Image Title

Search Results for Craig Gainsborough:

Ben Hirschberg, Armo Ltd | CloudNativeSecurityCon 23


 

(upbeat music) >> Hello everyone, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage of Cloud Native SecurityCon North America 2023. Obviously, CUBE's coverage with our CUBE Center Report. We're not there on the ground, but we have folks and our CUBE Alumni there. We have entrepreneurs there. Of course, we want to be there in person, but we're remote. We've got Ben Hirschberg, CTO and Co-Founder of Armo, a cloud native security startup, well positioned in this industry. He's there in Seattle. Ben, thank you for coming on and sharing what's going on with theCUBE. >> Yeah, it's great to be here, John. >> So we had written on you guys up on SiliconANGLE. Congratulations on your momentum and traction. But let's first get into what's going on there on the ground? What are some of the key trends? What's the most important story being told there? What is the vibe? What's the most important story right now? >> So I think, I would like to start here with the I think the most important thing was that I think the event is very successful. Usually, the Cloud Native Security Day usually was part of KubeCon in the previous years and now it became its own conference of its own and really kudos to all the organizers who brought this up in, actually in a short time. And it wasn't really clear how many people will turn up, but at the end, we see a really nice turn up and really great talks and keynotes around here. I think that one of the biggest trends, which haven't started like in this conference, but already we're talking for a while is supply chain. Supply chain is security. I think it's, right now, the biggest trend in the talks, in the keynotes. And I think that we start to see companies, big companies, who are adopting themselves into this direction. There is a clear industry need. There is a clear problem and I think that the cloud native security teams are coming up with tooling around it. I think for right now we see more tools than adoption, but the adoption is always following the tooling. And I think it already proves itself. So we have just a very interesting talk this morning about the OpenSSL vulnerability, which was I think around Halloween, which came out and everyone thought that it's going to be a critical issue for the whole cloud native and internet infrastructure and at the end it turned out to be a lesser problem, but the reason why I think it was understood that to be a lesser problem real soon was that because people started to use (indistinct) store software composition information in the environment so security teams could look into, look up in their systems okay, what, where they're using OpenSSL, which version they are using. It became really soon real clear that this version is not adopted by a wide array of software out there so the tech surface is relatively small and I think it already proved itself that the direction if everyone is talking about. >> Yeah, we agree, we're very bullish on this move from the Cloud Native Foundation CNCF that do the security conference. Amazon Web Services has re:Invent. That's their big show, but they also have re:Inforce, the security show, so clearly they work together. I like the decoupling, very cohesive. But you guys have Kubescape of Kubernetes security. Talk about the conversations that are there and that you're hearing around why there's different event what's different around KubeCon and CloudNativeCon than this Cloud Native SecurityCon. It's not called KubeSucSecCon, it's called Cloud Native SecurityCon. What's the difference? Are people confused? Is it clear? What's the difference between the two shows? What are you hearing? >> So I think that, you know, there is a good question. Okay, where is Cloud Native Computing Foundation came from? Obviously everyone knows that it was somewhat coupled with the adoption of Kubernetes. It was a clear understanding in the industry that there are different efforts where the industry needs to come together without looking be very vendor-specific and try to sort out a lot of issues in order to enable adoption and bring great value and I think that the main difference here between KubeCon and the Cloud Native Security Conference is really the focus, and not just on Kubernetes, but the whole ecosystem behind that. The way we are delivering software, the way we are monitoring software, and all where Kubernetes is only just, you know, maybe the biggest clog in the system, but, you know, just one of the others and it gives great overview of what you have in the whole ecosystem. >> Yeah, I think it's a good call. I would add that what I'm hearing too is that security is so critical to the business model of every company. It's so mainstream. The hackers have a great business model. They make money, their costs are lower than the revenue. So the business of hacking in breaches, ransomware all over the place is so successful that they're playing offense, everyone's playing defense, so it's about time we can get focus to really be faster and more nimble and agile on solving some of these security challenges in open source. So I think that to me is a great focus and so I give total props to the CNC. I call it the event operating system. You got the security group over here decoupled from the main kernel, but they work together. Good call and so this brings back up to some of the things that are going on so I have to ask you, as your startup as a CTO, you guys have the Kubescape platform, how do you guys fit into the landscape and what's different from your tools for Kubernetes environments versus what's out there? >> So I think that our journey is really interesting in the solution space because I think that our mode really tries to understand where security can meet the actual adoption because as you just said, somehow we have to sort out together how security is going to be automated and integrated in its best way. So Kubescape project started as a Kubernetes security posture tool. Just, you know, when people are really early in their adoption of Kubernetes systems, they want to understand whether the installation is is secure, whether the basic configurations are look okay, and giving them instant feedback on that, both in live systems and in the CICD, this is where Kubescape came from. We started as an open source project because we are big believers of open source, of the power of open source security, and I can, you know I think maybe this is my first interview when I can say that Kubescape was accepted to be a CNCF Sandbox project so Armo was actually donating the project to the CNCF, I think, which is a huge milestone and a great way to further the adoption of Kubernetes security and from now on we want to see where the users in Armo and Kubescape project want to see where the users are going, their Kubernetes security journey and help them to automatize, help them to to implement security more fast in the way the developers are using it working. >> Okay, if you don't mind, I want to just get clarification. What's the difference between the Armo platform and Kubescape because you have Kubescape Sandbox project and Armo platform. Could you talk about the differences and interaction? >> Sure, Kubescape is an open source project and Armo platform is actually a managed platform which runs Kubescape in the cloud for you because Kubescape is part, it has several parts. One part is, which is running inside the Kubernetes cluster in the CICD processes of the user, and there is another part which we call the backend where the results are stored and can be analyzed further. So Armo platform gives you managed way to run the backend, but I can tell you that backend is also, will be available within a month or two also for everyone to install on their premises as well, because again, we are an open source company and we are, we want to enable users, so the difference is that Armo platform is a managed platform behind Kubescape. >> How does Kubescape differ from closed proprietary sourced solutions? >> So I can tell you that there are closed proprietary solutions which are very good security solutions, but I think that the main difference, if I had to pick beyond the very specific technicalities is the worldview. The way we see that our user is not the CISO. Our user is not necessarily the security team. From our perspective, the user is the DevOps and the developers who are working on the Kubernetes cluster day to day and we want to enable them to improve their security. So actually our approach is more developer-friendly, if I would need to define it very shortly. >> What does this risk calculation score you guys have in Kubscape? That's come up and we cover that in our story. Can you explain to the folks how that fits in? Is it Kubescape is the platform and what's the benefit, what's the purpose? >> So the risk calculation is actually a score we are giving to clusters in order for the users to understand where they are standing in the general population, how they are faring against a perfect hardened cluster. It is based on the number of different tests we are making. And I don't want to go into, you know, the very specifics of the mathematical functions, but in general it takes into account how many functions are failing, security tests are failing inside your cluster. How many nodes you are having, how many workloads are having, and creating this number which enables you to understand where you are standing in the global, in the world. >> What's the customer value that you guys pitching? What's the pitch for the Armo platform? When you go and talk to a customer, are they like, "We need you." Do they come to you? Is it word of mouth? You guys have a strategy? What's the pitch? What's so appealing to the customers? Why are they enthusiastic about you guys? >> So John, I can tell you, maybe it's not so easy to to say the words, but I nearly 20 years in the industry and though I've been always around cyber and the defense industry and I can tell you that I never had this journey where before where I could say that the the customers are coming to us and not we are pitching to customers. Simply because people want to, this is very easy tool, very very easy to use, very understandable and it very helps the engineers to improve security posture. And they're coming to us and they're saying, "Well, awesome, okay, how we can like use it. Do you have a graphical interface?" And we are pointing them to the Armor platform and they are falling in love and coming to us even more and we can tell you that we have a big number of active users behind the platform itself. >> You know, one of the things that comes up every time at KubeCon and Cloud NativeCon when we're there, and we'll be in Amsterdam, so folks watching, you know, we'll see onsite, developer productivity is like the number one thing everyone talks about and security is so important. It's become by default a blocker or anchor or a drag on productivity. This is big, the things that you're mentioning, easy to use, engineering supporting it, developer adoption, you know we've always said on theCUBE, developers will be the de facto standards bodies by their choices 'cause developers make all the decisions. So if I can go faster and I can have security kind of programmed in, I'm not shifting left, it's just I'm just having security kind of in there. That's the dream state. Is that what you guys are trying to do here? Because that's the nirvana, everyone wants to do that. >> Yeah, I think your definition is like perfect because really we had like this, for a very long time we had this world where we decoupled security teams from developers and even for sometimes from engineering at all and I think for multiple reasons, we are more seeing a big convergence. Security teams are becoming part of the engineering and the engineering becoming part of the security and as you're saying, okay, the day-to-day world of developers are becoming very tangled up in the good way with security, so the think about it that today, one of my developers at Armo is creating a pull request. He's already, code is already scanned by security scanners for to test for different security problems. It's already, you know, before he already gets feedback on his first time where he's sharing his code and if there is an issue, he already can solve it and this is just solving issues much faster, much cheaper, and also you asked me about, you know, the wipe in the conference and we know no one can deny the current economic wipe we have and this also relates to security teams and security teams has to be much more efficient. And one of the things that everyone is talking, okay, we need more automation, we need more, better tooling and I think we are really fitting into this. >> Yeah, and I talked to venture capitalists yesterday and today, an angel investor. Best time for startup is right now and again, open source is driving a lot of value. Ben, it's been great to have you on and sharing with us what's going on on the ground there as well as talking about some of the traction you have. Just final question, how old's the company? How much funding do you have? Where you guys located? Put a plug in for the company. You guys looking to hire? Tell us about the company. Were you guys located? How much capital do you have? >> So, okay, the company's here for three years. We've passed a round last March with Tiger and Hyperwise capitals. We are located, most of the company's located today in Israel in Tel Aviv, but we have like great team also in Ukraine and also great guys are in Europe and right now also Craig Box joined us as an open source VP and he's like right now located in New Zealand, so we are a really global team, which I think it's really helps us to strengthen ourselves. >> Yeah, and I think this is the entrepreneurial equation for the future. It's really great to see that global. We heard that in Priyanka Sharma's keynote. It's a global culture, global community. >> Right. >> And so really, really props you guys. Congratulations on Armo and thanks for coming on theCUBE and sharing insights and expertise and also what's happening on the ground. Appreciate it, Ben, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you, John. >> Okay, cheers. Okay, this is CUB coverage here of the Cloud Native SecurityCon in North America 2023. I'm John Furrier for Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante. We're back with more of wrap up of the event after this short break. (gentle upbeat music)

Published Date : Feb 3 2023

SUMMARY :

and sharing what's going on with theCUBE. What is the vibe? and at the end it turned that do the security conference. the way we are monitoring software, I call it the event operating system. the project to the CNCF, What's the difference between in the CICD processes of the user, is the worldview. Is it Kubescape is the platform It is based on the number of What's the pitch for the Armo platform? and the defense industry This is big, the things and the engineering becoming the traction you have. So, okay, the company's Yeah, and I think this is and also what's happening on the ground. of the Cloud Native SecurityCon

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

Ben HirschbergPERSON

0.99+

Lisa MartinPERSON

0.99+

EuropeLOCATION

0.99+

SeattleLOCATION

0.99+

IsraelLOCATION

0.99+

UkraineLOCATION

0.99+

JohnPERSON

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

Amazon Web ServicesORGANIZATION

0.99+

New ZealandLOCATION

0.99+

TigerORGANIZATION

0.99+

three yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

CUBEORGANIZATION

0.99+

AmsterdamLOCATION

0.99+

Priyanka SharmaPERSON

0.99+

Tel AvivLOCATION

0.99+

BenPERSON

0.99+

ArmoORGANIZATION

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

Craig BoxPERSON

0.99+

two showsQUANTITY

0.99+

HyperwiseORGANIZATION

0.99+

last MarchDATE

0.99+

One partQUANTITY

0.99+

yesterdayDATE

0.99+

Armo LtdORGANIZATION

0.99+

Cloud Native Computing FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

KubeConEVENT

0.99+

Cloud Native FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

first timeQUANTITY

0.99+

first interviewQUANTITY

0.99+

HalloweenEVENT

0.99+

Cloud Native Security ConferenceEVENT

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

Cloud Native SecurityConEVENT

0.98+

KubernetesTITLE

0.98+

Cloud Native Security DayEVENT

0.97+

firstQUANTITY

0.97+

CNCFORGANIZATION

0.97+

KubeSucSecConEVENT

0.97+

CloudNativeConEVENT

0.96+

twoQUANTITY

0.96+

bothQUANTITY

0.95+

North AmericaLOCATION

0.95+

ArmoTITLE

0.94+

nearly 20 yearsQUANTITY

0.94+

Cloud Native SecurityCon North America 2023EVENT

0.94+

KubescapeTITLE

0.94+

OpenSSLTITLE

0.94+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.93+

this morningDATE

0.93+

a monthQUANTITY

0.93+

Kubescape SandboxTITLE

0.9+

thingsQUANTITY

0.89+

ArmoPERSON

0.87+

KubscapeTITLE

0.86+

CloudNativeSecurityCon 23EVENT

0.78+

one ofQUANTITY

0.77+

KubescapeORGANIZATION

0.76+

Cloud NativeConEVENT

0.75+

CUBE Center ReportTITLE

0.75+

JC Herrera, CrowdStrike, Craig Neri & Diezel Lodder, Operation Motorsport | CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022


 

>>Welcome back to Falcon 2022. This is Dave LAN. We get a special presentation segment for you today. This is Walter Wall day one of day two's cube coverage, JC Herrera. Here's my designated cohost. Who's the chief human resource officer at CrowdStrike. Craig Neri is to my left. He's the beneficiary and the beneficiary trustee and ambassador of, of operation Motorsport and former us air force. Thank you for your service. Thank you. And Deel Lauder, who is CEO and co-founder of operation Motorsport. Jen, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on. Great to be JC set this up for us. Explain your role, explain the corporate giving the whole student connection and the veterans take us through that. >>Yeah, sure. Yeah. So as, as head of HR, one of the, one of the things that we do is, is help manage part of the corporate giving strategy. And, and one of those things that, that we love to do is to also invest in students and in our veterans, it's just a part of our giving program. So this partnership with operation Motorsport is really critical to that. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that, we just see that there's a gigantic skills gap in cyber security. And so when we, when there's over millions of open roles around the world and 700,000 of 'em in the us alone, we've gotta go close that gap. And so our next gen scholarships that come out of the, that are giving funds are, are awarded to students who are studying cyber security or AI. And the other side of that is that this partnership with operation motor sport, then we get the opportunity to do some internships with veterans through operation motor sport as well, the >>Number 700,000 now, but pre pandemic. I remember number 3 50, 300 50,000. It's it's doubled now just in the us. Amazing. All right, diesel, tell us about the mission of operation motor sport, like who are the beneficiaries let's get into it. >>So operation motor sport engages ill, injured, wounded service members, those that are medically retiring from the service or disabled veterans, these individuals be taken out of their units. They lose their team identity, their purpose. And, and what we do is those that apply to the program and have a desire to work around shiny objects and fast cars and all the great smells or just car guys or gals that we have some of those as well. They, we, we bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries. So embed them into a race team and give them opportunity to find something new. We're a recovery program. We're not about, you know, finding jobs for these folks. It's about networking and getting outta that, you know, outta the dark places where some of them end up going, because this is a, a huge change for them. And, and in doing so, we now expose them to crowd strike. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where potentially if they want to, they can pursue new opportunities in areas like cyber security. >>And they're chosen through an application process. You're I'm, I'm inferring. >>Yeah. They just go online and say, you know, through word of mouth or through a friend or through the, the USO and other organizations, they go online and they click the apply here and they fill it out. And our beneficiary trustee, Craig, and calls 'em up and says, Hey, tell me about what you're looking for. And, and we, we pair them up with the race team and Craig, >>You're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. So explain that, what's your story? >>Right. So I started in this organization as a beneficiary. I was the one that hit the button on the website. And, and then a few minutes later, I got a phone call from then Tiffany Lader, diesel's wife, who's our executive director in the organization. And, and I had that same conversation that I now have with beneficiaries today. I did a, I did a full season with them last year in 2021 as a beneficiary. But at the end I realized how big of an impact that this has with folks. Transition can be very difficult, especially if they're ill injured or wounded. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back, cuz it meant such it had such a big impact on me. I'd like to, to help other veterans as well. Can I >>Ask you what made you hit that button? What made you apply? >>That's a great question. So I was one of the very fortunate ones that had a transition coach. I was in the military for 29 years and had a lot of great connections in the military and, and was connected to a coach, a transition coach and just exploring, you know, what that, what that would look like. And she was the one who said, Hey, why don't we, why don't we explore this passion of Motorsports that you have? My family had been going to, to Motorsports events for, you know, 50 years. And so, so I thought back, all right, this is, I like this idea. Let's, let's pursue this. So a quick Google search and operation Motorsport popped up and I hit the button and >>What programs are available in operation >>Motorsport? Yeah. So diesel kind of outline outlined it. We have basically three different programs. We have the, our immersion program, which is exactly what diesel described, where we take that veteran. And we actually immerse them in a race team. They're doing the, exactly what I was doing, doing tires and fuel and whatever the team needs them to do. We also have our emo sports program where folks who can't do the immersion program, immersion program is takes a pretty big time commitment sometimes. And so they just don't have the capacity or abilities to be able to do those. We could put 'em in our emo sports program where they can do it all virtually we're actually, we have a season going on right now where we, we have veterans racing in that emo sports program. And then we have a, a diversionary therapy program where we have a, a Patriot car corral set up at all these tracks. So they can go out with like-minded individuals and spend the day out there with those folks, other veterans. And we do pit pit tours and, and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds, nothing ridiculous. But we, we did doing some highway speeds. So we have a, a few, few different ways for them to be >>Involved. So, so the number three is like a splash in the pond, whereas number ones, the, to like full immersion. Right? Correct. And so what are you doing in the full immersion? What is, what is that like? I mean, you're literally changing tires and, and, and you're >>Yeah. You name it. You're >>In the you're you're you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. Right. >>The beauty of this is we could take somebody's capabilities and skill set and we can match it to whatever that looks like on a race team. Some people come in and have no experience whatsoever. And so we find a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, their, their initial job might be to fuel fuel cans or, you know, take tires off the car, wipe the car down, it's little things in the beginning. And then slowly as they start to grow and learn, then they take on bigger roles. But we also have different positions. They can be immersed in, in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So we have folks that are doing like tech inspections. We have folks that are doing race control up in the, up in the tower, directing race operations. So we have lots of opportunities, tons of potential. We, we foster those relationships and take the folks, whatever their capabilities and, and abilities are and find the right position for >>'em think, thinking about your personal experience, how, how did it, how would you say it affected you? >>Yeah. To understand that you really have to understand military transition. And I think that's where a lot of the folks that have never experienced this really struggle transition from the military is really difficult. And it's really difficult, even if you're, if you're not broken or you don't have some kind of illness or injury, but you add that factor into at the same time and it could be extremely difficult. And that's why we see like the 22, a day suicide rates with veterans, it's very, very high. Right? And so when you, when you come into this program, it, it is a little bit of a leap of faith, right? This is very new experience for somebody, right? For somebody like myself who had 29 years of experience in the military, very senior person in the military. And now you're at the bottom of the totem pole and trying to figure it all out again, it's, it's a, it's a big jump. But what you realize really quickly is a lot of the things that you experience in the military, you experience in that Pata, same exact things, lots of small team environment, lots of diversity, lots of challenges, lots of roadblocks ups downs, you, you deploy just like you would deploy in, in the military, you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission, then you pack it up and bring it home. So it's, there's so many similarities in >>The process. I mean, yeah. Diesel hearing Craig explained that there are the similarities sound very clear, but, but, but how did how'd you come up with this idea? It makes sense now in retrospect, but somebody just said, Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we can marry him or no, not >>Really. And it it's a funny story because I always said, I, I, I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, I believe in stealing the car. And so there's a sister organization that we have in the UK called mission Motorsport. And, and, and they invented this five years before we did. And, and they were successful. And I was, you know, through, through friendships and opportunities, I got to witness it in, in 2016. So went over to, to Wales in the UK and, and watched it in action. And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance, which is where we go back to, we'll be going back to November, taking 13 beneficiaries over to race in our own race team for a 12 hour race. And that's a whole other story, but that's where it all started. You know, we, we saw the opportunities and said, wow, they're changing lives through recovery, you know, through motor sport and the similarities and what they were achieving. >>Our initial goal was let's just come back and do this again next year, because we need to bring north American transitioning members over to, to witness this and take part. And then fast forward, we said, why stop there? And we stood up an organization. Now I'll tell you that the organization is not what it was, the, the initial vision. This is not where, I mean, I never imagine that we get to this point this day, especially with the announcement this morning, you know, with the partnership with CrowdStrike, it it's huge for us, but we've evolved into something that was very similar to the initial vision. And that was helping, helping medically transitioning service members with their own personal struggles and recovery. You know, the reason we call it operation Motorsport is because operations have no beginning and no end and our, and what we do makes us so different in that we're not a one and done, we take care of these guys. Even when they become alumni, they, they still come back. They, they come back to volunteer, they come back to check in their friends and, and all kinds. It's really, really neat. And, >>And JC of course, CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? You got the logo on the Mercedes. You you've got the safety car at, this is, I think it's called the safety car. Right. That's it? Yeah. So, okay. So that's an obvious connection, but, but where did the idea germinate for this partnership? >>There's so many things, but first and foremost, I think that the, the values of CrowdStrike and those of operation motors were very much aligned. If you think about it, we, we focus a lot on teamwork. There's no way we do these jobs without the teamwork part. We all love data. These guys are all in the data all the time, trying to figure out, you know, what your adversaries are doing. So there's that kind of component to it. And I'd say the last bit is critical thinking. So when we think about our organizations and how well aligned they are, that was a, that was a no brainer. And into the other side of it, we get the opportunity to do mentorship programs. I mean, I think both ways, hopefully I get invited to the Patriot corral. At some point I can go, go work on a car, but we'll do those both ways or mentorship opportunities. If folks from operation motor sport win a team up with a crowd striker. So >>Do you ever get to drive the car? Or is that just an awful question? No, that's >>A good question. Actually I do from the, from the track to the pits, very slow >>Speeds. They don't let you out in the train. That's right. No, I don't get to go out on the track. Diesel, you ever, you ever drive one >>Of these? I, I, I I've been on, on the track on, on different cars, not in the race cars that, that, that, that are on the team, but something that's unique in the Patriot corral, for instance, because JC brought that up is that when we do these Patriot corrals, part of that program at lunchtime is, is taking the individuals and doing parade laps. And now, you know, a parade lap. Well, what's the fun in that, but you drive highway speeds on a racetrack and your own personal car, following a pace car. That's a pretty cool experience. Cool. >>Yeah, that's very cool guys. Congratulations on this program and all your success and all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers really appreciate you guys coming on the cube and telling me great story. Thanks >>For having, thanks for the opportunity. You're very >>Welcome. All right. Keep it right there. Everybody. Dave ante and Dave Nicholson, we'll be back from Falcon 2022 at the area in Las Vegas. You watching the cube.

Published Date : Sep 22 2022

SUMMARY :

Thank you for your service. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that, It's it's doubled now just in the us. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where And they're chosen through an application process. And our beneficiary trustee, Craig, and calls 'em up and says, You're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back, cuz it meant such it had to Motorsports events for, you know, 50 years. and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds, nothing ridiculous. And so what are you doing in the full immersion? You're In the you're you're you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, in the military, you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission, then you pack it up and bring it home. makes sense now in retrospect, but somebody just said, Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance, which is where we go back to, point this day, especially with the announcement this morning, you know, with the partnership with CrowdStrike, And JC of course, CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? These guys are all in the data all the time, trying to figure out, you know, Actually I do from the, from the track to the pits, very slow They don't let you out in the train. And now, you know, a parade lap. all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers really appreciate you guys coming on For having, thanks for the opportunity. at the area in Las Vegas.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Dave NicholsonPERSON

0.99+

Craig NeriPERSON

0.99+

CrowdStrikeORGANIZATION

0.99+

UKLOCATION

0.99+

WalesLOCATION

0.99+

Deel LauderPERSON

0.99+

Walter WallPERSON

0.99+

2016DATE

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

29 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

JenPERSON

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

22QUANTITY

0.99+

Dave LANPERSON

0.99+

13 beneficiariesQUANTITY

0.99+

MercedesORGANIZATION

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

JC HerreraPERSON

0.99+

700,000QUANTITY

0.99+

NovemberDATE

0.99+

50 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

next yearDATE

0.99+

2021DATE

0.99+

both waysQUANTITY

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

pandemicEVENT

0.98+

JCPERSON

0.98+

Dave antePERSON

0.97+

todayDATE

0.96+

Operation MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.96+

firstQUANTITY

0.95+

one race weekendQUANTITY

0.92+

three different programsQUANTITY

0.92+

DieselPERSON

0.91+

PatriotORGANIZATION

0.91+

MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.9+

Falcon 2022EVENT

0.87+

Diezel LodderPERSON

0.87+

a few minutes laterDATE

0.87+

this morningDATE

0.85+

12 hour raceQUANTITY

0.84+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.84+

a dayQUANTITY

0.81+

3 50, 300 50,000OTHER

0.81+

CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022EVENT

0.79+

day twoQUANTITY

0.78+

FalconORGANIZATION

0.77+

mission MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.73+

threeQUANTITY

0.73+

operation MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.68+

Tiffany LaderORGANIZATION

0.66+

five yearsDATE

0.63+

sportsTITLE

0.61+

USOORGANIZATION

0.59+

over millionsQUANTITY

0.56+

dayQUANTITY

0.55+

north AmericanOTHER

0.55+

openQUANTITY

0.55+

2022COMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.54+

operationORGANIZATION

0.53+

JC Herrera, CrowdStrike, Craig Neri & Diezel Lodder, Operation Motorsport | CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022


 

>> Welcome back to FalCon 2022. This is Dave Vellante. We get a special presentation segment for you today. This is Walter Wall day one of day two's cube coverage. JC Herrera is here, he's my designated cohost. He's the chief human resource officer at CrowdStrike. Craig Neri is to my left. He's the beneficiary and the beneficiary trustee and ambassador of, of operation Motorsport and former US air force. Thank you for your service. >> Thank you. >> And Diezel Lodder, who is CEO and co-founder of operation Motorsport. Gents, welcome to the cube. Thanks so much for coming on. >> Thank you, Great to be here >> JC, set this up for us. Explain your role, explain the corporate giving, the whole student connection, and the veterans, take us through that. >> Yeah, sure. Yeah, so as, as head of HR, one of the one of the things that we do is, is help manage part of the corporate giving strategy. And, and one of those things that, that we love to do is to also invest in students and in our veterans, it's just a part of our giving program. So this partnership with operation Motorsport is really critical to that. And if you want to dive a little bit deeper into that we just see that there's a gigantic skills gap in cybersecurity. And so when we, when there's over millions of open roles around the world and 700,000 of them in the us alone, we've got to go close that gap. And so our next gen scholarships that come out of the, are giving funds are, are awarded to students who are studying cyber security or AI. And the other side of that, is that this partnership with operation Motorsport then, we get the opportunity to do some internships with veterans through operation Motorsport as well. >> The number is 700,000 now, but pre pandemic I remember number 350, 350,000. It's, it's doubled now just in the US, amazing. All right, diezel, tell us about the mission of operation Motorsport like who are the beneficiaries let's get into it. >> So operation Motorsport engages ill, injured wounded service members, those that are medically retiring from the service or disabled veterans these individuals will be taken out of their units. They lose their team identity, their purpose. And, and what we do is those that apply to the program and have a desire to work around shiny objects and fast cars and all the great smells or just car guys or gals that we have some of those as well. They, we, we bring them onto the teams as beneficiaries. So embed them into a race team and give them opportunity to find something new. We're a recovery program. We're not about, you know, finding jobs for these folks. It's about networking and getting out of that, you know out of the dark places where some of them end up going because this is a, a huge change for them. And, and in doing so, we now expose them to CrowdStrike. You know, that's, that's one of the new relationships that, that we have where potentially if they want to they can pursue new opportunities in areas like cybersecurity. >> And they're chosen through an application process you're, I, I'm inferring. >> Yep. They just go online and say, you know through word of mouth or through a friend or through the, the USO and other organizations, they go online and they click the apply here and they fill it out. And, our beneficiary trustee Craig, and calls them up and says, Hey, tell me about what you're looking for. And, and we, we pair them up with the race team. >> And Craig you're also a, a beneficiary in addition to being the beneficiary trustee. So explain that, what's your story? >> Right. So I started in this organization as a beneficiary. I was the one that hit the button on the website. And, and then a few minutes later, I got a phone call from then Tiffany Lodder, Diezel's wife, who's our executive director in the organization. And, and I had that same conversation that I now have with beneficiaries today. I did a, I did a full season with them last year in 2021 as a beneficiary. But at the end I realized how big of an impact that this has with folks. Transition can be very difficult, especially if they're ill injured or wounded. And so I asked if I could help if I could give back cause it meant such, it had such a big impact on me. I'd like to, to help other veterans as well. >> Can I ask you what made you hit that button? What made you apply? >> Oh, that's a great question. So I was one of the very fortunate ones that had a transition coach. I was in the military for 29 years and had a lot of great connections in the military and, and was connected to a coach, a transition coach and just exploring, you know what that, what that would look like and she was the one who say, why don't we, why don't we explore this passion of Motorsports that you have? My family had been going to, to Motorsports events for you know, 50 years. And so, so I thought back, all right, this is I like this idea. Let's, let's pursue this. So a quick Google search and operation Motorsport popped up and I hit the button. >> And what programs are available in operation Motorsport? >> And so, Diezel kind of outline, outlined it. We have basically three different programs. We have the, our immersion program, which is exactly what Diezel described, where we take that veteran and we actually immerse them in a race team they're doing the, exactly what I was doing, doing tires and fuel and whatever the team needs them to do. We also have our E-motor sports program where folks who can't do the immersion program, immersion program is takes a pretty big time commitment sometimes. And so, they just don't have the capacity or abilities to be able to do those. We could put them in our E-motor sports program where they can do it all virtually. we're actually, we have a season going on right now where we're, we have veterans racing in that E-motor sports program. And then we have a, the diversionary therapy program where we have a, a Patriot car corral set up at all these tracks so, they can go out with like-minded individuals and spend the day out there with those folks, other veterans. And we do pit, pit tours and, and we get 'em out on the track for a little bit of a, you know, highway speeds nothing ridiculous, but we, we been doing some highway speeds. So we have a, a few, few different ways for them to be involved. >> So, so the number three is like a splash in the pond whereas number one's the, like full immersion. >> Yeah, correct, yes. >> And so what are you doing in the full immersion? What is, what is that like? I mean you're literally changing tires and, and you're, >> Yeah. You name it. >> In the, you're, you're in that sort of sphere of battle, if you will. >> The beauty of this is we could take somebody's capabilities and skill set and we can match it to whatever that looks like on a race team. Some people come in and have no experience whatsoever. And so we find a team that needs, you know, that has a development opportunities where they could come in, their, their initial job might be to fuel fuel cans or, you know, take tires off the car or wipe the car down, it's little things in the beginning. And then slowly as they start to grow and learn then they take on bigger roles. But we also have different positions. They can be immersed in, in teams, but they can also be immersed in the series. So we have folks that are doing like tech inspections. We have folks that are doing race control up in the, up in the tower, directing race operations. So, we have lots of opportunities, tons of potential. We, we foster those relationships and take the folks and whatever their capabilities and, and abilities are and find the right position for them. >> Think, thinking about your personal experience, how, how did it, how would you say it affected you? >> Yeah, um, to understand that you really have to understand military transition. And I think that's where a lot of the folks that have never experienced this really struggle. transition from the military is really difficult. And it's really difficult, even if you're, if you're not broke and, or you don't have some kind of illness or injury but, you add that factor into it at the same time and it could be extremely difficult. And that's why we see like the 22 a day suicide rates with veterans, it's very, very high, Right? And so when you, when you come into this program, it's, it is a little bit of a leap of faith, right? This is very new experience for somebody, right? For somebody like myself who had 29 years of experience in the military, very senior person in the military. And now you're at the bottom of the totem pole and trying to figure it all out again, it's, it's a it's a big jump. But, what you realize really quickly is a lot of the things that you experience in the military you experience in that paddock, same exact things, lots of, small team environment, lots of diversity, lots of challenges, lots of roadblocks ups downs, you, you'd deploy just like you would deploy in, in the military you bring the cars to a track, you execute a mission then you pack it up and bring it home. So it's, there's so many similarities in the process. >> I mean, yeah. Diezel hear, hearing Craig explained that there are, the similarities sound very clear, but, but, but how did how'd you come up with this idea? (Diezel laughs) It makes sense now in retrospect, but, somebody just said Hey, you know, we have this and we have this and we can marry them or... >> No, not really. And it, it's a funny story because I always said, I, I, I don't believe in reinventing the wheel I believe in stealing the car. And so there's a sister organization that we have in the UK called mission Motorsport. And, and, and they invented this five years before we did. And, and they were successful. And I was, you know, through, through friendships and opportunities, I got to witness it in, in 2016. So went over to, to Wales in, in the UK and, and watched it in action. And we were there for one race weekend, race of remembrance which is where we go back to we'll be going back to November, taking 13 beneficiaries over to race in our own race team for a 12 hour race. And that's a whole other story but that's where it all started. You know, we, we saw the opportunities and said, wow they're changing lives through recovery, you know through Motorsport and the similarities and what they were achieving, our initial goal was let's just come back and do this again next year, because we need to bring north American transitioning members over to, to witness this and take part. And then fast forward, we said, why stop there? And we, stood up an organization. Now, I'll tell you that the organization is not what it was the initial vision, this not where, I mean I never imagine that we get to this point this day especially with the announcement this morning, you know with the partnership with CrowdStrike, it it's huge for us but, we've evolved into something that was very similar to the initial vision. And that was, helping, helping medically transitioning service members with their own personal struggles and recovery. You know, the reason we call it operation Motorsport is because operations have no beginning and no end and our, and what we do makes us so different in that we're not a one and done, we take care of these guys. Even when they become alumni, they, they still come back. They, they come back to volunteer they come back to check in their friends and, and all kinds, it's really, really neat. >> And, and JC of course CrowdStrike has an affinity for Motorsports, right? You got the logo on the Mercedes. You, you've got the safety car at this. I think it's called the safety car, right? >> That's it, yeah. >> So, okay. So that's an obvious connection, but, but where did the idea germinate for this partnership? >> There's so many things, but first and foremost, I think that the, the values of CrowdStrike and those of operation motors were very much aligned. If you think about it, we, we focus a lot on teamwork. There's no way we do these jobs without the teamwork part. We all love data. These guys are all in the data all the time trying to figure out, you know, what your adversaries are doing. So there's that kind of component to it. And I'd say the last bit is critical thinking. So when we think about our organizations and how well aligned they are, that was a, that was a no brainer. And into the other side of it, we get the opportunity to do mentorship programs. I mean, I think both ways, hopefully I get invited to the Patriot corral at some point I can go, go work on a car but, we'll do those both ways or mentorship opportunities. If folks from operation Motorsport win a team up with a CrowdStrikers. >> Do you ever get to drive the car? Or is that just an awful question? >> No, it's a good question. Actually I do from the from the track to the pits at, you know, very slow speeds. >> They don't let you out on the track? >> That's right, no, I don't get to go out the track. >> Diezel You ever, you ever drive one of these? >> I, I, I, I've been on, on the track on, on different cars not in the race cars that, that, that that are on the team, but something that's unique in the Patriot corral, for instance, because JC brought that up, is that when we do these Patriot corrals part of that program at lunchtime is, is taking the individuals and doing parade laps. And I'll, you know, a parade lap, well, what's the fun in that? but you drive highway speeds on a racetrack and your own personal car following a pace car, that's a pretty cool experience. >> Yeah, that's very cool. Guys, congratulations on this program and all your success and all the, the giving that you do for the community and, and your peers, really appreciate you guys coming on The Cube and telling your story. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thanks for the opportunity. >> You're very welcome. All right, keep it right there everybody. Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson, we'll be back from FalCon 2022, at the ARIA in Las Vegas. You're watching the cube. (relaxing music)

Published Date : Sep 20 2022

SUMMARY :

and the beneficiary and co-founder of operation Motorsport. and the veterans, take us through that. one of the things that we do is, just in the US, amazing. And, and in doing so, we now And they're chosen through the USO and other the beneficiary trustee. director in the organization. and just exploring, you know and spend the day out is like a splash in the pond of battle, if you will. be immersed in the series. of the things that you and we have this and And I was, you know, You got the logo on the Mercedes. So that's an obvious connection, but, And into the other side of Actually I do from the get to go out the track. that are on the team, but and your peers, really the ARIA in Las Vegas.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

Dave NicholsonPERSON

0.99+

Craig NeriPERSON

0.99+

DiezelPERSON

0.99+

2016DATE

0.99+

CrowdStrikeORGANIZATION

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

WalesLOCATION

0.99+

USLOCATION

0.99+

Diezel LodderPERSON

0.99+

29 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

UKLOCATION

0.99+

Walter WallPERSON

0.99+

12 hourQUANTITY

0.99+

JC HerreraPERSON

0.99+

NovemberDATE

0.99+

50 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

MercedesORGANIZATION

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

13 beneficiariesQUANTITY

0.99+

next yearDATE

0.99+

JCPERSON

0.99+

700,000QUANTITY

0.99+

FalCon 2022EVENT

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

Tiffany LodderPERSON

0.98+

both waysQUANTITY

0.98+

22 a dayQUANTITY

0.98+

2021DATE

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.97+

Operation MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.97+

oneQUANTITY

0.97+

todayDATE

0.97+

MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.95+

diezelPERSON

0.94+

CrowdStrikersORGANIZATION

0.9+

over millions of open rolesQUANTITY

0.9+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.9+

one race weekendQUANTITY

0.88+

three different programsQUANTITY

0.87+

this morningDATE

0.86+

pandemicEVENT

0.83+

CrowdStrike Fal.Con 2022EVENT

0.83+

day twoQUANTITY

0.79+

operation MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.78+

a few minutes laterDATE

0.77+

700,000 ofQUANTITY

0.73+

350,000QUANTITY

0.72+

PatriotORGANIZATION

0.72+

ARIALOCATION

0.7+

five yearsDATE

0.68+

350OTHER

0.68+

dayQUANTITY

0.65+

number threeQUANTITY

0.58+

mission MotorsportORGANIZATION

0.58+

north AmericanOTHER

0.53+

PatriotCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.38+

KubeCon Preview with Madhura Maskasky


 

(upbeat music) >> Hello, everyone. Welcome to theCUBE here, in Palo Alto, California for a Cube Conversation. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. This is a KubeCon preview conversation. We got a great guest here, in studio, Madhura Maskasky, Co-Founder and VP of Product, Head of Product at Platform9. Madhura, great to see you. Thank you for coming in and sharing this conversation about, this cube conversation about KubeCon, a Kubecon conversation. >> Thanks for having me. >> A light nice play on words there, a little word play, but the fun thing about theCUBE is, we were there at the beginning when OpenStack was kind of on its transition, Kubernetes was just starting. I remember talking to Lou Tucker back in, I think Seattle or some event and Craig McLuckie was still working at Google at the time. And Google was debating on putting the paper out and so much has happened. Being present at creation, you guys have been there too with Platform9. Present at creation of the Kubernetes wave was not obvious only a few insiders kind of got the big picture. We were one of 'em. We saw this as a big wave. Docker containers at that time was a unicorn funded company. Now they've went back to their roots a few years ago. I think four years ago, they went back and recapped and now they're all pure open source. Since then Docker containers and containers have really powered the Kubernetes wave. Combined with the amazing work of the CNCF and KubeCon which we've been covering every year. You saw the maturation, you saw the wave, the early days, end user projects being contributed. Like Envoy's been a huge success. And then the white spaces filling in on the map, you got observability, you've got run time, you got all the things, still some white spaces in there but it's really been great to watch this growth. So I have to ask you, what do you expect this year? You guys have some cutting edge technology. You got Arlo announced and a lot's going on Kubernetes this year. It's going mainstream. You're starting to see the traditional enterprises embrace and some are scaling faster than others, manage services, plethora of choices. What do you expect this year at KubeCon North America in Detroit? >> Yeah, so I think you summarize kind of that life cycle or lifeline of Kubernetes pretty well. I think I remember the times when, just at the very beginning of Kubernetes, after it was released we were sitting I think with box, box dot com and they were describing to us why they are early adopters of Kubernetes. And we were just sitting down taking notes trying to understand this new project and what value it adds, right? And then flash forward to today where there are Dilbert strips written about Kubernetes. That's how popular it has become. So, I think as that has happened, I think one of the things that's also happened is the enterprises that adopted it relatively early are running it at a massive scale or looking to run it at massive scale. And so I think at scale cloud-native is going to be the most important theme. At scale governance, at scale manageability are going to be top of the mind. And the third factor, I think that's going to be top of the mind is cost control at scale. >> Yeah, and one of the things that we've seen is that the incubated projects a lot more being incubated now and you got the combination of end user and company contributed open source. You guys are contributing RLO >> RLO. >> and open source. >> Yeah. >> That's been part of your game plan there. So you guys are no stranger open source. How do you see this year's momentum? Is it more white space being filled? What's new coming out of the block? What do you think is going to come out of this year? What's rising in terms of traction? What do you see emerging as more notable that might not have been there last year? >> Yeah, so I think it's all about filling that white space, some level of consolidation, et cetera. That's usually the trend in the cloud-native space. And I think it's going to continue to be on that and it's going to be tooling that lets users simplify their lives. Now that Kubernetes is part of your day to day. And so it is observability, et cetera, have always been top of the mind, but I think starting this year, et cetera it's going to be at the next level. Which is gone other times of just running your Prometheus at individual cluster level, just to take that as an example. Now you need a solution- >> Yep. >> that operates at this massive scale across different distributions and your edge locations. So, it's taking those same problems but taking them to that next order of management. >> I'm looking at my notes here and I see orchestration and service mesh, which Envoy does. And you're seeing other solutions come out as well like Linkerd and whatnot. Some are more popular than others. What areas do you see are most needed? If you could go in there and be program chair for a day and you've got a day job as VP of product at Platform9. So you kind of have to have that future view of the roadmap and looking back at where you've come, what would you want to prioritize if you could bring your VP of product skills to the open source and saying, hey, can I point out some needs here? What would you say? >> Yeah, I think just the more tooling that lets people make sense and reduce some of the chaos that this prowling ecosystem of cloud-native creates. Which is tooling, that is not adding more tooling that covers white space is great, but introducing abilities that let you better manage what you have today is probably absolutely top of the mind. And I think that's really not covered today in terms of tools that are around. >> You know, I've been watching the top five incubated projects in CNCF, Argo cracked the top five. I think they got close to 12,000 GitHub stars. They have a conference now, ArgoCon here in California. What is that about? >> Yeah. >> Why is that so popular? I mean, I know it's kind of about obviously workflows and dealing with good pipeline, but why is that so popular right now? >> I think it's very interesting and I think Argo's journey and it's just climbed up in terms of its Github stars for example. And I think it's because as these scale factors that we talk about on one end number of nodes and clusters growing, and on the other end number of sites you're managing grows. I think that CD or continuous deployment of applications it used to kind of be something that you want to get to, it's that north star, but most enterprises wouldn't quite be there. They would either think that they're not ready and it's not needed enough to get there. But now when you're operating at that level of scale and to still maintain consistency without sky rocketing your costs, in terms of ops people, CD almost becomes a necessity. You need some kind of manageable, predictable way of deploying apps without having to go out with new releases that are going out every six months or so you need to do that on a daily basis, even hourly basis. And that's why. >> Scales the theme again, >> Yep. >> back to scale. >> Yep. >> All right, final question. We'll wrap up this preview for KubeCon in Detroit. Whereas we start getting the lay of the land and the focus. If you had to kind of predict the psychology of the developer that's going to be attending in person and they're going to have a hybrid event. So, they will be not as good as being in person. Us, it's going to be the first time kind of post pandemic when I think everyone's going to be together in LA it was a weird time in the calendar and Valencia was the kind of the first international one but this is the first time in North America. So, we're expecting a big audience. >> Mhm. >> If you could predict or what's your view on the psychology of the attendee this year? Obviously pumped to be back. But what do you think they're going to be thinking about? what's on their mind? What are they going to be peaked on? What's the focus? Where will be the psychology? Where will be the mindset? What are people going to be looking for this year? If you had to make a prediction on what the attendees are going to be thinking about what would you say? >> Yeah. So there's always a curiosity in terms of what's new, what new cool tools that are coming out that's going to help address some of the gaps. What can I try out? That's always as I go back to my development roots, first in mind, but then very quickly it comes down to what's going to help me do my job easier, better, faster, at lower cost. And I think again, I keep going back to that theme of automation, declarative automation, automation at scale, governance at scale, these are going to be top of the mind for both developers and ops teams. >> We'll be there covering it like a blanket like we always do from day one, present at creation at KubeCon we are going to be covering again for the consecutive year in a row. We love the CNCF. We love what they do. We thank the developers this year, again continue going mainstream closer and closer to the front lines as the company is the application. As we say, here on theCUBE we'll be there bringing you all the signal. Thanks for coming in and sharing your thoughts on KubeCon 2022. >> Thank you for having me. >> Okay. I'm John Furrier here in theCUBE in Palo Alto, California. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Sep 7 2022

SUMMARY :

Co-Founder and VP of Product, in on the map, you got observability, think that's going to be top Yeah, and one of the What do you see emerging and it's going to be but taking them to that of product skills to the and reduce some of the chaos in CNCF, Argo cracked the top five. and it's not needed enough to get there. Us, it's going to be the first of the attendee this year? of the mind for both We thank the developers this year, in theCUBE in Palo Alto, California.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Madhura MaskaskyPERSON

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

Lou TuckerPERSON

0.99+

CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

LALOCATION

0.99+

North AmericaLOCATION

0.99+

MadhuraPERSON

0.99+

DetroitLOCATION

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

first timeQUANTITY

0.99+

ArgoORGANIZATION

0.99+

Palo Alto, CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

four years agoDATE

0.99+

KubeConEVENT

0.99+

SeattleLOCATION

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

this yearDATE

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

third factorQUANTITY

0.98+

todayDATE

0.98+

Platform9ORGANIZATION

0.97+

12,000QUANTITY

0.97+

a dayQUANTITY

0.97+

KubernetesTITLE

0.97+

PrometheusTITLE

0.97+

LinkerdORGANIZATION

0.95+

CNCFORGANIZATION

0.95+

firstQUANTITY

0.94+

KubeCon 2022EVENT

0.93+

DilbertPERSON

0.93+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.92+

waveEVENT

0.91+

day oneQUANTITY

0.91+

few years agoDATE

0.9+

ValenciaLOCATION

0.9+

ArgoConEVENT

0.9+

five incubated projectsQUANTITY

0.87+

KubeConORGANIZATION

0.86+

EnvoyORGANIZATION

0.85+

first internationalQUANTITY

0.84+

six monthsQUANTITY

0.81+

KubeconORGANIZATION

0.74+

top fiveQUANTITY

0.71+

DockerORGANIZATION

0.69+

north starLOCATION

0.63+

ArloTITLE

0.54+

pandemicEVENT

0.52+

GithubORGANIZATION

0.5+

OpenStackTITLE

0.49+

KubernetesPERSON

0.47+

GitHubTITLE

0.47+

CubeEVENT

0.3+

James Forrester | AWS Summit New York 2022


 

