>> It's The Cube, covering WTG TRANSFORM 2019. Brought to you by WINSLOW Technology Group. >> Hi, I'm Stu Miniman. We're here in Boston, Massachusets, across the Mass Pike from Fenway Park, and happy to welcome back to the program Mike Berthiaume, who's Director of Systems Engineering at Nutanix, a good partner of Winslow Technology Group. Mike, thanks for joining us. >> Well as always Stew, it's great to be here. This is number three for us I think, this has become kind a bit of a tradition. >> The third year we've done at this, I've seen you at many of the local user groups here and as I say, a nice home game after lots of travels around the globe. Talking about lots of technologies. >> For sure, looking forward to it. >> What I've always loved, diggin in, in a show like this is we've got users. Scott and the team have a 189 users, many of them are Nutanix customers. So let's start there, what's top of mind from your customers today? >> A lot, so there's a lot happening, as we know in the industry. Things are changing and our customers are trying to figure out what it means for them. But at the end of the day it's all about IT, providing the value back to the business. I think CIOs, and we were just speaking about this in our session, are really pushing their staff to look at public cloud as a potential option. So in many of the folks working on the trenches realize, "Oh yeah, public cloud does make sense "for some things but not necessarily everything." The true strategy we have to have as an organization is multi-cloud, figure out how to make that work. So that's really what we're hearing, and the good news is from our product portfolio Nutanix, and what we're doing. We're really very much in lockstep with that. >> When I think back when that whole wave of hyper-converged infrastructure aged the eye which, Nutanix to its credit never was like, HCI, HCI. It was about simplicity, it was about working on the business, and underneath it that's software that drives the company. The founders of the company came from some of the hyperscalers, some of the file system design underneath there. So when you hear, well the promise of public cloud is supposed to be simple and economic. Well public cloud, we understand is neither simple nor cheap. >> That's right. >> Hyper-converged infrastructure did simplify environments, and changes the economics of how we think if it. When I talk to Nutanix customers it's like, "Oh hey, I don't no longer need to do constant care feeding "of this stack of wires and stuff put together, "much of it is much simpler." You talk about customers, they're going to that multi-cloud, hybrid cloud environment, they're trying to figure out their strategy. Rick Gowan in his presentation said something I thought resonated with me, which is, "You don't want to end up in hybrid cloud, "just you ended up there by mistake without plans," And unfortunately that's where IT is, I've got lots of projects that I do, and I do them as I need them and I realize, "Oh wait, somebody's manage, maintain, "and pull all these things together." So help us understand where Nutanix fits in that multi-cloud story today, which is more than just where people that might not of looked in a couple a years, know the appliance. >> Yeah sure, and I think from are, and mentioned before our roots come from those big large public cloud environments like Google, and Amazon, and others. But when we talk about multi-cloud, and you also made the point that simplicity is probably one of the core values that our customers see Nutanix as being on the forefront there. So I would say that for me, hybrid cloud and I think the mantra within Nutanix, hybrid cloud is not something that many manufacturers have been able to achieve. It's a lot a separate silos, right and as soon as you create multiple silos, you're actually creating operational disruption, and you're actually creating complexity. So if you have to manage public cloud a, public cloud b, your on-prem environment, and maybe your remote offices, and even your edge with different management tools. There's not a ton of value there from a simplicity stand point. So what we strive to do? Is we strive to create that abstraction, that single consistent control plane. That goes between your on-premises, your remote offices, and now truly extend that into the public cloud. So I can manage my resources in the public cloud, in the same way I would on premises. Whether that be next generation applications that probably truly do belong in a public cloud, like cloud-native apps, or my traditional legacy applications that have been running in my data center for years. So that's really what it comes down to, is being able to provide that true seamless experience for users. And at the end a the day businesses and users shouldn't really care where their applications are, it should be whatever most cost effective for the business. And based on who you are as a user, if you're a developer? Or you are a executive? Where my application is shouldn't matter, it should be available wherever I am. >> Mike one of the things that's been interesting watching Nutanix is not the growth of the core market, but its got this three-tier architecture. You have a lot of different software pieces, some of which, at least today are not necessarily directly tied back to the original hyper-converged infrastructure. Where are you with the customers locally? Any kind a proof points? You can give us that kind a help us understand the strategy a bit more. >> I think the majority of the customers are running Nutanix here locally in New England, and probably