>>live from San Francisco. It's the queue covering our essay conference 2020 San Francisco Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media >>Hey, welcome back here. Ready? Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're in our 2020 the biggest security conference in the country, if not the world. I guess there's got to be 50,000 people. We'll get the official word tomorrow. It's our sixth year here and we're excited to be back. I'm not sure why. It's 2020. We're supposed to know everything at this point in time with the benefit on inside. We got two people that do. You know a lot. We're excited to have him. My left is Chris Bets is the SVP and chief security officer for Centurylink. Chris, Great to see you. And to his left is Chris Smith, VP Global security Services for Centurylink. Welcome. >>Thank you for having me. >>Absolutely. You guys just flew into town >>just for the conference's great To be here is always a really exciting space with just a ton of new technology coming out. >>So let's just jump into it. What I think is the most interesting and challenging part of this particular show we go to a lot of shows you 100 shows a year. I don't know that there's one that's got kind of the breadth and depth of vendors from the really, really big the really, really small that you have here. And, you know, with the expansion of Moscone, either even packing more women underneath Howard Street, what advice do you give to people who are coming here for the first time? Especially on more than the buyer side as to how do you navigate this place >>when I when I come here and see So I'm always looking at what the new technologies are. But honestly, having a new technology is not good enough. Attackers are coming up with new attacks all the time. The big trick for me is understanding how they integrate into my other solutions. So I'm not so I'm not just focused on the technology. I'm focused on how they all fit together. And so the vendors that have solutions that fit together that really makes a difference in my book. So I'm looking for for products that are designed to work with each other, not just separate >>from a practice standpoint. The theme of IRA say this year is the human element, and for us, if you look at this floor, it's overwhelming. And if you're a CSO of an average enterprise, it's hard to figure out what you need to buy and how to build a practice with all of the emerging tools. So for us core to our practice, I think any mature, 30 security practices having a pro services capability and consulting capability that can be solved this all together, that helps you understand what to buy, what things to piece together and how to make it all work >>right. And it's funny, the human element that is the kind of the global theme. And what's funny is for all the technology it sounds like. Still, the easiest way in is through the person, whether it's a phishing attack or there's a myriad of ways that people are getting him to the human. So that's kind of a special challenge or trying to use technology to help people do a better job. At the end of the day, sometimes you're squishy ISS or easier access point is not a piece of technology, but it's actually a person. It's >>often because We asked people to do the wrong things. We're having them. Focus on security steps. Use email. Security is an easy to grasp example way all go through training every year to teach folks how to make sure that they avoid clicking on the wrong emails for us more often than a year. So the downside of that is arresting people to take a step away from their job and try to figure out how to protect themselves. And is this a bad emails that are really focusing on the job? So that's why it's so important to me to make sure that we've got solutions that help make the human better and frankly, even worse in security. We don't have the staff that we need. And so how do we help Make sure that the right tools are there, that they work together. They automate because asking everybody to take those steps, it's just it's a recipe for disaster because people are going to make mistakes >>right? Let's go a little deeper into the email thing. A friend of mines and commercial real estate, and he was describing an email that he got from his banker describing a wire transfer from one of his suppliers that he has a regular, ongoing making relationship with. You know, it's not the bad pronunciation and bad grammar and kind of the things that used to jump out is an obvious. But he said it was super good to the point where thankfully, you know, it was just this time. But, you know, he called the banker like, did you just send me this thing? So you know where this as the sophistication of the bad guys goes up specifically targeting people, how do you try to keep up with how do you give them the tools to know Woe versus being efficient? I'm trying to get my job done. >>Yeah, for me, it starts with technology. That takes a look. We've only got so many security practitioners in the company. Actually. Defend your email example. We've got to defend every user from those kinds of problems. And so how do I find technology solutions that help take the load off security practitioners so they can focus on the niche examples that really, really well crafted emails and help take that load off user? Because users just not gonna be able to handle that right? It's not fair to ask them. And like you said, it was just poorly time that helped attack. So how do we help? Make sure that we're taking that technology load off, identify the threats in advance and protect them. And so I think one of the biggest things that Chris and I talk a lot about is how to our solutions help make it easier for people to secure themselves instead of just providing only technology technology advantage, >>our strategy for the portfolio and it sort of tied to the complexity. CN This floor is simplicity. So from our perspective, our goal is a network service provider is to deliver threat free traffic to our customers even before it gets to the human being. And we've got an announcement that we launched just a week ago in advance of the show called Rapid Threat Defense. And the idea is to take our mature threat Intel practice that Chris has a team of folks focused on that. We branded black Lotus labs and Way built a machine learning practice that takes all the bad things that we see out in the network and protects customers before it gets to their people. >>So that's an interesting take. You have the benefit of seeing a lot of network traffic from a lot of customers and not just the stuff that's coming into my building. So you get a much more aggregated approach, so tell us a little bit more about that. And what is the Black Lotus Labs doing? And I'm also curious from an industry point of view, you know, it's just a collaboration with the industry cause you guys are doing a lot of traffic. There's other big network providers carrying a lot of traffic. How well do you kind of work together when you identify some nasty new things that you're doing the horizon? And where do you draw the line between better together versus still independent environment? >>When we're talking about making the Internet safer, it's not really to me a lot about competitive environment. It's really about better together. That's one of things I love about the security community. I'm sure you see it every year when you're here. You're talking security practitioners how across every industry security folks work together to accomplish something that's meaningful. So as the largest world's largest global I P we get to see a ton of traffic, and it's really, really interesting we'll be able to put together, you know, at any given point in time. We're watching many tens of thousands of probable malware networks. We're protecting our customers from that. But we're also able to ourselves take down nearly 65 now where networks every month just knock them off the Internet. So identify the command and control, and we take it off the Internet. We work with our partners. We go talk to hosting providers, maybe competitors of ours. And we say, Hey, here's a bad, bad actors bad server that's being used to control now where? Going shut it down. And so the result of that is not only protecting our customers, but more importantly, protecting tens of thousands of customers every month. By removing now where networks that were attacking, that really makes a difference. To me, that's the biggest impact we bring. And so it really is a better together. It's a collaboration story and, of course, for said, we get the benefit of that information as we're developing it as we're building it, we can protect our customers right away while we're building the confidence necessary to take something as dramatic and action as shutting down on our network. Right. Unilaterally, >>Citrix. I was gonna ask you kind of the impact of I o t. Right in this in this crazy expansion of the tax services, when you hear about all the time with my favorite example, somebody told the story of attacking a casino through the connected thermometer in the fish tank in the lobby, which may or may not be true, is still a great story. Great story. But I'm curious, you know, looking at the network, feeding versus the devices connecting that's really in an interesting way to attack this proliferation of attack services. You're getting it before it necessarily gets to all these new points of presence doing it based on the source. For >>us, that's the only way to make it scalable. It is true that automation blocking it before it gets to the azure to a device. It is what will create simplicity and value for our customers. >>Right on the other piece of the automation. Of course, that we hear about all the time is there just aren't enough security professionals, period. So if you don't have the automation. You don't have the machine learning, as you said, to filter low hanging fruit and the focus your resource. If they need to be, you're not going to do it. The bad news is the bad guys, similar tools. So as you look at kind of the increase in speed of automation, the increase in automated connectivity between these devices making decisions amongst each other, how do you see that kind of evolving? But you're kind of role and making sure you stay a step ahead of the bad guys. For >>me, it's not about just automation. It's about allowing smart people to put their brains against hard problems, hard impactful problems and so on. So simply automating is not enough. It's making sure that automation is reducing the the load on people so that they're able to focus on those hard, unique problems really solve all those solutions and, yes, Attackers, Attackers build automation as well. And so if we're not building faster and better than we're falling behind, so like every other part of this race, it's about getting better, faster and why it's so important that technology work together because we're constantly throwing out more tools and if they don't work better together, even if we got incremental automation, these place way still miss overall because it's end to end that we need to defend ourselves and our customers >>layered on what he said. For the foreseeable future, you're gonna need smart security people that help protect your practice. Our goal in automation is take the road tasks out of out of the gate. They live so they can focus on the things that provide the most value protecting their enterprise. >>Right when you're looking, you talked about making sure things work together, for you talked about making sure things work together. How do you decide what's kind of on the top of the top of the stack, where everybody wants to own the single pane of glass? Everybody wants to be the control plane. Everybody wants to be that thing that's on your computer all the time, which is how you work your day to day. How do you kind of dictate what are the top level tools while still going out? And, he said, exploring some of these really cutting edge things out around the fringe, which don't necessarily have a full stack solution that you're going to rely on but might have some cool kind of point solutions if you will, or point products to help you plug some new and emerging holes. Yeah, >>yeah. So for us, yeah, we take security capabilities and we build them into the other things that we sell. So it's not a bolt on. So when you buy things from us, whether whether it's bandwidth or whether its SD wan and security comes baked in, so it's not something you have to worry about integrating later. It's an ingredient of the things that we sell in all of the automation that we build is built into our practice, So it's simple for our customers to understand, like, simple and then layered. On top of that, we've got a couple different ways that we bring pro services and consulting to our practice. So we've got a smart group of folks that could lean into staff, augment and sit on site, do just about anything to help customers build a practice from day zero to something more mature. But now we're toying with taking those folks in building them into products and services that we sell for 10 or 20 hours a month as an ingredient. So you get that consulting wrapper on top of the portfolio that we sell as a service provider. >>Get your take on kind of budgets and how people should think about their budgets. And when I think of security, I can't help but think of like insurance because you can't spend all your money on security. But you want to spend the right amount on security. But at the end of the day, you can't be 100% secure, right? So it's kind of kind of working the margins game, and you have to make trade offs in marketing, wants their money and product development, wants their money and sales, wants their money. So what people are trying to assess kind of the risk in their investment trade offs. What are some of the things they should be thinking about to determine what is the proper investment on security? Because it can't just be, you know, locker being 100% it's not realistic, and then all the money they help people frame that. >>Usually when companies come to us in, Centurylink plays in every different segment, all the way down to, you know, five people company all the way to the biggest multinationals on the planet. So that question is, in the budget is a little bit different, depending on the type of customer, the maturity and the lens are looking at it. So, typically, way have a group of folks that we call security account managers those our consultants and we bring them in either in a dedicated or a shared way. Help companies that's us, wear their practices today in what tool sets for use again things that they need to purchase and integrate to get to where they need to be >>really kind of a needs analysis based on gaps as much as anything else. >>That's part of the reason why we try to build prisons earlier, so many of the technologies into our solution so that so that you buy, you know, SD wan from us, and you get a security story is part of it is that that allows you to use the customer to save money and really have one seamless solution that provides that secure experience. We've been building firewalls and doing network based security for going on two decades now, in different places. So at this point, that is a good place that way, understand? Well, we can apply automation against it. We can dump, tail it into existing services and then allow focused on other areas of security. So it helps. From a financial standpoint, it also helps customers understand from where they put their talent. Because, as you talked about, it's all about talents even more so than money. Yes, we need to watch our budgets. But if you buy these tools, how do you know about the talent to deploy them? And easier You could make it to do that simpler. I think the better off right >>typical way had the most success selling security practices when somebody is either under attacker compromised right, then the budget opens right up, and it's not a problem anymore. So we thought about how to solve that commercially, and I'll just use Vitas is an example. We have a big D dos global DDOS practice that's designed to protect customers that have applications out on the Internet that are business critical, and if they go down, whether it's an e commerce or a trading site losing millions of dollars a day, and some companies have the money to buy that up front and just have it as a service. And some companies don't purchase it from us until they're under attack. And the legacy telco way of deploying that service was an order and a quote. You know, some days later, we turned it up. So we've invested with Christine the whole orchestration layer to turn it up in minutes and that months so you can go to our portal. You can enter a few simple commercial terms and turn it on when you need it. >>That's interesting. I was gonna ask you kind of how has cloud kind of changed the whole go to market and the way people think about it. And even then you hear people have stuff that's secure in the cloud, but they mis configured a switch left something open. But you're saying, too it enables you to deploy in a very, very different matter based on you know, kind of business conditions and not have that old, you know, get a requisite get a p o requisition order, install config. Take on another kind of crazy stuff. Okay, so before I let you go, last question. What are your kind of priorities for this show for Centurylink when it's top of mind, Obviously, you have the report and the Black Lotus. What do you guys really prioritizing for this next week? Here for Cisco. >>We're here to help customers. We have a number of customers, a lot of learning about our solutions, and that's always my priority. And I mentioned earlier we just put out a press release for rapid threat defense. So we're here to talk about that, and I think the industry and what we're doing this little bit differently. >>I get to work with Chris Motions Week with customers, which is kind of fun. The other part that I'm really excited about, things we spent a bunch of time with partners and potential partners. We're always looking at how we bring more, better together. So one of the things that we're both focused on is making sure that we're able to provide more solutions. So the trick is finding the right partners who are ready to do a P I level integration. The other things that Chris was talking about that really make this a seamless and experience, and I think we've got a set of them that are really, really interested in that. And so those conversations this week will be exceptionally well, I think that's gonna help build better technology for our customers even six months. >>Alright, great. Well, thanks for kicking off your week with the Cube and have a terrific week. Alright. He's Chris. He's Chris. I'm Jeff. You're watching the Cube. Where? The RSA Conference in downtown San Francisco. Thanks for watching. See you next time. >>Yeah, yeah.

>>long from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering a ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back Inside the Sands. Here's to continue our coverage here. Live on the Cube of AWS Reinvent 2019 Absolutely jam packed isles. Great educational sessions and one of the feature presenters now joins us well. Dave Alana John Walls with Paul Saville. Who's the SPP of court networking technology solutions at Caen. Freely. Paul, Good to see you again. >>Yeah, let's see you, John. >>So you just finished up. We'll get in that just a little bit. First off, just give me your impression of what's going on here and the energy and the vibe that you're getting. >>Yeah, I think it's fantastic. I mean, it's very high energy here, you know, there's a lot of new things that that are emerging terms of the applications that we're seeing the use cases for the cloud. And of course, exciting stuff happened around ej compute with the announcement of AWS with the outpost, Long >>will jump in Najaf. Everybody has a different idea, right? You weren't so I mean, if you define the edge, at least. How do you see it? >>Yeah, it's very simple definition of how we see the edge. It's putting compute very close to the point of interaction, and the interaction could be with humans or the inner action could be with devices or other electron ICS that need toe that need to be controlled or that need to communicate. But the point is getting that that computers close as possible to it from a performance standpoint that's needed. >>Okay, so we heard that a lot from Andy Jassy ethic yesterday. Right now compute to the data. I mean, with all due respect, it's like he was talking about like it was a new concept, right? We've been here for quite some time, so talk more about how you see the edge evolving. I mean, look, I have a lot of credit to Amazon because, you know, they used to not talk about hybrid. I predict a couple years to talk about multi cloud. Guarantee it because that's what customers are doing, so they respond to customers at the same time. I like their edge strategy because it's all about developers. Infrastructures code on the edge But you guys are about, you know, moving that data on or not necessarily bring in the computer that. So how do you see the edge >>evolving? Yeah, so the reason this whole trend is happening is because what's happening with the new technologies that are enabling a whole new set of applications out there? Things like What's going on with artificial intelligence and machine learning and virtual reality those the robotics control Those things are basically driving this need to place compute as close as possible to that point of interaction. The problem is that when you do that, costs go up. And that's the conundrum that we've kind of been in because when Compute gets housed at the customer premise in a home in a business in an enterprise, then that's the most expensive real estate that that there is, and you can't get the economies of scale that's there. The only other choice to date has been the public cloud, and that could be hundreds or thousands of miles away. And these new applications that require really tight control and interaction can't operate in that kind of environment, And yet it's too expensive to run those applications at the very edge at the premise itself. So that's why this middle ground now of a place and compute nearby, where conserve many locations or must be house more cost effectively. >>Okay, so you got the speed of light problem, right? So you deal with that later by making the compute proximate to the data, but it doesn't have to be like right next to it. Correct. But But what are we talking distance wise? It's that to be synchronised distance or >>when we think of the distance, we think about it in terms of milliseconds of delay, from where the edge device, the thing that needs to interact with the computer, the application needs to interact with. And we have not seen any applications that from the customers we talked to that really get beyond our need tighter than five milliseconds of delay. Now that's one way. So if we get into that range of place and compute within five milliseconds of the of the edge interaction, the device that it needs to interact with, that is enough to meet some of the most tightest requirements that we've seen around robotics control, video analytics and another >>like I could ship code to the data. But the problem is, if it needs to be real time, right, it's still too much. It's too much late, right? That's the problem that you're solving. That's right. Okay, >>so what's what you were talking about? Why milliseconds matter? That's right. So give me some examples, if you will, then about why, why five matters more than 10 or five matters more than eight or 20 or whatever, because we're talking about such an infant testable difference. But yet it does matter. In some respects. It does, >>because so give you an example of robotics, for example, robotics control. You know that is one of things that requires the most tight Leighton see requirement because it depends upon the robotics itself. If it's a machining tools that's working on a laid, then that doesn't require a tide of response time to the controller as, say, a scanning device that Israel time pushing things around very fast in doing an optical read on it to make the decision about how about where it pushes the device next, that type of interaction of control requires a much tighter, late and see performance, and that's why you get start, you start to see these ranges. But as I said, we're not seeing anything below that kind of five millisecond type of range from >>the other thing that's changing it and help me understand. This is yeah, Okay, you're moving the compute closer to the data, which increases costs. And I want to understand how you're addressing that. Maybe one of the ways addresses you're bringing the cloud model, the operating model to the data. So right patches, security patches, maintenance, things like that are reduced. Is that how you're addressing costs? >>Yeah, that is part of it. And that's why the eight of US outpost is very interesting because it is really a complete instance of AWS that is in a much smaller form factor that you can deploy very close to that point of interaction close to the customer to the customer premise, and that enables customers to leverage pretty much the full power of AWS in engaging with those devices and coding to those devices and dropping those applications closed. >>Now you lose the multi tenant aspect Is that right down unnecessarily >>from our understanding of outpost, it's a single 10 a device coming out the gate. But ultimately it's gonna be a multi tenant device. >>Yeah, okay, so near term, it's easier to manage. But it's it's multi instance, I guess, yeah, over time, maybe you could share that. That resource is still not getting. >>The interesting thing is that even though it's a single tenant device, there's still many great use cases because even a single Tenet device in set in one market could serve multiple enterprise locations. So it still has that kind of a sense of scale because you concert as long as it's it's one enterprise. Conserve many locations off of that one. That one device. >>Okay, so you don't get the massive economies of scale, but you're opening abuse cases that never existed before. >>That's right. But what about what do you do with the data supplied basically held something data scale and edge devices creating that much more data. All of a sudden speed becomes a little more challenging, taking in a lot more information, trying to process in different ways after feeding off of that, so a sudden you have a much more complex challenge because it's not static, right? This is a very dynamic environment, >>That's right. Yeah, and there's a very big trend that's happening now, which is that data is being created at the edge, and it's staying at the edge for a whole number of reasons. You know, in the Old World you would pretty much collect data and you'd ship it off to the centralized data center or to the public cloud to be housed there. And that's today. That's where 80% of data resides. But there's a big shift happening where that data now needs to reside at the deep edge because it needs to have that fast interaction with something that's that's working with or because of government regulations that are now coming in that are having much stricter tolerances around. You have to know exactly where your data is