(light music) >> Hello, welcome back everybody to theCUBE's coverage in New York City of AWS Summit 2022. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We had Dave Vellante, Lisa Martin here earlier. I'm going to wrap it up here with James Forrester, last interview of the day here in New York. Wish we would have had another day. It's a packed house, 10,000 people. James Forrester's the VP Worldwide Technical Leader for VMware's Cloud on AWS. On AWS is a big distinction. James, welcome to theCube. Thanks for coming on. >> Thank you so much, John. It's great to be here. >> So I think it's been like six years since the announcement of VMware's Cloud on AWS, which is a separate instance, separate hardware, but it's changed the game for VMware. You guys have done a lot of work, successful traction with customers. Clarified, I remember at that time, it really clarified VMware's Cloud play. Which then gave VMware more time to work on what it's doing now, which is, you know, using all their assets and their operations with Tanzu, Monterey, Cloud Native, Cross Cloud. What they call you guys call Cross Cloud, I call Super Cloud, action, a lot of stuff happening. So thanks for coming on. Okay. So first question is, what's the future look like for VMware's Cloud on AWS? >> Super bright, super bright. And there's a couple of great reasons for that. I think firstly, what we're seeing is that customers have now made enough progress in their cloud journeys. Many of them have chosen AWS and they're going full force. We're going to help them go faster. We're going to help them get there and get native to those adjacent services much quicker with more confidence and more resiliency. So it's a super exciting time to be doing what we do. >> You know, VMware has had a steady install base, okay. I mean basically it's like almost ingrained in the operations. What do you guys see as that next level step up function? Because you know, obviously Broadcom is buying VMware. Obviously that utility will be in place, but there's more. There's more there that customers can tap into. This is the promise of the cross-cloud. How do you talk about that when you got the AWS action? How does that all integrate? >> Yeah, absolutely. And of course, because so many customers are going to AWS on their own cloud journeys right now, what we get to have the conversation about is how they can get there more confidently. And so for customers who are just starting out, who are looking at their application portfolios, who have a ton of skilled IT professionals who they want to bring into that cloud journey, they can use the skills they already have. For those folks who are a little bit further along but they may be finding that refactoring their applications is more complex, more difficult that they anticipated, we give them a way of moving with confidence and with much less risk so they can do those cloud journeys that they anticipated. >> You know, James, I want to get your thoughts on what the state of the current situation is, vis-à-vis, your customers and your customers' appetite for AWS services. 'Cause one of the promises of the original deal was clarifying messaging but more importantly, customers can get the VMware Cloud and take advantage of the higher level services on AWS. What's the update there? What's the current state of the art? What's some of the patterns that you're seeing on the uptake of services and how they're working together? >> Yeah, it's a great call out. And honestly, one of the misconceptions that I address right out of the gate is that somehow going VMware Cloud takes you away from those services. It doesn't, it gets you closer to them. Full, direct, native access to all of those hundreds of great AWS services. So what we often find is that customers have their enterprise data, inside data workloads in their data centers. But what they want to do is get that up next to the AWS services that can use it, like Redshift and Athena and Glue. They can move those workloads right adjacent to those services to start using them right away. So it's a great way to look at the platform. >> So one of the observations that's pretty well understood right now by most people, I'd say 90%, if not more, not a hundred percent 'cause I've heard people like not get it, but it's pretty clear that the operating model for the the enterprise will be hybrid as a steady state. I don't think there's any debate on that unless you think there is. >> Do you feel the same- >> No debate. No debate. >> Okay. Hybrid's a steady state. What does that mean as clients start to think about edge and their data centers. 'Cause now the private cloud is back in the game. So I've heard people talk about private cloud, which we, I think we coined the term with Dave, Wikibon years ago, but it kind of went away because that was not the public cloud. So public cloud won, on premise didn't go away. We saw Amazon with Outpost. So now they're like, I can still have stuff on prem and run it in a cloud operations. So they're calling that private cloud, I think. So you're starting to hear the same things. What it means basically is that hybrid is winning. It's the standard. What does the hybrid environment look like from a VMware perspective as you guys look at that and have been building that out 'cause you have customers that are on premises. >> Yeah. >> Is it just to the cloud and back? Is it, is there any changes? Is there new connective tissue? Is there a glue layer? What's the operating model for VMware customers? >> Well, customers wanted those same benefits from public cloud agility, cost benefits, elasticity, innovation, sovereignty, sustainability, but they wanted to be able to do that everywhere. They wanted it in their data centers. They wanted it at the edge. And as you've pointed out public cloud delivered that for customers. AWS first out there delivering that for customers. Now with innovations like VMware Cloud and AWS outpost, we're able to bring that back into the data center. We're able to bring those same benefits of public cloud into the customers on-prem environment. And you're right. We see hybrid just rolling and rolling and being able to offer our solution across all of it. >> Yeah, we're big fans of VMware because theCube's 12 years old, we've been at every VMworld. Now they're calling it VMware Explorer, the events coming up. So the folks watching, plug for VMware Explorer, formerly VMworld, it's on the schedule. Content catalog just came out last week. It's looking pretty good. So put a plug out there. We'll be there with theCube, two sets. So you know, if you're going to VMworld, now Explorer go register, get up there. It's in San Francisco, always a great event. vSphere and vSAN, always great products. But you got Carbon Black, you got Security. So these things have all been working kind of pistons for VMware. Tanzu, I know Raghu and those guys are doing it. Craig McLuckie and team, they're working on that. You got Tanzu, you got Monterey. That's the new cloud native thing. How is that tracking vis-à-vis, the operating model of the the core engine, vSphere, vSAN and others. And then with the native services of Cloud. So you got AWS Cloud with VMware Cloud, vSphere, vSAN, Carbon Black, and Security. And then you got the Tanzu over here. How are those three things coming together? >> Well, the services that customers know and love first and foremost that they've been running the mission critical workloads on, vSphere, vSAN, NSX. What VMware cloud and AWS is, is a packaging together of those services. So customers don't have to configure it all themselves and do the heavy lifting. We manage and run it on their behalf. What we are adding to that most recently with Tanzu is now the ability to run containers within the same environment. 'Cause customers tell us they've got parts of their organization that are very much on vSphere VMs. Parts of their organization are moving to containers. We want be able to provide a single operating model, a single layer, a single way of managing all of that. No matter where it's deployed. >> You know, remember back in the day, when Raghu wasn't the CEO, Carl Eschenbach was there, Sanjay Poonen was there. Carl's now at Sequoia Capital, Raghu's a CEO. Sanjay's kind of looking for a next gig. I always said, why doesn't vSphere and NSX become that abstraction layer and commoditize the network so that white boxes and Dell and HP could all play in that layer? It just never happened yet. Is that something you guys talk about at all? Like, I mean in the, in the smokey room, in the execs, is that happening? What's the vision? >> Well, we always work backwards- from customers, right? (John laughing) And what customers are telling us is they want us to help them with that undifferentiated heavy lifting. So who knows where that could take us, but right now we're very focused on helping those customers move with confidence to the cloud. >> You didn't take the bait on that one. I appreciate that. (James laughing) Okay. So let's get some perspective. You're out with customers. What are the big things that you're seeing right now from your customers right now? 'Cause you look behind us here, 10,000 people at this event. This is not a no-show. This is not a throwaway event in, you know, somewhere in the corner of the world. This is New York City, only one summit. This is bigger than Snowflake Summit and that was packed. So from an event standpoint, this is pretty a big game statement here for AWS. These companies are not experiencing headwinds, they're changing. So what are your customers telling you around what they're looking at for the cloud native architecture? I mean obviously the digital transformation is continuing, obviously clouds here. And again, we were saying earlier, this is the first time in history that the cloud hyperscalers have been in market during a so-called downturn. So there's no other data. 2008, I wouldn't call 'em up and running. They were building, but AWS, Azure, others, these cloud players they're in market. And so you're starting to see kind of some data coming out saying, Hey, this thing's still working, the engine of innovation is cranking out and it's not slowing down the digital transformation. It might change the capital markets and valuations but it's not changing customers. That's what I'm hearing. Now, you probably would agree with that, right? >> James: I think that's exactly right. >> Okay. So let's stay with that. If you believe that, then it's like, okay, what are they doing? So what are customers doubling down on? What are some of the patterns you're seeing in the environment today that you could share with the audience? >> Yeah, so I think first and foremost is that steady transition to the cloud to deliver all of those benefits, agility, cost, elasticity, innovation, sovereignty, sustainability that hasn't gone away at all. In fact, it's only accelerated. With workloads like virtual desktops, which became so critical during COVID the need to be able to provide that kind of scalable elastic capacity has only increased. Now, coupled with that, most of these customers are already on a cloud journey. And while some folks may have had the luxury of letting that go a little bit more slowly, nowadays the urgency is pervasive across all of the industries that we get to talk to in New York. Everyone needs to go faster. Everybody's not seeing the progress that they expected that we think we can help them deliver. So the opportunity I think that's come out of COVID is more workloads, different use cases, disaster recovery, ransomware- >> Is that more of an awareness or reality or both? >> Both. Absolutely. >> Okay. So let me ask the next question. 'Cause this is a good conversation, I think. I agree a hundred percent. We're seeing the same exact thing. Now let's talk about how companies are thinking about the real opportunity that's emerged, which is refactoring the business model without actually changing the makeup of the organization per se, to take on new territories and potentially take over categories. >> James: Mm hmm. >> So I mean a data warehouse and a data cloud's kind of the same thing. Snowflake probably wouldn't like me saying that they're a data warehouse because they call themselves a data cloud, but it's kind of the same thing, just refactored on AWS. >> James: Yep. >> That's a super cloud. So that's an opportunity for everyone to do that in every vertical. How many customers are actually thinking that way and actually taking steps to pursue that, capture that opportunity? Or do you agree it's the opportunity? >> No, I think that that is an opportunity and I love that idea of super cloud in that what I think customers have started to realize, over the last couple of years in particular, is it's very difficult to take advantage of all of those great cloud services if your applications are still behind a whole lot of different layers of firewalls and so forth. So getting the application close to those services, in proximity to those services is that first step in modernization. Then it doesn't have to be a change the wings on the plane while it's flying conversation, which- >> John: Yeah. >> You know, is very risky for a lot of organizations. >> John: Exactly. >> It's a let's get the plane going a little bit faster. Let's get the plane going a little bit smoother, and let's get the plane to its destination with less risk. >> You know, James, that reminds me of the old school conversations of non disruptive operations. Remember those days? >> James: I do, yeah. >> Mostly around storage and, and servers. But that's what basically what you're saying. Transform while operating, right? >> James: Exactly. >> So this is, you can do both. You got to make time and it's a talent question too. I'd love to get your thoughts on how customers are thinking about who do you put on which task. 'Cause you want your A players on both areas. You don't want all your A players, what I hear, CSOs and CIOs telling me is that, I put all my A players on transformation, I got no one running the business. >> James: Mm hmm. >> So you got to kind of balance. That's a cultural team decision. >> It's a cultural team decision. It's also a skills marketplace decision. >> John: Yeah. >> And there's a practical reality to the skills that are available and how fast you can hire them. So a big part of the conversation that we have is when customers have existing skills sets, plug those into their transformation, plug those into their business outcomes. I like to use the phrase, "Let's make heroes out of IT" because they can be a much more critical player than they think they can be. Yeah, IT basically is not even around anymore. It's part of the organization. And then you have data science and data engineering coming in. So it's, you know, IT is not a department anymore, it's the company >> Exactly right. >> If you're kind of going down that road, yeah. >> Yeah. Alright, so final question. What's the biggest change you've seen and observed in your current year and a half? You know, we're coming out of COVID, knowing what was before, what sea change, what inflection point are we in now? How would you describe this current market? 'Cause again, we're kind of in a unique market. You know, you got crypto around the corner, people getting attracted to that, little bubbly obviously, reality of cloud and 2.0 or super cloud emerging. On premise is not going away. Edge exploding on the industrial side, especially with machine learning coming along. So this operating model is clearly in sight. What's the biggest observation you've noticed. >> I think it's the sense of urgency over the last couple of years in that most customers I talked to are no longer relaxed about the timing of delivering cloud capabilities to their organizations. Most customers are on sort of a transformation journey of their own and digital transformation and cloud transformation are absolutely fundamental to that. >> One more real quick follow up question if you don't mind, 'cause I appreciate your time. One of the things that's come up a lot in our conversations is the role of the ecosystem. Not only as a part of the business model but also validation of the enablement that cloud offers companies. You have an enabling platform, your ecosystem is well known. And so your customers are starting to develop ecosystems. So if the cloud model kind of trickles like downstream, ecosystem is kind of a proof of something. >> James: Mm hmm. >> What's your view of all this ecosystem discussion as we transform this next generation? >> Yeah, I think it touches on a couple of things. So obviously there is a technology ecosystem, which is evolving very rapidly in support of cloud and cloud transformation. But what's interesting, I think is the business ecosystem that's evolving around it. We're seeing our customers evolve their own businesses to assume that those cloud capabilities will be available to them. And if the cloud capabilities are not available to them in a timely fashion, then the ecosystem starts to have a domino effect. So the ecosystems are interdependent between business, and technology, and skills, and talent. And I think that's a great to be >> James Forrester, they're going to shut us down. The speakers are on, they're going to pull the plug. Thanks for being our last interview here in New York City and bringing us home. Really appreciate you taking the time to come on theCube. >> John, thanks so much. Great to be here, really enjoyed it. Okay. We are wrapping it up here in New York City. I'm John Ford with theCube, great day. For Lisa Martin, Dave Vellante, and the entire crew of theCube here on the ground. Live in person events are back. theCube hybrid, get online, check out our coverage there. The SiliconANGLE and thecube.net. I'm John Furrier signing off from New York City. See you next time. (light music)

Published Date : Jul 14 2022

SUMMARY :

last interview of the It's great to be here. but it's changed the game for VMware. and get native to those This is the promise of the cross-cloud. more difficult that they anticipated, of the original deal that I address right out of the gate is that the operating model No debate. cloud is back in the game. into the data center. of the the core engine, is now the ability to run containers and commoditize the to help them with that in history that the cloud What are some of the the need to be able to provide that kind of the organization per se, and a data cloud's kind of the same thing. and actually taking steps to pursue that, So getting the application for a lot of organizations. and let's get the plane to its of the old school conversations what you're saying. I got no one running the business. So you got to kind of balance. It's a cultural team decision. So a big part of the down that road, yeah. Edge exploding on the industrial side, are no longer relaxed about the timing One of the things that's come up a lot So the ecosystems are the time to come on theCube. Vellante, and the entire crew

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

Lisa MartinPERSON

0.99+

JamesPERSON

0.99+

Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

Sanjay PoonenPERSON

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

JohnPERSON

0.99+

SanjayPERSON

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

New YorkLOCATION

0.99+

John FordPERSON

0.99+

San FranciscoLOCATION

0.99+

New York CityLOCATION

0.99+

DellORGANIZATION

0.99+

2008DATE

0.99+

James ForrPERSON

0.99+

90%QUANTITY

0.99+

DavePERSON

0.99+

Carl EschenbachPERSON

0.99+

bothQUANTITY

0.99+

HPORGANIZATION

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

BothQUANTITY

0.99+

10,000 peopleQUANTITY

0.99+

Snowflake SummitEVENT

0.99+

BroadcomORGANIZATION

0.99+

VMwareORGANIZATION

0.99+

James ForresterPERSON

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

first questionQUANTITY

0.99+

six yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

Sequoia CapitalORGANIZATION

0.99+

last weekDATE

0.99+

two setsQUANTITY

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

OutpostORGANIZATION

0.99+

TanzuPERSON

0.99+

TanzuORGANIZATION

0.98+

both areasQUANTITY

0.98+

JaPERSON

0.98+

first timeQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.98+

Cloud NativeORGANIZATION

0.97+

vSANTITLE

0.97+

first stepQUANTITY

0.97+

hundred percentQUANTITY

0.97+

OneQUANTITY

0.97+

AWS SummitEVENT

0.96+

vSphereTITLE

0.96+

three thingsQUANTITY

0.95+

Breaking Analysis: The Improbable Rise of Kubernetes


 

>> From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, bringing you data driven insights from theCUBE and ETR. This is Breaking Analysis with Dave Vollante. >> The rise of Kubernetes came about through a combination of forces that were, in hindsight, quite a long shot. Amazon's dominance created momentum for Cloud native application development, and the need for newer and simpler experiences, beyond just easily spinning up computer as a service. This wave crashed into innovations from a startup named Docker, and a reluctant competitor in Google, that needed a way to change the game on Amazon and the Cloud. Now, add in the effort of Red Hat, which needed a new path beyond Enterprise Linux, and oh, by the way, it was just about to commit to a path of a Kubernetes alternative for OpenShift and figure out a governance structure to hurt all the cats and the ecosystem and you get the remarkable ascendancy of Kubernetes. Hello and welcome to this week's Wikibon CUBE Insights powered by ETR. In this breaking analysis, we tapped the back stories of a new documentary that explains the improbable events that led to the creation of Kubernetes. We'll share some new survey data from ETR and commentary from the many early the innovators who came on theCUBE during the exciting period since the founding of Docker in 2013, which marked a new era in computing, because we're talking about Kubernetes and developers today, the hoodie is on. And there's a new two part documentary that I just referenced, it's out and it was produced by Honeypot on Kubernetes, part one and part two, tells a story of how Kubernetes came to prominence and many of the players that made it happen. Now, a lot of these players, including Tim Hawkin Kelsey Hightower, Craig McLuckie, Joe Beda, Brian Grant Solomon Hykes, Jerry Chen and others came on theCUBE during formative years of containers going mainstream and the rise of Kubernetes. John Furrier and Stu Miniman were at the many shows we covered back then and they unpacked what was happening at the time. We'll share the commentary from the guests that they interviewed and try to add some context. Now let's start with the concept of developer defined structure, DDI. Jerry Chen was at VMware and he could see the trends that were evolving. He left VMware to become a venture capitalist at Greylock. Docker was his first investment. And he saw the future this way. >> What happens is when you define infrastructure software you can program it. You make it portable. And that the beauty of this cloud wave what I call DDI's. Now, to your point is every piece of infrastructure from storage, networking, to compute has an API, right? And, and AWS there was an early trend where S3, EBS, EC2 had API. >> As building blocks too. >> As building blocks, exactly. >> Not monolithic. >> Monolithic building blocks every little building bone block has it own API and just like Docker really is the API for this unit of the cloud enables developers to define how they want to build their applications, how to network them know as Wills talked about, and how you want to secure them and how you want to store them. And so the beauty of this generation is now developers are determining how apps are built, not just at the, you know, end user, you know, iPhone app layer the data layer, the storage layer, the networking layer. So every single level is being disrupted by this concept of a DDI and where, how you build use and actually purchase IT has changed. And you're seeing the incumbent vendors like Oracle, VMware Microsoft try to react but you're seeing a whole new generation startup. >> Now what Jerry was explaining is that this new abstraction layer that was being built here's some ETR data that quantifies that and shows where we are today. The chart shows net score or spending momentum on the vertical axis and market share which represents the pervasiveness in the survey set. So as Jerry and the innovators who created Docker saw the cloud was becoming prominent and you can see it still has spending velocity that's elevated above that 40% red line which is kind of a magic mark of momentum. And of course, it's very prominent on the X axis as well. And you see the low level infrastructure virtualization and that even floats above servers and storage and networking right. Back in 2013 the conversation with VMware. And by the way, I remember having this conversation deeply at the time with Chad Sakac was we're going to make this low level infrastructure invisible, and we intend to make virtualization invisible, IE simplified. And so, you see above the two arrows there related to containers, container orchestration and container platforms, which are abstraction layers and services above the underlying VMs and hardware. And you can see the momentum that they have right there with the cloud and AI and RPA. So you had these forces that Jerry described that were taking shape, and this picture kind of summarizes how they came together to form Kubernetes. And the upper left, Of course you see AWS and we inserted a picture from a post we did, right after the first reinvent in 2012, it was obvious to us at the time that the cloud gorilla was AWS and had all this momentum. Now, Solomon Hykes, the founder of Docker, you see there in the upper right. He saw the need to simplify the packaging of applications for cloud developers. Here's how he described it. Back in 2014 in theCUBE with John Furrier >> Container is a unit of deployment, right? It's the format in which you package your application all the files, all the executables libraries all the dependencies in one thing that you can move to any server and deploy in a repeatable way. So it's similar to how you would run an iOS app on an iPhone, for example. >> A Docker at the time was a 30% company and it just changed its name from .cloud. And back to the diagram you have Google with a red question mark. So why would you need more than what Docker had created. Craig McLuckie, who was a product manager at Google back then explains the need for yet another abstraction. >> We created the strong separation between infrastructure operations and application operations. And so, Docker has created a portable framework to take it, basically a binary and run it anywhere which is an amazing capability, but that's not enough. You also need to be able to manage that with a framework that can run anywhere. And so, the union of Docker and Kubernetes provides this framework where you're completely abstracted from the underlying infrastructure. You could use VMware, you could use Red Hat open stack deployment. You could run on another major cloud provider like rec. >> Now Google had this huge cloud infrastructure but no commercial cloud business compete with AWS. At least not one that was taken seriously at the time. So it needed a way to change the game. And it had this thing called Google Borg, which is a container management system and scheduler and Google looked at what was happening with virtualization and said, you know, we obviously could do better Joe Beda, who was with Google at the time explains their mindset going back to the beginning. >> Craig and I started up Google compute engine VM as a service. And the odd thing to recognize is that, nobody who had been in Google for a long time thought that there was anything to this VM stuff, right? Cause Google had been on containers for so long. That was their mindset board was the way that stuff was actually deployed. So, you know, my boss at the time, who's now at Cloudera booted up a VM for the first time, and anybody in the outside world be like, Hey, that's really cool. And his response was like, well now what? Right. You're sitting at a prompt. Like that's not super interesting. How do I run my app? Right. Which is, that's what everybody's been struggling with, with cloud is not how do I get a VM up? How do I actually run my code? >> Okay. So Google never really did virtualization. They were looking at the market and said, okay what can we do to make Google relevant in cloud. Here's Eric Brewer from Google. Talking on theCUBE about Google's thought process at the time. >> One interest things about Google is it essentially makes no use of virtual machines internally. And that's because Google started in 1998 which is the same year that VMware started was kind of brought the modern virtual machine to bear. And so Google infrastructure tends to be built really on kind of classic Unix processes and communication. And so scaling that up, you get a system that works a lot with just processes and containers. So kind of when I saw containers come along with Docker, we said, well, that's a good model for us. And we can take what we know internally which was called Borg a big scheduler. And we can turn that into Kubernetes and we'll open source it. And suddenly we have kind of a cloud version of Google that works the way we would like it to work. >> Now, Eric Brewer gave us the bumper sticker version of the story there. What he reveals in the documentary that I referenced earlier is that initially Google was like, why would we open source our secret sauce to help competitors? So folks like Tim Hockin and Brian Grant who were on the original Kubernetes team, went to management and pressed hard to convince them to bless open sourcing Kubernetes. Here's Hockin's explanation. >> When Docker landed, we saw the community building and building and building. I mean, that was a snowball of its own, right? And as it caught on we realized we know what this is going to we know once you embrace the Docker mindset that you very quickly need something to manage all of your Docker nodes, once you get beyond two or three of them, and we know how to build that, right? We got a ton of experience here. Like we went to our leadership and said, you know, please this is going to happen with us or without us. And I think it, the world would be better if we helped. >> So the open source strategy became more compelling as they studied the problem because it gave Google a way to neutralize AWS's advantage because with containers you could develop on AWS for example, and then run the application anywhere like Google's cloud. So it not only gave developers a path off of AWS. If Google could develop a strong service on GCP they could monetize that play. Now, focus your attention back to the diagram which shows this smiling, Alex Polvi from Core OS which was acquired by Red Hat in 2018. And he saw the need to bring Linux into the cloud. I mean, after all Linux was powering the internet it was the OS for enterprise apps. And he saw the need to extend its path into the cloud. Now here's how he described it at an OpenStack event in 2015. >> Similar to what happened with Linux. Like yes, there is still need for Linux and Windows and other OSs out there. But by and large on production, web infrastructure it's all Linux now. And you were able to get onto one stack. And how were you able to do that? It was, it was by having a truly open consistent API and a commitment into not breaking APIs and, so on. That allowed Linux to really become ubiquitous in the data center. Yes, there are other OSs, but Linux buy in large for production infrastructure, what is being used. And I think you'll see a similar phenomenon happen for this next level up cause we're treating the whole data center as a computer instead of trading one in visual instance is just the computer. And that's the stuff that Kubernetes to me and someone is doing. And I think there will be one that shakes out over time and we believe that'll be Kubernetes. >> So Alex saw the need for a dominant container orchestration platform. And you heard him, they made the right bet. It would be Kubernetes. Now Red Hat, Red Hat is been around since 1993. So it has a lot of on-prem. So it needed a future path to the cloud. So they rang up Google and said, hey. What do you guys have going on in this space? So Google, was kind of non-committal, but it did expose that they were thinking about doing something that was you know, pre Kubernetes. It was before it was called Kubernetes. But hey, we have this thing and we're thinking about open sourcing it, but Google's internal debates, and you know, some of the arm twisting from the engine engineers, it was taking too long. So Red Hat said, well, screw it. We got to move forward with OpenShift. So we'll do what Apple and Airbnb and Heroku are doing and we'll build on an alternative. And so they were ready to go with Mesos which was very much more sophisticated than Kubernetes at the time and much more mature, but then Google the last minute said, hey, let's do this. So Clayton Coleman with Red Hat, he was an architect. And he leaned in right away. He was one of the first outside committers outside of Google. But you still led these competing forces in the market. And internally there were debates. Do we go with simplicity or do we go with system scale? And Hen Goldberg from Google explains why they focus first on simplicity in getting that right. >> We had to defend of why we are only supporting 100 nodes in the first release of Kubernetes. And they explained that they know how to build for scale. They've done that. They know how to do it, but realistically most of users don't need large clusters. So why create this complexity? >> So Goldberg explains that rather than competing right away with say Mesos or Docker swarm, which were far more baked they made the bet to keep it simple and go for adoption and ubiquity, which obviously turned out to be the right choice. But the last piece of the puzzle was governance. Now Google promised to open source Kubernetes but when it started to open up to contributors outside of Google, the code was still controlled by Google and developers had to sign Google paper that said Google could still do whatever it wanted. It could sub license, et cetera. So Google had to pass the Baton to an independent entity and that's how CNCF was started. Kubernetes was its first project. And let's listen to Chris Aniszczyk of the CNCF explain >> CNCF is all about providing a neutral home for cloud native technology. And, you know, it's been about almost two years since our first board meeting. And the idea was, you know there's a certain set of technology out there, you know that are essentially microservice based that like live in containers that are essentially orchestrated by some process, right? That's essentially what we mean when we say cloud native right. And CNCF was seated with Kubernetes as its first project. And you know, as, as we've seen over the last couple years Kubernetes has grown, you know, quite well they have a large community a diverse con you know, contributor base and have done, you know, kind of extremely well. They're one of actually the fastest, you know highest velocity, open source projects out there, maybe. >> Okay. So this is how we got to where we are today. This ETR data shows container orchestration offerings. It's the same X Y graph that we showed earlier. And you can see where Kubernetes lands not we're standing that Kubernetes not a company but respondents, you know, they doing Kubernetes. They maybe don't know, you know, whose platform and it's hard with the ETR taxon economy as a fuzzy and survey data because Kubernetes is increasingly becoming embedded into cloud platforms. And IT pros, they may not even know which one specifically. And so the reason we've linked these two platforms Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift is because OpenShift right now is a dominant revenue player in the space and is increasingly popular PaaS layer. Yeah. You could download Kubernetes and do what you want with it. But if you're really building enterprise apps you're going to need support. And that's where OpenShift comes in. And there's not much data on this but we did find this chart from AMDA which show was the container software market, whatever that really is. And Red Hat has got 50% of it. This is revenue. And, you know, we know the muscle of IBM is behind OpenShift. So there's really not hard to believe. Now we've got some other data points that show how Kubernetes is becoming less visible and more embedded under of the hood. If you will, as this chart shows this is data from CNCF's annual survey they had 1800 respondents here, and the data showed that 79% of respondents use certified Kubernetes hosted platforms. Amazon elastic container service for Kubernetes was the most prominent 39% followed by Azure Kubernetes service at 23% in Azure AKS engine at 17%. With Google's GKE, Google Kubernetes engine behind those three. Now. You have to ask, okay, Google. Google's management Initially they had concerns. You know, why are we open sourcing such a key technology? And the premise was, it would level the playing field. And for sure it has, but you have to ask has it driven the monetization Google was after? And I would've to say no, it probably didn't. But think about where Google would've been. If it hadn't open source Kubernetes how relevant would it be in the cloud discussion. Despite its distant third position behind AWS and Microsoft or even fourth, if you include Alibaba without Kubernetes Google probably would be much less prominent or possibly even irrelevant in cloud, enterprise cloud. Okay. Let's wrap up with some comments on the state of Kubernetes and maybe a thought or two about, you know, where we're headed. So look, no shocker Kubernetes for all its improbable beginning has gone mainstream in the past year or so. We're seeing much more maturity and support for state full workloads and big ecosystem support with respect to better security and continued simplification. But you know, it's still pretty complex. It's getting better, but it's not VMware level of maturity. For example, of course. Now adoption has always been strong for Kubernetes, for cloud native companies who start with containers on day one, but we're seeing many more. IT organizations adopting Kubernetes as it matures. It's interesting, you know, Docker set out to be the system of the cloud and Kubernetes has really kind of become that. Docker desktop is where Docker's action really is. That's where Docker is thriving. It sold off Docker swarm to Mirantis has made some tweaks. Docker has made some tweaks to its licensing model to be able to continue to evolve its its business. To hear more about that at DockerCon. And as we said, years ago we expected Kubernetes to become less visible Stu Miniman and I talked about this in one of our predictions post and really become more embedded into other platforms. And that's exactly what's happening here but it's still complicated. Remember, remember the... Go back to the early and mid cycle of VMware understanding things like application performance you needed folks in lab coats to really remediate problems and dig in and peel the onion and scale the system you know, and in some ways you're seeing that dynamic repeated with Kubernetes, security performance scale recovery, when something goes wrong all are made more difficult by the rapid pace at which the ecosystem is evolving Kubernetes. But it's definitely headed in the right direction. So what's next for Kubernetes we would expect further simplification and you're going to see more abstractions. We live in this world of almost perpetual abstractions. Now, as Kubernetes improves support from multi cluster it will be begin to treat those clusters as a unified group. So kind of abstracting multiple clusters and treating them as, as one to be managed together. And this is going to create a lot of ecosystem focus on scaling globally. Okay, once you do that, you're going to have to worry about latency and then you're going to have to keep pace with security as you expand the, the threat area. And then of course recovery what happens when something goes wrong, more complexity, the harder it is to recover and that's going to require new services to share resources across clusters. So look for that. You also should expect more automation. It's going to be driven by the host cloud providers as Kubernetes supports more state full applications and begins to extend its cluster management. Cloud providers will inject as much automation as possible into the system. Now and finally, as these capabilities mature we would expect to see better support for data intensive workloads like, AI and Machine learning and inference. Schedule with these workloads becomes harder because they're so resource intensive and performance management becomes more complex. So that's going to have to evolve. I mean, frankly, many of the things that Kubernetes team way back when, you know they back burn it early on, for example, you saw in Docker swarm or Mesos they're going to start to enter the scene now with Kubernetes as they start to sort of prioritize some of those more complex functions. Now, the last thing I'll ask you to think about is what's next beyond Kubernetes, you know this isn't it right with serverless and IOT in the edge and new data, heavy workloads there's something that's going to disrupt Kubernetes. So in that, by the way, in that CNCF survey nearly 40% of respondents were using serverless and that's going to keep growing. So how is that going to change the development model? You know, Andy Jassy once famously said that if they had to start over with Amazon retail, they'd start with serverless. So let's keep an eye on the horizon to see what's coming next. All right, that's it for now. I want to thank my colleagues, Stephanie Chan who helped research this week's topics and Alex Myerson on the production team, who also manages the breaking analysis podcast, Kristin Martin and Cheryl Knight help get the word out on socials, so thanks to all of you. Remember these episodes, they're all available as podcasts wherever you listen, just search breaking analysis podcast. Don't forget to check out ETR website @etr.ai. We'll also publish. We publish a full report every week on wikibon.com and Silicon angle.com. You can get in touch with me, email me directly david.villane@Siliconangle.com or DM me at D Vollante. You can comment on our LinkedIn post. This is Dave Vollante for theCUBE insights powered by ETR. Have a great week, everybody. Thanks for watching. Stay safe, be well. And we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Feb 12 2022

SUMMARY :

bringing you data driven and many of the players And that the beauty of this And so the beauty of this He saw the need to simplify It's the format in which A Docker at the time was a 30% company And so, the union of Docker and Kubernetes and said, you know, we And the odd thing to recognize is that, at the time. And so scaling that up, you and pressed hard to convince them and said, you know, please And he saw the need to And that's the stuff that Kubernetes and you know, some of the arm twisting in the first release of Kubernetes. of Google, the code was And the idea was, you know and dig in and peel the

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Stephanie ChanPERSON

0.99+

Chris AniszczykPERSON

0.99+

HockinPERSON

0.99+

Dave VollantePERSON

0.99+

Solomon HykesPERSON

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

Cheryl KnightPERSON

0.99+

Jerry ChenPERSON

0.99+

Alex MyersonPERSON

0.99+

Kristin MartinPERSON

0.99+

Brian GrantPERSON

0.99+

Eric BrewerPERSON

0.99+

1998DATE

0.99+

MicrosoftORGANIZATION

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

Tim HockinPERSON

0.99+

Andy JassyPERSON

0.99+

2013DATE

0.99+

Alex PolviPERSON

0.99+

Palo AltoLOCATION

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

Clayton ColemanPERSON

0.99+

2018DATE

0.99+

2014DATE

0.99+

IBMORGANIZATION

0.99+

50%QUANTITY

0.99+

JerryPERSON

0.99+

AppleORGANIZATION

0.99+

2012DATE

0.99+

Joe BedaPERSON

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

Stu MinimanPERSON

0.99+

CNCFORGANIZATION

0.99+

17%QUANTITY

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

30%QUANTITY

0.99+

40%QUANTITY

0.99+

OracleORGANIZATION

0.99+

23%QUANTITY

0.99+

iOSTITLE

0.99+

1800 respondentsQUANTITY

0.99+

AlibabaORGANIZATION

0.99+

2015DATE

0.99+

39%QUANTITY

0.99+

iPhoneCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.99+

AirbnbORGANIZATION

0.99+

Hen GoldbergPERSON

0.99+

fourthQUANTITY

0.99+

twoQUANTITY

0.99+

Chad SakacPERSON

0.99+

threeQUANTITY

0.99+

david.villane@Siliconangle.comOTHER

0.99+

first projectQUANTITY

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

VMwareORGANIZATION

0.99+

ETRORGANIZATION

0.99+

Craig Nunes & Tobias Flitsch, Nebulon | CUBEconversations


 

(upbeat intro music) >> More than a decade ago, the team at Wikibon coined the term Server SAN. We saw the opportunity to dramatically change the storage infrastructure layer and predicted a major change in technologies that would hit the market. Server SAN had three fundamental attributes. First of all, it was software led. So all the traditionally expensive controller functions like snapshots and clones and de-dupe and replication, compression, encryption, et cetera, they were done in software directly challenging a two to three decade long storage controller paradigm. The second principle was it leveraged and shared storage inside of servers. And the third it enabled any-to-any typology between servers and storage. Now, at the time we defined this coming trend in a relatively narrow sense inside of a data center location, for example, but in the past decade, two additional major trends have emerged. First the software defined data center became the dominant model, thanks to VMware and others. And while this eliminated a lot of overhead, it also exposed another problem. Specifically data centers today allocate probably we estimate around 35% of CPU cores and cycles to managing things like storage and network and security, offloading those functions. This is wasted cores and doing this with traditional general purpose x86 processors is expensive and it's not efficient. This is why we've been reporting so aggressively on ARM's ascendancy into the enterprise. It's not only coming it's here and we're going to talk about that today. The second mega trend is cloud computing. Hyperscale infrastructure has allowed technology companies to put a management and control plane into the cloud and expand beyond our narrow server SAN scope within a single data center and support the management of distributed data at massive scale. And today we're on the cusp of a new era of infrastructure. And one of the startups in this space is Nebulon. Hello everybody, this is Dave Vellante, and welcome to this Cube Conversation where we welcome in two great guests, Craig Nunes, Cube alum, co-founder and COO at Nebulon and Tobias Flitsch who's director of product management at Nebulon. Guys, welcome. Great to see you. >> So good to be here Dave. Feels awesome. >> Soon, face to face. Craig, I'm heading your way. >> I can't wait. >> Craig, you heard my narrative upfront and I'm wondering are those the trends that you guys saw when you, when you started the company, what are the major shifts in the world today that, that caused you and your co-founders to launch Nebulon? >> Yeah, I'll give you sort of the way we think about the world, which I think aligns super right with, with what you're talking about, you know, over the last several years, organizations have had a great deal of experience with public cloud data centers. And I think like any platform or technology that is, you know, gets its use in a variety of ways, you know, a bit of savvy is being developed by organizations on, you know, what do I put where, how do I manage things in the most efficient way possible? And there are, in terms of the types of folks we're focused on in Nebulon's business, we see now kind of three groups of people emerging, and, and we sort of simply coined three terms, the returners, the removers, and the remainers. I'll explain what I mean by each of those, the returners are folks who maybe early on, you know, hit the gas on cloud, moved, you know, everything in, a lot in, and realize that while it's awesome for some things, for other things, it was less optimal. Maybe cost became a factor or visibility into what was going on with their data was a factor, security, service levels, whatever. And they've decided to move some of those workloads back. Returners. There are what I call the removers that are taking workloads from, you know, born in the cloud. On-prem, you know, and this was talked a lot about in Martine's blog that, you know, talked about a lot of the growth companies that built up such a large footprint in the public cloud, that economics were kind of working against them. You can, depending on the knobs you turn, you know, you're probably spending two and a half X, two X, what you might spend if you own your own factory. And you can argue about, you know, where your leverage is in negotiating your pricing with the cloud vendors, but there's a big gap. The last one is, and I think probably the most significant in terms of who we've engaged with is the remainers. And the remainers are, you know, hybrid IT organizations. They've got assets in the cloud and on-prem, they aspire to an operational model that is consistent across everything and, you know, leveraging all the best stuff that they observed in their cloud-based assets. And it's kind of our view that frankly we take from, from this constituency that, when people talk about cloud or cloud first, they're moving to something that is really more an operating model versus a destination or data center choice. And so, we get people on the phone every day, talking about cloud first. And when you kind of dig into what they're after, it's operating model characteristics, not which data center do I put it in, and those, those decisions are separating. And so that, you know, it's really that focus for us is where, we believe we're doing something unique for that group of customers. >> Yeah. Cloud first doesn't doesn't mean cloud only. And of course followers of this program know, we talk a lot about this, this definition of cloud is changing, it's evolving, It's moving to the edge, it's moving to data centers, data centers are moving to the cloud. Cross-cloud, it's that big layer that's expanding. And so I think the definition of cloud, even particularly in customer's minds is evolving. There's no question about it. People, they'll look at what VMware is doing in AWS and say, okay, that's cloud, but they'll also look at things like VMware cloud foundation and say oh yeah, that's cloud too. So to me, the beauty of cloud is in the eye of the customer beholder. So I buy that. Tobias. I wonder if you could talk about how this all translates into product, because you guys start up, you got to sell stuff, you use this term smart infrastructure, what is that? How does this all turn into stuff you can sell? >> Right. Yeah. So let me back up a little bit and talk a little bit about, you know, what we at Nebulon do. So we are a cloud based software company, and we're delivering sort of a new category of smart infrastructure. And if you think about things that you would know from your everyday surroundings, smart infrastructure is really all around us. Think smart home technology like Google Nest as an example. And what this all has in common is that there's a cloud control plane that is managing some IOT end points and smart devices in various locations. And by doing that, customers gain benefits like easy remote management, right? You can manage your thermostat, your temperature from anywhere in the world basically. You don't have to worry about automated software updates anymore, and you can easily automate your home, your infrastructure, through this cloud control plane and translating this idea to the data center, right? This idea is not necessarily new, right? If you look into the networking space with Meraki networks, now Cisco or Mist Systems now Juniper, they've really pioneered efforts in cloud management. So smart network infrastructure, and the key problem that they solved there is, you know, managing these vast amount of access points and switches that are scattered across the data centers across campuses, and, you know, the data center. Now, if you translate that to what Nebulon does, it's really applying this smart infrastructure idea, this methodology to application infrastructure, specifically to compute and storage infrastructure. And that's essentially what we're doing. So with smart infrastructure, basically our offering it at Nebulon, the product, that comes with the benefits of this cloud experience, public cloud operating model, as we've talked about, some of our customers look at the cloud as an operating model rather than a destination, a physical location. And with that, we bring to us this model, this, this experience as operating a model to on-premises application infrastructure, and really what you get with this broad offering from Nebulon and the benefits are really circling it out, you know, four areas, first of all, rapid time to value, right? So application owners think people that are not specialists or experts when it comes to IT infrastructure, but more generalists, they can provision on-premise application infrastructure in less than 10 minutes, right? It can go from, from just bare metal physical racks to the full application stack in less than 10 minutes, so they're up and running a lot quicker. And they can immediately deliver services to their end customers, cloud-like operations, this, this notion of zero touch remote management, which now with the last couple of months with this strange time that we're with COVID is, you know, turnout is becoming more and more relevant really as in remotely administrating and management of infrastructure that scales from just hundreds of nodes to thousands of nodes. It doesn't really matter with behind the scenes software updates, with global AI analytics and insights, and basically overall combined reduce the operational overhead when it comes to on-premises infrastructure by up to 75%, right? The other thing is support for any application, whether it's containerized, virtualized, or even bare metal applications. And the idea here is really consistent leveraging server-based storage that doesn't require any Nebulon-specific software on the server. So you get the full power of your application servers for your applications. Again, as the servers intended. And then the fourth benefit when it comes to smart infrastructure is, is of course doing this all at a lower cost and with better data center density. And that is really comparing it to three-tier architectures where you have your server, your SAN fabric, and then you have an external storage, but also when you compare it with hyper-converged infrastructure software, right, that is consuming resources of the application servers, think CPU, think memory and networking. So basically you get a lot more density with that approach compared to those architectures. >> Okay, I want to dig into some of that differentiation too, but what exactly do I buy from you? Do I buy a software subscription? Is that right? Can you explain that a little bit? >> Right. So basically the way we do this is it's really leveraging two key new innovations, right? So, and you see why I made the bridge to smart home technology, because the approach is civil, right? The one is, you know, the introduction of a cloud control plane that basically manage this on-premise application infrastructure, of course, that is delivered to customers as a service. The second one is, you know, a new infrastructure model that uses IOT endpoint technology, and that is embedded into standard application servers and the storage within this application servers. Let me add a couple of words to that to explain a little bit more, so really at the heart of smart infrastructure, in order to deliver this public cloud experience for any on-prem application is this cloud-based control plane, right? So we've built this, how we recommend our customers to use a public cloud, and that is built, you know, building your software on modern technologies that are vendor-agnostic. So it could essentially run anywhere, whether it is, you know, any public cloud vendor, or if we want to run in our own data centers, when regulatory requirements change, it's massively scalable and responsive, no matter how large the managed infrastructure is. But really the interesting part here, Dave, is that the customer doesn't really have to worry about any of that, it's delivered as a service. So what a customer gets from this cloud control plane is a single API end point, how they get it with a public cloud. They get a web user interface, from which they can manage all of their infrastructure, no matter how many devices, no matter where it is, can be in the data center, can be in an edge location anywhere in the world, they get template-based provisioning much like a marketplace in a public cloud. They get analytics, predictive support services, and super easy automation capabilities. Now the second thing that I mentioned is this server embedded software, the server embedded infrastructure software, and that is running on a PCIE based offload engine. And that is really acting as this managed IOT endpoint within the application server that I managed that I mentioned earlier. And that approach really further converges modern application infrastructure. And it really replaces the software defined storage approach that you'll find in hyper-converged infrastructure software. And that is really by embedding the data services, the storage data service into silicon within the server. Now this offload engine, we call that a services processing unit or SPU in short. And that is really what differentiates us from hyper-converged infrastructure. And it's quite different than a regular accelerator card that you get with some of the hyper-converged infrastructure offerings. And it's different in the sense that the SPU runs basically all of the shared and local data services, and it's not just accelerating individual algorithms, individual functions. And it basically provides all of these services aside the CPU with the boot drive, with data drives. And in essence provides you with this a separate fall domain from the service, so for example, if you reboot your server, the data plan remains intact. You know, it's not impacted for that. >> Okay. So I want to stay on that for just a second, Craig, if I could, I get very clear how you're different from, as Tobias said, the three-tier server SAN fabric, external array, the HCI thing's interesting because in some respects, the HCI has, you know, guys take Nutanix, they talk about cloud and becoming more friendly with developers and API piece, but what's your point of view Craig on how you position relative to say HCI? >> Yeah, absolutely. So everyone gets what three-tier architecture is and was, and HCI software, you know, emerged as an alternative to the three-tier architectures. Everyone I think today understands that data services are, you know, SDS is software hosted in the operating system of each HCI device and consume some amount of CPU, memory, network, whatever. And it's typically constrained to a hypervisor environment, kind of where we're most of that stuff is done. And over time, these platforms have added some monitoring capabilities, predictive analytics, typically provided by the vendor's cloud, right? And as Tobias mentioned, some HCIS vendors have augmented this approach by adding an accelerator to make things like compression and dedupe go faster, right? Think SimpliVity or something like that. The difference that we're talking about here is, the infrastructure software that we deliver as a service is embedded right into server silicon. So it's not sitting in the operating system of choice. And what that means is you get the full power of the server you bought for your workloads. It's not constrained to a hypervisor-only environment, it's OS agnostic. And, you know, it's entirely controlled and administered by the cloud versus with, you know, most HCIS is an on-prem console that manages a cluster or two on-prem. And, you know, think of it from a automation perspective. When you automate something, you've got to set up your playbook kind of cluster by cluster. And depending what versions they're on, APIs are changing, behaviors are changing. So a very different approach at scale. And so again, for us, we're talking about something that gives you a much more efficient infrastructure that is then managed by the cloud and gives you this full kind of operational model you would expect for any kind of cloud-based deployment. >> You know, I got to go back, you guys obviously have some three-part DNA hanging around and you know, of course you remember well, the three-part ASIC, it was kind of famous at the time and it was unique. And I bring that up only because you've mentioned a couple of times the silicon and a lot of people yeah, whatever, but we have been on this, especially, particularly with ARM. And I want to share with the audience, if you follow my breaking analysis, you know this. If you look at the historical curve of Moore's law with x86, it's the doubling of performance every two years, roughly, that comes out to about 40% a year. That's moderated down to about 30% a year now, if you look at the ARM ecosystem and take for instance, apple A15, and the previous series, for example, over the last five years, the performance, when you combine the CPU, GPU, NPU, the accelerators, the DSPs, which by the way, are all customizable. That's growing at 110% a year, and the SOC costs 50 bucks. So my point is that you guys are riding perfect example of doing offloads with a way more efficient architecture. You're now on that curve, that's growing at 100% plus per year. Whereas a lot of the legacy storage is still on that 30% a year curve, and so cheaper, lower power. That's why I love to buy, as you were bringing in the IOT and the smart infrastructure, this is the future of storage and infrastructure. >> Absolutely. And the thing I would emphasize is it's not limited to storage, storage is a big issue, but we're talking about your application infrastructure and you brought up something interesting on the GPU, the SmartNIC of things, and just to kind of level set with everybody there, there's the HCI world, and then there's this SmartNIC DPU world, whatever you want to call it, where it's effectively a network card, it's got that specialized processing onboard and firmware to provide some network security storage services, and think of it as a PCIE card in your server. It connects to an external storage system, so think Nvidia Bluefield 2 connecting to an external NVME storage device. And the interesting thing about that is, you know, storage processing is offloaded from the server. So as we said earlier, good, right, you get the server back to your application, but storage moves out of the server. And it starts to look a little bit like an external storage approach versus a server based approach. And infrastructure management is done by, you know, the server SmartNIC with some monitoring and analytics coming from, you know, your supplier's cloud support service. So complexity creeps back in, if you start to lose that, you know, heavily converged approach. Again, we are taking advantage of storage within the server and, you know, keeping this a real server based approach, but distinguishing ourselves from the HCI approach. Cause there's a real ROI there. And when we talked to folks who are looking at new and different ways, we talk a lot about the cloud and I think we've done a bit of that already, but then at the end of the day, folks are trying to figure out well, okay, but then what do I buy to enable this? And what you buy is your standard server recipe. So think your favorite HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro, whatever, whatever your brand, and it's going to come enabled with this IOT end point within it, so it's really a smart server, if you will, that can then be controlled by our cloud. And so you're effectively buying, you know, from your favorite server vendor, a server option that is this endpoint and a subscription. You don't buy any of this from us, by the way, it's all coming from them. And that's the way we deliver this. >> You know, sorry to get into the plumbing, but this is something we've been on and a facet of it. Is that silicon custom designed or is it pretty much off the shelf, do you guys add any value to it? >> No, there are off the shelf options that can deliver tremendous horsepower on that form factor. And so we take advantage of that to, you know, do what we do in terms of, you know, creating these sort of smart servers with our end point. And so that's where we're at. >> Yeah. Awesome. So guys, what's your sweet spot, you know, why are customers, you know, what are you seeing customers adopting? Maybe some examples you guys can share? >> Yeah, absolutely. So I think Tobias mentioned that because of the architectural approach, there's a lot of flexibility there, you can run virtualized, containerized, bare metal applications. The question is where are folks choosing to get started? And those use cases with our existing customers revolved heavily around virtualization modernization. So they're going back in to their virtualized environment, whether their existing infrastructure is array-based or HCI-based. And they're looking to streamline that, save money, automate more, the usual things. The second area is the distributed edge. You know, the edge is going through tremendous transformation with IOT devices, 5g, and trying to get processing closer to where customers are doing work. And so that distributed edge is a real opportunity because again, it's a more cost-effective, more dense infrastructure. The cloud effectively can manage across all of these sites through a single API. And then the third area is cloud service provider transformation. We do a fair bit of business with, you know, cloud service providers, CTOs, who are looking at trying to build top line growth, trying to create new services and, and drive better bottom line. And so this is really, you know, as much as a revenue opportunity for them as cost saving opportunity. And then the last one is this notion of, you know, bringing the cloud on-prem, we've done a cloud repatriation deal. And I know you've seen a little of that, but maybe not a lot of it. And, you know, I can tell you in our first deals, we've already seen it, so it's out there. Those are the places where people are getting started with us today. >> It's just interesting, you're right. I don't see a ton of it, but if I'm going to repatriate, I don't want to go backwards. I don't want to repatriate to legacy. So it actually does kind of make sense that I repatriate to essentially a component of on-prem cloud that's managed in the cloud, that makes sense to me to buy. But today you're managing from the cloud, you're managing on-prem infrastructure. Maybe you could show us a little leg, share a little roadmap, I mean, where are you guys headed from a product standpoint? >> Right, so I'm not going to go too far on the limb there, but obviously, right. So one of the key benefits of a cloud managed platform is this notion of a single API, right. We talked about the distributed edge where, you know, think of retailer that has, you know, thousands of stores, each store having local infrastructure. And, you know, if you think about the challenges that come with, you know, just administrating those systems, rolling out firmware updates, rolling out updates in general, monitoring those systems, et cetera. So having a single console, a cloud console to administrate all of that infrastructure, obviously, you know, the benefits are easy now. If you think about, if you're thinking about that and spin it further, right? So from the use cases and the types of users that we've see, and Craig talked about them at the very beginning, you can think about this as this is a hybrid world, right. Customers will have data that they'll have in the public cloud. They will have data and applications in their data centers and at the edge, obviously it is our objective to deliver the same experience that they gained from the public cloud on-prem, and eventually, you know, those two things can come closer together. Apart from that, we're constantly improving the data services. And as you mentioned, ARM is, is on a path that is becoming stronger and faster. So obviously we're going to leverage on that and build out our data storage services and become faster. But really the key thing that I'd like to, to mention all the time, and this is related to roadmap, but rather feature delivery, right? So the majority of what we do is in the cloud, our business logic in the cloud, the capabilities, the things that make infrastructure work are delivered in the cloud. And, you know, it's provided as a service. So compared with your Gmail, you know, your cloud services, one day, you don't have a feature, the next day you have a feature, so we're continuously rolling out new capabilities through our cloud. >> And that's about feature acceleration as opposed to technical debt, which is what you get with legacy features, feature creep. >> Absolutely. The other thing I would say too, is a big focus for us now is to help our customers more easily consume this new concept. And we've already got, you know, SDKs for things like Python and PowerShell and some of those things, but we've got, I think, nearly ready, an Ansible SDK. We're trying to help folks better kind of use case by use case, spin this stuff up within their organization, their infrastructure. Because again, part of our objective, we know that IT professionals have, you know, a lot of inertia when they're, you know, moving stuff around in their own data center. And we're aiming to make this, you know, a much simpler, more agile experience to deploy and grow over time. >> We've got to go, but Craig, quick company stats. Am I correct, you've raised just under 20 million. Where are you on funding? What's your head count today? >> I am going to plead the fifth on all of that. >> Oh, okay. Keep it stealth. Staying a little stealthy, I love it. Really excited for you. I love what you're doing. It's really starting to come into focus. And so congratulations. You know, you got a ways to go, but Tobias and Craig, appreciate you coming on The Cube today. And thank you for watching this Cube Conversation. This is Dave Vellante. We'll see you next time. (upbeat outro music)

