>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, we're here at VMworld 2018. You're watching theCUBE. Two sets, three days, over 95 guests. I'm Stu Miniman, my cohost is Joep Piscaer, and we've got a little bit of news to talk about. Lots of announcements made at the show. One of them is that VMware has purchased the intent to acquire Boston-based CloudHealth Technologies and I am thrilled to have back on the program, I've had him in my Boston-area studio and seen at lots of shows, Joe Kinsella, who's the founder and CTO of CloudHealth. >> Yes, you got it. Good to see you again, Stu, good to see you, Joep. >> Absolutely. >> Just to get it out of the way, the Boston Business Journal says for about 500 million. I know you can't comment on the dollars, but this is a big deal. 200 person company, as I said, Boston-based, right down the road from us. Heck, I'll stop at, your new headquarters is opening on Thursday, which I'm stopping at on the way back from the airport. Congratulations, first of all, and tell us what's the feeling like of your firm? >> It is exciting. We certainly weren't looking to get acquired, so as you know, we raised a fairly large D round last year and we were focused on building a big public company and what we found along the way of talking about a partnership with VMware was it was just a lot of synergy. Both vision, strategy, as well as cultural synergies. I think somewhere along the way we realized this made a lot of sense, so it is a big deal, and we're very excited about it. >> Awesome, Joe, one thing I like, I see you and your company at cloud shows. >> Yes. >> This is where we have, one of the things that excited me this week is we talk about, I'm a networking guy, talk about the networking, they're talking about multi-cloud the way that Nicira was pre-acquisition. VMware talking a lot more about multi-cloud. They had Amazon up on stage, and I think the acquisition of CloudHealth Technologies is, how does VMware become more of a cloud first? For people that don't know CloudHealth Technology, tell us a little about the origin, your founding, and where you play in the ecosystem? How much of a part is VMware today versus everything else? >> Without a doubt. I founded the company six years ago and it was, I was an early pioneer in the public clouds and the 2010-2011 timeframe I was building out large-scale public cloud infrastructure. Sounds a lot less impressive when I give you the numbers now, but then it was very impressive, and in the process of doing that just realized the incredible complexity that you had to confront to actually be successful in the public cloud. Both complexity of deploying and managing efficiently, that infrastructure, but also the complexity of all the tools that surround that management. So I set out with CloudHealth to build a single SaaS platform that customers could use to, what today you might call build out a cloud center of excellence, is kind of the terminology. Which is to have one central platform where you can centralize and distribute cost management, security compliance as well as proactive governance. All the way to integrating back into your back office and your service desk and your incident management. Make the cloud just part of how you deliver your business services. That was the journey six years ago, and it's been a tremendous journey to-date. >> You were definitely a pioneer in this, so congrats what you done. Cause I remember six years ago, come on, cloud was simple, I swipe a credit card and we'll just do this and everything. Now, everybody kind of understands not only cloud but especially multi-cloud, getting my arms around how I manage all this environment. Maybe touch on how does multi-cloud fit into this whole discussion and what does CloudHealth do with VMware today versus everything else? >> When I started the company, multi-cloud was part of the vision, but let's be honest, there weren't a lot of companies really doing multi-cloud. Usually, at best, especially in the enterprise, if an enterprise was even doing cloud they were choosing a single cloud provider. They really weren't trying to actually have multiple providers. I think what's happened is in the last 24 months is enterprises went from being a single cloud to pervasive multi-cloud, is what I call it, which is their portfolio now includes dozens of SaaS products, it includes multiple public cloud providers, it includes multiple private cloud providers, and it's just a very complex heterogeneous portfolio they're managing. We were built for that. It's finally come true and I think what it does is if you think what you need to be successful in that environment, if you're going to build out a cloud center of excellence across a pervasively heterogeneous environment, you need a single platform that does that for you. Today, our product supports Amazon, Google, Azure, and it also supports VMware, so it integrates directly into vSphere, does cost management, does inventory, visibility, as well as migration recommendations to and from multiple different public clouds. It's a great synergy between what it is that VMware does across its rich, robust portfolio and CloudHealth. >> Talk a little about the new possibilities you're now opening up, being acquired by VMware. What does that mean for that multi-cloud strategy? >> I think Pat touched on it in his keynote, and I thought he did a masterful job of describing how CloudHealth the brand will be kind of a core brand of VMware and this will be a centerpiece property across integrating across various different properties across their SaaS portfolio. But I also think VMware's very aware that there's a lot of choices that customers want. They may want to choose different products for log managing, configuration management, for application performance management, and I think we're going to continue to provide that choice to customers so that it won't be just a VMware-centric product. But at the same time, you look at the richnesses of VMware portfolio, which is, you look at what they do on-premise and you look at what they do around cost management inside the data center. You look at VMware on AWS as an offering. There's just huge potential synergies between what we do and how we can extend our value proposition into those areas much faster as part of VMware. As the founder