>> Man: from around the globe, it's "theCUBE" with coverage of "Kubecon" and "CloudNativeCon Europe 2020", virtual. Brought to you by Red Hat, the cloud native computing foundation and ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, I'm Stu Miniman, and this is "theCUBE's" coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon Europe 2020, the virtual edition of course, it, this ecosystem has been bustling, a lot of activity in the five years that we've been covering it with "theCUBE" we've watched very much the maturation of what's going on. Remember, in the early days, it was open source projects, companies pulling all the pieces together. Now, there's a lot more things to choose from lots of projects, not just Kubernetes, but all the other pieces, and still lots of new innovations and new startups coming into the space. So happy to welcome to the program, have two first time guests from Spectro Cloud, first of all, we have the co founder and CEO Tenry Fu, and also Tina Notle who's the Vice President of product, Tina and Tenry, thank you so much for joining us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Likewise. >> All right, so Tenry, as one of the co founders, I want to understand, you know, why Spectro Cloud? Why now, you know, many outsiders, would they have said for a while, you know, Kubernetes, it's just getting baked into all of the environment. They looked at all the platforms, whether you're talking, you know, Google and AWS or VMware, they all have their platforms, they all have their managed services offering. So help us understand, what your team does and how you differentiate from what's already existing. >> Absolutely yeah, so I actually used to work at VMware, I, and then, I saw clouds taking off right and then I left VMware, to start my first startup called CliQr Technologies, which focus on multicloud management. But at that time, really, multicloud management through a single pane of glass is obviously right, and then clicker later acquired by Cisco. So at Cisco, I kind of witness The Container and Kubernetes taking off, right? And it makes a lot of sense, right for the first time both the application workloads and infrastructure became truly portable across multiple environments, but also very interestingly at Cisco I observed there are many developer teams, right? That is adopting Kubernetes and everyone is doing a little bit different things, that because different teams, they have a different stack constructor requirements, like some for AI/ML, some, they need a different base OS, some they just don't want to have a different version, and a lot of existing solutions doesn't really provide this kind of flexibility to satisfy all the different needs, right? one size fit all, typically is a one size fit for nothing. So we asked ourselves, why can't we try to create a platform that will give people the flexibility, but not turning it into a DIY project, right, still have a full manageability, so that user don't need to worry about the upgrade, Day Two operations, governance so and so forth. >> Yeah to Tina, I know when I've looked at your product, it's discussed as layers, which my background's in networking. So I love seeing things visually and understanding the pieces as they lay out the stack. So maybe help us understand a little bit as to, you know, that the flexibility that you give and how it's not just the Paradox of Choice, just too many options out there and you know, developers left to create their own mess that they can't then support. (laughing) >> Yeah, so you know, as Tenry mentioned, offering folks flexibility without turning into a do it yourself, you know, hot mess is what we're what we're helping People do at Spectrol Cloud, the core of our solution, the core of the differentiation within our solution is around this concept of a cluster profile, and as you mentioned, cluster profile basically allows people to define in a layered fashion, what's part of their Kubernetes infrastructure stack? So at the bottom, you're talking, what's the base operating system? What's the version of Kubernetes, that's going to be part of clusters that uses profile? What's your networking and storage interface look like? And then on top of that, you have a number of optional layers. So again, you know, back to flexibility manageability, we give people options around what those other layers look like on top. They include everything from security, logging, monitoring, etc, just anything that you want to go ahead and kind of bake into a definition, a profile of what a cluster should look like in one of your deployed environments. >> All right, well, Want to make sure I understand when you talk about Kubernetes in there, can it be, you know, say VMware with Vsphere7, now has Kubernetes support. Red Hat open shift is an option, all of the cloud players have their, you know, AKS, EKS. And they're like, can I bake that Kubernetes in or are you taking a different approach? >> We're going with upstream vanilla Kubernetes today, that allows us to go ahead and provide what's newest within the ecosystem, and let people go ahead and have a really open, really open solution that's replying. >> Okay, so when I talk to, when you look out there, a lot of companies are saying how can I manage multiple clusters? So if you look at what Google, Microsoft and VMware, they're talking about, we can manage our clusters and we can also help you with those other clusters. How does that impact Tenry, your Solution, doesn't it need to be, it's just the upstream solution that I put into that cluster profile, or can I connect to, say a managed cloud solution? >> Yeah, so I think in terms the multi class management or the consistency is really the key, right. So through this class profile concept, not only it can be used as the initial template to deploy a cluster, but it can also use as a single source for choose, to drive the cluster Lifecycle Management income upgrade. So right now, as Tina mentioned, we primarily focus on upstream, so that we want to provide the maximum flexibility in terms of our end to end Kubernetes stack. But we do also have a plan, that down the road that we go into in Brownfield existing clusters. So that enterprise, existing investment to their Kubernete infrastructure can be under managed by us. >> Well there always reaches a time when the brand new technology gets called Brownfield. I think that's the first time I've heard something like, you know, EKS or the like, you know, referred to as Brownfield. Tina, you know, when I think back to my history with integrated solutions, obviously, if I have the various pieces, it should be easier for me to stay on the latest make upgrades, roll things forward or roll things back, but you know, what, give us if you could some of the, the key values of, you know, building these cluster profiles, what that enables for your customers. >> So the key around cluster profiles, we offer this policy based management, so you describe as an administrator, what it is that those clusters need to look like, right? And we've got, we adopt a declarative desired state, you know, management approach along what Kubernetes does itself, and so what you're able to get through adopting, utilize cluster profiles, is this guarantee that from deployment and then into day two as well, what you've described in this profile, winds up maintaining itself, it remains true of the clusters that have been deployed. So what it is that you require as far as the operating system, what is required as far as some configuration options, etc. So the profile itself winds up being ground source of truth and around what it is that you've got running at all these various locations, across clouds, across different clusters, etc. >> All right. Tenry, you mentioned that having things more standardized is going to help customers, absolutely, we saw that in data centers for a long time, and standardized, how do you help customers make sure that the configuration that they build are going to work, are going to be stable, if they make changes that they're not going to get things out of sync. Is there you know, interoperability matrix or some other ways that we're trying to make sure that customers, you know, stay on the rails, if you will. >> Absolutely right, So through our system, right, all the integration points, we carry the additional metadata, right to basically give the hint about compatibility, resource constraints, right, and also the upgradability, in terms of moving from one version to another. So this way, we can kind of give you some guidance, when they initially construct a class profile, what will work together nicely and then what will not, right. And then on top of that, when upgrading from one existing cluster to a new version of a class profile definition, then we can look at the environment, right to understand, right, if there's something that potentially incompatible will popping up right, so we call that pre pilot integration, check right and also post deployment, we also allow user to run additional conformance tests. So that make sure the cluster everything is actually is still acting as as it's supposed to be. >> Another way to explain that is that you know, the cluster profile concept has a lot of flexibility attached with to it, right? That's a lot of power, it can get you into trouble if you don't have the right safety nets and safety harnesses underneath you. So we have a multi layered approach to helping make sure that people are getting benefit out of that flexibility. >> Wonderful and I'm wondering did, when you've had more customers using this, is their shared information, and if there're community guidelines that help, you know, understand when it's going to be okay, hey, 1.19's out, we're looking at 1.20. You might want to do this or hey, if you're using this piece of networking, you might want to wait a little bit before you go to the next version. >> That's definitely the idea over time, folks that are engaging with us, are very interested in the fact that, because of the fact that we're SaaS management platform, SaaS space management platform today, that it offers them the opportunity to learn from their peers, if you will, right, and their