a good majority of the world are running Nutanix, running kind of the core Nutanix, right. And the value that they're driving from that, they're seeing there is immense. They're getting the simplicity having the ability to run their operations, click one button to do their upgrades without disruption. There is a lot of value there. That's solving many of the issues. Now the higher level capabilities, and the higher level features. In order to be able to deliver those in a consistent way, you have to have a solid core foundation. All right, so that sold core foundation is our core ACI platform, or our cloud like infrastructure. One of the things I'll always say to customers is, "When you look at your Nutanix infrastructure, "your software to find data center, "it actually resembles what's running in a public cloud." So whether, if you're running applications in Amazon for example, you're running in a highly scalable distributed architecture. That's the exact same thing you're doing with Nutanix, and the reason they've been able to deliver those higher value services is because they have that solid foundation underneath it. So if you want to run your environment in a similar way, and true hybrid cloud? You've got to follow their playbook, and the technology that you're choosing, and we believe Nutanix is that right choice. >> Yeah and in many ways we're seeing the blurring the lines between them. I've interviewed people from Nutanix that's on the Cooper Netty Show, that experience that I have and Nutanix has partnerships with some of the public cloud environments. So we're seeing that location matters a little bit less. >> Absolutely, I think the nirvana again if we can imagine, what is this all going to look like five years from now? It's a single portal, single interface where I'm requesting some sort of a business service, or an application. And when I deploy it, it's not going to ask me where it's going to go? It's going to out it where it belongs based on the cost and business logic that I've actually defined in the system. And if it needs to go on Amazon? Or it needs to go on Azure? The decision is going to be made based on business logic, as opposed to technology decision, which I think is what matters. >> So Mike, I can't let you go without talking about, Winslow Technology's here, is a big Dell partner. >> %100. And they sell the Dell XE solution here. They're people out there, there is well the Dell relationship. Yes, they are one Nutanix biggest partners, but they are also, if you look out into the market and you look at market share? The biggest alternative to a Nutanix agency I-Option is the Dell EMC VxRail. So help us understand that dynamic, and how that's playing out in your world? >> Yeah that's a great question, and I kind of expected the controversial questions, as always on theCube, so thanks Stu. In terms a that I would say that when you look at Nutanix, the first thing I'll say is all HCI is not created equal. There is pretty significant differences between the two platforms. Yeah combining and storage, we could loosely define as HCI, but we really can't look at competing solutions as true cloud like infrastructure. Running our controller virtual machine in the user space, and having mobility of applications across hypervisors, and across clouds on a single platform is something very unique to Nutanix. So we're absolutely seeing competitive pressure for sure, but when we have the opportunity to talk to customers about what their multi-cloud journey really means to them? The discussion usually moves forward in a positive way. So I think our view, our perspective. You mention simplicity, we're all about choice, freedom of choice, we don't want to lock our customers into anymore particular technology. Let's do what makes most sense for the business, whether it's alternative public cloud, alternative hardware, or even alternative hypervisors. We give customers choice, we don't have a religion around any one particular technology. We talk about containerization for example, and kubernetes. We give customers the ability to deploy kubernetes on crime, leveraging the source version in kubernetes. All of the capabilities within the Nutanix platform will run on of the hypervisors we support. Right, so that's an important distinction too, it's not like we're telling you have to run one particular hyupervisor to get x feature. So an important distinction point there is we truly do believe in giving our customers the freedom to choose. >> Yeah that's great, just last thing Mike I got to imagine your customers are asking a lot a questions. There's all these new things coming out there that look, sound, or feel a little like what Nutanix is doing. So from the big ones like AWS Outposts, Azure, had Azure stacked, now is the new Azure HCI. So what do you tell your customers when the start calling and asking about these technologies? >> Well, if you look at the history? We've been doing this for a long time now, I've been here for over five years, and Nutanix has been doing this sense two, we've released our product back in 2011, after a couple a years of development. So we've been doing it longer than anybody else, and we also really built our platform around a mantra, that we are highly scalable distributed architecture, along enabling choice, and providing a level of simplicity that customers won't see in any other platform. So just the amount of development and engineering and focus around our customers and the needs of our customers really makes us sustain that. And if you look at just the overall growth of Nutanix, and the transition we're making now to more of a subscription base business model. It makes sense for customers and we've given them the ability to consume in a way that is even more incremental than it was in the past, and certainly more differentiated than what our competitors do. >> All right, Mike Berthiaume always a pleasure to catch up with you on camera, as well as off. Thanks so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much appreciate it Stu. >> All right, more coverage here from WTG Transform 2019. I'm Stu Miniman and thanks for watching theCube. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Announcer: Live from San Francisco, It's the Cube. Covering Red Hat Summit 2018. Brought to you buy, Red Hat. >> Okay, welcome back everyone. We're live here in the Cube in San Francisco, California, Monscone West, Cube's exclusive coverage of Red Hat Summit 2018. I'm John Furrier, co-host. With John Troyer, he's my analyst co- host, he's the co -founder of Tech Reckoning Advisory and Community Development Firm. My next guest is Marco Bill-Peter, Senior vice-president of Customer Experience and Engagement at Red Hat. Welcome back to the Cube. Good to see you. So, you guys have a great track record with customer support. You guys use gold standard in open source, you've done it well, very reliable. It's a changing world. You know, Open Shift now, certainly the center piece, west, new acquisition. A lot of things happening with in the portfolio. Cloud native new capabilities are on the horizon. So, you've got to figure it out. So, what's the support strategy? What do you guys do? How are you looking? I'm sure it's challenging but never too much of a challenge for you guys. You're smart, what's the support strategy? >> I think the recipe it is really like not getting stuck in a wave, right? And be open to, you know I think Jim Whitehurst and his keynote talk quite a bit about, you used to do all plan, describe and execute. That thing just doesn't work, right? Because supporting customers on Linux, supporting them when they move to Open Shift or even application, is a whole different piece. So, as a leader you got to be flexible as in okay, here we do it this way, let's put more money in this. Let's say Open Shift support, Open Shift kind of, what's the customer experience there, right? Kind of figure out how it works. There's a lot of things that scare me in the daily business as in like okay, we can't do that. But I think Red Hat is really good in reconfiguring, Jim talked about that in a keynote as well, reconfiguring the organization. And so, we move for example, quality assurance into my organization and combining that with support. All of them give some more opportunities realizing, oh this product maybe not ready yet for the market, right? We can not support that. Or, you augmented with, I wouldn't call it AI capabilities, but more like those capabilities. All of the sudden stuff gets done automatically. >> And multi cloud is again, just like multi vendor environment, but it's a little bit different obviously. But multiple clouds you have different architectures. You guys do some progressive things. What's new, architecturally within the support group? Because you have deals announced here with IBM and Microsoft, one of them is a joint, I think integrated program where guys are teaming up. >> Microsoft is interesting. >> We've teamed last three, four years, right? With he first deal and gone further. You're like funny, right? I've been at Red Hat so long and you put people on premise. It's kind of funny. But it's good, right? And that's where you got to glue together. Sometimes it's people. Sometimes it's also more having the data, right? I mean if you go multi cloud. Difference between multi vendor, multi cloud. Multi vendor, you just call the vendor and tell them hey you handle it. Here, I'll put data, you handle it. Or maybe you do it a bit better. But, multi cloud is, well it's running there, how do you get access to that? Then the whole privacy laws comes in. So you got to be more instrumentation, you know, telemetry-- >> You're using tech to help you guys out. That's what you're referring by AI. >> I actually think that the next ten years you will see support changing quite a bit. >> John: In what way? >> But also you have to staff this up, right? You need to upscale your folks as well as technology. >> That doesn't go away. But I think you've got to go more that you really need deep skills. If you want to support Open Shift you've got to, either you understand it from the middle side, from the application side or from the bottom from the infrastructure. You need both skill sets. So you need really highly skilled people. But one the other hand if it's really like real time and people don't have patience to wait two weeks, especially if you're in the cloud. More and more tooling. I see the vision as in it would be less and less based on the scale but I think it's less people involved more and more automation, tooling. >> You kind of see it now with boss, kind of just tip of the iceberg. But you've got automation built into the culture of Red Hat. You've put coral west. They want to automate everything. >> You see Insights, right? We launched Insights three years ago out of support. They take support data, find out what's really happening, create rules that if you match it the customer systems say you have this and this issue. And now it's in the incentive stage of the strategy as in we can automate it, but you can automate it. you have a problem, you want to have it solved. >> You're presenting a support service. >> Exactly, and eventually, we'll not even tell you, in maybe hindsight we'll tell you, hey, you had this network issue or configured the wrong way, we fixed it have a good day. >> Well it came up in Cooper Netty's conversation we had last week in Copenhagen, we were in Denmark for CubeCon around things Cooper Netty's defacto standing, so great stuff, that's certainly great. Istio service mesh is atopic that's highly discussed. And one of the thing that comes up is the automation the down side is potentially it fixes things. So, you could have a memory leak for instance, that you never know gets fixed. But it just crashes every day and reboots itself. So, the new kinds of instrumentation that's emerging. So this is really the though job. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> How do you get in there-- >> Also have automation-- >> And you as the central provider, right, are pulling in data from across the world and across the customer base. So how do you take that, sift it to be more proactive about decision making and support. >> So we capture all this support data. And you know it's fascinating, we have some AI capabilities, some machine learning capabilities go through there. But it's fascinating, sometimes we see new issues coming up. What we do is then, we go well let's look who is exposed to that, just to get a footprint. And then you actually inform customers, hey, you had this and this issue or you have this. It's really a different, I want to get more proactive or I want to get more automated. With the automation I just want to be, right, so we installed, over the last, I would say 18 months, like a bot, simple bot basically, his name is Edmond. And he works on support cases. And we started slow, very slow. We didn't let it go as in total machine or anything. But now, I gave some stats earlier today. In one used case it's 25 percent faster solving a customer issue using Edmond. And he participates in 11 percent of all support cases. >> Wow. >> Edmond is a busy guy. >> And the game is changing too. I mean in the old days, first lines support, second lines support, offline support, then escalation. These things are older IT mechanisms. With this you're talking about completely doing away with, in essence first line support. But also first line support might come in, from say a Microsoft or an IBM. You've got to be ready for anything. >> Actually I think it's not just first line support. And it's not replacing them. It's helping them. It's really making them faster, right? I think the frustration piece is, like, customer opens his support case, some data is missing, right? So, you have a que it gets to that. Engineering looks and oh, there's data missing. Edmond sees that and says hey, I need this data. Based on all the support cases we fixed similar issues, this is the data we need. So Edmond gets the data ready, engineer looks and in some cases Edmond actually closes it out. >> Closes it out. >> Tells the customer here there's a better solution, do it this way. >> Yeah, that's fascinating. >> I'd love to pull the camera back a little bit, right? You are not the SVP of support. You're the SVP of customer experience and engagement, right? That's an entirely different role in some ways, in that you're responsible for customer success at some level. >> That is correct, yeah. >> Talk a little bit about reconfiguring organization to be that-- >> So I think maybe dive in a little bit on the customer success. So we have a organization, they call technical account. It's part of the customer success organization. That's a human business but it's fascinating, right. We put these claims on clients and have them work together. They understand the business. It's an old business but trust me, having still a human in there understanding, okay this is customer x, y, z. That's the business objective, I talked about this today as well, not to forget, hey this customer actually wants to do whatever, whatever on the like an SIP to actually take that further to actually support case and doing that the team helps quite a bit. And then also the commitment, right? We don't want just to do support cases and then that's why you renew with Red Head, we want to make sure you actually get value out of it and that's why you want to renew. So that's why we configured different. It's bigger, right? It's bigger as in really making sure the product is correct. So that's why quality assurance is in my team, this support. That's why I run internal IT for the engineering team. We run the stuff that we sell actually earlier. And some of my team is like, Marco why do we have to do that? Because we learn and I much rather have you feel the pain than the customer feel the pain. That's why we configure different than, I've been 12 a half years right on this and it's still exciting that we are still able to change around-- >> I think the quality assurance piece is still big too cause you're in there as well. Looking at the QA. >> Yeah. >> Making sure that's good too. You're testing out the products and doing QA all within the mindset of customer experience. >> Exactly, and you've got to move that being agile, is more you see developers actually submitting test cases. Tests, so that's the component testing and the basic tests. What we got to do more, is what you mentioned, if somebody does less with Open Shift to contain all that, that thing together, if some service software defines storage, that thing together to bring together that's the hard drive. So I want to move more and more. That we take used spaces from customers, we'll close it. This is how we do it. X, y, z, customer