of the company, what excited me about this was this was not taking me away from my vision, it was an opportunity to accelerate my vision, which is really what kind of got me there to this idea that we would be acquired. >> How do you think your product will help VMware, for instance in the VMware cloud on AWS. Do you think you'll integrate on that level to help VMware accelerate their proposition as well? >> Yes, I believe, I'm actually very excited about VMware and AWS because I think we all know that VMware's been optimizing its stack for so many years. There's incredible efficiencies that have been built in to it that I would like to bring up to a business perspective so that our customers can understand them and take advantage of them in an easier way. I think there's great potential there. I probably don't want to get over my skies too far here on this one, but I do think it's one of the things you'll see early post-close of this deal. >> Joe, I think the timing's really good. If this acquisition had happened two years ago, we'd be talking about vCloud Air. My joke would be to say when does the update come that says all migration should push you to VMware at 99.8% of the time? (Joep and Joe laughing) VMware, it's not only AWS. We saw the VMware presence at the Google show. >> Yeah. >> You're going to do Google Cloud Show and they're trying to position themselves more in this multi-cloud world, which is where your company sits. Joe, what advice do you give to companies that, software companies out there, how do they help customers in this multi-cloud work? It's a big environment. You help with a bunch of things, but there's licensing, there's all sorts of variability out there. I say it's this giant elephant there and you might have a main course of it, but there's lots of partners you need to work with and customers have the paradox of choice out there, so how do you as a software company be successful in this space? >> I think, myself as a software company or as our customers? >> What advice to you give to your peers out there and if you were giving Pat advice as to how do we be even more successful as a multi-cloud player? >> I think their strategy is very mature. That was one of the things that got me excited about it, which is, I think there was a time at which I think companies were very territorial about how they approached the pervasive heterogeneity that we're entering now, and I think being open in the way that they are, that all of the properties that customers may choose may not be a single vendor. There's going to be lots of different vendors and lots of different choices and freedom of choice, I think, is kind of one of the fundamental tenants of a successful strategy at this point in time. I would just highly encourage that for everyone which is I think the old world is the old world, now. We've entered a new frontier, we have to think differently, we have to act differently. I think what I really love about what Pat's doing is he's harnessing the DNA and the strength of VMware, which is just, they've been a tremendous provider of great software for two decades and kind of bringing it into the next frontier of cloud. I think they've got a lot to bring that we have not seen yet. That we're going to see over the next few years. I just hope to be a part of that. >> You mentioned the new frontier. VMware's still somewhere in between the old frontier and the new, so one of the problems we've seen in the past is VMware and its relation with the service provider world. What do you think you'll add to that mix to help service providers maybe move from the old world into that new world as well? >> Now, Joep, is that, that feels like a fastball down the middle. (all laughing) I just have to tell you. The relationship with VMware started 18 months ago. It started with an SVP at VMware and was all about partners. One of the things you might not see externally from CloudHealth is that there's really two products in CloudHealth. There's our direct product that we deliver to enterprises and SMB, and then there's a separate product that we sell to service providers and it enables them to deliver managed services to their customers on top of the cloud. We built it in a way where the products are really one product that actually are sold as two separate products. I think what we're going to bring is a real strong opportunity for partners across VMware, and that's why the opportunity, the business relationship started as a potential partnership around partners and eventually evolved into where we're at today. We're excited for that. I tell people that the cloud is the single greatest threat and the single greatest opportunity for partners. The difference between which one you're going to experience over the next few years is whether or not you can figure out how to harness the disruptive potential of the cloud. >> Sounds like I've got a question for Ajay Patel tomorrow when I interview him towards the end of the show. (laughing) Because yeah, it's service providers there. I know you can't talk a lot, but give us roadmap. What sort of things, is it like, I see NSX being pervasive. Are there integrations today? Do you have visibility in CloudHealth? Is that something from the networking side that you do or would tie into? I think back, I've been in this long enough, when EMC bought VMware it was here's all the cool stuff we could do and I was in engineering like oh my God, it's going to take us five or six years to do most of this stuff. >> Yes. >> It got done, but there's long, hard engineering work. 18 months, what can you talk about that's been done and give us a little bit of what should we be looking for? >> NSX is tremendous offering and I think what you see is, I'm really looking at this as more like tier one, two, and three integrations. Tier one I think you're going to see more around the cloud properties. Probably things like VMware on AWS and you'll see the SaaS products such as Wavefront and things like that. I think there's a natural extension and a natural movement and a natural value proposition we can bring on top of those. I think tier two you'll probably see a lot more hybrid, where you're going to see us kind of take advantage of that rich portfolio in VMware and extend it and add value on top of it to our customers. I think tier 3 I'll