can't cross state lines. It can't, you know, get out of certain security zone. Things like that are forcing companies now to keep that massive amount of data in a very understand known localized position. >>You gotta act on it in real time. Yeah, some of it will go back to the cloud, but you see folks persist. The data at the edge or not so much persistent data. People want to store it at the edges. Well, >>uh, people in the story at the edge where where it's going to have a lot of interaction. So if you're running A if you're running a chemical plant, you may not need to have access to a lot of data outside that chemical plant. But you you're intensively analyzing that data in the chemical plant, and you don't want to ship it off someplace centrally, 1000 miles away. To be access from there. It needs to be acted on locally, and that's why it's compute this movement toward EJ computers really building and becoming stronger. >>Talk about your tech. You know what? What's the real value of what you do? You obviously reducing late, sees they gotta secure all this stuff but >>central and brings the number of tools to help in this whole space. So the first of all, the network that we provide that could tie it all together from the enterprise location to the to the edge location where compute can be housed all the way back to the public cloud core way have a network that spans the entire U. S. Fiber all over the place, and we can use those lonely and see fiber optic connections to change those those areas together in the most optimal fashion. To get the kind of performance that you need to handle these distributed computing environments, we also bring compute technology itself. We have our own variety of EJ compute, where we can build custom edge compute solutions for customers that meet their very specific SPECT requirements that could be dedicated to them. We can incorporate AWS computer technology as well, and we have way have I t service's and skilled people, thousands of employees that are focused on the space that build these solutions together. For customers that tie together, the public cloud resource is the edge. Compute resource is the network resource is the wireless connectivity capabilities that's needed on customer premise and the management solutions to tie it all together in that very mixed environment. >>We were just on a session with Teresa Carlson runs public sector for AWS, telling the SAT in a session. Marty Walsh, the mayor of Boston, has got this big smart city initiative going on. I know that's one of the cases you're working on. Maybe talk about that a little bit. And maybe some of the other interesting use cases. >>Yeah, that's right. Definitely. Smart cities are a big our big use case, though. The one and we're we're actually actively working on a number of them. I would say that those used the smart City use cases tend to move very slowly because you're talking about municipalities and long decision making cycle, I'll tell you that. We've seen >>there's a 50 year plan he put forward, >>but the use cases that we're really seeing the most traction with our interestingly is robotics is a really big one, and Video Analytics is another big one. So we're actually deploying edge used case solutions right now. In those scenarios, the Robotics one is a great one because those devices need to be. Those robotic devices need to be controlled within a really tight millisecond tolerance, and but the computer needs to be housed in a very it's much more reliable economic location. The video Analytics piece is a really interesting one that we're seeing very, very big demand for, because retailers have now reached the point with the technology where they can do things like they can, they can figure out by doing video analytics whether somebody is acting suspiciously in the store and we're hearing that they can, they think they can now cut Devery out of retail locations dramatically by using video analytics. And when you talk about big savings to the bottom line of a company that makes a big savings to them so that those very to good use cases we're seeing that a real today. You >>know what the other things you were talking about earlier was about the disappearance of Compute Divide. So where to go? Wait. >>I like to say that in the old days, if you've been around long enough like I know you're old because watching you on TV >>way get out of college, Does that make you feel way get out of college? >>Everything was in the mainframe, right? You essentially. Yet when you went to work, you had a terminal, and everything was house Essentially. Then we went to distributed where client server model, where you everybody was working on desktops and a lot of the compute was on the desk tops and very little went back to a mainframe. Then we made the ship to the cloud where he pushed his much in the centralized location as we can, too. So he's shifted way back to centralized. That's the compute divide. I'm talking about goat, that big ship from decentralized, centralized, decentralized. Now we're actually moving to a new world where that pendulum swing that compute divide is disappearing because compute isn't most economically stored. Anyone location, it's everywhere. It's gonna be at the Io ti edge. It's gonna be at the premise it's going to be in market locations. They were essential. Eyes is gonna be in the public cloud core. It's gonna be all around us. And that's what I mean by the by the disappearance of the compute >>divine. And, you know, I wantto come back on that. You talk about a pendulum. A lot of people talk about the pendulum swings mainframe and distributed. A lot of people say it's the pendulum is swinging back, but you just described it differently. It's It's a ubiquitous matrix. Now you'd is everywhere. >>That's where you hear the term fog computing the idea of the fog. Now it's not the cloud that you can see off in the distance. It's just everywhere, right, surround you and that's how combines we can start to think about how >>I first heard that you're like, I don't know eight years ago. What the heck is this? It was ahead of its time, but now it's really starting to show. This is sort of new expansion of what we know is cloud reading redefining? Yes, exactly. Net ej five g. That's, you know, another big piece of it. You know, Amazon's obviously excited about that with wavelength, right? What do you see for five G? How's that? It can affect this whole equation. >>Yeah, I think five G is gonna have a have a number of EJ applications and was primarily gonna be around the mobile space. You know, it's the the advantage of it is that it increases band with and support smoke mobility, and it allows for a little bit higher resilience because they can take the part of the spectrum and make sure that they're carving it out and dedicating it for particular applications that are there. But I tell you that the five G gets a lot of attention in terms of being how EJ computer's gonna roll out. But we're not saying that at all. edge compute is available today and that we're providing those edge compute solutions through our fiber optic networks. What we're seeing is that every enterprise that we're talking to once fiber into their into their enterprise location. Because once you have fiber there, that's gonna be the most secure, reliable and scalable solutions fiber kin can effectively scale as Bigas. Any customer could ever consume the bandwidth. And they know that once they get fiber into that application into their location that they're good for for the future because they can totally scale with that. And that's how we're deploying edge solutions today, >>Paul. I know you got a plane to catch, and you got to go. But after that age comment, we're gonna keep you for another hour. No, I think it's great. You're doing all right. All right, Hang on. We're about to say goodbye to Paul now. Well, you have a free event. 2019. Coverage continues. Right here on the right

>>long from Las Vegas. It's the Q covering a ws re invent 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web service is and in along with its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back here to AWS reinvent 2019. Great show going on here in Las Vegas, where the Sands were live here on the Cube. Once again, covering it from wall to wall will be here until late tomorrow afternoon. David John Walls were doing by Joined by David. She coaches who is the vice president of product management for hybrid idea Century Lake. Good to see you, You guys and Brandon sweetie, who's the SPP of worldwide cloud sales at Veum With you be with you. This is gonna be a New England sports segment actually surrounded by ruin. Celtics, >>ESPN in Vegas, >>I remind you, the Washington Nationals are the reigning world. Serious shit. Wait a moment. Wait. Shark forever. A moment in time I got stuff. Let's talk about your relationship between via wearing set free like And what brings you here? A WSB offering. You're putting you guys that run on AWS. >>Maybe Maggie jumping and jumping. So look VM wear a long time player in the infrastructure space. Obviously incredible relationship with AWS. Customers want to transform their operations. They want to move to the cloud way have Vienna, where Claude, on a video B s. We continue to take tremendous ground helping customers build and build more agile infrastructure. Make that happen, Van. Where was built on our partners. Right centrally great partner MSP. And we think about helping customers achieve their business outcomes. Key partners like centrally make it happen. You've been a long term partner and done a lot of great things with us. >>Yeah, and really what? What Central Lincoln VM Where have done? I mean, really, we sort of created the manage private cloud market in the early days of managing the Empire solutions for customers, but really were and where we differentiate in other working with GM wear on AWS is really with elements of our network or the ability to take those kinds of solutions and make sure that they're connected to the right networks and that they're tied in and integrated with the customer's existing enterprise and where they want to go as they start to distribute the workload more widely. Because we run that network, we see a lot of the Internet traffic. We see a lot of threat patterns. We see a lot of things emerged with our cyber security capabilities and manage service is. So we add value there. And because of that history with BM wear and in sort of creating that hosted private cloud environment, there's There's a lot of complexity, friendliness inside of our service offer, where we can manage the inn where we can manage it in a traditional model that is cloud verified. And then you could manage it as it starts to move on to the AWS platform. Because, as we all know, and as even you know, Andy has referenced in different points, there's a just about every kind of workload can go to eight of us. But there are still certain things that can't quite go there. And building a hybrid solution basically puts customers in a position to innovate is what a hybrid solution is all about. >>That kind of moves the needle on some of those harder to move working in the M, where is such an obvious place to start? So you try to preserve that existing customer of'em, where customer experience but at the same time you want to bring the cloud experience. So how How is that evolving? >>Yes, it's a couple things, right? So l Tingley customers, they all want to move to the cloud for all the reasons we want security, agility, governance, et cetera. Right, but fundamentally need help. And so partners, like essentially help figure out which workloads are cloud ready, right? And figure that out and then to you, get to know the customer. Really well, begin the relationships that you have, right, and you can help them figure out which workloads am I gonna move right? And then that leads into more relationships on How do I set up d r. Right? How do I offer other service is through eight of us against those work clothes. >>There's a lot of things where being a manage service's provider for a V M were based platform or being. Amanda's service is provided for an AWS platform. There's a lot of things that you have in common, right? First and foremost is that ability toe run your operations securely. You've got to be secure. You know, you need to be able to maintain that bond of trust you need to be auditable. Your your your operations model needs to be something that transparent to the customer. You need to not just be about migrating workloads to the new and exciting environment, but also helping to transform it and take advantage of whether it's a V M where feature tool or next generation eight of us feature it's will. It's not just my great lift and shift, but then helped to transform what that that downstream, long term platform could do. You certainly want Teoh be in a posture where you're building a sense of intimacy with the customer. You're learning their acronyms. You're learning their business processes. You're building up that bond of trust where you can really be flexible with that customer. That's where the MSP community can also come in, because there's a lot of creative things we can do commercially. Contracting wise binding service's together into broader solutions and service level agreements that can go and give the customer something that they could just get by going teach individual technology platform under themselves >>and their ways >>where the service provider community really chips in. >>I think you're right and we think about helping Dr customers success manage service providers because of those engine relationship with customers. We've had tremendous success of moving those workloads, driving consumption of the service and really driving better business outcomes based on those relationships you have. >>So let's talk about workloads, guys. Course. Remember Paul Maritz when he was running the M word? He said Eddie Eddie Workload. Any application called it a device. He called it a software mainframe and Christian marketing people struck that from the parlance. But that's essentially what's happened pretty much run anything on somewhere. I heard Andy Jassy Kino talking about people helping people get off on mainframes. And so I feel like he's building the cloud mainframe. Any work less? But what kind of workloads are moving today? It's not. Obviously, he acknowledged, some of the hard core stuff's not gonna move. He didn't specify, but it's a lot of that hard core database ol TV transit transaction, high risk stuff. But what is moving today? Where do you see that going? >>Don't talk about some customers. >>Yeah, >>so a lot of joint customers we have that. I think you fall into that category. In fact, tomorrow on Thursday, we're actually leading a panel discussion that really dives into some customers. Success on the AWS platform that Central Lincoln are managed service is practice has been able to help them achieve what's interesting about that We have. We have an example from the public sector. We have an example from manufacturing and from from food and beverage example from the transportation industry and airlines. What's really interesting is that in all those use cases that will be diagramming out tomorrow, where VM Where's part of all of them, right? And sometimes it's because I am. Where is a critical part of their existing infrastructure? And so we're trying to be able to do is design, you know, sort of systems of innovation, systems of engagement that they were running inside of an AWS or broadly distributed AWS architecture. But it still needs network integration, security and activity back to the crown jewels and what's kept in a lot of those workloads that already running on the BM where platform So that's a lot of ways. See that a good deal with regards to your moving your sort of innovative workloads, your engagement workload, some of your digital experience, platforms you were working with an airline that wants to start building up a series of initiatives where they want to be able to sell vacation packages and and be very creative in how they market deliver those pulling through airline sails along the way. They're gonna be designing those digital initiatives in AWS, but they need access to flight flight information, schedule information, logistics information that they keep inside of there there. Bm where environment in the centralized data center. And so they're starting to look at workloads like that. We started to look at the N word cloud on eight of us being whereas it a zit in and of itself as a workload moving up to eight of us. There's a range of these solutions that we're starting to see, but a lot of it is still there, and he had the graphic up. There were still, in the very early days of clouded option. I still see a lot of work loads that are moving AWS theater in that system of engagement. How can I digitally engaged with my customers better? That's where a lot of the innovation is going on, and that's what a lot of the workload that are running in launching our >>I mean, we're seeing tremendous momentum and ultimately take any workload, wailed, moving to the cloud right and do it in an efficient and speedy path. And we've got custom moving thousands of workloads, right? They may decide over time to re factor them, but first and foremost, they could move them. They relocate them to the cloud. They can save a lot of costs. Out of that, they can use the exact same interface or pane of glass in terms. How they manage those work clothes, whether they're on Kramer, off Prem. It gives them tremendous agility. And if they decide over time, they have to re factor some workloads, which can be quite costly. They have that option, but there's no reason they shouldn't move. Every single worker today >>is their eyes, their disadvantage at all. If if you're left with ex workloads that have to stay behind, as opposed to someone who's coming up and getting up and running totally on the cloud and they're enjoying all those efficiencies and capabilities, are you a little bit of a disadvantage because you have to keep some legacy things lingering behind, or how do you eventually close that gap to enjoy the benefits of new technologies. Yeah, >>there's a sort of an old saying that, you know, if you're if you're if you're an enterprise, you know, that means you've had to make a lot of decisions along the way, right? And so presumably those decisions added value. It's your enterprise, or else she wouldn't be in enterprise. So it really comes out, too. Yeah, to those systems of records of those legacy systems way talk about legacy systems >>on Lian I t. Is the word legacy. I know it's a positive. United is the word legacy. A majority of >>your legacy is what the value you built up a lot of that, whether it's airline flight data or scheduling, best practices are critical. Crown jewels kind of data systems are really important. It really comes down to it. You're on enterprise and you're competing against somebody that is born in the cloud. How well integrated is everything. And are you able to take advantage of and pace layer your innovation strategy so that you can work on the cloud where it makes sense. You can still take advantage of all the data and intelligence you build up about your customers >>so talking earlier, You guys, it seems like you guys do you see that? That cloud is ultimately the destination of all these workloads. But, you know, Pac thinking about PacBell Singer, he talked about the laws of physics, the laws of economics and the laws of the land so that he makes the case for the hybrid >>Murphy's Law. >>Yeah, so that makes the case for the hybrid world. And it seems like Amazon. To a certain extent, it's capitulating on that, and it seems like we got a long way to go. So it's almost like the cloud model will go to your data wherever it iss. You guys, I think, helped facilitate that. How do you look at that? >>Yes. I mean, part of that answer is how much data centers are becoming sort of an antiquated model right there. There there is a need for computing and storage in a variety of different locations. Right, And there's that we've been sort of going through these cycles back and forth of you use the term software mainframe and the on the Palmer. It's kind, a model of the original mainframe decentralizing out the client server now centralizing again to the cloud as we see it starting to swing back on the other direction for towards devices that are a lot smarter. Processors that are, you know, finally tuned for whatever Internet of things use case that they're being designed for being able to put business logic a whole lot closer to those devices. The data. So I think that is what one of things that I think that said that one of the BM wears. A couple of years ago, data centers were becoming centers of data. And how are you able to go and work with those centers of data? First off, link them all together, networking lies, secure them all together and then manage them consistently. I think that's one of the things I am has been really great about that sort of control playing data plane separation inside your product design that makes that a whole lot more feet. >>I mean, it is a multi cloud, and it's a hybrid cloud world, and we want to give customers of flexibility and choice to move their workloads wherever they need, right based on different decisions, geographic implications, et cetera, security regimens and mean fundamentally. That's where we give customers a tremendous, tremendous amount of flexibility. >>And bringing the edge complicates >>edge, data center or cloud. >>It's so maybe it's not a swing back, you know, because it really has been a pendulum swing, mainframe, decentralized swing back to the cloud. It feels like it's now this ubiquitous push everywhere. >>Pendulum stops. >>Yeah, >>because there's an equal gravitational pull between the power of both locals >>and compute explodes everywhere. You have storage everywhere. So bring me my question of governance, governance, security in the edicts of the organization. You touched on that. So that becomes another challenge. How do you see that playing out what kind of roles you play solving that problem >>on the idea of data governance? Governance? Yeah. I mean the best way to think about our. In our opinion, the best way to think about data governance is that is really with abstraction. Layers and being ableto have a model driven approach to what you're deploying out into the cloud, and you can go all in with the data model that exists in the attraction layers in the date and the model driven architecture that you can build inside things like AWS cloud formations or inside things like answerable and chef and been puppet, their model, different ways of understanding what your application known state should be on. That's the foundational principle of understanding what your workloads are and how you can actually deliver governance over them. Once you've modelled it on and you then know how to deploy it against a variety different platforms, then you're just a matter of keeping track of what you've modelled, where you've deployed it and inventorying those number of instances and how they scale and how healthy there that certainly, from a workload standpoint, I think governance discipline that you need in terms of the actual data itself. Data governance on where data is getting stored There's a lot of innovation here at the show floor. In terms of software to find storage and storage abstractions, the embers got a great software to find storage capability called the San. We're working with a number of different partners within the core of our network, starting to treat storage as sort of a new kind of virtualized network function, using things like sifts and NFS and I scuzzy as V n F that you can run inside the network we want. We have had an announcement here earlier in the week about our central bank's network storage offer. We're actually starting to make storage and the data policy that allows you to control words replicated and where it's stored. Just part of the network service that you can add is a value add >>or even the metadata get the fastest path to get to it if I need to. If I prefer not to move it, you're starting to see you're talking about multiplied this multi cloud world. It seems like the connections between those clouds are gonna be dictated by that metadata and the intelligence tow. You know what the right path is, >>And I think we want to provide the flexibility to figure out where that data needs to reside. Cross cloud on, Prem off from, and you can just hear from the conversation, David, level of intimacy some of our partners have with customers to work through those decisions. Right, if you're gonna move those workloads effectively and efficiently, is where we get a lot of value for our joint customers. >>I mean, she's pretty fundamental to this notion of digital transformation that's ultimately what we've been talking about. Digital transformation is all about data putting data at the core, being able to access that, get insights from it and monetize, not directly, but understand how data affects the monetization of your business. That's what your customers >>and I think we >>wantto. Besides, I think we want to simplify how you want to spend more time looking up. Your applications are looking down your infrastructure, right? Based on all the jury, are drivers across the different business needs. And again, if we can figure out how to simplify that infrastructure, then people could spend more time on the applications because that's how they drive differentiation in the market, right? And so let's simplify infrastructure, put it where it needs to be. But we're going to give you time back to drive innovation and focus on differentiating yourself. >>You know, it's interesting on the topic of digital transformation reindeer. So right, sort of an interesting little pattern that plays out for those of us that have been in the service of writer community for a little while that a lot of the digital transformation success stories that you see that really get a lot of attention around the public cloud like eight of us. The big major moves into going all in on the public cloud tend to come from companies that went all in on the service provider model 10 years ago, the ones that adopted the idea. I'm just gonna have somebody do this non differentiating thing for me so that I can focus on innovation, are then in a better position to go start moving to the cloud as opposed to companies that have been downward focused on their infrastructure. Building up skill sets, building up knowledge base, building up career, path of people that, actually we're thinking about the technology itself as part of their job description have had a hard time letting go. It sort of the first step of trusting the service provider to do it for you lead you to that second step of being able to just leverage and go all in on the public lab. >>And customers need that help, right? And that's where if we can help activate moving those workloads more quickly, we provide that ability, put more focus on innovation to Dr Outcomes. >>I know you're talking about legacy a little bit ago and that the negative connotation, I think. Tom Brady, Don't you think I wanna run number seven? I haven't had a home smiling Would always do it back with more. We continue our coverage here. Live with the cube, where a w s rivet 2019.