peers experiences. On top of that, we also have the ability to watch just what's been going on in other deployments in the Kubernetes ecosystem and we can make sure that all that's available, as Tenry mentioned, you know, in the form of the metadata that's on top of those packs. >> All right, how about how do you price this solution? When I look out there, I talked about Kubernetes baked into all the platforms, oftentimes, it can be baked into ELA, It's part of, you know, my just general cloud spend from that platform. So how do you do the pricing and, you know, are you plugged into any of the cloud marketplaces yet? >> Yeah, so flexibility is really part of our DNA. So even for pricing, we want to provide the maximum flexibility to our customer. So unlike some traditional solution typically is priced based on number of pause, right, a year, or even number of nodes, right. So we actually price based on number of CPU cores of all workers node under management by hour. So what we call those, core hour under management, right, and then every thousand core hours at one unit, we call kilo core hours. So kind of similar to how electricity is consumed, right, so this way, based on these core hour consumption, we allow user to either pay as you go as amongst the on demand plan, or you can do an annual commitment. >> And we are in process on the marketplaces. >> Yeah. >> All right, how about, we talked about Kubernetes, I think service mesh are part of it. What in this Kube, kubecon cloud native con ecosystem, which projects are the most tied into what you're doing anything that specter cloud is particularly contributing to that you can share? >> Yeah, so our system is built on top of Kubernetes cluster API project. So we are one of the contributor to class API, we are actively adding additional functionality to enhance class API, especially by in some other VMware environment for some custom use case, such as static IP or some special placement behaviors, and also adding additional contribute on different cloud support. >> Yeah, and as far as things that we're watching, and clearly we're, we've seen a dramatic increase in the number of people on our customer front that are interested in actual deployment, of service mesh now. So that's something that you know, we're going to be more engaged in over time. And another one that we're hoping to see, check out more talks around Kubecon is AI ML, right? A lot of interest on the part of customers around AIML use cases. >> Yeah, absolutely edge and AI and ML. Definitely very hot topics to conversation this year at the, at the Europe show, expect that to continue. Tina, I'm wondering, do you have any customer examples, maybe even anonymized that could kind of just explain the key values that your customers are seeing using your solution? >> Yeah, sure, so we've got one of our earliest customers is a Canadian financial, who came to us because, they were looking to figure out how to manage consistently at scale, and they have the problem that Tenry described earlier, around, I've got different development teams, they have different needs, and you know, how do you satisfy all those guys without going crazy, right? They've got an AIML use case, that's a special snowflake they've got two separate teams in different groups that would like to be under an IT management umbrella. That's a convergence use case that they're looking at, so kind of a typical example of somebody that we think of is, you know, a really good set of people for us to be having conversations with. We've also been working with a telecom provider that it's in a similar, similar vein actually, there's an AIML, there are multiple teams of different infrastructure, and they want to be able to consistently manage it's a story that we're seeing over and over again, thankfully. >> Yeah, we also see right from I think, at individual group or team level, right. There are a lot of, kind of a product owner or data scientists that they really want to have a kind of an easy button to quickly be able to provision Kubernetes clusters that suit for their need, right. And a lot of these groups, their primary focus is really the application, right? It's not their interest to spend a lot of time and resource on Kubernete management, in terms of deploying update, or secure an operation. So through us, they can very easily spin up a Kubernetes cluster, whether it's for AIML or for developing experiment, they can very quickly do that But with the flexibility, because a lot of existing solution, they may limit the version of Kubernetes clusters, they may limit the what kind of integration they can do. >> Yeah, Tenry you, we talked a little bit earlier about, you know, potential integration down the road. I'm curious, just there's so many companies creating innovations out there, you know, say for example, one that I hear a lot of feedback on is AWS now has far gate support for their EKS offering. Is that Something down the line you should look at or do you have some guidance as to how customers should be thinking about that, and if they want that kind of functionality, how they would get that with a solution like yours? >> Yeah, actually, we really share the same vision as AWS, right. So we believe, ultimately is the infrastructure really should be transparent to application developers, right, and it should be boundary-less. So our goal is not only manage Kubernetes, across multiple environment, but eventually we will be able to link all these cluster together, to make them acting as a single infrastructure. So developers, they can still use their familiar Kubernetes interface to deploy and manage their application, but without worrying about the how infrastructure underneath is operated or managed, right. So this in a way will eventually become kind of a phallic model, but across multiple cluster and multiple clouds. >> Alright, Tina, if maybe if you could give us the final takeaway, people attending Kubecon, cloud native con, what's the one thing that if you know they have a problem, they should be coming to Spectro cloud to hear more about? >> Yeah, sure so what Spectrol cloud aims to do is help enterprises not have to trade off between flexibility and control of their infrastructure, and manageability of use that stuff's that's the main, the main thing that we would like people to remember. >> All right, well Tenry and Tina, thank you so much for sharing with our community a little bit about Specter Cloud great talking to you and look forward to hearing more in the future. >> Thanks so much. >> Thank you too. >> All right, and stay tuned more coverage from Kubecon Cloud Native Con 2020. I'm Stu MiniMan and thank you, for watching "theCUBE." (light music)

>> Live from Barcelona, Spain. It's the cue covering Sisqo Live Europe, brought to you by Cisco and its ecosystem partners. >> Hi, everybody. Welcome back to Barcelona. This is Cisco Live. I'm Dave a lot with stew Mina, man. And you're watching the Cube. The leader >> in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Dr. Thomas Shearer's here is the chief architect of tle Indus looks onboard and David Cope is back. He's a senior director of marketing development for the Cisco Cloud Platform and Solutions Group. Gentlemen, welcome to the Cube. Thank you. Thanks. So you're very welcome. So tell Indus. Tell us about Delinda. >> So Telindus, we are actually an integrator, a cloud operator, and a tech company. And we're partnering over the years with Cisco, with all the products that they have notably, and lately we are moving also into the public cloud. We have private cloud offering, but we see our first appetite coming up with our customers in the public cloud, which are heavily regulated industries. And there we are working notably with the team off Dave to have an offering there that enables them to move into the clouds. >> So these guys are a customer or a partner? >> Well, you know, what's special about them. They're actually both. So they're a big customer of Cisco offerings, Cloud Center and other offerings. The Cisco Container Platform. But they also use those to provide services to their customers. Expect so there are a great sounding board about what the market needs and how our products are working. >> So Thomas telling has been around since. If I saw right. Nineteen seventy nine. So you know, we weren't talking multi cloud back then, but it is a big discussion point here at the show. You said private public, you're using Cloud Center, maybe explain to us what multi cloud means to you and your customers today. >> I would say most customers that we have a large organizations we manage the IT infrastructure. We're also doing integration projects, but those customers they are normally not really technology companies, you know, they are searching to work with us because we deal with the good part off their IT operations. So at these companies they come from a private infrastructure, they have there these days. They're VMWare installation their private clouds and I think also, it will stay like this for for a good amount of time. So there's no good reason to just go into the cloud because it's fancy or because there is something that you cannot have certainly there is. But that's stable progress that they are following. So what we need is actually to catch the low hanging fruits that exist in a public cloud for our customers. But in such a way that it satisfies their day today IT operations and sometimes it's our IT operations who is doing that since we are managing this. So for us, actually, hyper cloud, to say short, is actually the standard, or multicloud. >> So I wonder we're almost two years into GDP, are one year into the owner's finds. How has GDP are affected? You and your customers and What's it like out there these days? >> GDPR is for me not the main reason for public, private, multicloud installations for us and that involves GDPR is the regulation that we are in, so our customers are notably from the financial sector, and they're very strict on conservative security. rules for good because their main business is they're selling trust. There is not much more business where you trust that much than a bank. They know everything about you, and that's