>> Narrator: From Miami Beach, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019. Brought to you by Acronis. >> Hey, welcome back, everyone, it's theCUBE's coverage of Acronis Global Cyber Summit 2019 here in Miami Beach, Florida, at the Fontainebleau hotel. I'm John Furrier hosting theCUBE. We're here with Craig Weir, Director of Cloud Portfolio at Ingram Micro. Welcome to theCUBE. Director of Cloud Portfolio at Ingram Micro Cloud, so you guys have a cloud and you guys have sales, technicals out there? >> We got everything, so we have the platform itself, so we have our own platform that is used by one-third of the world telcos. We have large VAR's, DVAR's, SP's using our platform. We're also a cloud aggregator, so we offer pretty much any vendor solution on there, so today, we have over 200 solutions on our platform. We offer services to help partners grow and expand because jumping from where they are today to where they want to go tomorrow is very difficult, so we offer those services, so it's a full package. >> You know, I'm really impressed with Ingram. I got to tell you, Ingram Micro, you guys have essentially reinvented you guys' self in plain sight, so it's like changing the airplane out of 35,000 feet, it's really hard to do. You guys have done it, you've essentially taken a distribution model to the cloud, maintained that stickiness with your clients and partners, and now have automation built in. >> Yeah, we always talk about: we're building a plane while we fly it. And we've been doing that for 10 years. We were the first to get into cloud, we're the world's largest distributor, we know that, but times are changing and you need to adapt with it. So we want to get ahead of the curve, being that we want to own the platform, so we made large acquisitions to be the number-one platform provider. We also want to do the value-added service because partners today want to make that change. They're starting to make that change, but they're not sure exactly how to do it or how to monetize it correctly. So we realized, earlier on, we need to make a massive investment and DNA change in what we do. The old word of pick, pack, and ship is gone, right? Distributing now means a million things that we do. We're more of a service provider than we are anything else. >> Yeah, it's so funny, and also, gross margin used to be higher in the old days. When they started to get hit, started getting out of that direct distribution, there was margin pressure, and again, channel businesses are very efficient. The weak don't survive very long and the ones that are smart actually evolve. This is a great case where you can wrap services around it and, with the cloud, you get operating leverage. So you have an investment, now you have a business model for the next 10, 20 years. >> Yeah, if you think about distributions' basis points, it's a term that doesn't really exist outside distribution where you're razor-thin on those margins, but to your point on cloud, it's much heavier lift, it's much more cooperative selling, so obviously, we want to focus there where we can have growth at a higher profitable rate. And, if you can wrap around platform services around that and make you more money and give more value to the channel, why not? >> Well, that's what the channel wants. They want profitability, want to keep their customers, and increase their gross profit, and that's from services. Now, with software economic margins coming in, the revenue is higher. Software economics are great. >> Yeah, and I think a lot of partners today, NSP's, LAR's, VAR's, DVAR's, they don't really know what is their company actually worth? What's the multiple, right? And they're trying to do that assessment of how much your businesses are actually services and how much is that just reoccurring on an annuity basis, not managed service in some respect. So, for us, we look at that and say, well, how do we actually help you migrate that business? We want to get you to 60, 50, 70% services-led where you're making an average of 10, 20, 30 points. >> And a lot of your partners too have long-standing relationships with customers. And so, by you innovating, that just trickles down to them. That makes it sticky for you guys, great business model. Craig, talk about your relationship with Acronis. We're here at their Global Cyber Summit 2019. Talk about what you guys are doing with them. >> So we've been with Acronis for six years now. We're their largest distributor worldwide. We operate from pretty much every country we operate. They're one of our leading, actually, they are our leading backup disaster recovery and cybersecurity solution. We've an amazing partnership at every single level. When it comes to how we go to market, how we back its position, how we recruit enable partners, it's really next to none. We've very, very aggressive timelines and goals for next year for where we want to go, and where that means it's actually growth, expansion, service offering, no matter what head count we have towards this initiative. Acronis is our number-one provider. >> They have a similar DNA and they're thinking like you guys do with the cloud, thinking about how that transformation business model evolved for Ingram Micro. They're seeing it now with their unique integrated... Well, it