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. Welcome >>back everyone to the cubes live coverage of UI path forward. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, coasting alongside of Dave Volante. We have two guests for the segment. We have Chris career. He is the senior director of service delivery at century link. Thanks so much for coming on the show. And Kumar, he is the client partner at Infosys. Thank you so much for joining us. So show G I'm going to start with you. We're hearing so much about this automation first era and when you are partnering with a company, we hear that automation first requires this real mindset shift. So I'm wondering if you could walk us through the process of when you are partnering with a company and you are saying we will help you add more automation to your work processes. How do you do it? How do you get the company to sort of adopt that mindset shift? >>So it is basically changing the mindset of the individual contributor. So the first thing is how do we make them adapt? Those changes into the organization and making sure that the learning experience and the Cuban experience are getting tased, are adapting by the individual contributor. That is more important for Infosys as a client partner to Centrelink. We are always striving for. >>So Chris, maybe talk a little about your role. Your title is, has service delivery in it. What does that, what does that mean? So we're, we're of course we're a telecommunications providers, so of course we sell our products, we have an extensive product portfolio. Uh, once it's sold, we have to fulfill those products. And that's what our service delivery comes in. Uh, everything from order entry all the way through to activation and delivery to the customer of the final solution of whatever it is they purchase from us. All right, let's get into it. So we just had Gardner on, they were saying, Hey, you know, there's a, there's a lot of things that can be cleaned up, cleaned up in there, >> a lot of things in there. Um, if you think about technology today, telecommunications, especially as a, as a industry, um, it's an industry of aggregation at this point. >>And it has been for a number of years. So with aggregation you, you end up with is um, I use kind of a phrase where we have an aim over the front door and that's the name of how we do business. Uh, that's, that's becomes a brand behind the front door. We're still operating as many of those individual companies still. So we're trying to stitch together in the background, the various networks, delivery options, products, et cetera, in a seamless way for our customers. So to do that, of course using automation becomes a very powerful tool for us right now to do everything that we would have to stitch together with human glue. Um, that's something that we have to deal with on a day in and day out basis. An area of the I focus on is ordering. I'm ordering in our space is highly manual. You're doing a lot of transcription, so to give sales the right tools so they can sell a, you give them a very elegant front end of the house. >>And many of the discussions we've had today, uh, have centered around the front of the house, looks very elegant and very smooth. And the back of the house is where a lot of the stitch together work happens. And that's where that automation comes into play. So partnering with somebody like a shadier, uh, trying to get onto the front end of how do we smooth those things out internally. Um, we're an operations organization. What we are always challenged with is how do we provide the service and product to our customers at an efficient price point. Um, people is a, is a margin drag at the end of the day. Um, but also we want our folks to be doing things that are more interesting. Uh, which is what automation is really about is that digital transformation and how do you transform your employees with you. Uh, and I'm definitely in an area where I have an opportunity there. >>And so that is, that is, that is what you, I've had this really selling, it's this idea that here are your, your employees who are doing these mundane tasks, these dreariness, this Drudge drudgery. And we are giving them an opportunity to do more of the creative work to use their brains. And more interesting and compelling ways. Shoji I mean is, is that the value props, I mean, how much are customers buying into that? I mean, is that, and is that immediate? Is it immediately clear to them, Oh, since I don't have to do that type of data entry anymore, I can now do this. I mean, is it obvious how you'll spend your, the rest of your time? >>So it is more about the analyzing the, what is happened in the history and making sure that how their data can be used and put it into the AI and making sure that how the automations can be revealed through that. That is a way to, you know, out of power we are making as a journey in central link as well, like in, along with the, the other telco organizations we are doing here. So specifically that is what, yea and automation we are specifically into making sure that how the customers can take advantage of the practice using the tools, like a UI path. >>So where's your expertise? automation, RPA, telecommunications, ordering, all of the above. So my ex >>is telecommunication. I have been with the telecommunication companies for about 25 years now. I'm majorly going through the raw from >>push button telephones to the era now it is standing up to fighting. So that's my, uh, expedience. You sound like an old man. Yeah. So Chris, when you do a business case for doing in RPA, I mean, I know a lot of CFOs and where's the hard dollars? You know, where are we going to save money? Well, we're going to, we're going to shift people from here to here and they going to do more productive work. Where's my hard dollars? Did you go through that or is it so blatantly where the potential >>is? Talk about the business case. It's not always a blatantly obvious, right? So when I'm building a business case, there's a number of things as an operations leader that I have to focus on, right? I own budget for my organization. So at the end of the day, I own making sure that I hit my budget targets for the business businesses. Always you're finding those, um, based on our opportunities in the marketplace, so forth. But I also have a lot of people that work for me. So part of the bigger area for me, and it's an area that I've spent a lot of time with consultants like shot to you on, is how do I transform my workforce? How do I bring them with me? How do I make it less scary for my employees? Because the first reaction, human reaction to employees who have been doing a function for so long, we heard it today about the cognitive changes, opening up your brain path, so on and so forth. >>Um, and the first reaction to them is going to be that shortest path to, Oh my God, I'm gonna lose my job and I have to then become a salesperson in addition to operations leader in addition to a budget manager to say, no, this is an opportunity for you to do something more interesting. You have that 20 years of experience in the industry. I want to use that knowledge in a different way. I want to open up some doors and career paths for you. Uh, so for me it's interesting and trying to break a sedentary workforce into a more dynamic workforce to initiate them into the digital age. When I write a business case, mostly what I'm looking at is very some of the it classical things. How do I save those dollars? What's my payback? What's my return on investment? More and more in the automation space, we're thinking much more customer first employee experience first. >>How do I provide the customer a better experience? How do I provide an employee a better experience? So the business cases have become a little bit more challenging, uh, cause you're also have offering some soft benefits, which is our employee experiences is a really big deal. Our customer's experience is going to be how we differentiate ourselves, uh, could be in the difference between the next sale and not making the next sale. So those have to get factored into the business cases and it becomes a bit, uh, art and science on how to quantify that. So there's a lot to unpack there. I want to start with kind of the, the, the sentiment of, Hey, I'm gonna lose my job. How did you deal with that, uh, with your team? Is it carrot stick combination so they can try it. I think a lot of it is first listening. >>Um, at least my style as a leader is to listen to what my people are saying first and then address it with as many facts as I possibly can. Right. Um, most folks think emotion first. Um, and, and you can end up in an adversarial type of situation there where you really don't want to be in an adversarial situation with your employees. You want your employees to support the change, the transformation that, that shift into a digital space. So for me, I have to listen to a lot first. And depending on who I'm listening to, I'm getting a very different story. I have employees from millennials to baby boomers. So as a result, each one of them were coming from a very different place, a carrot versus stick. Interesting concept because from a carrot perspective, the companies getting the care that the employee may not necessarily see that at first where we're saying, Hey, we want you to do more interesting work. >>But to them, they feel it. It's more of a stick at first. Uh, so it's interesting. Um, in my space it's been a, I've consulted with, with other folks, I've talked to a lot of my peer leaders, um, seeking a lot of advice on how do we navigate this cause we're cutting a new path as leaders. Um, I'm more akin to a baby boomer and a Jenner in, you know, a gen X type of a person. That's who I came up under an industry. So I have to temper my own thinking. Um, so it's interesting because for instance, I looked at my people managers and maybe it's a little bit more stick with my people managers where it's very much of a, gives me ideas. How do we crowdsource that, that information, our employees are going to be the best source of our, of our ideas for automating. >>What do we automate? How do we automate the things that they really disliked doing first? Right? So you're kind of giving them a carrot with, you're giving them a little bit of quick wins. We've heard about that today as well. Um, but then it becomes a matter of what about the individual contributor developer, right? How do I take somebody today who hasn't maybe been retooled from a career perspective in many, many years and give them the ability to say, no, you're not a programmer but you can automate things and UI path gives us some of those tools to do that with the purveyors of RPA would ha would tell you that people actually love it because it's taking away that undifferentiated heavy lifting. Once they get a taste for it and they can do other things, frees up time. Having said that, they may be really good at entering data into a form. >>They may not be good at doing other strategic things, so there's gotta be some kind of retraining exercise to. My question is, are you seeing either specifically at century link or broadly in the industry some kind of notion of gain share? In other words, if you're going to save this much time slash money and your business case, we'll give you back a portion, I don't know, 30% 50% whatever, so that you can retrain people. You can actually advance their careers. So you see you having conversations like that or is it actually where I think we're having conversations akin to that. Not necessarily have that conversation. Um, conversations that I'm having are more of the nature of, you know, chicken and the egg kind of a thing. When it comes automation, you're under budgetary pressures. How do you take out your employee, retool them and train them on how to automate something using UI pads, tool suite, um, and then re-invest that same knowledge, right? >>Because if you automate something, you free up somebody else you can train to do more automation. Um, a lot of our, our employees who are first adopters, if you will, the willing hands that are going up. Some are millennials, some are many other generations. Um, but it's, it's been there very interesting because it's very powerful for those who have learned the tools and is very powerful and a peer to peer solicitation of, look what I can do for you. We've been complaining about this manual step for 20 years. How come it, we're still having to do it. So it the becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy, right? You get those who evangelize it based on learning the new technology and then they train into their peers. Um, retooling employees is something that you brought up or at least that's what a little bit of what I heard. >>Um, you know, many areas, Hey, I've been doing data entry for a long time. What else am I good at? And a lot of that just becomes creativity. Who else? Who do you interact with the most? Who are the employees or who are the customers, who are the sales organizations, et cetera, where you end up, they know your name, they're going to call you because you know that answer. Well guess what? You're a knowledge base for them. And that often becomes where I ended up retooling and re shifting employees. They see new opportunities that they never seen before. One of the most interesting things I think I hear constantly is I never expected to be in sales, uh, from an operations type of person. They always think of a salesman as that salesperson kind of personality. And they don't see themselves in it, but they never think of themselves as sales support, which is that, that's what they end up becoming. Um, and they always were to begin with. They just never thought of themselves that way. So we're moving a lot more of my customers or my employees, if you will, closer to the customer than they ever saw in themselves. And RPA is enabling that. So that's, that's kind of a, a knowledge revolution. It's a self actualization change. It becomes a skill add that they never thought they had. Um, they're all interesting concepts, but they all, you know, I'm learning something new every day as a leader. >>Well, and you're bringing up so many interesting points that, that what this revolution actually means for people's careers. I mean, the really the re rebooting of work and really changing how we spend our time at the office and changing what we do during the course of our day is shadier. I mean he, he, Chris has been talking about how people are now closer to the customer and therefore the human, the soft skills are becoming increasingly important. So how are you helping companies think through those challenges to make sure that their people do have the appropriate skills? And as Chris said, it can be the difference of not making a sale versus making a sale. >>So it is about, uh, it's about learning. Learning can make, uh, the people transform as well as the company's transformed. So while we are adopting technology, we needed to ensure that how do we ensure the learning platforms are brought in to ensure the, that is part of their curriculum. Like what we have done in four school or colleges in the organization, make it live enterprise for the every organization to move into a live organization. It is always about learning. So what emphasis does is about, it's about the knowledge, what we carry. So we have created platforms like legs for internal to our organization. And wingspan is an AR is an external customized version for all of our external customers that is plugging into all the transformation programs. What we do to ensure that the learning is Paladin for the transformation, why you are path, you look it up. >>There's um, um, we have looked at, looked at others and I think in my career you're always going to have multiple partners. Um, so when it comes to the UI path, it's one of those UI path invested very early. You know, they wanted to be that partner. I think today part of the message we heard, uh, from some of the UI path executives were that, uh, we want to be humble. Um, and therefore it's not always about, Hey, how do I win this dollar so much as I, how do I educate on technology? Um, and how do we help you transform and pull you forward to a certain degree. Um, so I think UI path has a lot of, um, very human possibilities and human traits and how it, it educates its clients. >>Judge generally just a question as a, as a buyer and a practitioner, if you have a choice between best of breed, um, and you know, a suite, right? Let's say, I don't know if you're an ERP customer, but some ERP vendor all of a sudden bolts, you know, RPA on to their solution. How do you decide the convenience of Oh yeah. All in one versus the best of breed? >>Um, I think it depends on the size of your firm because throughout my career I've seen many different answers to the same question. Um, shadier is probably had a relationship with me for a number of years, uh, in various forms if you will, as a consultant and a partner. Um, what he often hears from me is both I'm gonna do both. Um, because some way I'm going to learn something from each of those engagements. So more often than not, the answer is you do a lot. You do both. You don't just pick a single partner. Um, the smaller you are, the more likely you are to do a single partner. The larger you are, the less likely you are to do a single partner. Diversity is a good thing. And so was competition >>where it's still live by Chris shot. Thank you so much for coming on the Kiva. Great conversation. That's going. Sorry. I'm Rebecca Knight for Dave Volante. Stay tuned for more of the cubes live coverage of UI path forward.

>> live from San Francisco, celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage. It's the Cube covering Veum, World 2019 brought to you by IBM Wear and its ecosystem partners. >> And welcome back here, San Francisco Moscow Centre, North John Walls along with John Troyer. We're live here on the Cuban Veum World 2019 and right now we're joined by Christmas. Reynolds, who's a product in court product management and Clyde on data service, is for Centurylink. It's good to see you, sir. Good to be here. Thank you. And And he's gonna tell us today why Milliseconds matter, right? You are. >> That is the goal. Your >> your subject of ah, coming presentation. Just about 45 minutes or so. But we'll get to that a little bit. First off, let's just paint the picture of centurylink your presence here quite obvious. But you know what your portfolio includes? There what you're up to, and maybe starting to hint a little bit about why milliseconds matter to you. >> Makes it so. Where a technology company, global in nature. A lot of our roots started with fiber connectivity. Basic networking service is I. P Service is. But over the years we've become far more of a nightie service company. So there was an acquisition of Savvas a long time ago that brought a lot of those capabilities to our company. And we've made more fold in acquisitions that have also bolster those capabilities. We have invested heavily in Security Service's recently and about two weeks ago we had an announcement that said, We're investing heavily an edge compute getting workloads closer to end users. And that's really where milliseconds matters. You want the performance of those applications to consumers or machinery or whatever it may be toe work effectively and work well. And sometimes that requires that those workloads air in close proximity to the end users. >> Would you bring up ej compute? We were just having this discussion before we started, John asked of you. Okay, What? How do you define the because of there A lot of different slices of that, right? Different interpretations, different definitions. So with that being said, how do you define and or at least in your mind, how do you separate edge or what's true edge? Yeah, >> good questions. I think he was John question, not mine. I chuckled time, so because there is no perfect answer. Uh, the broadest definition I've seen is that you have core, and you can think eight of us Azure. You can think where the big core cloud nodes are that are pretty central, maybe 50 milliseconds away from the end users. There's two intermediate edges, if you will, and this is where there are varying opinions. To me, there's really only one if you're within five milliseconds of where your end users are, I consider that to be a market edge. Some people say there's a closer edge that's in within a millisecond of the end users, but I just I personally have not seen the use cases come out yet that require that low of a late unsee that don't actually reside where the end users are so >> going. Well, that's, um, so that's, um, modules at a at a warehouse or ah, manufacturing facility. Is that what? Is that what you consider like an edge? Uh, media marketed? >> Yeah, in >> theirs. It's interesting if you have 10 manufacturing plants in a geographic area, or maybe a better example is if you're a logistics company and you have sorting and distribution centers, you have multiple of those in an area that can all use the same compute as long as it's within five milliseconds, you can do the sorting lines and keep the machinery working. You can get routed into the rate vehicles for distribution. That's a good market edge. When you get all the way to that, the deep edge or on premise they think of an autonomous vehicle is a good example. There are certain things you're not gonna want to transmit and make driving decisions that don't reside on that vehicle. You don't want to crash into anyone. You need almost instantaneous decisions. And that would be the edge that intermediate one millisecond that sits between the two of those. I think it pushes one direction or the other. >> So Chris, here in the emerald 2019 obviously a lot of talking about cloud, but very specifics. This year. We have a lot of specifics around what Veum, where is doing Hybrid Cloud Israel and of course, hybrid cloud implies the network. And so one of the latest announcement from Centurylink is that you're providing via more cloud on AWS you're managing. You are able to help manage provide that as a managed service. I know you already do. Manage service is where you managing stuff in your data centers. But you could, I guess you can also manage workloads on prim and talk a little bit about that portfolio and how adding Veum VMC on AWS few more cloud nebulas adds to that. And then maybe we'll slide into the networking peace and how important that is. >> So we have AH, tool called Cloud Application Manager that has been built over the past handful of years that allows customers to deploy workloads to AWS toe azure and now to be emcee on AWS as well as private cloud environment. So maybe customers want to host those workloads on premise. Maybe it's regulatory compliance or whatever the reason may be. So we have a lot of experience of helping customers deploy those workloads, and then a lot of customers come to us and want to manage. I want us to manage the life cycle of those workloads, those air, the core capabilities. I think the reason that VMC on AWS is so compelling to customers is a lot of customers may not want to deal with the hardware refresh cycles that they do when it's their own private cloud environment or their own hardware stack. This gives them the opportunity to migrate those workloads and a relatively seamless fashion into an environment that is sitting in Maur of, ah, public cloud type model where it's it's Op X versus the Catholics in the headache. >> Go ahead. John was good, just in terms of so and so. Part of why you would work with Centurylink is you are experienced manage service provider. But also you have ah lot of the networking set up to do that efficiently, right? So maybe you talk about some of the workload is that you see going up there and some of the tools and, uh, performance folks can expect, >> Yeah, that's near the core part of my products that so near and dear to me for sure. We've developed a lot of capabilities over the last year and 1/2 around dynamic networking. So if you have your existing VM wear environment in your own data center, or maybe it's a private cloud that's managed by century link, we now have the ability for customers to go in and create net new connections, private network connections that have better Leighton see have better through putting performance between those environments and AWS or, in this case, VMC on AWS. And it allows customers to do a couple of things if they have their own environment and they're happy with it today. But it's not scaling, and they need to add more capacity. They could do that in the hybrid fashion in VMC on eight of us. If they're done with their existing environment hardware stack and they just want a forklift and move that into VMC on eight of us, they can create a big, large connection, push a ton of data over a few weeks, shut it down, and our building models and hourly billing models such that we're only charging them for as long as it's necessary. This gives them flexibility to manage where their workloads air sitting between those two locations as they see fit over time. >> So you're talking about all these new flexibilities new capabilities, much more agile systems being, I guess, interconnected with each other, right? But whether it's hybrid or whether it's multi cloud, whatever the case is, >> how you how to get >> everybody or everything that talk to each other in a way that works and provides, You know, the addresses, the Leighton see challenge, because to me, I'm again outside looking in. That's Ah, that's a big hurdle. As new capabilities get developed, new possibilities exists, but we gotta make it fast way, and we have to make sure they're they're speaking the same language. >> Yeah, it's a great question, and it is very challenging, and it is not all automated today as much as we would like. We have great integration to deploy workloads between environments. We've spent a ton of time from a networking standpoint of integrating with different cloud providers, and they each have their loan little nuances and to make it common between all of them takes a lot of time and effort. Where a lot of our focus is going in the next 12 months is how do you take those application, migration and management capabilities we have in one tool set? How do you marry that? With all of the dynamic networking capabilities and standardization across the cloud providers, we've done so the now it's not only are you moving network workloads, you're also creating the right underlying network to support those workloads in that multi cloud fashion well to capabilities we have. We just need to marry him up a little more clearly. >> I mean, what are you saying out there in the market with your customers? Multi Cloud Bright is perhaps another overused word like EJ. Are you seeing multi cloud portfolios? Are you seeing applications? Talk, actually use have data in one place, and and the and the computer and another. And obviously network becomes increasingly important if that's a reality today. But is that is that real, or is that still science fiction? >> It's becoming more riel so that there are a lot of customers. My pain, A lot of enterprises really bet big on one cloud provider because you have to build up the competency of capabilities inside your own shop and you become really good with working in Azure. Eight of us or Google or of'em were on the hunt. BP BMC Oh, the companies that are doing true multi cloud and using multiple cloud providers. Well, our companies that probably reside around here, so I won't say any of these specifically or doing this mutt. Companies like uber companies like Spotify companies that are born in the cloud that started with those core competencies will take the best of multiple cloud providers. So maybe the Big Data Analytics sitting in Google is most intriguing to them. But they love the tale of the storage cost. Price points on eight of us, and they love this. Ask spit in azure. They'll piece together components since they built it in a containerized fashion. And they take the best of what each cloud has to offer and into your point. The cloud providers air coming to centurylink and saying We need a better way to stitch together all of these different cloud environments because people, the cutting edge developers are pushing us in that direction. Now >> what about the the application network relationship? Um, changing is, you know, you see a shift there of some kind of as, uh, we're talking about, obviously a lot of new opportunities, a lot of developments, and so does that alter the dynamics of that relationship in any way >> It does, and it's the same conversations I just mentioned. Actually, that's driving it. I think today it is network engineers and network infrastructure. People reacting to applications not performing well are reacting to a software developers requested toe add this Google region or that VM wear on on AWS region over time. What's gonna happen, I believe, is their service mesh orchestration capabilities like SDO is a good example is the one Google is pushing hard and it would it allows people to do is from a rules driven perspective. I want my application to have these Leighton see requirements and you can't find me a network solution that is any worse than that. Or if you're seeing packet loss greater than 80% I want you to add more capacity to the network. It won't be humans the network engineers doing that. It's going to be application saying here are my criteria for me to work well, networks Let me see all the options I have out there now. I'm gonna go pick the best one and change it if I need you to make make myself work the way I need to. As an application. >> I love that that I've never connected Is Theo down as as an at, sir, as an APP service layer down to the network. Thank you. I just have a new I got a new thought. Eureka another reason >> why milliseconds matter. That's right. Hey, Chris. Thanks for the time. We appreciate that. I know this is a very busy time for you on. You do have a speaking engagements. We're gonna cut you loose for that. But thanks for spending time with us. And good luck. It centurylink appreciate it. Enjoyed it. Looking forward, Thio. More success. Back with more for Vimal. World 2019 after this short break right here on the Q.