something they cannot sacrifice. Now, in Europe, we have the advantage. Data is that strict regulation which puts kind of standards. And that involves obviously also the GDPR thing. But if I look into that standards, that regulation imposes its very technical, they say. For example, please make sure if you move into the clouds then avoid a lock-in, be confident on what will be your exit cost. What will be your transition cost, and don't get married to anyone. And that's where Dave's team comes into the game because that they provide that solution, actually. >> I mean, that's music to your ears, I would think. I mean, I have to be honest. If I were a public cloud provider, I'd say no, don't do multi cloud. We have one cloud, does it all, But no customer speaks like that. >> You're right. And I think to me what I love about Linda's in the way they use the product is they work in such a highly regulated environment, where policies managing common policies across very different environments becomes critical. So how do I manage access control and security profiles and placement policies all across very different multiplied environments? That's hard, and that's been one of the cornerstones that we've focused on in Cloud Centre. >> Yeah, so look, double click on that. We're talking Teo, a guest earlier, and I was asking them, sort of poking it. There's >> a lot of people who want that business because it's a huge >> business opportunity. It's, um, some big, well established companies. Cisco's coming at it from a position of strength, which course? Network, But I'll ask you the same question. What gives you confidence that Cisco is in the best position for customers? Two urn, right? Tio manage their multi cloud data environment? >> I think it's I think it's a great question. I mean, for my perspective and I love our customers perspective. But if you think about Cisco's heritage around the network and security, I think most people would agree. They're very strong there. It's a very natural extension to have Cisco be a leader and multicloud because after all, it's how do I securely connect very diverse environments together. And now a little further. Now, how do I help customers manage workloads, whether they be existing or new cloud native workloads, So we find it's a very natural extension to our core strength and through both development and acquisition Cisco's got a very, very broad and deep portfolio to do that. >>So your thoughts on that? >> Yes, Cisco is coming from a network in history. But if your now look into the components there is, actually, yeah, the Networking Foundation, there is CUCS, which we have, for example, in our infrastructure, there is hyperflex there are then solutions like CCP that you can run a DevOps organization can combine it with Cloud Center to make it hybrid. And just today I learned a new thing, which is Kubeflow. I just recognized Cisco is the first one that is coming up with a platform as a service enabled Private Cloud. So if you go private Cloud usually talk about running VM's. But now with With With a CCP and it's open source projects Kubeflow which I think will be very interesting to see in conjunction with CCPN I heard that it's going to happen. You're actually Cisco is the first one delivering such a solution to the markets. So it's growth that just have >> a thing for the cnc es eso que >> bernetti slow way Don't have to send a cease and desist letter, right? >> CCP that Francisco Container platform Ryan out sad Some while ago on Prim Cooper. Nettie Stack. Right. >> So, Thomas, you know, with the update on Cloud Center suite now containerized, You got micro services. It's built with communities underneath and using cube flow. I'm guessing that's meaningful to you. There's a lot of things in this announcement that it's like, Okay, it sounds good, but in the real world, you know what? What do you super excited for? The container ization? You know, I would think things like the action orchestrator and the cost Optimizer would have value, but, you know, police tell us yourself >> The CloudCenter was already valuable before, you know, we a did investigation about what kind of cloud brokering and cloud orchestrations solutions exist back in those days when it was called CliQr CloudCenter and me and my colleagues know that CliQr team back then as well as now at Cisco we appreciated that they they became one family now. For me, CloudCenter fulfills certain requirements that I simply have to fulfill for our customer. And it's a mandatory effect that I have to feel for them, like being able to ensure and guarantee portability. Implementing policies, segregation of duties were necessary, things like that. I have to say now that it becomes containerized. That's a lot of ease in managing CloudCenter as a solution by itself, and also you have the flexibility to have it better. Also, migratable. It's an important key point that CloudCloud eyes a non cloud centric product that you can run it on-prem that your orchestration that you don't have to log in on the orchestration there and have it on-prem but now can easily move it on things such a GKE because it's it's a container based solution. But I think also there's a SaaS option available so you can just subscribe to it. So you have full range of flexibilities so that a day to day management work flow engine doesn't become a day to day management thing by itself. >> So I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of your environment around since nineteen seventy nine. So you must have a lot of a lot of stuff, a lot of it that you've developed over the years. But you mentioned that you're starting to look a public clouds. You just mentioned your customer base, largely financial services. So they're highly regulated and maybe a little nervous about the cloud. But so paint a picture of your Maybe not for certain workloads. Paint a picture of your environment tunnel where you want to go from. From an architecture and an infrastructure perspective. >> We have our own what we call private managed cloud. That's a product we call U-flex which is  FlexPod reference architecture that's Cisco was networking NetApp storage. Cisco UCS in conjunction with the ember, as a compute. This we use since many years and as I already have said, the regulated market started opening up towards public cloud. So what does it mean? European Banking Authority. So EBA, who's the umbrella organization on European level. They send out a recommendation. Dear countries, please, your financial institution. If they go into the cloud that have to do ABC. The countries I have put in place those regulations they have put in place those controls and for them, they are mostly now in that let's investigate what its influence in the public they come from their private infrastructure. They are in our infrastructure, which is like private infrastructure virtualized and managed by us, mainly VM based. And now the news things on top that they investigate are things like big data, artificial intelligence and things like that which you mostly don't have in private infrastructure. So in that combination is what we have to provide to our customers but their mostly in and investigative mode. >> and okay. And and Cisco is your policy engine management engine across all those clouds, is that right? >> Yes we are able to manage those workloards with CloudCenter. Sometimes it depends also on the operating model. The customer himself is the one using CloudCenter, you know, so it depends, since we are in integrator, cloud operator and also offer our services in the public cloud. It's always the question about who has to manage what. >> One of the things, if I could just add on that we see people providing our products as a service. We're just talking about Kubernetes. Customers today are starting to move Kubernetes just from being like development now into production. And what we're seeing is that these new Kubernetes based applications have non containerized dependencies reach out to another traditional app, reach out to PaaS, a database. And what we try to do is to say, how do you give your customers the ability to get the new and the old working together? Because it'll be that way for quite some time. And that's a part of sort of the new cloud center capabilities also. >> That's that's a valid reason. So you have those legacy services and you don't want just to You cannot just replace them now. Now let's go all in. Let's be cloud native. So you have always thes interoperability things to handle and yeah, that's true. Actually, you can build quite some migration path using containerization. >> Yeah, I mean, you can't customer can't just over rotate to all the new fun buzz words. They got a business to run. Yeah, so this >> And how do I apply security policies and access control and to this very mixed environment now, common policies and that becomes challenging. >> But it's also part of our business. Yes, there have there, for example, financial institution than not a nineteen company. That's where we come in as a for Vita Toe. It's such an industry daddy, via highly value the partnership with Cisco Heavy Cat build new services together. We had that early adopters program, for example, regarding CCP. So Cisco is bringing a service provider into the loop to build what's just right for the customer for them on their behalf. Yes, you describe that is very challenging, is it's In some cases, it's chaos. But that's the opportunity I heard this morning that you guys are going after pretty hard. >> No, it's right. And you've got one set of desires for developers, but now we move into production. Now I t cops gets involved, the sea so gets involved. And how do we have then well thought out integrations into security and network management? Those air all of the things that we're trying to really focus on. >> Well, anywhere the definite zone. So you you were surrounded by infrastructures code. Is there a fits and club? Guys, Thanks so much for coming to Cuba and telling your story. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Enjoyed. Thank you. Alright, Keep it right there, buddy. Stupid him and Dave. Alon. Today we're live from Cisco Live Barcelona. You watching the cube right back?