won't be unique for long 'cause I think everyone is going to copy it. This integrated holistic view having a platform that's an enable, not just hardware, the infrastructure, where they got a platform layer which is enabling capabilities for sets of services on top. Theirs and their ISV's and developers, I mean that's just a proven platform formula. What's your feedback on that? Do you see that translating well in the field, in the partner networks? >> Yeah, very well, I think today, you think of backup disaster recovery as legacy backup disaster recovery. Where am I backing up to, why am I backing? It's for that disaster. Not remediation of issues, security risks. You're seeing them go into a completely security play which someone argues and says it makes no sense, your backup disaster recovery, your BDR. But, if you think of the ransomware attacks today, the fact that I can have a safe copy hooked up in minutes, the ransomware is no longer an issue. And how they position that is really a security end-to-end solution. It doesn't mean you don't need any other security. Obviously, you still do. But it comes at a very different angle and I think it provides a bit of clarity to customers who are confused. They said that earlier, they mentioned: how many different security providers are becoming open every single day? >> No one wants to buy another tool. >> No, and there's no more large mega offer. There's no one solution. >> You know, solving the ransomware problem certainly is a great way to get breached in any account. Hey, I get the mousetrap for solving ransomware. In that case, that's when a better mousetrap works. You're right to the front of the line. Then, once you're in there, then you got to figure it out. This is what's interesting to me is that it's a data solution. I think you cracked that nut, it's a winning formula. >> If you think of a really basic, what are we trying to do or who are we trying to protect? Either people or information, right? We're not worrying about protecting people today. We're talking about information, so at the end of the day, what's most vital for a company's organization? You're looking at their customer data, their personal data, financial data, and if you think about would you want them to have access to, how do you want to mediate that? So the ability of end-to-end and how that story, which was really, really important to the customer, to have the clarity on why, is critical. >> Well, you guys do a great job on security. I read your reports every year that go out at VMworld and Reinvent, all the different events you guys go to. You guys have great security groups, props to those guys. I want to get back to this data backup thing that you mentioned earlier 'cause we had some insight from our conversation. I was just on with a Forrester analyst where, if you look at backup and recovery, it was basically because it was some operational disruption. That had nothing to do with security. I was like, lights go out, hurricane, Hurricane Sandy, whatever happens, something's happening. And that was all built around the continuity of its down rollback. But now the disruption is security. So no one's actually thought about it that way. So I think these guys have a great angle. I'm thinking of it like, well, if the disruption's security, that eliminates almost all the current solutions because they're just rolling back bad code. >> I don't think it eliminates all of them, but it's a great point. >> Well, the majority of them. >> You sit there and go, well, why is Acronis a security provider? It makes no sense. And you sit back and start thinking about the approach 'cause, again, we're thinking old BD and R. The new world of backup and disaster recovery is not the disaster being a natural occurrence or something with this were to happen. It's the every-single-day cyberattack and ransomware that's happening on a regular basis. That's the new norm. New norm isn't the hurricane, it isn't the cyclone, it's security attacks every day. >> And, happening weekly, two towns are being taken out. Craig, observations from your standpoint being an industry participant. Got experience out there in the field, talked to a lot of customers. You guys have your own cloud. Just in general, the top story of this whole cyber protection, security, data world, what's the top story in your mind? What's the most important story that needs to be continually covered and talked about? >> I think what we're missing today is a lot of partners aren't protecting their own house. At the end of the day, when an MSP is looking after their end user's data, do they really understand what they're responsible for? Do they have the right system in place, right? It's back to the constant security attacks. We're seeing, time and time again, MSP's, medium to small, are having massive breaches and going out of businesses in no time. You see MSP's who want to go to MSSP, but that requires-- >> John: What's that mean? >> Managed security service provider. >> John: Okay, all right. >> So you're an MSP specializing, dedicated on... And security, you have a SOC, which means you have a security operational center, meaning that you have to either buy that or go and invest on it or maybe partner with somebody. It's incredibly expensive. So MSP's