>> Man: Live from San Francisco celebrating 10 years of high tech coverage, it's the Cube. (music) Covering VMworld 2019. (music) Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> And welcome, indeed, here to the cube and our coverage of VMworld 2019. We are in the Moscone Center in San Francisco. They're open, they're back in business and so is VMware. And we're watching the folks stream out from this morning's keynote session, Pat Gelsinger hosting that session. And it was an impressive setup to say the least. Thousands packing that ballroom downstairs for a plethora of announcements, all from Pat Gelsinger. I'm John Walls, Justin Warren joins us. We haven't been together for a while, it's good to see you.- It's been a little while, yeah. >> How've you been? >> I've been well, I've been well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I'm surprised they brought us back together after the last time. >> I don't believe... let's not talk about that incident. >> I thought it went so well, we just end on a high note. But it is a pleasure to be with Justin, we'll be with him throughout the week, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, our coverage here. We're joined right now by two guests, Paul Savill, whose the SVP of Network and Technology Solutions at CenturyLink and Omar Sunna who is the Director of Digital Products at GE Health care. And gentlemen thanks for being with us, it's good to have you here on the Cube. >> Thank you John. >> First off, let's just, gimme, your both, your take just on VMWorld 2019. What you're looking for, what you're expecting, and kind of the early vibe that you have going on. Paul, why don't you take that first? >> Sure, one of the things I've really been impressed with is how VMware is expanding, the kind of open nature of it's relationships, it's developing it's ecosystem, really broadening it out, it's making a number of acquisitions to enable new capabilities. And we're really excited about that. CenturyLink and VMware have been partners for, I think, around 12, 15 years. As we've been building out our own cloud services and so it's a very exciting time to see all this technology coming together in the way that it is. >> I love with the way you put it too, acquisitions. Pat made a little comment about that, it's like, "I can't wait to find out who I'm "going to buy next." >> Yes. >> And they've been, certainly been in a full speed ahead modefor the past year, year and a half. Omar, you're take, early. >> Yeah, man, I think I look at it from a health care solutioning perspective and it's exciting to see this level of technology and kind of the building out of the ecosystem and what could it enable for health care consumers. Especially with the big focus around privacy and and data management. I think some of their, and security, some of their latest acquisitions could actually help grow that ecosystem and offer more options especially to the health care industry. >> All right, well now let's talk about your portfolio at work then, a little bit, at GE Healthcare. Obviously health systems, health care's a huge user you know, these days, well it's kind of simplifying it a bit, but just talk about what you're concerns are, what your attention is, and kind of the things that are keeping you up at night, these days, in terms of health care and what you're doing in the IT space. >> You know, I mean, I think the, you know when we look at our customer environment globally, you know, we tend to kind of summarize some of the key challenges for our customers around three pillars. Access, so being able to provide access to all the patients that need it, regardless of location. With aging population in a lot of developed countries, with also a lot of people having the means to receive more proactive health care, it is challenging the health systems to be able to provide adequate access to patients. Capacity, providing capacity when the resources, including the human capital resources, that health systems have. So how do you free up your specialists to make sure that they're able to provide the right level of patients who need it, patient care for the patients that need it. As well as clinical efficacy. How do we help with software applications, with technology, to help reduce the variation of care, and improve patient outcomes, regardless where the patient is receiving care, within the rural community or with advanced academic medical centers. So we try to kind of think of our solution technologies as helping our customers solve for access, capacity, and clinical efficacy. >> Yeah, so a lot of health care, it's kind of a retail setup in that there's lots of hospitals and other allied health professionals who have lots of different locations that they need to provide heath care for them and that technology needs to live where the patients are and where the doctors are. So it was interesting to see, in the key note, earlier this morning, talking about edge and different kinds of edge as well. We've got thin, medium, and thick edge, according to VMware. So how do you see that rise of edge computing effecting the way that you deal with health care. >> Yeah, I mean tremendous, actually, opportunity for us. And GE is working on capitalizing on the technology, on edge technology, to allow us to bring in AI application right to, where kind of within the customer network. And that is, that's helping us solve for a lot of concerns around private security as well as moving large data sets to the cloud to process, to be able to get benefit out of algorithm and additional applications. So that's actually an exciting area. And agree with you, I mean we're seeing more and more large distributed health care networks emorph, in the U.S. we've definitely seen huge merger and acquisition movement that we continue to see, and consolidation. And then we also see that globally. With regional delivery networks coming up and being able to have software applications live within this distributed network and provide information for the right clinician at the right time is a big initiative for us. And for us this makes a huge difference in the way our providers are able to deliver care for their patients. >> This seems like an ideal opportunity for the folks at CenturyLink to help you with that. >> Abso-- (nervous laughter) >> Yeah, that's right, I mean CenturyLink really, to that point, sees this landscape evolving rapidly. And we even have a phrase internally we use that, "The network is the data center." We believe that in the future, compute is going to be distributed so widely, in such a broad geography and dropped in places where it's most efficient to run it and where it's most efficient to connect it with network, that really, the data centers we think about it today, becomes this very widely distributed platform that is connected together with high performance networking solutions. And that's part of what we're working with GE Healthcare on. >> I'm old enough to remember when "The network is the computer" was the slogan that we're all following now, and it seems that's actually coming true now. Where we have this idea of it, it's not just cloud, and it's not just data centers, and it's not just edge, it's actually a combination of all of them. And you need to be able to deal with that technology wherever it needs to live. Which is, I think, is a positive change from what we were talking about a few years ago, where it seemed to be, we had to make one choice. Now the choice is you actually need a bit of everything. >> Right. >> Tell me about your decision, or at least in terms of on-prem, off-prem, and health care, I would assume, extremely sensitive, obviously, to security concerns and management and certain policies about who can access what, where, when and how, whatever. How are you going about making that decision in this new multi-cloud environment, this hybrid-cloud environment, when people are making migrations, you know, with their businesses, and they're going off-prem. But you, I would assume, have to be a lot more sensitive, or more sensitive to other factors than, perhaps, other businesses have to be. >> Yeah, we definitely do. There is, you know, with regulations, you know, and, for example in Europe, GDPR, there's in country regulations around where data resides. All of that kind of plays a factor in customer adoption of technologies and where they're comfortable. We've talked a lot of CIOs in the health care sector and a lot of them say, "Hey, listen we're on a journey, "we're used to hugging our servers, "we're used to controlling it, and technology has evolved. "But, in terms of our policies, ability to accept liability "of data breaches and what technology providers are willing "to sign up for. "All of that plays a roll in that journey." Like Justin had mentioned, it is actually a, in developing an ecosystem, where you have combination of on-prem and off-prem, is a lot of where health care health systems are investing their money. So we're seeing certain data that resides on-prem that is mission critical versus more historic data can go into cloud technology, cloud storage technology and others. But, there's no doubt that we're at an inflection point, we're seeing a lot more health systems sign up to cloud based SAS applications. Invest in private cloud hosting service, invest in also public cloud hosting services. And all of that actually will create, as a software provider, all that could actually help us create more opportunities and more solutioning for our customers. I love listening to some of the cloud computing power that would allow us to develop newer applications. So it's actually exciting, it's a journey with our customers, you know, we're choosing to kind of be alongside of our customers and help them. Doing a lot of education. And being able to have a relationship with CenturyLink, be able to see the advances and availability of resources that CenturyLink makes available for us as well as other partners that we have help us really make sure that we're able to build the right level of technology meeting the health care customer needs. >> So Paul, fill in the gaps a little bit about where CenturyLink is in trying to solve this, I wouldn't say dilemma, but it certainly is a puzzle of some sort, right, as decisions are made about what's going to be off loaded, what's not, how are we going to access, what do we allow. How do you see CenturyLink's role when you have a customer like Omar, like GE Healthcare, coming to you with their unique needs, and addressing those? >> Sure, well, as unique as GE Healthcare is in the health care industry, there are some common characteristics about how we are seeing enterprise customers look at these situations. And one of them is that placing compute on the premise itself, that, that is generally the most expensive real estate that an enterprise has when it has to go in the hospital, when it has to go at the retail store location. And a lot of enterprises today are doubling the amount of compute and storage that they're having at their premise locations every year because the volume is just growing so much. That's becoming a problem, because you don't want your, you don't want your hospital becoming a bigger and bigger data center, so to speak, right? And so the way that we're approaching the problem and working with this, is in VMware was actually, you know, expressing a very similar viewpoint about the edge and about how the thick edge and the thin edge, and the thin edge of the customer premise is where you want to have the lightest load, but you want to have the most critical applications that are sitting there, you want to have the information that you have to protect the most in a most guarded way that's most important for your operations there. But from there you can more efficiently run things from a distance backing out going all the way back to the public cloud core, if you connect it with high performance networking from end to end. And so what CenturyLink has been doing is putting together these solutions that make that balance of trade, so to speak, between the cost of compute, the cost of where you have to put it, to where it best can be housed, what kind of latency performance that it needs to have to meet it to the performance specification, all the way back to the public cloud design and how to tie it in to the public cloud. And that's where we've been building our competency and the solutions we've been putting together for customers. >> You mentioned the need for high performance networks in there so I've got to ask you about 5G. From what I know about 5G it looks like the kind of situation you have with health care, where you've got lots of mobile tablet devices, you've got lots of other actual equipment IoT devices in a health care situation. That seems like an ideal use case for 5G. Is that what hot 5G is actually for, is the hype real? >> Well, 5G is certainly going to transform the world in terms of it's ability to provide wireless high bandwidth connectivity and low latency connectivity to devices. But, edge compute is not about 5G. You can have edge compute without 5G. In fact, it's a bit of a myth that edge compute can't arrive until 5G comes, because edge compute is something that is available to do today. And, in fact, CenturyLink is deploying edge compute solutions with, by basically building fiber into enterprise locations and then housing compute at different areas of the network at the point that's most optimal for the solution. And there are a variety of wireless solutions that can be used in that campus environment other than 5G to connect wireless devices back securely and safely to that edge compute that sits there. >> But it seems like it still should be, or at least looks like it could be a game changer in what it's going to allow in terms of, I guess, advancing edge computing. >> Right? I mean, you're still going to provide new capabilities and new reach and new functionalities that don't currently exist. >> I take Paul's point, though, because there are other technologies like Wi-Fi 6, for example, which is, it's basically the same thing as 5G, it just uses a different radio communications mechanism. But, and I also take your point that you can do edge computing today, absolutely. You can put computing into retail situations and you can have, I mean we have tablet devices now. We have laptops. So we kind of have edge computing. We always have, it just now, now it has a name. >> Yes, that's correct. >> So, tell me before we let you go, Catalyst Award winner from CenturyLink and VMware, Paul, first off let's talk about how you assess that, what's the determination, the criteria, for that and then I'm going to let crow a little bit Omar, about receiving that award. But tell us about the Catalyst Award first. >> Yes, well we call it the Catalyst Award because, when you think about it, a catalyst is something that excites a chemical process. Technically that is the definition of catalyst. But catalyst, in the way we view it, is something that we wanted to recognize a person or a company, that we felt like was really driving innovation, that was really solving a problem and working, also collaboratively together with VMware and CenturyLink in solving some of these problems. So we looked at GE Healthcare and really felt like, in a place where certainly we have seen such great advances in health care administration and building to save people's lives. Oddly, medical errors is becoming an increasing amount of now the problems in terms of death rates. Because, while we have so many ways to solve problems, so many ways to address it, that portion of what's causing deaths is actually on the rise. And so GE Healthcare is taking the technology that they're deploying and helping to solve that problem, that's why we wanted to recognize Omar and the company today. >> An honor for you I would assume you're all pretty proud of that. >> Yeah, absolutely, and thank you, and, yeah, I mean it's was really fantastic to be recognized by our partners. And a great testimony to the team at GE Healthcare. And our team wakes up in the morning and our mission is to improve lives in the moment that matters. A lot of our technology is used in mission critical and the way we're able to deliver that to our customers relies heavily on our ability to leverage advances in technology and be able to improve our ability to deliver our different applications for our customers. So this, actually been fantastic, the relationship has been tremendous for us. Where we have hosted our solutions in CenturyLink, the level of support that we have received have really enabled us to deliver important application for our customers and meet their SLAs and meet their clinical use cases and the needs of software uptime. So that has been tremendous for us. >> Well congratulations. >> Thank you. >> Well then thanks for your time, both of you. And enjoy the show, enjoy San Francisco, we've got good weather this week. >> That's right, yeah. >> So get out and enjoy that, thank you Paul and Omar. Back with more on the Cube, you're watching our coverage here live in San Francisco in VMWorld 2019. (music)

>> Narrator: Live from San Diego, California, it's The Cube! Covering Cisco Live U.S. 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and it's eco system partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube's coverage of Cisco Live, Day 3 from buzzy, sunny San Diego. I'm Lisa Martin, my co-host is Stu Miniman and Stu and I are pleased to welcome to the Cube Stephanie Wible, Senior Product Manager, hybrid networking and SD-WAN, from CenturyLink. Stephanie, welcome to the Cube! >> Thank you, I'm glad to be here. >> Yeah, so welcome to the buzzy dev nut zone. This place has been buzzing for three days now. >> It is definitely an active session over here today. >> It is, so let's talk about SD-WAN. We've heard a lot the last few days about the massive transformations to the network. Changing customer demands, changing customer needs, talk to us about the SD-WAN marketplace, overall. >> So we don't have a conversation with any of our customers these days that don't include some kind of a conversation about SD-WAN. Everybody is looking to transform their networks and their looking for the next best thing. They're also trying future-proof their networks. Some of the customer drivers that we see are folks looking to augment existing MPLS networks with lower cost access, making the best use of their assets, both from an equipment perspective as well as a network perspective. And then having that sort of centralized command and control capability that SD-WAN provides them. >> Alright, so Stephanie the SD-WAN space, while most customers are familiar with it, it's not a monolithic space. It's not like there's five products on the market and there all very similar. There's a few different areas and even Cisco has two primary products that your offering. Can you give us a little bit about the lay of the land as to what use cases there are for the various pieces? How do you decide which there are? Or I know I've talked to customers that have had multiple SD-WAN solutions. >> That's a good point. So, when we initially started looking at SD-WAN, we kind of did a RFI on about 15 or so different vendors. The market has compressed a little bit since then through acquisitions and mergers but we at CenturyLink, in particular, recognized that one size does not fit all for all customers. So we wanted to offer a choice of services for our customers and most of the vendors have very similar kind of capability but some have other features that some don't. For example, the Meraki one, we typically have our branch customers, our customers that have many homogenous kind of like sites that they want something simple and something easy and not something that has a lot of bells and whistles. That's a perfect fit for them. It's very easy to install and get it up and running. Where something like Viptela that has a lot more capability and a lot more customization available would be perfect for some of our larger customers. The Telepher, for example, is we have a large install base of customers already using Cisco gear, the ASR and the ISR, where that's very attractive to those folks where they can just lay the software on top of their existing assets without having to do a full network swap out. And then our other option is our Versa which was our initial launch which was in 2016. Again, that's a full-featured SD-WAN capability. So it kind of depends and we try to bring the customers and have that conversation. Understand what theirs drivers are so that we can help tailor them and select and help them select one of the options that we have. >> Yeah I have to imagine that most of the time you're really helping the customer down there. It's not, "Okay there's a catalog, choose which one." That's some of the reason we would go to a CenturyLink is so that you listen to them, understand that, and you've helped filter a lot of that for them and maybe get them down to some of the just what size they're buying. >> Yep, and its not just the vendors. The pure play vendors talk about we call it the tip of the iceberg. So they talk about the SD-WAN capability. Where CenturyLink can add a lot of value to that is we also provide hybrid WAN solution and PLS, we also do. That's the public, the private section. And we recently, with the introduction of our SD-WAN services, started offering public connectivity in broadband and WIFI. So we can offer the mix of access along with the overlay service. We can be the single button to push for that but we also have had extensive history in managed services. So we have done managed routers and managed iads for our voice or data. And then the other big portion of that is we are a global provider, so for those customers looking to expand they're already in our global network. We've got one of the largest global backbones in the world. >> So let's give our audience a view from a customer who is in the process of needing to upgrade their network being able to future-proof it, as you said a few minutes ago, be ready for WIFI sites. Say it's a bank with many different retail branches. What would be the ideal solution for them? Would it be something more like Viptela that, is that more customizable? That in one branch you might need a much smaller pipe than you do in a much larger branch? What goes through that for a customer that's going through that upgrade process to modernize their network? >> Yep, so we try to have our technical experts go in and sit down with the customer and kind of do a question and answer session and try to understand what their business drivers are, what solutions that they're trying to solve for, and provide guidance and expertise along that lines and try to suss out. We also have what we call a Transformation Workshop where we like to bring customers in and have a kind of in-depth conversation, one-on-one conversation, show them some of the demos of the services that we offer and try to suss out what their real requirements are. And then, again, we can offer solutions and say, "Hey, based on the footprint that you have, "based on the connectivity options that you want, "based on your time frame, based on your cost," all of those things are factors to where would direct a customer. >> So giving them sort of a prescriptive, customized pathway for that upgrade based on all the analysis about what they, what their current lay of their WAN looks like and where they want to get to. >> Exactly, exactly. >> So, Stephanie I knew you'd do those in-depth discussions with customers. One the great opportunities about a show like Cisco is you've got 28,000 people here coming by the booth, coming into to sessions, so you get to speed date on some of these things, but what are some of the top things that they're asking for? What are some of the pain points that your hearing from customers? Is SD-WAN one of the top things bringing them to you? Or what are some of those key conversations? >> SD-WAN is, that's been kind of the industry term and so everybody knows a little bit about it and the crazy part is a lot people coming in have really done their homework and know a lot about the differences between the different platforms. Security is at the top of everybody's mind and that is another really big driver that everybody wants to have a conversation about. Security, how can I get a security patches out to my endpoints faster and better and quicker? How do I integrate my security with an SD-WAN solution? And so we see those a lot. We have answers for those questions and we can help folks figure that out. >> So here we are at the 30th annual Cisco customer partner event. A lot of evolution in the last 30 years. A lot of work has been done by Cisco to transition from just a hardware network gear provider to hardware, now software. Challenging for large organizations with the history and the product depth and the networking expertise-- >> Absolutely. >> that a company like Cisco has. I want to get your opinion. You've been with CenturyLink for a long time. CenturyLink and Cisco also go way back. >> Stephanie: Yep >> What are some of the advantages is CenturyLink seeing by Cisco's transition to more of a software provider? >> Cisco's always been a great hardware provider partner for us and I hadn't worked in that space too much. However, the folks that we have been working with, both on the Meraki side and Viptela side, super responsive, super willing to help. They're always available. What questions can we answer? Can we get in? Is there training that we can provide? They've been great. Super partners to work with. >> In terms of the customer reaction though, is it giving you guys a leg up, an advantage, that there is more of a software lead approach of looking at an old legacy company that is much more modernized? If you think of how Cisco would compete with a born-in-the-cloud company, what is that kind of competitive advantage like for you guys? >> That's an interesting thing too. So where Cisco has traditionally been a hardware provider, a lot of our customers are very familiar. They're CCIE network certified. It's funny trying to get those folks over. Some are very, its usually the younger set that's willing to go the whole software designed route. So its a challenge. Some folks are very, very much old school and they want to stick with the hardware-based solutions and they don't want to move to the digital world. However, things, cloud computing and all the applications moving to the cloud is kind of forcing them there. So its kind of a slow cycle on some of those and then some of their smaller groups. And we, the early adopters were the ones that were, "Yeah, let's just jump in "and go directly the software route," so it's-- >> Yeah, Stephanie you bring up a great point. I used to give presentations and when you would talk about rollout of technology in the network world, we would measure it in a decade. >> Right, yeah. >> It was like, "Okay, here comes 10 gig and there's the standard "and here's the piece," and all the things like that. What are some of those drivers in your customers because are they moving? You know we found, in general, they are moving faster. Speed is one of the things that we talk about. That agility to be able to respond. So what are some of those drivers from your companies that your work with that's helping them refresh faster, look at new technologies, and be open to some change? >> I think it's just keeping up with the industry. Like you said, it used to take years to do things and now its changing on a monthly and a weekly basis. And people are, I think, they're a little bit scared. It's like if we don't do something, we're going to get left behind. And it, the industry, is kind of forcing people to make those changes. Cost driver is another one that we see and people having to hit their fiscal numbers and everything else like that. But network transformation is not a simple thing. It's not a quick go in, run something. It's something that requires a lot of planning, a lot of analysis, and you want to, what do the old carpenters say? You measure twice and cut once, right? You want to plan, you want to plan, you want to plan and then you implement. So it does take time and people are getting there. When we first start talking about SD-WAN there was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk, it was a lot of talk and all a sudden then you start seeing, and it seems to be speeding up. People wanting to make decisions. We've had people that have had experiences and have shared experiences, and I think that has helped people make their decisions to actually go. >> What are some of the factors, like security, as an accelerator of a business that maybe might be on the slower side to migrate and start moving to a multi-cloud? Which a lot of businesses live in. Security also just the threat of being Uber-ized by a smaller company that isn't taking advantage-- >> They can move fast. >> Right, of whether it's network automation, SD-WAN, taking advantage of the expansion of 5G. What are some of those, how are some of the security and some of those other threats, are they catalysts that you guys are leveraging with customers to help them understand why the transition is imperative? >> I think they are. I think the iPhones and the laptop devices where you can click and have that immediate user experience, that's starting to build people's expectations that you can get things that quickly. And for the old legacy companies that aren't willing to get in there and to start thinking about doing that migration and change, they will get left behind. It's just where the industry is today. >> Great, Stephanie, why don't I give you the, give us the take-away from Cisco Live. You know, Cisco plus CenturyLink, what's that mean for customers? >> I'm sorry, I didn't catch all, I'm sorry. >> Cisco plus CenturyLink, the take-away for customers. >> Yeah, we're great partners. We've been partners for years. We continue to be partners. I think we bring a great marriage of the SD-WAN services and our hybrid network and all of our managed services together. Lots of years of experience and we love helping our customers, both of us. We want to delight and provide that great customer experience. >> Well. Stephanie, it's been a pleasure to have you on the Cube talking about all things SD-WAN, marketplace, the drivers, the opportunities, and the benefits. We appreciate your time. >> Thanks so much you guys. Have a great show. >> Thank you. For Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching the Cube Live from Cisco Live, San Diego. (electronic music)

>> Male Announcer: Live from San Diego, California, it's the Cube. Covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco, and its eco-system partners. >> Hey, welcome back to the CUBE! We are here at Cisco Live on day three of the event. Our third day of continuous coverage. I'm Lisa Martin, with Stu Miniman. Stu and I have a couple of guests joining us right now. (Lisa) We've got to my right, Joe Gorecki, the senior lead product manager for Advanced Network Managed Services from CenturyLink. And Danny Rising, Meraki Product Specialist-Global Service Provider, Cisco. Guys welcome to the CUBE! >> Thank you very much, Lisa and Stu. >> So here we are in the DevNet Zone day three, this is the busiest day so far which I didn't expect it to be as crazy busy but I guess the IoT takeover is going on right now. So the appetite, the enthusiasm for this event, and the DevNet Zone is huge. Danny we'll start with you, talk to us a little bit about the Meraki Portfolio and then we'll get into what you guys are doing with CenturyLink. >> Yeah, so it's been a really exciting conference for us so far, we're seeing a lot of, um, ya know excitement from our customers and our partners. And, um, what you guys have probably seen is a lot of the new products that we've come out with recently, whether it's our new Wi-Fi 6 capable access points, our SD-WAN products and now have the cellular (Danny) embedded in them, as well as our video surveillance cameras. So, we're seeing a lot of, uh, excitement from our customers around that, which really kind of adds to the message around simplicity that we try to bring to the market, and are excited to be working closely with Centurylink on how they deliver that to our customers. >> So, Joe, we've heard a lot about Wi-Fi 6 from Cisco. Talk to us a little bit about, you know, are your customers as excited as Cisco is for this? And, get us into the solutions that you're offering with Meraki. >> I think the customers, once they understand what Wi-Fi 6 will bring to the table for them, they'll get excited about it. I was in a meeting, two years ago with a large big box retailer, electronics that has numerous IoT smart devices in this and 95% of the bandwidth requirements in the store, is for upgrading iOS software and things of that nature and these devices. And they could not get enough Wi-Fi bandwidth, and they could not get away from the signal. Wi-Fi six is going to be to me a deal breaker, game changer for the customers because it's going to give them the opportunity to get more density, and more capabilities out of their Wi-Fi signal which plays right into the Meraki Portfolio goods because they were embedded and started as Wi-Fi. >> Oh my God, Danny I needed a two new t-shirts that says 'Wi-Fi 6, I am your density.' (Laughter) >> That's phenomenal. Joe, talk us a little about you know, we're quite familiar with Centurylink on our program, but you know the Meraki piece, how does that fit into your portfolio and general offerings? >> We've been partnering Meraki for about four or five years. Centurylink in general was the first, very first Gold Partner in the world, with them and we've been a long standing partnership since then. And then when we took a look at the Meraki Portfolio, and when Cisco procured them, we saw a great opportunity. Although they talked about the simplicity of development for their customer base. We took a look at it and says we can benefit from that for our customers to provide that, because it's simple in a way. But we have 24-7 eyes on glass. We provided as a managed rapper, where we do everything from help them design their needs based on their business outcomes, we build it for them, and we will run it giving them a flexible way of securing it. And we support the entire portfolio Meraki opportunities, and it's given us the opportunity to go in there and simplify the solution for the customer. The Meraki MX67C and 68C which Danny brought in, allows you to insert a SIM card for wireless backup into the device creating a true SD WAN capability with one simple elegant device. Which, when you're talking about small retailers and things of that nature, size is critical because they don't have the space. So it gives them something that they can deliver in a simple unified device. >> Okay, let's actually talk about now that customer experience. Danny, from the feet on the street field perspective. When you're going into a Meraki opportunity with a customer, where you were saying, Joe, that that big box retailer example where Wi-Fi 6 is going to be a game changer. And also, I think you said deal breaker really, but for those customers who are, and companies, who are able to take advantage of it, it probably will be a deal breaker. The amount of video, that's going to be offloaded from cellular networks to Wi-Fi in the next couple of years is massive. As is the amount of mobile video data that's being generated, so, that being a game changer. When you go into customer opportunities, Danny, talk to us about some of the challenges that they're facing today. Some of the trends that you're seeing, and the opportunities that Meraki and CTL can bring to them. >> Yeah, great question. And you know, um, you know as you as people you know, see everywhere in the, in the booths and our new messaging, uh, around work simple. And our mission at Meraki has always been around simplicity, and I think Centurylink really adds another layer of that, on how our customers can consume the technology. So, while we make it very easy to see and read in the dashboard, they make it even easier for our customers to consume and view all of that in a managed fashion. So some of the trends that we're seeing, which are pretty interesting, um, is over 60% of our largest Meraki deals are all being sold through our service providers like at Centurylink. So our largest of large enterprise customers, are really seeing the value in a fully managed service. Not just from what Meraki can bring, but what our service providers can bring too. Whether it's, you know, the additional transport services, the managed services, the installation services. Um, and so that gets us really excited because we can partner like great, uh, folks like Centurylink to really enable our customers to consume the technology the way that they want to consume it. >> And what are some of the business outcomes, that you're saying you're seeing this trend there from a service provider perspective. Joe, let me ask you, what are some of the business outcomes that this managed service is enabling customers in any industry to achieve like, that would maybe go all the way up to the top line? >> Well, to the top line, that's what it really is they want, more for less. The companies around the world now with the advent of SD WAN are looking for pushing network costs out of their business. But, uh, interestingly enough, at the same time, they're saying, 'the network is our life blood.' So you think that's a little counterintuitive. So, what Meraki allows us to do, is be able to have dual circuits, multiple capabilities in there, and a very cost effective device with our security they need. But it also, then, what I call it takes the SD WAN and takes it to the land. Because many many many of a non-Meraki type of solutions, you have different switches, you have different AP's, this consolidates it puts it into a common platform. We take that over for them and offer their becoming an extension of. So they can focus on their business, which has been an outsourcing talk for decades, but it's no different. But then we're able to tie it with a network. And us taking care of that for them we can, ya know, provide the uptime that they need, the cost reductions that they're looking for, or providing more for the same cost, and that's where the benefits are. >> Alright, so Danny, I heard security mentioned in what Joe was just talking there. But bring us into, okay, where security fits into the Meraki Portfolio? >> Yeah, so um, you know, the Meraki SD-WAN product was built on top of our security appliance, the MX, and so, we view security as the key foundation to any SD-WAN uh, you know platform, right? Especially as customers are looking to drive traffic out to the open Internet, connect to all the cloud applications, you really need to have security embedded in that. And so we focused on that, and that's why we decided to drive um, our SD-WAN features and functions around our security platform. So, all of our SD-WAN or across all of our, uh, MX platform, which is based around security. So, we see that as a key pillar to the whole SD-WAN story. >> The security business within Cisco grew double digits in Q3, 2019. You guys just announced another impending acquisition at Century, oh last week, so really, you can tell that there's a focus that Cisco has on expanding their security breadth and portfolio. That continues to be a topic that we talk about at every event, with every technology, in any business, security is table stakes. You can have the speed, but at the not at the expense of security. So, from what Joe we'll start with you. From your perspective, what Meraki is doing to build Integrated Security, what does that enable you guys to do from a Centurylink perspective? What opportunities does it open up? >> Well, at Centurylink, we take the same approach. We see security as something that we do. It's embedded in our network, and network based security is critical, and mission critical, so we do that. What Meraki allows us to do then is it takes a secure platform, puts it there. It does allow us to have a secure environment through the open Internet. Which is always scary because it's insecure, but it provides the secure ability to be able to do that, reducing the customer cost bringing it back to our network where we have all the security enabled in there. So, security, when we first launched Meraki there is we thought it was wireless was the key, because that was their foundation. And we looked at and said, 'No, the MX security appliance is the key because that is the secure engine that connects us to our network, brings it back to a single pane of glass and we can provide that solution.' But then it goes into the same portfolio or the portal, into the network, into the land so that we have visibility and it provides that experience for the customer. >> All right, Joe want to give you the opportunity here, Cisco's got a lot of partners out there. So for those out there watching, why Meraki plus Centurylink? >> Well, Meraki and Centurylink, we've been working together since the beginning to be able to provide the solution when we were the first cloud managed security provider in the world. We got that designation last year on the security of the Meraki platform. So we have this embedded, it's embedded in our DNA, we have the appropriate resources. And we have learned, and, trained engineers in the field for feet on the street, and our sales engineering platform and our design engineering platform. That gives us the unique ability to be able to provide that what we call build, plan, build, run. We help them plan their network from the ground up, including into the land. We will build it for them in an orchestrated, controlled fashion, rolling it out with their upgraded network, and we will run it for them in a very flexible badger that makes us an extension of their customers. That coupled with Meraki and the relationships that we've had for 25 years, really brings a good solid solution to our customer base. >> Yeah, and I'll add on to that too, um, you know, don't just you know, we always like to say don't take our word for it. Um, Centurylink was actually the first and currently only Global Service Provider with a Cisco designated, um, Cisco DNA Certification across both SD WAN network access and security which is audited by a third party company. That's all based on their Meraki offering. So, um, they got that certification back in 2018. Uh, and again, we're the first globally and are still currently the only service provider with those designations. So, just kind of represents the amount of work effort and partnership that we've all done together. That's even proven by, you know, an auditing company to get those certifications. >> And those certifications give us and the resources that we have at our disposal. What we like to say is it eliminates the risk. We mitigate the risk because we have the resources, we have the skills, and we have the flexibility to deliver a solution and their needs. >> So, as we look at the evolution of the partnership, the evolution of certifications, and the evolution of Cisco, going from what was traditionally hardware only to now hardware and software. Danny, your perspective on how Meraki is being integrated into Cisco as we look at Meraki, it's been around for about 12 or so years. Talk to us a little bit about the integration of Meraki is really kind of foundational to Cisco's current evolution. >> Yeah, that's that's been really exciting to see and um, for those are the folks that are actually at the show here, you can actually see, you know, before Meraki would have its own booth, and we were, you know, still kind of a one off product family. Um, this year, we're actually integrated into all the different Cisco solutions across the floor. So you'll see us in the service provider booth. You'll see us in the iOT booth. You'll see us in branch in a box. You'll see us over in Wi-Fi. So we've really kind of integrated and Cisco's really embraced a lot of the Meraki technologies, um, from an architecture standpoint. Um, and even you know, all the way up to Chuck, you'll hear him say, you know, we're trying to Mareki-phi, a little bit of everything. So that's been really exciting to see at the show here just kind of where Mareki sits even on the show floor, which has been pretty fun. >> And what's been some of the feedback downstairs across the convention center with prospective customers, seeing and feeling this Meraki integration as a really bonafide substantial part of Cisco's foundation? >> Yeah, you know, I think it just validates, um you know, the investment that Cisco made in Mareki back in 2012, when they acquired us and just really the growth that we've seen over the years and just how we've been able to integrate with all the rest of the Cisco products and solution sets. And our customers are excited to see that, because, you know, while you know a lot of our customers have, you know, tons of Cisco products already embedded, how does Meraki fit into that? I think our story is becoming a lot more clear, uh and we can see it out on the floor today, so our customers are looking forward to seeing that up from us. >> Excellent, Joe, last question for you as we look at. I mentioned a minute ago, Cisco's evolution Cisco's transformation from 30 years ago, this conference started as called conference called Networker and 150 people. And now it's evolved as Cisco Live with 25,000 or so people, as has Cisco evolved from a hardware network, your providers that's mentioning to shifting into software subscription service provider. Your thoughts from Centurylink's perspective on watching Cisco's transformation and how will that enhance the partnership with CTO going forward? >> Well, when Danny had mentioned that Cisco is becoming more Mareki-fied. We look forward to that because when they were more the baseline heights of the networking routers, switches and network as they morphed we've morphed with them, because we kept that, you know, gold designation, masters and everything through the process. So we encourage this type of environment because we see this going away from hardware more to a dumb x86 box out there doing routing and switching, adding more capabilities on there. So moving the software, something that is one we knew it was coming, so we are gearing up to be with them. We see that becoming more simple and elegant solutions from the company with more flexibility. Because in back in the day, you would have a Cisco solution, but you would have four or five different operating systems, as they mentioned. Now, that's a common platform, now it's more unified. And those types of things not only help us deliver a solution better for our customers, but it also creates a more seamless integration and solves more problems. So we look forward to the continued morph that we're going to morph with them. >> Simple, seamless, Mareki-fied, I like it. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining Stu and me this afternoon, we appreciate your time. >> (IN UNISON) Thank you very much for having us. >> Our pleasure. From Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin. from Cisco Live, in San Diego.