>> From Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2018 brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and it's ecosystem partners. >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage here. Day three of wall to wall coverage at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2018, here in Seattle, theCUBE's been breaking it down all week. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Our next guest is Tuan Nguyen who is the principal engineer in technical marketing, cloud products and solutions at Cisco Systems. Tuan, welcome to theCUBE. Thanks for joining us. >> Thanks for having me. Thank you. >> So obviously, cloud has been a big part of Cisco. We've seen at Cisco Live last year and Cisco Barcelona. >> Yeah. >> Got your big European event coming up, Cisco Live in Europe. >> Yes. >> Cloud has been a big part of the CEO's conversations on stage. >> Yes. >> Cisco's going all in on cloud, DevNet. >> Yeah. >> DevNet Create, two communities. You guys got a cloud native vibe going on in Cisco. >> Yeah, we do. >> Cloud centered. You got some products that are addressing this. >> Right. >> This is a, shift for Cisco, big time. >> Yeah. >> You've in the cloud, but this is like all. It feels like an all in. >> Right, right. Yeah, yeah, so what we've been evangelizing to people here is that Cisco is a software company, right? We certainly have a very strong heritage in our enterprise relationships related to our hardware platforms but we're transitioning and we're really making that conversion to being a software company. Cisco has been acquiring talent and technology in the past couple years. We've developed some strong relationships with Google and AWS as well and we developed these reference architectures that our customers can buy as kind of a single unit and get the support that they need from us. >> Yeah. >> So. >> We covered your recent announcement with AWS. >> Yes. >> Really nice, elegantly designed Kubernetes strategy where using EKS over here, you got the Cisco stuff on here so it's seamless experience for the customer which is great, congrats, I think that's a great announcement. I think it's directionally correct. I think that's what customers want. But I want to ask you a bigger question I want to get your opinion on, perspective. When you look at Kubernetes, what we're hearing here at the show from end users and from the emerging start ups that are contributing is that, breaking down the monolithic application into a series of granule sets of services is what everyone is doing. That's clearly, that microservices, a variety of other things, Kubernetes can connect that. But it's the network that brings it together. >> Right. >> So we're seeing the policy knobs inside Kubernetes as being a very strategic benefit. We had one expert say, "A lot of people "aren't taking advantage of those policy knobs. "This is a great opportunity." >> Right. >> You guys are, (laughing) as networked as you could be at Cisco. This is your DNA. >> Yeah. >> How are you guys looking at Kubernetes? Are you looking at the policy knobs? How do you talk to your customers about this new opportunity with Kubernetes? >> Yeah. >> What's the real up side-- >> Yeah. >> For your customers with Kubernetes? >> Yeah. So one, you mentioned, we see Kubernetes as very pervasive so we offer an on prem version of Kubernetes and of course, you know, we partner with Google and with AWS to deliver on cloud versions of Kubernetes and related to policies, application policies, in the form of Istio and network policies or security policies in the form of a network interface. Our on prem solution offers three types of CNIs. So we're very flexible in that way and certainly if you are a Cisco customer and you have a Cisco ecosystem of hardware platforms then we natively integrate into those platforms and we let you leverage your existing investments, yeah. >> So if I look at it that way, then I'm saying, okay, I'm good with Cisco right now. >> Yeah. >> Do I have to change anything with Kubernetes? What's the impact to me, as a Cisco customer? >> Yeah. >> Is this added value? Consistent environment? What's the impact to the customer's day to day, operational? (laughing) >> Sure, sure. Yeah. >> Environment? >> Yeah, so our customers are asking us to tie both VM based and container based workloads into CICD, so we obviously, with with our ACI/CNI we give them the capability to construct policies in Kubernetes that end up on the hardware platform, right? That's number one. Then we also have a hardware registry, we have security policies, that can be carried across different platforms, so in your private cloud and VMware and OpenStack, you can carry those same policies. For us, we've got application delivery, frameworks and platforms, that deliver the application in the form of both VM and container based as well as bare metal and we kind of unify the user experience, when it comes to application deployment in Kubernetes. >> Yeah, so Tuan, I'm actually glad that we got you towards the end of what we've been talking about here because one of the things we've been teasing apart is, multi clouds, in many ways, is like what we've been talking about a long time about multi vendor. >> Yeah. >> And the networking space is an area that we really understand. You know, what worked and what didn't work in a multi vendor world and the management piece was often the breaking point because just stitching all those together, we've looked for the last few years, customers have multi cloud and getting their arms around that and how do I manage that, can be a real challenge. >> Yeah, yeah. >> We know Cisco's making investments, they've made acquisitions. Tell us, what have we learned from the past? What's different about this now that will make it successful where management has been one of the pitfalls for quite a long time? >> Yeah, yeah. So I think what we've learned from the past is that customers are asking us for policies that can span across the multi cloud, right? So, whereas certain platforms will give you a hybrid cloud experience, Cisco is investing in things like VPN meshed apologies into CSR, in ASR, in protecting workloads as they move across different cloud targets. And then also in the provisioning and life cycle management. We feel that customers want the capability to run applications in any cloud environment and under any type of overlay or underlay networking platforms, yeah. >> Tuan, one of the things that you talk about not only getting your arms around it but there is multi axis's that I need to optimize for. One of the ones, of course, sorting out is cost. So, you know, where does Cisco sit in this environment? The big shift that I think was really highlighted for me last year, going to Cisco Live is, it used to be most of what I'm managing, I control. >> Right. >> Today, most of the network and most of the environments that I'm in charge of? They're outside of my purview. >> Right. >> With doing that multi cloud world. >> Right. >> So how I make sure that I don't, you know, get myself in trouble with the CFO? >> Right. >> Or have unexpected things come up? >> Right, right, yeah. I came through a software acquisition called CliQr Technologies and CliQr Technologies is that one tool that gives you that experience and allows you to see cloud cost. So cloud cost from a hourly, metered perspective but also from a budgeting perspective. And we're adding additional components into our platform that gives you like true cost for all of your compute, all of your network, your storage, your services like Lambda and then also makes recommendations on the instant sizes that you need to use. We have policies like suspension policies that help our customers to save on their cloud bill. In a lot of ways, the life cycle management aspect of applications is something that differentiates us from other cloud management platforms. >> Talk about the cost side and the cost of ownership. I've always been talking about the cloud as the TCO or total cost of ownership, changes a bit. What are some of the challenges that you've seen the customers having that you guys are helping with? When you look at integrating security, networking and application performance and management? Cause it's not siloed anymore. >> Yeah. >> They're integrating together. >> That's right. >> This is a new dynamic. >> Right, right. >> What's state of the art? What are you guys doing? You guys address that? What are some of the customer challenges? Just, what's your thoughts on that area? >> Yeah so most of the time there are two basic challenges to this. One is, you know bringing the cloud economy into the private cloud consumption is something that our platform does. And then also being able to visualize all the costs. Helping our customers to make good decisions about what types of workloads run where best and whether it's, so we enable, obviously, VMs as well as cloud native, container based, micro services to co-exist in a single platform so we'll deploy VMs and containers in a hybrid fashion. >> Yeah. >> Or we'll deploy them into the same and we'll give you the utilization of those workloads based on dollar amounts, based on run time and also based on the type of workload. >> So here's the curve ball question for you. Now multi cloud comes into the equation? >> Yeah. >> How do you guys deal with that because workload, in some cases, I've heard from customers that refactoring those workloads is a problem. >> Right. >> So if I'm going to run true multi cloud, I'm going to have multiple clouds, I need networks to know, have smarts, around where I want to put that and do I want it in different geography maybe or region? So the network has the intelligence on a lot of things. >> Right. >> How are you guys addressing the multi cloud component? >> Yeah, yeah. >> With workload? Without refactoring? >> Yeah. So because we can compose