today-- >> John: The compliance and the insurance alone. >> The compliance, insurance, the expertise. There's a massive shortage of people. So we see the MSP's today may be fine. Maybe 10% could go make that leap to MSP so that everyone else is figuring out: how do I manage the security space? I have all these different offers I have and solutions I have. A lot of them are homegrown, they're not very good. So, at the end of the day, when we look at what's missing is, hey, if you're an MSP, is your own house protected? Before you try to put everyone else's. Because, if you're managing all that data from that partner, you better make sure your house is protected. >> Protect your own house and I think that's interesting, what just came out of Acronis is that, it's a little bit of a flashy announcement, but the blockchain notary, they say, hey, we'll protect the data in all forms and we'll encrypt it on a blockchain. So that speaks to this blockchain problem. Well, data's a supply chain. >> It is, and you sit there... Again, let's talk old backup disaster recovery. You have data somewhere, it's a copy of your file. Do you know it's a clean copy, an authentic file? Do you know that something hasn't happened to it? And before, we never would've known that. Now we do. >> Yeah, well, I've always said in theCUBE, Dave Vellante and I talk about storages, not about the storage, CPU's and the hardware, but the data that's being stored. Take care of your own house first before you take on other people's data. I love that analogy. >> Yeah and customers are getting smart these days. Customers are looking, they're doing reading. Most customers look each at a time. They're looking at word-of-mouth, a trusted advisor, and they're doing research online. So they're demanding this. >> Craig, I really appreciate your insights. Thanks for taking time to share. Take a minute to give a plug for what you guys do in the cloud, how does someone get involved and work with you, what's a customer for you? Take a minute to give a plug out for what you guys do. >> So Ingram Micro, so we're the largest cloud organization in the world. We'll talk U.S. specifically. >> John: Cloud? >> U.S. cloud. >> John: Amazon's bigger. >> As a distributor. >> John: Okay, distributor cloud, that's what I thought. Just to make sure, you keep an eye on them. >> Yeah, no, it's a good point. So we actually are, we do distribute AWS, we do distribute Azure. They're largest for both of them in the channel perspective. But partners today, what I would say the opportunity to them is there's those who play very heavily in the space, then those that do not. Everyone is somewhere in the middle. Working with Ingram Micro, the ability to really, what we said, the Cloud Awesomeness Roadmap which we presented earlier, we're taking a partner from infancy maybe doing a handful of SaaS offers today to going 10, 20 offers on a regular basis. We really enable and train them to make that jump both financially and from a skillset perspective. >> Can anyone get involved? You guys have a vetting process? They have a cloud SaaS app? >> Yeah, so cloud marketplace, if you're an Ingram Micro account today, you have a free account into our cloud marketplace, which is our e-commerce buying engine which is built on CloudBlue, which is our platform. Free access to it, online purchasing of any SaaS offer you want, depending on what the authorizations are by the SaaS offer. Free access to our team when it comes to how to enable support them, whether it's security, UCA's, backup disaster recovery, public cloud, Microsoft, you name it. And it's really a team dedicated to help the problem solvers, which is everyone here today, solve the current problem of how to get more of an annuity subscription basis. >> Awesome, well, congratulations. Cloud marketplaces are hot, you guys are number-one channel, distributor, cloud, whatever it's called. Is there a category? >> For making new-- >> Channel cloud. >> Yeah, you could say-- >> Distributor cloud. >> We're a distribution service provider. >> Congratulations Ingram Micro trends. Building the plane while they're flying it, I love that one too. It's theCUBE, we're a-flying here in Miami Beach at the Fontainebleau hotel for Acronis' Global Cyber Summit 2019. We're back with more coverage after this short break. (upbeat electronic music)

(upbeat music) >> Live from Barcelona, Spain, it's theCUBE! Covering Cisco Live! Europe, brought to you by Cisco and it's eco system partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of Cisco Live! 2019 here in Barcelona, Spain. I'm Stu Miniman, my co-host for this segment is Dave Vellante. Dave, myself, and John Furrier here, gettin' wall to wall coverage. Happy to welcome to the program, first time guest, Dave Stanford, who's the Customer Experience Cloud Product Management at Cisco, Dave thanks so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having me here. >> Alright. So, we've been digging into the whole multi-Cloud piece here, some real big announcements. A lot of their business solutions talking about being anywhere, it's the bridge-to-possible here at the show- >> Exactly. >> So, tell us exactly the customer experience there. Is this, the gooeys, much more than that, do you know? >> It is. >> What's that