Published Date : Jul 15 2021

SUMMARY :

We saw the opportunity to So good to be here Dave. Soon, face to face. hit the gas on cloud, moved, you know, of the customer beholder. that you would know from your and that is built, you know, building your the HCI has, you know, guys take Nutanix, that data services are, you know, So my point is that you guys about that is, you know, or is it pretty much off the of that to, you know, why are customers, you know, And so this is really, you know, the cloud, that makes sense to me to buy. challenges that come with, you know, you get with legacy features, a lot of inertia when they're, you know, Where are you on funding? the fifth on all of that. And thank you for watching

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
CiscoORGANIZATION

0.99+

Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

DavePERSON

0.99+

Tobias FlitschPERSON

0.99+

TobiasPERSON

0.99+

Craig NunesPERSON

0.99+

LenovoORGANIZATION

0.99+

100%QUANTITY

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

Mist SystemsORGANIZATION

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

SupermicroORGANIZATION

0.99+

fifthQUANTITY

0.99+

NebulonORGANIZATION

0.99+

less than 10 minutesQUANTITY

0.99+

twoQUANTITY

0.99+

JuniperORGANIZATION

0.99+

50 bucksQUANTITY

0.99+

three decadeQUANTITY

0.99+

PythonTITLE

0.99+

second thingQUANTITY

0.99+

MerakiORGANIZATION

0.99+

NebulonPERSON

0.99+

less than 10 minutesQUANTITY

0.99+

secondQUANTITY

0.99+

WikibonORGANIZATION

0.99+

two thingsQUANTITY

0.99+

NvidiaORGANIZATION

0.99+

first dealsQUANTITY

0.99+

each storeQUANTITY

0.99+

PowerShellTITLE

0.99+

third areaQUANTITY

0.98+

MartinePERSON

0.98+

todayDATE

0.98+

thirdQUANTITY

0.98+

NutanixORGANIZATION

0.98+

A15COMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.98+

three-tierQUANTITY

0.98+

GmailTITLE

0.98+

FirstQUANTITY

0.98+

second principleQUANTITY

0.98+

Bluefield 2COMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.98+

110% a yearQUANTITY

0.98+

single consoleQUANTITY

0.98+

second areaQUANTITY

0.98+

hundreds of nodesQUANTITY

0.98+

MoorePERSON

0.97+

about 40% a yearQUANTITY

0.97+

oneQUANTITY

0.97+

ARMORGANIZATION

0.97+

VMwareORGANIZATION

0.97+

CubeORGANIZATION

0.97+

three-partQUANTITY

0.97+

thousands of storesQUANTITY

0.97+

singleQUANTITY

0.97+

fourth benefitQUANTITY

0.96+

two great guestsQUANTITY

0.96+

firstQUANTITY

0.96+

eachQUANTITY

0.96+

second oneQUANTITY

0.96+

More than a decade agoDATE

0.96+

about 30% a yearQUANTITY

0.96+

HPEORGANIZATION

0.96+

around 35%QUANTITY

0.95+

thousands of nodesQUANTITY

0.95+

up to 75%QUANTITY

0.95+

appleORGANIZATION

0.95+

Craig Hyde, Splunk | Leading with Observability | January 2021


 

>> Narrator: From theCUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with that leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. >> Hello and welcome to this special CUBE Conversation. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're here for a special series, Leading with Observability, and this segment is: End-to-end observability drives great digital experiences. We've got a great guest here, Craig Hyde, senior director of product management for Splunk. Craig, great to see you. Thanks for coming on. >> And thanks for having me. This is great. >> So this series, Leading with Observability is a super hot topic obviously with cloud native. In the pandemic, COVID-19 has really kind of shown cloud native trend has been a tailwind for people who invested in it, who have been architecting for cloud on premises where data is a key part of that value proposition and then there's people who haven't been doing it. So, and out of this trend, the word observability has become a hot segment. And for us insiders in the industry, we know observability is just kind of network management on steroids in the cloud, so it's about data and all this. But at the end of the day, there's value that's enabled from observability. So I want to talk to you about that value that's enabled in the experience of the end user whether it's in a modern application or user inside the enterprise. Tell us what you think about this end user perspective. >> Sure, yeah thanks a lot for that intro. And I would actually argue that observability wouldn't even just be machine data or network data, it's more of a broader context where you can see everything that's going on inside the application and the digital user experience. From a user experience or a digital experience management perspective, I believe the metrics that you pull from such a thing are the most useful and ubiquitous metrics that you have and visibility in all of technology. And when done right, it can tell you what the actual end result of all this technology that you're piecing together, the end result of what's getting delivered to the user, both quantitatively and qualitatively. So, my background, I actually started a company in this domain. It was called Rigor and we focused purely on looking at user experience and digital experience. And the idea was that, you know, this was 10 years ago, we were just thinking, look, 10 years from now, more and more people are going to do business digitally, they're going to work more digitally and at the same time we saw the legacy data centers being shut down and things were moving to the cloud. So we said, look, the future is in the users, and where it all comes together is on the user's desktop or on their phone, and so we set out to focus specifically on that space. Fast forward 10 years, we're now a part of Splunk and we're really excited to bolt this onto an overall observability strategy. You know, I believe that it's becoming more and more popular, like you said, with the pandemic and COVID-19, it was already on a tear from a digital perspective, the adoption was going through the roof and people were doing more and more remote, they were buying more and more offline, but the pandemic has just pushed it through the roof. And I mean, wow, like the digital business genie's out of the bottle and there's no putting it back now. But, you know, there's also other things that are driving the need for this and the importance of it and part of it comes with the way technology is growing. It's becoming much more complex in terms of moving parts. Where an app used to be run off three different tiers in a data center, now it could be across hundreds of machines and opaque networks, opaque data centers all over the world, and the only time you often see things, how they come together, is on the user's desktop. And so that's where we really think you got to start from the user experience and work back. And, you know, all the drive in computing is all about making things better, faster and cheaper, but without this context of the user, often the customer and the experience gets left out from reaping the rewards from all these gains. So that's sort of like encapsulates my overall view of the space and why we got into it and why I'm so excited about it. >> Well Craig, I got to ask on a personal level. I mean, you look at what happened with the pandemic, I mean, you're a pioneer, you had a vision. Folks that are on the entrepreneurial side say, hey digital businesses is coming and they get it and it's slowly gets known in the real world, becomes more certain, but with the pandemic, it just happened all of a sudden so fast for everybody because everyone's impacted. Teachers, students, families, work, everyone's at home. So the entire user experience was impacted in the entire world. What was going through your mind when you saw all this happening and you see the winners obviously were people had invested in cloud native and data-driven technologies, what was your take on all this when you saw this coming? >> Well, the overall trend has been going on for decades, right? And so the direction of it isn't that surprising, but the magnitude and the acceleration, there's some stats out there from Forbes where the e-commerce adoption doubled within the first six months of the pandemic. So we're talking, you know, 10, 12 years of things ticking up and then within six months, a doubling of the adoption of e-commerce. And so like anybody else, you first freeze and say, what does this mean? But when people start working remote and people start ordering things from Amazon and all the other websites, it's quick to see like, aha! It no longer matters what chairs somebody is sitting in when they're doing work or that they're close to a store and you have a physical storefront when you're trying to buy something, it's all about that digital experience and it needs to be ubiquitous. So it's been interesting to see the change over the past few months for sure. But again, it doesn't change the trend, it just magnified it and I don't see it going back anytime soon. >> Yeah I mean, digital transformation has always been a buzz word that everyone kind of uses as a way to kind of talk about the big picture. >> Right. >> It's actually transforming and there's also share shifts that happen in every transformation, in any market shift. Obviously that's happening with cloud. Cloud native edge is becoming super important. In all of these, and by the way, in all the applications that sit on that infrastructure which is now infrastructure as code, has a data requirement that observability piece becomes super critical, not just from identifying and resolving, but also for training machine learning and AI, right? So, again, you have this new flywheel observability that's really at the heart of digital transformation. What should companies think about when they associate observability to digital transformation as they're sitting around whether they're CXOs or CSOs or solution architects going, okay, how does observability plug into my plans? >> Yeah, absolutely. I mean, my recommendation and the approach that I would take is that you want to start with the end in mind and it's all about how you set your goals when you're setting out in getting into digital transformation. And, you know, the late Steve Jobs, to borrow one of his quotes, he said that you have to start with the customer experience in mind and work backwards to the technology. And so I think that applies when you get into an observability strategy. So without understanding what the actual user experience is, you don't have a good enough yardstick to go out there and start working towards. So availability on a server or CPU time or transaction time in a database, like, those are all great, but without the context of what is the goal you're actually going after, it's kind of useless. So, like I said, it's not uptime, it's not server time, it's not any of that stuff, and it's user experience and these things are different. So they're like visual metrics, right? So what a user sees, because all kinds of things are going on in the background, but if it can see that the person can see and their experience is that they're getting some kind of response from the machine, then that's how you measure where the end point is and what the overall goal is. And so like to keep kind of going on with that, it's like you start with the end in mind, you use that end to set your goals, you use that domain and that visibility to troubleshoot faster. So when the calls start rolling in then they say, hey, I'm stuck at home and I'm on a slow internet connection, I can't get on the app and core IT is taking a phone call, You can quickly look and instrument that user and see exactly what they're seeing. So when you're troubleshooting, you're looking at the data from their perspective and then working backwards to the technology. >> That's super exciting. I want to get your thoughts on that. So just to double down on that because I think this highlights the trend that we were just talking about. But I'll break it down into three areas that I see happening in the marketplace. Number one, availability and performance. That's on everyone's mind. You just hit that, right? Number two, integrations. There's more integrations going on within platforms or tools or systems, whether it's an API over here, people are working together digitally, right? And you're seeing e-commerce. And third is the user patterns and the expectations are changing. So when you unpack those kinds of like trends, there's features of observability underneath each. Could you talk about that because I think that seems to be the common pattern that I'm seeing? Okay, high availability, okay, check. Everyone has to have that. Almost table stakes. But it's hard when you're scaling, right? And then integrations, all kinds of API is being slinged around. You've got microservices, you've got Kubernetes, people are integrating data flows, control planes, whatever, and then finally users. They want new things. New patterns emerge, which is new data. >> Yeah, absolutely. And to just kind of talk about that, it reminds me of like a Maslow's hierarchy of needs of visibility, right? Like, okay, the machine is on, check. Like you said, it's table stakes, make sure it's up and running. That's great. Then you want to see sort of the applications that are running on the machine, how they're talking to each other, are other components that you're making API calls to, are they timing out or are they breaking things? And so you get that visibility of like, okay, they're on, what's going on top of those machines are inside of them or in the containers or the virtual machines or whatever segment of computing that you're looking at, And then that cherry on top, the highest point is like, how is that stack of technology serving your customer? How's it serving the user and what's the experience? So those are sort of the three levels that we kind of look at when we're thinking of user experience. And so, it's a different way to look at it, but it's sort of the way that kind of we see the world is that three tier, that three layer cake. >> It's interesting. >> And you need all the layers. >> It's super relevant. And again, it's better together, but you can mix and match and have product in there. So I want to get into the Splunk solution. You guys have the digital experience monitoring solution. Can you explain what that is and how that fits into all this and what's in it for the customers, what's the benefit? >> Right, sure. So with the digital experience monitoring and the platform that we have, we're giving people the ability to basically do what I was talking about, where it enables you to take a look at what the user's experience are and pull metrics and then correlate them from the user all the way through the technical journey to the back end, through the different tiers of the application and so on. So that technology is called real user monitoring where we instrument the users. And then we also layer in synthetic monitoring which is the sort of robot users that are always on for when you're in lower level environments and you want to see, you know, what experience is going to look like when you push out new software, or when nobody's on the application, did something break? So a couple of those two together and then we feed that into our overall observability platform that's fed with machine data, we have all the metrics from all the components that you're looking at in that single pane of glass. And the idea is that we're also bringing you not only just the metrics and the events from logs and all the happenings, but we're also trying to help tease out some of these problems for you. So many problems that happen in technology have happened before, and we've got a catalog with our optimization platform of 300 plus things that go wrong when webpages or web applications or API calls start acting funky. And so we can provide, based on our intelligence that's built into the platform, basically run books for people to fix things faster and build those playbooks into the release process so you don't break the applications to begin with and you can set flags to where people understand what performance is before when it's being delivered to the customer, and if there are problems, let's fix them before we break the experience and lose the trust of the user. So again, it's the metrics from the stats that are coming across the wire of everything all the way to the users, it's the events from the logs that are coming in so you can see context, and then it's that user experience, it's a trace level data from where you can double click into each of the tiers and say, like, what's going on in here? What's going on in the browser? What's going on in the application? What's going on in the backend? And so you can sort of pool all that together in a single pane of glass and find problems faster, fix them faster and prevent users from having problems to begin with. And to do this properly, you really need it all under one roof and so that's why we're so excited to bring this all together. >> Yeah, I've been sitting on theCUBE for 10 years now. We've been 11 years, on our 11th year doing theCUBE. Digital you can measure everything. So why not? There should be no debate if done properly. So that brings up this whole concept that you guys are talking about full fidelity. Can you just take a minute to explain what that is? What is full fidelity mean? >> Sure, you know, full fidelity really comes down to a lot about these traces. So when we talk about metrics, logs and traces, it's all about getting all the activity that goes on in an application and looking at it. So when you or I interact with our company's app online and there's problems, that the person who's going to fix this problem, they can actually see specifically me. They can look at my experience and look at what it would look like in my browser, you know, what were all the services that I was interacting with and what was going on in the application, what code was being called, what services were being called, and look at specifically me as opposed to an aggregate of all the domains all put together. And it really is important from a troubleshooting standpoint. It's really important from an understanding of the actuals because without full fidelity and capturing all of the data, you're kind of going, you know, you're taking guesses and it eliminates a lot of the guesswork. And so that's something that's special with our platform is that ability to have the full fidelity. >> When does a client, a customer not have full fidelity? I might think I have it, someone sold me a product, What's the tell sign that I don't have full fidelity? >> Oh yeah, well with observability, there's a lot of tricks in the game. And so you see a lot of summary data that looks like, hey, this is that one call, but usually it's knitted together from a bunch of different calls. So that summary data just from, because this stuff takes up a lot of storage and there's a lot of problems with scale, and so when you might see something that looks like it's this call, it's actually like, in general, when a call like this happens, this is what it looks like. And so you've got to say like, is this the exact call? And, you know, it makes a big difference from a troubleshooting perspective and it's really hard to implement and that's something that Splunk's very good at, right? It's data at scale. It's the 800 pound gorilla in collecting and slicing apart machine data. So like, you have to have something of that scale in order to ingest all this information. It's a hard problem for sure. >> Yeah, totally. And I appreciate that. While I got you here, you're an expert, I got to ask you about Open Telemetry. We've heard that term kicked around. What does that mean? Is it an open source thing, is it an open framework? What is Open Telemetry and what does it mean for your customers or the marketplace? >> Yeah, I think of Open Telemetry as finally creating a standard for how we're collecting data from applications across AP- In the past, it's been onesie-twosie, here and there each company coming up with it themselves and there are never any standards of how to look at transactions across data, across applications and across tiers. And so Open Telemetry is the attempt and it's a consortium, so there's many people involved in pushing this together, but think of like a W3C, which creates the standards for how websites operate, and without it, the web wouldn't be what it is today. And now Open Telemetry is coming behind and doing that same thing from an observability standpoint. So you're not just totally locked into one vendor in the way that they do it and you're held hostage to only looking at that visibility. We're trying to set the standards to lower the barrier of entry into getting to application performance monitoring, network performance monitoring and just getting that telemetry where there are standards across the board. And so it's an open source project. We commit to it, and it's a really important project for observability in general. >> So does that speak to like, the whole more data you have, the less blind spots you might have? Is that the same concept? Is that some of the thinking behind this? >> It enables you to get more data faster. Now, if you think about, if there are no standards and there are no rules on the road and everybody can get on the road and they can decide if they want to drive in the left lane or the right lane today, it makes getting places a lot harder. And the same is true with Open Telemetry. without the standards of what, you know, the naming conventions, where you instrument, how you instrument, it becomes very hard to put some things in a single pane of glass because they just look differently everywhere. And so that's the idea behind it. >> Well Craig, great to have you on. You're super smart on this, and Leading with Observability, it's a hot topic. It's super cool and relevant right now with digital transformation as companies are looking to rearchitect and change how they're going to flip the script on software development, modern applications, modern infrastructure, edge, all of this is on top of mind of everyone's thing on their plans. And we certainly want to have you back in some of our conversations that we have around this on our editorial side as well with when we have these clubhouses we are going to start doing a lot of those. We definitely want to bring you in. I'll give you a final word here. Tell us what you're most excited about. Put the commercial for Splunk. Why Splunk? Why you guys are excited. Take a minute to get the plug in. >> It's so easy. Splunk has the base to make this possible. Splunk is, like I said, it's an 800 pound gorilla in machine data and taking in data at scale. And when you start going off into the observability abyss, the really, really hard part about it is having the scale to not only go broad in the levels of technology that you can collect, but also go deep. And that depth, when we talked about that full fidelity, it's really important when you get down to brass tacks and you start implementing changes and troubleshooting things and turning that data that you have in to doing, so understanding what you can do with it. And Splunk is fully committed to going, not only broad to get everything under one roof, but also deep so that you can make all of the information that you collect actionable and useful. And it's something that I haven't seen anybody even attempt and I'm really excited to be a part of building towards that vision. >> Well, I've been covering Splunk for, man, many, many years. 10 years plus, I think, since it's been founded, and really the growth and the vision and the mission still is the same. Leveraging data, making use of it, unlocking the power of data as it evolves and there's more of it. And it gets more complicated when data is involved in the user experience end-to-end from cybersecurity to user flows and new expectations. So congratulations. Great product. Thanks for coming on and sharing. >> Thanks again for having us. >> Okay, this is John Furrier in theCUBE. Leading with Observability is the theme of this series and this topic was End-to-end observability to enable great digital experiences. Thanks for watching. (lighthearted music)

Published Date : Feb 22 2021

SUMMARY :

all around the world, and this segment is: And thanks for having me. in the experience of the end user and the only time you often see things, and you see the winners obviously and all the other websites, about the big picture. and by the way, in all the applications but if it can see that the person can see and the expectations are changing. that are running on the machine, and how that fits into all this and the platform that we have, that you guys are talking and it eliminates a lot of the guesswork. and so when you might see something I got to ask you about Open Telemetry. And so Open Telemetry is the and everybody can get on the road Well Craig, great to have you on. but also deep so that you can and really the growth and is the theme of this series

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Craig HydePERSON

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

10 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

January 2021DATE

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

Palo AltoLOCATION

0.99+

Steve JobsPERSON

0.99+

11 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

11th yearQUANTITY

0.99+

10QUANTITY

0.99+

SplunkORGANIZATION

0.99+

800 poundQUANTITY

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

BostonLOCATION

0.99+

eachQUANTITY

0.99+

RigorORGANIZATION

0.99+

thirdQUANTITY

0.99+

six monthsQUANTITY

0.99+

pandemicEVENT

0.98+

one callQUANTITY

0.98+

twoQUANTITY

0.98+

300 plus thingsQUANTITY

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.98+

10 years agoDATE

0.98+

COVID-19OTHER

0.97+

three different tiersQUANTITY

0.97+

each companyQUANTITY

0.97+

Open TelemetryTITLE

0.97+

one vendorQUANTITY

0.97+

todayDATE

0.97+

three areasQUANTITY

0.97+

SplunkPERSON

0.97+

hundreds of machinesQUANTITY

0.96+

three levelsQUANTITY

0.96+

oneQUANTITY

0.95+

first six monthsQUANTITY

0.94+

three layerQUANTITY

0.91+

CUBE ConversationEVENT

0.91+

single paneQUANTITY

0.9+

decadesQUANTITY

0.9+

one roofQUANTITY

0.89+

KubernetesTITLE

0.87+

Leading with ObservabilityTITLE

0.86+

doubleQUANTITY

0.83+

COVID-19EVENT

0.8+

12 yearsQUANTITY

0.8+

three tierQUANTITY

0.8+

Number twoQUANTITY

0.77+

a minuteQUANTITY

0.74+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.69+

past few monthsDATE

0.62+

ForbesORGANIZATION

0.58+

10 yearsDATE

0.57+

ConversationEVENT

0.52+

MaslowORGANIZATION

0.46+

tiersQUANTITY

0.43+

Craig Wicks & Tod Golding, AWS | AWS re:Invent 2020 Partner Network Day


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. Special coverage sponsored by A. W s Global Partner Network. Welcome back to the cubes Coverage Cube. Virtual coverage of AWS reinvent 2020. We're not in person this year. We have to do the all the Cube interviews remote. But we've got two great guests from the Amazon Web Services Partner Network A W s a p N. Craig Wicks, senior manager of AWS Satisfactory. Todd Golden, Principal Cloud Architect, Global SAS Tech Lead Gentlemen, Thanks for joining the Cube. Appreciate it. >>Thanks, John. >>Um, first of all, I want to get in Craig with you and just take them in to explain what is the satisfactory. Because this is a unique and growing team within AWS. Um, we've been saying it for years, but the moves to the cloud houses has been obvious is mainstream. But your team, your role is doing some interesting things. Explain. What is the satisfactory? What do you guys do? >>Yeah, Thanks, John. Really delighted to be here today. Yeah, the satisfactory. Maybe for those that may be somewhat disappointing. There's no factory, no sort of easy button for SAS. There's no templates. There's no machinery. We wish we had it. But we're really a global team of subject matter. Experts in SAS that really help AWS partners transform their business right both business and technical to the Saas model and help them do that faster with greater confidence and all the best practices that our team has learned over the years. >>And Todd, your solution architect. So you're the partner. You have to help your customers get their, um, you know, being a solution architect really is like the mechanic of the business. You gotta lay out the engine of innovation and this is what clients are trying to strive for. Can you take him and explain how your role is involved in this? Obviously, SAS is not. It makes sense on paper, but making it happen is not trivial. What do you What do you what? Your role. >>Yeah, so I'm very much, in fact, connected to Craig. We're all part of the same organization, and we're sort of very much deeply involved with these organizations. We get very much, um, embedded with these these partners that we work with and really helped them through sort of the nuts and bolts of what it means to transform an application thio multi tenant sort of SAS models. That means helping them figure out how to map that two different AWS services. It means helping them figure out how to realize the sort of the business objective objectives of transforming to sass. But really, our goal is to sort of just get into the weeds with them, figure out their specific domain because there's no one size fits all. Versace figure out how that really connects toe, where they're at in their trajectory, in terms of where they're trying to get to end of the journey is a business and then find that alignment with a W S services. So there's sort of that trifecta of lining all those bits up and sort of formulating, Ah, technical strategy that really brings all those pieces together for them. >>Craig, I want to get your thoughts on the trends, and Todd, you can weigh in to want to get your reaction. Over the weekend, I was picking some folks on on the Internet, linked in and whatnot from eight years ago when that we did our first cube at reinvent with second year of reinvent, and nobody was there in the industry press, wasn't there were the first I think press to be there. Um and a lot of people have either moved on to big positions or companies have gone public. I bought me. Major things have happened in 2013 clouds certainly rose there. SAS became the business model. Everyone kind of knows that. But the dynamics today are different when you think about the on premises and you got the edge. A big part of the themes this week in the next couple weeks as we unfold here reinvent. This >>is >>different, but the same Can you share? What is the trend that people are riding on? What's the What's the wind of innovation? >>Yeah, and certainly I would say, First of all, just personally, I've been in SAS for some time. It was involved early on, in sort of, ah, model. We called the application service provider model, which was sort of a predecessor assassin, you know, the gray hairs out to remember that one. But, uh, you know, I think first of all, I would say SAS is everywhere and people wanted to be everywhere And so there's just We just see insatiable demand for sass from from customers out there, right? And I think the challenge problem we see is that organizations that we work with just can't transition fast enough, right? The rial technical challenges that air in front of them in terms of how they build an architect, Assaf solution and but most importantly, the business model that sort of underpins. That is a huge transformation for companies that they're going through. And that's one of the things that we just see. You know, Justin, my time in satisfactory native us. The range of organizations we worked with has just changed. So, you know, early on we're working with companies and infrastructure around security and storage and those areas, and the last few years it's just expanded to all sorts of industries, from public sector oil and gas. Um, sort of financial services. You know, everyone really wants to build this model, and that's really, you know, born around the customer demand they're seeing for South. >>That's interesting. You mention challenge. I wanna get your thoughts. You mentioned a SP application service provided you remember those days, you know, vividly, mainly a tech thing, but it's really a consumption model around delivery of software and services. And, you know, Web services came on in 2000. The rest is history. We've got Amazon Web services, but now, as you get more vertically expanded oil and gas and go mainstream. But what >>are some >>of the challenges? Because as people get smarter, it's not just about self service or buy as you go. It's a business model you mentioned. Is it a managed services itself? Services has been embedded into the application. Can you share some of the new things that are emerging on the business model side that people should pay attention to? What, some of those challenges? Yeah, I >>think one of the first things is just a fundamentally are operating service, right? So that changes the dynamics to everything, for in terms of how you engage with customers to how you deliver. You know, the kind of simple thing E I often tell people is you know who's answering the pager now. If someone goes, if something goes wrong, it's not your customer. That's you right, and you have to manage and sustain that service and and really continue Thio provide innovation and value to customers. Right? That's one of the challenges we see is is organizations are now on a treadmill in terms of innovation where customers expect something from South model and you really have to deliver on that. And then one of the final points I would say is it really transforms how you think about going to market right sales and marketing your fundamentally transformed. And, um, you know, traditional ways of really selling software and technology. Um, largely go away and go away and some good ways. And SAS, where you can really put customers in experience right and have them evaluate your technology in a manner where they can have a trial experience, right in a way, toe really introduce them to technology very slowly. And then, um, they grow over time, right? As they see value in that software, which is very aligned, how we think about, you know, a AWS our own technology. >>Okay, Todd, I gotta ask you out. So you want to drive that car? The SAS car, What's under the hood with the right tires? What's the conditions? And it's a technical issues here. If I'm a customer, I'm in a PM, partner. Okay, I'm in there. I got a traditional business pandemic hits or just my business models forcing me. What's your advice? What have I got to do? What's the playbook on the technical side? How doe I go to the next level? >>Well, uh, you know, we're obviously gonna ask a lot of questions and probably the answer to that, sadly, like most technical people will say to you is it depends which is never the answer anybody wants to hear. But so we're definitely gonna ask a lot of questions you about, like where you're at. What are the immediate sort of pressures in your business? This is where the technical team people on our team tended wearing a little bit of a business hat here where we want to know before we sort of guide you down any one particular technical path, like water. Sort of the key sort of dimensions of getting you to a SAS till every model, but but probably as a theme generally were saying to people is, Let's look at how we can get you there incrementally. Let's get you into a SAS model as fast as we possibly can. So we have a lot of different sort of patterns and strategies will use that air about sort of incremental adoption of SAS, which are how can I sort of lift my existing environment, move it into a SAS model, present a SAS offering to the business, Let me operate and run, get the metrics and analytics, get the sort of operational efficiency and the Dev ops goodness of sass, and then sort of move after that into the insides of that sass application. And think about now, how can I begin to move that two more modern constructs? How can I move that into containers? Potentially? Or how can I begin to adopt server list technologies? How can I apply? I am another constructs to achieve Tenet isolation. Eso We're really just trying to put them in a position where they can sort of incrementally modernize their applications while still realizing the benefits of getting to market on a saas model. >>So you're saying that the the playbook is come in low hanging fruit is used existing core building blocks, you see two s three dynamo whatever and then hit the higher level services as you get more experience Or is there a certain recipe that you see working for customers? >>So it's it's probably less about that. It's probably It's not about necessarily where you're out in the service continuum and which services you're using. Um, well, we're gonna move you to a set of services that are probably a good set of services that are that way to move your monolith in most effectively into a saas model as a beginning point that could land you in to that could land you in containers. The more important thing we're going to do here is we're going to surround the that sort of experience with all the other moving parts that you have tow have billing metrics. We're gonna We're gonna build in on boarding so that you could get frictionless on boarding. Those are all gonna be net new things you have to build. We're probably gonna change your identity model and connect that up with cognito or one of our partners solutions eso for us. It's it's sort of grabbing your existing environment. Can we move it over effectively, maybe modernize it a little bit along the way, but more importantly, build all those horizontal concepts in leveraging the right AWS services for you, uh, to bring that to life. >>That's actually smart, aleck. The way you described it that way, it's almost as if it's the core tenant of what Amazon stood for. You standing up fast and you get value, right? So what you're saying is, whatever it takes is a variety of tools to stand it up. I mean, this is interesting, Craig, and talk if you can comment on this because one of the things that we've been reporting on, I've done probably a dozen interviews specifically around companies that have moved to the cloud early, proactively kind of in this way, not in a major radical way. But, you know, operationally they have been transforming, you know, piece by piece. How Todd you laid it out and then pandemic it. And they've had successfully position themselves to take advantage of the forcing function of necessity of dealing with, you know, remote work and all these things that just clobbered him so and again. They were on the wave at the right time. Kind of because they had to because they did the right work. This >>is a >>factor. This is gonna tell sign. Can you guys share your reaction? What you've seen with satisfactory because this >>is the >>benefit of moving to the club. Being positioned needs pandemic today. Tomorrow, its edge. What's after that? Right space. I mean, there's a lot of things. This is kind of the playbook. What's your reaction to that? Correct. >>Yeah. I certainly see, you know, organizations that we work with that have really delivering the SAS model, being more agile, right. The ability to sort of flex resource is and change the way they sell and work with customers and find ways to, um, sort of delivered to them. Um, that don't require, um, some of the things that we're really maybe some of the things that are holding them back from traditional software in terms of how fast they deliver new features and services and, you know, changing to sort of market and world dynamics very quickly. Right is a big part of that. And, you know, one of the things we talked about in the SAS model is really not just getting to sass, but being to deliver in that model, right? And dr Innovations to customers very quickly. Um, s O that you really getting sort of securing, you know, sort of them is the loyal customers and sort of a lifetime customer. Hopefully, um, you know, that's a big part of status. >>Yeah. And there's two types of organizations that you guys have been successful with. The startup, obviously, you know, category creators or disruptors will come in, you know, come in with a nap. Born in the cloud, kick some ass you've seen that movie happens all the time still going on. And then you got the existing organizations that have to stay in that innovation wave and not get crushed by the by the change can you guys share how the factories working? The satisfactory from a mix of of clients is Atmore establishes its startups in between. Give us a taste of What's the makeup? >>Yeah, it's range just to give you a range of some of the companies worked with from kind of legacy technology companies or companies that have been around in some time, like BMC, you know, f five alfresco we've all worked with over the past few years, and they've launched products with our team on a W s. You know, to kind of start ups like Matile. Ian. You know, Cloud zero. Cokie City, which just launched a data management service announced here at Reinvent um, two very kind of specific industry players. I think this is a trend we've seen most recently where, you know, we work with organizations like NASDAQ. I based tea in the aerospace, you know, area Emerson in oil and gas. We've seen in a number of oil and gas companies really come to us based on sort of dynamics, their industry and the constraints the customers are in in terms of how they could deliver the value they provide, >>is there. Is there a key thing that's popping out of all these deals that kind of has a is a tale sign of pattern or, um, a specific thing That's obvious on then, when you look at the data, when you zoom out, >>Yeah, I think one thing I would just say people underestimate the transformation. They have to go through continually. And we still have organizations that come to us, and maybe they come to Todd or others, and they're really they're envisioning This is a technical transformation, right? And they sort of want to talk all about the application and and sort of the new architecture er they they want to move to. But we really see theon pertinent A line business and technology around sass is a model, and that's really fundamental to getting it right. And so, you know, often we see organizations that really have unrealistic launch dates, you know, which is pretty common in software and services these days, but particularly a staff model. We just see that, you know, they underestimate the work in front of them and kind of what they need to bring with that >>Todd real quick for it against the announcements which are cool. Um, technical things that pop out of these organizations is there, Uh, the cream kind of rises to the top. When you look at the value proposition, what do they focused on? Technically, >>um, you know, it's interesting because to me, ah, lot of the focus tends to be more on the things that would surprise you. Like a lot of people are wanna sort of think about how to design the ins Thea click ation on the business logic of their application and take advantage of this scale on the sizing of AWS and those things, they're still all true. But but really an assassin organization with a really successful SAS organizations will see ah, lot more shift to the agility and the operational efficiency, right? So really good organizations will say we're going to invest in all the metrics and all the land analytics, all the tooling that lets us really have our finger on the pulse of what our customers are doing. And then they'll derive all their tech and their business strategy based on this really data driven experience. And I see that as the trend and the thing we certainly advocate a ton inside of the satisfactory is don't under invest in that data because that data is really especially in a multi 10 environment where everybody's running in this sort of shared environment. That data is essential to understanding how to morph your business, how to innovate, understand how your cost profile is really evolving. And so I see the really strong organizations building lots of the sort of foundational bits here, even ahead sometimes of building features and functions into their own products. >>It's not only moving fast and deploying tech is moving fast on the business model innovation as well. You're basically saying, Don't overplay your hand and try toe lock in the business model logic because it's gonna change with the data that what you're saying. >>Yeah, they're playing for for the innovation. They're playing for the agility they're playing for new markets, new segments that may evolve. And so they're really trying to put themselves in the position of being able to pivot and move. And they're really taking pride in the fact that their technology lets them do that. >>You know, that's not that's a business model That's not for the faint of heart. You know, when you have a market that has a lot of competitiveness to it and certainly was seeing the sea change happening over this year in the past few years, with cloud completely changing the playing field, winners and losers air emerging. And that's I think, this key it's you know, as I said in The Godfather, you know, you need a wartime conciliatory for these kind of times, and this is kind of what we're seeing, and I think that's a great point. Todd. Good stuff there. Um Okay. So announcements. You guys had some things on stage. Talked about Craig. You guys launching some new stuff? New programs? >>Yeah, absolutely mhm. Yeah, John, I guess our model is really to learn from a range of partners and experiences we have and then, you know, build tools and approaches to help everyone go faster, right? Because we certainly can't work with thousands organizations. And one of things that our team has had the opportunity over the last few years is published ton of articles, Blog's white papers, you know, very specific approaches to building SAS solutions. If you search Todd Golding out there on YouTube or anything, you'll find a bunch of things. But we wanted to bring on the altogether. And so we've created Central directory called Satisfactory Insights. Hug. And there's a right now over 70 unique pieces of content that our team is produced and curated. Whether you're starting on your staff journey right, you need socks one on one and business planning to level 400 right? 10 10 in isolation from Todd Golding, right. That's all there and available to you on the satisfactory program page. >>What? Some of the interesting things that came out of that that data from the insights you can share. >>Yeah, a couple things that we have we published most recently I would point to are really interesting. We just recently published a five case study where we go deeper in terms of their transformation. To really understand what was, you know, behind the scenes and that, um, we also published a white paper called the SAS Journey Framework, where for the first time, our team really broke down the journey. And what are the steps required? And what are some of the key questions you need to ask Onda Final piece I'd point to for people that Todd talks to is, we have, ah, white paper on SAS tended isolation strategies where we really go deep on on that particular challenge and what's there and that's also published and available on our satisfactory inside sub. Could you >>just define what is that mean tenant isolation strategies? What does that >>go to Todd with that for sure? >>Let's get that on the record. What is the definition of SAS tenant isolation? >>Sure, sure. So, you know, I think I've been in the room and with a lot of people that reinvent and basically have been in Chuck talks and said, You know what's tended isolation to you, and a lot of people will say Oh, that's authentication. Essentially, somebody got into the system. So now I know my system is isolated, but and a multi tenant environment right where we're running all this. These resource is in this data all co mingled from all of these different tenants. Um, it would be a huge blow to the business if one tenant somehow inadvertently exposed the resource or exposed to the resource is of another tenant. And so, fundamentally 10 of isolation is all of these techniques and strategies and architectural patterns that you use to ensure that one tenant can inadvertently get access to the resource is of another tenant s. So it's a sort of a layer of protection and security that goes beyond just the authentication and authorization schemes that you'll typically see in a cess architectures. >>So that's basically like having your own room lock and key doorway not just getting in, but no one can access your your stuff. >>Yeah, so it's a whole set of measures you could imagine. Identity and access management and other policies sort of defining tenant boundaries and saying, as each tenant is trying to access a resource or trying toe, interact with the system in some way, you've put these extra walls up to ensure that you can't cross those boundaries. >>Todd, I want to get your thoughts on this. Well, architected sas lens piece. What is this all about? >>Well, um, a WS has had for a long time the sort of the well architected framework, which has been a really great set of sort of guiding principles and best practices around how to design an architect solutions on top of AWS. And certainly SAS providers have been using that all along the way to sort of ask foundational questions of their architecture. Er But there's always been this layer of additional sort of SAS considerations that have set on top of that are that air SAS specific architectural patterns. And so what we've done is we've used this mechanism called the well architected lens that lets us essentially take our SAS architectural principles and extend the well architected framework and introduce all these concepts into the SAS and to the architecture pillars that really ask the hard SAS architecture questions so security operations reliability all the sort of classic pillars that are part of the well architected framework now have a SAS specific context added to them. Thio to really go after those areas that are unique to sass providers. And this really gives developers, architects, consultants the ability to sit down and look at a SAS application and evaluate its alignment with these best practices. And so far we can really positive response. Thio the content. >>Great job, guys doing great work. Finally, there's something new that you guys are announcing today to make life easier. Preview building SAS on a bus. What's that? What's that about? >>Sure. Eso You know you can imagine. We've been working with thes SAS providers for a number of years now, and as we've worked with them, we've seen a number of different themes emerge on and and we've run into this pattern That's pretty common where we'll see these, uh, these customers that have a classic sort of installed software model. They're installing it on premises or in the cloud, but basically each customer's sort of has their own version of the product. They have one off versions. They have their potentially have customization that are different. And while this works for some time for these businesses, what they find is they sort of run into this operational efficiency and cost wall. Whereas they're trying to grow their businesses, they they just really can't. They can't sort of keep up based on the way that they're running their current systems, and this is sort of a natural draw to move them to sass. But the other pattern that we've seen here is that these organizations are sometimes not in a position where they have the luxury of sort of going away and just saying, Hey, I'll rewrite my system or modernize it and make all of these changes. There could be any number of factors competitive pressures, market realities, cost that just make that too much of, ah, difficult process for them to be able to just take the application and rewrite it. And so what we did is sort of try to acknowledge that and say, What could we do to give you, ah, more prescriptive solution of this, the sort of turn key, easy button, if you will to say, Take my existing monolithic application that I deliver in this classic way and plug it into an existing pre built framework. An environment that is essentially includes all these foundational bits of assassin Vyron mint. And let me just take my monolith, move it into that environment and begin toe offer a SAS product to to the universe. And so what we've done is we've printed something and were introduced. We've introduced this thing called a W s SAS boost So a W s ass boost. It's not on a W s service. It is an open source reference environment. So you essentially download it. You install it into your own A W s account. And then this installs all these building blocks of sass that we've talked about. And it gives you all this sort of prescriptive ability to say, How can I now take my existing monolithic environment lifted into this experience and begin toe offer that to the market as a sash products. So it has, you know, it has billing. It has metrics and analytics. All the things we've been kind of talked about here they're all baked into that from the ground up on. We've also offered this an open source model. So our hope here is that this is really just the starting point of this solution, which, which will solve one business case. But our hope is that essentially the open source community will lean in with us, help us figure out how to evolve and make this into something that addresses a broader set of needs. >>Well, I love the SAS boost. Firstly, I wanna take the energy drink business there. Right there. It sounds like an energy drink. Give me some of that sass boost by that at 7. 11. Craig, I wanna get the final word with you. You've been the SAS business for over 20 years. You've seen this movie before. There are a lot of people who know the SAS business, and some people are learning it. You guys are helping people get there. It's different, though. Now what's different today? Because it's it's It's not just your grandfather's sass. As the expression goes, it's different. It's new dynamics. What is, uh, the most important thing people should pay attention to Whether they have a SAS legacy kind of mindset or they're new to the game. Take us >>home. Yeah, I >>think certainly, you know, getting disaster is not the end of the journey. You know, we see really successful fast provider. Just continue to differentiate, right? And then one of the things that I think we've seen successful SAT providers do is really take advantage of AWS services to go faster. Right? And that's really key, I think in this model is to really find a way to accelerate your business and deliver value faster. Andi just sort of keep that differentiation innovation there. Um, but I would just say now that there's more information out there available than ever, you know, and not only from from our team, but from a host of people that really are our SAS experts and follow the space. And so lots of resources available. Everyone >>All right, gentlemen, Thanks for coming on. Great insight. Great segment on getting to sass, sass boost Just the landscape. You guys are helping customers get there, and that's really the top priority. It's necessity is the mother of all invention during this pandemic. More than ever, uh, keeping business model going and establishing new ones. So thanks for coming on. >>Thanks for having us, John. >>Okay, It's the cubes. Virtual coverage. We are a SAS business. Now we're virtual bringing you remote. Uh, SAS Cube and, uh, more coverage with reinvent next few weeks. Thanks for watching. Okay, yeah.

Published Date : Dec 3 2020

SUMMARY :

It's the Cube with digital Um, first of all, I want to get in Craig with you and just take them in to explain what is the satisfactory. Yeah, the satisfactory. get their, um, you know, being a solution architect really is like the mechanic of the business. But really, our goal is to sort of just get into the weeds with But the dynamics today are different when you think about the on premises and you got the edge. You know, everyone really wants to build this model, and that's really, you know, born around the customer demand they're seeing And, you know, Web services came on in 2000. Can you share some of the new things that are emerging on the business model side that people should pay attention So that changes the dynamics to everything, for in terms of how you engage with customers So you want to drive that car? Sort of the key sort of dimensions of getting you to a SAS till every model, We're gonna We're gonna build in on boarding so that you could get frictionless on boarding. necessity of dealing with, you know, remote work and all these things that just clobbered Can you guys share your reaction? This is kind of the playbook. of how fast they deliver new features and services and, you know, changing to sort of market get crushed by the by the change can you guys share how the Yeah, it's range just to give you a range of some of the companies worked with from kind of legacy technology companies when you look at the data, when you zoom out, And so, you know, often we see organizations that really have unrealistic launch dates, When you look at the value proposition, And I see that as the trend and the thing we certainly advocate a ton inside of the satisfactory It's not only moving fast and deploying tech is moving fast on the business model innovation as well. They're playing for the agility they're playing for And that's I think, this key it's you know, as I said in The Godfather, That's all there and available to you on the satisfactory Some of the interesting things that came out of that that data from the insights you And what are some of the key questions you need to ask Onda Final piece I'd point to for Let's get that on the record. exposed the resource or exposed to the resource is of another tenant. So that's basically like having your own room lock and key doorway ensure that you can't cross those boundaries. What is this all about? consultants the ability to sit down and look at a SAS application and evaluate Finally, there's something new that you guys are announcing today the sort of turn key, easy button, if you will to say, Take my existing monolithic application Whether they have a SAS legacy kind of mindset or they're new to the game. Yeah, I And that's really key, I think in this model is to really find a way to accelerate your business It's necessity is the mother of all Now we're virtual bringing you remote.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
JohnPERSON