leave quiet for now, but I think there's some really amazing potential of what it is that we can do together based on what I'm seeing exist in VMware and things that maybe are being built that are not yet public. I think there's some really great potential of what we can bring to the market around how they can manage their multi-cloud portfolios in to the future. >> Joe, last thing I wanted to ask you. Boston-based company. VMware had a strong presence in the Boston area. I know a lot of people near Cambridge facility but talk about the tech scene in Boston, being a founder, you got a new headquarters, getting acquired, I'm a bit of a homer, supporting people so that I don't necessarily have to travel across the country or across the world. Give us your viewpoint on the Boston area these days. >> You know this, which is it is incredibly vibrant, what's happening in Boston, which is the businesses being built, the entrepreneurs that are there, the entire ecosystem is working at a pace I have not seen in over two decades. They're building real meaningful businesses. When you actually lift up the cover and you look at what these entrepreneurs are building, it's going to be an important tech scene for decades to come based on just what I'm seeing happen today. I look today and a lot of people like to give the credit to the person who founded the company. There's thousands of people who touched this business. Just including the tremendous effort from every person who joined this company. There's been people like yourself and people who've added value in many, countless ways along the way. It all came, primarily, from a Boston community that was there to support me and my company as we grew up in the Boston tech scene. I've been blessed to actually be surrounded by great people in one of the best cities in the world. >> Joe, congratulations again. >> Thank you. >> If you don't know, they even have superhero stickers of this guy that they give out at conferences. (laughing) >> Joe Kinsella, CloudHealth Technologies, congratulations to you. >> Thank you. >> I'm looking forward to seeing the grand opening back in Boston when I fly back after the show. For you Piscaer, I'm Stu Miniman, thanks so much for joining us on theCUBE. Be back with lots more. >> Thank you. (electronic tones)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, It's The Cube, covering NAB 2017. Brought to you by HGST. >> Welcome back to NAB day three. I'm Lisa Martin. We are here live in Las Vegas very excited to introduce you to our next guest, Alan Hoff, VP of Market Solutions for Avid. Welcome to The Cube. >> Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be here. >> You are an NAB veteran. This is your 21st year. >> Indeed, yes. >> You must have seen incredible transformation. >> Alan: It's true, yes. >> Tell us about just, you were saying before we went live that you've really been here at the start of digital transformation. Walk us through that kind of the evolution that you've witnessed? >> Yes, certainly. So when I first came here in 1996, the show was a little bit smaller and I came with a company that did non-linear digital video editing systems, not Avid but a competitor. And that was really the first link in the overall production chain that became digitized, and so that was really the forefront of the digital transformation that we're now seeing play out and ultimately culminating with all these cloud-based workflows that everybody's talking about. So I've been watching it as that digital production value chain has evolved all across knocking down one category after another, and as I say, it's really culminating now with the journey to the Cloud. >> Speaking of journey, this journey that you've been on in your seat, what are some of the things that surprise you still in yearr 21 for you at NAB? And what are some of the trends that you've seen go from maybe something buzzy to a real key value solution? >> Yeah, so I think Cloud was being hyped quite a bit a few years ago, and Avid was there. We announced some cloud-based workflows a couple years ago, et cetera, along with others. But it's really just now at this show that we're really seeing it come into a more pragmatic, broader workflow solution. The challenges that the industry is facing at all levels is that they need to create more content at higher quality that is more standout in nature and that is engaging and attention-grabbing than ever before, because there's so much more of it being created, and there are so many more outlets in which it can be consumed, and it's no longer on anybody's schedule but the consumer's schedule. So that has really thrown a wrench in the works in the traditional business models that people have gone through. And so Avid saw this a few years ago, and we developed something that we call the Media Central Platform. The goal of that platform was to standardize all the disparate different technologies and bits and standards that were out there into one unified whole to make it easier for individual artists or creative teams, like at post houses, or even the largest media enterprises out there, to get more efficient in the way they create their content and distribute their content. So what that's meant is Avid, which historically had been a very vertically oriented and closed company, had to learn how to play well with others. This is not unlike what we're seeing from other large players in the industry, Microsoft for example. These guys have realized that, in order to deliver what it is that the customers are looking for, again, regardless of their level of the segment, they have to be open and play well with the perhaps traditional competitors or folks that you never would have thought would have a solid workflow. So in the case of Avid, we, a year ago, announced that we were working with Adobe, which has always been a tool of choice for Avid customers. It's very common for them to have Avid products, Adobe products. But in some areas, we were directly competitive, and so what we ended up doing was we made it so that the Adobe Premiere products could work seamlessly within the Avid Media Central Platform. This year, we did something similar with-- >> You've got a big announcement at this show? >> Well, with EVS, we did integration. So EVS makes these, arguably, the world's best sports replay