applications that consist of both VMs and containers, right? One of the projects, just one of the use cases that we worked on with our relationship with Google was to, from cloud center, to deploy cloud native workloads in GKE that would navigate and basically traverse the VPN network to go back into the on prem target in order to access a database that was kind of a legacy database using an API URL. So that whole workflow was something that we solved for with our reference architecture so, you know, we obviously have the portfolio of products that allows our customers to take advantage of both hardware, software and networking and security and monitoring all in one reference architecture. >> A lot of opportunities for you guys. I think you're positioned well. We've covered you guys on the DevNet, DevNet Create. >> Yeah. >> You're seeing the cloud center, this dashboard kind of model of looking at the operations side, the development side. A lot of changes. Really kind of fit right into your wheelhouse. >> Yes, yeah. >> I think the Kubernetes policy knobs, it's a big story that I'm walking away with on this trip and saying, wow, policy sounds like a networking thing. Networking guys love policy. >> Yeah. >> If you can automate it? >> Yeah, that's right. >> And managed the costs? >> Yeah. >> It's a good thing. >> Yeah. >> Thanks for coming on, appreciate your insight. >> Thank you, thank you very much. >> CUBE coverage here, day three continues. I'm John Furrier with Stu Miniman. Stay with us for wall to wall coverage here at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon. We'll be right back with more, after this short break. (upbeat techno music)

>> Announcer: Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's the Cube, covering Cisco Live 2018. Brought to you by Cisco, Veeam, and the Cube's ecosystem partners. >> Hello and welcome back to the Cube's exclusive coverage of Cisco Live 2018 in Europe. Kicking off 2018 here in Europe is Cisco's annual event. I'm John Furrier, the cohost of the Cube, with Stu Miniman, analyst at Wikibon. Our next guest is Todd Brannon, who's the marketing director at Cisco, welcome to the Cube. >> Thank you. >> Great, thanks for coming on. >> Absolutely. >> You guys announced HyperFlex before the show. >> We did. >> And a lot of cloud happening here in the keynote. Seeing IOT, well security number one obviously. Security, that's always going to be number one, but the other themes are obviously IOT and multi-cloud. >> Todd: Multi-cloud. >> Huge conversations, both developing rapidly in kind of it's own way. >> Well that's crucial for us 'cause we talk about HyperFlex 3.0, a lot of cool features that we're building into that, but the scope for us is much, much broader because of the multi-cloud piece. That's reality for our customers. They've told us very, very clearly, I'm going to use multiple public clouds, but I'm also going to have to get my on-prem side of it. So we tell 'em, absolutely, good multi-cloud starts at home with platforms like, with HyperFlex, and that's exactly the way we've brought it together. So we talk about a kind of a very modest aspiration with this is we want to help customers power any application, on any cloud, on any scale. >> Well take a minute before we get started, help us with some questions. What is HyperFlex 3.0 for the folks watching? What is it? >> So we introduced HyperFlex as our hyper converged platform built on UCS. We acquired a company called Springpath. They brought in a purpose-built, log-structured file system for the cluster and we combined these things together to create HyperFlex. So it's really unique in the sense that, well let me back up, I'd say a lot people ignore how crucial a file system and a network are to a clustered system. It kind of goes without saying, but a lot of the focus has been on, okay what's the individual node in that stack look like, but we look at it much more at the cluster level. And so, our uniqueness is that we've engineered all of this thing together. So we brought that out in 2016, last year really we focused on performance, 40 gig, all-flash, open up the network pipes and then this year is really about our multi-cloud integration and then additional features that we're bringing in to support more workloads, Hyper-V support, containers. So 3.0 is really just filling in a lot of features that we need to really make this a ideal platform for multi-cloud. >> Todd, we've tracked UCS since the early days. UCS really created and led the whole converged infrastructure ten. >> When we heard about CI though, it's really about simplification. It's infrastructure, it's that next step. Hyper converged, a lot of the things you were talking about there, it's about cloud and the underlying platform, and while CI can be used for that, seems like a different discussion. Can you give us a little bit compare/contrast as to what you see? >> Absolutely. Well, I mean, the conversion infrastructures, you know, we started that way back in the day with Vblock and VCE, and then FlexPod, VersaStack, FlashStack, there's lots of different storage partnerships that we have we can bring customers. And private cloud has been a big workload for those infrastructure components. You know, it's really just a storage question of how you want to address that component, but it all revolves around the operating model. So our mission is, look, we've got a huge install basic customers are used to acquiring and deploying pre-engineered chunks of infrastructure like a Vxblock or a FlexPod, what have you, we need to continue to serve them, while they also evaluate where hyper convergence might fit in the equation as well, and how do we offer those both up with a common set of policy and management, with UCS management, with Intersight. So we think that these are going to coexist for quite some time and customers are going to have to decide how they want to use those different types of infrastructure, but ultimately, it's just about the workload. >> Cisco and it's storage partners have billions of reasons why they're going to keep selling CI's for a while. >> Certainly, yep. >> Help connect the dots though. You talked about that operating model in the keynote this morning, big focus on multi-cloud, >> Todd: Certainly. >> And things like, we talked to AppD at AWS re:Invent, how does the public cloud mesh with these other solutions. >> So, one of the things that we're announcing here at the show is the cloud, our Cisco container platform. That's an example of how we're going to work with Google to create an integrated stack, focused initially around Kubernetes, and we have HyperFlex as an infrastructure component under that, and that's, for people that are really accelerating their application development or maybe they're modernizing older workloads with containers, we're going to provide that element. But the true multi-cloud functionality is what we do with things like CloudCenter. So that was our CliQr acquisition, allows us to profile workloads, take 'em out to the cloud, multiple public clouds. So for us, when we talk about HyperFlex as a platform for multi-cloud it's those integrations with CloudCenter, but then also AppD, which is hugely important because like we were talking about earlier, you've got applications now that are distributed across on-prem and multiple public clouds potentially. So maybe you got a front end out in the public cloud, customer data or business logic on-prem, how do you keep track of the performance of that collection of functions and systems that are running independently and you have to do that with something like AppD. So we have a lot of the software components to help customers really get their multi-cloud going. >> So bringing it back to HyperFlex, my understanding, not just virtual environment anymore, you're also doing containers and that tied into that multi-cloud piece. >> So, a couple important things with this 3.0 release. We're bringing for Hyper-V, for customers who want to do different hypervisors, and then we developed a persistent storage plug-in into the file system for those stateful workloads that are going to be in containers. So again, with Kubernetes, as developers want to go out and do pod requests, basically self-service volumes on the HyperFlex storage environment, that's huge. And so we've opened it up to two more classes of workloads right there. >> I mean, what aren't you doing? Got these centralized apps. Is there going to be a Cisco coin in the future? (laughs) >> I think -- >> There's a rumor going around. >> So yeah, I can't speak to our cryptocurrency strategy. That's out of my domain. >> Probably coming, these centralized apps, again, on the horizon, another future thing you guys are positioned for. In all seriousness though, I want to put a plug in for Stu's Wikibon team. They came out with a true private cloud report recently last year, really kind of the only ones looking at it this way, but it really is interesting. I want to get your comment to this because we go to 100 of events a year, last year was over 100, I think, 30, and what we've observed is the same thing that's happening here. DevNet's got a lot of attraction. You've got DevNet Create, more of an open-source, cloud native focus. >> Todd: Sure. >> You're seeing the enterprises getting their act done at home, inside the premise. >> Todd: That's right. >> So it's not so much they're moving to cloud. Yeah, some stuff's going in the cloud, but they're kind of cleaning up the house first, going cloud ops on premise. >> That's right. >> And then, as a preparation to all the spend and all the intention is really on the private cloud, what they call true private cloud. Do you see the same thing? >> Absolutely. >> And is that a stepping stone to the cloud? >> Absolutely, and that's exactly, that's informed everything we've done here in this latest, this past year really, of