0.99+

Todd GoldingPERSON

0.99+

JustinPERSON

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

NASDAQORGANIZATION

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

ToddPERSON

0.99+

Todd GoldenPERSON

0.99+

2013DATE

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

TomorrowDATE

0.99+

2000DATE

0.99+

IanPERSON

0.99+

twoQUANTITY

0.99+

WSORGANIZATION

0.99+

AssafORGANIZATION

0.99+

BMCORGANIZATION

0.99+

N. Craig WicksPERSON

0.99+

A. W s Global Partner NetworkORGANIZATION

0.99+

SASORGANIZATION

0.99+

Amazon Web Services Partner NetworkORGANIZATION

0.99+

EmersonORGANIZATION

0.99+

firstQUANTITY

0.99+

AtmoreORGANIZATION

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

eight years agoDATE

0.99+

10QUANTITY

0.99+

7. 11DATE

0.99+

over 20 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

first cubeQUANTITY

0.98+

first timeQUANTITY

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

YouTubeORGANIZATION

0.98+

over 70 unique piecesQUANTITY

0.98+

two great guestsQUANTITY

0.98+

FirstlyQUANTITY

0.98+

Cokie CityORGANIZATION

0.98+

The GodfatherTITLE

0.98+

Cloud zeroORGANIZATION

0.98+

two typesQUANTITY

0.97+

each customerQUANTITY

0.97+

AWS SatisfactoryORGANIZATION

0.97+

second yearQUANTITY

0.96+

this weekDATE

0.96+

this yearDATE

0.96+

ChuckPERSON

0.96+

waveEVENT

0.96+

A W sORGANIZATION

0.95+

Tod GoldingPERSON

0.95+

pandemicEVENT

0.94+

SAS Journey FrameworkTITLE

0.94+

a dozen interviewsQUANTITY

0.93+

Host Analysis | Kubecon + CloudNativeCon NA 2020


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with coverage of Yukon and Cloud. Native Con North America 2020 Virtual brought to you by Red Hat The Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Ecosystem >>Partners Everyone welcome back to the cubes. Coverage of Coop con Cloud, native con North America 2020. Normally the Cuba's in person. But like the EU event, this is gonna be a remote virtual event. This is the Cube virtual. We are the Cube Virtual. This is a keynote and show review with our analysts and hosts Lisa Martin, GOP Scar and myself. Guys, welcome to the program. Lisa, Great to see you. You great to see you remotely. Thanks for coming on. >>Always great to be part of the Cuban acute virtual keeping us connected. >>So Coop Con Cloud Native cons November and I remember in 2016 the first Coop Con. That's when Hillary Clinton got defeated by Trump. And now this year the election's passed this time and, uh, Biden the winner. So, you know, election more good vibes this year in the community because everyone was kind of sad last time. So if you remember the first Cube con, it was in Seattle during that time, so that was important to kinda reminisce on. That other thing I want to bring up to you guys is the somber news of the passing of Dan Con who was the executive director of C N C F. He passed a few weeks ago on his home. It was illness and great legend. So we're gonna call that out, and there are thoughts and prayers. Go with the families. Condolences to his wife and kids. So what? I'm say, Dan. Godspeed. Funny dance story, Lisa. Yo, piece that I always always pronounce his name wrong on the queue was like, John, it's con, not Cohen. Okay. All right, Dan, Good to see you. Sorry, but a great guy friend to everyone And super great human being. So rest in peace. Okay. Que con, I >>think the big thing. >>This you wanna get your thoughts, you have to start with you, C and C F. What are they up to? Obviously remote. It's been a terrible year with the pandemic and all the disruptions on DCI change your thoughts on where they are now, this year. >>So you know, it's funny, even though it's remote. Even though reaching people, it's become harder. Uh, you know, we all have to deal with this from our you know, our living room, our office at home. But still, the C in C F is doing what it's been doing for a little while now. So instead of focusing on the technology part of RT world, there are focusing on you know, the community side of it. So they're fighting for inclusivity. They're fighting for diversity, for resilience in terms off their community. And they are really working on making the open source community more accessible, both for end user companies. A swell as offer developers thio enter the space, have their contribution and, you know, make sure that everyone can reap the full benefits off these open source products. >>You know, we talked to Priyanka Sharma and Stephen Augustus, and this was a big theme. There's there's been there's been a lot of engagement online, obviously, even though they have a remote platform, some people are thrilled with it. Some aren't. No one's ever happy these days. It's on the Web. It's always difficult, but the community been activated and a lot more diversity. I covered the big story around. You know, Master slave. The terminology now is gonna go main, you know, terminology and how that's gonna be safer. Also for diversity stem women in tech, This >>has been >>a big theme. I'd love to get your thoughts on that, because I think that's been a very positive thing. Uh, Lisa, you and I have been talking about this for years on the Cube around this diversity peace. What's your thoughts as well, like to get both your reactions on where this directions going. >>Yeah. You know, I think there's a number of things that have been catalyzed this year by the challenges that we've been through and the diversity pushed into the spotlight again. The spotlight is different, and it's really causing change for good. I think it's opening people's minds and perspective, as is, I think, this entire time, you know, it's for events like Yukon and all the other events that were normally getting a lot of airline miles for John and you were not getting. We're sitting at home with our in home studios, but at the same time, the engagement is increasing in every event, I imagine that the great Q. Khan and cognitive community that Dan Cohen has built is on Lee getting bigger and stronger, even though folks are physically separated. That's been just been my observation and something I felt from everything show I've covered every interview I've done that diversity is being raised now to a visibility level that we haven't seen in terms of a catalyzing action. >>You your reaction, Thio. >>No, I completely agree. And I want to add to that where you know, just like Lisa said. You know, we used to fly to these events. We were privileged and lucky to to be there to have the opportunity. But because everything is now digital and virtual, it opens the community up to so many other people who, for whatever reason, weren't able to join in person but are able to join virtually indigenously. So I think you know, even though there's a lot of downsides Thio to this pandemic, this is one of the, you know, the small nuggets of off seeing the sea NCF community opening up to a broader audience. >>Yeah, and that's a great point. You know, we aren't getting the airline miles we're getting Certainly the zoom and the cube mileage remote Lisa, because what's interesting you're saying is is that you know, we're getting more action with him coming in, doing some or hosting yourself, um, Eliana Gesu as well, Others. But we can get people more because remember, the people aren't we're not trying, but so aren't other people that were coming the big names, but also the fresh voices, the new names, names? We don't know yet. I think that's what we're seeing with the remote interviews is that it's one click away from being on the Cube now. So cute. Virtual is 24 73 65 we're gonna continue to do that. I think this is gonna change the makeup of the engagement in the conversation because you're gonna have mawr participation that's going to be highly accelerated. But also, these new voices are gonna bring a positive change. It might upset the hierarchy a little bit in the working groups at the top you, But you know they're open. I mean, I talked with Stephen Augustus. He's totally cool with this Chris, and I check is the same way he's like, Hey, bring on more people. This is the >>This is >>the vibe of the of the Lennox foundations always been. >>It's always been that way. And, you know, going back Teoh to the early open source events in Europe that I went to you. I started doing that as a teenager 15 years ago, and the vibe, you know, hasn't necessarily changed. The makeup of the audience certainly has changed right from it, being dominated by white males. It's totally opened up. And, you know, if we see that happening with the C N C F now as well, I think that's for you know, for the better. I think, um, our community, the i t community in the open source community need that resilience. Need all of those different perspectives from all of you know, different kinds of people from different walks of life with different histories. And I think that only makes the community stronger and more viable in the long run. I >>agree it's that >>open source needs. >>Sorry, it's not thought diversity that I think we're seeing even more now again. Just my perspective is just that the light that this challenging time is shining on, exposing things that are really opportunities and it's I think it's imperative to look at it in that way. But that thought diversity just opens up so many more opportunities that folks that are maybe a little bit more tunnel visioned aren't thinking of. But for businesses, thio and people Thio thrive and move forward and learn from this we need to be able Thio, take into consideration other concepts, other perspectives as we learn and grow. >>Yeah, that's a good point. You know, It was giving a a shout out to Dan Conn. And when I heard the news, I put a clip. One of my favorite clips over the interviews was really me kind of congratulating him on the success of C and C. I think it was, like two years ago or maybe last year. I forget, Um, but I >>was a >>critic of it ever initially, and I was publicly on the record on the Cube. Lisa, you remember, uh, with Stew, who's now having a great new career? Red hat Still and I were arguing, and I was saying, Stew, I think this is gonna fail, because if c. N. C F doesn't balance the end user peace with the logos that we're coming because remember, you about four years ago. It was like a NASCAR logo. Farmers like you know, it's like, you know, everything was like sponsored by Google this and then Amazon came in. You look at the sponsor list. It was like It's the who's who and cloud and now cloud native. It was the industry the entire industry was like, stacked up against reinvent. This is before Amazon made their move. I mean, uh, as your maid, they're moving for Google. Cloud kind of got their footing. So is essentially coop con against a W s. And I said, That's gonna fail, and I had to eat my words, and I did. It was rightfully so, But the balance, the balance between end user projects and vendor was very successful. And that's still plays out today. Lisa. This is important now because you said pandemic de ecosystem still needs to thrive, but there's no face to face anymore. >>What's the >>challenge? What's the opportunity there? I wanna put you on the spot. >>Sure. No, I think I think it's both challenging and opportunistic. I tend to look at it more from an opportunistic view. I think that it forced a lot of us, Even people like myself who worked from home a lot before, when I wasn't traveling for my marketing company or the Cube. You can really have very personal interactions. The people on Zoom and I found that it's connecting people in a deeper way than you even would get in the office. That's something that I actually really appreciate, how it has been an opportunity to really kind of expand relationships or toe open new doors that wouldn't be there if we were able to be studying together physically in person. And it's obviously changing. You know, all the vendors that we work with. It's very different to engage an audience when you are on Lee on camera, and it's something that, as we know, is we work with folks who haven't done it before. That's one of the things that I think a lot of the C suite I talked to Mrs is that opportunity Thio. You know, be on a stage and and be able to show your body language and your energy with your customers and your partners and your employees. But I actually do think that there is what we're doing through Zoom and and all these virtual platforms like the Cube virtual is well, we're opening up doors for a more intimate way that I think the conversations are more authentic. You know, people are have, like, three year old Discover occurs and they're running in the room when they're screaming behind that. That's how things are today. We're learning toe work with that, but we're also seeing people in a more human >>way. Containers Mitch, mainstream and shifting, left the role of security this year. What's your >>take? So I mean, if we're talking about security and nothing else, I think we're at a point where you know, the C N C. F has become mainstream. Its most popular products have become mainstream. Um, because if we're talking about security, there's, you know, not a lot left. And I say that with, you know, a little bit of sarcasm. I don't mean to offend anyone, but if I did, uh, I do apologize, but, you know, security. Even though it is super important again, it means that we have, you know, moved on from talking about kubernetes and and container Management, or we've moved on from storage. Um, it means that the technology part of the C N. C. F. Like the hard work has been done for 80%. We're now into the 20% where we're kind of, you know, dotting the I's and and making sure that we cover all of the bases. And so one of the news sandbox sandbox projects that has been accepted, I think, today even eyes certain Manager Thio to manage certificates Uh, you know, at scale, um, in an automated fashion. And I think that's, you know, 11 prime example of how security is becoming the theme and kind of the conversation at Yukon this year where, you know, we're again seeing that maturity come into play with even with sandbox projects now being able to help customers help end users with, you know, certificates which is, you know, in in the the macro picture a very specific, a very niche thing to be able to solve with open source software. But for every company, this is one of those vital, you know, kind of boilerplate security measures so that the, um the customer and all of their infrastructure remains safe. >>I think you what You're kind of really articulate, and there is the evolution of CNC off much to John Surprises. You said you thought in the very beginning that this wasn't gonna take off. It has. Clearly, Dan Cohen's left a great legacy there. But we're seeing the evolution of that. I do know John. Wanna ask because you did a lot of the interviews here. We've been talking for, what, nine months now on the Cube Virtual about the acceleration of transformation, of every business to go from that. Okay, how do we do this work in this in this weird environment? Keep the lights on. How do we actually be successful and actually become a thriving business? As things go forward, what are some of the things that you heard from the guests regarding? Kobe has an accelerator. >>Well, I think I think a couple of things. Good. Good question. I think it ranges. Right. So the new They had some news that they're trying to announce. Obviously, new survey certifications, K a security certification, new new tech radar support, diversity stats. You know, the normal stuff they do in the event, they gotta get the word out. So that was one thing I heard, but on the overall macro trend. You know, we saw the covert impact, and no >>one's >>afraid of it there. I mean, I think, you know, part of the legacy of these tech communities is they've been online. They're they're used to being online. So it's not a new thing. So I don't think that the work environment has been that much of a disruption to the people in the in the core community. Linux Foundation, for instance, had a great shot with Chris and a sticker on this. He's the CTO. He's been the CEO, brought a senior roles. Um, in fact, they're they're creating a template around C N C f. And then they're announced The Finn Finn Ops Foundation. Uh, Jr store meant, um, is an executive director. That's part of the new foundation. It's a practitioner community. So I think, um, teasing out the conversation is you're gonna see a template model of the C N. C f. Where you're going to see how groups work together. I think what cove? It has definitely shown in some of the things that you guys were saying around how people are gonna be more engaged, more diversity, more access. I >>think you're >>gonna start to see new social constructs emerge around distinct user groups. And I think this Finn ops Foundation is a tell sign around how groups of people going to start together, whether they're cube host coming together on Cube fans and cube alumni. I mean, let me think about the alumni that have been on the Cube. Lisa, you know Tim Hopkins, Sarah Novotny. Chelsie Hightower. Um, Dan Burns, Craig MK Lucky. I mean, we've had everybody on that's now Captain of the industry. So, um, way had capital one we've had, uh, you know, lift on. I mean, it's becoming a really tight knit. Everyone knows each other, and I think now they realize that they have a lot of, uh, power to infect change. And so when you're trying to affect change, um, that's a good thing, and people are pumped about. So I think the big focus was, um, CNC have a successful again. It's there's there's a somber note around Dan cons passing, but I think he had already moved on to a new position. So he was already passed the baton to management, But he did leave a mark, but I think there's Priyanka Sharma. She's doing a great job. People are upbeat and I think the theme is kubernetes. It happened. It's went next level, then it's going next level again and I think that's kind of what people really aren't saying is kind of the public secret, which is okay, this thing's going mainstream. Now you're gonna start to see it in, in, In commercial deployments. You're gonna start to see it scale into organizations. And that's not the cool kids or the Emerging Dev ops crowd. That's I t. So you know you know it's gonna happen is like, Hey, you know, I'm a nice guy, our developer. What is this? It has toe work. Well, that's the big I think I think people weren't talking about That's the most important story. >>I think another element to that John is the cultural shift. You know, we were talking when we talk about Dev ops who was think about speed and I talked to some folks who said, You know, it's it has to be the I T. Cultures on the business cultures coming together in a meaningful way to collaborate in a very new way. Thankfully, we have the technology to enable us to collaborate. But I think that's been another underlying thing that I've heard a lot through recent times. Is that that facilitator of of cultural change, which is always hard to dio? And there's a bit of a catalyst here for organizations to not just keep the lights on. But to be successful, going forward and and and find new ways of delighting their customers, >>we'll get the final word. I just want to say my big take away to the show is and we'll go down the line. I'll start Lisa in Europe, you could go is the usage of cloud and multi cloud is here. Everyone sees that. I think there's a financial aspect going on with security. You're gonna be tied in. I think you see new sets of services coming built on the foundation of the C N C F. But cloud and multi cloud is here. Multi cloud meeting edges. Well, that is definitely on everyone's radar. That was a big theme throughout the interview, so we'll see more of that. Lisa, your takeaways. >>Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think one of the biggest things that I hear consistently is the opportunities that have been uncovered, the the collaboration becoming tighter and folks having the opportunity to engage more with events like Coop Con and C and C F. Because of this virtual shift, I think there's only ah lot of positive things that we're going to stay to come. >>Yep. Yeah, my point of view is I mean, open source is validated completely right? It's a viable model to build around software. On the one hand, on the other hand, the C and C s role in making that open source community broadly accessible and inclusive is, I think, the biggest win Thio look back at at the last year. >>Well, I'm super excited for moving on to the next event. It's been great pleasure. Lisa. You you guys are great co host Virtual Cube. Thanks for participating. And we'll see you next time. Thank you. Okay, that's the cubes. Coverage of Coop con 2020 cloud Native con Virtual This the cube Virtual. We are the cube. Virtual. Thanks for watching

Published Date : Nov 18 2020

SUMMARY :

It's the Cube with coverage of Yukon and You great to see you remotely. So if you remember the first Cube con, it was in Seattle during that time, This you wanna get your thoughts, you have to start with you, C and C F. What are they up to? So instead of focusing on the technology part of RT I covered the big story Uh, Lisa, you and I have been talking about this for years on the Cube around this diversity peace. I imagine that the great Q. Khan and cognitive community that Dan Cohen has built And I want to add to that where you know, just like Lisa said. I think that's what we're seeing with the remote interviews is that it's one and the vibe, you know, hasn't necessarily changed. Just my perspective is just that the light that this challenging time is shining on, congratulating him on the success of C and C. I think it was, like two years ago or maybe last year. the end user peace with the logos that we're coming because remember, you about four years ago. I wanna put you on the spot. That's one of the things that I think a lot of the C suite I talked to left the role of security this year. and kind of the conversation at Yukon this year where, you know, we're again seeing that maturity I think you what You're kind of really articulate, and there is the evolution of CNC You know, the normal stuff they do in the event, they gotta get the word out. I mean, I think, you know, part of the legacy of these tech communities is they've been And I think this Finn ops Foundation is a tell sign around how groups I think another element to that John is the cultural shift. I think you see new sets of services coming built on the foundation of the C N C And I think one of the biggest things that I hear consistently is the on the other hand, the C and C s role in making that open source community broadly accessible Coverage of Coop con 2020 cloud Native con Virtual This the cube Virtual.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Tim HopkinsPERSON

0.99+

Sarah NovotnyPERSON

0.99+

Lisa MartinPERSON

0.99+

StewPERSON

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

Dan BurnsPERSON

0.99+

Dan ConnPERSON

0.99+

Priyanka SharmaPERSON

0.99+

EuropeLOCATION

0.99+

ChrisPERSON

0.99+

TrumpPERSON

0.99+

LisaPERSON

0.99+

Eliana GesuPERSON

0.99+

SeattleLOCATION

0.99+

Dan CohenPERSON

0.99+

JohnPERSON

0.99+

Hillary ClintonPERSON

0.99+

80%QUANTITY

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

DanPERSON

0.99+

Red HatORGANIZATION

0.99+

Stephen AugustusPERSON

0.99+

Finn ops FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

20%QUANTITY

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

NASCARORGANIZATION

0.99+

Linux FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

CohenPERSON

0.99+

ThioPERSON

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

two years agoDATE

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

2016DATE

0.99+

three yearQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.98+

OneQUANTITY

0.98+

LeePERSON

0.98+

Craig MK LuckyPERSON

0.98+

this yearDATE

0.97+

nine monthsQUANTITY

0.97+

bothQUANTITY

0.97+

Q. KhanPERSON

0.97+

24 73 65OTHER

0.97+

NovemberDATE

0.97+

C N C F.ORGANIZATION

0.96+

Finn Finn Ops FoundationORGANIZATION

0.96+

Cube VirtualCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.96+

BidenPERSON

0.95+

pandemicEVENT

0.95+

LennoxORGANIZATION

0.95+

15 years agoDATE

0.95+

C.PERSON

0.94+

Native Con North America 2020 VirtualEVENT

0.94+

Coop Con.EVENT

0.94+

pandemic de ecosystemEVENT

0.93+

Cube virtualCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.92+

Dan consPERSON

0.92+

CubanOTHER

0.91+

GOPORGANIZATION

0.91+

one thingQUANTITY

0.91+

Guy Bartram, VMware and Doug Lieberman, Dell Technologies | Dell Technologies World 2020


 

>> Narrator: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of Dell Technologies World Digital Experience brought to you by Dell Technologies. >> Hi welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE coming to you from our Palo Alto studios, with our ongoing coverage of the Dell Technology World 2020, the digital experience, we can't be together this year, but we can still get together this way. And we're excited for our very next segment, really talking about one of the big leverage points that the Dell VMware relationship can result in, so we're excited. Joining us our next guest is Guy Bartram, he is the Director of Product Marketing for Cloud Director, for VMware. Guy great to see you, where are you coming in from? >> Thanks for having me on Jeff. >> Where are you coming in from today? (Guy chuckles) >> So this yeah, this London for me, this is from London. >> Excellent, great to see you. >> In the UK. >> And also joining us, Doug Lieberman, he is the Global Solutions Director for Dell Technology, Doug, great to see you, where are you coming in from today? >> Well, thanks for having me, I'm calling in from just outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. >> Excellent, love Philly's lived there for a couple of years and man, there's some terrific food in that part of the world, I tell yah. So let's get into--- >> You say--- >> Are you Pat's or Geno's. >> Actually I'll eat either one but I think I prefer Pat. >> Okay buddy, I used to get one of each and eat half and half and piss people off that were the purest, but that's a difference--- >> That's the right way to do it. (Jeff and Guy laughs) >> Right, so let's get into it, you know, before we turned on the cameras, you guys were talking about this exciting announcement that you've been working on for a really long time. So before we get kind of into the depths and the importance, why don't we just go ahead and tell us, what is the big announcement that we're sharing today? Go to you Guy. >> And so VMware and Dell really have worked together and we both have partner programs that are focused on service providers, Cloud Service providers, and systems integrators and strategic outsourcers. And what we've done is work together to build a solution that is really targeted towards them in the cloud arena, so taking our cloud capabilities and solutions and optimizing it for cloud providers and doing that through what we call, leveraging our Dell Technologies Cloud Platform and putting VMware Cloud Director on top of that. >> So that's pretty amazing, and really, to you Guy, what does that enable Cloud Service providers to do that they couldn't do so well before? >> It brings a whole lot of benefits to a Cloud Service provider, I mean, for cloud providers, historically they've had to have infrastructure services that've been, you know, quite heavy for them to build, taken a long time to get the market, and really had a high burn and operational costs and this solution VMware Cloud Director on Dell Technologies Cloud Platform is going to bring them the multitenancy aspects of cloud director and all of the speed and efficiencies in application and infrastructure delivery to enable them to address the common need now around hybrid cloud management and hybrid cloud operations. >> And you talked about before, I'm sorry, go ahead, Doug. >> No, I was saying, you know, I think that the big key piece is that, there're special requirements that cloud providers really need from their infrastructure, from their cloud, that makes it special to their business model, and what this aims to do, is to provide those capabilities in a easily consumable and rapid implementation format so that they can get to revenue faster and they can get to higher level services faster. >> It's funny, you talked about getting to revenue faster, back in the day I worked at Intel and Craig Barrett was famous for TTM. TTM, everyone used to think it was time to market bringing a new product to market, and he said, no, no, no, it's time to money, right, how fast can you get operational, so that you can basically get this thing to start generating revenue, I always think of that when you look at seven 37 sitting at a gate, you know, how do you get it operational? So Doug, what were some of those special challenges that they have in their market and how are you helping them solve them? >> So it's a great question, Jeff, as we work with service providers all over the world, they've given us a consistent message, that the days of the value in their service being, how they build the underlying cloud and how they do that orchestration automation are really behind us, right, they're expecting today, an end to end capability delivered as sort of an appliance for that underlying infrastructure for the cloud components, so that they can focus on the higher level services and the things that provide more value and more margin for them, and so, you know, the as a service offerings that run on top of the underlying cloud. And so what this joint solution does is really provide a validated design so that they can redirect their engineering resources from figuring out how to make that base cloud work in a service provider format, with multitenancy, chargeback, showback, portals, et cetera, and get that up and running faster and not have to worry about how to automate all that themselves, so they can focus their engineering efforts on those higher level services that provide greater value to their bottom line, to be honest, >> Great, that's great, and Guy, I want to go back to you, you know, the Cloud Service providers probably don't get as much of publicity as you know, we hear all the time about the big public Cloud Providers, you know, the big three or four or however you want to count them and we hear a lot about data centers and staff migrating between those two, we don't hear a lot of conversation in kind of the hybrid or the multicloud discussion about the role of the smaller Cloud Service providers. So I wonder if you can share a little bit about how they play in the market, you know why this is a really important segment for everyone's, you know, kind of architecture and ability to deliver applications. >> That's great common, I mean, one of the things we tend to call on our partners internally is the fall of mega cloud, that you know you really haven't heard of, there's 4,000 partners in our partner program and all of them are providing very valuable cloud services. They provide cloud services they've in all areas of cloud, so this could be into Azure, Google, AWS or in their own data centers, and many of them have come from infrastructure rich environments or what we call asset heavy environments and delivering services in these environments. The recent kind of drive to cloud adoption and digital transformation has meant that there's been a growing demand for Cloud Service providers to deliver valuable managed services and professional services to help customer do that digital transformation and really help the customer identify, where their customer's workloads, would be best apt and running. And, you know, cloud providers specialize in delivering these services like Doug was saying, they're looking at that higher value and they brought a lot of skills and capability in those areas. >> That's great, 'cause it's really good to keep in mind they pay a really important role in this whole thing. And Doug I want to go back to you in terms of working together with VMware in the solution space, right, so it's one thing to talk about a relationship between two companies, it's one thing to see Michael Dell and Pat Gelsinger on stage together, it's a whole nother deal to get together and put in the investment in these joint solutions. So I wonder if you could share a little bit more color on not only today's announcement, but what this really means for you guys going forward and more importantly, your customers, and ultimately your customer's customers. >> Absolutely, so Dell and VMware are both committed to really driving the success of our Cloud Provider partners all over the world, and to do that, we recognize that there's an additional level of capabilities that we need to bring together and jointly do that. And so we agreed to work together to go build a series of capabilities that are really targeted at going beyond just the basic HCI market and the basic cloud market and extending that for capabilities that are targeted specifically and built specifically for our service providers. And so this solution that we're announcing today is the first step on a journey, but we both committed to and made investments in, continuing that and adding more and more capabilities as we move forward and really addressing that very specific market. And working with our Cloud Service provider partners to figure out what is the next step, what do they need from us, at the end of the day, we're looking to jointly help them be more successful and accelerate their time to market and their go to market capabilities. >> Right, that's great, and Guy back to you, you actually had some numbers, some IDC numbers that you can share in terms of some of the real measurable benefits of this. >> That's right Jeff, yeah, we have, IDC did a recent analysis for us with about 12 partners interviewed across the globe, and some of the results that came back were pretty astounding actually, this pay-for is available on our VCE product page on vmware.com. But just as kind of summarize, you know, we talk about getting to revenue faster, they found that on average service providers were able to onboard customers, i.e migrate them, into their cloud environment around 72% faster, 57% faster delivery of new services and we all know that, you know, portfolio and construction of services takes a long time, but you get business units to buy in to give it support services, so 57% faster delivery of services is incredible. And then, you know, obviously getting to revenue 32% more revenue from VCD services than without VCD and 51% overall more growth with VCD from things like more efficient operations, which are also marked at like 31%. So, you know, significant advantages to having Cloud Director bringing those economies of scale, bringing that capability to migrate from a customer premise into service providers cloud, and then obviously be able to utilize multiple larger clouds across multiple regions. >> That's great, and Doug, I wonder if you could share, are there some specific applications that are driving this more than others, is there any particular kind of subset of the solutions that you can highlight where you're getting the most demand and where you see kind of the both short term opportunity as well as mid and longterm opportunity? >> A great question, I think it really evolves around a couple of different aspects. So one is from a pure security standpoint and things like data sovereignty, we're seeing an increased demand for the service providers that are our partners, as in the ecosystem of cloud, there will always be a role for the hyperscaler clouds as well as the role of these independent Cloud Service providers that are at the next tier down, both for the data sovereignty issues, things like GDPR, but as well as kind of that personal feel, that personal touch and specialty in applications, some of the specific areas we're seeing are things like business process management capabilities, database as a service, VDI as a service, but even more critically things like cyber recovery and backup as a service we're seeing, especially in the current situation that we're in, really an uptick in the cyber attacks and the ransomware, et cetera, and so solutions such as our cyber recovery are critical in those capabilities and those higher level services tied into and integrated with an overall service provider framework are key. And so in the area that we're really seeing uptake are really the business critical mission functions that enterprises are looking to run in a trusted partner's data center, and that's what we're seeing, where we're a lot of traction for this Dell Technologies Cloud Platform, combining VCD and VCF together to give you all those features and enterprise reliability. >> Right, and I didn't ask you Guy kind of the partnership question about having the opportunity to put your capability, you know, on the Dell Cloud Platform, opens up a whole new set of field resources, a whole new set of technical resources, you know, a whole different resources, not that VMware's short on resources by any stretch of the imagination, but it's certainly an additive, you know, kind of one plus one makes three opportunity. >> Yeah, I mean, it's great to be doing this and we've actually already been doing this on a couple of other initiatives, so from my perspective, I, you know, I manage Cloud Director Portfolio and we've already integrated Dell, Data Domain Dell, Avamar backup solutions, Data Protection Suite, into VCD as self service and we've already put in quite a bit of work, working together with Dell on that, as we go forward we're going to be putting more work into supporting VCD on the Dell Technologies Cloud Platform and integrating more services from Dell and from other vendors into the solution as well. So all we want to really provide is the capability for service provider to have the easy to consume hardware model, easy to consume subscription software model, with our program, and then the extensibility of services over and above just the infrastructure layer. So looking at things like object storage, and as Doug said, data protection, migration services, container cluster services, there's a myriad of services that VCD provides today out the box, and then there's the a whole extensibility framework, which we use when we work with partners, like we've done with Dell to deliver things like data protection. >> Yeah, I want to go back to you Doug, in terms of kind of a higher level, this whole transition to as a service, you've been in the business for a long time, you've been in the solutions a long time, but, you know, switching everything to as a service, as often as we can, and as frequently as we can, and as broadly across portfolio is really a terrific response to what the customers now, are looking for. So I'm wondering if you share some color on, you know, this philosophy of trying to get to, as a service, as much as you can, across the broadest solution set as you can. >> Yeah and if you look over the last decade, and decade and a half, there has been this increasing trend to moving to as a service offerings and the public clouds really drove a large part of that, than in tier two service providers around the globe. The key piece especially in the current business model, then going forward is how do you optimize, your CapEx versus OPEX and how do you really leverage the IT infrastructure to the maximum extent possible, based upon current business conditions, and that means the ability to grow and train and the ability to only consume what you need. In the past, when we had traditional data centers, you basically built for the worst case, and so the worst case was you had, an accounting run that happened at the end of the month that required a lot of processing power, then you built to that and that's what you use, and for the rest of the month, it really mostly idle. The cloud model really gives you the ability to A, improve their, or only use what you need and consume when you want to use it, but also adds in really shifting the responsibility for the management and the operations into someone, people who are experts in that area, so that again, you as a business can focus on your mission critical aspects of what you do whether that's developing a drug, building cars, making pizza, whatever it is, really as a service model enables your business to drive their core competency and not have to worry about the IT infrastructure that other people can do more efficiently and with better value than you could do it internally. And all that drive to that as a service model with the additional financial models that really aligned to the business paradigm that really companies are looking for. >> As you're saying that I'm thinking, wow, remember those days when our worst case scenario, was running a big batch load at the end of the month or the end of the quarter, and that would be re-missed, right, we are 2020, we're spread out all over the country and the world on both sides of the Atlantics. If I didn't say something about, you know, kind of the COVID impacts in terms of this accelerate, 'cause we hear it all the time in social media, right, who's driving your digital transformation, is it the CEO, the CIO, of COVID, and we've moved from this kind of light switch moment and then merged to, hey, this is an ongoing thing, and you know, kind of the new normal, is the new normal. And it's really shifted, a lot of people are talking about, you know, kind of shifts in the cloud infrastructure, the direction of the traffic, right, from going now from East to West and it's North to South, 'cause it's going to everybody's home. I wonder, I'll go back to you Guy, in terms of, the response that you've heard from some of your customers, in a response to, you know, kind of A, let's put a stop gap in early March that was interesting, and critical, and done, but now, kind of looking forward as to, you know, kind of a redistribution of workloads and architecture and users and I think Doug talked about security. How are you seeing any kind of ongoing effects and how is this impacting, you know, kind of you go to market and what you guys are bringing to market. >> Yeah, we're definitely seeing a lot of change in the way that service providers are trying to address this now. At the start of COVID, it was really a struggle, I think, for everyone to get the resources that they required to keep customers up from running, a lot of people started re-examining their disaster recovery contingency planning, and realizing that actually, what has happened in the last couple of years is, you know, workloads have exploded, a lot of patient workloads have completely gone through the roof and container workloads have grown drastically, and what's happened is the contingency plans behind all this stuff haven't changed and they just simply can't keep up the dynamic nature of the way we're doing business. Quite simply put technology is outpacing our weight, our ability to deal with that, so, you know, service providers need to provide a platform solution that enables them to be able to orchestrate at scale and enables them to orchestrate securely at scale, and really that means they've got to move away from this is hardware analog and move into virtual resourcing, cloud resource pooling elasticity, and particularly hypothesy. I know VMware we talk a lot about hybrid solutions and multicloud, but it's a reality when you look at where customers are today in their cloud journey, most of them have a footprint in their premise, have a footprint in a cloud provider premise and have multiple footprints in public cloud environments, so they need to have that consistent security model across that, they need to have data contingency and backup solutions, and someone needs to be in that to manage that, and that's where the service providers come in. They need to move away from the kind of infrastructure day to day operations that they were doing before and scale it out to now application protection and application development environments. >> Right, so Doug, I'm going to give you the last word as we wrap up this segment, you know, it's easy for us and pundits and people to write about multicloud and hybrid cloud and all these concepts, you guys actually have to make it work on the ground with real customers and real workloads. So I wonder if you could just kind of, you know, share your perspective, you've been working on this Dell Cloud Platform, you know, kind of how you see this evolving over time, and again, kind of what gets you up in the morning as you look forward as to what this journey is going to be over the next six months, one year, two year, three years down the road. >> Brought a lot of functionality capabilities to the world, right, the ability to consume things as you need them, the ability to really rely on a combined set of clouds and multicloud, and if you look at any enterprise that by any estimate, any company of any size, it's probably got 12, 15 clouds that contain their multicloud between using hyperscalers, tier two service providers, as well as cloud based services like Salesforce.com or Office 365, and you combine all those together and what that provides is a lot of flexibility, a lot of functionality, but also an extreme amount of complexity. And that complexity is really where Dell Technologies Cloud and Dell Technologies Cloud Platform is looking to help and to reduce that complexity, 'cause ultimately a successful enterprise is going to leverage the best from multiple clouds across multiple different implementations in order to provide the end to end IT experience that they need for both their external facing and internal IT operations. And with Dell Technologies Cloud Platform and working with our service providers, what we aim to do is to simplify the implementation of those multiple clouds and how they work together and make it as seamless as possible to shift workloads where they need to be, see your entire virtual enterprise IT environment, no matter where it's running, and to really optimize on your business to understand how you're using cloud, where you're using cloud, and how those clouds work together. And so the integration of all the different features with VMware and Dell bring together that end to end capability to significantly simplify the multicloud experience, and then ultimately our service provider partners, can help you on that journey to provide that management and orchestration across those different clouds and the data transformation, the digital transformation necessary in order to drive success. >> That's great, well, thank you Doug, for putting a nice big bow on it, and congratulations to you both for getting this release out, I know there's a lot of hard work and effort behind it, so it's always kind of good to finally get to expose it to the real world, so thanks for taking a few minutes with us. >> Great, thank you for having us. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah thanks Jeff, thank you. >> All right, he's Guy, he's Doug, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE's continuous coverage of Dell Technologies World 2020, the digital experience. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (soft upbeat music)

Published Date : Oct 22 2020

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Dell Technologies. that the Dell VMware So this yeah, this London for me, in the United States. in that part of the world, I tell yah. one but I think I prefer Pat. (Jeff and Guy laughs) Go to you Guy. and doing that through what we call, and all of the speed and efficiencies And you talked about before, and they can get to higher and how are you helping them solve them? and the things that provide more value and ability to deliver applications. and really help the customer identify, and put in the investment and to do that, we recognize and Guy back to you, and we all know that, you know, and the ransomware, et cetera, Right, and I didn't ask you Guy so from my perspective, I, you know, and as broadly across portfolio and so the worst case was you had, and you know, kind of the new and enables them to to give you the last word and to really optimize on your business and congratulations to you both 2020, the digital experience.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
DougPERSON

0.99+

JeffPERSON

0.99+

Doug LiebermanPERSON

0.99+

Jeff FrickPERSON

0.99+

Pat GelsingerPERSON

0.99+

12QUANTITY

0.99+

LondonLOCATION

0.99+

Guy BartramPERSON

0.99+

Dell TechnologiesORGANIZATION

0.99+

two companiesQUANTITY

0.99+

DellORGANIZATION

0.99+

57%QUANTITY

0.99+

UKLOCATION

0.99+

VMwareORGANIZATION

0.99+

4,000 partnersQUANTITY

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

IntelORGANIZATION

0.99+

31%QUANTITY

0.99+

32%QUANTITY

0.99+

Michael DellPERSON

0.99+

2020DATE

0.99+

51%QUANTITY

0.99+

Palo AltoLOCATION

0.99+

early MarchDATE

0.99+

three yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

twoQUANTITY

0.99+

two yearQUANTITY

0.98+

fourQUANTITY

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

GuyPERSON

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

Craig BarrettPERSON

0.98+

VMware Cloud DirectorTITLE

0.98+

IDCORGANIZATION

0.98+

GDPRTITLE

0.97+

first stepQUANTITY

0.97+

Dell TechnologyORGANIZATION

0.97+

Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaLOCATION

0.97+

GenoORGANIZATION

0.97+

both sidesQUANTITY

0.96+

one thingQUANTITY

0.96+

one yearQUANTITY

0.96+

around 72%QUANTITY

0.95+

United StatesLOCATION

0.95+

last decadeDATE

0.94+

about 12 partnersQUANTITY

0.93+

threeQUANTITY

0.93+

COVIDOTHER

0.93+

Dell VMwareORGANIZATION

0.93+

Office 365TITLE

0.93+

tier twoQUANTITY

0.93+

Sanjay Uppal and Craig Connors, VMware | VMworld 2020


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of VM World 2020 brought to you by VM Ware and its ecosystem partners. >>Welcome back. I'm stew Minuteman. And this is the Cube coverage of VM World 2020 our 11th year covering the show. And of course, networking has been a big growth story. Four vm where for a number years, going back to the Neisseria acquisition for over billion dollars. Really leveraging all of the virtual networking and SD wins been another hot topic. A couple years ago, it was the Velo Cloud acquisition. And now happy to welcome to the program two of the Velo Cloud business executives. First of all, we have Sanjay you Paul. He is the senior vice president and general manager of that mentioned division of VM Ware. Enjoining him is Craig Connors, whose the vice president and chief technology officer for that same division he was the chief architect of fellow Cloud Craig Sanjay. Thank you for joining us. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Alright, So, Sanjay, first of all nice, you know, call outs and a lot of news that we're gonna get to dig into in the morning Keynote you know Pat Sanjay the team. Uh, you know, a couple of years ago, Pat talked about, you know, the next billion dollar businesses networking your team helping toe add to that. And, ah, a new term thrown out that we're gonna get to talk a little bit about. Our friends at Gartner termed it sassy. So I'll let you, you know, explain a little bit the news that this wonderful new four letter acronym that the Gartner spots that us. Um, why don't you start us there? >>Yeah. I couldn't be more excited to be here at VM World announcing this expansion of what's going on in Ste. Van. So I see Van was all about bringing branch office users to their applications and doing that in a really efficient manner, throwing out all those complex hardware appliances and simplifying everything with software, increasing the quality of experience for the user. But now what has happened is, you know they want security to be dealt off in the same way. Same simplicity and automation, same great user experience. And at the same time, you know, blocking all these attacks that are coming in from various places and covert has just driven that even more meaning that you need to get to networking and network security to be brought together in this simple and automated way while keeping the end user experience be great on while giving I t what they need, which is high security and good manageability. So this acronym sassy, secure access Service edge It really is the bringing together off net networking and network security both as a service. That service angle is really important. And the exciting part about what we're announcing at the at we'd be involved. Here is the expansion off the S, Stephen Pops and Gateways into becoming Sassy pops. And now customers can get a whole slew of services both networking and network security services from the anyway. So that's the announcement. >>Wonderful, Craig. You know, since since since you've helped with so much of the architecture here, I wanna kick out a little bit. When? When it comes to the security stuff that Sandy was talking about. I remember dealing back with land optimization solutions, trying to remember. Okay, wait. When can I compress? When can I encrypt? You know what do I lay on top of it? Um, SD when you know fits into this story, help us understand. What does you Novello Cloud do? What is it from the partner ecosystem? You know, So you know there's there's some good partners that you have helping us. Help us understand. You know what exactly we mean because security is such a broad term. >>Yeah, thanks. So there's four components in the sassy pop that we're bringing together. Obviously, VM Ware Ston is one of those Sanjay mentioned the changing workforce. We have off net users that aren't coming from behind Stu and Branch Mawr and Mawr today. So we also have secure access powered by our workspace. One solution that's bringing those remote users into the sassy pop and then two different security solutions. Secure Web gateway functionality. And that is the next generation secure Web gateway that includes things like DLP and remote browser isolation. And as you saw in the news today that's powered through ROM agreement with Menlo Security. And then we have next Gen firewall ing for securing corporate traffic. And that's powered by our own VM Ware NSX firewall, which has been recently augmented with our last line acquisition. So those are the four key components coming together within our sassy pop. And of course, we also have our continued partnership with the scaler for our our large joint via Mersey Scaler customer base to facilitate that security solution as well. >>Yeah. So, Sanjay, maybe it would make sense. As you said, you've got ah, portfolio now in this market, Uh, got v d I You've got edge walk us. Or if you could, some of the most important use cases for your business. >>Yeah. So you know the use case that has taken off in the last several years since the advent of SD. When is to get sites? So these would be branch offices and a branch office could be an agricultural field. It could be a plane. It could be an oil rig. You know, it could be any one of these. This is a branch office. So these sites how to get them connected to the applications that they need to get access to so telemedicine example. So how do you get doctors, diagnosticians and all that that are sitting in their clinics and hospitals? You get great access to the applications on the applications can be anywhere they don't have to be back in your data centers. You know, after data center consolidation happened, some of the apse you know, we're in the data centers. But then, after the cloud advent came, then the apse were everywhere there in the public cloud, both in I s as well as in SAS. And then now they're moving back towards the edge because of the advent of edge computing. So that's really the primary use case that s Stephen has been all about. And that's where you know, we have staked a claim to be the leader in that space. Now, with Covic, the use cases are expanding and obviously with work from home, you take the same telemedicine example. The doctors and diagnosticians who used to work from hospitals and clinics now have to get it done when they're working from the home. And, of course, this is a business critical app. And so what do you do? How do you get these folks who are at home to get the same quality of experience, the same security, the same manageability, but at the same time, you cannot disturb the other people who are working from home because that is an entire ecosystem. You serve the business user, but you also serve the needs off the home users keeping privacy in mind. So these two cases branch access and then remote access, which great talked about these are the primary use cases, and then they break down by vertical. So depending on whether it's health or it's federal or its manufacturing or its finance, then you have sub use cases underneath that. But this is how we from a from a V C n standpoint, you know, claimed to have 17,000 customers that have deployed our networking solutions. Ah, large fraction of those being our stu and solutions today. >>Yeah. Okay, Craig, one of those terms that gets thrown around a lot in the industry iss scale. I look at certain parts of the market, you know, say kubernetes kubernetes was about, you know, bringing together lots of sites. But now we're spending a lot of time talking about edge, which is a whole different scale. Same thing if you talk about devices and I o t can you speak to us a little bit about, you know, fundamentally, You know that branch architecture, I think, set you up well, but when I start thinking about EJ, it probably is. You know, uh, you know, larger number and some different challenges. So So maybe maybe some differences that happen to happen in the code to make that happen? >>Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you know, we've been fortunate in the success that we've had in RST ran deployments. More than 280,000 branches deployed with RST ran solution. So scale is something that's been near and dear to our heart from the beginning. How do you build a multi tenant service in the cloud? How do you build cloud scale? And we brought that aspect into all of these components through container ization, as you mentioned through horizontal scalability, bringing them into our own dedicated pops. Where we control the hardware we control the hyper visor, obviously built on top of the m r E. S s. I that allows us to deliver scale in a way that other competitors may not be able to achieve. >>Yeah, son Sanjay, it's been a couple of years since the acquisition by VM Ware. Give us a little bit of an update, if you would as to, you know, what I'm sure. Obviously, customer reach on adoption greatly increased by by the channel and go to market. But, you know, directionally And you know, any difference in use cases that that you've seen now being part of the M R. >>Yeah, absolutely. No. There's there's been an expansion in the use cases, which is why this fit was very good, meaning Vela Cloud being a part of VM way. So if you look at it, what the wider network does, where the place where you know ties, we tie it all together and tie walk together. If you look at the end User computing, which Greg was mentioning, the clients are digital workspace, workspace. One client. Well, those clients now will connect to our sassy pop. So that's one tie in that obviously we couldn't have and we were an independent company. The other side of it, when you go from the sassy pop into the data center, then we tie into NSX. Not just that the Cloud firewall, but in the data center itself so we can extend micro segmentation. So that's another kid use case that is becoming prevalent. Then the third aspect of this is really when you run inside telecom operators and VM Ware has a very robust business as it goes after telcos with the software stack and so running our gateways running our sassy pops at the telco environment, then gets us to integrate with what's going on with our telecom business unit. We also have what we're doing on our visibility and Tellem entry perspective. So we had acquired a company called Neons A, which were crafting into on edge network intelligence product that then fits into VM Ware's overall. For in the space we have, ah, product suite called We Realize Network Insight. And so that network inside, combined with what we're doing from from a business unit standpoint, gives customers an end to end view from from an individual client through the cloud, even up to an individual container. And so we call this client to cloud to container. All of this is possible because we're part of VM Ware. In the last piece of this is something that's gonna happen. We believe next year, which is edge computing when edge computing comes in. You know, I jokingly say to my team this acronym of Sassy, which is s a s e you gotta insert of sea in the middle. So it becomes s a CSE and out of that pronounced that says sacks E. So I know it sounds a little bit awkward, but that c stands for the compute. So as you put compute in the computer is going to run in the edge, the computer that's going to run in the pop and the sassy is gonna become, you know, sexy. And who better to give that to you than VM Ware? Because, you know, we have that management stack that controls compute for customers today. >>Well, definitely. I think you're you're you're drawing from the Elon Musk school of You know how to name acronyms in products Do so sometimes It's really interesting. Uh, Craig, talk us a little a little bit about that vision to get there, you know? What do we need to do as an industry? How's the product mature? Give us a little bit of that. That that roadmap forward, if you would >>Yeah, I think you know Sassy is really the convergence of five key things. One is this distributed pop architecture. Er So how do you deliver this? Compute and these services near to the customers premise. And that's something that companies like us have have had years of experience and building out. And then the four key components of sassy that we have, you know, zero trust access S t u N next generation firewall ing and secure Web Gateway. We're fortunate, as Sanjay said, to be part of the M where where we don't have to invent some of these components because we already have a works based one and we already have the NSX distributed firewall. And we already have the m r s d when and so ah, lot of companies you'll see are trying to to put all of these parts together. We already had them in house. We're putting them under one umbrella, the one place where we didn't have a technology within VM Ware. That's where we're leveraging these partnerships with memo and see scaler to get it done. >>Sanjay e think the telco use case that you talked about is really important One we've definitely seen, you know, really good adoption from from VM Ware working in those spaces. One place I I wanna understand, though, if you look at vcf and how that moves. Thio ws toe Azure, even toe Oracle's talked about in the keynote this morning. How does SD win fit into just that kind of traditional hybrid cloud deployment we've been talking about for the last couple of years? >>Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, when you look at Ste Van, that name can notes software defined, but it doesn't. It's not specific to branch office access at all. And when you look at DCF, what VCF is doing is really modernizing your compute stack. And now you can run this modern compute stack of your own data centers. You can run it in the private cloud. You can run it on the public cloud as well, right? So you can put these tax on Amazon, azure, Google and and then run them. So what an STV in architecture allows you to do is not just get your branch and secure users to access the applications that are running on those computes tax. But you can also intermediate between them. So when customers come in and they say that they want simplified networking and security between two public cloud providers, this is the multi cloud use case, then getting that networking toe work in a seamless fashion with high security can be done by an S Stephen architectures. And our sassy pop is perfectly situated to do that. And all you would need to do is add virtual services at the sassy pop. An enterprise customer would come in and they say they want some peanuts here and some VP CS there they want to look at them in an automated fashion. They want to set it up, you know, with the point and click architectures and not have to do all this manual work, and we can get that done. So there's a there's a really good fit between Sassy s Stephen and where VCF is going to solve the multi cloud problem that people are having right now. >>Excellent. I really appreciate that. That that explanation last thing, I guess I'll ask is, you know, here at VM World, I'm sure you've got a lot of breakouts. You've probably got some good customers sharing some of their stories. So anonymous if it has to be. But we would love if you've got either views of some examples, uh, to help bring home that the value that your solutions are delivering. >>Great. When I start with one and then creek and fill in the other one, eso let me start off with the telemedicine example. So we have, you know, customer called M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. And these are the folks in in Texas, and they provide a really, really important service. And that service is, you know, providing patients who are critically ill to give them all the kinds of services, whether they come into the clinic or whether they're across a network connection. And they're radiologists and doctors air sitting at home. So I think it's very important use case and, you know, we started off by deploying in the hospitals and the clinics. But when Cove, it hit there to send a lot of these folks to work from home, and then when they work from home, it's really this device that goes in which you can see here. This is our Belo cloud edge. And this, um, has said in one of the my my favorite song says, There's nothing this box can't do. All right, so this box goes home into the, you know, doctors home, and then they are talking to their patient, getting telemedicine done because it solves the problem off performance. Um, you know that some of those folks have literally said that this thing was a God sent. That's not very often that networking people, you know, have been told that their products are like godsend. So I'll take that to the limit of grain of salt. But we are solving a very important problems increasing the performance were also this is a secure device, so it's not gonna be hacked into and then makes things much more manageable from a nightie standpoint. So this is one of those use cases, and there's plenty of them. But Craig has his favorites all turn it over to him. >>There's so many I could bore you. I think you know one really interesting. One is a new investment banking company that we have is a customer, and they used to go work in the office five days a week, and everything that they did was on their computer in the office and with this pivot to work from home post Kobe, did they think their future is a flexible work workforce where sometimes there in the office and sometimes they're remote. And when the remote there are deep peeing into their desktop, that is sting in their office and with their like to remote access VPN solution, they had to connect, Say, I'm a user sitting in Southern California. I'm connecting my VPN to Chicago to then come across the network back to Los Angeles to get to my desktop so that I can work from home. And now with Sassy, my secure access client from workspace one connects to the closest asi pop I get to my desktop in my office. Tremendously lower, Leighton see tremendously higher quality to experience for the users, whether they're, you know, at home, on the road anywhere they need to access that device. >>Craig Sanjay, thank you so much. Love the customer example. Sanjay. Good job bringing out the box. Uh, show people It's a software world. But the sassy hardware is still needed at times, too. Thanks for joining us. All >>right. Thank you, Stew. Thanks. Great. Cheers. All >>right. Stay with us for more coverage of VM World 2020. I'm still minimum. Thanks. As always for watching the cube

Published Date : Sep 29 2020

SUMMARY :

World 2020 brought to you by VM Ware and its ecosystem partners. First of all, we have Sanjay you Paul. that we're gonna get to dig into in the morning Keynote you know Pat Sanjay the team. And at the same time, you know, You know, So you know there's there's some good partners that you have helping us. And as you saw in the Or if you could, some of the most important use cases for your business. And that's where you know, we have staked a claim to be the leader in that space. I look at certain parts of the market, you know, say kubernetes kubernetes was about, I mean, I think you know, we've been fortunate in the success But, you know, directionally And you know, any difference in use Then the third aspect of this is really when you run inside telecom That that roadmap forward, if you would And then the four key components of sassy that we have, you know, we've definitely seen, you know, really good adoption from from VM Ware working in those spaces. So what an STV in architecture allows you to do is not just get your branch and I guess I'll ask is, you know, here at VM World, I'm sure you've got a lot of breakouts. And that service is, you know, providing patients who are critically ill the users, whether they're, you know, at home, on the road anywhere they need Craig Sanjay, thank you so much. All Stay with us for more coverage of VM World 2020.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
SanjayPERSON

0.99+

GartnerORGANIZATION

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

VM WareORGANIZATION

0.99+

ChicagoLOCATION

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

OracleORGANIZATION

0.99+

Southern CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

GregPERSON

0.99+

TexasLOCATION

0.99+

Los AngelesLOCATION

0.99+

StewPERSON

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

PatPERSON

0.99+

Craig ConnorsPERSON

0.99+

Neons AORGANIZATION

0.99+

next yearDATE

0.99+

Velo CloudORGANIZATION

0.99+

VM WorldORGANIZATION

0.99+

Menlo SecurityORGANIZATION

0.99+

More than 280,000 branchesQUANTITY

0.99+

Craig SanjayPERSON

0.99+

Sassy s StephenORGANIZATION

0.99+

One solutionQUANTITY

0.99+

two casesQUANTITY

0.99+

azureORGANIZATION

0.99+

17,000 customersQUANTITY

0.99+

M. D. Anderson Cancer CenterORGANIZATION

0.99+

Mersey ScalerORGANIZATION

0.99+

PaulPERSON

0.99+

NSXORGANIZATION

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

StephenPERSON

0.98+

WorldORGANIZATION

0.98+

11th yearQUANTITY

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

third aspectQUANTITY

0.98+

SandyPERSON

0.98+

Pat SanjayPERSON

0.98+

NeisseriaORGANIZATION

0.98+

OneQUANTITY

0.98+

VMwareORGANIZATION

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

VCFORGANIZATION

0.98+

One clientQUANTITY

0.97+

five keyQUANTITY

0.97+

over billion dollarsQUANTITY

0.97+

Sanjay UppalPERSON

0.97+

CloudORGANIZATION

0.96+

StuORGANIZATION

0.96+

telcoORGANIZATION

0.96+

VM WareTITLE

0.96+

FirstQUANTITY

0.96+

two different security solutionsQUANTITY

0.96+

five days a weekQUANTITY

0.95+

four letterQUANTITY

0.93+

Branch MawrORGANIZATION

0.91+

MawrORGANIZATION

0.91+

CovicORGANIZATION

0.91+

CubeORGANIZATION

0.91+

Novello CloudORGANIZATION

0.9+

this morningDATE

0.87+

billion dollarQUANTITY

0.87+

four componentsQUANTITY

0.85+

couple of years agoDATE

0.84+

one tieQUANTITY

0.83+

stew MinutemanPERSON

0.82+

Craig Sanderson, Infoblox | Next Level Network Experience


 