>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California it's the Cube covering Cisco Live US 2019. Brought to you by Cisco and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Cube, Lisa Martin with Stu Miniman rounding out day one of our coverage of Cisco live! in San Diego. We're pleased to welcome Tera Sumner, the senior manager of Global Product Management at CenturyLink. Tera welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you, thank you both for having me. >> So we've had a number of folks from CenturyLink on the Cube over the years, I know that you guys are a big US communications provider. >> Tera: We are. >> You've got customers in over 60 countries but this is no longer your grandfather's CenturyLink. >> That's right. >> Lisa: Tell us more about it. >> So we are focused in the next roll out of the next phase of CenturyLink. We're moving from a telecommunications company to a technology company and the division that I work in for UC&C the unified communications that's where it's at. That's where it's all going to take place and having a partnership with Cisco is key for us to get from that telecoms base to the technologies base for sure. >> So bring us inside a little bit, Unified communication and collaboration, you know, Cisco obviously a strong presence in that space. Lot's of people have used Webex and understand the various, you know, VOIP phones and everything that they do there. What particularly brings Cisco and CenturyLink together? Is it engineering work, field, go to market, you know where are the pieces? >> Sure and it's all of those, right. It's all of those, what's been very nice is that Cisco has embraced the idea of being a platform and not a siloed individual product line. And so for a service provider like CenturyLink, for us to be able to embrace that same philosophy of the platform of services, what that means is that our engineering and field ops folks, our operations teams do all the hard work on the back end to make sure that we have established all of the right security, the right network, the reliability, the global scaleability of our specific platform of services and being that leader in telecommunications. And then we're able to lay that Cisco platform on top of it and what happens then from a product management level is once you've established that foundation, it's really plug and play. The customer calls and says "I need calling, I need meetings, I need" you know whatever it is they need and we build that solution and very quickly can put those components into play and get them to use the service right away. >> So we were all at Enterprise Connect. We were all just talking about that, Stu and I hosted the Cube there just, what a couple of months ago I guess. And it's such an interesting, it was an interesting event because everything is centered around communication. You can't have a great customer experience without having a phenomenal and very connected communications platform within an organization. >> Correct. >> You can't have great satisfied employees if they don't have the connectivity that they need so really looking at enterprise communication and collaboration tools as table stakes, >> Tera: Absolutely. >> For any organization because without it you're, in any industry, there's a competitor right on your coattails ready to swoop in if you're going to be making any mistakes. >> Tera: Absolutely. >> And now as we look at the waves of change with respect to connectivity, the explosion and expansion of 5G, the proliferation of the amount of mobile data that's going to be video traversing that works, massive demand placed on any organization to be able to deliver communications extremely quickly and extremely securely. Talk to us about some of the waves that you're going to be riding in helping customers to mitigate with respect to these new demands for high density, high performance connectivity. >> Sure, so if we talk to customers, as you know, today one of the biggest things is, it's all about security. We have a massive and really super intelligent security department at CenturyLink and it's kind of cool watching all of the various projects that they get into because they're so passionate. And not only are they passionate about it, they're adamant that we make as much of a connection secure, meetings, any kind of information secure that we possibly can and we've mitigated any risk possible. And then you take that and you have to communicate that information but you have to also be able to showcase the various solutions that you have, all of the Cisco platforms that you have. So what we have also done is we've taken that platform of services from Cisco and we've put it in the hands of our operations folks, our sales folks, our field techs, our executives, our middle management group and every one of them knows then how to quickly use the teams application from their desktop, they all have it on their, and I don't have my phone with me, they'll have it on their mobile device. So it's very familiar, it's very quick and it's always on, right so they're connected all the time, which I know we all say "I hate that, I hate that." the minute you don't have it, it drives people crazy. So it's a very valuable tool for us from a product management perspective to put these tools in the hands of our internal users who are the voice to that customer, so when the customer calls and goes "Oh my gosh, I don't know what's going on", "Ah, I've been there before, let me help you out and let me do that very quickly." >> So want you to help us understand, how are you helping customers keep up with just the rapid pace of change that's going on here. As Lisa mentioned Enterprise Connect, the themes I was hearing, very similar to what we're hearing here at the show. You know cloud drastically changing architectures, AI and ML infusing itself into all the environments there. It feels like from a customer standpoint every time they go do a role, it's like "Oh wait, hold on, didn't you hear about the new thing and the new thing and the new thing." And, >> And don't use that, use this. >> That tendency to, like oh wait, I thought I was down the path yet I constantly need hear about yet another thing. >> Absolutely, so yes, you're right it's a constant game of catch up if you will. Have you tried the new app, do you have the latest version of X, Y and Z? What we're trying to do is also bridge that gap because we have tremendously intelligent and savvy customers where it used to be if you build it, they will come and now it's no, no, no, don't even build it. Let them tell you what your market needs to drive, the customers have the most unique uses for the technology these days and we have to keep up with that. So we let those customers help drive where we go from a product standpoint but at the same time I've got traditional customers who are saying "Okay, somebody told me I need to get to the cloud." "Okay, I can help you with that." We have a very unique perspective on how we bring customers onboard, on how we get customers to adopt the technology and truly, the way that we do that is with the human touch right. We concentrate completely on our customer experience from end to end, so if you give us a call and you say "Here's a problem I need to solve and here are the components I have sitting in there today." We design the solution that you need for your business needs and then we walk you through that step by step and when we're all implemented and ready to go we're still going to answer that phone. We're still going to answer your emails and take your calls and say "What else can I do for you? How can I help? How do we want to expand?" So it's really that customer service on top of the focus of customer experience that makes CenturyLink I think still very unique in the industry because we care that what we are putting in your hands as a customer is something that not only you will use but you'll talk about in a very positive light. >> So given that everything you talked about, you know connectivity, and when we don't have connectivity you feel like you've lost a limb or you've lost sight or hearing. It's that disconnect that is just, these days it feels so strange but customers need to have definitely, and that was a theme I think that we hear at every event. We also heard it at Enterprise Connect, it's not just AI it's humans and AI but speed is essential for any industry especially those that are undergoing any sort of transformation because they've got to stay ahead of their competition. So how do you balance that, how does CenturyLink balance that need for speed and also deliver a customer experience that's unique as you say, that has that personalized element that it sounds like I'm hearing. How are you leveraging tools like automation and AI machine learning to help CenturyLink deliver that customer experience but quickly? >> Well, we're doing lots of things, some of the things that we're doing is that automation from the first time they click on the website to say "What's going on at CenturyLink? Oh, they've got UC&C." You click a button and you read a little bit about what the products are and you can order it right then and there and then you get it turned around very quickly to put it in your hands. And oh by the way, if you need some help we've got the training videos, we've got you know, a phone number for you to call if you really need some human explanation of "Okay, I just can't figure this out, I can't get that." So the automation is key for sure. When you're talking about speed, as you know if anyone has teenagers around and they're using gaming systems or you're watching Netflix or whatever it is that you're doing all day, you are eating a ton of bandwidth. And so what's nice about working for CenturyLink is that well, we're the provider of the bandwidth, so we get to see the trending of what products are consuming the most of that bandwidth and we very quickly can prioritize and say "this content delivery network needs more" or "Holy Cow, what is U&C doing in Latin America or APAC or EMEA? They're consuming a ton of bandwidth, we need to allocate more and put a priority on that." And so that's different than other competitors who aren't also service providers because then they have to go back and negotiate. "No, no, no, my services really do need more bandwidth and I really do need some priority and be nice to me and I'll take care of it." Right, so we have that ability at CenturyLink to do that very quickly. >> So Tera, CenturyLink's had a long partnership with Cisco, a very deep relationship, Cisco's been talking a lot about their transformation. Remember a year ago, it was when you think about, you know Cisco 2030, it's not as a networking company it's a software company. Give us your assessment as a partner, what you've been seeing in Cisco and also bring us in a little as to how CenturyLink is, as we said at the beginning, a different CenturyLink that we might have thought of in a previous generation? >> Sure and it's a good question, it's for me I've been at CenturyLink for, you know as I mentioned, about 15 years and I've got to witness and be a part of the initial relationship with Cisco that we had, up unto today when I help manage that relationship and it really has transformed from a relationship to a partnership. And it's no longer just they give you something and you go and implement it, now it's truly the give and take. Right, you have these conversations, but we also have the relationships with several of the employees of Cisco to say "Okay, I understand you're putting this into the network, tell me a little bit more about that, how is that unique to a service provider versus an enterprise? How can I make that a better value proposition for my customer base because of CenturyLink?" And we get the reciprocal communication back and forth, whereas years ago it was "Here you go, here's what we're giving you, go ahead and put that into the network." So it's really been exciting for us at CenturyLink and certainly, I think, for our Cisco folks because it's easy now, we know each other very well, we know so many of the employees at both companies that when I pick up the phone its "Hey, how's it going?" Instead of "Oh, I need to speak to the Vice President of X, Y, Z." Right, so it's truly been a great transformation in a partnership from that relationship to that true partnership where there's give and take. And if we have a question or we think "You know I've got this amazing customer who has this bizarrely intelligent ask." I want to help them with that. I have no hesitation to pick up the phone to call my partner and say "You're going to love this. Help me figure out how to get us there." And it's really been working quite well over the last few years. I'm kind of excited to see how far it goes in the next few. >> So it sounds like it's evolved into a much more strategic partnership. >> Tera: Absolutely. >> Is that an accelerator or facilitator of CenturyLink's transformation to a technology company? >> It's both of those things, it's a complete accelerator but it just makes sense when you have partners who have that very similar vision that you do from a strategic company, you look at that and think "Okay, you know what, this is going to fit very nicely into my strategy, my mission statement" and it's going to be a much easier transition for all of my colleagues as a result because then they can see "Oh, that's exactly what we need to do." We need to take these steps to move into that technology mode and now you're showing me how to do that with your strategic partnership with Cisco. It's very fun. >> Fun is good, Tera thank you so much for joining Stu and me on the Cube this afternoon. >> Absolutely. - We're going to keep our eye on CenturyLink, we appreciate your time. >> Absolutely, come and visit us any chance you get. >> All right, for Stu Miniman, I'm Lisa Martin, you're watching the Cube, day one of our coverage of Cisco Live has just come to an end. We want to thank you so much for watching and catch us starting tomorrow morning, day two from San Diego. Thanks for watching.

>> Narrator: Live from London, England. It's theCUBE, covering AWS Summit London 2019. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services. >> Welcome back to Excel London everybody. My name is Dave Vellante, and you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, we go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, this is our day long coverage of the AWS Summit in London, 12,000 people here. It's a Summit, it's like a mini reinvent. Dominic Deacon is here, he's the sales director for cloud and alliances at CenturyLink, Dominic, thanks for coming on theCUBE. >> Thanks very much for having me. >> So, what's going on here at the show, what's CenturyLink showing? What are the conversations like, and what are you guys up to? >> Well, it's been a fantastic day for us here at CenturyLink, we've got a big stand presence out on our floor here, it's been fantastic to see the vast number of people here today, and fascinating from all different types of industries, different types of technology companies, manufacturing companies, it's just a vast, different array of people. And some fantastic conversations on the stand today. >> So cloud computing when it came in, a lot of people sort of didn't understand it. A lot of people ignored it. A lot of people thought they could replicate it. But now, it's starting to come into focus, now that we're in, you know, whatever it is, 15 years in. >> Dominic: Yeah. >> 12, 13 years in. It's been a real tailwind for your business. Describe why that is, where you fit in the value chain of the ecosystem. >> Sure, so you know, CenturyLink is a global IT network technology organization. So we operate in many many different countries, 60 off countries globally. And for us the value proposition with CenturyLink is around connecting customers to AWS cloud. It's around then helping do the migration and transition of workloads to AWS and the cloud. And then for us, a key part of our heritage is the managed services, so then we are able, once applications have been, and workloads, have been transitioned to AWS, we're able to managed those as a managed service provider for the organizations, and a lot of enterprises now are on this digital transformation journey, you know, a lot of industries today are being disrupted by new entrants, and we've seen a lot of those over the past, kind of five to ten years. Probably name a, you know, 25 of them off the top of my head if we wanted to right now. So industries are being disrupted, and we're there to really help organizations in that digital transformation journey through connecting, through migration, and then through the management aspect. >> So the early days of cloud, of course you saw a lot of startups, and a lot of innovators moving to the cloud. You saw large corporations maybe doing a little shadow IT... >> Dominic: Yeah. >> You saw IT maybe throwing up some crapplications, you know, we used to jokingly call them in the cloud. Now the cloud is essentially running, you know, any workload, any application, anywhere in the world. What are you seeing in terms of some of the trends, in terms of what people are doing with the cloud, what they're putting in the cloud, who are they, what's your customer based look on it? >> Yeah, I mean it's, you know, it's been a fascinating journey over the last kind of ten years really. You know, I remember going back ten years ago and, you know, enterprise organizations were, yeah this cloud thing, not sure, they'd give you a million reasons why they wouldn't do it, and then you'd have some parts of the organization generally you know, lines of businesses that were, that were a bit stuck with their own IT departments around speed and agility, hey we need this now, but you guys are telling me it's gonna take four months just to deliver some service and then another month to build it out, I can't wait six months to be able to, you know, accelerate our business, so we needed different ways, so that's when we starting seeing the shadow IT aspects, and especially with AWS, right? Well I've got a credit card, I can get the resources that I need within 30 seconds, I've just logged in, right? I've got all the resources there right now, we can accelerate, and now we can go, and that really started the revolution, but also, became a bit of a challenge to enterprises because now they've got unregulated IT spends, we've got lots of different silos of applications, that starts to become a challenge to manage that at scale, which really started to turn enterprises into understanding, well actually, digital transformation for us, cloud fixes at the core part of those strategies, okay, so now let's start bringing that in, how do we start utilizing that to the best of our ability, and we've seen that shift over the last ten years to really get to a point where we are today with some really cool things happening with, you know, large scale enterprise mission critical applications now being deployed in AWS. SAP, ERP applications for example, ten years ago, I didn't think anyone would've realized that you could've run that in AWS, and here we are today where you can. >> I don't know if you saw the keynote this morning, but the guy from Saintsbury said that they moved an Oracle rack instance into AWS, and I got a lot of questions for him... (laughs) but he ran off, and there were a number of examples of Oracles, not trivial to move Oracle in, but SAP of course is not as antagonistic with regards to AWS as Oracle are, but so there's a better partnership there. So you're seeing those types of applications now moved to the cloud. What's the motivation for people doing that? Are they able to change the operating model, how are they able to affect their business by doing that? >> Well I think the fundamental change in the last, maybe five years is that their, is that the board of their enterprise organizations have actually woken up to the fact that we can start delivering transformation at speed and at scale, utilizing services like AWS. And the broad ecosystem of specialist partners that sit in and around AWS to be able to deliver that value, and the board and steering committees, of, you know, the large enterprise customers have kind of sat there going, right, the time is now, disruption is, you know, quite prevalent in our marketplace now, so we need to change, we need to become more agile, we need to change our cost base, we need to change our operations model, we need to be thinking more about the customer experience and how do we deliver new services quickly to remain relevant, and you kind of have this tidal wave of everything aligning, and the realization that there is a way to be able to do this, and realize the benefits of that. And I think that's really what we've seen in the last few years or so. >> Now, you guys obviously, first talk about your AWS partnership, how did it start, how's it going, what's the relationship like, what's that journey been like? >> Sure, so, yeah, CenturyLink, as I said before, provides global network services, and also provides, you know hosting, cloud, and managed services that combine with that with a security wrap and a managed security service that goes across, you know, network, infrastructure, and applications. That's the core of our business globally. I'd say for us, you know, essentially, we made a pivot around three or four years ago, which was to say, do we really need to own our data centers anymore, or do we just want to be able to provide the expertise and services that come from a data center? So rather than building all of our own, you know, cloud infrastructure and trying to take that to market, actually what we are experts in is being able to deliver value with that infrastructure from an application standpoint, and being able to manage that and optimize it in the most economical model to be a service provider for those customers, and so, you know, we've been on that journey ourselves for probably the last three or four years, and that led us up to the point where, you know, a lot of our customers were asking us, hey, I've got some applications and some kind of traditional hosting with CenturyLink, but we're also looking at AWS for some of our newer workloads, hey CenturyLink, are you able to help us across both of these, and then we kind of saw the magnification of, you know, the hybrid IT kind of platform come in, I've got applications that I need to set in a private cloud, or some legacy infrastructure, I'm also looking at my AWS public cloud, and actually what I need is a service provider to be a consistent provider across all of these different infrastructure types now as we transition. So CenturyLink made that pivot, we joined forces with AWS about three years ago now. It's a fantastic partnership for us, and we deliver all of those cool capabilities that we have for years with the AWS platform as part of their partner ecosystem, delivering that value for our mutual customers. >> So Matt Garmin said this morning in the keynote that, you know, he firmly believes they do this, he believes that over time, the vast majority of workloads are gonna live in the public cloud. Having said that, he said something you didn't hear AWS recognize several years ago, which was hybrid. You just mentioned hybrid. >> Dominic: Yup. >> And then he laid out a number of things that they're doing for folks on prem, I think you mentioned Snowball, which I think was one of the first ones. >> Dominic: Yeah. >> You know, and then a number of other ones, of course Outpost. >> Dominic: That's the big one. >> Grab a lot of attention, so my point of this question is that, and a sort of observation and then question, is AWS, never say never, when it comes to AWS. >> Dominic: Absolutely. >> You know, years ago, people said no, they'll never do on prem, never do hybrid, of course now, they're gonna become a leader in hybrid, predicted that on theCUBE for a while. There's also this world of multi cloud, of course AWS doesn't wanna talk about, you know, non, other clouds, but there's a multi cloud world, every show you go to, everybody's talking about multi cloud, it's a huge opportunity for you. I've contended that multi cloud is largely a symptom of multi vendor, and line of business, and shadow IT, and as we said now, we've got this mess out there that IT's gotta deal with. >> Yeah. >> But it's an opportunity, you know, chaos is cash for you guys, so what are your thoughts on multi cloud, how real is it, how far are we into the journey of multi cloud? >> Yeah, I mean that's a, that's a really interesting questions, and actually, we see, we see that more and more in the enterprise space now. I think as that, as the thinking in enterprises has matured, there's a realization that, you know, it's not always that one thing fits everything. So it's about understanding, you know, the workload that I've got today, and where's the best platform for that workload to reside on that delivers the scale, the performance, you know, from a compliance perspective, am I compliant with this workload, and which platform is the most compliant around that? So there's a number of factors that come into play, which leads to, you know, some platforms being, we call it the best execution venue, becomes the best venue to deploy the application. You know, public cloud is fantastic and provides the agility, speed, innovation, but sometimes isn't necessarily the right platform for some of the legacy workloads that actually just need to transition out of a customer status center, because they don't want a data center anymore. So, there is movements today where, you know, as that market's maturing, the organizations are sort of saying to themselves, well I need a, I need a staging post to now understand what I do with these workloads before I can then do a level of migration and transition and refactoring, and so that I can get to, get to private cloud. Generally that comes down to, you know, sometimes it's capex avoidance, I don't wanna refresh my whole data center, or I actually don't wanna own bricks and mortar anymore, for us we just wanna be able to consume the service under an SLA that's outcome driven. So that's where we start seeing the, you know, the hybrid cloud model, and that's a mixture of private cloud, and sometimes a mixture of public clouds as well. Sometimes, enterprises look at it and go, well if I put all my eggs in one basket, does that blast my risk compliance? Or do I split it out, and you know, basically have two public clouds that we mitigate the risk and can move one workload into another? There's a number of different factors that are driving that, but generally it's around risk mitigation, speed, and economics. >> I'm glad you brought that up too, and as well horses for courses, you know? You were saying that sometimes, there's, you know, a workload that fits best here. So I, we've predicted on theCUBE that eventually, Amazon will get into that business, you'll see, because once it gets big enough, and if it's real, Amazon will have a solution, you know. >> Dominic: Sure. >> Because their customers will ask for it. >> Dominic: Absolutely. >> Amazon says they're customer driven, they actually are. >> Dominic: Yeah. >> Enough customers say that's how things like Outpost... >> Dominic: Absolutely. >> Occur. So take use back to sort of, what's happening in your business today, where you see this sort of next near term, to mid term, going for CenturyLink. >> Sure so, you know, for us our focus is on really, you know, delivering great customer outcomes and customer experience. And it's about delivering the value add in partnership with AWS, so combining the strength of CenturyLink with the strength of AWS delivers great customer experience, also delivers great customer business outcomes, which keeps, you know, our mutual customers together with us for many many years, hopefully. And that's really for us focusing on delivering, you know, our core innovation with, on top of AWS around how we deliver our automated managed services, we're looking at simplification, automation of operational functions for our customers, because if we can streamline that, the economics become better, SLAs increase, their business productivity and performance increases along with that, and it's a mutual win win win for all three partners involved, which is what we're all striving for. >> Well, as somebody once said, the network is the computer, you guys are the network, so, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE Dominic. >> Dominic: Thank you for having me. >> You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody, we'll be back with our next guest, you're watching the cube, this is Dave Vellante, live from London AWS Summit, we'll be right back.