development around HyperFlex is our IT customers telling us, look I've got the developer as my new constituent. As much as I need to maintain shrink wrapped apps or legacy workloads for the core business, the developer is really my customer now and I have to provide infrastructure on-prem that behaves like the cloud in terms of infrastructure as code and being able to do things like we're doing with this Kubernetes environment, where the developers can withdraw the resources they need, turn 'em back in and the IT team can get out of the way. That's hugely important. >> I think we're observing on our opening this morning when we were commenting on the keynote and some of the trends here is that Cisco is moving up the stack pretty rapidly over the years, this year more than ever, you can start to see a clear line of sight that it's not just network plumbing, although that's pretty critical. But with Kubernetes and the growth, you mentioned Google, it's pretty interesting, a renaissance is going on in the software world, certainly with open-source, you have app developers, which are like just classic building software apps, then you got engineering, software engineering. So I use that that term software engineering as a throwback to the age when I graduated with my CS degree, that was what you called yourself when you got a job. You were a software engineer. You have network engineers, so you're seeing a line of under the hood engineering with software and networks and whatnot. And then, above Kubernetes you're seeing, just hey I just want a program, just give me some functions. >> Absolutely, and it's the IT generalist that are emerging as the heroes here that have to understand, okay, how do I build that on-prem platform, how do I have the capability to get my developers out to the public cloud, as in when they need to and it makes sense, or potentially bring things back. And you're right, and then on the development side they don't want to have to worry about the mechanics of that. So to the degree we can enable our IT customer to provide that service, but also simplify that for them is essential. >> Talk about your posture to those two different personas because you guys just provide the network in the old days and app developers programmed on them. They get some storage or perusing some storage. Now you got to lean in towards the network engineers, which are now software engineers under the hood, and then you got to lean in to the app developers and enable them to be successful. How are you attacking those, not attacking, how are you servicing and leaning into those groups. >> We brought the storage and computing experts into the fold with UCS, nine years ago, but now when you look at our acquisition of AppD, that's where we really start to take care of the application owner, be it the developer or the business owner for the application and allowing them to kind of see across on-prem, out in the public cloud, how do I ensure that I'm going to stay out of trouble, and if something goes wrong I know exactly where in that constellation of services the problem resides. So AppD is critical in that sense because -- >> So they fill a big hole. >> Absolutely, because that's how we can, all this comes together to power our workload, power business service. Applications are the heart of new business. >> Todd, what about from a training perspective? Cisco Live's always been a show where people get their certifications, they build their careers on this stuff. It's changing so fast. How are you keeping, the training tracks, and giving that career help to all the people that do this for a living. >> We're adding the pillars for all the things we're talking about, the multi-cloud software portfolio, new infrastructure components, like HyperFlex. Those are all being built into our training regimen and also our training partners, so they can take that out and scale it for us. >> All right, so you went and just connected the dots on what I was finishing up for network engineers, software engineers, under the hood, app developers, AppD, you guys have a good solid footing there, good approach. Multi-cloud, is that the Kubernetes? Is that the secret sauce to multi-cloud in your opinion? And/or how do you guys look at multi-cloud and how do you talk to your customers about it? >> Well we talk about, the data is pretty clear, customers want to be able to use multiple public clouds and they want to be able to evaluate them. So I think the center of our strategy, we have our multi-cloud portfolio, how we organize all these things. The cloud consume pillar of that is really comprised of AppD, which we talked about, but also CloudCenter. And so CloudCenter is a tool that allows our customers basically profile an application and then go understand what's it going to cost me and what are the different attributes of these public cloud services, and which one matches up the best. So I'd say that's the center of the strategy. Obviously, particularly around containers, but more workloads in the future, Kubernetes becomes a much bigger -- >> So orchestration is pretty key. >> Yeah, orchestration's essential and it's not just in a pure software context, but how do we hook down into infrastructure. So we've already built this programmable infrastructure, so how do we expose those knobs and dials to orchestration engines so that we're not just virtualizing, but we're actually optimizing the infrastructure they need. >> That's the beautiful thing about service and function-based software. Okay, so now I've heard about this dCloud. What is dCloud? >> So dCloud's basically a demo environment that our engineering team can use and our partners can use to demo software. So, for example, we launched our cloud management platform for UCS and HyperFlex last fall, we call it Intersight. So software like that, you know software becomes central to our strategy, dCloud becomes the way that we show that. >> Customers can come in and play on that and partners? >> Partners and our sales teams can take customers through it. >> But not customers. >> I don't believe there's an end user entrance to that yet. >> So it's like a sandbox for the cloud. >> But I could be wrong. I'm not a dCloub expert. >> So for the folks watching, what's different this year at Cisco Live in Europe from other shows? Is there anything that stands out to you around this year? >> Definitely the multi-cloud theme and we're hearing that from customers. They don't, there's always been the question of what type of infrastructure should I provision for different workloads, but it's really moved that past that to here's the workload spectrum I need to support. What are the tools you're going to give me for that on-prem? How can you help me get to the cloud? And I think the other thing, more narrowly speaking, hyper convergence is really turning the corner in terms of adoption. So when we first, we weren't the first ones to arrive at the hyper convergence party in the industry by any means, but we brought the keg. So when we showed up the party kind of got started. We think we brought the complete answer and now we're seeing as more and more workloads can go onto a HCI platform, the adoption's starting to, and we're seeing large organizations bring it on, both in the core and out at the edge. So those are a couple big changes -- >> Todd, any bold predictions? Will Cisco be number three in HCI by the end of 2018? >> Todd: Yes, 'cause we already are. >> Okay. (laughs) >> We already are. So, today it's a three horse race right now. So it's Dell, Nutanix, Cisco in the latest IDC numbers. So I think by the end, I'd like to see number two within a type of a timeframe. I'll give you number two within six quarters, how about that? >> And Stu wants to know what are you going to do with all that cash that you bring over from, to the US? (laughs) >> John: What are you going to buy? >> Your patriotion, yeah. >> I heard Chuck talking about investing in employees so I hope to get some of that, or no. No guys, I think Chuck's already kind of laid it out. We got our investors, we've got potential things we can do, bringing in new technology, so he's really laid that out. >> Todd, final question for you at the end of the segment. >> Sure. >> As the personnel change, excitedly, the infrastructure of the cloud and the evolution of the renaissance that's coming with software, DevNet, DevNet Create, doing some great stuff as an indicator of what's coming, >> Sure. >> How is the roll of the network, your target customer, who's been loyal Cisco net MVP all these years and you got storage guys, interdisciplinary has been a big thing, what skill sets do you see evolving for that Cisco hero out there? What the trend that you can talk to? >> It's the ability to automate. It's the ability to take advantage of some of the technologies we're bringing in terms of assurance. It's how do you bring all of that insight that resides in the network, in the telemetry and that data, how do you bring that out and use it in a way that can help the business. I think for our core audience, for those folks you talk about, it's how do I become much more adept at bringing these pieces together in an automated way, but then how do take advantage of some of the things that are available to me now in terms of bringing the power of analytics, AI, into an IT context and take advantage of those things for all the different things you can imagine, security, assurance, et cetera. >> So the big thing then, just to summarize, if I hear you correctly, the difference this year is that you got AppD, and you got end to end DevOps. >> I think it's our multi-cloud story has really jelled over the past year, and now we're bring it in to the context of on-prem infrastructure in addition to the public cloud side of it, so I think that's the, that's big news from data center side. >> Todd Brannon who's the marketing director at Cisco here inside the Cube. We are in Barcelona, live coverage, two days, wall to wall. I'm John Furrier for Stu Miniman. More live coverage at the Cube after this short break. (synthesizer beat)