and apply that. >> At the end of the day it's the same game different playing field. The customer wants choice, best possible solution experience, for them. You guys got to enable that, and then support it, make it happen. >> Yeah. >> And with cloud. >> And you see how, I don't know if you saw the demo yesterday when they show basically I think or Amazon was slower and every traffic that routed. This is reality as well, right? I mean if you look at one press release we did yesterday, I just find it a fascinating story. They're kitchen appliances. I don't know if you saw that. But they have over a million kitchen appliances or cooking appliances connected to the internet. It's a German, Swiss company when they got to upgrade the system so they get recipes done, they actually spin up instances in Alibaba in Asia and I think in Amazon in the U.S. They spin it up, they scale out all the appliances connect then they shrink it together. How do you support these customers a whole different case. >> That's great for the customer. >> Yeah. >> But more of a challenge for you guys. >> Then again with preparation of the right integration testing before, with the right set up that we know this is what the customer is doing this weekend. Amadeus as well, talked at the keynote, we worked long time with Amadeus. >> You're a smart team. >> As part of your customer role, you were involved with the Innovation awards. They were up on stage this morning. What struck me was they were both about time to value. And speed of deployment as well as scale. Often these were global companies, we had Amadeus on yesterday, spanning the globe. Huge number of transactions. Anything stand out to you in those Innovation Awards this year? Perhaps, that's been different in previous years? I think that the scale is actually interesting that you say. I think we have much quicker now. I think that's awesome, technology matures. I think we used to have more smaller work projects in getting to a certain scale. But I just goes faster. I think the controlled piece is probably a bit more accepted. This whole containerization is not magic anymore. I think a lot is being moved, is coming from the development side but also from the Linux side. So I think there's a less struggle of that. But I do still see some cultural struggles. You talk to customers, maybe not the Innovation Award winners. but even them they say, hey it took us a long time to convince internal structures, how we change things around. >> Talk about the open source role because you mentioned, before we came on how you guys are all in the open, an open source. Is there like a project that you're part of that supports centric? Is there certain things you're picking out over the source? As you guys do the QA and build you own stuff. >> Yeah we do a lot. We submit a lot to open. There's very few. We don't share data. We can't share customer data for obvious reasons. But tooling, most of the tooling we share if it's data collectors. We re an open source road. There' not much that we don't, there's nothing proprietary. Engineers, that's why they're coming to write. That's the configuration. They want to see, hey how does this stuff get applied. They own the packages, then some stuff is shared. If it's tied to the customer portal, the AI pieces maybe the open source parts of it but-- >> What's it like this year, for the folks who are watching who couldn't make it? What's the vibe here at Red Hat Summit 2018? What's the hallway conversations like? What's some of the dinners? What are you talking about? What's the chatter? >> I think the big chatter for me is kind of like this Open Shift, containers, agile development. You know the agile development comes back and back and really like how do we do this right? And tech connects obviously, how do you take application develop them or how do you take applications put them in a container. And then you see these demos. With multi cloud. >> New applications is not stand alone Linux anymore. >> Yeah. We have containers and tend to be able to run public cloud or multi cloud on premise. The options are endless. And I think that's the strengths from Red Hat. We prove that with Linux we can have a solid API. We don't screw up the applications. And if we can guarantee that across the four footprints, that's Paul's vision five, six years ago. I think we are there. >> You talked about a bit of cultural shift. How can Red Hat help it's customers come up to speed? That's a little bit...but be more agile. >> It's a good example. I think we do a lot of these sessions. I actually think that our sales motion, they are pretty aware with open sources, what the culture is. They do a lot of these sessions with customers. Jim Whitehurst is actually awesome. When he comes to clients. We did a C level event at a bank, based in Zurich and it was in a Swiss bank. And I think that they got like 140 C level, CIO groups. And Jim did a talk about the open organization about breaking down the barriers. I think that's a role that we play. Well some is Red Hat's role, but we go to do that stuff. Because we can share part of it in how we are configured, how we are different. >> I think that kind of thing is high on every CIO's list of agendas. >> And everything in the open is proving that open is winning. Open beats closed pretty much every time and is now pretty standard operating wise we're starting to see but operational wise, not just for software development. >> I actually think that from practice and how to run the company. Some stuff is transparency, right? If you work in a company that you're not transparent with your associates, can you really do this in 2018? >> No. >> And so I think those are elements that I think we do well to have had. And we got to keep internal as well, reminding ourselves, these core principles from open source are really important. >> Hiring, so you're bringing new Red Hatters in? >> At the rate we are hiring it's actually big concerns. How do we maintain this culture, right. This talk is not always polite but it's the way we function. >> You guys are humble. You're playing the long game, I love that about you. So congratulations Marco. Thanks for coming on the Cube show. >> Thanks very much. >> Thanks. >> It's the Cube Live here in San Francisco for Red Hat Summit 2018 here in Moscone West. I'm John Furrier and John Troyer. Stay with us for more live coverage after this short break. (upbeat music)