live from Las Vegas it's the cube covering Dell technologies world 2019 to you by Dell technologies and its ecosystem partners welcome back everyone to the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world 2019 here in Las Vegas at the sands Expo I'm your host Rebecca night along with my co-host do minimun we are joined by Steve Nolan he is the lead product manager private cloud at CenturyLink thank you so much for coming and direct from st. Louis Missouri thank you thanks for having me today so let's start by having you tell our viewers a little bit about CenturyLink ok centrelink is a very large carrier international with our recent acquisition of level 3 we have a little over 500,000 fiber optic miles belong to us we're wired into over a hundred thousand buildings globally across approximately 60 countries connected into over 300 data centers so that's kind of our telecom network story I actually work within a division of essentially that handles managed hosting products it's through an acquisition they did a number of years ago called a company called sabes where we now have about 20 years a little over 20 years and managed hosting services to customers in the business and there's been a lot of news this week at Dell technologies world and you your CenturyLink had a big announcement just this morning yes we just released a press release on a two-prong option we've been working on for about six months now it's for a private cloud product that I manage that I released actually a year and a half ago we just added it now Dell options for that product based on the Dell PowerEdge six are 640 server and that of course we did that to be able to expand options and choices for our customers to UM open up the opportunities to those situations where we weren't able to get into before so we're very excited about it so it's it's new it's it's exciting it's of course a great great platform very very amazing technology so Steve that the term private cloud you know is it's almost about 15 years old now but there were many years that we didn't all agree as to what private cloud should be you know I run article recently about hybrid cloud and you know even hybrid cloud was basically like oh I had private cloud and public cloud and a bunch of pieces and I put them together and like well the hybrid multi-cloud stories were hearing this mean many of their shows very different we're trying to get our heart around this so you know I'm familiar with Savas you know I've seen century like many times at vmworld so bring us inside that private cloud it tell us a little bit about you know what you've been seeing in the environment some of those key use cases to what customers are doing and and how this is different than you know the virtualized environments of the past certainly so so what we've been seeing happen in the industry and and it's some and you go back a number of years a few years well to the cloud and you have six people what does cloud me and you get six definitions right but what we've seen is that there's this huge move towards public cloud over the last number years the hyper cloud all-day activity we see plenty of it and there's been challenges associated that you don't find out day one you find out over time certain things that were challenged to work with and in a public cloud type of scenario customers at you know what I still want to hold on to some infrastructure and what we're seeing now also do what private cloud is it is a an infrastructure there's a hum percent dedicated to one client and a story all of that infrastructure belongs to one one one company one entity it is not shared nothing is shared that is true private cloud and so that's what what I manage for our company is our private cloud products we're and we've we have one that's been with us not for about 15 years it's on VMware we're a large VMware shop where a hundred percent VMware today we've been working with VMware for I think a total 15 years a little over 15 years and the various types of products and solutions and platforms we work with them for a year and a half to be able to create our new private cloud product that is a hyper conversion infrastructure software fine networking based on VMware's VMware cloud foundation software suite right so that's where the movements are and and what's happening with this now a we want to go into kind of what's happening in the industry in the world is the way that you built infrastructure historically right as you build your compute your network your storage and your security those are the four minimum columns of which technology you need for a solution and then you connect it all together it's some by four different groups for different subject matter expert groups and and it can be very time-consuming to piece all that together now we roll into this hyper-converged world and you just give me a stack of servers that have some cpu some RAM some disks and I layer on some very well designed and architected software like some VMware Cloud Foundation and I define everything from one interface through software it makes of the ability for enterprise customers to be able to move a much faster or making change to the environment I can spin up a firewall in minutes a several a balancer a router that's very powerful compared to how it was done in the past so Steve one of the years expertise I know CenturyLink has is on the networking side of it's something we've heard Dell talking about their networking and how that's expanding the HCI market today and as well as if you talk about that hybrid or multi cloud environment networking is a critical component things like an ST when put into so can you help you know where does that those those pieces fit into your environment where we see that that going and is these are it's a common theme and that we've been talking through a little over a year now and this this topic of milliseconds matter is the edge and so that's where it's really evolving to and that's what we're working towards as well so so one of the things we're doing with our products is moving in our products out to them the data centers many more data centers what we've done in the past and then taking that a step further we go to edge computing because of our telecom expertise and experience and our thousands of points of presence we can put those systems into a pop if you would we can put those systems of course on customer Prem getting the response times down to just a few milliseconds which is critical to business's response times delivery companies or various comers where that that's important to the middle of stiffens milliseconds matters because it saves them money because they're very able to be more responsive to their customers that's exactly what I want to drill into a little bit you say milliseconds matter which is which is absolutely true and you're talking about how customers feel this need to move so much faster and we know about the breakneck speed of technological change can you give us a real business impact I mean as you said this this really is game-changing for so many companies can you just give us an example of a customer you're working with and how this really the ROI on the stuff yeah okay so we're working with some shipping companies who of course they've got the little responders when they delivered the package they have hundreds maybe as many as a few thousand locations they want to be able to put that data right neck in those locations so that the response on that package gets that information faster they they get closure on that they are able to bill faster they're able to move on to the next item faster provide the information to their customers faster those are the real live examples that we're seeing with the Middlesex and spanner type of scenario we actually did a demo of this at vmworld last year we just give an example where and we did a test of going across the internet and then going across a dedicated circuit and we painted us one page one screen and it took a second going across the internet and it took a half a second to go across the dedicated circuit and so it's like will you take that one page and it's the thousands of pages that one of your employees goes through in a day and then multiply it by your thousands of ploys that's not where we're adding up to cost savings more efficiencies of your employees when they can get that information faster all right so one of the important areas here is that is the management piece so we can understand your partnering deeply with VMware is it primarily the V realized suite for from management tooling anything what's what's special about the CenturyLink offering so relative to my product offering is in the private cloud we actually have because here's the situation customers don't just have one cloud we all know the true story is it's it's not about public or private it's about both it's not about one cloud or one other cloud is about many and so we actually through an acquisition we had done we created a product called cloud application manager it's a multi cloud management product that is designed today to support from one interface I can have a W us as your Google my private cloud product we call the centrally private cloud on VMware cloud foundation our public cloud product all from one interface I can manage my workloads I can monitor the oasis we will manage a monitor those OS as an application for the customer Larrin will be call our managed services anywhere a methodology - for customers that want that management to provide that for them right so it's it's really about it being able to take all those different environments in that hybrid IT solution the vast majority of enterprise folks either have one or are stuck with right and be able to trim it down to singular interfaces to be able to support them how closely are you working with customers on the actual implementation onboarding of these new technologies and making sure that employees are also really onboard with these things so well first of all when we work through solutions with our customers we don't just say here pick this from a menu and so we sit down and design for them so so we're very specific in how we've designed our products to where we actually allow over a thousand configuration options so we want that you have to right-size the infrastructure that's what you start that's the foundation your right size that infrastructure for your work environment for what it is that you're trying to accomplish and you allow flexibility to be able to grow it and so we have flexibility to be able to have RAM or storage to those systems or add more systems give the flexibility to grow as you need to grow whatever but it is you want to push it's growing on you fine so so that's where we start with this in that design aspect of this and that's how we solution all of our mana Hosting sub products great well Steve you started this conversation at cube Ricky you're ending a cube alum so thanks so much for coming on the show well thank you for having us having me all right appreciate it I'm Rebecca Nightforce - minimun we will have much more of the cubes live coverage of Dell technologies world coming up in just a little bit

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018, brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> And welcome back to Las Vegas. We are live here at AWS re:Invent along with Justin Moore and I'm John Wallis. I know when you travel these days, all you want is, you want it to work, right? >> Yeah. >> We just want to get there. Well, I'll tell you what, Phil Wood from EasyJet wants you to get there as well. As does Matt Leonard from CenturyLink. Gentlemen, glad to have you with us. >> Thanks very much. >> We appreciate it. >> EasyJet, a European-based carrier just north of London, so we're talking about air travel. You are, as we've just recently learned, you are a Catalyst Award winner from CenturyLink, there's a reason for that and that's a point of distinction. So Matt, if you would maybe take us through a little bit about what EasyJet did to earn that distinction. >> Sure, the Catalyst Award is an award that we give out in combination with VMware to kind of highlight customers that are doing new and exciting things with regard to digital transformation. We've been a provider of services and a partner with EasyJet for a long time and they've done some really cool things with regard to services they provide their end customers. And we play a very very small part of that. Two exciting things that are my personal favorites with regard to EasyJet is the Look and Book service. So within the application if you want to book a new trip you normally have to type in the airport that you want to go to, and you have to figure out what's the name of the airport, or the three-digit code. With the EasyJet application you can upload a picture and it has intelligence that's used to figure out that picture and what that landmark is and then what the nearest airport is. So that's pretty exciting. And the second exciting thing within the application >> is a trip in one tap. So you can basically justdial in how much money you want to spend for a trip, hit the Go button, in literally one tap it'll recommend a city, a hotel, and a fun and exciting thing that's happening during that duration of time. So for last minute travelers, my family's certainly one of those, we got a free period of time, one tap it'll tell you where to stay, how to get there with EasyJet and then what's exciting happening within that city. >> So I could put in, I say, I want to spend 300 dollars a ticket, and tap boom, and it'll say you can go to Brussels, you can go to Amsterdam but you can't make it to Dublin this weekend, right? Or whatever. I love that. So what has that done for your business in terms of, on a micro level and a macro level, what's it doing in terms of that interface and what's it mean to your business in general? >> As a business, we're 23 years old, so we started very much like a startup and we kind of came in at low-cost airline bracket. But now what we're renowned for is the convenience, and you've got two examples there where our customers love that because it's a convenient way. They don't have to do lots of searching, they can just take the photograph and they know exactly where they're going to go. And that's really what differentiates us is that convenience and the customer experience that we offer to all of our customers. We have a lot of customers. We have 90 million passengers a year. They come to us because they know not just that we give great value but that experience. So what it's done, it's made us grow. And that's literally how we continue to grow is to expand those customer services and Centurylink have been a part of that journey for over half of our tenure as an airline. >> It sounds like technology is actually right on the edge of driving that value for customers and making things easy. Like just the experience of being able to walk out and take a photo of something and say, I want to go here. I would like to go out and see if I can trick it by taking a photo of the Eiffel Tower out in the back here. >> We'll go and try it out in a bit. >> I'm confident. >> We'll see how it goes. That's making use of a whole bunch of technologies. It's got mobile technology in there, it's got image recognition, it's got machine learning. What else are you seeing at the show here at AWS, what are some of the technologies that you think will drive the next evolution of things, what's going to win you the next award? >> I think one of the things I've really been looking at is around data and around the personalization. So we talked about customer experience but our whole journey of taking a plane, taking a holiday, for example, it's from the moment you book it to the moment you get back. There's so many touch points during that and there's so much data that we can take from that. So I've been really interested in looking at how different organizations and how Amazon have been using data. I also think you can't come to a show like this without looking at machine learning and AI. We're using aspects of that in how we analyze our data, but that's certainly something I think's going to change the airline industry moving forward. >> How important is a partnership with someone like CenturyLink in making sure that you get the best use of these technologies? >> Matt talked about that they have a small part to play but you've got to understand that every single customer, every single search on our website goes through a network. In order for us to connect to our customers, be they booking a flight, be they on a flight, we've got to go through a reliable network. And the way I describe it, it needs to be effortless. It needs to just work. You mentioned that right at the beginning. But I also think as well for us to exploit technologies like the cloud, which is what we're starting to invest a lot more into, we need a partner who can help us on that journey. So again, that's where CenturyLink and the partnership we've got has been absolutely crucial. The things that we're doing with CenturyLink around making sure that we're only paying for our network for what we use. We're an airline. Our airports are seasonal so kind of traditional networks, what you'll end up doing is paying for bandwidth all year, when in the winter seasons if you're not flying there that's dead money. So it's simple things like that but that makes a huge difference towards my cost base perspective. >> And time of day, I assume that affects that as well? >> Absolutely. I mean, clearly in our summer periods we fly a lot, so time of day during the summer, there's not that many hours we don't fly. >> You get a lot of daylight over there, right? (laughter) >> But certainly in winter where we have our kind of summer destinations, it makes a big big difference. And that's cost we pass on to the customer as well which is massively important. >> What is it about the customer that you don't know? You talked about AI, what that could do for you down the road. How much information, how much data do you think you can extract from the customer to make that experience even better, and what do you need to know about them, and how will CenturyLink help you get there? >> You need to know everything. I mean, we know that we sell a hundred seventy million bacon sandwiches a year. Whether that's useful or not, but we know that. >> There's hungry people. >> That's a lot of bacon. >> It is a lot. But it means that we know the type of food that our customers want to eat, we know the top destinations, even knowing how long between booking a flight and actually flying. So we know from a price perspective and from a making sure our planes are full or making sure we're not overselling our flights. All of that information, there's just a wealth of data that you're getting out there. And it's not just customers. One of the big factors for us is safety. So we use our data now to analyze maintenance. So we have predicted maintenance around when's the right time to put in spare parts but also what's the most efficient time so that we're not disrupting the customer. So actually we may want to bring a maintenance cycle sooner so we can open up more routes for customers to fly when they want to. So it's very hard to answer that question cause every day we're coming up with new ideas or new bits of information that at the time we never thought we needed to know but that actually turns out to be an absolutely crucial part of our offer. >> That's not an unusual thing for most people in a world where there's this much dynamic, this much change going on. So what process do you run through to figure out, where should we be looking to find out the next set of optimizations? Or how do you discover what is the next thing that you should work on, like where does the idea for, maybe we should build this app. Where does that come from? >> I don't think there's one model. I think what's always been at the heart of EasyJet is innovation, and we've always focused on the customer. So we have a great loyalty scheme and our customers are very loyal. We have 75% loyalty with our customers which is phenomenal. We get a lot of feedback and that feedback drives a lot of the ideas that we push forward. So I think it's a mixture of our passion, it's a mixture of our experience, but I'd say that feedback from the customer, that drives a lot of the ideas that we do moving forward. >> From the CenturyLink perspective, you received certification for the MSP designation. >> Yup. >> Working in the travel business, what does that do, or how does that MSP certification translate over to learning about a different industry, to applying different approaches, unique approaches, because it's not one size fits all. They have very, very specific challenges that you're trying to address. >> Yeah, so on a broader sense, our mission with clients like EasyJet and customers interested in the cloud is really to connect, migrate, and then manage their workloads within the cloud. That's really what we're focused on. And there's certainly commonalities within verticals but every customer's different, and really assessing, starting with the customer, and that's a common thing that I think both EasyJet as well as CenturyLink and certainly Amazon have in common, really focused on that customer journey. One of the approaches that we take through a program called CustomerLink is put the customer right in the center of the team and we've applied the Agile methodology to that customer engagement process. So we do a standup meeting once every two weeks, we do sprints once every two weeks. A lot of our customers are part of that board that we use to activate the sprint and to define priorities and what actions are. So really pulling the whole team together across different departments, focusing on the customer first, and in many cases the customer's customer first cause a lot of your priorities are based on what your customers are after, and really making sure that we're working on the right activity in a very lean way, pulling away as much waste as possible that aren't contributing to adding value to the customer journey. >> And then from your side of the fence going forward, you've mentioned four or five general areas, you've said, we could improve here, we could look at this, we could look at that. How do you prioritize and say, okay, let's focus here now and then we'll move on. So if you had to focus now, or for the next twelve months, what would that be on? >> So we've actually just relaunched our strategy. At the heart we are an airline so our priority is about being number one or number two in all the primary airports. We've got to keep that. But we also recognize from the data that the amount of our customers who will book hotels or book further products through some of our partners that's something that we can actually capitalize on. So we're looking more into holidays now. Taking that customer centricity, and how do we make the end-to-end journey for our customers so including travel to and from airport and the whole day. So that's a priority for us. Continue building our customer loyalty. So as much as we pride ourselves on loyalty, we believe there's a lot more you can do. I think the airline loyalty schemes need to be shaken up a little bit more. If you look in the retail sector or things like that they're focusing on different things. It's no longer just the case of air miles. People want speedier boarding, or they want a better experience, better seating arrangements. So we're looking at our loyalty. And then also business. We talk about, we've got really good slots for when we fly planes. And they're slots that are competitive to a business traveler. So that's our three main areas, I would say, are business, holidays, and loyalty. >> Matt, you're going to be in business for a while. I think you're okay. If you could work on legroom, I'm sold. Matt and Phil, thank you for being with us. We appreciate the time. Join us here on theCUBE. You're watching our live coverage from Las Vegas at AWS re:Invent. (electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas it's theCUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel and their ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to the Sands. We're live in Las Vegas here on theCUBE as we continue our coverage of AWS re:Invent. Along with Justin Warren, I'm John Walls. We're now joined by Dave Shacochis, who is Vice President of Product and Hybrid IT at Centurylink. Dave, good to see you again. >> Yeah, great to be back. Good to be back on theCube, good to talk to you John. >> Excellent. And by the way, you win the GQ award. >> All right. >> Everybody raving about that black, velvet you've got going on. >> 50,000 people here at re:Invent. If I'm in the lead- >> That looks very strong. >> I'm in the lead at the turn, that's good to hear. >> Best Dressed award. >> Very nice. All right, well big news though for you guys. Obviously being designated as the managed services provider, reaching that certification with AWS, tell us about that, about that process and what it's meaning to your business, and what it means to your customers. >> Yeah, AWS is such a customer-focused organization. They're very passionate about their end customers, and solving problems. But they've also built up a huge partner network, and what Terry Wise and the team have built is a real partner-relevant organization. And so what they've really done to make it a level playing field, to be as passionate about their partners as they are about their end customers, hopefully intending to solve problems for customers as well, is really to put a lot of thought into making sure that when they have a competency or a certification, that it's no joke to get through. It's a serious exercise to go through something like a managed service provider or an MSP certification. We had that get finished up for us several months ago, and we've been rolling that into our managed cloud practice, and really helping our customers with the three key criteria of what AWS really wants to have its partners do, which is really design and plan and be able to orchestrate workloads, and model workloads for customers, and understand how and where they're going to deploy and migrate into the cloud. They really want to see and make sure that you're doing next generation work during the operational run phase. Not just are you monitoring and managing those workloads in those environments, but are you doing predictive analytics? Are you starting to take a look at trends inside the data? Are you using Big Data to actually augment your management practices? Right? Not traditional ITEL just in a cloud location, but really next generation managed services. They measure and they certify all that. And then the third thing they want to do is take a look at how are you reporting? How are you helping the customer optimize and analyze cost, and become as efficient as they can with their deployment of AWS services. So it's a significant exercise to go through. It really made our service better. And quite honestly, that's a great example of AWS being customer-focused by making sure that the partners they want to work with can hit a certain level-- >> Step up your game. >> Hit a certain bar to be able to drive that value for their end customers. >> Yep. >> Yeah. So for the customers who were choosing Centurylink to come to something like AWS, what is it about Centurylink that they like? That they would rather deal with you than go, say direct to AWS and try to do everything themselves? >> I think there's really sort of two or three real differentiators for Centurylink when we work with our customers. Probably the first and foremost is that hybrid nature of how we can meet the customers where they are. Centurylink has been running and managing and working in the data center space for a good 15 to 20 years. We've been running and managing private clouds and hosted compute environments for as long as there has been such a category in the industry. With all the different heritage that rolls into Centurylink from an IT Services perspective. So they really come for the experience and the pedigree, and the complexity, friendliness. But they also come for the fact that we can meet them where they are, whether it's inside their current data center, help them do data center consolidation, help them move into hosted centers, and then help them on that journey, 'cause so much of the enterprise is still very much on a journey, right? There may be projects that are firing up to the cloud, there are a lot of organizations that are ready to make the full leap and go all-in on the cloud, but by and large there's some kind of a hybrid environment where they're still looking at the different form factors, and they're very much on a journey to get from where they are today to where they can be more agile. >> Yeah. >> So this is the experience that we have. But then what we really, and there's lots of companies out there that have good experience, they have good tools, they have experience running and managing and monitoring. There's a lot of other companies that have the MSB certification. What Centurylink has that's really a deep investment is all the network optionality and the network control that we have. So not only can we do managed services inside AWS, we can also do the managed network that gets the traffic and gets the workload to AWS. >> Right. >> And that's a real critical differentiator. Not only can we get those connections set up and configured, we can also manage those environments and then secure those environments. So there's a lot of investment that Centurylink has put into our managed cloud practice, augmented by managed networking and managed security. The assets that Centurylink brings to bear with regards to our security portfolio and our network portfolio, come from years of significant investment. One of the largest global IP backbones in the world. We've been gleaming network and security telemetry from that network, and building threat patterns and threat management services inside the core of our network. So really, customers who work with us have a secure, consistent, reliable path to the cloud, and then they get the managed services, the MSB certified managed services, once they're there. >> Yeah. So speaking of connections, I believe that you've announced a product in, I think it was October, called Direct Connections. >> Yes. >> Is that right? Tell me more about what that is. >> Sure so that's that sort of, for those of you tracking my hand waving at home, you know the network stuff over here. Inside our network portfolio there is ... our cloud connect service is one of most deeply connected to AWS services out there. So we're a significant direct connect partner. We drive an ethernet-based service into AWS in all their major regions, and then we have that cloud connect service run to hundreds of global multi-tenant data centers as well as hundreds of thousands of enterprise locations. So we have, what we launched there back in October was the latest version of cloud connect, which we call Dynamic Connections. It's a feature within cloud connect that allows us to take a global ethernet circuit, tying into AWS, and make that happen in minutes. That didn't exist before. So a lot of people think about AWS direct connect, and they can configure direct connect and tie it up to their VPC, then they start the Telecom process that could take weeks and or months, and it depends on who they're working with, and who they're buying from. >> Yeah. >> If you're in a building that's on net with us, or your traditional data center is one of the data centers, the many hundreds of data centers that are on net with us, we can go and get that connection turned up, all of the automation, and once you get that circuit created, you can dial it up and dial it back, a gig, ten gigs, anywhere in between. You can go below a gig, wherever you need to. You have complete control over the creation of a new circuit, which is great for retail locations. Retail customers like this as they're bringing in new facilities, and bringing mixed-use facilities on net, and they're bringing new facilities that they need to be able to trunk back to their data center in the cloud. We can use dynamic connections to go and help them create new locations, but then as the business needs change at those locations, they can dial up and dial down bandwidth, and really have a rich level of control for how the traffic is being routed and passed. >> Yeah, having spoken to customers in the past, that is actually quite valuable. It has been quite painful to go through that process. >> A lot of big cloud migrations, once they're done with them, one of the problems you run into is, "Well, I never really thought through and anticipated what the network path would look like after I made that move to the cloud." >> Yeah. >> And that's one of things we try to do with our customers at the onset of an engagement, is not just say, "Let's start stampeding to the cloud right away." Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but let's think through the network design first. Who are your users? What are the new traffic patterns going to look like? And what are the hybrids that you're going to be building, where something that's in the cloud needs to talk back to your corporate data center? Do you have enough bandwidth and do you have a low enough latency connection between the two? >> Yeah. >> Early this week you were talking about Milliseconds Matter, right? You had a presentation that you were featuring that. So what does that mean to your AWS customers? That's kind of intuitive, they do matter. >> Sure. >> What was the perspective that you were bringing to that and the latency issue? >> Yeah, so we did a presentation here earlier in the show, where we really illustrated that combination I was referring to earlier, of our MSP certified managed offering coupled with our cloud connect network automation. What we've really done a lot of work with around cloud connect is creating a service that has a few different user experiences. If you're a network engineer, if you're somebody who's running a corporate network, you really want to get in and really just get a layer to interface from Centurylink, optimize your BGP routing and do all of those sort of Telecom-grade configurations, you can do that with Centurylink cloud connect. We also have a very straight-forward version. In Andy's keynote this morning, one of the things he was really talking about, it really spoke to me, was this idea of, well there are builders who want to use the tools, and there are builders who just want instructions. >> Yeah. >> Builders who just want to dump the IKEA parts out and put the thing together. And then there's some people that want to sit there with a lathe and handcraft everything. So different types of builders. We have a version of cloud connect that can appeal to the builder who doesn't necessarily want to get down in the weeds of networking, and they just want to basically take a workload and connect it to the right private network link. And so that higher level version of cloud connect is what we demonstrated earlier today, and really the fundamental premise of Milliseconds Matter is network orchestration and cloud orchestration coupled together gives you a whole lot greater level of control. And that's where we're starting to see all these emerging use cases, where you can certainly think about migrating everything to the cloud, but then you have to start thinking about where do those workloads need to run? What does the future look like, in terms of IoT devices and sensors and video telemetry and environmental telemetry, all the different sources of data that organizations can use to go and innovate around. Where you're going to run that business logic is going to run closer and closer to the edge for a lot industries: in retail, in healthcare, in a lot of government institutions, in hospitality. So basically the fundamental premise of Milliseconds Matter is have control of your cloud, but then also have control over your network, and hopefully have the two in concert with one another. And that's what we're fundamentally driving at with our service platform. >> Sounds great. >> And real quick, when you talk about all this, in a 5G world, all of a sudden when you talk about edge, you talk about- >> Sure. >> That's a game changer, is it not? >> Well it is. 5G is still so emergent. There's a lot that's there. There's a lot there that's 5G. There's still 4GLTE. There's still lots of different ways to go and get all that data trunked together. And it doesn't stay on LTE forever, right? Eventually it all starts to get to an IP backbone, and then that's where you still have a lot of latency optimizations and route optimizations that you want to be able to deal with. So we absolutely look at LTE as something that we think is a huge opportunity with a lot of our partners that we're working with across our network footprint, to be able to use LTE as a new access strategy, just like we've used just about all the other access strategies that are out there. >> Excellent. Good to see you again. >> Yeah, great to see you, John. >> See you down the road soon, I hope. >> For sure. >> All right, thank you for joining us. Dave Shacochis joining us here from Centurylink. Back with more from AWS re:Invent. You're watching theCube. (electronic music)

>> Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE covering AWS re:Invent 2018. Brought to you by Amazon Web Services, Intel, and their ecosystem partners. >> Hey everyone, I'm John Furrier, co-host of theCUBE here live in Las Vegas where Amazon Web Services, AWS re:Invent 2018. Our sixth year covering it, presented by Intel and AWS. Our next guest is Paul Savill, Senior Vice President of core network and technology for CenturyLink. Welcome to theCUBE, good to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> Thanks, really glad to be here. >> So one of the things we've been covering on SiliconANGLE and theCUBE is that the holy trinity of infrastructure is storage, network, and compute, never going away but it's evolving as the market evolves. You guys have been providing connectivity and core network. >> Right. >> Really high availability bandwidth and connectivity for many, many years. Now you guys are in the middle of a seat change, what's your story? What are you guys doing at re:Invent? You guys are partners, your logo is everywhere, What's your story? Why are you here? What are you talking about at re:Invent this year? >> Sure, yeah. You know I really do believe it is a seat change. We've actually been working with AWS for many years and when AWS first started, we were one of the major internet service providers for AWS and access into AWS cloud services, but a few years ago we really started seeing this seat change start to happen because Enterprise customers started asking for weird things from us. They actually wanted to order dedicated 10 gigabit optical waves from their Enterprise location into the AWS platform, and we were thinking everything should come through the public internet, why are people doing this? And really, what was driving it, was issues around performance, concerns around security, and so we're starting to see the network really start to play a major role in how cloud services and how performance of cloud-based applications are delivered. >> We're here in day two of re:Invent, we've got two more days to go. Andy Jackson's got his big keynote, he's the CEO he's got his big keynote tomorrow morning. We're expecting to hear latency to be a big part of his keynote. Specifically as Amazon evolves their strategy from being public cloud, where all the action is, to having a cloud version on premise. >> Right >> Because of latency and heritage or legacy workloads on premise aren't going away certainly. Maybe their footprint might be smaller, I'd buy that, but it's not going away. But connectivity and latency is now at the front of the conversation again because data and compute have that relationship. I don't want to be moving date around, if I do it better be low latency, but I want to run compute over the network, I want to send some compute to the edge. So latency is important. Talk about this, because you gave a talk here around milliseconds matter, I love that line, because they do matter now. >> They do, yeah. >> Talk about that concept. >> Sure, yeah. We're absolutely seeing it and the reason we kind of came up with that tag line is because more and more as we've been working with enterprises on networking solutions, we've found that this is really true in how well their applications perform in the cloud, and I really do applaud Jausi and AWS for working on that solution to deliver, to the prim, some of the AWS capabilities. But really we see the market evolving, where in the future it's a trade off between latency and the amount of bandwidth and how the performance needs to be applied across the field. Because we believe that some things will make a lot of sense to be hosted out of the cloud core, where there's major iron, major storage and compute, some things can be distributed on the prim, but then other things make more sense to be hosted out of somewhere on the far edge where it can serve multiple locations. It may be more efficient that way, because maybe you don't want to haul all the bandwidth, or huge amounts of data very long distances, that becomes expensive. >> Well bandwidths cost, it's a cost to you. >> It's still a cost, yeah. >> Latency, one, is a performance overhead cost on that that could hurt the application, but there's also a cost, there's actual financial cost. >> Yes, there is. >> Talk about this concept of latency in context to the new kinds of applications, because what's going on is that as compute, and as you mentioned, storage, start to get more functionality, specifically compute, >> Yes >> Things happen differently. I've been studying AI, I've been a computer science major since the 80's, and AI's been around since the 80's and earlier, but all those concepts just didn't have the compute capability and now they do, now machine learning is on fire, that's a renaissance. Compute can help connectivity, you just mentioned a huge case there, so this is powering new software applications that no one has ever seen before. >> That's right. >> How are these new networks workloads and applications changing connectivity? Give some examples, what are some of the things you guys are seeing as use cases running over the connectivity? >> Sure. So we're seeing a lot of different use cases, and you're right, it really is transforming. An example of this is retail robotics for instance. We're seeing very real applications where large retail customers want to drive robotics in their many retail store locations but it's just not affordable to put that whole hardware software stack in every single store to run those robotics, but then if you try to run those robotics from an application that hosted in a cloud somewhere a thousand miles away then it doesn't have the latency performance that it needs to accurately run those robotics in the store. So we believe that what we're starting to see is this transformation where applications are going to be broken up into these microservices where parts of it's going to run in the cloud core, part of it's going to run in the prim, and part of it's going to run on the near edge where things are more efficient to run for certain types of applications. >> It's kind of like a human. You got your brains and you got your arms and legs to move around. So the brains can be in the cloud, and then whatever is going on at the edge can have more compute. Give some other examples. You and I were talking before we came on camera about video retail analytics. >> Righ, uh huh. >> Pretty obvious when you think about it, but not obvious when you don't have cloud. So talk about video analytics. >> Yeah, that's another important driver is with all of the AI tools that are being developed and as AI advances and as other things, technology like machine learning, advances, then we want to apply AI to a whole new range of applications. So retail, like video analytics for instance, what we're starting to see is the art of the possible. You may have a retail store that has 30 different video cameras spread up around its store and it's constantly monitoring people's expressions, people's moods as they come in, there's an AI sitting somewhere that's analyzing how people feel when they walk in the store versus how they feel when they walk out. Are they happier when they walk out than when they walk in? Are they really mad when they're in the waiting line someplace, or is there a corner of the store where, real time, there's an AI that's detecting that, hey there's a problem in the corner of the store because people seem like they look upset. That type of analysis, you don't want to feed all of that video, all of those simultaneous video feeds to some AI that's sitting a thousand miles away. That's just too much of a lift in terms of bandwidth and in terms of cost. So the answer is there's this distributed model where portions of the application in the AI is acting at different locations in the network and the network is tying it all together. >> Microservice is going to create a whole new level of capabilities and change how they're implemented and deployed. >> Yes. >> And connectivity still feeds the beast called the application. Also the other thing we're seeing, as we're expected to hear Amazon announce, new kinds of connectivity, whether it be satellite and/or bandwidth to edges. IOT, or the network edge as it's called, where the edge network kind of ends with power and connectivity. Because without power and connectivity it's not on the network, it's not an edge. >> That's right. >> There's a trend to push the boundary of edge. Battery power is lasting longer, so now you need connectivity. How do you guys at Century look at this? So do you guys want to push the boundaries, how are you guys just pushing the boundaries? >> Sure. >> Yeah, IOT is another area that's really changing the business. It's opening up so many new opportunities. When you talk about the edge, it's really funny because people define the edge in so many different ways, and the truth is the edge can vary depending on what the application is. An IOT, if you have a bunch of remote devices that are battery powered that are signaling back to some central application, well then that IOT, those physical devices, are the new edge and they could be very deep into some kind of a market. But there's a lot of different communications technology that can access those. There's 5G wireless that's emerging, or regular wireless. There are applications like LauraNet, which is a very low bandwidth but very cost effective way for small IOT devices to communicate small amounts of data back to a central application. And then there's actual fiber that can be used to serve locations where IOT devices can be feeding very heavy amounts of bandwidth back to applications. >> So it's good for your business? >> It's great for our business. We really see it opening up so many other new avenues for us to serve our customers. >> So I'm going to put you on the spot here. If I asked you a question, what has cloudification done for CenturyLink? How has it changed your business? How would you respond to that question? >> I think that it's made what we do even more critical to the future of how enterprises operate. The reason for that is just the point that you made when we started, which is storage and compute and networking, it's all really coming back together in terms of how it boils down to those things. But networking is becoming a much more important factor in all of this because of the latency issues that are there and the bandwidth amount that is possible to generate. We believe that it's creating an opportunity for us to play a more pivotal role in the whole evolving cloud ecosystem. >> I still think this is such an awesome new area because, again, it's so early. And as storage, network, and compute continues to morph, all of us networking geeks and infrastructure geeks, software geeks are going to actually have an opportunity to reimagine how to use those parts. >> It is, yeah. >> And with microservices and custom silicon, you see what Amazon's done with amapertna. You can have data processing units, connectivity processing units, you can have all kinds of new capabilities. It's a whole new world. >> It is and, you know, interestingly enough organizations are going to have to change. One of the things we see with enterprises is that many enterprises are organized so that those three areas are still completely managed in separate departments. But in this new world of how cloud is crushing all of those things together, those departments are going to have to start working much more closely aligned. I had a customer visit me after our session yesterday and was saying I get the whole thing of how now when you deploy an application in the cloud, you can't just think about the application. You got to think about the network that ties it all togeher. But he says I don't know how to get my organization to do that. They're still so segmented and separated. It's a tough challenge. >> And silos are critical. I just saw a presentation with the FBI director, deputy director of counter terrorism, and they can't put the puzzle pieces together fast enough to evaluate threats because of the databases. She gave an example around the Las Vegas shooting here. Just to go through the video tape of the hotel took 12 people for 20 hours a day for a week to go through that video. They did it in twenty minutes with facial recognition. And they have all this data, so putting those puzzle pieces together is critical. I think connectivity truly is going to be a new kind of backbone. >> Yes, uh huh. >> You guys are doing some good work. Okay, lets get a plug in for you guys real quick. By the way, thanks for the insight. Great stuff here at re:Invent. One year anniversary CenturyLink with level three coming together. Synergies, what are you guys doing? Give the update on the coming one year anniversary of the Synergies. >> Sure. Uh huh. >> What are the Synergies? >> Yeah, we're getting tremendous synergies. In fact, I think if you listen to our analyst reports and our quarterly earnings calls, we're really ahead of plan in that area. We've actually raised our earnings guidance for the year as a result of what was originally expected of us. We're doing really well on that front. I'll tell you the thing that excites me more than synergies is the combined opportunity that we have because of these two companies coming together. Ways that, bringing the companies together, surprised me that we found new opportunities. For instance when you take level three, which is a globally distributed network covering Europe, and Latin America, and North America, and parts of the Pack Rim with fiber and sub sea systems, and combine it with CenturyLink's dense coverage of fiber in North America, then it really creates a stronger ability for this company to reach enterprises with very high performing network solutions. One of the main things that surprised me actually relates to this conference, and that is that CenturyLink was really focused around building out cloud services, working closely with companies like AWS on creating managed services around cloud, building performance tools around managing cloud based applications. Level three was really focused on building out network connectivity in a dynamic way to use the new software defined networking technologies to be the preferred provider of high performance networking to cloud service providers. >> The timing was pretty impeccable on the combination because you were kind of cloudifying before cloud native was called cloud native. You were thinking about it in kind of a dev ops mindset and they were kind of thinking of it from a software agility perspective out of infrastructure. Kind of bring those together. Did I get that right? >> That's exactly right. Level three was thinking about how to make the network consumable on a dynamic basis and on demand basis the same way cloud is. When you combine CenturyLink's capabilities with that then it's just opening up so many new things for us to do, so many new ways that we can deliver value to our enterprise customers. >> Well I'm always hungry for more bandwidth, so come on. You guys lighting up all that fiber? How's all the fiber? >> Yeah, we're expanding dramatically. We're investing heavily in that fiber network. We have around 160,000 enterprise buildings on our network today and we're growing that just as fast as we can. >> So Paul Sevill, you're the guy to call if I want to get some cord network action huh? >> That's right. >> Alright. Thanks for the insight, great to have you. Good luck at the show here at re:Invent. CenturyLink here inside theCUBE powering connectivity. Big part of the theme here at re:Invent this year is powering the edge, getting connectivity to places that need low latency for those workloads. That's the key theme. You guys are right on the trend line here. CenturyLink on theCUBE, I'm John Furrier. Stay with us for more wall to wall coverage after this short break. (upbeat techno music)

>> Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE, covering VMworld 2018. Brought to you by VMware and it's ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas. This is Lisa Martin with theCUBE. We are at Vmworld 2018, Day One. I'm with Justin Warren. Hey Justin. >> Hi Lisa, how you doin'? >> Good. This is VMware's 20th anniversary and we're very excited to welcome two new guests to theCUBE. We've got Scott Brindamour, the Senior Director of the U.S. architect team from CenturyLink. Hey Scott. >> Hello, how are ya? >> Good. And we've got Geoff Thompson, the Senior Director of VMware Cloud Provider Program. Welcome. >> Thank you very much and hello. >> The 20th anniversary of VMware. You've been with VMware a long time. >> Yes. >> Lot of momentum kicked off this show, not just this morning. You guys said you were in here yesterday. >> Yes. >> Just curious to get your perspective, Geoff, on the buzz and the opportunity that you're hearing, not just from your customers but from your partners as well. >> Oh yeah, yeah. I remember the first one I went to way, way back, even before I joined VMware, when I was at Hewlett Packard. Then, it was a little small event back in, I think it was Los Angeles. Now, here we are in 20 thousand something people in Vegas for the nth year running, so the buzz is amazing. This year, I think more than ever for us, because Cloud is just becoming more and more of a focal point and the discussion and topic area for everybody, so the buzz is incredible. Working with CenturyLink here and with Scott is just like an opportunity to dig deeper on all these relationships, find new opportunities to go all in on the strategy that you guys have really already adopted, look at Cloud Verified and take that to the next step. Yep, great so far and looking forward to more. >> So talk to us, Scott, about the partnership that CenturyLink has with VMware. VMware has a massive amount of partners. I saw a stat this morning on stage. What is it about CenturyLink's offering and VMware that's really better together for end users? >> Yeah, I think it's really in our approach and how we really listen to our customers and try to understand where they are in their journey and what they need and not just throw a widget at a customer, but really design a solution that meets their needs and VMware having a flexible architecture and a vision for the future enables us to not only plant the seed today, but where we're going; a lot of co-development with VMware, a lot of partnership with VMware, a lot of making sure our teams that operate the environment and my team on the front lines work with customers are trained and ready for the next technology. I think I've seen a remarkable change in VMware over the last several years in accelerating their road map and working with AWS and a lot of the other partners. It's refreshing. A lot of our business is private Cloud on VMware. We've been a big partner for a long time and the VMware Verified is something we hold dear and we look forward to the relationship ongoing. >> Yeah, that focus on Cloud came through loud and strong in the keynote today and you mentioned it here, the private Cloud, hybrid Cloud, multi Cloud. CenturyLink has a rich heritage in networking and networking is vital for managing Cloud. So tell us a bit more about how CenturyLink's networking skills helps customers to understand how they can manage this multi-Cloud universe they have to live in now. >> Sure and maybe I should even talk about, the viewers that don't know what CenturyLink is. I've been with the company for 15 years, a company called Savvis, but we've made a number of different acquisitions over the years to gain different technology areas, where there'd be ERP, where there'd be dev opps capabilities in the public Cloud, where there'd be Cloud management platforms, et cetera. Now, we see more data is being moved outside of the data center and more data is being originated outside the data center, so customers are really saying, what do I do with all this data? Where do I put my apps? I can't put it in my four walls. I want to move it to the Cloud. Not every customer is on the same path at the same rate and can accept the change. I think the biggest thing we do is helping customers manage pieces of that portfolio, but it's not just a take-over kind of an old ITO play. It's a co-sourcing kind of play, a co-management model where they may have some skills in one area but deficient in