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering InterConnect 2017. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back everyone. We are here live in Las Vegas at the Mandalay Bay for exclusive Cube coverage for three days for IBM InterConnect 2017. I'm John Furrier. My co-host, Dave Vellante. Our next guest is Ed Walsh, General Manager of Storage and Software-Defined Infrastructure at IBM. Welcome back. >> Ed: That was a mouth full wasn't it? >> Welcome back to The Cube. Welcome back to the fold at IBM. >> Thank you very much, always good. >> You're leading up a big initiative. Take a quick second to talk about what you're the general manager of scope wise, and then we'll jump right in. >> Yeah, so I run basically the storage division, which has all of our storage from mainframe to open systems, tape, software defined storage and software defined compute, but it's all under our storage portfolio. So development, sales, you know, run the PINA. >> Right, and the new innovations that are coming out, what do you have your eye on? What's your goal, you know, you got a spring in your step. What's the objective? >> So we talked probably in October, I was 90 days in. So now I'm a whopping 8 months in. I think we kind of talked about it. I kind of... my hypothesis for coming here was you know, clients are going through this big change and some of your write ups lately about the True Private cloud and how they're trying to go from where they are now to where they're trying to get to. And that confusion eats up leadership so as confusion... IBM has the right vision, but it's like clouding cognitive, as is much on PRIM. So we have the right vision to help them get through that. And we have a history of doing that. And the second one was that we have a portfolio that's pretty broad. So we almost have an embarrassment of riches on what we can do with someone when they're really trying to look to modernize environments or transform, we can help them from anything. From the biggest and baddest. But it really doesn't matter. The broad portfolio allows us to engage and bring it forward and get them to the... Whatever their path forward is we can give that vision. And then, the one thing I was really talking about is he could bring in IBM. If I could bring in IBM, the greater IBM, the True Cognitive, the analytic team, and bring that together to bear for our infrastructure clients, or inside storage itself, that would be where we'd have the trifecta taking off. So we're in the middle of that transformation. Going very well. But along the same lines I have a fantastic product line. We're going to continue, in fact we're putting more investments on that. Not only on the hardware raise, but as much on the software-defined, and going all flash just because a lot of operational benefits. But then really what we're able to do by bringing the large IBM behind us... IBM also did some interesting organizational changes in January. Arvind Krishna is now running Hybrid Cloud and research for IBM so it's bringing the girth of IBM behind what's on PRIM hybrid into the Cloud. So it allows us to play a very strategic role. >> So a couple Wikibomb buzzwords, right? The True Private Cloud, we talked about server sandwiches, really sort of instantiation of software-defined. Really the impetus is that customers on PRIM want to run the Public Cloud. With that kind of agility and automation. So what are you seeing? What is IBM delivering to support that? First of all, are you seeing that? >> So it's kind of funny, so that... I do talk about study a lot because I thought the True Private Cloud, the way you coined it, is the right way to almost just say it's not what you're thinking I'm about to say. But the study, it's everything you get in the Public Cloud and you want to bring it on PRIM. All the flexibility, all the development models, right? How you engage developers. All the financial models as well, but bring that. And then it easily extends the Hybrid Cloud. When you start going through that, every one of our clients we engage, they know we understand the value of Cloud. They're at different maturity levels of how they're using Cloud, but it's all in their vision. We do a lot of work to help people bridge. So where are you know, let's talk about where you need to get to and have some meaningful steps to get there. So the True Private Cloud resonates with them. And then what we're doing is launching. In fact we launched this week with Cisco. So we have a converged offering with Cisco called VersaStack. But what we're operating on is, how do you make a Private Cloud as agile, and has the same use cases specifically for developers or DBA's that you have on the Public Cloud? And we're bringing that to the offering set for a converged offering. So what we do around on API later... So a key use case would be to do would be, why do people go to Public Cloud? Business units like it because the developers. It's easy to use, they have true DevOps capabilities. They're able to swipe a credit card. Single line of code. Spin up an environment. Signal out a code. Spin it down. They don't have to talk to an IT guy. They don't have to wait three weeks or do a ticket system. So how do you do that on PRIM? So what we have now, in market is, imagine a API abstraction layer, that for storage allows all the orchestration and all the DevOps tools to literally do the exact same thing on PRIM. So once you set it up, it allows the IT team, it's called Spectrum Copy Data Management, allow the IT team to set up templates. But through roles based access, allow a developer or a DevOps tool like Chef or Puppet to literally infrastructures code. Single line of code, spin up a whole environment. An environment would be, let's say three or four VM's, last good snapshot, maybe Datamaster or not. Most times it's Datamast. Bring up an offense network, but literally it goes from, on PRIM I just can't get it done. It takes me two or three weeks. So that's why I go the Public Cloud for other reasons. I can not only choose where I put it, where it's the right place to do, but I can give the exact same use case on PRIM by just doing API calls and they use exactly the same tools for development that are used in the Cloud, like Chef, Puppet, Urbancode, Python scripts. >> How's the reaction been to that? Give us some anecdotal... >> So once you have that conversation, that's just one of the things we're doing to make the True Private Cloud come to life. Of course the extension to SoftLayer, in other Clouds to get the... People, all of the sudden they see a path forward. It's not as easy to... You have to explain how it works, but the fact of the matter is they don't have a lot of tools now to make... We can bring down cost, give you a little bit more efficiancy, consolidate it. But that's not really how True Private Cloud is. You need the automation. So they're responding to it well. In fact it's the number one demo on the floor. For us, as far as systems, people trying figure out actually how to do the DevOps on the PRIM. >> John: That's awesome. >> Talk more about he Cisco relationship. There's a lot of interesting things going on in the storage business. There's consolidation, and you know the whole VCE thing and then Cisco looking for partners. You guys selling off BNT, it opens up a whole new partnership potential. So how has that evolved and where do you want to take it? >> So I think, match made in heaven between us, especially in storage, and Cisco. If you look at the overall environment conversion Hipaa converts account for about a third of the storage industry, so we play well. There's no overlap between us and Cisco. It's great. We're after the exact same accounts and actually, from a... You think of the very top level of our organization all the way down, the two companies have a lot of the same cultures and to be honest we're very tight. So it allows us to have a great relationship. We've already had a good relationship. About 25 thousand joint clients, which is amazing. And then what we're doing with VersaStack specifically is we're putting in the next generation, so we have a great converged offering that has all our all flash storage, but also software-defined. But what we added is we brought in what they did with their CliQr acquisition, which is called CloudCenter, and you add that on top make it single click, deploy and application anywhere, both on PRIM in the different Clouds, and it makes it very simple for developers. We talked about the API Layer. You bring that in to DevOps environment. So we feel really strong that as far as, if you're looking to bring in a True Private Cloud probably the best answer that we could do, is what we do with VersaStack. And we just announced it this week. And also we gave a preview. It's Cisco live in Melbourne a week ago. I think it's been a good uptake. But it kind of plays to... When you know what people were trying to do, but you need to bring the automation. You got to make it self-service and that really drives, for the business units, as well as developers. That drove what we brought into VersaStack. So we brought different assets in it from Cisco and IBM to make that kind of a reality. >> John and I were talking earlier on theCUBE this week and somebody brought up, yeah the CIO, they really don't think about storage. They certainly don't want to be thinking about the media. And the conversation shifted way off... Even flash now, it's like, oh yeah, yeah we get it. But you mentioned something earlier and this is very relevent to CIO's. They want to get from point a to point b with this minimal disruption, they don't want to have to buy a boat load of