service, those great sports slomo replay, et cetera, that you see on sporting events. They have basically become the standard in that area. So we wanted to integrate the workflow. So we worked with EVS. They used our connectivity toolkit to create a flow-blown, certified membership in the platform so that an Avid user can have access to the EVS assets as if they were the Avid assets. So seamless workflow, all because that's what the customers need to be able to create this content faster and get it out to more devices. >> Speaking of the customer, you mentioned some alliance partners. In your role at Avid, you're responsible for product marketing alliances. Talk to us about what you're seeing, from the customer journey perspective, as they're transitioning media production to the Cloud. You mentioned some of the pain points. Walk us through kind of a typical journey, Whether it's a customer in sports or a customer in media and entertainment. >> Sure. Great, great. So our big announcement at the show here was the partnership with Microsoft and the fact that we were going to be moving the Avid Media Central Platform to Microsoft Azure Cloud. This is a really big watershed moment for the industry, if I may be so bold, because now, Avid with her big alliance ecosystem is going to be migrating to the Cloud. And the more gravity that the Cloud has, the more easy it will be for folks to have a peace of mind that that's a place they can trust and move to. We feel that we had a great advantage in moving to the Cloud, because we already had taken a platform approach. So when we say we're moving into the Cloud, it's obviously not to the exclusion of the typical terrestrial ways that people are accustomed to working. It's all meant to be complementary so that folks can take a hybrid approach. What I mean by this is, whether you're in sports production or in news production or in post-production, you're probably not just going to wake up one morning and say, okay, that's it. Everything I'm doing has got to be in the Cloud, because that's where everybody's going. I need to look in a very planful manner at the way I go about doing things and look at the benefits of what the Cloud brings and be selective in terms of what parts you want to migrate when. And with the partnership with Microsoft, what Avid is saying is you could continue to stay in your traditional on-premises approach here, if you want. You could being to migrate things into a private data center, either still in your own facility or maybe down the street in a data center. Or you could go fully into the public Cloud. And that last one, it's interesting how many people have reacted: oh, I don't know if I'm ready to put my assets, my gold bar equivalence-- >> Mission critical, right. >> into the Cloud, I don't know if I'm comfortable doing that. But the reality is this Microsoft Azure Cloud is trusted by every large banking institution on the planet. It's trusted by the United States Department of Defense. The biggest secrets and the largest assets in the globe are protected by Microsoft Azure. They've gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure that data is going to be secure, and the same holds true for media and entertainment assets. And to really put a fine point on it, they went and got the Motion Picture Association, the MPAA, certification for security, so they have all that. So it's as good as being in Fort Knox when it's in the Cloud. So I really want to put that to rest. I mean, these guys, all they do is think about the security and denial of access to any sort of outside threat, whereas most media and entertainment companies, that's only one of the things they're thinking about. They've got a lot going on, you know. >> Lisa: Exactly, exactly. >> And they are actually more vulnerable, even in terra firma on promoli solutions than they would be going to the Cloud. So just a little editorial aside, because security is a big concern to people at all levels of the industry. >> It is. Certainly, those in the technology space understand is, it's a reducing of the concern, but it is a concern nonetheless. It sounds like what you just articulated customers have the choice of hybrid as a journey or hybrid as a destination. >> Correct, correct, right. They might never move beyond a hybrid state, although I would predict that in five years from now, most everything is going to be cloud-based, and once people start to see the scale and reach and productivity they can get, as well as the benefits of things like machine learning and artificial intelligence (mumbles), just going to help them speed the way that they go about doing what they do. It will be clear that that's the way they should probably be doing what they do, >> Exactly. >> And that's at levels. >> And finding more value from the digital assets that they already have. That's right, exactly. And so, that's the other thing is, once it's in the Cloud, it's easier for you to repurpose and distribute, say, to over the top services, et cetera. So we were talking before about Netflix and Hulu and Amazon and Avid's role there. This may be-- >> Yeah, tremendous amount of content, 80% to 90% original content is produced with Avid. So in the last minute or so, tell us about that. >> Yeah, so Avid has grown up through the industry, we're almost 30 years old, and we understand the pains and challenges that the traditional broadcasters are facing by these insurgent and incumbent newcomers like the streaming services. But what I think is interesting is that those guys are using our tools, too, as you say, to a very large degree. So we're very privileged to have the streaming services as well as eleven of the largest international news organizations using us. Six of the largest Hollywood film studios are using us. We're very fortunate to have all that great diversity of customers that have embraced us across various parts of their workflow. >> Fantastic. Well, it sounds like not a dull moment for Avid or you. >> Right. >> I want to thank you so much, Alan, for stopping by The Cube. >> Thank you, Lisa. >> You are now a Cube alumni. I am, yes. It's great to have been here. Thanks for the invitation. >> Thank you. >> Okay. >> We want to thank you for watching again. We are live at NAB from Las Vegas. I am Lisa Martin. Stick around. We'll be right back.