>> Announcer: From around the globe, it's theCUBE with digital coverage of next level network experience event, brought to you by Infoblox. >> Okay, welcome back everyone's to CUBE's coverage and co creation with Infoblox. Next Level networking event, virtual event, I'm John Furrier, your host to theCUBE. We're here with Craig Sanderson, Vice President security products at Infoblox. Talking about securing the borderless enterprise, obviously Infoblox, we had a variety of different conversations. Craig, welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you. Thanks, it's great to be here. >> Remote CUBE, normally we're in person, but since it's COVID-19, we're doing our best to get the stories out and one of things I want to chat with you is with COVID-19, this shift to remote working is interesting and the word work is interesting you got the work forces which are people work places which are locations, which is now home, workflows and work loads all work related, right? So if you think about the enterprise, you know, just the disruption to business model around this unforeseen, almost 100% VPN usage maybe or you got all this remote action, no one could have foreseen all this coming. How is this shift change the security paradigm and posture for enterprises? >> Yeah, I think for a lot of the customers that we've talked to, a lot of them are thinking about digital transformation for some time. What COVID has really done is rapidly expanded or kind of accelerated the need for them to think about what the digital transformation plans are. And unfortunately for some organizations who may be not as far down the line as others, they've looked at their current implementation for remote access, and their traditional security models of like perimeter based and they found that you know in this current environment where suddenly you've gone from being only a partial set of your workforce or remote to now all of them being remote and their applications, their data, the users, they're all kind of spread anytime, anyplace, anywhere. Their traditional models don't really work. So what it's caused a lot of organizations to do is to really accelerate their digital transformation plans and quite often for some of those organizations, they've realized that they've had to make the move relatively quickly because their traditional architectures have just not been designed for this level of disruption the digital transformation has had on their businesses. >> Give some examples of how companies have either been flat footed or on their heels, kind of push back and saying, well, we got caught off guard to ones that are kind of in place that kind of managed the pandemic well, what's the difference? Can you just give some color commentary around, you know, the the profile who got it right or some were right, and some that have gotten it wrong, or are struggling? >> So I think the ones who got it right are the ones who were already thinking about digital transformation. They're looking at the fact that a lot of the applications that their consumers or their users are consuming are increasingly going to be in the Cloud anyway. So the traditional architecture of all the good stuffs on the inside and the bad stuff on the outside, that simply doesn't work with Cloud and those organizations who were looking at obviously Cloud deployments for their applications, SDN IoT, those organizations have had be thinking about how they can secure those devices, the applications and users in a way that is going to be ubiquitous. The fact that you can deploy the security controls wherever those applications users or devices are going to be. So those organizations are already starting to think about how they can build a networking architecture that is going to be suited for digital transformation, and by extension, they've been recognizing that the security model has to change, 'cause they were much further down the path. Really, this has been an acceleration. For those organizations that well, I'm not really interested in Cloud, are worried about the risks associated with Cloud and things like that, who tended to try and stick or cling to the old traditional model. Where they really run into trouble now, it's like this model just doesn't work. And now the decisions almost been taken out of the hands with COVID, because now their users are not on the corporate network. They can't build a rock wall around those users. They now have to provide protection for a user who's potentially not even using the device that they can control. So for those organizations who are already thinking about cloud and SDN and IoT, because of that digital transformation effect they've been starting to think about security, for those who have not thought about that or who have tried have been pushing that off, they're the ones who've been caught somewhat flat footed and now they're been forced to make a decision which maybe not they're actually feeling comfortable already ready to go off and do. >> You know, Craig, I sat with a friend the other day and we're like briefing on hey, you know, COVID-19 really, kind of, exposes almost like the tide coming out as that tsunami comes. You can see everything, all the scabs and all the problems. And then we started talking about the whole work at home situation, like this is probably the biggest use case of IoT in real life because you can really see it play out, not just a factory or sensor or device at the edge of the network, these are work, people doing work, right? So this whole IoT Edge, it's about addressability. So you know, I have to ask you, 'cause we've talked with you guys earlier in other segments around this next level networking experience, I love the word experience, but next level networking means next level. So DDI has an abstraction, DDI being DNS DHCP, and IP address management. How does the security piece fit in? Because certainly, yes, you got at home, we got a bunch of IoT people running their stuff from their home networks and so remote access, and you got also the business around, which includes everything that's connected to the network now, and literally is borderless. So I like that term. So how does DDI security fit into that? Yeah, I mean, it's part of having the experience, I mean, one of the things that's changed, I mean, I've been in security for over 20 years, probably about 10 or 15 years ago, as a security guy, you could come back and you had a veto, you'd come back and say, well, no, we're not going to roll this thing out, these applications, or these services, because it's a risk to the business. Now in a lot of the CSOs that I've talked to is that veto is going away. If this application is going to get rolled out, we're going to run this service security has to catch up. Now what you can't have is from a seamless experience point of view, is to say well, okay, you've now got wonderful application experience, but then it gets ruined by all the security controls are very invasive. So all organizations are having to do is to think about how you can build a seamless networking architecture that can also seamlessly include the security as part of that. And so you can still have the security of the organization needs without it becoming a massive disruption to the experience. And one of the good examples is, for a lot of organizations their remote access, going back to the COVID example, is based on VPN. VPNs are cumbersome and have got troubles with passwords and all these sort of like traditional issues associated with the user experience from a VPN perspective. I mean, a lot of users have the patience to deal with that, and they don't necessary follow all the necessary security controls. So people are being forced to rethink how they can build the quality application experience underpinned by a digitally transformed network, but at the same time, making sure you could layer in at foundational layer, the security functions as well. And that's where a lot of organizations who are a little bit more forward thinking understood that and start to think about like DNS, is essentially this ubiquitous platform, which is already there it can already provide the sort of security services by default. Because going back to your example about IoT, one of the jokes with one of my friends is, and for every IoT security, sorry, every IoT offering, there's a separate IoT security offering. And one of the things that was a lightbulb moment for us is, if you're trying to secure all these heterogeneous IoT devices, well, one thing they have in common, they're all going to get an IP address, so we're going to use DNS. So what people have to start to do is to try and make security seamless, it has to be built into the foundations. It can't be this extra thing that you kind of glob on the side, because it then ruins the overall experience for the users. The nice thing about DNS is its ubiquitous, and you can apply the security, regardless of what the endpoint and application is, because the common denominator they choose they get an IP address and they use DNS. >> And DNS has such a great track record over the years of having layers of abstractions on top of it to pace with the functionality and it's really been an operating model and you bring up the different security packages and postures for each thing. And you mentioned, you know, the old days security guy, oh, no we're killing that, no we're going this way. That was the operational model, but now with DevOps, you put a Cloud earlier, DevOps has proven that agility, speed scale can work, and how to security catch up? It's an operating model. So this is really kind of the key epiphany is, hey, VPNs, that's not the experience that people want. And, you know, I was just talking with someone from Amazon this morning in another interview segment and the discussion was new expectations, new solutions. So that's kind of what we're seeing right now. So how do you enable that out at speed by not screwing over the operations people, right? So 'cause they got to be, operationally, I need to be really rock solid, so you need automation, you got to have those factors and requirements built in, but you got the agility for development. your reaction> >> Yeah, absolutely. We see that especially is one of the things about 'cause DNS essentially ubiquitous. You can apply similar security controls regardless of the environment. So, right now I'm stuck at home because of the COVID virus. So again, I'm going to use DNS, I go through one of our Cloud platforms, I have DNS applying the security controls there. But within the same thing because DNS works as one ubiquitous system and it's like how the internet works with DNS is quite easily, not only can you block malicious threats for myself, but also you can push that same block mitigation to a DNS server that's running in AWS. So if your workload that may also have been compromised, trying to go to the same malicious domain, you can also be blocked by DNS. And so that ubiquity, the fact that it's built as this ubiquitous system, mean one thing is very different in the networking world standards are great. We can plug different things together, they all kind of fit together nicely. Insecurity is not normally that not only the cases, normally, you've got this jigsaw puzzle, where all the pieces don't really fit together. The nice thing with DNS is is absolutely ubiquitous. So one basic example is, if I try to go to a malicious domain, or I tried to steal data over DNS, not only would we be able to block it, but we'd also be able to dynamically share that mitigation to all of the on prem DNS servers, the DNS servers rather in your public or private Cloud, and for all the other like remote users. So the fact you've got this pre built fabric, and it's not that we're security geniuses, it's just it happens to already be there because of DNS and how DNS has been developed over the last 30 or 40 years. So I think the nice thing about it is a lot of organizations are starting to realize that you've got this foundation already there. Ostensibly, it's there for networking purposes, but the ability to repurpose all the core assets of DNS, the scalability, the flexibility, adaptability, the ubiquity, all those things are there by default. Why don't you use that as the new foundation for that next gen security architecture? >> And you know, you got me as a fan, I'll say that right away, because when we think about the simplicity of going to the low level building block in DNS, it fits for what I said earlier, the future of work, the word Work, workplace, workforce, workload, workflows, no matter what it is, it works across. So it's a consistent, primitive. I mean, it makes total sense. Why would you want to have different things. So again, this brings up the whole foundational level of DDI that's got my interest. And I want you to explain this for folks, because I think it's not obvious. Abstractions are pretty clear, people get abstraction layers, reduce complexity, and increase functionality and capability. But DDI, you guys have from a foundational security standpoint, is kind of the unique thing Infoblox has. How is that different, DDI from other offerings in the security stack? >> Yeah, I think the one thing is pretty unique, especially when it comes to DNS is the fact that it's built together as this ubiquitous system, and it's there by default. I mean, otherwise, the internet just wouldn't work. So the nice thing is, is that if you deploy a DNS system we can deploy as a grid, so whether it's the an appliance running on prem or sitting in a public Cloud, or even for roaming users who are going through one of our points of presence, it works as one big ubiquitous system, whereas you take like traditional firewalls, you're configuring these devices separately, and you have to manually stitch it together. And you take multiple different vendors and you know, it doesn't quite fit neatly together. DNS is based on the standard, you could take a DNS server for master DNS server from another company and because it's based on standards, it will work seamlessly together, in fact, that the threat mitigation mechanism where you distribute threat intelligence to tell the DNS, what is the malicious domains or IP addresses to block is based on so called response policy zones. That's been part of the DNS standard since 2010. And it works seamlessly across multiple vendors, whereas in the security world, as I said, it's kind of like a jigsaw where you get all the pieces together that you think you need and then the burden is always on the customer or the organization to then piece these things together and as a chief source it doesn't fit together. I can see that burden can cause a hell of a lot of issues for a lot of the customers. >> Yeah, I got to ask you since DNS is so foundational to element *and have all internet activities obviously, you know URLs is DNS, it's string actually. So everything's based on DNS, how it resolves. So what what about the, how would you respond if someone said, hey, you know, I don't even know DNS is still around. I know it's palm. It's underneath there somewhere, I don't even have to deal with it, it just runs things, we've been using it for years. What's the big deal? So how do you go in and say, hey, customer, hey, enterprise, you're not borderless, I get a hitch. But they have DNS. How do they modernize it? How do they assess it? How do you go in and some of the young kids don't even know what DNS might even is? I mean, like, it's a new, so like, *what do you go where, how do you approach that and what's the pitch because they got it and as an opportunity to innovate. what's the story there? >> *Is really two aspects to it. The first one is, I mean, DNS is a bit like oxygen. If it's not there, you really need to notice it. You just take when we had the Mirai botnet attack a few years back, all these organizations suddenly realized how important DNS is. And there's a reason why DNS is the number one attack vector for DDoS attacks. If I'm an adversary, I could try and take out individual applications it's going to take me forever. I take out your DNS, everything's going to stop. I mean, it's that *foundational z. But because its been >> *Hackers no problem, yeah. >> Exactly, so and for that reason, that's why it's constantly targeted. So firstly, my first pitch to customers is, you've got to take this stuff seriously, because when it goes down, everything is down. And the impact to your organization, not just from a brand reputation, but just from running your business is going to be huge. But on top of that, the way to think of DNS is, the nice thing is is you don't have to change your network architecture. If you think about a typical user who clicks on a phishing link. When they click on a phishing link, who's going to see the malicious requests first? Is it your firewall? No, your DNS server. Because you made the request, you have to resolve the malicious domain that you're going to try and connect to. You need to find out the IP address of it. So your DNS server and it's been proven multiple studies that, the vast majority of malware uses DNS as its control plane. So if you want to understand what the bad guys are doing, you know, your DNS servers got a front row seat to exactly what the bad guys are doing. And to implement security on it is you don't have to change your network architecture, because your DNS is already there by default. All you need to do is infuse it with security knowledge, whether that is machine learning, analytics or threat intelligence. But those DNS servers are ideally positioned. They're going to see the malicious activity, regardless of what the application is. So it's foundational, not just in terms of, if it's not there, it's going to cause a massive issue to your field or environment anyway. But even if you secure the DNS, the DNS is also this wonderful tool that is in all the right places and it's also deeper into the network. One of the challenges you mentioned about operations is the challenges is okay, you can block malware but if you don't know the source address of the device that is actually trying to make the request, you don't know what to go and clean up, where's your DNS server, your DHCP server knows exactly who it is because we handed out the IP address, we know the MAC address, we know the IP address, we know the user name, we have all that information that is going to be critical for security operations. And now you can see what *it's or about maybe the first report, you start to see that organizations are waking up to the fact that you have this treasure trove of security operations data that you haven't tapped largely for political reasons, because the security guys can't reach over and grab the necessary DDI network context from those DNS platforms, because typically they're owned by the networking or the server team. >> Before we get into that *force reports, I think that had some threat investigation data. What you're getting at about this DNS is that basically, it's critical infrastructure. And if you try to forget about it, 'cause it works, you lose sight of the real opportunity, which is, if it's critical infrastructure, you got to treat it like critical infrastructure, and make sure it's modernized, refreshed in the right position to manage all this, right? >> Absolutely. Absolutely, yeah. It's unfortunate With the Mirai botnet attack. A lot of organizations, as they said well, okay, we'll just outsource this, we don't have to worry about it. But when it wasn't there, and it wasn't the fact that, I mean, it was an attempt to take out like Minecraft servers. Nothing to do with most of the businesses who were impacted, but there was a lot of collateral damage. And unfortunate is like one of those things is because DNS is a victim of its own success. The fact that is reliable, it is consistent. You don't have lots of DNS outages typically. As a result of that people tend to forget about how critical it is as the role it plays in serving all of your applications and your users. >> Let's get into the *fourth report 'cause they surveyed a bunch of hundreds of security and risk management leaders, both compliance and also security pros that are using DNS, what were your key thoughts on the takeaways from that study? What should people know about it? >> It's very encouraging as up in Infoblox about five years when I first joined, the usage of DNS as a network context as a way to help with security operations is very, very low. And that causes all sorts of issues for organizations when it comes to doing security operations. I mean, a prime example is, the guys who work in security operations, that is the biggest issue for customers right now. They've bought almost too much security gear. And each of those security tools and platforms, they're generating security events. So again, security events from your firewall, or from your IPS or from your neck system, or whatever it happens to be and the burden now falls on the security operations teams. And it's been proven that there's huge amounts of open opportunities because there just, isn't enough trained security operations staff and the ones who are already in the business, are massively overworked and struggle to get through all the security events that have been firing from their security operations tools. So for what I was encouraging from the first report is that organizations are realizing that DHCP is going to help* you be able to identify the fact that these two security events seem completely separate. One of them is got a source address of 10.1, the other ones 20.1, well, you know what? This laptop moved from one side the building to the other and got a different address, it's actually the same device. But based on the traditional security events you're getting from the existing tools, you know, you're going to think it's two separate events, and they're not. Likewise, one of the things that's coming out is that people start to use DNS as an audit trail. And one of the challenges for organizations is, if you get a data breach, what's one of the first questions a journalist is going to ask you is like, well, what is the scope of the breach? What was impacted? And quite often organizations are not prepared. They come back and say, well, at this stage, we don't know. That's a great way for a CEO or CFO to get fired. So a smarter way of doing it is, if you think about you got the devices under investigation, the DNS queries that those* machines have been making is a wonderful audit trail of not just the external resources it's been accessing, but also the internal resources as well, what has been potentially exposed. So I think from the forest report, we're certainly seeing people realizing what were their biggest challenges security operations. Essentially, the DDI data is almost like the oil that's going to grease the wheels of security operations. And if you don't do that, buying more security gear, it's not going to make the problem better, it's actually going to make it worse unless you can operationalize it. >> Yeah, at the end of the day, the failures right there in the low level of critical infrastructure and building floors no one cares what happened on the 10th floor foundations. I got to get your thoughts on this because as you guys have DDI abstraction, DNS, you know, as it's growing, had its evolutions with abstractions, you know, as these things kind of flex, used to be an old expression DNS tricks, you know, you would mangle DNS, and it was a naming system. So you use it the way you use it and then new innovation layers create more upside and more, takes away complexities. How does DNS scale enable value? Because now you got Cloud, you got Cloud native, new software's being written and developers want to rely on the DNS as a critical infrastructure, but also want to be enabled to have, you know, really robust applications. >> Yeah and I think with the, given the fact that all the work has been put into DNS over the last 20 or 30 years, work has resolved in a very highly available very resilient system. And so a lot of stuff has to go wrong for DNS to fully go down. And it's easy to just take things like *Anycast, Anycast allows you to connect to the nearest DNS server, that's going to give you the resolution. So it's going to give you the best performance. This also can give you the high availability and resilience that goes along with that. And I think also from the security guys point of view, is if all the things that we've started to realize is that DNS is a great avenue by which you can detect somewhat unique threats. So one of the things that comes up quite a lot, we're starting to see old malware being re weaponized to exfiltrate data over DNS. So if you're a DevOps guy, and you're building your new application, if someone compromises your application, if I tried to extract the data over HTTP or email, you probably have a solution for that. 6But how many organizations have visibility in the billions of DNS queries that's going to come out your network in a day. Which ones are those might be actually data that has been stolen, it gets encoded and corrupted, chopped up and sent out and DNS packets. Is very difficult for traditional security appliances to understand and really differentiate between legitimate DNS requests, the malicious ones are actually the ones who are benign applications that essentially tunnel over DNS because they're trying to bypass firewalls. So increasingly, DNS is a threat vector for basic data loss. It's also important to understand is really gives you a window into what the adversary is doing. So not just when it comes to data exfiltration, but other things like domain generation algorithms that allow adversaries to maintain control of devices that they compromised. So a lot of that stuff is not just about the high availability and the ubiquity of DNS, but also making sure you can be fully on top of the potential impact of DNS being exploited as a potential backdoor out of your network. >> Critical infrastructure, but also that's where you're going to see the footprints of any kind of activity right there, it's a great observation space as well for detection and analysis, great stuff. Craig, thank you for taking the time, great insight, great conversation. DNS is critical infrastructure, get on it, and people are on it, they're going to go the next level. Getting the next level networking experience is about having that security always on high availability, and protecting the bad guys. Craig, thanks for joining me on this CUBE conversation for the Infoblox virtual event. Thank you. >> Pleasure. Thanks for having me. >> Okay, that's the CUBE coverage of Infoblox is next level networking virtual event. I'm John Furrier, your hosts of the CUBE. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Jul 27 2020

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Infoblox. the borderless enterprise, it's great to be here. and one of things I want to chat with you a lot of the customers that the security model has to change, And one of the things that was and the discussion but the ability to repurpose is kind of the unique thing Infoblox has. for a lot of the customers. and some of the young kids is the number one attack vector And the impact to your organization, refreshed in the right position as the role it plays in serving that DHCP is going to help* you be able Yeah, at the end of the day, So one of the things that and protecting the bad guys. Thanks for having me. Okay, that's the CUBE

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
RajPERSON

0.99+

DavidPERSON

0.99+

Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

CaitlynPERSON

0.99+

Pierluca ChiodelliPERSON

0.99+

JonathanPERSON

0.99+

JohnPERSON

0.99+

JimPERSON

0.99+

AdamPERSON

0.99+

Lisa MartinPERSON

0.99+

Lynn LucasPERSON

0.99+

Caitlyn HalfertyPERSON

0.99+

$3QUANTITY

0.99+

Jonathan EbingerPERSON

0.99+

Munyeb MinhazuddinPERSON

0.99+

Michael DellPERSON

0.99+

Christy ParrishPERSON

0.99+

MicrosoftORGANIZATION

0.99+

Ed AmorosoPERSON

0.99+

Adam SchmittPERSON

0.99+

SoftBankORGANIZATION

0.99+

Sanjay GhemawatPERSON

0.99+

DellORGANIZATION

0.99+

VerizonORGANIZATION

0.99+

AshleyPERSON

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

Greg SandsPERSON

0.99+

Craig SandersonPERSON

0.99+

LisaPERSON

0.99+

Cockroach LabsORGANIZATION

0.99+

Jim WalkerPERSON

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

Blue Run VenturesORGANIZATION

0.99+

Ashley GaarePERSON

0.99+

DavePERSON

0.99+

2014DATE

0.99+

IBMORGANIZATION

0.99+

Rob EmsleyPERSON

0.99+

CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

LynnPERSON

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

Allen CranePERSON

0.99+

Next Level Network Experience Intro V1


 

>>from around the globe. It's the Cube with digital coverage of next level network experience event brought to you by Info blocks Hi ups to Minuteman and welcome to the Cube's coverage of the info blocks virtual event. Digging into the next level networking experience. I'm here with John Furrier, who is the host of the event. John. We've been talking about next level networking for for a few years now. Everything's multi cloud cloud native SAS adoption, really transforming the way that we have to think about networking. Tell us a little bit about this event. >>So as you know, yeah, again go back years from when member VM Ware bought in a sexual like Okay, you know that's going to change the game software to find networking. And we love that. We were all riffing on program ability. You saw the Dev Ops trajectory hitting networking. We would say that's where the action is on this event really kind of speaks to Info Blocks as a company which is really well known for DNS. I mean, they had cricket. Liu Stuart Bailey, that really kind of the pioneers in DNS and security have constantly been adding innovation to it, but DNS is one of those things where it's kind of like not thought about, but it runs everywhere, runs the web. It is critical infrastructure and, you know D HCP. We all know what that is. We have a home router, and then he got I p address management. These have been traditionally different things for enterprises, and everyone has it. They got to deal with it. And it's really, ultimately the location and how things resolved and connect. So you know, it really becomes a foundational opportunity to figure out where the access is not only a remote access, but security. So we had a great bunch of guests looking at looking at the info blocks. Next level networking, because they bought, had an acquisition, a Cube alumni snap route recently, and this caught our attention because they were doing Cloud Native. And one of the guests we had was Glenn Sullivan. He was the founder of Snap Route. He was the the guy who did all the Siri work for Apple. So this guy knows large scale of those cloud native We had kuna Sunni, who's the runs? Corporate development in all of the products for info blocks. He kind of went into the strategy of how they're taking the I won't say boring DNs, but the critical infrastructure of DNS and how they're extending the functionality with an abstraction layer around D D I, which is DNS DCP and management. And then we had some great guests on there. We had a Craig Sanderson from info blocks. He's on there. You'll hear from him. He talked about the security and then finally a customer who's running a big school district who, with Covert 19 exposes all these challenges around what has been called the borderless enterprise. So really, next level is that, you know, how do you deal with all this stuff? And that's been a big issue. So we're gonna unpack all that in this virtual event. We have four great interviews, and so it's going to be a great program. >>Yeah, John, as you said it to some of those foundational pieces of how network is done, a lot of times runs, you know, under the radar, something you don't need to think about. But all of these changes, as we said, you know my data. My network is now highly distributed, especially I would expect that the impact of the global pandemic and work from home are really causing even more of these challenges and to think about distributed infrastructure even more. So what are some of the themes we should be looking for here? How much of them kind of tie into what we've been talking about the last couple of years in some of these cloud native worlds? >>That's great questions to I'll get into some of the themes of the program, but you brought up the covert 19 again. We've been talking about this in our reporting. You've been doing a ton of interviews following all your your stuff as well as well as all of our team. Covert 19 really exposes the aspect of critical infrastructure, and to me it's like it's the It's the great I o T experiment happening in real time. It's forcing companies saying, Hey, the work. The future of work is about workplace. The location is now home workforce. Are the people emotional? They want ease of use. They want a different experience. They're all not in the office workloads and work flows. All of them have the common word working it so I think over 19 exposes this what I call I o t experiment because everyone is now borderless. It changes the game and really puts the pressure on security network access. And ultimately, you know, the bad guys are out there so you could have someone a teacher at home or a worker at home, and they get some malware attack and they're not sophisticated, zoom or whatever they're using for tools. All that's changed and they're vulnerable. So this brings up a huge networking challenge from whether even VP ends or even relevant or not to everything. So, to me, that is a huge point. You're gonna hear that throughout the commentary that that's kind of teased out. But the real things about innovation around the cloud you're gonna hear info blocks and they're experts talk about what they're doing and how they see cloud scale and cloud native integrating into an older paradigm like DNS. And to me, that's the That's the evolution of this DD I concept. That's an abstraction layer that creates innovation opportunities but also takes away a lot of the complexities around managing all the DNS things out there and again, that's the access of the network. It's a it's a place of truth is really kind of low level, but it's really foundational. So to me, that's the main theme. And customers want ease of use into it, whether they're at home or not, and replacing the old ways to putting a box out there. That's the way it was, DNs DNs. People would manage it all. Now they want to have it provisioned, managed a manage service cloud Native Cloud operations because it's only gonna get has to get that way. >>Yeah, it's interesting, John. You know, we watched the whole wave of software defined impact networking. I think of a company like Info blocks. They've been around for decades. They're dominant in the space is that they play in. Traditionally, it would have been an appliance that you thought of for their environment you talked about. They now have the snapper out acquisition as part of what they're doing. So it just what should we be looking for? What are they really the main point? That Info Box wants to bring people together for this next level networking experience? >>Well, Glenn Sullivan was one of my favorite discussions, and he's been on. He's a cube alumni and he's so smart. He came again from Apple. He knows that he knows what large scale looks like. Snap route was really early and was one of those technologies that just, you know, it has the core DNs built in kubernetes built in. They were doing some pretty aggressive, I would call it for lack of a better word kubernetes on bare metal. They were doing stuff, but really super cool kubernetes you combine that with DNS and info blocks actually has the core DNs that's actually in every kubernetes of in the CN CF. So everything that comes out of the CN CF from a core DNS standpoint is info blocks. So yeah, they're definitely relevant in the whole CNC of Cloud Native foundation, effort around cloud native. And as that scales just micro services, you're gonna have to have this new abstraction layer and also be compatible with automation. So that's, um, we didn't go into the weeds on that, but that was essentially the head room for all the different conversations roles of cloud native and open source technologies enabling borderless enterprises because you got to have the operation side and you got to have the program ability. So you start to get into the true dev ops that we used to riff on all the time. You know, move fast, break stuff to don't break anything. Right? So ops, ops and Dev have to come together. This is where the winners and losers of networking will be determined. You gotta provide the enablement for developers, but you gotta provide the stability of an operational checklist. >>Yeah, John, I guess the last question I want to ask you before we get to the guests, You know, that operational change, You know, we saw for so many years it was, Oh, all the networking people, they're going to have to learn to code up weight. Dev ops is actually gonna spreading the information around. And maybe I won't need a particular networking team. But we understand when things go wrong, you've gotta have somebody with the expertise that could be able to dig in. What are you know, who should be listening to this? What are some of those organizational implications for what you're talking about with info blocks? >>That's a great point. I mean, the biggest challenge that I see in all this entire digital transformation as it starts to get down into the cloud native world is, most people are asking the wrong questions. They don't even know what they're talking about When it comes down to trying to compare an apple to an orange, they're really kind of disconnected on language. You got server people in networking. We know that they have different languages, and working together is key. When you think about something like DNS, that's a technical. That's an operator that's an I t person, that someone who's running critical infrastructure. But when you start to think about the security aspect of it, it's a CSO conversation. So what I'm seeing come out of this that's critical, is when you start to get into this cloud native world. You have more stakeholders in the value proposition of all this and with covert 19. As I pointed out, you know you got hacks and you got security. So when you talk with security, that's up and down the organization. That's the CSO down to the teams themselves. We have about automation horizontally scaling with Dev ops. That's multiple teams, so you have an integration kind of stakeholders. You know DNS servers, all networking. All these people have to kind of come together. So the people who should watch this are the people who are concerned about scaling the modern enterprise, which is borderless, which is code word for multiple access points and multiple connection points. R i o t um, how do you make that work? And that's the real challenge. So it's kind of like an I t a person who wants to figure out where the puck will be so they could be there when it's there and skate to where the puck is, as we say, and and the CSO of the senior people have to understand that DNS cannot be overlooked because whether it's a managed service. So So Cloudflare had a huge out into the DNS. Setting DNS takes down everything. So it's ah, it's the most fertile ground and the most targeted ground for attacks, and that is well understood. So getting the right questions in place foundational we had to set up the modern enterprise, and then that's going to be a construct for the cloud native architecture and ultimately the developer environment. So yeah, it's a topic that's kind of nerdy with DNS, But it has implications across digital transformation. >>Jonah expecting lots of conversations around security and automation how they tie into all of the modern and modernization themes. Absolutely some pieces that shouldn't be left behind. All right, John Ferrier, Thanks so much for helping us kick off. Really interested. Make sure to stick with us off to listen to all the guest interviews here that John has done the info blocks. Next level networking experience. Instrument, man. And thank you for watching the Cube. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Published Date : Jul 23 2020

SUMMARY :

the way that we have to think about networking. that really kind of the pioneers in DNS and security have constantly been adding innovation to it, But all of these changes, as we said, you know my data. that's the That's the evolution of this DD I concept. They now have the snapper out acquisition as part of what they're doing. You gotta provide the enablement for developers, but you gotta provide the stability of an operational checklist. Yeah, John, I guess the last question I want to ask you before we get to the guests, You know, So getting the right questions in place foundational we had to set up the modern enterprise, of the modern and modernization themes.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
JohnPERSON

0.99+

John FerrierPERSON

0.99+

Glenn SullivanPERSON

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

AppleORGANIZATION

0.99+

Liu Stuart BaileyPERSON

0.99+

Craig SandersonPERSON

0.99+

SiriTITLE

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

Snap RouteORGANIZATION

0.98+

Info BoxORGANIZATION

0.98+

CloudflareTITLE

0.98+

JonahPERSON

0.97+

CubeORGANIZATION

0.97+

Info blocksORGANIZATION

0.97+

appleORGANIZATION

0.97+

VM WareORGANIZATION

0.96+

Info BlocksORGANIZATION

0.94+

info blocksORGANIZATION

0.94+

kuna SunniPERSON

0.93+

over 19QUANTITY

0.93+

four great interviewsQUANTITY

0.92+

decadesQUANTITY

0.92+

Covert 19OTHER

0.88+

snap routeORGANIZATION

0.86+

orangeORGANIZATION

0.86+

globalEVENT

0.8+

covertTITLE

0.77+

last couple of yearsDATE

0.77+

pandemicEVENT

0.77+

MinutemanORGANIZATION

0.75+

Covert 19ORGANIZATION

0.72+

snapperORGANIZATION

0.69+

SASORGANIZATION

0.67+

Cloud NativeORGANIZATION

0.62+

19QUANTITY

0.5+

19OTHER

0.5+

CubeCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.44+

DevEVENT

0.28+

Craig Hibbert, Vcinity | CUBE Conversation, March 2020


 

from the silicon angle media office in Boston Massachusetts it's the queue now here's your host David on tape hello everyone and welcome to this special presentation we're gonna introduce you to a new kind of company first you might recall we've been reporting extensively on multi cloud and the need to create consistent experiences across cloud at high performance now a key to that outcome is the ability to leave data in place where it belongs not moving it around and bringing a cloud like experience to that data we've talked about kubernetes as a multi cloud enabler but it's an insufficient condition for success latency matters in fact it's critical and the ability to access data at high speeds wherever that data lives well we believe be a fundamental tenet of multi cloud now today I want to introduce you to a company called vicinity V CIN ity the simplest way to think of this company is they turn wide area networks into a global land and with me is Craig Hobart to talk about this he's the VP at vicinity Craig good to see you again thanks a lot thanks Howie middays good to be back so when I first heard about this company I said wow no it can't that breaking the law of physics so first of all tell me a little bit background about the company sure yeah absolutely so about two decades ago this company was formerly known as Bay Microsystems they were they were asked to come up with a solution specific for the United States military and there was a couple of people involved in that that tender fortunately for us Bay Microsystems prevailed and they've had their solution in place with the US military for well over a decade approach in two decades so that is the foundation that is the infrastructure of where we originated so did I get it right it kind of come through what you do can you add some color to that yeah yeah as much as I can right so based on who the the main consumer is so we do some very creative things where we we take the benefits of tcp/ip which is the retransmit the ability to ensure the data arrives there in one piece but we take away all the bad things with it things like dropping packets typically ones are lossy networks and and most people are accustomed to two fiber channel networks which of course which are lossless right and so what we've done is take the beauty of tcp/ip but remove the hindrances to it and that's how we get it to function at the same speeds as Al and overall one so but there's got to be more to it than that I mean it just sounds like magic right so you're able to leave data in place and access it at very low latency very high speeds so you know what's the secret sauce behind that is it is it you know architecture patents I mean yeah absolutely so we have over 30 unique patents that contribute to that we're not just doing those things that I just thought about before is a lot more we're actually shortly in the typical OSI stack the the moving through those layers and using our DMA so a lot of companies users today obviously infinite out uses in between the nodes Dell uses at HP is it's a very ubiquitous technology but typically it has a very short span it's designed for low latency as a 21-foot limitation there's certain things you can do to get around that now so what we did in our earlier iterations is extend that so you could go across the world but utilizing that inside a proprietary sort of l2 a tunneling protocol allows you to reinstate those calls that happened on the local side and bring them up on the other side of the world so presumably that sets up for Rocky it does yeah and rocky to you absolutely so we use that we use it converged Ethernet we can do some magical things where we can go in InfiniBand and potentially come out rocky at the other end there's a lot of really good things that we do obviously if it uh bans expensive converged Ethernet it's a lot more feasible and a lot easier to adapt when we can make sure I understand this so you think InfiniBand you're thinking you know in a data center you know proximate and shocking synchronous distances are you saying that you can extend that we can but extended not extending finna band but you're saying you can you translate it into Ethernet yeah yeah we we translate into we have some proprietary mechanisms obviously that that all the patents on but in essence that's exactly what we're doing yeah we take in the earlier years InfiniBand and extend that to wherever it needed to be over any distance and and now we do it with conversion and infinite in like speeds yeah yeah so obviously you've got that we can't get around physics oh I mean it for instance between our Maryland office and our San Jose office it's a 60 millisecond r/t team we can't get beyond that we can't achieve physics but what we can do is deliver us sometimes a 20x payload inside that same RTT so in essence you could argue that would be due to the speed of light by delivering a higher payload is what's the trade-off I mean there's got to be something here yeah so it's today it's not it's not ideal for every single situation if you were to do a transactional LTP a database at one side of the world to the other it would that would not be great for that something files yeah so so what we actually do I mean some some great examples we have is seismic data we have some companies that are doing seismic exploration and it used to take a lot of time to bring that data back to shore copied to a disk array and then you know copied to multiple disk arrays across the world so people can analyze it in that particularly use case we bring that data back we can even access it via satellite directly from the boats that are doing the the surveys and then we can have multiple people around the world looking at that sample live when we do a demonstration for our customers that shows that so that's one great example of time to market and getting ahead of your competition what's the file system underneath so we have a choice of different file system is a parallel file system we chose spectrum Connect it's a very ubiquitous file system it's well known it has there is no other file system that has the the hours of runtime that that has we off you skate the complexities from the customers we do all of the tuning so it's a custom solution and so they don't see it but we do have some of the hyper scales that want to use lustre and cluster and be GFS and things that we can accommodate those so you have a choice but the preferred is gpfs is a custom one we have you absolutely if somebody wants to use another one we have done that and can certainly have dialogues around it could talk about how this is different from competitors I think of like guys like doing Wayne acceleration sure sure yeah so what acceleration regardless of who you are today with it's predicated upon caching substantial caching and some of the problems with that are obviously once you turn on encryption that compression and those deduplication or data reduction technologies are hampered in that caching based on who our primary customer was we're handed encrypted data from them we encrypted as well so we have double layers of encrypted data and that does not affect our performance so massive underlying technological differences that allow you to adapt to the modern world with encrypted data so we've been talking about I said in the intro a lot about multi cloud can you tell us sooner where do you fit in but first of all how do you see that evolving sure and where do you guys fit in Joe so I actually read to assess very certain dividends I read your article before we had a dialogue last week and there was a good article talking about the complexities around multi cloud and I think you know you look at Google it's got some refactoring involved in it they're all great approaches we think the best way to deal with multi cloud today is to hold your data yourself and bring those services that you want to it and before we came along you couldn't do that so think now a movie studio we have a company in California that needs people working on video editing across the world and typically they would proliferate multiple copies out to storage in India and China and Australia and not only is that costly but it's incredibly time consuming and in one of those instances it opens up security holes and the movies were getting hacked and stolen and of course that's billions of dollars worth of damage to to any movie company so by having one set of security tenants in your in your physical place you can now bring anybody you want to consume that day to bring them all together bid GCP AWS as you for the compute and you maintain your data and that segues well into things like gdpr and things like that where the data isn't moving so you're not affected by those rules and regulations the data stays in one place it's we think it's a huge advantage so has that helped you get some business I mean the fact that you have to move data and you can keep it in you can give us an example yeah it absolutely doesn't mean if you think of companies like pharmaceutical companies that have a lot of data to process whether it's electron microscopy data nano tissue samples they need heavy iron to do that we're talking craze so we can facilitate the ability to rent out supercomputers and the security company of the farmers is happy to do that because it's not leaving the four walls present the data and run it live because we're getting land speeds right we're giving you land speed performance over the wine so it's it's possible we've actually done it for them to do that craze make money by renting the farmers are happy because they can't afford craze it's a great way to accelerate time to marketing in that case they're making drug specific for your genome specific for your body tissue so the efficacy of the drugs is greatly improved as well well as you have been we know the storage business primary storage right now is I've said it's a knife fight yeah and it's a cloud is eating away at it flash was injected and gave people a lot of head rooms and they're not buying spindles for performance anymore but but data protection and backup and and data management is really taking off do you guys fit in there is are there use cases for you you there when you think of companies like cookie City and rubric and and many others that are the cloud seems to be a tailwind for them is it a tailwind for you I think so and I think he just brought up a great point if you look at and again another one of your articles I'm giving you some thanks Rick you know saying I won't forget it is the article you wrote I thought was excellent about how data is changed it's not so much about the primary data now it's about the backup data and what rubric and cohesive tea especially have done is bring value to that data and they've elevated it up the stack for analytics and AI and made available to DevOps and that's brilliant but today that can find it too within the four walls of that company what vicinity can do for those companies has come along and make that data available anywhere in the world at anytime so if they've got different countries that they're trying to sell into that may have diff back up types or different data they can access this and model the data and see how it's relevant to their specific industry right as we say our zeros and ones are different than your zeros and ones so it's a massive expansion it take that richness that they've created and extrapolate that globally and that's what facility brings to the table you know within the days of big data we used to look at high performance computing as an example going more into commercial notes that's clearly happened but mainstream is still VMware is there a VMware play for you guys or opportunity great question great question in q1 of this year so so January end of January 2020 typically in the intro we talked about how we were born on a6 which is incredibly expensive and limited you get one go ahead and then we move to FPGAs we actually wrote a lot of libraries that took the FPGAs into a VMware instance and so what we're doing now with our customers is when we go in and present they say there's no way you can do this and we show them the demo when we actually leave they can log-in download to VMware instances put one in in these case one the west coast or with one of my customers we have now one on the east coast one in London download the VM and see the improvement that we can get over their dedicated lines or even the Internet by using the VM fact we did that in a test with AWS last week and got a 90 percent improvement just using the VM so when you are talking to customers what's the you know what's the the situation that you're looking for the the problem that comes up that you say bone that's vicinity maybe you could show not you do slash call in there so I think a lot of that is people looking to use multi cloud right that aren't sure which way they want to go how they want to do it and for other companies that can't move the data there's a lot of companies that either went to the cloud and came back or cannot go to the cloud because of the sensitivity of the data so and also things like the the seismic exploration right there is no cloud solution that makes that expedient enough to consume it as it's been developed and so anybody that needs movie editing large file transfer dr you know if you're moving a lot of files from one location to another we can't get involved in storage replication but if it's a file share we can do that and one of the great things we do is if you have cysts or NFS shares today we can consume those shares with the with the spectrum scale the gpfs under the cover and make that appear anywhere else in the world and we do that through our proprietary technology of course so now remote offices can collapse a lot of the infrastructure they have and consume the resources from the main data center because we can reach right back here at land space they just become an extension of the land no different than me plug in the laptop into an Ethernet you pay a penalty on first byte we do but it's almost transparent because of the way tcp/ip works very chatty yeah it is so we drop all that and that that's a great question an analogy we use in house is you turn on a garden house and it takes a few seconds for that garden hose to fill but with us that water stream is constant and it's constantly output in water with tcp/ip a bit stop start stop start stop start and if you have to start doing retransmit which is a regular occurrence of tcp/ip and that entire capacity of that garden hose will be dropped and then refilled and this is where our advantage is the ability to keep that full and keep serving data in that what you just described makes people really think twice about multi clouds essentially they want to put the right workload in the right place and kind of leave it there and essentially it's like the old mini computer days they're creating you know silos you're helping sort of bridge those we are that and that is the plot and so you know we have B to B we are B to C I mean if you sit and think about the possibilities I mean it could end up on every one of these right this software you know do we tackle every Wireless point this is this is some of the things that we can do you're an app or do we put vicinity on that to take the the regular tcp/ip and send the communication you know through through our proprietary Network around proprietary configuration so there's a lot of things that we can do we can we can affect everybody and that is that is the goal so divide by hardware from you or software or both that's another great question so if you are in a data center in the analogy I just gave before about being a a big data center you would use a piece of hardware that's got accelerants in it and then the remote office could use a smaller piece of hardware or just the VM with the movie company example I gave you earlier India and Australia is edit in live files on the west coast of the United States of America just using the VM so it depends what we come in as we look at your needs and we don't oversell you we try and sell you the correct solution and that typically is a combination of some hardware in the main data center and some software at the others so I've said you know multi-cloud in many ways creates more problems today than it solves you guys are really in there attacking that multi-cloud is a reality it's it's happening you know I said historically it's been a symptom of multi-vendor but now it's becoming increasingly a strategy and I think frankly I think companies like yours are critical in the ecosystem to really you know drive that transformation for organizations so congratulations thank you thank you we hope so and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you in the future excellent well thanks for coming in Craig and we'll talk to you soon thank you for watching everybody this is Dave latte for the cube and we'll see you next time

Published Date : Mar 5 2020

**Summary and Sentiment Analysis are not been shown because of improper transcript**

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Bay MicrosystemsORGANIZATION

0.99+

21-footQUANTITY

0.99+

CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

90 percentQUANTITY

0.99+

March 2020DATE

0.99+

IndiaLOCATION

0.99+

LondonLOCATION

0.99+

AustraliaLOCATION

0.99+

Craig HibbertPERSON

0.99+

DavidPERSON

0.99+

Craig HobartPERSON

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

ChinaLOCATION

0.99+

billions of dollarsQUANTITY

0.99+

RickPERSON

0.99+

last weekDATE

0.99+

San JoseLOCATION

0.99+

January end of January 2020DATE

0.99+

Boston MassachusettsLOCATION

0.99+

20xQUANTITY

0.98+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.98+

CraigPERSON

0.98+

todayDATE

0.98+

over 30 unique patentsQUANTITY

0.98+

one locationQUANTITY

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.97+

60 millisecondQUANTITY

0.97+

US militaryORGANIZATION

0.97+

one sideQUANTITY

0.97+

MarylandLOCATION

0.97+

twiceQUANTITY

0.96+

one pieceQUANTITY

0.96+

Dave lattePERSON

0.96+

JoePERSON

0.95+

oneQUANTITY

0.94+

United States militaryORGANIZATION

0.94+

a lot of filesQUANTITY

0.94+

United States of AmericaLOCATION

0.94+

one setQUANTITY

0.93+

HPORGANIZATION

0.93+

DellORGANIZATION

0.93+

one placeQUANTITY

0.92+

a lot of dataQUANTITY

0.9+

couple of peopleQUANTITY

0.9+

vicinityORGANIZATION

0.9+

InfiniBandTITLE

0.9+

VMwareTITLE

0.88+

q1 of this yearDATE

0.86+

gdprTITLE

0.85+

west coastLOCATION

0.83+

V CINORGANIZATION

0.83+

about two decades agoDATE

0.82+

a lot of companiesQUANTITY

0.82+

two fiber channelQUANTITY

0.8+

VcinityPERSON

0.78+

single situationQUANTITY

0.76+

east coastLOCATION

0.72+

two decadesQUANTITY

0.71+

timeQUANTITY

0.68+

InfiniBandCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.68+

lotQUANTITY

0.67+

WaynePERSON

0.67+

VMware playTITLE

0.67+

OSIOTHER

0.63+

few secondsQUANTITY

0.63+

over a decadeQUANTITY

0.61+

doubleQUANTITY

0.56+

GCPORGANIZATION

0.54+

four wallsQUANTITY

0.53+

a6COMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.51+

InfiniBandORGANIZATION

0.39+

Sizzle Reel | UiPath Forward 2019


 

it's gonna come from the expansion potential right none of our customers are more than one percent automated from an RPA perspective so that shows you the massive opportunity but back to the market site data size I Craig and I in the other annals we talk often about because I think the Tam views are very low you look at our markets here let's just get some real data out there right our market share in 2017 was 5% let's use Craig's linear data for now you know our market share this year's over 20% our market share applying and I don't get the exact numbers you don't provide guidance anymore it's substantially we're substantially gaining share now I believe that's the reality of the market I think because we know blue president's numbers we'd go four times faster than them every quarter Automation anywhere won't share their numbers but you know I can make some guesses but either way you know I think we're gaining share on them significantly I think you know Craig's not gonna want us to be 50% of the market two years he's just not and so he's gonna have to figure out how do we didn't have it brought more broadly about about that market trend he talked about it on stage today about how does he calculate the AI impact and the other piece is now the process mining now that we are integrating process mining into RP a right it strategic component of that how does that also involve the market so I think you have both the expansion in the product portfolio which tries and then you have the fact that customers are gonna add more automation at faster pace and more robots and that's where the expansion really kicks in them we often say you know look is up there's a company that you know one day will be public company our a our our number is very important we do openly transparently share that but you know the other big metric will be you know dollar base net expansion rate the shows really how customers are expanding I think that I know what our number is we haven't shared it yet I know all the SAS companies the top 10 I can tell you you know we're higher than all of them the market projections are low and I think he knows in what you were just saying - is that that the company's pitch is that we are freeing people we are liberating them from the mundane from the drudgery from the data entry and and as you as you pointed out rightfully a lot of the customers are saying oh no it's giving our time it's giving our employees time back to focus on the higher level tasks the more creative aspects of their job butBut I wonder if it is in fact what what it really is doing two jobs I mean I think that there's a really telling line in that Forex profile of Daniel Dinah's who is the CEO of this company's founder of this company the newly minted billionaire the first ever bot billionaire exactly where it was an MIT professor quoted saying you know we always say to the companies that we say give us your data and we'll tell you if it is in fact having this job-killing effect and he said the companies don't want to give that up so accelerate that accelerate we're one of the largest nice providers is the only thing that we do where process automation and AI company and our sole focus has been process automation since our inception in our past lives were generalists we did well and wanted to do it again so when we started accelerating we wanted to make sure that we focus on a very specific vertical niche and process automation was just starting up the optic about mid-2016 ish I think one of the big trends that's out there I mean our PA has come onto the scene I like how you phrase it Dave because you refer to it as rightly so automation is not new and so we sort of say the big question out there is is our pages flavor of the month art being is definitely not and I come from a firm we put out a blog earlier this year called our PA is dead long live automation and that's because when we look at our PA and when we think about when we think about what its impact is in the marketplace to us the whole point of automation in any form regardless of whether it's our PA whether it be a good old old-school BPM whatever it may be its mission is to drive transformation and so the HFS perspective and what all of our research shows and sort of justifies that the goal is what everyone is striving towards is to get to that transformation and so the reason we put out that piece the RP is dead long live integrated automation platforms is to make the point that if you're not because what is our PA allow it affords an opportunity for change to drive transformation so if you are not actually looking at your processes within your company and taking this opportunity to say what can I change what processes are just bad and we've been doing them I'm not even sure why for so long what can we transform what can we optimize what can we invent if you're not taking that opportunity as an enterprise to truly embrace the change and move towards transformation that's a missed opportunity so I always say our PA you can kind of couch it as one of many technologies but what RP has really done for the marketplace today it's given business users the leaders the realization that they can have a role in their own transformation and that's one of the reasons why it's actually become very important but a single tool in its own right will never be the holistic answer that's a very good question I think it's a question that has been very common throughout this entire conference I would say you know when I think about scaling what I've noticed over the past few years is that you know the actual bot development is about 25 percent of the work that you need to do right when it comes to scale there is everything outside of the actual development is the important part so how are you funneling opportunities into a pipeline how are you streamlining the entire process reengineering of you know fitting an RPA into an existing process you know what is what are the governance that what's the governance you have in place to make sure that the code of that development is clean and can be maintained long term and then more importantly I think that people overlook you know the people think of scale is being able to develop a lot of bots I think more importantly what scale is is being able to efficiently maintain a large portfolio bots and that's what I've realized this year we've got now about 300 automations in production and you know your reputation as an organization is really on how well you maintain those box because if your bots are consistently failing and you're not fixing them quick enough for your functional users to leverage them then you lose a lot of credibility so I think that's been a big learning for us as we reach how are you guys thinking about the way in which a user worker interacts with that that fog I think it's it's more like a dance and and less like a task manager right so you might think in classic automation you know click a button go do this thing click about and go do that thing that the automation is happening when you want it to the way that our platform is written the robot can listen to what you're doing it can monitor for when you click on a specific button or for when you move files to a folder so think about it less like a conscious effort to guide the robot and more as a a collaborative you know effort where where the robot is seeing what you're doing and taking action to help you and do things on your behalf and then letting you know when they're done so it's the paradigm is changing for work and when you have a robot on your computer it's gonna open up a new way of doing your daily act and and the enabler there is what machine learning machine intelligence it's a combination of things so think about machine learning and AI as just one tool that that robot has to use both CR as well you know we did a demo earlier this week where we took receipts moved him to a folder the robot sees that you've moved receipts into a folder can bounce it off an end point that and break apart those receipts using OCR load that all into excel and help you with your expense report so think about things like this you things you need to do you do what you would normally do put receipts in a folder and the robot takes care of the rest the most fascinating thing about RPA right now is that it's really highlighting the problems that organizations have all their accidents of history are really being brought up by RBA and then you've got these digital darlings that they're trying to compete with the greenfield site kind of people and some of those don't have beautiful back offices but let's not go there for a minute so it our PA is an opportunity for companies to link their digital dreams with their existing legacy nightmares I definitely think we're seeing less tech spending expected for q4 and I think that will spill into 2020 based on the ETR and enterprise technology research data that we see but I think it's actually a healthy pullback I kind of agree with guy on that front and I actually think it is good for our PA I think our PA is one of those sectors that you see in the EGR surveys that is gaining share relative to other tech spending and I think that will continue in any downturn so I expect softness you know however you define downturn I don't think it's going to be falling off the cliff or a disaster but I definitely think spending will be more tepid one of the nice things about our PA is you can take your software robots and apply them to an existing process and a lot of times changing processes not a lot sighs almost always changing processes is painful however we've talked to some customers that have said by applying our PA to our business it's exposed some really bad processes have you experienced that and can you maybe share that experience with us absolutely so for us one of the initial robots may apply to a customer facing process it was our field team trying to get back to our customer with with some information and we realized that the the cycle time was very long and the reason is there are four functions involved in answering the question and seven different applications are being touched all the way from Excel to ERP CRM so with it obviously bringing a strategic solution to fix the cycle time and reduce that to streamline the process was going to take us long so our PA was great help we'd reduce the cycle time by putting a robot and we were able to get back to ours please sales team in the field in matter of minutes what used to take hours was now being responded in minutes now that doesn't mean that process is perfect but that's unacceptable steam was in the field before you know streamlining and going into a bigger initiative anything you could share Christine coming from a software engineer background I at least I had the tendency to don't give enough credit to sales to marketing and not even to the customers we understand the customers in the so we build technology for the sake of technology so we were really fortunate to have some multi customers what we didn't understand how because I thought that customers should go to themselves to test and find the best technology out there and just go with it I I was really kind of I had a lot of blind spots on how this world operates but after I've started to visit customers and understand their pain points and their requests actually machine using our own technology because they use it in the real world so that message that that completely transform my thinking so I went back to my engineering teams tonight and I tell the guys from this day I don't wanna ever here we don't fix bugs and we do features and we do this when the customers say you do this you say thank you thank you for showing me the light I will do this that's that makes we create the better draw [Music]