another. We can help them with AWS, for instance. We can help them with the new software-defined V-conformate foundation technologies that VMware is going to as well, and bring the network components as well, so that a workload that's running on premise can work and perform just as well off premise by providing that private network connectivity or public network connectivity to those end users as well. >> You mentioned that partnership idea. I'm keen to understand the partnership you can provide essentially as a service provider. Customers rely on service providers a lot to help them manage their own infrastructure, in conjunction with the vendors. So, tell us a bit more about how your partnership with VMware works for customers. >> Yeah, we work a lot with-- VMware at its roots was a software company, so lately, selling services and selling services to clients that are not just a software skew in a software package, so a lot of interaction with VMware client teams and doing strategic discussions with some of our key clients about how we can bring them to the next generation and buying a private Cloud as a service, instead of just selling them a VMware license and have the customer try and figure it out. So, how do we get a customer on the same path and working together to do a lot of that together with our clients, and really making sure we're a partnership and our sales teams are going out to customers together is a big part of6 that. >> Right. >> Yeah, I think from our side, CentralLink is a strategic global partner of ours, so that means several things. The most important thing is we get an opportunity to have more and more briefings together, go deeper on our global strategy as a combined unit so we can look at new technologies that are comin6g down the pike. You can assess them and decide if there's a customer opportunity there and if there is, we'll bring our Cloud practice team in. We'll look at how we take that opportunity and make it a go-to-market strategy together and then we'll go and do sell with. We'll go out into our field teams. We'll educate them on what the offering is and then VMware and CentralLink is co-selling that solution. >> Yeah, I think a lot of the VMware sellers, the public Cloud threat that they have and the move to the public Cloud, how does that still co-exist with customers? I still strongly see that there's a lot of legacy apps. We were talking earlier about only 20% of workloads have moved to the Cloud. There's still a lot of legacy apps that are on VMware that are their crown jewels that are running their companies. They just need to deliver that in a new model and that's where a partner like CentralLink can help, to move it out of their data centers, to move it into VMware on AWS and help a customer understand what are the right workloads to move there, do I need to replatform it, when is it ready, how do I migrate it and how not to disrupt their operations and then manage it, if the customer doesn't have the capabilities to do it off their own premise and skill sets. It's a totally different mindset managing it off your premise than inside your four walls. >> So when you're talking to a customer at the outset of an organization that has multiple Clouds maybe driven by application type, maybe driven by that on a combination of acquisitions. Where does that business conversation start? Are you starting at the C-suite level? Are you starting there to really help the business leaders understand how to extract the power of their data? Tell us a little bit about how do you help them with a multi-phased approach. >> Sure. We definitely talk to the C-suite, CIO, whoever is leading the strategy but it depends on the company. A lot of that's actually done in the line of business, the more innovative lines of business that are transferring their business that have done a first mover. You hear a lot about shadow IT, where the business is going around IT because IT can't move fast enough. CIOs who are transformative, we're typically working with them and we're trying to figure out where they are in their strategy. Are they an early adopter or are they a lagger, do they not have a strategy and then understand; do they want to take a lot of risk and move quickly. Do they want to do it slowly and not disrupt their business. Depending upon the culture and the risk nature of their organization and what is actually running on that infrastructure they're going to move, you got to make those decisions. We call it, in CentralLink terms, my team talks about what's called best execution venue. We're agnostic. We're obviously a big VMware partner, but we also do resale solutions on Azure and AWS as well, as we're a data center provider and we can put it in our four walls on old legacy dedicated server environments as well. Whatever the right venue for our customer is, which is typically going to be hybrid, some on public Cloud, some on private Cloud, some on premise, some off premise and even more moving out to the edge, that customers want to do workloads in smaller quantities in kind of a dynamic nature, spinning up and spinning down, that we work with the clients to figure out what's the right execution venue; cost factor, who's going to manage it, what's the best place to locate it, does it need to be secure, governed, is their data sovereignty or compliance regulations on it. Then, ultimately, how they're going to scale their business and what their vision is to automate as much as possible and standardize it. You heard it today this morning; it's all about automation. So, how can they automate and how can they reduce the labor that the individual persons on the keystrokes and automate the infrastructure and make it look the same. I think the software-defined data center model that VMware has is a step in the right direction and there's a big uptake on customers in that environment today. >> Yeah, we're hearing a lot today, I think Lisa, of people saying it's customer choice. The ability to automate things but in the way that I choose to do it and transforming at the speed I need to do it. It's coming up quite a lot. Maybe you could tell us a bit more from the VMware perspective about how you're enabling that customer choice and we heard a lot about the automation, so how does the automation work with partners in enabling customers to be able to transform their business. >> For us, it's about we give choice and flexibility so within our program, it's all about making sure that we give everything that we build for ourselves and our end user customers, giving that to our partners. So, in terms of Scott and CentralLink, we give them the tools to go and build the Cloud and then set up the automated operations for them to expose to their end user customers and then we also leverage VMware Cloud on AWS, so we made that available to the program as well. So, our partners have choice in flexibility and ease of operations and then they expose that to their customers as well, so it's win-win-win, I think there. >> Yeah, and the keynote this morning, it was SDDC, software-defined data center from VMware was talked about as a self-driving data center and that's ultimately what we see as well in partnership with VMware that a lot of customers understand the VMware tool sets. Extending that to a new platform that's software defined and enabling automation, that it can ultimately one day drive itself, so customers can automate the deployment of applications they're running on, something that can be spun up on AWS very quickly. Applications can be migrated over automatically with tools, managed and then no one responding to an alert that a VM or an application is down, it can autocorrect itself and it really could be automated in the future. We see that and certainly all the tools and capabilities that VMware puts in place that enable that is something that we subscribe, we use it ourselves and we have our customers use it as well. >> I'm curious what your take is, Scott, on the announcements that Andy Jassy made this morning on the stage with Pat Gelsinger. They announced VMware Cloud on AWS a year ago at this same event. There's been a lot of momentum. &They talked about the different M releases now going everywhere. From a partnership perspective, what does that mean to CentralLink and how do you think that will positively impact your business? >> Well, there's two sides of our business. We have a very large, obviously, networking business and we have a hosting and Cloud and data center business, so we see the two of them coming together. I talked about the data center dying and everything moving off; how do you network that all together, but we have a very large retail customer in the, let's say, fast food chicken business, I'll keep it at that level. We started off hosting a lot of their critical applications that run their stores and understand what's the best place to put stores and store operations. We also, from the networking side in acquiring Level three, they had a lot of the networking capabilities. They now want a single platform to run store operations from a network, from a virtual desktop, from an email, from an order fulfillment, supply chain management, all to be contained in a particular region that you can manage it locally without all the data going back. So, the ability to have a software-defined smaller component that can run it that can not only have the data center and the Cloud component as private, to keep the data safe and non-public, but also the network software-defined on one platform together with one provider that can manage the whole thing. Now you're distributing your data out, the network becomes more important, the performance of the network, the resilience of the network becomes more important too. That environment goes down, you don't sell any more chicken. That's the biggest thing that customers are seeing, is converging of those capabilities together and I think there's very few providers out there that can speak both those languages and provide both of those to clients today. >> Taking those benefits all the way out, for what the infrastructure enables from a cost in speed perspective, the Board of Directors at said chicken chain, what are they actually benefitting from? It might be this invisible software, but from a business perspective, how is this going to impact their business? Selling more chicken? >> Yeah, it's basically, they have a strategy to continue to be in more markets and the more markets they do, the time to set up and deploy infrastructure and have that ready, that's the biggest enabler. To have the store front, to have the store ready, then all the infrastructure that supports the store, especially now you have people, they can order chicken on their phones, loyalty, they can place their order ahead of time and pick it up, they don't have to go through drive-through any more, things of that nature. Everything becomes digitized and the I want it now generation that we live in today, that'll accelerate their ability to deliver services to the store and then react to the changes in the market as they happen. Everything is digital now. That's the biggest thing, is growth through stores, growth through being able to meet the demands of the stores as they change going forward, so very dynamic. >> Awesome. Scott, Geoff, thank you so much for joining us on theCUBE. You're now theCUBE alumni. We'll give you some stickers. >> Yeah, stickers. Great thank you. >> We appreciate you guys sharing what's new. >> Thanks for your time as well. It's such really good VMware. >> Thanks. >> Appreciate it. >> For Justin Warren, my co-host, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE from Vmworld Las Vegas 2018. Stick around, we'll be right back. (techno music)

>> From Orlando Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018, brought to you by NetApp. >> Welcome to theCUBE. I'm Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend and we are in Orlando at SAP SAPPHIRE NOW 2018. This is a huge event. Not just 20,000 people here but there's about a million people SAP SAS are going to engage with their life and on-demand video experiences for Sapphire, amazing. We are excited to welcome for the first time to theCUBE Jinesh Jain the VP of Global Delivery at CenturyLink. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you, thank you guys for having me here. >> The theme in this event is really around what SAP is doing to enable the intelligent enterprise. This is really beyond digital transformation where customers have to have a customer centric view. It's about infusing and embedding emerging and advanced technologies, AI machine learning into business processes. How is CenturyLink helping customers on that transformation journey? >> I think that's a great question. Let me give you a little bit of background behind what CenturyLink is all about because this is all SAP here in this event right? CenturyLink is all about connecting customers in the in the digital world. And we recently acquired Level 3, and with that Level 3 acquisition we became now, we provide trusted connections to all the connected world, you know all the network world. So you can imagine in a digital transformation you need a very strong foundation when it comes to connectivity, network, infrastructure and security behind that and that's what CenturyLink does. That's our core business and with that journey as we started the journey, we have 60 plus datacenters as part of CenturyLink core strategic assets. We have around 500K miles of fiber optics, which is one of the, we are the second largest in the United States when it comes to network connectivity and redundancy across. And in 60 plus countries, I think all this strategic assets mix provides us very strong foundation for any customers who is embarking this digital journey. It reminds me of one of those recent survey done by McKinsey Global Institute, where they said that they figured out that digitization index for Europe was 12% and for North America was little better around 18%. But look at the gap, how much of gap is there in terms of exploring the full potential of digitization. So I think our journey in terms of giving the digital transformation starts from our strong foundation of our strategic assets of data centers network and security, along with that as you mentioned about the intelligent enterprise, we have a very strong practice in terms of not just descriptive analytics, but we do prescriptive analytics. We do machine learning. We have IOT and we do big data analysis as well. So all these things combined together provides a complete end-to-end solution. And of course SAP plays a big play here and we can talk about that in terms of what we do on the SAP side as well. >> So let's add some more color to that. When I think of CenturyLink, I think about the 60 data centers. Even when I think about SAP what I normally consider CenturyLink's role traditionally in a SAP relationship is that you know what CenturyLink to get me better either closer to my customers so that data injection can happen faster with lower latency. When I think of CenturyLink, I think of lower latency to hyper scale cloud providers so that if I have hold on applications I can get closer to my core SAP data, but what I'm hearing is that CenturyLink has greater SAP capability outside of that. Tell us about the SAP practice at CenturyLink. >> I'm glad you asked that because everybody is wondering about CenturyLink and SAP relationship. In fact let me go back in time here. Six years, few years back I would say six, five years back, CenturyLink acquired Cognilytics. Cognilytics was all about deep HANA expertise, deep analytics and all about BI strategy. And then recently a couple of years back, they acquired SEAL Consulting. So these two organizations which CenturyLink acquired, that gave us deep roots into SAP ecosystem in terms of what CenturyLink and SAP can work together. So now let's look at Cognilytics. They were all about HANA, core HANA expertise. They co-innovated with SAP in terms of that HANA analytics. They came out with number of used cases symptoms of predictive science and then when they acquired SEAL Consulting, it was all about yes for HANA transformation, which is absolutely the theme across this Sapphire and for all the SAP customers globally. From SEAL perspective, which is now of course part of CenturyLink, but now we can provide infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, OSDB as a service, which is already part of CenturyLink. Now with SEAL and Cognilytics coming into play, we are end-to-end sharp in terms of SAP strategy, digital transformation strategy, using SAP tools and products, implementation upgrades, application management services, and continual improvement as part of the digital transformation every customer is looking for. I think that's how we are using the strategic assets of CenturyLink as part of with the SAP expertise coming into play. >> So every customer, digital transformation to any business is just, it's you got to do it right or you will lose relevance and go out of business and we've seen a lot of incumbent retailers for example go away because they haven't been able to transform digitally. I read a stat recently that said 70% of siloed digital transformation projects fail. So how does CenturyLink and your expertise with SAP as for with HANA, how do you help customers be successful? Do you come in and see these siloed projects that you know maybe shadow IT had evolved and helped them to break down those silos, so that they can actually facilitate what it is that they need which is that that 360-degree view of their customers. What they want, when they want it, to be able to predict what they're gonna want next. How do you help break down those silos? >> Right, now I think is a known problem, known challenge across all of the customers who are embarking this journey. I'll tell you what. I'll give you a simple, the way we work, our digital strategy is very much aligned with our customer's business and IT goals. So what we do first and foremost is we want to align ourselves with what the business and IT goals are. Let's double click on that right. So if I look at the business goals, so most of the customers today, A, they want to make sure they want to protect the revenue stream right? B, they want to make sure they have real-time position, no latency in terms of their business decision making. And C, they want to make sure that they go into the new markets. They just can't stay silent to same market there. Plus know the unfamiliar competition, which comes up many times. So that's the business aspect of the goals. We want to look at that and make sure that we align our implementation, our strategy to those business goals. If you look at IT side of that, and I tell you what, these are the things which are being missed out with most of the partners in this ecosystem. If I look at the IT side of it, first and foremost we want to make sure that IT think goals are, it's all about innovation. They want to be innovative. They want to have minimal shelf wear so that they can innovate all the time. They want to evolve the resources so they are aligned with the lines of business all the way and that way everybody has a career path, and they are evolving to the market needs. And then lastly it's all about making sure that all the mundane tasks you know if I look at they need to focus on core competency and offload all the routine tasks. And we very much aligned as part of the journey to those business and IT goals. So if you look at our mission, we won't just look at our mission in terms of overall CenturyLink for SAP customers. We want to provide them a private managed secured cloud, which is scalable, which can be commissioned in a week's time with full automation, completely secure, data protected and an uptime of 99.99% and take care of all the lights on kind of routine tasks, so they can focus on their main core competency about business decision, new business, business process design and things like that which are being lagging behind. So that's our key theme in terms of how we drive all the SAP information. >> There's a lot of complexity behind getting this much value out of any platform, whether it's complexity at the data analytics layer, whether it's the networking that needs to be done, the design and deployment of NetApp stack. We're in a conference where all the hyper scalers are here. >> Yes. >> The company smaller than CenturyLink provides larger than CenturyLink. How is CenturyLink uniquely positioned to basically go to whether it's a Fortune 100 customer or someone down level to basically add value where these other providers potentially will trouble at. >> Alright, no I think it's very true, we need to be nimble. I mean you know we can be a big ship, but should not take time to turn. And I completely agree with that. I think what we do is I'll tell you, one of the unique position we have in this market space is you know we can proudly say that we are, we don't need to go to any third party when it comes to data center locations. We have our own 500k lines of fiberoptics. So network is where we provide, we can provide minimal latency from network perspective. We are all over the, we are 60 plus countries. We are into 350 metros. We can do a metro tier. I think if you look at our network, our hosting capabilities our infrastructure capabilities, we are uniquely positioned compared what the customers need today as a one-stop shop or a one hand to shake to make things happen for them. At the same time, we are very nimble for many customers because that's how CenturyLink has grown up. They acquired us, and we were 800 people company. So was other acquisition as well. We can very easily adapt, innovate, comprehend and adapt to the needs of the customers based on our core competency, our solutions which are available, and strategy which is very much fitting most of our customers in the retail space, in CPG space, in manufacturing space, in healthcare, and in life sciences. We have some designated industry solutions as well, which can help us drive those values quicker. At the same time measurable. >> Being nimble I think of you know being adaptive and being flexible but adaptive struck a big, actually Hasso Plattner this morning in his keynote talked about SAP being adaptive in the context, I think he was talking about intelligence. And everybody wants to paint intelligence all over everything and they talked about SAP being adaptive. That kind of aligns with something I read recently that Bill McDermott said, which is where SAP was the last to accept the status quo. I think he was talking about in relation to CRM specifically but the first to change it. So with that spirit of being nimble, being adaptive how are you helping customers adapt to needing to bring on you know edge core millions of devices or customers that go you know what I want to be able to use advanced technologies like AI to make you know my manufacturing smarter or to be able start connecting my supply chain with demand chain? How are you harnessing that, your adaptability to meet their needs on some of those emerging trends? >> Absolutely, this can be very overwhelming and if you really look at what everybody's talking about, where do you start with and I think we have been doing this for last six years, even before the keynote announcement to be honest to you guys. We have documented 60 to 70 used cases in this case. So what we do is when we approach a customer or a prospect, we come out with some specific used case for their line of business. It can be in a marketing campaign. It can be in a supply chain. It can be in financials. It can be in insurance. So depending on what the needs are, we have those documented used cases, so what we do is for each of these used cases, we break it down in terms of what problem are we gonna to solve, what is the problem definition. And for that problem definition, what's my used case, how do I solve this, what are the alternatives, and how do I reach to my measurable value of that solution. And then we have built-in data models ready to go for each of these used cases behind the scene. So that helps us build something which is nimble, because the data is available. We just need to customize to 20% of what the customer needs are, and then provide that value right away. And once that pilot goes live for a small segment of user community, then we expand that to the larger audience to see the value of whether this is a predictive science machine learning or just pure KPI driven analytics. So we do that and then we expand that. This is what we have done with number of Fortune 500 companies and we're really proud of what we do in terms of being big, but being nimble. >> So speaking of being big, talk about customer engagement, not necessarily the actual customer conversations, but how do customers engage with CenturyLink. One of the simple things that you look at the hyperscalers, I can go to the website, and when I have a question, I can type it in and I'll get a script that answers me in an hour or so. What is the engagement model for interacting with CenturyLink for new customers? >> I think, actually let me go back on this one. I was reading a survey in a CIO magazine. Actually this is a recent survey last year it was, that around thousand-plus CIO's who were interviewed and most of the CIO's, all the CIO's had SAP systems in their companies. And 40% of them said they want to move from on-premise to cloud. Right there that's our engagement strategy there. That we come as a one-stop shop for all these customers who are planning to move from on-premise to cloud. Why? Because number one, they want to reduce their CAPEX, upfront reduction in your cost. They want to make sure that their steady-state cost for keeping the lights on is bare minimal. So whatever budget is left out they can focus more on innovation. We take the sliver line of keeping the lights on and moving them from on-premise to cloud as part of our engagement strategy to start with number one. As we do that, they realize, customer realize that we are not just hosting partners. We just don't provide scalable private managed security cloud for our customers, but we can also do SAP implementation end-to-end, which is whether this is ECC upgrade to S/4HANA or this is a digital strategy for S/4HANA going forward, or just HANA as a pure analytics tool. Or the different SAP suite of products, whether this is Hybris, whether this is Ariba or other suite of products which are very much in a SAS model aspect of SAP, we support that end to end. Our support model is based out of the United States. We have offshore centers in India. So globally follow the same kind of approach. We do this between our number of you know units here in US and in India. That's our engagement strategy across. >> So last question is we're now in our booth here at SAPPHIRE NOW. Tell us about what CenturyLink, NetApp, SAP are doing within the context of automation. >> Wonderful yeah great. That's important actually because I think if you really look at the pace of what customer needs today, the pace is changing so fast. In a typical SAP landscape, you want to commission a system, a development system or a production system within weeks or within days. Gone are other days where you need two months and three months. I mean you miss the business goals for doing all these things. So what we have done is we want to get into the automation mode, and we are heavily investing in that part with help of Cisco, UCSKS. NetApp plays a very big role here in terms of providing their data-driven strategy, their hyper-converged infrastructure as part of the storage system and working with another partner Vnomic to make sure that entire, all these gears behind the scene have a very good orchestration layer to automate the whole process of building the infrastructure, building the application, building all the services and handing it over to our, to the customer team for them to start the journey. So that whole cycle can be reduced by the automation. So I would say NetApp plays a big role there, no doubt about that because most of the IT organizations are data driven today. The SAP workloads are changing and you can't wait for those change manually to be operated. So these are all application driven workloads which changes you know, which can adapt to all these changing workloads and this is where we are going right now in terms of automation. >> Well thanks so much Jinesh for stopping by. I wish we had more time but talking to us about what CenturyLink is doing with SAP, with NetApp for example to help customers on this arduous digital transformation journey. We appreciate your time. >> Thank you so much I mean this is great, thank you, enjoy rest of the day. >> We want to thank you for watching theCUBE. Lisa Martin with Keith Townsend from SAP Sapphire 2018. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)