(soft rock music) >> Announcer: Live from Los Angeles, it's theCUBE. Covering Open Source Summit North America 2017. Brought to you by the Linux Foundation and Red Hat. >> Hello everyone, welcome to a special Cube coverage here in Los Angeles, California for The Linux Foundation's Open Source Summit in North America. I'm John Furrier, co-host of The Cube. This week I'll be co-hosting with Jeff Frick and Stu Miniman who will be here shortly. He's out getting data from the keynotes and scouring the community for information. Two days of coverage of line up here. Open source is changing the world. More than ever, open source is continuing to accelerate. Over 23 million developers now actively programming with open source. Where the world economy is now based on open source, relies on open source, and where open source and code is changing culture. Jeff, had a great keynote from the Linux Foundation open source community, and really this is an accumulation of many, many years of coverage for us in the developer community. Kind of sitting above all the different communities like Stack Overflow, all the different source foundational communities: Open Stack Summit, Cooper Netty's, KubeCon, now CNCF, a variety of other shows, and obviously industry shows. And this is now, we're seeing where open source is becoming so mainstream on a global scale, we're seeing something unprecedented in the history of the computer industry and that is the role of open source in society. And I think the number one message we're seeing is that the Linux software has been around for 25 plus years. Linus Torvalds was on stage today kind of like reminiscing. He's been Time Man of the Year, he's won the Nobel Prize in Computer Science, the Millennial Award I think it's called. Essentially the top award. 17th most important person in this decade. Linux is now a main force. People are relying on open source, and then look no further than the Equifax pact that has changed 150 plus million people in terms of their, potentially identity fraud out there. It's from open source software, so you're starting to see the reliance of open source, where a sustainable ecosystem is continuing to grow, but security is a concern, and which projects to join. There's so much action, I called it open bar and open source. There's so much goodness flowing in from Google, IBM, you name the companies out there. People are being paid to learn and write code at this point in history. This is a historic moment for the open source community. As society starts to be molded by the shape of code in the keynote they call it a Do-Acracy. For doers and builders who are changing democracy on a global scale. This is the big theme and obviously a slew of announcements on a project basis: Certification for Cooper Netty's, new people joining, the CNCF and a variety of different projects. But certainly from our standpoint and theCUBE, we covered a lot of the game of this past eight years. Certainly the Cloud and big data, and the software ecosystem. Software-defined Data Center to software eating the world, Data Science eating the world. This is only going to continue with things like Blockchain, virtual reality. And as fake news and bought networks in the cloud continuing to change the notion of what the source is, not just source code, source of information. More than ever, the role of communities will play a front and center role in all of this. >> Yeah I think that's as big of a deal as the software piece, John, is the role of communities that open source creates. And it's a different way of thinking about things. It's a different way of trying to get more innovation. It's acknowledging that the smartest people aren't necessarily in your four walls. So it's really an attitude, but I want to get your take 'cause there's a couple models of stewardship in the open source world. We're here at Open Source Summit in L.A. Linux Foundation event. Linux Foundation is taking on more and more of the stewardship of many of these projects, kind of bringing it under one roof. We see another model where the stewardship is kind of driven by one particular company, right, that's trying to build a commercial business around an open source stack, but there's a couple companies that have become almost the defacto steward for a new and evolving open source space. How do you see the pros and the cons against those two models. Ya know it's great is you got a great steward, it's maybe not so great is the steward is not so terrific and you get a conflict between the steward of the technology and the actual open source project. >> Well, Jeff, and this is the fundamental question on everyone's mind here, as we continue to see the communities grow. And also the scale out of communities as well as the number of