encompass? >> We really want to put a whole wrapper around all these products and solutions from a service perspective, and that includes everything from advisory, really guiding our customers, how do I get there, we see all these products and sometimes, it's like, well what do I use these for? So, we want to guide them, help them adopt it and then, support it, support's probably the most important piece. With all these multiple solutions, who can the customers call to get support for all of these? >> You know, I mean, I've worked with Cisco, partnered with Cisco my entire career, and the last few years, boy, things are changing so fast. >> Absolutely. >> A year ago kind of opened my eyes, and said, oh Cisco's movin' to be a software company? You really see the movement when I come to the show here, when I talk to people like the Cisco DNA Platform Solutions. >> Exactly. >> And all the things that customers need to change. Bring us inside how you're helping customers with that change, the services, and everything that you're wrapping around there. >> Sure. My role today is to develop the offers and scale them out and enable our other advanced services folks to deliver, but previously I was delivery myself. So, I understand the challenges that the customers have, so I know what they expect, they want the products to go out there and seamlessly work together, now they do. There's APIs, there's connectivity, but we have to actually show them what they can do with them, what are the use-cases. And from our perspective, when a product's released, a CX offer or service package should go out the door with that, too. QuickStarts are the biggest thing we have. >> Yeah and actually one of the keys things we talk about that move to software, with hardware it was inner-operability and how do all these things wire together? >> Exactly. >> Software, right, it needs to be seamless. >> It does. >> It should be platforms. And solutions in there, so give us the critical eye, a look internally, how's Cisco doing, what's the feedback you're hearing from the teams and partners? >> I think we're on the right track. We're well ahead with some of the solutions we're released with Cisco Container Platform, Cisco CloudCenter Suite. The biggest thing we hear from customers, a lot of, especially developers, application users, they don't care, they just want it to be up and running. So, with our integrated solutions, with things like the new HyperFlex 4.0, we build on top of that, they don't have to worry about connectivity to security or to load balancing, name the technology, they can bring it up and we can actually have the software do exactly what it needs to do. >> So, I've observed for decades the evolution and the services' business. >> Yeah. >> When I started in the business, it was all about break-fix. >> Yes. >> Right and then you had large software projects and ERPs. >> Yeah. >> And business process, re-engineering, a lot of consultative selling, internet came in. A lot of e-commerce activity. >> Yeah. >> How has the Cloud changed the service role, the organization, and how you go to market and scale, as you mentioned before. >> I think the biggest change with the Cloud, it's no longer just break-fix, let me go and install it and figure it out. It's, we really need to understand what our requirements are before we move to the Cloud, we hear about speed, cost-performance, but there's a lot more thought that has to go into it. We have to look across the IT infrastructure. So, that advisory upfront, that guidance, that wasn't necessarily always there, that's the biggest change, before we even think about using the product, we need to understand why we purchase this product. >> And so, what do you need from the customer? I mean, you obviously need data and participation and buy-in from the customer, what do you need to be successful there? >> Really from the customer we need to know, what are you trying to accomplish? What are the use-cases, and we have a lot of common use-cases we've seen, security is always a concern. How do I securely connect to the Cloud? How can I leverage Cisco's software to do that? And it's not just about connecting to Cisco's software, but how do we use Cisco's software to do that connectivity? So, it's over and over we see this constant pattern of, I want to build a manager hybrid Cloud securely, multi-Cloud network it and take the complexity out of what we do there. >> As the demographics of your buyer changes- >> Yes. >> How do you service them differently? How do you create a customer experience that's more focused on the way they want to interact with you? Whether it's chat or talk about that a little bit. >> So, you're not really talking to the IT infrastructure person anymore, you're talking to the lines of business or the application developers. So, you have to go in with the understanding of, I'm not going to go in and say, we're going to refresh the hardware, we're going to do this, we're going to give you new switches, new routers. You start the conversation at the application level now. What types of applications do you have? Are they traditional, do we have to re-factor them? Can't we just move them to the Cloud? Then, you go to the next level of, we understand this, now let's get our hardware in place to support