services to get it done. And now you're talking about things like automation and self-service. What are the discussions like with senior IT executives and how are you helping them get from point a to point b with minimum disruption? >> So the good thing about... You think about the IBM brand. It's as much about trust and helping people through it. So people give us just a credit to say I can engage with them, get the innovation. But also we've been through the zeros So a lot of the times they're asking how are we doing it? How are we transforming our company? How are we doing it internally? And then if you jut kind of, common sense, walk them through because of the broadness of the portfolio, we don't just have this point solution and every answer is, well you buy this box, right? We're able to have that conversation and when you get that broader IBM together that's where it kind of differentiates and they love it. Now I've been to a lot of, oh I'll say, IBM friendly accounts which is great. But also, some people that have never dealt with us are eyes wide open because it's a new day. People are struggling with this big transfer, right? How do you get from now to where you want to go in Cloud is a big change. >> Those new customers, what are they getting wide-eyed about? What are they focusing on? What's the big focus? >> So we'll talk about, we'll do True Private Cloud, but really what you can do as far as data, and what we're doing around Cognitive is really telling, right? The ability to really show 'em with symbol API calls they get more... So to have a Cognitive conversation that's an industry specific conversation really gets people lit up. In the end it ends up being, okay I see the possible. Then, how do I get from here to there. And typically it doesn't start, well I'm just going to go directly that direction. It's help me with a multi-year plan to get to there, while I'm taking out costs, adding agility over time. But I would say the kind of conversations are especially with an industry lens, which is what IBM brings to it, is really telling. >> So I got to ask you about the Convergent reStructured markup because the hot trend that's in the Cloud native world is server lists. So is there a storage list version? Cause what you're basically saying with the True Private Cloud is, you're essentially doing server lists, storage lists, philosophy. Is that, I mean how do you guys rationalize this server list trend. Cause servers and storage are basically the same things in my mind these days. But, I mean, you might disagree. >> I think in general people aren't looking to the different components. They're looking for a way to operate in their environment that's more efficient. They're looking for use cases. They're also trying to have IT not be in the way of what they're trying to do in development, but actually give the right tools. So that's why, to be honest, go back to True Private Cloud, I've been using it a lot cause it really resonates with people. Is how do you get that same experience but on PRIM, cause there's different reasons to be on PRIM. >> It's like Cloud native on PRIM. You could get all the benefits of what Serverless promotes, which is here's an unlimited pool of resources. The software will just take of that for you. That's DevOps. >> And doing... >> John: On PRIM. >> And doing true DevOps, Chef, Puppet, no compromises is exactly how you do it. So you change nothing for your developers. But now you're running it on PRIM or in a Hybrid Cloud. Cause there's a lot good use cases for Hybrid Cloud even if it's born in the Cloud application. You're making a web application or iPhone application, the fact of the matter is, you might want to test it against the back end. So being able to do a Hybrid Cloud, bring this system record data there, to be able to do DevOps on what production looked like maybe last night, or a week ago is much different than the current DevOps models. >> Well it's a good strategy too. If you think about the True Private Cloud, the way you're looking at it, which I think is the right way, is a lot of the things that we look at on theCUBE, and talk about, is three areas. Product gaps, organizational gaps, and process gaps. The number one thing is organizational gaps. So when you have that True Private Cloud on PRIM, it's not a big leap to go Cloud Native Public. >> It's seamless in fact. >> John: It's totally seamless. >> And on that case that a lot of the stuff we're talking about is, we help people modernize and transform their environment. And the message is all about optimization on the traditional application environment. It's all about freeing up the resources. So... >> John: That's the ovation strategy. That's the creativity, that's the Dev element. >> And if you don't free up the key resources they can't be on the digital transformation. And without the right skill set, because they're kind of trapped in operation. So a lot of the automation things we're doing are things that, to be honest, the storage team, or the admin team will be doing. It's manual error prone, but take it away. But also you free up the team. So it kind of plays to all those. >> That must really resonate with the CIO. I mean, I would imagine CxO goes, okay I could have Cloud on PRIM and then train my organization to then start thinking Hybrid workloads as they start moving Hybrid pretty quickly. >> And here's the thing, is what do you have to change for developers? Tell me what I have to get by the developer or DBA's? And the answer is nothing. Use the exact same tools. So you know, on stage it'll literally show me how Chef or Puppet... They're not doing trouble tickets or spinning things up, down, but... Same thing with deploying applications. It's like Cloud Center application. Set up the stack and deploy either on PRIM, different architectures, both converged and non-converged or in different Clouds. And they allow you to just, one click and deploy it. And they deal with all those differences. But that's how you want to make it, you use it serverless. They don't have to worry about the infrastructure. But also we're freeing up the team. >> So Ed, I got to ask ya, on a sort of personal note, I mean I've followed your career for a long time. John and I call you the Five Tool Star. You've had the start-up experience, you've got technical chops, you did a stint at IBM, you went to MIT and came back with that big MIT brain, brought it to IBM, so pretty awesome career. By no means even close to over. What have you brought to IBM? I think I've known every GM of storage, since the first GM of storage at IBM. What specific changes have you brought and what's the vision and the direction that you want to take this organization? >> It's a great culture, great history of storage. So I guess that I would be the first outsider coming into storage. But I don't think it's any different. I've been in storage my entire career. I understand it. Some of it is optimizing their current model. The portfolio of what we're doing. Some of it is just making sure we have the right things in sales and working with channels, which one of my companies was an actual channel partner. So I think it's just the perspective of maybe a fresher look, but again we are a great team. Great portfolio. We're quietly number two in storage hardware software. Shhhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone. Cause we don't do a good job of getting the news out... But the fact of the matter is... >> Now we'll tell everyone. You say don't tell anyone, we're telling everybody. You tell us to tell everyone, we don't tell anyone. >> Together: (laughing) >> But we still get people, are you guys still doing storage? We're like, literally we're number two by revenue. And this is IDC and Gartner software hardware. So we are a player in the space. We have a lot of technology and I guess what I'm bringing is just maybe a little spice of vision and... >> Well you guys have a strategy that's unique and different but aligned with the mega trend. That, to me I think, is something that's been in the works for a while. It's been cobbled together. Dave always points it out, how the storage groups change. But the game is still the same, right? Ultimately it's about storage. Now the market conditions are changing on the organizational side. That seems to be the thing. >> Ed: Agreed. >> Well all flash is probably the thing. >> But also what you're going to start seeing is bringing Cognitive capabilities. So we're not going to call in Watson for storage, but imagine bringing Watson to storage, right? Think of all the metadata we have. Not only for support but for insight. You're going to all start doing more Cognitive data management, and not only look at metadata, but taking action on them. Using Watson to look at images, so very interesting use cases that I think only IBM can do. >> I can just envision the day where I just voice activate, Watson spin me up more servers. And provision all flash petabyte. Done. >> (giggling) Believe it or not, we can do a chat, but we have that working. >> John: (laughing) >> We're looking for applicability of that, so. >> And then Watson would tell me, well you can't right now. >> You're not authorized. (laughing) >> You got to grab the Watson for storage url. He's been grabbing url's all day on GoDaddy. (laughing) >> Ed, thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. Congratulations on taking names and kicking butt in storage, in the strategy. True Private Cloud, a good one, love that research, again from Wikibomb. >> Yup. >> Kind of new but different, but relevant. >> Ed: Very relevant. >> Thanks so much. >> Ed: (mumbles) So thank you, thank you very much. I appreciate it. >> Okay, live coverage here at Mandalay Bay here at IBM Interconnect 2017. I'm John Furrier, Dave Vellante. Stay with us. More coverage coming up after this short break. (pulsing tech music)