overall lines of code. So a couple of key things, one is: We call it the ruling class, that's the elephant in the room here at the show is, we see it in politics, identity politics shaping our national level and certainly on a global scale. China blocking all block chain, ICOs, and all virtual currencies as of today. You're starting to see the intersection of geopolitics with code. Where the notion of a democracy, or democratization, or do-acracy, as one of the speakers has called it. You can think of code, lines of code, as a vote. You write a line of code, that's a vote into an ecosystem. And we're starting to see these notion of distributed labor, distributed control changing the face of capitalism. Ya know, it's really happening, and the value that corporations are creating in this new model is a real dynamic. And really what's happening is the change from a ruling class, even in the software world. The success of open source has always been based upon self-governance. Self-governance implies a group collective that manages and approves things. That group collective, some would argue, has not been inclusive over the years. Certainly the role of women in tech has been an issue. And so what you have developing is the potential for a ruling class of what shapes the future culture. Certainly there's a no-brainer with women in tech that there should be more women in tech because half the people in the world are women. They're users of software. Software is going to be relied on by all aspects of our world. Not just in Earth but also in Space. So, the notion of ruling class is changing and the inclusion is a huge deal. Onboarding new people. Building on individual successes, and building it together as a group relies on inclusion. It relies on inlcusion of people, and requires inclusion of how the self-governance goes forward. And again, this is a major concept in this world as it evolves because like I said, open source is relied on, people are leaning on it at a tier one level. Software that's powering the telescope in the North Pole, in the Antarctic to Space stations all use Linux. And this is, again, what we're seeing. Getting technology in the hands so people can use code to shape culture. That is ultimately a big thing, we're at a tipping point right now, were at an inflection point, whatever you want to call it. Open source is continuing to grow, and that culture-shaping notion of code equals culture, is really what it's all about, and the role of community is more important than ever. And inclusion is the number one factor in my opinion. >> The other interesting thing to get your take, John, is Android. So Linux has been around for a long time, everybody knows about Linux, and there was lots of flavors and it all kind of aggregated. Android is really growing as a significant factor, and I think it was announced here that Samsung has now joined the project. And there's a really interesting little gizmo now that you can take your Samsung phone, stick it in a docking station, and have it power a big giant screen and a keyboard. And so, ya know, as Android has developed as the power in the handheld devices, it's closer and closer, it's not surpassing what we have in these things. It's another big kind of shot in the arm towards the open source ecosystem that really wasn't as significant as it is today. >> Well I mean the Android Operating System is again, just an operating system in the minds of the tech world. Obviously consumers use it, device, huge market share iOS Android and even other operating systems. Who knows, maybe it'll be the year of Linux on the phone, at some point. But you're starting to see software powering devices. This is the internet of things phenomenon. This is where you start to see trends that build out of that notion, like Blockchain, like A.I. are going to start impacting lives. And that's one thing that Linus Torvalds was saying on stage was, the most rewarding thing in his career with all the accolades aside; the fact that he's had an impact on people's lives has been the number one thing that motivates him. That's what motivates most people. So I would say that the Android significance is one of pure numbers. More market share, more penetration for the user experience. And the user experience is a cultural issue. Back to culture equals code. And, inclusively powering everyone to get involved and be part of it, either as a user or a participant in the community or a coder, really is about deciding the future, and if people do not get involved and are not included, then the ruling class will decide what's best for the culture, and that is not the theme here today. The theme here in open source for the next level is letting the code and the technologists in an open collaborative self-governing way be in communities, be inclusive and shape the culture, letting the code shape the culture. And Android, again, is another straw in the camel's back that allows for more penetration and more influence. More relevance, and continued relevance of technology. Providers, coders, communities and certainly individuals. And again, collective intelligence is a group phenomenon. That is a community powered theme. That is what's going on here and again, this is to me, is very radical disruption to the global society. >> Get your take John, 'cause then you get kind of forking and things kind of move and groove, it's kind of like a river, finds another path, right. And you had the container and docker really drove a lot of activation on the container side. Google comes out strong with Cooper Netty's, another open source project