Published Date : Feb 24 2020

**Summary and Sentiment Analysis are not been shown because of improper transcript**

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
2017DATE

0.99+

5%QUANTITY

0.99+

ChristinePERSON

0.99+

2020DATE

0.99+

ExcelTITLE

0.99+

50%QUANTITY

0.99+

two jobsQUANTITY

0.99+

two yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

Daniel DinahPERSON

0.99+

MITORGANIZATION

0.99+

seven different applicationsQUANTITY

0.99+

more than one percentQUANTITY

0.99+

mid-2016DATE

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.98+

excelTITLE

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

tonightDATE

0.98+

four functionsQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.98+

todayDATE

0.98+

q4DATE

0.97+

bothQUANTITY

0.97+

earlier this yearDATE

0.97+

one toolQUANTITY

0.97+

about 300 automationsQUANTITY

0.95+

about 25 percentQUANTITY

0.95+

single toolQUANTITY

0.95+

this yearDATE

0.93+

over 20%QUANTITY

0.93+

DavePERSON

0.93+

earlier this weekDATE

0.92+

top 10QUANTITY

0.92+

one dayQUANTITY

0.89+

2019DATE

0.87+

EGRORGANIZATION

0.85+

RBAORGANIZATION

0.82+

SASORGANIZATION

0.81+

RPATITLE

0.73+

CraigORGANIZATION

0.68+

lotQUANTITY

0.62+

UiPath ForwardTITLE

0.62+

a lot of botsQUANTITY

0.61+

past few yearsDATE

0.59+

Sizzle ReelORGANIZATION

0.51+

customersQUANTITY

0.49+

manyQUANTITY

0.47+

Dan Kohn, Executive Director, CNCF | KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2019


 

>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE, covering Kubecon and CloudNativeCon brought to you by Redhat, a CloudNative computing foundation and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back to theCUBE, we are here in San Diego where we are keeping CloudNative classy. I'm Stu Miniman, and my cohost is John Troyer, and we are happy to welcome back to the program, our host, Dan Kohn, who is the executive director of the CloudNative computing foundation, or the CNCF. Dan, thank you so much for having us. >> Thrilled to be back again. >> All right, and, yeah, so our fourth year doing this show, the big shows-- >> Dan: Nothing's really changed. You just tear right along the same level. One year to the next, you can just confuse them pretty easily.. >> So, you know, Dan, we actually did a prediction show yesterday, and I said, maybe it's my math background, but I look back two years ago, it was four thousand, then eight thousand, now twelve thousand, so I predict Boston must be sixteen thousand because I was used to those standardized tests, but with the growth, you never know, and it is very difficult, you know, we talk about planning, we've talked, this facility was booked before-- >> Dan: Two years ago. >> --the curve really started taking off. So, help us set the stage a little bit, we're getting towards the end of the event, but you know, tons of day zero things, so many sessions, so many people, there were pre-show events I heard that started like the end of last week, so, it's a small city in this community in so many pieces, and the CNCF helps enable all of it. >> It does, and what's fun for us is just that, the community is out there adopting these technologies and contributing to it and growing, and being able to come together, this is always our biggest event in North America but also in Europe and China. It's just a really nice snapshot of the point of time, in saying, okay, where are things, how many companies are interested in having sponsor booths, how many developers are there, how many track, but, I think maybe my favorite anecdote from Kubecon CloudNativeCon San Diego is that there was a, so we offer, a CFP track, a call for proposals that's extremely competitive, only 12% of the talks get accepted. And then we have a maintainer track, where the different providers can have either an intro, a deep-dive, or both. So the deep dive for the project Helm, which is not even a graduated project yet, I mean, it's very widely used, package manager for Kubernetes, but the deep dive for Helm had more than 1600 people inside their session, which is more than we had at all of attending Kubecon 2015 and 2016 combined. >> So, Dan, one of the words that gets mentioned a lot in this space, and it has lots of different meanings, is "scale". You know, we talk about Kubernetes built for big scale, we're talking about Edge computing which goes to small scale. This event, you look at the ecosystem. There's a thirty foot banner with all of the logos there, you look at the landscape-- >> Dan: They're not that big, either. >> --there are so many logos on there. Actually, I really thought you had an enjoyable yet useful analogy in your opening keynote. You talk about Minecraft. I've got a boy, he plays Xbox, I've seen Minecraft, so when he pulls up the little chart and there's like, you know, all of these little things on the side, my son can tell you how they're used and what you can build with them, I would be completely daunted looking at that, much like many of the people coming to this show, and they look around and they're like, I don't even know where to start. >> And that was fun keynote for me to put together, because I did need to make sure, both on the Minecraft part, that all the formulas were correct, I didn't want anyone... But then I drew the analogy to Kubernetes and how it is based on a set of building blocks, hundreds of them, that have evolved over time, and for that, I actually did some software archeology of reaching out to the people who created the original IPFW, Linux firewall 20 years ago based on PSD and then the evolution since then, made sure that they were comfortable with my description of it. But now, bringing it out to Kubecon, CNCF, we have a lot of projects now, so we're up to 43. When we met in Seattle four years ago, it was 2. And so it's definitely incumbent on CNCF to do a good job, and we can probably do an even better one on trying to draw this trail map, this recommended path through understanding the technologies, deciding on which ones people might want to adopt. >> Yeah, I think that would be really interesting. In fact, the words trail map kind of came up on Twitter, today, I saw. And one of the things that struck me was how the first rule of Kubecon is, well, Kubernetes is not maybe in the center of everything, it's underneath everything, but, like you said, 42 projects in the CNCF, many more projects, open-source projects, of course, from different vendors, from different coalitions, that you can see here on the show floor as well, if not in a session, so, without giving a maybe a CNCF 101, what does the path forward look like in terms of that, the growth of projects within the CNCF umbrella, the prominence of Kubecon, are we headed towards CloudNativeCon? >> Well, we've always been calling it Kubecon CloudNativeCon, and we could reverse the names, but I don't see any particular drive to do that. But I would really emphasize, and give credit to Craig McLuckie and some of the other people who originally set up CNCF, where Google had this technology, if they'd come to the Linux Foundation and said, we want to call it the Kubernetes Foundation, we probably would've said yes to that. But the impact, then, would be that all of these other technologies and approaches would have come in and said, we need to become part of the Kubernetes project, and instead, there was a vision of an ecosystem, and the reality is that Kubernetes is still by far the largest project. I mean, if you look at the total number of contributors, I believe it's approximately the same between Kubernetes and our other 42 projects combined. So, and of course, there's overlap. But in that sense, in some ways, Kubernetes sort of represents the sun, and the other projects are orbiting around it, but from the beginning, the whole idea was to say that we wanted to allow a diversity of different approaches, and CNCF has had this very clear philosophy that we're not king makers, that if you look at our landscape document, where we look at different functions like key management or container run times or databases or others, there can be multiple CNCF hosted projects in each box. And so far at least, that approach seems to be working quite well. >> Yeah, Dan, having been to a number of these, the maturity and progress is obvious. Something we've said is Kubernetes is really table sticks at this point, no matter where I go, there is going to be Kubernetes, and therefore, I've seen it some over the last year or so, but very prominent on this show, we're talking about work loads, we're talking about applications, you know, it's defining and explaining that CloudNative piece of it, and the tough thing is, you know, modern applications and building applications and that AppDev community. So, you know, speak a little bit-- You've got a very diverse audience here, talk about the personas you have to communicate with, and who you're attracting to this. I know they put out lots of metrics as to the surveys and who's coming and who's participating. >> Well, we do, and we'll be publishing those, and I love the fact. I think some people misunderstand in the thinking that Kubecon CloudNativeCon is all infrastructure engineers, and something like a third or more of the attendees are application developers, and so I do think there's this natural move, particularly towards AppDev. The difference is that on the infrastructure side, there's just a really strong consensus about Kubernetes, as you're saying, where on the application development side, it's still very early days. And I mean, if anything, I think really the only area that there is consensus on is that the abstractions that Kubernetes provides are not the ones that we want to have regular application developers at most enterprises working with, that they shouldn't actually need to build their own container and then write the YAML in order to configure it. Brian Liles hit that point nicely with his keynote today around Rails. But so we can agree that what we have isn't the right outcome, we can agree that whatever are the winning solutions are very likely underneath going to be building those containers and writing the YAML. But there are so many different approaches right now, at a high layer on what that right interface is. >> Yeah, I mean, just, one example I have, I had the opportunity to interview Bloomberg for the second time. And a year ago, we had talked very much about the infrastructure, and this year we talked about really, they've built internally that PaaS layer, so that their AppDevs, they might know that there's Kubernetes, but they don't have to interface with that at all. I've had a number of the CNCF end user members participate, maybe, speak to that, the community of end users participating, and end user usage overall. >> Yeah, so when we first met in Seattle four years ago, we had three members of our end user community. We appreciated them joining early, but that was a tough call. But to be up to 124 now, representing almost every industry, all around the world, just a huge number of brand names, has been fantastic. What is interesting is, if you go talk to them, almost all of them are using Kubernetes as the underlying layer for their own internal PaaS, and so the regular developers in their organizations can often just want to type get push, and then have the continuous integration run and the things built and then deployed out and everything. But it's somewhat surprising there hasn't yet been a level of consensus on what that sort of common PaaS, the common set of abstractions on top should be. There's a ton of our members and developers and others are all working to sort of build that winning solution, but I don't have a prediction for you yet. >> And of course, skill interoperability and skill transferability is going to be key in growing this ecosystem, but I thought the stats on you know, the searches you can do on the number of job openings for Kubernetes is incredible. >> Yeah, so on the interoperability, we were very pleased to announce Tuesday that we've now passed 100 certified vendors, and of all the things that CNCF does, probably even including Kubecon, I might say that that certified Kubernetes program is the one that's had the biggest impact. To have implementations from over 100 different organizations that you can take the same workloads and move them across and have the confidence, those APIs will be supported, it's just a huge accomplishment, and in some ways, up there with WiFi or Bluetooth or some of the best interoperability standards. And then you mentioned the job support, which is another-- >> Yeah, I want to transfer engineers too, as well as workloads. >> --area that we're thrilled, and we just launched that, but we now have a couple hundred jobs listed on it and a bunch of people applying, and it's just a perfect example of the kind of ecosystem development that we're thrilled to do, and in particular the fact that we're not charging either the employers or the applicants, so it's jobs.CNCF.io to get access to that. >> Great. Dan, you also mentioned in your keynote, Kubernetes has crossed the chasm. That changes the challenges that you have when you start talking about you know, the early or mid majority environment, so I know you've been flying around the globe, there's not only the three big events, but many small events, talk about how CNCF6 mission helps you know, educate and push, I guess not push, but educate and further innovation. >> Yeah, and just enable. So, one of the other programs we have is the Kubernetes Certified service provider, these are organizations, essentially consulting firms, that have a deep expertise that have had at least three of their engineers pass our certified Kubernetes administrator exam, and it is amazing now that we've passed 100 of those, but they're in over 30 different countries. So we're just thrilled to see businesses all around the world be able to take advantage of that. And I do get to go to a lot of events around the world; we're actually, CNCF is hosting our first ever events in Seoul and in Sydney in two weeks, that I'm quite excited for, and then in February, we're going to be back in India, and we're going to be in Bengaluru, where we had a very successful event in March. We'll be there in February 2020 and then our first one in New Delhi, those are both in the third week of February. And I think it does just speak to the number of people who are really eager for these to soak this up, but one of the cool things about it is we're combining both local experts, half of our speakers are local, half are international, and then we do a beginner track and an advanced track. >> Yeah, Dan, you know, I'd just love a little bit of insight from you as to, there's a little bit of uncontrolled chaos when you talk about open source. Many of the things that we're talking about this year, a year ago, we would've been, oh my gosh, I would've never thought of that. So give us what it's like to be kind of at the eye of the hurricane, if you would. >> A lot of criticism, to be honest. An amazing number of people like to point out the things that we're not quite doing correctly. But you know, the huge challenge for an organization like CNCF, where, we're a non-profit, these events are actually spinning off money that we're then able to reinvest directly into the projects, so doing things like a quarter million dollars for a security audit for Kubernetes that we were able to publish. Or a Jepson testing for NCD, or improving documentation and such. So a big part of it is trying to create those positive feedback loops, and have that, and then another huge part is just, given all the different competing interests and the fact that we literally have every big technology company in the world on our board and then all of the, I mean, hundreds of start ups that tend to be very competitive, it's just really important that we treat organizations similarly. So that all of our platinum members are treated the same, all our gold, all our silver, and then within the projects, that all the graduated projects are treated similarly, incubating, sandbox, and people really notice. I have kids, and it's a little bit there, where they're sort of always believing that the other kid is getting extra attention. >> Yeah, right, you can't be the king maker, if it will, you're letting it out. Look out a little bit, Dan, and you know, we still have more growth to go in the community, obviously the event has room for growth. What do you see looking forward to 2020 and beyond? >> Yeah, I would love to predict some sort of amazing discontinuity where everyone adopts these technologies and then CNCF is not necessary anymore, something like that. But the reality is, I mean, I love that crossing the chasm metaphor, and I do think it's very powerful, and we really do say 2018 was the year that Kubernetes crossed the chasm from the early adopters to the early majority, but I would emphasize the fact that it's only the early majority. We haven't reached in to the entire second half of the curve, the late majority and the laggards. And so there are a ton of organizations here at the event who are just getting up to speed on this and realizing, oh, we really need to invest and start understanding it. And so, I mean, I don't, we also talk about there will be some point of peak Kubecon, just like peak Loyal, and I don't yet see any signs of it being 2019 or 2020, but it's something that we're very cognizant of and working hard to try and ensure that the event remains useful for people and that they're seeing value from it. I mean, there was a real question when we went from one thousand Seattle four years ago to four thousand in Austin three years ago, oh, is this event even still useful, can developers still interact, do you still have conversations, is the hallway track still valuable? And thankfully, I'm able to chat with a lot of the core developers, where this is their fifth North American Kubecon and they're saying, no, I'm still getting value out of it. Now, what we tend to hear from them is, "but I didn't get to go to any sessions," or "I have so many hallway tracks and private meetings and interactions and such," but the great thing there is that we actually get all of these sessions up on YouTube within 48 or 72 hours, and so, people ask me, "oh, there's 18 different tracks, how do I decide which one to go to?" And I always say, "go to the one where you want to interact with the speaker afterwards, or ask a question," because the other ones, you can watch later. But there isn't really a substitute for being here on the ground. >> Well, there's so much content there, Dan, I think if they start watching now, by the time you get to Amsterdam, they'll have dented a little bit. >> I'll give a quick pitch for my favorite Chrome extension, it's called Video Speed Player. And you can speed people up to 120, 125%, get a little bit of that time back. >> Yeah, absolutely, we have at the backend of ours, there is YouTube, so you can adjust the speed and it does help most of the time, and you can back up a few seconds if needed. Dan, look, congratulations, we know you have a tough role, you and the CNCF, we really appreciate the partnership. We love our community, it has had a phenomenal time this week at the show, and look forward to 2020 and beyond. >> I do as well, I really want to thank you for being with us through this whole way, and I think it is just an important part of the ecosystem. >> And I know John Furrier also says thank you and looks forward to seeing you next year. >> Oh, absolutely. >> Dan, thank you so much. John Troyer, I'm Stu Miniman, getting towards the end of our three days, wall-to-wall coverage here in sunny San Diego, California, thanks for watching theCUBE.

Published Date : Nov 22 2019

SUMMARY :

brought to you by Redhat, a CloudNative computing of the CloudNative computing foundation, You just tear right along the same level. and the CNCF helps enable all of it. of the point of time, in saying, okay, of the logos there, you look at the landscape-- and there's like, you know, all of these both on the Minecraft part, that all the formulas the prominence of Kubecon, are we headed of an ecosystem, and the reality is that piece of it, and the tough thing is, you know, is that the abstractions that Kubernetes provides I had the opportunity to interview and so the regular developers in their organizations the stats on you know, the searches you can do and of all the things that CNCF does, Yeah, I want to transfer engineers too, and in particular the fact that we're not That changes the challenges that you have So, one of the other programs we have Many of the things that we're talking interests and the fact that we literally obviously the event has room for growth. because the other ones, you can watch later. by the time you get to Amsterdam, get a little bit of that time back. most of the time, and you can back up of the ecosystem. and looks forward to seeing you next year. Dan, thank you so much.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
John TroyerPERSON

0.99+

Dan KohnPERSON

0.99+

DanPERSON

0.99+

Brian LilesPERSON

0.99+

Stu MinimanPERSON

0.99+

SeattleLOCATION

0.99+

100QUANTITY

0.99+

AustinLOCATION

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

New DelhiLOCATION

0.99+

BengaluruLOCATION

0.99+

SeoulLOCATION

0.99+

February 2020DATE

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

EuropeLOCATION

0.99+

Linux FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

IndiaLOCATION

0.99+

SydneyLOCATION

0.99+

MarchDATE

0.99+

San DiegoLOCATION

0.99+

North AmericaLOCATION

0.99+

42 projectsQUANTITY

0.99+

TuesdayDATE

0.99+

twelve thousandQUANTITY

0.99+

FebruaryDATE

0.99+

2020DATE

0.99+

CloudNativeORGANIZATION

0.99+

18 different tracksQUANTITY

0.99+

next yearDATE

0.99+

eight thousandQUANTITY

0.99+

CNCFORGANIZATION

0.99+

100 certified vendorsQUANTITY

0.99+

MinecraftTITLE

0.99+

2019DATE

0.99+

ChinaLOCATION

0.99+

Kubernetes FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

San Diego, CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

second timeQUANTITY

0.99+

AmsterdamLOCATION

0.99+

sixteen thousandQUANTITY

0.99+

John FurrierPERSON

0.99+

fourth yearQUANTITY

0.99+

three membersQUANTITY

0.99+

72 hoursQUANTITY

0.99+

thirty footQUANTITY

0.99+

Two years agoDATE

0.99+

fifthQUANTITY

0.99+

a year agoDATE

0.99+

BloombergORGANIZATION

0.99+

each boxQUANTITY

0.99+

three years agoDATE

0.99+

two years agoDATE

0.99+

four years agoDATE

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

three daysQUANTITY

0.99+

this yearDATE

0.99+

KubeConEVENT

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

ChromeTITLE

0.99+

hundredsQUANTITY

0.99+

more than 1600 peopleQUANTITY

0.98+

2018DATE

0.98+

yesterdayDATE

0.98+

CloudNativeConEVENT

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

jobs.CNCF.ioOTHER

0.98+

four thousandQUANTITY

0.98+

two weeksQUANTITY

0.98+

Rob Esker & Matt Baldwin, NetApp | KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2019


 

>> Announcer: Live from San Diego, California, it's theCUBE! Covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. Brought to you by Red Hat, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, and its ecosystem partners. >> Welcome back, this is theCUBE's fourth year of coverage at KubeCon CloudNativeCon, we're here in San Diego, it's 2019, I'm Stu Miniman, my host for this afternoon is Justin Warren, and happy to welcome two guests from the newly minted platinum member of the CNCF, NetApp, sitting to my right is Matt Baldwin, who is the director of cloud native and Kubernetes engineering, and sitting to his right is Rob Esker, who does product and strategy for Kubernetes, and is also a forward member on the CNCF, thank you both for joining us. >> Thank you. >> Thanks for having us. >> All right, so Matt, maybe start with you, NetApp, companies that know, I've got plenty of history with NetApp there, what I've been hearing from NetApp for the last few years is, the core of NetApp has always been software, and it is a multicloud world. I've been hearing this message since before the cloud native and Kubernetes piece was going. Of course there's been some acquisitions, and NetApp continuing to go through its transformations, if you will. So help us understand NetApp's positioning in this ecosystem. >> In Kubernetes? >> Yes. >> Okay, so, what we're doing is, we're building a product that allows you to manage cloud-native workloads on top of Kubernetes, so we've solved the infrastructure problem, and that's kind of the old problem we're bored to death talking about that problem, but what we try to do is try to provide a single pane of glass to manage on-premise workloads and off-premise workloads, and so that's what we're trying to do, we're trying to say, it's now more about the app taxonomy in Kubernetes, and then what type of tooling do you build to manage that application in Kubernetes, and so that's what we're building right now, that's where we're headed with the hybrid multicloud. >> There's a piece of it, though, that does draw from the historical strengths of NetApp, of course. So we're building, we are essentially already in market a capability that allows you to deploy Kubernetes, in an agnostic way, using pure open unmodified Kubernetes, on all of the major public clouds, but also on-prem. But over time, and some of this is already evident, you'll see it married to the storage and data management capabilities that we draw from the historical NetApp, and that we're starting to deploy into those public clouds. >> With the idea that you should be able to take a project, so a project being in a namespace, namespace having an application in it, so you have multiple deployments, I should be able to protect that namespace, or that project, I should be able to move that, and that data goes with it, so that we're very data-aware, that's what we're trying to do with our software is, make it very data-aware and have that align with apps inside of Kubernetes. >> Yeah, so Rob, maybe step back for a second, one of the things we've heard a few times at this show before, and it was talked about in the keynote this morning, is that it is project over company when it comes to the CNCF. Project over company, so it's about the ecosystem, the CNCF tries not to be opinionated, so it's okay for multiple projects to fit in a space. NetApp moving up to a platinum sponsor level, participated here, NetApp's got lots of histories in participating and driving standards, helping move where the industry's going, where does NetApp see its position in participating in the foundation and participating in this ecosystem? >> Yeah, so great question, and actually, I love it, it's one of my favorite topics, so, I think the way we look at it is, oftentimes projects, to the extent they become ubiquitous, define a standard, a defacto standard, so not necessarily ratified by some standards body, and so we're very interested in making sure that in the scenario where you want to employ this standard, from a technology integration perspective, our capabilities can operate as an implementation behind the standard. So you get the distinguishing qualities of our capabilities, our products and our services, vis-a-vis, or in the context of the standard, but we're not trying to take you down a walled garden path in a proprietary journey, if you will. We would rather compel you to work with us on the basis of the value, not necessarily operating off a proprietary set of interfaces. So Kubernetes, broadly perceive it as a defacto standard at this point, there's still some work to be done on rounding out the edges, a lot of it underway this week, it's definitely the case that there's an appeal to making this more offerable by, pardon the expression, mere mortals, and we think we can offer some help in that respect as well. >> Yeah, where is its usability? I mean, that's the reason I started stacked on cloud, was that there was a usability problem with Kubernetes. I had a usability problem with Kubernetes. That's what we're trying, that's how I'm looking at the landscape, and I look at all the projects inside of the CNCF, and I look at my role is, our role is to, how do we tie these together, how do we make these so they're very very usable to the users, and how we're engaging with the community is to try to align this, basically pure upstream projects, and create a usability layer on top of that. But we're not going to, we don't want to ever say we're going to fork any of these projects, but we're going to contribute back into these projects. >> So that's one concern that I have heard from some customers, which speaking of which, some of them yesterday, one of the concerns they had was that, when you add that manageability onto the base Kubernetes layer, that often, various vendors become rather opinionated about which way we think this is a good way to do that, and when you're trying to maintain that compatibility across the ecosystem, so some customers say, "Well I actually don't want to have to be too closely welded "to any one vendor, 'cause part of the benefit "of Kubernetes is I can move my workloads around." So how do you navigate what is the right level of opinion to have, and which part should actually just be part of a common standard? >> Think it needs to be along the lines of best practices, is how we do it. So, let's take network policy, for example, applying a sane, default network policy to every namespace. Defining a sane, default pod security policy, building a cluster in a best practices fashion, with security turned on, hardening done, where you would've done this already as a user, so we're not locking you in in any way there. So that's, we're not trying, I'm not trying to curate any type of opinion of the product, what we're trying to do is harmonize your experience across all this ecosystem, so that you don't ever have to think about, "I'm building a cluster on top of Amazon, "so I got to worry about how do I manage this on Amazon." I don't want you to have to think about those providers anymore. And then on top of those, on top of that infrastructure, I want to have a way that you're thinking about managing the applications on those environments in the exact same way, so I'm scaling, or I'm protecting an application on-premise, in the identical way I'm doing it in the cloud. >> So if it's the same everywhere, what's the value that you're providing that means that I should choose your option than something else? >> So, we do have, this is where we have controllers that live inside of the clusters, that manage this stuff for the users. So, you could rebuild what we're doing, but you would have to roll it all by hand. But you could, we don't stand in the way of your operations either, so if we go down, you don't go down, type of idea. But we do have controllers, we're using CRDs, and so our app management technology, our controllers are just watching for a workload to come into the environment, and then we show that in the interface, but you can just walk away as well, if you wanted to. >> There's also a constellation of other services that we're building around, this experience, that do draw, again, from some of the storage and data management capabilities, so staple sets, your traditional workloads that want to interact with or transact data against a block or a shared file system. We're providing capabilities for sophisticated qualities of persistence that can exist in all of those same public clouds, but moreover, over time, we're going to be, and on-premise as well, we're going to be able to actually move, migrate, place, cache, per policy, your persistent data, with your workloads, as you move, migrate, scale, burst, whatever the model is, as you move across and between clouds. >> How far down that pathway do you think we are, 'cause one criticism of Kubernetes is that a lot of the tooling that we're used to from more traditional ways of operating this kind of infrastructure, isn't really there yet, hence the question about, we actually need to make this easier to use. How far down that pathway are we? >> I'd argue that the tooling that I've built has already solved some of those problems. So I think we're pretty far down the path. Now, what we haven't done is open sourced all of my tooling, right, to make it easier on everybody else. >> Rob, NetApp's got strong partnerships across the cloud platforms, I had a chance to interview George at the Google Cloud event, I know you partner of the year, I believe, on some of these stuff, help us understand how some of the things Matt and the team are building interact with the public clouds, you look at Anthos, and Azure Arc, and of course Amazon has many different ways you can do your container and management piece there. Talk a little bit about that relationship and how, both with those partners and then across those partners, work. >> Yeah, it's, how much time do we have, so there's certainly a lot of facets to that, but drawing from the Google experience, we just announced the general availability of Cloud Volumes ONTAP, so the ability to stand up and manage your own ONTAP instance in Google's cloud. Likewise, we announced the general availability of the Cloud Volume service, which gives you the managed push button as a service experience of shared file system on demand, at Google, I believe it was either today or yesterday, in London, I guess maybe I'll blame that on the time zone conversion, not knowing what day it was, but the point is, that's now generally available. Some of those capabilities are going to be able to be connected to our ability from MKS, to deploy a on-demand Kubernetes cluster, and deploy applications from a marketplace experience, in a common way, not just with Google but Azure, with Amazon, and so frankly the story does differ a little bit from one cloud to the next, but the endeavor is to provide common capabilities across all of them. It's also the case that we do have people that are very opinionated about, I want to live only in the Google or the Microsoft or the Amazon ecosystem, we're trying to deliver a rich experience for those folks as well, even if you don't value the agnostic multicloud experience. >> Yeah, and Matt, I'm sure you have a viewpoint on this, but it's that skillset that's really challenging. I was at the Microsoft show, and you've got people, it's not just about .NET, they're embracing and open to all of these environments, but people tend to have the environments that they're used to, and for multicloud to be a reality, it needs to be a little bit easier for me to go between them, but it's still, we're making progress but there's work to do. >> Matt: Yeah, what's the question? >> Yeah, so, I know you're building tools and everything, but what more do we need to do, where are some of the areas that you're hopeful for, but where are the areas that we need to go further? >> So for me it's coming down to the data side. I need to be able to say that, when I turn on data services, inside of Kubernetes, I need to be able to have that workload go anywhere, because as a developer, I'm running a production, I'm running an Amazon, but maybe I'm doing tests locally on my bare metal environments, right, I want to be able to maybe sink down some of my data that I'm working with in production down to my test environment. That stuff's missing, there's no one doing that right now, and that's where we're headed, that's the path, that's where we're headed. >> Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, actually, 'cause one of the things that I feel like I heard a little bit last year but it is highlighted more this year, is we're talking a little bit more to the application developers because, Kubernetes is a piece of the infrastructure, but it's about-- >> It's the kernel. >> Yeah, it's the kernel there, so, how do we make sure we're spanning between what the app developer needs and still making sure that infrastructure is taken care of, because storage and networking are still hard. >> It is, yeah, I mean I'm approaching, I'm thinking more along the lines of, I'm trying to think more about app developers, personally, than infrastructure at this point. For me, so I can give you a cluster in three minutes, right, so I don't really have to worry about that problem. We also put Istio on top of the clusters, so it's like we're trying to create this whole narrative that you can manage that environment on day one, day two type operations. But, and that's for an IT manager, right, so inside of our product, how I'm addressing this is you have personas, and so you have this concept, you have an IT manager, they can do these things, they can set limits, but for the developer, who's building the applications or the services and pushing those up into the environment, they need to have a sense of freedom, and so on that side of the house, I'm trying not to break them out of their tooling, so part of our product ties into Git, so we have cd, so you just do a git push, git commit to a branch, and we can target multiple clusters. But at no point did the developer actually draft DAML, or anything, we basically create the container for you, create the deployment, bring it online, and I feel like there's these lines, and the IT guys need to be able to say, "I need to create the guardrails for the devs, "but I don't want to make it seem like "I'm creating guardrails for the devs, "'cause the devs don't like that." So that's how I'm balancing it. >> Okay, 'cause that has always been the tension, in that there's a lot of talk about DevOps, but you go and talk to application developers, and they don't want to have anything to do with infrastructure, they just want to program to an API and get things done, they would like this infrastructure to be seamless. >> Yeah, and what we do, also what I'm giving them is service dashboards, because as a developer, you know, because now you're in charge of your QA, you're writing your tests, you're pushing it through CI, it's going to CD. You own your service and production, right? And so we're delivering dashboards as well for services that the developers are running, so they can dig in and say, "Oh, here's an issue," or "Here's where the issue's probably going to be at, "I'm going to go fix this." And we're trying to create that type of scenario for a developer, and for an IT manager. >> Slightly different angle on it, if I'm understanding the question correctly, part of the complexity of infrastructure is something we're also trying to provide a deterministic sort of easy button capability for, perhaps you're familiar with NetApp's Nason ATI product, which we kind of expand that as hybrid cloud infrastructure. If the intention is to make it a simple, private cloud capability, and indeed, our NetApp Kubernetes service operates directly off of it, it's a big part of actually how we deliver cloud services from it. So the point is that, if you're that application developer, if you want the effective NKS on-prem, the endeavor with our NetApp ATI product is to give you that sort of easy button experience, because you didn't really want to be a storage admin or a network admin, you didn't want to get into the, be mired in the details of infra, so that's obviously work in progress, but we think we're definitely headed down the right direction. >> It does seem that a lot of enterprises want to have the cloudlike experience, but they want to be able to bring it home, we're seeing that a lot more. >> Yeah, so this turnkey on-premise, turnkey cloud on-premise, and, with NKS we can, the same auto-scaling, so take the dynamic nature of Kubernetes, so I have a base cluster size of say four worker nodes, right, but my workload's going to maybe need to have more nodes, so my auto-scaler's going to increase the size of my cluster and decrease the size, right? Pretty much everybody only can do that in the public cloud. I can do that in public cloud and on-premise, now. And so that's what we're trying to deliver, and that's pretty cool stuff, I think. >> Well there's a lot of advantages to enterprises operating in that way, because people out here, I can go and buy them or hire them, and say "Hey, we need you to operate this gear," and you've already done it elsewhere, you can do it in cloud, you can do it on-site, I can now run my operations the same across, no matter where my applications live, which saves me a lot of money on training costs, on development costs, and generally it makes for a much more smooth and seamless experience. >> So Rob, if you could, just love your takeaway on NetApp's participation here at the event, and what you want people to take away from the show this year. >> So it's certainly the case that we're doing a lot of great work, we like people to become aware of it. NetApp of course is not, I think we talked about this in perhaps other contexts, not strictly a storage and data management company only. We do draw from the strengths of that as we're providing full stack capabilities, in a way that are interconnected with public cloud, things like our NetApp Kubernetes service as really the foundational glue in many ways, to how we deliver the application runtime, but over time we'll build a constellation of data-centric capabilities around that as well. >> Matt, I would just love to get your viewpoint as someone that built a company in this ecosystem, there's so many startups here, give us kind of that founder viewpoint of being in this sort of ecosystem. >> Of the ecosystem... So this is, I came into the ecosystem at the beginning. I would have to say that it does feel different at this point, I'm going to speak as Matt, not as NetApp. And so my thinking has always been it feels a lot like, you're a big fan of that rock band, right, and you go to a local club, and we all get to know each other at that local club, and there's maybe 500 of us or 1000 of us, and then that band gets signed to Warner Brothers, and goes to the top, and now there's 20,000 people or 12,000 people. That's how it feels to me right now. I think, but what I like about it is that, it just shows the power of the community is now at a point where it's drawing in cities now, not just a small collection of a tribe of people. And I think that's a very powerful thing with this community, and like all the, what are they called, the Kubernetes Summits that they're doing, we didn't have any of those back when we first got going, I mean it was tough to fill the room, and now we can fill the room, and it's amazing, and what I like seeing is people moving past the problem of Kubernetes itself, and moving into what other problems can I solve on top of Kubernetes, so you're starting to see all these really exciting startups doing really neat things, and I really like, like this vendor hall I really like, 'cause you get to see all the new guys, but there's a lot of neat stuff going on, and I'm excited to see where the community goes in the next five years, but it's, we've gone from zero to 60 insanely fast, 'cause you guys were at the original KubeCon, I think, as well. >> It's our fourth year doing theCUBE at this show, but absolutely, we've watched it since the early days. I'm not supposed to mention OpenStack at this show, but we remember talking to JJ and some of the early people there, and we interviewed Craig McLuckie back in his Google days, and the like, so we've been fortunate to be on here since really day zero here, and definitely great energy, congrats so much on the progress, I really appreciate the updates on everything going, as you said, we've reached a certain state, and adding more value on top of this whole environment. >> Yeah, we're in junior high now, right, and we were in grade school for a few years. >> All right, well Matt and Rob, thank you so much for the update, hopefully not an awkward dance tonight for the junior people. For Justin Warren, I'm Stu Miniman, back with more coverage here from KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2019 in San Diego. Thank you for watching theCUBE. (techno music)

Published Date : Nov 21 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by Red Hat, of the CNCF, NetApp, sitting to my right and NetApp continuing to go and then what type of tooling do you build and that we're starting to With the idea that you in the keynote this morning, in the scenario where you and I look at all the of the concerns they had so that you don't ever that live inside of the clusters, from some of the storage of the tooling that we're used to I'd argue that the and the team are building so the ability to stand up and for multicloud to be a reality, headed, that's the path, Yeah, it's the kernel there, so, and the IT guys need to be able to say, always been the tension, for services that the If the intention is to make It does seem that a lot of enterprises and decrease the size, right? and say "Hey, we need you and what you want people to take away So it's certainly the love to get your viewpoint and I'm excited to see and some of the early people there, and we were in grade and Rob, thank you so much

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Justin WarrenPERSON

0.99+

Matt BaldwinPERSON

0.99+

MattPERSON

0.99+

GeorgePERSON

0.99+

Rob EskerPERSON

0.99+

RobPERSON

0.99+

Stu MinimanPERSON

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

LondonLOCATION

0.99+

Red HatORGANIZATION

0.99+

Cloud Native Computing FoundationORGANIZATION

0.99+

San DiegoLOCATION

0.99+

MicrosoftORGANIZATION

0.99+

2019DATE

0.99+

20,000 peopleQUANTITY

0.99+

Craig McLuckiePERSON

0.99+

GoogleORGANIZATION

0.99+

yesterdayDATE

0.99+

JJPERSON

0.99+

fourth yearQUANTITY

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

three minutesQUANTITY

0.99+

San Diego, CaliforniaLOCATION

0.99+

two guestsQUANTITY

0.99+

12,000 peopleQUANTITY

0.99+

CNCFORGANIZATION

0.99+

500QUANTITY

0.99+

NetAppORGANIZATION

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

KubeConEVENT

0.99+

Warner BrothersORGANIZATION

0.99+

KubernetesORGANIZATION

0.99+

this yearDATE

0.99+

NKSORGANIZATION

0.98+

KubernetesTITLE

0.98+

zeroQUANTITY

0.98+

60QUANTITY

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

CloudNativeConEVENT

0.97+

NetAppTITLE

0.97+

oneQUANTITY

0.97+

this weekDATE

0.97+

GoogleTITLE

0.97+

GitTITLE

0.95+

one concernQUANTITY

0.94+

day oneQUANTITY

0.93+

Kubernetes SummitsEVENT

0.9+

tonightDATE

0.89+

Marie Myers, UiPath | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering UiPath Forward Americas 2019. Brought to you by UiPath. >> We're back, UiPath Forward III from Las Vegas at the Bellagio, you're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, my name is Dave Vellante. Marie Myers is here, she's the CFO of the rocket-ship known as UiPath. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for coming on. >> Thank you. >> So, wow. You must be under a lot of pressure to keep the ship moving in a fast direction. But I was just talking to Daniel, he said, you know, when we started the company, we had basic finance systems, kind of like every other startup, but that obviously has changed, so. Well, congratulations, I know you got a lot more work to do but how are you spending your time these days? >> Doing a lot of work, is what I would say. So, as you've kind of seen, that tremendous growth, so huge pressure to just scale the company and ensure that the company has the ability to meet the growth that we're experiencing. So right now I've been really focused on building the operational backbone and actually building a lot of robots for UiPath, actually. That's something I wasn't expecting but came into the role and really help build our own ecosystem around robotics as well. >> I was asking Daniel how much dogfooding, champagne sipping you guys have done and, if it has contributed to the growth and it sounds like quite a bit, actually. >> Absolutely, I'd say we're really hitting the gas pedal right now in terms of building out our own competency and kind of to your point, eating the dog food, drinking the champagne and starting to push the envelope on how we actually use automation and AI to really scale our own business. You asked me where I was spending my time and where I was focused, I literally moved my family to Bucharest for the summer to really focus in on helping to scale the infrastructure. >> So, CFOs usually have a philosophy, a framework, that they like to work with. Obviously you got to stay flexible. How would you describe your philosophy as to how you'd like to manage this company? >> Well clearly, for us we're at an incredible stage of momentum in the market, and the ability for us to continue to build distance in terms of being number one is critical, so in terms of strategy, supporting that number one position, being agile. Able to scale for growth and ultimately do so profitably is certainly the ambition that we have in mind. And that requires turning a lot of different dials, right? And being able to turn them at the right time but at the same time ensure that we've got enough, let's just say, cushion underneath to scale that growth, because the growth is happening very very quickly. >> So CFOs, today's CFO is definitely, I would say more strategic than when I first got into the business, we used to joke that the cheap financial officer. But, I think of CFOs that I really admire, guys like Mike Scarpelli, who was at ServiceNow, now he's at Snowflake. I think he was at Data Domain too, Tom Sweet at Dell, whole different example, they're doing crazy financial engineering. But, much more of a strategic focus. Want to throw gasoline in the fire, and drive growth, but at the same time, thinking about efficiency, so. How have you seen that role evolving and how does that apply to what you guys are doing? >> So I think your comments about the role of the CFO are really right on, I mean, what's perhaps even more interesting, I think, for CFOs that are in software and maybe in a space like we're in is that you ultimately also get involved in being an advocate for your business. In robotics process automation, almost 40% of the first use cases are in finance. So, you're out there supporting the business case with other CFOs who want to understand how does efficiency really, why they should buy from us and what's the business proposition? So you've got to balance the demands of the business with running the business and so, I think that does give you the very unique lens because you understand how this product, to your point, drives operational efficiency. And obviously all CFOs really care, that's right on the list of the top three. >> You know, that's interesting, Marie, because the tech company CIOs are always being pulled in. Because they're early users of some technology. It's not common anyway, that the CFO is one of the lead sales go-to people but it sounds like it is in your case. How much time do you spend in the field? >> I try to balance my time, because you could get pulled very heavily I feel because of the nature of our business into that but I think because robotics process automation has been a key entry point into finance, there's a lot of work for CFOs to do there. So I try to balance my time, but it is, I think, a very important part of our own learning for our company, we get a lot of feedback from our customers. And, even helps me in my role because I get use cases from customers that I apply internally to drive our own efficiency. >> Well, plus, you know, you can see what's happening in the field, you can feel the pain of the sales reps, you can tell which ones are kind of sandbagging, >> You're right, absolutely! >> 'cause they're all sandbaggers! >> You're right about that, so it's been great being at this event, I know a lot of the great reps and so you really understand, you've got a good pulse on what's happening in terms of the business and where the risks are in the quarter. So that's one advantage. >> What're the metrics that you're driving? I mean, obviously the conventional ones, throw those in, but. >> Yeah, I mean obviously productivity, very important for us, we've got a lot of folks we've hired so really understanding what that productivity looks like. The usual cast of characters, AR. Customer acquisition costs, really focused on, what is that first customer costing and then how we're managing our land and expand. What our upsell looks like, so I think the usual cast of characters. >> And then eventually, as all these M and As happen, you'll get cohort sales coming in and the like. So, is everything that you guys sell recognized on a deferred revenue basis? >> No, we're in the midst of converting to 606 right now so we're kind of like subscription one year on prem. So pretty conventional software, red rack. >> Okay, but as you move to the cloud model. >> That gives us a different model, yeah. And we have it, we're just starting that journey. >> It seems like, you see different models. You know, Adobe bit the bullet, Splunk sort of peeled the Band-Aid off very slowly and they both can work. But it seems like a lot of the, I'll call it game, maybe it's the wrong word. But that's what came to mind, is educating the street. On that metric, on that transition. You certainly see it, for instance, in Oracle's case. Putting a lot of emphasis on helping the street understand that transition. That's not your primary focus right now, I'm sure you're spending some time with the analysts, I saw many buzzing around here. >> There was a lot here in the last few days. >> Dave: Yeah, they all want your business! >> (she laughs) They all want your business! I got a lot of texts in the last 48 hours. >> Well, it's an exciting time. And you know, eventually you guys are going to do an IPO and why wouldn't they? Be smart to be here, but what are your thoughts on that? Is that something that you really don't pay attention to right now, are you preparing for that? >> I'd say we're just getting total transparency, we're just moving through 606. So we're digesting that transition first and we're just starting down the whole cloud migration path. So as we start to think that through it's going to be I'd say a priority for 2020. And it's going to be important, I mean, for this business we expect, who's to say what the uptake rate is as customers move to the cloud? But I suspect it's going to be fairly aggressive in our business just because of the nature of bots and how customers think about bots. >> Yeah, so, Daniel said on the previous segment, he said, look, IPO's in our future, probably not 2020, we need at least a year to get our act together. So we're looking at 2021 but it depends on what the climate is, et cetera. My question is, and I've talked to, I see you orange here, Pure Storage is a high flyer in the infrastructure business, they're all orange, so they paint the town orange. >> Seems orange is very popular right now. >> It's a great color, recognizable. But I was talking about, they're all about growth. Not about optimizing profit right now and that's the right play because the street's rewarding growth. You guys, clearly, all about growth. >> We've got the growth story buttoned down, yeah. >> Yeah, you've got that down. But you still want to put gas on the fire, right? So, right now you're still optimized for growth. >> Absolutely, you see what's happening here, right? So, yeah, I think that kind of-- >> And you're well capitalized, so that's not the issue. So the strategy, I presume, is keep growing, get escape velocity, because, the company that gets escape velocity and is the leader in this business, you guys are the leader right now. You're not going to rest, you're going to stay paranoid, I'm sure. But the one that leads is going to make the most money. That always happens. >> Well, extending that leadership role is part of our core strategy, right? Maintaining number one, putting distance. I think you've seen the products that we announced here the last couple of days, adding to the portfolio or giving us incremental TAM so we can grow across the space. I think growing both down the stack and up the stack is critically important for us as we think forward to the future, too, right? We just don't want to be a pure robotics process automation company. We want to look across AI, down the stack into process mining. >> How do you think about your TAM? >> That's a great question. So I've been studying up a little over the last few days preparing for the board meeting tomorrow. I mean, robotics process automation, TAM next year is about two and a half, or two and change in terms of revenue, two billion. I've been looking at it a lot more broadly because I do believe that it is defined today quite narrowly in terms of very traditional RPE. And that started very much in the back office. As we've spread automation and kind of created that platform mentality, the TAM becomes additive. You've got now the process mining TAM which I think we can clearly start to play in that space. And then also the BPMs and now, obviously, AI. So, I was just doing our own back of the envelope in the last few days and you can get, easily, I think now, above that $10 billion mark and it depends on how you start to think about AI as you go forward and that just adds incremental TAM. >> Well, and you throw in services, you're already there. >> Yeah, exactly. >> Probably be there by next year. I think generally, I'll just give you my quick opinion. I think the market's undercounting the TAM potential. And I haven't done a detailed TAM analysis of the, I don't even want to say RPA 'cause that's the core. >> Exactly. >> But I could see this thing expanding dramatically, we talked about cohort sales. Just talking to customers, you're like one to 2% penetrated and there's so many more use cases. As you bring in AI, which, I really think of AI as a horizontal. But if you start applying AI and bringing in automation as an adjacency to you guys, I think that TAM are going to be many many tens of billions beyond what you're thinking. >> That's exactly how I like to think about it, of course, I go back to my IDC friends and try to use some of their benchmarks. But I think they're somewhat conservative. And I think as the market matures and people understand the breadth of the category, I just think that when RPA started it was kind of pigeonholed as a back office opportunity. >> Yeah, I mean, I was at IDC for a long time and we were really crappy at long-term TAM analysis. And you saw it with, Craig LeClair was awesome today. >> Yeah, I love Craig. >> Love him, fantastic. >> Very witty. >> His forecast, however, and same with IDC, we were there, we used to do these linear forecasts and that's not how these markets grow. It's an ogive and a steep S-curve and I think that's my prediction. >> Marie: I couldn't agree more with you. >> We heard predictions this morning, I summarized the predictions and gave my own. And that's one that I see. I'd like to see a longer-term forecast. Maybe we'll work on that. >> Well, we'd love that, I think that's going to be important. I think, part of it's just the maturity of this category. And as folks are starting to understand the breadth of the application, if you think about it, that's why there was so much early work in finance. Now you're starting to see the business spread across the enterprise, right? And I think as it spreads across the enterprise it just adds that incremental TAM and it becomes a gateway to AI. >> I've been using ServiceNow as an example, even though a totally different business, they had a much heavier lift, they started in IT, and went on, so it took longer for adoption. But there's a lot of similarities that I see just in terms of extending beyond just the core of the business, growing the ecosystem, I think is a critical part of that but as far as the customer adoption and the applicability of your technology, I think it's got a lot of legs, so. Like you say, Marie, we'll work on that a little bit. >> I'd love that, thank you. >> Dave: Appreciate you coming on, it was great to have you and wonderful to meet you. >> Enjoyed it. You too, thank you very much. >> You're welcome. Alright, keep right there, buddy, we'll be back to wrap up UiPath Forward III right after this short break. You're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

Published Date : Oct 17 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by UiPath. of the rocket-ship known as UiPath. but how are you spending your time these days? and ensure that the company has the ability if it has contributed to the growth and kind of to your point, eating the dog food, that they like to work with. is certainly the ambition that we have in mind. and how does that apply to what you guys are doing? I think that does give you the very unique lens It's not common anyway, that the CFO because of the nature of our business into that and so you really understand, I mean, obviously the conventional ones, and then how we're managing our land and expand. So, is everything that you guys sell recognized so we're kind of like subscription one year on prem. And we have it, we're just starting that journey. Putting a lot of emphasis on helping the street I got a lot of texts in the last 48 hours. And you know, eventually you guys are going to do an IPO But I suspect it's going to be fairly aggressive I see you orange here, Pure Storage is a high flyer and that's the right play We've got the growth story But you still want to put gas on the fire, right? But the one that leads is going to make the most money. the last couple of days, adding to the portfolio in the last few days and you can get, easily, 'cause that's the core. and bringing in automation as an adjacency to you guys, And I think as the market matures And you saw it with, Craig LeClair and I think that's my prediction. I summarized the predictions and gave my own. the breadth of the application, if you think about it, and the applicability of your technology, Dave: Appreciate you coming on, it was great to have you You too, thank you very much. to wrap up UiPath Forward III right after this short break.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Dave VellantePERSON