this and then our infrastructure. But applications, that's the big shift. That's where the discussion is now. >> Alright, so we've talked about some of the impact of Cloud. >> Yeah. >> We've been hearing about how AI and ML are getting infused- >> Yes. >> Into all the products and that has to have a huge impact on how the customers interact and manage- >> It does. >> And there's got to be a little bit of the retraining that we talked about, too. >> Definitely, I mean, that's probably the biggest challenge, even hiring right now to find the right fit for Cloud or for Dev-Ops, AI, ML, it's a challenge. So, you have to have a plan in place with this background. And, what we've done within CX is we have a five tiered model. So, we start with the pre-requisites, where are you in this scale, we'll give you a rating based on what you have, but you really still have to train the folks, you have to give boot camps, cohorts, then code deliver on different engagements. But you still have to bring in folks with the right background, even if it's network route-switch, you can train them, but you have to have that program in place to be able to ramp them up. >> Yeah, we always said one of the biggest strengths Cisco has, is you've got those army of Cisco certified- >> Yes. >> The CCIEs out there. >> Yes. >> CCNPS and the like out there. Now, a lot of what they have to manage, it's either outside of their control, it's in the public Cloud >> It is, yeah. >> Or, right there's automation. I don't need to just get an alert and go do it, wait I need to make sure that the business rules are in place and- >> Exactly. >> The tooling's going to take care of that. So, help us understand what's the new, what's the new role inside the customers, that's got to change who you're negotiating with and who's involved in the conversations when you're putting this solution together, as well as, kind of the pre as well as the post deployments. >> Sure, sure I think the biggest difference is our customers now have customers. >> Yeah. >> Before we just managed their IT infrastructure. A good example, we have a healthcare comp, a healthcare corporation in Canada, the clinics are basically the clients of the overall organization, they don't care how long it takes to spend, they want speed. They can't go to the IT department and say, give me a VM and then three weeks later, they give it up or they provision it. And then, they'll go and say, well this is too slow. Here's my credit card, I'm going to buy Amazon Web Services and provision it, now we need to bring all of that together so, the route-switch folks need to become multi-Cloud architects. And when I talk about multi-Cloud, they need to know everything up the stack, infrastructure, connectivity with the CSR, security with our Cloud Protect Portfolio, and then the applications, not to mention the vast array of third party solutions, Cooper Netties is everywhere now. It's the defacto standard for containerization. This is really something that's come up over and over. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges is to get our folks to look at the overall stack rather than one piece. >> You challenge. I mean, Cisco and Hallmark, and Cisco has always been partner friendly. >> Yes. >> It's worked with all the different infrastructure that's out there. >> Yup. >> Now, you add in all the different Clouds. >> Exactly. >> And it's not just a cloud. >> It's an entire cloud stack, all the APIs. Your eyes bleed when you look at all the different APIs from Amazon- >> Yup. >> Data services, even. >> Exactly. >> There are dozens and dozens of them and so, so how do you manage (chuckles) that challenge? You can't just throw bodies at it? >> No, so we leverage the tools that we have. Cisco Container Platform's a good example. We use it in-house, but it's the biggest thing we position to our customers in the Cloud story because it's made deploying and managing containers or Cooper Netties simple. Before CCP, my team would deploy open source Cooper Netties which worked great, it was complex to set up, but then you had to look at, I need a tool for monitoring, I need one for logging, for load balancing, you ended up with 10 different applications. You thought you were moving to containers, but hey, there's much more to it. So, now with CCP, it's all packaged, everything's simple to manage. So, that's just the containers. And you mentioned governance before. I think this is a big thing, CloudCenter Suite, we can model our applications in there, deploy to any Cloud endpoint, so we support over 15 Clouds. And what my team does is bring this all together. So, it's not just a service, we want to show you how you can automatically provision those clusters and move it anywhere you want to go. >> Yeah, I wonder if you can put a point on that. The CloudCenter Suite, CloudCenter's been around for awhile. >> It has. >> But there's really been a re-architecture. It's built, Cloud native. >> It is. >> Cooper Netties' in there, but what, as a customer, is going to be like, oh wait, this isn't what I was used to in the past, help us understand what it is for the future. >> Absolutely, I think CloudCenter has been around for awhile, it's an amazing product. I took over this Cloud Portfolio and Services about a year ago and I'd heard