that we just heard at the VMworld a week ago. Pivotal get on stage with Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger talking about kind of a new derivation that they're kicking out that's not Cooper Netty's. I forget what it's called, a different, cube-something >> John: PKS. >> PKS. >> John: A little container service. >> Continues to evolve and kind of fork. So what's your take on kind of how these things continue to morph. >> Well that's a good point, I mean you're talking about vendors in industry. Industry is a term that they use here it's kind of a polite term for saying companies with a vol for capitalism. And capitalism, one of the factors involved in what's going on here: corporate value is not a bad thing. But capitalism driving the culture is not what it wants. Distributed labor, distributed control, changing the face and capitalism is about the role of open source. So there's a role for industry and corporations. The issue is that as vendors, in the old model, which is put stuff out there, control the standards bodies and influence the industry through their proprietary mechanisms. That's changed and they don't have the proprietary nature but they can try to use their muscle and money. That's not happening anymore, and I think forking, as you mentioned, the ability to take a piece of code and build on it, whether it's a framework or libraries out there. And writing custom code is what Jim Zemlin was talking about with us is the code sandwich. That 90 percent of the software out there is open source and only ten percent is highly differentiated. That is the programming model. So, to me I think forking is a wonderful democracy dynamic in open source. If you don't like it, you can fork it. And if it doesn't make it, then the Do-Acracy voted with their code. So, this a term you call voting with your code. We can use the term in marketing called people vote with their wallet, vote with their feet. In communities, in open source they vote with their code. So to me, forking if a good thing that provides great opportunity for innovation. The issue of vendors pushing stuff out there is what I call the calling the bullshit factor. Communities that are vibrant and sustainable they can call bullshit on this right away. So, companies can't operate on the old model, they have to ingratiate in, they have to make real contribution, and they have to be community citizens. Otherwise you're going to get called out for pushing their vendorware. And that is interesting, and I'm not saying that they are doing that but Pivotal is a great example. Ya know, Pivotal put out a pretty good service, makes Cooper Netty's manageable, Google Cloud engines tied directly to it. So any updates coming from the Google Cloud engine gets updated into Pivotal, that's the value to users. If it sucks, if it doesn't work well, people won't use it. So, voting with your code, voting with your feet, is what people will do. So there's now a new level of triangulation or a heat shield if you will from vendor dominance, throwing their muscle around and even Microsoft is here with Linux. It's a huge testament to the success of Linux, and that's really what it's all about. >> Yeah, Microsoft is here, Intel is here. A lot of big companies are here and a lot of, in the early days, people had issues with the big companies coming in. But, clearly they're a huge part of the ecosystem, they write big checks, they help fund nice events like this. So the last question for you John, before we get into it: Two days of wall to wall coverage, what are you looking for? What are some of the questions that you've got on top of your mind that we'd hope to get some answers over the next couple weeks, or couple days, excuse me. >> Well I saw a great quote up on stage, was called May The Source Be With You. And, it was kind of a Star Wars reference: May the force be with, may the source code be with you, if you will. I'm looking for things that changed people's lives, 'cause the theme in open source now is the reliance of code in all aspects of global life here on earth and in space now as we see it. That the quality of life for society depends on open source. And again, 90 percent of most great software is written in open source, ten percent is differentiated and unique. That's the model they call the code sandwich. It's easy to code, it's easier to get involved. There's more communities that are robust and vibrant. If it impacts the quality of life, so that's one thing. The second thing I'm looking for is, we're looking at some of these new future trends and I've been really thinking a lot about lately as you know in theCUBE, is the role of Blockchains and these really disrupted technologies. We've started to see the power of the user in communities where there's technologies empowering the individual at the same time creating a group dynamic where the groups can build. So, individual success can be part of something that contributes to a group that can build on top of it. That's an open source flywheel that works great. I'm looking for Blockchain, I'm looking for those new technologies that are going to be in that vein. And of course, the outcome is: Does it impact lives, does it make the quality of life better? >> Alright. Well you heard it there, we'll be here for two days of wall to wall coverage. We're at the Open Source Summit North America in L.A. It's pretty funny, right next to Staples Center. John, I don't think we've ever been right downtown L.A. You're watching theCUBE, we'll be back with our next guest after this short break, thanks for watching. (light electronic music)