plum as combining the best of the data link and the data warehouse where you've got the data scientists and data engineers with what would have been another product and the business analysts and the BI crowd satisfied with the same product, but what would have been another? >> Male Speaker: So, I'd say you're spot on. What is super interesting to me is, one, I've been doing data warehousing now for, I don't know, 20 years, and for the last five, I've kind of felt like data warehouse, just the term, was equivalent to the mainframe. So, I actually kind of relegated it the I'm not going to use that term anymore, but with the advent of the cloud and with other products that are out there we're seeing this resurgence where the data warehouse is cool again, and I think part of it is because we had this shift where we had really expensive products doing the classic EDW and it was too rigid, and it was too expensive, and Haduke sort of came on and everyone was like hey this is really easy, this is really cheap, we can store whatever we want, we can do any kind of analytics, and I think, I was saying before, the love affair with piecing all of that together is kind of over and I also think, it's funny, it was really hard for organizations to successfully stand up a Haduke platform, and I think the metric we hear is fifty percent of them fail, right, so part of that, I believe is because there just aren't enough people to be able to do what needed to be done. So, interestingly enough, because of those failures, because the Haduke ecosystem didn't quite integrate into the classic enterprise, products like green plum are suddenly very popular. I was just seeing our downloads for the open source part of green plum, and we're literally, at this juncture seeing 1500 distinct customers leveraging the open source product, so I feel like we're on kind of this upswing of getting everybody to understand that you don't have to go to Haduke to be able to do structured to unstructured data at scale. You can actually use some of these other products. >> Female Speaker: Sorry George, quickly, being in the industry for 20 years, we talk about, you know, culture a lot, and we say cultural shift. People started embracing Haduke, we can dump everything that data lake turned into swamps. I'm curious though, what is that, maybe it's not a cultural shift, maybe it's a cultural roller coaster, like, mainframes are cool again. Give us your perspective on how you've helped companies like GE sort of as technology waves come really kind of help design and maybe drive a culture that embraces the velocity of this change. >> Sure, so one of the things we do a lot is help our customers better leverage technology, and really kind of train it. So, we have a couple different aspects to pivotal. One of them is our labs aspect, and effectively that is our ability to teach people how to better build applications, how to better do data science, how to better do data engineering. Now, when we come in, we have an opinionated way to do all those things, and when a customer embraces it it actually opens up a lot of doors. So we're somewhat technology agnostic, which aids in your question, right, so we can come in, we're not trying to push a specific technology, we're trying to push a methodology and an end goal and solution. And I think, you know, often times of course that end goal and solution is best met by our products, but to your point about the roller coaster, it seems as though as we have evolved there is a notion that data will, from an organization, will all come together in a common object store, and then the ability to quickly be able to spin up an analytical or a programmmatic interface within that data is super important and that's where we're kind of leaning, and that's where I think this idea of convenience being able to push button instantiate a green plum cluster, push button instantiate a gem fire grid so that you can do analytics or you can take actions on it is so super important. >> Male Speaker: You said something that sounds really important which is we want to get it sounded like you were alluding to a single source of truth, and then you spin up whatever compute, you bring it to the data. But there's an emerging, still early school of thought which is maybe the single source of truth should be a hub centered around real time streams. >> Male Speaker: Sure. Yeah. >> How does Pivotal play in that role? >> So, there are a lot of products that can help facilitate that including our own. I would say that there is a broad ecosystem that kind of says, if I was going to start an organization today there are a number of vertical products I would need in order to be successful with data. One of the would be just a standard relational database. And if I pause there for a second, if you look at it, there is definitely a move toward building microservices so that you can glue all those pieces together. Those microservices require smaller, simpler relational type databases, or you know, SQL type databases on the front end, but they become simpler and simpler where I think if I was Oracle or some of the more stalwart on the relational side, it's not about how many widgets you can put into the database, it's really about it's simplicity and performance. From there, having some kind of message queue or system to be able to take the changes and the updates of the data down the line so that, not so much IT providing it to an end user, but more self service, being able to subscribe to the data that I care about. And again, going back to the simplicity, me as an end user being able to take control of my destiny and use whatever product or technology makes the most sense to me and if I sort of dovetail on the side of that, we've focused so much this year on convenience and flexibility that I think it is now at a spot where all of the innovations that we're doing in the Amazon marketplace on green plum, all of those innovations are actually leading us to the same types of innovations in data deployments on top of Kubernetes. And so two of them that come to mind, I felt like, I was in front of a group last week and we were presenting some of the things we had done, and one of them was self-healing of green plum and so it's often been said that these big analytical solutions are really hard to operate and through our innovations we're able to have, if a segment goes down or a host goes down, or network problems, through the implementation the system will actually self heal itself, so all of a sudden the operational needs become quite a bit less. In addition, we've also created this automatic snapshotting capability which allows, I think our last benchmark we did about a pedobyte of data in less than three minutes, so suddenly you've got this operational stalwart, almost a database as a service without really being a service really just this living breathing thing. And that kind of dovetails back to where we're trying to make all of our products perform in a way that customers can just use them and not worry about the nuts and bolts of it. >> Female Speaker: So last question, we've got about 30 seconds left. You mentioned a lot of technologies but you mentioned methodology. Is that approach from Pivotal one of the defining competitive advantages that you deliver to the market? >> Male Speaker: It is 100 per cent one of our defining our defining things. Our methodology is what is enabling our customers to be successful and it actually allows me to say we've partnered with postcrestkampf and green plum summit this year is next month in April and the theme of that is hashtag data tells the story. And so, from our standpoint, green plum is continuing to take off, gem fire is continuing to take off, Kubernetes is continuing to take off, PCF is continuing to take off, but we believe that digital transformation doesn't happen without data. We think data tells a story. I'm here to encourage everyone to come to green plum summit, I'm also here to encourage everyone to share their stories with us on twitter, hashtag data tells a story, so that we can continue to broaden this ecosystem. >> Female Speaker: Hahtag data tells a story. Jacque, thanks so much for carving out some time this week to come back to the cube and share what's new and differentiating at Pivotal. >> Thank you. >> We want to thank you for watching The Cube. I'm Lisa Martin with my co-host George Gilbert. We are live at Big Data SV, our tenth big data event come down here, see us, we're in San Jose at Forrager eatery, we've got a great party tonight and also tomorrow morning at eight am we've got a breakfast briefing you wont' want to miss. Stick around, we'll be back with our next guest after a short break.