all about it, started to ramp up on it, within four hours I couldn't believe this is really gooey-based. This is simple, so I can model the application and it's a simple as clicking deploy, and I can push it to any Cloud environment. And I think that's the biggest challenge, it's always been, how do I migrate my applications from the data center to the cloud or vice-versa. And CloudCenter's made it so simple within two minutes, you can actually migrate an application or deploy it, and they've added so many other features around cost and orchestration that it's everyday, I see customers starting to adopt CloudCenter Suite. >> I want to ask you about Swimlanes. >> Yeah. >> Cisco's a product company. >> Yes. >> You R&D. You build product, you ship products. >> You're not a services company. but you have a large services organization. How do you, what's your swim lane relative to some of the big SIs, what's your relationship with them? How does that work? >> Sure. So, I'm really closely partnered with all of the engineering teams, but at the same time, the partner organization, the systems integrators, they're still partners, especially in the new CX organization, we want to drive the solutions out to our customers, so we're actually taking some of our partners, bringing them on board, ramping them up on our services. And saying, hey you know what, you go deliver it, we'll support you, there's not a competition. I think, with CX now, we've combined everything together, the partners are just as important to us as the products that we sell. >> Will they private label those services or is- >> Yeah, absolutely, so our QuickStarts for example, these smaller packages, to turn up the solution stack quickly and drive adoption, we can hand that off to 'em, they can sell it themselves and label it. >> Yeah, so you're open that. And that drives their brand and their value. Their intimacy with their customers, yeah. >> I mean, we have a big market, but still the partners can reach them different spaces that we wouldn't traditionally be able to get to in professional services. >> Yeah, they have those relationships. Services has always been very local by nature. >> It has. >> The world's not just going to, we've talked about this, not just going to go to three clouds. I mean- >> That's right. >> Services, people want to meet people and they're in the same neighborhood. And there's trust. >> Yup. >> And that just doesn't disappear over night. >> And you have to build that, too. But you have to build the expertise before you get that trust. >> Yeah (chuckles). >> So, Dave, lot of customers here, you've been in meetings, giving presentations all week, give us a little bit of what's the buzz at the show? What are some of the top conversations? People are doing their planning for 2019. >> Yeah. >> You know, big hurdles and big opportunities that people are excited for. >> So, two common themes, security has come up over and over again, customers who haven't moved to Cloud they're concerned, how do I connect? And can I really put this in the Cloud? Or do I have to keep it in the data center? So, we talk about how we can secure and it- >> And I'm sorry, are they concerned about security, compliance, governance- >> They are. >> All of the above. >> One example. Yesterday, a customer said, I have a top secret application. And my company's pushing me towards the Cloud, can I really put this top secret application in a container in a public Cloud environment? So, that's just one conversation. It's the concern of, I don't own this anymore. It's not my data center, so how do I secure the application? How do I make sure there's no type of interference with that app, any type of interjection into damage it, right? And then, the other thing is, I see your stack, I see you have infrastructure, I see all the products, I don't think it's that simple to put together. It's great on a PowerPoint, but show me in the real world how this works together. And, that's what we've been doing, showing these demos, how we can build everything. >> Alright, so once you've shown them, walked through everything, they're feeling answered? >> They're feeling much better, but we go back to the whole CX lifecycle, advisory, implement, support, and that brings it all together. >> Yeah, and the top secret thing, Google, you've been highlighting partnerships with Google, Microsoft, Amazon, they've got specific Clouds, we've been watching this- >> They do. >> 'Specially, all the stuff happening at the government level. >> Yeah. >> And one of the great proof points about public Cloud adoption. >> Yeah, definitely. >> Alright, want to give you the final word as people come away from Cisco Live! 2019, when it comes to customer experience, what do you want them to understand? >> It's all about solutions, putting it together. So, you see all these products, it's not that complex, CX, our partners can help you build it, scale it out, and really adopt it. >> Alright, well Dave Stanford, really appreciate you helping us understand the CX experience here. >> Thank you. >> Definitely lots of opportunities here. Cloud, AI, ML, putting all the solutions together. For Dave Vallente, I'm Stu Miniman, back with more coverage here of Cisco Live! 2019. Thanks for watching theCUBE. (funky upbeat music)