0.99+

DanielPERSON

0.99+

MariePERSON

0.99+

Marie MyersPERSON

0.99+

Mike ScarpelliPERSON

0.99+

DavePERSON

0.99+

Tom SweetPERSON

0.99+

2020DATE

0.99+

two billionQUANTITY

0.99+

next yearDATE

0.99+

OracleORGANIZATION

0.99+

2021DATE

0.99+

ServiceNowORGANIZATION

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

DellORGANIZATION

0.99+

AdobeORGANIZATION

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

Craig LeClairPERSON

0.99+

one yearQUANTITY

0.99+

$10 billionQUANTITY

0.99+

Data DomainORGANIZATION

0.99+

BucharestLOCATION

0.99+

2%QUANTITY

0.99+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.99+

firstQUANTITY

0.99+

tomorrowDATE

0.98+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

todayDATE

0.98+

UiPath Forward IIITITLE

0.98+

bothQUANTITY

0.98+

606OTHER

0.98+

TAMORGANIZATION

0.96+

tens of billionsQUANTITY

0.96+

SnowflakeORGANIZATION

0.95+

one advantageQUANTITY

0.94+

this morningDATE

0.94+

top threeQUANTITY

0.93+

about two and a halfQUANTITY

0.93+

twoQUANTITY

0.93+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.92+

almost 40%QUANTITY

0.91+

2019DATE

0.91+

606QUANTITY

0.9+

UiPath Forward Americas 2019TITLE

0.89+

ServiceNowTITLE

0.88+

first use casesQUANTITY

0.84+

Pure StorageORGANIZATION

0.84+

UiPath FORWARD IIITITLE

0.83+

IDCORGANIZATION

0.8+

last 48 hoursDATE

0.78+

BellagioLOCATION

0.75+

daysDATE

0.73+

least a yearQUANTITY

0.69+

lastDATE

0.66+

last coupleDATE

0.64+

UiPathCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.52+

UiPathTITLE

0.41+

Eric Lex, GE | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>> Narrator: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath Forward Americas 2019, brought to you by UiPath. >> Hi everybody welcome back to Las Vegas, we're at the Bellagio at UiPath Forward III, day two of theCUBE covers. theCUBE is a leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events. We extract the signal from the noise. Erik Alexis here is the Vice President of Global Intelligent Process Automation at GE. Eric thanks for coming on. >> Yeah absolutely excited to be here. >> So, you guys have a COE, you're obviously heavily involved in essentially running the COE, is that right? >> Yeah that's my role at GE. I lead our Global Center of Excellence for intelligent process automation. Our journey started with UiPath a while back in 2016. So, it's been an incredible journey so far. >> And I want to get into that. So, before I do, I was struck by the Forrester analyst, Craig LeClair this morning made a statement. I don't know if you're in there, but he said, "Yeah COE, setting up a COE, "maybe that's asking too much." But I talk to a lot of people that have a center of excellence. Maybe it's definitional but what does your COE look like in terms of just it's role, size? >> Yeah it's a great question, so I think in terms of the role that we play more broadly, I mean we provide a lot of the technical expertise, the hands-on development and the operational support for our business units. And so we've really kind of developed that expertise over time, and we use our business units to really drive and identify the opportunities that come in through the COE. So, in terms of the size of the COE, we've got in total number of heads, we've got about 50 primarily technical resources there, that are supporting development as well as ongoing operation. >> Awesome, okay so let's talk about your journey. When did it start? What was the motivation behind it? How did you make the business case, and we'll get into it. >> Yeah so our journey started back in 2016, GE, we used to have a shared services organization that we had a very forward-thinking CEO at the time who wanted to really disrupt the way that we worked. And so RPA was something that was just coming out and kind of getting noticed by a lot of these shared services organizations. And so throughout the year we assessed a couple of technologies obviously landing on UiPath for a number of reasons. I would say in terms of our journey 2017 was kind of our year to prove the technology. We wanted to see if this stuff could really work long term and operate at scale. Given that I'm still here obviously, we proved that was correct and then 2018 was kind of the year of scaling and operationalizing kind of a sustainable model to support our business units across the board from an RPA standpoint. So, really building out a proper structure, building out the governance that goes along with building robots and building a kind of a resource team to continue to support the bots that we were at scale at that point, so maintaining those bots is critically important. And then 2019 has really been the year and I think the theme of this conference in general, a bot for every person I think that's the direction we're moving in 2019. We've kind of perfected the concept of the back office robot and the development of those, and running those at scale. And now we're moving towards a whole new market share when it comes to attended automation and citizen development. >> So, in '16 it was kind of kicking the tires it was almost like R&D. And then '17 was really essentially a proof-of-concept right so still a small team, a two piece kind of team kind of thing right? And then when you talked about scale, helped us understand what's involved in scale, I know it's also another big theme of this conference. What are the challenges of scaling and how did you resolve those? >> Yeah that's a very good question. I think it's a question that has been very common throughout this entire conference. I would say when I think about scaling what I've noticed over the past few years is that, the actual bot development is about 25% of the work that you need to do, right? When it comes to scale there is everything outside of the actual development is the important part. So, how are you funneling opportunities into a pipeline, how are you streamlining the entire process reengineering of fitting an RPA into an existing process, what's governance you have in place to make sure that the code of that development is clean and can be maintained long term? And then more importantly I think that people overlook, people think of scale as being able to develop a lot of bots. I think more importantly what scale is is being able to efficiently maintain a large portfolio of bots, and that's what I've realized this year. We've got now about 300 automations in production and your reputation as an organization is really on how well you maintain those bots, because if your bots are consistently failing, and you're not fixing them quick enough for your functional users to leverage them, then you lose a lot of credibility. So, I think that's been a big learning for us as we reach scale. >> That's interesting I mean I think about scripts, how fragile scripts are and you got a lot of 'em, and they almost always break. And so what is the discipline that allows you to have that quality of bot that is maintainable? Is it a coding discipline? Is it a governance? Is there other automation involved in maintaining those bots? >> No there is and I think the team that's under me, my technical team has done a phenomenal job of setting this up, but we've got some very rigorous standards that we've put in place around. We do have reusable components for example that need to be used on every single robot that goes into production, so that when I look at for example a bots login, that bots login is going to be the same across all my bots. So, every developer who's going to be maintaining that bot knows what it is and how to fix it. I think the standardized logging as well to make sure that we've got robust logging for every single robot is incredibly important because again that's going to be critical when somebody goes to try and fix the bot. >> So you are like an app store, you're enforcing rules like Apple for developers. >> Exactly. >> Okay so let me ask you a question. See now several years in if you had a mulligan, what would you do differently? >> Yeah I think that's another very good question. I think when you first start with this technology, it's unbelievably exciting, because it's something that you can immediately see the difference and the impact it can make, and so you want to try and apply it everywhere to everything, to solve every problem. And I think that's kind of where we got a little ahead of ourselves. We weren't as thoughtful as we should have been when we started taking in the use cases that we were bringing in and while I sit here and tell you that we've got 300 automations in production, I've also decommissioned about 90 automations as well. Because you kind of live and you learn as you go through that process on. This doesn't make sense for RPA. It's not driving the value anymore. It's not driving the right value for the company. >> And is that because the process needs to be reworked before it's automated or there are other factors? >> Yeah I think there's a couple of factors there. I think number one, some bots are intentionally just for short-term use. We look across the portfolio, some bots you design for to operate for two weeks for a massive for example document transition or something like that. So, that's a common reason for decommissioning. I would say secondly you just picked the wrong process. It's not big enough. You think this is perfect for RPA, but it's saving somebody maybe five or 10 minutes a week, which in reality do you really want to put all the effort and to continue to maintain something like that on a back office level? So, I think the size of the processes and the complexity you've got to be thoughtful about as well. >> Thinking about a bot for every worker, what does that actually look like? Is that like you get a laptop and you get a bot? How does that actually manifest itself? >> Yeah I think as I've talked to some of the teams and Daniel as well about this, it's really around I mean imagine opening it up just like any other application on your computer and Excel, you've got that sitting on your desktop and you use that for a number of different things. I think that's kind of how I envision it and everyone when they come into GE, they'll get their laptop and it's part of their kind of package of software that they get. One of them will be UiPath and I think again if GE where I see that as the future. We've got to be thoughtful about how that's rolled out because you want to make sure it's done the right way and you want to make sure that that succeeds and what comes along with that is a lot of education. There's a lot of people that need to be educated on the technology in order to roll that out effectively. >> It's part of the onboarding part, just part of the HR onboarding, and so you open up your laptop and based on your role you'll have a library of bots that are applicable for your job. Is that kind of what you envision? >> Again I think that's kind of the future state and so HR will have a common library that they can pull from and Finance will have a common library that they can pull from. And I think the announcement this weekend of or this week of our StudioX is going to make life significantly easier. So, if you need to kind of edit any of those components or make any custom steps, you can do that with StudioX, but I think having a pre-built set of bots by function would be extremely important. >> And StudioX is the citizen developer right? So, okay now how do you then enforce the edicts of the COE if Dave Vallente's writing automations. >> It's honestly a question that we haven't answered yet and I think that's the piece that we're trying to solve for now, to roll it out more broadly. And I think part of it's going to be training right? Educating the broader group, part of it is giving them access to front office robots and so you do have the code back at the orchestrator so that you can see kind of what's going on and make sure if there are massive changes that need to be made, you can make some of that centrally, so I think figuring out how to centrally maintain and store some of that code is going to be important. >> And the idea of moving beyond this what they call this morning the snowflake into the snowball. So, reusable components is something that I've heard a lot about. That's not trivial yeah right because mapping the right component for the right job is always going to be some kind of unique, not always, but there could be some unique element to put in words. So, what are your thoughts on kind of future? I mean we touched on some of them. It sounds like even though you started early, 2016, it sounds like you still got a long way to go. What's the roadmap look like for you guys? >> Well it's really never-ending because you know you see how quickly the industry is changing and how quickly these automation platforms. I think we're at the point now where these are no longer RPA platforms. They're automation platforms with all of the different features and you look at the broader ecosystem of the technologies being pulled into play. I think it's moving from robotics process automation into intelligent process automation. And that's really our goal and leveraging the ecosystem that the UiPath is built is I think what we want to do more of going forward. >> And the primary measurement of value to you, I'm inferring is time saved from doing non-differentiated tasks, is that really a key metric or are there others that you're looking at, bottom line dollars that you're saving or what? >> I think the way that we measure productivity is really in three major buckets. One is the hours saved so that employees can do other things and I would say that is far and away, the largest bucket that we have. But I think additionally you've got to think about direct cost out. I mean if my finance team comes to me and says, we're thinking about hiring a person to do this why not an RPA? Why can't we use an RPA to do that instead? So, it's not like anyone's losing their job over. It's just figuring out a better way to supplement your existing workforce. Then I would say the third way really is thinking about the compliance element of things. So, and that's often overlooked. You may not save anyone time. You may not save anyone hours or dollars, but what you can do is expand for example in your audit function, expand your testing or sampling of a certain criteria, instead of sampling maybe the top 20 risky units, you can now sample a 100% of a population, which fundamentally changes how you can get comfortable with your financial statements and other elements of the compliance. >> Talking earlier just I asked is sampling dead because of RPA right? >> It really feels like that you know. >> Dave: Eric it's super knowledgeable. I really appreciate you coming on. >> Absolutely. >> Dave: Congratulations on all your success really. >> Thank you very much Dave. I appreciate it. >> You're welcome. All right keep it right there everybody, we will be back with our next guest right after this short break. We're live from UiPath Forward III from Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

brought to you by UiPath. We extract the signal from the noise. So, it's been an incredible journey so far. But I talk to a lot of people of the role that we play more broadly, How did you make the business case, and I think the theme of this conference and how did you resolve those? of the work that you need to do, right? and you got a lot of 'em, that need to be used on every single robot So you are like an app store, what would you do differently? I think when you first start with this technology, We look across the portfolio, some bots you design There's a lot of people that need to be educated and so you open up your laptop and based on your role And I think the announcement this weekend of So, okay now how do you then enforce the edicts that need to be made, you can make some of that centrally, What's the roadmap look like for you guys? and leveraging the ecosystem that the UiPath is built is I think the way that we measure productivity I really appreciate you coming on. on all your success really. Thank you very much Dave. we will be back with our next guest

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
DavePERSON

0.99+

Dave VallentePERSON

0.99+

2016DATE

0.99+

Eric LexPERSON

0.99+

EricPERSON

0.99+

Erik AlexisPERSON

0.99+

two weeksQUANTITY

0.99+

Craig LeClairPERSON

0.99+

2019DATE

0.99+

DanielPERSON

0.99+

ExcelTITLE

0.99+

fiveQUANTITY

0.99+

GEORGANIZATION

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.99+

AppleORGANIZATION

0.99+

300 automationsQUANTITY

0.99+

2018DATE

0.99+

100%QUANTITY

0.99+

OneQUANTITY

0.99+

2017DATE

0.99+

ForresterORGANIZATION

0.99+

two pieceQUANTITY

0.99+

StudioXTITLE

0.98+

'17DATE

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.98+

third wayQUANTITY

0.97+

about 300 automationsQUANTITY

0.97+

'16DATE

0.97+

this weekDATE

0.97+

10 minutes a weekQUANTITY

0.97+

Vice PresidentPERSON

0.96+

about 25%QUANTITY

0.95+

Global Center of Excellence for intelligent process automationORGANIZATION

0.95+

about 90 automationsQUANTITY

0.93+

Global Intelligent Process AutomationORGANIZATION

0.91+

this morningDATE

0.9+

three major bucketsQUANTITY

0.89+

20 risky unitsQUANTITY

0.87+

secondlyQUANTITY

0.86+

BellagioLOCATION

0.84+

every single robotQUANTITY

0.84+

day twoQUANTITY

0.84+

this weekendDATE

0.84+

about 50QUANTITY

0.83+

UiPath Forward Americas 2019EVENT

0.83+

early, 2016DATE

0.81+

UiPathLOCATION

0.77+

this yearDATE

0.77+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.76+

Forward IIIEVENT

0.73+

UiPathTITLE

0.72+

technicalQUANTITY

0.62+

oneQUANTITY

0.62+

FORWARD IIITITLE

0.57+

yearsDATE

0.57+

pastDATE

0.56+

NarratorTITLE

0.55+

coupleQUANTITY

0.54+

topQUANTITY

0.51+

IIITITLE

0.36+

Bobby Patrick, UiPath | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. >>We're back in Las Vegas. UI path forward three. You're watching the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. Bobby Patrick is here. He's the COO of UI path. Welcome. Hi Dave. Good to see it to be here. Wow. Great to have the cube here again. Right? Q loves these hot shows like this. I mean this is, you've said Gardner hasn't done the fastest growing software segment you've seen in the data that we share from ETR. You guys are off the chart in terms of net score. It's happening. I hanging onto the rocket ship. How's it feel? Well it's crazy. I mean it's great. You all have seen some of the growth along the way too, right? I mean we had our first forward event less than two years ago and you know about 500 plus plus non UI path and people then go year later. It was Miami USY. >>There's probably a lot. Cube I think was Miami right yet and a, and that was a great event, but that was more in the 13 1400 range. This one's almost 3000 and the most amazing part about it was we had 8% attrition from the registrations. Yeah. That's never seen that we're averaging 18% of 20% for all of our, most of our events worldwide. But 8% the commitment is unbelievable. Even 18 to to 20% is very good. I mean normally you'll see 25 to sometimes as high as 50% yeah. It just underscores the heat. >> Well I think what's also great, other stats that you might find interesting. So over 50% of the attendees here are exec. Our senior executives, like for the first time we actually had S you know, C level executive CHRs and CEOs on stage. Right. You could feel the interest level. Now of course we want RPA developers at events too, right? >>But this show really does speak, I think to the bigger value propositions and the bigger business transformation opportunity from RPA. And I mean, you've come so far where no one knew RPA two years ago to the CIO of Morgan Stanley on stage, just warning raving about it. That's, we've come a long way in two years. >> Well, and I saw a lot of the banks here hovering around, you know, knocking on your door so they, they know they are like heat seeking missiles, you know, so, but the growth has been amazing. I mean I think ARR in 2017 was what, 25 million at this time. Uh, at the end of 17 it was 43 and 43 and 25 and now you're at 12 times higher now 1212 X solve X growth, which is the fastest growing software company. I think in that we know from one to 100 we were, we did that in 21 months and all that. >>And we had banks who now we're not really counting anymore and we're kind of, you know, now focus more on customer expansion. Even though we hit 5,000 customers, which we started the year at 2050 ish. We just crossed 5,000. I mean, so the number of customers is great, but there's no question. This conference is focused on scaling, helping them grow at enterprise wide with, with, with RPA. So I think our focus will be in to shift a bit, you know, to really customer expansion. Uh, and that's a lot of what this announcements, the product announcements were about a lot of what the theme here is about. We had four dozen customers on, on stage, you know, the Uber's of the world, the Amazons of the world. It's all about how they've been scaling. So that's the story now. Well, you know, we do a lot of these events and I go back to some of the, uh, when the cube first started, companies like Tablo, Dallas Blunck great service. >>Now, I mean, these you can, and when you talk to customers, first of all, it's easy to get customers to come talk about RPA. Yeah. And they're, they're all saying the same thing. I mean, Jeanne younger said she's never been more excited in her career from security benefit. But the thing is, Bobby, it's, I feel like they're, they're really just getting started. Yeah. I mean most of the use cases that you see are again, automating mundane task. We had one which was the American fidelity, which is a really bringing in AI. Right. But they're really just getting started. It's like one to 3% penetration. So what are your thoughts on that to kind of land and expand, if you will? I think, you know, look, last year we announced our vision of a robot for every person. At that point we had SNBC on stage and they were the one behind it. >>And they are an amazing story. Now we have a dozen or so that are onstage talking about a robot for every person like st and others. And so, but that, that, that's a pretty, pretty, pretty bold vision I think. Look, I think it's important to look at it both ways. Um, there's huge gold and applying RPA to solve real problems. There's a big opportunity, enterprise wide, no question. We've got that. But I look New York Foundling was on stage yesterday. We have New York Foundling is a 150 year old associate. Our charity in New York focused on child welfare, started by three fishers of charity. They focused on infants. And anyway, it's an amazing firm. Just the passion that New York family had on stage with Daniel yesterday was amazing. But what they flew here because for once they found a technology that actually makes a huge difference for them and what in their mission. >>So their first RPA operation was they have 850 clinicians every week. They spend four hours a week moving their contact, uh, a new contact data associate with child child issues from system to system to spreadsheet and paper to system, right? They use RPA and they now say for a 200,000 hours a year. But more importantly, those clinicians spend those four hours every week with children not moving. So I'm still taking, I think Daniel had a bit of a tear in his eye, hearing them talk about it on stage, but I'm still taken by, by the, by the sheer massive opportunity for RPA in, in a particular to solve some really amazing things. Now on a mass scale, a company can drive, you know, 10, 15, 20% productivity by every employee having a robot. Yes, that's true on a mass scale. They can completely transform their business, your transform customer experience, transform the workplace on a mass scale. >>And that, that is, that's a sea level GFC level goal and that's a big deal. But I love the stories that are very real. Um, and, and I think those are important to still do plug some great tech for good story. Look, tech gives, you know, the whole Facebook stuff and the fake news got beat up and it had Benny come out recently say, Hey, it's, it's not just about increasing the value to shareholders, you know, it's about tech for good and doing other things affecting lifestyle's life changing. And Michael Dell is another one. Now I've, I've, I've kind of said tongue in cheek, you know, show me the CEO misses is four quarters in a row and see if that holds up. But nonetheless, you love to see successful companies giving back. It seems to be, it's part of your, well look I've been part of hardware companies and I met you all through a few of them and others they have good noble causes but it was hard to really connect the dots. >>Yes there CPS underneath a number of these things. But I think judging by the emotional connection that these customers have on stage, right and these are the Walmarts and Uber's and others in the world judging by the employee and job satisfaction that they talk about the benefits there. I just, I my career, I have not seen that kind of real direct impact from you know, from B2B software for example on the lives of people both everyday at work but also just solving the solving, you know, help accelerate human achievement. Right. And so many amazing ways. We had the CEO of the U N I T shared services group on stage yesterday and they have a real challenge with, you know, with the growth of refugees worldwide and he would express them and they can't hit keep up. They don't have the funding, which is, you know, with everybody and, and Trump and others trying to hold back money. >>But they had this massive charter for of good, the only way they get there is through digital. The new CEO, the new head of the U N is a technology engineer. He came in and said, the way we solve this is with templates, with technology. And they decided, they said on stage yesterday that RPA and RPA has the path to AI and the greater, the greater new technologies and that's how they're going to do it. And it's just a, it's a really, it's, I think it's, it feels really great. You know, it's funny too, one of the things we've been talking about this week is people might be somewhat surprised that there's so much head room left for automation because the boy, 50 years of tech, Kevin, we automated everything. That's the other, but, and Daniel put forth the premise last night, it actually, technology is created more process problems or inefficiencies. >>So it's almost like tech has created this new problem. Can tech get us out of the problem? Well, essentially you think about all the applications we use in our lives, right? Um, you know, although people do have, you know, a Salesforce stack and sometimes in this SAP, the reality is they have a mix of a bunch of systems and then we add Slack to it and we add other tools and we add all the tools alone, have some great value. But from a process perspective of how we work everyday, right? How a business user might work at a call center, they have to interact then. And the reality is they're often interacting with old systems too because moving them is not easy, right? So now you've got old systems, new systems and, and really the only way to do that is to put a layer on top of the systems of engagement and the systems of record, right? >>A layer on top that's easy to actually build an application that goes between all of these different, these different applications, outlook, Excel, legacy systems and salesforce.com and so on and so on and, and build an app that solves a real problem, have it have outcomes quickly. And this is why, Dave, we unveiled the vision here that we believe that automation is the application. And when you begin to think about I could solve a problem now without requiring a bunch of it engineers who already are maxed out, right? Uh, I can solve a problem that can directly impact the businesses or directly impact customers. And I can do that on top of these old technologies by just dragging and dropping and using a designer tool like studio or studio X in a business user can do that. That's, that's a game changer. I think what's amazing is when you go to talk to a CIO who says, I've been automating for 20 years, you know, take up the ROI. >>Once they realize this is different, the light bulb goes off. We call it the automation first mindset. A light bulb goes off and you realize, okay, this is a very different whole different way of creating value for, for an organization. I think about how people weigh the way that people work today. You're constantly context switching. You're in different systems. Like you said, Slack, you're getting texts and you want to be responsive. You want to be real time. I know Jeff Frick who was the GM of the cube has got two giant screens right on his desk. I myself, I always have 1520 tabs open if I go, Oh you got so many tabs on my, yeah. Cause I'm constantly context switching, pulling things out of email, going back and forth and so and so. I'm starting to grok this notion of the automation is the app. >>At first I thought, okay, it's the killer app, but it's not about stitching things together with through API APIs. It's really about bringing an automation perspective across the organization. We heard it from Pepsi yesterday. Yeah, right. Sort of the fabric, the automation fabric throughout the organization. Now that's aspirational for most companies today, but that really is the vision. Well, I think you had Layla from Coca-Cola also on, right. And her V their vision there and they actually took the CDO role of the CIO and put them together. And they're realizing now that that transformation is driven by this new way of thinking. Yeah, I think, you know, look, we introduced a whole set of new brand new products and capabilities around scaling around helping build these applications quicker. I, I think, you know, fast forward one year from now, the, you know, the vision we outlined will be very obvious the way people interact with, you know, via UI path to build applications, assault come, the speed to the operate will be transformational and, and so, you know, and you see this conference hear me walk around. >>I mean you saw last year in the year before you see the year before, but it's, it's a whole, the speed at which we're evolving here, I think it's unprecedented. And so I'll talk a little bit about the market for has Crigler killer was awesome this morning. He really knows his stuff now. Last year I saw some data from him and said the market by 2020 4 billion, and I said, no way. It's going to be much larger than that. Gonna be 10 billion by 2020 I did Dave Volante fork, Becca napkin by old IDC day forecast. Now what he, what he showed today is data. It actually was 10 billion by 2020 because he was including services, the services, which is what I was including in my number as well, but the of it, which was so good for him now, but the only thing is he had this kind of linear growth and that's not how these rocket ship Marcus grow. >>They're more like an old guy for an S curve. You're going to get some steep part now, so I'd love to see like a longer term forecast because that it feels like that's how this is going to evolve. Right now it's like you've seated the base and you can just feel the momentum building and then I would expect you're going to see massive steep sort of exponential growth. Steeper. There may be, you know, nonlinear because that's how these markets go >> to come from the expansion potential, right? And none of our customers are more than 1% audit automated from an RPA perspective. So that shows you the massive opportunity. But back to the market site, data size, Craig and I and the other analysts, we talk often about this. I think the Tam views are very low and you'll look at our market share, let's just get some real data out there, right? >>Our market share in 2017 was 5% let's use Craig's linear data for now. You know, our market share this year is over 20% our market share applying, and I don't want to give the exact numbers as you don't provide guidance anymore, is substantially we're substantially gaining share now. I believe that's the reality of the market. I think because we know blue prisms numbers, we go four times faster than the every quarter automation. The world won't share their numbers. But you know, I can make some guesses, but either way I think, you know, I think we're gaining share on them significantly. I think, you know, Craig's not gonna want us to be 50% of the market two years, he's just not. And so he's going to have to figure out how to identify how to think. That brought more broadly about, about that market trend. He talked about it on stage today about how does he calculate the AI impact and the other pieces now the process mining now that now that we are integrating process mining into RPA, right? >>It's strategic component of that. How does that also involve the market? So I think you have both the expansion and the plot product portfolio, which drives it. And then you have the fact that customers are going to add more automations at faster pace and more robots and that's where the expansion really kicks in. And we often say, you know, look as a, as a, as a, as a company that, you know, one day we'll be public company, our ARR numbers. Very important. We do openly transparently share that. But you know, the other big metric will be, you know, dollar based net expansion rate that shows really how customers are expanding. I think that, I know it, our numbers, we haven't shared it yet. I know all the SAS companies, the top 10 I can tell you, you know we're higher than all of them. >>The market projections are low. And I think he knows it well. >> Speaking of Tam, and when we, I saw this with, with service now, now service now the core was it right? So the, the ROI was not as obvious with, with, with you guys, you're touching business process. And so, so in David Flory are way, way back, did an analysis of service and now he said, wow, the Tam is way being way under counted by everybody. That wall street analyst Gardner, it feels like the same here because there are so many adjacencies and just talk to the customers and you're seeing that the Tam could be enormous, much bigger than the whatever 16 billion a Daniel show, the other Danielson tangles, the guy's balls. He said, Oh that's 16 billion. That's you. I pass this data. And you know, we laugh, but I'm, I'm like listening. Say I wonder if he's serious cause this guy thinks big. >>I mean, who would've thought that he'd be at this point by now? And you're just getting started? Well, I think, you know, one thing I think is, you know, we're, we're, you know, we were a little bit kind of over a little less humble when we talked about things like valuation over the last few years. We were trying to show this market's real, you know, we want to now focus more on outcomes and things get a little less from around those numbers. And I think that shows the evolution of a company's maturity, um, that we, I think we're going through right now. Uh, you know, the outcomes of, you know, Walmart on stage saying, you know, their first robot that was, this was, this was two years ago, delivered 360,000 hours of capacity for them in, in, in, in, in HR, right? That, you know, I think those, that's where we're gonna be focused because the reality is if we can deliver these big outcomes and continue them and we can go company-wide deliver on the robot for every, every, every, every person, then you know, the numbers follow along with it. >>Well we saw some M and a this week as well, which again leads me to the larger Tam cause we had PD on, um, with Rudy and you can start to see how, okay now we're going to actually move into that vision that the guy from PepsiCo laid out this, this fabric of this automation fabric across the organization. So M and a is, is a part of that as well. That starts to open up new Tam. Opportunity does. And I think, you know, a process mind is a great example of a market that is pretty well known in Europe, not so much in the U S um, and there are really only a few players in that, in that market today. Look, we're going to do what we did in RPA. We're going to do the same thing. You're process mining. We're going to just say anything we're doing in it, not as democratization, you'll our strategy will be to go mass market with these technologies, make it very easy for accessibility for every single person in the case of process mining, every business analyst to be able to mind their processes for them and, and ultimately that flows through to drive faster implementations and then faster, faster outcomes. >>I think our approach, again, our approach to the business users, our approach to democratization, um, you know it's very different than our competitors. A lot of these low code companies, I won't name a number cause I don't remember our partners here at our conference. They're IT-focused their services heavy and, and you know, their growth rates I'll be at okay are 30% year over year in this market. That shouldn't be the case at all. I mean we're a 200 plus a year. We are still and we've got big numbers and we have a whole different approach to the market. I don't think people have figured it out yet, Dave. Exactly, exactly. The strategy behind which is, which is when you have business users, subject matter experts and citizen developers that can access our technology and build automations quickly and deliver value proof for their company. And you do that in mass scale. >>Right. And then you will now allow with our apps for your end users, I get a call center to engage with a robot as part of their daily operation that none of the other it vendors who are all kind of conventional thinking and that's not, our models are very different, which I think shows in our numbers and and, and the growth rates. Yeah. Well you bet on simplicity early on. In fact, when you join you iPad, you challenged me so you have some of your Wiki bond analysts go out. I remember head download our stuff and then try to download the competitors and they'll tell us, you know how easy it as well we were able to download UI path. We, we built some simple automations. We couldn't get ahold of the other other, other companies products we tried. We were told we'll go to the reseller or how much did you have to spend and okay so you bet on simplicity, which was interesting because Daniel last night kind of admitted, look, he tracked the audience. >>He said thank you for taking a chance on us because frankly a couple of years ago this wasn't fully baked right and and so, so I want to talk about last, the last topic is sort of one of the things Craig talked about was consolidation and I've been saying that all week and said this, this market is going to consolidate. You guys are a leader now you've got to get escape velocity cause the leader makes a lot of money and becomes, gets big. The number two does. Okay, number three man, everybody else and the big guys are starting to jump in as well. You saw SAP, you know, makes an announcement and you guys are specialists and so your thoughts on hitting escape velocity, I wouldn't say you're quite there yet. I want to see more on the ecosystem. There's maybe, who knows, maybe there's an IPO coming. I've predicted that there is, but your thoughts on achieving escape velocity and some of the metrics around there, whether it's customer adoption penetration, what are your thoughts? >>Yeah, I mean we definitely don't have a timetable on an IPO, but we have investors, public investors and VCs that at some point are going to want, this is the reality of how, of how it works. Right. Um, you know, I think the, uh, you know, I think the numbers to focus right now are on around, you know, customer outcomes. I think the ecosystem is a good one. Right? You know, we have, I'd say the biggest ecosystem for us to date has been the SAP ecosystem. When we look at our advisory board members, for others, that's really where, where the action is. Supply chain management, ERP, you know, certainly CRM and others, we don't have a view that, so our competitors have, but we have chosen not to take money from our, from ecosystem companies because we don't, our customers here are building processes, all the automation across ecosystems. >>Right? So you know, we don't want to go bet on say just one like Salesforce or Workday. We want to help them across all the ecosystem now. So I think it's a little bit of a different strategy there. Look, I think the interesting thing is the SAP is the world. They bought a small company in France called contexture. They're trying to do this themselves. Microsoft, Microsoft didn't in Mark Benioff and Salesforce are asked on every earnings call now what are you doing for RPA? So they've got pressure. So maybe they invest in one of our competitors or maybe they, you'll take flow in Microsoft and expanded. I think we can't move fast enough because you know, I don't know if Microsoft has, I mean they're a great sponsor by the way. So I don't want to only be careful we swept with what I say. But you know, strategically speaking, these larger companies operate in 18 months, 12 1824 months kind of planning cycles. >>If he did that, he will never keep up with us. There's no one at any of our traditional large enterprise software companies that ever would have bet that we would come out and say that the best way to build applications right to solve problems will be through RPA. Either there'll be a layer on top of all their technologies that makes it easier than ever for business users to build applications and solve problems, that's going to scare them to death. Why? Because you don't have to move all your legacy systems anymore. Yes, you've got tons of databases, but guess what? Don't worry about it. Leave him alone. Stop spending money on ridiculous upgrades right now. Just build a new layer and I'm telling you I there. As they figured this out, they're going to keep looking back and say, Oh my God, why didn't we know? >>Why did we know there's it looked I hopefully we could all partner. We're going to try to go down that route, but there's something much bigger going on here and they haven't figured it out. Well, the SAP data is very interesting to me that I'm starting to connect the dots. I just did a piece on my breaking analysis and SAP, they thank you. They, they've acquired 31 companies over the last nine years, right? And they've not bit the bullet on integration the way Oracle had to with fusion. Right? And so as a result, there's this, they say throw everything into HANA. It's a memory that's not going to work from an integration standpoint, right? Automation is actually a way to connect, you know, the glue across all those disparate systems, right? And so that makes a lot of sense that you're having success inside SAP and there's no reason that can't continue. >>Why there's, you know, there's a number of major kind of trends we've outlined here. One of, uh, we call human in the loop. And you know, today, you know, when each, when an unattended robot could actually stop a process and instead of sending the exception to a, an it person who monitoring, say, orchestrator actually go to an inbox, a task and box of that business user in a call center or wherever, and that robot can go do something else because it's so, so efficient and productive. But once that human has to solve that problem, right, that robot or a robot will take that back on and keep going. This human and robot interaction, it doesn't exist today and we know we're rolling that out in our UI path apps. I think you know that that's kind of mind blowing and then when you add a, I can't go too far into our roadmap and strategy or when you added the app programming layer and you add data science, that's a little bit of a hint into where we're going because we're open and transparent. >>Our data science connection, it's, it's this platform here, this kind of, I'd like to still call it all RPA. I think that that's a good thing, but the reality is this platform does Tam. What it can do is nothing like it was a year ago and it won't be like where it is today. A year from now you've got the tiger by the tail, Bobby, you got work to do, but congratulations on all the success. It's really been great to be able to document this and cover it, so thanks for coming on the cube. Thank you. All right. Thank you for watching everybody back with our next guest. Right after this short break, you're watching the cube live from UI path forward three from Bellagio in Vegas right back.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. I hanging onto the rocket ship. Cube I think was Miami right yet and a, and that was a great event, but that was more in the Our senior executives, like for the first time we actually had S you know, And I mean, you've come so far where no one knew RPA two years ago Well, and I saw a lot of the banks here hovering around, you know, knocking on your door so they, And we had banks who now we're not really counting anymore and we're kind of, you know, now focus more on you know, look, last year we announced our vision of a robot for every person. Look, I think it's important to look at it both ways. a company can drive, you know, 10, 15, 20% productivity by every employee having a robot. the value to shareholders, you know, it's about tech for good and doing other things affecting but also just solving the solving, you know, help accelerate human achievement. that RPA and RPA has the path to AI and the greater, the greater new technologies and that's you know, a Salesforce stack and sometimes in this SAP, the reality is they have a mix of a bunch of systems and then we add I think what's amazing is when you go to talk to a CIO who says, I've been automating for 20 years, I myself, I always have 1520 tabs open if I go, Oh you got so many tabs on my, and so, you know, and you see this conference hear me walk around. I mean you saw last year in the year before you see the year before, but it's, it's a whole, There may be, you know, nonlinear because that's how these markets go So that shows you the massive opportunity. I think, you know, Craig's not gonna want us to be 50% of the market two years, the other big metric will be, you know, dollar based net expansion rate that shows really how customers And I think he knows it well. And you know, deliver on the robot for every, every, every, every person, then you know, the numbers follow along with it. And I think, you know, a process mind is a great example of a market that is pretty well known in Europe, services heavy and, and you know, their growth rates I'll be at okay are 30% year over I remember head download our stuff and then try to download the competitors and they'll tell us, you know how easy it as You saw SAP, you know, makes an announcement and you guys are specialists and so your I think the numbers to focus right now are on around, you know, customer outcomes. So you know, we don't want to go bet on say just one like Salesforce or Workday. Because you don't have to move you know, the glue across all those disparate systems, right? And you know, today, you know, when each, when an unattended robot could actually Thank you for watching everybody back with our next guest.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
DavePERSON

0.99+

MicrosoftORGANIZATION

0.99+

Jeff FrickPERSON

0.99+

EuropeLOCATION

0.99+

WalmartsORGANIZATION

0.99+

TrumpPERSON

0.99+

UberORGANIZATION

0.99+

2017DATE

0.99+

Bobby PatrickPERSON

0.99+

TabloORGANIZATION

0.99+

WalmartORGANIZATION

0.99+

KevinPERSON

0.99+

JeannePERSON

0.99+

DanielPERSON

0.99+

31 companiesQUANTITY

0.99+

5%QUANTITY

0.99+

30%QUANTITY

0.99+

FranceLOCATION

0.99+

50%QUANTITY

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

Last yearDATE

0.99+

15QUANTITY

0.99+

8%QUANTITY

0.99+

Coca-ColaORGANIZATION

0.99+

2020DATE

0.99+

16 billionQUANTITY

0.99+

360,000 hoursQUANTITY

0.99+

12 timesQUANTITY

0.99+

850 cliniciansQUANTITY

0.99+

PepsiCoORGANIZATION

0.99+

OracleORGANIZATION

0.99+

18QUANTITY

0.99+

ExcelTITLE

0.99+

iPadCOMMERCIAL_ITEM

0.99+

5,000 customersQUANTITY

0.99+

18%QUANTITY

0.99+

50 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

yesterdayDATE

0.99+

CraigPERSON

0.99+

25 millionQUANTITY

0.99+

5,000QUANTITY

0.99+

VegasLOCATION

0.99+

BobbyPERSON

0.99+

1520 tabsQUANTITY

0.99+

20 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

GardnerPERSON

0.99+

U N I TORGANIZATION

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

100QUANTITY

0.99+

20%QUANTITY

0.99+

PepsiORGANIZATION

0.99+

New YorkLOCATION

0.99+

10 billionQUANTITY

0.99+

Morgan StanleyORGANIZATION

0.99+

25QUANTITY

0.99+

FacebookORGANIZATION

0.99+

two yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

Michael DellPERSON

0.99+

43QUANTITY

0.99+

this weekDATE

0.99+

AmazonsORGANIZATION

0.99+

10QUANTITY

0.99+

18 monthsQUANTITY

0.99+

RudyPERSON

0.99+

David FloryPERSON

0.99+

four hoursQUANTITY

0.99+

U SLOCATION

0.99+

New York FoundlingORGANIZATION

0.99+

U NORGANIZATION

0.99+

last nightDATE

0.99+

MiamiLOCATION

0.99+

more than 1%QUANTITY

0.99+

SalesforceORGANIZATION

0.99+

Mariesa Coughanour, Cognizant & Clemmie Malley, NextEra Energy | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

(upbeat music) >> Live, from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE, covering UiPath Forward Americas 2019. Brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to Las Vegas, everybody. You're watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events and we extract the signal from the noise. This is day two of UiPath Forward III, the third North American conference that UiPath-- The rocket ship that is UiPath. Clemmie Malley is here. She's the Enterprise RPA Center of Excellence Lead at NextEra Energy. Welcome. Great to have you. And Mariesa Coughanour, who is the Managing Principal of Intelligent Automation and Technology at Cognizant. Nice to see you guys. >> Nice seeing you. >> Nice to see you. >> Thanks for coming on. How's the show going for you? >> It's been great so far. >> Yes. >> It's been awesome. >> Have you been to multiple... >> This is my third. >> Yep. >> Really? Okay, great. How does this compare? >> It has changed significantly in three years, so. It was very small in New York in 2017 and even last year grew, but now it's a two-year event taking over. >> Yeah, last year Miami was-- >> I don't know. >> It was nice. >> Definitely smaller than this, but it was happening. Kind of hip vibe. We're here in Vegas, everybody loves to be in Vegas. CUBE comes to Vegas a lot. So tell me more about your role at NextEra Energy. But let's start with the company. You guys are multi billion, many, many, tens of billions, probably close to $20 billion energy firm. Really dynamic industry. >> Yeah, so NextEra Energy is actually an awesome company, right? So we're the world's largest in clean renewable energy. So with wind and solar, really, and we also have Florida Power and Light, which is one of the child companies to NextEra as a parent, which is headquartered out of Florida. So it's usually the regulated side of power in the state of Florida. >> We know those guys. We've actually done some work with Florida Power and Light. Cool people down there. And we heard, one of the keynotes today, Craig LeClaire, was saying, "Yeah, the Center of Excellence, "that's actually maybe asking too much." But there are a lot of folks here that are sort of involved in a COE and that's kind of your role. But I was surprised to hear him say that. I don't know if you were in the keynote this morning, but was it a challenge to get a Center of Excellence? What is that all about? >> So I think there's a little bit of caution around doing it initially. People are very aggressive. And we actually learned from this story. So when we started, it was more about showing value, building as many automations as possible. We didn't really care about having a COE. The COE just happened to form. >> Okay. >> Because we found out we needed some level of governance and control around what we were doing. But now that I look back on it, it's really instrumental to making sure we have the success. So whether you do a hybrid development to automation, which you can have citizen development, or you're fully centralized, I think having the strong COE to have that core governance model and control and process is important. >> Mariesa, so your title is not, there's not RPA in your title, right? RPA is too narrow, right? >> Yeah. >> In your business you're trying to help transform companies, it's all about automation. But maybe explain a little bit about your practice and your role. >> Sure, so Cognizant's been on the automation journey now for three years. We started back in 2014 and right out the gate it was all about intelligent automation, just not RPA. Because we knew to be able to do end-to-end solutions you would need multiple technologies to really get the job done and get the outcomes they wanted. So we sit now, over 2,500 folks at our practice, going out, working cross-industry, cross-regions to be able to work with people like Clemmie to put in their program. And we've even added some stuff recently. A lot of it actually inspired by NextEra. And we have an advisory team now. And our whole job is to go in and help people unstuck their programs, for lack of a better way to say it. Help them think about, how do you put that foundation? Get a little bit stronger and actually enable scale, and putting in all this technology to get outcomes? Versus just focusing on just the pure play RPA, which a lot of people struggle to gain the benefits from. >> So Clemmie, what leads you to the decision to bring in an outside firm like Cognizant? What's that discussion like internally? >> So, I'll just give you a little bit of backstory, because I think that's interesting, as well. When we started playing with RPA in late 2016, early 2017, we knew that we wanted to do a lot of things in-house, but in order to have a flex model and really develop automations across the company, we needed to have a partner. And we wanted them to focus more on delivery, so developing, and then partner with us to give us some best practices, things that we could do better. When we founded the COE we knew what we wanted to do. So we actually had two other partners before we went with Cognizant, and that was a huge challenge for us. We found we were reworking a lot of the code that they gave us. They weren't there to be our partners. They wanted to come and actually do the work for us, instead of enabling us to be successful. And we actually said, "We don't want a partner." And then Cognizant came in and they actually were like, "Let's give you somebody." So we wanted somebody around delivery, because we said, "Okay, now that we centralize, "we have a good foundation, a good model, "we're going to need to focus on scale. "So how do we do that? "We need a flex model." So Cognizant came in and they said, "Well, we're going to offer you a delivery lead "to help focus on making sure "you get the automations out the door." Well, Mariesa actually showed up, which was one of the best hidden surprises that we received. And she really just came in, learned the company, learned our culture, and was able to say, "Okay, here's some guidance. "What can you instill? "What can you bring?" Tracking, and start capturing the outcomes that she's mentioned. And I know that was a little bit more, but it's been quite a journey. >> No, it's really good, back up. So Mariesa, I'm hearing from Clemmie that you were willing to teach these guys how to fish, as opposed to just perpetual, hourly, daily rate billing. >> Yep. And that's really what our belief is. We can go in, and yes, we can augment, from resourcing perspective, help them deliver, develop, support everything, which we do. And we work with Clemmie and others to do that. But what's really important to get to scale was how do we teach them how to go do this? Because if you're going to really embed this type of automation culture and mindset, you have to teach people how to do it. It's not about just leaning on me. I needed to help Clemmie. I need to help her team, and also their leadership and their employees. On how do you identify opportunities, and how then do you make these things actually work and run? >> So you really understand the organization. Clemmie was saying you learned the culture. >> Yeah. >> So you're not just a salesperson going in and hanging out in theCUBE. So you're kind of an extension, really, of the staff. So, either of you, if you can explain to me sort of, where RPA fits into this broader vision. That would really be helpful. >> Sure, so maybe I can kick a little bit off from what I'm seeing from clients like Clemmie, and also other customers. So what you'll find is RPA tends to be like this gateway. It's the stepping stone to all things automation. Because folks in the business, they really understand it. It's rule-based, right? It's a game of Simon Says, in some ways, when you first get this going. And then after that, it's enabling the other technology and looking at, "Look, if I want to go end-to-end, "what do I need to get the job done? "What do I need around data intake? "How do I have the right framework "to pick the right OCR tool, "or put analytics on, "or machine learning?" Because there's so much out there today and you need to have the stuff that's right-fit to come in. And so it's really about looking at what's that company strategy? And then looking at this as a tool set. And how to use these tools to go and get the job done. And that's what we were doing a lot with Clemmie and team when we sat down. They have a steering committee that's chaired by their CIO, Chief Accounting Officer, and senior leaders from every business unit across their enterprise. >> So you mentioned scaling. >> Yep. >> We heard today in the predictions segment that we're going to move from snowflake to snowball. And so I would think for scaling it's important to identify reusable components. And so how have you, how has that played out for you? And how's the scaling going? >> Yeah, so that's been one really cool component that we've built out in the COE. So I had my team actually vote on a name and we said, "We want to go after reusable components." They decided to call them Microbots. So it's a cool little term that we coined. >> That's cool. >> And our CIO and CAO actually talk about them frequently. "How are our Microbots? "How many do we have? "What are they doing?" So it's pretty catchy. But what it's really enabled us is to build these reusable snippets of code that are specific to how we perform as a company that we can plug and play and reduce our cycle time. So we've actually reduced our cycle time by over 50%. And reusable components is one of the major key components. >> So how do you share those components? Are they available in some kind of internal marketplace? And how do you train people to actually know what to apply where? >> Right. So because we're centralized, it's a little bit easier, right? We have a stored repository, where they're available. We document them-- >> And it's the COE-- Sorry to interrupt. It's the COE's responsibility, and-- >> Exactly. So the COE has it. We're actually working with Cognizant right now to figure out how can we document those further, right? And UiPath. There's a lot of cool tools that were introduced this week. So I think we're definitely going to be leveraging from them. But the ability to really show what they are, make them available, and we're doing all of that internally right now. Probably a little manual. So it'll be great to have that available. >> So Amazon has this cool concept they call working backwards documents. I don't know if you ever heard this. But what they do is they basically write the press release, thinking five years in advance. This is how they started AWS, they actually wrote. This is what we want, and then they work backwards from there. So my question is around engineering outcomes. Can you engineer outcomes, and is that how you were thinking about this? Or is it just too many unknown parts of the process that you can't predict? >> So I think one of the things that we did was we did think about, "What do we want to achieve with this?" So one of the big programs that Clemmie and the team have is also around accelerate. And their key initiatives to drive, whether it's improve customer experience, more efficiencies of certain processes across the company. And so we looked at that first, and said, "Okay, how do we enable that?" That's a top strategy driven by their CEO. And even when we prioritize all the work, we actually build a model for them. So that it's objective. So if any opportunities that come in align to those key outcomes that the company's striving for, they can prioritize first to be worked on. I actually also think this is where this is all going. Everyone focuses today on these automation COEs and automation teams, but what you will see, and this is happening at NextEra, and all the places we're starting to see this scale, is you end up with this outcomes management office. This is a core nucleus of a team that is automation, there's IT at the table, there's this lean quality mindset at the table, and they're actually looking at opportunities and saying, "All right, this one's yours. "This one's yours and then I'll pick up from you." And it's driving, then, the right outcomes for the organization versus just saying, "I have a hammer, I'm going to go find a nail," which sometimes happens. >> Right, oh, for sure. And it may be a fine nail to hit, but it might not be the most strategic-- >> Exactly. >> Or the most valuable. So what are some examples of areas that you're most excited about? Where you've applied automation and have given a business outcome that's been successful? >> Yeah, so we are an energy company. And we've had a lot of really awesome brainstorming sessions that we've held with UiPath and Cognizant. And a couple of key ones that have come out of it, really around storm season is big for us in the state of Florida. And making sure that our critical infrastructure is available. So our nursing homes, our hospitals, and so on. So we've actually built automations that help us to ping and make sure that they're available, so that we can stay proactive, right? There's also a cool use-case around, really, the intelligent automations space. So our linemen in their trucks are saying, "Hey, we spend a lot of time having to log on the computer, "log our tickets, "and then we have to turn our computers off, "drive to the next site, "and we're not able to restore as much power "or resolve issues as quickly as possible." So we said, "How can we enable them?" Speech recognition, where they can talk to it, it can log a ticket for them on their behalf. So it's pretty exciting. >> So that's kind of an interesting example. Where RPA, in and of itself's not going to solve that problem, right, but speech recognition-- >> It's a combination. >> So you got to bring in other technology, so using, what, some NLP capability, or? >> Yeah, so that's one we're currently working on. But yes, you would need some type of cognitive speech recognition, and. >> So you sort of playing around with that in R&D right now? The speech [Mumbles]. >> Yeah. >> Which, as you know, is not perfect, right? >> It is not. >> Talk to us. We know about it all. Because we transcribe every word that's said on theCUBE. And so, there's some good ones and there's some not so good ones. And they're getting better, though. They're getting better. And that's going to be kind of commodity shortly. You really need just good enough, right? I mean, is that true? Or do you need near perfect? >> So I think there's a happy medium. It depends on what you're trying to do. In this case we're logging tickets, so there might be some variability that you can have. But I will say, so NextEra is really focused on energy, but they're also trying to set themselves apart. So they're trying to focus on innovation, as well. So this is a lot of the areas that they're focusing on: the machine learning, and the processing, and we even have chat bots that they're coining and branding internally, so it's pretty exciting. >> So NextEra is, are you entirely new energy? Is that right? No fossil fuels, or? >> So it's all clean energy, yes. Across the enterprise. >> Awesome. How's that going? Obviously you guys are very successful, but, I mean, what's kind of happening in the energy business today? You're sort of seeing a resurgence in oil, right, but? >> Yeah, so I think we had a really good boom. A couple years ago there were a lot of tax credits that we were able to grow that side of our company. And it enabled us to really pivot to be the clean energy that we are. >> I mean, that's key, right? I mean, United States, we want to lead in clean energy. And I'm not sure we are. I mean, like you say, there was tax incentives and credits that sort of drove a lot of innovation, but am I correct? You see countries outside the U.S., really, maybe leaning in harder. I mean, obviously we got NextEra, but. >> I mean, I think there's definitely competition out there. We're focused on trying to be, maybe not the best, but compete with the best. We're also trying to focus on what's next, right? So be proactive, and grow the company in a multitude of ways. Maybe even outside the energy sector, just to make sure that we can compete. But really what we're focused on is the clean renewables, so. >> That's awesome. I mean, as a country we need this, and it's great to have organizations like yours. Mariesa, I'll give you the final word. Kind of, the landscape of automation. What inning are we in? Baseball analogy. Or how far can this thing go? And what's your sort of, as you pull out the binoculars, maybe not the telescope, but the binoculars, where do you see it going? >> I think there's a lot of runway left. So if you look at a lot of the research out there today, I heard today, 10% was quoted by one person. I heard 13% quoted from HFS around where are we at on scale from an RPA perspective? And that's just RPA. >> Yeah. >> So that means there's still so much out there to still go and look at and be able to make an impact. But if you look, there's also a lot of runway on this intelligent automation. And that's where, I think, we have to shift the focus. You're seeing it now, at these conferences. That you're starting to see people talk about, "How do I integrate? "How do I actually think about connecting the dots "to get bigger and broader outcomes for an organization?" and I think that's where we're going to shift to, is talking about how do we bring together multiple technologies to be able to go and get these end-to-end solutions for customers? And ultimately go, what we were talking a little bit about before, on outcome-focused for an organization. Not talking about just, "How do I go do AI? "How do I go put a bot in?" But, "I want to choose this outcome for my customer. "I need to grow the top line. "I'm getting this feedback." Or even internally, "I want to get more efficient so I can deliver." And focus there, and then what we'll do is find the right tools to be able to move all that forward. >> It's interesting. We're out of time, but you think about, it's somewhat surprising when people hear what you just said, Mariesa, because people think, "Wow, we've had all this technology for 50 years. "Haven't we automated everything?" Well, Daniel Dines, last night, put forth the premise that all this technology's actually creating inefficiencies and somewhat creating the problem. So technology's kind of got us into the problem. We'll see if technology can get us out. All right? Thanks, you guys, for coming on theCUBE. Appreciate it. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for having us. >> You're welcome. >> Thanks. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be right back with our next guest right after this short break. UiPath Forward III from Las Vegas. You're watching theCUBE. (electronic music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by UiPath. Nice to see you guys. How's the show going for you? How does this compare? and even last year grew, We're here in Vegas, everybody loves to be in Vegas. and we also have Florida Power and Light, And we heard, one of the keynotes today, And we actually learned from this story. it's really instrumental to making sure we have the success. to help transform companies, and putting in all this technology to get outcomes? And I know that was a little bit more, that you were willing to teach these guys how to fish, And we work with Clemmie and others to do that. So you really understand the organization. So you're not just a salesperson going in It's the stepping stone to all things automation. And how's the scaling going? So it's a cool little term that we coined. that are specific to how we perform as a company So because we're centralized, And it's the COE-- But the ability to really show what they are, and is that how you were thinking about this? And so we looked at that first, and said, And it may be a fine nail to hit, So what are some examples of areas so that we can stay proactive, right? So that's kind of an interesting example. But yes, you would need some type of So you sort of playing around with that in R&D right now? And that's going to be kind of commodity shortly. and we even have chat bots that they're coining So it's all clean energy, yes. in the energy business today? to be the clean energy that we are. And I'm not sure we are. just to make sure that we can compete. and it's great to have organizations like yours. So if you look at a lot of the research out there today, So that means there's still so much out there to still go and somewhat creating the problem. right after this short break.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
Clemmie MalleyPERSON

0.99+

Craig LeClairePERSON

0.99+

Mariesa CoughanourPERSON

0.99+

AmazonORGANIZATION

0.99+

VegasLOCATION

0.99+

NextEraORGANIZATION

0.99+

MariesaPERSON

0.99+

FloridaLOCATION

0.99+

50 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

2014DATE

0.99+

ClemmiePERSON

0.99+

New YorkLOCATION

0.99+

NextEra EnergyORGANIZATION

0.99+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.99+

2017DATE

0.99+

AWSORGANIZATION

0.99+

two-yearQUANTITY

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

Daniel DinesPERSON

0.99+

early 2017DATE

0.99+

13%QUANTITY

0.99+

three yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

last yearDATE

0.99+

10%QUANTITY

0.99+

thirdQUANTITY

0.99+

late 2016DATE

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

CognizantORGANIZATION

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

over 50%QUANTITY

0.99+

$20 billionQUANTITY

0.98+

MiamiLOCATION

0.98+

U.S.LOCATION

0.98+

over 2,500 folksQUANTITY

0.98+

CognizantPERSON

0.98+

2019DATE

0.98+

Florida Power and LightORGANIZATION

0.97+

this weekDATE

0.97+

five yearsQUANTITY

0.97+

firstQUANTITY

0.97+

two other partnersQUANTITY

0.96+

last nightDATE

0.95+

one personQUANTITY

0.94+

tens of billionsQUANTITY

0.94+

United StatesLOCATION

0.93+

COEORGANIZATION

0.93+

multi billionQUANTITY

0.91+

UiPath Forward IIIEVENT

0.91+

Simon SaysTITLE

0.86+

Kevin Kroen, PwC | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. >>Welcome back to UI path forward three. This is UI pass. Third North American conference. We're here at the Bellagio hotel. You are watching the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise, we pick the brains of experts. Kevin crone is here. He's a financial services intelligent automation leader at PWC. Kevin, thanks for coming on the cube Bexar Avenue. You're very welcome. So financial services has always been kind of a leading indicator of technology adoption. I presume that automation is, is no difference, but you know, you're in the New York area, you're belly to belly with the financial services companies, the big whales, what's going on in Fs these days? Sure. >>So as we look across the financial services industry, they were one of the leaders with automation more because the overarching business environment really forced them. As we looked at, um, the regulatory burden that a lot of our banking clients we're under over the past decade kind of post crash that really, um, has kind of forced two things. One, it's limited the amount of um, discretionary spend that they have to spend on really big technology transformation projects. It's also forced a lot of margin pressure and having to think about, uh, differently how they could run their business at a much lower and more effective price points. And so that's, um, driven automation to the top. And we've seen tools like U I path and kind of the broader RPA ecosystem becoming kind of, you know, the right technology at the right time of being able to, um, really kind of embrace that, that, that, that rightsizing agenda and financial services sector. >>Yeah. And furniture at the macro level, they're a little bit out of favor right now you've had this, what we thought was this rising interest rate environment and that's reversed. And so that's not necessarily good for them. So they got to look for other ways to sort of drive the bottom line. So maybe you could talk a little bit about, you know, gen generally where you're seeing automation, um, back office, front office. Think about the maturity curve. What are the leaders doing? What, >>what's the sort of best practice right now for intelligent automation RPA? Sure. So as we looked at intelligent automation right now, I think one of the interesting things, vital services was an early adopter. So a lot of, a lot of the big banks and asset managers and insurance companies really start investing in this, this class of technology four, five, six, seven years ago. And so we're actually seeing the, the early returns from, from those, which is informing how this, you know, this topic goes to other industries. But I think as we look at those returns, we see a couple of major challenges. Um, there's challenges with getting the scaling technology, there's challenges with, so that's interesting. Okay. So the, the ladder changing, the nature of work is, as you're saying, largely automating existing mundane processes, kind of paving the cow path as I sometimes say. >>However, if, if it's a, if it's not the most efficient processy to begin read process to begin with, they need to sort of re look at that and that may be falls into the, to the, to the former category of enterprise life. And so where people investing in boat or they are they just hitting the low hanging fruit where we're seeing an investment in both. And then PWC is used that a while fucks your mission program should have both channels and each channel should be informing the other. So if citizens are coming up with ideas of things that they can automate themselves, that's great, but those should also be contributed into the kind of broader ecosystem. And there may be, um, what's called grander ways to, to, to solve that problem, both from a technology perspective and from a process reengineering perspective. Is there a, is there an automation ex-officio is there a chief who's sort of looking at all this stuff or is it more organic? >>It's, you know, one of the, I think interesting things we've seen and learned from our clients over the past couple of years is the con, you know, we thought there'd be an emergence of a chief automation officer or something like that. But really the automation agenda's owned in so many different places within our clients. And it's not consistent client decline in some cases. It's really a CIO own topic. A lot of cases it's more of a chief operating officer, chief digital officer, chief transformation officer. We're also seeing a push at the chief HR officer level because this is really, you know, there's a, there's a big question straight in terms of thinking about kind of skills and how you equip your workforce with the right digital skills for the future, which is now putting HR at the table for this, which is the place where I think traditionally with big technology transformations, they've never really sat. >>So, in thinking about, um, ROI, you know, you've laid out this sort of bifurcated, you know, paths to vectors the hard sort of end-to-end problems and then the sort of low hanging fruit changing the way to work. I would presume the second one gives you the quick hit, you know, faster break even, but probably lower net present value. Um, and, and so maybe you could talk a little bit about the ROI equation and how people are looking at that. Yeah. It's interesting cause I think yeah, to your point, I think an enterprise led initiative, you're going to want to define a business case and say this is why we're doing it and what we're looking to achieve going down to SIS and let channel, that's a harder thing to do because you don't want to stifle innovation. The organization, one of our views is that the people that sit closest to the business process are the ones that should be coming up the right ideas, if they're given the right upscaling and the right tools at their disposal. >>Um, but you know, it's bottoms up exercise. And so again, going back to the concept of having a kind of an ecosystem with both an enterprise channel and a citizen channel is important because you're at the enterprise level, you're going to need to understand what type of benefits are actually being created at the, you know, at the micro level and figure out two things. One, are there things that, you know, do, have we built enough that we can start to release capacity from organization? Um, or is there something else that if I put in, will allow us to really think about transforming our business? So it's a, it's a lover. It's not that the end solution, right? When I tell people about you that don't know what RPA is, I say it's a lot of back office stuff and it is. Um, but we heard today that from one of the keynotes that, you know, we gotta move from the back office to the, to the front office. >>How much is that happening in financial services and how much of a sort of a holistic end to end strategy are you seeing? I'm sure you guys are promoting that are fans of that because you're going to get a much bigger business impact. It's transformational. But where are we at in the maturity of that? Yeah, it's interesting, right? So we, you know, staying on this theme of the enterprise and citizen light innovation levers, you know, the enterprise. Um, and you know, innovation levers tend to be focused more in the back office, high transaction volume type processes. I think when we look at the citizen led channel and a lot of the ideas that have been coming out in our cotton with our clients are starting to embrace this. They tend to be more front office oriented processes. There's lots of things, especially client servicing or that are tasks that are done are somewhat mundane. >>And um, you know, it's the business case and LOC isn't necessarily back capacity. It's about client experience and customer service. So, you know, you can take the, um, you know, the, the, the wealth advisor that has to log into five different systems to answer a simple client question. That's a, you know, that's a process that being able to actually have an automated way to generate that same thing at their fingertips, um, you know, could be really powerful. And so there's a big push there. I think the interesting part on the, um, going back to your bet, your business case question from before is that, um, you know, the, the business case for a lot of those types of automations, um, it's not just a factor of um, you know, have we built enough that we think that there's benefit, it's also about adoption. So if I build a robot to automate that wealth advisor process that I just noted, if 50 wealth advisors can adopt that rather than one wealth advisor, it's going to be a much greater business case. And that's a much, that's a different way of thinking about business case in the RPA sense. Because most people tend to think, here's a process, this process, I have five people that run this on a day to day basis. Um, and here's, here's my business case. In this case it's, I built something really innovative. If I can get a a hundred people to use this because it's, it takes 10 minutes out of their day, there's real, there's, there's real time there, but it is causing a lot of our clients to think differently. >>So you talk about three things as challenges scaled the business case, which you just talked about and change management. Is that part of the, and they're interrelated? Is that part of the challenge with scale? It is far as the channel. >>I mean just building on the last point around adoption, you know, that what we're doing, what we're talking about here with RPA, I think people that live in the RPA space day to day, this does this almost become second nature. And like, yeah, the technology is not that complicated. This is very basic, but you start going out to the entire organization and especially outside of technology. Um, it's, it's new. And so the change management's really important. Um, and it's important we, we view from two lenses. One is really thinking about how do you, um, upskill your workforce at a minimum so they know what technology is actually out there. It doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna make everyone a bot builder in your organization. But knowing what RPA is and knowing that, Hey, I have some tools to go help solve a given business problem is really important. But, uh, you know, the, the uh, the second point that we think is really important in here is the ability to, um, really think, sorry, really think about the, um, you know, what the longterm impact of kind of, um, you know, the overall organizational model and how that actually adopts to using automation over time. >>And that ties into change management, which is the other thing and people don't like change. Um, the other thing we heard this morning, um, Craig LeClaire Forrester analyst talked about how a lot of robots are idle sitting around ill, you know, then though at the orchestrator. And so I was, I was thinking, well, we're seeing sass models emerge, you know, UI path announced their cloud product and I would expect you're going to see new pricing models as well, kind of usage base pricing, which is kind of generally not how things are priced today. But is that something that customers are pushing for >>or definitely. I mean I think there's, um, there's two, two things we hear from customers in this space. I think as RPA, as a product is developed and you know, I think there was a push, uh, with most, with all the vendors towards kind of what's priced for bot. But the concept of a bot is a somewhat ambiguous concept to a lot of our clients. And what our clients really want is to price and value, right? And understand, um, if I'm building bots that are, you know, covering this part of the organization, I'm appropriately paying for this, um, rather than worry about how much workload did I put onto one bod versus another. I think with, uh, with the mass adoption of cloud and the fact that the RP ecosystems quickly moving from an on prem solution to a cloud based solution, I think a lot of this is just gonna happen naturally. Um, over time. I think the other, I think the other really important part in there is not to just make this a technology question about the kind of the pricing. It's also a question on value delivered and realize the benefits case and can you actually tie what those realized benefits are to what the actual price that's actually going to pay for the software is >>all right. You ready for some curve balls? Sure. Okay. So you're, you know, thought leader you worked for one of the largest consultancies on the planet global scale. You guys do some really great work disruption. We talk about digital transformation, automation obviously plays in there, blockchain, AI, RPA, et cetera. Do you, do you think that banks will lose control of payment systems? >>I'm not sure. I would say the pro, the biggest problems that banks are facing, um, with regards to that isn't necessarily whether they control the payment system or not. I actually think it's how effective they can run the system internally. I mean, I'm a, I'm an automation guy, right? And my goal is to make clients run as efficiently and as effectively as possible. And I look at a lot of the legacy debt that sits within a lot of our clients infrastructure. I think that's the biggest problem to tackle. I think if they don't tackle that and are not successful topics like RPA and automation, it, it's going to create the forces of nature that allow some of the broader disruption to happen. So it's, you know, to me, at least in my mind, it's one of these things that you, you have your agenda in what'd you can control. These are the things that you actually shouldn't be focusing on. So you're set up to compete with some of the big disruptors in the future. >>Yeah, interesting. I mean that's one industry, there's a disruption all around us, but that's one industry along with healthcare and defense that it hasn't been highly disrupted yet because it's very high risk. Not only that they're, you know, they've got very strong relationship with the government. So this, and they're big and they're well funded, but, but it seems like that disruption scenario is coming to financial services. When you talk to people in the industry, they certainly see it, but there's also a lot of complacency. It's like, Hey, we're a big, big Fs. We're doing really well. Um, dots on that. >>Um, you know, there is, you know, when we looked across and I'll just say kind of technology investment in the banking sector, big banks and asset managers, insurance companies are some of the biggest spenders on technology out there. And in your view, look at a lot of the commentary that comes out of analyst calls. There's pretty consistent, um, push a to talk about, um, you know, Becky organization as a technology company or some form of that. And there's also a big push to talk about how much money they're spending. That's great. But we've also, yeah, I think when you, you kind of look under the covers, there's been a lot of historical challenges with um, with implementing big technology projects and things. There's a lot of legacy debt that's been built over the past 25 years and complexity really thinking about this from a front to back perspective. >>Like from the point, you know, taking a, the trading side of a bank, looking at the point of trade entry through post-trade processing through finance processing through kind of every step in the life cycle. It's still run from a technology perspective, probably not as efficient as possible. And I think especially when you get outside the front office area and some of the training areas and look at that. So there's a ton of opportunity for improvement and, and you know, kind of building on the last theme, I think to the extent that technologies like RPA and automation are embraced, it helps think about that problem a little bit differently and gives us a chance to tackle some of these big meaty legacy problems that had been around for a while. If we're successful at this and we can force the ROI to be proved, we can force the change management exercise to happen. I think it sets our clients up for, again, for success to avoid some of these disruptive factors. >>Yeah. So huge opportunity then for a UI path than some of its competitors, you know, penetration wise, adoption wise, what inning are we in? >>Uh, adding to we're, we're in early days. I mean, I think we've seen a ton of interest. It's under the excitement from our clients. But you know, our surveys of, of, of the financial services industry, um, most clients will acknowledge their past the pilot and proof of concept phase and there may be even past the first 10 bought phase, but they're not at scale. Right. And I think until three things happen, I think until we can prove that the technology is being used, um, you know, from an organizational coverage across a much wider swath than it is today. I think when we can prove that there's actually a real demonstrable benefit happening from a, from an organizational operating model perspective, and to the extent that the workforce is actually embracing this and I'm posing it, I think we'll, you know, >>be in a much better position to say, Hey, we're working now getting to ending five or six and, and this, this picture's becoming more complete. But it's still early. A lot of opportunities. Kevin, thanks very much to come into the Q was great to have you. Thank you for having me. Hi, and thank you for watching. We're right back with our next guest right after this short break. You're watching the cube live from UI path forward 2019 at the Bellagio right back.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. is no difference, but you know, you're in the New York area, you're belly to belly kind of the broader RPA ecosystem becoming kind of, you know, the right technology at the right time you know, gen generally where you're seeing automation, from those, which is informing how this, you know, this topic goes to other industries. However, if, if it's a, if it's not the most efficient processy to is the con, you know, we thought there'd be an emergence of a chief automation officer So, in thinking about, um, ROI, you know, you've laid out this sort of bifurcated, are there things that, you know, do, have we built enough that we can start to release capacity Um, and you know, innovation levers And um, you know, it's the business case and LOC isn't necessarily back capacity. So you talk about three things as challenges scaled the business case, which you just talked about and change management. really think about the, um, you know, what the longterm impact I was thinking, well, we're seeing sass models emerge, you know, I think as RPA, as a product is developed and you know, I think there was a push, So you're, you know, thought leader you So it's, you know, to me, at least in my mind, Not only that they're, you know, they've got very strong relationship with the government. um, push a to talk about, um, you know, Becky Like from the point, you know, taking a, the trading side of a bank, looking at the point of trade is actually embracing this and I'm posing it, I think we'll, you know, Hi, and thank you for watching.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
KevinPERSON

0.99+

10 minutesQUANTITY

0.99+

Kevin KroenPERSON

0.99+

twoQUANTITY

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

sixQUANTITY

0.99+

fiveQUANTITY

0.99+

five peopleQUANTITY

0.99+

New YorkLOCATION

0.99+

both channelsQUANTITY

0.99+

each channelQUANTITY

0.99+

PWCORGANIZATION

0.99+

two thingsQUANTITY

0.99+

50 wealth advisorsQUANTITY

0.99+

two lensesQUANTITY

0.99+

second pointQUANTITY

0.99+

2019DATE

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

bothQUANTITY

0.99+

second natureQUANTITY

0.99+

OneQUANTITY

0.99+

Kevin cronePERSON

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.99+

Craig LeClairePERSON

0.99+

five different systemsQUANTITY

0.98+

three thingsQUANTITY

0.98+

first 10QUANTITY

0.98+

fourDATE

0.96+

one industryQUANTITY

0.95+

second oneQUANTITY

0.94+

one wealth advisorQUANTITY

0.94+

past decadeDATE

0.93+

Bexar AvenueLOCATION

0.93+

this morningDATE

0.92+

one bodQUANTITY

0.86+

BeckyORGANIZATION

0.85+

PwCORGANIZATION

0.84+

seven years agoDATE

0.78+

fiveDATE

0.75+

BellagioLOCATION

0.72+

North AmericanEVENT

0.71+

past couple of yearsDATE

0.7+

a hundred peopleQUANTITY

0.67+

sixDATE

0.67+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.64+

Americas 2019EVENT

0.63+

BellagioORGANIZATION

0.59+

ThirdQUANTITY

0.59+

past 25DATE

0.52+

yearsQUANTITY

0.51+

ForresterORGANIZATION

0.49+

threeQUANTITY

0.47+

UITITLE

0.34+

Armando Lambert, Bayview Asset Mgt. & Ahmed Zaidi, Accelirate | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>>Live from Las Vegas. It's the cube covering UI path forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. >>Welcome back to Las Vegas. Everybody, you watching the cube, the leader in live tech coverage. We go out to the events, we extract the signal from the noise. Ahmed Zion, he is here, he's the chief automation officer at accelerate a specialist service provider in this area of RPA in Armando Lambert is the vice president of enterprise optimization governance and risk guys. Oh sorry. At Bayview asset management in Miami. Welcome to the cube criminal. Thank you for that. So Bayview, you've got a good view of the Bay and Miami, is that kinda where the name comes from or the beautiful place to work happening with UI path forward to was in Miami at the Fontainebleau back here in Vegas. But um, so let's get into it. I met um, chief automation officer. That's kind of a cool title. I don't see that a lot. What's that entail? And tell us about accelerate. >>So accelerate at accelerated where one of the largest nice providers is the only thing that we do a process automation and AI company. And our sole focus has been process automation since our inception and our past lives were generalists. We did well and wanted to do it again. Uh, so when we started accelerate, we wanted to make sure that we focused on a very specific vertical niche and process automation was just starting up the uptick about mid 2016 ish. >> So there's gonna be some interesting conversations around process automation is like had an analyst on yesterday, they predicted RPA is dead, you know, process automation lives. You know, it's kind of a tongue in cheek thing. So maybe we can talk about that a little bit, but Amando tell us about your role and a little bit about Bayview. So Bayview is an asset management company, primarily whole loans, mortgage back securities, mortgage servicing rights. >>We offer service advisory as well as investment vehicles. My role basically is to strategize, innovate, look at new technologies, new ways of streamlining the business. Um, and you know, about in 2016, you know, we were faced with the challenge and the challenge was we have a lot of road swiveled to chair type work, back office, operational work. Um, and I went in there just trying to look at people, processes and systems and trying to figure out a way to make things more efficient. And you know, RPA is one of those vehicles. Okay. So smart. You started with people in process, you didn't start with the technology. Yeah, absolutely. Right. So what did you learn? I mean, take us back to 2016 when you started to do the investigation, you started unpack the processes and the people. What did you see and then what led you to RPA? >>Yeah, I mean, I think inherently you're, you're, there's a lot of business processes that are just brought down through years of just being kind of entrepreneurial and doing a lot of business. So a, of these prices of processes early on we felt like we can just go in and automate and we realized that just needed a level of process optimization first. Um, so in doing that, it just kind of directs the vehicle right into what type of automation you need to do. It's not always RPA. RPA is big, a big component for us. Um, it works for us. Early on we wanted to put a strong governance structure. I strongly believe that, you know, and it's worked out so far for us. >> So you, you brought in accelerate, you brought in an outside firm to help you with that process automation, is that right? Absolutely. >>So tell us more about how that all went down. So that was, that was an interesting, um, interesting time, right? The, these products were coming up. Nobody really knew how well they work. And so we went in and we actually did proof of value, right? We said, Hey, this is all well and good. Let's do a proof of concept that a proof of value at that time, proof of concepts really were a thing. I don't, I don't think we should do them anymore. We should only do proof of values. But we went in, looked at the various systems they had, tried it out so he could demonstrate it to his management that this thing works. And as soon as that was over, I think I'd given to her, Armando, here we went all in, right? We said, all right, let's look at the highest value things. >>Let's deliver this. Um, let's figure out a governance model. Let's, let's not, let's not hold it back like we, like we have done in the past. It project spinning up. So let's get the infrastructure up and running very quickly. Let's get, let's get a few automations out there. Some of the business sees the value right away, right? Crawl, walk, run. We can do this. You know, what are we going to automate and what do we need from it and how are we going to govern this? These are the three pillars that I see that I suggest everybody look at it. And we did that in parallel parallel streams and all three of them. And within a few months he was able to return a significant value back to the business, which has led to adoption. I think, I think that has been a very big reason why he's been able to scale because he was able to show early value back to the business very quickly focusing on value rather than the technology or the underlying solution. >>Right? It's um, a lot of times we see folks going into RPA saying, what can RPA do for me? I think that is the wrong question. Um, the question really is what do you do? Let's classify what you do in manual mechanical work, intelligent work and wasteful work, right? And then look at your toolbox. I have RPA, I have AI, I have other technologies that within an enterprise folks are working on, and then apply those to it. RPA becomes the glue for most of these things. You have API as SDKs. You have AI technologies, be it cloud or on prem. RPA becomes the glue and it becomes easy to deploy once you figured out what all the different pieces are. But it's important to look at the process first and say, what? What do you do? So when the business comes back and say, what can you do for me with RPA? >>I said, no, I don't know. What can you do for, with the, I don't know. Tell me what you do and then I'll tell you what the solution is. So mono, given that you started with the value, did that ease some of those potential friction that you sometimes see with change management or change in general? Or did you still see that resistance? And I'm interested in where you started, what were some of those high value areas that you attack but, but the cultural piece first if you will. Yeah, I mean a lot of marketing, you know, it's really what it comes down to trying to prove to the Csuite and managing director areas. Like this is a value proposition. You know, early on, you know, we did a lot of presenting roundtables, luncheon learns with the business. You know, because there is some resistance early on. >>I think everybody has a misconception that it's going to take their jobs where I believe it's gonna create a lot more jobs in the future. Um, for me it was always a scalability play. You know, how can our business do more for less? And that's really what we really wanted to get to. Throughout that journey. We realized there's a lot of benefit, especially for companies that have a heavy back office operations. Um, and we just started, like I mentioned there, we started slow. I didn't want to boil the ocean. I knew I needed to prove to leadership that this works. And I think about three years ago, we all kind of felt, is this going to stick? You know, we've seen technology, I've been in technology for over 20 years and you know, some things fly, some things don't. Right? So we wanted to prove that it worked. >>And you know, the industry just kind of surrounded itself around that. And look where we are now. I think everybody's putting a lot of money in their budgets for, you know, intelligent automation, not just RPA. So the initiative was kind of middle up to the C suite and then top down. Is that how it, absolutely. I'm a firm believer the tone needs to come from the top. It has to come from the top. And you know, luckily for me, I have great leaders in our company. Um, they understood the vision, they understand what, what it could potentially mean for their business. They just needed someone to help execute it. So what kinds of things did you start with? There was a lot of sort of manual form filling out or some of that, uh, you know, data extraction from PDFs using, utilizing OCR, you know, RPAs great to gather and collect data so that they can put it in their models and make more informed decisions. >>Uh, claims processes, you know, dealing with different agencies. So, you know, early on in adopting UI path, there were some limitations. We worked around that. Now it's pretty much limitless and they could touch any system, any technology, any process. So yeah, it's growing tremendously. And in terms of just ensuring governance and compliance as you scale, you have robots doing that. Um, how do you tell me what we're working more and more. I mean, I think regulators now realize, okay, you're removing the human element, right? So, you know, that's a big value as well. Or sampling. Now you're not limited to what you can sample. You can sample 100%, you know, so those are big values and when you speak to regulators, they really understand that I would say five years ago, I'm not so sure. Um, but now they welcome it. And I think a lot of the government agencies now are, are adopting RPA. >>Uh, so it's, it's a good story. Well, automation kill sampling is that I think it is absolutely right. The point actually interesting point that you made, right? Uh, the regulators or the auditors or for that matter, the security and the compliance guys inside the enterprise have this. So this term of the bot, right has this connotation of Terminator and I keep telling him, no, this is that thing. You buy a target that does this. I press the right button, it goes right up, press the left button, mil goes left. It just doesn't think on its own. And I think that conversation is very important, right? Once you have that conversation with the security and the compliance guys to say, this is a bot, it only does what you ask it to do. You could put a social security number in front of this guy all day long in front of this user ID all day long. >>It just doesn't know what to do with it. Won't ever read it. And once they realize that they, the, the conversation changes, um, you know, especially when it in compliance and audit, right? Uh, the compliance officers would love this. Once you tell them there's a lot of decision making that happened in people's heads or Excel spreadsheets that never made it to systems and was never logged. So you'd get something in you massage that, you did that, and you put that in the system. That decision making is now auditable. So you can go back and say, here was the input, here was the massaging of it. Here's what went into the system of record after it came in. So that I think, I think those conversations early on really helped this scale in an age old problem and tribal knowledge. Exactly. You know, Joe has his spreadsheet and Fred knows the Joe has the spreadsheet. >>So when Joe leaves, he has to get the spreadsheet back. And that's kind of this perpetual thing. How much of what you guys did, Armando was processed re-engineering versus just applying automation at some low hanging fruit. Um, I think looking back now it's about a 50, 50 split. Um, you know, there are some areas that have robust processes and that makes our life easier. We can just kind of go in, map it out, look at the automation future state and deploy, develop and deployed. Uh, you know, some areas, you know, they inherit processes and they don't always just so busy doing their day jobs and they don't always realize there's, there's room for efficiency in their process. So, you know, early on when we priced out how much this would cost, how much development it would be, we didn't always factor in that it would be a 50, 50 split and doing a lot more process improvement in the beginning. >>Um, we've now counted for that. So absolutely. It's about a 50, 50 split. Craig LeClaire this morning said something that, you know, I was an analyst and he says, very, you know, very analyst's sort of savings. You've got to stop worrying about the ROI, you know, focus on the more strategic stuff. Every analyst sort of says that. But yeah, there weren't a lot of CFOs too. And they're like, where's the ROI? So you know, you're in the services business, you know, you have to have ROI dollars matter. Absolutely. So you obviously measure ROI. How do you look at it? You know what you said earlier, you're not cutting jobs, right? But so what do you tick? How do you measure kind of the, the value, the ROI? I mean, you know, giving the end user a little more to think about, right? Giving them the opportunity to, you know, do more, be more thoughtful in what their day to day job is rather than doing the swivel chair type work. >>So, you know, the measurement, the beauty around RPA is it's very quantifiable. You know, unlike some traditional it systems, you really can, the data doesn't always kick back. You know, all our, our, our own bots, all our processes kickback, they give us data that we can quantify, um, metrics on, on, on volume versus man hours. This is all information you capture early on. You need to do this at the discovery stage and we train. We have a robust training program for our business analysts and program managers and developers and they're always, that's the question they ask every time. It's not just about what is your process, your cute future, current state, future state, and it's like, how many limit? Let me look at your historical trending. What are their volumes look like? You know, our business is very cyclical. It goes up and down, and when I mentioned I want them to be scalable and have more capacity, that's really the play for me. >>For me, it's never been an FTE. I get it. It may come from the Csuite, but like I said, the tone from the top has been solid. Their vision is more about, Hey, when it's cyclical and it goes up and down, we need to be able to do more. We need to be able to scale. Have you been able to measure productivity improvement? Absolutely. Absolutely we have. If you had a Mulligan, what would you do differently? A good question. I mean, I think we factored early on, I mentioned this early on how much process improvement was needed. I think we undervalued that. And um, you know, every business faces the same challenges, right? They, you know, everyone feels like they're doing the right thing. These processes are inherited. You know, regulations change, investors change. There's new business rules every day, you know, and you kind of need to sit back as a business user every now and then and refresh that. >>And um, you know, we didn't account for that early on. We're helping the business do that. Our business is fantastic. They bought into the program and it's like having additional workforce working on your side. You know, Daniel Dienes in his keynote last night, basically sending them pick up on something you guys said is, is, um, he really appreciates those customers who took a chance early on. He goes, because frankly, our product wasn't, you know, fully, fully baked out. And I was like, wow, what an honest statement from a CEO. You don't usually hear that. My sense is that they got it right. You path. And I'd love your comments. In the sense that they attack, they went after simplicity and said, okay, make it easy to adopt and then we'll figure it out. And then, you know, bringing in the functionality is that, is that kind of what happened or picking up on Daniel? >>And by the way it was, it's amazing. Humility really comes through, right? So I saw him 2016 standing on stage and when my partner came to us for the idea of saying, Hey, we're going to do, we should do this RPA thing. Now I'm giving away my age. But 1998, my first job, I was sitting in front of the computer and Prudential and they put this software in front of me. It was called SQA robot. It was a test automation tool. It was called SQL robot. Uh, why that relates to Daniel is he's had a, came on the stage in the IRPA conference in 2016 if remember, I love this presentation just to blues black thing and few words on it. He goes, let's not kid ourselves. We have this very traditional, you know, QA automation technology that we think can do something really super. >>And I have built a product on top of that, but there's, there's not a lot of magic in here yet. Right. So that's, but, but I think the, the, the great thing about you I've had has been the vision, right? The vision has been, and if you saw yesterday they started with the core and unlike some of the other vendors, they said, we're just going to do RPA really well. We're not going to go into the OCR market. We're not going to try to build AI things. Let's make sure that our core RPA, so you know, you want to go, you're an enterprise, you want to do OCR, you're not going to buy it from an RPA company. You want to buy it from somebody who's been doing it for 30 years or we just has that sole focus. I think you'll have had had that sole focus. >>But as I've seen in the past three, four years, they've just done a great job with the, with the full vision, right. Starting from, they started with the middle of the core of the product and they said, okay, let's go towards the business and see what the business needs with, you know, planning of their, um, of their automations on and so forth and going further to the right to say, let us enable the technology guys who actually implement this to give them the tools and the integrations they need to, to actually make this routed to full product. Um, I think it's a very good question when people say, what can you do with RPA for me? So I said that answer was very different three years ago than it is today. Right? Some of the things are coming out of the box with these. So I, I, I predict that in the next few years, document understanding and natural language and all of that will just be built in today's still very sort of clunky in terms of how you do it. >>But I think those things are coming, coming together. So looking at processes that way is really important. It's a lot of runway for this. Margaret, Armando, I'll give you the last word. Where do you see are RPA or intelligent automation going in, in your organization? Is it still early days you had a lot more adoption or you're pretty much, you know, settled? No, definitely not settled. Um, I think it's, you know, RPA is just one of the tools in the spectrum of intelligent automation. So more integration, more API APIs, a lot of machine learning, uh, eventually some AI. Um, so yeah, we are not slowing down. There's a lot of opportunity. My mandate as I mentioned before, is just scale, scale, scale. So you know, the process is working. We have a good program in place. We'll continue marching forward. Great guys, thanks so much for coming. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for watching. From right back with the cube. Live from UI path forward three in Las Vegas. Right back.

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

forward Americas 2019 brought to you by UI path. Thank you for that. So accelerate at accelerated where one of the largest nice providers is the only thing that we do a process you know, process automation lives. Um, and you know, about in 2016, you know, I strongly believe that, you know, and it's worked out so far for us. you brought in an outside firm to help you with that process automation, is that right? I think I'd given to her, Armando, here we went all in, right? So let's get the infrastructure up and running very quickly. becomes the glue and it becomes easy to deploy once you figured out what all the different pieces are. So mono, given that you started with the value, I've been in technology for over 20 years and you know, some things fly, some things don't. I think everybody's putting a lot of money in their budgets for, you know, intelligent automation, Uh, claims processes, you know, dealing with different agencies. this is a bot, it only does what you ask it to do. the, the conversation changes, um, you know, especially when it in compliance and audit, Uh, you know, some areas, you know, they inherit processes and I mean, you know, giving the end user a little more to think about, right? So, you know, the measurement, the beauty around RPA is it's very quantifiable. And um, you know, every business faces the And then, you know, bringing in the functionality is that, is that kind of what happened or picking up on you know, QA automation technology that we think can do something really super. Let's make sure that our core RPA, so you know, you want to go, you're an enterprise, you know, planning of their, um, of their automations on and so forth and going further to the right to So you know, the process is working.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
DanielPERSON

0.99+

MiamiLOCATION

0.99+

BayviewORGANIZATION

0.99+

Ahmed ZionPERSON

0.99+

Daniel DienesPERSON

0.99+

JoePERSON

0.99+

2016DATE

0.99+

Armando LambertPERSON

0.99+

VegasLOCATION

0.99+

MargaretPERSON

0.99+

30 yearsQUANTITY

0.99+

1998DATE

0.99+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.99+

Craig LeClairePERSON

0.99+

FredPERSON

0.99+

50QUANTITY

0.99+

Ahmed ZaidiPERSON

0.99+

ExcelTITLE

0.99+

100%QUANTITY

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

yesterdayDATE

0.99+

three years agoDATE

0.99+

five years agoDATE

0.99+

mid 2016DATE

0.99+

first jobQUANTITY

0.99+

threeQUANTITY

0.99+

oneQUANTITY

0.98+

three pillarsQUANTITY

0.98+

ArmandoPERSON

0.98+

over 20 yearsQUANTITY

0.98+

last nightDATE

0.97+

2019DATE

0.97+

BayLOCATION

0.96+

PrudentialORGANIZATION

0.96+

AmandoPERSON

0.96+

firstQUANTITY

0.94+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.92+

about three years agoDATE

0.9+

ArmandoORGANIZATION

0.88+

50 splitQUANTITY

0.87+

this morningDATE

0.87+

four yearsQUANTITY

0.86+

AccelirateORGANIZATION

0.82+

IRPAEVENT

0.76+

one ofQUANTITY

0.72+

next few yearsDATE

0.71+

MulliganORGANIZATION

0.65+

SQLTITLE

0.6+

FontainebleauLOCATION

0.56+

aboutQUANTITY

0.5+

RPAORGANIZATION

0.46+

AmericasLOCATION

0.45+

Michael Setticasi, DataRobot & Kourtney Bradbeary, American Fidelity | UiPath FORWARD III 2019


 

>> Voiceover: Live from Las Vegas. It's theCUBE covering UiPath Forward Americas 2019. Brought to you by UiPath. >> Welcome back to the Bellagio, everybody. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage, this is Day 2 of UiPath's Forward III Conference and Kourtney Bradbeary is here R&D specialist at American Fidelity. She's joined by Michael Setticasi, who's the senior director of business development at Boston-based DataRobot, but Michael's from Seattle. Guys, welcome to theCUBE. >> Kourtney B.: Thank you. >> Kourtney, let's start with you. I know you guys, you kind of do benefit solutions, but maybe talk a little a bit about the company and some of the big trends that are driving what you guys are doing. >> Kourtney B: Absolutely. So I work with American Fidelity, it's an insurance company based out of Oklahoma, but our main focus is providing solutions to our customer pain points. So we're a niche-based organization that focuses mainly on education, so the public sector, so education in municipalities in providing solutions and benefits to our employers and our employees that we work with. >> Cool, and Michael, you guys, obviously data science is your thing, but describe a little bit more about what you guys do. >> Yeah, we're an AI enterprise company. What we're really trying to do is democratize the use of AI machine learning within organizations, and we really appeal to both data scientists and business users that understand their business and data and want to do more. >> So Kourtney, you're title is really interesting. R&D special projects, so you got this little sandbox that you get to play with, RPA is on the hype cycle and now it's in the trough of disillusionment, but it's kind of an early play around with things. How did you get in to RPA? Where you guys at? What's this R&D thing going on? Right, so with research and development, I guess there's a lot of space to work with emerging technologies, and AI, and RPA, and how those two things come together and anything new that we see and exciting we're able to apply that technology. It's one thing to think, "Oh, AI, that's cool. Let's do that." But if it doesn't benefit your customer at the end of the day, if it's not driving decisions in your organization, then we don't want to do AI just 'cause it's cool. We really want to do AI because it's what benefits our customer. So we got into RPA because when we saw a demo, and it was like, whoa. If that's real, if that's what we think it's going to be, that's a game changer. So you have RPA, and you have AI kind of coming up at the same time and whenever it was, first coming out a few years ago, they're silo, they're separate. What we've started to do recently is to bring the two industries together and really bring together the RPA component and the AI component to really become IPA, or Intelligent Process Automation, so that way we can really start to transform businesses. >> So this is interesting to me, Michael, because as Kourtney was saying, most people think of these things as separate and more aspirational down the road. You guys are AI experts, what are you seeing in terms of these two domains coming together? >> You hear about intelligent automation everywhere, right? We are pushing it hard, and we're seeing a lot of customers and potential prospects look at it, but I have to give credit to American Fidelity. They are ahead of the curve. They're combining this ability to use an RPA process and a machine learning model to really automate things and provide better customer service and get to the endpoint faster and more efficiently. So I think they're ahead of the curve, but you're going to see more and more of this in the marketplace. >> So Kourtney, a lot of the customers that we talk to, this is kind of my observation, is they're automating obviously mundane processes but frankly really crappy processes. They're really screwed up in a lot of ways. And they're throwing RPA at the problem, it sounds like you have a little different philosophy around how to apply automation. Can you explain that? >> Right, so you don't want to automate something that's bad because then it's going to break a lot, and it's just not a good idea. So what we've tried to do is whenever we get request in the door, there's always a stopping, if somebody has to make a decision, in the past, it's been "Okay, well we can automate the first part and the last part", but it's kind of have to stop in the middle for you to make a decision. And what DataRobot has allowed us to do, in the past, it was really hard to actually apply machine learning, 'cause you had to have these data scientists and they'd have to spend months trying to figure out what model for the data, and is it, you know, retraining a model is really difficult. DataRobot makes a data scientist's job so much easier and actually applicable to the workplace where you could scale, enable scaling, because without DataRobot or without a service like that, it's impossible to scale. So it allows us to implement AI with our RPA to then not just automate the mundane processes, but the small decisions that we make everyday, just 'cause we do our jobs everyday and we know how to do our jobs, AI enables us to automate those processes, as well. >> And you're doing that in an unattended way, or is it an attended automation? >> Both, both. So there's some processes that we have to have a human select things and make certain decisions along the way, or there's some processes that are completely unattended. With any automation, your goal is always to automate 100%, but in reality, you're usually going to get about 80% of a process automated. So what we try to do, we go for the hundred percent, rarely get that, but then you can take out the 20% for human review. And so maybe of the 20% that's not fully automated, maybe we can make stop points for human interaction there, but there have been some processes that we have been able to fully automate. >> So Michael, the data scientists complain that 80% of their time is spent in wrangling data and getting the data ready to actually build a model. I presume that's what you guys do, you solve that problem, right? >> We definitely solve some of that, right? If you get the data all in one place, DataRobot takes care of a lot of the data preparation that's involved in data science. We've also have ways to kind of manage the best places you store your data, so that if other people use the platform, they can see where to get it to. But overall, I would just say, when you look at UiPath and the way it's growing, it's such an exciting growing company like we heard Daniel yesterday mention their growth from customer from year to year, how they're the fastest enterprise software growing company out there. So you combine that RPA market with this growing machine learning market, and there's a ton of excitement. I mean, that's what you're seeing at the conference today. >> So you guys have data scientists on staff, is that right, or-- >> Correct! >> Okay, and so what does this mean for them? Does it mean you just need less of them, or they spend more of their time doing productive work? >> It means they spend more of their time doing productive work, instead of trying to figure out what model to fit, 'cause if you're a data scientist, or an actuary, or any, data analyst, or any of those things, you might know five models that you try to fit everything to. What DataRobot enables us to do is not be stuck to those five models that we know. It enables us to combine models, and choose models based on that data, so it really helps us with the modeling. >> Are you, I should've asked this before, are you still in R&D? Or are you in production? Or where are you at in terms of majority? >> Oh no, we're in production. We have two IPA processes in production today, and we're working on increasing that as we go. We have over a hundred an fifty RPA processes in production, as well as, many many just machine learning, so we're working on combining those now. So we have many machine learning, we have many RPA, and we're working on increasing our IPA. >> What have you seen as the business impact? Do we have enough data yet to sort of-- >> Absolutely. We don't try to focus on ROI. What we try to focus on is how is this impacting our customer, and how is this impacting employees' lives. There's obviously a lot of fear around automation but at American Fidelity, what we try to do is show how this is going to improve our employees' lives and we're by no means trying to cut jobs. We're actually going to have a net increase of jobs over the next five years. We're re skilling our workforce. We're really focusing on how it improves our employees, rather than focusing on ROI. >> So you're not on the ROI treadmill? So how did you get your CFO to sort of agree to all of this? >> So we do track ROI. It's not something we share publicly. But we focus more on our humans and our employees than our ROI. >> Is that because, I mean you're not, virtually every customer I've talked to says, "Well, we're not firing people. We're just getting more productive, or shifting them to more interesting tasks, et cetera, et cetera," and if you do the ROI calculations, you say "Oh, I don't need as many humans to do this anymore", and so you'd say, "Okay, FTE cost" and then you apply that, it's kind of a BS number, 'cause it's not like you're cutting people, so it's not a hard ROI. Is that why you don't focus on ROI? Or you just think it's worthless metric? >> No... >> Actually, I'm sorry. You said you do have it, you just don't share it publicly. >> Right, we just don't share our ROI publicly. And I don't think it's made up, or it's fake. I've never met an organization that says they have more people than they have work for people. There's always work. I really enjoy the first video opening of UiPath, it's, "since the beginning of time, humans have worked", and everyone thinks that automation is going to get rid of jobs, there's a lot of controversy over that, but realistically, if you think about the first industrial revolution, that was, after the first industrial revolution hit, that was the biggest economic upturn that had seen since that time. We're in that same space now. It's just hard to see it with where we're at. It's only going to increase, work is only going to increase. It's definitely going to change. I think it's naive to think that jobs won't change. And there will be jobs that will be eliminated, job functions, but I don't think there's elimination of humans needed, if that makes sense. >> Well yeah, it does. You guys sound like you're pretty visionary about how to apply technology to your business. And Michael, I mean, Kourtney's right, machines have always replaced humans, this is nothing new, first time ever that it's in cognitive function, so that scares people a little bit, but what else are you seeing in the marketplace that you can share with us? >> We're just seeing increased use of automation. So like, you might think when you talk DataRobot, you're using us for the top 1% things that a company might do, right? If you're a bank, you might use us to help out, figure out, how you can more efficiently lend customer's money, and make sure that you're making good investments, but what we're finding is, automation and machine learning models are being used everywhere. They're being used in marketing now, right? An example could be this show. We'll get leads from this show. Let's run some machine learning to understand what leads to follow up on first, because we'll get the best result. We're seeing machine learning in HR, right? Making sure their employees are happy, tracking employee churn through machine learning, so I think what we're seeing is it's being adopted more broadly, which means you need more people. We're not replacing people. >> So, why UiPath? >> Whenever we started the vendor process and started looking at several vendors, the UiPath product just was unmatched, frankly. There was a lot of vendors that had more code base, and there was then UiPath that anyone can learn. And that's what we really liked 'cause in American Fidelity, we've chosen to go with, we have a COE but we've also chosen to go with a democratized model where everyone in the organization will be able to build robots. We're training people to build robots. We have, each department has people that are dedicated. A certain portion of their time is building robots and UiPath really made that available with their products for anybody to be able to learn. >> So you have a COE. >> Kourtney B.: Yes. It was interesting, Craig LeClaire this morning, I don't know if you saw his keynote, but he kind of made this statement, it was sort of a off-handed statement, he said, "COE, maybe that's asking too much". He didn't use term tiger team, but I inferred, it's like, rather just kind of get a tiger team of some experts, but talk a little bit more about your COE. >> So, we kind of go with a hybrid model. If you think about, typical, it's weird because RPA is only a few years old, and we're thinking typical RPA, but people usually either go with a COE or completely democratized. We've really gone with a hybrid model, so we have a COE with governance where we've set a loose framework of what to follow, and we have code standards, when you say, follow these things. We have a knowledge library that we share. But we only have a handful of full-time RPA developers, and everyone help, those developers help, teach and help grow that knowledge throughout the organization, so that way we have people in every area that can also develop. So our developers are not our own key developers. Our developers are focused on the IPA, on the AI, whereas our other people throughout the organization are focused more on RPA so we can really make a big difference more quickly. >> Do you have a software robot that automates auditing and checks for compliance? >> Yes, so we have, one of our robots, the function that it does is audit one of our inputs, so we do have robots in almost every area that, yeah, we do have audit robots. >> Has it cut the auditing bill? Is that part of the ROI? You don't have to answer that. (giggles) >> Michael, our last question for you is where do you see this all going? This is very interesting to me because I've inferred from a lot of the conversations that, like that PepsiCo guy was up yesterday, talking about an AI fabric throughout the organization, not just tactical projects, and that kind of interested me, but I expected it's much further off. I'm hearing from Kourtney that it's actually real today. What's your sort of prediction or forecast for the adoption of this more advanced intelligent process automation? Is it kind of just starting now and it's going to explode? Or am I just missing the mark here? >> No, I think you're a hundred percent on. I mean, first off, I think, like I mentioned earlier, RPA and machine learning separately, are in these incredible growth stages. Right, and we think our message to customers now is if you're not thinking about how you're doing AI and machine learning, you're already behind 'cause your competition is. And so you better get thinking about it. I think we're going to get to that level with intelligent automation, with RPA plus machine learning very soon. I do think right now we're in that infancy stage where people are looking for used cases, and they want to hear great stories, and so I do think American Fidelity is ahead of the curve, but they're not going to be ahead of the curve for long. It's catching up. If you're not doing it, we're going to eventually get to that point where you'll have someone like Elon Musk or Masayoshi Son, say, if you're not thinking of intelligent automation, you're already going to be left behind. >> All right, congratulations on the work that you've done. >> Kourtney B.: Thank you. >> It's a really awesome story. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. >> Yeah, yeah, thanks for having us. >> Thanks for having us. >> All right, keep it right there, everybody. We'll be back from UiPath Forward day number 2. You're watching theCUBE. Be right back. (upbeat music)

Published Date : Oct 16 2019

SUMMARY :

Brought to you by UiPath. and Kourtney Bradbeary is here and some of the big trends that are driving and benefits to our employers and our employees Cool, and Michael, you guys, obviously data science and we really appeal to both data scientists and the AI component to really become You guys are AI experts, what are you seeing in terms of and a machine learning model to really So Kourtney, a lot of the customers that we talk to, but it's kind of have to stop in the middle that we have been able to fully automate. and getting the data ready to actually build a model. the best places you store your data, that you try to fit everything to. So we have many machine learning, we have many RPA, and we're by no means trying to cut jobs. So we do track ROI. and if you do the ROI calculations, You said you do have it, you just don't share it publicly. and everyone thinks that automation is going to but what else are you seeing in the marketplace So like, you might think when you talk DataRobot, and UiPath really made that available with their products I don't know if you saw his keynote, and we have code standards, when you say, is audit one of our inputs, so we do have robots Is that part of the ROI? Is it kind of just starting now and it's going to explode? And so you better get thinking about it. Thanks so much for coming on theCUBE. All right, keep it right there, everybody.

SENTIMENT ANALYSIS :

ENTITIES

EntityCategoryConfidence
MichaelPERSON

0.99+

Michael SetticasiPERSON

0.99+

SeattleLOCATION

0.99+

OklahomaLOCATION

0.99+

KourtneyPERSON

0.99+

Kourtney BradbearyPERSON

0.99+

80%QUANTITY

0.99+

Craig LeClairePERSON

0.99+

hundred percentQUANTITY

0.99+

UiPathORGANIZATION

0.99+

20%QUANTITY

0.99+

American FidelityORGANIZATION

0.99+

PepsiCoORGANIZATION

0.99+

BostonLOCATION

0.99+

yesterdayDATE

0.99+

Kourtney B.PERSON

0.99+

five modelsQUANTITY

0.99+

Masayoshi SonPERSON

0.99+

bothQUANTITY

0.99+

BothQUANTITY

0.99+

100%QUANTITY

0.99+

todayDATE

0.99+

Elon MuskPERSON

0.99+

two thingsQUANTITY

0.99+

two IPAQUANTITY

0.99+

two industriesQUANTITY

0.98+

each departmentQUANTITY

0.98+

Kourtney BPERSON

0.98+

DataRobotORGANIZATION

0.98+

2019DATE

0.98+

first videoQUANTITY

0.98+

one thingQUANTITY

0.98+

two domainsQUANTITY

0.98+

firstQUANTITY

0.95+

oneQUANTITY

0.94+

Las VegasLOCATION

0.94+

1%QUANTITY

0.93+

first partQUANTITY

0.93+

few years agoDATE

0.92+

first timeQUANTITY

0.92+

Day 2QUANTITY

0.91+

theCUBEORGANIZATION

0.89+

DataRobotPERSON

0.89+

over a hundred an fifty RPAQUANTITY

0.89+

about 80%QUANTITY

0.88+

one placeQUANTITY

0.88+

UiPathTITLE

0.86+

UiPath's Forward III ConferenceEVENT

0.85+

DanielPERSON

0.85+

RPATITLE

0.85+

this morningDATE

0.83+

AmericanOTHER

0.78+

number 2QUANTITY

0.77+

next five yearsDATE

0.75+

industrial revolutionEVENT

0.73+

first industrial revolutionEVENT

0.73+

&DTITLE

0.69+

FORWARD IIITITLE

0.67+

DataRobotTITLE

0.66+

R&DORGANIZATION

0.64+